Girl, Unframed

by Deb Caletti

  Lila pushed her chair back in anger and went inside. As Jake mopped up the mess with a stack of napkins, I saw the muscle in his cheek twitch, in that place where anger sits and simmers. I pressed a kitchen towel to the tablecloth. Our hands bumped. His big, thick knuckles met mine. He caught my eyes. He held them again, same as he did before.

  “Hey,” he said. And then he shrugged. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew what it felt like. Us together, her not there at all.

  Flame on paper, catching on kindling. Before you know it, the house is on fire, and then the block, and then the city, and you are running outside, holding only your wedding photo.

  * * *

  That night, Nicco called after work. I didn’t tell him about any of this, how tense our house was. I didn’t tell him about Jake and that guy in the car, or about the huge fight Lila and Jake had after the wineglass spilled. You should have heard how loud they were. I’m sure the neighbors did.

  I didn’t tell him about the flasher, either. It felt shameful, to be the one that man chose. I worried it said something about me. Like I had an invisible marking that meant I would invite things other people wouldn’t invite.

  I didn’t want to tell Nicco about all the ways things were broken. The way I was. My real self wasn’t shiny and perfect and fascinating and whole. Even my own dad was only interested in me for two days max.

  I was afraid to be seen. But I really, really wanted to be seen. More than anything.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Exhibit 46: Sworn statements of William and Eva Rand, 128 Sea Cliff Drive

  Exhibit 47: Sworn statement of Priscilla Ruby, 129 Sea Cliff Drive

  But Nicco let himself be seen. It was always a risk, to show yourself, one that some people were more willing to take. Or more able to take, probably because it hadn’t sucked so bad when they tried it before.

  By this time, Nicco and I were talking on the phone several times a day, meeting whenever we could at the beach or some food place or for ten minutes in his car. We’d take whatever we could get, you know, just to see each other. And then, God, there’d be the twisted clothes and the frustration of public places and gearshifts and all that kissing.

  Finally, though, we were going to his apartment for the first time. Before we did, we had to stop by his moms’ house on Cabrillo. Leslie, his mom-mom, the one who gave birth to him (his words), had something to give him. The something was a vegetarian casserole and corn muffins. His moms lived in a Victorian house that they shared with a single guy who rented the basement apartment. We pulled up in Nicco’s van, and then he looked at me and shrugged, like, It is what it is.

  “Stop,” I said.

  “Okay, come on, then.”

  We took the steps up to the front door. In the entry, there was an old piano that now held several potted plants. In the corner, a huge, flat-leafed palm wound its way up another set of stairs and to the ceiling.

  “Hey!” Nicco shouted.

  “In the kitchen!” Leslie shouted back.

  I was nervous. This was Nicco’s mom. One of them. And you could tell she and he were close, by the way he talked about her. Upstairs, Leslie was crimping foil over a large baking dish. The windows of the small kitchen were open, and I could hear the neighbors playing Latin music. Framed vintage fruit crate labels hung on one wall, and a long row of salt and pepper shakers in various forms—chefs, dogs, smiling tomatoes, cowboy hats—lined the windowsill. Leslie wore a breezy sundress, which covered her solid frame. Her short hair was a lawn of gray, spiky grass. She took my hand in her warm one. Her eyes were as kind as Nicco’s. “You must be Sydney,” she said.

  I was happy she knew about me. “It’s great to meet you,” I said.

  “Likewise. Definitely.” She looped her arm around Nicco’s waist. “This kid. This one.” She kissed his cheek.

  “We’re only here for a minute,” he said.

  “No worries. Next time, you can stay longer and we’ll talk more.”

  She hugged us both, and Nicco took the food and thanked his mom. In spite of our differences, I saw the similarities Nicco and I had too—no siblings, no father, more than enough mother. On the way out, I spotted other pieces of his life in this house where he’d grown up. A cushy sofa and a jammed bookcase with a bong sitting on one of the shelves. A wood coffee table that was stacked with magazines.

  “Small house,” he said.

  “Big hearts,” I said back.

