All You Get Is Me

by Yvonne Prinz

  “You’re not going to fall in love with some potato-growing farmer while I’m gone, are you?”

  “Maybe. What kind of potatoes are we talking about?” I smile.

  “I don’t know if I can bear being away from you. It could kill me.”

  “Me too. How tragic would it be if we both died from missing each other?”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.” Forest looks up at the moon. “Hey, I wonder what time it is?”

  I look up too. The moon is yellow and almost full, a harvest moon, they call it. “I don’t know, close to midnight, I think.”

  “It’s your birthday.”

  “I forgot all about it.”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Best birthday ever.”

  “Best summer ever,” says Forest.

  “Best everything ever.”

  “Run away with me,” he says.

  “Okay, soon.”

  Forest drives me home and in the driveway I hold on to him as tight as I can. I don’t want to get out of the car but I do, bit by bit, coming back to him several times for one more kiss. I finally close the car door and drag myself up the porch steps, feeling like a rag doll.

  The party has moved to our kitchen and my dad and Reynaldo are going at it, having sampled a lot of wine. Tomás is with them too. Maria’s gone home. She’s too wise not to have brought her own car.

  I slip upstairs. I don’t want them to see me. My hair is wet, my clothes are rumpled, and I feel years older than the last time I saw these people. I’m sure they’d see it too if they looked at me. I make it to the bathroom and lock the door. I pull off my damp clothes and run hot water into the old tub. I slide in and lay there, watching a water drop cling to the faucet and then lose its grip and fall into the tub with the others. I run my hand along my sixteen-year-old body. I feel changed. I’m not the girl I was when summer began. I’ve had sex with someone (someone who’s leaving me in a matter of hours) and I’ve fallen in love. In a few days I’ll have a driver’s license. Are there any other birthdays as life-altering as sixteen? Are there any other birthdays that set you free like this? I don’t think so.

  I think about my mom and how excited she’d have been for this day. She’d want to talk about it openly and in full detail. I don’t feel that lump in my throat that I’ve felt so many times when I think about her missing another rite of passage in my life. This time I feel calm and confident that I did what I did for all the right reasons. I did it because I love someone and he loves me back.

  Rufus finds me as I’m leaving the bathroom with a towel wrapped around me. I close my bedroom door and pull a tank top over my head and then I change my mind and take it off. At sixteen one should make substantial changes in the way one lives. I’m going to sleep naked tonight and maybe forever. The sound of laughter and slurred Spanish still carries up the stairs but it doesn’t bother me.

  Rufus curls up on the rug next to my bed. He seems okay with the new me. He seems to like the idea that I’ve moved from the backseat into the driver’s seat and I’ve taken hold of the wheel.

  I drift off thinking of nothing but Forest: Forest’s hands, Forest’s lips, Forest’s body, Forest’s heart.

  Chapter 21

  Morning washes over me later than usual on my birthday. I finally wake up exhausted and exhilarated. I’m surprised at my nakedness until last night’s events come back to me. My dad’s still sleeping. I heard him climbing the stairs at four a.m. as I was drifting between dreams and consciousness, both featuring Forest. All night, I kept flipping through a stack of mental photographs: where our hands were and when; what he said to me and what it meant; what was playing on the stereo; the way he smelled; the way he felt. It’s ironic that I’ve spent my whole life snapping photos of the things I want to remember and here I am, having to recall what happened on the most important night of my life so far, frame by frame, without any visual aids.

  I throw back the covers and pull on my ugly underwear and yank a T-shirt over my head. I pad across the wood floor to the window. Jane and Steve are in the midst of concocting a birthday message of some sort with balloons and crepe paper. I quickly step back from the window. I don’t want to ruin the surprise. The phone rings and I grab it.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” says Forest. “Happy birthday.”

  “Hi. Thanks. I just woke up.”

  “I know. I’m parked in your driveway. I saw you in the window.”

  “You haven’t been there all night, have you?”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve only been here for a couple of hours. Good to know that ‘up at dawn’ crap you’ve been feeding me all summer is a big lie. Don’t come out quite yet, okay? I’ll call you when we’re ready.”

