All We Know of Love

  I decide what I need is a good sugar rush.

  But Claire is eating all the candy. She leaves the pretzels and peanut-butter crackers. She seems to prefer soda over water. It’s OK. I bought a lot.

  I do notice, though, that she doesn’t say thank you. I thought mothers were supposed to teach their kids to say thank you.

  “I have a cell phone, if you want to call anyone,” I say casually. I hold it out to her.

  “I’m fine,” Claire answers.

  I take the opportunity to check my calls and then I shut it off again. I need to conserve my nationwide accessibility. My reception bars are disappearing one by one.

  Claire keeps her suitcase upright between her legs, with her feet like bookends. We can hear the rain outside and the thunder moving away. I am trying to be pleasant; for some reason I feel responsible for this kid I don’t even know. But she is not making it easy.

  “What grade are you in?” I ask her, figuring school is a safe topic.

  She just shrugs her shoulders, her mouth full of Starbursts. You’d think someone this needy and this hungry would be a little friendlier. A little nicer.

  Then again, of all people, I should understand how easy it is to be mean. Easier in fact.

  Leave being kind and selfless to the people who can afford it. To the people who have experienced it for themselves. Do unto others is a very nice saying, but it doesn’t really take certain things into account. Basically, how do you know what to do unto others when nobody’s done it unto you?

  But when Claire goes into the bathroom, I somehow find the Maryland Transit Authority Security Department.

  The first thing that changed when my mother took off was dinner. There wasn’t any for a while. Just nothing. I was in sixth grade.

  I would get home off the bus and my dad would be there already, because, I suppose, he thought he needed to be. Before that time, when my mom was still around, he used to work really late. Now he made sure to be home, but it was in body only. We never talked about what happened. It was almost as if she never existed.

  I would watch my dad pour his first drink around four thirty. He always kept one clear-green bottle of Tanqueray gin in the cabinet above the pantry. I’d help myself to a bowl of cereal around five, and another one usually around eight or nine, before I went to bed. In the morning, before I went to school, I’d have another. I liked to vary my choices a little: healthy cereal for breakfast, like Wheaties or Rice Krispies; for dinner, something in between, like Frosted Mini-Wheats or Blueberry Morning. But at night, I’d go all out. The grosser the better, the sweeter the best: Sugar Pops or Frosted Flakes. I even got my dad to buy Cap’n Crunch and Cocoa Puffs, which turns the milk dark filmy brown. My mother never would have bought Cocoa Puffs.

  But she wasn’t here, was she?

  In school, for the rest of that year, I got hot lunch.

  One night I heard my dad puking, only at first I didn’t know what it was.

  I was already sleeping, or nearly. I was still crying myself to sleep pretty much every night at that point, with my face in my pillow and the covers pulled over my head, trapping me inside. But this sound was louder than I was. I sat up in the darkness; I stopped crying and listened. It’s easier to listen when there is no light, nothing to distract you. There is nothing but sound, and it was an awful sound.

  My heart froze in that moment when you know something is wrong, before you actually register that something has happened. I was afraid before I realized I was hearing something unnatural and scary. In the next second, I knew it was my dad.

  Is he hurt? Has he fallen, or is he sick?

  I forced myself to get out of bed. The floor was cold under my bare feet. I felt my way along the wall and into the hall, where the noises got louder. For a second, they stopped. It was quiet.

  I had never felt quite so alone as in that moment, in the hallway, with all doors closed to me. Darkness behind me, and darkness up ahead. Until the noises started again, abruptly. I pressed open the door to my parents’ bedroom and cautiously stepped inside. There was a light under the bathroom door, edging out along the floor in a perfect flat plane. From behind the door, I could hear moaning. My dad was saying something.

  Help me. Help me, God. No, no. Oh, God.

  And in between his words, the distinct sound of vomiting. I heard the toilet flush, and, too quickly, the door opened. Light instantly filled the room with its severity, and I saw my dad. He was gray, not only his hair, suddenly, but his skin, his mouth, his eyes. Nothing but grayness. He was wearing only his faded boxer shorts and black dress socks. He looked so small and weak. And sad.

  “I hate you!” I shouted. “You’re disgusting. No wonder Mom left,” I said.

  I said that, even knowing all the while that it was my fault she left. It was my fault more than it was his. It was like seeing myself, yelling at myself. Only easier.

  Shortly after that, my dad started cooking dinner. Chicken potpies and fish sticks, and then later, hamburgers and baked ziti. I never heard him sick again. I never even saw a bottle of alcohol anywhere in our house. Ever.

  It all happens pretty quickly. An announcement comes over the loudspeaker and Claire jumps up.

  “That’s my bus,” she says.

  “Wait, are you sure?”

  “I’m not dumb,” she snaps.

  “Well, where are you going?” I don’t know what else to say. I suppose it’s just a matter of time. Maybe I should stall her. Instead, I get up and walk beside her.

  I am surprised when she answers me. “To my grandmother’s.”

  I am more surprised by how much I want to believe this.

  “She’s paying for my ticket.” Claire is suddenly talkative. Maybe because she’s picked up her suitcase and is walking away from me. “She can’t wait to see me.”

  “That’s nice,” I say. “Your grandmother must love you very much.”

  Christ, when did I start sounding like such a phony?

  But Claire just snorts. “Love?” she says. “Love sucks.”

  Then just as she nears the gate, I see the security lady heading toward her, ready to intercept. The woman has a walkie-talkie up to her mouth, and I can only imagine what she is saying. I sit back down, so I can’t see Claire’s face. I cannot see whether she feels relieved or betrayed, but either way I am sure she knows it was my fault.

  I broke up with Adam a total of three times in four months.

  Each time it was my idea.

  And each time we got back together, well, that was my idea, too.

