Everyone Knows How Much I Love You

by Kyle McCarthy

  “Hostas. My mom made me help her plant some last summer.”

  “They’re everywhere. They’re, like, the symbol of the suburbs.”

  Other kids streamed around us, their black violin cases swinging, their sports jerseys silver and slick. A crew of boys from our grade, all scraggy shoulders and loose hair, ambled by, shoving and smoking. Lacie looked, and I looked, too, but Leo was not among them.

  Another kick to the planter. “We could just go?” I suggested.

  “He said today.” Kick. The rubber made a satisfying thunk. She ticked her eyes up to the flag, limply clutching its chrome. “Fucking flag.”

  “One day Mr. Pawling forgot to put it up.”

  “Hah.”

  Then Leo was blocking the sky, backpack swaying from one shoulder; then Leo was leaning over and giving my best friend a kiss. I studied the new scuff marks on my shoe. We turned to go.

  I still didn’t know the exact moment it had happened. One moment he was watching her slap her legs in the firelight; the next, they were together all the time. Completely, inviolably. I gathered that as the fire was winding down, there had been a walk by the creek, a confession of feeling, some making out, but whenever I brought it up Lacie always got smiley and vague. She did ask me if I minded, though; I’ll give her that. I had pretended confusion, then outrage, exclaiming “Seventh grade was a million years ago! And I didn’t even like him like him!”

  Now, down Glovings, Lacie and Leo walked in the dead middle, defiant. They were talking, Leo’s voice a soft rumble from barely parted lips, Lacie’s head tilted as she gave quiet, serious nods.

  Behind us, a car.

  “I mean, fuck that shit,” Leo said.

  The car grew louder as it slowed, drawing close. The engine thrummed inside me, agitating me; I braced for the horn. Nodding vigorously, I drifted sideways, not as if I was responding to the car, but as if the left side of the road abruptly intrigued me. Leo kept talking.

  A red blast of sound.

  I jumped. Lacie jolted. We leapt to the curb. And Leo, Leo of the lazy saunter, broke none of the rhythm of his stroll as idly he made his way to the grass.

  In a fresh roar the minivan surged past us. A woman, all mouth, hurled out the single epithet, “Move!”

  Leo ran after her and feinted as if throwing a rock. “Fucking bitch!”

  “Don’t use that word!” Lacie was giggling. My heart was still a furious flutter.

  “What?” He swung his arm around her. “Fucking? You don’t like that word?”

  “No,” she said, her grin wider, turning into the crook of his arm. “Not that one.”

  He mouthed something in her ear, and she laughed, scrunching more deeply into him. Casually I kicked a pebble. Shoved my hands in my pocket. Whistled a tune, though I couldn’t whistle: what came from my mouth was air.

  * * *

  —

  Finally Leo peeled off toward his house, and we made the right and then the left to University Place. In Lacie’s kitchen we microwaved dinner plates of Ritz crackers topped with American cheese before heading to her room.

  Tacked to Lacie’s corkboard were new cutouts, which I studied like a map. A hazy black-and-white photograph of a café in Paris; an elaborate doodle of jointed broken branches; a blueprint. Pages from the Delia*s clothing catalog, laughing girls in chartreuse and violet pants with baby T’s snug around their cheery round breasts.

  “Do you think we could do it today?”

  “Sure, if you want.”

  She perched on the bed, and I sat on the floor in the crook of her thighs. With a comb she divided my hair into sections. The line of the comb’s teeth against my scalp was cool and calming, as were her fingers, humming lightly through my hair, setting my scalp tingling. “Am I hurting you?” she murmured when she tugged the first braid tight. “Do it as hard as you can,” I told her, and closed my eyes.

  The Saturday before, we had gone in Grogan’s car to a Phish show in Camden, and I was still buzzing with all I had seen, the long, lanky girls with ribbons in their hair, the scruffy boys bare-chested in corduroy shorts, the nitrous and burritos and buds for sale. Some of the girls had dreads, clumps as fat as sausages framing their faces, and I had seized on this hairstyle; it seemed the perfect way of announcing my allegiance to all things alternative while I worked on my wardrobe.

