Teach Me

by R. A. Nelson

  I didn’t know he would taste this sweet.

  My hand moves up, discovering his face. His jaw is lightly bristled with evening whiskers. My hand touches both our faces, feeling the joining of our lips as it is happening.

  “I can’t believe it,” I say when our faces move apart.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I can’t believe it.”

  I can’t stop shaking, either.

  I’m on completely alien ground. Levitation is a possibility. Before I can absorb the consequence of the first one, he kisses me again.

  “Maybe you’d better run,” Mr. Mann says when we surface for air.

  I open my eyes, try to sound as if my head is still attached. “Where?”

  Because there is no other place.

  His laugh sounds bitter. “Damn it.”

  We kiss again. My head is totally gone; there is nothing left but my heart. Suddenly I’m not afraid anymore.

  “I love you,” I whisper.

  I hope he can’t see my tears in this light. I burrow my face into his chest and smell the day on his shirt. He clenches his fist against my back and speaks into my neck. His voice is warm.

  “I didn’t mean to take it this far.”

  I lift my blurry eyes. “That still means you meant to take it.”

  magnification of breath

  Joy.

  Holy sweet goodness.

  It’s with me every waking moment.

  But it’s a terrified, shivering, fragile joy. The next morning I wake up silently shrieking, the sheets in knots around my legs. Did it happen?

  Has he forgotten? Changed his mind? Lost it?

  The world is a whole new place.

  I touch my fingers to my lips. Feel him there. I would know for sure if I could see him.

  But—no!—I’ve got a dentist appointment today. I miss his class.

  The dentist says my wisdom tooth, the one that’s lying on its side, the slacker, should come out as soon as I can schedule it. I’m not listening; I’m staring deep into the oval-shaped light above my head. There are thousands of little golden diamonds glistening there. They help me focus. I don’t want to think about anything that takes me away from thinking about Him.

  God, it happened. It did.

  I’m sugar-shock frantic by the time I get to school.

  Mr. Mann is sitting with the other teachers in the lunchroom.

  He’s swinging his fork, legs thrown out casually, ankles crossed. I’m desperate to talk to him, hear his voice, confirm by some semaphore or sign the connection between us. But approaching the teacher tables today would feel like running naked through the mall with my hair on fire.

  I hope he can see me.

  I watch his mouth move as he talks, eats, smiles—how beautiful. Now it’s my mouth too, in its own way. I have laid claim to it. My lips, my teeth, my tongue. How can he be using all of them without touching some part of me?

  But today, in this new light, I’m not sure of anything. The space between us, the emptiness, the distance, could be a guarantee last night was a dream—no, a fever. Maybe if I—

  “Where’ve you been?” Schuyler says, plunking down on the plastic seat next to me, making it go schooch on the floor, pinching my arm. “Listen.”

  He’s gushing about something that happened five hundred million years after the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe, perfectly certain that I care. His hair is shaped like a bell with only one side, a living entity separate from the rest of his body. But he’s so cute in a Schuyler way. Red barbecue chicken gore stuck to his teeth, Vlad the Astrophysicist.

  “So before stars, galaxies, quasars could form, the temperature drops in all that empty space and it starts snowing!” he says. “All over the universe! Hydrogen snow!”

  I sit in my own empty space, the one-half meter of nothingness around my chair, let his voice flurry over me.

  The gabble of voices around us makes me feel like I’m in a nuthouse. Excuse me, an asylum. My mouth paradoxically hurts from too much attention and too little. I can’t stand this lack of control, this ache that can’t be instantly addressed, only magnified by all the other aches around me.

  Each moment away from him feels like a slippage, a backsliding into the miserable kiddieland where I lived before. I have to be active about this or I will lose him forever. I don’t care how crazy this feels. I only care that I—

  He stands up.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say.

  I grab my tray and rush after him.

  I catch him beside the garbage cans. He smiles, but not too hugely. “Carolina.” This is the only name in the world for me anymore. We scrape our trays with ultra-deliberateness.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi. You don’t have to whisper.”

  “Hi.”

  “I’m happy to see you too.”

  “I still can’t believe it. I’m trying to make myself believe. Intellectually I know. I know that it happened. It’s just—it ’s just so good.”

  “Yes. It happened. It did. I thought about it all—”

  Somebody comes by. Mr. Mann says hello, glances around nervously, hunching over his empty tray as if deciding on a last secret bite of something that is already gone. It isn’t safe here; I can tell that’s what he’s thinking.

  “Of course. Of course it happened,” he says. “You were there.”

  “I was there!” I’m sounding so stupid, but right now I don’t care.

  “But where were you this morning? I missed you in class.”

  He missed me! He was thinking about me at the very same time. We have to talk about this. I have to remember it so we can. And try to get the time just right. The exact moment. Crazy. This is crazy.

  “The dentist,” I say. “I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it! He says I need to get my wisdom tooth out. Great.”

  “Don’t be sorry; it’s okay. Really.” He lowers his voice. “The lucky bastard. That means he gets to see you again. Maybe I’ll be sick that day.”

