by Carrie Mac
“Let’s stop talking about it.” Salix reached for me. My sketchbook and pencils fell to the floor. She kept leaning forward until I could feel her breath on my cheeks. “Let’s stop talking about hard stuff and do something that feels good instead. I’m in charge of the distraction department, remember?”
Salix’s lips on mine, her tongue sliding between them. She pushed me onto my back and slid her hands up my shirt until she was peeling it off.
My heart raced. My hands shook as I reached for her.
“You know porn?” The words just came out, and now I had to go with them, no matter how badly I wished that I’d never said them. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
“Sure,” she murmured into my neck.
“You know the girl-on-girl stuff?”
“Maeve?” She pulled away.
“I’ve seen it,” I said. “You know, little bits of it, on the internet.”
“Okay.” Salix drew out the word, hanging it up at the end. “And?”
“The straight stuff is all dicks and balls and vaginas and tits and butts and mouths and humping. And the girl-on-girl stuff is so fake. It’s not real. That’s not what girls do, you know? The girls in porn are automatons.” I did my best robot voice. “I-lick-you-you-kiss-me-pinch-my-nipple-arch-your-back-bend-over-moan-moan-sigh.”
“It’s okay,” Salix said.
“Porn?”
“I mean it’s okay if you don’t know what to do.” She took my hand. “I don’t know what to do either.”
“You don’t?”
“Not really.” She kissed my hand. My wrist. The soft crease of my arm.
A man and a woman. We all knew that. A man and a man, easy to figure out. I even knew that Dan liked to be on the bottom, and what that meant. But the mechanics of two girls? Two real girls? Not two porn robots? No one had told me. No one talked about it at school. There was no health class about this, two girls in bed together.
—
Salix took her shirt off too, and then we were getting naked, and then we were naked, and I wasn’t thinking about anything other than the weight of Salix on top of me, and the blood rushing to all the right places, and Salix’s tongue on my nipple and her hand between my legs and the electric buzz of the two of us together. This. Us. Together. This was the only thing. The one and only thing.
I didn’t want to see any of them.
Not Claire.
Not the boys.
Definitely not Dad.
I didn’t want to know if he was doing well, or if he was sliding.
I didn’t want to see him succeed, and I didn’t want to see him fail.
I didn’t want to hear from Mom about anything that she needed me to do for the house.
I didn’t want to hear from her about Raymond. Things are so good between us, she’d written. He treats me so well, Maeve. I imagine good things.
I didn’t want to sign for the package that was the birth pool. I didn’t want to be there when the midwife checked the heartbeat and laughed with the boys, who would argue over who was going to cut the cord.
I wanted to be with Salix. All the time.
She wasn’t messy. She wasn’t fucked up. She was a good thing. And she had nothing to do with the mess at home.
“Do you think Raymond will come home with her?” she said.
“Look up.” I took her hand and pulled her into the park. “Look up.”
A murder of crows across the sky, coming from the north at an angle.
Hundreds and hundreds of them, going home.
Give your father a chance, Claire had said when she’d seen me the day before, already on my way out. He’s doing great so far.
Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe it would last. Maybe it wouldn’t. I didn’t want to sit in the murky unknown. I wanted to stand on concrete. I wanted to stand on concrete and hold hands with Salix and look up at the sky, at the crows heading surely home.
It was Salix who picked up the letter from Ruthie. The mail was behind the door when we came from the park for lunch one day. Dad was at work. Claire and the boys were out at a bird sanctuary more than an hour away. We had the place to ourselves for at least half the day.
“Hydro, bank, and something for you,” she said as she came up the stairs.
A postcard from my mom, I assumed. But it was an envelope, with a return address of ASRA, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. ASRA, which stood for Alaska Summer Research Academy. I recognized Ruthie’s writing right away. My stomach clutched into a knot.
“Who’s it from?”
“A girl.”
“A girl.” Salix held me from behind and looked over my shoulder. “Why are your hands shaking?”
“I told you about Jessica.”
“This is from her? I thought she lived in California.”
“She does. This isn’t from her.”
Inside was one sheet of paper, a row of little Tardises marching along the bottom.
Dear Maeve,
I was going to email you back, but we don’t have internet in the field, and it was down when we went into the main campus, which is a four-hour drive. So I’m writing you a letter. How weird is that? Not that weird, I guess. If you’re a geek.
I’m so sorry to hear about Mrs. Patel. I know that she was a very good friend. And I’m so sorry that you were the one to find her. I can’t imagine.
Is your dad better now? Claire? The boys? The baby? The baby isn’t due for a while, I know. But all that before-birth stuff. It’s okay?
I hate writing letters. Especially this one.
You know, I didn’t know what to say to you ever since that day, but now I do.
I’m sorry for what I did.
Really sorry.
Your friend,
Ruthie.
ps. I have a girlfriend. She can name all the Doctors in order, along with who played them and the dates. She told me that I should’ve apologized by now. She’s right. I was violent. I should never have put my hands on you like that. And I’m sorry that I was weird about you and Jessica. I shouldn’t have kissed you. And I should’ve stopped when you said no.
