by Louise Hawes
The one who’d done all that was my mother. Or rather the lonely girl I knew was sitting on that couch with her: a fifteen-year-old kid who’d hardly gotten the chance to show off for her own parents before she had to become one herself.
“Mom,” I told her, “you don’t need an MD for a daughter.” You don’t need me to major in medicine so you can major in being respectable, in being somebody.
“But we’ve come so far.” She had laid the book beside her, and her hands were in her lap now, nested, quiet. Hopeless.
“You can put a whole magazine together all by yourself. You’re funny and smart and you know just how to handle people.” When she raised her glance, I caught it. “Isn’t that enough?
“Me? I’m not sure what I want to do after I graduate, but I’m one hundred billion percent sure it isn’t what someone else wants. Not you. Not even Rufus.”
“But—”
“If I try out for a part in next fall’s play, and if I don’t get it?” I remembered what Lisa had said about needing some acting credits behind me. “It won’t be your fault. It will be mine. And if I apply to theater school and don’t get in? That will be all my own doing.” I wanted her to understand. “Do you have any idea how good that feels?”
If my mom and I had been onstage or in a movie, she might have wept, might have told me about her long-ago doctor. Might have asked me about Fry. That was the happy ending I’d always imagined. Or maybe you could call it a happy beginning. But the truth is? This wasn’t a play, and I wasn’t writing the script. If my mother was ever going to confide in me, it would be in her own time. All I could do was walk over to her and take her hand. Just for a second. Then kiss her on the cheek.
She stayed there, frozen, the way she gets. She looked at me as if I were a large balloon that had floated into the living room and was pretending to be someone she knew. She didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. It seemed like a very long time before she recognized me. When she did, she spoke in a small, resigned voice. “Well, if you’re going into theater,” she said, “at least you’ll always have something from wardrobe you can wear out.”
* * * *
He came to the door that afternoon, the same way he used to. Right after my mother went back to the office, there he was, like always. The difference was Fry stayed outside, head down, as if he were waiting for permission to come into the hall. I couldn’t bear to talk on Mom’s perfectly plumped cushions, so we sat outside on the front steps. I perched beside a big planter filled with carnations and pansies. (As soon as she’d invited Rufus to dinner that first time, my mother had added the carnations, long-stemmed afterthoughts that towered over the tiny pansies.)
That planter took up nearly the whole step where I sat, so Fry had to find a place below me.
“Listen,” he said.
“I am,” I said.
“Whoo-heooooo,” said a dove from the oak tree next door.
“Let’s go to the beach,” Fry suggested, “where we can talk.”
“We can talk here,” I told him.
“But H and Margaret are waiting to see you.” He nodded toward the Taurus, shuddering on idle across the street. H waved from behind the wheel. Beside him, Margaret was bent over the front seat, wrestling with the cooler. Fry had brought backup.
I studied the pansies’ clown faces and thought about Rufus, about second-chance daughters. Second-chance boyfriends.
“Noooo-noooooooo,” said the dove, who knew better than I did. I ignored it and went to the beach.
It was good to hear the ocean again, to take my shoes off and walk in the sand. To feel how the sun had worked its way down into the beach. Yes, morning pages with Rufus were still percolating, and everything felt like a poem. And yes, it was good to sit on a towel, watching the water beads dry on everyone’s legs after a quick wade. Finally, it was good to have H and Margaret there. To remind me that things didn’t have to stay the same. That they could change in the best of all possible ways.
H’s crush on Miss Kinney was definitely a thing of the past. The boy who sat beside Margaret now, who laughed and talked in a lower, easier register than before, seemed older, different. And if you can believe it, quieter. One thing hadn’t changed, though. He insisted on sharing his latest poem.
I was dreading my encounter with Fry and exhausted from my face-off with Mom. The four of us had barely toweled off, and Margaret had just set out a paper plate of olives and deviled eggs. In short, I was not at all ready for one of H’s rhyming disasters. But as it turned out, this one was different; it was more than half good. He didn’t need to read it, because like Rufus that first day of class, he had it memorized.
