Consent

by Nancy Ohlin

  “Isn’t today spicy chicken stew day?”

  “Oh, right! Doro wat. You know my family’s recipe rotation better than I do.”

  “Tuesdays are Swedish food, Wednesdays are make your own tacos, Thursdays are pasta or pizza, Fridays are sushi from Tokyo Palace, and Saturdays and Sundays are anything goes,” I rattle off.

  “I am so impressed!”

  “Yeah, well, I’m very impressive.”

  Once inside Plum drops her backpack on the shiny oak floor. I set mine down carefully on the front hall table next to a ceramic bowl full of keys. Shakespeare, who is part Saint Bernard, part German shepherd, and part lots of other things, lopes out of the living room. He greets us with a friendly bark and slobbery kisses.

  “Mom? Dad? We’re hoooome!” Plum shouts.

  “Pernilla!”

  Mrs. Sorenson emerges from the kitchen holding a glass of white wine in one hand and a spatula in the other. Her red sundress is striking against her dark brown skin, and her long black hair spills down her back. She looks like a model, which is what she was before she became a full-time mom and author. She writes picture books about a frog named Sir Ribbit and is practically a rock star in the under-six set.

  She kisses Plum’s forehead and then mine. Her scent is a mix of Chanel No. 5 and sautéed onions. “Hello, my loves. How was your first day back?”

  “Great!” says Plum.

  “So boring,” I say at the same time.

  Mrs. Sorenson touches my cheek. “It’s senioritis, darling. I had it too. Honestly, I couldn’t get to college fast enough.”

  “Where’s Daddy?” Plum asks.

  “He’s on his way home. His flight from L.A. just landed. Bea, sweetheart, you’re welcome to stay for dinner.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Sorenson.”

  “You girls can help me with the salad. I found the loveliest spinach at the farmer’s market this afternoon. And it’s organic!”

  Mrs. Sorenson turns and heads back to the kitchen, still raving about the spinach. Plum, Shakespeare, and I trail after her. As we pass the dining room, I notice that the table has already been set for four. Everything looks so festive: the crystal vase flush with half-open roses, the pearly-white wedding china edged with gold, the silver candlestick holders. Mrs. Sorenson always says that nice things aren’t meant to gather dust and that every day is a special occasion.

  She is pretty much a grown-up version of Plum.

  In the white, sun-dappled kitchen, the doro wat bubbles on the stove. An array of ingredients covers the marble counters: garlic, ginger, half an onion, a stick of butter, and a carton of eggs. Jazz piano plays from an iPod dock—Oscar Peterson or maybe Bill Evans. The finches, Hansel and Gretel, twitter at each other in their ornate antique cage.

  On the refrigerator is a photo magnet of Plum from when she was in kindergarten. With her curly Renoir hair, enormous blue eyes, and caramel complexion, she looks almost the same as she does now. Next to the magnet is a crayon drawing of three dinosaurs and the words “I LOV YOU MOMY DADY ROARRRRR.”

  Plum tears a piece of injera and offers me half. “Can Bea and I go to Boston Columbus Day weekend?” she asks her mom through a mouthful of bread. “We want to visit Harvard really badly. We’re going to apply Early Action!”

  “Wait, what?” I whisper to Plum. She waves her hand to shush me.

  “Not Princeton?” Mrs. Sorenson says, sounding disappointed. She and Mr. Sorenson both went there.

  “We do want to apply to Princeton, Mommy. Just not Early Action. So is it okay if we go to Boston? And can we borrow the Prius? And can I ask Aunt Jessika and Ingrid if we can stay with them for the weekend? Please, please, please?”

  Mrs. Sorenson laughs. “You have it all figured out, don’t you? Well, it sounds like a fine plan. Let me talk to your father first.”

  Plum flashes me a triumphant smile. “Yes! Road trip!”

  I frown at her: But I haven’t agreed to this yet.

  She gives me a breezy look back: Just trust me!

  “You girls might want to fit in some other school visits while you’re there,” Mrs. Sorenson says as she dips a wooden spoon into a tin labeled ETHIOPIAN BERBERE. “Like maybe Tufts and BU and Wellesley? There are so many other good colleges, too.”

