If I went slow enough, I was allowed to touch him almost everywhere. Almost. He said, “Slow down,” so many times that even when he let me go faster, I went slow to tease him. A different game. To make him say, “Faster.”
One night in the meadow, we kissed until our lips were raw, and my T-shirt was off and my panties were wet under my skirt from rubbing against his thigh. He would run his hand up my legs, but he was too nervous to touch me there. Finally, he let me unbuckle his belt and take him in my hand. I went slow, so slow, until he was breathing hard and his voice was deep in his throat when he said, “Wavy, you’re driving me outta my mind.”
“You said slow,” I whispered in his ear.
Laughing, he squeezed my arm hard enough to hurt, and said, “Goddamn, I know I said slow, but that’s not what I meant. You’re gonna kill me if you keep doing it that way.”
I didn’t kill him, but I made him beg, sweaty and gasping. He didn’t even beg for anything. He was just begging, with my name in between. “Please, Wavy, please,” until his hips lifted off the quilt and he came. A strange word for it, like he was leaving somewhere else and arriving in the meadow with me.
Summer played games, too. It changed time, changed fast and slow.
Secretly, I knew, Kellen wanted to go fast. He said, “No, don’t. We can’t, sweetheart.” Alone with me, he turned his back while I went swimming, unless I kept my T-shirt and panties on. When Donal came swimming under the full moon, though, I took off all my clothes to swim, and Kellen watched me. I came out of the tank naked and went to him, trailing water through the grass. When I put my arms around him and stamped my wet shape on his T-shirt, he didn’t say, “No, don’t.” He said, “Oh, Wavy,” in his begging voice. He ran his hands down my slippery sides to my hips, and kissed me until Donal said, “Ew, gross! No suck-face!”
Summer had so many tricks. The nights lasted longer than the days, even though the angle of the Earth’s axis meant that was impossible. The night couldn’t be longer, but summer made it seem that way. Summer sneaked time for me, taking a minute from February, three minutes from English class in March, ten whole minutes from a boring Thursday in April. Summer stole time to give me another hour under the stars with Kellen.
The only time summer slowed down was for the two weeks at Aunt Brenda’s house. Time stolen from me instead of for me.
The night before Aunt Brenda picked us up was the Fourth of July. Kellen bought fireworks: rockets for Donal and sparklers for Sandy and me. Then we took the bike around the lake and back to Kellen’s house. He let me lie on top of him on the sofa and he kissed me for so long. Nothing more than that, even though his heart pounded under my hand.
“I better take you home soon so you’ll be ready when your aunt comes in the morning,” he said.
“Not yet.”
“Yeah, sweetheart, we better.”
I pressed my leg between his, where Orion’s belt kept him closed up in his jeans. I loved how kissing made me soft between my legs, but it made him hard in the same place. It was wonderful magic.
Kellen groaned and said, “You need to sleep. I need to sleep. I gotta go pick up that wrecked Knucklehead tomorrow.”
I went but not before I left him a message. Once he had the bike started, I darted back into his bedroom. Going down on my knees on the linoleum tiles—so much like a classroom—I dug into his nightstand and found the magazine. I’d looked at it so many times, it opened to the page I wanted. The pleasure I wanted. I laid it on his pillow and ran back out to the bike.
Would he understand the message? Would he think it was dirty? No. He said, if you love me as much as I love you, it’s not dirty. I loved him all the way and that meant nothing was dirty. He wasn’t afraid of my germs. He wasn’t scared of me sneaking inside him.
PART FOUR
1
AMY
July 1983
Everything was different that summer. Before, whenever Mom wanted Wavy and Donal to come visit, she would call Aunt Val, and Kellen would deliver them. That summer, it was Aunt Val who called and said, “Why don’t Wavy and Donal come see you for a few weeks?” Mom insisted that she would pick them up, and I went with her.
After we got off the highway, we drove along narrow gravel roads, following directions Val had given Mom. When we got there, Wavy and Donal were alone in an old farmhouse surrounded by hayfields.
“Where’s your mother?” Mom asked.
