I'm Not Your Other Half: A Cooney Classic Romance

  I wanted to talk about motherhood and childbirth and nurturing and all the things that Mrs. Lipton had done for Kit and what was the point? Where had it all led, if Kit was to die at age seven?

  But there was no one, so I kept it inside.

  Michael pummeled the ice shards at the bottom of his glass with a straw, as if it were a jackhammer. The straw bent like a broken leg. “I don’t see why you don’t come to me first,” he said. “Isn’t that what this is all about?”

  We were sitting across from each other, which was a mistake. We couldn’t snuggle, we could only look into the angry features opposite. “What is what all about?” I said. I knew I was starting a fight. I knew I was being unfair.

  “Us,” said Michael.

  “Has nothing to do with Kit Lipton,” I said. I felt better, being obnoxious. What’s the matter with me? I thought.

  “It seems to me you’re too emotional over everything,” said Michael.

  “Too emotional? A little girl I liked very much may die any hour and I’m too emotional?”

  Michael set his jaw. He was wearing a heavy wool shirt, and the collar hadn’t been ironed; it kept flapping, and each time he turned his head from me in anger, the collar point scraped his cheek and he had to shove it down. Another time, a more loving time, I’d have walked around the booth and gotten in next to him and tucked the collar inside his pullover sweater so it would lie quietly. Now I was perversely glad that at least something was bothering Michael.

  “You’re the first girl I’ve dated for any length of time, Fraser,” said Michael at last. He was so fidgety he could hardly sit there. I knew he wanted to drive off and abandon me. Only the fact that I would have no way to get home was preventing him. “I admit I don’t understand. I admit I have different attitudes than you do about a lot of things, but—”

  “All you care about is you!” I said fiercely. “Have you even asked me how Kit is? No. All you care about is who drove the car. Have you asked whether I got lots of research done? No. All you care about is I didn’t have your permission to do it.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “You didn’t need permission. I’m not some creep who expects you to have my consent every time you turn around. I’m just dating you, Fraser. I want to spend time with you. Especially Saturdays. Especially free afternoons. It seems to me that common courtesy—”

  “See? You still didn’t ask about Kit.”

  Michael sank back. His face became absolutely immobile. His breathing was so controlled I could not see his chest rise or fall. “Okay,” he said quietly. “How is Kit?”

  But I didn’t tell him. I kept the fight going. I said, “What, I have to give you orders to get you to exhibit a little concern?”

  He ceased to look in my direction at all. He began folding and refolding the paper airplane, pressing the creases down with his thumb nail and then reversing the fold.

  Oh, Michael, I thought, I’m not angry with you. I think I’m angry with God, for letting Kit fall down stairs. Maybe I’m really angry with Kit, for being clumsy. Maybe I’m angry at my mother for being afraid to talk about death, or at Annie for being too busy to consider what happened.

  The anger seeped out of me. We sat silently in the booth, exhausted. I told myself to make an effort to repair things, but I didn’t. I told myself to touch his hand and let the power of touch start the repairs, but I didn’t reach out.

  “Hey, what do you know?” Price boomed in my ear. “Told you we’d find them here, Annie.” Price slipped in next to me, and I had to shift over to make room for him. Annie sat next to Michael. She was flushed with pleasure. It was fairly warm out; spring was approaching; her light jacket was unzipped, and she was a riot of colors—a rainbow sweater, an electric-blue jacket.

  “It’s Monday,” I said to Annie. “How come you’re not at your violin lesson?”

  “I’m only taking every other week now,” she said. “It was getting to be too much to keep up with.”

  If I had been sitting on the outside of the booth I’d have left. I would just have started walking, even though it was miles. But I was fenced in by Price, and by my former best friend, and by Michael.

  My former best friend.

  Their talk swirled around me. Two people having fun. One struggling to regain his equilibrium. And me, completely removed.

  Annie was no longer my best friend.

