by Judy Blume
She was hoping no one would ask because Abby had told her to invite Bru and she hadn’t. She didn’t want to worry about him tonight, about whether or not he was enjoying himself. She wanted to keep her reunion with Caitlin to herself. “You’ve never been in love,” she said. “You don’t understand.”
“If being in love means giving up your freedom, not to mention your opportunities,” Caitlin said, “then I haven’t missed anything.”
30
THE FOLLOWING CHRISTMAS, when she was a junior, Vix took Bru to Santa Fe. They drove out in his truck, listening to Bob Marley, Elvis Costello, James and Carly. Sometimes she worried they were acting old, settled, more tired than excited when they were together. But that would change, wouldn’t it, when she was out of school? The real world couldn’t be this hard.
The stories she heard at school about guys’ behavior made her appreciate Bru even more. He was so sweet and loving, always concerned about her. Sometimes she wished they’d met later so it could all be new and fresh again. Those feelings. That rush. How did couples who’d been together for years manage to keep it exciting?
When they got to Santa Fe he found a cheap room in a sleazy motel on Cerrillos Road. She would stay at the house. It wasn’t until they got there that she discovered her mother had accompanied the Countess to Key West. “It’s the emphysema,” her father said. “She can’t take the high altitude anymore. She needs your mother’s help getting settled.”
Her father tried. He put up the old tabletop tree decorated with the gold and silver balls Tawny kept packed in a hatbox on the top shelf of the hall closet. He roasted a turkey, made mashed potatoes and creamed onions, brought an apple pie home from the restaurant. Lewis was away for the holidays, with a friend’s family, planning to enlist the second he graduated from high school. But Ed invited Lanie and her family up from Albuquerque. She had two babies by then, and this was the first time Vix had seen either one of them. They had green snot dripping out of their noses and pacifiers stuck in their mouths like valves. It was a wonder they could breathe. Vix held one feverish child, then the other, trying to find some genetic connection.
“They look like him,” Lanie said, “Jimmy.” Lanie looked drained, haggard, ten years older than Vix. Vix wished they could take out the old Barbies and play on the floor. This time she’d let Lanie use Barbie’s Dream House. Jimmy didn’t show up for dinner, not that Lanie expected him to. He was probably at his brother’s house getting stoned, she said.
At the end of the day, when Lanie got into her truck with the children and the Christmas toys, she hit on Vix for money. “I work my ass off shoveling manure while he sits around getting high. My life sucks.” Vix felt like telling Lanie she was working her ass off, too, making every penny count, but Jesus, she was a student at Harvard and Lanie was existing on food stamps so she ran back into the house and dug fifty dollars out of her wallet.
“Thanks,” Lanie said, pocketing the money. “Your guy is gorgeous. Marry him while you can.”
Vix was surprised. “I wouldn’t have expected you to recommend marriage.”
“Yeah, well … I didn’t exactly plan on winding up like this.”
“Get out of it then,” Vix said. “Get your life together. You could move in with Dad, go back to school. You can’t just give up.”
Lanie’s mouth hardened. “You come back here once in three years and think you can fix everything just like that? You don’t know shit about any of us. Tawny’s gone for good, not that Dad will admit it. He’s got some cow at work, not that he’ll admit that either. You think she’s going to put up with me and these two?” The kids were asleep, the baby in a car seat, Amber slumped against him, breathing heavily. Didn’t Lanie know it was illegal to drive with an unprotected child?
“Are those bullet holes?” Vix asked, eyeing the damage to the door of the truck.
“Just some jerk at the trailer park shooting up everything in sight,” Lanie told her, turning on the ignition. “Nothing personal.”
Vix drove to the cemetery with her father. It was the first time she’d visited Nathan’s grave since she’d left for college. She stopped at Kaune’s to buy a poinsettia in a plastic pot and when they got there, she set it in front of the simple marker.