  “You know that casserole was just an excuse to meet you, right?”

  “I figured.”

  “It could feed ten people on a yoga retreat.”

  * * *

  In the van, Nicco started the engine. I was nervous, but I wanted to get there. “How far to your place?” I asked. The Buddha smiled at me.

  “Not far.” Nicco reached over and took my hand. And then it happened again, as it always did when his fingers laced in mine—the sudden energy, the want. I moved my other hand up his arm. He let go, set his hand on my leg, and stroked my skin. Then he gripped my leg hard before he took his hand back.

  “Oh, man,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “There’s too much space between us.”

  “For sure.”

  A red light. He leaned way over, kissed me hard. It was easy to get lost in that. The car behind us honked. Who knew how long the light had been green.

  “You’ve made me lucky,” he said, because he found a parking spot right in front of the Cambodian restaurant. Across the street, there was a Russian bakery and a Russian bookstore, and I spotted an Irish bar and a sushi place. Four countries of cuisine on one block—what more could you want?

  He punched a code to open the door next to the restaurant, which led to a staircase. We hurried up. Another door, another lock. It opened to a small room with a futon and two old leather chairs, and a kitchen with a pot in the sink.

  “Vince never does his dishes,” Nicco said, but I couldn’t care less. I just covered his mouth with a kiss, and his hands were on me, and we were back-back-backing up to his room until we landed on a bed. A whole, huge, luxurious bed. Luxurious, meaning there was space and privacy, not that it was fancy. It had been made in a hurry—green sheets, a duvet flattened by the years, a woven blue blanket on top. The smell of the restaurant was in the room—something frying, something fishy, plus smoky wood barbecue. None of that mattered. When I opened my eyes, I saw Nicco above me, as well as a huge, beautifully patterned tapestry, from his moms’ store probably, a deep blue and red with little gold threads and shiny discs.

  We kissed for a long time, too long, until it turned into hands, mouths, fingers, up, over, in—a fevered hurry. I wanted more, more, more. Our T-shirts were off, shorts half undone. His skin felt so good against mine. But then he rolled off of me. Sat up.

  “Wait, wait,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. I didn’t think I wanted to wait. I was nervous, yeah. This was a huge leap from Samuel Crane, but I wanted to know what sex was, and I wanted to know with Nicco. I wanted to choose this. My body seemed to belong to everyone else. It might never be mine, when beliefs about it went back eons.

  Me, my choice. If this would change me, I wanted to be changed. This was part of IT. Not the whole thing, but a big piece, and I knew that for sure from the way my heart pounded like a fist on a door. I held his wrist, pulled him back toward me.

  But Nicco stayed where he was. He was trying to slow things down. I was embarrassed. I sat up. I held my shirt to my bare chest. I didn’t understand what was happening. I’d thought he was making sure I wanted to do what we were about to do, but that’s not why he’d pulled away. Was I being too aggressive or something? Did he think I was that kind of a girl, so now he was turned off? Was he crazy? Was he from another planet? I mean, supposedly every guy wanted sex, and was ready for sex at any second, right? Do you see how complicated this all was? Because girls could have misconceptions about guys, too.

  “Syd,” he said. His voice was hoarse.
He shook his head.

  “What?”

  I wanted to cry. Maybe I was a little mad. I didn’t know what this meant, because I’d never been in this place before. I was wondering if I was doing stuff wrong. And Nicco had been in that place before. He’d had sex with a girlfriend before me, Anna. When I thought of her and him, I was sure I was doing stuff wrong.

  “Don’t look so sad! I just don’t want to rush this, you know?”

  He sat there with his pants undone and his arm around my bare shoulders. I felt stupid like that. Humiliated. I put my shirt back on. “God, don’t misunderstand. I want you. I want you so bad. But I want some time in this part. The getting-to-know-each-other part. If we have sex… it’ll change everything.”

