by Claire Cook
. . . . .
I was eating tuna from a can. Dolphin-safe, extra-fancy solid white meat tuna. I'd drained it in the kitchen sink, poured some bottled lemon juice over it, swirled it around for a while, then drained it again. I put a dollop of mayonnaise on a paper plate, grabbed a plastic fork. I found paper towels, tore off two rectangles and tucked them under the plate. I managed to get a glass of milk into the hand that was holding the can of tuna. I carried everything into the living room.
Carefully, I arranged it all on the coffee table, leaving space in the center to stretch out my feet. I turned on the TV. Perfect timing, the opening photos of the Brady Bunch were still flashing while everyone sang about the way they all became the Brady Bunch. I speared a chunk of tuna, dipped it in the mayonnaise. The lemon juice gave it just the right tang, kept it from tasting too fishy.
Jan Brady was jealous because her older sister Marcia had so many boyfriends. Well, I could certainly relate to that. Except it was worse for me when I was Jan's age because it was my younger sister who had all the boyfriends. Christine was as softly feminine as I was gawky and angular, as irresistible as I was resistible. She was two years behind me in school but light-years ahead of me in the date department.
I caught another lump of tuna, gave it a generous dunk in the mayo. Jan Brady couldn't take it anymore. I watched her invent an imaginary boyfriend, George Glass. Then she asked the operator to check their line so she could pretend it was a call from George. This seemed to work pretty well. I wish I'd thought of it.
I remembered that the worst part was that boys were always talking to me to get to Christine. They'd sidle up to me after math or English or out at the lockers. No matter how many times it happened, I always felt a small flutter of hope in my chest when a cute guy like Timmy Stack or Jackie Gordon approached. It could be me they wanted. Couldn't it? And then the kick, like Charlie Brown and the football, that landed a couple of inches below my rib cage, in my exact center. Does Christine have a date for the dance? Just curious, do you think Christine would go out with me?
Hi, George. Sure, I can talk. It's so sweet of you to call, George. Poor Jan Brady. I pierced some more tuna, felt Jan's pain, her heartbreaking attempt to invent a shred of romance that Marcia couldn't touch. My eyes teared up, so I ditched the tuna, gulped down some milk to distract myself. Oh, no. Mrs. Brady was deciding to invite George to Jan's birthday party to surprise her. The Brady kids agreed to help track him down. Jesus, why couldn't they just stay out of it, leave poor Jan alone.
When she noticed I was seriously date-delayed, Christine started trying to fix me up. She offered me her hand-me-downs, "good kids" who weren't quite up to her standards. Big sister Carol jumped right in. I'd get a phone call from a boy and I'd want to ask, okay, which one of my sisters made you call?
It's a mystery. There's no George in Jan's class.
No George in the entire school.
No George in this part of town.
And, of course, the Brady Bunch being the Brady Bunch, they got to the bottom of it by the end of the half hour. Why can't Jan find a real boyfriend? They put their heads together to problem-solve. Decided to go out and do a little investigating. Long story short, it turned out the boys all did like her, just thought she was a real good guy. A swell guy. And so Mrs. Brady dressed her in a light blue dropped-waist dress with a white satin bow. Put a matching satin ribbon in her long blond hair. You make a great-looking girl, the neighborhood boys agreed, falling in love with her at last.
I sighed, glancing down at my nubby sweatpants with the baggy knees. Before long, I'd have such a busy life that I'd almost never get to sit around by myself looking like this. I probably wouldn't even have much time for The Brady Bunch.
Chapter
Twenty-six
It was going to be an important day, so I washed my hair twice. Instead of rinsing off the conditioner immediately the way I usually did, I left it on long enough for it to accomplish something. I made good use of the extra time by shaving my legs while I waited. When I was married, I had shaved my legs on a regular basis. I didn't miss it.
I'd woken up this morning feeling great. It was more than having a date. I couldn't wait to get out in the fresh air, to see the kids at school. I turned off the water, climbed out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my hair. Dried myself with another towel while I tried to decide whether this was a permanent change in my disposition or maybe just a temporary aberration. Or if my days had a sneaky little tendency to start strong, then go quickly downhill. Hard to tell.
