My Life Next Door

  “Want to come to my house? You allowed to fraternize off-site?”

  I tell him to wait two minutes while I ditch the uniform.

  When we get to the Garretts’, it is, as usual, a hive of activity. Mrs. Garrett’s breast-feeding Patsy at the kitchen table, quizzing Harry on the names of various rope knots for sailing camp. Duff’s on the computer. George, shirtless, is eating chocolate chip cookies, dreamily dipping them in milk and leafing through National Geographic Kids. Alice and Andy are in an intense discussion over by the sink.

  “How do I get him to do it? It’s just killing me. I’m gonna die.” Andy scrunches her eyes shut.

  “What are you dying of, dear?” Mrs. Garrett asks. “I missed it.”

  “Kyle Comstock still hasn’t kissed me. It’s killing me.”

  “It shouldn’t take this long,” Alice observes. “Maybe he’s gay.”

  “Alice,” Jase objects. “He’s fourteen. Jesus.”

  “What’s gay?” George asks, his mouth full of cookie.

  “Gay is like those penguins we read about at Central Park Zoo,” explains Duff, still typing away on the computer. “Remember, sometimes the boy ones mate with other boy ones?”

  “Oh. I rem’ber. What’s mate, I forget that part?” responds George, still chewing.

  “Try this one,” Alice suggests. She walks up to Jase, shakes back her hair, casts her eyes down, walks her fingers up his chest, and then toys with the buttons of his shirt, swaying slightly toward him. “That one always works.”

  “Not on your brother.” Jase backs up, rebuttoning.

  “I guess I could try that.” Andy sounds doubtful. “But what if he sticks his tongue in my mouth right away? I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

  “Eeeew,” squeals Harry. “Barf. That’s rank.”

  Feeling my face warm, I shift my eyes to Jase. He’s blushing too. But he quirks a little smile at me.

  Mrs. Garrett sighs. “I think you should just take this at a slow pace, Andy.”

  “Does it feel really gross, or nice?” Andy turns to me. “It’s so hard to imagine, even though I do try. All the time.”

  “Samantha and I are going upstairs to, uh, feed the animals.” Jase grabs my hand.

  “Is that what they call it now?” asks Alice languidly.

  “Alice,” Mrs. Garrett begins as we hurry upstairs to the relative quiet of Jase’s room.

  “Sorry,” he says, the tips of his ears still pink.

  “No problem.” I pull the elastic out of my hair, toss it back, flutter my eyelashes and, reaching out, walk my fingers dramatically up his chest to unbutton his shirt.

  “Oh my God,” Jase whispers. “It’s like I’ve just gotta…I can’t help myself…I—” He hooks his index finger into the waistband of my shorts, moving me closer. His lips descend on mine, familiar now, but more and more exciting. In the past few weeks, we’ve spent hours kissing, but only kissing, only touching each other’s faces and backs and waists. Jase, who takes his time.

  Not like Charley, who was incapable of meeting my lips without reaching for more, or Michael, whose patented move was to thrust his hands up under my shirt, unclasp my bra, then groan and say, “Why do you do this to me?” Now it’s my hands that slide up under Jase’s shirt, up his chest, while I lower my head to his shoulder and breathe in deeply. All our other kisses have been slow and careful, by the lake, on the roof, potentially not so alone. Now we’re in his bedroom, and that feels both tempting and wicked. I move my hands to the hem of his shirt, tugging up, while part of me is completely shocked that I’m doing this.

  Jase steps backward, looks at me, intent green eyes. Then he raises his arms so I can slip the shirt off.

  I do.

  I’ve seen him without a shirt. I’ve seen him in a bathing suit. But the only times I got to touch his chest it was dark. Now the afternoon sun slants into the room, which smells earthy and warm with all the plants, quiet except for our breathing.

  “Samantha.”

  “Mmmm,” I say, trailing my hand over his stomach, feeling the firm muscles tighten.

  His hand reaches out. I close my eyes, thinking how embarrassed I’ll be if he stops me. Instead, his fingers close lightly on the hem of my shirt, sliding it up, while the other hand curves around my waist, then moves, touching my cheek, asking a silent question. I nod, and he eases the shirt entirely off.