  “Okay.” I go into the bathroom and brush my teeth and look at myself in the mirror. I try to find the new me somewhere on my face but I don’t look much different except for slightly bluish circles under my eyes from lack of sleep, and puffy lips from all-night kissing. I go back into my room and pull on some jeans and slide into a pair of flip-flops. The phone rings again.

  “Okay, now you can come out,” says Forest. “Meet me at the front door.”

  As I open the screen door, Forest appears. He kisses me and blindfolds me with a bandana that smells like patchouli, which means it belongs to Jane. He leads me by the hand down the porch steps and across the yard. I can hear Rufus trotting next to us and Jane and Steve giggling like children.

  “Ready?” asks Forest.

  “Uh-huh.” He lets go of my hand and unties the bandana.

  Jane and Steve are standing in front of a shiny new car, one of them on each end.

  “Ta-da!” they yell.

  It’s my dad’s old abandoned Mercedes, which has been sitting in the garage for the last two years, but it’s been given a makeover. They washed all the bird poop off of it, waxed it, pumped up the tires, evicted the pigeon that was nesting in the passenger seat, polished up the chrome, and shampooed the upholstery. It looks brand-new. They also have it decked out like a parade float with flowers and balloons and a big banner that says “Happy Birthday, Roar!”

  Steve dangles the key in front of me. “Check it out, birthday girl. This baby now runs on biodiesel.”

  “Mine?”

  “All yours.”

  I take the key and hug him. “Can I start it up?”

  He stands aside and gestures at the car like Vanna White. He pulls open the driver’s-side door and I slide into the seat. I insert the key into the ignition and turn it. The engine roars to life. I smell French fries. Jimi Hendrix starts to play.

  I stick my head out the window. “Where’d the stereo come from?”

  “Jane and I got it for you. Can’t have wheels without tunes.”

  Forest is watching all this, beaming. I get out of the car and hug Jane too.

  “Thank you, guys. It’s the best birthday gift I ever got.”

  “You can fill it up with Millie’s deep-fryer oil for now but she’s putting in a biodiesel station in the fall.”

  “Can I drive it?”

  “Stay on the property or your dad’ll kill me.”

  “Get in, Forest.”

  Forest gets in the passenger side and I push in the clutch and find first gear. I let the clutch out slowly and give it some gas. The old car eases forward stiffly.

  “She runs like a top. I tuned her up myself,” calls Steve as we pull away. He and Jane stand there, beaming.

  Forest grins at me. “Okay, here’s the plan: We rob a 7-Eleven on the way out of town, and head for Canada, okay?”

  “Sure.” I give it more gas and shift into second. The chickens hurry out of our way as I steer the car along the driveway. The balloons flap in the breeze and the crepe paper blows off in pink and blue chunks. The banner falls off and I run over it.

  “Hey, good thing you’ve got a car now. George wants the beast back and I have a feeling it won’t be here for me when I come back next summer.”

>   I put my foot on the brake. The car stalls. “Wait, what?”

  “Yup. I talked to your dad. He said I could work on the farm next summer.”

  “He did?”

  “Well, Tomás and Miguel and Steve put in a good word for me. They said I was a good worker, which, yes, is an outright lie, but I’ll learn.”

  I lean over the gear shift and wrap my arms around him.

  “Hey, I’ll miss that car,” I whisper in his ear.

  “Me too. Best time I ever had in a car.” He smiles. “Forget the car, best time I ever had, period.”

  I start the car again and drive it back to the barn. My dad’s up by then, hungover, and mad as hell that they didn’t wait till he was up before they gave me the gift. He gets over it when I tell him how much I love it. He beams and takes all the credit.

  Jane has a big country breakfast all planned out and she goes inside to get it together. Tomás and Miguel give me a big bouquet of wildflowers fit for a beauty pageant winner, which I put in a glass canning jar on the kitchen table since we still don’t own a vase.