I applied a thick coating of moisturizer to my entire body. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, while I waited for my skin to absorb it. I looked like a snowperson, my body encased in white cream. Apparently, it was not possible to make up for lost moisturizing. I rubbed the surplus off with a towel, checked myself out again. Not bad. I mean, not great, but not bad either. I still had a fairly decent waistline, unlike those of my sisters, which had mutated with repeated pregnancies. My breasts were not quite as chipper as they'd been at twenty but, again, not bad.
"You're a catch, Sarah, an absolute catch," I said to my reflection. "And if that doesn't get 'em, there's always your scintillating conversation." I congratulated myself on actually making it to a second date with Ray Santia. Whatever I wore would have to go through a Tuesday at school first, because the final afterschool jewelry-making class was today and I wouldn't have time to go home and change before I met him.
I dropped both towels on the bathroom floor, hurried to my bedroom. Found a comfy black jacket and matching pants I could bend in at school, threw them on over a black top. Boring. So I grabbed a pink chiffon scarf to dress it up, gnawed at the plastic thread that attached the tags. The scarf had been hanging in my closet, unworn, for well over a year. I reached back in and grabbed another virgin scarf, black splashed with jeweled shades of red and green, flecks of gold. I'd switch scarves for dinner with Ray. I'd seen it done on TV—outfits turned into other outfits with just the right accessory.
. . . . .
Austin came to circle gripping a toy mouse tightly with both hands. Before I could remind him that toys from home needed to spend the school day zipped into their owners' backpacks, Austin said, "Topo Grigio is my new friend. He's still adjusting. Can he stay with me until he doesn't feel anxious? He gets a stomachache."
"Isn't that Topo Gigio?" I asked, stalling so I could think. I was having a hard time focusing today. I wondered if I was up to negotiating with Austin. I could feel the other children waiting to see what I would do.
"No, Topo Gigio was in Pinocchio. This is Topo Grigio."
"Topo Gigio wasn't in Pinocchio, honey. He was the little Italian mouse on The Ed Sullivan Show." I remembered him vividly from those Sunday nights of my childhood. I loved Topo Gigio, attempted week after week to figure out if he was magical or mechanical. I tried to see a key sticking out of his back or strings rising above him on the snowy TV screen. I also loved Señor Wences and his talking box. "S'all right?" "S'all right!" Those were the days, curled up with both parents and my brothers and sisters and our weekly ration of Jiffy Pop and root beer Fizzies.
"Then who was in Pinocchio?" Austin's face was all scrunched up as if he were trying to remember back to decades before he was born.
"Geppetto?" I tried, then immediately thought Jiminy Cricket might have been the better answer.
"Are they, like, related?" June asked. She'd been speaking up more often at group since I started being nice to her.
"Who?" I asked.
"Any of them."
"No, silly." Austin hugged the mouse in to his chest. "But two of them are both mouses."
I fought for direction. Took another look at Austin's mouse. It was crocheted, dark gray yarn edged with white. Somehow the tail curled downward in a long spiral. I wondered if there was a special crochet stitch for that or if it was done afterward. Maybe you sprayed the tail with starch and wrapped it around a pencil un
til it dried. My mother would have known.
"Would you like to tell us about your mouse, Austin?"
Austin smiled. "Yeah, look. Topo Grigio has stuff underneath to clean your toilet. Wanna see?" Austin pulled off the top half of the mouse, uncovering a white cylinder. He leaned over and placed it on the floor in front of me. A powdery cloud arose from the holes at the top, then settled noticeably on my black slacks. I tried to brush it off. It smudged.
Dolly, I thought.
"Dolly gave Topo Grigio to me because my father listened to all her boyfriend stories. Dolly said she likes to give presents to big, strong men like us. And we shouldn't worry about letting any cats out of their bags."
