Love (And Other Uses for Duct Tape)

by Carrie Jones

  I sit on the wet earth, my head resting against the marble. If I close my eyes, maybe I could see him somehow, but that’s not what I want. I want to be able to smell what he used to smell like, feel if the skin on his arms was rough or smooth, super hairy, or just kissed with follicles.

  “I wish I knew you,” I say. The rain pellets my bike helmet. Thwonk. Thwonk. It makes a patter beat like Morse code, but I can’t decipher the message. What does my mom do when she comes here? What does she think? Does she see old visions of him, dancing her across the floor at their high school prom? Does she feel the soft cloth of his flannel shirt against her cheek as he hugs her hello? Does she remember the day he left for the war? The sorrow-crinkles in his eyes when he refused to say goodbye?

  “No good-byes,” he told her, patting her belly, where I was swimming around, waiting. “Those are for movies and men who don’t come home.”

  But he didn’t. He didn’t come home.

  When your dad dies before you know him he becomes a fairy tale, like someone familiar that you’ve always wanted to meet but you keep missing each other somehow, almost as if you walk straight and they turn; you ride your bike down a road while they whiz by in an ambulance; you know they exist, that they existed, but it’s something that you can never touch.

  And the thing is, I think the people you know can be like that too. You think you’re so connected. You think you know someone’s soul and then it just rain-smears away and you’re just left with words about them, words that explain about them, but you don’t have them.

  My fingers press against his headstone, but it’s just wet stone, wet and hard and there’s nothing there at all, just a name, letter-symbols of someone who once was.

  That’s it.

  That’s it when your dad dies before you knew him or when your husband dies before he kisses your baby. You just journey through it. You just keep going and going like some sort of crazy battery-powered pink bunny in a commercial. You bang your drum and you go on.

  “Would you love me?” I whisper ask. “Do you think Tom loves me?”

  My father, he doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t answer.

  So, I get up and walk away.

  Everything is different, just because of Jim in the car, just because you can’t keep everything the same forever, I guess.

  It rains harder but I can handle it. On my bike I can handle almost anything. It’s like you’re a superhero pushing through the rotation of the tires. It’s all you and muscle and gravity, going forward, moving, all power.

  I race my bike through the sheets of water. Massive puddles slosh up and spray my legs. The bike is like the storm, out of control, but I’m doing my best to stay upright and stable on the old, hilly Bayside Road. I would focus on the faded white line that shows the shoulder, but puddles obscure it.

  This is hell.

  Splash.

  Only wet.

  Can hell be wet?

  Isn’t hell supposed to be hot fire and searing pain? Isn’t it supposed to be constant torture by your most hated enemies? For me, that would be Mimi Cote, the high school bully queen.

  Why would her mother name her that? Mimi like me-me, like shallow materialism and greed at its best.

  “Because life is full of cruelties perpetuated by our parents,” is what Em would say.

  Splash.

  My cell phone waits in my pocket, tempting me to call Em, or Tom, for a ride, but I won’t do it. I don’t need help getting home. I’m no damsel in distress. It’s just rain.

  Splash.

  This time the puddle wiggles my tire a bit. My jeans are heavy against my leg.

  “I am so stupid,” I say out loud, between gritted teeth. “I am a total idiot.”

  Clouds thicken the sky. Thunder rolls around the air like a curse. The zinnias in the cemetery must be struggling.

  I pedal and then a black truck pulls up alongside me. The growling engine noise lets me know it’s my neighbor, Eddie Caron. Eddie used to be one of my little-kid best friends and then he freaked out last fall, pushed me against a locker, put his hand on my …

  Don’t think about this.

  Pedal.

  Just pedal.

  “Hey Belle!” He’s rolled down the window. “Want a ride?”

  “No, thanks,” I manage to make my lips move. The bike’s tires rip through another puddle, dark and foul. A used paper cup floats in it. Ahead of me, near Billy Ray’s house, is a flat lake spreading out across both lanes of the road. On sunny days, there’s a pothole there that I always have to veer around. The rain hits this massive puddle, striking it over and over again.

