She left a note for her mom on the kitchen table and heard the phone ringing as she sailed toward the door. It was Mr. Brattle, she could see from the caller ID. She let him ring himself out. She wouldn’t torture him today.
She took a bus to the airport, where she picked up an expensive round-trip ticket that she’d reserved last night with her father’s “emergencies and books” credit card.
She slept peacefully across three seats on the two-hour flight to Charleston, waking only for the snack. Today, she ate the apple.
She used up some time reading magazines in the Charleston International Airport; then she took a cab to the Episcopal church on Meeting Street. This time the live oaks and beard-trailing pecan trees looked nicely familiar.
She arrived a few minutes before the ceremony was to begin. The ushers had finished ushering, and the congregation was assembled among giant bouquets of purple and white blossoms. She tucked herself anonymously into the shadowed back row. She could recognize two of her aunts in the second row. Her stepgrandmother, whom nobody liked, sat next to her aunts. Otherwise Carmen didn’t know a single guest on her father’s side of the aisle. It was sad how couples only seemed to have couple friends and lost them all once they stopped being a couple.
Suddenly her father appeared at the side door, tall and distinguished in a tuxedo, with Paul in an identical tuxedo standing by. Paul was his best man, she realized. She waited to feel the bile leak through her, but it didn’t. Paul looked so serious about his job as best man. Albert and Paul looked right together with their light hair and matching heights. Her father was lucky, she knew.
The bride music started. First to emerge was Krista, looking like a piece of candy in her dress. She looked nice, Carmen decided. Her skin was so pale it looked blue underneath. The music seemed to notch up in volume, a dramatic pause elapsed, and Lydia appeared.
There was something about a wedding. It didn’t matter that Lydia was in her forties and wore a silly dress. She was transformed by grace as she walked up the aisle, and Carmen felt just as moved as she was supposed to. Lydia’s smile was the perfect bride’s smile, shy but sure. Her father’s eyes feasted upon his bride’s perfection. Once she arrived beside him, the four family members made a crowded half circle beneath the altar.
Carmen felt a momentary pang, seeing the family arranged like that. They wanted you there too. You were supposed to be there.
Carmen let herself be hypnotized by the sawing of the cellist, the smell of the candles, and the drone of the minister. She forgot that she was the daughter of the groom and that she was dressed inappropriately. She left her body and traveled high up into the arches, where she could see everything, the big picture.
It wasn’t until they were marching back down the aisle that her father found her eyes and pulled her from the ceiling and into her body. The look on his face made her want to stay there.
Diana somehow managed to make her brownies in the camp kitchen. Ollie tried to give her a back rub. Emily offered to lend Bridget her Discman.
They were all worried about her. She heard them whispering when they thought she was asleep.
She went to dinner with them the next night, just because she was sick of them clucking around her and bringing back care packages. There was a pile of rotting food under her bed.
After dinner, Eric came over and asked her to take a walk with him. It surprised her, coming from the man who would not be caught. She said yes.
They walked over the headlands to the main part of the Coyote beach. In silence they walked past the RVs to a secluded place at the end, where palm trees and cacti took over the sand. The sunset was fiery behind their backs.
“I was worried about you. After the game yesterday and everything . . .” His eyes told her he meant it.
She nodded. “I don’t always play well.”
“But you’ve got a spectacular talent, Bridget. You must know that. You know that everybody thinks you’re a star.”
Bridget liked compliments as well as the next person, but she didn’t need this one. She knew how she was.
He dug into the sand. He smoothed the walls of the hole he’d made. “I was worried that what happened between us . . . I was worried that you were hurt by it. Maybe more than I understood at the time.”
She nodded again.
“You haven’t had much experience with guys, have you?” he asked. His voice was gentle. There was nothing demanding. He was trying to help.
She nodded again.
“Oh. I wish I’d known that.”
“I didn’t tell you. How could you know?”
He widened the hole in the sand. Then he filled it in again. “You know, Bridget, when I first met you, you were so confident and so . . . sexy with me. I thought you were older than you are. I know better now. You haven’t done very much. You’re a young sixteen.”
“I’m fifteen.”
He groaned. “Don’t tell me that.”
“Sorry. Just being honest,” she said.
“Couldn’t you have been honest before?”
Bridget’s mouth quivered. He looked sorry. He came closer to her and put his arm around her shoulders.
He forged ahead. “Here’s what I wanted to tell you. We might not get to talk again, so I want you to remember it. Okay?”
“Okay,” she mumbled.
He let out a long breath. “It’s a tough admission from a guy who’s supposed to be a coach here, so listen up.” He looked at the sky for help. “You took my life by storm this summer. You’ve been in my bed with me every night since that day I first saw you.” He put his hand on her hair. “The day we swam together. Running together. Dancing together. Watching you play . . . I know I’m a soccer drone, Bee, but watching you play was a huge turn-on.”
She smiled a little.
“That’s why you scare the shit out of me. Because you’re too pretty and you’re too sexy and you’re too young for me. You know that too, don’t you?”
Bridget wasn’t sure if she was too young for him, but she knew she was too young for what she had done with him. She nodded.
