Al ordered the wine in a funny Italian accent. Krista fiddled with her beads and whispered something nice to her mother. Lydia insisted Christina try a bite of her “divine” corn-and-lobster salad.
Carmen felt flushed and warm with pleasure as she looked around at the animated faces. This was her family, weird as it was. She’d gone from a dysfunctional three to a completely haywire six.
Paul looked at her. It’s all good, he seemed to say.
She smiled. And the real bonanza was, she’d gotten Paul in the deal. Paul, who was the kindest, most patient person she knew.
She thought back to last summer, the day she’d met Lydia and Krista and Paul for the first time. She’d been furious at her father. She’d thought it was an ending, but it had turned out to be a beginning.
She looked at her mother, bearing up gracefully. Al and Lydia were a couple; Christina was alone. Christina always bore up gracefully. As a single mother with a full-time job. As a person with a broken heart.
Her mother deserved a beginning too.
At 9:15 the phone rang, and Lena pounced on it. The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend, but she never knew which until she answered it.
“Hello?” she said, barely disguising her eagerness.
“Hi.”
It was her best friend.
“Kostos.” How she loved his name. She loved just saying it. “Where are you?”
“At the subway station.”
Her stomach commenced the spin cycle. She forced herself to pause, slow it down. “In … which … city?”
“In your city.”
“No.” Please, please. “Really?” Her voice sounded squeaky.
“Yes. Can you come and get me?”
“Yes. Yes. Right away. Just let me, um … lie to my parents.”
He laughed. “Wisconsin Avenue side.”
“Bye.”
It was almost too good that she still had the Traveling Pants. She pulled them on and lied hastily to her mother about going for ice cream with Carmen. She flew out the door and into her car, blessing her parents for letting her use it whenever she liked.
He was there waiting for her, a silhouette standing solidly on both feet. He wasn’t a dream or a hoax. She buzzed down the passenger-side window so he could see that it was her. He was hardly in the car when he kissed her big and full on her mouth and cradled the back of her head in his hands. “I couldn’t stay away,” he told her breathlessly. “I took the train right after work.”
He kissed her more and some more until finally she remembered she was at the wheel of a car on a major thoroughfare. She looked up, delirious, trying to bring the streaming streetlights into focus. “Where should we go?”
His face was vivid, locked onto hers. He didn’t care.
“Do you think we should do something besides kiss?” she asked. “I mean, should we keep some semblance of a date? Are you hungry or anything?” Her body was most eager for the making out.
He laughed. “I am hungry. I do want to take you out. But, no, I don’t really want to do anything where I can’t touch you for more than a few minutes.”
Love inspired her. “I think I have an idea.”
She drove to the A&P. She supervised the buying of raw cookie dough and a quart of cold two-percent milk from the refrigerated aisle, a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts with pink icing from the cereal aisle. They found a lot of ways to touch each other—his hands on her waist, her hip pressed to the side of his, his lips, briefly, on her neck—even there under the squinting grocery store lights.
She tried to drive as carefully as possible, speeding along the forests of Rock Creek Parkway, even though he kissed her elbow and touched her hair. She drove along the Potomac River, and the glowing marble faces of the monuments rose up around them like an ancient city. The road was nearly empty but for them. The glittering water and the pale arched bridges were so beautiful they were struck silent.
For once it was a simple matter to park. They carried their bounty in a brown paper bag to the wide white stone steps and gazed up reverently at Mr. Lincoln, floodlit and enthroned in his marble temple.
“This is the most beautiful time to see the monuments, but nobody ever comes,” Lena explained, gesturing at the emptiness around them.
Some people might have thought that the solemn gaze of a great president might cool a person’s passion, but Lena disagreed. They ate and they kissed, deeper and more involved each time. She pinched off pieces of cookie dough and he gazed at her in her green tank top. He considered her shoulders, her neck, her mouth as though in a rapture. Her beauty through his eyes made her take a kind of pleasure in it she’d never felt before.