  “You can’t ride your bike in the rain,” says Eddie. “You look like a freaking lunatic and you’re soaked.”

  He leans his bulky body out of his truck window. I keep riding, pumping the pedals, smooth and hard so I can go faster even on the slick roads. He keeps the truck going the same speed as my bike.

  “I’m fine!” I yell and push harder, like I’m somehow going to magically be able to outrun a truck with an engine, a motor and Eddie’s big foot on the gas, like I’m suddenly Superman. Sorry. Too gender specific. Superperson.

  Eddie shakes his head at me, squints his big dark eyes and doesn’t give up. “You’re being stupid.”

  The rain splatters down. Lightning shrieks across the sky.

  “You’re just being stubborn,” he yells at me. I glance over at him. Rain has soaked his shirt. “You’re going to fall.”

  “Will not.”

  “Will too.”

  Thunder booms. Rain splatters against my ears. Eddie keeps trailing me. “If I was Tom you’d take the ride.”

  “Yeah.”

  That’s a no-brainer right there. Tom is my boyfriend. Eddie is the freak who grabbed my breast in the hallway and got suspended for it. I’m not supposed to think about that. I think about it and shudder in the cold rain.

  “Belle, just let me bring you home. Okay?”

  I start to shout something back, but at that moment something happens. My hand starts jerking the way it does right before I have a seizure, only I don’t really have seizures much anymore. I don’t. I stare at my hand. My bike lurches hard and quick. The front wheel wiggles and I fly over the handlebars, head first. Somehow I relax my body, but curl it, like a ball, and I thud into the dirt on the shoulder of the road.

  I jump right up, horrified, embarrassed, even more soaked. I don’t care if I’m hurt. I cannot believe I fell off my bike. I never fall off my bike.

  Eddie’s truck is stopped in the middle of the road. His door’s flung wide open and he’s right by me, face tight and wet. “Belle … ”

  He reaches his hand out. His hand is huge and waits in front of me. I follow the line of his arm to his face. His brow crinkles and below it his brown eyes plead for me to take his hand, to take it, to trust him.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Belle, I think you had a seizure.”

  I pace away from him, pivot back. My shoulder hurts. My ankle hurts. My head feels groggy and funny like it used to after I had a seizure. I did not have a seizure. I only have seizures when I’ve had caffeine or aspartame. I did not have caffeine or aspartame.

  “I’m fine.” I grab at my bike, lifting it like I’m going to jump on it and ride home. The frame looks okay, but the front tire is flat. “Crap.”

  I could patch it, but I don’t want to. I unbuckle my helmet and yank it off. Water sloshes into my eyes. I grab the handlebars to walk my bike back home but everything in me feels weak and tired, like all my muscles have been yanked hard and fast.

  “I couldn’t have had a seizure,” I whisper out.

  Eddie’s meaty hand lands on my wet shoulder, the one that I didn’t land on. “Belle, let me bring you home.”

  I st
op walking and breathe in. “I can call Em for a ride. I have my cell.”

  He does not move his hand and it’s all I can do not to run away. It was horrible in the hall that day, the way I couldn’t get away from him, the way his eyes hardened like asphalt and he wouldn’t listen. I felt helpless.

  I did not just have a seizure.

  Thunder echoes across the sky. Tom is at practice, but maybe coming home now, because the weather’s so bad. My mom is running errands and I am here, on the Bayside Road, standing with Eddie Caron and his hand, his hand is on my shoulder.

  Let me go, I say, but it’s only in my head. Let me go, Eddie.

  When we were little kids we’d play together. We’d do all those little-kid things. We’d hold hands and pull on each other, running in a circle and chanting Ring Around the Rosie. We’d fall down and giggle forever, staring up at the sky. Back in first and second grades, when I was too little to fit in and Jade Gerard would bully me into giving him my Goldfish snacks, it was Eddie who would beat him up behind the school.

