The Serious Kiss

by Mary Hogan

“Can I talk to you for a second?” I said, walking straight up to Warren even though my legs wobbled like rubber bands. Barbara waited for me near the Snack Shack.

  “Oooo. Warrenville gets busted!”

  “Mommy wants you home.”

  The boys in line made fun, but I didn’t care. “It’ll only take a second,” I said.

  Warren nodded. He led me over to the far fence, away from the action, and said, “Yeah?”

  There he was, inches from my face, his caterpillar eyebrows up, waiting. My heart hammered my rib cage. My tongue felt like a piece of cardboard.

  “You know that Santa-Claus-down-the-chimney thing?” I said. “It’s a crock. Totally made up! A fat guy could never slide down a chimney. Why do people lie? That’s what I want to know.”

  Warren smiled softly. He remembered his rant about Pocahontas.

  “I was wondering,” I said, biting my lower lip, “is everything okay? I haven’t seen you much at school.”

  Warren stopped smiling, looked away. “Yeah,” he said. “Everything’s fine. I’ve been around.”

  I waited for him to say something more, but the next thing he said felt like an ice pick to the chest.

  “I’ve gotta go. My friends are waiting.”

  Warren sauntered away and I nearly crumpled to the dusty ground. If Barbara hadn’t appeared, I probably would have stayed there, in a heap, until the dry wind blew me away.

  That night, as I was getting ready for bed, our phone rang. I got it by the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “I did it,” Nadine squealed.

  “Did what?”

  “Had a serious kiss!”

  Oh.

  How could I tell the girl I used to tell everything to that I didn’t want to hear about the happiest moment in her life? How could I tell her I was feeling too upset and confused to even care? When I’d got home, I’d taken a shower, washed the dirt from Skyview Drive-In down the drain. I couldn’t wait to crawl under the covers and pull a blanket over my life.

  “Great! What was it like?” I asked, forcing my voice to sound cheery.

  “Awesome! Incredible! It was everything we imagined it would be that day in your backyard. My knees got weak and my heart pounded and I thought fireworks would shoot off the top of my head. Curtis is a great kisser. Very dramatic. He sort of bent me over backward like we were in an old movie or something. Kissing him felt like the whole world was on fire!”

  “Wow.” It’s all I could think of to say. Then I added, “I’m really happy for you, Nadine.” And I was. At least one of us would know love.

  “You’ll get your kiss, too,” she said. “One day. You’ll see.”

  In my head, I figured she was probably right. But in my heart, a serious kiss – true love – felt as far away as the distant look in Warrenville’s eyes.

  THIRTY-ONE

  By mid-December, Barstow store owners had trotted out their tired holiday decorations and the weather cooled to a comfy sixty degrees. Each day, I got up, got dressed, caught the bus, and went to school. When we weren’t at Aqui, Barbara and I hung out at her place or mine. Rif scrubbed graffiti off Big and Little Moe, Mom had manicures during her lunch breaks at Wal-Mart, Dad got better in Victorville, Dirk played video games, and Nana made Ethiopian food with chickpeas.

  “Not many people know that the Ethiopian Christmas holiday is celebrated on January seventh,” she said. “Part of the traditional holiday meal is a sourdough pancake called injera that acts as an edible plate!”

  Things were back to normal at the Madrigal mobile homes – well, as normal as life can get when your dad is in rehab and the boy you thought was “the one” barely nods his head when he sees you at school.

  “Guys are jerks,” Barbara said again. But it didn’t make me feel any better.

  The one bright spot in that dismal month was – believe it or not – our therapy sessions with Just Josh and Dad. I learned a lot.

  “An alcoholic parent is like having a ‘king baby’ in the family,” Josh said during one session. “Instead of being mature and responsible and taking care of the kids, like a wellfunctioning parent does, the king baby is grown but still immature. He requires a lot of attention, the way babies do. In fact, he becomes the centre of attention. The whole family is always watching him, watching out for him, covering for him.”

  Mom leaned forward, listening intently.

  “When there’s a king baby in a family,” Josh continued, “the children are forced to grow up before they are really ready to. They have to parent the king baby in a sense, because he’s not up to the job of parenting them. It’s very scary for kids. It feels unsafe, which creates a tremendous amount of anxiety. Because, you see, the child knows deep down that he or she is really faking it, pretending to be able to handle it all. But, of course, she can’t, can she? After all, she’s just a kid. Does this sound familiar?”