  Then he pulls me close and we’re kissing again, which feels much more intimate when so much of his skin is touching mine. I can feel the thud of his heartbeat and the rise and fall of his breathing. I bury my hands in the waves of his curls and press closer.

  The door opens and in comes George. “Mommy said to bring these.”

  We move hastily apart to find him extending a plate of chocolate chip cookies, several of which have large bites out of them. George thrusts the plate at us guiltily. “I had to make sure they were still good.” Then, “Hey, you guys have nothing on top!”

  “Um, George—” Jase runs his hands through the hair at the back of his head.

  “Me neither.” George jabs a finger at his own bare chest. “We match.”

  “G-man.” Jase leads him to the door, handing him three cookies. “Buddy. Go back downstairs.” He gives his brother a little shove between his skinny shoulder blades, then shuts the door firmly behind him.

  “What’re the chances he won’t mention the no-shirt thing to your mom?” I ask.

  “Slim.” Jase leans back against the door, closing his eyes.

  “George tells all.” I hastily tug on mine, yanking my arms into the sleeves.

  “Let’s just, uh…” Assured Jase is at a loss.

  “Feed the animals?” I suggest.

  “Right. Yeah. Uh, here.” He crosses to some low drawers under his bed. “I have it all separated by…”

  We sort food and dump out water bottles, refilling them, edge straw into cages. After about five minutes I say, “Put this back on now.” I thrust his shirt at him.

  “Okay. Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Unbelievably distracted by my body, Samantha?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughs. “Good. We’re on the same page, then.” There’s a pause. Then he says, “I said that wrong. Like it was all about how you look, and that’s not it. It’s just that you’re so different than I thought you were.”

  “Than you thought I was, when?”

  “When I saw you. Sitting on your roof. For years.”

  “You saw me. For years?” I feel myself flush again. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “For years. Course I didn’t tell you. I knew you watched us. Couldn’t figure out why you didn’t just come over. I thought…maybe you were shy…or a snob…I didn’t know. I didn’t know you then, Sam. Couldn’t help watching back, though.”

  “Because I’m just so compelling and fascinating?” I roll my eyes.

  “I used to see you, out the kitchen window, during dinner or when I was swimming in the pool at night, wonder what you were thinking. You always looked cool and poised and perfect—but that’s…”

  He trails off, ruffling his hair again.

  “You’re less…more…I like you better now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I like you here—real and just you and coping with all this insanity—George and Andy and Harry, me, I guess—in that calm way you have. I like who you really are.”

  He regards me contemplatively for a long moment, then turns away, carefully fitting the water bottle into the ferret’s cage.

  Underneath the flare of pleasure at his words, there’s a niggling prickle of unease. Am I calm? Am I somebody who takes things in stride? Jase is so sure he sees me.

  A knock on the door. This time, it’s Duff wanting help with his sailing knots. Then Alice, who is having a CPR test tomorrow and needs a willing victim.

  “No way,” Jase says. “Use Brad.”

  I think it’s good we have all these interruptions. Beca
use right now I don’t feel the least bit calm, totally unsettled by what happened as we stood there, bare skin to bare skin, with this growing feeling that what happens between us is not on my schedule, in my control. Not me choosing to move away or back off or step apart, but a desire less easily managed. Before, I’ve always felt curious, not…not compelled. How much experience has Jase had? He’s a fantastic kisser; but then, he’s good at everything he does, so that’s no guide. The only girlfriend I know about is Shoplifting Lindy, and she certainly seems as though she had no hesitation about taking what she wanted out of life.

  When Mrs. Garrett comes up to ask if I want to stay for dinner, I say no, my quiet empty house with its leftovers in Tupperware, somehow, for the first time, a refuge from the steamy silence of Jase’s room.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Here ya go, Grace. Senior Center Pig Roast. Daughters of St. Damien Shad Fest. Sons of Almighty Michael Feast of the Blessed Shad. You need to go to all of these.”

  Clay has a highlighter and the local newspaper. Mom has a third cup of morning coffee.

  “Shad festivals?” she says faintly. “I’ve never done those before.”

