by Han Nolan
"You mean you like me? You like me, like me?"
Ziggy keeps strumming the guitar, but he's staring right at me—right through me. "Is that so strange?"
"Uh, yeah. You're in college. You're going to be this big Hollywood musician-writer person. You're probably going to be famous someday. And I'm, I'm..." I shrug.
I don't know what I am, but as much as I fantasized about Ziggy and me, it wasn't for real, was it? It couldn't be for real, because we come from two different places—two different soul places. I would ruin his life. I know that. I'm a walking time bomb. It's okay with Lam, because so is he. We're trouble times two. When I think of this, I feel a little better about Lam. I feel like maybe it's okay he cheated on me, because he probably only cheated first, and given enough time, I probably would have cheated on him with Ziggy, or with somebody else. That's what I like about Lam. He's comfortable. He's trouble, but that's comforting somehow. Does that make sense? I'm used to trouble. I wouldn't know what to do with someone who has his shit together the way Ziggy does. Maybe I'd be bored. Yeah, bored, and I'd always be afraid of messing up. I'd be afraid of messing him up. I would hate to do that. He's like the perfect person. Lam and me, we fit. We're two messed-up people.
"Don't you know how wonderful you are?" Ziggy says. "You're different from all the girls I know. You're funny, and nicer than you ever let on, and you're smart in this different sort of way. You're so natural and confident."
"Me? Confident?"
"You're strong. You're a fighter. You come from the school of hard knocks, and I feel like such a weenie next to you sometimes." He stops playing and rests his arm in the curve of the guitar. "I'm older than you are, but sometimes I feel like you're older. You're, you're a powerful person, Elly. You make things happen."
"Me? Powerful? Look, Ziggy, I don't come from the school of hard knocks. My parents are well-educated teachers, and they're missionaries. I come from the planet of disaster, a disaster of my own making. I'm always making the wrong decisions. I'm always acting before I think. For once, I'm trying to think first, and what I think is if we ever got together, I'd ruin you in five seconds flat. Not on purpose. I think you're really hot and all, and it would be fun to kind of—you know, but that's all, and that's not good enough for either of us. I'm married now. I've got a baby on the way."
"Hey, would you sit down? I'm getting a crick in my neck," Ziggy says, so I sit, even though my back has been bugging me and it kind of feels better to just lean against the snack machine.
"I think I could handle your kind of trouble. Anyway, I think you underestimate us." He sets his guitar on the floor by the coffee table and inches closer.
I've unwrapped my bar and I take a bite. Half the bar comes off in my mouth. I bite into the half in my mouth and half again falls into my lap. I lift my arms. "See what I mean? Disaster." I scoop up the piece of bar and the crumbs and look at Ziggy. "What do you mean I underestimate us? I don't get that."
"I think we'd make a cool couple. I think you're going to go far, Elly. You just need to be challenged, that's all. And don't you know opposites attract? We'd be good for each other."
"Well, whatever. I'm married, so unless Lam divorces me, wherever I go, I'll be going with him."
"So you really love him, then?"
Ziggy's face kind of just droops, and his gray eyes get dark and smoky-looking—sad.
The baby kicks, and my heart skips a beat. "I don't know. I'm too mad at him to know how I feel right now. Maybe I just always loved the idea of us. I love who we used to be before we got married. It felt like we could conquer the world together and that there was a world to be conquered. We were fun. Life was fun. I guess I feel with you, that maybe the world has already been conquered, and that there would be nothing left for me to do—know what I mean?"
"That I'm boring?" He inches even closer, and because I take up the other half of the couch, I've got nowhere to go, so I kind of lean away from him, which is wicked uncomfortable.
"No. No, Ziggy, just—I don't know. Really, I don't. I don't know what I'm saying. I'm just blurting out whatever pops into my head, and that's never a good thing."
