The Possibilities

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  “We should go,” I said, and leaned in for a closing peck, but he kissed me hard and sloppily and I decided to give it a go, give in to total desire, but it didn’t work. I was self-conscious about the people outside, about someone coming in and seeing us. I wanted public declaration, I wanted him as a boyfriend. I wanted dinner, a bed, music, sweetness, a mix tape. Love. While kissing, I opened one eye and through my fluttering lid I watched his closed eyes, his moving face. He looked like he was nursing, and I laughed in his mouth, then pulled away. He moved out from under me, then moved his chest against mine, pushing me, his mouth on my mouth, until my back was flat on the ground. My mouth was still in a nervous smile and he licked at my teeth.

  “I want to fuck you so bad,” he said.

  No mixed signals there.

  He moved his hand through my hair, then under my jeans and down into my underwear.

  “You’re so wet,” he said, and I didn’t know what to say in response. I was soaking but felt anything I said would sound ridiculous. Indeed, I am so wet? Yes, I’m wet for you? This was Seth—my object, my focus for so long—I was finally getting his attention, yet his words were making this bright star of a boy fade fast. Don’t fade. Be perfect. Be from a book. And so I too moved my hand under the buckle of his jeans and the elastic of his boxers. I wasn’t really enjoying myself any longer, but holding his penis was somehow less awkward than talking to him, and I hoped it was buying time for him to realize what was happening between us: intimacy. He stopped touching me and undid his jeans. Then he sat up and straddled me.

  “I really like you,” he said.

  “You should,” I said, trying to be coy. It was difficult to talk because of his weight, but I thought this made me sound sexy, breathy. I took a chance: “I like you too. I have for a while.”

  I felt good just looking at him. Us, looking at each other.

  “Do a little?” He rose up on his shins, then took his penis out. He poked my chin with it, then brushed part of my jawline with its tip. “Say ah,” he said, and laughed.

  “Gross,” I said. I may have laughed even though for the first time I felt disgust and perhaps fear. I was trapped beneath him and was starting to become aware of the cold. “Let’s go back outside by the fire,” I said. Don’t fade.

  He moved his hand gently from my hair down to the base of my neck.

  “Come on,” he whispered. He rubbed my throat. I tucked my chin to catch his hand, and he moved up higher on my chest, then leaned over and placed his hands on the ground above my head. I opened my mouth and took him, my face feeling ugly and contorted. I stopped.

  “I can’t.”

  “A little more,” he said, a quiver in his voice.

  I resumed my task. I was sick with myself for being too embarrassed to say no, but felt I had passed a certain point and that it would be unfair to stop. Finally, I said, “There,” and tried to sit up. Did I say, “I’m cold” or “Let’s go back”? I don’t remember.

  He crept down my body and pulled my shirt and sweater up and kissed my stomach, then moved his face down to the zipper of my jeans and he unsnapped and unzipped and pulled both my underwear and pants down at the same time and shoved himself into me.

  I said, calmly, “Stop. Stop,” and he did, soon after. He shuddered, moved farther in, fast, and then slowly out. The “out,” I have to say, was a shameful pleasure. It itched a scratch? I don’t know. As opposed to the mean thrusts, it was a gentle sensation, soothing what needed to be soothed. I wanted to cry from the release, from the feeling of having him out of me, almost (though I didn’t think this then) like giving birth.

  I sat up. I could feel semen slide out of me, down into my buttocks. Seth buckled his jeans. I pulled up my underwear and my pants.

  “You good?” he said.

  I was not good. I was pregnant. I would find this out one month later. I would be terrified and alone, ashamed and so, so far from good. I no longer felt young. I had aged in seconds.

  His voice, its lightness and softness: confusing. I don’t think I answered. I was crying, though he didn’t know that.

  “I’m thirsty,” he said. “You’re cool, right? You’re good?”