Nathan William Leonard
1970–1982
Rest in Peace
Then she asked her father for some time alone. He nodded and walked away. She kneeled at the foot of the grave.
Ed
HE CAN SEE HER HANDS moving. She’s talking to Nathan. Does she still feel guilty for those summers away? He hopes not. He should tell her Nathan understood. Nathan always defended her. Took off after Tawny every time she bad mouthed Vix. How that boy loved her! He remembers taking the two of them on a camping trip in the RV. Nathan must have been six or seven. The way they’d laughed together! Vix, pushing him along a trail in his chair, uphill, then down … too fast … too fast … The surprise when he’d fallen. The fear in her eyes. Turned out to be only a bruised elbow. Decided not to tell Tawny. Their secret. Just the three of them.
How much does she know about Tawny and him? Did Lanie tell her he’s seeing someone? Not that he wants it this way. He wants Tawny to come home. But she says it’s over. They should both try to make new lives. What does that mean … a new life? A new life with Frankie? Frankie’s okay. Makes him laugh. Long time since a woman made him laugh.
What about Vix and the boyfriend? Does she love him? He can’t tell. Hard to believe she’s a junior at Harvard. His daughter. A good kid, Vix. Maybe not a kid anymore. A woman. Yes. She looks like a woman now. He can feel the tears starting. Tawny hates it when he cries. Calls him weak. Maybe he is weak. So what? How come he can’t talk to them … to his daughters? Do they know he loves them? Especially Vix. Does she know?
ON THE WAY HOME her father said, “He’s a nice boy.” At first she thought he was talking about Nathan, until he asked, “Are you happy?”
For a minute she considered letting down her guard, telling him how uncertain she was about life and love and everything in between. Then she thought better of it, given what Lanie had told her about Tawny and him.
“So that’s where you come from,” Bru said on the morning they left.
“Yes, that’s where I come from.” As soon as she said it, she started to cry. She heard Tawny’s voice warning her, Save your tears for something important, Victoria. But this was important, wasn’t it? Besides, she couldn’t stop. She’d be eating a burger in some joint on the highway and it would start out of nowhere, tears flooding her eyes, a lump in her throat making it impossible to swallow. Or she’d be brushing her teeth before bed in some motel and catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror, just as her face contorted and the tears began. She wept for Nathan, for Lanie, for her father, and maybe for herself. She no longer knew her family, and they certainly didn’t know her.
At first Bru was sympathetic. He held her that first night, until she was able to fall asleep. But the following night, when he began to stroke her thigh and she didn’t respond, he turned away, hurt. He didn’t get it. He thought it had to do with him. The next time the tears began they were in the truck, just crossing into Virginia. “Here we go again …” he said, pulling off at a rest stop. He jammed on the brakes. “You want anything?”
She shook her head.
He was gone for a long time. When he came back he handed her a cranapple juice and a bag of pretzels. “Whatever it is, get over it, Victoria … just get over it, okay?”
By the time they got to Boston and she was still at it he was angry. “I don’t know you anymore.”
“Maybe you never did.”
“Yeah, right … but either way this is getting …” He turned away from her. “I think we need a break.”
If he expected her to argue he was mistaken. She nodded her head calmly and just like that, with no discussion, no questions, no anything, they separated.
Bru
HE’S ALWAYS WAITING and worrying she�
�s going to end it. Always looking for signs, expecting the worst. So he jumps the gun, says it out loud before she can. She doesn’t even cry. Nothing. That proves it, doesn’t it? Jeez … she cries all the way home, then he tells her he needs a break and she just sits there like she’s made of stone. After he drops her off he’s shaking so bad he has to pull off the road, afraid he’ll plow into somebody if he doesn’t.
Back on the Vineyard he has a beer with his uncle. Unloads his problems with Victoria. His uncle keeps nodding. Tell me about it, he says. They say one thing, they mean another. No way to understand them. I know it hurts but there’s other fish in the sea. And they’ll be jumping for you before long.