“And now, after being so close to you, I can’t be around you and not think about what that feels like.”
She was going to cry. Big fat tears quivered in her eyes.
He put his palms on either side of her head. “Bee, listen. Someday, when you’re twenty, maybe, I’ll see you again. You’ll be this hot soccer star at some great school, with a million guys more interesting than I am chasing you down. And you know what? I’ll see you and I’ll pray you want me still.” He held two clumps of her hair in his hands like it was precious stuff. “If I could meet you again, at a different time under different circumstances, I could let myself worship you the way you deserve. But I can’t now.”
She nodded yet again and let the tears fall.
She wanted his profession of feelings to do the trick. She really did. She knew he wanted that too. Whether he spoke the truth or not, he thought he could make her feel better, and he really, really wanted to.
But it wasn’t what she needed. Her need was as big as the stars, and he was down there on the beach, so quiet she could hardly hear him.
Under the tent in the backyard, Carmen’s father hugged her for a long time. When he pulled away his eyes were full. She was glad he didn’t say anything. She could tell what he meant.
Lydia hugged her too. It was pure duty, but Carmen didn’t care. If Lydia loved her father that much, all the better. Krista pecked her cheek and Paul shook her hand. “Welcome back,” he said.
If anyone noticed the fact that she was wearing jeans, they didn’t say so.
“Bridal party! Time for formal pictures!” called the photographer’s elderly assistant, taking no note of the fragile air. “Bridal party! Please gather under the magnolia!” she cried into Krista’s ear. It was as though there were hordes of them rather than just four.
Carmen headed for the drinks table, but her father caught her hand. “Come,” he said. “Y
ou belong with us.”
“But I’m . . .” She gestured toward the Pants.
He waved away her concern. “You look fine,” he said, and she believed him.
She posed with the four of them. She posed with Krista and Paul. She posed with Lydia and her dad. She posed with her dad. The old assistant made a sour observation about Carmen’s jeans, but nobody else said a word. She couldn’t help feeling impressed by Lydia letting her fairy-tale wedding pictures be mucked up by a dark-skinned girl in a pair of blue jeans.
The drinks-and-dinner part of the wedding seemed to rush by. Carmen made small talk with her neurotic aunts until the bride and groom took the floor to loud applause. Shortly afterward, Paul arrived at her chair. “Would you like to dance?” he asked her formally, bowing slightly.
Carmen stood, deciding not to worry that she didn’t really know how to waltz. She put her arm through his. On the parquet platform he began whirling her in time with the music.
Suddenly she remembered the girlfriend. She began studying the surrounding tables to see where the poison looks would be coming from. Paul seemed to sense her distraction.
“Where’s . . . uh . . .” Suddenly Carmen couldn’t think of her actual name.
“Skeletor?” Paul supplied.
Carmen felt her cheeks grow hot. Paul laughed. He had an unexpectedly sweet, hiccupy laugh. Had she really never heard it before?
Carmen bit her lip shamefully. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“We broke up,” he offered. He didn’t appear to be the slightest bit sad.
When the song ended he drew away, and she saw her father striding over. Before Paul left the dance floor, he bent close to her ear. “You make your dad happy,” he said, surprising her, as he did pretty much every time he opened his mouth.
Her father pulled her into his grasp and waltzed them along the perimeter of the dance floor.
“You know what I’m going to do?” he said.
“What?” she asked.
“From now on, I’m going to be as honest with you as you’ve been with me,” he said.
“Okay,” she agreed, and let the twinkly white lights blur into a smeary snowstorm.
At the end of the night, on her way up to bed, she noticed the dining room window. Smooth glass followed a web of fracture lines to a hole. The pane wasn’t fixed, but rather covered by clear plastic and a messy arrangement of silver duct tape. For some reason, this made Carmen feel ashamed and happy at the same time.
Lena,
I finally did something right in these Pants. I think Tibby did too. So we’re sending them to you with some good Carma attached (heh heh heh). I can’t wait to tell you about everything when we’re all together again. I hope these Pants bring you as much happiness as they brought me today.
Love,
Carmen
Tibby went to work in her pajama top. She had to borrow a smock. Duncan pretended to be surly, but she could tell he was happy to see her after she’d called in sick for so many days. He complimented her on Carmen’s pants.
At four o’clock her treacherous mind slipped back into the assumption that Bailey would show up. And then Tibby had to remember again.
“Where’s your friend?” Duncan asked. Everybody at Wallman’s knew Bailey now.
Tibby went to the back entrance to cry. She sat on the high concrete step and buried her face. Every so often she wiped her flowing nose on the borrowed smock. Her skin was sticky under her flannel pajama top.
Somebody was there. She looked up. It took her a moment to adjust her eyes to the sight of Tucker Rowe.
“Are you okay?” he asked her. Absently she wondered if he ever got hot in all that black.
“Not particularly,” she answered. She blew her nose into the smock.
He sat down next to her. She was too deeply into crying to stop, so she just cried like that for a while. Awkwardly he patted her hair once. If she had been her regular self she might have been ecstatic that he was touching her, though mortified that he was touching her filthy hair. As it was, she only gave it a glancing thought.
