by Tawni Waters
“How many girls have I been with?” he asks.
I nod. Crickets chirp, and somewhere in the distance, something hoots. Thank god. I have inadvertently wandered into “conversation about us” territory and am desperate for a distraction. “Is that an owl?” I ask.
Dean doesn’t seem to hear the question. “One,” he says. “I’ve been with one person. She was the prettiest girl in the world.”
It is so quiet between us, I finally feel obligated to blurt out, “Me too,” even though it’s not true, even though I’ve been with one other person besides Dean. Now doesn’t seem like the right time to go all scout’s honor on him.
“You really think I’m the prettiest girl in the world?” Dean asks.
I try not to show him how much what he said means to me. No one else has ever thought I was the prettiest girl in the world. Except Mom. She always told me that.
“Second only to Marilyn Monroe,” I answer.
He laughs, then starts to play a Neil Young song my mom loved about a woman riding a Harley on a desert highway. It’s called “Unknown Legend.”
He’s probably thinking about me when he sings, but my mom is the only unknown legend I’ve met. I see my mom riding down the dark desert highway, forever and ever. I hope she really is flying, happy, free, wild, the way she was in life. Unexpectedly, a wave of grief washes over me and almost knocks me flat. I’ve been this way since Mom died. One second, I’m fine. The next, I’m almost doubled over with pain, trying to keep from bursting into tears for no apparent reason. I clench my fists, wishing Mercy’s liquor cabinet was nearby. Why didn’t I think to steal a bottle for the road? I have nothing to numb the pain.
The tearing sound in my brain starts, and then, I hear Mom screaming. After that, it’s Mercy saying, “Honey, your mom died.” My heart pounds against my rib cage like an ape trying to break out of a zoo. I can’t breathe.
Shit. It’s happening again.
This is probably as good a time as any to tell you that in the month after Mom died, I had two full-blown panic attacks. The second one was so bad, Mercy rushed me to the hospital. We were both certain I was dying. I wasn’t, but I’m pretty sure it was just as scary as real death. The doctor gave me a pamphlet about grief counseling and a prescription for clonazepam, which I took for two days and never touched again. Mom always said psychiatric meds were dangerous. I looked up clonazepam on the internet, and it turned out she was right. Clonazepam caused all kinds of horrible side effects, including but not limited to addiction, seizures, and death. Thanks, but no thanks, asshats. Maybe the medication helps some people, but I already had all I could handle.
I am fine. It’s only a panic attack, I remind myself. Staring at the stars, I repeat the mantra the doctors gave me for dealing with this shit. It’s. Only. A. Panic. Attack.
So far, since I went to the hospital, the mantra has helped every time I started to panic. It’s working now. My heartbeat slows. I count five physical things to ground myself, the way the doctors said I should. A tree trunk. A rock. A clump of grass. An ugly black bug. Dean. Thinking of Dean is what finally makes my breathing go back to normal. I reach for his hand and stop his fingers from moving along the ukulele strings.
“You okay?” he asks.
I think about telling him what I’m feeling, but that makes my breathing go ragged again, so instead I say, “I’m fine.” He leans in and kisses me. His lips are soft and warm. My heartbeat speeds up, this time for completely different reasons.
After a couple of minutes, Dean slides his hand under my shirt, running his fingers along my belly. I pull away. “If you think buttering me up is going to make me let you sleep in the tent, you’ve got another thing coming. I am so not sleeping out here with the rattlesnakes.”
“We could both sleep in the tent,” he offers.
“Dream on, Ukulele Boy.”
“You sure?” he asks.
I nod.
“You’re the boss.” Smiling, he resumes his strumming.
• • •
I wake up to the sound of birds. As my dreams evaporate, I think I’m home with Mom, curled up in my queen-size bed with pink ruffles. (My bedroom looked like someone ate a bunch of cotton candy and threw up everywhere. Don’t judge me. Mom decorated when I was twelve and going through my princess phase.) A crow caws, and I remember Mom’s dead. “Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore,’” I mutter, even though it isn’t a raven, and quoting Edgar Allan Poe before you open your eyes has to be really bad juju. I believe I’m at Mercy’s house until the rock digging into my spine reminds me I’m not in a bed at all. I open my eyes and watch the sunlight filter through the flimsy fabric of the tent.
