by Mimi Cross
“You don’t, aw. You’re so fun-ny.” She draws out the last word in that way people do when they’re saying something besides what they’re saying. That in itself isn’t worrying, but the “aw” is. She thinks I’ve done something cute, possibly on purpose, and I have no idea what that something is. I have absolutely no recollection of seeing this girl, ever, until three o’clock today.
“The Halls’ end-of-summer blowout,” she says.
Anger floods me.
“Must have been the beer talking. Look, I’m going to bed now.” I nod toward the door.
“Oh, right, well, I just wanted to say good night. I mean, I don’t think your parents are going to be home for another couple of hours, so—” She lifts her hands to her hair, pushing it back, the movement thrusting her already prominent breasts in my general direction.
For a moment, I just look at her.
Then I think about the guy I’ve been. The guy I could still be.
“I’ll be right downstairs,” she says. Paradoxically, she takes a step toward me. “Or . . . I could hang out up here for a while.” I don’t have a chance to respond before she goes on. “I won’t tell Tammy, or Trish?” She giggles. “Can’t remember which one you’re going out with.”
“Neither.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen just a little. “Well, then . . .”
I notice her lips now, glistening, like the inside of a plum. She’s standing close enough that I can smell their fruity scent. Can imagine them on me, sweet and sticky.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she says, lowering her voice. “We could just . . .”
A sort of jolt travels through me. I say, “I want it to mean something.”
“Even better.” She reaches for the hem of her shirt.
“No—I mean, just go, okay? Please.”
Because, yeah, I do want it to mean something, and with you, it wouldn’t.
RIDE
CATE
Mrs. Bennet had all but begged, so even though I’d rather be home, high and hiding from the world, I’m sitting at the Bennets’ kitchen table writing—something. Kimmy is in bed.
The thing that I’m writing might be a poem, but it’s missing some crucial ingredient. I have no idea what that secret ingredient is, though I do know that, without it, the thing sucks.
The front door slams. Bryn. Time to call home. Actually, it was time two hours ago, but Bryn’s late. Two hours late. Not that I care, except that I’m pretty sure Dad won’t answer the line out in the barn at this hour. He’s definitely in the zone by now. Mom might be up reading, but she’ll be pissed if she has to come get me. I should just call a cab. I try Dad first.
Ring. Redial. Ring. I try Mom.
“This is Jan.”
“Mom? It’s me. Are you up? Can you give me a ride?”
“I thought your father was going to fetch you.”
“He’s not answering.”
Bryn strides into the kitchen. Bitchy as she can be, I have to admire the way she wears fishnets with wellies and a miniskirt. Her face is wet with rain, and droplets cling to her raven hair. I give her a little wave.
She glares at me with bloodshot eyes and yanks open the fridge door.
Obviously, she’s been making the most of the fact that her folks are out of town.
Static crackles in my ear. “What did you say, Mom?”
“I’m in the city. It’s midnight—why are you still out? Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“I know, and I do. The Bennets are away.”
“I don’t remember you telling me that. Did you eat there? What about your father?”
“I told you, he’s not answering. And yes, I ate here. With Kimmy.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” I hear her drop something. “You’re breaking up.”
No, you are. “I thought I’d be done around nine, and Dad said he’d pick me up, but I guess when I didn’t call . . .” He entered his netherworld.
“So when Dad didn’t hear from you by nine, what? He decided to disown you? Why doesn’t that man pick up his phone?” More crackling. Then silence. Like Mom’s waiting for an answer, like I have one.
“Mom.” I lower my voice. “Bryn was late, so I’m late. Dad probably figured I had a plan. Look, I’ll take a cab.”
Bryn eyes me, then slaps mayo on a tortilla. She adds half a head of lettuce, rolls it up, and takes a huge bite. This strikes me as very un-Bryn-like.
“Is that your mom?” David comes in shaking water off his hair.
