Usually, I don’t drink. Mainly because—as Harp (the person) so astutely observed—I don’t like it. But also because I’ve always figured I was weird enough without alcohol. Why take the chance of getting drunk and doing something even stupider than usual? But tonight, some degree of intoxication seems, well, the sensible thing. So I take the cup of sangria Gabe offers me, drink it down, and wait for the effects to overtake me.
Meanwhile, we go inside and dance. That helps. You don’t have to talk when you’re dancing. And it’s so crowded that I don’t have to worry about whether I’m dancing well. Matt and Tiffany drift away from us, probably out to one of the cabanas, which I heard somebody say are equipped with army cots. Probably Josh and Amy have claimed one, as well. But fortunately, I’ve had a couple more sangrias, so I don’t really care. I don’t even panic when Gabe suggests we go for a walk. It’s grown chilly and I wait, humming along with the band, while he goes up to his room to get us a couple of sweatshirts.
Walking along together, it seems to me that things have turned out okay after all. I didn’t make a total fool of myself seeing Josh. And it’s been easier than I thought it would be with Gabe. Not that I think he’s falling madly in love with me or anything like that. Just that maybe he’s not embarrassed to be with me, maybe I’m not as much of a dork as I thought I was.
We’re even talking. We talk about books, some. And movies we like. We goof around a while, reciting our favorite parts of This Is Spinal Tap. Then he asks me what I’ve been up to since I left Bloomington—as if assuming I’ll be back in the fall.
“Skiing,” I say, which is certainly part of the truth.
“Nice,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to try that.”
“You should,” I say. “Cyclists are great skiers. You know, because of their legs? Cyclists have great legs,” I babble on. “So they pick it up easily.”
“Really,” he says.
Even the three, or is it four, sangrias I’ve drunk cannot save me from being mortified by his bemused response. Jesus, how did I end up talking to him about his legs? But do I stop there? No. I keep right on, tell him about this girl I know, a ski racer, who had a snowmobile wreck and saved herself by lifting the snowmobile off her body with her legs.
“That’s how strong skiers’ legs are,” I say.
He laughs. “Yeah? What about speed?” Then he surprises me, running the flat of his hand over my hair. “I mean, speaking of body parts. Athletically, that is? Did you cut off all your hair to make you faster?”
I’m rattled by his touch. All I can do is keep talking, and I segue into the story of how I decided to simplify my life. Well, obviously, not the whole story. I leave out the part about being ditched by Harp. By the time I’m finished telling it, we’re all the way down to Tenth Street.
Gabe nods toward the little shopping area a block away. “Want to get some ice cream?”
“Sure,” I say.
And it goes downhill from there. First, I insist on paying for my ice cream, which embarrasses him. Then, to make up for it, to make him laugh again, I tell him all about Harp: buying him on impulse, the grim scene at Gramps’ house resulting from my misguided belief in the premise of The Natural Dog, and my efforts to train him ever since—including walking him every evening on the Monon Trail, where he continues to resist the whole concept of walking on a leash in the most annoying but amusing ways.
“You could be a stand-up comic,” he says. “Really.”
But that’s not the worst thing. He adds, “I’ve had a really good time tonight, Emma. This was a good idea Matt had.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.”
Of course, it wasn’t his idea to ask you to the dance, I tell myself. You knew that.
And suddenly I start feeling sick. Maybe it’s Gabe inadvertently admitting that Matt bullied him into taking me to the beach party, or maybe it’s the sangria finally catching up with me—and Rocky Road ice cream on top of it. Whatever. The world starts spinning around me. Walking back, I keep stumbling and bumping into him—partly because I feel a little better when I close my eyes.
The next thing I know I wake up, way past midnight, freezing, on a chaise lounge near the ocean at the Phi Delt house.
“Jesus, I should have warned you about that sangria,” Gabe says when I sit up. He’s sitting on a lawn chair beside me, smoking. “They mix up every fucking thing you can imagine to make it. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “I drank it. Just tell me I didn’t throw up, okay?”
