There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.
—George Bernard Shaw
It took Lena hours to fall asleep, and once she did, she had a dream that made her wake up again.
The dream had the ratty, two-bit quality of an old-fashioned science filmstrip. She heard the whir of the film flying through the projector and the fan that kept the light cool. The film showed two greatly magnified cells moving through a roughly drawn diagram of the human body. One cell was traveling from the brain, and the other from the heart. The cells met at about the clavicle. They bounce bounce bounced together until both membranes gave way at once and they joined.
In the dream, Lena raised her hand and heard herself saying to Mr. Briggs, her ninth-grade biology teacher, “That can’t happen, can it?”
Then she woke up.
When she woke up she went to the bathroom, because she really had to pee. And while she was peeing, she got tired of herself. She got tired of not being able to say what she wanted or do what she wanted or even want what she wanted. She was tired, yes, but she couldn’t sleep.
She sat on her windowsill for a long time and looked at the three-quarter moon. It was the same moon shining on Bee and Carmen and Tibby and Kostos and Bapi and all the people she loved, near and far.
No, she wasn’t going to be sleeping anymore tonight. She put on the Traveling Pants under her nightgown and put her denim jacket on over that. Before she could think better of it she went downstairs and out the door. She closed it very carefully behind her.
It was about a mile to the Sirtises’, and Lena walked it with a reckless feeling in her heart. She had already come to terms with the worst possible thing. It couldn’t get any worse.
But she owed it to herself to see if it could possibly get better.
She had been to the Sirtises’ house enough times to know where the guest bedroom was. But as she sneaked around the side of the house, she was suddenly afraid that they had a burglar alarm and that she was going to set it off. She imagined sirens wailing and dogs barking and Kostos watching the cops drag Lena off wearing handcuffs over the sleeves of her nightgown. Maybe she hadn’t come to terms with the worst possible thing.
It was lucky the guest bedroom was on the first floor, because she was bad at climbing and had terrible aim.
The lights were off in the room. Naturally. It was nearly three in the morning. She climbed through the bushes that lined the side of the house. She felt very stupid. She knocked softly on the window. She knocked again. What if she woke the whole house? How would she explain herself? The whole Greek community would be whispering about Lena the sexual predator.
She felt him stirring before she actually saw him at the window. Now her heart felt like an unmanned AK-47, wheeling around in her rib cage and blasting everything in range. Kostos saw her and opened the sash.
If the sight of Lena in her nightgown and jeans knocking on his window at three in the morning gave him the feeling of a waking nightmare, he didn’t let on. He did look surprised, though.
“Can you come out?” These were the first words she’d spoken to him since he’d arrived. She was proud that she’d had enough breath to send them to his ears.
He nodded. “Wait. I’ll be there,” he said.
She pulled herself out of the bushes, losing a little of her nightgown in the process.
His white T-shirt looked blue in the moonlight as he came toward her. He had pulled a pair of jeans over his boxer shorts. “Come with me,” he said.
She followed him into the backyard, to a corner shielded by tall, old trees. He sat down and she sat down too. Her jean jacket was hot from all the walking. She took it off. She perched on her knees first, then sank down on the damp grass to sit cross-legged.
The summer sky was magical to her as she looked up at it. She felt heedless and not so afraid.
He was watching her face very carefully. He was waiting for her to say something. She was the one who’d pulled him out of his bed in the middle of the night.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” she said in a voice a little louder than a whisper.
“Okay,” he said.
It took a while to get the words up and out. “I missed you,” she said. She looked in his eyes. She just wanted to be honest with him.
He looked in her eyes right back. He didn’t look away.
“I wish I hadn’t broken off our letters,” she said. “I did it because I was afraid of missing you and wanting you all the time. I felt so stretched out. I wanted to feel like my life belonged just to me again.”
He nodded. “I can understand that,” he said.
“I know you don’t feel the same way about me anymore,” Lena said bravely. “I know you have a girlfriend now and everything.” She picked a blade of grass and rubbed it between her fingers. “I don’t expect anything from you. I just wanted to be honest, because I wasn’t before.”
“Oh, Lena.” Kostos’s expression was strained. He sat back in the grass and put his hands over his face.
Lena found herself staring at his hands instead of his eyes. She cast her own eyes down at the grass. Maybe he didn’t want to talk to her anymore.
At last he pulled his hands away. “Don’t you know anything?” he said. He said it like a groan.
Lena’s cheeks turned warm. There was a sob in her throat. She had expected him to be sympathetic to her, no matter what. Now she felt her courage slipping. “I don’t,” she said humbly, her head bowed. She could hear the tears in her voice.
He pulled himself up and turned to her. His body was facing hers straight on, no more than a foot away. To her amazement, he took one of her hands in both of his. He looked pained by the tragedy in her face. “Lena, please don’t be sad. Don’t ever be sad because you think I don’t love you.” His gaze was steady on her.
Her tears were perched on her lids, and she wasn’t sure which way they were going to go.
“I never stopped,” he said. “Don’t you know that?”
