by Ann Hood
“I Dream of Jeannie hasn’t been on in years,” she said. “And I think you know that. Everyone knows that.”
“Maybe.” He touched her cheek for an instant. “Go back home to Connecticut.”
“It’s Massachusetts,” she said.
“Okay.”
“At least there things are exactly how they seem. People know where they stand.”
“Okay,” he said again.
Libby made her way back across the hot sand. She wished she hadn’t worn high-heeled sandals, they made the going tough. But she wouldn’t stop to take them off until she was back in her car. Then she sat and watched until they were finished shooting and the crew tore the whole thing down, until the desert grew cold and there was nothing left standing.
“Trust me,” Jenny said. “I’ll quiz you every night and you’ll practice in this book and it’ll be a breeze.”
She smiled that glorious smile of hers. Huge orthodontist bills, Jenny had told him once.
“Which first?” she was asking him now. “Math or English?”
“You know,” Troy said slowly, “some experts think SATs are dumb.”
She laughed. “What experts?”
He tried to remember. Finally he shrugged. “I don’t know. I saw it on 60 Minutes.”
“You nut,” Jenny said. She squeezed his hand, gave him a soft quick kiss on the cheek. “They mean for poor children. And it’s IQ tests, not SATs.”
“I thought—”
“Besides,” she said, “for the schools you’ll be applying to you won’t even need to score very high.”
He wanted to tell her that he didn’t want to go to any school. He wanted to graduate and work with his father and maybe in a few years build a house. What he liked to read were carpentry magazines. To look at pictures of floor plans and half-built homes, to read about the choices of wood you could use, to study the way rooms open onto each other. Troy already had ideas for the house he would build. There would be skylights and a big stone wall that separated the living room and the bedroom, so there could be a fireplace in both rooms. And he wanted a big kitchen with one of those islands in the middle.
“Even if you go to the community college for a year,” Jenny said, “you can always transfer. Maybe you could even go to a school near me.”
“In Michigan? Somewhere like that?”
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
Troy studied her perfect face. The smooth white skin. The blue eyes and little turned-up nose.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. His voice was almost a whisper. He kissed her, but she pulled away, smiling.
“First we study for the SATs,” she said. “Being the world’s best kisser will not get you into college.”
Troy nodded. He wondered if she really thought he was the world’s best kisser. He wondered if she liked skylights in a house, and big fireplaces with pillows in front of them.
“I remember now,” he said. “It was like, how can a test ask for a word that means the same thing—”
“A synonym,” Jenny said.
“—the same thing as sofa when the answer is davenport. No one’s heard of a davenport. I mean, who says davenport? Right?”
She didn’t answer him. She was too busy writing something in the practice book. Finally she looked up at him.
“Ready?” Jenny said.
“The four food groups,” Renate said as she put dinner on the table.
“Whoopee,” Dana said.
“If you eat from the four food groups every day,” Renata continued, “you’ll stay strong and healthy.”
The sign they’d hung for Millie was still in the doorway, WELCOME HOME. And, Dana thought, Renata and Millie had really made themselves right at home. Everyone was acting like they were one big happy family when really, they all knew the real truth. They were a bunch of strangers pretending.
Renata even tried to act as if she was her mother all of a sudden. She came into Dana’s room to say good night. She asked her about school and how Caitlin was doing and if there were any boys she liked. But Dana refused to play along. She just kept reading and planning her move to New York City.
“I might take the SATs,” Troy said.
Renata smiled. “That’s great.”
Dana groaned. She wanted to tell this woman she did a bad June Cleaver act. Instead she got up. “Great dinner, Mom,” she said in her best sarcastic voice.
Her father looked at her all sad, as if she was breaking his heart. “Dana,” he said.
“No,” Renata said. “It’s all right.”
It was Millie who giggled. “She’s not your mother,” she said.
Dana looked right at Renata. “No kidding,” she said.
