Charmed Thirds

  Anyway, I didn't want to spoil Marin's fun with my misanthropy. So I got all hopped up on candy canes and hot chocolate and threw myself into the Christmas cornballiness. And thus, I found myself wearing a jingle-bell reindeer-horn headband, entertaining my niece with very loud, very atonal versions of yuletide classics. Marcus accompanied me on guitar.

  “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!” cheered Marin with delight after I tore through “Good King Wenceslas.”

  “Now, this next number contains a very important life lesson, Marin, about being true to yourself, even when everyone around you is putting you down.”

  She blinked her huge blue eyes in bewilderment.

  “It's a little song about the culture of conformity, and how easily individuals can be victimized by groupthink and . . .”

  “ING! ING! ING!” Marin's word for “sing.”

  And so I cut short the life lesson and positively shredded “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Despite my very punk rock performance, Marin lost interest before we even got to the middle eight and drifted over to her Pinky the Poodle Playhouse. I kept singing until my performance went down in “HIS-TOR-Y.”

  Then Marcus said, “Rudolph Revisited: A Red-Nosed Nerd's Revenge.”

  When I heard him say the title of the high school editorial I wrote three years ago, an editorial that I'm sure has been forgotten by everyone else who read it, I was reminded of just how much HIS-TOR-Y we have together.

  Marcus deserves to know the truth, but isn't demanding it from me. He's content to just be, which is very Zen of him. Besides, we were so full of sincere holiday cheer that I didn't want to spoil the mood.

  Tomorrow. I will tell him tomorrow.

  We had made gifts for each other because we were sickened by our culture's conspicuous consumption and MORE MORE MORE materialism. And also because we're poor. Marcus is friends with a silversmith at school—yes, a silversmith—who taught him how to make a ring out of a quarter. He somehow soldered a message for me in teeny script: My thoughts create my world. It only fit the middle finger of my right hand.

  “I love this,” I said, making the obscene hand gesture necessary to model it for him. “I'll think of you every time I tell someone to fuck off.”

  “Who's the last person you told to fuck off?” Marcus asked.

  “You.” A laugh struggled its way out of my throat. “New Year's Eve 2000–2001.”

  Before he could comment on this historical low point, I grabbed him by the red and green nubs of wool sticking out from around his neck. It was supposed to be a scarf. I tried knitting it last semester but didn't get very far.

  “It's almost long enough to be an ascot,” I apologized.

  “I love it,” he said. “I love you.”

  We kissed with sticky peppermint mouths.

  Then Marin ran back over, showing us how she had taken the Virgin Mary out of the Nativity set and given her a makeover.

  “PEE! POO!” Marin can say “Pinky the Poodle” but prefers the scatological shorthand because it makes her very immature aunt Jessie laugh. And I laughed even harder when I saw that Jesus' mama had red Magic Marker “makeup” smeared across her face, and Pinky's bikini and feather boa over her robes. Mary looked like a hooker after a bad trick.

  “Nothing is sacred,” Marcus said.

  And I silently agreed.

  the thirtieth

  Marcus isn't here. He'll be back tomorrow to ring in the New Year with me.

  Marcus is in Maine visiting his brother, Hugo, whom I have never met. All I know about him is that he's twenty-two, never went to college, works in construction, and lives in a log cabin on a lake in a salt-of-the-earth Ashton and Demi arrangement with a woman named Charlotte who is twenty years older than he is and has two teenage sons from a previous marriage and ekes out a living making pottery that she sells in a tent pitched on the side of the road. Marcus has never offered to take me with him to meet them. I've been his girlfriend for almost a year and a half now, so I considered it beneath me to ask to be brought along. Or maybe I felt like I didn't deserve to ask. At any rate, I didn't. Which is why he's in Bangor and I'm here.

