Pippa frowned. “Gabe asked and you agreed. It’s what all his friends are doing.”
“Which is a really terrific reason he should do it too.” Francie took Tian’s hand and brought it to her lips. She muttered something that sounded like “lemmings.”
“Gabe’s a good kid,” Pippa said. “And there’s nothing wrong with a party like this. Besides, Zoe and the twins are in there with them, and they’ll make sure nothing bad happens.”
“I don’t know about Zoe,” Francie said, “but Tim isn’t exactly responsible where girls are involved and Jeremy isn’t the most mentally stable guy in the world.”
“The twins are solid,” Tian said, snapping a rubber band. “They’ll keep Gabe’s friends in line.”
Sam felt the heat of Anna’s stare and turned to her. He knew that look. “Why don’t I just go check it out?” He stood up. “I haven’t wished Gabe a happy birthday yet.” When no one objected, he flashed Anna a you-owe-me glance and walked toward the living room.
It was hard to believe these kids were, what, eleven and twelve? They looked like small high school kids, with make-up and weird hairstyles and acting both knowing and infantile. He supposed parents always looked down on the youth culture of the next generation. His dad always seemed disappointed in him, telling him to “be a man”—whatever that was supposed to mean. Brad gave him the third degree every evening and clearly suspected the answers were lies. Flo was different. She never forbade him anything. When he was a teenager, she reminded him about the potential consequences of smoking weed in the alley near the movie theater, or getting caught with a fake ID, or not wearing a condom—which made him blush furiously but didn’t seem to faze her—but rarely questioned him about his activities. Sam had evolved his own parenting style, such as it was, in direct opposition to his memory of how his father handled things, with a small dose of Flo’s unconditional trust thrown in for good measure.
Trying to locate his daughter in the dark living room pulsating with drum beat and intermittently illuminated by action-stopping flashes of strobe lights, Sam wondered how effective his parenting amalgam would turn out to be. He didn’t see Zoe, but there was one of the twins over by the refreshment table surrounded by sixth grade girls. From Francie’s comment in the kitchen, that was probably Tim. Sam looked away, telling himself that he’d check again after he found Zoe.
There she was, pivoting her wheelchair to the heavy bass rhythm. She twisted her head too—side to side and up and down so that her hair flashed and twirled around her face like a fierce and rowdy halo. He couldn’t tell if she was dancing alone or with someone, but it didn’t seem to matter because Zoe looked like she was having great fun. Sam leaned against the wall and his gaze swept around the room.
He wasn’t the only one whose attention was riveted on Zoe. The other twin, Jeremy, was staring at her too. He was the quiet one, a little pathetic, always had his nose in a sketchpad drawing plants when he was younger. Sam wondered how he fared when the family broke up and had to leave their greenhouse. Anna had mentioned he was studying botany at the university. Good for him, but why was he staring at his energetic and outgoing daughter?
Jeremy watched Zoe dance. Elbows jerking akimbo, she swiveled her chair sideways to the music, whipping her head back and forth so that her hair bounced, the long sandy-brown curls alive and electric. You’d think a wheelchair would make a person earthbound, but not Zoe. He wished he could dance like that, uninhibited and totally into the rhythm, not caring how awkward he looked, how uncoordinated.
How do you dance with a girl in a wheelchair, he wondered for the umpteenth time.
It shouldn’t be a problem for fast dancing, if she didn’t mind being partnered with a klutz, that is. He had never been all that social, didn’t like parties or school dances, but he’d watched enough other people enjoying themselves to fake it. He on his feet and Zoe in her chair could wildly gyrate around each other just like able-bodied couples do. Was that term, “able-bodied,” politically correct or offensive? He didn’t know and at that moment being PC wasn’t the most critical question. No, the most important thing in the universe was wanting to dance with Zoe, slow and close, their arms entwined tightly around each other. That yearning pushed doubts about terminology out of his brain, replacing it with the one really important issue: how could they slow dance if Zoe couldn’t stand up? He pictured himself leaning over her chair, his butt sticking out, and that couldn’t be right.
