“Oh?”
“Nope. That’s a pretty modern convention.”
“Wouldn’t be the first thing people just made up out of that book,” Stevie says.
“How’d you know that?” I ask Eden, hating Stevie for the easy way he’s lapsed comfortably into conversation with Eden. He didn’t even seem thrown to find her on his right side.
“Dude, you think there’s anything about Eden I haven’t heard? Gotta know your facts with a name like this.”
“Oh, I hear you,” Stevie says. “Imagine all the crap that gets hurled at guys with names like Steven and Nicholas.”
“I can only dream.”
“Nightmares, baby, nightmares.”
Eden giggles. I’ve never heard her giggle. She’s not really a giggling type of girl.
“Well, I’m gonna get to class,” Stevie says, leaning down to pick up the bag at his feet. “Don’t want to be late for that quiz.”
I glance at my watch, peeling myself off my locker to stand up straight.
“We still have fifteen minutes,” I say to Stevie’s back. Maybe the battery in my watch has died and really I’m running late and I didn’t even know it.
Stevie turns back and grins at me, then shrugs at Eden.
“Try to toss a friend some help,” he says, and walks away.
Crap. I hate that Stevie thinks I need his help—worse yet, I hate that I do need his help.
Eden slides along the lockers toward me. Her long brown hair seems to move more slowly than the rest of her, trails behind her on the lockers as she moves.
“Stevie’s pretty smooth,” she says, nodding in his direction.
“Yeah.”
“Wonder what he’s trying to cover up.”
“Huh?”
“Anyone that smooth has something to hide, right?”
I think about telling her about Stevie’s parents, about his coming on all my family vacations, about the fact that he’s slept every Christmas Eve since we were five on the floor of my bedroom, and how my parents still sign our presents from Santa Claus. My parents even tell us that the checks that Stevie’s parents give us are from Santa, even though their names are obviously on them and we know who they’re from. (And even though we’re both technically Jewish. And too old to believe in Santa Claus.) When we leave for Ohio on Christmas Day, Stevie is always waving from the curb, Pilot at his side since he watches Pilot for us while we’re gone. I’m pretty sure that’s the only trip we take that Stevie’s not tacitly—or explicitly—invited to join. I mean, Jesus, my parents may infantilize me—Stevie, too, when they get the chance—but mostly, at least, they stick around.
But instead of saying any of that, I say, “You’re pretty smooth, too.”
Eden looks down, and her hair falls over her face. I can smell her shampoo: grapefruit and brown sugar.
I realize I’ve implied that she’s hiding something, too. “Sorry,” I say quickly.
Eden shrugs. I try to make it better with a joke at my own expense.
“Well, if how smooth you are is a measure of what you have to hide, I guess I’ve got nothing.”
Eden looks up at me now, and smiles.
“Oh, I don’t know, Nick. You’ve got some moves.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I smile. “I guess everyone has something to hide.”
“I guess so.”
Eden leans down to pick up her bag.
“Ready for the quiz?” I say.
“Let’s just get it over with,” she says, and we head for the classroom. And as we walk, just for a second, I put my left hand on her right shoulder. Her skin is hot underneath her shirt.
After school, Eden joins Stevie and me outside the pizza shop, now crowded with students. It feels comfortable with her here, staring at the middle schoolers, and pointing out to Stevie which of the senior girls roll their uniform skirts so high you can see their boy shorts underneath. And it even feels natural when she leans back against me, rather than against the pizza-place wall.
“Dirty,” she explains, pointing at the wall, like I’m the obvious alternative.
“Glad to help keep you clean,” I answer. I feel stronger, somehow, with her weight against my chest.
And as she leans on me, her left hand brushes mine, and it feels perfectly natural to me that I should take that hand. She looks up and smiles at me, and I feel distinctly like right now I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, outside my school on a New York City fall day with my best friend beside me and—forgive the cliché—my best girl’s hand in mine.
I walk Eden to the subway, and the whole walk there, I know I’m going to kiss her good-bye, and I know she’s going to kiss me back. I feel the kiss coming up from my stomach, as though that’s where every kiss originates, waiting in your belly, growing stronger as it climbs up your rib cage, fluttering a bit when it passes your heart, and waiting, patiently in your throat, until you tilt your head and move your lips, and it knows it’s time to come out from inside you.
Eden probably knows I’m just waiting for the subway stop to kiss her; she’s waiting for it. And so I decide to use one of those moves she said I had. A block before the subway stop, I take her hand and pull her so that I’m leaning against a building and she’s facing me, and then I kiss her. I press her hands onto my sides until she takes hold of my shirt on either side of me. I don’t stick my tongue down her throat or anything. I mean, there’s some tongue involved. But not at first. First I kiss her once, quickly, and then again for a little bit longer. The taste of her is completely new, everything I imagined—the apples, the honey—and a thousand other things I never knew a person could taste like. I move my hands so that they’re on her hips, and I pull them toward me, my fingertips just barely resting on the curve of her ass. And then I pull her even closer and lean down over her and really kiss her. And then there’s tongue, and breath and warmth. And I know that I would never, not in a million years, be kissing her like this with my hands in those places, if she hadn’t told me that I had moves, that I was smooth.