  Pepe is also away until tomorrow. He's visiting assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins in Chicago. Bridget felt too guilty to leave her mom alone during the holidays and declined when he asked her to go. (She now regrets that decision since her mom is always working overtime at the Oceanfront Tavern because she gets paid double to cover for servers or hostesses or bartenders who—ahem!—take time off to spend with family.) So Bridget and I have been hanging out with each other because we hate everyone else in town.

  The weather sucks. It's not cold enough to snow, but still soggy and gray—like hugging wet construction paper. Bridget and I have stayed indoors, mostly at my house because she fully appreciates all of my mom's manufactured holiday cheer. A single, working mom, Mrs. Milhokovich doesn't have any time for it. When we were ten, my mother was shocked—SHOCKED!—to discover that since the divorce, Mrs. M. didn't even bother trimming the tree anymore; she just stored it in the basement fully decorated, and dragged it back out as-is every third weekend in December. Since then my mom has encouraged Bridget to spend as much time with our family over the holidays as she wants.

  “You know that Bubblegum Bimbos is supposed to come out in a few weeks, right?” she asked on the day of her boyfriend's departure.

  “How can I forget when you forwarded me a bizillion articles from Ain't It Cool News?”

  I'm not looking forward to seeing the film version of Hy's book. Bridget needs to see it because she auditioned for a role and was justifiably miffed when she wasn't considered “seasoned” enough to play the “Gidget Popovich” role inspired by . . . herself.

  “To give a totally honest review, I need to be schooled in the art of the teen movie. You know, for, like, a base of comparison.”

  And so, for the past five days, Bridget and I have seen every eighties teen movie in my DVD collection. The Best of the Genre (Sixteen Candles, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Real Genius), The T&A Romps (Private School, Porky's), The Stupid Supernatural Comedies (Teen Wolf, Weird Science), The Brat Pack Dramadies (The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire), The Dark Social Commentaries (Less Than Zero, River's Edge), and—of course—The Against All Odds Romances (Say Anything, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful).

  “You know what's, like, totally annoying about these movies?”

  I shrugged, picked up the remote, and shut off the DVD player.

  “All these couples are, like, supposedly so into each other but all they do the whole movie is talk about how they're such opposites and how it's so cruel that their friends and family just can't accept their love and how tough it is for their romance to survive and wah-wah-wah-wah.”

  “Hm.”

  “Percy and I have had a lot of tough stuff to deal with and you don't hear us wah-wah-wahing about it all the time.”

  Tough stuff. I was interested in hearing about this.

  “Like what?”

  She plopped herself down in my old beanbag chair that I had rescued from the basement.

  “Well, even though his parents accept me, and my parents accept him, like, the whole world isn't so ready to deal with, like, interracial relationships.”

  “You get a lot of shit for dating someone black?”

  “No!” Her blue eyes bulged. “Just the opposite!”

  “Really?”

  Then she went on to say that since Pepe started at NYU he's been hassled by black girls for choosing a white girlfriend—a blond Barbie-doll-gorgeous white girlfriend, no less—over one of them.

  “There's a shortage of smart, black men who aren't, like, in jail,” Bridget went on. “And so there's a lot of competition among black women to get one. So for someone like me,” she yanked on her platinum ponytail for emphasis, “to be dating Percy is, like, in their opinion, an insult to all African Americans.”

  “Wow,” I said, surprised by Bridget's intensity. “How does Percy feel about all thi
s?”

  Bridget's smile returned to her perfect face. “He says he's never considered race a factor in his friendships and relationships, so why start now? And that if those girls were more open-minded, then maybe they would find someone who makes them as happy as he is with me.”

  She sighed, squashed down into the beanbag, and closed her eyes. “And, like, the long-distance thing makes this even harder.”

  “Uh-huh,” was all I could say.

  “It's so hard to find the line between, like, missing him enough and living your life, you know?”

  My mouth soured with the metallic taste of blood. I hadn't realized that I'd been gnawing on my upper lip that hard.

  “Like, logically, I know it makes sense for Percy and me to just break up now and just live our separate lives and not have to worry about missing each other all the time. But when I think about that, I get sick. Physically sick. Like I seriously throw up. I need to be with him, even if I can't, like, be with him.”

