Where Love Goes

by Joyce Maynard

  “That Snapple is really something,” says Tim.

  Sandy asks if he’s tasted the Mountain Berry. It’s the best, she thinks. Maybe Jeff can get him some free.

  The phone rings. Ursula runs to pick it up. A student is calling to ask Tim about the bog trip on Saturday.

  “They shouldn’t call you all the time like that,” Ursula says. “Somebody could be trying to get us and the line would be busy.”

  “They’d call back,” says Tim. He’s clearing away the dishes. Sandy and Jeff look uncomfortable. In his infant seat, Keith is beginning to fuss. He pulls off the hat Ursula had put on him and begins to chew it.

  “When can I open my presents?” Ursula asks again.

  “After cake time,” Tim reminds her.

  “I can’t help it,” she says. “I’m just so excited.” She looks at the phone again.

  “Why don’t we go ahead and give her the presents now?” Claire says. “Sandy and Jeff probably need to get home soon.”

  Ursula opens one of the smaller packages first—the day-of-the-week panties. Then the smell markers. Then the puzzle. Then she opens Sandy and Jeff’s gift, a coloring book based on the TV series “Full House.”

  She opens Claire’s presents next—a dress she has ordered from the Hannah Anderson catalog with matching purple tights. Claire has also made Ursula a sewing kit with five different colors of rickrack and sequins and tiny snaps the size for making doll clothes and a little china thimble with pansies painted on it. Also a pattern for Barbie clothes, and some fabric.

  “I love this,” Ursula says. “I wish I knew how to sew.”

  “I’ll teach you,” says Claire.

  There’s one package left, the Bend ’N Stretch Barbie. Ursula runs to her father when she gets it and hugs him. “This was just what I wanted,” she says. “And blond is my favorite.”

  “So,” he says, clearing away the wrapping paper. “Who wants cake?” Sandy and Jeff say they’d better be going. They need to put Keith to bed.

  Ursula looks around the room. He is probably saving the black velvet box for the very end, she figures.

  He carries in the cake with its eight candles. She makes a wish. It’s many hours earlier in New Zealand probably. Maybe that’s the problem.

  When they’re all done with their cake, Tim tells Ursula it’s time to get ready for bed. “Even eight-year-olds have bedtimes,” he says. “I’ll be up in a minute to read you a story.”

  She lies in bed waiting for him. This will be the moment he gives her the ring.

  He comes in and snuggles up next to her. “I hope you had a good day,” he says. She tells him she did. She loves the Barbie.

  “I know I didn’t give you as much as usual this year,” he says. “Money’s been so tight.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. She closes her eyes. When she opens them, the black box will be lying there on her bed.

  “I do have one more thing for you, actually,” he says. And then he reaches into his pocket.

  It’s a night-light.

  Sally goes on break at three o’clock, and unless he’s working himself, Travis skateboards over to Friendly’s most days to join her. She only gets fifteen minutes, but to Travis every second he gets to spend with her is precious. He’s usually there by quarter till, waiting. Not just sitting around, naturally; Travis never sits when he’s got his board, particularly not when there’s a parking lot with good curbs. He has waxed the curb in front of Friendly’s, actually—a section of it—so he goes extra fast. If Sally happens to have a second there where she can look up to glance out the window, she will catch sight of him, in midair most likely. He’s an acrobat, a landlocked surfer. Better than a surfer, actually. Who couldn’t ride a wave, when you think about it? Travis rides concrete, propelled by nothing but the shifting of his own lanky body and the explosive strength in his legs and arms and his concave abdomen. He knows every nick in Friendly’s curb, also every line of his board, which he shaves down and alters almost weekly. Put Travis in a physics class and he’s brain-dead. But here in Friendly’s parking lot, he’s a skateboard scientist. A magician.

  He does it for Sally. The way some people write poems and songs or paint pictures for a person, Travis dedicates his skateboarding to her. Everything he does now he does with her in his mind.

