I guess statistics show half of married people do it. And I mean I know Ebb’s mom isn’t married, but she’s doing it with a guy who is, so she’s half responsible for his statistic. How can Ebb even live with her mom after that? If I caught either of my parents at that I’d be too distraught to function, let alone type up the whole thing in an e-mail to a practical stranger. I never thought of myself as morally superior to anyone, but…
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Keyon asks.
Oh, God, I think. I am a sad white girl. And a complete drag.
“Totally fine.” I smile at him and feel like a fake. “Actually,” I say, my smile drooping, “I’m distracted by some stuff going on with… a friend.”
He waits, like he’s inviting me to say more. When I don’t he doesn’t press it and goes back to the subject of our status as antiques dealers. “Okay, so we’re not going to be millionaires. But money in my pocket is money in my pocket, and I didn’t have to make sandwiches to get it. Also,” he says, and points at me, “finding that radio made you dance. So that’s worth it right there.”
“Yeah, I am a pretty amazing dancer now that you mention it.”
He laughs, then makes his face serious. “Wasn’t laughing at you.”
“Uh-huh.”
Near the insurance office, he says, “My dad said to invite you over for dinner, by the way.”
By the way? He says it all casual, like it’s not a huge deal.
My immediate response is “Oh. Okay!” Then I have a terrifying thought: that everything Keyon has been doing since the party is because his dad is telling him to. Calling me, e-mailing every day, inviting me for dinner. He feels guilty and is trying to be the kind of good guy his dad wants him to; then he will oh-so-gently lower my expectations down to nothing and cut me loose. “I mean, if you want me to come over,” I add.
“Hell yeah,” he says. He puts his hand on my thigh, which immediately bursts into flames, and my fears about Keyon being his dad’s puppet evaporate in an instant. “If I didn’t want you to come I’d make up some shit to my dad about how you don’t date the brothers.”
An excruciatingly awkward pause befalls the car. It’s the second time he’s said something to point out that we’re different colors, something I don’t really know how or whether to talk about.
“You do, though, right?” he asks, with a quick glance.
“Oh, yeah. I totally do. I date the brothers. Like nobody’s business. Yes.”
We both burst out laughing.
“I thought so,” he says.
“Just promise me you won’t start singing ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’ at the dinner table.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth I’m mortified I said the l-word even though it’s in a totally neutral context.
He doesn’t seem to notice, and takes his hand off my leg, shaking his head. “Can’t promise that.”
There are three unanswered e-mails from Zoe in my in-box at the end of the day. I’m scared to read the most recent one because I know I’m in trouble for not replying. The message preview shows me the first line. Did you get my last two e-mails? Or my texts? Are you dead? Because if you are it would be nice—I can imagine the rest. Something in me won’t click on the message. Like the specter of Ebb’s e-mail and its contents sitting there has spooked me away from the whole idea of e-mail.
Dad appears in the doorway of my room, holding a limp Gertie in his arms. “She finally conked out in front of the TV,” he whispers.
I get up to help peel Gertie’s sweaty self off him and get her tucked into bed. We work silently and deftly, like accomplished jewel thieves. How many times have we done this before, with each kid? How many times is it going to happen now without me? Dad crooks his finger at me to beckon me into the hall. We pull the door behind us.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.” He puts his arms around me for a hug. “How are you doing? I feel like we haven’t talked in ages.”
“We haven’t.”
Of course we had our family times over the weekend but that was like a thousand percent absorbed with child management. Dad releases the hug and takes my hand, pulling me into the living room, where Mom lies on the couch with her eyes closed.
“I’m taking Lauren out for gelato. Want us to bring you anything?”
Mom moves her head about a quarter of an inch back and forth in a no, then lifts one index finger. We know from experience it means “See you later, have fun, don’t talk to me anymore because I am getting some precious rest.”
We walk up the hill to Marco Polo, where Dad gets spumoni and I get half mocha chip and half cinnamon. And we sit at an outside table, even though it’s typical chilly Sunset summer weather, and talk. It’s not like we have this deep father-daughter discussion or anything; he shares what’s going on at work and I talk about what I still need to wrap up before moving across the Bay.
And I ask, “When you were in college, were you friends with your roommate?”
He shrugs. “Not particularly. Well, wait. There was one, sophomore year. Dale Greenwald. He was a good guy.”
“Are you in touch anymore?”
“Oh, gosh. Haven’t heard from Dale since graduation.”
I lick cinnamon-mocha off the little plastic spoon. “Did you guys, like, agree about everything?”
He laughs. “No. He was more into the Grateful Dead than any thinking person should be.”
“I don’t mean about that stuff. I mean important stuff. The meaning of life. Ethics and morals and sh… stuff.”
“To be honest, it’s hard to remember. We got along. I don’t remember us fighting about anything.” He stretches his legs out in front of him, resting the heels of his sneakers on the cement. “Ethics and morals, huh? Do you have some deep thoughts about that?”