  This makes me smile as though I might never stop smiling.

  “Any cavities?” he says.

  “Nope,” I say. “Well, one.”

  “Where?”

  I start to touch my chest right where my shirt is buttoned. “Here,” I want to say. “Right here.” At the very last second, I realize how idiotic that would look. What am I turning into?

  “Nope, not really.”

  He grins. “How can you not really have a cavity?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Don’t,” he says.

  “What?”

  Somebody else has got his attention again.

  We shove our trays together through the slot in the wall, meaty steam bathing our faces. He heads out the door into the empty hall.

  “We probably shouldn’t be doing this,” he says when I catch up.

  I’m wounded infinitely. It’s as if a rogue star has raced across my path, ripped my sun away. I apparently can’t keep the pain out of my face.

  “Damn. I’m sorry, no, I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t mean last night. No! I meant talking about it at school. It’s—you can’t believe how bad it would be. We have to be really careful. You know that.”

  I’m back, out-of-body experience over. “Oh. Oh. You’re right. I’m sorry, that was stupid. I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s just—you know that feeling you get when you’re not sure anything is—”

  He reaches over, squeezes my hand. Just as quickly, he lets go, is looking straight ahead, speaking to me sideways. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry at all. Meet me after school. Wait for me in your car. It’ll be about thirty minutes after everybody else is gone. Can you?”

  Can I?

  My heart flies away.

  It’s real.

  His shoulder brushes my hair as he turns to go. Now I’m an exploding star, a supernova, throwing out all my energy in a single titanic burst radiated directly at his departing back:

  Love.
>
  I love him so much.

  For a long time I close my eyes walking up the hall after he’s gone. Knowing there is no possible way I can hit anything. Not now, not ever.

  dawn of creation

  Wait.

  I’m in a frenzy of anticipation the rest of the day.

  His car is still there when I come out of the gym. Kids are streaming past me. For once in my life, I can’t study them. I’m not even a part of their species anymore.

  I sit in Wilkie Collins, head down, as if interested in something in my lap. I wish I had a book to read, but the only thing in the glove box is a cheapie Easy Eye paperback from Mom’s seventies collection. I can’t concentrate enough to read anyway, especially Return of the Native. I’m parked a few rows from his Honda, every muscle tense, body quivering with questions: What now? Where to from here?

  It’s the ultimate exercise in self-control.

  There.

  I laser beam him with my eyes as he slowly makes his way from the gym to the little green car in the teachers’ lot. How I worship his walk. Why isn’t the ground cracking open in his wake? Why aren’t the clouds above his sweet head moving in a weird new way?

  Why do I love him so much? What is it? I think it might be this:

  He’s not showing me a new world; he’s showing me an old one. One I’ve kept buried deep inside under layers of science, grades, math, my parents’ expectations, my hyper-developed sense of responsibility, my achiever’s overdrive—

  It’s a world without boundaries. One that I remember from being a kid. A world beyond measure, beyond physical stuff. A world that’s more like the universe than science will ever be. That’s what he’s promising me, whether he knows it or not. He said it himself: It’s a mystery.

  I roll down the window; he puts his hands in.

  “Follow me.”

  I follow slowly out of the lot and we drive forever across town to an overgrown research park waiting for future soft industry. I’ve seen this place before with Dad. Because of NASA, Huntsville is a high-tech boom town, gobbling up land as fast as it can be annexed and zoned.

  Right now this place is nothing but monster roads cutting through a lot of meadows and cotton fields gone fallow. We find a dead cul-de-sac and come to a stop at the broken end of the asphalt under the shade of a sycamore tree. We’re surrounded by acres of waving broom sage the color of straw, a massive sedge pond across the way. A long bird with its legs hanging down flaps by and settles in the water. Everything, the world, is so large today.

  He slides in next to me. I’m so hungry for him, I can barely breathe.

  “It’ll be safe here,” he says, taking my hands. I can’t speak. “This is the worst and the best thing I could ever do,” he says. “I got home last night, told myself, You’re crazy. What the hell are you doing? But seeing you here, now—I missed you so much. It nearly drove me insane.”

  His arms.

  We kiss for hours or minutes, I’m not sure which. I’m completely smothered by my need for him. Have I ever been anywhere else but here in his arms? Is this our place? Our new home? In between kisses we watch lines on the pond, the bird, the sun pushing the sky around. But mostly we just look at each other. He’s framing my face with his big hands. I love the smell of his hair.

  I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful in my life.

  It’s real.

  He hasn’t gone, vanished, become something that only exists in this universe part of the time. For a very long time we don’t talk as much.

  We’re too busy creating joy.

  nova apples

  More time.

  What happens to it?

  The hours and weeks run together into May like watercolors.

  I’m so hungry for his touch, I could hold him for days or years. We see the unseen side of every shopping mall, the backs of dozens of stores. His car has working air; mine has couches. The state park. Abandoned playgrounds. A particular church. But the place by the pond is best.

  Today we’re sitting there in tall grass on the edge of a sheltered meadow.

