The Kissing List

by Stephanie Reents

  “They’re loaded,” Hayley says. “But Geoff just wants to be an artist. Having money’s such a burden. I’m glad my family’s normal. I won’t have to worry about some big wedding.”

  Alex looks stricken. “Are you planning on getting married soon?”

  Hayley blushes. “No, I mean, whenever. Marriage is totally old-fashioned.”

  “I’ll second that,” I say.

  “I’m starved,” Peter says, standing up.

  The topic of marriage makes all of us nervous. This summer, Peter, Alex, and I are going to five weddings of friends from college. To say you don’t want to get married makes you wonder what you’re doing sleeping in the same person’s bed several times a week, but to say you do brings waves of despair.

  Hayley moves to the stove. “I’m not exactly sure how I’m supposed to make a pancake look confounded,” she says, scooping blueberries out of a bowl and dropping them into the sizzling skillet of pancake batter. “Or bewildered, for that matter.”

  “You’re doing great,” Alex says, standing next to her.

  When Hayley hands me my plate, a smiling pancake stares up at me. “This isn’t resolute,” I complain, which is how I woke.

  “You’re always smiling,” Hayley answers. “So even if you are feeling resolute, or whatever, you still look happy to me.”

  The tennis court is hot. Hayley doesn’t wear her tennis dress. Instead she has on a faded pair of surfing shorts, a turquoise blue tank top, and Converse low-tops, probably with black soles. As usual, Peter and Alex are dressed in cutoffs and bleach-stained T-shirts with stupid jokes. We’ve donned the baseball hats with mosquito netting—this time to keep blackflies and horseflies from landing on our faces.

  Alex, Peter, and I didn’t actually know one another until our final year of college: Peter started a year ahead of us, but took time out to hike the Appalachian Trail and “get straight with God,” even though he didn’t believe in God then, and still doesn’t. Alex hung out with the crowd of people who had gone to high schools whose formal names started with definite pronouns, instead of no pronouns at all. They read primary sources in their high school history classes, and this made them intellectuals from the get-go. The rest of us, like me, had our epiphanic moments the first time we spoke the word epiphany in class instead of church.

  “Should we play, or just play around?” Alex asks.

  “Remember, I’ve only played three times,” Hayley chimes in.

  “Hit,” Peter answers.

  Peter and I pair up, hitting nice, even strokes to Hayley and Alex. The court is turf, not clay, so the ball moves slowly. This gives me enough time to remember to roll to the balls of my feet and crank back my racket.

  “Nice,” Peter says to me.

  I’m no tennis player—just high school PE and games with friends. The first time Peter and I played tennis, he hit the ball to me with such perfection that I was able to return it hard and straight. Each time my racket kissed the ball, it made a satisfying sound, like a bottle of champagne being uncorked. Peter confessed he wanted me afterward, right there on the public tennis court underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

  The order switches. Peter hits to Hayley. “Watch the backspin,” he says, even before his ball lands. “Move up.”

  Hayley swings but misses it completely, which I’ve done numerous times before. She doesn’t say a word.

  “Nice try,” Alex says.

  “Those are tricky,” Peter says.

  When Hayley tries to restart the rallying, she drops the ball, swings, and misses completely.

  “Fuck,” she says, throwing her racket on the ground and shuffling toward the gate.

  “Don’t worry,” Alex calls. “It’s a damn frustrating game.”

  “And it’s hot,” Peter says. “I’m on my edge.”

  They both head toward her. I spin my racket in my hand, twisting it, letting it go, then catching it by the grip. It’s the sort of obsessive thing I did a lot when I was a kid. Like making self-improvement lists or trying to jump rope for an hour straight or memorizing poems. I throw the racket into the air, like a baton, and it twists several times. I miss, and it hits the turf with a thud, like the sound of a small animal meeting the tires of a car. Neither Peter nor Alex looks back at me.