I shrug. I’m not going to be talking about Ebb’s mom with my dad, thanks. “Not really. Just kind of wondering what it would be like to live with someone who thinks about things in a totally different way than you do, you know? I’ve never exactly had a roommate who was capable of opinions much stronger than favorite color, or thoughts more profound than fairness in toy sharing.”
“True, that.”
Also I wonder about Dale Greenwald, and how he and my dad never talk. Is that the destiny of all friendships, no matter how good they are? To die out or fade away? To end? “Maybe if you’d had e-mail and stuff when you were in school you’d still be friends with Dale. I bet if you went on Facebook you’d find him in about two minutes.”
Dad grimaces. “That could be fun for nostalgia purposes. But I’ve got your mom, and one or two good buddies. A person doesn’t need much more than that. As you get older you tighten up that circle pretty well, I think.”
One or two good buddies. And hopefully a partner or spouse. Zoe, whose self-esteem sometimes seems governed by how many friends and followers she has online, wouldn’t like that. But then maybe it doesn’t matter that much how Zoe and I are different, or how Ebb and I may be.
“Zoe is my Dale, I guess.”
He laughs. “Zoe is not your Dale, hon. Zoe is your Thelma.”
“Who?”
“Thelma and Louise? Don’t tell me Mom and I haven’t made you watch that yet. Great movie. The ending, though… I’m not saying that should be a model of friendship for you. I only mean—”
I interrupt him before he goes on a whole big tangent. “Okay, maybe Zoe isn’t my Dale. But I think I’m probably going to be friends with my roommate this fall and then she’ll be my Dale. That’s totally depressing.”
“Forget about Dale,” Dad says. “Live in the present. Take care of the relationships in front of you now. Most friendships have a natural life, and when they’ve lived that out, you’ll know.”
“It’s still depressing.”
He lifts his spoon to me in acquiescence as the L train rattles down the hill.
EB,
I’m completely wiped and brain dead but I know I’ve slacked on answering, and I’m
sorry! Also, sorry that my replies here are going to sound memo-like. Brain. Dead.
Parents: I have to admit, I have pretty good ones. Their biggest flaw is their relentless desire to procreate. So. Many. Kids. And also: gross.
According to your theory this means I will either have zero kids or a dozen. I vote for zero.
Soap opera lives: Unless you have faked your own death, had plastic surgery to look like someone else, built a prison in your basement where you’re holding an ex who always has his shirt off, or caused someone else’s miscarriage by pushing them down a flight of stairs, I think you’re okay. (I went through a soap phase in ninth grade. I’m not proud.)
Not to minimize the weirdness of your mom kind of cheating—
Adulterating?
—with your kind of boyfriend’s dad. It’s actually… well, I mean how do you feel about that? I sort of can’t believe she’d do that with you in the next room. I don’t know if I could keep that a secret from someone I cared about. I get that you wouldn’t want to mess things up with Mark, but. Hopefully he’s not like his dad. Based on your parental theory, again, he’ll either be a cheater himself or a monk. Scary. On the other hand, he moved your tank top strap up. I don’t know.
Do I sound like a self-righteous a-hole, or like a supportive friend? I can’t tell. Whichever, it’s an opinion I can’t seem to hold in. I leave it.
Keyon: The question of like vs like like doesn’t seem that important anymore. Maybe it’s all more fluid than that. His parents invited me over for dinner, and he put his hand on my thigh. Otherwise, no new news.
Sex: Really? You were with Alex all that time and never did it? What DID you do? Something, right? Maybe this is too personal or I’m too curious. Naturally having all these kids in the house makes me terrified of getting pregnant, but it’s more than that. I’m not sure what. Also I still feel like I just met Keyon. Also I think I should do about a thousand more sit-ups and push-ups before anyone sees me naked.
Good night.
Lauren
About ten minutes after getting in bed I realize I didn’t play Ebb’s Yes/No/Maybe So game about what to bring to school. To leave that hanging seems as bad as my semijudgmental thoughts on her mom. I climb out and send a separate PS.
Yes: A variety of confusing crayon art my little brothers and sisters have made for me. I won’t hang it on the wall, but I like to have it with me.
No: Anything with a 49ers logo on it. I’ll have to become a Cal Bears fan.
Maybe so:
My sense of right and wrong?
I can’t put that.
Maybe so: Thinking about stuffing my sister P.J. into my backpack. She’s a little bit my favorite.
Oh by the way, yes to black boots in CA. Big yes.
THURSDAY, JULY 25
NEW JERSEY
Must. Be. Nice.
Must be really, really nice to have two super-duper parents.
Good for you, Lauren!
Well done!
You picked the right vagina to pop out of so let me give you a round of applause.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
Oh! And how do I feel about my mother gallivanting around town like a desperate whore?
I feel shitty about it if that wasn’t clear, thanks for asking.
And no, Mark’s not like his dad. Don’t you think I’d have copped on if he were an asshole? He was the one who confronted me and demanded an explanation for kissing him when I was otherwise entangled!
(In fact, Mark made several references when we were out on Tuesday—bowling, of all things—to his dad sort of being “a dick.” Each time I wondered whether that was an opening I should leap through but each time I kept my mouth shut and then changed the subject, which seemed to suit him fine.)
