Roomies

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  I want to write about the Moonlight but I want to do it justice and I’m so sleepy. Mark didn’t bring me home until about 4 AM, and I’m exhausted so I write the easy stuff first.

  Thanks for the photo. It’s fun to see you—are you wearing mascara, because your eyelashes really pop—and also to see Zoe. How’s the extended sleepover? Are your brothers and sisters better yet? I still feel bad about the missent e-mail. Won’t happen again!!!

  Very cool about Keyon and the kissing.

  When I get to this, I think maybe it’d be rude to not at least acknowledge what she told me? So I go for it.

  This may make me sound naïve but I don’t know many black people. I have no idea why that is, except that I don’t seem to cross paths with any. There are a bunch of black kids in school but somehow we don’t end up talking much. That’s sort of screwed up, isn’t it? So much for the great melting pot.

  Way too tired to tackle the Moonlight so I wrap it up.

  And yes, totally room for symbolic knickknacks.

  EB

  I’m trying to think of a symbolic knickknack of my own to bring with me but I’m already in bed and the lights are off and I can’t be bothered to get up and look around. The only thing that comes to mind right now is the matchbox I swiped from the lobby of the Moonlight, which is sitting on my night table right now. And somehow not at least telling Lo a tiny bit about the Moonlight feels like some kind of lie by omission. So I add:

  Yes: A matchbox from the Moonlight Motel.

  No: My virginity.

  Maybe so: Birth control?

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 3

  SAN FRANCISCO

  My bedroom feels like a foreign country. During the Illness, every inch of my—our—space got covered with Gertie’s and P.J.’s toys, clothes, books, applesauce containers, and Dora sippy cups. Not sexy. I cross it off my mental list of Places to Spend Special Time with Keyon. Because I guess Ebb’s e-mail has made me ponder that. Since dinner at his house Monday, we’ve made out seven more times. Seven times in four days. Twice in his car, once at his house, once at Goodwill, and three times at the sandwich shop. We have to knock that off at work, to eliminate the possibility of Joe Senior catching us.

  The point is, I need the entirety of the scoop from Ebb: where, when, how, what, why.

  I mean, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I liked the idea of us both being virgins, the sort of equality it would give us to start out the school year. Now if I want things equal I have to—

  “Sorry for the mess,” Mom says, coming in with a laundry basket. “We’ve been too wiped out to deal with it. This was way more brutal than I could have imagined.”

  It’s been nearly an entire week. Finally, everyone is better, and Dad is out with Gertie and Marcus and Jack, and Grandma has P.J. and Francis. All so that Mom and I can clean up in peace.

  “It’s okay.” She still sort of looks like she should be in bed. I take the basket from her and start heaping clothes and blankets into it. “Sit down,” I say, pointing to my desk chair. She does.

  “Did you have fun at Zoe’s?” she asks.

  “Yeah, actually. It was weird at first to not have a hundred people running around screaming, but I got used to it.” And got used to sleeping till ten every day, and used to staying up till one every morning, and used to her parents leaving us almost totally alone so we could talk and talk and talk and make videos and zone out with Buffy marathons and share clothes. It was, I guess, a taste of what college life will be like. Only without Zoe.

  Mom laughs. “A hundred. Is that how it feels to you?”

  “Sometimes.” I pick up a pajama top and quickly drop it again. “Is it possible that I just touched vomit?”

  “Very.”

  I fold my sweatshirt sleeve over my hand, pick up the rest of the stuff, then add my sweatshirt to it before washing up in the bathroom, with steaming hot water. When I come back into my room, my mom is crying. Not hard. More leaking and sniffling.

  “Mom? Are you okay?” Crying, for her, is not uncommon. The woman has taken more than her share of rides on the hormonal roller coaster. “You’ll feel better after you catch up on sleep.”

  “It’s not because of the flu,” she says, brushing tears away with the back of her hand. “Well, it’s partly because of the flu. But I was thinking about how much you do for us. How your life isn’t how I pictured it. What you’ve had to take on because of…” She waves her hand toward the general vicinity of my sisters’ beds.

