Gimme Everything You Got

by Iva-Marie Palmer

  Then, this summer, I realized maybe the shorts meant something bigger. Like that I was a feminist. Not one who didn’t shave her armpits, but a sexy one. In this other book my mom gave me, Fear of Flying, the main character talks about a “zipless fuck.” (I didn’t read the whole book, and I wondered if my mom had before she gave it to me.) It was supposed to be a sexual encounter with no strings attached. It sounded simple compared to how Candace was always upset about a guy who ditched her, or how Tina pined for her long-distance boyfriend. Simple, like the shorts. Not that I’d know what to do if some guy suggested we try some no-strings sex, but it was easier for me to imagine the sex part of being with a boy than the part where you felt some kind of deep soul connection, or whatever happened when people talked about falling in love.

  (Also, not for nothing, but early this summer, I was wheeling my bike down our alley ’cause the chain had fallen off, and I heard Jeff Sipowitz, who has the best hair in the eleventh grade but terrible acne, say to my neighbor Dave Kazlov, “Boing!” I didn’t know what he meant, but later Dave told me that Jeff thought I had a nice ass and “boing!” was what I did to his dick. And I sort of liked hearing that, even if Jeff is gross. So, okay, feminism is more complicated than my elastic-band shorts.)

  But after three years at a high school where every boy—even the ones who seemed worth a crush for a minute—proved to be a letdown, maybe I could allow myself a crush on Bobby McMann, teacher or not. I’d have to allow it, since my mind was already picturing us grabbing one another by our matching waistbands. More realistically, I wondered when and how I’d see Bobby again.

  And that’s how this whole thing started.

  Two

  I’d read a horror story once in some weird magazine one of my older sister’s boyfriends had left at our house about this town where a mysterious orb showed up and all the women became bold and sex-crazed. I think about that story a lot because it seemed to be saying that all my fantasies were weird somehow, like they needed to be connected to some demonic orb. But I didn’t care—Bobby McMann was my orb.

  But, within a few hours, I realized he was having the same effect on every girl at Powell Park. The last time there’d been this much commotion over a guy was freshman year, when someone brought in an issue of Cosmo from, like, five years before in which Burt Reynolds was lying completely naked on a bearskin rug, with his arm casually draped between his legs, over his fulcrum. But Bobby wasn’t a photo, available to anyone who got their hands on that issue of Cosmo. He was Powell Park’s own resident hunk, like a gift specially for the girls at our school, maybe to make up for all the things we didn’t have, like attractive guys, flattering restroom lighting, and gym uniforms that didn’t give you a rash. Even the maxi pad dispensers in the bathroom still sold the ancient “sanitary napkins” that you had to wear with a belt.

  We were in last-period Kitchen Arts, which was like extra home ec for people who wanted to focus on eating cake batter. Our teacher was Miss Cuddleton, a sweet-faced round lady with a squeaky cartoonish voice. We called her Miss Cuddle and abused her very limited authority so we could gossip in class.

  We were supposed to be making lemon pie. We only had to make the curd filling. Because it was the start of the school year and we were still kitchen losers, not artists, Miss Cuddle had made all the crusts. “If you really love the people you’re feeding, you don’t buy store-bought crust,” Miss Cuddle had said. Candace had nodded the same way she did when a priest said, “And Christ died for your sins.”

  I was standing at one of the Formica counters next to a pile of lemons Miss Cuddle had made into a neat pyramid. Dana Miller and I were doing a sloppy job grating lemon peel while Candace waited to add it to the curd mixture she had on the stove. Tina was measuring out sugar.

  Dana was this kiss-up sophomore who said she wanted to be a school principal even though no one started out actually wanting to be a principal. She worked as a student aide to Assistant Principal Lawler, who she sometimes called by her first name, Theresa. Dana’s family and mine intersected. My uncle’s brother-in-law was her uncle, and even though this meant nothing—it wasn’t like she showed up at my family functions or vice versa—she always acted like it did. Thus, she’d immediately paired up with me in Kitchen Arts. At least today it was turning out to be useful. She’d dug through a few files and found out that Mr. McMann had graduated from Southern Illinois University, where he’d been a soccer player, and that he would be teaching freshman algebra.

