And Now You Can Go (9 page)

"The scooter?" I say. "Yeah."

"I'll wear a scarf!"

I go into the kitchen. "What were you two talking about?" I ask my mom.

"How he's going to marry you." I'm confused and flattered— it's been years since we dated. "He said, 'I'm going to marry your daughter.'"

My eyes are like my mothers, I realize—a fraction of an inch too close together.

"Americans," she says. "They are so nutty. When I was in my twenties and first moved here, every date I went on, the man asked me to marry him."

Last time I was home, my sister Freddie and I asked her about the men she'd dated before our father. She told us she'd been in love with a man in Italy, but had left him for a year to travel.

"What happened?" Freddie asked. We looked at each other: we couldn't believe we'd never heard about this man, our father's predecessor. His rival!

"A month before I was supposed to go back to Napoli he wrote and said the distance was too much, he'd met someone else. He was a pilot, and he'd fallen in love with a flight attendant."

"So what'd you do?" we asked, almost in unison. We looked at each other again and Freddie winked. She can wink with either eye; I can wink with one.

"I applied to Alitalia as a stewardess." "And?" Freddie said.

"They didn't give me a job."

"What would you have done if he'd waited for you?" Freddie asks questions I don't want to know the answer to.

My mother didn't hesitate. "I would have married him," she said. I open the door for Jason. "Your hair," he says.

"Long story," I say.

He looks at his watch. "It's only eight."

I hug him. Our temples rub. I forgot he isn't much taller than me. We walk out to the sidewalk, where his scooter is parked.

"So what's the story?" he says, as he hands me a helmet. I look inside it and pull a blond hair from its black lining.

"That's yours," he says, watching me release it to the wind. "From a few summers ago." "Of course," I say.

"So why'd you dye your hair?" "Can you help me with the strap?"

As he's fixing the strap, I can smell his warm breath. He's a warm person, I decide. "Is that okay?"

"Perfect," I say, holding both hands on my helmet, imagining an accident, and me staying safe. I have a Volvo on my head.

"So?" he says, and examines a strand of my hair, as if making sure he was right.

"I was held up at gunpoint in a park and the police haven't caught the guy. One of the cops said I should consider moving, changing my hair color, not going out alone."

He looks at me hard, trying to determine if I'm serious. His eyes are the brown of a dictionary I once owned. A good one, with lots of illustrations and second meanings and alternative spellings.

"Ha-ha," he says.

We ride through the streets, my fingers interlocking in front of his chest.
Has he heard
?' I wonder.
Was he playing dumb when he asked about my hair? Of course he must know
—
why else would he call me now, after all this time? Why not before
? I try to shake the thought out of my head and the helmet tilts to the side. I adjust it and when I put my hand back around his waist I shift myself toward him, pushing my breasts against his back.

We pull up in front of the restaurant. It's in a part of town I haven't been to before. It's colder here, or maybe it's later, but suddenly I'm dressed all wrong.

"You were getting cozy on the ride," he says as we unsnap our helmets.

"You wish," I say. I drop his helmet on the pavement and pretend it's a mistake. We order from a waitress wearing a tie. "I hate it when they do that," I say. "What?"

"When women wear ties. When it's part of a uniform."

"You hate a lot of things," he says. "I almost forgot that about you." "That's not true," I say, and I wonder if it is.

"Yes it is."

"Give me an example."

"God," he says. He throws back his head in mock exaggeration. He hasn't done a very good job shaving his Adam's apple.

"What?" I say.

"That's going to be on your tombstone. Your tombstone's going to have a quote: 'Give me an example.' That's what you'll be known for."

"Seriously," I say. "What do I hate?"

"You hated that movie we saw at the Regency." "Which one?"

"You know."

"It probably had Sandra Bullock in it. I hate her." He rests his chin on his knuckles and stares at me. "Only you and Canada like Sandra Bullock," I say.

He's wearing a button-up shirt that looks iridescent in the dimmed restaurant lights. "You hated Charles's girlfriend," he says.

"Who's Charles?" I say. "Oh yeah, she was awful."

Jason laughs. His smile is good. His stepfather was everyone's orthodontist.

Jason excuses himself to go to the rest room. He touches my shoulder when he passes me. As I rearrange my silverware, I try to remember why we stopped seeing each other. No reason other than distance: when classes started at the end of the summer, I left town.