  That was the old Eddie. Now there’s this Eddie. The hallway Eddie. How can they be the same person? They are. Somehow they are.

  His eyes meet my eyes.

  Let me go, Eddie.

  He lets go. The hand that had rested on my shoulder wipes at the water on his face, rough and impatient.

  “I’m sorry, Belle,” he says with a voice that doesn’t match his hand. “I was a shit. I know I was a shit. You know … back then. I was drunk. That’s not an excuse. I’m better now. The old Eddie.”

  He swallows and I don’t say anything.

  Something in his eyes flickers and I feel sorry for him somehow. I do not want to feel sorry.

  “Please,” he says, “let me give you a ride home. It’s insane out here. And I really think you had a seizure. You were jerking.”

  My breath sucks in. “You saw me?”

  “Yeah.”

  I nod, just the tiniest nod, and Eddie grabs my bike and hoists it into the back of the truck. He opens the door for me and makes sure I don’t fall getting in his truck. But it was just a seizure. It doesn’t make me incapable of getting in a freaking truck.

  “I’ll get it all wet,” I say.

  He shrugs. “Like I care. It smells like puke in here, anyway.”

  I sniff in. It does. My head wobbles back against the seat. There’s a crack in the black vinyl shaped like the letter Y.

  He starts driving. “It’s my dad. He went on a bender one night and slept it off in my truck. I used Fantastic but you can still smell it.”

  “Really?” It’s hard to imagine Mr. Caron drinking. He’s so Bible School with his perfectly creased shirts.

  “Fantastic is a pretty good cleaner.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Things have kind of sucked at home lately,” Eddie says. The wipers swish back and forth, frantically trying to rid the window of water. “Should I be doing something special for you?”

  “What?”

  “Because you just had a seizure?”

  “No.”

  I rub the wet out of my eyes. Eddie’s shirt clings to him.

  He says, “I’m sorry.”

  We both know what he’s talking about. We both know it’s not about his father. We both know it’s not because I was jerking on the side of the road.

  “So am I.”

  It takes us less than five minutes to get to my house, even though Eddie has to drive slow through the puddles. My phone beeps. Tom’s sent me a text message. It’s a picture of him, soaking wet with Shawn. They’ve got their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. Then the message: MISS U. Why couldn’t it have said LOVE U?

  Great.

  The whole way, I keep thinking about how mad Tom would be if he knew I was in here with Eddie. He hates Eddie. He hates when I do what he thinks are stupid things. Like when I forget that Wrigley’s Spearmint gum now has aspartame in it and start chewing. Or when I climb on top of the roof of my house so I can be closer to the stars. This ride with Eddie? Tom would count this as an extremely stupid thing. And the seizure would make it worse.

  I won’t tell him.

  U 2, I text back.

  Just as Eddie turns the truck into my driveway he says, “Remember Cardigan?”

  Cardigan was this eighth grade trip we all had to take. We climbed up a mountain and camped out for three nights with the teachers, and I was a total wimp. My backpack was really heavy. My head was spinning. I’d drunk five Pepsis on the bus ride over. Now, I realize I must have been in pre-seizure mode, but back then I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I didn’t know why I passed out. I didn’t know that caffeine and aspartame gave me seizures. I just felt bad.

  Eddie had come all the way back down the mountain to where the teacher and I were resting. He took my pack up the mountain for me. He climbed the mountain twice. I called him my Hero Friend and everyone teased him about it, but it was kind of nice. Eddie’s never been popular, and I think he felt kind of popular that weekend, like he fit in, and for once no one cared that he was so huge and not super smart or really good looking. They just cared that he was my Hero Friend.

  “Cardigan was crazy,” I say, opening the door. The rain attacks us. Eddie just barrels out of the truck anyway, hauling out my bike and carrying it to where it will be safe under the porch.