  “I heard one of the office managers call him a ‘Title IX hire’—you know, that legal thing where they have to have sports teams for girls—and I bet he’s only coaching girls’ soccer because he couldn’t get a boys’ sport,” Dana was saying, loud enough that people a few stations over could hear her. She was on the tall side, but she always bent forward at the waist when she talked to people, like she wanted to be shorter. Meanwhile, I was short and always had to draw myself up taller when I talked. Maybe the only way to be happy with how you looked was to never look at anyone else.

  “If he was a soccer player, maybe he really wanted to start a team,” Tina interrupted her. “We don’t know what’s inside his head.”

  “I just want to know what’s inside his pants,” a sophomore at the next cooking station interjected.

  “We all saw THAT,” Candace said, holding a rolling pin in front of her pelvis and waving it suggestively.

  “And thank God it’s not shaped like a rolling pin.” I corrected her penis shape comparison by picking up a banana from one of the fruit bowls arranged by a previous class.

  Dana cleared her throat and I tried not to roll my eyes.

  “Anyway, he was a last-minute hire,” she told us. “If you remember, we were supposed to have a girls’ basketball team. But resources didn’t permit it.” She even sounded like a principal. I wondered if she practiced.

  “Oh yeah, because of the gym,” Tina said, referring to the spare gymnasium at the back of the school that had been closed off at the end of last school year when a huge chunk of the ceiling had fallen in.

  “Why soccer? Who would a team even play?” I asked, more out of concern that Coach McMann would be taken from us before we even got to know him. I didn’t pay much attention to sports—I’d only go to football or basketball games when Candace dragged me—but I still knew none of the other high schools around here had a girls’ soccer team. Even boys’ soccer was limited to the private schools. Guys at our high school acted like it was girly to play soccer, and the joke was that the guys who played it only did because they hadn’t made the football team.

  Of course, Dana looked ready to answer my question, but Candace cut her off.

  “Who cares?” she said, swiping her finger near her lip, where a dot of powdered sugar clung. “Tell us more personal details.”

  Dana continued authoritatively, like she was already in charge of Bobby’s fan club. “His birthday’s November seventh. Scorpio.” You could tell by the way she said it, she was compatible with Scorpios. But so was I, as an Aries. “He drives a 1973 Datsun,” she continued, “the blue-gray one in parking spot twenty-seven. This is his first teaching job.”

  “Oh my God, are you guys going to camp out by his car or something?” Tina shook her head. “The poor guy. He only wanted to shape minds.”

  “He is shaping minds,” I told her. “Dirty ones.”

  Dana pursed her lips tight, like my impertinence was the same as if I’d suggested peeing in the lemon curd. “He’s never been married. And he lives on Mansfield, probably in one of the duplexes near Rocket Slide Park.”

  “And what are his turn-ons and turn-offs?” I said, getting a laugh from Tina and Candace and another look from Dana. I gave my lemon one last run across the grater and filed away all the information Dana had offered like it was answers for a test I’d be having soon.

  “Do you think you’re going to try out?” Tina said, mostly to me and Candace.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I hadn’t known
I’d even been considering it before she asked, but I realized in that moment that I’d made a mental note of the place and time for tryouts the next day when I had passed the sign-up sheet on the way out of the cafeteria. “Are you?”

  Tina nodded with certainty. “I want to,” she said. “It might be fun.” I could imagine Tina on a team. She was good at everything she tried, which we teased her about. She claimed she did well in school and joined extracurriculars because it made her parents happy—Tina’s mom kept a stack of college brochures on the coffee table—but I knew she kind of loved that her house was a shrine to her accomplishments.

  “I was thinking it could be good exercise,” Candace said. “And maybe we’d bump into the boys’ teams if we practice after school?”