“Sure. You didn’t throw up,” he says. “Should I tell you if I’m lying?”
“You’re not capable of lying,” I say. “That Pulitzer Prize thing. Remember?”
“Yeah, okay. You threw up,” he says.
“Shit. I knew it.” I sit up too fast, and my right eye feels like someone’s sticking little knives into it. “Shit,” I say again and draw my knees up so I can rest my head on them.
“Hey.” Gabe smushes out his cigarette and leans toward me. “Emma. Are you okay?”
“Fine. Fabulous.” I wave my hand weakly toward the deserted ocean of baby pools beyond where we sit. “Except for that fucking tidal wave. It gave me a killer migraine.”
He shakes his head and smiles at me. “Are you ever not funny?” he asks.
Sometimes, I want to say. When I’m not mortified. When I’m not trying to be cool.
But of course I don’t say that. I let him walk me back to the dorm, grateful for the way he talks the whole way about The Things They Carried, this book he read in a lit class and fell in love with. It’s about Vietnam, he says. “I’ll be reading one of the stories, horrified by the war stuff in it—and at the same time laughing my ass off. I mean it, that book kills me. I’ve read it about ten times, trying to figure out how something could be so depressing and hilarious at the same time. I mean, how did he do that?”
It doesn’t seem like any kind of trick to me, which only makes my head hurt more. Depressing and hilarious: that’s the story of my life. What I don’t understand is why, if you feel that way, you’d want to write it down. It seems to me your energy would be far better spent trying to forget.
Something else I don’t say. Maybe I’m getting smarter, learning how not to be so … my weirdest self all the time. Maybe next time I feel attracted to someone, I’ll be able to break him in gently as to who I am. I just wish I’d started to have a clue about some of this stuff before I met Gabe.
“So,” he says, when we get to the dorm.
“Listen. Thanks,” I say. “You know, for—”
He shrugs. “Hey, I wasn’t in the greatest shape myself. It might just as easily have been me who—”
Barfed, we’re both thinking.
I feel sorry for him. He looks embarrassed for having brought us back to that. The truth is, he’s not much better at this dating thing than I am. I’m going to have to be the one to give him the exit he needs now.
“Well,” I say. “It was really great to see you again. But I’d better get some sleep. I’ve got to get up, get back to Indy before noon. I promised my dad—” I wave my hand vaguely in lieu of an actual plan.
“Oh. Sure,” he says. “Okay, then. See you.”
And he’s gone.
Thirty
Please, please, please, please, please don’t let Tiff be back yet, I pray, standing in the elevator with a bunch of girls who look as bad as I feel. But when I open the door and she’s not there, it’s as if I tumble backwards in time to last fall and I’m the miserable, lonely person I was then—which seems even worse than being the miserable, lonely person I am now.
At least I’m a rich miserable, lonely person now, I say to myself, still apparently unable not to be a comedian.
I don’t even turn on the light, just lie down with my clothes still
on and try to sleep. But there’s laughter along the hall outside and the smell of spring drifting through the open window, and I feel so restless. Plus, I realize I’m still wearing Gabe’s sweatshirt. I lift my arm and breathe in what must be the scent of him. I can’t stop thinking about how great it was, the two of us walking along Tenth Street together for that little while, feeling like I could say anything. Was that real? Or was he just being nice when he said he had a good time with me?
And so what if he was telling the truth about that. Whatever good time we might have had occurred before I threw up and passed out and he had hours to sit in the yard on a lawn chair all by himself remembering the other times we were together and what a dork I was then.
What time is it in Paris, I wonder? What’s Mom doing? If I were to tell her about what happened tonight and how I feel about Gabe Parker, what would she say?
It seems to me at this moment that there’s not a single person in the world, not even Mom, who’d be able to understand how I feel—about anything. When Tiff finally comes in, near three o’clock, I pretend I’m sleeping.