  In a dark booth at Vinnie’s, part of my life ended. The other half of that life didn’t even notice. She had become half of a couple, a piece of Price Quincy; and if there wasn’t enough left for her violin, there certainly wasn’t enough left for me.

  “Listen,” said Price, as if we had any choice, with his loud sharp voice. “This time my father managed to get four tickets to the ice-hockey game. Last one of the season. Two fantastic teams. It should be wild.”

  “I hate ice hockey,” I said. “It’s too violent.”

  “But they choose to be violent,” said Michael. “They know they’re going to lose a few teeth and they figure it’s worth it in order to play. It’s not like war on innocent civilians, Fraser. Those guys want to be out there bashing each other’s heads as often as the puck.”

  Annie said, “Price and I went and it wasn’t as bad as I thought, Fray. Hardly any blood at all. And the rest of the game is really exciting.”

  “Oh, Annie!” I cried, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible company. “I can’t bear how you’ve changed. What happened to you? How can you be like this?”

  There was a long silence.

  Price and Annie just looked at me. Blankly. It was a mark of how our friendship had dissolved that Annie did not know what I was talking about. Michael said, “She’s upset about Kit Lipton, that’s all.”

  It wasn’t all, but I was glad he had rescued me. It was a good excuse for saying something ugly; it would absolve me.

  “Did you get in to see her?” said Annie. “I heard they weren’t allowing visitors or I’d have tried to go, too.”

  “I called her parents for special permission. They remembered me from Toybrary and agreed. Kit looks awful. Lying there like a frozen bundle of arms and legs, perforated with tubes and monitors. She looks dead already.”

  Michael’s hand went across the table to me and we clasped fingers. Mine were cold, his warm. I marveled at the power of touch.

  “Oh, Fraser,” he said. “No wonder you feel so rotten.”

  Annie said, “I wish there were something we could do. I feel so helpless. Doctors can’t help, though, so neither can I. Price, this little girl was such a sweetheart. So bouncy. When she took a toy from Toybrary she hugged it to her heart as if it were the answer to her prayers. We adored Kit.”

  Price nodded. “I’m not that crazy about little kids,” he said. “I’m just as glad you’re not involved with Toybrary any more. It must have been boring.”

  “Well, it was in a way,” said Annie. “Where are the seats at the Coliseum, Price? Are they good ones?”

  “You kidding? Would my father get crumby tickets?”

  Annie giggled. “Of course not.”

  I’ve lost my best friend, I thought again.

  In Toybrary, I watch a lot of little boys and girls. Boys never chatter. They exchange, they demand, they argue, they leave. But girls are apt to share emotions. Even when a toy is popular with both sexes—say, an old-fashioned toy, like the wonderful wooden Pinocchio marionette—the boys simply bring it back and set it down, whereas the girls tell you how they put on a little play. They’ll even discuss the theme of the play—like say, getting lost and being found.

  Boys seemed to me more essentially alone. Girls knew early on that good friends made a good toy or a good thought better.

  Kit probably had a good friend, I thought. Katurah is probably angling for one, too. Katurah probably already knows that an older brother is all very well, but what a girl needs as her first line of defense is a friend. At Katurah’s age, friends wouldn’t share anything more important than brok
en crayons, but she’d be in training for the day when she had hoards of little girl friends and out of that hoard would come one, as Annie had come to me, just to talk to.

  My mother and I have had the worst fights in our family, but we’ve had the best times, too. With my father, everything is so brief, so quickly summarized. He thinks a subject should be discussed once and then neatly packaged with a closing ribbon like “You’ll grow out of this, Fraser”; “You won’t even remember this next year, Fraser”; “Everybody feels that way, Fraser.” And then he believes the topic is closed.

  But nothing is ever closed. No wound heals completely. The hurt of being left out, the shame of publicly failing, the ache of knowing that you’re not expert enough to get what you want in a school with so much competition—these don’t go away easily. The wounds need to be tended to. That’s what a best friend is for. Tending.

  That night I cried myself to sleep.