  “I’ll have to ask my dad,” I say, hedging. “I’ll have to clear it with Mrs. Lugansky, too. She doesn’t like it when I miss a lesson, and my lessons are always on Saturdays, and it’s really hard to reschedule with her.”

  “I’m sure Scary Russian Lady will let you go,” says Plum. “After all, this is about college.”

  Her face is so shiny and hopeful, like she’s talking about Christmas morning.

  It’s very hard to say no to Plum.

  This is where I should tell her the truth. That I have no interest in Harvard or Princeton or any other college. That my dad wouldn’t even notice if I went away for a weekend, any weekend. That Mrs. Lugansky is not a real person.

  But it’s been so long since I’ve lived in the world of facts that I’m not sure how to even start that conversation.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I promise without looking at her.

  “Yay!” Plum grabs me in a fierce embrace that falls somewhere between bear hug and death grip.

  The Sorensons are an effusive people.

  • • •

  Aside from the lying thing, Plum and I have a great friendship. We care about each other and watch each other’s backs. Also, it’s really easy to be with her; she’s like a sister who is so familiar, like every-molecule-in-our-bodies familiar, that we can slip in and out of osmosis without the slightest effort.

  I also love her parents and desperately wish I were a Sorenson.

  When Plum and I first met, it was ninth grade, and she was the new girl who sat in front of me in English and raised her hand even more than I did. One day, during a discussion of Romeo and Juliet, she turned around and whispered: “Do you want to come over after school and meet my new dog? His name is Shakespeare, too.” For some reason, I found this funny and burst out laughing. She laughed too. Mrs. Jacobs gave us a stern look before resuming a tedious speech about the individual versus society.

  I accepted Plum’s invitation. This wasn’t like me at all, since I generally kept to myself; even back then, I was way more “individual” than “society.” I had some friends but no one really close. There was something so irresistibly sunny and smart about Plum, though.

  So we went to her house. I met Shakespeare and also her perfect parents, including her dad, who is a famous architect. We played backgammon and Clue and Ping-Pong in her groovy retro basement. We watched silly YouTube videos on her laptop.

  Soon I was over there all the time. At first Mrs. Sorenson seemed worried and asked me if my parents didn’t miss me. When I told her that it was just my dad and that he worked late most nights, she got teary-eyed and made me a huge mug of hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows.

  So later that fall, when Tommy Vacco called Plum “Fatso” in phys ed, I punched him. I actually punched him. It was my one and only time getting a detention. But it was worth it, and Tommy totally left her alone after that.

  I try to imagine what it would be like if Plum went away to Harvard or wherever and I stayed in Eden Grove. Aside from missing her, I really can’t spend the rest of my life here. If I do, I will turn into Theo. Or worse, my dad.

  Maybe I should just follow Plum’s lead on this college business. Adulthood by osmosis. I’m sure there are worse ways to grow up.

  FOUR

  Later that night I decide to practice piano for a bit before going to bed. It’s been a while, but something about hearing Mr. Rossi has motivated me; I could have listened to him forever.

  I’m so glad I didn’t sign up for photography with Mrs. Lutz.

  Dad is still at his office, preparing for a new trial. He’s been texting me for the last couple of hours, giving a later ETA each time. Feel free to order in Chinese was the most recent one.

>   I’m tempted to text back: I’m sorry, do I know you? or The owner of this phone has been kidnapped by demented squirrel-bots. But I don’t. Dad does not have a sense of humor.

  I put the phone away and play some arpeggios to warm up. The piano is a Kawai upright with a scratchy walnut finish. It hasn’t been tuned in all the years we’ve lived in this house, and it’s missing the high F key.

  Still, it’s a piano.

  Gradually, my random broken chords begin to fall into order: first a C-major arpeggio, then a D, then an E. I complete all the major arpeggios and move on to the minor ones. The sound swells and resonates in the two-story living room/dining room, which is enormous and sparsely furnished and therefore a bit echoey. Our development is named Pleasant Meadow, which is weird because there are no meadows in sight, pleasant or otherwise. The house used to belong to Dad’s mom; she gave it to him after he moved back to Eden Grove and before she retired to Tucson, Arizona. Dad never bothered to buy more furniture beyond what Grandma Min left, though, including the old piano, which was Aunt Jeanine’s, I guess, when she was a kid.