  “Just don’t wash your hair for a month,” Lacie coached, giving me a gentle pat on the back. “And keep twisting the braids and running your fingers over them.”

  I scooted around and looked up at her on the bed. “Awesome, thanks.” Gingerly I patted my hair.

  “Hey,” she said carefully. “Are you coming over to Leo’s tonight?”

  “Oh, yeah. I think I might stop by.” I couldn’t admit that I hadn’t been invited. People didn’t invite in those days; you just heard about it, the news was in the air. To not know was worse than not being invited; it meant that people—boys—didn’t think to talk to me.

  From her dresser I picked up a pair of silver hoops. “Can I borrow these?”

  “What?” She craned her neck. “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  The little victory ran hot through me. Thumbing through her closet, I ticked through her wardrobe: sundresses of burnt yellow and psychedelic green; gray pants with mauve and periwinkle patches; little halter tops printed with leaves and birds, shirts too skimpy to wear to school. I pulled out a turquoise tulle skirt, long and gauzy and flecked with silver sparkles. “And this?”

  She shrugged. “For tonight? If you want.”

  Gladness warmed my heart. In her clothes I would be safe.

  * * *

  —

  In the soft breeze, a layer of tulle brushed my bare knees. It felt lovely. I felt lovely, standing on Leo’s porch in Lacie’s skirt. For long moments before leaving I had studied myself in the mirror, thinking that in Lacie’s dress I was a hippie princess, a girl who belonged at a party at Leo’s.

  But no one was coming. I tried rapping, ineffectively, on the screen door. Music—a bouncy bubbly twist of Phish—bled from the inside. I knocked again, harder, and rang the bell twice, two quick, frustrated shrills. They should be able to hear me, even over the music. I was beginning to feel stupid, standing there on the cement stoop.

  I knocked a fourth time. Nothing. Tentatively, I pushed the front door open. From beyond the hall I could just see a shadowy kitchen, with pools of yellow light. The hair on my scalp—already pulled tight into braids—prickled.

  “Hello?” I called.

  Why wasn’t Lacie waiting for me? Didn’t she care?

  In the kitchen there was no one—just a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, some smudged glasses, and a sopping sponge on the counter. I picked it up and smacked it, hard, against the floor. Thwack! it said, a wet, squishy sound. I descended the stairs.

  Suburban basement. Dank blue-gray carpet, a ragged brown couch, a single standing lamp draped in a red T-shirt. A circle of maybe fifteen kids. Glass bubblers going around. Phish noodling from a stereo. When I entered, no one looked up.

  Lacie sat leaning with one shoulder against the wall, nodding as Leo talked with rhythmic urgency. Sibley and a few other guys were crowded around her, forming their own little circle within the larger one. Grogan was lying on his back, his hands cupping the crown of his head, as if advertising his total calm.

  Uneasily I sat down beside the two Steves. Steve T was saying, “First the government pays them to build the prisons, and then they have to fill them up. That’s why they bring the crack in.” I nodded emphatically, but neither Steve looked over.

  Lacie was laughing. She looked radiant in her starry-blue halter top. Through the opening in the back, the lovely pale ridge of her spine, flecked here and there with dark moles, flexed as she laughed, the shoulder blades moving under her skin like wings.

  “They
just keep building them and building them,” Steve B said, and Steve T echoed, “It’s part of their system, part of their plan,” and I keyed into the rhythm of the way he kept saying system and plan. The music circled dizzily, wheeling around the same riff. Everyone but me was stoned. As the two Steves ranted, I zoned out on Leo’s face. He had stubble along his jaw, and spiky black hairs above his lip.

  “Jesus, Rose,” whistled Steve B.

  I swung around, blinking. Both Steves were staring at me. Steve T dinged me on the ankle. “Don’t you shave your legs?”

  Frantically I yanked Lacie’s skirt back over my calf. “Shaving is fake,” I told them, but they ignored me.

  “It’s so hairy,” Steve B said to Steve T. “She’s hairier than a boy.”

  To prove it, Steve T hiked up his pants. It was undeniable: the skinny toothpick of his leg was lightly dusted with white-blond hairs. Mine was thick like an animal’s.