“You look,” Bryn says, “like a dog.”
Mom’s voice cuts in and out. “Damn phone. What did you say?”
“A cab. I’m going to catch a cab.”
“I’ll take you home,” David says.
“Oh. Okay. Thanks,” I say to David. “Mom? I’ve got a ride.”
“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Hate to stay over, but I just couldn’t miss this. Hon, you should have seen the clothes.” Then, as if it’s the most important thing in the world, Mom starts describing what everyone was wearing at the opening she went to earlier. She goes on and on, and it hits me. All the words I can never find? She’s got them.
Finally, she hangs up. David looks at me expectantly. Bryn does, too, for that matter.
“My dad says if she goes first, he’s getting her a tombstone shaped like a phone.”
“Our dad’s would be a laptop,” Bryn says around a mouthful of tortilla.
“The way he travels, this can’t be the only place Dad thinks of as home,” David says. “Where will we bury him?”
For a second we all just look at each other, realizing that talking about our parents’ gravestones is just about the most maudlin thing on the planet. Then Bryn starts laughing madly.
“You’re wasted,” David says to her, but he starts laughing and then I do, too. Bryn pulls a pint of ice cream from the freezer, opens it, and plunges a tablespoon in.
David and I head for the door.
She waves the spoon. “Thanks, Davey.”
“No problem, little sis.”
“I hate when you call me that,” she shouts after him.
“I know you do,” he calls back.
We stand outside on the porch for a second, contemplating the best way to get to the car without getting wet. But it doesn’t really matter, because although it’s pouring harder than it has all night, it’s, like, seventy-five degrees out. Finally, we take off our shoes and just step into the rain. Our bare feet slap wetly on the driveway.
“It’s weird,” I say, raising my voice above the sound of the rain. “To see Bryn coming home stoned on a school night and chowing down on a pint of Häagen-Dazs. Then again—I don’t really know her.”
“You know she loves ice cream. Ice cream for the Ice Queen.”
“What about the getting-wasted part?” Because that part interests me, very much.
Water paints David’s chestnut hair black. Courses down the straight line of his nose as he holds open the passenger door of his father’s Porsche. I climb in.
“The getting-wasted part—is new. Watch your fingers.”
But I’m not watching anything except him.
And he doesn’t close the door, not right away. He just stands there in the rain, giving me plenty of time to see the little frown he tucks under a smile just before he asks, “What about me—do you know me?”
At least, I think that’s what he says. But the rattling of the rain mixes with his words, so I don’t quite catch them and can’t be sure.
I’m not really sure about anything anymore.
ENAMEL
DAVID
Of course she doesn’t know me. I’m not sure why I bothered asking.
Warm rain runs down my face.
I’ve been my brother. No, I tried to be him. Failed.
Jing. The keys hit the driveway with a wet smack. I scoop them up, tossing them easily from my left hand to my right—
Thinking of my father.
“Here, S
on, catch this.” Football. Baseball. Tennis. Golf.
“David, do that.” Student council. Honor Roll. Mr. Popularity.
Be him.
I’d caught every ball he’d ever thrown me. And I’d caught his diseases. Lying. Ambition.
My father is a big-shot lawyer now, well known. But it wasn’t always like that. He’d grown up on a farm in New York State. Beef-fed. Homeschooled. All-star athlete.
Scholarship recipient. Fraternity brother. National Leaguer. Husband. Lawyer. Father.
Father of one. Father of two. Father of three.
Father of two.
Then Kimmy came along and turned back the clock. Kimmy came along, and then there were three, like before.
Hell, I know more about my dad than I do about myself. Know more about my brother.
I get in the car. “Cate,” I want to say.
I try to remember when her name began to sound like the answer to my questions.
Cate, I wish we could drive away.
I’m dropping all the balls now. Trying to loosen the carefully constructed Jack mask.
But I can’t seem to drop the pretense.
So I give her The Smile—
It feels rusty.
