Sealed With a Kiss

by Robin Palmer

  “And that’s part of why we wanted to come down this weekend—to tell you in person,” Dad added, “so we can all process the news together as a family.”

  Aha—I was right. This trip wasn’t about his missing me. It was about the baby with the horrible name. Just like probably everything would be about the baby from now on. Was I ever going to be special to anyone anymore? The divorce part of my parents’ divorce hadn’t been the hard part—this part of the divorce, when they ended up meeting other people and starting new families, was the hard part. And why were my parents so big on processing and blending and sharing? Why couldn’t we just be like normal families and eat dinner in front of the TV and not talk? I was getting sick and tired of my family. Maybe I could get Pete to adopt me. I’d have to learn Spanish, but that would be okay. Or Rose—it would be cool to go to Jamaica with her to visit her family. “You can’t name him Ziggy,” I said.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because . . . well, because . . . ,” I sputtered. I was going to say, “Because with a dumb name like that, he’s definitely going to be chosen last for kickball and kids will throw spitballs at him on the bus—”

  “Ziggy was my grandfather’s name,” Sarah said, all misty-eyed. Oh great—she was one of those pregnant women who cried a lot. “He always used to tell me that I could be anything I wanted when I grew up.”

  Dad’s dad used to say the same thing to him, and he had a normal name: William. Which wasn’t bad because then you could choose from a bunch of nicknames, depending on your mood: Bill, Billy, Will, Willy. And you could spell them with a y or an ie.

  “Ziggy was actually his nickname,” Sarah went on. “His real name was Peter. But when Greta from the yoga studio did the numerology, Ziggy was a more positive name, and apparently he’ll live twenty years longer than if his name is Peter or Malachi, which is the other name we were considering.”

  Malachi?! This poor kid had no idea what was in store for him once he was born.

  Dad turned to her. “Honey, the more I think about it, I really think the bathtub option is the way to go.”

  “What bathtub option?” I asked.

  “I’m going to deliver Ziggy in the bathtub at home!” Sarah said. “Studies show that babies born in water live a lot longer.”

  Oh man. He wasn’t even born yet, and already his life was a mess.

  If I really wanted to make sure I had good karma (it was a Buddhist thing that basically meant luck), I’d move back to Northampton to protect him, even if it meant sleeping on a sofa bed because he had taken over what should’ve been my room.

  “Ziggy Elias Parker,” Dad said excitedly. “Doesn’t that sound like the name of someone who comes up with the cure for cancer or solves the global warming crisis?

  “Actually, no,” I wanted to say. But I didn’t. It sounded like the name of someone who eats glue and moves his lips when he’s reading. The good news was that I had four more months to try to convince them to give the baby a normal name . . . and then he would owe me for life and have to do whatever I told him to do once he was old enough to understand how I had saved him from a lifetime of misery.

  Sarah and the-baby-currently-known-as-Ziggy-but-not-for-long-if-I-could-help-it decided to go back to their hotel for a nap. Probably because of all the sugar she had eaten. It was a relief because (a) now Dad and I could have some alone time, and (b) I felt like my butt was getting bigger just watching Sarah eat.

  Dad and I sat on a bench in Madison Square Park, and I suddenly felt like crying again. Sure, we talked on the phone and we e-mailed (although some of the jokes he forwarded on to me were really dumb), but just sitting next to him holding his hand with the callouses on the middle and pinky fingers because of the way he held his camera and smelling his smell (a combination of coffee and cinnamon) made me realize again how much I missed him. It wasn’t like Alan was a jerk or anything. In fact, as much I had originally thought the whole IBS thing was totally corny, it was working, because not only did I not mind spending time with him, but I actually looked forward to it. Plus, I had gotten an iTouch out of it. But still, my dad had been my dad my entire life.

  “Judging from all those texts you keep getting on that fancy iPhone of yours, it seems like you’re really starting to build a life for yourself,” he said.

  “It’s an i Touch,” I corrected him for the fifth time. That was one area where Alan and I were actually a little more bonded than Dad and I were. “There’s no phone part to it.” I pulled out my cell. “This is my phone.” Mom said Dad was a Luddite, which meant someone who didn’t get e-mail on his phone.