Our steaks come.

"How's your stepdad?" I ask. "They divorced," he says. "I'm sorry," I say.

"It's okay. He was gay." "Really?"

"Yeah," he says. "Now he's dating Jimmy Weeks's dad." "Jimmy Weeks," I say. "How's Mrs. Weeks?" I had Mrs. Weeks for English in high school. A whole semester on Sylvia Plath. "Dead," Jason says. "What?" I say. "She put her head in the oven."

He pays and I don't protest. We get back on his scooter, the leather seat cold between my legs. He takes me to a bar on an alley I've never noticed.

The hostess recognizes him and seats us in a tall red booth. It's the shape of an open parenthesis. He orders me an apple martini and I drink it quickly, with frequent sips, so I can order something I like.

"What are your plans?" he says. I ask him to be less broad.

"Are you moving back here?"

I remind him that I'm going to school in New York. "Why don't you move East?" I say. I don't know why we're even having this conversation.

The couple in the booth next to us gets engaged. The booths are so high we don't see this. But our waitress, with the pleated skirt that lampshades out from her small waist, tells us. "The couple in the next booth just got engaged."

"Really?" Jason says.

"Yeah," says the waitress. "He put the ring in the bottom of her cosmopolitan. I almost had to give her the Heimlich."

The waitress has full lips, outlined in maroon. I wonder if I could fall in love with a woman. I decide no. The one time a girl—a stunning girl from New Jersey with runs in her stockings and glitter on her chest—kissed me, at a bar, I felt I was taking advantage of her.

Jason slides out of the booth and goes over to the next table. "Congratulations," he says.

They invite us to join them. I sit down with the newly engaged couple and Jason. We're sitting boy, girl, girl, boy.

The bride-to-be has a good profile, a strong, straight nose like Nefertiti. They've ordered a bottle of champagne and the man fills our glasses too high, the foam spilling over. He makes a bad sex joke, something about blowing one's wad. I want to like him so I try not to listen.

They are a good couple, these two. Jim and Dede are their names and they say "we" instead of "I." He's a high-school teacher, she's a lawyer. She's working on a case involving Native Americans and water rights. She pinches her earlobes and shows me earrings the tribe gave her. They look like they were bought in a reservation gift shop.

"That's so sweet," I say.

We talk and I decide I don't really want to be their friend after all. Within ten minutes I'm noticing all their flaws: the way she strokes her eyebrows obsessively and speaks with a fake British accent; the way he says "That's pretty funny" and "Don't even go there." But Jason likes them. After half an hour, Jim and Dede say they're going home. "Gotta close the deal, you know," he says to Jason. I look away; I don't want to see him wink.

Dede turns to me. "You two will have to come to our wedding.

And after that, you'll have to come to our twentieth wedding anniversary." "When will that be?" I ask, stupidly.

"In twenty years," she says.

They leave us with a half bottle of Cristal.

I wonder why, after all this time, Jason told my mother he's going to marry me. "What ever happened with you and Anika, the Norwegian?" I ask.

"Finnish. She was crazy," he says. "Didn't you ever notice that?"

I only met her twice. "No," I say. "I only noticed she was beautiful." "She
was
beautiful," Jason says. "I can't believe you admit that." "What made her crazy?" I ask.

"Her dad was an alcoholic, her mother on Prozac—her mother actually had it blended in her orange juice. I had to be careful when I had breakfast there."

"So that makes her crazy?" I have no idea why I'm sticking up for this woman. "She had problems," he says.

"Everyone has problems," I say. "I have problems."

He throws his head back, fake-laughs. "You," he says, and takes a sip of the Cristal, "are the most normal person I know."

"No I'm not," I say.

"The only thing wrong with you is your eyes—" "Too close together, I know. What else?"

He looks at my stomach and opens his mouth. Then he closes it again.

I take a sip of champagne, then pour myself some more. I'm trying to wash the taste of everything I've ever heard out of my mouth.

"Give me an example," he says, and smiles, "of how you're not totally normal and well-adjusted."

"Can I tell you a secret?" "Yeah."

I lean in. "I was hog-tied and raped," I say. I don't know why. "What?"

"I was hog-tied and raped. I tried to pee, but couldn't. That's what they say to do, you know. Pee."

