Don dropped the croquet mallet. It hit the driveway with a thunk. Then he turned his back to me and headed up the walk, taking long, angry strides. Once up the front steps, he pushed past my mother, ignoring her as she spoke to him, and disappeared down the hallway. A second later I heard a door slam.
“What a baby,” I said to Lissa, who was now down by the mailbox, pretending to be engrossed with reading the new letters STARR/DAVIS that had recently been affixed to it.
“He was really mad, Remy.” She came up the driveway carefully, as if expecting Don to throw himself back out the door, ready for round two. “Maybe you should have just said you were sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” I said. “For not being psychic?”
“I don’t know. It just might have been easier.”
I looked up at the house, where my mother was standing in the doorway, hand on the knob, glancing down the hall to the darkened kitchen, the direction in which Don had stalked off. “Hey,” I called out. She turned her head. “What’s his problem, anyway?”
I thought I heard him saying something from inside, and she eased the door shut a bit, turning her body away from me. And suddenly I felt completely strange, like the distance between us was much much greater than what I could see from where I was standing. Like that line, always so clear to me, had somehow shifted, or never even been where I’d thought it was at all.
“Mom?” I called out. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Good night, Remy,” she said. And then she shut the door.
“I’m telling you,” I said to Jess. “It was totally messed up.”
Across from me, Lissa nodded. “Bad,” she said. “Like scary bad.”Jess sipped on her Zip Coke, pulling her sweater tighter over her shoulders. We’d gone by and knocked on her window after leaving my mom’s, when I decided I wasn’t about to spend the evening under the same roof as Don and his temper. Plus there was something else: this weird feeling of betrayal, almost, as if for so long my mother and I had been on one team, and now suddenly she’d up and defected, pushing me aside for someone who would stick a finger in my face and demand respect he hadn’t even begun to earn.
“It’s really kind of normal behavior,” Jess told me. “This whole my-house-my-rules thing. Very male. Very Dad-esque.”
“He’s not my dad,” I told her.
“It’s a dominance thing,” Lissa chimed in. “Like dogs. He was making clear to you that he is the alpha dog.”
I looked at her.
“I mean, you’re the alpha dog,” she said quickly. “But he doesn’t know that yet. He’s testing you.”
“I don’t want to be the alpha dog,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to be a dog, period.”
“It’s weird that your mom would put up with that,” Jess said in her thinking voice. “She’s never been the type to take much crap, either. That’s where you get it from.”
“I think she’s scared,” I said, and they both looked at me, surprised. I was surprised myself; I didn’t realize I thought this until I said it aloud. “I mean, of being alone. This is her fifth marriage, you know? If it doesn’t work out—”
“—and you’re leaving,” Lissa added. “And Chris is this close to being married himself—”
I sighed, poking at my Zip Diet with my straw.
“—so she thinks this is her last chance. She has to make it work.” Lissa sat back, ripping open the bag of Skittles she’d bought and popping a red one in her mouth. “So maybe, she would pick him over you. Just for now. Because he’s the one she has to live with, you know, indefinitely.”
Jess eyed me as I heard this, as if expecting some reaction. “Welcome to adulthood,” she said. “It sucks as much as high school.”
“This is why I don’t believe in relationships,” I said. “They’re such a crutch. Why would she put up with his baby ways like this? Because she thinks she needs him or something?”
“Well,” Lissa said slowly, “maybe she does need him.”
“Doubtful,” I said. “If he moved out tomorrow she’d have a new prospect within a week. I’d lay money on it.”
“I think she loves him,” Lissa said. “And love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone’s bad qualities because they somehow complete you.”
“Love is an excuse to put up with shit that you shouldn’t,” I replied, and Jess laughed. “That’s how it gets you. It throws off the scales so that things that should weigh heavily don’t seem to. It’s a crock. A trap.”
“Okay, then,” Lissa said, sitting up straighter, “let’s talk about untied shoelaces.”
“What?” I said.
“Dexter,” she said. “His shoelaces were always untied. Right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Yes, you do, and yes, they were. Plus he was clumsy, his room was a mess, he was completely unorganized, and he ate in your car.”
“He ate in your car?” Jess asked incredulously. “No shit?”
“Just the one time,” I said, and ignored the it’s-a-miracle-throw-up-a-hallelujah face she made. “What’s the point here?”
“The point is,” Lissa cut in, “that these are all things that would have made you send any other guy packing within seconds. But with Dexter, you put up with them.”
“I did not.”
“You did,” she said, pouring more Skittles into her hand, “and why, do you think, were you willing to overlook these things?”
“Don’t say it was because I loved him,” I warned her.
“No,” she said. “But maybe you could have loved him.”
“Unlikely,” I said.
“Extremely unlikely,” Jess agreed. “Although, you did let him eat in your car, so I suppose anything’s possible.”
“You were different around him,” Lissa said to me. “There was something new about you that I’d never seen before. Maybe that was love.”
“Or lust,” Jess said.