The song ended and Jeremy glanced at the music system, his assignment for the party, as the next song started without any help from him. Gabe’s iPod was loaded with the music Gabe and his two best buddies selected, groups like One Direction that he never heard of but Gabe said the girls loved. It left him nothing to do except watch Zoe and daydream. Across the room his brother clearly had no compunctions about leaving his assignment at the refreshments table, hanging around instead with a group of Gabe’s female classmates.
Always looking out for his twin, Jeremy scanned the room for possible adult interference, but no grown-ups were in view. He didn’t expect his parents to actively chaperone. It just wasn’t their style. Tian and Francie were probably chugging beers in the kitchen, wishing they were back home in their dark apartment six blocks away. But he expected Gabe’s mother to be keeping tabs on the group. Pippa seemed like a hovering kind of parent, always worrying that Gabe would hurt himself playing soccer. And Zoe’s mom, Anna, seemed even more overprotective.
Wait, there was Zoe’s father, Sam, scanning the room. Maybe he would say something to Tim, stop him from hanging around those girls. Tim didn’t mean anything, but still. And at least Zoe was sixteen, only four years younger than him.
And here she came, wheeling in his direction.
Zoe wiped her sweaty palms on her thighs. One silver lining of paralysis was that skinny jeans fit really tight, much better than her friends who were always lamenting their chunky legs. She pushed her chair toward the far corner, where Jeremy stood leaning on the wall next to the iPod system trying to look nonchalant and pretty much failing.
She liked him, even if he wasn’t outwardly hot like his brother. They both had curly light hair that contrasted with darker skin, kind of like her father’s coloring. Was that Oedipal or something? Jeremy wasn’t all buffed and polished like Tim, but he was cute and had been so easy to talk with that afternoon when he cut his hand on the strobe light.
Now in the yellow and pink flashes of the spinning ball, Jeremy looked even more like a scared rabbit, but she wasn’t going to wimp out now. She pushed right up next to him and held out her hand, really glad she had just wiped it dry.
“Dance with me?” she asked.
She’d chosen a really fast number and the dance floor—well, the living room—was crowded. It wasn’t easy to dance close together without rolling over his feet or someone else’s. She kept losing herself in the music and the movement and the drumbeat, but she always knew where he was. Whenever she caught his eye, she couldn’t help smiling. When the song ended and a slow number began, neither one of them made any move to leave the dance floor.
He raised his eyebrows. She nodded. Yes.
Honestly, she had no idea how to do this. She had googled “dancing in a wheelchair” every way she could think of. Some of the results made her laugh—scantily clad women in Quickie chairs shaking their boobs on a stage and troops of disabled dancers doing synchronized motions to Aretha Franklin and men in chairs with regular girls draped on their laps. Nothing that helped her at all.
But she had thought about this a lot over the past few hours and she remembered how she used to dance with her papa when she was little. So, pushing her chair back toward the wall, she locked the wheels and leaned down to swivel the footplates out of the way. She put her feet on the floor and motioned Jeremy closer. Extending her hands, she gripped both of his and pulled herself up.
“Mind if I stand on your feet?” she asked.
He looked dazed but shook his head. No.
/> She placed one ballet slipper on each of his black high tops, angled outwards for a stronger base of support. Then she positioned her arms loosely around his neck and grinned.
“So what are you waiting for?” she asked. “Dance.”
Relax, Jeremy told himself with every exhaled breath. But it was hard when every inspired breath carried the aroma of Zoe’s marzipan shampoo. Silly idea, marzipan shampoo. He smiled into her hair, couldn’t help it; it was right there, tickling his nose. How could he help being so aware of her hair? It did smell like ground almonds and fresh squeezed oranges. He liked it. And he liked her feet in those soft little shoes standing on his sneakers so that every step he took, every sway back and forth to the music, she was right there moving with him. His hands were planted on the small of her back, which was warm under the satiny fabric of her shirt, just above the waistband of her jeans. He liked how her arms rested on his shoulders and her hands circled his neck.