It wasn’t long and it hardly rhymed at all. But it was true and sweet and it made Margaret close her eyes, then lean over and kiss him, right there on the ratty NASCAR towel he insisted on dragging to the beach even though it had lost so much of its color that Mario Andretti’s nose had pretty much disappeared. “That was good,” I told him, and I meant it. “That was really good.”
I watched H and Margaret then. Studied them, I guess you could say. The way they sat with each other was comfortable, open. Not wrapped around each other, but just touching. As if that was enough. I was pretty sure Margaret didn’t go all helpless, shapeless goo inside each time H talked to her. And I was pretty sure H wouldn’t have minded telling her just what he was thinking and feeling.
Fry didn’t watch what I was watching, though. Instead, he stared at me. Too long and too hard. He drank a sip of beer and then he stared. Drank another sip and stared again. As if he were trying to memorize me. As if he knew he wouldn’t see me again. “Come on,” he said at last. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Like the dove, I knew better. But I went. I took his hand, partly out of habit, and partly because, well, the gulls were screeching, the water was sparkling like fireflies, and everything felt like home. The cottages along the shore got farther back and farther apart. Soon there were just dunes on one side of us, water on the other. Halfway to the cove, it happened. There was no talk, no preliminaries. Fry just grabbed me. Held me close. And covered my mouth with his. Me? I pushed him away.
Not want to kiss Fry? Not want to get up close and sweaty with the sexiest guy in school? Like H’s poem, this was something no one could have predicted. But everything had changed since our last kiss. For one thing, I was now clear: That had definitely been our last kiss. Rufus had shown me something besides how enjambed lines rush you ahead like a waterfall. He’d shown me what honesty and being there for someone looked like.
“Fry,” I said, backing away from him. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“How you’re sorry you blew me off? How you miss me so much it hurts?” Now there was a smile, but it was huge, exaggerated.
I turned away, started walking back toward the others. Fry grabbed me, too hard. He pushed me toward a dune, a shaggy mountain of sand that blocked out the last of the cottages along the beach. He was breathing hard, as if he were stroking toward a giant wave. “Listen,” he said. “We can still make this work.”
A SINGLE GULL OVERHEAD
WHEEE-EEEEE. AUKKKKKKKKKKK. WHEEEE-eeeeeeeeeee.
FRY
(Not letting go)
When you kissed me on that empty stage? I fell like a damn fool.
ME
Look, Fry,
(Trying to get my arm free from his grip)
things are different now.
GULL
(Diving into a high-tide wave)
KRRRREEEEEEE-EEEEEEEEEE-EEEEEEE-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
FRY
A fool who maybe took a few shortcuts to get what I wanted.
GULL
(With a fish in its claws)
Krauchhhhhh. Chaaaulllllkkkk. KRAAAAAAAAA.
INCOMING TIDE
SHHHHHHH, NOW . . . shhhhhhh, now. SHHHHHHH, NOW. NOW. NOW.
FRY
(Letting me go, sinking down against the dune)
Mom and Mr. Mustache are getting hitched.
What?
(Shaking my head, sitting beside him)
Really?!
FRY
Really. They’re moving to California. They want me to come with them.
ME
(Genuinely happy, and yes, a lot relieved)
Oh, Fry! That’s some of the best surfing in the world.
FRY
I won’t go if you ask me to stay.
THE TIDE
(Washing over both of us)
Shhhhhhhhh. SHHHHHH. SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
“One word, Sarah,” Fry told me, leaning in, seeing a future I didn’t. “Stay,” he said.
I wasn’t quiet because I was thinking it over. It was more that I was afraid of how much he wanted something I could never give him.
“It doesn’t have to rhyme, Sarah. Forget that moon-spoon crap.” He was smiling, holding my hand again, more gently this time. But those chocolate eyes of his were losing light fast. “Just tell me to stay.” The animal look was coming back. And the longer I waited, the worse it would be.