  Okay, okay, I understood, I guess, even if I was embarrassed and ashamed and suddenly worried about what he thought of me, though Nicco was never like that, not ever. But the thing was, it had already changed. From the moment we kissed outside after that concert, when we stumbled into this whole, I don’t know, landscape of desire, nothing had been the same. How were we supposed to pretend it wasn’t there? We felt it when we were in his car and at the beach and just eating some sandwich at a café. When we were at his apartment, we felt it. When we were sitting on a blanket at Golden Gate Park, we felt it. This force, this power between us. Something deep and necessary and urgent.

  When he drove me home that day, there it was again. Even though he’d tried to slow it down earlier, it was there. Good luck getting rid of it. Good luck ever getting that out of your head. I was glad. I liked it. It felt huge and powerful, and I wanted him to know it wasn’t going anywhere, as if he didn’t already. People said this changed over time, that you felt less desire the longer you were with each other. This seemed impossible. How could it change over time? It felt like a heat that would only build upon itself, more likely to blaze out of control than burn out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Exhibit 48: Sworn statement of Leslie C. Ricci

  When I went home, I found something awful. Not at first. At first, I went upstairs. My mind had gone all irrational and self-pitying, you know, thinking maybe I’d never be good enough for a man to really want me. I mean, sure, the Shanes of the world might like my boobs, my ass, the candy in the dish, but what about the whole, real girl and the men who mattered? In my frustration and confusion, I took off my shoes and dropped my purse on the bed. My lip gloss fell out and rolled underneath, and I was mad at everything, so I just thought, Good. Stay there. The lip gloss out of my reach seemed like the way my life was going in general.

  Before we left Nicco’s apartment, he’d changed into the familiar black pants and white shirt. I watched him do up the buttons and zip up the zipper, which was the wrong direction of things, I thought. A failure, for sure.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the whole night ahead. No one was home, so I had no idea what the dinner plan was. I didn’t really want to be around anyone anyway.

  And then I realized: It was quiet. In my stupid fog, I hadn’t noticed that Max didn’t come to greet me. He hadn’t even barked, as he always did when a car drove up. And Jake never took him anywhere. Max was pretty much another thing that Jake had acquired, like his car, like that art, like his various properties. Like Lila.

  This was an emergency. Suddenly, I had no doubt.

  “Max?” I yelled. “Come here, boy!”

  I ran downstairs. What if he’d gotten out somehow? Maybe Lila had left a door open.

  “Max! Come on, bud!”

  I dashed around, searching the rooms. And then, oh God, I saw him. He was in the kitchen. Under the table. He looked at me with those eyes that meant he was obviously not okay, eyes that said something had gone really wrong. I looked around. In the kitchen, I found that box of chocolates that Riley had given Lila that day in the restaurant. The box was open. The lid was flung off and partly chewed, and little brown paper cups were scattered on the floor. The chocolate was gone. There was also a coffee cup nearby, knocked on its side. Max loved coffee. You had to be very careful where you put your cup, because you’d come back to find him slurping like a hurried businessman late for work.

  “Oh, no. No.” I didn’t know much about dogs, but I knew chocolate could be lethal. Chocolate and coffee—man, it was like finding the rock star with a pile of empty syringes.

  I tried to call Lila. My hands shook from panic. No answer. I tried to call Nicco, but he must have had the ringer off already, since Mary, his boss, had a no-phones policy.

  Alarm raced through me, but I didn’t know what to do. How could they have let this happen? I found the pet poison control line. How much did he weigh? No idea. A lot. How much chocolate had he eaten, and what kind? No idea, no idea. “Bring him in to see a vet,” they said.

  “I’m sorry, buddy. Hang in there, Max boy.” What was the matter with these people? How could they be so careless with living beings? I tried Lila again. Nothing. Then I called Jake’s cell number, written on that pad by the phone. When he answered, I told him everything in a rush.

  “Can’t come now, Syd. I’m right in the middle of something important.”

  “This is important. I can’t get to his vet! I don’t even know who his vet is! I don’t know where to go or what to do! Please, Jake.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  “They said to bring him in now! Not an hour from now. Now now. He could die. Jake, we need you! I need you.”

  “Shit! Shit, fine! I’ll be right there.”