But he didn’t like how his body sprang to attention. He knew her legs were paralyzed, or partly so, but what about the rest of her? Maybe she couldn’t feel a boner. Still, he leaned back and looked at her. He had to say something, but couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Zoe smiled at him. “So, I’ve been wondering. Are we related or something? Like, cousins?”
“I don’t think so.” Not by blood or marriage anyway, but she felt so familiar even though he hadn’t seen her in years. Maybe people could become related by circumstance, by geography or history or the strange things their families got involved with.
She nodded, as if she could read his mind and agreed with him. “My mom said you dropped out of college. How come?”
“I’m just taking a leave of absence, while I figure stuff out.”
“What kind of stuff?” She tilted her head just a little and the gesture was delicate and expectant, as if she really wanted to know the answer. It made him want to tell her everything but how could he explain it right? It was so important that she understand how significant the extinctions were, how tragic. He took a deep breath of marzipan.
“It’s the plants,” he said. “They’re dying, hundreds of species every day.”
“I didn’t know that. Why?”
“Global warming and pollution and poisons in the air and water. It’s our fault.”
“What can we do about it?”
He loved that she said we. “That’s the problem. I don’t know how to stop it. I’m not sure it’s possible.”
She closed her eyes then and rested her head on his shoulder. He felt her touch the curls at the nape of his neck, twisting them around her fingers. He emptied his mind of vegetable disaster and focused on the music. And her fingers. He was so glad he hadn’t gotten around to a haircut. If only he were brave enough to touch her hair but no, his arm couldn’t do that. The thought raced through his mind that Tim would go for it, but he pushed the knowledge away because this wasn’t about Tim.
This was about him. Jeremy. About how every inch of his body felt new. How each place where they touched contributed a singular and astonishing note to his orchestra of longing. How the inch of space between their bodies was electric, with hormone-charged molecules spinning wildly.
He wished the song would last forever.
A wisp of her hair danced into the air and landed on his cheek. He closed his eyes and felt the strands curl around his ear. Strange how hair could feel so alive, so green and growing, even though he knew that growth was from the follicle and the hair itself was a matrix of protein, filaments of keratin and melanin, husks of dead cells. Her hair was totally animate—the strand on his face was a vine, twining around his ear. Another curl spiraled around his shirt collar, tendrils grabbing the cotton fabric, tiny suction disks attaching to his neck. A third thicket of hair reached across to his arm, sending adventitious runners grasping his skin and burrowing into his flesh.
“Jeremy?”
He opened his eyes to a quiet room, buzzing with between-song conversation. Zoe regarded him half smiling, half concerned. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m great.”
The moment he saw Sam coming toward him, his expression grim and disapproving, Tim winked at the gaggle of girls and started back to the refreshment table. He hadn’t seen Sam in years, but even without his crazy mustache the dude was totally recognizable, and so was his attitude. Not that he had any authority over Tim, no way, but Tim didn’t need anyone ratting him out to Tian. His father had always tended to overreact to ordinary stuff and Tim planned to avoid being on the receiving end. He grabbed fresh ice from the cooler under the table and packed it around the cans of soft drinks in the metal tub. That’s when he noticed Jeremy.
Whoa. His brother was dancing with the crippled girl. His goofy face was all dazzled and befuddled and he looked down at her like she was some hot actress and she was looking at him with the same silly grin. The funny part was that his brother was probably still a virgin and didn’t have a clue about moving this along. She was just a kid, but not too young for those sparks sizzling around the two of them.
Watching his brother twist a long strand of the girl’s hair and weave it in and out around his fingers, Tim couldn’t help feeling both smug and envious. So this was how a botanist gets it on.
Chapter Fourteen
Luckily, Flo’s telephone had speed dial and Mimi’s number was near the top of the list. Number three, right after Sam and Zoe. Flo counted the ring tones as they echoed in her ear—five, six, seven—and a picture formed in her mind: her best friend Mimi spending Saturday evening with Marlene, sharing a bottle of cabernet, and gossiping about her. Over decades, Flo had tried to squash her jealous feelings. It was childish for grown women to worry about best friends and who liked whom more. She knew that, but that didn’t mean she could stop herself, any more than she could stop worrying about potential disasters. Besides, at this point in her life she needed Mimi more than ever. Needed her loyalty and her full attention, undivided and undiluted.
