Maybe the thought of my parents had telepathically introduced some specter of adult authority into the room, because now Aaron seemed almost normal as he said, “Right. Sugar. This is one of those situations that calls for a massive dose of sugar. Nico, why are you looking like that? What part of dessert are you not understanding? I got us something to eat.”
Sugar. Dessert. What was wrong with me? How thoughtful of Aaron to have gotten us a snack. And how glad it made me that there was an us he’d gotten it for. I’d overreacted to the song, and to Aaron standing behind me. Everything was better. The good Aaron was back.
“It’s in the kitchen,” he said.
I followed him out of the studio and went to wait on the couch. After a while he returned and sat next to me with a cardboard container and two spoons. His smile was wicked and beautiful.
“Ice cream,” I said. “That’s so nice.”
Our friendship had started with ice cream. It was like an anniversary present.
Aaron said, “I don’t want it to melt.”
“Oops, I’m sorry,” I said.
Aaron said, “I hope you don’t mind if I made the flavor decision for once.” We laughed. We had a history. We shared private, unfunny jokes.
Of course, I knew what flavor it was before he took the lid off the Dairy Divine pistachio.
“Want some?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
I reached for a spoon, but he pulled it away. He looked into my eyes. Gravity dragged me toward him. He filled the spoon with ice cream.
“Open up,” he said.
“I can’t,” I said. “It’s hideous.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Aaron. “You like it. Come on. Baby bird.”
I watched myself from a great height, sucking the cool metal spoon. Ice cream slid between my lips, shockingly cool and smooth. I’d braced myself for the dish-detergent taste. But taste was the least of it, really. I opened again. I took the spoon. Ice cream slipped down my throat. Delicious.
I could tell that Aaron wanted me to look at him while he fed me. But it was already too much, being fed and eating and keeping the ice cream off my mouth. The next spoonful came too fast. Ice cream dripped from my lips. Aaron watched it. His eyes drifted shut and then opened again.
I knew it was ill and perverted, but I didn’t want him to stop. At the same time I needed to see if I had the power to stop him.
I said, “I used to hate pistachio.”
Aaron said, “I know. But you’re not the same person, Nico.”
“Well, actually, I’m kind of still me.”
Aaron said, “Don’t talk.” He filled the spoon. “Please, Nico, don’t say anything.”
“I really don’t want any more,” I said.
“For me? Just another bite,” Aaron pleaded.
“All right,” I said. “One bite.”
I opened my mouth just wide enough for the tip of the spoon to part my lips.
“Okay. One last bite and we’re done,” said Aaron. I thought, Fine. I can do this. I’d seen TV programs on which contestants gulped down pails of grubs. It was just pistachio ice cream. Nothing more, nothing worse. It wasn’t drugs or poison. Autoimmunization.
The next spoonful was so large I had to stretch my mouth wide.
“Brain freeze,” I said.
“Swallow,” Aaron said.
I tried to swallow. A green bubble blipped from between my lips. Aaron put down the spoon and, with his fingers, smeared the sticky green all over my mouth and chin. He sat back, admiring his work. Then he took his finger and put it in my mouth. Astonishment fractured me. I split off from myself. Half of me watched the other half sucking on Aaron’s finger.
He took his finger out of my mouth, dipped it in the ice cream, and painted my lips with his finger. And before I could wipe it off, he swooped in closer and kissed me.
I kissed him back, gently at first, and then a little harder, trying out different ways, as if he might get bored if I did the same thing for too long. The pressure of his lips against mine melted every cell in my body.
“Jesus.” Aaron’s eyes were closed. He didn’t seem to be talking to me.
He kissed me again. His tongue touched my lips.
“I said, “Is this . . . ?” What was I going to ask? Was this still my first kiss? Or was it already over, lost and buried beneath all the subsequent kisses? The only first kiss I would ever have. And it wasn’t even mine.
Aaron repeated, “Don’t talk.”