The Implications of Smooth
Later, walking home by myself, I’m thinking about Eden’s theory that people who are smooth have something to cover up. And I can see how that makes sense. Stevie has his ridiculously busy parents, and, from what I can tell, Eden’s home life isn’t so great, either. And neither of them ever talks about those things; instead they’re both smart and quick on the uptake. They’re always ready with a great comeback and a snappy joke, cleverness coming out of them so fast and easy it practically falls from their mouths.
Where do I fit into Eden’s theory? Up until a week ago, my family life was what both Stevie and Eden would call idyllic; we fight, but no one’s changing her name, and no one’s getting ignored. But up until a week ago, I barely had the nerve to talk to Eden, and I certainly never would have had the nerve to pull her to the side of the street and kiss her for twenty minutes.
Maybe I should call up Sam Roth. Or at least send him a thank-you note: Thank you for fucking up my life enough that I got to be smooth for at least one afternoon. And it occurs to me then that I don’t know where he lives. I know he grew up in Texas, sure, but he might not still live there. My dad grew up in Ohio and moved away as soon as he finished high school, pretty much.
“What’re you smiling about?” my dad asks me later, during the boring part of Jeopardy! when they ask the contestants about their lives. I had been thinking about how chapped my lips were.
“Thinking about how I’m going to kick your ass at Jeopardy! today.” We’re sitting on the couch, both of us in jeans and T-shirts, with our feet up on the coffee table and Pilot in between us. Mom’s in the other room, on the phone. I can tell Dad doesn’t believe that it’s Jeopardy! that’s got me smiling, so I change the subject, because I don’t want to tell him about Eden.
“Any word from Sam Roth today?”
“Sorry?”
“You heard me,” I say, but I am careful to so
und friendly, casual.
“Not today, no. He and his fiancée left for vacation on Monday.” It seems very strange that he knows that, like Sam Roth is a really good friend who always lets you know when he’s leaving town so that you don’t worry when you don’t hear from him for a few days.
“Where’d they go?”
“Montana, I think.”
“Montana? That’s kind of random.”
“There’s some fancy camping resort. They like to go camping.”
I wonder just how much my dad knows about Sam Roth. How well he knows him. I wonder if he’s keeping track of the facts, the way I am: he’s from Texas, he’s getting married, he likes camping.
They’re starting to ask questions on the show again, but I can tell Dad’s only pretending to be watching now.
“I wonder how he told his fiancée about you.”
“I think she always knew he was adopted. He said he wasn’t raised to keep it a secret.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Well, that’s stupid, I think. Not that he was raised not to keep it a secret, but Dad’s having said that his fiancée always knew he was adopted. Not possible. It’s not like he picked her up at some bar and said, Hi, my name’s Sam Roth, and I’d like to ask you out and by the way before I do I’d like to tell you that I also happen to be adopted. I mean, he would have told her at some point while they were dating. She can’t have always known.
Dad looks straight at the TV when he answers my questions, and I know he wants me to just play the game with him, but I have more things to ask.
“You were.”
“What?”
“You were raised to keep it a secret.”
He looks at me now.
“It’s not exactly the same thing.”
“It is exactly the same thing.”
He opens and then shuts his mouth. He looks back at the TV. I reach for the remote and hit the mute button.
“You kept it a secret.”
“There were people who knew.”
“Who?”
“Well, I told my mother. And your uncle Hank.”
“And Sarah’s family?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know who Sarah ever told. We didn’t talk about it.”
“Would have been hard to keep a secret, though, right? I mean, she looked pregnant, right?”
Dad shrugs. “I honestly don’t know, Nick.” I remember he wasn’t there during most of her pregnancy; he was away at college.
“How about Mom?” I press. “When did you tell her?”
He’s still looking straight ahead. I suspect he’s reading the clues on the screen.
“I don’t remember, actually. While we were dating.”
“When you were dating?”
“Yes. I couldn’t exactly be talking to your mother about getting married and starting our own family without letting her know about him.”
“You couldn’t?”
He looks at me, as if surprised to find that I don’t completely understand that. And I look back, because I want him to know that of course I understand it, but I’m coming around to a point here.
“No,” he says slowly, “I could not.”
“And did you tell her when you put your name on the registry?”
“Of course. She was with me when I did it.”
“She was?”
“Yes. I mean, it’s just a button on the computer. But yes, she stayed with me while I did it, she sat next to me, at the table there.” He nods in the direction of the dining room table. I wonder when they did it. Maybe while I was at school. But what if his eighteenth birthday fell on a weekend; maybe they got up early, did it before I was even awake, sneaking around in the dark.
“And did you tell Grandma and Uncle Hank?”
“I think I must have. I mean, I don’t know if I told them when I did it, but they knew I was planning on doing it, once Sam turned eighteen.”
“So, you told all these people. Because you didn’t think it would be honest not to tell them.”
