Love (And Other Uses for Duct Tape)

by Carrie Jones

  “If anyone needs to call, I’ll call,” he says.

  “He hit you.”

  This is so obvious. I don’t know why I say it.

  “It’s against the law, Eddie. It’s assault.”

  Night noises blend into a hum, crickets and tiny birds, predators stalking their prey, mice hunker down and hide, breathing in and out as quietly as they can while their hearts race away inside their tiny chests.

  “You don’t need to save me, Belle,” he finally says. “Go home. Text Tom or something. Tell everybody about the latest idiot truth about Eddie Caron. Alcoholic. Abuser. Abused. Right? Everyone’ll love that.”

  “Eddie … ”

  “I mean it, Belle. You can’t save me, okay? I’m not one of your stupid causes.”

  I turn away. I go back inside, fix my window, hold my cell phone in my hand, listening for sounds from Eddie’s house, but I hear nothing. I push my head against the window pane, remember to breathe.

  “I can’t fix anything,” I say to the window, to Eddie, to Em.

  Nobody hears.

  Em’s Song

  i did all the good girl things

  since I was three years old

  i love him so we did it

  over and over again

  and it wasn’t a good girl thing

  but it wasn’t a bad girl thing

  it was a thing bodies do

  and then it was all about urine

  and cells and change

  and i’m stuck here in this body

  that’s getting ready to implode

  and i’m stuck here in this body

  that’s getting ready to exercise

  its rights and it’s my body

  it’s my body

  but it’s not just mine right now

  but it is

  i did all the good girl things

  since I was three years old

  and i don’t know what

  those good girl things are anymore

  i don’t know what I am anymore

  i don’t know

  i am running down a river field

  i am slicing through the water

  i am refusing to talk about it

  about my choice, about my choice

  about a play set in a yard, a law book on a table

  about my choice, my choice

  Monday

  “Tell me more about yesterday?” my mom asks me, watching me sip my Postum, even though she has to leave for work soon.

  “We went kayaking.”

  “Did you wear life jackets?”

  “PFDs, Mom. No one calls them life jackets.”

  “Fine. PFDs?”

  “Personal flotation devices.”

  “Whatever. I just want you to be safe.” She eyes me. “Did you really buy condoms with Emily and Anna, Saturday?”

  “Mom. What do you think?”

  The Postum is too hot to swallow easily.

  My mom grabs my hand in hers. “If you are going to have sex, which I hope you aren’t, I want you to be careful, that’s all. It’s a big commitment and it’s a big risk. You could get pregnant. You could get a disease.”

  “Mom!” I pull my hand away and stare at my toast which is burnt black on one side and tell her the truth, which I wish was actually a lie. “I’m not having sex.”

  I can’t believe I’ve just said that and it was the truth. This is not how I see myself. I’ve always been a girl who had sex, protected sex, of course, monogamous sex with a committed partner and blah, blah, blah, but definitely a girl who has sex. It’s really hard to suddenly be Belle, the girl who doesn’t have sex. It’s hard to go back to that. I now understand the whole term “born-again virgin.” I do not want to be a born-again virgin. Although, it’s better than being an unwed teenage mother, I guess. Oh God …

  My head hurts again. I can’t even think anymore without my head hurting.

  My mother snorts and crosses her arms over her chest. “Right. You aren’t having sex. But if you are, I want you to use condoms. I could make an appointment and you could go on the pill.”

  “Mom!!!” God, what would she say if she knew about Em?

  “I just want you to be careful, honey. Losing your virginity is a big deal.”

  I stand up before I even know I’m standing. All I want to do is get out, get away. “I know Mom. Okay? I know.”

  I book out of there and slip into the bathroom to take a shower. I lost my virginity a while ago with Dylan, my ex-boyfriend. Yes, the gay one. Yes, we had sex. Yes, he was capable of having sex with girls, specifically me. Yes, to all those questions. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Ripping off my pajamas, I step into the shower stall without getting the water temperature right first. It goes from hot to cold to scalding to okay, just like my life.

  Mr. Duffy taught us about how in literature authors use the “objective correlative” to show the character’s emotion. Something like a wilted flower becomes a symbol for the character’s emotional state. I don’t think it’s only in literature by T. S. Eliot or other old dead guys that there are objective correlatives or endowed objects or whatever you want to call them. I think they follow us through life.

  The shower becomes lukewarm.

  I do not want the shower to be my objective correlative. I do not want to be Hamlet, the hero who could not act. Not that I’m a hero since I seem absolutely unable to fix anything for anyone. But we do both have dead fathers, and mothers who are now getting randy. And issues about words and certainty.

  Crap.

  Hopefully, we’ll move out of our Shakespeare unit in English soon. It’s only like we have a Shakespeare unit every single year. I am so sick of Shakespeare.

  I press my head against the tiles and try not to think about condoms and sex and objective correlatives. I try not to think about how much I want to have sex with someone again, to feel Tom next to me. I try not to think about my mother and her modest eyebrow lifts. I try not to think about Em being pregnant, Eddie being smacked around.