As his kisses grew more intense, I veered between sleepiness and alertness. At moments I was ashamed that Aaron was in the room when I was having these feelings. I seemed to be shedding layers until the problem of me no longer mattered. I wasn’t me. I was a pair of lips that existed to find Aaron’s.
Aaron pulled away and looked at me. His mouth was a bruised, candy-lipstick red, glowing beneath the pistachio. It was terrifying and funny, or it would have been in another situation. I wondered what Aaron saw in my face. I didn’t want to wonder if Margaret kissed better than I did. Of course she had. She’d had practice. They’d had sex. This was just kissing.
Now I remembered why Aaron needed to know that I wasn’t my sister.
A seismic growl of nausea stirred in the pit of my stomach. I jumped up, crashed past Aaron, and sprinted for the bathroom. The housecleaning hadn’t gotten that far. The bathroom smelled like generations of drunken teenage boys pissing everywhere except the toilet. I vomited, then crumpled to the floor and lay my cheek against the gritty tiles. I didn’t care how filthy the floor was.
I knew I should probably wash my face, but the sink was repulsive. The mirror was grimy and smeared, but not so that I couldn’t see that my mouth and chin were still green. I went back to the other room and perched on the arm of the couch.
I said, “You must be totally grossed out.”
Aaron said, “I’m trying not to take it as a comment on my kissing.”
“It’s my fault,” I said. “It’s—”
“Let’s not talk,” he said.
“We need to,” I said. “You need to know. I’m not Margaret, I’m Nico.”
“I know who you are,” he said. “I’m not crazy, Nico. Or if I am, we both are.”
I said, “We shouldn’t do this.”
I expected him to ask me why, or to say I was being overly dramatic, to say that we were simply friends helping each other get over Margaret’s death. But kisses were a marker. Kissing drew a line. My first kiss and my first breakup were happening at the same time.
“You’re probably right,” said Aaron. “We probably shouldn’t hang out at all.”
“Probably not,” I said. The staircase spirit would have given anything to take it back.
We couldn’t look at each other.
Aaron said, “Damn if this doesn’t feel like channeling Adam and Eve.”
I loved him, I loved him for saying that. No one else would have thought it. No one, that is, but Margaret.
I said, “I know what you mean.” The worst, I knew, was ahead of me, like when you get stung by a bee, and at first it’s not so bad, but you know the pain is coming.
“I should probably take you back,” Aaron said.
“Probably,” I agreed.
We didn’t talk on the drive to town. When Aaron dropped me near Elaine’s, he didn’t say, as he usually did, that he’d see me soon. I might never see him again, our paths might never cross. It would be hard but not impossible, even in our little town. He was going away to college. He should have known better than to do what he’d done. It should have been illegal to dress a girl up like her sister and kiss her and make her physically sick. And to make her want more.
“Bye,” I said.
“Bye,” he said.
Bye, said the staircase spirit. The spirit said, Maybe we should talk one more time. But it was already too late.
I found Elaine in the living room, watching Law and Order. Aaron had left me alone with Elaine and a crime-show rerun.<
br />
“Where’s Tycho?” I said.
“Day-camp picnic,” she said. “I’m waiting in case they call and ask me to come take him home. What’s that stuff on your mouth?”
“Ice cream,” I said.
“What ice cream is that color?” she said. “Nico, sweetheart, what’s wrong? Crème de menthe OD? Don’t tell me you and the boy were drinking some crappy kid-shit at two in the afternoon.”
I could have said “pistachio.” I wanted to tell Elaine. I wanted to hear how the story sounded if I said it out loud. I wanted to ask Elaine if it was normal to get your first kiss from a guy who made you eat ice cream so your mouth would taste like your sister’s. Had something like that ever happened to her?
Elaine said, “Let’s try it another way. Where did you get the ice cream?”
“At Aaron’s.” I gave the word time, testing to see if the world would end.
“Aaron as in Margaret’s Aaron?” said Elaine. “Please tell me it’s some other Aaron.”
“That Aaron,” I said.
“My God,” she said. “Is that the boyfriend you’ve been seeing?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said.