“We can still have next year, just like we planned. I’ll hang with H and his family, and we can graduate together. There’s always California after that.” He took my other hand, too, and his voice dropped, then broke as if he were just now growing up. “My girl comes first.”
It was like diving into winter waves. “I can’t,” I told him.
“Why not?”
“Because I need to find out who I am by myself before I can be with anyone else.”
Fry looked at me, and he didn’t need to say anything. His face was all hurt, all questions.
I glanced out across the horizon and found a faraway dot that must have been the gull making off with its catch. I tracked that steady, determined wingbeat across the sky.
“It isn’t you, it’s me.” I needed to explain. “I already told Rufus I can’t be his amenu—his intern. I told him I want to give acting a try.” Finally, I said the hardest thing of all: “I’m pretty sure I don’t feel the same way about you that Margaret does about H. Or the way your mom does about Mr. Mu—about her fiancé.”
Then I talked for a long time. Way too long. I heard myself filling up the awkward space between us, pouring in words. But I was too nervous, too afraid to stop, and I couldn’t even meet his eyes. So I told him about listening to the world talk. About being part of that dialogue every time I walked onstage. I chattered on and on, and when I finally ran out of breath and looked up at him, I saw something I’d never expected. Fry was crying.
For Margaret
Some people laugh
ha-ha-ha.
Other people put
their hands on their mouths
he-he-he.
In department stores
Santa laughs
ho-ho-ho.
But this girl I know—
okay, this girl I’m crazy for
laughs like an envelope
tearing open and good stuff
spilling out.
The Last Class
Fry stopped texting and calling. I knew he was probably surfing next day, and wasn’t about to come off the beach for the banquet that night. I hoped the ocean was full of brilliant rogue waves, and that the boy I’d just said no to was catching every one of them, perfect ride after perfect ride.
As for me? I was riding a different kind of wave by 6 p.m.—on Mamselle’s terrace. It was heart-in-your-throat exciting to be sitting with Margaret and H at the head table, to look out over dozens of other tables, scurrying servers, popping flashbulbs, and reporters, some from national networks. Because, let’s face it, it wasn’t every day that a group of regular kids got thrown a farewell banquet by a world-famous poet.
My mother and the three florists she’d worked with had outdone themselves. (And spent mounds of Shepherd’s money.) Because it was warm enough to be outside, they’d scattered potted plants and twinkling lights everywhere. The usual ferns and palms were supplemented with silver trellises at all four entrances. Wisteria and trumpet vines crawled up each one and hung like gorgeous draped curtains from the top. Tubs of live orchids filled the center of every table; all the napkins were folded into rabbit ears, then wrapped around a small glass vase that held miniature roses and sprigs of honeysuckle. I had to admit, the whole place looked and smelled amazing, like a garden on steroids, one big, gorgeous botanical paradise.
Even Thatcher Vogel showed up, and maybe, I whispered to Margaret, his mother had dressed him, because he wore a plain sport shirt without a single skull or big truck in sight. Everyone from class was there, sitting right up front at the head table. Everyone except Fry, of course. And sure, even in the middle of that crowd, swept up by suspense and excitement, I still got flashbacks; a few sweet moments flooded me, kisses, laughs, poems. But mostly? I felt relief that it was over. Make-believe poetry. Make-believe love.
I studied the others at the long table: the inseparable couple who’d thrown their hoops together; Coral Ann Levin, whose mother had sewn her a dress by hand; Thatcher and his goon crew; the kids from Shore High; Margaret, whose laugh had made me trust her; H, a kindred spirit and a dear friend, after all. We’d all shared something, something big. None of us were in the same place we’d started a few short months ago.
Me? Where had I been Before Rufus? I’d had a prince, I’d been a “popular girl,” and I’d no inkling what an iamb was. And now? I’d lost my prince and was doomed, with the start of school, to fall (back) to the bottom of the WPH social ladder. But I had a new-and-improved father who, in his own unpredictable fashion, was there for me. I’d learned about getting out of bed to do something that’s more important than staying in it. And most surprising, most wondrous of all, I’d met a great poet who shared the world I’d always felt alone in—the world I heard crackling and whispering, giggling and singing, moaning and roaring all around me. A poet who made me proud of myself and of what I could do, might do yet.