  He shook his head and sighed. “Just give me a cordless and an old-style answering machine, and I’m happy.” He shifted a little on the bench. “So are any of those texts from . . . boys?”

  I shifted, too. So much so that I almost fell off the bench. “Dad!” I cried. This was almost as embarrassing as when Mom put her hands in my bra to adjust my boobs when we went bra shopping.

  “Honey, as much as it terrifies me, I’m fully aware that you’re at that age where you’re going to start developing those kinds of feelings,” he said. “And you know that if they’re for a girl instead of a boy, that’s perfectly okay, too, right?”

  I cringed. I missed hanging with Dad, but if all our time together from now on was going to be filled with these types of conversations, I would’ve rather just e-mailed with him. The only thing that could make this worse would be if he somehow brought up the phrase making love. I hated that phrase. It was so . . . corny. And gross. Even when I got to be an adult, I was never ever going to use it.

  “And when you have a crush on someone, I accept the fact that you’re going to want to kiss them—at some point,” he went on. “Not right away, but at some point,” he said nervously. “And that’s a beautiful thing. Just like . . . making love is,” he said.

  I slid down the bench. PleasepleasepleasePLEASE stop, I thought to myself.

  “Although making love is something you won’t experience for many, many years,” he added.

  Okay, that was enough. My parents had sat me down (together, of course, because that’s the kind of embarrassing family I came from) when I was eleven to have the Talk about puberty and how babies were made and all that stuff, and of course they used that phrase like nine billion times then. I did not need to sit through this again. “Dad, do you have to keep using that phrase?” I cried.

  “What phrase?” he asked. “Making love?”

  I slid down even farther. The only good thing about this moment was that it was so embarrassing that hopefully it was bringing on my period. “Yes, that phrase,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with the phrase ‘making love’?” he asked, confused.

  This time I slunk down so far that I slid off the bench. “Dad! Please!” I was mortified. Didn’t he realize people could HEAR him?

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “So . . . is there anyone . . . special in your life?” he asked once I had gotten back up.

  I looked at him. I could lie and say no, or I could come clean and tell him about Blair. Unlike SOME people—like, say, the woman who actually gave birth to me—he was interested in hearing about what was going on in my life. Why not? He had once been my age, and also had a good memory on account of all the vitamins Sarah made him take, so he probably could remember what this crush thing was like. And it couldn’t hurt to get a boy’s opinion on the whole thing. Plus, I was pretty sure there was no way he could work the phrase making love into the rest of the conversation.

  Weirdly enough, as I was telling him all about Blair and the three-crushes issue, I started to feel . . . lighter. And therefore hungry. At one point Dad yawned, and he kept blinking, like he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open, but I’m pretty sure that was just because the long drive was catching up to him and not because I was boring him. “So what do you think?” I asked when I was finished. “Do you think I have a crush on Blair?”

  “I’m not sure,” h
e admitted.

  “You’re not sure?!” I cried. “But you’re an adult—you’re supposed to be able to answer these kinds of questions! What should I do?”

  Dad shrugged. “Well, there’s really not anything to do, other than just be yourself and wait for more to be revealed,” he said.

  What was up with this being yourself stuff?! Didn’t my father realize that we were talking about a boy here?

  He took my hand. “Lucy, relationships are like lotus flowers. If you allow it to open and blossom at its own rate, you can’t go wrong. But if you force it—”

  “All the petals will fall off, and it’ll get slimy and start to smell really gross because it’s rotting?” I said. That’s what had happened to the tulips that Alan had bought me at the deli after one of our IBS outings.

  He laughed and ruffled my hair, which, both luckily and unluckily, was now long enough to get messed up when it was ruffled. “Yeah, something like that.”

  I took out my little notebook. That was a good one to write down. It sounded very poetic. Especially the part about the petals falling off.