“Dean?” I call. No answer. “Dean?” I yank on a sweatshirt and stumble outside.
Dean’s nowhere to be found, but his sleeping bag is still unrolled by the fire pit. A cup of gas station coffee sits on a stump he apparently used for a bedside table, judging from the opened copy of the New Yorker that rests there. What kind of college freshman reads the New Yorker? He’s so pretentious.
I pick up the coffee and find a note scribbled on a napkin underneath it: Rise and shine, morning glory. Thought you could use a pick-me-up. Your tent got pretty crazy last night. What were you doing in there, wrestling bears? P.S. Do you always snore like that?
I blush and am grateful no one is around to see it. I have always been what Mom liked to call an “active sleeper,” meaning I talk, walk, and sometimes pee in my sleep. Not in my pants, mind you. Traditionally, I get up and find a completely inappropriate place to relieve my bladder, usually the hamper or a potted plant. The inappropriate peeing has happened only a few times in my life, but it’s enough to make me phobic about sleeping near anyone I don’t know well. As I stare at Dean’s chicken-scratch handwriting, I find myself asking the million-dollar question: Did I or did I not pee in Dean’s sleeping bag last night? You think I’m being facetious. I’m not. Once, I peed on Mom’s pillow.
I pick up the coffee and take a sip. Predictably, it tastes like shit. “Dean?” I call again. Still no answer. I wander into a cluster of scrub oaks. My pants are around my ankles before I remember to hope for a spot of red in my panties. There is no blood, and judging from the sheer volume of urine I expel, I am almost sure I did not sleep-pee last night. I return to the stump, pick up Dean’s note, and stare at it. Rise and shine, morning glory. My mom used to wake me up with those words. I thought she was the only person in the world who said that. How the hell did he know? For a second, I believe in an afterlife, that Mom is watching from a cloud somewhere, sending psychic messages to Dean, telling him what to say to make her daughter trust him. What if Mom is trying to set me up with Dean? That would be just like her. She was such a control freak. If there was any way she could stick around after death to orchestrate my love life, she’d totally do it.
“Mom, what the hell are you up to?” I say.
“She wrestles bears in her sleep and talks to herself,” Dean says behind me.
I jump and dump a little coffee on my hand, which burns me, which in turn makes me whirl around and slap the shit out of Dean’s arm.
“Whoa!” He laughs, rubbing his bicep. “Did I startle you?”
“You scared the hell out of me!” I try not to let on that the sight of him sporting sexy bed-head and five o’clock shadow makes me long for that moment on the beach.
Remember that growling noise he made when his mouth was right by your ear? I think.
No, I answer myself. (He’s right. I do talk to myself, but usually inside my head.) I don’t remember that at all.
Of course, I’m lying. I remember it very well.
“Where were you?” I ask.
He points at my coffee, as if that should be an answer.
“I mean after you got the coffee, Stephen Hawking. Clearly, you got coffee and then went somewhere else.”
“Can’t a guy take a piss without enduring the inquisition upon his return? And you’re welcome for the coffee.”
He seems mildly hurt, and I am instantly remorseful. “Thank you for the coffee.” Before I can stop myself, I kiss his cheek. The smell of his skin takes me right back to that beach. Which is the last place I need to be. I pull away and take a huge swig of my hellacious coffee.
My kiss seems to have worked magic on Dean. His eyes have gone from wounded to elated in two seconds flat. “How’s the coffee?” he asks.
I smile sweetly. “It tastes like vomit.”
“Really? That bad?”
I nod. “It’s bringing back when I rode the Tilt-A-Whirl three times at an amusement park.”
“Nothing like a cup of barf in the morning,” he says, stretching.
(Yes, his shirt does ride up and reveal the line of hair on his belly. No, I don’t notice.)
As we break down our camp together, I’m keenly aware of his biceps. I feel like some loser heroine in a romance novel. If I’m not careful, I’ll be gushing about manhoods and heaving bosoms in no time.