  Hayley vetoes croquet. In a rare show of controlling his competitive urges, Peter says he doesn’t want to play cards—“not on a day as beautiful as this one.” Because of the mosquitoes, spending the day in a hammock with a book is out of the question. Finally we agree on a swim in a small lake on the mainland. The road is narrow and twisty, like a ball of unraveled yarn. Alex takes the turns fast. Out the window, I see the place that Alex pointed out the last time we were here where a freak tornado touched down years ago and cleared a square mile of timber in less than thirty seconds.

  “How fast can this do a hundred?” Hayley asks suddenly, leaning forward in the gap between the front seats, one elbow on Peter’s headrest, the other on Alex’s, her chin on her forearms.

  “The Wagoneer?” Alex says. “No inkling.”

  “Could it even do a hundred?” Peter says.

  “Oh, sure, it would do a hundred,” Hayley says. “People race cars like this out at the track where Geoff drives, and they do a hundred, easy, without souped-up motors. I bet this could do it in ten seconds or so.”

  “Starting from a standstill,” Alex asks. “Is that what you mean?”

  “How fast it can accelerate?” Peter echoes.

  “Yep,” Hayley answers. “From zero to a hundred.”

  “Should we try it here?” Alex asks. “See how fast we can make this bad boy go? There’s a straight stretch in a couple of miles.”

  Peter laughs. “This bad beast.”

  I try to catch Peter’s eye in the rearview mirror, but Hayley’s head is in the way. “Sounds stupid and dangerous.”

  “Geoff and I do it all the time,” Hayley answers. “If we come on another car, we’ll just slow down and try again.”

  With this, she’s thrown down the gauntlet. There’s no way Alex and Peter will miss the chance to prove they’re just as cool as Geoff.

  “I’m getting out,” I announce. “Less weight,” I add, an afterthought. I’m hoping Peter will offer to wait with me. I’ll keep Sylvie company. I’ll let you two hotshots eat up the road. But he doesn’t, of course.

  “Are you sure?” Peter asks, before they let me off on a gravel shoulder.

  “Oh sure, I’m sure. Have a great time.”

  Peter certainly hears the fake cheerfulness in my voice, so forced I almost choke on it. After the three of them peel out, I stand there, the tanginess of the evergreen trees that line the road mixing with the dullness of the dirt that I’m mindlessly kicking up with my toe. I’m mad at myself for not playing, even though it’s a stupid game, stupid like so many games that people play.

  I went to college with two body-size duffel bags and my bicycle taken apart and packed in a box. At the airport, ninety minutes away, I’d had to reassemble my bike curbside and ride Peter Pan for the last leg of the journey. The small New England town that was to be my home welcomed me with a downpour. I locked my bags to a signpost and took off on my bike, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go. All my neatly folded clothes, clothes my mother doubted would be in fashion “back East,” were wet by the time I returned to ferry them to my new dorm room. At first, everyone thought my boots and Lees were quaint. “You grew up on an orchard?” boys would ask at parties, eyeing my leather belt. “Yep,” I’d chirp and then launch into an explanation until it dawned on me that they weren’t really interested in growing fruit trees. I saved the money I earned from working in the cafeteria and bought a pullover fleece and Doc Martens. I earned an A in my first lit course and spent my free time in my professors’ office hours so that by the time I graduated, no one could see how ill at ease I sometimes felt. I could handle a hard frost that hits before the peach trees have shed their blossoms, but the rules that everyone else
seemed to have effortlessly mastered—eating rice with chopsticks, or networking, or lining up the perfect internship—still seemed cryptic. Through sheer effort, I tried to hide my sense of being two moves behind. Even now, even after succeeding by the most conventional measures, this feeling lingers.

  I hear the sound of the car before I see the Wagoneer. Hayley’s at the wheel with Alex next to her. Peter’s in the backseat. They’re sitting up very straight and looking ahead. It’s impossible to judge how fast they’re going. As they come closer, they seem to go faster until they flash by—a streak of forest green. Then, as my perspective changes, the car seems to slow down. I hope Hayley’s wrong about a hundred without a souped-up motor.

