Love (And Other Uses for Duct Tape)

“I don’t know. Tom hasn’t talked about it?”

  “No.”

  “She was sixteen when she got pregnant. Tom’s dad married her, of course, but she had to give a lot of things up. Not that she’s regretted it. But she’d been a smart, smart girl. Straight-A student. Everyone thought she’d end up at Harvard or somewhere. But now she’s stuck.”

  My hands shake. Em’s face flashes in my head, her dancing down the hall. “Tom never told me that.”

  “Maybe he’s embarrassed,” my mom says, reaching out to hug me. I let her. My mom is big into hugging and it’s kind of nice sometimes and kind of embarrassing other times. Right now it’s kind of nice. She smells like cooked chicken and warmth.

  “Chief Tanner had to give up his dreams too. He didn’t always want to be a cop, but the criminal justice academy was an easier swing than college,” my mom continues. “He sometimes still feels guilty that Jenny didn’t get to go off to school, to reach her potential.”

  “She’s a great mom,” I say. “She really loves Tom.”

  My mom nods. “But she’s full of sadness.”

  If my mom were Em I’d ask her if this is the real reason why Tom hasn’t had sex with me yet, but my mom isn’t Em, and I don’t ask her.

  “Do you think everyone who has a baby when they’re young is sad?”

  She shakes her head. “No. But it’s hard.”

  I consider telling her. Just for a second, I really think about it, but instead I grab a movie she’s rented. It was on the counter.

  “What is this?” I hold it in her face.

  She shrugs. “Night of the Living Dead Zombie Mutant Cannibals?”

  “You are someone who watches love stories.”

  She bites her lip.

  I stare at her. “Oh my God. You’re in love.”

  “Like.”

  I shake my head. “Pitiful.”

  There are times when I think that my mom isn’t sad anymore. Like when she’s just sitting at her computer, chewing on her nails, or maybe trying to peel off the sticker that says DESIGNED FOR WINDOWS XP. Or when she’s talking about Jim and his horror movies and his 3-D photography and all that stuff.

  But the truth is that she’s stuck, too.

  The moment my dad died she became a war widow, a single mother. Her life story changed from a happy ending to a CNN three-minute human interest story on Memorial Day.

  Once, I asked her, “Did you ever regret getting married?”

  And she sipped her coffee and then she stopped. She set the mug down. It was white and blue and had pictures of Asian flowers on it, pictures of things we’ll probably never see in real life, but can only just know about.

  She said, “No. Because then I wouldn’t have you.”

  I didn’t say anything, but my eyes must have moved because she said, “Don’t you roll your eyes at me.”

  “You have to say that,” I said. “You’re my mother.”

  She pulled in deep breath. She stared into her coffee like it had answers in there. “I don’t have to say anything.”

  I waited. The thing is, with my mom, if you give her enough time, she’ll eventually say something. It’s like she can’t stand the silence. She has to fill it up.

  “It’s hard,” she finally said. “When you love someone that much and then they’re gone. You’re stuck. Because you still love them. But you aren’t with them. You get stuck with the sadness, with the plans that won’t ever happen, with the dreams that don’t come true. Just stuck.”

  Maine is white. The whitest state in the nation. And Eastbrook does not do much to combat that. For decades and decades, there were no black families here, no people originally from Latin America or whose ancestors came from Asia. You don’t hear Spanish spoken at the Shop ’n Save. There aren’t any Asian markets, any hair dye kits for hair that isn’t naturally blonde, brown or red.

  Eastbrook is bland, full of Tuna Helper casserole and white-bread hamburger buns. The people who live here know it and don’t care, most of them. For generations we have dealt with the blandness, and just let it be.

  “It’s not like we can recruit black people to come here.” My mom says this after dinner, after I shove the Eastbrook American article in her face. Jim wrote it, so she probably already knows it by heart.

  The headline reads, “Racial Diversity Proves Elusive in Nation’s Whitest State.”