Wavy shrugged.
“We’re supposed to tell you that she had to go to the doctor,” Donal said.
“Well, she knows I’m picking you up today, right?”
Wavy pointed at the grocery bags by the kitchen door. Their luggage. She seemed so annoyed that I wished I had stayed home. In the car, Wavy dug in her book bag and pulled out a package of Magic Markers. Choosing a bright turquoise one, she leaned across the seat toward me. Just below the hem of my shorts, she started drawing what would become an elaborate peacock over the course of the drive home. I knew my mother would screech about even a fake tattoo that covered my whole thigh, but I didn’t stop Wavy. Her hair tickled where it brushed against me, and it smelled like gunpowder.
That was what I loved about her. You never knew what she would do.
The first thing she did was ruin Leslie’s summer. Wavy didn’t even arrive until after the Fourth of July, but the ruining was retroactive.
Leslie had a crush on a lifeguard at the city pool. Miss Goody-Goody even broke the rules and drove by his house when we were supposed to go to the library. Then she ditched her one-piece swimsuit and bought a bikini so small she had to shave off most of her pubic hair. The lifeguard was a year older and more popular than Leslie, but by July, I started to think she had a chance with him. On his breaks, he let her climb up the chair ladder to bring him a can of pop.
Then Wavy came. Wavy, with her eyes that weren’t any particular color except dark. Even after Mom told her to take it off, she wore eye shadow that made them look smoky. She didn’t like to swim with all the people, so she sat on a lawn chair, wearing a cowboy hat, a wispy skirt, her motorcycle boots, and a tight white T-shirt with no bra. A year before it would have been a costume for a weird little girl, but that summer it seemed strangely sophisticated. Wavy relaxed in the chair and crossed her legs, swinging her foot back and forth.
When Leslie’s lifeguard went on break, he climbed down and bought two cans of pop. He walked over to where she was tanning in her skimpy bikini, looked past her at Wavy and said, “Who’s your friend?”
“She’s my cousin,” Leslie said.
“What’s her name?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
Leslie should have said, “She’s only thirteen.” That might have worked to shut him down. What didn’t work was him asking Wavy her name, because she just shook her head. A year before, it might have passed for shyness. That summer it was an alluring mystery.
“Oh, come on. You won’t even tell me your name?”
Wavy looked through him.
“You want a coke?” He held out the can to her. She took it and rolled its cool, sweating surface over her arms and across the back of her neck. Then she set the can down next to her chair. Done with his offering. Done with him.
He sat on the deck chair next to hers and for the rest of his break, he sweet-talked her. In response, he got a big, fat nothing.
All he managed to do was break Leslie’s heart.
He wasn’t Wavy’s only suitor, either. The way she strolled up and down, her skirt swishing around the tops of her boots, her narrow hips jutting out, it was like throwing chum into a pool of sharks. The old guys were the worst. Guys who had to have been twenty-five or thirty. They were more persistent, too, offering her cigarettes and beers.
“She can talk, right?” Leslie’s lifeguard asked me one day.
“If she wants.”
“How do I make her want to talk to me?”
By then, I knew the answer: “You need to be Jesse Joe Kellen.” Besides be
ing one of the few people she would talk to, Kellen was one thing Wavy would talk about.
Leslie’s friend Jana came over to our house with this book, Forever. She got it at summer camp and she said, “Oh my god, you have to read it.”
We read it. Jana’s sister Angela even read the dirtiest parts out loud to make us laugh. Angela was pretty, with gray eyes and a dimple in her chin. She had a boyfriend, but I don’t think she’d done anything but hold his hand. As for me, I thought, I’m never doing that with a boy. Never.
Wavy found the book worth three words: “Not like that.”
“Oh, you think you know so much. I bet you’ve never even kissed a boy,” Leslie said.
Wavy gave us the smoldering look that had stolen Leslie’s lifeguard and said, “A man.”
“What man?” Angela said.
“Kellen.”
“You really kissed him? Like a real French kiss with your tongue?” Jana said.
“More.”
“How much more?”