  “Mom, don’t, please, don’t worry about it.” I lie back on Gertie’s stripped mattress. “I’m used to it.”

  “Sometimes I think back to when it was only you and me and Dad,” she says, searching fruitlessly for a box of tissue.

  I return to the bathroom for a roll of toilet paper to bring to her. “Here.”

  “It was so… Lauren, it was so wonderful. We were so happy, you can’t even imagine.”

  I’ve heard this story many times. They were so happy, so happy about me, and they thought if one kid was great, more would be even better, and they tried and tried and tried forever, it seemed, until they were magically fertile again and Jack came along, followed by the rest of them. A vicious cycle of happiness.

  “You’re happy now,” I remind her, sitting on the floor by her feet. “This is what you guys wanted.”

  “Do I look happy, Lauren?” She points to her splotchy face, then blows her nose. We laugh.

  “Well, not right now. But epic family flu is not a normal day.”

  “True. But days like this make me think about the road not taken. The what-ifs. What if we’d gone on being a family of three? Or what if we’d stopped with Jack? I think about what kind of life we could have had, what we could have given you….” The tears start up again.

  I fold my arms on her knees and rest my chin on them, eyes turned up to her. I can’t think about Gertie and Peej and Marcus and Francis not existing, or us being different than we are. And I know she can’t, either. Despite what she just said, I know she loves being their mom as much as she loves being mine. “Mom. You’re exhausted. Why don’t you go take a nap. I can handle all this.”

  She doesn’t move, except to keep unraveling more toilet paper. “It’s been hard on you.”

  “It’s fine, Mom!”

  “Dad and I can’t go back in time and change everything….”

  “I don’t want to change anything.” Now I am starting to tear up, seeing her so upset and talking as if my life has been this disaster. I blot each of my eyes on the knees of her jeans. She rests her hand on my shoulder.

  “Lauren. Honey. These aren’t the rantings of a worn-out mommy. I’m trying to make a point.”

  I sit back so I can see her face. “What.”

  “Dad and I decided that… we… we want you to know that you’re free. For the rest of the summer and when school starts, we’re really going to let you go.” She straightens up and blows her nose one more time. “We want you to really. Feel. Free.” Her fist pounds her knee with each word.

  “Um, okay.”

  My head spins for a second. I’d better not be catching this flu.

  “We want to give you back some of what you haven’t had for a long time. No responsibilities as far as the kids. No having to check your schedule with ours. No ties, no—”

  Whoa. I hold up my hands, stopping her. “Mom. Mom. I get it.” My heart pounds. I want her to go nap and stop talking. I add, “Thank you,” so I don’t sound ungrateful. I get up and start putting clean sheets on Gertie’s bed.

  “Do you really get it?” She stands, comes over, and takes my wrist. “We don’t want to hold you back. We want you to fly out of the nest and… soar, Lauren.”

  She’s serious. She and Dad have probably been talking about it all week while I was at Zoe’s. Plotting my free, soaring future, which is somehow here, now. They’ve been discussing how great and unburdened I would feel to get this news that the role I’ve played in my family since Jack was born
is so very over.

  I don’t feel soary and unburdened.

  I concentrate on smoothing out Gertie’s top sheet. She likes it tight around her body. She likes it when I put her in bed and tuck everything in so that it’s a struggle for her to even move her arms. “Now you’re my prisoner,” I always tell her, with an evil laugh, and she loves it.

  “You rest, Mom. Let me get the house in shape, and then I’ll embark on my… freedom.”

  She finally agrees to take a nap. I get the laundry started, do the dishes, disinfect the bathrooms, and run the vacuum.