Austin was still talking. "Dolly said my father did her a big favor by helping her figure out how to handle that smooth operator Billy Hurlihy." He paused, took a deep breath. "Ms. Hurlihy?"
"Yes?"
"Are you, like, related?" he asked.
. . . . .
By the time the food arrived, I knew Ray Santia had great hands. First, there was a light touch on my forearm when we met in the parking lot of Oceana. We walked toward the restaurant and I held my purse in front of the smear on my right thigh. I'd tried washing off the powder from Topo Grigio's canister, but that seemed to have only activated the bleaching agent. I'd have to call Carol to find out if there was any hope for my pants.
Next came a slight pressure on my back with one hand as he opened the restaurant door with the other. A breezy palm on my shoulder as we followed the hostess to our table. And the lightest graze of my collarbone as he helped me off with my jacket.
I was a goner.
Ray Santia was wearing another flannel shirt. Deep red plaid, probably wool. I wondered if it felt scratchy around his neck, or if it was lined with a slippery, satiny fabric. The waitress was pretty, but Ray didn't seem to notice. He kept looking into my eyes as she placed the salmon in front of me, the haddock in front of him. We smiled at each other and switched plates. "Oh, sorry," the waitress said. We ignored her.
"Nice scarf."
"Thanks." I looked down, saw pink chiffon, realized I'd forgotten to change it after school. So much for fashion versatility.
"Pink's a great color on you." Ray rubbed his hand back and forth over the stubble on his right cheek. I imagined the way it would feel under my fingertips, against one of my own cheeks.
"Thanks." I turned my attention to the way his mustache curled under at the bottom. I wasn't really crazy about mustaches, but on Ray it worked.
I held my own during our conversation, which was peppered with Ray's touches. Soft grazing of the back of my hand, firm pressure on my forearm. I actually remembered that I was a teacher, and said so, and even managed to tell a couple of cute kid stories. I added my reading and long walks to his interests in softball and basketball. I followed his one brother with my five siblings. His parents both alive and safely out of the way in the Midwest led to my father probably lurking outside the restaurant to tell Ray one more time what a catch I was.
When the conversation dwindled, I used the lag time to practice my smile. During breaks, I managed to finish my dinner without dunking a corner of my pink scarf in the tartar sauce, which I knew would make it less flattering. The firm and constant pressure of Ray's knee against mine didn't make it any easier.
I balanced my fork and knife carefully on my plate, folded my hands on the edge of the table, smiled again. Ray reached across the table, placed both hands on top of mine. "So how about let's get the sex part out of the way so we can get on with the rest of this relationship?"
"Okay," I said, or at least I think it was me.
Incongruously, I heard my mother correcting me. "I," she said. "It was I." Growing up, she always corrected us when we answered the phone.
May I please speak to Sarah? Or Christine. Or Michael.
This is her, we'd say. Or him.
She! He! Hands on her hips, my mother would await our revisions. This is s/he, we'd mumble into the receiver.
What was my problem? I was married and divorced and hadn't lived with my parents in years. But when my live father wasn't meddling in my life, my dead mother was correcting my grammar.
Fortunately, Ray didn't seem to notice my flashback. He scarfed down the rest of his meal, then reached across the table to hold my hand again. He ordered espresso for two without checking in with me. Great, I'd be a wide-awake consenting adult.
. . . . .
Now why exactly had I said yes? I wondered, as I followed Ray Santia to his house. Flecks of snow twitched in my headlights, but not enough of them for a snow cancellation. It would make a good announcement, though: Attention, all sex has been canceled due to inclement weather.
I tried not to think. Then I tried to think. They felt pretty much the same. Okay, maybe I was exaggerating, but it felt like I was beginning a sex spree of sorts. A mild one, but it was quite possible that was how it always started. Probably I'd end up on morning television someday, talking about how I became sex-addicted. It all started innocently enough, I'd insist.
I parked my Honda a discreet distance behind Ray's Toyota. Several compelling questions emerged from my confusion and whirled around in close proximity to my brain. First and foremost, what the hell was I doing? Several other questions, no less pressing, followed quickly. Did adults often sleep together on the first date? Was there an age limit for being a slut?