Before you decide I’m some simpering girl who got all twitterpated when Twilight came out, let me explain. Mom was uncharacteristically sketchy when it came to having “the talk” with me. I’m happy to announce that she grew out of her “squeamish about sex” phase, and by the time I was seventeen and lost my virginity to a notorious womanizer, she was there to mop up my tears and listen to the whole sordid story. (Actually, it was a short story—thirty seconds, give or take.)
But when puberty hit me in sixth grade, she was visibly daunted. She gave me a book called Your Beautiful Body full of labeled, anatomically correct cartoons. Meet your beautiful vagina, one said. The vagina in question was not beautiful, but in its defense, I have never seen a beautiful vagina, cartoon or otherwise. Not that I’ve seen many, but the ones I have seen looked like aliens. Ditto for penises. Who decided sex organs were sexy? They are so not. When I finished the book, I was 100 percent sure sex happened when an animated sperm with googly eyes and an animated egg with puckered lips loved each other very much. Any other girl my age would have cleared up her confusion by breaking into her dad’s porn stash or running questionable internet searches, but since I didn’t have a dad, and our only computer was in Mom’s bedroom, I did the next best thing, which was break into Mom’s romance novel stash. They were completely outdated. I think she must have stolen them from her mom. Still, I got the gist of how actual sex happened from those books, but I think I will always be prone to referring to my lady parts as my “delicate flower.”
I watch Dean shove the tent into its bag. Imagining us on the beach, I silently narrate the memory. Aching, she pulled him to her and held his head against her breasts, relishing the sensation of his hair tickling her skin. “Take me, you beast,” she said, gasping.
I threw in the “Take me, you beast” for effect. I did not actually say, “Take me, you beast.” Our dialogue went something like this:
Dean: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Hell yeah, I’m sure.”
And then, in ’70s romance novel speak, we succumbed to our burning desire. I remember when it was over, looking at the sunset, smelling Dean’s skin, and feeling warmth washing my insides, warmth that at the time felt like love. Of course, in retrospect it was the hormones talking. Mom’s cartoon sex book taught me that much.
When we are all packed up, Dean asks, “You driving or am I?”
“I am,” I say without hesitation. I always drive. If Dean doesn’t know that by now, he’s just plain stupid.
Four
Again, I wish I could say that Dean’s hands on my waist don’t affect me, but they still do. More than yesterday, if I’m honest with myself. Even when the landscape is at its most breathtaking, I’m hyperfocused on his fingers webbing my belly button. Red rocks tower above us, slicing the sky with their jagged edges, turning the landscape into a scene from a cowboy movie. His torso pressed against my back is warm, and even in the desert heat, it’s soothing, like hot soup on a rainy day. Like home. He makes me feel safe, and that’s the problem. Nothing scares me more than feeling safe. I felt safe with Mom, and look how that ended. If it had ever occurred to me that Mom might leave someday, maybe I wouldn’t have let myself get so attached. Maybe I would have kept a little piece of my heart for me, but my DNA is all twisted up with hers, and since she is now nothing but ash in my saddlebag, I’m ash too.
We drive for hours, stopping every once in a while to pee. Every time we stop, I say a prayer to the period gods. They do not deign to hear my supplications. By pit stop number three, a McDonald’s this time, I’m pretty panicked as I pull up my jeans. Maybe because the sperm donor for my maybe-baby is with me, I can’t push the lateness of my period out of my head. It occurs to me for the first time this might be more than a pregnancy scare. This might be a pregnancy. I remember the cartoon zygote from Mom’s sex book and imagine one growing inside me. That scares the living shit out of me. Zygotes don’t stay zygotes. Zygotes turn into embryos. Hell, it’s an embryo already. And embryos turn into fetuses, and fetuses turn into babies. Babies poop and cry and need things I can’t even begin to imagine. Like fathers. Babies need fathers. If I had a father, I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in now, crashing in Mom’s friend’s guest room, pretending to have a home. I lean my head against the cool metal wall of the bathroom stall and cry, never mind the germs. However, I pull myself together quickly, blow my nose, and open the stall door. In the mirror, my face is red, taut. I look I’ve been crying. Hell, I look like I’ve been dying. I look like a walking corpse.