“You didn’t write me anymore. You got a new girlfriend.”
He released her hand. She wished he would keep it. “I didn’t get a new girlfriend! What are you talking about? I went out with a girl a few times when I was feeling miserable about you.”
“You came here all the way from Greece without even telling me.”
He semi-laughed—more at himself than at her. “Why do you think I came here?”
She was afraid to answer. The tears slopped over her lids and ran in big rivulets down her face. “I don’t know.”
He reached out to her. He put a finger on her wrist. He let it float up to touch a tear. “Not because I want a career in advertising,” he said.
On one level her mind was spinning madly, and on another it was focused and calm. The smile she put forth threatened to warp at any second. “Not because of the Smithsonian?”
He laughed. She found herself wishing he would touch her again. Anywhere. On her hair. On her ear. On her toenail.
“Not because of that,” he said.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked.
“What could I have said?”
“You could have been happy to see me or told me you still cared about me,” she suggested.
He laughed his rueful laugh again. “Lena, I know how you are.”
Lena wished she knew. “How am I?”
“If I come close, you run away. If I stay still then maybe, slowly, you might come.”
Was she like that?
“And Lena?”
“Yes?”
“I am happy to see you and I still care about you,” he said.
He was kidding, but still she took it to heart. “And I had lost all hope,” she said.
He put his hands over hers and held them against his chest. “Don’t ever lose hope,” he said.
She reached for him slowly, rising to her knees and finding his mouth with hers. She kissed him gently. He groaned a very quie
t groan. He put his arms around her and kissed her deeply. He fell backward and pulled her onto the grass on top of him.
She laughed and then they kissed some more. They rolled in the grass and kissed and kissed and kissed until a boy on a bike threw the newspaper up the walk and scared them apart.
The sun was lighting the sky from the bottom as Kostos pulled her to standing from the grass. “I’ll walk you home,” he said.
He was barefoot and had bits of grass stuck all over his shirt. His hair was sticking up on one side. She could only imagine how she must look. She giggled most of the way. He held her hand.
Just before they reached her house, he stopped and kissed her more. He let her go. She didn’t want to go.
“Beautiful Lena,” he said, touching her collarbone. “I’ll come for you tomorrow.”
“I love you,” she told him bravely.
“I love you,” he said. “I never stopped.”
He pushed her a little toward her door.
She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to be anyplace without him. It was hard to make herself walk away.
She turned around for a last look.
“I never will,” he promised her.
Bridget stood back and looked at the attic with a sense of accomplishment. She’d applied two coats of cream-colored paint. She’d painted the ceiling matte white and the trim semigloss. She’d painted the wide-planked floor a beautiful green, the color she remembered the Gulf of California being on sunny days last summer.
As an extra surprise for Greta, she’d set up a pretty white iron bed frame that had been in storage. She’d found a reasonable mattress. She’d sanded an antique bureau and painted it with the same cream-colored paint she’d used for the trim. On a trip to Wal-Mart she’d bought cheap—but still nice—white cotton eyelet bedding and simple white lace curtains.
The final touch was a big armful of purple hydrangeas she’d gathered in the backyard while Greta was out. She found a glass pitcher and set them on the bureau on a piece of blue fabric.
Other than the one box left in the corner of the room, it was perfect.
She thundered downstairs. “Greta! Hey!”
Greta was vacuuming. She hit the Power button with her foot. “What is it, hon?”
“You ready?” Bridget asked, making no effort to hide her excitement.
“For what?” said Greta, playing coy.
“You want to see your attic?”
“Are you finished already?” Greta asked that like wasn’t Bridget the cleverest girl in the whole world.
“I’ll follow,” Bridget ordered.
Grandma took the two flights slowly. Bridget noticed the cottage-cheesy texture under her skin and the stringy purple veins that spread over her calves.
“Ta-da,” Bridget crowed, leaning past Greta to open the door at the top of the stairs with a flourish.
Grandma gasped. As if she were in a movie, she threw her hand over her wide-open mouth. She studied the room for a long time, every single part. “Oh, honey,” she said. When she turned around, Bridget could see there were tears in her eyes. “It is so beautiful.”
Bridget couldn’t ever remember feeling as proud. “It looks good, doesn’t it?”
“You made a little home up here, didn’t you?”
Bridget nodded. Without thinking about it quite like that, she really had.
Greta smiled. “I didn’t peg you for the domestic type, I’ll admit.”
“Me either!” Bridget answered, her eyebrows high on her forehead. “You should see my room at home.” She got quiet. She hadn’t meant to bring up anything about home.
Grandma let it go. “You worked your tail off on this job, honey, and I am so grateful to you.”
Bridget shuffled modestly. “No problem.”
“And I already have somebody in mind to move in.”
Bridget’s face fell, and she didn’t try to hide it. She hadn’t actually imagined somebody moving in here and throwing her out. Was Greta all done with her? Was there no more work for her here? Was this really it?
“You do?” she said, trying not to cry.
“Yes. You.”
“Me?”
