2 Floors at the House Where Conversations Are Held within Fifteen Minutes of Their Return Home
1. DOWNSTAIRS
“Oh, darn,” his mom says, checking a few drawers in the kitchen. “I need to go out and get some candles.” Addressing Rachel: “We celebrate Shabbat.” Rachel nods with her mouth open slightly. “Do you know what that is?”
“Yeah, of course,” Rachel answers, and takes a sip from her iced tea.
“Can’t Nate just pick some up?” Darren asks.
“Actually,” Rachel says, “Darren, I don’t think I ever told you this. Why would I? But one of my grandmothers, she was Jewish. I guess.”
“Huh,” Darren says.
“Really?” his mom asks, with what might be approval.
“Yeah, my mom’s mom. But she died when I was only two, so I never got to know her.”
“What a shame,” his mom says.
Darren opens the refrigerator, looks for something.
“I guess it means that I’m technically Jewish.” Rachel takes another sip. “Like, according to Jewish law, right?”
“Yep,” his mom says. “That’s how it works.”
Darren blows his nose.
“Okay.” Rachel smiles, and maybe clears her throat. “I know this is going to sound weird or something,” Rachel says, looking at Darren, “but sometimes I kind of feel Jewish. You know?”
“Not really?” Darren responds.
“Darren,” his mom says.
“Like, in seventh grade, there weren’t so many Jewish kids at our school, but I did go to Jordan Peltz’s bar mitzvah. And . . .”
“Yeah?” his mom asks a few seconds after Rachel trails off.
“Nothing,” Rachel says, dismissing whatever she was going to tell them with her hand.
Darren drinks from a carton of OJ.
“What?” his mom asks, to encourage her. “Darren, use a glass. You’ve got a cold. For God’s sake.”
“It’s just, it’s really weird.” Rachel laughs. “But I felt, I don’t know, kind of at home in the temple. Where the service was.” No one says anything. “I mean, we don’t go to church almost ever. My dad thinks religion is stupid. Sorry. And whenever we do go, it just feels like this weird place to me. But at his bar mitzvah, when they opened the—is it called an ark?”
“Sure is,” his mom says with a smile.
“I swear”—Rachel blushes—“I got the chills.”
She stops talking. Right before his mom says, “That’s a wonderful story,” Rachel looks down and puts some of her hair, painted black, behind her right ear.
2. UPSTAIRS
“Why won’t you kiss me?” Rachel asks, sitting on Darren’s bed.
“What?” Darren is standing by his dresser, maybe pretending to straighten the thing out.
“You haven’t even kissed me once yet.”
“I have a cold.”
“So?”
“So you want to get sick?”
“I don’t care about getting sick,” Rachel says. Darren tries exhaling through his nostrils, with little success. “Your mom’s gone.”
“When did you do that to your hair?”
“You don’t like it. I knew you wouldn’t.”
“No, I do.”
“You don’t have to lie.”
“No, seriously, I do. A lot. It’s cool.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“It just, it kind of surprised me. That’s all.”
“I know. Me too. My friend Carrie dared me. It totally freaked my parents out. Totally. And it’s crazy, how people treat you differently when you look like this.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Like, I don’t know, in public and stuff, you can tell people think, I don’t know, like I’m some bad girl or something.”
“Bad girl.”
“I’m so bad.”
Darren thinks about hopping up on his dresser, so he can sit there with his legs dangling off. But he’s not sure he’d make it.
“Do you think you’re going to keep it that way?”
“Maybe. At first, like the first time I saw it in the mirror, I freaked. I was like, ‘Oh my God, how long is this going to take to grow out?’ But now . . .”
“What?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“What?”
“It’s just—it’s kind of fun to see if you can be someone else. You know? Not like I’m bad now, but still. Like everyone just always assumes I’m some goody-goody. Rachel Madsen, straight-A student, plays the piano all day, vice president of the Spanish club. Blah, blah, blah. So stupid.”
Darren stops fussing with his dresser. “Yeah.”
“Right?”
“Yeah, I think so. Just how people don’t know the first thing about what other people are really like.”
“But the weird thing is, it made me realize, like—this is even crazier, but I swear . . .”
“What?”
“It’s just, I don’t know if I know what I’m really like.” Darren nods his head, sits down on the bed next to her. “You know?”
“Yeah.”
They kiss for a bit. Unclear who started it.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Why do you think I have a girlfriend?”
“I didn’t say I think you do. I just asked.”
“Do you? Have a boyfriend?”
“Not really. A guy asked me to homecoming. We’ve gone out a couple times. Tyler Kinsey. Supposedly he’s an amazing soccer player. Like I should care. He’s nice, but not my type, I guess. I think he might be stupid. I know that’s mean, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. He’s kind of boring to talk to.” She squeezes Darren’s hand. “Okay, honestly, like to be totally honest, he wants me to go with him to some big-deal party next week, but I don’t know.”
“Are you going to?” he asks.
“What about you?” she asks. Darren doesn’t answer, gets up, tends to his sinuses for a few moments. “You do, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Sort of. Maybe.”
