Arizona Allspice

by Lewin, Renee

  “Maybe it was just you, though.”

  He pushes his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose with his pointer finger and shrugs.

  “Are you buying those?” I laugh. “Looks like you’ve grown attached.”

  He takes them off his face and studies them. “Not that attached.” He places them back on the display. “Besides, these were always your special thing,” he smiles.

  As we walk from store to store the desire to see Joey try on new things grows stronger. After seeing him with those Buddy Holly glasses on, I can’t stop thinking about him being all dressed up like a preppy Ivy League university student or like a Ralph Lauren model on a yacht. It’s a style opposite of his laidback wardrobe, but I know he can pull it off.

  “Joey, I would really like to buy you an outfit or two today.”

  “No thanks, Laney. Save your money for something more worthwhile.”

  “It is worthwhile! It’ll be a late birthday present from me to you. Look at that mannequin. If you dressed like that, I wouldn’t be surprised if people started giving you special treatment.”

  “So what? What do I need all that for? I’m not trying to impress anyone.”

  “Your poor future girlfriend.” I shake my head solemnly. Joey knits his eyebrows. “You’re gonna pick her up from her house on your squeaky bicycle, wearing a t-shirt, soccer shorts and flippy floppies?” Joey laughs at the image I’ve painted. “It’ll be an outfit you can wear just in case you go on a nice date…” I trail off. He seems to be caving to the idea. Finally, he shrugs, sighs and then says yes.

  “Yes!” I grin and clap my hands.

  “But only one outfit,” he stresses.

  I rub my hands together. This was like having my own real-life Ken doll. I look around the mall for the right store. I see a classy gentleman’s apparel shop and point to it.

  Joey follows my line of sight and groans. “Why me?”

  I lead him to the store. “Right this way, Ken.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  Joey walks out of the fitting room wearing a deep olive green V-neck sweater with a white sports shirt underneath. The sweater falls just above the waist of the vintage dark washed jeans. The cut of the jeans are perfect: not too loose or too long. “Oh! I forgot the accessories.” I find some sunglasses, a belt and some sneakers and hand them to him. “Push your sleeves up to your elbow.” I help him with the white collar and cuffs. The sweater meets the top of the shiny brown leather belt nicely. The silvery aviator glasses resting in his curly red hair and the tan and white canvas sneakers without socks add an air of chic insolence. The clothing creates clean lines on his body. The way they cling to his chest, around his biceps, and across his backside makes me consider picking out another outfit that would show more skin. He looks like a downright arrogant, sexy snob. I love it!

  Joey eyes himself in the full-length mirror and then strikes a Mr. Universe pose with one bicep flexed and the other arm pointing skyward.

  “Next stop is a modeling agency,” I say. “You look great. I said you would.”

  “I look like a Village Kid…and I like it. This is entirely your fault,” he smirks. Eventually, Joey changes back into his t-shirt and soccer shorts and we carry his new outfit up to the sales clerk. “Are you sure about this?” Joey asks.

  “Yes, Joey. I want to do this.”

  He nervously fingers the $150 price tag on the jeans. “Really? Elaine, these are kind of expensive. I don’t want you to regret.”

  “Joey,” I say as sternly as my uncle had said to me. His eyes widen a little. “I am buying them for you. You deserve to have nice things. Now, kindly shut up.”

  At the food court, Joey insists on paying for my lunch. I allow it even though I think it’s silly. We’re not on a date and I have plenty of money. As we eat our Chinese food, I reminisce on the days I spent at this mall when I was a teenager. “More times than I can count, Denise, Marisol, Ariella and I would eat here for free. Denise would flirt with a restaurant worker or hit on an older guy she’d find and magically lunch was served. It was funny to see how easily she could convince men to follow her orders. I had a lot of fun with Ariella then, too. Simone’s was our favorite store. Did you ever meet Ariella?”

  “No.”

  “I guess she left town before you could meet her. She was my best friend. But that was before everyone in school decided to hate me.”