  “You never had a real opponent before, Grace. Yup, all of them. Look here, they’re opening an old boxcar as a diner in Bay Crest. You need to be there.”

  Mom takes a slow sip. Her hair is as untidy as it ever gets, a platinum tangle where her bun should be as she tips her head back on the sofa.

  Clay skids the highlighter over a few more articles, then looks at Mom. “You’re tuckered,” he says, “I know. But you got what it takes, Gracie, and you need to take that where it’s meant to go.”

  Mom straightens up as though Clay’s yanked on her strings. Now she walks over and sits next to him, examining the paper and tucking her hair behind her ears.

  The way she is around Clay makes me uneasy. Was she this way with Dad? There’s balance between Tracy and Flip, I see that now, but Mom seems to be under a spell sometimes. I think of those moments in Jase’s room. If Mom feels that way around Clay, it’s not like I don’t understand. But…but the shivers I feel around Jase are nothing like the prickle of anxiety I get now, watching their blond heads duck closer together.

  “Was there something you needed, sugar?” Clay asks, noticing me hovering.

  I open my mouth, then shut it again. Maybe Tracy’s right and I’m just not used to Mom “having a man.” Maybe, despite everything, I’m protective of my invisible father. Maybe I’m just hormonal. I look at the clock—an hour and a half till the B&T. I picture the cool water, sunlight on its surface, that calm underwater world, broken only by my even steady strokes. I grab my gear and go.

  “Sailor Supergirl! You’re on TV!” Harry hurtles himself at me as I come in the kitchen door. “It’s you! Right in the middle of Mammal Mysteries. Come see!”

  In the Garretts’ living room, George, Duff, and Andy are sitting mesmerized in front of one of Mom’s political commercials. Right now, it’s a shot of her face, in front of the Capitol building. As women, as parents, we all know family comes first, she says as the camera shows still photos of me and Tracy in matching dresses with our Easter egg baskets, on the beach, sitting on the lap of the B&T Santa Claus, all with Mom in the background. I didn’t think they’d ever snapped a picture of me with Santa without me crying, but I look relatively calm in this one. The B&T Santa always smelled like beer and had a drooping, palpably fake beard. My family has always been my focus.

  “Your mommy’s pretty but she doesn’t look like a mommy,” George says.

  “That’s a rude thing to say,” Andy tells him as there’s another montage of pictures—Tracy accepting a gymnastics award, me winning a prize at a science fair for my model of a cell. “Oh look—you had braces too, Samantha. I didn’t think you’d have had to have those.”

  “I just meant she looked fancy,” George says as Mom smiles and says, When I was elected to be your state senator, I kept my focus. My family just got a lot bigger.

  Next are pictures of Mom standing with a crowd of high school students in caps and gowns, bending next to an old woman in a wheelchair waving a flag, accepting flowers from a little boy.

  “Are those people really your family?” Harry asks suspiciously. “I’ve never seen any of them next door.”

  Now the camera pulls back to show Mom at a dinner table, with a horde of ethnically diverse people, all smiling and nodding, evidently talking to her about their values and their lives over…a banquet of popular Connecticut foods. I spy a clambake, ingredients for New England boiled dinner, pizza from New Haven, things we’ve never had on our table.

  To me my constituents are my family. I will be honored to sit at your table. I will go to the table for you, this November, and beyond. I’m Grace Reed, and I approved this message, Mom concludes firmly.

  “Are you okay, Sailor Supergirl?” George pulls on my arm. “You look sad. I didn’t mean anything bad about your mommy.”

  I snap myself away from the screen to find him next to me, breathing heavily in that small-boy way, holding out the battered stuffed dog, Happy.

  “If you’re sad,” he says, “Happy’s magic, so he helps.”

  I take the dog, then put my arms around George. More noisy breathing. Happy’s mushed between us, smelling like peanut butter, Play-Doh, and dirt.

  “Come on, guys. It’s a beautiful day and you’re indoors watching Mammal Mysteries. That’s for rainy days.” I usher the Garretts outside, but not before flicking a glance back at the TV. Despite all the posters and leaflets, the news paper photos, it’s still surreal to see Mom on television. Even stranger to see myself, and how much I look like I belong right there with her.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Following Tim’s B&T firing, the Masons, still researching scared-straight boot camps, are trying to keep him busy. Tonight they’ve given him money to take me and Nan to the movies.

