We passed a van like Aaron’s, stuffed with kids. The driver beeped hello.
“Who was that?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Aaron. “Some random soccer-mom communication. You know what I wish I could do? Watch a movie, an old one like I used to watch with your sister. Maybe we could do that. I’d thought I’d never be able to go the Dairy Divine or drive up to Miller’s Point. And we did it together, Nico, and it wasn’t so terrible. Was it?”
We drove by the woodstove store, then the Quikmart.
“No,” I said. “It was fine. It was . . . nice.”
Nice, mocked the staircase spirit.
He said, “You could come over, and we could hang out at my house and watch an old movie on DVD.”
“We could?” It was one thing to go with Aaron on a spontaneous ice cream run. But making plans, watching movies . . . how would that work? Don’t worry, Mom and Dad. I’m going to Aaron’s to watch the kind of films I used to watch with Margaret. If they were reasonable, they’d understand that Aaron and I were just friends trying to help each other get through this. But my parents wouldn’t see it that way. They’d always distrusted Aaron. Now they’d probably think he was some kind of necrophiliac child molester. If I wanted to spend time with him, I would have to keep it secret.
“Sure,” I said. “We could.”
“When?”
“Sunday,” I said. “The bookstore’s closed.”
“Excellent. I’ll call you.”
I said, “I’m not sure my parents will go for it.”
“I’m sure they won’t,” said Aaron.
As we neared Goldengrove, Aaron repeated, “I’ll call you, okay?”
I said, “You’d probably better hang up if my mom or dad answer the phone.”
Aaron grinned. “I’m good at that. I’ve had plenty of practice.”
Eight
I TOLD MYSELF IT WAS NOTHING I HADN’T DONE BEFORE. I’D lied to my parents every time I’d pretended to go to the movies with Margaret. But Margaret had always worked out the intrigues and the complicated arrangements.
To watch a film with Aaron would take, including travel time, three hours, more or less. My parents would worry if I said I was going to spend that long riding around on my bike. Three hours at the library? My dad spent half his day there, and it was closed on Sundays. Three hours at the movies? Even my parents knew the Rialto didn’t have matinees.
I needed a friend to lie for Aaron and me the way I’d lied for him and Margaret. But I’d blown away all my friends after my sister died. Anyway, I couldn’t trust them with a piece of gossip this hot. I imagined confiding in Violet or Samantha. Then I tried to calculate how long they could hold out before they told someone. I couldn’t blame them. There wasn’t a teenager on earth who could resist the glamour of being the first to hear that a girl she knew was hooking up with her dead sister’s boyfriend. Which I wasn’t, but even so, I knew how it might look.
I considered everyone I knew. Then I thought of Elaine. She was old enough, cool enough, she could keep a secret. She’d always refused to tell us the name of Tycho’s dad. I’d invent a boyfriend my parents didn’t like, and I’d ask Elaine to pretend that I was at her house when I was seeing Aaron—that is, the mythical boyfriend. I could ask her a favor because I was doing her one, filling in at the store till she found a sitter for Tycho. It never occurred to me that I was encouraging her to lie to her employer, probably because I couldn’t imagine Dad as anyone’s boss.
One afternoon, the phone at the store rang. It was Elaine, she’d forgotten a novel that she was halfway through. Tycho was home with a cold, she couldn’t leave. Could I bring over her copy of The Man Who Loved Children?
Dad was in his office. He looked up from a book when I knocked. “Just listen to this passage. Got a minute, Nico?”
“Sure,” I said. “But I need to go out. Elaine wants me to bring her a book. Can you take over the counter for a while? She’s stuck home with Tycho.”
“Fine. But listen.” He read, “ ‘In one South Indian village, pilgrims come to feed the dead by throwing food into the ocean. Bearded holy men work the beach, selling packets wrapped in banana leaves, a recipe the sadhus divine the dead want to eat.’ ”
“I wonder what’s in the packets,” I said.
“Comfort food for the dead,” Dad said. “Basmati rice? Vegetable curry?”