  “They don’t hate you. That was five years ago. People have changed. You talk to Marisol now, and it’s not so bad between you and Denise,” Joey puts a positive spin on it.

  “My mother died and none of them came to the funeral. That was only a year ago.” I stir a spiral path into my rice. “A few parents showed up, but no one else. That was when I needed them.” The calmness with which I say this is startling. There’s a pang of sadness in my gut, but I’m not bawling. Nor am I completely detached. Joey, however, goes someplace else in his head. He stares down at his plate for close to a minute. Then his eyelids flutter as he snaps out of it. He quietly clears his throat.

  “We were scared,” he says, “and weak. Even stupid. We should have been there. All we thought about was ourselves and”

  “Wait a minute. Don’t say ‘we’. Don’t group yourself with them. I was talking about everyone else. Not you.”

  “But I didn’t come to the funeral.”

  “I know.”

  Joey searches my eyes for any sign of resentment. “If I could have been a better person that day and had my act together, then I would have been there for you,” he says with tender conviction that fills an emptiness that was inside of me.

  “Joey, I know. I know.” I reach across the table and entwine my fingers with his. I smile as I see his relief. He relaxes and I marvel at the light roughness of the inside of his hand and how its warmth travels through my hand, up my arm and to the rest of my body. I reluctantly release his fingers and we return to eating our lunches.

  “It really bothers me that I’m friends with people that hurt you in the past. I hope you can be comfortable with them and trust them again. I want you to come back to this same mall with Denise and Marisol and have it be like old times.”

  “That’s very sweet of you to want that for me,” I say between bites of my over-salted shrimp fried rice. “It would be wonderful, but I won’t get my hopes up and neither should you.”

  “You’ve got to keep putting yourself out there, Elaine. Let a few walls down. I’m not saying that you’re responsible for it all. I just think sometimes you forget that to talk to you they have to let walls down and put themselves out there, too.”

  I nod and continue to eat. Joey gives me concerned glances every now and then. I’m not mad. He’s right. I forget that it’s hard for Denise, Marisol, and other folks to be comfortable with me. Approaching me is a dangerous move. They’ve sensed the intense, negative feelings I’ve had towards them for years. What could I have done differently to make things right long ago? Should I have done anything differently? I could have forgiven Denise, Ariella and Marisol for not caring that I was almost raped. Then, when word got around about the rent thing, they might have stood by me. Or not. I wish I could stop thinking about the past because I can’t change it. Maybe I should go to Cesar’s party. I could have new experiences and forget the painful history.

  Joey doesn’t know about what happened to me. Would he be encouraging me to salvage broken friendships if he knew? Would he still be friends with Denise and Marisol? He holds his large circle of friends close to his heart and does whatever he can to not lose them. I’ve only been friends with Joey for a few weeks. It wouldn’t surprise me if he took their side. I imagine how that fateful moment might play out. He’d call me a liar. He’d call me a tease again. My mind froze with fear when Joey called me that word. According to my girlfriends, being a “tease” was reason enough for Richie to assault me.

  In the moment Joey spit out that word, I was certain he knew my secret. I had run home afterwards in
a daze of paranoia. Who had told him? Finally, I saw that I was being irrational. My irrational thoughts reminded me of my father and the mental illness that could be lurking within me. I know that if I vocalized every worry I have about that issue I would hear, “Don’t be silly. You’re perfectly healthy.” The thing is, everyone’s fine until the second that they aren’t.

  Right now, I’m not worrying about it. Joey has a lot to do with that. There’s a connection between Joey and I that comforts me. He is a link to my mother and my brother, both of whom are not here with me. He reminds me of my mother’s compassion and my brother’s openness.

  “I’ve gotta take a piss,” Joey announces.

  I drop my fried rice laden fork onto my plate. “Ugh! My delicate sensibilities!” I complain.