I’m so sorry.
pps. Q. What do you call an “e” that runs away?
A. An escapee!
“It’s from Ruthie.” I handed the letter to Salix. “My best friend. Or, she used to be.”
After she read it, she looked up, confused and concerned.
So I told her.
—
Things ended when Jessica moved back to California not even a month after she arrived. I love you, she said. I love you, I said. Come see me! I will! Two weeks later she emailed me to say that it was over and that she’d found a new girlfriend, and she hoped that I would find the right person and fall in love. What we had, Maeve, was a two-sided crush, you know? But I didn’t know, and without thinking, I forwarded it to Ruthie. My feelings were hurt, and I wanted someone to know. But it was also kind of funny, too.
Her reply was so fast, it was hard to believe she’d had time to compose it. An invitation to make hexaflexagons was exactly how someone like Ruthie smoothed things over. So I went, because I missed Ruthie. I wanted things to go back to normal. As I walked up her front steps, I knew what I was going to say. Now we have BJ—Before Jessica. Not blow job, Ruthie. It’s not funny. And AJ—After Jessica. She was just a blip in our timeline, that’s all.
Ruthie’s mother answered the door and ushered me down to the basement. I tried not to think back to all the papier-mâché and broken glass on the floor, but it was hard not to. There was Ruthie, standing at the bottom now, smiling. She handed me a pair of scissors.
“I have a template.”
“A template?”
“For the hexaflexagons,” Ruthie said. “I need to make one for each person in my class. Final project.” I followed her into her bedroom. Doctor Who was playing on her computer.
“Eleventh, right?”
“Tenth.” She muted it and sat at her desk beside a bowl of barbecue chips and a couple of
cans of root beer—two of my favorite things. She opened the drawer and pulled out a pack of red licorice. Also a favorite.
She gracelessly ripped open the package. “Want one?”
“No thanks.” I sat on the edge of the bed. What was she doing? Were we going to talk about Jessica? Or maybe we were going to pretend that she never happened?
“I’ve numbered the triangles,” Ruthie said through a mouthful of licorice. “That way we can do a pattern on each one that will come together when it’s folded.”
“Ruthie?”
“Or we can leave them plain.” She rolled up another piece of licorice and stuffed it in her mouth. “And they can color them after. I was going to bring a box of markers.”
“We’re not going to talk about it?”
Ruthie’s expression was blank. She chewed and chewed. She held out the package of licorice. “Want one?”
So we were not going to talk about it.
I took a piece and nibbled on it. “Thanks.”
We cut strips of paper—not talking at all—and Ruthie demonstrated how to fold them and glue them, and how to work the hexaflexagon so that it showed one surface, then another, then a third. Ruthie’s fingers seemed unusually nimble.
When we’d made enough, she put them in an envelope and stood up.
“You should probably go now.”
“I could stay,” I said. “We could watch a movie or something?”
Ruthie patted her thighs, something she did when she was particularly nervous. “I can’t.”
“Okay.” Confused, I picked up my bag. Ruthie was still patting her thighs, and then all of a sudden she was coming at me.
“Ruthie—”
She pushed me against the wall with such force that one of her science-fair trophies toppled off the shelf above and landed on the bed. “Ruthie, stop!” I put up my hands, but Ruthie leaned in, and then I was pressing up against Ruthie’s breasts through her shirt and they were enormous and squishy and Ruthie’s face was in mine and her mouth was open and wet and she smelled of barbecue chips and licorice and she was kissing me with such ferocity that I could not breathe.
And I couldn’t speak, because Ruthie’s mouth was on mine and she was sliding her face back and forth, as if that were kissing, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. I tried to push her away, but Ruthie planted her hands on either side of my shoulders and kept slobbering on me until I finally ducked down under her arm and was free.
“What the hell are you doing?” I clutched my bag to my chest.
Ruthie sank to the floor. “You picked her.”
“It wasn’t about picking!”
“You were supposed to pick me.”
“I didn’t pick anyone!” I could hardly speak. I was breathless, and shocked, and had no idea what to say. I backed away. “I never liked you that way. Never.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Ruthie put her head in her hands and started to sob.
Part of me wanted to kneel beside her and put my arms around her and tell her it was okay. But then I felt bile rising in my throat and I ran up the stairs instead, stopping short when I saw Ruthie’s mom at the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables, as if everything were absolutely normal.
“All done, dear?”
I could only nod, and then I rushed out the front door and down the steps and onto the sidewalk. I stood still for a moment, totally stunned. And then I ran, and I kept running, all the way across town to my mom’s office, where I sat on the curb by the car and waited, my breath hot in my chest, my pulse bounding. When I saw Mom walking across the parking lot, I started to cry. “What is it, baby? What happened at Ruthie’s? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
I was fine. I was fine, right? Everything was fine?
I didn’t tell my mom.
I didn’t tell Dan.
I didn’t tell Dad, or Claire.
I didn’t tell anyone. Until I told Salix.