  “Please,” Nan urges over the phone. “It’s a movie. How bad can that be? He won’t even care—or even notice—if we pick a chick flick.”

  But the moment I slide into the backseat of Tim’s Jetta, I know this plan is not going to work. I should get out of the car, but I don’t. I can’t leave Nan in the lurch.

  “Tim. This isn’t the way to the movies!” Nan leans forward in the passenger seat.

  “So right, sis. Screw Showcase. This is the way to New Hampshire and tax-free cases of Bacardi.”

  The speedometer edges past seventy-five. Tim takes his eyes off the road to scroll through his iPod or punch in the lighter or fumble around in his shirt pocket for another Marlboro. I keep feeling the car drift, then lurch back into its lane as Tim yanks the wheel. I look at Nan’s profile. Without turning, she reaches back a hand, grabbing on to mine.

  After about twenty minutes of speeding and weaving, Tim pulls over at a McDonald’s, slamming the brakes so hard that Nan and I pitch forward and back. Still, I’m grateful. My fingers are stiff from clutching the door handle. Tim returns to the car looking even less reliable, his pupils nearly overtaking his gray irises, his dark red hair sticking straight up in front.

  “We have to get out of this,” I whisper to Nan. “You should drive.”

  “I only have my learner’s permit,” Nan says. “I could get in big trouble.”

  Hard to imagine how much bigger trouble could get. I, of course, can’t drive at all, because Mom has put off my driver’s ed classes time after time, claiming that I’m too young and most of the drivers on the road are incompetent. It never really seemed like a battle worth fighting when I could catch rides with Tracy. Now I wish I’d forged Mom’s name on the parental consent forms. I wonder if I could just figure it out. I think of those six-year-olds you occasionally hear about in news stories who drive their stricken grandparent to the hospital. I check the front of the Jetta. It’s a stick shift. There’s no way.

  “We need to think of something, fast, Nanny.”

  “I know,” she murmurs back. Leaning forward,
she puts her hand on Tim’s shoulder as he tries, unsuccessfully, to maneuver the key into the ignition.

  “Timmy. This doesn’t make sense. We’re going to eat up all the tax-free savings in gas just getting to New Hampshire.”

  “It’s a fucking adventure, sis.” Tim finally gets the key in, presses the accelerator down to the ground, and burns rubber out of the parking lot. “Don’t you ever crave one?”

  The car surges faster and faster. The urgent hum of the engine vibrates through the seats. Tim’s passing other cars on the right. We’ve shot past Middletown and are closing in on Hartford. I check my watch. It’s eight fifty…My curfew is eleven. We won’t be anywhere near New Hampshire by then. Assuming we aren’t wrapped around a tree somewhere. My fingers ache from holding so tightly to the door handle. I feel a prickle of sweat across my forehead.

  “Tim, you have to stop. You have to stop and let us out,” I say loudly. “We don’t want to do this with you.”

  “Lighten up, Samantha.”

  “You’re going to get us all killed!” Nan pleads.

  “Betcha you’ll both die virgins. Kinda makes you wonder what the fuck you were saving it for, huh?”

  “Timmy. Will you please stop saying that word?”

  Of course, this request is all Tim needs. “What word? Ohhhh. That word!” He makes a little song out of the word, says it loud, quietly, all strung together. On and on and on with the F-bomb for the next few minutes. Then he puts it to the tune of “Colonel Bogey’s March,” on and on and on again. A bubble of hysterical laughter fights its way to my lips. Then I see that the speedometer has leaped into the 100s. And I’m more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life.

  “Shit. Cops.” Tim pulls a wide unsteady turn into a truck stop. I pray that the police car will follow us, but it speeds on by, siren blaring. Nan’s face is parchment. The Jetta squeals sideways to a halt. Tim staggers out of the driver’s seat, saying, “Damn, I gotta pee,” and wanders off in the direction of a gigantic blue Dumpster.

  I yank the keys out of the ignition, climb out, and hurl them into the bushes at the side of the parking lot.