“They think they’re the Brady Bunch,” Dana told Roald.
They were at a restaurant near the college, eating hamburgers and drinking beer.
“All I know is in two months I will never have to deal with any of them again,” she said
“How long do I have to wait for the mayonnaise?” he said. “Everything’s getting cold.” Roald had a disgusting habit of putting mayonnaise on his french fries. Lots of mayonnaise.
“Why don’t you just use ketchup like everybody else?”
“Because,” Roald said, dragging each word out, “I am not like everybody else. And neither are you. But, you start thinking like that and you’ll end up right here in Massachusetts for the rest of your life. Remember that.”
The waitress slid a jar of mayonnaise across their table and kept on walking.
“Thanks,” Roald called after her. “That’s what I like. Service with a smile.”
Dana opened the jar, and spooned heaps of mayonnaise all over her french fries.
“That’s right,” Roald said. “Just like in Brussels.”
“Mais bien sûr,” Dana said. She stared out the window, onto the dark street. Sitting here, at night like this, she could almost imagine she was already there. She squinted her eyes, trying to see the distant city lights.
All Millie did was sleep. Renata told Troy not to worry, that it was from the trauma of that long surgery. Sometimes he babysat for her so Renata and his father could go to a movie or something. He knew that Dana hated the living arrangement they had, but he loved it. It was the first time since his mother had left that it felt good to stay home. Sometimes he even reminded himself that he never stayed home before his mother left. That maybe this was the first time ever that it felt good.
Dana closed herself up in her room all the time, reading weird books or talking on the phone to this new friend of hers, Roald. If Troy tried to even talk to her, she stared at him all hard and cold. She’d hung a map of New York City on her wall, and circled different sections in red. But when he asked her what the circles were for, she ignored him and just kept reading Slaughterhouse Five. She did manage to tell him how far behind she was. “On what?” he’d said. “Vonnegut. Kafka. Everything.”
“Uh-huh,” Troy had said, and left her room.
He was happy to spend nights, as he was doing right now, with Millie sleeping upstairs and Renata and his father at the movies. He told Jenny he’d be studying those SAT review books she’d given him. But really he was revising the plans for his house. Every now and then he went upstairs and stood in the doorway and watched Millie breathe. He liked the rise and fall of her chest. It made him believe it would never stop, that she would grow up and be fine someday in the future.
That’s what he was doing when the doorbell rang. Watching Millie breathe and imagining her as a teenager, with long chestnut hair and beautiful white teeth.
He heard someone come in the back door and call hello. Troy watched for two more breaths before he went downstairs. Caitlin was standing in the living room, studying his drawings. She was all dressed in black, a long sweater with tights and flat shoes that made her look like a kid.
“Dana’s not here,” Troy said. He took the drawings from her right away.
“As usual,” Caitlin sai
d. She sat on the couch, tucking her legs up underneath her. “Roald again?”
She pronounced his name real loud and fake and Troy laughed. He went and sat beside her. “Yeah. Roald again,” he said.
“I think he’s gay,” Caitlin said.
“They’re both weird,” Troy told her. “No offense.”
“Are you kidding? I never even talk to her anymore. And when I do, I don’t even understand what she’s talking about half the time.”
Troy nodded.
“And,” Caitlin said, “to top it all off, Kevin broke up with me. He got all strange because of this New York thing.” She took out a tube of bubble gum-flavored Chapstick and spread it on her lips. It smelled sweet. “Can I hang out here awhile? Maybe watch TV or something?”
“Sure,” Troy said. “I’ll make popcorn.”
She smiled at him, her lips all shiny and sweet. “Great. Thanks.”
They watched MTV for a while, then Back to the Future 2 before she asked him what the drawings were. He wasn’t going to tell her at first, but he liked having her here with him. It reminded him of when they were kids and the three of them would always be together. Even when they were real young, and Caitlin was a skinny freckle-faced kid, Troy used to think she was beautiful. He used to give her rings from the bubble gum machine and she’d wear them even after they turned her fingers green.