  “Yes!” Rif and I said in unison. Dirk looked scared.

  Another time, Josh explained how family members can become so entangled in the life of the alcoholic, they forget to have a life of their own.

  “It’s important to detach, with love. No one is responsible for Lot’s behaviour but Lot himself. You all have to let go.”

  Nana nodded and smiled at me.

  Maybe because we were all there ready to listen, or maybe because he was ready to talk, my father slowly began to open up.

  “Just like you, Libby,” he said, barely above a whisper, “I watched my father disappear. He sold insurance in San Bernardino. We had a house, a normal life, the three of us. Until his drinking took over. Just before I graduated high school, we lost the house. My parents moved to Nana’s trailer in Barstow. It wasn’t a nice retirement home then, it was a dump. I lived with my friend’s family in San Bernardino until I graduated. I was so ashamed of my dad, I told everyone he got a job as a dealer in Vegas.”

  Glancing around the room, I noticed my brothers looked the same way I did – agog. We’d never heard any of this before. The mere mention of my grandfather was taboo in our house. Shhh! Don’t tell. For the first time in my fourteen years, I understood why.

  “My father was the man I most wanted not to be,” Dad said, “and here I am, exactly like him.”

  Josh said, “That’s why we’re here. To break the pattern.”

  After that session, Dad took Mom’s hand and led her into the hallway outside the therapy room. My brothers and I followed until Nana said, “Let’s give them a few minutes alone, okay?”

  We nodded and hung back. Still, I could hear my dad ask my mom, “Why have you and the kids stuck by me all these years?”

  Mom didn’t hesitate. “Because we’re a family,” she said. “And that’s what families do.”

  At that moment – for the first time since I can remember – I felt like I really did belong in my family. We belonged together. For better or worse.

  On the last day before Christmas vacation, I felt a hand tap my shoulder as I organised my locker.

  “Hang on, Barbara,” I said, without turning around. “I’m almost done.”

  “Libby.”

  The voice was male, familiar. I wheeled around, and there he was.

  “Hey,” Warren said.

  I just stared at him, my heart thudding, unable to think of a word to say.

  “I’ve been a jerk,” he said.

  Even more speechless, my mouth hung open.

  “Can you come with me?” he asked. “I want to show you something.”

  I nodded. Truth was, after everything, I’d still follow Warrenville anywhere.

  We left campus, walked down the hill, and continued across the iron bridge.

  “Insects breathe through tiny pores in their bellies,” Warren mentioned, as we crossed the dry riverbed. “And dragonflies have the best eyesight of almost all insects.”

  I grinned. Warren was always full of so many obscure facts.

  “Did you know that the average male has up to twenty-five thousand hai
rs on his face?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Now you do,” he said, grinning back at me.

  Eventually, my heart stopped racing, and a blanket of calm engulfed me. Maybe I’d been through too much to feel tense anymore, or maybe it was something else. Something about Warrenville that relaxed me. I let him take me where he wanted me to go. I let life flow.

  We turned left after Big Moe and walked up a dusty road. There weren’t many houses around, just dried fields and scrub. Until we came to a clearing. A small, metal arch marked the entrance to a cemetery. The wrought-iron gate was open. It was tiny, nothing like Oakwood Cemetery in Chatsworth, and old. Some of the gravestones were so wind-whipped you couldn’t read who was buried there. Others were brand-new. Warren took my hand. A surge of electricity shot through my whole arm.

  He said, “I want you to meet my mom.”

  Warren led me to a small headstone at the far end of the cemetery. It read, HERE LIES CECILIA VILLEGRANJA, BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER.

  Squeezing my hand, Warren said, “My mother was killed by a drunk driver. Right out there.” He pointed up the road.

  I looked up the dusty, deserted road. When I turned back, Warren was facing me.

  “I freaked out about your dad. I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault. I’m pissed off at all drunk drivers. How could someone drive when he’s high? When someone’s mom could be on the road walking home from work? How could anyone do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, quietly.

  “I shouldn’t have cut you out. I’m sorry. I went a little crazy.”

  “It’s okay, Warren. I went a little crazy, too.”