Star comes on to him, suggests they get together. So they do. In the storeroom of her shop, on the floor, between cartons of chewable vitamin C and ginseng. Her breasts are small and lopsided. She makes animal sounds as she comes. There are other fish in the sea, he keeps telling himself.
Do me again, Star says, an hour later. So he does her again.
But when he falls asleep, he dreams only of Victoria.
31
ON JANUARY28, the Challenger shuttle blew up during takeoff, killing all the astronauts aboard, including Christa McAuliffe, and that night Vix fell apart, crying uncontrollably, banging her fists against the wall. What was the point? You worked your ass off, you struggled to get someplace, and wham! just like that, it could all come crashing down. Nothing made sense.
She’d suppressed her feelings about Bru until that moment. But just like the shuttle, their love had come crashing down, over in a flash. Maybe the Countess was right after all. Live for the moment. There might be no tomorrow. And even if there is, nobody really gives a damn.
Her hysteria frightened Maia, who ran down the hall to find Paisley. When the truth came out, she and Paisley exchanged such looks! “You broke up with Bru and you didn’t tell us?” Maia asked. “How could you keep something like that to yourself?”
But she was a master at keeping it all to herself. She’d learned at the feet of an even greater master, hadn’t she? Deny … deny … deny …
When they’d returned from vacation they’d had two weeks of reading time, two weeks to prepare for exams. She couldn’t tell them about Bru then, couldn’t allow herself to think about it. And if the shuttle hadn’t blown up she might have made it through the semester without confronting reality. “We didn’t exactly break up,” she explained. “We’re taking time off.” That was the truth, wasn’t it? They hadn’t broken up. No one ever said they were breaking up.
“Whose idea … his or yours?” Maia asked.
“We agreed.”
“Who suggested it?”
“Does it matter?”
“Just tell me, okay …”
“He did.”
“Then he’s an idiot and you’re better off without him.”
Maia
VICTORIA CAN BE so secretive! It doesn’t make being her friend easy. But for better or worse, they are friends. And friendship is what’s on her mind as she sits alone at the medical clinic waiting to be seen. She’s not going to stand back and watch Victoria flush it all down the toilet because of some guy. She’s not going to let her jeopardize her scholarship. They have two classes together and she happens to know Victoria hasn’t been keeping up with her reading. She’ll do whatever’s necessary to help —if only she doesn’t have cancer, because she’s discovered a dark spot on her foot that she’s almost sure is a melanoma. She just hopes it’s not too late.
When her name is called she steps into the cubicle where a young doctor holds a magnifying glass to her foot and examines the spot. He doesn’t think it’s anything, he tells her, but he measures it anyway, then draws its shape on a page in her medical record. Come back in a month, he tells her, sooner if you notice any change.
You’re not going to do a biopsy?
There’s really nothing to biopsy at this point. He reads the concern in her face. You don’t have cancer if that’s what you’re thinking. So relax …
How can he be so sure without a biopsy?
Are you stressed-out? he asks.
What, is he kidding? Of course she’s stressed-out. She’s a junior at Harvard, isn’t she?
CAITLIN CALLED from L.A. on a blustery winter day. “I couldn’t take another minute in London. It’s been so gray, so damp. I thought I’d never feel warm again. I’m visiting Sharkey. He’s so involved with whatever it is he’s studying he barely has time to see me, which is just as well because you’ll never guess who I ran into out here.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Tim Castellano.”
“Tim Castellano!” She hadn’t thought about him in years, not since high school. The story broke just a couple of months after the summer they’d baby-sat Max. It made the cover of People. Tawny brought a copy home from the supermarket. “Did you have any inkling while you were working for them, Victoria?”
“No,” Vix had lied, thinking of the hardness inside his pants when she’d thrown herself over the seat and landed on his lap.
“Imagine having an affair while your wife is pregnant … and walking out on her the day you bring the baby home from the hospital. Despicable. I’ll bet this ruins his career.”