  “I am a blank slate,” I announce to the hair in the drain that is clumped and disgusting, full of soap residue and shampoo. “I am thinking of nothing.”

  But I do think of someone. I think of my dad. What would he say?

  Probably something like, Suck it up, Sweetheart. Stop your bitching and moaning.

  I almost laugh, because it’s funny to imagine him like that. I give him a wicked Maine accent where he drops the “g”s off the ends of his words and draws out his “a” sounds into “ah” sounds.

  Suck it up, Sweethaht. Stop yah bitchin’ and moanin’ deah.

  The water pressure spritzes into something weak and then comes on full force and as it does my grin morphs into something else. I miss my dad, after how many years? I really, really miss him.

  Daddy.

  It’s a word I’ve never called anyone.

  Daddy.

  It’s a secret club that I can’t get in.

  When my dad died, I was just a baby, not even in school yet. My mom didn’t have a job. People in town had bake sales at the First Congregational Church and raffles at the Knowlton School and penny drives at the Tideway and Mike’s to make sure that we had enough to get us through the funeral. Then the dental supply company hired my mom into the human resources department/secretary stuff, even though all she had was a college degree and no work experience.

  People call my dad a war hero, but it was never officially a “war.” It was a “conflict,” the first one, in Iraq. He was a paramedic for the Eastbrook Fire Department, which translates to being a medic in the National Guard. Those are the things he was. Those are the words that describe him: war hero, paramedic.

  Every time I see the fire ch
ief, he pulls me into this big hug and says, “Your dad was a hero, Belle. You know that, right?”

  I pull away and nod. He gets tears in his eyes and always says something like, “He’d be so proud of you.”

  I smile and then I say something like, “He’d be proud of you too.”

  That always makes people, especially Chief McKenney, turn away and wipe at their face.

  My dad was kind of a superstar in this town. He grew up here, played basketball for the Class B Boys State Champions, went on to college, and became a paramedic. When he died, they named the gym at the high school after him. There was a big ceremony and everything, but I don’t remember that. I was just a baby.

  When people die they put their names on things. If they weren’t famous or “popular” or if their death wasn’t tragic, it’s just a gravestone. If they were famous, or rich, or tragic, it’s a building at a university, an emergency room at a hospital, a gymnasium. Then eventually people forget the person the thing was named after. Years and years and years pass and the name means nothing anymore, it carries no memory of the person. It becomes just words, meaningless, empty.

  Since my mom never married again, people still look out for us. Mr. Dow mows our lawn, trims our lilacs and helps us with our taxes. Eddie Caron’s dad plows out our driveway. Mr. Jones invites us out on his sailboat at least once a summer, and he secretly paid for my cheerleading camp in middle school, and always asks about my grades.

  “It’s like every man in town is your daddy,” my mom always laughs.

  “That does not sound good,” I always tell her. “That sounds like you’re the town slut.”

  She always laughs more. “I wish.”

  The shower water rushes down on me and I try to not think about my mom out on the town with reporter Jim Shrembersky. Still, I see her giggling over the salad bowl at Olive Garden up in Bangor. I see Jim Shrembersky wiggling his eyebrows lasciviously and making some stupid jokes. I see my mother reaching out to touch his hand with her finger. His heartbeat quickens. So does hers. Thumpity. Thump. Thump.

  My mother knocks on the bathroom door when I’m toweling off and from the break in her voice I can tell she’s been crying.

  “I’m going to miss you,” she says. “I’m going to miss you when you go.”

  I scrunch on a bathrobe and pull open the door. The cold doorknob is like peace after the hot steam of the shower. My mom waits on the other side, trying to look brave, but her bottom lip trembles. Mine does the same thing when I try not to be sad.

  Up on the ceiling, a spider crawls towards its web. My mom’s face straightens itself.

  “I’m not going far. It’s just college,” I say and pull her against me.

  “It’s life,” she says. “You’re going into life without me.”

  I nod and pat her back. The cloth is dry and thin. I whisper to her, “I won’t be far.”

  She shakes her head, pulls away, smiles at me. “You already are. You’re doing the typical teenage self-involved thing.”

  We wait a second. We wait another second, just standing there with each other and then I point above her head at the hallway ceiling. “There’s a spider up there.”

  “Let’s let him be,” she says, and then reaches and pulls my hair out of the collar on my bathrobe. “You go get dressed before you catch pneumonia.”

  “It’s May,” I say and then bite my lip, because I’ve realized my mistake.

  Her hand wanders to my cheek. “Let me mother you while I still can, okay?”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  A second passes. Another goes by. I grab at the doorframe of the bathroom, looking for something to help hold me up. It’s dusty. I should dust.

  “Mom?”

  She turns around.

  “What, sweetie?”

  “I’m glad you have a good time with Jim.”

  She smiles, slow and sweet. It spreads its calm joy across her face. “Thanks, honey.”

  Her bottom does an extra wiggle as she tiptoes down the hall and she starts singing. The wrong lyrics come out, like always. She does this on purpose. I have no idea why.