  Before I know it, they’re back, the car spraying gravel on the shoulder.

  “How’d it go?” I ask.

  Hayley leans across the seat. Her chest is touching Alex’s shoulder, and she’s grinning. The dimple in her left cheek is as round and perfect as a small pie cherry. “Twelve-point-three seconds,” she answers. “A little slow, but not too bad. This thing probably just needs a tune-up and a couple quarts of high-performance oil.”

  “It was great,” Alex says, grinning. “I think I’ve gone a hundred before, but never like that.” He gives Hayley a playful punch on the shoulder. “You’ve whetted my appetite for speed.”

  “Fantastic,” Hayley says to him. “You’ll see. Going really fast gives you such a rush, about ten times more intense than this.”

  Peter rolls down his window: “The rush I had was already pretty intense.”

  “Are we going to the lake now?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” Hayley says. “There’s another thing we want to do. It’s really cool. It’s kind of like a game of trust. Two people sit in the driver’s seat—one person between the other person’s legs. One person drives while the other directs.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “The person who’s driving can’t see,” Hayley explains. “Either the driver is blindfolded, or the other person covers the driver’s eyes.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “The other person, the person sitting behind the driver—Geoff and I call him the director—gives the blind driver directions,” Hayley explains. “You know, like a little to the left, sharp turn to the right, slower, faster.”

  “That’s crazy,” I say.

  “It sounds great,” Alex says.

  “I bet Sylvie doesn’t want to do it,” Peter says. “It’s not her thing.”

  I glare at him: “You’re right.”

  “Luckily that doesn’t mean it’s not my thing,” Peter says. “Should we play rock, scissors, paper to see who goes first?”

  “It’s my idea,” Hayley says, “so I get to drive. It’s what gives me the biggest rush.”

  Alex groans when his scissors are crushed by Peter’s rock. Peter’s lame for letting his competitiveness get the best of him, for not giving Alex first dibs.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get your turn,” Hayley says as she gets out of the driver’s seat to let Peter in. Alex jumps out, and we watch the two of them arrange themselves, Hayley in the V of Peter’s legs with Peter’s chin just skimming the top of her head. It reminds me of when my dad used to let me sit in his lap and steer the truck down our gravel driveway when I was a child.

  “This wouldn’t work if you were taller than Peter,” I say.

  “No, it’s really better if the driver’s shorter than the director. When Geoff and I do it, I always drive.”

  Hayley grips the steering wheel, and Peter clamps a hand over each of her eyes. “No peeking,” he says.

  “Okay, Peter,” Hayley says. “It’s easy. You just tell me to go left or right, a little more or a lot. You’ll also tell me when I need to slow down or speed up. For now, we’ll stick to the basics: no U-turns, no passing other cars, or things like that.”

  She wiggles between Peter’s legs. He flips up the sun visor, then replaces his hands over Hayley’s eyes. “Comfy?” he asks.

  “Yep,” she answers. “And I can’t see a thing.”

  “Okay, you’re going to turn slightly to the left,” Peter says. “You’ll go up a little bump to get back on the road. Take it slow. There’s nobody coming.”

  Those are the last words we hear before the Wagoneer goes rolling away from us. Alex looks longingly after them.

  “This is crazy,” I say.

  He grins. “Hayley’s so crazy. She’s something else.”

  After looking both ways, I dash across the road and walk slowly in the direction Hayley and Peter have driven. Several cars speed by, bulldozing air toward me, blowing my clothes against my body. Each time this happens, I slow down and hug the shoulder a bit more. In the distance, I spot what I think is the green Wagoneer—the blind driver and the director—returning.

  The car’s about a half mile away when I step into the lane of oncoming traffic.

  “What are you doing?” Alex calls. “Sylvie!”

  The car comes toward me until I imagine I can see Peter, wrapped around Hayley, and Peter can see me, standing in their path. I don’t move because I know Hayley wouldn’t if she were in my position. Then I shut my eyes, just like Hayley, and wonder whether Peter will tell her, “Time to brake.”