  Mr. Mann is sitting behind me, massaging my neck and shoulders with both hands, his legs beneath my legs. No one has ever done this for me before. Ever. It’s hard to keep still; I feel selfish. But he’s also making me feel so impossibly good, so loved.

  Let him.

  In the distance a coyote tracks its way through a deadfall on the edge of the wood. The falling sun is painting the new leaves gold. There is no place on earth but this, a sheltered meadow exactly equidistant between two industrial complexes. But only on Sunday afternoons. The rest of the time it’s a concrete plant.

  “The trucks and buildings are just the other side of those trees,” Mr. Mann says. “Oops, there goes one.”

  “A truck?”

  “Nope. I sometimes see tiny spots in front of my eyes. They call them vitreous floaters.”

  “Weird. Do they bother you?”

  “It’s no big deal.” He moves his hands down my back, around my sides, making me squirm. I am one gigantic nerve ending, raw, but not raw with pain, only pleasure. He goes on.

  “I remember the first day I ever saw them, the floaters—I was fourteen and terrified. We were camping, getting ready to go to Six Flags. Nobody would believe me that I was seeing spots. I thought I was dying. Or that maybe there was something in the pool water.”

  “What do they look like?”

  He thinks about it, squinting. “Tiny corkscrews and geometric patterns. But very indistinct. Diaphanous. I can see right through them most of the time.”

  “My, what a big vocabulary you have, Grandma.”

  “The better to eat—”

  “Uh uh uh.” I wag a finger over my head; he closes his teeth over it.

  “My ears ring all the time,” I say, touching his lips behind me when he lets my finger go. “It’s called tinnitus. It’s not bad. I only notice it when it’s super-quiet. A kid threw a bunch of cherry bombs in a campfire when I was lying beside it.”

  He’s nuzzling my neck now, moving along the hairline, lightly nibbling. “Lying?”

  “Okay, gutter mind.” I laugh. “It was a church picnic. There were a bunch of kids around. I was thirteen. The big drama of the evening was a girl who tried to run away from home with a Barbie suitcase full of five hundred pennies.”

  His hands move down and he hugs me around my middle, face against my cheek, his legs thrown out on either side of me now.

  “Why? Why did she want to run away?”

  “She thought she was pregnant.”

  “God. At thirteen!”

  “From French kissing.”

  He laughs and kisses my right ear, takes the lobe gently in his teeth. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it was sad. Did she make it?”

  “Nope.”

  “We never do, do we?”

  I turn in his arms, straddling his legs so I can look at his face. His eyes are the color of newborn stars. “Did you try to run away?”

  “I tried a lot of things. Almost.”

  “There you go again. No Emily talk today. So you were a messed-up kid?”

  He doesn’t talk much about his childhood. I have to wonder how happy he was.

  “Yep, pretty much. But I can touch my elbows behind my back,” he says. “If I stand holding a door frame and push. At least I think I still can. Tell me something about you.”

  I think. “I have to spit in every river I cross. It’s almost a compulsion.”

  “Ha. I like that. What if you’re in a car?”

  “Then you get to experience what engineers call a little blowback.”

  “Hee. Okay. My turn. Let’s see. I won a national poetry award back when I was dumb enough to think it was easy.”

  “Really? Why didn’t you keep going?”

  “Health benefits sucked.”

  “No, really.” I run my fingers over his eyebrows, smoothing them.

  “There’s not much to tell. It just wasn’t going anywhere. Poets get paid wor
se than hamburger flippers. No offense.”

  “None taken. Can I read it sometime?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Here’s something. I cried the first time I saw a Hubble picture of Supernova 1987A.”

  He touches the tip of my nose with the point of his tongue. “With a name like that, sounds like a tax form. I’d cry too.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you saw it. I’ll show you on the net. It looks just like the symbol for infinity with a ring of fire superimposed over it.”

  “No shit, really?”

  “Exactly.”

  He suddenly kisses me deeply; we don’t speak for a while. All thoughts are pushed out, replaced by sensation.

  “Apples?” he says when we pull apart.

  “Gala,” I say.

  “Fuji.”

  “I can live with that. Sure.”

  We move ever closer to a center.

  two

  Eighteen.

  Twice Nine.

  It’s my birthday today.

  What does this number mean to me now?

  It used to mean graduation, freshman year at college, one more candle on my cake.

  Now it’s something waited for, yearned for, desperate, dying, living, hungry, howling—

  Fearing.

  Am I scared? I am.

  Am I brave? I hope.

  But.

  Somehow I don’t feel one bit different.

  Somehow everything feels different.

  Has he touched me?

  Yes. A thousand times.

  But.

  Has he touched me?

  A mountain of fire rushes at my head.

  I’m back to Earth.

  Oh—I’m here. It’s my birthday dinner.

  My folks, the Greens, Schuyler. We’re all sitting in my favorite Japanese restaurant. The hostess is beating a gong; the chef is juggling eggs with a spatula. Skewers are whirling in front of my nose around one knuckle of a single finger. Now he’s threatening to singe off my eyebrows with fountains of flammable saki. Anything to snare my attention.