  Forest and I take off down the path through the field to the Cathedral of Trees. Forest has his book bag slung over his shoulder and I have my camera. When we get there, we sit side by side on a log, looking up at the light streaming through the trees.

  “Promise promise promise me you’ll come back,” I say, still looking up, afraid to meet his eyes, afraid I’ll cry. I feel so fragile.

  “C’mon, I promise,” he says, pulling me closer.

  He flips open the book bag. He pulls out a gift wrapped in tissue paper printed with little daisies on it and hands it to me. It makes my heart ache to think of him carefully wrapping it for me. I tear the paper off. It’s a book of photographs by Elliott Erwitt called Elliott Erwitt’s Handbook. I flip through it. The photos are all black-and-white candids. All of them are of people expressing themselves with their hands, people from all over the world. Inside the front flap, in Forest’s tidy handwriting, it says: She handed me an apricot . . . Happy Birthday, Love “F”

  “It’s beautiful. I love it.” I kiss him on the cheek.

  “I have one more thing for you.” He digs back into the book bag and comes out with one of his journals. He hands it to me.

  “What is it?” I look at the untitled cover.

  “It’s the diary of us. Starting from the first time I saw you and ending at today. You can read it when you need to know how I feel.”

  I flip through the pages and stop somewhere near the front. I read a paragraph. Forest uses the same brown ink for the entire book. Something about that touches me.

  I saw her again today. Pretended it was an accident. She was selling vegetables at the farmers’ market. Her hair was pulled back with a rubber band. I got nervous, didn’t know what to say. GOD, what an idiot! So uncool. I think I told her something about her eyes. She looked at me like I was full of shit. I told her I was sorry about Sylvia but it came out all wrong. How will I find her again? Can I leave it to chance? She’s so beautiful, so calm, so watchful. She hates me, I’m sure of it.

  I look up at Forest. “Are you sure you want me to have it? It’s so private.”

  “Yes. I want you to have it. I’m not embarrassed.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I’m so moved by this gesture but I try again not to cry. It’s too early in the day for that. My eyes fill with tears. I blink them away.

  Forest takes my camera from around my neck and looks through the viewfinder, playing with the focus. He takes several shots of me, sitting on the log, holding his gifts, missing him before he’s even gone.

  Back at the house, Jane has pancakes and eggs on the grill, bacon and veggie sausage frying, and hash browns sizzling. My dad has the espresso machine fired up and he’s making two coffees at a time. Steve is setting the table with cheesy party hats that say “Sweet Sixteen” on them at each place and balloons are tied to the back of my chair. The kitchen is noisy and smells beautiful. Dr. John is on the stereo playing New Orleans jazz piano.

  Forest goes outside to call Miguel and Tomás in to eat and we sit down at the table, passing platters of food and talking with our mouths full. This is our last meal together as a family. Jane will help Steve pack up his things tomorrow and head back to Berkeley for the beginning of fall semester. Forest will be gone in a few hours, and my dad informs us that he has some news: Tomás has made a life-altering decision. Reynaldo has asked him to come over to his vineyards as his apprentice, working directly under him. He’s offered to help get him started in the process of becoming an American citizen, and with the money he’ll be getting from the lawsuit, he’ll be able to afford a down payment on a small place and bring Rosa back from Mexico. Wanda will live with them and take care of her during the day. How does all this stuff keep happening right under my nose and why am I always the last to hear about it?

  We toast Tomás’s success and then everyone sings “Happy Birthday” to me followed by “Las Mañanitas,” the song they sing at Mexican birthday parties. Then we toast to the end of a great summer growing season. For the fall and winter it will be just my dad and Miguel and me. We’ll hire day labor as we need it but there’s a lot less to do on the farm after the summer’s over. We’ll still do the markets and the restaurants but soon we’ll be selling root vegetables, pumpkins, and winter greens like kale and chard. Steve will still work the Ferry Plaza Market with my dad to make some extra money but my dad will pick him up in Berkeley on the way. The chickens lay a lot less in the winter so we’ll only sell eggs on the roadside stand and maybe a few dozen a week to Millie.