Wavy flicked her finger against the Judy Blume book.
“Oh, bull. You’re lying,” Leslie said. “I wish you guys could see him. He’s huge.”
Wavy grabbed at her crotch like a guy and gave Leslie a nasty smile.
“He’s so disgusting. Seriously, he’s fat and he has all these gross tattoos.”
Jana and Angela weren’t listening to Leslie. They were staring at Wavy.
“So, you really touched him?” Jana said. “You touched his—his penis? What was it like?”
“Hot. Hard. Desperate.”
Leslie scowled, but Jana, Angela, and I broke up laughing. The dirty-minded Wavy was fun, but I assumed most of it was an act to upset Leslie. Ken in a dress.
“Do you really go all the way with him?” Angela said.
Wavy nodded, but Leslie said, “No, she doesn’t!”
I didn’t know what to believe. I was older than Wavy, but something had happened to her in the last year. She seemed a lot more grown up than I felt. She seemed more like Aunt Val, and not just her clothes, but the way she held her head, the way she walked.
“She’s not even fourteen. She doesn’t either go all the way,” Leslie said.
Wavy shrugged and flashed her ring at us. I’d thought it was costume jewelry, but that day she let us look at it up close, so we could see it was a real ring. Not some gumball prize that would turn your finger green.
“You wouldn’t! He’s so grody,” Leslie said.
Anyone else might have been offended, but Wavy wasn’t. She opened her backpack and took out a photo album. In the front were pictures of Aunt Val and Donal. After that were pictures of Kellen. Playing cards with some men. Holding Donal up to feed a giraffe. Standing next to Wavy, her in a pretty green dress. The last one showed him astride a motorcycle on a sunny day with his shirt off, tattoos all over. He smiled, his gold tooth glinting.
Jana was fascinated. She came back the next day and, instead of her younger sister, she brought a friend of hers. Someone who was a lot more popular than Leslie. That was Leslie’s consolation prize for losing the lifeguard.
Jana and her friend grilled Wavy about everything, which was funny since she hardly said more than a word at a time. Sometimes she didn’t even need a word, like when she used me to demonstrate some sexual position that seemed completely ridiculous when I was fifteen. I couldn’t imagine two grown-ups doing that with straight faces, and when I started giggling, Wavy collapsed on top of me, laughing.
They even got Donal involved. Luring him upstairs with cookies, Jana said, “Is your sister really getting married?”
“Kellen loves her. When we go swimming buck naked, he kisses her and lets her rub her boobies on him. It’s gross. He says, ‘Oh, Wavy.’”
Donal tried to make his voice deep and Wavy, who’d been drawing a dinosaur tattoo on his shoulder, flicked him on the back of the head.
“You go skinny-dipping with him?” Jana said.
That raised Wavy even higher in Jana’s eyes, but it reminded Leslie of her swimming pool tragedy. It left me with divided loyalties. I loved Wavy, but Leslie was my sister. I was sad and relieved when the two weeks were up. Maybe Leslie could get her lifeguard back, if she still wanted him.
Mom had planned the visit the way she wanted, but there was confusion about when Wavy was going back. Wavy was furious when she found out she wasn’t going home until after her birthday. Grabbing the calendar off the kitchen wall, she threw it down on the table and started counting off the days to indicate two weeks.
“Wavy, we’re going back on the twentieth. Your mother and I agreed.”
“You agreed. Not me,” Wavy said.
“I thought you’d like to spend your birthday with us.”
Wavy tapped her finger over the fourteen days again and she had a scary look in her eyes. A look that said she would do what she wanted.
“Goddamn it,” Dad yelled from the den, where he was probably tired of listening to Wavy’s mime-show argument. “Why not take her back tomorrow?”
“Because I don’t take orders from her.”
“Take her back tonight for all I care. Christ. I’m trying to work.”
Wavy slammed her hand on the table to bring Mom’s attention back to her.
“Don’t you act that way toward me, young lady.”
For a minute, she and Mom glared at each other. Then Wavy walked over and picked up the phone. I’d never seen her use one before, but she started dialing.