After dropping some Visine into my eyes and smearing on some lip gloss, I stroll into the dining area of the McDonald’s. Dean stares at the menu.
“Hey.” I force a smile I don’t feel.
“Hey, back,” he says.
“You’re not seriously thinking of ordering fast food, are you?” I ask. Mom was not traditionally religious, but she was zealous about some things. Healthy food was one of them.
“Well, I was—” Dean says.
“You’d be better off eating dog food. Have you seen what goes into the chicken nuggets?”
“I was going to order a cheeseburger.”
“Their cheeseburgers don’t decay. You can sit one on a shelf for a year, and it will still look exactly the same as the day you bought it.” I can hear my voice rising. I know the rage I feel is irrational, but I can’t seem to control it. These days, I’m pissed off for no good reason a lot.
Dean shrugs. “Cool.”
“Cool? I think you mean disgusting.”
“No, actually, I mean ‘cool,’” Dean insists.
“Jesus, Dean.”
“You’re the second girl to call me Jesus. The first one was in the bedroom.” Dean smiles when he says this. I know it’s a joke. Still, jealousy twists my insides.
“I thought you said I was your first.”
“Harley, get a grip. I was kidding. You were the first.”
I burst into tears. (When I got diagnosed with PTSD, the doctor warned me about the crying, but I had no idea how bad it would get.)
Looking baffled, Dean puts an arm around my shoulder and leads me away from the counter. “Okay, Harley, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what’s going on here. Fill me in. Are you crying because I’m ordering a cheeseburger, because I have a Christ complex, or because I made a joke about another girl?”
I don’t know what to say. I’m keenly aware I’m acting like a freak. I’m crying because I might be pregnant, but I can’t bring myself to tell him that, so I play my ace. “I’m crying because my mom is dead.”
It works. “Oh, man,” Dean says. “I’m so sorry, Harley.” He wraps his arms around me, and for a second, I feel safe. I forget to be afraid. I bury my face in his shoulder and breathe that salty-sweet smell of his. Suddenly, I am cr
ying because Mom is dead. It’s like that scene at the end of Braveheart, the one where they cut out his guts while he’s still alive. I’ve felt like that ever since Mercy said, “Honey, your mom died.”
Dean kisses the top of my head. “Look, Harley. I know I will never be able to totally get what you’re feeling. I’ve never had to go through what you’re going through. But if you need to cry and wipe your snot on someone, I’m your guy.”
How does he always know exactly the right thing to say?
“Thanks,” I whisper.
“Seriously, if I can do anything for you, tell me.”
“You can get me a fucking cheeseburger,” I say, pulling away from him and swiping at my nose with the back of my hand.
Dean laughs. “Are you serious? I thought they were carcinogenic or something.”
I smile through my tears. “They are, and I want one. It’s high time I start killing myself slowly like a good American girl.”
Dean leans in and kisses me on the forehead. His lips are warm and wet. That pain in my belly intensifies, but it’s different now. It’s a good kind of hurt. “You are the most bewildering, adorable creature I have ever known,” he says.
“That would have been sweet if you didn’t use the word ‘creature’ to describe me,” I deflect.
Dean laughs. “Sorry. I meant to say you were the most adorable organism I’d ever known. Now go sit down, Creature Feature, and I’ll get you that fucking cheeseburger.”
I choose a booth in the corner and watch a little girl with lopsided braids playing in the ball pit. “Mommy, I’m swimming!” she shouts, neck deep in plastic balls, clumsily practicing her breaststroke. My eyes get hot again. I close them to keep tears from falling. I’ve already melted down twice in this particular fast-food joint, and I’d rather not go for a third.
“Watch out for sharks!” a woman’s voice says, and the little girl squeals. Inside my head, I’m four again and at the beach with Mom. The sun is dropping into the sea, turning it oxblood red. My face is pressed against her shoulder, and she whispers, “‘But soft, what light from yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.’” The waves roll in and out.