  He was polite. He said, “After you,” and I crawled out, stood up, then walked toward the party above me. I hated everyone there. Really. I walked up the hill, hated everyone. I walked up the hill, looked down at my pants, sure the wetness was visible. The moisture sickened me. It had been easy for him because of it, the residual desire. I thought it was blood because I was in pain, but it wasn’t.

  I walked toward the fire. I felt my pubic hair freezing onto my skin. Each step, a tug.

  He mumbled something and walked quickly in another direction, toward a group of guys by the surveyor line for the new lift. That was how I lost my virginity. It was one of those moments, and there weren’t too many of them, when I longed for my mother. I cried for her that night in bed, saying Mom, Mommy, Mommy out loud.

  Kit walks into the antique shop. She sees me and heads in my direction. For the first time I wonder how my son treated her and if her decision has anything to do with him. I can’t imagine knowing something like that about your own child. I’d see Seth’s mom at the rec center sometimes, doing her step aerobics class. She always wore a belt around her leotard and would sing along to the music, whereas it seemed like everyone else was out of breath. You could be a good mom and it still didn’t matter.

  “Nice bed,” Kit says.

  Something is happening here, something nice, and I partly prefer the way it was before—untrusting and angry.

  “You mind?” she says.

  Would I mind what? then realize what she wants.

  “Hop on in,” I say.

  She has to jump a little because she’s small like me and the frame is high off the ground. I look away as she gets settled because it feels like I’m seeing something private, like watching her dress.

  “Are you going to tell Suzanne what’s going on?” Kit asks.

  “I don’t want to,” I say. “She’s my friend, but I just don’t want her to . . . I don’t know.”

  “Know you differently from the way she knows you now,” she says.

  “Okay,” I say. “That sounds right.”

  “Maybe I’m speaking for myself,” she says.

  “She’s also ridiculously conservative,” I say. I’m protecting you, I don’t say.

  We sit together and I look at our legs side by side.

  “I had a bed like this,” I say.

  “What kind is it?” she asks.

  “The heavy kind,” I say.

  She surveys the bed, puts her hand around a post. “Barley twist posters,” she says.

  “How do you know that?”

  “For a writing class in college I wrote a short story about girls who steal their mother’s antiques to pay for tickets to a Madonna concert. I researched French antiques with regional chart clues and clarifications.”

  “Thorough,” I say. “Was it based on a true story?”

  “It was based on someone else’s true story,” she says. “I would never do something like that. You are witnessing my wild stage.”

  “Cully was a result of my wild stage,” I say. “My detour.”

  “Good result,” she says, and I want to tell her it was, but at the same time I don’t want to sell her anything. Being a mother is so hard. No one tells you how difficult it is and even if they do, language doesn’t communicate the varied hues of motherhood.

  “You must have done well in school,” I say. I eye another rocking chair and wonder how long it’s been sitting here and how much longer it will stay. I imagine myself rocking in it, in my empty home.

  “I did okay,” Kit says. “I liked school, but I wasn’t crazy studious or anything. I just know odd things. I remember things you don’t need to remember.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like . . . ,” she says. We’re so close. I try to scoot over a bit without seeming rude. “George Wash
ington had dentures made out of hippopotamus tusk.”

  “Really,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Dude had hippo teeth.”

  “I loved school,” I say. “I was that annoying girl who always had her hand in the air.” I remember studying the course catalog, strategizing, choosing classes as if packing them for a trip. Each class added a layer to me so that I thought I was building myself. Each year was a chance to start over or to edit what I had built.

  “You should go back,” she says.

  I laugh, then my mind hitches onto the possibility of it, of any and everything. Demolition derby. Grad school. “Yeah,” I say, and stop myself from saying, “You should.”

  “Your dad wants you to go to medical school?” I ask.

  “He does,” she says. She laughs as if recalling something. “When I was little I’d go to the hospital after school a lot, sit in his office and do homework. Sometimes he’d bring me into the operating room. He’d pick me up so I could see the patient he was working on. He’d point out the liver, the heart, the fat. I loved it.”