“Who are you calling?” Mom said.
“Kellen.”
“I don’t think so. You’re a guest here and you’ll go back when I say so.”
Mom came around the table and disconnected the call. From the look on Wavy’s face, I expected violence, but she won the argument with four words: “Guest? More like prisoner.”
In the morning, Mom packed us all in the car, even Leslie, who whined about it.
“Why do I have to go?” she said.
“We’re all going to drive up and spend Wavy’s birthday with your Aunt Val. Won’t that be nice? Happy birthday, Wavy.” Mom was so mad she looked like flames were going to shoot off her head.
“Why doesn’t Dad have to go?” Leslie said.
“Your father has to work. Do you have a job? No. You spent all summer at the pool, flirting with lifeguards. So shut up!”
Wavy and Donal didn’t seem fazed by Mom yelling, which made me wonder what they were used to, that he could go on happily playing with his cars in the front seat, while Mom blew a gasket.
The whipped cream on Mom’s shit sundae was that Wavy tricked her.
As we drove through Powell on our way to the farm, Wavy leaned forward and pointed for a turn.
“That’s not the way to the house, is it?” Mom said.
Wavy pointed for the turn again. Mom took it and drove down the street until Wavy said, “Here.”
“Cutcheon’s Small Engine? What’s that?”
“That’s where Kellen works.” Donal started to open his door, but Wavy stopped him.
“Now, look,” Mom said. “I’m dropping both of you off at home. I’m not leaving you here.”
Wavy slid her hand down my arm and was out of the car before Mom could drive off.
“Wavy!” Mom shouted as the door slammed. She scowled as Wavy walked toward the garage, but what could she do? Run after Wavy and force her into the car? After a minute, she drove off.
The cherry on Mom’s shit sundae was that when we got to the farmhouse, nobody was there. The back door was unlocked and dirty dishes were piled in the sink. Beer bottles and a full ashtray sat on the coffee table in the living room, next to a bunch of burned pieces of tin foil.
“It’s okay,” Donal said, when he saw the look on Mom’s face. “You can take me down to the ranch. That’s where I sleep anyway.”
“You don’t sleep up here?”
Donal gave Wavy’s it-is-what-it-is shrug.
The ranch looked like an armed compound you might see on the
news. White supremacists or a religious cult. Past the gate stood two metal garages, and off in the trees a big metal barn. Clustered up by the road were four trailers, one with a deck on the front. Sitting on the deck, smoking, was a life-sized Barbie doll.
Donal jumped out of the car and ran to hug her. Then he took off toward the garages. The Barbie doll came down the porch, cigarette in her hand and said, “Hey, are you Donal’s auntie? And his cousins? I’m Sandy.”
We waited for an explanation of who Sandy was but she didn’t offer one.
“Do you want to come in for a drink or something?”
“Do you know where Valerie is?” Mom said.
Sandy was the prettiest sad woman I’d ever seen, and for a second, she frowned, more sad than pretty. “No, but she’ll be back later if you want to wait.”
“It’s okay to leave Donal here, with you?”
“Sure, hon. I’ll get him a snack here in a while. Did Wavy come back with you?”
Mom didn’t answer, so I said, “She’s at Kellen’s.”
Sandy was pretty again, smiling.
“Oh, he’ll be glad to see her. They’re so sweet to each other. Yesterday he took a big cooler full of ice and drove over to Garringer. They have a Baskin Robbins there, and he bought her a scoop of every flavor of ice cream they have. You know, for her birthday. Isn’t that the sweetest thing? Sure you don’t wanna stop for a drink? Donal could show you his little motorbike. He’s so cute on it.”
“No,” Mom said. She didn’t even wait to say good-bye to Donal.
An hour into the drive home Mom turned down the radio we’d turned up to avoid talking, and said, “How do you think Wavy seemed?”
My sister glared. Like the girl who stole her lifeguard, that’s how she seemed to Leslie.
“Happy,” I said.
“She didn’t seem hostile to you?”
“Only because you wanted her to stay for her birthday.”