  “Yearbook doesn’t really get going until winter, and I don’t have a fall activity,” Dana said.

  “But none of us know anything about soccer,” I said.

  “Who does?” Candace waved the whisk, sending a spray of lemon curd toward me. “I’m sure no one.”

  “But why not tennis, or swimming? Why soccer?” I couldn’t imagine a world where I’d make the team, much less one where I’d want to practice every day after school. But if my friends could see themselves doing it, did I want to be the one left behind? Plus, getting to look at Mr. McMann in his shorts every day might be worth faking an interest in a sport.

  “You guys, the curd’s going to burn,” Candace said, now stirring furiously. The other teams of girls were already assembling their pies, while our curd smelled like toast on fire.

  Miss Cuddle padded over to our station and tilted her head. She looked like Mrs. Claus’s cousin with her short copper curls and soft gaze. “Good work, girls,” she said, clearly not noticing or at least not caring that our work was anything but good.

  When the bell rang, Tina offered me a ride home but I turned it down, saying I needed a couple books from the library. As the halls emptied, I made my way to the cafeteria.

  I stood in front of the soccer tryout sheet Coach McMann had tacked up. There were a few names on it, but most of the lines were cluttered with guys’ handwriting and rude fake names, including a couple for Coach McMann: Booby McMann. Bobby McNads.

  My stomach growled noisily. Our team’s lemon pie had been mostly inedible after the curd had turned brown and stuck to the bottom of the pan. I eyeballed the blank line where I could write my name.

  No. I would sleep on it.

  “Need a pen?”

  I recognized his voice instantly. How had he snuck up on me twice today?

  I spun around and was looking right at Coach McMann. Bobby.

  I gulped. “Um, no,” I said.

  His grin faltered. He held up a palm, like he was apologizing for bumping into me, and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you might be thinking about trying out.”

  “I am,” I stammered. “I mean, I’m going to.”

  This got a smile. A smile that made me sure I was going to try out.

  “Oh, good,” he said. He peered at the sheet. “Do you think Jimmy Carter’s Balding Ballsack knows this is a girls’ team?”

  I laughed and involuntarily reached to flip my hair over my shoulder, a gesture I’d only ever been inspired to use in my daydreams. “Don’t worry, I know a few girls showing up tomorrow who aren’t on the list. I bet there will be a lot of us.”

  That smile again. “Good to know. Maybe the sign-up sheet is silly,” he said. He pulled the paper from the bulletin board. “I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow . . . um . . .”

  “Susan,” I said. “Susan Klintock.”

  “Susan, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  On my walk home, I was able to make my stomach flip over and over just by thinking about my name spoken in Bobby’s voice.

  Susan, I’ll see you tomorrow.

  My mom’s car was in the driveway, and I walked into the house with the same feeling I got when I broke curfew. Like my mom would smell the lust on me and be disappointed that I was so interested in a man. For all her concern about me knowing what the clitoris was, she mostly read self-help books with titles like How to Be Your Own Best Friend and said she wanted to find her whole self before she committed to anyone else again.

  Even though Dad paid alimony and child support, Mom worked at a real estate title company as a file clerk in charge of all the documents or whatever from home sales. She wanted a job downtown as a title assistant for commercial real estate deals or something excruciatingly boring like that, and she was taking a bunch of dull classes at the community college to build her résumé. While Dad dated, Mom buried her head in textbooks. She almost never went out at night except if the college had a guest speaker she wanted to see. She had mostly stopped cooking except for casseroles she’d make on the weekend to last us through the week. She didn’t even have time to watch Charlie’s Angels with me these days.

  She’d put men on the back burner, or on ice completely, and she almost never asked me about boys, either. It was like she thought our period talk and the anatomy lesson were all I needed. Not that I was complaining, necessarily. It’s not like I would have much to say if she did ask.

  I went into the kitchen and saw Mom’s friend Jacqueline there, wearing a shiny gold blouse with a deep-cut neckline that showed off the big gold Capricorn medallion that hung to her breasts. Her hair was curled in glossy rolls away from her face, where her eyes were smothered beneath glistening purple eyeshadow. Mom’s textbooks were open and scattered across the kitchen table, along with what looked like the contents of Jacqueline’s makeup bag.