  One of the things that you learn when you live on a farm is that change comes at you whether you’re ready for it or not. Every season is punctuated with its own smells and tastes and you find yourself looking forward, waiting for the next thing to come along so you can take a bite of it. When we lived in the city, this marking of the seasons didn’t seem to happen to us. We drifted from one season to the next without thinking about it too much. This life is very different. It’s so much more than putting on a sweater or grabbing an umbrella. It’s about setting your internal clock to the sun and the moon and the seasons. The longer I do it, the better I understand it. It’s not something you can teach. You have to live it.

  After breakfast we pile the dishes next to the sink, all sticky with maple syrup. Forest has to catch a flight to L.A. from Oakland at two p.m. so I walk him to his car. I hang on to him for dear life. I practically break his ribs and it’s still not enough. This isn’t a summer romance. This is us, forever, as far as the eye can see. When he finally pulls away I touch my finger to my cheek and taste our tears. I can barely stand to watch him drive up the road. Rufus licks the salt from my dangling fingers and distracts me from what I’d really like to do, which is lie right down on the dusty ground and howl. Instead I take Rufus up to my room, crawl under the covers, and open Forest’s journal to the first page. I read it as I run my finger along the Guatemalan bracelet that’s been tied to my wrist since the day Forest gave it to me:

  I saw a girl today in a hospital waiting room . . .

  Chapter 22

  Connie Gilwood gets a decent offer on the house the day after she puts it on the market. A man who runs a tire store in Stockton and his wife and two kids will move in at the end of September. They’re moving up in the world. Connie is leaving in two weeks for New Hampshire. She’s going to live in her sister’s guesthouse until she finds a place of her own. She’s downsizing.

  My dad keeps his promise to her and arranges a meeting with Tomás. When he asked Tomás if he would do it he wasn’t crazy about the idea (who would be?) but he eventually agreed to it. Connie doesn’t speak Spanish so my dad translates. It happens at our kitchen table, which is fast becoming the place where all important exchanges occur. I stay out on the porch, cross-legged on the swing, but I can hear as much of the conversation as I need to. Connie doesn’t try to offer any excuse for what she did. I give her credit for that. She humbly asks
for Tomás’s forgiveness and Tomás gives it to her. He tells her that Sylvia forgives her too and that’s when she falls apart. I hear her sobbing and then I hear a chair scraping across the floor and I know that Tomás has stood up and gone over to her. I’m sure that he must be hugging her or touching her somehow; I know that this will only make it worse for her because I’ve seen that look in Tomás’s eyes and I know that it’s a powerful thing.

  When it’s over, Tomás goes back to work and my dad walks Connie to her car and they say good-bye. Her eyes are red and the skin on her face looks raw. I suppose that this meeting with Tomás will help her move on. I suppose I’m glad for her. After all of the horrible things I’ve imagined about her, she doesn’t seem like such a bad person anymore. It’s obvious that even with Tomás’s forgiveness she’ll regret this for the rest of her life.

  Steve and Jane are already gone. They’re on their way back to Berkeley in Steve’s loaded-down Jeep to start school again. I’m out of my mind with missing Forest even though he only left yesterday. I walk down to the mailbox for something to do, and even though I know it’s impossible, I’m hoping there will be something from him, something tangible to accompany the three emails he’s already sent today. I pull out the New York Times for my dad and a stack of bills, plus two birthday cards, one from each grandmother, each containing a check for fifty dollars. At the bottom of the stack is a large envelope addressed to me. The return address is FOTO magazine in New York. I tear it open right there on the road:

  Dear Ms. Audley:

  Congratulations. On behalf of the editorial staff, the judges, and everyone here at FOTO magazine, I am happy to inform you that your photo titled “Reluctant Rodeo Clown” is the winner of this year’s FOTO magazine photography award.

  Please read the enclosed release carefully, sign it at the bottom, and return it to our office by September 15. Your photo will appear in the November issue of the magazine and a check for ten thousand dollars will be forwarded to you upon receipt and acceptance of your release.