  He wants to get laid, of course. That part is driving him crazy. But how he feels about Sally isn’t just about that anymore. He also wants to hold her hand and ride around in his car with her. He wants to bring her things—like the peach he stopped to buy at the farmers’ market on his way over to Friendly’s. He is saving up to buy her an ankle bracelet with both their names engraved inside. Fourteen-carat gold.

  Travis dreams about Sally every night. Sally and skateboarding. Last night it was both: He dreamed the two of them were out on a road someplace all alone, and she was telling him how much she loved him, and he was kissing her and she had her arms around him, and they were doing it. Having sex. Then he was on his board again, and he did this jump he’s never seen anybody pull off, not even on a video. A total midair sideways flip, landing on his back wheels. Nobody was watching but her. The only one that matters.

  That’s the move he’s working on today as he waits for her, and he almost has it, too. He adjusts his weight and throws back his arms in a way that lifts his board and his body clear off the ground. He hopes she’s watching him from the window. If she does, she will see something amazing: his skateboard nearly perpendicular to the ground, his body defying gravity, his back arched, his wheels spinning. Maybe astronauts have had this feeling. Maybe skydivers, and certain birds.

  So far in his sixteen years the farthest Travis has ever gone from home was the eighth-grade trip to Boston to walk the Freedom Trail. When he came home he told everybody one trip to the city was enough for him: Too dirty. Too noisy. Too crowded. Good tar, just not enough open space to make use of it.

  But since being with Sally, it’s like Travis’s whole world has opened up. He has to accomplish things. He wants to go to L.A.,for the national exhibitions where the pros compete. He wants to take her with him.

  Nobody will know who he is when they walk of course. Nobody will have seen a board like his, sanded like he’s done, a full quarter-inch thinner at the front edge than it is in back. “Who’s the kid?” someone will ask when they call out his number. “What kind of board is that?”

  “It’s just some nobody from the stick,” somebody will answer. “He probably got lost on his way to the soapbox derby.”

  The music playing is Boyz II Men. The surface is the slickest he’s ever skateboarded on. He sails out like Aladdin on his carpet. But faster. Lifts off. Lands upright. Flips again.

  “Jesus,” somebody says. “Did you see that?” The crowd is going nuts.

  The music’s blaring. People are out of their seats. A representative from AirWalks is making his way down to the sidelines to talk sponsorship.

  But Travis doesn’t have time for him. He has to see Sally first. He skates up to her and lifts her up onto his board, puts his arms around her, right there in the middle of the championships.

  “I was so proud of you,” she says. They kiss. They don’t walk out of there. They fly.

  This is what he is thinking about as Sally steps out the door of Friendly’s, in her pink and white uniform, with the HI I’M SALLY nametag pinned over her heart. She is so beautiful. He hands her the peach.

  “You nut,” she says, laughing. She takes a bite. Juice drips down her chin. “Now look what you made me do.”

  He doesn’t wipe it off. He just kisses her.

  Often These days Sally has resisted going to her dad’s house because that means leaving her friends. Not seeing Travis. But all this week Sally had been looking forward to going to her dad’s on Friday, for Labor Day Weekend. Not that she pictured herself having some corny heart-to-heart father-daughter talk. It’s just that all this stuff that’s been happening with Travis wanting to have sex all the time has her con
fused. All those years she was in such a rush to grow up and move on to the next step. Now she guesses she’s there and she wishes things could just be simple again.

  She has this idea she and her dad can paint a mural on the ceiling of her old room. She’s got drawings made already. Her paints are packed in her overnight bag. She’ll make a big batch of oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies and they’ll go to the drive-in. She wouldn’t even mind it if her dad takes out his guitar and they sing all those old folk songs from the sixties.

  When he picked them up at her mom’s, her dad said he had something to tell them. “You know Melanie?” he said. Of course she knew Melanie. Melanie babysat for them ever since Sally was seven or eight.

  “She and I have been seeing each other, kind of,” he said. “I’d been meaning to tell you.”

  Pete was totally silent. “What do you mean seeing each other?” Sally said. “You mean she’s your girlfriend? She’s just a few years older than me.” She felt nauseous.