Was she making him as happy as he was making her? Was that even possible? But then again, could she feel this good, this close, if he weren’t feeling at least some of it too?
It seemed a fitting transition to go from the Great Emancipator to the very stars themselves, but you couldn’t see them when you were too near the lights. So they wandered off the landscaped paths to a dark, private clearing, where they lay on their backs, overlapping one ankle each. It was exceedingly thoughtful of the rest of the world to leave them completely alone.
The warm air was sweet tonight. The thick summer leaves were sweet. Tonight, even the garbage overflowing the rim of the can was sweet.
Some nights the stars winked and teased coldly from a great distance. Other nights they seemed to smolder and urge one on in a personal way. Tonight was the second kind of night. Lena felt grateful that it was summer, and that when they were together they had no ceiling pressing these feelings down.
First just their ankles touched. Then forearms and hands. Then, boldly, Lena found herself, her whole body on top of his, curving into all his parts and places. “Is this too fast?” she asked him.
“No.” He said it forcefully, as though afraid she might stop. “No and yes. Too fast and too slow.” His chest moved as he laughed. “But please don’t stop.”
She let her hands float over his stomach. “Do you think you could take a short break from being a gentleman and start again tomorrow?”
Gently he rolled her over so that he was on top of her, but was suspending most of his weight on his hands. He buried his head in her neck. “Maybe. A little.” It was muffled in her earlobe. An exalted little shiver shot down her backbone.
Relishing her present and her very near future, she watched him bend over her stomach and kiss her private skin. Slowly lifting up her shirt to reveal tiny bits of her at a time, he lavished kisses over her belly button and upward to her ribs. In pure, delicate disbelief at this outer, unimagined possibility of pleasure, she felt him open her bra and sweep the light cotton of her shirt over her head. He looked at her with all the veneration he’d had when he’d seen so much of her in the olive grove last summer. But then she’d belonged only to herself, and she’d wildly covered her body with her hands. Tonight she belonged to him, and she wanted nothing more than for him to see her.
Without waiting she pulled his shirt off too. She pressed her naked self against his naked self.
Memory is funny, and it does tell lies. But tonight, the look of bare Kostos in the moonlight was no less beautiful than the bare Kostos she had seen in the pond in Santorini and had imagined all those times since. Her spirit flooded her body from end to end and tip to tip, and she thought of a line from a song she loved.
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free.
Carmen liked the idea of baking cookies with Jesse and Joe. As she’d cheerfully grabbed the butterscotch chips and rainbow sprinkles from the grocery store shelves on her way to work, it had seemed to her the kind of project a really fine baby-sitter would do.
But now, when faced with the actual spectacle, it seemed less fun.
“Jesse, honey, lightly. Just a little tap,” she begged him.
Jesse nodded and smashed the egg against the side of the metal bowl. Hundreds of tiny shell bits slid down into the batter.
He looked up at her for approval.
“Well, maybe a little gentler would be good. Maybe I’ll do the next—”
It was too late. Jesse was already battering egg number two against the rim.
“Ahhhhhhh!” Joe was reaching toward the sprinkles and howling.
“Joe, I know you want another sprinkle. But I don’t think Mommy—”
Babies were flailing and incompetent most of the time, but then once in a while, they blew your mind with pure precision. Carmen watched in disbelief as Joe leaned forward, shot out his hand, connected with the small tub of sprinkles two feet away, closed in on a handful, and knocked the tub so dramatically off the counter that sprinkles rained down.
“Oh, my God,” Carmen muttered.
“Stir, right?” Jesse asked excitedly, satisfied that the eggs had been crushed to oblivion.
“Well, maybe we should try to—”
She put Joe down on the floor so she could fish some of the shells out of the dough. But Joe tried to pull himself up to standing with the help of a kitchen chair, and the sprinkles rotated under his feet like a hundred ball bearings. His fall was fast and loud.