  I urged Max up. I wished I could lift him in my arms, but no way. I yanked and pulled and got him outside. I didn’t want to waste another minute. I had no idea how long he’d been there like that, sick on the floor. The very second Jake drove up, we’d take off.

  I was standing outside with him, bent over, frantic, you know, when I heard it. A shrill whistle. Shrill enough that I turned my head. And there was Shane, out by the truck. It was the end of the day, and they were packing up. He gave me the okay sign with his thumb and forefinger. He shook it, as if to say the view, my ass in the air, was mighty fine.

  Fury shot through me. I was so angry. God, I was pissed. I mean, look, there I was, obviously in distress with an animal in distress. How could you miss what was going on? How could you miss the fear, the pain we were both in? But hey, what did that matter? What did my pain have to do with anything? Why even bother to notice it? My body was a billboard to remark on. My body was someone else’s entertainment, a story that had nothing to do with me at all. I was a painting. Girl, oil on canvas.

  I wish I could tell you I got in his face or went over and kicked him hard in the nuts. You’d be all, Way to go! if I had. You’d see me as heroic. Instead, I fumed. What should I have done? I was a girl and he was a man. Being heroic like that is dangerous. Sometimes it’s just plain stupid. Don’t blame me for not speaking up. Blame him for me not speaking up.

  It didn’t take long for Jake to get there. But it was long enough for it to dawn on me as I waited that we’d never get Max into that stupid Lamborghini. I didn’t have to worry, though, because Jake thought of that too. He drove up in a van. Not a van like Nicco’s, but this big moving truck. Like the one that came to our house before, but larger.

  “Vet’s open till seven thirty,” Jake said as he got out. He lifted Max right up in his arms and placed him on the front seat. I got in next to him.

  “Where’d you get this truck?” I asked. I mean, I was glad a van had appeared out of nowhere, but then again, a van had appeared out of nowhere. It smelled like cigarettes inside the cab. Gross. There was a baseball cap on the floor, and a crushed can of Red Bull.

  Jake just shook his head. He was in no mood to talk. He looked pissed. Maybe pissed at me, like I had something to do with leaving Max alone with a box of chocolates, when Max was his dog, and it was Lila who’d left them out with her coffee.

  “Damn dog,” he said. “Fuck.”

  At the vet, they made Max throw up. They checked his heart, which was nor
mal. Poor guy, he looked miserable. Like the day had really gone wrong. First, it was awesome, being alone in the house, finding your favorite coffee, a bunch of delightful treats, and then, boom, here you were in your most hated place, being forced to puke. But he perked up after that. He wagged. It turned out that there hadn’t been a lot of chocolates left, so he hadn’t eaten that many, but we didn’t know that until later.

  We all got back into the truck. It was a quarter to eight by then. I know, because Jake looked at his phone and said, “Shit! It’s a quarter to eight!” It seemed later. Clouds had rolled in, fog too, and it was dark already. He was driving fast. He was taking the corners hard enough that poor Max slid on the seat.

  It was making me nervous. I was getting a terrible feeling.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. Because even though the city was still mostly unfamiliar to me, I knew we weren’t going home. It was taking way longer. Everything looked a little industrial. I had no idea where we even were.

  “I need to make a stop.”

  “What kind of a stop? I’m starving. We should get Max home. He’s been through a lot, you know?” And so had I. I just wanted to put Max on my bed and get into my pajama shirt so we could rest.

  “A work stop. Nonnegotiable.”

  “Work? At night? It’s going to get dark any minute.”

  And then, at a stoplight, he looked over at me. Really looked, long enough that the light turned green. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “Right there.”

  He put his fingertip on my neck.

  Oh, great. Oh, no. Shit! We hadn’t moved from that stoplight, because we were in some empty part of the city, and no one was around.

  “Jesus.” His voice was full of disgust. “Is that a fucking monkey bite? Have you and that kid been fooling around?”

  Shame washed through me. I’d never heard that expression before, but I knew what must be on my neck. Those words sounded dirty and vile. Animal-like and filthy.