  Cream Puff appears out of nowhere and leaps onto the bench. She head-butts my arm with a violent burst of affection and derails my A-minor arpeggio.

  I continue playing with my left hand and scratch Cream Puff’s ears with my right. She purrs and digs her knifelike claws into my lap. Until last week Cream Puff was just “Cat.” She’s a stray, and Dad doesn’t want me taking in any more strays. The last one cost us five hundred dollars in vet bills and died anyway. The one before that turned out to be pregnant.

  Dad said Cat would have to go back outside unless I found another owner for her. I tried really hard not to name her because I was afraid of getting attached. But I ran out of willpower, and besides, she’s so darned beautiful: a fluffy marmalade coat, an elegant lion nose, and amber eyes that will play nonstop stare-down with you. She’s also homeless, so how can I turn her out? The nights are already starting to get chilly, and I’ve had zero success getting someone to adopt her. Not even Plum’s family can take her because Mr. Sorenson is super allergic to cats.

  After a while Cream Puff stops her furious digging and curls into a warm ball on my lap. I can feel her gravelly purrs through my thin cotton skirt.

  My arpeggios gradually morph into Chopin’s Etude Opus 25, Number 12, a.k.a. the “Ocean Etude.” The word étude derives from the French word for “study”; many études help to hone a particular technique. The Ocean Etude is all about the technique of arpeggios.

  But for me, it’s all about the ocean. When I play it, I hear waves rising and breaking and crashing against the rocks. I’ve never actually been to the ocean, any ocean, but I figure it must be just like this.

  See ocean would be at the top of my wish list, encircled in a big pink heart.

  After Chopin, I go backward in time and start from the beginning. Bach’s second Partita—I wonder if Mr. Rossi plays this one? Then Beethoven’s Sonata Number 32, Opus 111, which has only two movements instead of the usual three and was one of the pieces he composed after becoming deaf.

  Then I return to the nineteenth century with Schumann’s Fantasy in C. Finally, I move on to the twentieth century with Rachmaninoff’s “Little Red Riding Hood” étude and Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau,” meaning “water games.”

  It’s almost eleven o’clock before I realize that I’ve been playing for three hours straight. I don’t remember the last time I did that. I wonder if Mr. Rossi likes to practice late at night too? What kind of piano does he own? Where does he live? Does he live alone, or—

  My phone buzzes, startling me. It’s another text from Dad: Home after midnight. See you in the morning.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I say out loud.

  It’s probably just as well. I want to practice for a little bit longer, and it’s always best to play when he isn’t around.

  FIVE

  On Tuesday, I sleep through my phone alarm, and I can already tell that it’s going to be one of those days. My blankets are in an agitated knot, and my muscles are tight with exhaustion. My head throbs with a sort-of migraine and the foggy vestiges of a dream.

  I try to remember the dream. It was vague and sexy and disturbing. Was I in it? Who was I with? And then it comes to me: Mr. Rossi.

  Why am I having X-rated dreams about him?

  Obviously, because, I tell myself. Still, it’s probably not a good idea to harbor sexual fantasies about one’s teacher.

  A sudden hacking noise makes me bolt straight up. On the floor next to my desk Cream Puff is throwing up on my backpack.

  “That is not cool!” I yell at her. She regards me with a helpless look, bucks, and proceeds to throw up some more.

  Sighing, I slip on my glasses and get up to search for paper towels.

  I pad down the hallway, which overlooks the great room with only a skeletal faux-wood guardrail separating me from the void. Rain spits against the skylights and makes a loud, steady, drumming sound.

  Peering over the guardrail, I can see Dad’s legal papers fanned across the dining room table, along with a coffee mug and an empty carton of Ben & Jerry’s. He must have stayed up after he got home, to work. He gets like this whenever he has a trial.

  Just before I reach the bathroom, I realize that the door to Theo’s room is open. Curious, I poke my head inside.

  Dad is on the floor, peering under the bed.

  “Um . . . Dad?”