  “Sometimes a person’s chronological age isn’t the most important thing, if they’re really tuned in to each other,” he said. Pete was fiddling with the dials of the radio.

  “She’s really looking forward to seeing you guys,” her dad said. “She says she’s always thought you two are totally cool.”

  Melanie’s lying in the front yard in her bikini when they pull up.

  “Great earrings,” she says to Sally as she approaches the car. She’s skinnier than Sally these days. Last summer, when she used to come over for cookouts sometimes (and more, Sally realizes now), she and Sally sometimes shared clothes, but it would no longer be possible.

  “How’s summer school?” Sally asks her.

  “Best thing I can say is it’s over,” Melanie says. “I couldn’t wait to get back home and hang out with you guys.” Her arm is wrapped around Sally’s dad’s waist as she says this. She hooks a finger in his belt loop. Sally does that with Travis. Among other things.

  “I brought the new Rage Against the Machine tape,” Sally tells Melanie. As long as they keep talking, everything must be normal.

  “Cool,” she says. “Your dad and me went to see them last week in Providence, right, Sammy? I wasn’t sure they’d let an old fart that’s forty-one into Lollapallooza, but they did.”

  Sally had wanted to go to Lollapallooza herself. But Travis had to work and she couldn’t get a ride.

  “What do you think?” Sally’s dad says. “Melanie’s only been here a couple weeks and she’s already planted flowers all over the place. What was the name of these again, Mel?”

  “Chrysanthemums, you idiot!” she shrieks, throwing a handful of grass at him. “Jeez, he doesn’t know a thing about plants, does he? You should’ve seen all the weeds I had to pull out.”

  Sally’s mom always hated chrysanthemums. There used to be peonies in this bed, and delphiniums, and roses.

  Melanie runs ahead into the house. Her bikini bottom is stuck in her ass. She pulls it down and looks over her shoulder, laughing. “I hope nobody saw that!” she says.

  Melanie has made chocolate-chip cookies. She has also painted hearts around the kitchen window and put a vase of daisies on the table. When Sally goes to the bathroom she finds one of Melanie’s bras hanging over the shower and some bikini underpants. Her dad’s bedroom smells like incense.

  “Your dad told me your idea about going to the drive-in tonight,” Melanie says. “I love it.”

  The two of them sit in the front seat, naturally—Sally’s dad and Melanie. Sally’s in the back with Pete.

  “Don’t you think your dad looks just like Keanu Reeves?” Melanie asks her. “Only better looking?”

  “My dad looks like my dad!” Sally wants to scream at her. Not some movie star. Not somebody’s boyfriend.

  It’s past midnight when they get home from the drive-in. Pete wanted to stay till the end of this really dumb movie with the guy from Waynes World in it. Lying in her bed in the room next to the one her dad evidently shares with Melanie now, Sally concentrates on not listening for any sounds. She imagines them moving on the mattress like a pair of jewel thieves. She tries not to picture her dad, so she pictures Travis instead, with his hard, insistent penis and his searching tongue. She hears faint laughter and the sound of her brother’s Crash Test Dummies tape. She remembers how, when she was little, her mother used to lie in this bed with her sometimes when she had a hard time getting to sleep, and the song she used to sing.

  “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Daddy’s going to buy you a mockingbird.…”

  She thinks about the night her parents told her they were separating, and how her brother had gone up to her room and knocked over her dollhouse—trashed it like a rock star. She thinks about the time she and Travis were making out in the janitor’s closet at school and he was so heated up he came all over her jeans, and she had to use a roll of paper towels to clean herself off. She thinks about the time she and her dad built a model of the solar system for her fourth-grade science fair and of how, when her brother broke Jupiter the day before it was due, her dad had stayed up most of the night making a new paper-mâché planet with her.

  She remembers the time, years ago, when Melanie used to come over almost every Saturday night to babysit when her parents went out. It was Melanie, in fact, who taught Sally how to make oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies. She was always their favorite babysitter.

  Sally tries to picture herself kissing Mr. Edmunds, whose kids she babysits now and then, Saturday nights when Travis has an away game. Nobody would say he looks like Keanu Reeves. Dan Ackroyd, maybe.