The recording clicked on and Mimi’s voice commanded her to leave a message. Flo froze and couldn’t think what to say.
“It’s me,” she stumbled over her words. “Please call.” She shook her head. How dim-witted she was becoming. Some days, she barely recognized herself.
Maybe music would help. She turned on the thingy that Sam gave her for Chanukah and stood staring at it. Amazing how that small machine could contain all her music. Sam had transferred CDs and audio tapes, even her old vinyl records into that tiny rectangle. She always left it on scramble, partly because she forgot how to use the menu, but mostly because she loved being surprised at what came next. How would Aretha Franklin feel about following Blondie? What fun to hear the final notes of Smokey Robinson fade into Donovan or Sweet Honey and the Rock.
It took a few seconds to identify the song that came on, but then she did and it was a revelation. “I always cook with honey,” Judy Collins sang. “To sweeten up the night.” She wanted to sob, thinking how nights used to be sweet. And—that was it—she wanted to cook, to bake, to make something sugary and satisfying, something that would fill her up and make her happy. She danced a little, a grapevine step and a twirl, imagining that Charlie was dancing with her in the small apartment he had never seen, in the city he had never visited.
She two-stepped into the kitchen and looked at the shelf of cookbooks. She rarely cooked any more, other than making a salad with some tuna fish, or nuking a frozen organic burrito. The kitchen table was half-covered with junk, items that belonged someplace else but she didn’t care where. Charlie-cat was curled up and sleeping, his gray fur a shadow in the wooden salad bowl. A slatted box that once held clementines was cluttered with bills waiting for Sam’s attention and grocery store flyers, a bottle of her favorite coriander-scented body lotion, worth every overpriced penny. She picked up an ancient photo of Sam wearing Zoe in a baby carrier. Poose, he used to call her, short for Papoose.
Flo shook her head. How wrong she had been
about Zoe. After the ultrasound, she had advised Sam and Anna to have an abortion. There were very few things in her life she regretted, and that one topped the list. She didn’t regret Charlie, though maybe she shouldn’t have married Brad, but she regretted being so wrong about Zoe. She kissed the photo and returned it to the salad bowl, under the little bag of marbles Sam gave her as a gift. Mildly amusing, really, if it hadn’t been so insulting.
But tonight she didn’t care about insults. Tonight she wanted to cook, to make something special, from scratch. She ran her finger across the dusty spines of the cookbooks, stopping at Diet for a Small Planet. She pushed the box of junk away and sat at the table, thumbing through the recipes and listening to Charlie’s uneven purr. Years ago she would’ve tossed him off the table, but now it didn’t matter. Let him sit wherever he wanted to. She smiled at the lentil recipes, remembering how Sam loved the soup but wouldn’t touch the loaf, no matter how many times she told him they were both made from the same ingredients—lentils and brown rice and carrots.
She found the recipe for honey and nut granola, but who was she fooling? She didn’t have any of these ingredients in the house—steel cut oats and walnuts and organic orange blossom honey. She had nothing in this house. She threw the book on the floor, kicked it into the corner on her way to the refrigerator. Well, she didn’t need a cookbook. She’d make something up, using what she did have.
Precious little, it turned out. But there were eggs—eggs didn’t go bad, did they?—and an omelet would be great. Savory was even better than sweet, and healthier. She could cut those mold spots off the cheddar and chop those slightly wilted scallions and somewhere in the cupboard there was a can of artichoke hearts. Yes, cooking was just the thing to feel better.
She scrambled the eggs in a bowl and chopped the scallions, the wrinkled green pepper and limp celery, swaying as Janice Joplin belted out a little piece of her heart. Sad she had died so early. So many of Flo’s heroes died young: Malcolm X and Judi Bari and Che Guevara and Rachel Corrie. And some heroes dropped out of sight, and you never heard from them again. She wondered what happened to that IRA woman, Bernadette somebody? Was she still standing strong or long gone?
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