  “I’m not slow in a Vette,” she sings.

  I think she means to say, “I’m not so innocent,” which is an ancient Britney Spears song, but I will not ask.

  “NO!!!” she croons. “I’m not slow in a Vette.”

  “No more, Mom,” I yell.

  “Sorry,” her voice comes back up the stairs, but the rest of her has already disappeared.

  I start a list.

  Self-involved? My mom said I was. I’m not. Am I?

  Am I primarily interested in things that only have to do with me?

  What do I care about?

  Em.

  Tom.

  My mom.

  Mimi’s evil ways.

  My dad.

  My guitar.

  The fact that I’ll be $40,000 in debt when I graduate college even though I’m getting work study, two dinky scholarships and a grant. Oh, God. Oh God. God. God.

  Being a good person and not obsessively worrying about my in-debt future.

  Amnesty International, racism, sexism, homophobia.

  The fact that Eddie’s dad came home drunk and hit Eddie last night. Just hit him.

  Ha!

  Emily’s secret doesn’t make me feel any heavier, although I guess it shouldn’t yet. The secret is only one month old, we think, locked inside of her, waiting until it won’t be a secret anymore. It is not my secret to hold, but I hold it with her as if it is my own.

  That’s what best friends do. They hold each other’s pain inside their womb as if it were their own. I am going to be a good friend for Em. That’s my role now, my label.

  Emily usually drives me to school instead of Tom on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They made an agreement when Tom and I first started dating. I think it’s kind of cute that they fight over me, but in a way it makes me feel like a kid stuck in a custody battle, only the parents actually like each other.

  We don’t all ride together because Tom has a truck and Em has a little red car that makes Tom sweat the moment she starts pumping it over sixty. Tom drives crazy too, so it makes no sense.

  “Control issues,” Em explained once. She’s probably right. His dad is a cop.

  When I get in the car, Em does not turn on any music. We do not sing like we normally do. I’ve stashed Gabriel in the backseat and buckled up my seat belt, because Em drives like a wild woman and she is not so good at paying attention to the road. This is why Tom perspires. Me? I’m used to it.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?” she says like she doesn’t know that I couldn’t sleep at all last night because I was too busy worrying about her. Her hands clench the steering wheel getting ready for my answer, I guess. The neon green fuzzy dice that Shawn gave her as a joke jiggle as she backs out of my driveway.

  I wait a bit. I stare down at the ant crawling across my shoe. “There’s an ant in your car.”

  She screams and slams on the brakes. My hands come out in time to smack into the dashboard.

  “Oh my God!”

  “It’s just an ant,” I say, sitting back up and looking around. We’re stopped in the middle of the road. Em’s hand rakes through her hair. For a minute, I forget all about her secret and smile at her, because her eyes are crazy and she’s almost stuttering.

  “Shawn said I was a slob. He said it and I was all, like, ‘No, I am not a slob, you ass.’ But I am. Aren’t I?”

  I shrug and worry for a second that I’ve smooshed the ant during Em’s forced stop. Em smacks her hand into her forehead. “I am such a slob. I’m disgusting.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  The ant heaves an old half-green French fry o
nto his back and trucks it in a path parallel to my Snoopy shoe.

  “You’re lying,” Em pouts. “I’m worthless. Just worthless.”

  “No, you aren’t,” I say again, “but you are stopped in the middle of the road.”

  “Crap,” Em mutters and picks her foot up off the brake and we start rolling down the Bayside Road. Lucky for us, not a lot of people live out here. “I’m a wreck. I cannot believe it.”

  “You’re okay,” I say. “Just think that your car is single-handedly sustaining an entire colony of ants. It’s an environmentally conscious thing to do.”

  “Ha.”

  “Ha back.”

  “Some friend you are,” she teases, pretending to be mad, but her long duck lips turn up at the corners.

  The ant disappears under the seat, heading for the rear of the car, I guess.

  “I’m the best friend you’ll ever have,” I tell her.

  She sighs. “I know.”

  And just like that the secret settles in over us, muffling our happy hearts, silencing our smiles. That’s what secrets do, they silence us.

  We have a secret that we haven’t even told anyone. We haven’t told our boyfriends. We haven’t told our moms. We have a secret that we do not want. That we do not want to be true.

  Tom finds me by my locker.

  He looks at me.

  I look at him. His jeans are ripped at the knee. I can see his dark skin through the hole. I want to put my fingers in there, pull him closer.

  His voice is husky and quiet at the same time. “You doing okay?”

  For a second I think he’s asking me about Emmie, but then I realize it’s about my seizure.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Stressed about the talent show tonight, but that’s it.”

  He reaches across and pulls the hair from my face, tucks it behind my ear. “I worry about you. I’ll try not to. I can’t help it.”

  People slam by us. Shawn yells, “You’re going to be late for Law, Belle.”

  “I’m coming,” I say, grabbing Tom’s hand.

  “You seen Em?” Shawn asks, hovering above us. He’s so tall and clean looking. Oh God … and innocent looking and he’s about to learn he’s a father.