I walked toward Ray's house as slowly as I could.
. . . . .
"Creases!"
"Pardon me?"
I hadn't even heard the yipping behind the bathroom door. Ray's hands had been working their magic. I'd held up my end by rubbing my hands along Ray's back, around those great shoulders, down along his considerable biceps. Wool, just as I suspected, I thought as his rough shirt scratched my palms. We'd had a long kiss in the hallway, another one in the first room we came to, the kitchen. At that point, Ray lifted me up onto the edge of the kitchen counter, ostensibly to find a new kissing angle. There was a bit of a Tarzanic quality to his hoist, but since he'd refrained from beating his chest afterward, I decided it was more endearing than not.
He stopped to listen, midkiss. "Creases. I gotta get Creases. Stay right here."
I sat on the counter, pointing and flexing my feet for something to do, while Ray went to rescue the puppy. "Forgot all about you, little fellow, didn't I," he crooned, passing me without a glance. I sat, marooned on Ray's kitchen counter, while he took Creases outside to pee. Maybe they both peed, standing side by side, male bonding. I thought about jumping down, but then Ray might have to lift me up all over again. Twice might seem redundant.
Eventually, Ray and Creases walked by me again, then disappeared once more. I waited, listening to the opening and closing of doors, which escalated into the banging of a cabinet or two. "You don't have any condoms, do you?" Ray yelled from somewhere deep in the house.
I slid off the counter and tiptoed out the door.
. . . . .
I stared at the roughened red patch on my chin in my bathroom mirror. A beard burn, Kevin and I called it back in the days when he still bothered to kiss me but not always to shave first.
I opened the medicine cabinet. No condoms. Kevin always said they were like taking a shower wearing a raincoat. Part of my horror when I found out about Nikki was that I knew, absolutely knew, he hadn't worn one with her either. Hadn't cared enough to keep me safe. Oh, the amazing rage I felt toward Kevin while I awaited the results of my blood test. And the odd, quick flash of disappointment when it came back negative, and I didn't have a terminal disease to throw in his face along with his infidelity.
I heard a ring from wherever I'd left my cordless phone. Then two, three. The machine picked up on four. My plastic diaphragm case hadn't moved an inch on the shelf from where I'd left it last time I used it. I held it in the palm of one hand, opened it with the other. Careful as always, I held the circle of rubber up to the light to check for holes that might admit wayward sp
erm.
Pinpricks of light shone through, creating an entire constellation, roughly the shape of the Big Dipper.
. . . . .
I thought the knocking on the front door would never go away. If Siobhan hadn't moved around to my bedroom window, the one closest to my bed, and yelled Auntie Sarah, I never would have believed it could have been anyone but Ray Santia.
I turned on my bedside light. Pulling my down comforter off the bed with me, and wrapping it around my shoulders like a bad version of a superhero's cape, I met Siobhan at the kitchen door. She was shivering and hatless, her eyes seriously puffy. Tendrils of her multihued hair stuck to the sides of her face. She wore her school backpack over an old wool peacoat. The handle of her ample suitcase was extended, and after she bumped it up three steps, it rolled effortlessly into my house.
We sat on the couch, my comforter wrapped around both of us. "What happened?" I asked.
"My parents suck."
"You're sixteen. Your parents are supposed to suck." I pulled the comforter over Siobhan's legs so she'd stop shivering. "Do you want some hot chocolate?" I asked, hoping I had some.
"No, thanks."
"So what specifically happened?"
"They won't let me get my navel pierced. Can you believe it?"
I sort of could, but didn't think saying so would be constructive. "Well, you have a fair amount of holes already."
"Big deal. Everybody has their ears pierced. And, besides, this is the only thing I'm asking for for Christmas. One measly thing and they can't even give it to me. So I told them I'll get it pierced in the spring when I go to Spain with my Spanish class because you don't have to be eighteen to do it there and a whole bunch of girls did it last year." She paused for a ragged breath. "So now they say I can't go to Spain."