  Jokingly, Joey snorts at my claim and leaves our table. By the time I finish the last of my food, he returns. I gasp. He’s wearing the outfit I bought him. “You sneaky snake,” I pout. I hadn’t noticed that he brought his bags with him to the restroom. He plops down in his seat and pushes his aviator glasses off of his face and onto his head, oblivious to the girls at a nearby table whispering about him and giggling. He was right. It’s my fault. I created this dapper monster. “That outfit is supposed to be special. Why are you wearing it to sit around in a greasy food court?”

  “This outfit costs hundreds of dollars. I’m not going to wait until the one day a year that’s special enough to pull it out of my closet and dust it off. I’m going to get mileage out of it starting today. Besides, the museum at the university is classy enough.”

  “I guess.”

  Our plan is to visit the University of Arizona, my old prospective college. It’s only a ten minute drive from this mall and has six different museums showcasing anything from minerals and meteorites to 13th century European oil paintings.

  Swiftly, Joey grabs our trays and empties them into the trash. I peer up at him from my seat as he stands towering over me. “Madame,” he says and gives me his arm. I stand and hook my arm with his. As we walk away, I hear the previously giggling teenage girls sigh in disappointment.

  Walls of red brick form fortresses of knowledge on the U of A campus. Skinny fan-leaf palm trees, tough Ebony trees and fat green Saguaro cacti populate the rocky gardens. The school is at the foothills of the western segment of the Santa Catalina Mountains. White clouds halo their dark, stoic peaks. The view is magnificent, but the heat propels Joey and me indoors. As we walk down the halls, through the galleries, across the quads and inside the centers, we receive occasional stares from students and staff. Not anything negative, just curiosity. Joey doesn’t seem to notice. Or if he did, he didn’t comment on them, so I guess it didn’t bother him.

  It doesn’t bother me, either. This is quite a change. I’m letting more things roll off my back these days because I know I have someone on my side. When Raul was the person I called my friend, I couldn’t exactly rely on him to speak up if people were disrespectful to me. I relied on Raul’s popularity with the Park Kids to extinguish conflict before it could start. My peers were quieted, but they were still my enemies. There was no real guarantee that I could let my guard down and feel safe. It wasn’t a relationship like Joey and I have.

  I am so used to everyone outside of my family being the enemy. Today, right now, the wall has been lowered. I know the students at this university campus aren’t out to get me. Everyone is just living his or her life, taking it day by day, decision by decision. As I walk with Joey around the lively college grounds and pass the engineering building, I think of Manny. I think about where I expected he and I would be at our age and the reality of where we ended up. I was supposed to be living here in Tucson and Manny was to live in Pasadena. My twin brother and I have now been forcibly pulled apart. I will never again ask for me and my brother to go separate ways.

  “Elaine, what’s wrong?” Joey grasps my arm and stops us in the middle of the courtyard. He noticed the tears in my eyes.

  Why do I insist on embarrassing myself this way? I’m sure he thinks I’m a weak person. Of course, berating myself makes me want to cry more. “I knocked Manny for not having the courage to go off to school without me, but there’s no way I would have lasted long at this school alone. Now I see I can’t make any decisions in my life without him. I have to know that he supports me. I need to be near him.” I focus my watery vision onto the ground and brace myself for Joey’s reaction. He doesn’t say anything. I feel his hand rub my back, which is comforting, but he’s silent. I wipe my face and look up at him. He wants to say something. I can tell by the way his lips are slightly parted.

  “I think you are stronger than you believe,” is his cryptic response.

  That’s all he has to say? Suspicion clenches me. Is he hiding something from me? Is it that same secret that Manny’s been keeping from me? I open my mouth to begin some interrogation, but I second guess myself. Maybe I was just being paranoid. Maybe I was just slipping back into my old way of tagging everyone as my enemy. I decide I just need to chill out. I survey our surroundings and settle on the campus bookstore. There’s nothing like a bookstore to calm my nerves.