“Emma?” she whispers. “Emma?”
I give a little moan. “Mmmm?”
“How was it? Did you have a good time with Gabe?” She giggles. “God, are you as tanked as I am?
“You are,” she says when I moan again. “Okay, I’m wasted too. See you in the morning.”
But there’s no way I can face talking to her about my date with Gabe. I’m not mad at her for telling me it wasn’t his idea. I know how she is. She wanted it to be his idea, so she twisted her mind around somehow and actually thinks it was. I’m just embarrassed—about everything. I don’t want to talk about Gabe. Or Josh and Amy. I just want to go home, find a good book and exit to a whole other universe for a while.
I can’t go till the sangria’s totally worn off. But I know Tiff. She sleeps like the dead; she’ll be out cold till at least noon. So I let myself drift off to sleep, knowing the sun will wake me. When it does, around seven, I get out of bed and scribble a note on the back of a concert flyer on her desk. Tiff, Didn’t want to wake you up. But I need to be home before noon, so I’m heading out. Thanks for everything. I’ll call you! Love, Emma.
I leave it on her bedside table, and consider leaving Gabe’s sweatshirt for her to give back to him, but I don’t. I turn it inside out, though: my little secret. Halfway home, I stop at a Bob Evan’s for breakfast, where I sit in a booth for nearly two hours reading a bunch of outdated People magazines that have collected in my Jeep, passing the time so I don’t get home too early.
When I pull into the driveway, Dad’s waxing Gramps’ Harley, and the sight of it sends me to a whole new low. I love that turquoise bike as much as Gramps did, even though it’s the absolute tackiest thing you’d ever want to see, all got up in silver and fringe.
“Emma!” Dad calls, and throws the wax rag in my direction. It lands just short of Harp’s nose, and he opens his eyes, gazes at it suspiciously. Then he picks it up in his teeth and trots over to me, his tail wagging wildly, and drops it at my feet like a gift.
“Good boy,” I say, ruffling his warm fur.
“Good boy, hell,” Dad says. “He ate a whole box of chocolate donuts yesterday and then threw them up all over the living room carpet. That little shit! Knocked them right off the kitchen table. He’s got spirit, I’ll say that. Did you have a good time in Bloomington?”
I shrug, which he takes for an affirmative.
I walk over to examine the newly waxed bike and I can see myself, all wavery, in the gleaming turquoise tank. The chrome sparkles. The silver fittings on the saddlebags wink in the sun. Dad steps closer to the bike, then back, squinting like Michelangelo assessing the Sistine Chapel. He picks up the rag and rubs here and there.
“Can I sit on it?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says.
I throw my leg over the tank and get on, remembering how Gramps used to lift me up and put me on the seat when I was little. How I’d sit there, Emma Hammond, girl biker, for as long as he’d let me. Today Dad saddle-soaped the leather seat and it feels soft and warm against my bare legs. The very weight of the bike beneath me is exciting. I lean over and put my hands on the handlebars, just like I used to do then.
Dad smiles at me. “Do you remember asking Dutch if you could have his motorcycle when he died? You were maybe eight.”
I remember, all right. Mom’s horrified reaction to my request was my first real clue about what dying actually meant. She hustled me off into the kitchen and, kneeling so we were face-to-face, holding me tightly by the arms, she told me never, ever to ask such a question again. It was a terrible thing to talk about someone dying as if all it meant was a bunch of things going up for grabs as a result. It became one of those embarrassing family jokes afterwards. Jules would say, “Can I have your new skis when you die?” Or your Lenny Kravitz CD, or whatever.
Gramps and Dad thought it was funny, though. “I was kind of surprised he didn’t leave it to you in the will,” Dad says now. “Though he probably just assumed I’d remember and give it to you when the time came.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “What are you saying?”
“You want it?” He nods toward the bike.