  The low hum of the car grows louder. In the abstract, it’s a beautiful sound, like nighthawks diving from a high eddy of air for insects far below, but in practical terms, it means the car is coming closer. I know how little resistance my body offers, how easily I will be thrown into the air, how quickly I will drop. “Sylvie!” Alex shouts. “Jesus Christ, Sylvie!”

  Then something shrieks, and the air fills with the acrid smell of burning rubber. I open my eyes; the car is about ten feet in front of me. The door jerks open, and Hayley falls out of the car and onto the pavement. She rises, brushing off her hands. “What the fuck, Peter? Why didn’t you tell me to stop?”

  Peter says something that I can’t hear, or at least I think he does because Hayley takes a step toward the car and yells some more: “What? That’s no excuse.”

  He gets out. “I was going to,” he insists. “There was still space.” He reaches for her. “Are you okay?”

  Hayley snatches her hand away from him. “I cheated. I peeked. I felt your fucking body tense, and I waited for you to give me something, you know, like ‘Stop. Sylvie’s in the middle of the road,’ and I waited, and Jesus Christ, you just sat there saying nothing.”

  She kicks the front tire, hard. “What the fuck? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Peter stands there, his hands at his sides like useless things. Alex is still on the shoulder. The only person who moves is Hayley. She strides toward me, taking purposeful steps. I expect her to begin screaming, but she doesn’t. A car approaches from the opposite direction, slows down, and from the window, a man calls out, “Everything all right there?” Hayley hugs me, and I wonder how the man must see us, the four of us standing in a constellation around the car in the road, how differently he must see us from the way we see ourselves, how differently I see Hayley and even myself since she stopped the car. She is squeezing me so tight, I can feel her heart hammering against my chest, and for the first time in what seems like ages, I feel my own.

  To: Philip

  Fr: Anna

  Dt: July 12, 2011

  Re: Why We Didn’t

  Purpose

  The purpose of this memo is to—

  Never mind.

  You know, by now, that the memo is a form I like, one that we often use in my business for thinking through the hierarchy of effect (how to move consumers from awareness of a product to the conviction to buy it). A disclaimer: I am not trying to sell you anything. I am not even trying to sell you my version of the truth. I know you will find holes in my argument, illogical conclusions—we may even disagree upon the facts. My mind is far from your brief-drafting machine, a brain capable of producing meticulous legal arguments just as soon as you’ve sucked down your morning coffee. I
know, I know: it doesn’t come easy, and such assumption-making about your intelligence and all your accomplishments is unfair. I’ve learned (not without practice, correction, nagging, even machine-gun bursts of impatience) that the last thing you want to hear is “You’re so brilliant and accomplished, et cetera, et cetera, I know you’ll get it done.” Instead, as instructed, I have tried my best to say the following:

  I hear that you are stressed out, and I hear that things are very difficult for you right now. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know.

  But sorry. Back to the matter at hand.

  Data Method Assumptions

  I wish interpretation were as easy as

  If x = 3, and x + y = 10, then what is y equal to?

  Ergo: If we were having so many conflicts over things large (whether to have one child or two, buy a bigger place, invite your best friend to our wedding, given your shared history) and small (organic versus nonorganic produce, the amount of meat in our diet, the best bicycle route back and forth to the park, allocation of bookshelf space in the living room, and so on), then the bickering and long, hurt silences would not likely diminish after we tied the knot. But future happiness is tricky to predict, especially when your married and partnered friends are counseling that hard work equals long and happy unions while also narrating half-funny, half really fucking seriously alarming stories whereby wedding planning and wedding ceremonies are likened to haunted houses filled with hidden demons and people who give fright merely because you didn’t expect them to appear.

  Let’s face it: you and me, Phil, we were hard workers. We’d swallowed that most hallowed American value hook, line, and bait. So much misplaced ambition, so much longing for intimate recognition. We wanted what almost everyone thinks they want: to fall in love and live happily ever after.