  I shivered.

  “Why am I telling you this?” she asked, her face flushed with the rush of emotion. “You know all about it! You miss Marcus as much as I miss Percy!”

  I nodded convincingly, pressing a tissue to my lip.

  “You know he never stopped talking about you, like, the entire three thousand miles to California . . .”

  “I know,” I said, my eyes dropping. “You've told me.” Bridget went out of her way to remind me time and again, just so there was no doubt in my mind that nothing had happened between them.

  “I mean, it was, like, really, really sweet but, like, really, really annoying, too,” she went on, half-joking. “There's only so much gushing you can listen to. About how you were the most dynamic, the most interesting person he'd ever met. About how he loved your way with words, your ability to laugh at yourself. How you always managed to keep him guessing. How the sexiest thing about you is that you have no idea just how sexy you are. And on and on and on and on . . .”

  I know this is all true. And yet, it bothered me now, as it bothered me then: Why did I have to hear these things through a third party? Why hadn't Marcus ever said any of these things to me?

  Is it because I never asked?

  “It's just so hard to be in love sometimes,” Bridget said. “Maybe we can find some inspiration in this next film, Better Off Dead.”

  Bridget giggled, but I didn't.

  “That's a joke,” she said, looking me over with concern. “Are you okay?”

  No, I wasn't okay. Now I was the one who felt sick. I looked at myself in the mirror and my skin was like chlorophyll.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I just miss Marcus, like you said.”

  She patted my head sympathetically, much like I had with Marin when she was upset by his absence. “He'll be back tomorrow.”

  Yes, tomorrow.

  As Bridget popped in the DVD, I took off my ring and read its inscription: My thoughts create my world.

  What about my actions? What about those?

  the thirty-first

  Marcus returned today. And with him, a sky so bright and blue I had to squint.

  “Let's go for a walk,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me off my parents' doorstep. “I still need to thaw out!”

  He breathed in deep and hummed happily on the exhale. Then he started talking. Marcus had a lot to talk about. I did, too, but I let him go first. As if it made a difference.

  Proving that they are their father's sons, Hugo and Marcus bonded through adventure. In three days they managed to go skiing (cross-country and downhill), ice fishing, and dogsledding, and do several other activities with “snow” as the prefix, including, but not limited to, -boarding, -mobiling, and -shoeing. In the middle of an anecdote about almost running over a moose during one of these pursuits, he paused long enough for me to pose my question.

  “Marcus, why didn't you ask me to go with you?”

  “I had no idea you'd be interested.”

  “Of course I'm interested in meeting your brother,” I said. “I'm your girlfriend. I feel like I should know your flesh and blood as well as you know mine.”

  He rubbed his hands through his bed-heady red knots. “I'm sorry, Jessica. I guess I'm not well versed in boyfriend-girlfriend protocol. I forget that you're this person I'm supposed to introduce to my brother. I just see you as you.”

  I was about to ask him what exactly he saw, so I could hear for myself all those things he had so willingly confessed to Bridget. But we were both stopped dead in our tracks by an unexpected sight.

  “Our park!”

  “They changed it!”

  “They changed everything!”

  The Park That Time Forgot was no longer. Gone were the swings, slide, and sandbox of my youth. All were replaced by a plastic FUNTASTIC PLAY CENTRE.

  This was a cosmic joke. The Park That Time Forgot was the Fifth Wonder of Pineville. Wonders one through four—the wine-bottle-shaped cement eyesore known as The Champagne of Propane, the VW bus on the roof of Augie's Auto Parts, the purple dinosaur statue in front of the carpet store, and the hot-dog-shaped truck known as Der Wunder Weiner—have all been immortalized in the pages of the Weird N.J. coffee-table books. The Park That Time Forgot was the only wonder that had been kept our little secret, which was fitting as the most significant stop on the tour.