—
“What she did to you was sexual assault.” Salix’s jaw tensed. “Damn right she should be apologizing. Just because she’s a girl doesn’t mean she can get away with forcing herself on you.”
“You know, after it happened, I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe it was my fault. I asked myself, What if it was a guy? And I knew the answer: I’d tell. But I was confused. And I still am. I felt sorry for her.”
“Would you feel sorry for your assailant if it was a guy?”
“Assailant? That’s a bit harsh.”
“What she did was harsh. Just because she’s a girl doesn’t make it any less harsh.”
“But she’s not just a girl,” I said. “She’s Ruthie. She’s my weird and socially tragic and totally harmless best friend. She was confused. She was trying. She thought that because Jessica was gone and we both—”
“There’s no excuse.” Salix’s expression was grim. “Are you going to write her back?”
“Of course.” I didn’t even hesitate. Of course I’d write her back. Ruthie was the gigantic ogre that had forced me against the wall, but she was also my oldest friend, and I wasn’t willing to break up with her.
“I hope she behaves better with her new girlfriend.”
“It’s good that she told her, right?”
Salix nodded. “That part is a very good thing.”
“If I thought for one second that Ruthie was dangerous, I wouldn’t write her back. I trust her.” I pulled Salix to the couch and sat in her lap. I draped my arms around her neck and kissed her. “I have good instincts. I knew you were a good thing. A very good thing.”
It took a couple of days to write Ruthie back—eight long pages about everything that had happened since that afternoon. I walked up to the post office and mailed the letter, and as I came out of the post office, there was Dad.
“I followed you.”
“Drunk, junkie, and stalker?”
“Ouch.” He put his arm around me. “Walk with me.”
“To where?”
“The Legion,” he said. “For a meeting.”
“I suppose that’s a good thing.”
“I’m looking forward to this one.” He dropped his arm. “The one I go to on the way home from work is so boring. Boring stories. Boring people. Everyone is so tense. And so boring. Promise me that you’ll never be boring, Maeve.”
“I’d rather be boring than a drunk.”
“Fair enough.”
We walked south, joining the early-evening bustle on the sidewalk. The restaurant patios were full of people and pitchers of sangria and plates of sweet potato fries. The shops were open later during the summer, so doors were open and people browsed and music leaked out onto the street.
“I’ve kept my word,” Dad said. “I’ve gone to a meeting every single day.”
“Good for you.”
We walked along in silence for a while, and then he took my hand.
“Where’s the painting, Maeve?”
I wished that I knew. I wished that I could bring it back. I wished that I had left it on the wall.
“I threw it in the alley.” My voice caught. “Someone took it. I’m sorry.”
“Okay.” He nodded and nodded. “Thanks for telling me.”
“It was mean. What you said about it.”
“It was. I’m sorry too.”
I was supposed to meet Salix in front of the liquor store where she was busking. That was at the end of the next block. First of all, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to lead Dad right to the front door of a building full of alcohol. Secondly, I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to meet Salix. Salix was sparkling and clean and all the good things. Dad was messed up and dark and several bad things in a row.
We were nearly there, but we could still cross the street. The intersection was steps away.
No. I did not want him anywhere near the liquor store. No. I did not want him to meet Salix. Not at all. Maybe never. He wasn’t welcome to be part of the story yet.
“Let’s cross here, Dad.”
“W
e don’t need to. I can resist the liquor store, Maeve. I’m more of a bar guy anyway.” And then he stood still. “Hear that?”
Salix. She was playing “Clocks” again. The song she’d been playing that first time I saw her at the bus station.
“The light’s red. Let’s go.”
“She’s amazing.”
“Yeah, she is.” I tugged his arm. “We’re going to miss the light.”
“I’ve seen her around, busking.” I could see him thinking, linking the various parts. He grinned. “That’s her, isn’t it?”
“Who?”
“That’s the girl. The girl.” He was already walking away. “Come on, introduce me.”
“I don’t—” I didn’t want this to be happening. I didn’t want him to ruin it. I didn’t want the two of them to collide like this. If they met, I wouldn’t be able to have them unmeet, ever.
“Dad!”
He spun back, a big smile on his face, handsome and bright-eyed. “What?”
So this was how it was going to go.
“Okay. Wait for me.”
—
Salix was playing with her back to us.
“Don’t.” Dad stopped me from getting her attention. “I just want to listen for a minute.”
He closed his eyes and listened until she finished the song and set her violin down to get a drink of water. Salix noticed me then.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” We smiled at each other for a long moment, and then I remembered to introduce them. “Salix, this is my dad. Billy Glover.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir.”
“Call me Billy.” Dad tossed a handful of coins into her case. “You’re very talented, sweetheart.”
“So are you,” Salix said. “I’m a big fan of the Railway Kings.”
“That was a million and a half years ago, but thank you.”
“Can I walk with you?” Salix put her violin away. “Where are you going?”
I glanced at Dad.
“A meeting,” he offered. “I’m sure you’ve heard all the gory details.”
I didn’t deny it. I didn’t say anything. Salix took my hand.
“Come on.” Dad sighed. “I don’t want to be late.”
—