Rachel nearly laughs. “What’s her name?”
“Zoey.”
“Zoey what?”
“Zoey Lovell.”
“What’s she like?”
“I don’t know. I barely know her. I swear. It’s kind of a long story. I actually”—Darren tries inhaling through just his right nostril—“I mean, I knew her and stuff, before camp.”
“You did?” Rachel asks, her brow moderately furrowed.
“Yeah. But—but she doesn’t even live around here right now.”
“Did she move?”
“No. Her parents sent her to some kind of boarding school or something.”
“Really? What’d she do?”
Darren rubs his nose with the back of his hand. “I think she ran away.”
“No way.”
“Probably some other stuff too.”
No one says anything. Darren tries not to look at Rachel’s hair. He fails.
“You’re crazy about her, aren’t you?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? Back at Green Ridge?” Rachel asks this sounding more curious than hurt, which isn’t to say she’s not some of both.
“I don’t know.” Darren grabs some more Kleenex. “I probably should have.” He blows his nose forcefully, which fails to alter the situation in his sinuses. “Sorry. I feel so dumb with this cold.”
Rachel nods her head. “It’s okay, I get it.” Her bag, still unopened, sits up against the bed, next to her. No one says anything for a while. “I can ask my parents to switch my flight. Maybe I can still go back tonight.”
“No, it’s cool.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You should stay.”
“You’re such a liar. You are.”
No one says anything. Rachel plays with a zipper on her bag. Darren keeps scanning his room, like he’s tryin
g to figure out what kind of room it is now that she’s in it. They look at each other every once in a while but then look away. There’s a chance neither of them is sure how they’re supposed to do even that at this point.
“I feel so bad for Krista,” Rachel says.
“Yeah,” Darren says.
More silence.
“Hey,” Darren says eventually. “Can I play you something?”
“Sure,” Rachel says, her voice really soft.
So he opens his computer and searches for the song.
“It’s kind of stupid,” he says.
“Play it,” she says.
The song starts, and soon some guy is playing the saxophone, but so softly it sounds like something else. Or like the guy playing is hanging upside down from a hot-air balloon.
“That’s beautiful,” Rachel says.
“Right?”
“What’s it called?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“No I won’t.”
They listen without speaking for a while. Darren breathes through his lips, which are quite dry. He closes his eyes, maybe in order to think about Rachel. When he opens them, she’s looking at him, smiling. A nice chunk of late-afternoon sunlight is coming through his window and passing not that far from Rachel. All the dust specks illuminated inside it seem to matter somehow. Maybe Rachel is beautiful, maybe he could love her, maybe his life would be ten times better had he been born in Minneapolis, or in 1936, or whenever this song was first recorded. Like what if you don’t have to be alone in your whale? Like what if that’s the point? To find the right person to sit there in the whale with you.
When the song ends, Darren starts it over. He makes sure Rachel can tell he’s doing this. She seems to swallow something when she notices this is what he’s doing. He loves this song so much right now, it makes him a little sad. Like his life will never be good enough to deserve this as part of its sound track. The guy on the sax holds some of his notes for so long, bending them a bit at the same time. It makes you feel like you’re riding in the hot-air balloon. Or that you are the hot-air balloon. That he and his saxophone are inflating. With helium, and something else, something that makes it feel really good and just a little bad to be filled up like this.
So Darren goes and joins her on the bed. There are easily ten thousand things he’d like to tell her right now, and another ten thousand he wouldn’t mind asking her. But instead he lets some combination of gravity and desire and soft mattress bring their shoulders together.
And then they’re kissing again, this time because of Darren. And then they’re lying back on his bed. He’s so much bigger than her, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
“I missed you, Darren,” she tells him. He didn’t miss her, but maybe he should have. He could have sat alone in his room, listening to this song, wishing she were here like she’s here right now. Instead he’s wishing she’s the one he can’t get over.
The garage door starts opening. They sit up. They stand up. Just before they leave his room to go back downstairs: “ ‘Day Dream.’ ”
“Huh?” she asks.
“That’s the name of the song.”
She takes his hand and leads him back downstairs.
4 Physical Components of the Verdict Darren’s Mom Quickly Delivered to Darren on Her Way out the Door to Get the Candles
1. Shoulders raised
2. Eyebrows raised
3. Bared-teeth smile
4. (After lowering shoulders and eyebrows, and un-baring her teeth), the words “She’s cute!” mouthed
4 Interpretations of These Components
1. The shoulders: something like, “Isn’t this fun?”
2. The eyebrows: “Lucky you!”
3. The teeth: “Kind of crazy, but pretty neat, too!”
4. The mouthed words are more complicated. But if Darren had to guess, then he’d guess something like: “Though I’m certainly not focusing here on anything sexual, per se, I am pleased that this fairly attractive, rather wholesome, and probably well-behaved girl appears interested in you, and I strongly encourage you to be interested in her as well, because, let’s face it, your social calendar has been awfully empty of late, and maybe this is just what you need, so I’m going to do my part to, you know, give you two some time alone, because, just between you and me, we totally have Shabbat candles, I just made that up!”