“I hope someone has the guts to teach those kids a lesson.” The microphone snapped to life, and I jumped, as if someone had sneaked up behind me. Actually, though, they’d sneaked up right in front of me. I’d been so busy people watching and gossiping with Margaret, I hadn’t seen Rufus and our prof join us.
“If they were a year or two older, those punks would be thrown in jail. I say give them a preview of coming attractions!” It was my poet’s voice, but not his words. He’d come in, like he always did, without anyone noticing. For a famous guy, he had the strangest way of disappearing sometimes. But there he was, propped on his crutches, his big hands wrapped around the sides of a lectern, reading.
“I really didn’t think it was possible that a bunch of teenagers, regular high school students, some of them kids of my neighbors, could deliberately destroy an old man’s past.”
Everyone at my end of the table gasped. By now, we all recognized the letters from the paper. The ones by outraged citizens. Where had Rufus found them? And why on earth was he reading them at what was supposed to be a très élégant event?
I hardly dared look at Mom’s table, where she and Aunt J. were eating elbow to elbow with the mayor, the town council, and her boss at the magazine. As Rufus kept reading, though, I sneaked a peek. My mother’s hand was at her throat.
“Most things have two sides, Rufus read, “but the kind of desecration that went on in that house last week is just plain wrong. ‘Shameful’ is another word for it.”
I found the table with the principals and teachers from our schools. Miss Kinney was wearing a beautiful white peasant blouse and a confused smile. Beside her, there was a young man in a uniform. A young man who sat very close to her, his arm over her chair.
“If we’re raising boys and girls who trample on everything we hold precious, what hope is there for the future?”
When he’d read the worst parts of those angry letters, Rufus stopped and beamed at all of us. I felt sick inside, not so much that he was
punishing us for what we’d done, but that he wanted to.
“I’ve just read you,” Rufus told the sea of tables spread across the patio, “what some folks in town think of the young men and women I’ve been working with this summer.” He picked up a book bound in green and turned a few pages. “And now I’d like to read you what those shameful, thoughtless barbarians have written for all of us.” He found the place he wanted, and peered from under that sweep of white hair at the diners around him. “It’s about a humble weed we all take for granted, something that blooms in the toughest spots.” Then, in a voice that was as warm as afternoon sun, Rufus read the poem we’d all made together, the one about Lamium.
At first, as I listened, it sounded like a famous poem, something Miss Kinney would probably make us memorize. But the words were ours, and that day in the garden came rushing back: the twilight, the way Rufus had opened everyone like flowers.
“Is there a heartbeat in those purple veins?
Are those embryos or mouths or rosary beads?
The color of my first dress, gathered with love.”
I looked around the room, saw the faces of people who’d never shared that class with us, people who might have written some of those angry letters. Everyone was quiet, listening.
“Fairy cups stirred with blades of grass,
Notes clustered on a windy score,
Three blooms, three friends, alas!”
I couldn’t help twisting in my seat, turning toward the entrance to the dining room, where Shepherd and Manny were standing. And sure enough, my father nodded, gave me a thumbs-up. Did he understand everything we’d written? I couldn’t tell, but he knew it mattered to me. And that was enough.
“Petals small as a child’s tears good-bye,
Dropped stitches everywhere
From a blanket the color of sky.”
There was a moment, right after my poet read the end of our poem, when no one said a word, when the kitchen and the nesting birds in the trees beyond the terrace made the only sounds you could hear. That’s when I checked my mother’s table, saw Mom’s stunned-rabbit look, her slow smile as the people around her put their hands together. The clapping was loud and long; it drowned out the birds, the kitchen, everything except Manny’s four-finger whistle. And it didn’t stop until Rufus grabbed the lectern and raised one hand.