“Macaroni and cheese,” I said. It had never occurred to me that the dead might get hungry. Was there some food Margaret wanted? Pistachio ice cream, maybe.
“I wish I could use it in my book,” my father said. “But it’s not, strictly speaking, about the end of the world. I wish I was smarter. I wish I could synthesize this and Hindu eschatology and—”
I said, “You’re really smart, Dad. I’m sure you can use it somewhere. But I need to go out. Remember?”
“What’s Elaine reading?” my father said.
“The Man Who Loved Children,” I read off the cover.
“I’ve never read it,” Dad said.
“Me, neither,” I said. “But if Elaine wants it that badly, it’s got to be pretty good.”
“Take your time,” my father said. “I could use a break from writing.”
I ran all the way to Elaine’s. I found her in the kitchen, wearing shorts and a Jim Morrison T-shirt, her bare feet splayed across the top of her yellow Formica table. She was smoking a cigarette, drinking iced coffee, leafing through a travel magazine. She stubbed out the cigarette, as if I that would mean I hadn’t seen it. On the CD player, a blues singer was growling about a rabbit and a hunter and a gun.
“How’s Tycho?” I asked.
“He’ll live. But you know how he is. Every head cold is a metaphysical nightmare. Why should he have to suffer? Not that he asks, exactly. But I know what he’s thinking. Why can’t he just watch TV and drink juice and not chant stuff like ‘Hot now!’ and ‘Cold now!’?”
“Maybe so you don’t have to take his temperature.”
“He hates it,” said Elaine. “So I don’t. He’d bite through the thermometer. But what about you? Are you okay?”
I said, “I don’t know why everybody’s always asking me that.”
“Are you?”
“Cramps.” I made a face. I actually had my period, so I wasn’t lying, not yet.
She shut the magazine.
“I bet you didn’t know that Zimbabwe is the new Las Vegas.”
I said, “Maybe Las Vegas is the new Zimbabwe.”
Elaine said, “If kids wrote these magazines, they’d be a lot more interesting.”
“Thanks, I guess.” I handed her the book I’d brought from the store.
“Thank you.” She sighed. “I’ll never find my place. Reading it is so painful I keep having these narcoleptic attacks, nodding off in mid-sentence. Because the father in the book is exactly like the son that my father and my ex-husband would have had if they’d gotten married and had a baby and the baby grew up and became a father. You should read it. But not now.”
“Your father and your ex-husband couldn’t have had a baby.”
Elaine looked disappointed. “Metaphorically, Nico. The funny thing is, I never noticed they were alike until I read the book. Self-dramatizing sons of bitches, both of them. Men, I mean. Your dad excepted.”
“Dad included. In his way.”
Elaine said, “Your father’s less of a motor mouth. And a million times nicer. More present and accounted for, if you know what I mean.”
“Present?” I said. “Accounted for? Dad?”
Elaine said, “Maybe it’s just a father thing. Christina Stead got that right. Hey, you want some iced coffee? Aren’t you dying of heat in that? Those synthetic vintage shirts, you might as well be walking around in a plastic trash bag. Wasn’t that Margaret’s shirt? Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” I fought the urge to say that Margaret told me I could have it. I could lie, but not about that.
“It looks great on you,” said Elaine. “But gos
h, you’re losing weight. Isn’t your father feeding you? Nico, how are you? Really.”
I said, “I’m okay. Not great.”
“Great would be bizarre,” she said. “No one’s expecting great. Getting out of bed is the new great. Which you seem to be doing.”
“That’s about all,” I said.
Elaine said, “I hear you’re conducting ESP experiments in the poetry aisle. I thought that was inspired—”
I said, “Can I turn down the music?” I needed a walk across the room to process the fact that my father had told Elaine something so personal and shaming. Adults entertained each other with stories about their kids. The younger you were, the less privacy you had. Well, fine. I could lie about Aaron.
“Did I ask if you want some coffee?” Elaine said. “My short-term memory’s shot.”