  “Why not? There’s still a lot of people from Somalia looking for places to live. How about people running from Darfur? We could totally set something up. ”

  She pulls a hand through her hair and turns away. “You’re going to be late for your date.”

  Then she casts me her “I’m a single mother and have some mercy on me” look.

  I gulp down my post-dinner Postum and stay quiet.

  For a second.

  “I just think it’s ridiculous,” I say. “It’s like if you have a guitar and you only play D7 chords on it. You know? Maine is the guitar and races are the chords.”

  She doesn’t even look up from the paper because obviously my analogy stinks. She just waves her hand at me.

  “You’re so cute when you’re all riled up,” she says.

  This makes me swallow, because the truth is, I am riled up, but it’s not just about this. It’s about Em, too. The world seems to sway in front of me, the newspaper letters lose their meaning.

  My mom blurts, “Kara Raymond’s black.”

  I get back into it. “That’s one person.”

  “Better than nothing.” She scrapes some stuffing from a plate and then announces, “Dylan’s gay.”

  “That doesn’t count. I’m talking about racial diversity.” I slam my mug down on the table and Muffin skitters away, looking at me over her shoulder like I’m some sort of fiend. The truth is I’ve scared myself.

  My mom? She just smiles and pulls some extra crescent rolls out of the stove. “Forgot these were in there. I’ll wrap them up for you.”

  She drops the cookie sheet on the stove top because it’s too hot and executes a perfect change-the-topic maneuver. “There’s Rajeesh.”

  “Crash?” I forgot about him. Maybe I just don’t notice. That’s not right either, though, is it? To not notice people’s race? That’s like ignoring their difference instead of rejoicing in it. What would Angela Davis say about that? Audre Lorde? God, it’s all complicated. And now Em … Em’s going to be the one who is different, not because of sexuality or race or religion but because she’s pregnant. She’s the pregnant teen, the unwed mother. Dinner hardens in my stomach.

  My mom doesn’t notice. “Right. Crash. Whatever he calls himself now. Are you getting a headache?”

  I shrug. “I’m thinking too hard.”

  “You doing anything super special tonight?” She smiles. She grabs a bread knife out of the drawer.

  “Nothing as hot and heavy as you.”

  “Belle!”

  My mom has a date with Jim again tonight. As much as I don’t want to admit it, it’s very unlikely that she is tormented by The Problem. I will not think about this.

  “Not a big deal,” I say, but I’m not sure what I’m talking about. The date? Maine? Guitars? What is wrong with me? I throw my arms around her shoulders. “I love you anyways.”

  She kisses my wrist. Her hair smells like burnt twelve-grain toast and vanilla. “Good.”

  Then she adds an extra-loud smack on the top of my head and says, “I love you too. I just worry about you, that’s all.”

  “There’s no reason to worry,” I say and I don’t know if it’s a lie.

  While I wait for Mr. Thomas Tanner, my mom’s screwing up the lyrics to this ancient Beatles song, “Love, Love Me Do.” She’s really belting it out, screaming, “Love, love my poo. You know it’s on my shoe. Oh, what am I to do
. It’s smelll–ell-elly … smelly poo.”

  “Mom!” I throw some biking socks that are on the couch waiting to be put away. They plop her in the head.

  “It’s funny,” she sing-song says just to annoy me. “You know it’s funny. I think your boyfriend is here.”

  She has bizarrely good hearing. Mothers should not be allowed ridiculously good hearing. I move the curtain in the living room window and peek out. Tom’s truck idles in the driveway and he doesn’t knock on the door, just rushes in the house.

  “Good evening, Thomas,” my mother says, smiling. She loved Dylan, my last boyfriend, but she gets all giggly when she sees Tom.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Philbrick,” he says and runs a hand through his dark hair. He smiles at my mom, but his smile shifts when he sees me into something bigger, something fuller.

  “You are one ridiculously good-looking young man,” my mom announces. Tom flushes. She keeps going. “Just a sigh-inducer.”