  Three years ago this very night, it was the setting for the infamous “Fuck you!” New Year's Eve. On The Park That Time Forgot's rusty merry-go-round, Marcus confessed that he had eavesdropped on my angsty conversations with Hope while getting high with her brother. That he had used our mutual angst as a devirginization tactic, just to see if he could bed the school's biggest goody-goody. That his dirty intentions were purified as he'd gotten to know me.

  Until this revelation, I had been ready to sleep with him. But I wasn't ready for the truth, so I told him to fuck himself. It was such a devastating blow—for him to hear it, for me to mean it—that it would take us another year and a half to overcome.

  And come together.

  Only to return here, to be torn apart.

  “I hate this!” I yelled, kicking the purple kiddie climbing wall that had replaced the dinged-up merry-go-round.

  “The old one wasn't very safe,” he said, skimming his hand along the curves of a twisty slide. “I wouldn't want Marin playing on any of that old equipment anyway.”

  “You're missing the point!” I screamed. “This was our park! And it's gone! Gone!”

  Marcus took a step back. “What's going on with you? Are you all right?”

  No, I wasn't all right. I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

  And that's when I ruined everything with a whisper.

  “What?” he asked. Though from the stricken tone of his voice, I knew he had heard my words above the breeze.

  “I cheated on you.”

  And then, as quickly as I could, I told him everything I should have told him over the phone, months ago. How I thought I was pregnant and how it terrified me, not only because I wasn't ready to be pregnant, but because I didn't feel ready to be in the kind of relationship in which a pregnancy would be a significant mistake, a love that was already so deep that it wouldn't be easy to just forget and get back to normal. And how this fear had something to do with why I fooled around with this other guy, but I wasn't exactly sure how, but we didn't have sex and it really, really didn't mean anything . . .

  Marcus held up his hands in capitulation. “Enough.”

  “But you should know everything . . . ,” I said.

  “I know everything I need to know.” His voice was flat.

  “Oh god, I'm so sorry,” I said, searching his face for a sign, any sign as to what he was really thinking. “I should have told you sooner.”

  “You told me when you were ready to tell me.”

  He didn't seem traumatized by my revelation. He seemed almost totally unaffected, as if I had confessed to breathing: I did it, Marcus! I inhaled and I exhaled!

  ?
??Do you hate me?”

  He took my hand. “I don't hate you.”

  “Really?”

  “I could never hate you. There's no good in hating you.”

  He stroked the middle-finger ring gently before letting go and walking back toward my house, the park of our past receding into the background. I followed. And for about a minute, I reveled in my relief. Marcus doesn't hate me! I'm so lucky to have such an understanding boyfriend. He knows that everyone makes mistakes and that I'm no exception. He's a better person than I am, because if he ever told me that he had kissed Butterfly, I would totally lose it because I can't deal with the idea of him being attracted to anyone who isn't me, even for one regrettable moment . . .

  How can he be so okay with this?

  I started to get mad that he wasn't mad.

  “Uh, Marcus?”

  “Yes?”

  “You don't hate me?”

  “No.”

  Pause.

  “You're really not mad?”

  He sighed. “I didn't say that.”

  “Okay. Then what are you?”

  He didn't say anything. Instead, he stopped and sat down on a curb only a few blocks away from my house. He was hunched over, hugging his legs, and he seemed so much smaller than I know he is. I sat down next to him and hesitantly took him in. He smelled like the dying embers of a bonfire. I waited for him to say something.

  He didn't.

  And he didn't.

  And he still didn't.

  Finally, after what seemed like a silence as endless as the universe itself, I couldn't take it anymore.

  “Marcus? Why aren't you saying anything?”

  He shifted in my direction, and I heard every inch of his body rubbing against the concrete.

  “I was trying to find the right words. And I can't. So I'd rather say nothing right now.”

  “Nothing? I do what I did and you have nothing to say? You don't care enough about our relationship to say anything at all?”

  He got up and walked to the Caddie parked in the driveway. All without a word.