  He turns and gives me a quick, embarrassed smile. He is wearing his fancy charcoal suit, a white shirt, and his lucky tie. The tie is maroon with invisible maroon stripes. His silvery-black hair—what there is of it—is still damp from the shower.

  Plum once said Dad looks like an Asian George Clooney, but I don’t buy it. I think he maybe used to be handsome, from my impression of his and Mom’s wedding photo. But that photo is no more, so the details are a little fuzzy.

  “I thought I heard a mouse in here. Hope I didn’t wake you,” he says.

  “Dad, it’s almost eight. I was supposed to be up, like, half an hour ago.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry, I’m a little . . .” His sentence trails off as he resumes his search for the mystery mouse.

  I glance around Theo’s room. It’s basically unchanged since his last visit here, when he had to pick up some sweaters and also his old Yu-Gi-Oh! card collection for who knows what reason. Probably to sell it for beer money. Luckily, he left all his comic books behind. I don’t care about his Green Lanterns and Fantastic Fours, but the Supermans and Batmans are absolutely not allowed to leave this house. He used to read them aloud to me when I was little, or at least he did on the few occasions when Dad forced him to babysit me.

  Dad rises to his feet and brushes his hands against his pants legs. “I must have imagined it. How was your first day back? Do you need me to sign any forms?” He always asks me this, as though I were still in elementary school.

  “No, no forms. The first day was fine.”

  “Did you get the classes you wanted?”

  “Yes. Hey, Dad? Plum wants me to go to Boston with her on Columbus Day weekend, to visit some colleges.”

  Dad’s phone buzzes in his jacket pocket. “Sounds good. Sorry, honey, I have to get this. I left you some lunch money by the coffeemaker. Feel free to use my credit card to make travel arrangements.”

  He pulls out his phone and turns his back to me. “Hello? Good morning, Carlos. Yeah, I was on Lexis all night, and I still haven’t managed to dig up the right precedent on the ‘defense of others’ angle. . . .”

  “Okay, then,” I say to myself. Still, what did I expect? A sudden show of interest in my life?

  I continue down the hallway and find a roll of paper towels in the bathroom. Hannah, our housekeeper, always keeps the cleaning supplies under the sink.

  Back in my room Cream Puff is preening on my bed as though nothing happened. On top of my backpack a furry hair ball lies in a slimy pool of cat vomit. There are two other vomit piles on the floor. Luckily, t
hey just missed my stack of prized vintage Nancy Drews.

  “Thanks a lot,” I say to Cream Puff. She blinks at me and continues licking her paw.

  After I manage to restore my backpack to sort-of normal, I look around for something to wear. Fortunately, I find a pair of jeans and a green top on the closet floor that aren’t wrinkly or stained. It’s Tuesday, which means no music history class—not that that should affect my wardrobe decisions in any way whatsoever.

  Checking the time, I mentally calculate that I can brush my teeth, wash my face, put in my contacts, and scarf down a yogurt before I have to leave. If I catch a ride with Dad, I’ll save ten minutes—plus, I won’t have to walk in the rain.

  I hear Dad’s footsteps trotting down the stairs. More footsteps . . . then the front door opens and closes.

  “Dad! Wait up!” I shout at the top of my lungs.

  No answer.

  For a moment I’m tempted to text him and tell him to come back. Something stops me, though—maybe the thought that he will say no? A girl can take only so much parental rejection in one lifetime.

  But what am I going to do? I can’t drive the other car, the ancient Subaru, because I haven’t applied for a student parking permit yet. And I don’t dare try to park without one since A-Jax is beyond draconian about rules and regs.

  Sighing, I text Plum: Can you guys give me a ride?

  She texts back immediately: Yes, we’ll be there @ 8:30! Do you want me to bring you a banana muffin? They’re freshly baked!

  I really should just move in with the Sorensons.

  SIX

  Plum has to meet with her chem lab group after school, so I need to kill some time. Later, we’re planning to go to her house, take half of a practice SAT test, and reward ourselves with our favorite Buffy episode from season two—the one where Buffy and Angel finally, finally get together and enjoy about five minutes of happiness before all hell breaks loose in Hellmouth City.