  I imagine her father’s forehead wrinkled with surprise by his daughter’s ability to look so closely at the insides of a body.

  “But I loved that it was his,” she says. “His work. I don’t think it’s what I want to do.”

  “I have trouble picturing you and Cully together,” I say. I see him on the skate ramp. I see him in college, backpacking trails by himself or hiking with his snowboard to untouched terrain. I see him on the Million Dollar Highway, all cool and able.

  “I think I was an exception to his rule,” she says, and smiles as if remembering something specific. “But he was the same as me. He knew odd things too. I think I let him off the hook a bit. He could be uncool with me. Like, I bet Rocky felt relieved to just be with Adrian and not have to, you know, flex. We watched that movie together. It’s a really good movie.”

  “What do you mean by uncool?” I ask. “How would he be uncool?” I want to lie back, I’m enjoying this so much. It’s good to stop for a moment. I feel like we’ve been moving so fast.

  Kit swings her leg off the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. We watched a lot of movies, played a lot of pool. Pool was big—we’d take it very seriously. We went for drives and just talked nonsense, like . . . one time he asked me what words made me laugh. I guess he had watched something on the Discovery Channel about the planets and every time they said ‘Uranus,’ he laughed. It’s a word that’s always funny.”

  I remember my dad and Cully laughing about this. I remember them watching this show.

  “Titicaca,” Kit says. “Balzac. Those were my words. Then we just got into words we liked, based on sound alone. We ran through words for hours.”

  I close my eyes for a second, warmed by the thought of this commonality he has with me—being so opinionated about words—and also warmed by the thought of him sharing this activity with someone else, and having it be valued and loved. I think he must have loved her and now I do see them together.

  “He was sweet,” she says. “And super funny. I always felt like I was on an adventure even if we were just sitting there.” I watch her thinking of him.

  “He was a fling though?” I say.

  “Maybe,” she says. “I was playing it cool. We were fooling around, I guess, seeing what would happen. Who knows what would have happened?”

  She looks at me and by her expression I see that something has changed. She’s still remembering him, perhaps, wondering what would have happened. It’s taken me so long to realize other people loved him, other people are hurt. My dad, Billy, even Suzanne, yet they must feel they can’t compete with me. I give her a moment.

  A mother walks to the back section with a toddler on a leash. When the child tries to sit on a hideous needlepoint footstool, the mother gives the leash a tug.

  “Your mom should have gotten you one of those,” I say.

  “One of what?” she says, then understands. A leash.

  “Have you talked to her lately?”

  “Almost every day,” Kit says. “She has phone interventions. She talks about successful people my age. Kelly Caswell got into Harvard Law, Maeve Richy is going to Parsons School of Design, Gigi Strode opened a boutique.” She imitates her mother’s voice and I envision a posh socialite. “In our last conversation she told me she got me antique earrings from Gigi’s boutique—from the late seventeen hundreds. They’re little wooden birds and I guess the beaks are gold. She said if she told me what carat they were, I’d absolutely die.” She imitates her mother: “ ‘They’re marvelous. They’re the bomb, as you say.’ ” Kit looks at me and says, “I have never, ever used that expression.”

  “She sounds like . . . a mother,” I say, thinking how I’d do the same with Cully—constantly bring up the plans and occupations the other kids were doing. Why can’t we ever see who our children actually are? Why can’t we let them cook?

  The toddler on the leash bends over, hanging her head between her legs. “I’m so tired,” she says.

  “Don’t be dramatic,” her mother says. “Can’t wait until she’s her age,” she says to me. “Though I suppose that age has its problems too!”

  “It goes by very fast,” I say, liking her mistake in thinking I’m Kit’s mother. Each age did have its problems and yet with each age I remember thinking, This is my favorite. This is such a fun age.

  She pulls on the leash, and the girl follows her mother toward the front of the store, walking as if up against a strong wind.

  “This age has its problems,” Kit says to me.