Grandma laughed. “Of course. You’d rather be here than in that falling-down boardinghouse on Royal Street, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” Bridget said, her heart lifting high.
“So it’s done. Go get your bags.”
Carmen discovered a strange scene when she walked into her kitchen the next morning. Her mother and her father’s stepdaughter were sitting across from each other at the small round table, chewing companionably on poached eggs.
“Morning,” Carmen said groggily. She’d been half hoping she’d dreamed the whole Krista episode.
“Would you like a poached egg?” Christina asked.
Carmen shook her head. “I hate poached eggs.”
Krista ceased chewing the very bite in her mouth. She had a look of yearning on her face, as if she wished it were she who had thought to hate poached eggs.
Carmen backed up in a hurry. “I don’t hate them, actually. I like them, actually. Brain food. I’m just not in the mood for them.” It was a tricky business, being somebody’s role model. It was a lot of pressure, especially in the morning.
“Are you baby-sitting today?” Christina asked her.
Carmen got out the sweet Cheerios and a bowl. “Nuh-uh. The Morgans left for Rehoboth yesterday afternoon. I don’t work again till Tuesday.”
Her mother nodded vaguely. Christina hadn’t appeared to listen to her own question, let alone Carmen’s answer.
Christina got up to pour more coffee, and Carmen took sudden note of the skirt she was wearing. It had gray and white pleats, and her mother had owned it since before Carmen was in nursery school. There were first-string outfits and there were second-string outfits, but this skirt belonged on the bench. Forever.
“Are you wearing that to work?” Carmen asked, forgetting to hide her disbelief. How long had it been since either of them had done laundry?
Her mother was easily hurt these days, so Carmen shouldn’t have been surprised to see her disappear into her room.
A few minutes later, Carmen looked up from her cereal to see Krista gazing motionlessly at her half-eaten poached egg, and Christina wearing yesterday’s pants.
It was pathetic. It was horrible. Carmen hated herself and hated them for listening to her.
“Hey, I have an idea,” she said in an overloud voice to the two of them. “From now on, nobody listen to anything I say.”
Lena lay in her bed until the middle of the next day, just her and her bursting heart, thinking about everything that had happened. She wanted to keep herself to herself, as she was often inclined to do. But she also wanted to share the news, so she was glad when the phone rang and it was Bee.
“Guess what?” Lena blurted out immediately.
“What?”
“I did know.”
“You did know what?”
“I did know what I needed to do.”
“About Kostos?”
“Yes. And you know what else?”
“What?”
“I did what I needed to do.”
Bridget screamed. “You did?”
“I did.”
“Tell me.”
Lena told her everything. It was hard to give such a private, visceral experience to the spoken word, but she also had the reassuring sense that she was locking it down.
Bee screamed again when she was done.
“Lenny, I am so proud of you!”
Lena smiled. “I’m proud of me too.”
Tibberon: C, have you talked to Lena yet? She sounded so giggly I thought I was talking to Effie. I’m happy for her. Kind of scary, though, too. I want her to still be Lenny. One Effie is enough over there.
Carmabelle: I talked to her. It’s amazing. The Love Pants are at it again. Except for me. Is there something wrong with me, Tib? I mean, besides all the regular things?
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What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life.
—Walt Whitman
Sometimes you just had to face it. You had to march right into the ugly middle, Tibby told herself. Otherwise you ended up flat against the wall, creeping fearfully around the edge your whole life.
That was what she told herself, and she was sticking with it. She put the disk into her computer.
She studied the files. She couldn’t remember what was what. She was a good labeler, but Bailey was not, and Bailey had been her PA and supposed organizational whiz. Then again, Bailey had been twelve. Tibby picked one and double-clicked. She had to start someplace.
An image materialized on her screen. It was her setup shot from the day at the 7-Eleven. It was from their first day of filming last summer—Tibby remembered it so distinctly. It was the day she’d met Brian.
The picture moved from the counter display of Slim Jims to the man working the register. Just as she remembered, he slapped his hands over his face, shouting, “No camera! No camera!” Tibby felt the smile on her face.
Then the shot changed and Tibby gasped. There it was. Tibby felt as though every nerve in her body were on alert. It was Bailey’s face, close up. She felt the surge of emotion smack her like a sandbag across the head. Fat tears floated in front of her eyes. Without thinking, Tibby’s finger hit the Pause key. The resolution diminished, but the image was even more striking. Tibby leaned in so close the tip of her nose touched the screen. She drew back. She was almost scared the face would disappear, but it didn’t.
Bailey looked over her shoulder at Tibby. She was laughing. She was right there. Right there.
Tibby hadn’t seen her since the last night of her life.
She had imagined Bailey’s face at least a million times between then and now, but the further she got from the real Bailey, the less distinct it became. She was glad for the real face again, for Bailey’s eyes.
Beethoven was rollicking along. Bailey was laughing.
Tibby let the feelings wash over her. She could sit here and cry for as long as she liked. She could crawl under the desk. She could run around in the parking lot. She could live big. She could make herself to do things that were hard. She could.