RAIN
CATE
As he climbs into the car, David turns the full wattage of his smile on me. I’m not sure why he does this, but I don’t mind. Then, I swear, he looks down at my legs.
When I was a few years older than Kimmy, I knew a bunch of girls in the city who were really into horses. Not like the people around here, who actually ride horses, who own them even, but in a different way. These girls collected horses. Their bedroom walls were covered with pictures of horses. Horse calendars hung on the backs of their bedroom doors. Books about horses lined their bookshelves. Those same girls prized small figurines of horses, made of hard plastic. I liked the feel of them. At one girl’s house, I was especially drawn to a black figurine of a colt. Its knobby knees and skewed stance, its legs were somehow . . . familiar.
Now that I live in horse country, I know what the toy makers were going for when they designed that colt. The real colts out in the fields here in Middleburn have the same uncertain bearing. They’re . . . wobbly.
For years, when we used to come out here on weekends, I rode, too—with Laurel—and loved it. We took lessons. Rode for hours. I relished the feeling of freedom, the wind in my face.
But one day, the English-style stable where we took lessons had a different groom. Laurel wasn’t there, and there was a new instructor. She gave me a different horse, a bigger horse.
When I fell, I wasn’t hurt. But the whole incident seemed like a manifestation of my own wobbliness. I lost confidence and stopped riding, but that wasn’t the only change I made. I tried to be more still, to keep quiet, keep to myself. That way, no one would know I was wobbly inside. I’ve fooled a lot of people with my stillness. My parents, for example—although with the concert . . . the way I blew it. Surely now they know I wobble.
David must see it, he must. I’m way wobblier now than I ever was before.
As we drive along Chapel Hill Road there’s nothing but the sound of heavy rain, the swish of the wipers. Hurricane season is over in New Jersey, but the tropical cyclone hitting the county tonight must not know that. Inside the car, it’s uncomfortably warm. Or maybe it’s me.
Then, all at once, it’s as if we’ve driven out from under the deluge. The wipers clunk once, twice, giving a protesting squeak just before David turns them off. Our view of the glistening black road is suddenly clear.
Rolling down the window, David lets in the night. The air is weighted with humidity, the stars and moon hidden behind low clouds. The infrequent lights that mark a stable, or one of the long winding driveways leading off Chapel, glow grainy yellow in the dense darkness, and are ringed with misty halos. We pass field after field.
David nods toward the chlorine-scented bundle in my lap. My wet bathing suit, rolled up in a towel. As promised, the pool is still open and heated. “Been working on your cannonball?”
“Ha-ha. Not really. Making a big splash isn’t my thing.”
He laughs a little. “Yeah, I know that about you. You keep to yourself.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You’re so . . . calm. So many girls . . . I don’t know. They always seem like they’re . . . wanting. Wanting . . . something.”
You. They want you. Since I can’t possibly spit out this basic truth, I remain silent. The night is quiet as well, for now, except for the whispering hiss of the tires on the rain-soaked road, an evocative sound.
“I don’t get that from you. That wanting. You do your own thing.” He glances over at me. “You’re always writing. What do you write?”
“Bad poetry mostly. Sometimes I compose a little music.”
“Compose a little music. You make it sound like it’s nothing. You’re a serious guitarist, right? Not that you’ve ever played for me—even though I asked you to.” He shoots me a pointed look. “When I was laid up, remember?” Then his eyes are on the road again. “You want to make music your career?”
“Yeah, but you know . . .” My throat feels tight. Yeah, but you know, I choked in front of the world, so now I don’t know what I want.
He gives me another quick glance.
“I think I want to be a writer,” I manage to blurt. “Maybe a music critic.” Or maybe I’ll just run away, live under a rock.
“Really,” he says, nodding a little. “So, you’re good with words.”
He didn’t miss a beat—I’m so relieved. He doesn’t know me, the musician. He hasn’t heard about the concert.