  That night Laurel, Mom, Alan, Dad, Sarah, and I went to dinner at Patsy’s Pizzeria on Seventy-fourth Street, which, next to V&T’s up on Amsterdam and 110th, was my favorite pizza in the city. And from the way that Sarah ate three garlic knots, two slices of mushroom and pepper, and one slice of cheese, I guess she thought it was pretty delicious, too. Personally, I didn’t think it was so weird that we were all eating together, but from the way that Alan dinged his fork on his glass, stood up, and got all choked up as he gave a speech about how grateful he was that the blending was going so smoothly that we were at a point where we could all eat together, I guess he did. Then, after he was done, Dad got up and dinged on his glass.

  “I feel like I’m at a wedding,” I whispered to Laurel.

  “I feel like I’m at the Golden Globe Awards,” she whispered back.

  “Thanks, Alan, for that heartfelt speech,” Dad said. “And I, too, am very glad that we’re all together today. If fifteen years of studying Buddhism has taught me anything, it’s that the only constant in life is change.”

  Oh great. Another Buddhism lecture from Dad. Now those I had not missed. When he delivered them in a public place, they could be very embarrassing.

  He reached over and squeezed Mom’s hand. “People get divorced.” He patted Alan on the shoulder. “But then they fall in love again.” I slumped down in my chair as Alan dabbed at his eyes. Dad reached over and patted Sarah’s belly as she grabbed for the piece of leftover crust on his plate. He beamed at Laurel and me. “Siblings are born into your life, or they come in later. At any rate, to quote the Dalai Lama, it is all good.”

  Phew. From having sat through so many of Dad’s lectures over the course of my life, I knew that the “It is all good” meant that he was done and we could go back to eating like a semi-normal blended family and stop talking about feelings.

  “In fact, even when your daughter tells you that she has her first crush on a boy, it is all good, because that, too, is just part of life.”

  WHAT?! I almost fell off my chair. What was he doing? Did he not realize that there were other people in the room—like, say, my mother?! Obviously, it was her own fault that she didn’t already know this information, but still, it’s not like I wanted her to find out like this.

  Everyone turned to me. “You have a crush? You didn’t tell me that,” Mom said. How was it that with just one little look, I felt like I had been splashed with a giant gallon of guilt? Did they teach moms how to do that in the hospital before they gave birth?

  “You told your dad?” Laurel asked, surprised.

  “A crush?! You have a crush?” Alan asked anxiously. “Who is it on? What does his father do?”

  Sarah pointed at my half-eaten slice of pepperoni. “If you’re not going to finish that, can I have it?”

  “Okay, (a) I’m not even sure it’s a crush yet!” I cried. “If you’re going to make big announcements, you should at least get the facts right! And (b) I didn’t say anything because I kind of thought you’d remember this from when you were a kid, but when someone tells you a secret, you’re not supposed to then announce it to a table full of people!”

  “But, honey, these aren’t people—this is your family!” Dad cried.

  I leaned back in my chair as they all started chattering about the crush that I had that I wasn’t even sure was a crush as if I wasn’t even there. Yes, they were my family, but they were driving me bonkers. At least Laurel and I were leaving for L.A. on Friday, so I’d get a break from them. Dad was always saying that the Buddhists believed that before you were born, you chose the family you were going to come into so you could learn your life lessons. As far as I was concerned, the only lesson I was being forced to learn was how not to die from embarrassment.

  I took out my advice notebook. When you tell a person a secret, make sure you always add the phrase DON’T TELL ANYONE, even if you think that part is super-obvious.

  As I was putting on my old bra that night before bed, there was a knock on my door. But before I could say, “Just a second—don’t come in yet,” it opened, which meant it was Mom, because she always did that, even though she knew that it totally drove me crazy.

  “Lucy, I really wish you’d stop wearing that bra to bed,” she said, sitting down on my bed. “It can’t be good for your circulation.”

  “But it’s working!” I said. “My boobs are totally shrinking.” Okay, maybe they weren’t totally shrinking, but when I had worn my Angry Little Girls T-shirt the other day, I could have sworn the letters were in a different place.