  “So does this one,” I say.

  The clerk walks toward us. We both get down from the bed.

  “Isn’t she a beauty,” he says, then in a delayed gesture, raises his arms to portray his awe. “These are acanthus leaves carved into the posts. It’s made of mahogany—”

  “Wow, solid?” Kit asks, a question that impresses me and says a lot about the world she must be from.

  The man freezes with his mouth open. “Don’t insult me,” he says, in a teasing voice to hide the fact that he isn’t teasing.

  I look at her and widen my eyes—an expression she automatically duplicates.

  “Please notice the ball-and-claw posts,” he says, and waits until we look down at the bed’s claw-feet. “They’re the size of grapefruits,” he says. “Yellow grapefruits.”

  “Big foot,” I say, and hear Kit stifle a laugh.

  The man pats the bed, then slides a finger across the birds. “The pine has suffered from woodworm,” he says, “but obviously the worms have been long dead and the bed has been treated. The drapes are sold separately, though I assume you’d want to choose your own to coordinate with your decor.” He raises his arms: “With this bed you can be lady of the manor.” He does a kind of bow, pivots, and walks away.

  “Wow,” I say. “I should buy it. It could be . . . ceremonious. Or maybe something less heavy.”

  The clerk walks back, holding a clipboard with sheets of paperwork.

  “We’re just looking,” I say.

  He raises his hand. Salespeople must hate when people say they’re “just looking.” It’s like being sprayed with bug repellent. “I wanted to show you this.” He hands me a sheet of paper. “Though it’s a copy of the original, this, my dear, is a poem that was found with the bed.”

  Sleep, my sweet. Tomorrow we’ll meet.

  Then back to bed

  where we will show

  bliss and love. These stars move slow.

  I believe this is meant to touch me. It may be the most horrible poem I’ve ever read. I hand the paper to Kit. She reads it, then hands it back to the man. He takes it, pivots, and walks away.

  We look at one another and stifle laughs.

  “That was bizarre,” I say. “This is all very bizarre.”

  “Detours,” Kit says. “What an odd dude.”

  I hear the toddler’s mother say, “I’ve asked you to stop that. One, two, three, okay
, that’s it. You’ve lost points. I’m taking points away.”

  “No!” the little girl yells.

  It’s always amusing when it’s someone else’s kid. Kit watches the little girl, and I wonder if this is all confirming things for her, making her relieved that this won’t be in store for her just yet.

  “Sarah?” she says, her voice breaking. She looks at me with an intense fondness that both warms and scares me.

  “Are you feeling okay?” I ask. “We should get going. I can’t trust my dad near a store.” I begin to walk to the front of the shop.

  “Wait,” she says.

  “What is it?” I ask. “You’re not going to be sick, are you?” I glance around and land on the cauldron.

  “No,” she says. “I wanted to suggest something. Offer something.”

  “What is it?” I stop by the rocking chair, tempted to sit.

  “I’m trying to say—I’ll just say it.” She takes a deep breath and I smile, thinking she looks like she’s about to propose to me.

  “I don’t want to have a baby,” she says. “I’m pretty sure about that, but I would, I’m willing to . . . to give birth to it, or whatever. To have it for you. You and Billy. Or just you. If you want me to. I would do that—”

  My smile falls. My grip on the chair tightens. She keeps talking as though explaining something to herself, and her line of thought begins to smooth itself out, making her suggestion, or offer, into what she thinks may be an obvious route and solution. The inevitability of it, her expression reads. The logic. I lean into the rocker. I could break it with my grip.

  My body can’t seem to register this news. My heart is pounding out joy and remorse and irritation. I think of her growing this child for me, like I’ve commissioned it. I imagine he or she floating in her womb, kicking her, moving from mung bean to melon, then coming out of her body and into my hands. I open and close my hands.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. A clearer explanation will fail to penetrate, I’m afraid. My mind is not taking this. “What are you saying?”

  “I’d have the baby for you,” she says.