“Forget that,” she said. “The guy you’ve been hanging out with?”
I nodded again.
Elaine said, “This is creeping me out. Oh, my God, you poor baby.”
“I’m not a baby,” I said.
“Sorry,” she said. “I realize that. Nico, what is that on your mouth? It looks like battery acid.”
I said, “That’s sort of how I feel.”
“You’re kidding, right?” she said. “I knew this girl who tried to kill herself by drinking antifreeze.”
“I’m kidding,” I said. “About that.”
“What’s going on?” said Elaine. “Sit down. Tell me everything. Begin at the beginning. No, wait. Go wash that stuff off your mouth. Pour yourself some orange juice and bring it over here.”
The bathroom mirror showed me how wasted I looked. I scrubbed my lips till they burned. The orange juice tasted vile. Maybe the fake pistachio had ruined my taste buds forever.
Elaine said, “Start from the beginning.”
I said, “Only if you promise you won’t tell my parents.”
“I can’t do that,” Elaine said.
“Then I can’t tell you.”
Elaine considered the options. “Fine. But I don’t like it.”
I speed-talked my way through the story, surprised by how much I had to say and how long it took to tell it. I heard how creepy it sounded: Aaron getting me to wear my sister’s shirt and her perfumed oil and making me taste like her before he kissed me.
Elaine said, “The kid’s a pervert. He’s four years older than you. He’s a graduating senior. You’re a ninth-grader, Nico. The guy was way out of line.”
I said, “It wasn’t like that. I wanted to be with him. It felt like he was my age. He knows me, he knows what I’m going through.”
Elaine said, “I’m glad to hear it. Tell that to the cops.”
“He didn’t rape me. Kissing’s not a crime. He kissed me, I kissed him back. It was sort of like we were in love. Except that what he really wanted was for me to be Margaret.”
Margaret’s name still worked magic. Elaine went blank for a while, then said, “Nico, it’s so sad I can hardly stand it. Listen, there will be other guys. Not all guys are like that. This was off the charts.” She shook her head.
“You know what? I just realized what this reminds me of. God, Nico. You’ve been Judy-ed.”
“Judy-ed?” How could there be a word for my situation?
“It’s an expression my friends use,” said Elaine. “It comes from Vertigo. I can’t believe you never saw it. I thought you and your sister liked old films. It’s my favorite Hitchcock—”
“What’s it about?” I asked.
“Jimmy Stewart’s a private detective hired to tail this woman . . . I don’t want to spoil it for you. Anyway, what I mean is . . . sometimes, certain guys want you to be someone else. Some sexy aunt or grade-school teacher they got imprinted on, like ducklings. Some old girlfriend who broke their heart, some Victoria’s Secret model. They keep edging you in that direction. And you want to please them. But you’ll never be that person. Sooner or later they figure it out, and that’s when they dump you.”
“What’s the Judy part?” I said.
“That’s the woman Jimmy Stewart tries to turn into someone else.”
“Was the someone else dead?”
Elaine said, “I don’t know how I overlooked that little plot detail.” She took both my hands in hers. “Hang on. The video store has to have it. I’m sure it’s in. No one in this town ever borrows anything decent.”
Margaret used to. And Aaron. I missed them both. I was sorry I’d told Elaine, if it meant I couldn’t see Aaron.
“Thank God they’re open on Sundays now.” Elaine rushed out the door. The video store was two blocks away. Elaine’s absence gave me long enough to remember kissing Aaron. The memory brought back that melting sensation. It was shaming to feel like that, alone, in Elaine’s apartment. I wanted to feel it with Aaron, this time without the ice cream. But I’d ruined any chance of that.
Elaine came back with the DVD. As she hit the play button, I thought how silly it was that Aaron and I had made a sacred love-memorial séance out of watching a film. If it turned out that Aaron and I could still be friends, we could simply watch a movie without it being so heavy.
We got through the FBI warnings and fast-forwarded through the previews. The spiraling credits spun us into Jimmy Stewart’s panic attack.