“Mine just come out of my mouth,” he continues. “I feel like I don’t always choose them, feel like . . . I’ve been taught just what to say.”
I shake my head. “I’m not good with words. I said I want to be a writer.”
“But you are a writer. You write, so you’re a writer.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“That’s exactly how it works.” More quietly he says, “That’s how everything works. You do it. You make it happen. Also . . . the opposite: you are what you don’t do. For example, if you don’t show up, for a friend, let’s say, then you’re a bad friend. Only, everyone does stuff like that. But there are . . . bigger things.” He speaks the next words so softly that I barely hear them. “You let someone drown, you’re a murderer.”
“What are you saying?”
But the only answer I get is the sound of car wheels on wet road, and the whoosh of night air rushing by David’s window.
Maybe he didn’t hear me, or maybe he decided not to respond.
Silently I count the white wooden horse fences. They remind me of Cal now.
SILK
CATE
The next day I’m back at the Bennets’, saying to Kimmy, “We shouldn’t be in here.”
In all the years I’ve been babysitting at the Bennets’, I’ve never actually been in Bryn’s room. I look around at the blue-black walls.
Kimmy leaps onto the bed and reaches for the nightstand where Bryn’s got an iPod connected to a set of speakers. She hits “Play” and a velvety voice fills the room along with an irresistibly rhythmic synth line.
“Everywhere, everywhere . . .” She’s got it cranked to eleven.
“Check this out,” she shouts, grabbing a heap of material off the back of Bryn’s desk chair.
“Kimmy—” My voice gets lost under the music.
Silver discs dangle from the scrap of pink material Kimmy ties around her waist.
An orange flash comes toward my face as she tosses something similar to me.
“Put it on!” She starts moving her hips. Grinning, she lifts her arms, stretching them out at shoulder level. Pressing the ball of one foot into the ground, she pivots around it.
The voice coming out of the speakers is celebratory, but I don’t feel like dancing at all.
“Try it,” Kimmy commands. “Use one foot for an anc
hor, then just—” Again, she circles around the stationary foot, arms undulating. “Try it!” she insists.
Reluctantly, I tie the orange sash low on my hips. The material is thin, sheer over my jeans. I swish my hips a little, side to side. The silver discs shimmer.
“Try a figure eight,” she calls over the music. She demonstrates, looking like a younger, happier version of Bryn, with David’s hair and honey eyes. “Yeah!” she shouts as I swivel my hips. “Keep that foot nailed to the floor!”
“Where did you learn all this?” I yell over the music.
“Bryn taught me!”
For a second, I think I’ve misheard. It’s hard for me to imagine Bryn taking the time to show Kimmy anything.
The coins on my belt start jing-jinging like Kimmy’s.
“Now this,” she shouts, lifting her arms. Slowly, I lift my arms.
“Tie your shirt up so your belly shows! It’s belly dancing!” She yells the last few words like a war cry.
I undo a couple buttons and tie my shirttails together like Kimmy’s.
“Right, but keep moving!”
I move . . .
“Here!” She tosses me another sash, midnight blue. “Take an end in each hand.”
Imitating her, I lift the veil high overhead, stretching my arms out. Then, like Kimmy, I release one end, twirling the cloth so it creates a spinning spiral reaching to the floor.
“Gotta know, gotta know . . . You’re beautiful inside . . .”
Following her lead, I grab up the end again, then lift the veil in front of my face, peering over the top edge. Kimmy laughs. I smile a little.
“The love that lives inside you . . .”
My babysitter mind hears the phone ring, but before I can come all the way back from where the music’s taken me, Kimmy jingles out of the room at a run.
The song’s set on loop. The synth is sinuous, atmospheric. Lifting the veil high, I follow it with my eyes, my head dropping back, my lips parting. Trying to let go of the heaviness that’s always on me now, I allow my eyes to close. The music thrums. I need this.