“Could have been,” I said, leaning back on my palms. “But I never slept with him.”
Jess raised her eyebrows. “No?”
I shook my head. “I almost did. But no.” The night he’d played the guitar for me, that first time, picking out the chords of my father’s song, I’d been ready to. It had already been a few weeks, which at one time might have been considered a record for me. But just as we’d gotten close, he’d pulled back a bit, taking my hands and folding them against his chest, instead pressing his face into my neck. It was subtle, but clear. Not yet. Not now. I’d wondered what he was waiting for, but hadn’t found a good time to ask him. And now I’d never know.
“That,” Lissa said, snapping her fingers as if she’d just discovered uranium, “proves it. Right there.”
“Proves what?” I said.
“Any other guy you would have slept with. No question.”
“Watch it,” I said, pointing at her. “I have changed, you know.”
“But you would have, right?” she asked. She was so insistent, this new Lissa. “You knew him well enough, you liked him, you’d been hanging out for a while. But you didn’t. And why is that?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“It’s because,” she said grandly, sweeping her hand, “it meant something to you. It was bigger than just one guy and one night and out you go, free and clear. Part of the change I saw in you. That we all saw. It would mean more, and that scared you.”
I glanced at Jess but she was scratching her knee, choosing not to get into this. And what did Lissa know anyway? It was Dexter who’d stopped things, not me. But then again, I hadn’t tried to push it further, and there had been other chances. Not that that meant anything. At all.
“See?” Lissa said, pleased with herself. “You’re speechless.”
“I am not,” I said. “It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Dexter,” she said quietly, “was the cl
osest you’ve come to love, Remy. Real love. And you dodged it, at the last second. But it was close. Real close. You could have loved him.”
“No way,” I said. “Not a chance.”
When I got home later that night I realized, irony of ironies, that I was locked out. I’d given my key to my mother, and never thought to ask for it back. Luckily, Chris was home. So I just tapped on the window over the kitchen sink, making him jump about four feet vertically and shriek like a schoolgirl, which made having to forge through the dark and navigate around the pricker bushes in the backyard at least worthwhile.
“Hey,” he said nonchalantly as he opened the back door, all cool now, as if we both hadn’t just witnessed this particularly spineless behavior. “Where’s your key?”“Here, somewhere,” I said, stopping the door before it slammed shut. “Mom and Don were locked out earlier.” Then I filled him in on the gory details as he munched on a peanut butter sandwich—bread butts again—nodding and rolling his eyes in all the right places.
“No way,” he said as I finished. I shushed him, and he lowered his voice. Our walls, we both knew, were thin. “What a chump. He was yelling at her?”
I nodded. “I mean, not in a violent way. More in a pouty, spoiled brat kind of way.”
He looked down at the last remnants of bread butts in his hand. “No surprise there. He’s a total baby. And the next time I trip over one of those Ensures on the side porch someone’s going down. Down.”
This made me smile, reminding me of how much I really liked my brother. Despite our differences, we did have a history. No one understood where I was coming from the way he did.
“Hey Chris?” I asked him as he pulled a carton of milk from the fridge and poured himself a glass.
“Yeah?”
I sat down on the edge of the table, running my hand over the surface. I could feel little pieces of sugar, or salt, fine but distinct beneath my fingers. “What made you decide to love Jennifer Anne?”
He turned around and looked at me, then swallowed with a glunking noise my mother always screamed at him about when we were kids, saying it made him sound like he was drinking rocks. “Decide to love?”
“You know what I mean.”
He shook his head. “Nope. No idea.”
“What made you,” I expanded, “feel like it was a worthwhile risk?”
“It isn’t a financial investment, Remy,” he said, sticking the milk back in the fridge. “There’s no math to it.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Forget it.”
He put his glass in the sink, then ran water over it. “Do you mean what made me love her?”
I wasn’t sure I could take further discussion of that question. “No. I mean, when you thought about whether or not you wanted to open yourself up, you know, to the chance that you could get really hurt, somehow, if you moved forward with her, what did you think? To yourself?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” I snapped. “God. It’s a simple question.”
“Yeah, right. So simple I still don’t even know what you’re asking.” He flipped off the light over the sink, then wiped his hands on a dishtowel. “You want to know how I debated about whether or not to fall in love with her? Is that even close?”
“Forget it,” I said, pushing off the table. “I don’t even know what I’m trying to find out. I’ll see you in the morning.” I started toward the foyer, and as I got closer, I could see my keys laid out neatly on the table by the stairs, waiting for me. I slid them into my back pocket.
I was on the second step when Chris appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Remy.”
“Yeah?”
“If what you’re asking is how I debated whether or not to love her the answer is I didn’t. Not at all. It just happened. I didn’t ever question it; by the time I realized what was happening, it was already done.”
I stood there on the stairs, looking down at him. “I don’t get it,” I said.
“What part?”
“Any of it.”
He shrugged and flipped off the last kitchen light, then started up the stairs, brushing past me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Someday, you will.”