  “You smell funny too,” Steve B added. “And your hair is weird. Do you actually think it looks good like that?”

  The room drained. The air shivered like the shush of a dusty bird wing, thick with pot. The boys started talking about something else, I don’t know what; unsteadily, I rose, and pushed toward the stairs, my eyes blurry and burning. I kept waiting for someone—for Lacie—to call my name, but she was lost in conversation with Leo. She was gone.

  From then on, she was the kind of girl who always had a boyfriend. Or she had been the kind of girl who always had a boyfriend, but I wasn’t sure whether she still was. In high school there had been Leo, but I hadn’t known her in her twenties. Now there was Ian, but even after eight weeks on Albemarle Road I still hadn’t seen him. There were nights Lacie didn’t come home, but though I assumed she was with him, I didn’t ask.

  She had an odd way of talking about him. Right, Ian, she would say, as if he were a grocery store item she had forgotten to pick up. Or, in a tone of showy bewilderment, He says I’m not open enough, as if, emotionally speaking, she were something like Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

  A vault would’ve been a better architectural metaphor for how Lacie handled her feelings, but I joined her in cluck-clucking over Ian’s emotional neediness, and mirrored her exasperation over his snuggling and texting.

  Her stance of bemused indulgence toward him made it all the more perplexing when she asked, twenty minutes before the guests were due to arrive for Shabbat, whether I thought it was okay that Ian was the only guy coming. “Do you think he’ll mind?” she said, which was funny, because she had never, until then, seemed concerned with his feelings, and because—as I tartly replied—he was her boyfriend. How should I know? I hadn’t even seen him in a year.

  She heard my sarcasm, registered my displeasure, and disappeared into the kitchen to stir the tom kha gai. But in truth I was flattered she had asked. Her vulnerability, so flashed, had a tantalizing shine.

  * * *

  —

  Soon the guests began to arrive, cooing hellos and tossing jackets onto Lacie’s bed. Wine was opened and glasses procured. Some girl, even before introductions, cleared off the table; I envied the familiar way she handled Lacie’s things, the way she knew what could be dumped on the floor and what should be carefully tucked into the bookshelves.

  The woman clearing turned out to be named Sophie. She was petite and pale-skinned, black-eyed, delicate yet direct. “So you’re the one who’s known Lacie since forever,” she cried. “What was she like in high school? You have to tell us.” But before I could answer she was distracted by a book on the mantel. “Oh, have you read this yet?” she called to Lacie, and the lightness of her tone convinced me she had no idea what I had done.

  Next I was introduced to Dylan, who reminded me of a cloudy day at the beach, sandy brown hair and freckles. While shaking her hand I wondered: did none of Lacie’s friends know the story? It would be just like Lacie to be discreet.

  I didn’t have time to riddle it out. “Dylan gave you the bed,” Lacie was prompting.

  “Oh God, thank you,” I obediently cried, and Dylan said it was no problem, they were getting rid of it anyway. Trash, I told myself, you sleep on other people’s trash. But I smiled.

  After Sophie and Dylan came Anna, a soft, milky redhead with a twisting mouth. “You’re both writers,” Lacie exclaimed, and we shook hands warily, but when she heard I was working with Portia Kahn, her green eyes widened. “She’s got a great list.”

  There was no Ian yet, but other than the occasional glance at the door, Lacie didn’t betray any reaction to his tardiness. We gathered round the dining-room table, now set with silverware and cloth napkins, and Lacie, singing, lit two tall green candles. They all knew the prayers, and slowly scooped their hands before their eyes. I tried to follow. Once I caught Lacie’s eye and she smiled apologetically, as if to acknowledge this new part of herself. Later we passed covered bread, and sipped delicate quarter-glasses of wine from jam jars. “Shabbat,” Sophie purred happily, leaning back in her chair.

  Then the sacred mood, so sudden and fragile, vanished, and we were just five women eating soup. The tom kha gai was oily and fragrant, a warm coconut broth with lemongrass and tender strands of chicken. We all exclaimed over it, but Lacie, laughing, said it was stupidly easy to make. Dylan said that all soups were easy, that was what was so fantastic about them, and we were off, idly sailing the sea of conversation: a mutual friend, Jenny (mutual to all of them, I mean), who used to inflict ghastly lentil soup on her dinner-party guests; Jenny’s move to Oakland last summer with her girlfriend; Oakland; San Francisco; rent. Mostly I listened, and tried not to slurp my soup.