  Bending down to shake the dust off the dried flowers decorating his mother’s grave, Warren said, “Mom didn’t like fresh flowers. She hated to watch things die.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  The desert behind Warrenville’s house goes on forever. He lives in the middle of nowhere, beyond the outskirts of Barstow. It took us half an hour just to get there. His house was a patchwork of plaster patches and wooden supports.

  “Each week something new falls apart,” he said. “Each week my dad and I patch it back up. Dad calls it our quilt house.”

  I thought about my house in Chatsworth and our Barstow trailer, how ashamed I was of them. Now, looking at Warrenville’s funky mended house, and his obvious love for it, my cheeks got hot. Why have I wasted so much time worrying about what other people think? How stupid is that?

  The sun was still high in the sky as Warren and I shared a soda in his backyard.

  “It’s so dead around here,” I said.

  “Dead?”

  “The desert, I mean,” I added quickly.

  “Girl, there’s nothing dead about a desert.” Standing, Warren took my hand and led me far into the flat, dirt-brown field beyond his house. “When I was growing up, my mother showed me all the life here. There’s a heliotrope there, over there a yellow linanthus.” He pointed to wildflowers popping through the dry desert soil.

  “That’s a brown-eyed evening primrose.” He kicked a stone off into the emptiness. A low, dry bush rustled. “If we stood here silently, and didn’t move until dark, we could watch the desert wake up before our eyes. Coyotes, owls, iguana, prairie dogs, jackrabbits, rattlesnakes . ”

  I winced. “Maybe we should move.”

  “Why?”

  “I hate snakes.”

  “How can you hate snakes? That’s like saying you hate nature. Without snakes, the eagle might die of starvation, the desert would be overrun with rats. Snakes are as beautiful as bats, as beautiful as scorpions, as beautiful as . ”

  He went on. I just stared at him, smiled inside. In truth, there was nothing as beautiful as he was. His cheeks were aflame in the sunlight, his black eyes even blacker and more intense against the powder blue desert sky.

  “. as beautiful as vultures and tarantulas . ” Warren continued his list. I longed to touch his face, his hair. I wanted to reach under his jacket sleeve and trace my fingertips all the way around his tattoo.

  “. as a wild donkey,” Warren went on. “As beautiful as a black widow spider, as a fish . ”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I interrupted. “There aren’t any fish in the desert.”

  “That’s what you think,” he said. “Pupfish live in mineral hot springs throughout the desert. Like I told you, there’s life and beauty everywhere. You just have to know where to look.”

  I knew exactly where to look. Straight into Warrenville’s eyes.

  “You’re right,” I said softly, my voice suddenly buried deep within my chest.

  “I know,” he said, just as softly, right back at me.

  Suddenly, Warren took a step closer to me and reached for my hand. He lifted it up to is chest, held it against his beating heart. “This is my life,” he whispered. My heart thumped, too.

  I stood absolutely still. Afraid to breathe, afraid to move. The rhythm of our two hearts seemed to shake the whole earth. Suddenly, Warren’s face was against my face, and his lips were against my lips. They felt velvety. He smelled like fresh cilantro; he smelled like spring. I pressed my lips harder against his and he parted his mouth, wrapped one arm around me, flattened my hand against his pounding heart. We kissed. Our kiss lasted a lifetime. I could hear the flutter of desert life awakening around me. Or was it me? Was it my life awakening around me?

  All I knew for sure was that Nadine was mistaken. It was nothing like our fantasy that day on the Lilos in my Chatsworth backyard. My knees weren’t buckling; I wasn’t on the verge of passing out. I wasn’t ready to explode. This kiss felt soft like Juan Dog’s ears. My body felt light, like it was floating. This kiss was as deep as the centre of the Atlantic, as wide as the Pacific. It was shelter in a storm, a cool breeze in the desert, a bonfire in the snow. This kiss felt safe and exciting at the same time. It was hot butterscotch melting over vanilla ice cream; it was a down pillow. This kiss – at long last my serious kiss – felt like arriving, belonging, being loved, loving.

  “You,” Warren whispered.

  He didn’t say anything more. He didn’t have to. He just kissed me again. And it felt like coming home. That much I’d been right about. A serious kiss feels like home. Pulling back the curtains and letting in the light and coming home.

  It’s complete. It’s the beginning. It’s the end of emptiness.

  It’s love. The big it.

  It’s life, in a desert, if you know where to look.