He disappeared down the hall, and a minute later I heard him shut his door, his voice low as he made his required good-night-again-this-time-by-phone call to Jennifer Anne. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and was on my way to bed when I stopped by the half-open door of the lizard room.
Most of the cages were dark. The lights for the lizards were kept on timers, which clicked them on and off at just the right cycles to make the lizards believe, I supposed, that they were still sunning themselves on desert rocks instead of sitting in a cage in a converted linen closet. But at the far end of the room, on a middle shelf, one light was on.
It was a glass cage, and the floor of it was covered in sand. There were sticks crisscrossing it, and at the top of one stick were two lizards. As I came closer, I saw that they were entwined—not in a mating, nature-takes-its-course kind of way, but almost tenderly, if that was even possible, like they were holding each other. They both had their eyes closed, and I could see the pattern of their ribs, revealed and hidden with each breath they took.
I kneeled down in front of the cage, pressing my index finger against the glass. The lizard on the top opened his eyes and looked at me, unflinching, his pupil widening slightly as he focused on my finger.
I knew this meant nothing. They were just lizards, cold-blooded and probably no smarter than the average earthworm. But there was something so human about them, and for a minute all the things that had happened in the last few weeks blurred past in my mind: Dexter and I breaking up, my mother’s worried face, Don’s finger pointing at me, all the way up to Chris shaking his head, unable to put into words what seemed to me, at least, the most simple of concepts. And all of it came down to one thing: love, or the lack of it. The chances we take, knowing no better, to fall or to stand back and hold ourselves in, protecting our hearts with the tightest of grips.
I looked back at the lizard in front of me, wondering if I had finally gone completely crazy. He returned my gaze, now having decided I was not a threat, and then slowly closed his eyes again. I leaned in closer, still watching, but already the light was dimming as the timer kicked in, and before I knew it, everything was dark.
Chapter Thirteen
“Remy, sugar? Come here for a minute, will you?”
I got up from behind the reception desk, putting down the stack of body lotion invoices I’d been counting, and walked back into the manicure/pedicure room, where Amanda, our best nail girl, was wiping down her work space. Behind her was Lola, patting her scissors into her open palm.“What’s going on?” I asked, already suspicious.
“Just sit down,” Amanda told me, and the next thing I knew I was sitting: Talinga had snuck up behind me and pressed down on my shoulders, whipping a hair cape around me and snapping it at the neck before I even knew what was happening.
“Wait a second,” I said as Amanda grabbed my hands and planted them, quick as lightning, onto the table between us. She spread out my fingers and started filing my nails with quick, aggressive jerks of an emory board, biting her lip as she did so.
“Just a quick makeover,” Lola said smoothly, coming up behind me and lifting up my hair. “A little manicure, a little trim, a little makeup—”
“No way,” I said, pulling free from her grip. “You are not touching my hair.”
“Just a trim!” she replied, yanking me back into place. “Ungrateful girl, most women would pay big money for this. And you get it for free!”
“I bet not,” I grumbled, and they all laughed. “What’s the catch?”
“Keep your hands still or I’ll cut more than this cuticle,” Amanda warned me.
“No catch,” Lola said breezily, and I braced myself as I heard snipping behind me. God, she was cutting my ha
ir. “A bonus.”
I looked at Talinga, who was testing lipsticks on the back of her hand, glancing at me every so often as she gauged my colors. “Bonus?”
“A plus. A gift!” Lola laughed one of her big laughs. “A special present for our Miss Remy.”
“A gift,” I repeated, warily. “What is it?”
“Guess,” Amanda said, smiling at me as she started applying smooth streaks of red polish to my pinky nail.
“Is it bigger than a bread box?” I said.
“You wish!” Lola said, and they all started laughing hysterically, like this was the funniest thing ever.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said sternly, “or I’m out of here. Don’t think I won’t do it.”
They were still tittering, trying to control themselves. Finally Talinga took a deep breath and said, “Remy, honey. We found you a man.”
“A man?” I said. “God. I thought maybe I was getting some free cosmetics or something. Something I need.”
“You need a man,” Amanda said, moving to my next nail.
“No,” Talinga said, “I need a man. Remy needs a boy.”
“A nice boy,” Lola corrected her. “And today is your lucky day, because we happen to have one for you.”
“Forget it,” I said as Talinga bent down next to me, poking at my face with a makeup brush. “Is this the one you tried to set me up with before? The bilingual one with nice hands?”
“He’ll be here at six,” Lola went on, ignoring me completely. “His name is Paul, he’s nineteen, and he thinks he’s coming to pick up some samples for his mother. But instead he’ll see you, with your beautiful hair—”
“And makeup,” Talinga added.
“And nails,” Amanda said, “if you stop wiggling around, goddammit.”
“—and be completely smitten,” Lola finished. Then she did two more small snips and ran a hand through my hair, checking her work. “God, you had some split ends. Disgraceful!”
“What in the world,” I said slowly, “makes you think I’ll go through with this?”
“Because he’s good-looking,” Talinga said.