When the tears finally subsided, she looked up.
“Why don’t we get a cup of joe and you tell me what’s up,” he offered.
She looked at him carefully, not through her eyes but through Bailey’s eyes. His hair was overgelled, and his eyebrows were plucked in the middle. His clothes and his reputation seemed fake. She couldn’t for the life of her remember why she had liked him.
“No thanks,” she answered.
“Come on, Tibby. I’m serious.” He thought she was turning him down out of insecurity. As though someone so much cooler than her couldn’t possibly take an interest.
“I just don’t want to,” she clarified.
His face registered the insult.
I used to have a huge crush on you, she thought as she watched him walk away. But now I can’t remember why.
Not long after he left, Angela, the lady with the long fingernails, came out carrying two clear bags of garbage to the Dumpster. When she saw Tibby she stopped.
“Your little friend is real sick, isn’t she?” Angela asked.
Tibby looked up in surprise. “How did you know that?” she asked.
“I had a little niece die of cancer,” Angela explained. “I remember how it looks.”
Angela’s eyes were teary too. She sat down next to Tibby. “Poor thing,” she said, patting Tibby’s back. Tibby felt the scratchy tips of her fingernails on the polyester.
“She’s a sweet, sweet kid, your friend,” Angela went on. “One afternoon she was waiting for you. I got off first, and she saw I was upset about something. She took me out for ice tea and listened to me cry for half an hour about my rotten ex-husband. We made it a little Wednesday afternoon ritual, Bailey and I did.”
Tibby nodded, feeling equal parts awe for Bailey and disappointment in herself. All she’d ever noticed about Angela were her fingernails.
In a miracle fitting the magic of the Traveling Pants, they arrived in Greece on Lena’s last day. The package was so crumpled, it looked as though it had gone around the world and back, but the Pants were there, unharmed—though they were wrinkled and softer and a little more worn than when she’d seen them last. They looked almost as exhausted as Lena felt, but they also looked like they’d hold up for about a million more years. These Pants were Lena’s final mandate: Go tell Kostos, you big loser.
As she put them on, they gave her more than guilt. They gave her courage. The Pants mysteriously held the attributes of her three best friends, and luckily bravery was one of them. She would give the Pants what meager gifts she had, but courage was the thing she would take.
She also felt sexy in the Pants, which couldn’t hurt.
Lena had once participated in a charity walkathon that took her eighteen miles through Washington, D.C., and its suburbs. Amazingly, the walk to the forge was longer.
She meant to go after lunch, but then she realized she couldn’t eat any lunch anyway, so why wait?
Which turned out to be a good thing. When she saw the low building around the bend, she would have thrown up, but she didn’t have any food in her stomach, so she managed not to.
Lena’s hands were sweating so profusely she was afraid they might smear her painting. She tried drying them on the Pants and switching hands, but wet handprints on your pants weren’t exactly the hallmark of a cool customer.
At the entrance to the yard she stopped. Keep walking, she silently ordered the Pants. She trusted them more than her actual legs.
What if Kostos was busy working? She couldn’t very well bother him, could she? Whose terrible idea was it to pounce on him at work? the cowardly part of her brain (representing a very large majority) wanted to know.
She kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If she turned around, she would lose it.
The forge was dark but for the roaring flames contained in the massive brick firebox at the back. Ther
e was one figure working a piece of metal in the fire, and it was too tall to be Bapi Dounas.
Kostos either heard or felt her footsteps. He saw her over his shoulder, then carefully, slowly put down his work, took off his big gloves and mask, and came over to her. His eyes still seemed to carry the slightest reflection of the fire. There was nothing self-conscious or worried in his face. That appeared to be her department.
Lena usually counted on boys being nervous around her so she could claim the natural upper hand, but Kostos wasn’t like that.
“Hi,” she said shakily.
“Hi,” he said sturdily.
She fidgeted, trying to remember her opening line.
“Would you like to sit down?” he offered. Sitting meant perching on a low brick wall that partitioned one part of the room from the other. She perched. She still couldn’t remember how to start. She recalled her hand and then the painting in her hand. She thrust it at him. She’d planned a more elaborate presentation, but whatever.
He turned the painting over and studied it. He didn’t respond right away like most people; he just looked. After a while that made her nervous. But she was already so nervous it was hard to tell exactly where the extra nervous started.
“It’s your place,” she explained abruptly.
He didn’t take his eyes off the painting. “I’ve been swimming there many years,” he said slowly. “But I’m willing to share it.”
She listened for something suggestive in his words—half hoping there was, half hoping there wasn’t. There wasn’t, she decided.
He handed the painting back to her.
“No, it’s for you,” she said. Suddenly she felt mortified. “I mean, if you want it. You don’t have to take it. I’ll just . . .”
He took it back. “I want it,” he said. “Thank you.”
Lena swept her hair off the back of her neck. God, it was hot in this place. Okay, she coached herself, time to get talking.
“Kostos, I came here to tell you something,” she said. As soon as her mouth opened, she was on her feet, shuffling and pacing.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Page 18