“Oh, Joe,” Carmen groaned. She swept him up and hopped around the room to avoid the sprinkles. “Want to play with my cell phone?” she offered. She didn’t care if he called Singapore.
“Here.” She stuffed him into his high chair, grabbed the broom from its hook, and began sweeping up the sprinkles.
“Stir, right?” Jesse called again from his perch on the counter.
“Um … yes,” Carmen said wearily. They wore you down so fast. She’d only been here for fifteen minutes.
She heard Mrs. Morgan coming down the stairs. Carmen leaped toward Joe, attempting to wipe all evidence of sprinkles from his mouth and hands.
Mrs. Morgan appeared at the door to the kitchen in a suit. Carmen was amazed at how elegant she looked. “Wow,” she said. “You look fantastic.”
“Thanks,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I have a meeting at the bank.”
“Mama! Mama!” Joe screamed. He threw Carmen’s cell phone across the room and put his arms out toward his mother.
Don’t do it, Carmen warned in her head. But inevitably, the forces of the universe sucked Mrs. Morgan toward her baby. She picked him up.
“Mommy! Look at this!” Jesse shouted.
“Are you making cookies?” Mrs. Morgan asked, with as much enthusiasm as if he had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Yes!” Jesse shouted delightedly. “Taste it! Taste it!”
Mrs. Morgan peered into the bowl.
“Please, Mommy? I made it.”
As Mrs. Morgan hesitated, Carmen watched Joe bury his head in his mother’s armpit. Carmen had seen this coming. A thin trail of snot stretched right across the lapel of Mrs. Morgan’s black suit, exactly as though a slug had slid across the fabric. Mrs. Morgan didn’t notice, and Carmen didn’t have the heart to tell her.
Carmen’s memory suddenly supplied images of her own mother’s work clothes—the gabardine skirt on which Carmen had gotten a bloody nose, the tweed blazer on which she had spilled blue nail polish.
“Mommy, it’s yummy!” Jesse urged the spoon toward his mother’s mouth.
Mrs. Morgan kept her eager smile intact as she examined the bits of shell slithering through the yolk. “It will be even more delicious after it’s cooked,” she remarked.
“Please?” Jesse wheedled. “I made it!”
Mrs. Morgan leaned forward and took the tiniest taste. She nodded encouragingly. “Oh, Jesse, it’s wonderful. I can’t wait to taste the cookies!”
Carmen watched Mrs. Morgan in disbelief. Would she, Carmen, have been willing to taste that mess? Would her mother? As quickly as the question had flashed into Carmen’s mind, the answer followed it. Yes, Christina would have tried the dough. She would, and she had.
In that moment, Carmen understood how it was for mothers. Mrs. Morgan didn’t taste it because she wanted to. She did it because she loved him. And for some reason, Carmen found this thought mysteriously comforting.
Lennyk162: Carmen! Where are you! What’s up with your cell phone? I’ve been trying to call you all day! I want to talk to you SO MUCH.
Carmabelle: Cell out of order. Be right over.
Tibby called Brian at home. She almost never did that. The answering machine picked up. It was one of those unpersonalized computer-generated messages that came with the machine. It reminded her of buying a picture frame and leaving in the picture that came from the store instead of supplying your own.
She cleared her throat. “Uh, I hope this is the right number…. Brian, it’s Tibby. Will you call me at Williamston? I really want to talk to you.”
She hung up. She tapped her thumb against the edge of her desk. Why should he call her after the way she’d treated him? If she were him, she wouldn’t call herself. Or if she did, it would only be to tell herself that she was an asshole.
She dialed the number again. The message played again. “Brian? It’s Tibby again. Uh … one thing … well, really the main thing I wanted to say is that I’m really sorry. More than sorry. I am ashamed. I …” Tibby looked out the window and suddenly realized that she was laying her guts out to an answering machine that didn’t even have a personalized message. She was crazy. She hadn’t been sleeping enough. What if she was dialing the wrong number? What if Brian’s mom and his stepdad picked up the messages? She slammed the phone down.