Yes, I want it! But the words stick in my throat. I can almost feel Mom beside me, hear her voice saying, What in the world are you thinking about? She’ll be furious with Dad if he gives me the Harley, making things even worse between them.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Mom—”
He shrugs. “Your mom’s not here, is she?”
That hangs between us for a few seconds. Then he says, “I wrote her a letter, told her what I had in mind. I told her I’d make you dress right: boots and leather jacket, all that. You’d have to wear a helmet. And you’d have to let me give you some lessons before you take the riding test for your license, too.
“I’ve been thinking of taking that trip west that Dutch and I always used to dream about,” he goes on. “Thinking maybe you might want to go with me. We could spend a couple of days riding around here, so you can get used to the bike. Then head out. Margaret will keep Harp for you; I already asked her. What do you say?”
I look at the bike, think of how Gramps would never, ever roar up the driveway on it again. That, somehow, gets all mixed up with Gabe being so nice about what an ass I made of myself last night, and I feel paralyzed with sadness.
“Emma?” Dad says.
“Yeah, I want to go,” I say, blinking back tears. “I just—”
“I know,” he says. “I wish Dutch could go, too. But we’ll have a good time. And he’d like it that we were going together. You know that.”
“Yeah,” I say. It’s true. But I don’t want to go on the trip because I think Dad and I will have a good time, or because I think it would please Gramps to know I was his substitute. Gramps is dead, way beyond pleasure or disappointment. I want to go west with Dad because going will put a half a continent between me and Gabe Parker’s humiliating kindness. But then, I figure, Dad’s motives aren’t totally pure either. Yeah, he wants us to have a good time together. But he also won’t be sorry about putting half a continent between himself and home, where every single thing reminds him of Mom.
“Can I have it when you die?” That’s the first thing Jules says when I call to tell her about our plans. “Let’s see,” she goes on when she’s finished laughing hysterically. “That ought to be … when did you say Dad wrote Mom that letter?”
“Very funny,” I say.
“Mom is going to be pissed.”
“She is not,” I say, feeling five.
“Is too.” Jules laughs again. “Well, anyway, becoming a biker chick ought to cancel out whatever points you got on account of saving that stupid goose. Speaking of which—”
“What?”
“The mo
ney,” she says, like I’m a dunce. “You know something, Emma? The other day I finally just sat Will down and said, ‘What’s the matter with us, anyway?’ And we ended up talking about everything. He was totally paranoid about the money. He was, like, ‘All my parents ever cared about was money, and I don’t want to end up like them.’
“God. And there I was, constantly trying to foist it off on him. ‘Let me invest in the gym,’ I’d say. ‘Let me pay for dinner.’ I couldn’t figure out why he’d get so upset every time I bought him a present. It hurt my feelings, you know? And I still don’t exactly understand why he’s so freaked out about it. I mean, we don’t have to be like his parents just because we have a lot of money. We can be any way we want—
“Anyhow, we decided what I could do for him is work at the gym,” she goes on. “That way, he and his partner can get by not hiring another person for a while. He feels comfortable with that. And I like it there, you know? We can schedule ourselves to work a lot of the same hours. Plus it’s like dance, in a way—only it’s about being strong and healthy instead of being strong and thin. Not that I mean to stop dancing,” she says. “For myself, anyway. I still have some thinking to do about that.”
I’m glad for her. She’s doing what people are supposed to do when they grow up: figuring things out, slowly making her own life. But that life seems so far away from what our life together used to be.
As for me, I feel like I’m in limbo: the past irretrievable, the future frightening, unknown.
I call Tiff, like I said I would, but she seems distant. We don’t mention the beach party. She doesn’t try to convince me how Gabe actually really likes me, but is shy. In fact, she doesn’t mention Gabe at all. She talks about how finals are coming up soon. I tell her about the trip I’m taking with my dad.
She’s tired of trying to prop me up, I suppose. Who can blame her? But I miss the Tiffany who drove me crazy most of the time. I feel sad when we hang up, like I’ve lost something that, till now, I didn’t quite realize I had.
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