4 Questions That Nate Asks and Then Immediately Answers Himself Right After Being Introduced to Rachel Downstairs
1. You’re the piano player, right? Right.
2. Hey, if I could unearth that old Casio keyboard we got like nine hundred years ago, would you be willing to rock out with me and the bro-ham? I’ll take that as a yes.
3. How ya feeling about watching us be Jewish for dinner? Pretty psyched, I bet.
4. Guess how many jobs I now have? Zero!
14 Observations Nate Quietly Shares with Darren While Rachel Is in the Bathroom
1. Dude.
2. I can’t believe the gods arranged home delivery for you.
3. You must have really suffered in some previous life.
4. I’m completely serious about that, by the way.
5. And the dyed-black hair, man.
6. It’s like your stinking destiny to wind up with a girl who dyes her hair black.
7. Which isn’t my thing.
8. But hey, different strokes for different folks and all that.
9. She’s quality, I’m serious.
10. You can just tell.
11. Like right away.
12. You need not worry about my hanging around this evening.
13. Insane.
14. Totally insane.
3 Medical Supplies Darren’s Mom Presents to Him upon Her Return, Along with Her Instructions
1. A red and white box (“Take a couple of these now, I don’t think the others are helping.”)
2. A green and blue box (“Take two of these before you go to bed, they’ll help you sleep. Knock you right out.”)
3. A travel pack of Kleenex (“These have aloe in them, so your poor nose doesn’t end up raw.”)
3 Bits of Dress-up Nate Is Wearing When He Comes Up from the Basement, Casio Keyboard in Hand
1. A black felt fedora
2. An oversize pair of yellow plastic sunglasses with purple lenses
3. A pink feather boa
3 Musical Acts Rachel (Now Wearing the Boa) Mentions to Nate (Still Wearing the Fedora) After He Asks Her, “So What Do You Listen to Other Than Classical?” While Darren (for Whom Everything Is Now Purple) Follows Them to the Garage and Helps Set Up the Keyboard
1. THE BEATLES
“The Beatles don’t count,” Nate says.
“Why not?” Rachel asks.
“Because everyone loves the Beatles.”
“So?”
“Okay, fine, so what’s your favorite song of theirs?”
“Favorite? That’s impossible.”
“Fine. Favorite two. Or three.”
“Hmm. Okay. ‘Penny Lane.’ Uh, ‘Martha My Dear.’ And ‘Lady Madonna.’ ”
“You like Paul.”
“You don’t?”
“What else? Someone else.”
2. ELTON JOHN
“Seriously?” Nate says.
“Yes, seriously. What?”
“Nothing. Noted. Next.”
3. JONI MITCHELL
“Right on,” Nate says.
“I’m glad you approve.”
“You like anyone who still exists?”
“I told you he was kind of a dick sometimes,” Darren says.
“You won’t like the current stuff I like.”
“How do you know?” Nate asks.
“Because you’re not a twelve-year-old girl.”
“But you still are?”
“No comment.”
“Meaning in spirit or something?”
“Da
rren, do you guys play here a lot?”
“C’mon, Rachel,” Nate says. “You have to tell me.”
“Sort of,” Darren says.
3 Hugely Popular Musical Acts Nate Accuses Rachel of Liking, Only One of Which She Denies
1. Too embarrassing to mention
2. Worse than #1
3. This is one that not even Rachel likes
3 Chords Nate Calls Out and Starts Playing Over and Over Until Rachel (on Keyboards, Obviously) and Darren (Bass, Duh) Join In
1. G
2. C
3. D
4 Stages of Darren’s Experience of Playing a Certain Mega Teenybopper Hit
1. Playing competently.
2. But still feeling like the distant point on their pop-music triangle. There’s something Nate and Rachel are sharing that Darren can’t really share with them. It might be a sense of abandon. As in, you decide to play some arguably stupid song you’ve told yourself to hate a hundred times, whether or not it deserves to be hated at all. But then you start playing it, and you realize it’s kind of a cool song, or at least a very fun song to play.
3. Getting into it. Finally, because what’s the big deal?
4. Only then remembering you hate it and that you maybe (no, you definitely) judge the crap out of people who do like this song. Making it so you can’t totally give yourself over to the song right now, even though why not? Because what would be so wrong with just enjoying this song (and your rendition of it) for a measly three minutes? Who would care? Who would think less of you for it? Certainly not Rachel or Nate. They’re having the time of their lives. And no one else is even here. Leaving only you. It’s you who won’t let yourself. You idiot loser.
7 Accoutrements Assembled for the Sabbath Meal
1. Two silver candlesticks
2. Two candles
3. One silver wine goblet
4. Some red wine
5. One ceramic challah platter
6. One poppy-seed challah
7. One challah cover, which says in reddish-orange Hebrew lettering on top, SHABBAT SHALOM
11 Physical Acts His Mom Performs Before Even Saying the Prayer for the Candles
Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You Page 20