“Margaret never liked him,” I said.
“Not my type,” said Elaine.
Cut to Scotty’s recuperation and the cheer-up visit from perky, butch Midge.
“Poor Midge,” said Elaine.
A man wanted Scotty to follow his wife, Madeleine, who had a bizarre fixation on a dead woman named Carlotta. Madeleine haunted Carlotta’s favorite spots. A cemetery, a boardinghouse.
“Believe it or not,” said Elaine, “I had a film history professor in college who wrote a book on how Madeleine symbolized the cookie from Proust.”
I laughed, even though I wasn’t sure who Proust was. Scotty was staking out a fancy apartment building. An elegant blonde swirled out the front door and into the driver’s seat of a luxury sedan.
“Kim Novak,” said Elaine. “She is so hot.”
Moments later, a panicky Scotty was fishing Madeleine out of the bay. The near-drowning was hard for me. Elaine noticed and felt guilty, so things were a little tense until the action shifted from the shore to Scotty’s apartment. Madeleine was waking up in his bed.
“Is she naked? Did he undress her? Isn’t that a little perverted?”
“A little?” said Elaine.
As Madeleine and Scotty played out their star-crossed romance, I couldn’t look at Elaine. I kept thinking of her and my father, and I didn’t want to hate her. So I must have missed a beat, because now Scotty was chasing Madeleine up the tower of a Spanish-style church. I screamed when she fell.
“Everybody screams the first time,” Elaine said. “But watch. Here comes the Judy part.”
My whole body tensed defensively against the look on Scotty’s face as Judy emerged from the dressing room in Madeleine’s gray suit. I needed to tell Margaret that Jimmy Stewart was a better actor than we’d given him credit for. Somehow he knew exactly how a guy looked at that rare—no matter what Elaine said, it had to be rare—moment when he’s transformed a living woman into a dead one.
I said, “I can’t believe it’s something that . . . happens.”
Elaine said, “That’s the point. It’s not personal.” I felt a lurch of nausea and burped up some pistachio-tinged acid. The room began to spin lazily. Vertigo was catching. Elaine said, “That’s the thing about art. Each time, you see something new. I’d always assumed the film was about men’s sexual weirdness. But it’s also about
grief and how crazily grief can make people act. It can totally unhinge them. Sort of like Last Tango . . . Don’t see that one for a while, either.”
I said, “Elaine? I think I’m getting the flu. I think I need to lie down.”
Elaine said, “You look pale, honey. Can I get you something? A Tylenol? Water? Herbal tea?”
“Nothing, thanks,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Do me a favor. Don’t give whatever you’ve got to Tycho,” Elaine said. “Lie down on my bed, all right?”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll go out back and lie in the hammock.”
I let the hammock swing me through the hot, still afternoon. I concentrated on rocking so as not to think about Aaron. I tried to empty my mind so completely that when a mosquito landed on my forehead, I didn’t have the instinct or the energy to swat it away. Let it have a big gulp. I deserved to be bitten. Every so often, Elaine would come out and check on me and put her cool hand on my forehead.
“You’re not running a fever,” she said. “Thank God.”
Early that evening, my parents came back, wired from their vacation. They swept into Elaine’s place as if I were a hostage they were liberating from a safe house.
“What’s that bump on your forehead?” my mother asked, first thing.
I had to think a minute. “Mosquito bite,” I said.
“I can’t believe I didn’t notice,” Elaine said. “Put some aloe on it. Here.”
“That’s all right. It’s only a bug bite.” Now Mom was the calm one. Elaine seemed completely frantic.
Dad said, “Gee, Elaine, it’s not malaria.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Mom.
Elaine said, “I don’t know what I could have done. That bug repellent is poison. Tycho can’t stand the smell.”
“He’s the canary in the coal mine,” said Dad.
Elaine said, “Put some ice on it, Nico.”
Mom said, “Don’t worry about it. Thanks, Elaine. We can’t thank you enough.”
Goldengrove Page 19