  Eventually Sally falls asleep. She wakes early—before dawn—to the sound of muffled cries and whispers in the next room. When she tells her dad at breakfast that she needs to get back home early—home meaning her mom’s house—on account of a big report that’s due, he doesn’t argue. He seems relieved.

  Sally says a prayer that when she gets home she won’t see Tim’s station wagon sitting out front, or his horrible kid’s pink bicycle.

  And she doesn’t. So she runs inside, never happier to be home.

  Claire is sitting up in bed reading when Sally finds her. Although Sally used to climb into bed with her mother all the time when she was little, it has been years since those days.

  “Have a good weekend?” Claire asks. “How’d the mural turn out?”

  “We didn’t get around to it,” Sally tells her. She stands in front of the mirror examining her stomach. Claire waits.

  “Pete behave himself?” Claire asks.

  “You know. The usual,” Sally tells her—though the truth is, she has never known her brother to be so subdued. “Dad wanted him to mow the lawn, but he said he had a stomachache. Then he sat around all afternoon on the couch watching a ball game and eating Wheat Thins.” She doesn’t mention Melanie.

  “I’m fat,” Sally says. She isn’t, of course.

  “You nut,” Claire tells her. This is their familiar routine. “You have a darling little body.” Sally’s sitting on the bed now. Claire puts an arm around her.

  They sit that way for a minute or two, not saying anything. Claire’s playing a CD of the Chieftains. “I don’t know how you can stand this music,” Sally tells her. “Every song sounds the same. Only my mother would listen to a group with bagpipes.” In fact, she says this with a certain pride.

  “It’s the ullean pipes,” Claire tells her. “There’s a big difference.”

  They’re silent again. Claire gets the feeling Sally wants to talk about something but doesn’t know how. She puts her head on Claire’s shoulder. Claire strokes her hair.

  “Something going on?” she says.

  “Not really. I was just remembering how we used to read in bed together.”

  “You could go get your driver’s ed manual and climb in,” Claire says.

  “I really should go to bed, anyway. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  Claire knows not to push. It’s enough just to have Sally come to her
this way and sit with her. She has been so preoccupied with Tim and Ursula, it’s been weeks since she’s talked with her daughter about anything more than doing the laundry or what time she needs to be picked up from Friendly’s.

  “I wish everything could be simple again,” Sally says.

  Claire knows what she means. All those years she was driving the car pool and hauling children to the beach, her marriage might not have been great, but there was an order and safety to her days. You understood when you got up what the day had in store for you. You changed the baby and put the laundry on and defrosted the chicken pieces and drove the car pool and cut the crusts off the sandwiches and looked over the math worksheets and put on the rice and cleared away the dishes and gave them their baths and read them a chapter of Wind in the Willows and turned out the lights, and you knew when you lay down to sleep yourself that you would do pretty much the same exact thing tomorrow. You knew nobody was going to rub your shoulders with iris-scented massage oil and whisper wonderful things in your ear, but you also knew you weren’t going to say a good-bye that would hurt worse than amputation. The possibilities—for joy, but also grief—were limited. Whereas the way her life is now, Claire’s like an astronaut whose tether has come loose in the middle of a space walk. No telling where she’ll end up, or if she’ll end up anywhere. More likely she’ll inhabit a state of perpetual floating.

  Sally thinks her own life is impossibly hard. “Oh, Mom,” she says. She sighs deeply.

  “Things are getting pretty serious between you and Travis, I guess, huh?” says Claire. She has talked to Sally about safe sex on numerous occasions, but now she’s wondering if maybe she needs to bring it up again.

  Sally punches the pillow and makes the same kind of frustrated, impatient sound Claire does sometimes when she’s working at the sewing machine and she can’t get the tension adjusted right. “When he’s not around, I think about him all the time, even when I don’t want to. When he’s around, he acts like a jerk a lot of the time and I wish he’d just leave. Then he does and I’m thinking about him again. I wish I never even had a boyfriend. This is my last one, definitely.”