After the Kiss

by Terra Elan McVoy

  what you don’t know might kill you #2

  you are walking tight circles around your room and your fist is in your mouth to keep yourself from screaming. you are biting on your knuckles you are biting down hard and the box with all that (insufficient) money is strewn on your bed. your door is locked and mom’s knocked twice but you can’t let her see you until you calm down. but you can’t calm down you will never calm down because it was your future it was your plan it was a scrap of life that was going to be all your own and not theirs and now it is shattered. and sure you could work awhile and head out after that, but would you live with mom and dad then for that long? you were counting on this. this was your plan, something not even luli was free enough to do. but you are an idiot because you have jumped out of a plane with a pack strapped on your back and didn’t look to really see if there was a parachute in it. you hadn’t thought of that you hadn’t been checking you just knew—there’s that word again—you were going to go, you knew so much and you were so stupid and now you have no idea what you’re going to do.

  snapping

  when you finally come down mom is quiet and tense but trying to be normal—she doesn’t like when you ignore her doesn’t like when you shut her out. on your plate is baked barbecue chicken and some almond green beans, biscuits mom doesn’t bother to make but gets from the flying biscuit because theirs are the best. and it is a dinner you like and one you told mom to make but now even the smell makes you nauseous and you press your eyes closed. when dad asks what the matter is you say you want to get a job, and the surprise on his face is equaled in mom’s. he says if you need something to just let him know, but when you say i need a job; i need something to do mom leans closer in and asks if it’s to buy drugs for your friends. this is so ridiculous you can’t help your cruel laugh, saying don’t be stupid. and then dad says don’t talk to your mother like that and then you’re somehow yelling at him, telling him he can’t control you much longer and you’ll do what you want. and mom says what is it we aren’t giving you honey, they want to know what it is you aren’t able to do and she is genuinely surprised and hurt and stunned and confused. and you can’t stand their sympathetic eyes always on you their comforting hands holding you down, can’t stand that the only plan you really had of your own without them now either has to involve them or isn’t going to happen. you hate this dining room this chair their faces and you need to get out, so you push away from the table and keep going when dad tells you to sit down, that we haven’t finished talking. you have never acted like this and you don’t know what you’re doing now, but you know you are running up the stairs—you can hear your feet pounding—and slamming the door to your room. you start sobbing so hard you can barely breathe.

  emergency call

  when she picks up you can barely talk—just crying and breathing and squeezing out wails, and she says are you hurt where are you? and you can hear how she’s scared. so you take a deep breath and say i don’t know what to do, and you don’t even wait you just pour it all out on her—the catcher, his girlfriend, postcards from chicago, your ruined dreams. you know you are rambling and half don’t make sense but you have to cover everything you have to get it all out—she is your only friend, the only one you can tell anything to, the girl who has stayed with you in three different cities now. and as you talk the crying feels like it’s coming from some even deeper place inside you—not your head or your eyes but somewhere deep down in your gut: a place so deep there aren’t even organs there anymore just a small black space where you’ve been shoving your heart. he’s gone they’re all gone and now you can’t go anywhere yourself and it’s just too much to handle you can’t manage any more. there is a huge wet spot on your comforter from your tears and the drool as you’re lying on your side curled up around the phone and she tells you to take a deep breath and then take another and she asks where you are and is glad when you say home. she says it sounds awful but she knows you’ll be okay, and she doesn’t try to come up with answers which you think is nice. she tells you to take a bath she tells you to sleep she says that will help and we’ll figure things out. she waits till you’re ready she waits till you’re calm and when she says she’ll call tomorrow you are so exhausted you just nod.

  Becca

  I Owe Her

  She told me

  —should I tell her?—

  I had to leave him

  —would she leave him?—

  when he cheated,

  —is he cheating?—

  that it was broken

  —will she be broken?—

  even before I broke it off.

  Now I have seen him

  —did I really see him?—

  with another girl

  —maybe just a friend-girl—

  and I owe her

  —she did the same for me—

  the same kind of respect.

  I will tell her

  —what will I tell her?—

  simply what I saw;

  —what did I really see—

  I will be her friend

  —she is such a good friend to me—

  and be there for her

  —she is always there—

  in her time of need.

  Say What?

  What comes out of Nadia’s mouth sounds like

  Russian

  at first.

  Then maybe Chinese

  twisting into Swahili

  becoming Pig Latin,

  flipping finally into something originating in France.

  I say to her,

  Say what?

  And she blinks like she can’t believe

  I can’t understand.

  When she says it again

  —Yes I know. That’s his wife;

  I’m, you know, the

  Other Woman—my face rushes red and my

  mouth hangs open:

  empty

  of all the things I wish

  I could find any language

  to say.

  Wrong and Right

  I might be an amateur

  —I may not know everything.

  but I know sense when I see it,

  and this sure ain’t it.