  Obviously they need my help, and they’re kidding themselves if they think otherwise. They want me to “soar”? Ha! Good luck keeping things around here in order while I’m off soaring. What does that even mean? I’ll have a huge class load, and a campus job, hopefully, and maybe a boyfriend, and I have to make all these decisions about that boyfriend and I won’t even be able to escape to Zoe’s house, or have her around to demonstrate how to breathe into a boy’s ear or teach me how to use the smart phone I’m going to get, and, honestly, my parents need me. They need me! They would be better off if I didn’t go to college at all, is the actual truth. I could put it off. I could…

  … stop everything from changing.

  I wind the vacuum cord back around its holster.

  Yeah. Good luck with that.

  When the house is in order and there are clean blankets on my bed, I close my bedroom door and pull those blankets over my head and have a good cry.

  EB—

  Wow. Just, wow, if I read your yes/no/maybe so right. I’m eagerly awaiting more. I mean, as much as you want to tell me. So I guess we won’t put a VIRGIN CENTRAL sign on our dorm door now?

  Things with Keyon are holding steady. I don’t think we’re really like boyfriend/girlfriend, though. (BTW it’s kind of the same here re: black people, only here we pretend it’s not like that.) I think we’re friends with benefits. Limited benefits. Though I feel like a floozy saying it (“floozy” is one of my grandma’s favorite words), that could possibly be a good arrangement? Something that would not lead to heartbreak. Isn’t it enough to like and have affection and warm feelings and trust, and not have to “be in love”? Or even really date? Are you in love with Mark?

  I’m also justwowing about your dad. He said NO? Why??

  Quite possibly this is more questioning than is really polite.

  By the way, you’ve sort of mentioned more than once the weirdness of having a gay dad, but honestly, it’s not that weird. Not here, anyway. I can see how it would be weird for you as his daughter, but as a SITUATION it is not weird at all. When is the last time you saw him? Did you already tell me that?

  Here, I imagine writing, If you want to talk weird, weird is that I already met your dad when I went to his gallery last Saturday. It was sort of an accident. Now THAT’S weird!! But I don’t want her to feel hurt or mad or whatever about that and there’s no reason to tell her, and it’s not like me and her dad had this long talk. It was like hi-bye and there’s no chance he’ll remember me. Why stir things up?

  I’m back home. My family is more or less recovered. My mom had this big talk with me today about how they want me to “be free” and “soar” and apparently this means I’m no longer needed in the family. That’s not what they mean but that’s a tiny bit how it feels. Less like “Fly, little birdie!” and more like “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out of the nest.” I don’t know. Thinking about it sort of makes me want to cry. Okay, I did cry. Before. And maybe a little right now!

  Good time to sign off…

  Lo

  I got nothing for yes/no/maybe so right now.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 3

  NEW JERSEY

  I’m babysitting for Vivian when I get Lauren’s e-mail and it makes me want to cry, too. I wish I could drop everything to write back but Vivian is teething or something and clinging to me like crazy and she’s red-faced and awful and screaming “Mama.” I wish I could cry like a baby—really let it rip. Maybe Lauren and I will have to put down our bags, shake hands, send away anyone who drops us off, and have a good full-on bawl before starting college for real.

  “Please please please, Viv,” I say, in my best soothing tones. “Stop crying, sweetie. Please stop.”

  The straight-up wailing I can almost handle; it’s the “mamas” that really get me.

  I’m seriously going to lose it.

  And won’t that freak Vivian out? Surely, babysitters are not supposed to completely lose it. It’s not like Viv and I can have this good sort of cathartic moment and then both feel better after it. She expects me to be in control. She expects me to be the grown-up. I grab one of her favorite toys, a phone that says “Hello!” and beeps when you open it. I hold it to my ear and say, “Oh, you want to talk to Vivian?” and hold it out to her but she’s not listening. She’s still wailing. So I go to the freezer—a big drawer under the double-doored fridge—and open it and pull out one of her frozen teethers—this one bright pink and shaped like a foot. I hand that to her and she shoves it in her mouth and I sit down on the recliner in the den and she calms down and sits on my nap and gnaws on that foot.

  Crisis averted.

  Hers, at least.

  I could seriously cry at the drop of a hat these days. And people would probably think it was because of the whole Losing of the Virginity—if people actually knew about that—and anyway, that’s not it.