He means to nod, but shakes his head. He reaches his hand out toward me and pulls it back. I feel oddly liberated and I realize why: if I had been raped, I'd feel more justified doing everything I'm doing.

"That's why I dyed my hair," I say.

Part of me feels awful for lying to him, for putting him in this situation. But he won't touch me, can't bring himself to touch me. He sits there staring at the candle on the table with matches scattered, broken and burnt, around its wick.

"I'm sorry," Jason says to the candle.

He pays the bill and neatly folds the receipt into his wallet. "Why don't we take the scooter to my place," he says. "I'll get my car and drive you home."

"I thought your car was in the shop," I say.

"It's not. I just thought the scooter would be more fun."

When he drops me off at home, he looks at the steering wheel. His hand covers the horn, as though he's in imminent danger. We make no plans to see each other; we say nothing. I get

out of the car, slam the door, and then enter my parents' house quietly. Shoes in hand, I make my way up to my room.

Before I came home, my father was sleeping in my bed, but now he's moved back into my mother's. I clear away the vestiges of his residency—the Advil, the book about preventing prostate cancer, the week-old
TV Guide
. My father has highlighted, in yellow, the time and channel for
America's Most Wanted
. After I put my childhood diaries in chronological order, I go to sleep.

I bike to my old all-girls school. I'm surprised to see classes are still in session. Out on the field, thirty girls in white blouses and blue skirts are preparing for a game. I watch through the fence as they take off their skirts and lay them on the bleachers; they wear shorts beneath their uniforms, as we did.

The coach—a man who looks in his thirties, with a cast on his left arm—blows a whistle, summoning the girls to congregate by a goal. The girls run out onto the field. Halfway to the goalpost, a few of them stop and point, or stare. One girl is wearing her white blouse on top, but on the bottom, only underwear. She forgot to wear shorts under her skirt, and hasn't noticed until now.

Some of the girls laugh. A few cover their mouths. The girl in her underwear runs back to the bleachers, puts on her skirt, and takes off toward the school gates, the exit.

I jump on my bike, determined to intercept her as she's running out. I get there first, and stand bike-side, waiting. I'll tell her it's okay. I'll tell her I was her; I know what it's like.

"Hi," I say, as the girl approaches, running. Her red hair is French-braided, her dark blue socks stay knee-high as she runs. She's twelve, maybe—sixth or seventh grade. She wipes her nose with the back of her arm and dries her arm on her skirt.

"Hey," I say again. "It's okay." The girl doesn't even look at me. She makes a wide arc around me and my bike and takes off down the street.

My mom forgets I don't like fish. I complain about the lack of food at home. "Well, you have legs and time," she says. "Why don't you go shopping?"

I go to the Gala Foods on Irving. Outside, by the newspaper stand, a man reaches into his jacket pocket and I jump back. Cigarettes.

Inside, I shop for my sister and me. She's coming back from England tomorrow. Originally, due to the cost of the plane ticket, she wasn't going to make the long trip home from Oxford for Christmas. But in the last few weeks she changed her mind.

"Please don't come home on my account," I told her over the phone. "It's not just that," she said.

Freddie and I like black beans, tortilla chips, tortillas, split-pea soup, croissants, and vanilla yogurt. I put all this in a cart.

In line, I stand behind a Chinese-American woman, who's talking to her little boy. "What's this?" she says, pointing to an apple.

"Ball," he says, and laughs.

She corrects him and points to an orange.

"Ball," he says. He's sitting in the shopping cart's kid seat, his legs through the two cutout slots. But his legs don't bend at the knee; they stick out straight like Popsicle sticks. He laughs at everything: the magazines at the checkout stand, his mother, me. I smile back. I can't remember the last time I smiled so wide, with so many teeth.

I want to pull this mother aside and tell her what happened to me in the park. I feel she'll understand.

It's odd who I tell and who I don't, but for the most part I don't tell anyone I know and I fantasize about telling strangers everything. I want to tell this Chinese-American woman with the son at the supermarket. I want to tell the person who takes my toll at the bridge. I want to drive in search of lifeguards and rangers and firemen, and tell them. I want to give the information, like a baby in a bundle on a doorstep, to people who will never know who I am. I can tell them and move on, drive off, and they will never hold it against me, never try to explain my future actions with what happened in the past. I do not want to be judged by this forever.