  “Mom!” I kiss her cheek and rush past her down the stairs.

  “He is!” she says, pulling her purse over her shoulder. “You both know it. He has to be to keep up with you.”

  I hug Tom, press my face into his T-shirt and then turn around to glare at my mother.

  “How about Tom? He’s not too white-bread,” she says.

  “He’s still white,” I say, grabbing Gabriel’s gig bag and slinging it over my shoulder. Tom, being the well-trained boyfriend that he is, takes her instead.

  My mom prances down the steps and touches Tom’s forearm. “But the sun’s made him even darker than he normally is. Look at him. He could pass.”

  “Pass? What kind of thing is that to say? Isn’t that what they used to say about African Americans who were really pale?” I wait for an answer. “That is not a cool thing to say.”

  Nobody answers.

  Then Tom just smiles and says, “French blood. Penobscot too.”

  “Really?” I did not know that. How could I not know that?

  He nods. “My dad’s mom was from Indian Township.”

  “Not as white-bread as you think, eh, Bellie?” my mom captures my face in her hands. “Have fun at the movies tonight. Do not come home too late. You look stressed.”

  I would nod, but my head is stuck in her thin hands. Someday Emmie will be doing this.

  “Don’t be too late, Bellie baby,” she says like I’m two years old. Her eyes go all misty.

  “Don’t be too late tonight on your date,” I wiggle my eyebrows at her, in a lascivious way, I hope. Tom and I sprint out the door.

  “Hurry up, sort-of-white boy,” I tell him, “before she T-bones the truck and apologizes for dating again.”

  “Okay Bellie Baby,” he teases and wiggles his eyebrows. He puts the truck into reverse. His head looks over his left shoulder as he backs out, a precaution Em doesn’t always take. The cords on his neck pop out and I get some sort of weird vampire urge to bite them, or nibble on them, or at least lick them. I groan.

  “What?” Tom asks, shifting. His big brown hand holds the stick.

  My cheeks flame. They burn. “Nothing.”

  “Belle Philbrick, don’t lie to me. You just groaned.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Liar.”

  “The stars are out tonight.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Yep.”

  He laughs. What would happen if he knew? If he knew about Emmie? Would he never even kiss me again because he’d be so afraid that it would happen to us, that he’d get either:

  Stuck with me forever

  Stuck with the ego-reducing knowledge that he is no hero man and ditched me

  Explode

  Cry

  What will Shawn do? That’s the real question, isn’t it? What will Shawn do? Will he go away? Will he just be a memory and no longer a connection? What will Em call him? Just Shawn, that guy who made my baby?

  Sometimes in the morning on our way to school I imagine these elaborate fantasy scenarios of Tom and I finally doing it. I imagine him hauling the truck into the break-down lane by Billy Ray’s house. Billy Ray’s wife, Rena, stares out the window of their clapboard house as Tom pulls me into an embrace. She gasps in shock as the truck rocks back and forth as Tom and I finally consummate our relationship. Or maybe would it turn her on? When arms meet skin. When legs entwine and thrust. When lips nibble on necks. When tongues …

  I close my eyes. And for a second I imagine it isn’t me and Tom, it’s Shawn and Emmie. It’s … Oh God.

  “You groaned again,” Tom announces.

  “I’m achy,” I say, which is a half truth.

  “Why?”

  “I fell off my bike yesterday.”

  The truck slows down. “You did what?”

  “Nothing big.”

  “Are you hurt?” he says, grabbing at my hand and holding it in his. His eyes are worried, scared.

  “Just scraped. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Commie, that’s just not cool.” His hand lets go of my hand and moves up to graze my face. It’s strong and rough and smooth. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

  My fingers find the on button of his radio, somehow, without my mind telling them to. Slow, soulful music comes on. The music is about love and need and getting it on. God. Godgodgod.

  Nobody ever talks about women’s sexual desires, except in Cosmopolitan magazine. And here it is, my best friend’s pregnant and I’m completely in the desire zone. What would Tom think if he knew?