  You can’t tell someone

  to leave someone

  if he’s with someone else

  when you are the someone else

  someone else

  is with.

  When I say so,

  she twists up her face:

  You wouldn’t understand it. It’s—

  complex.

  I want to show her

  my report card

  —my straight A’s in Chem II, SAT score 2175,

  my honor roll certificates

  and my history fair ribbon

  (third place).

  I may not know much about

  the complex world of grown-ups

  but I know right when I see it

  and this sure ain’t it.

  Cleaning Therapy

  The coffeehouse is spotless.

  I have been clearing

  and wiping

  and Windexing

  and straightening

  for the last hour,

  avoiding

  the constant line six people deep at the counter,

  making

  Nadia and Janayah

  fend for themselves.

  I pretend

  I am concentrating.

  Pretend

  to be simple—a little girl who

  doesn’t understand

  anything

  complex.

  When I finally round the counter

  Janayah’s face

  —as usual—is a rotten walnut aimed at me,

  but Nadia is smiling.

  I think for a minute

  it’s all in my head,

  until she raises her eyebrow,

  smirks,

  You done pouting yet?

  Scales from My Eyes

  It’s as tho
ugh I’ve been

  slapped.

  And my face stings and reels,

  and the ceiling swims

  closer than it’s ever been and I hear

  some unknowing middle school girl say to her friend:

  She thinks she knows everything she acts like

  we really like her—

  and I turn away,

  though there’s nowhere to look, they’re all

  laughing inside their eyes,

  laughing at me,

  laughing the whole time.

  Fist in My Pillow

  Once for Alec.

  Twice for the redhead.

  Three times for letting

  any of that happen.

  Again for my lost friends

  twice more for my stupidity

  three times for thinking Nadia

  was my friend,

  that Denver and I

  might ever go out.

  Pow-pow

  pow

  pow

  pow.

  A punch for idiots in econ.

  A punch for stupid Hollywood gossip.

  One for people who hate Shakespeare.

  Another—make that two—again

  for Alec and the redhead.

  I punch till my fist hurts,

  until I’m

  breathing hard and my

  forehead

  is clammy.

  Mom sticks her tired head in the doorway,

  says

  That sounds satisfying.

  She asks

  if I will let her

  have a go at it too.

  Camille

  vacant

  in the morning mom and dad are both waiting for you downstairs. they let you sleep late, saved their tennis and grocery shopping until you finally came down. their faces aren’t angry but are worried and sad and they want you to tell them what all this is about. if you need money, they tell you, there’s plenty in your savings for college and they’ll help you with whatever else you need. and europe seems so far away now so impossible to reach; you feel so stupid for wanting it and for thinking you could go. it’d be too difficult to explain your outburst—you don’t even know what to say—so you just apologize and blame school, say you’re just ready to be done. and they nod and they hold your hands and they tell you how proud they are and that you only have a couple months to go and meanwhile spring break is coming up and maybe you and mom could take a trip together. maybe even dad could get a couple of days off. and you listen and you say they’re right and inside you are only ashes there is no girl in here anymore she has fled she has moved far away.

  inbox surprise #2

  check ur email 4 onz luli texts later on, and since you are not doing anything but watching “what not to wear” reruns you go ahead and log in. there are stupid videos from ellen, random websites and lyrics autumn wanted to share, photos from dad’s sister, fwds from grandpa, boobtique promos from BUST. there is no word from the catcher there is no word from chicago but at the top one from luli: atlanta here i come. attached is a plane ticket—she’s arriving on tuesday—and a paragraph saying she’s changed her break plans. she was supposed to be going to portland with friends but i’ll have more fun with you, and i’ve never been south! you know when she gets here she’ll stage some intervention, she’s doing this because of last night and probably thinks you’re insane, but the ticket’s been bought and she’s already coming and the black space deep inside that was your heart flares again and it is better than if you ever got a bushel of postcards from chicago (or even just one again—even just one), because this is real and solid and not uncertain and ethereal, and you feel so happy and grateful you could cry.

  cleaning up

  at school you were more a clock-watcher than ever, dying to get home dying to go shopping with mom and load up groceries for luli’s dinner and all the best snacks, dying to help re-clean the house even though marisol’s already cleaned this week. you can’t sit still you want everything magazine perfect for your friend who is really truly coming, your friend who is going to travel the tightrope that is strung between you, who’ll land safely on your side, likely a lime green parasol in one hand and a deck of tarot cards in the other. you are re-dusting the spotless bottom level of the big mahogany coffee table in the living room, windexing the mirrors and extra-polishing the dark banister and even the stairs. you are hanging all your clothes up, straightening the magazines in their basket, shining every surface in your room and arranging all your photo frames and miniatures, all your little keepsakes that have traveled with you from town to town—the unpainted porcelain frog you made in first grade, the silly plastic girl with straight-up pigtails who screams hideously long when you press her back, the strange double acorn you found in golden gate park the vial of water from lake michigan, the tiny teacups with roses painted on the sides from grandma tess, the small leather album full of someone else’s vintage photos that you bought at that antique place you and mom went to when you first moved here—all your things so many things you have packed and unpacked and arranged for yourself, but now luli is coming to look at them, your old things and some new things too, and you are vacuuming for no reason you are dusting your spotless blinds, because luli comes tomorrow and you want everything looking just right.