  “So it was nice to see your dad, huh?” she asked, petting Miss Piggy, who had snuggled up in her lap. Why was it that Miss Piggy would let everyone touch her except me? Once I was back from L.A., I was really going to step up my efforts on Operation New Kitten.

  “Yeah, it was great,” I said, throwing some size-small T-shirts into the pile of “things to be packed for L.A.” now that my boobs were deflating. I knew where Mom was going with this. I decided just to cut to the chase. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my crush,” I mumbled.

  “So am I,” she said softly. “Look, no one is happier than I am that you have such a great relationship with your dad, but I guess I’m just a little hurt that you didn’t tell me, too.”

  She was hurt? What about me? I’d tried to tell her about the crush, but she’d been ignoring me for weeks! “Well, maybe if you weren’t so busy all the time, I would have,” I blurted out.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, confused.

  “I’m talking about the fact that ever since we moved here, you’re either going on fun IBSs with Laurel, or hanging out with venus, or looking for places to get married, or totally forgetting about me when I tell you I have something to talk to you about,” I replied.

  “Lucy, I—”

  My eyes started to get glassy. “You know, just because you’ve known me for twelve years doesn’t mean you can stop bonding with me, too.”

  She got really quiet, and her eyes filled with tears, too. Jeez. No wonder why I cried so much—it was hereditary. “I guess you’re right,” she said quietly. “I think because I was so afraid of anyone feeling left out, or of there being an us-versus-them dynamic, I went too far the other way.” She sighed. “I think because you’re so strong I somehow didn’t think about how it was affecting you.”

  I looked up from the crumpled mound of “to be packed” clothes that were getting more wrinkled by the moment. Luckily, Laurel really enjoyed ironing—maybe I could get her to iron my stuff when we got to the hotel. “‘Strong?’ Mom, I fail the Presidential Physical Fitness Tests every year in gym.” I hated gym. Most of the time I skipped it by using the “Please excuse Lucy B. Parker from gym today on account of the fact that she is menstruating” note that Marissa had forged for me.

  She laughed. “I meant emotionally strong,” she said. “And you’re so resilie
nt.”

  “Can you just speak in English, please?” I sighed. “I’m too tired to turn on my computer and look stuff up on dictionary.com.”

  She took my hands in hers. “Resilient means being able to bounce back to your original form. Like after the divorce. Or when Rachel and Missy ended their friendship with you. Or when you burned your hair off. Or when I told you we were going to have to move to New York if we were going to make a family with Alan and Laurel—”

  I cringed. She just listed the greatest hits of the horrible things that had happened to me. Way to make a person feel better.

  “After all those things, you could’ve gotten really angry and just stayed in your room all the time and cried and not talked to anyone. But you didn’t.”

  “That’s not true,” I corrected her. “I stayed in my room and cried a lot. Remember, you yelled at me for using so many of the Cold Care tissues?” They were the best ones because they were super-soft, so your nose didn’t get all red, but they were also expensive.

  “I mean that you cried for a while, but when you were done, you got up and brushed yourself off and held your head high and went back out into the world,” she said. “You never lost your . . . Lucyness.”

  My Lucyness? What did that mean? That I wore a lot of color? That I overshared? That I tripped a lot because of my coordination problem? “Maybe I seem strong and re—what was that word again?”

  “Resilient,” Mom said.

  “Resilient . . . but I’m still a kid. Even if I am about to get my period any day now. Do you have any idea how much my neck hurts from holding my head up? Or how many tissues I’ve really gone through? Or how many times I had to go hide in the bathroom stall at school to cry? Being twelve hasn’t been very fun,” I said, starting to cry again.

  Mom reached over and handed me a tissue and then grabbed one for herself. “I know it hasn’t. And I’m sorry for not realizing that as precocious and resilient as you may be, you still very much need your mother.” She reached over and hugged me. “But I need you to do something for me, okay? Instead of letting this get all bottled up, I need you to talk to me about it. And I’m going to make a really big effort so that when you say, ‘Mom, I need to talk to you,’ I’m going to put aside whatever I’m doing to listen, okay?”