  As far as first times go, in all the possible scenarios I have imagined over the years, the Moonlight surpassed all expectations by being really right feeling. Even now, three days later, I keep seeing vivid flashes of the time we spent there. Just an image of his hand here or there, a certain faraway look on his face, the bones of his hip, the painting on the wall next to the bed, of a girl wearing a bonnet collecting seashells in a bucket. When I snapped a picture of it with my phone he said, “That’s what you want to take a picture of? To commemorate our night together? Because I’m happy to pose.”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “That’d be great for when Vivian plays with my phone tomorrow.”

  So he’s going to talk to his dad today and I am going to brace for impact. And hope that I get my period, like, right this second, even though I’m not due for another week. We used protection, of course, but wouldn’t it be just my luck?

  What’s making me a little bit sad about the whole thing is that, apart from Lauren, there’s no one I really want to tell about it. And as I picture her and her gaggle of siblings while I am holding Vivian—an only child whose parents are out at some fancy restaurant where people probably give babies dirty looks—I feel so alone that for a second I contemplate packing up some of Viv’s things and kidnapping her, raising her in some far-off state as my own.

  Something about the closeness I feel with Mark makes me really wish I had a brother or a sister, all joking about birthing them myself aside. Which may sound totally screwed up because I definitely don’t see him as a brother, but there’s an ease with him, a sort of acceptance, that I imagine comes with the territory when you have siblings. No one but my mother has to love me just because I am here and I am me and am their daughter/sister/whatever, and obviously even my mother seems to forget that loving me is supposed to be her first job on this planet. But then I decide maybe I’m being melodramatic and Justine and I have been meaning to get together anyway, so I call her but she doesn’t pick up.

  Vivian has finally snapped out of her funk and is getting into all sorts of trouble in one of the kitchen cabinets, so I go sit on the kitchen floor and we make music with pots and pans and wooden spoons. I say things in a high-pitched singsong, like “Oh, Vivian, if you only knew what I just did!” and she’s happy again and I let her glee rub off on me, at least until it’s time to go home.

  If my mother senses a change in me, she doesn’t let on. She’s up when I get home from babysitting and tells me there’s leftover KFC in the fridge. I fix a plate and join her in the living room, where she’s w
atching a reality show about one of those über-nannies. There is a lot of screaming and crying and judging going on. I’ve never asked my mother why she and my dad didn’t have any more kids after me. It’s the sort of question that answers itself, doesn’t it?

  Because he was gay.

  Because they were too young.

  Because I was a mistake.

  Because the whole marriage was a sham, even if it took them a long time to realize it, longer than any rational person, myself included, can understand.

  Sometimes, when I’m wondering if my family situation has permanently screwed me up, I’m surprised by how sane I feel. And having the courage to trust my own feelings actually makes me feel even saner, even more grown-up. But I really wish things weren’t so complicated.

  I answer Lauren’s e-mail in my head:

  Yes, I am in love with him.

  The show ends and my mother tosses the remote at me and says, “I’m hitting the hay.”

  “Me too,” I say. “In a few minutes. Once my chicken digests a little.”

  “TMI,” my mother says, and that pretty much sums it up.

  Mark sends me a text a few minutes later: Miss you.

  I’m about to write back when another text says Go outside right now.

  I get up and pad to the door and open it and there’s a small box on the doormat. It’s blue. Like turquoise blue. With a white satin ribbon tied around it. And even I know what that means, probably because my mother once dated a guy who bought her a necklace from Tiffany and she wouldn’t throw the box out for years. In fact, she might still have it.

  “Mark?” I whisper, not wanting my mom to hear, and then he steps out from behind a tree by the sidewalk and walks toward me.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” he says.

  And so I sit on the top step and he sits next to me, his knee touching mine, and I stare at the box for a minute. I know he’s rich. Or at least his parents are. Richer than I may ever be. “It’s too much,” I say. “Whatever it is, it’s too much.”