As I finish saying this, and before I even get all of it out of my mouth, Ziggy is on me. He kisses me on the lips, and there it is, that zing feeling that makes my toes curl and the baby do somersaults. It scares me. I don't want to like him more than Lam. I love Lam. I'm married to Lam. I want to keep on kissing Ziggy, and yet at the same time I want to push him away. I see out of the corner of my eye Ziggy's hand heading for my boobs and I push him off of me. "No, Ziggy. I can't. I'm married." I say this because it's the only defense I can think of. I don't really know how I feel, but getting groped in the counselors' break hut I know is wrong. I don't do it in the back of cars, and I don't do it in the middle of a kids' camp, either. I don't have time to say any of this, though, because while we're staring at each other, trying to figure out what really just happened, Lam shows up at the door.
"Knock, knock," he says.
I have my back to the door, so Ziggy sees him first, and he looks alarmed.
I turn around, and I see that Lam has a pot of geraniums in his hands—my favorite flowers.
I struggle to my feet. "Lam! What are you doing here? Do your parents know? Aren't you supposed to be teaching swimming?"
Lam enters the hut and hands me the pot of flowers while at the same time he kisses my cheek. "Yes, and yes," he says, in answer to my questions. "I just wanted to give you these and maybe talk to you. I've only got about fifteen minutes, so if you don't mind, Zig, I'd—"
Ziggy jumps up and bangs his head on the overhead lantern. He grabs at his guitar, fumbles, and almost drops it. "Sure, sure," he says, clutching the instrument to his chest. "I'll get out of your way. Later, Elly." Then he scoots out the door so fast you'd think Lam were threatening to beat him up, which he would have done if he knew what had just happened in here.
"What the hell is that all about?"
I shrug. "So, Lam, what was it you wanted to say to me? We only have a few minutes, you said."
He twists around and stares at me a second, then, coming to, he takes the plant from my hand and helps me to sit on the couch. He sits beside me and takes my hand and gazes into my eyes.
"I'm really, really sorry, Elly. I've just—I've been acting like a crud. I know it."
"Yeah, Lam. You totally made a fool of me. Everybody knew, except me. Now everybody's going around feeling sorry for me. It's terrible. And Gren, of all people. And you cheater! You cheated on me! We've only been married a little over a month, and you cheated on me. What does that say about our marriage?" I withdraw my hand from his, and Lam sits back on the couch.
"That it's a sham. Let's face it, El, we never would have married if you hadn't—if we hadn't had to."
"So, so, that's it? So it's over? Are we supposed to get a divorce now because you cheated and our marriage is a sham?" I feel dizzy all of a sudden, and it feels like the baby is using my belly as a punching bag. "We're about to have a baby, Lam!"
Lam stares down at his thumb a moment, then sticks the edge of it between his teeth and chews at a loose piece of skin. His nails are bitten down to the quick. Something about his hands, those nails, makes me feel sorry for him. I don't know why. I don't want to feel sorry for him. I want to hate him, and fight with him, but I feel tired, and I just want to get past the fight and make up. I want us to either agree to a divorce or agree to stay together.
"Well?" I say, still waiting for some kind of answer. "Do you love Gren?"
Lam sneers. "You know I don't. She was just—available, if you know what I mean. Come on, Elly, give me some credit."
"Why?"
Lam frowns. "Yeah, why. So, I guess you want a divorce. I guess we're going to give the baby to my parents—or your sister."
"I guess," I say, and my heart stops. "That would make everybody happy—your parents, my parents, my sister."
Lam gets this glint in his eye. "Well, screw them
. I'm not trying to make them happy. Screw them. We should just stay married and show 'em."
My heart starts up again. "Yeah, screw them. We could show 'em good. We could act like a real married couple, all lovey-dovey and responsible, and really show 'em. What do they know, anyway?"
"Yeah," Lam says. He starts working at the skin on his other thumb. "You know, I think I really love you, Elly. I haven't wanted to be married. I don't feel ready, but..."
"I love you, too, Lam. I love you, anyway, you crud. You're such a crud." I stand up, and he stands up, and he takes me in his arms and his skin's all cool from being in the lake. It feels so good. He feels so good. My first love. My only love. My husband. "I love you, Lam," I say.
"I love you, too, Elly."
Chapter Seventeen
LAM AND I plan to start all over again. I decide to push what happened with Ziggy in the break hut to the back of my mind and really concentrate on being a loving wife.