“You asked,” I told her. “I said yes.” I didn’t like coffee. Margaret used to love it. The heart-disease books warned against caffeine. Uncaffeinated, my heart was ricocheting off my rib cage. Fear made me want coffee, the way being near a cliff can make you want to jump.
“Coffee would be excellent,” I said. Excellent was Aaron’s word. “Excellent,” I repeated.
As Elaine and I chatted—the weather, her ongoing babysitter search, customers at the bookstore—I stirred three teaspoons of sugar into my thickening coffee and, sip by sip, let the caffeine and carbs get ready to do the talking for me.
“I need to ask you a favor,” I said.
“I owe you one,” Elaine said.
I said, “I’ve started hanging out with this guy.”
“Oh, please, not yet,” she said. “Who is he?”
“No one you know.” Was that a lie, too? Did Elaine know Aaron? “Just a guy.”
“What’s he like?”
I waited a beat. I’d rehearsed this. “This really nice kid, in my class. Smart, considerate. You’d like him, Elaine. But my parents can’t handle my going out with anyone right now. They go crazy about every little thing. I don’t blame them. But no one would be good enough, and they’re giving me a hard time.”
“Have your mom and dad met him?”
I nodded. “It wasn’t pretty.”
“Why didn’t they like him? Tell me the truth.”
How shortsighted of me, not to have expected this, not to have invented a list of the imaginary boyfriend’s alleged flaws to go with his real virtues.
“My dad says he has a screw loose.”
“Which screw?” asked Elaine.
“The one that makes everything boring.”
Elaine said, “This is starting to worry me.”
“Please, Elaine. You know me. You’ve known me since I was born.”
“Your parents aren’t stupid,” she said.
I said, “They’d have a problem if I was going out with God.”
“Let’s hope you’re not,” said Elaine.
“Anyhow, I don’t think your dad believes in God. Any more.”
I said, “Come on, Elaine. Please.”
“Remind me how old you are,” she said.
“Thirteen. Almost fourteen.”
Elaine said, “Still growing. All that sugar can’t be good for you, honey.”
“I don’t drink coffee that often,” I said. “Only on special occasions.”
Elaine said, “What do you do?”
I looked at her.
“What do you and this boy do?”
“Nothing. We go out for ice cream—”
“Where?”
“The Dairy Divine.”
“He drives?” Elaine said. “How can he be in your class?”
“We take our bikes. We get ice cream. It’s nothing. My parents are paranoid. Can I say I was here with you?”
“I don’t like lying to your parents.”
“Listen.” I paused to steady myself.
“This is the first thing—the only thing—I’ve wanted to do since . . .” Elaine knew since when.
I was playing the Margaret card. I had saved it until now. It was the only thing that could make good-mom, good-person Elaine keep something like this from my parents.
Elaine stared at the ceiling. “How could that water spot be growing when it hasn’t rained for weeks?” She looked at me and shrugged. “Young love. What was that like? Dear Lord, I can hardly remember.”
“It’s not love.” I glared at her. “God, Elaine. We hang out.”
“That goes with the territory. The first time it’s never love. People say first love. Such and such a guy was my first love. But usually, they mean second love. The first time they don’t know it, or they won’t admit it. If you know what I mean.”
I didn’t. I wasn’t in love with Aaron. I didn’t even have a crush on him. That would have been too strange. We were friends, we were friends, we were friends, was all. I couldn’t begin to explain it. But let Elaine think it was love if it made her do what I wanted.
She said, “Everyone wants to bet on young love, to put their money on first love, as if love’s going up against death in some cosmic High Noon shoot-out. No one wants to think that love and death are working the same side of the street.”
“What?” I hated how adults got cryptic when you most needed them to be clear.
“Never mind,” she said. “Just two things, okay? First: Don’t make any decisions for a year. I mean any decisions.”
I said, “I’ve been hearing that from everyone who comes into the store.”