  That I’m ridiculous and shallow.

  That I’m a slut, which is a horrible word, but it’s the word that people slam on girls who want to have sex, even if it is perfectly monogamous sex and they are a senior in high school, with a ridiculously attractive boyfriend.

  Yes. Yes! Yes! Yes!

  I change the station to public radio where the guest com-mentator talks about losing his son to a heroin overdose. His kid was seventeen.

  “My dad’s worried Eddie Caron is using,” Tom says, his voice a grumble low and penetrating.

  “Really?” I pull at my gig bag, resist the urge to try to pull her out and play. My pulse starts to race like I’m biking up McGown’s Hill and I don’t tell Tom about Eddie giving me a ride because I can’t. I can’t tell him. He’d be flipped out worried over the seizure thing, but the part about me being alone with Eddie would push him over the edge. I can’t tell him about Em because it’s not mine to tell. I am full of hollow sounds, secrets, words that don’t resonate, empty notes. I try again. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  Eddie has to go to school in another town because of what he did. When we were little, Eddie was always my protector-knight, my hero friend. Then I thought he was like a book bad guy in a thriller novel, just muscle and meanness. Now, after the ride home yesterday, I don’t know. I don’t know who he is. I think that the only thing I know is that being certain about something is impossible. We take things for granted.

  Exhibit One: Em is pregnant.

  Exhibit Two: Tom’s not even white, technically, I don’t think. Did I have a clue? No, I did not.

  Exhibit Three: My last boyfriend was actually gay.

  We think people are a certain way and we build our whole lives on that, and then … bing … we were wrong. We thought we were certain, but certain is pretty much impossible.

  Okay. Not everything. I am certain that Tom hates Eddie Caron, but I ask the question anyway.

  “Using what?”

  “Heroin.”

  “Oh.”

  I shiver. A lot of people have gotten into Oxycontin and eventually heroin. This is, of course, not what people think of when they think of Maine. Not me. Not my friends
. But Eastbrook is small. We all know somebody. Nate Clarkson, who’s just three years older than us overdosed on heroin when he was at school at USM this winter; they named a basketball tournament after him. Another guy, Austin Hubbell, is in treatment because his mom caught him down behind Shop ’n Save surrounded by syringes. He weighed about a hundred pounds. He used to wrestle in the 180-pound weight class, so that gives you an idea. White conquered his skin making him look as if he was already a ghost. Austin had run away a week before she found him. Now his mom’s eyes are blank, grassy lawns and her hands shake when I see her at the Y. I want to hug her and tell her that it’s alright, that her love would save him, but that would be a lie. I don’t think love can save anyone.

  It didn’t save my dad. It didn’t save Nate.

  I imagine Austin Hubbell sprawled out behind the dumpster, needles in his arm. I imagine Nate the last time I saw him in his casket. The funeral home people put lipstick on his lips. It was too pink. I close my eyes and imagine beefy Eddie Caron face down on his lawn. His mother screams and runs out in her bathrobe. His crisp-shirted father staggers back against the rose bush, not noticing the thorns.

  That’s not going to happen.

  I pull in a breath, try to make my pulse slow down.

  “Eddie’s not on drugs,” I finally announce to Tom, his duct tape figurines on the dashboard, and to the world in general. “He can’t be.”

  “Belle. This is the same freak who attacked you in the hall first semester, remember?” Tom says. His dirt-road voice melts into something harsher than normal.

  I pull my gig bag a little closer to me, but it requires me opening my eyes. Sometimes it’s easier to just keep your eyes closed.

  “People can change,” I say thinking about Em. “People change all the time. I mean, if they have a chance to. It’s not like people’s personalities are set in stone.”

  Tom’s cheek twitches like it does when he’s angry. I start playing out the chord progressions in my head. I finger a little duct tape soccer player Tom’s made. The soccer player has his leg up, ready to pummel a little duct tape ball.

  “Eddie Caron’s going to school in Bar Harbor now,” I tell him.