Lam and I agree to make an effort to be together whenever we can, so now during my break, I head down to the lake, teetering on the rocks and roots along the way, and watch Lam teach the campers swimming. He has the older kids, the ones who already know how to swim, and to tell the truth, he's not the best teacher, but they all love him 'cause he's cool. He struts around like some big important dude, swinging his whistle on a lanyard so it wraps and unwraps around his index finger. He's tall, and tan, and blond, and he's still kind of got a young boy's face instead of a man's, and the girls all seem to like that. Okay, and so do I. All the older girls flirt with him, and they don't care that I'm sitting right there watching them, but then again, they flirt with all the male counselors. Lam takes it all in stride like he knows he's good-1ooking and like the whole point of being down at the lake is to just strut back and forth for all the girls. He's always been like this, but now it kind of bothers me, after what happened with Gren.
On Tuesdays Lam has a bunch of boys to teach during my break time, and he's so totally different with them. He's gruff and makes them do laps endlessly, and he slouches in a deck chair the whole time, twirling his lanyard around his finger. I watch Jen and Gren teach their groups while I'm down there, and I have to admit Jen's a pretty good teacher. She's good because she's very serious, and I think she cares about the kids. It makes all the difference. It makes me wonder, do I care about my kids, the ones I work with, and the ones in my cabin? Or am I just here because I have to be? If I was told I didn't have to be here anymore, would I leave, even though the kids need someone to be in the cabin with them? The answer is, I don't know. I want to care. Maybe I do care, but I think that maybe I care even more about them liking me, and that gets in the way of me really seeing them. I make a note to myself to try to really see them, to pay attention more to who they are.
The ILs have changed everybody's schedule around for the second four weeks of camp, even though most of the kids here sign on for eight weeks, instead of two, or four, like at most camps. I figure their parents want to make sure they can see a difference in their kids' weight by the time they get them back. Already, most kids have lost at least eight pounds, with Josh Billingsgate losing the most at sixteen point four pounds, but he was pretty hefty to begin with, and in the camp rule book it says the more weight you have to lose, the faster it will come off.
Anyway, the ILs made sure Lam and I got the same day off this time so that we can spend quality time together. It's like the MIL finally gets it; if she really wants the baby, then she has to be nice to me, not jump all over me because she's mad I married her precious son, and if we decide to keep the baby, then it's better for the baby if Lam and I are actually happy together, so now she's so sweet to me it makes me want to barf. It feels so fake. Still, I guess it's better than getting blamed for everything that goes wrong at this camp.
So today, Lam, Ziggy, and I all have our day off at the same time, and I'm looking forward to the three of us having a good time. And yeah, okay, I know how much of a threat Ziggy could be to our marriage, but I'm not going to let anything happen. We can all just be friends. It can work, can't it?
The MIL surprised me this morning by handing me an envelope with fifty dollars in it. She said, "Go buy yourself a new dress today; my treat." That was pretty nice, but I don't want to buy a dress. I'm three and a half weeks away from my due date, and I feel like I ought to fix up our cabin better and get all the junk off the floor and put it in some drawers or something. I want to buy a chest with the money. I don't wear dresses normally; it's just that they're the only things comfortable right now. Everything else is too binding, including my underpants and the straps of my sandals. I can't wait to be rid of this baby inside me. It's really dragging me down. I want to sleep all the time now, but when I do lie down, I can't ever get comfortable.
I've been looking forward to my day off just so I could take it easy, maybe go into town for a bit, then get a bite to eat and take a long nap.
"So I was thinking," I say to Lam and Ziggy as we're heading down to the parking lot by the lake, "I want to go to this secondhand furniture store they've got in Rumford and see if I can pick up some kind of chest for my clothes. Then we can all go get pizza or something."
"Or you and me could go to the Adventure Center in Bethel, and then get some pizza," Lam says, taking my hand and helping me over the rocks, which I can barely see 'cause my stomach's in the way.
"No pizza," Ziggy says. "Remember, Elly, how dizzy you got when they served pizza here last week? You went chalk white like you were going to faint."