Suffice it to say, I will not be asking Lauren if I can go crash with her picture-perfect clan, but since my mother has been ignoring me ever since my confrontation with Mark’s dad, it’s becoming harder to imagine staying at home for another five weeks. At first, when I realized I was getting the cold shoulder, I was sort of okay with it because, like Lauren, I was feeling pretty morally superior. Besides, being estranged from my mother felt like good practice for next month, when we won’t be together anyway. But then the shoulder seemed to get colder and the frozen dinners and leftover plates stopped appearing, and I realized I was basically living on my own—but without the real freedom of being alone—and I stopped liking it and starting hatching my escape plan, otherwise known as Operation Deadbeat Dad. Much as I don’t want to leave Mark’s kissing behind, I cannot hack it here.
The days started to feel really long, especially the ones without a peep from Lauren, who I guess was too busy feeling holier-than-thou to write. I started wondering, Is this what life will be like in college, if me and my roomie don’t hit it off in the flesh? Suddenly I could see it going that way—a whole freshman year of fights about who ate whose last package of ramen noodles or who never picks their dirty clothes up off the floor, a whole year of sharing a room with a hostile.
Surely there is something fundamentally flawed about the idea of the freshman-year roommate. Because on the one hand, yes, you’ve got this sort of friend forced on you when you most need one, so you don’t have to walk into the dining hall or orientation meeting alone, but on the other, when has forcing friends on people ever worked?
It was probably loneliness—and a few more texts from Morgan—that drove me to pick up the phone and call Justine. I’d been thinking about her a lot—and actually missing her, too—and I’d been wondering what Keyon’s dad would tell me to do about the situation. I had a feeling he’d tell me to call her, to be the better person.
And so here we are, at a local coffee shop in the middle of the day on a Thursday. Already it feels wrong because we’ve never gone out for coffee or tea or any kind of beverage before, but we go through the whole routine of ordering and getting a table and then sitting and sipping. We’re quiet, and I think about telling her about Lauren, whose e-mail I’ve just gotten, or about my mom and Mark’s dad—or just about Mark—but there’s so much catching up to be done before I can get to anything of substance that the mere thought of it makes me tired.
After another long minute of silence she says, “This is weird.”
I say, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and we both laugh.
We put lids on our drinks and decide to take my car, and leave hers, and go to the beach because it’s sunny and hot in town and it’s always cooler by the water. We don’t talk at all in the car. It feels like maybe we both know that we’re on our way to a better place to talk about the stuff we need to talk about—because it’s big stuff, or maybe because it feels like there’s an ocean between us.
After we park I grab a blanket out of the trunk and think of all the times Alex and I sat on this same blanket on the sand, and I figure he is as good a topic as any to start with. After I spread the blanket out beyond the dunes that separate the beach from the boardwalk I say, “I guess you heard about me and Alex.”
“Yeah.” Justine sits down and wipes some sand off her hands, brushing them together. “Are you okay?”
I nod and study a big group of people sitting near us as the sun starts to fade. Judging by the coolers, chairs, and umbrellas, it looks like they’ve been there for hours—or plan to be. They’re mostly older, not quite as old as my mom, but way older than me, and there are some kids who are maybe around six and twelve and everything in between, coming and going with boogie boards and paddle games. I can’t imagine I’ll ever have a vacation like that. Not unless I marry into some massive clan.
I say, “It always sounds like a lie but it was totally mutual.”
She kicks off her sandals and buries her toes in the sand but I can still see a slice of silver from her toe ring. “You guys never seemed like that great of a fit to me.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” I say.
She shoots me a look. “Yeah, you would ha
ve loved that.”
I shake my head. “It’s true, I guess.” I think about Alex in detail for a minute—his love for at least two sitcoms I can’t stand and the way he wore that baseball cap all the time—and already I can’t imagine how we were ever together.
“I was mostly bummed for myself,” Justine says, nudging me. “No more six-pack.”
I am about to say, “I always hated when you called us that,” but she says, “Anyway, Karen’s okay.”
I feel my whole body tense.
“Karen?” I say, raising my voice even though I don’t want to.
“I figured you knew.” Justine wiggles her toes free, then starts to burrow again. “He’s been hooking up with Karen Lord.”
I sort of know her from school. She’s on the soccer team and has a party girl reputation.
“Are you jealous?” Justine asks, and it annoys me because it almost sounds like the answer she wants is yes.
I shake my head. “I met somebody, too. So no. Not really. Not at all.”
And in saying it, I realize it’s true. I’m over him. Over it. Between Alex and Mark there’s simply no comparison.
“Oh,” Justine says. “Well, that’s cool. Who is he?”
“I want to tell you about him,” I say, “I really do. But I don’t even know what to say. I mean, I’m going away in a few weeks anyway so it’ll probably end. It hardly seems worth talking about.”
“EB,” she says seriously. “Everything used to be worth talking about. With us. Everything and anything. Farts, even. Or the best way to shave your legs. Or shrubbery.”
“I know!” I say. “I want that again!”
“Me too!”
Roomies Page 9