“Why are you looking at me all weird?” Caitlin said.
Troy felt his cheeks grow hot. “I wasn’t,” he mumbled.
“Well, stop it,” she said.
She was always bossy. She would pretend to be a sergeant and make him and Dana march and jump over fences. She always picked the television shows they watched and the games they played. Somehow he’d stopped noticing her. Maybe it was when she and Dana started playing with paper dolls or those stupid Cabbage Patch kids they used to carry around all the time. But Troy also remembered how even after he stopped hanging around with them, he still thought there was something about Caitlin. Something a little sad underneath those freckles and all that smart talk.
It was still there, too. That sadness. He could see it right now as she sat here applying and reapplying that bubble gum Chapstick with her bony little hands. Not a morbid sadness, but the kind that you have to really look close to notice. She was funny too. And that’s probably what most people saw, a funny sassy girl who acted as if she knew it all.
“You’re doing it again,” Caitlin told him. “You’re looking at me like you never saw me before. Can’t you do something else?”
So Troy got the drawings and brought them over to the couch, spreading them across both their laps.
“It’s a house I want to build someday,” he said softly. “I keep rearranging it, making changes and stuff.”
“What are these?” Caitlin asked him.
“Skylights.”
“Mmmmm,” she said. She traced the shape of them with her fingertips.
“And this is a big fireplace that takes up a whole wall,” he said, shuffling the drawings so she could see better. His face was more sure now.
“So it’s like in two rooms?”
“Exactly!” he said. “And wait until you see this great kitchen. See, it has one of those islands in the middle.”
“Those are so great. Becky Barnett’s house has one of those.”
“I guess stuff like this seems dumb to you. I mean, with your big plans to go to New York and stuff.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Dana and I are going to paint our walls black.” She held on to the drawings, “They say that some apartments in New York have the bathtubs in the kitchen. Can you imagine?”
“No,” he said. He watched her studying the drawings. He tried to imagine what it would feel like to kiss her. Quickly he picked up the remote for the television and jumped through the channels.
MTV came on again, the new Madonna video.
Caitlin jumped up and started lip-syncing with Madonna. She knew all the moves. The more Troy laughed the more she camped it up. When the video ended, Caitlin was lying on the floor with her arms outstretched in a perfect Madonna pose.
Troy looked at her. When they were really little, maybe five or six, he used to have a crush on her. She used to wear these really long braids with tiny colored ribbons on the ends. He reached up and touched her hair. It was all rippled now, like waves. “Remember your braids?” he said.
Caitlin got to her feet. “Of course I do. I mean, they were on my head, weren’t they?” She swatted at him. “You nut,” she said.
He was thinking again what it would feel like to kiss her. He could smell that bubble gum stuff.
“Remember when I used to have a crush on you?” he said.
Caitlin nodded.
Standing there like this, it seemed to Troy as if the air was crackling, as if the room had been shot with an electrical jolt. Once, on television, he’d seen a guy get electrocuted at an accident scene. The man had been trying to get to the people trapped in a car and he’d stepped on live wires that had been knocked to the ground. The jolt had lifted the man’s body off the ground, sent smoke from his ears and mouth. Even though Troy knew the man was dying, he’d felt a thrill. The power of that jolt of electricity was what he sometimes got when he took great speed, or the first time he got a tattoo and the needle pricked him hard, It was, he’d always thought, what love was supposed to feel like. And here it was now, right in front of him, the air sizzling and crackling as Caitlin stepped toward him, a quizzical look on her face, her eyes narrowed, her head tilted slightly.
Then the door opened and Dana came in, wet with rain, and the moment was over. Troy reached a hand out as if to find that electrical current, to touch it. But there was nothing there. Just the cool wet air that Dana brought in with her.
“April is the cruelest month,” Dana said.