  After two minutes of convincing Joey that I am okay, we go inside. Once we head up from the textbooks on the first floor to the second floor where the general books are located, I put my sadness out of my mind and get excited. I marvel at the large globe at the center of the bookstore, so big that three people could hug their arms around its circumference. Joey smiles at my wonder. “Let’s play a little game,” I propose. Joey’s eyes brighten with curiosity. “How about we both find a book for each other, a book the other would enjoy. The catch is we only get two minutes to find it.”

  Joey scratches his chin and his eyes dart around to tally the dozens of bookshelves. “I’ll meet the challenge,” he nods with a smirk.

  “Okay, we’ll meet back here at this grande globe in two minutes.” The slim red second hand of the clock above the checkout counter skims across the number 11. I begin the countdown. “Five, four, three, two, one.” Joey dashes away to the other side of the bookstore before I can blink. “So damn competitive,” I mumble and scurry over to the poetry section.

  Eight minutes later, I make my giddy way over to the globe with the book I selected hidden behind my back. Joey isn’t there yet. I begin to worry. Was I unfair to give him only 2 minutes? I do technically have an advantage. I’ve visited this bookstore before, two years ago. No, I have more than a slight advantage. For God’s sake, the boy is having trouble seeing! What is wrong with me? Why would I challenge him to pick through the miniscule type on the slim spines of thousands of books?

  “Oh!” I yelp as someone lightly pinches my side. I turn around to find Joey standing there with his hands behind his back. I glance at the clock and back at his amused expression. “You made it with five seconds to spare. Was it hard for you?” I tease.

  “Of course it was. You’re very high maintenance,” he says matter-of-factly.

  “Sure. Okay, let’s switch.” I hand him what I’d found. It is a biography and collection of the artwork and provocative poetry of E. E. Cummings. Joey had mentioned in his journal that he admired the poet’s style. With my other hand, I receive a book with a mysterious cover. It has no title. A golden fabric has been stretched across the thick covers. The shimmering fabric is embroidered with twisted copper dew drops and thirteen-petal flowers. The pattern is reminiscent of Indian or Persian paisley. I open the book and leaf through its many pages. Joey and I look up from our books at the same time.

  “This is so awesome,” Joey beams.

  The smile on my face is as big as his, but mine quivers a little.

  “I’m so happy you like it because mine is absolutely perfect.” I hug it to my chest. Inside the book he picked out for me, every single page is blank.

  ******

  Yesterday in Tucson was fun once I suppressed the flashbacks I kept having of my ex-stepfather. When we left the mall and went to U of A, I wasn’t as paranoi
d because, what would that idiot be doing on a college campus? The amount of college guys that were leering at Elaine was ridiculous. My temper has seriously leveled out these days because I let the dudes live to see another day and I didn’t complain about it to Elaine. Besides, I don’t think Elaine would have appreciated it. She’s not mine to be possessive over. She probably would’ve thought I was being immature and hotheaded. My worst fear is Elaine’s fear; I don’t want her to be afraid of me. My mother lived in fear when she was married. I don’t intend to do that to the person I care about.

  I had a great time in Tucson. I faced my fears and opened my mind. Spending time with Elaine was great, but it was hard. I don’t want to be just friends. I thought it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I thought that going back to a situation where she and I weren’t friends at all would be a worse hell. I’m not so sure anymore. It’s complicated. I don’t want to go, yet it upsets me to stay. I’m hoping Manny can help me make sense of my feelings today.

  When I arrive at the Roberts’ home, Elaine is still getting ready. I lean against the doorway of the bathroom and silently watch her brush her shiny black hair up and gather it between her hands. She winds her rubber band around it to form a neat bun. I glance at her hair tie from yesterday still around my wrist. I’m sure she won’t miss it. She has dozens of them in weird places all over her house. Why she’d need a hair tie along with some silverware is anybody’s guess. Next I have the privilege of seeing her get her boots on. She has to tighten her laces so she bends overrr…Elaine Frankie Roberts, will you marry me?