  But I did not know if I was weeping for Kit, dying in a big-city medical center. Or for a friendship that was slipping away before I could catch it. Or for my own confusion over Michael—my never-fail technique at ripping apart the only good relationship I had ever had with a boy.

  Chapter 9

  IT WAS A SECOND Wednesday—for years, Needle N Thread night at our house. But now Mom was home. “Mom?” I said.

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Don’t you miss Needle N Thread?” I’ll get her talking about her friends, I thought. Then we’ll move into talking about Annie. About what’s happened. About whether I’m the one who’s crazy or Annie is. I won’t aim for talking about Kit tonight; Mom can’t handle that.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “It was an awful lot of fun. After all these years, we knew each other so well. You can be so much more productive sitting around, talking, while you do your needlework. I always felt sort of warm. Sort of Early American. Like a quilting bee.”

  “But Mom, if you liked it so much, why did you quit?”

  We were in the kitchen. Our kitchen was poorly designed. It has one long wasted wall with no counters, no space for a table to press up, no shelves because the corridor effect is too narrow. My mother wanted it to be an interesting wall, to make up for being a stupid wall. For years she bought old mirrors at tag and antique sales. She has seventeen large, and I don’t know how many small, mirrors on that wall. Old primitive frames and narrow curlicued frames, speckled black reflections and quivery old glass. I looked at my mother and myself over and over, different sizes and angles in the mirrors. It made me queasy.

  “Well, your father is home. If I have a choice, I like to be with your father.”

  “But he’s just watching television. You’re in here making tomorrow’s dinner ahead.”

  “Well, I don’t literally have to be in his arms, Fraser. It’s just nice being together. I like being home when he’s home.”

  “But don’t you miss your friends?”

  “Not that much, really. I have your father.”

  I tried to think of Michael like that. I have Michael. So I don’t need anything else. I don’t need to sing in Madrigals, I don’t need to take walks alone in the country, I don’t need to browse in libraries, I don’t need Annie.

  I stared at my mother. She didn’t notice. I turned and watched her in the mirrors instead, and this time she was aware of my gaze and twinkled her fingers at me. Dozens of me twinkled back. “Some of those are pretty messy,” she said, handing me Windex and paper towels. “I can’t imagine why I thought mirrors were a perfect decoration for a wall close to the stove. Oh, well.”

  I polished mirrors.

  The phone rang. “It’s Michael,” called my father.

  I took the call in the front hallway, instead of up in my bedroom the way I always do, for privacy. My father looked at me strangely, but he walked away carefully, closing the doors to give me privacy anyhow. “Hi, Michael,” I said.

  “Hi. Listen. Don’t you want to change your mind about the hockey game? Price’s father got fantastic seats. Right near the front.”

  How could I explain to him enough times that right near the front was the last place I would want to be if I went to a hockey game, which I didn’t want to do? “No, thanks.”

  He sighed. “Okay.”

  Silence. A pain sharper than cramps shot through me, and my throat got hot and tight. I love you, Michael. “Couldn’t you let Price have both our tickets,” I said, “and we’ll do something else?”

  “Fraser, when do I ever get to go to a pro hockey game? With seats like this? I don’t want to do anything else.”

  “I do.”

  “Yes, you’ve made your point very clearly. Okay. I’ll see you next week then. You can research Eliza, since you get such a thrill out of being alone in a library.” He hung up.

  Michael, whose patience was what first attracted me to him! Whose sweetness with Katurah was so nice to see! Michael, exasperated beyond belief with me! I could imagine him, the way his eyes would be closing. The way his large smooth hand would tug at his hair, pulling it back as if he could pull the frown off his forehead. How his eyes would open very slowly, so that for him the room must materialize by degrees, and he’d take a long deep breath, his wide chest spreading wider, pulling the cables of his gray sweater taut, and then relaxing.

  Oh, Michael!

  I kept on Windexing mirrors, and polishing them far more carefully than my mother’s standards required, and it caught at me again—pain like a fishhook; fear like a tightening wire.