  unexpected

  in the morning ellen sees you on your way in and stops in the middle of her conversation with simon and makes a beeline for you, walks beside you all the way to your locker, chattering about who really you don’t much care. for a while as you stand there taking out books and putting in others she just looks at you and you know she wants you to say something but you are not sure what if anything you want to say back. finally she says it for you: hey, listen, what’s up? and you’ve been avoiding her it’s true, ducking out to the side lawn instead of the quad with everyone during lunch, taking alternate routes to class the last few days just to keep from running into her—into anyone—needing a break from the bees because you’re not sure you haven’t been stung, or won’t be soon if that’s not the case. you weren’t at the lake house; you’re not answering texts. and you are sure if you looked her in the eye her clear blue ones would see straight through your brown ones and down into some of the things you’re not ready for her to see. so you shrug and you tell her you are just feeling stressed about school and college and what’s coming next, and then slip in a little truth about it being weird to be the new girl in the middle of everyone’s big final senior year, when they’ve all got their parties and their traditions and the things they’ve been looking forward to together since the first days of ninth grade. and you don’t really know why you are telling her this at all and you try to make it a joke or at least not so serious but she has already heard you and then she does the oddest thing—she gives you a big hug and says how glad she is you moved here, even if it’s weird. and you chalk it up maybe to senior sentimentality and you remind yourself how she didn’t clue you in on the catcher having a girlfriend but you follow her back to your friends and your shoulders—where she hugged them—will still feel nice.

  the provider

  you check the flight arrival four times in a row before dad tells you to quit it and just get in the car. mom is staying at the house to make sure dinner will be ready when you get back and that means you and dad drive together listening to u2 and singing loud and happy. it is his favorite band he went to go see them twice before he got this job with the company and if you’d been old enough he would’ve taken you then. he still regrets not taking you, he says, though he brought you back a long sleeved t-shirt with all their faces on it. it was three sizes too big then and still flops around your frame but it is soft and it is cozy and it was a present from your dad so still you wear it sometimes although mostly just to bed. anyway he is happy and excited too—he and mom always love company—and it is as though your fight with them never happened and though you can still feel the outline of ash around your heart, today luli is coming and everyth
ing will be okay. in the middle of “running to stand still” though dad gets this weird look on his face and when it is over he turns down the volume and tells you he hopes you know that if he’d known how hard all this moving would end up being on you he wouldn’t have taken this job. why didn’t you quit when we were in chicago then why did we have to leave everything why did i have to leave him? you feel it all burning at the back of your throat but you know the exact answers, and you understand why. because it was a good job and so many people were losing their jobs while dad’s company was still doing well, opening new telecom hubs in more towns. when people were losing houses yours was still paid for, when companies were making cutbacks dad’s still took care of all of you. so they moved you to atlanta, and what else was he going to do he had to go where they said. you know this but had sort of forgotten it all, are remembering the moves haven’t been a picnic for him, either. you realize what that job outburst must’ve sounded like to him: you’ve done all this and still aren’t doing enough. you don’t know what to tell him—you don’t know how to say that you still want to run away from him, even after all he’s done.

  at the top of the escalator

  waiting in airports always makes you think of the beginning of love actually—the scene that makes you and mom cry every time. now you are in that scene standing on your tiptoes to see over the shoulder of the big guy in front of you and his even-bigger wife. the first gush of people is coming up from the escalators but there is no luli and you’re left looking around at the little girl chattering at two barbies down on the floor and a man holding a sign that the woman he’s waiting for will be embarrassed to see. there are soldiers in beige camos walking past and everyone claps and they wave thank you and go on in their line. then comes another push of travelers up the escalators—the man with the sign strains his neck, the rose in his hand looks too—people with red bags black bags backpacks quilted duffels. some people in the crowd around you go forward to hug some of these people, others turn around to check the arrival screen again. you are wondering when she will get there you are wondering will you look different to her, and the crowd from the escalators dissipates and goes where they are going, and you watch the girl with the barbies again. beside you dad is patient and unruffled and smiles down at the little girl and then smiles at you and squeezes his arm around your shoulder, once. the man beside you turns and looks and you look away and your dad’s arm goes back by his side. another push of people—she texted you fifteen minutes ago when she landed surely she is in this group surely it doesn’t take so long—and there are brown heads and black heads that aren’t hers and blond heads in ponytails and a girl in a corset and another one in a sweatsuit and then there is her face there—then there she is.