But wait a minute. What was she thinking? Was she too cowardly to see her apology through, after the way she’d treated Brian? She was just going to hang up in the middle of it? Did she really care more about what his mom and stepdad thought than about being a decent friend?
Tibby looked down at her feet. She was wearing elephant slippers. She was also wearing plaid pajama bottoms and a bathing suit because all her clothes were dirty. She was also wearing a towel tied around her middle because they’d turned up the air-conditioning too strong in the dorm. She hadn’t showered or gone outside in several days. What dignity, exactly, was she trying to preserve here?
Tibby dialed the number again. “Brian? It’s, uh, Tibby again. What I wanted to say is that I am sorry. I’m so sorry I can’t find any words that could cover it. I want to get the chance to apologize to you in person. And also I wanted to tell you that I am, um, screening a movie—a new one, not the old one—on Saturday at three at the auditorium here. I know you won’t want to come.” She stopped to catch her breath. She was running her mouth like a lunatic. “I probably wouldn’t if I were you. But just in case you do, it would mean a lot to me.” She hung up. Was this too weird? Was she going to earn herself a restraining order from the whole family?
She dialed the number again. “And sorry to call so many times,” she said in a rush, and quickly put down the phone.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
—Henry David Thoreau
Friday night Bridget ran almost seven miles, all the way to the bend in the river where Billy’s old house sat. Maybe he still lived there.
Her body was changing, she could feel it. She wasn’t totally back to normal, but she was most of the way there. Her legs and her stomach were getting muscular and strong again. Her hair was blond again. Running by herself, she took off her baseball cap, which felt like a relief. She let her hair breathe in the warm evening air.
She stopped by Greta’s to pick up her ball and went straight to the soccer field. It had become a ritual for her, kicking around by herself at night in the three patches of light.
“Gilda!”
She turned around and saw Billy coming toward her. He was probably on his way to a party where all the girls enjoyed crushes from all the boys.
“Hi,” she said, out of breath, glad she’d remembered to put her baseball cap back on her head.
“I thought you didn’t play anymore.”
“I started again.”
“Oh.” He looked at her. He looked at the ball. He loved soccer as mu
ch as she did. “You want to play?”
She smiled. “Sure.”
There was nothing like a handsome opponent to get Bridget’s adrenaline pumping. She found her pace, keeping the ball in front of her. She zagged left, one-touched it, then shot. She heard Billy’s moan of disbelief behind her. “Lucky shot,” he said, and they started again.
It was as though she were back on the Honey Bees again. Bridget had always had an exploding capacity to be as good as she wanted to be, and tonight it enabled her to get around Billy five times in a row.
Panting, he sat down in the middle of the field. He put his hands over his face. “What the hell!” he bellowed into the night air.
Bridget tried not to look smug. She sat down next to him. “You’re wearing jeans. Don’t take it too hard.”
He lowered his hands and stared at her. He had the spooked look back from a few weeks ago. He squinted at her. “Who are you?”
She shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“Are you, like, Mia Hamm in disguise or something?”
She smiled and shook her head.
“I’m the best guy on our team!” he shouted at her in frustration.
She shrugged again. What could she say? She had a long career of pruning boys’ egos on the soccer field.
“You remind me of this girl I used to know,” he mused, more to the grass than to her.
“Yeah?”
“Her name was Bee, and she was my best friend till I was seven. She used to kick my ass also. So I should be okay with this.”
His eyes were animated and sweet. She liked that he was a good sport under his pride. She wanted to tell him who she was. She was sick of the whole game. She was sick of stuffing her hair into a baseball cap.
She noticed he was looking at her legs. She might not be a beauty, but she knew her legs were getting nice again. They were toned and tan from running for five weeks straight, not to mention her nightly soccer workout. He didn’t look spooked and he didn’t look grateful. In fact, he looked a bit awkward. He cleared his throat. “I, uh, better get going. You’ll be there tomorrow at five, right? It’s the second-to-last game before the tournament, you know.”
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