“Well, excuse me for being one giant cliché. But they don’t mean what I mean.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Don’t make me get overly personal, Nico. Decisions about . . . your body.”
I said, “Oh, right. Sex. I should have known. I swear we’re not doing anything like that.” I almost wanted to admit the boy was Aaron so she would know how wrong she was. Or maybe I wanted to hear what she knew about Aaron, what lies my father had told. But I couldn’t risk it.
Elaine said, “I assume your mom had the Big Talk with you, right?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Actually, yeah.”
When I told my mom I’d gotten my period, she’d started crying. Then she said, “Come on. I’ll drive you to the drugstore.” On the way, she said, “Nico, you’re a smart girl. And you have an older sister. I’m not going to embarrass us both. The most important thing is to be safe and make sure you’re old enough. There’s a box of condoms in the upstairs medicine chest. As for the rest . . . I don’t want you to get your heart broken, honey, but I know that’s wanting the impossible.”
Then she’d told me about a short story she’d read in which a character says that the nature of sex is that the man is the guest and the woman the hostess. “The guest wants all sorts of things, he wants to make an impression, to enjoy himself, and so forth. And the hostess . . .”
Mom waited for me to ask what the hostess wants, but I didn’t. For some reason it seemed more repulsive than something clinical and disgusting. I preferred the part about the condoms in the bathroom.
“The hostess,” my mother said, “wants to be thanked.”
“Was it a man or a woman character who said that?” I asked.
“A woman,” said my mother. “And a woman wrote it.”
At the drugstore we’d bought a lifetime supply of stick-on pads and junior tampons. The kid at the checkout counter snickered at the mother-daughter menstruation survivalists.
Elaine said, “I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when Daisy gave you the sex talk. I’ll bet your mother was very modern and progressive.”
“I guess,” I said, though neither of those words described our conversation, precisely.
“Maybe I’m less modern. But then again I’m a single mom. Living proof of . . . something. At the very least, you’ll have a connection you might not want to have with that person. You can meet him twenty years from now, and no matter what else happened, he’ll still be the first guy you had sex with. I don’t want to be graphic, but you will ha
ve had that person inside you.”
“Elaine,” I said. “Please. That is so totally gross.”
“Sorry,” said Elaine. “But I don’t think I can emphasize this point strongly enough.”
Elaine was sounding like the sex-ed version of Officer Prozak. And I didn’t need her to tell me that sex was scarier and more intimate than anything I wanted to do with a person I hardly knew. How I longed to tell Margaret about this conversation. She would have fallen down laughing, though it might have been confusing, why Elaine was warning me not to have sex with her boyfriend. I was insulted that Elaine would reduce my friendship with Aaron to instincts and teenage hormones. What had brought us together was deeper and stronger than that.
“Pregnancy’s the least of it,” said Elaine.
“Not really,” I said.
“You’re right. Forget I said that. No means no.”
“No one’s asking me to have sex,” I said. “Not asking means no, too.”
“Someone always asks,” she said. “That’s why they call it dating.”
I said, “We’re not dating. We’re friends.”
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s cut to the chase. If I’m going to lie for you, at least one of us has to tell the truth. Which brings me to the second thing. I don’t want you drinking or smoking pot.”
“I promise,” I said. I meant it. I couldn’t imagine having sex, or even a beer, with Aaron. Let her think this was love. Kissing, hurt feelings, groping, tears. Breakups, heartbreak. The whole teenage first-love drama.
Elaine said, “Okay. Fine. Don’t tell me the truth. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
Nine
IT WASN’T LOVE, NOT IN THE USUAL SENSE. BOTH OF US HAD loved Margaret. But someone who didn’t know about our hopeless love triangle with the dead might easily have mistaken it for ordinary love. That’s what someone might have thought when the phone rang on Thursday evening, and I jumped because I’d known it would ring, just as I’d known it was Aaron. That’s what someone might have concluded when I took the receiver into another room so that, in an urgent, murmured shorthand, Aaron and I could arrange to meet at noon on the following Sunday.
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