Dad nods. “I don’t think I could have gone through it without telling them.” I think he still doesn’t see where I’m headed.
“So, you owed all that honesty to Mom and to your family, but you didn’t think that maybe you owed it to me?”
“What?”
I swing my feet off the coffee table and sit up with them on the floor in front of me. I suddenly wish I were wearing shoes. “When you registered—you didn’t think maybe you should have warned me, Hey, son there’s a chance the phone might ring some day and it’ll be this kid I kinda sorta used to know?” I say it meanly, purposely doing a bad imitation of my father’s voice, mocking the sort of middle-America country twang that comes out in his voice from time to time.
“Nick,” Dad says, sitting up also, genuinely surprised. “You were five years old when I registered.”
“I was completely left out when you registered. A whole part of your life—of our life—that you didn’t think to include me in.”
“You were left out?” Dad repeats.
“Yes. And maybe I was five then,” I continue, standing up now, “but didn’t it occur to you in the eleven years between then and now that I might have gotten old enough to handle it? You and Mom always treat me like I’m so much younger than I am. One of these days you’re going to have to notice that I’ve grown up a little bit since I was five friggin’ years old.”
“Well, you certainly could have fooled me,” Dad says. This is probably the part when other kids’ parents would be yelling, but my dad doesn’t yell, and doesn’t even stand up but keeps his feet firmly on the floor. I look jealously at his shoes. “I mean that you’re not five anymore. All evidence to the contrary, Nicholas.”
I look down at him, and then I look at Pilot, whose ears are standing straight up on alert. He’s not used to hearing us speaking like this. We’re not yelling, but I know we sound angry. He keeps looking at my father and back to me for a clue about what this all means. I can’t think of anything to say, so I just look at Pilot.
Finally, I say, “You’ve upset the dog,” and I turn on my heel to walk to my room, as though upsetting Pilot was the end result of the conversation.
And maybe it was. Because I don’t really understand why I’m so upset. Why should I be angry at my dad for having had Sam Roth almost thirty years ago?
Eden answers on the fourth ring, just when I’d begun to think she was screening me, when I’d begun to curse the people who invented caller ID because I would have to leave a message or else she’d know I’d called and hung up.
“Hey, Nick.”
“Hi, Eden.”
“What’s up?”
“Are you chewing gum?”
“Yes,” she answers unapologetically, and pops a few bubbles for effect.
“You sure do chew gum a lot.”
“It’s a little creepy that you just admitted you’ve been looking at my mouth.”
“Nah, I think it just shows I’m observant.”
“You’re something.”
“Or other.”
Now that I’ve been in her room, I can really picture her there. Maybe she was sitting at her desk when I called, and now she’s getting up, bare feet cold on the floor, taking steps toward the bed, on the edge of which she perches, crosses her legs. Maybe she raises her hand to touch her lips, remembering how I kissed her.
“What’s up, Nick?”
This whole time I’ve been pacing, walking back and forth across my room, which is not at all that large and it really only takes me a few steps, and I actually, for a second, wish that I were shorter, or at least that my legs were shorter, so that it would take me longer to cross the room. Usually I’m very grateful for my long legs, for the extra few inches they give me, the extra inches that allowed me to lean my head down over Eden’s this afternoon instead of just look her in the face. I get the long legs from my mom. My dad’s pretty short and, shit, now I’m busy wondering how tall S
am Roth is instead of talking to Eden.
“Nick?”
“Yeah, sorry.” I stop walking and sit on my bed, just at the edge like really it’s someone else’s bed and I’m scared to disturb it.
“Are you mad at your parents?” I say finally.
“What?”
“Are you mad, at your parents, you know, at your mom, for the way she was the other night, talking about your dad in front of me, eating our pizza?”
“Wow. And here I thought you were just calling to secure a second make-out session. One kiss is a little early for delving this deep, don’t you think, Nick?”
“It wasn’t just one kiss,” I say, my voice dropping an octave. There it is again, this newfound smoothness. Awesome. But I don’t want to get offtrack here. “I just thought I’d skip over all that awkwardness, and assume you were in for a long haul of countless make-out sessions, and go straight to the good, deep, adolescently-angst-ridden-let’s-rail-against-our-parents stuff.”
“Well, since you put it that way—hang on.” I can hear her put the phone down and I imagine she’s walking across her bedroom. When she comes back, she says, “Had to spit out my gum.”
“Oh, wow, we really are getting to the good stuff.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Am what?”
“It was your question, Nick.”
“Angry at them?”
“Yes. But only sometimes.”
“Why only sometimes?”
“ ’Cause, I mean, I guess I’m used to it. I mean, I only realized how creepy they are recently.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. For most of my life, I didn’t know other parents were different from them.”
“No?”
“I didn’t know parents could be any other way—I didn’t know parents could be like yours.”
I don’t want to tell her what my parents are like, what my dad is really like, now.
“And your parents were always like that?” I ask.
“Kinda. I mean, the hating of one another is fairly recent, and I don’t expect that to last that long, but yeah, they were always weird.”
The Lucky Kind Page 5