  I want to have Michael. If these are the demands he makes, I have to go with it.

  I called him back. “Michael? I’ll go.”

  The Coliseum stank of beer and sweat and popcorn. It was jammed with more men than women, all wearing dark, heavy clothes, all overly eager. All I could think of was Romans gathering at their Coliseum for their games; slaughters and blood and thumbs down for death. When the teams skated out, the spectators bellowed things like “Get ’em, Billy!” and “Kill ’em, Nick!”

  This is how I choose to spend my time? I thought. Kit is dying and I’m sitting here waiting to see these people attack one another?

  “Now just relax, Fraser,” said Michael. He handed me a Coke, and it sat in my hand cold and heavy. “It’s fun, really,” he told me. “It’s just a game, like basketball. You love basketball. Make an effort and you’ll love this too.”

  I’ll never like it, I thought. The game hasn’t even started and I want to leave. I hate the whole audience. I hate myself for being here. I hate Annie for giggling and shouting. “Michael, I want to go home.” I said.

  “We all came in Price’s van,” Michael said. “You can hardly drive away. You know what? The first time we double-dated and picked up that log cabin, I figured Price was the one who was going to be the problem. But I was wrong. You are.”

  “I’m taking a taxi to the bus stop,” I said, “and taking the bus back to Chapman.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Michael fiercely, and his fingers dug into my arm. “The bus stop is in the worst section of town. You shouldn’t even get out of a taxi there, let alone wait for a bus. Now just shut up and cooperate, Fraser. We’re here now, and if you didn’t want to come you shouldn’t have come.”

  He was right. The bus station was out of the question. And so I sat, while the spectators around me screamed. It was the most involved audience I had ever come across. It made college football look like nursery school. People shrieked encouragement, and when they jumped up they stomped on their beer cans to flatten them. Michael yelled right along with them, and so did Price.

  And so did Annie.

  On the covers of the paperback romances Annie and I used to read there would be a blurb. As David sweeps Cathy away … Read how Lance sweeps the resentful Mignonette into the oblivion of love …

  It really meant that. Annie had been swept away. You could not even tell now where she had stood. No footprints on the carpet pile, no scuff marks on the floor. Price had swept her away. Price was s
till there. But Annie was not.

  “Miss Fraser MacKendrick, please,” said a thin metallic voice.

  I could not imagine who was on the phone. It sounded very official. What applications had I made (or serious criminal errors!) that would lead to an official phone call? A total stranger always assumed that Fraser MacKendrick was a boy and addressed me as “Mr.” I said dubiously, “This is Fraser MacKendrick.”

  “Hold the line for Lacy Buckley,” said the metallic voice, now sounding slightly rusty.

  “Lacy Buckley!” I said.

  Lacy ran the morning talk show. The national talk show carried most of the hour, but she did the local segments. I’d been on Lacy’s show twice when I was kicking off Toybrary. Being on television was nothing like what I had expected, and being on Lacy’s was more fun than any of the others, because she was actually interested. The rest were just killing time.

  Lacy looked somewhat like my mother. She was my height, but stocky. She wore blouses to match her name—silk, festooned with miles of lace. She had an oddly shaped nose, a big mouth over a sagging chin; long, flat eyebrows, and hair skinned back into a tight bun skewered with pins and draped with ribbons.

  All this, and yet she was a striking, altogether appealing woman. I was crazy about her.

  She remembered me, I thought. How fantastic.

  “Fraser?” said her familiar voice. Big and chunky, like a necklace nobody would ever really wear in public, her voice thrust itself into your living room and never left.

  “Hello, Lacy,” I said joyously. “How are you?” She was one of the first adults I ever addressed by her first name. She had told me to, and it felt comfortable.

  “Splendid, my dear. It’s almost one year since you launched Toybrary. We want to schedule a first-anniversary interview. Be prepared with statistics about toy use. What toys are popular. How many you own now. What types. How many children are actually patrons of Toybrary. That sort of thing.”