  The talk drifted from girlfriends to boyfriends. Anna had recently been in Bar Harbor, closing up the summer home of her husband’s family, but to all the coos of I love Maine she only shook her head. “I spent the whole weekend convinced I had Lyme disease. Is there Lyme disease in Maine? Do you guys know?”

  Dylan, laughing: “Did you even see a tick?”

  “No, I just…got a rash.” She turned to me, explaining, “I’m a total hypochondriac, but then I actually get sick. It always turns out that I was right to worry.”

  “I don’t think that’s hypochondria. I think that’s just being aware.” Was I being obsequious? I was having that weird thing where my head felt too big and my teeth grotesque. I couldn’t stand the attention, so I rushed to grab more of it. “It’s like with me and this toothpick. I still think I was right to freak out.”

  “What’s you and the toothpick?” Lacie asked.

  “Oh.” I rolled my eyes. “Once I thought I had swallowed a toothpick.”

  The toothpick was a useful story, insofar as it made people laugh, and presented me as a neurotic (read: intelligent) mind, but I had never told it in New York before, and the stakes of this particular telling felt oddly high.

  I made sure they were all looking at me before I added, “I didn’t sleep for days.”

  Laughter, thank God. Dylan said, “You were worried about it coming out the other end?”

  I made a mock solemn face. “Yeah, I mean, it can kill you.”

  Anna, laughing: “How did you swallow a whole toothpick?”

  But I was distracted by a man in the doorway with big blond curls and scruff on his face: Ian. “Hey,” he said, uneasy at interrupting our chatter and yet somehow at ease in his uneasiness. “I brought some bread,” he announced, holding up a loaf wrapped in one of our tea towels, and just like that, I knew their relationship was real.

  “Ian!” they all cried, and lightly Lacie rose to her feet. Maybe she kissed him on the cheek—I’m not sure. When she reached his side, I found myself averting my eyes.

  I had forgotten how big and blond he was, with gold curls of hair and little scabs of dried plaster on his arm. He wore Carhartts and red plaid; he came into the living room still wearing his boots, and Lacie didn’t say a word. He kisse
d all the women on the cheek, and when he got to me he exclaimed, “Rose!” and wrapped me in a big hug. He hugged me so hard my feet left the floor. “You’re here!” he kept exclaiming, as if he hadn’t known. “You’re in New York!”

  “It’s true.” I was back on the ground, grinning like a fool.

  “Amazing.” Happiness like water trembled behind our smiles.

  Then we remembered the others. Lacie slipped off to the kitchen to fix him a bowl of soup, and he poured himself into her chair, graceful despite his bulk. “What are we all talking about?” he asked.

  “Hypochondria,” Sophie said.

  “Toothpicks,” Dylan said.

  “I was swallowing them,” I said, thinking it would be funny, but Ian only nodded. Were we all being girly, too giggly over white wine? I wanted to separate myself from the women I had been so eager to join just a moment before, but how could I when I was the one holding the floor?

  “I was eating fish tacos,” I explained. “This was in Nebraska. They were held together with toothpicks. I was with”—but I found myself suddenly unable to say my boyfriend—“Alex,” I finished lamely. Later I would see Lacie, too, refer to people by their first name rather than as my sister or my friend—it was kind of a trick for engendering intimacy—but at the time I felt like a country rube, assuming everyone knew everyone else in my world.

  “And in the middle of eating his second one, there was this crunch. And Alex was like, totally matter-of-fact, Oh, a toothpick.”

  I mimed picking a toothpick out of my mouth.

  “And I was like, Oh my God. That’s what that was.”

  Barks of laughter. Dylan gasped out, “You didn’t know it was a toothpick?” Ian smiled.

  “Yeah, I had bitten something hard, like a few minutes earlier, and I didn’t know what it was, so I swallowed it.” Beat. “So of course we went to the ER.”