“What does that mean?” Troy asked her.
Dana rolled her eyes. “T. S. Eliot,” she said.
Caitlin and Troy looked at each other and shrugged. For an instant Dana even thought something passed between them. But then it was gone.
“Where were you?” Caitlin said. “With Roald?” She pronounced his name in that same way and Troy laughed.
“We went to see Grand Illusion,” Dana said. She rubbed her hair with a kitchen towel to dry it. “Only the best movie ever made.”
Troy looked at Caitlin. “I like Terminator 2 better,” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” Dana said. “A real masterpiece. I’m going to go change. Are you going to stick around?”
Caitlin shook her head.
“Okay. See you tomorrow at school.”
“Right,” Caitlin said.
“Yeah,” Troy said. “See you tomorrow at school.” Even after she left, for some reason he couldn’t stop grinning.
Troy started to follow Caitlin at school, to bump into her and pretend it was an accident, to wait outside her classroom door until she emerged, looking puzzled to see him there. Sometimes when he was with Jenny he would grab her to him and kiss her hard, waiting for that jolt. It never came. She felt as good as ever, but he wanted that feeling he’d had when he stood in front of Caitlin that night in his living room. At night he dreamed of that man he’d seen on TV. The way his body flew off the ground, the way his eyes looked so surprised and his mouth flew open as if he was saying, “Oh!”
On Fridays in art class, Mrs. Graham always taught them art history. Everyone thought it was the most boring thing in the world. She showed them slides and talked about Impressionism and the Renaissance. Usually half the class went to sleep, hidden in the dark classroom. Mrs. Graham would shout “People! Wake up!” and bang on the screen with her pointer.
Troy tried to pay attention, even though all those paintings of madonnas and kings were boring. Jenny liked art. Her parents had framed prints from museums all over the house and she could talk about different exhibits she’d seen. She loved one painting called American Gothic. It had a weird-looking couple holding a pitchfork and made h
im think of an old cornflakes commercial. But still he tried to pay attention. A while ago he really had liked one of the slides. It was of wet-looking water lilies in pastel colors. “You like Monet?” he’d asked Jenny that night. “His water lilies?” Her eyes had brightened and she gave him one of her great smiles and said “Yes!” with such enthusiasm he’d been sure she would let him move his hand under her panties that night. He’d been right.
So he tried hard to stay awake, to pay attention to Mrs. Graham’s boring slides. Today they seemed especially boring, her nasal voice droning on and on about something he couldn’t quite focus in on. The next day were the SATs, and Jenny was all excited that he was taking them. Thinking about that made his stomach feel tight, like he was getting ready to be punched. That had been Houdini’s trick, he knew. To tighten his stomach muscles so he could take a punch. The trick had failed him. It was a punch that had ultimately killed him.
Troy blinked hard and tried to focus on the slides. Suddenly, right there in front of him was the most incredible slide. A woman holding flowers and a man kissing her, floating right up into the air. Troy leaned forward in his seat, studying it. Was it the power of that kiss that had lifted the man—jolted him—off his feet like that? he wondered.
“Who painted that?” Troy blurted.
The jocks in the row behind him laughed. “Wake up, Harper,” someone shouted.
“Chagall,” Mrs. Graham said. “Thank you for asking, Troy.” And then she clicked her remote control and the picture was gone, replaced by one of a man playing the violin on a roof.
When class ended, Troy pushed his way down the corridors to Caitlin’s locker. There was only one more period left and he knew she had study hall, which meant she could leave for the day. He had History, which meant he couldn’t but he didn’t care.
She was already walking toward the door, her neon-colored high-tops squeaking against the waxed floors. Troy caught up with her, grabbing her arm to stop her.
“What is wrong with you?” she said. “Why do you keep following me around? Where’s that girlfriend of yours anyway?”
The sunlight was pouring through the window, almost blinding him so that her face was practically a blank, outlined by sun.