It didn’t. He’d left TV behind for feature films, while Loren’s career just fizzled.
Vix had brought the magazine to school to show Caitlin. “An eighteen-year-old model?” she’d cried. “He left Loren for some eighteen-year-old from New Zealand when he could have had me?”
“Aren’t you glad he didn’t?”
“I just wanted to have sex with him, Vix. I didn’t want him to leave his marriage. And I still think he’d have been a good one for my first. At least he’d have known what he was doing.”
Vix thwacked her across the butt with the magazine. Caitlin said, “Someday I’m going to finish what I started with him.”
And here she was, six years later, finishing what she’d started.
“I didn’t have to seduce him or anything,” Caitlin told her. “All I had to say was ‘Remember me?’ and he said, ‘How could I forget, Spitfire?’ So we met for a drink … I was wearing white, everybody wears white out here, and one thing led to another.”
“So how was it?” Vix asked, angry at herself for caring.
“Actually, the first time was fantastic … we were both so hot we hardly had a chance to take off our clothes … and God, Vix, he’s got an incredible Package … but once I’d satisfied my curiosity … well, we didn’t have that much to say to one another. Two weeks was more than enough.”
Vix looked out the window. It was still snowing. And she had a cold that wouldn’t go away. She also had two papers due. So she didn’t want to think about Tim Castellano’s Package or how warm and sunny it must be in L.A., or why she was killing herself at school while Caitlin was running around in something white, making it with movie stars.
“It’s so weird out here. There’s so much insecurity. You wouldn’t believe how insecure most of these people are.” She took a breath. “Why are you sniffling that way? Do you have a cold?”
“Everybody here has colds.”
“You should transfer to a school out here. It’s eighty-something today. Then we could room together. It would be like the old days.”
“I’m a junior, Caitlin. You don’t transfer at the end of your junior year.”
“I forgot.”
“Anyway, it’ll be spring soon.”
“Not soon enough from the sound of your voice.” Another big breath. “So, how’s Bru?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
She wasn’t going to tell her they were taking time off, that she’d heard from Trisha he’d already found another woman, Star, the owner of the health food store. “I mean I have two papers due and I’ve got a job working three nights a week so how am I supposed to find time for a social life?”
“I’ll call you next week wh
en you’re in a better mood, that is, if you think you’ll be in a better mood next week.”
“Try me in two weeks.”
“Fine. Two weeks.”
Sharkey
HE DOESN’T HAVE time to worry about her. He’s at the lab eighteen hours a day. Why’d she have to come to L.A. now?
How about an introduction? his lab partner asks.
I don’t think so.
Come on … she’s your sister, isn’t she?
She’s not available, he tells him.
She puts out vibes, man …
Forget about it! he says like he means it.
Okay, sure … no problem.
She lures him away for dinner one night, to some place on a hill with fancy prices. It’s been a long time since he’s been to a real restaurant. At this rate you’re going to fly through your money, he tells her.
She finds that funny. You worry about money, Shark?
Let’s put it this way. I don’t spend twenty-five bucks on a solo pizza.
That’s sweet.
Don’t play cute with me, Caitlin. I’m your brother, remember?
Are you trying to tell me something?
Get a job … go back to school. Do something with your life.
I am doing something, Sharkey. It’s just different from what you’re doing.
32
VIX AGREED to go home with Maia over spring break, to the white clapboard house in Morris Township with the pool and the tennis court. She found Maia’s family warm and welcoming, intellectually stimulating. So how come Maia was always complaining? “They’re controlling,” she told Vix. “And the sibling rivalry is so intense.”
She and Maia took a drive to the shore, to Maia’s cousin’s house. He and his friends were out on the beach, tossing around a Frisbee. She wouldn’t let herself think of other games of Frisbee on other beaches. Andy was a second-year medical student at Penn, short, compact, with good shoulders and arms, blond hair, light eyes. He was funny, a gabber, the opposite of Bru in every way.