  “Yeah,” he says. “But it was fun. Do you know why you had one? A seizure?”

  I shake my head, accept the truth. “No. Now? I didn’t have anything today that would make me have one. No coffee or gum or anything.”

  He cracks the knuckles on his right hand. They’re scratched up and rugged. “You stressed?”

  “Yeah. I’m always stressed.”

  “Sometimes elevated stress levels can make people who are prone to seizures have seizures. It gets them closer to their threshold levels.”

  I eye him. Rain beats down. “You sound like a doctor.”

  “I looked up a lot of stuff up on the ’net, you know.” He shifts his weight. His left leg jiggles nervously. “When you first had them.”

  “Oh.”

  I don’t know what to think. The rain keeps pummeling down, so I just thank him and go inside, slouching, soaked, and not looking very powerful. At all.

  Hello house.

  Goodbye Eddie.

  Water falls off of me, puddles by the front door. I rip my clothes off, check out the bruise on my ankle and head upstairs for the bathroom. My cat, Muffin, rubs against me and then hisses.

  “I know, I’m wet,” I tell her.

  She turns her back to me, shows me her kitty bum.

  “It’s not like it’s on purpose.”

  Why does Tom have to be so cute? It kills me. The white of his teeth against his tree bark skin. The water molding his hair to his skull, dripping down his ear. Stop. Darn it. Stop being so damn cute. God, God, God, hormones just suck.

  I throw my wet clothes into the washing machine, turn on the shower and check out his picture one more time. Damn. I won’t tell anyone about my seizure. I won’t risk it. This will be the one secret that I keep. Yeah, I keep it with Eddie, but nobody’s talking to him anyway, and if I tell … . If I tell it means doctor appointments and medications, probably. It means no taking showers or baths without my mom pounding on the door every minute making sure I’m okay. It means no riding my bike and I already can’t drive a car.

  “It was a fluke,” I announce to the bathroom.

  The bathroom, I’m happy to say, agrees.

  There is nothing to do tonight, so Em and Shawn and Tom and I, we take off for dinner ourselves. We just go to Pat’s Pizza, to sit in the green vinyl booths, to peruse the same coffee cup-stained menus we know by heart. And of course, I peruse Tom’s face, the same jaw t
hat’s strong and straight but not in some ridiculous Superman way, the lines that crinkle by his eyes when he laughs, the cheek muscle that twitches when he’s mad. I know him by heart too, and the longing … It’s crazy. I can’t believe you can long for someone so much when that person is right there.

  Anna and Kara and Crash are at another table with Dylan and Bob. Bob shifts his eyes away when I say hi. The overhead lights glint off his glasses. The sun has burnt the scalp beneath his super short hair.

  “You guys want to sit with us?” Anna asks.

  Shawn holds his hands out. “You look crowded.”

  Anna wipes at the corner of her lip, which she’s outlined with black, and then says, “We could sit on laps?”

  Even she knows it’s a stupid idea.

  We end up only a couple booths away and while we sit perusing and perusing and perusing, the voices of the other table breeze over. They hum towards us. The fan on the ceiling turns and turns. Each spin of it causes the blades to shake and it reminds me of my hand, of falling on the ground.

  Tom shuts his menu.

  “You know what you’re getting?” Shawn asks.

  “Mexican.”

  “No green pepper?” I ask.

  Tom sticks his tongue out, disgusted at the thought.

  “Stick that thing back in unless you’re going to use it,” Em says. “Oh, wait … Bellie, you do want him to use it?”

  I kick her underneath the table. She yelps and smiles.

  “Sometimes I hate you.” I make my voice go hard mean.

  “You really love me.” She hides behind the menu then pokes her eyes over the top, all little girl sweet. “Right?”

  Shawn hauls her into his side, wraps his fingers around her shoulder. He smiles so hard his face muscles must ache, the world is in that smile. “We all love you, Emily-bemily.”

  She kisses his cheek. “Good.”