  “Dierdre, I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to school. I’m just saying you shouldn’t go to school like that.” On the word “that,” Jacqueline gestured to what seemed like Mom’s whole body and every life experience and choice she’d ever made while living inside it.

  “Jackie, I’m not going to school to catch a man,” Mom said. “I’m going to catch a better job and more self-sufficiency. I’m working on me.” She said this like she had to remind herself of these things, not just Jacqueline.

  Jacqueline looked up and saw me, and her face dropped before breaking into a fake smile. I’d once heard her say to my mom how she’d give anything to have been born later because the “young girls are going to get to have all the fun now that everything is changing.” I wasn’t so sure about that, because I didn’t really know what things had been like before, or if I was having any fun, but regardless, she didn’t seem to like me.

  “Susan, tell your mom a little lipstick wouldn’t kill her.”

  “If it’s poisoned it could,” I said, grabbing the can of Cheez Balls off the counter and popping three into my mouth at once, which seemed to disgust Jacqueline.

  “What happened at school today?” Mom asked, looking up briefly from her math book.

  “We’re getting a soccer team. I’m going to try out.” If she asked more, I decided, I’d tell her about Bobby. Not all about Bobby, but I’d say, “Coach McMann seems nice.” Just so his name could float around our house.

  Mom nodded. “Hmm, sounds interesting,” she said, but nothing else. I thought she’d be impressed, since I never went out for things. Tina’s mom had probably already started deciding where Tina’s trophies would go.

  “Soccer?” Jacqueline said, and poured white wine into one of my mom’s Snoopy coffee mugs. (Mom had let Dad take the wineglasses.) The wine, Jacqueline had probably brought over. Mom didn’t drink all that often. “I know someone who played once. Such a rough sport. But you’re built for it.”

  I ignored what had to be an insult as Mom said, “You’ll have to tell me how it goes, honey.” She scratched some numbers out on a legal pad next to her and frowned, then looked up like she’d remembered something important. “You left your light on while you were at school. The power bill doesn’t pay itself.”

  “Let Albert pay it,” Jacqueline said, at the same time I said, “Doesn’t Dad pay for that?” The tiniest flicker of irritation crossed my
mom’s face, and I wondered why she couldn’t be maybe a little bit like Jacqueline. Mom’s quest to prove she didn’t need help from anyone meant that instead of me being the girl who got to live with a Fun Divorced Mom who took her out for manicures and clothes shopping, I got stuck with my mom, who wanted to be practical and intellectual.

  Maybe she felt stuck with me, too. It would be easier for her to work on herself if she were by herself.

  I was about to head to my room, Cheez Balls in hand, when my mom pointed a finger in the air, as if spearing a thought before it got away. “Oh, and your dad called. He said he’d love to have you over on Sunday.”

  “Will Polly be there?” I asked. Polly was my dad’s girlfriend, the only person he’d dated whose name I had learned and whose age was at least midway between mine and my mother’s instead of closer to mine.

  “Yes, she’s cooking. Probably something fabulous, knowing her.” Mom never said much about Polly, not really, except that Polly was “everything I am not.” She took off her reading glasses and gave me a rueful look. “I know you don’t love the situation, but you can’t avoid your father.”

  Jacqueline and I huffed out identical sighs. “Really, Dierdre, I don’t know how you can be so calm about all of this. You’re letting him win the divorce.”

  Mom shook her head. “Jackie, there’s nothing to win. I asked for this, and honestly, I’m glad Albert has someone.”

  “You could easily be dating a gorgeous stud if you’d just let me take you to A Single Thing,” Jacqueline said, naming the singles bar that had opened a few towns away. Jacqueline, who’d been divorced once, had met her new husband at the bar, if you could call him “new.” He was so old that I figured he would die having sex with Jacqueline before I graduated high school.