"Oh, yeah, and I felt all clammy. Yeah, that was bad, but maybe it was because it was fake cheese. It was that low-fat soy cheese crap."
Lam looks mad about something.
"What's wrong with you?" I ask.
Lam shrugs. "Nothing. I just thought we should have some time alone. No offense, Zig, but three's a crowd."
"But I've spent my days off at the library all alone every week. I'm ready for some fun. Come on. Let's have some fun—the three of us," I say.
"I wouldn't mind looking at that secondhand furniture place. I need a new chair for my desk in my apartment at school," Ziggy says.
"Since when is looking at other people's garbage considered fun?" Lam says. His voice sounds snarly.
We're at the cars now, and Lam opens the door to the passenger side of his Jeep for me. Ziggy stands aside and looks like he doesn't know if he's supposed to get in, too, or not.
"Come on, Ziggy," I say, then to Lam I add, "We can do the Adventure Center, but Ziggy's coming."
"Fine," Lam says, "but when our whole marriage falls apart because we have no time together, don't blame me."
Ziggy steps back from the car. "Okay, look guys. I don't want to cause any friction. You two go on and have fun. I'll be fine on my own. Just tell me where that furniture store is. I think I'll have a look around." I give Ziggy directions while Lam taps his fingers on the soft top of his Jeep. And I always thought Lam was a patient person.
The whole way into Bethel, Lam and I argue over Ziggy. Lam says we're too close and that it's worse than him and Gren because there was nothing really between them, but Ziggy and I clearly have a relationship going on.
"Yeah, nothing but sex with you and Gren," I say. "How much more intimate can you get?"
"Lots," Lam says, and I realize, thinking of Ziggy and some of our conversations and how I'd much rather be shopping at a used furniture store with him than going to the center with Lam, that maybe he's right, so I shut up about it and try to change the subject. Lam won't have it.
"What gives him the right to know that pizza makes you sick? Why didn't I know that? Why didn't you tell me that?"
We're riding down a long, steep, twisty hill, and Lam keeps looking over at me, and he's staring too long instead of keeping his eyes on the road. It makes me edgy. "Hey!" I shout. "First of all, I didn't even remember about the pizza, because I didn't consider the crap we ate real pizza. Then, second of all, you weren't there because you were busy screwing
Gren, so don't give me this hurt-little-boy act like I'm whispering secrets to Ziggy. Third, aren't we supposed to be having fun? Is this the fun part? Because I'm not smiling."
Lam calms down after that and pretty much keeps his eyes on the road, at least for a little while.
We do have fun together, and it almost feels like old times except I'm not high—just Lam is, and what I want to know is, did he always act so stupid when he was high and I just didn't notice, or is he just now acting stupid for some reason? He's driving like a maniac on purpose, speeding up and over Paradise Road like he thinks we're on a roller coaster. My baby doesn't like this one bit, but does Lam listen? No!
We spend a couple of hours at the arcade in the Adventure Center, and Lam gets into the zone, kind of like he's hypnotized, then we rent a canoe, which is crazy, I know, because we can paddle one anytime for free back at the camp, but it's not private and romantic like it is paddling alone on the Androscoggin River. It's such a gas, too, because I need Lam and two men to help me in and out of the canoe, and my end sinks down almost as far as Lam's does. Speaking of gas, man, do I have it. I read about getting gas in the "having a baby" books, but I didn't really get how bad the gas could be when you're pregnant. Still, Lam thinks it's a riot, and so we have a good time. We stay up where the river is lazy and just paddle along and talk, and Lam tells me he's thinking about opening a cigar store some day.
"A cigar store? Lam, you don't even smoke cigars."
"Yeah, but I'm planning on starting up. Lots of cool guys smoke cigars."
"But they stink."
"So does pot, and that never bothered you," Lam says.
We're in a really still spot on the river and we're not even paddling, just letting the canoe drift along. The sun is high and there's a breeze, and it's a perfect day.
"Still, it's a dumb idea," I say.
Lam flicks his paddle so water splashes on me. "No, it's not."