  “You’re pretty unforgettable,” I said, admitting, I suppose, that I had been trying to forget him. Only couldn’t.

  “So are you,” Adam told me. He sat down first, on the low stone wall in the front of the high school. Here he was waiting, forgiving. Wanting. I had a choice, but I couldn’t put words to it, so I couldn’t hear it. Instead, I watched Adam as he watched me sit down on the stone wall beside him. An entire length of empty wall and I was free to sit wherever I chose. I looked down, and I sat.

  To anyone else it would have been an insignificant calculation — one inch farther to the right or to the left. If I’d sat farther away, or nearer to Adam, he might have read the whole situation differently. And he might not have taken my face in both his hands, pressing his mouth to mine, as he did.

  I could feel his warmth through his fingertips and on his lips. I tried to return the message with my whole body, letting it collapse into his presence.

  How could I have been so foolish, so selfish? So demanding. The intensity of being apart, the void that it had formed in me, had created a longing for something I hadn’t known I wanted so badly.

  How many chances did I deserve?

  I wouldn’t risk it again.

  As soon as I step up into my bus, my eyes are scanning the tops of heads poking over the tops of the tall seats. I am looking for a place to sit. I notice there is a different driver now. Not that I noticed the first one too closely, but this guy is s
omeone new. He doesn’t know or care that the last bus driver drove away and left me on the highway. All he wants is my ticket.

  “Everyone take a seat,” he says. He’s already got his hand on that pole lever that pulls the doors shut. The rain is drizzling, cold and steady, seeping under the corrugated awning. Inside the bus, the windshield wipers are thumping back and forth. They are huge, making their way across the entire windshield. It looks like the front window of a spaceship.

  “Can everyone take a seat?”

  The bus is pretty crowded. It looks like all the window seats are taken. I can sit next to that large skinhead-looking guy picking at his cuticles; a really, really old lady who has that look of smelling like mothballs and menthol ointment; a man with a McDonald’s bag on his lap and a hamburger in his hand; or this little, nervous-looking guy with a briefcase.

  “Miss?” The driver says this to me directly. “Find a seat already.”

  Nervous-man smiles at me as I make my way toward him, which I think is nice since he was probably praying for the seat next to him to stay empty, and I am that last passenger to get on and dash his hopes. But he accommodates me anyway, and something about that seems generous, and I think, for some reason, God, I gotta call my dad.

  What time is it?

  I sit down.

  I should have called before. My mind speeds through a garbled time line.

  I should be up at the ski house with Sarah by now. I should be unpacked and getting ready to go eat dinner with her family. I should be laughing and listening to them telling family stories and family jokes at some restaurant. Sarah’s dad always flirts with the waitresses. Sarah’s mom always makes us order too much food.

  I really should call my dad, but it’s another half an hour or so before I do.

  It’s almost dark now, on the bus and outside. Up and down the rows of seats, people flip on their little overhead reading lights. It’s quieter than it was earlier. The guy next to me has his hands folded neatly over his briefcase. I see that he has two rings, one on each hand. Actually, I don’t think he’s shifted his position once since the bus started moving. His pants are perfectly pressed, and he smells faintly of soap. I think he’s probably gay, which is good. He’s not paying any attention to me at all, which is also good, since I’m going to have to lie to my dad, right out loud, in public. But I have no choice.

  I can probably get away with this.

  I flip open my phone. I am always amazed at how much light glows from this thing. The woman in the seat directly across the aisle looks over at me and then quickly back, engrossed in her serious reading. She is in her early twenties I figure. She shuffles her magazine kind of hostilely. She is reading an especially thick issue of Vogue. In her bag, on the floor by her feet, I see a stack of four or five other fashion magazines.

  I should have thought of that.

  Sarah and I were supposed to meet at the bookstore.

  “Hey, I’m so glad you called me up,” she said when she saw me. Sarah is always smiling. That is something I had always loved about her. She made me laugh. Telling Sarah something, even the worst, saddest thing, even if I had just been crying about it, always seemed to sound funny. When I told Sarah, I could laugh about it.

  It had been that way since second grade, when I first met and fell in love with Sarah. She had that happy gene, and she was willing to share it.

  “Me, too,” I said. I was glad. So glad to see her in fact that I forgot for a moment that I had lied to Sarah, lied by omission but still lied. It wasn’t Sarah I wanted to see that afternoon. It was Adam. Only I didn’t know if Adam was going to show up, so I needed a more reliable excuse to come into town. I needed Sarah, but I wanted Adam, and I had used Sarah in the worst possible way.

  But that’s what girls do for each other, isn’t it? It’s an unspoken rule, right? Love comes first. We are all in this together. We’ve got to help each other out — sister power and all that.

  Sure.

  Sarah would have understood if I had told her, so why didn’t I just tell her?

  This was our favorite bookstore — the only one in town, but still our favorite place to hang. The people who worked there let us read books we never bought, sit on the floor and talk. When we were in fifth grade and too afraid and embarrassed, one of us stood by the window display holding open pages of Our Bodies, Ourselves for the other to look at the pictures from out on the sidewalk. Then we switched.

  No one in the store ever made us stop.

  There were pictures of naked women, people having sex, babies being born. We wanted to know. We asked each other questions we couldn’t ask anyone else.

  But that day, I felt shame rising up in my face for an entirely different reason. I knew I had betrayed Sarah, only she didn’t. Not yet.

  “Wanna stay here or go get something to eat? Or see a movie?” Sarah asked me. “Or we could just stay here. Whatever. It’s fine with me.”

  The movie theater was only a few blocks away. The coffee shop next door. I stammered. “I . . . uh . . . um.” I moved to shrug, but the weight of my lie, the weight of my truth, held my shoulders down. “I think I’m meeting Adam.”

  I watched Sarah’s face crumble, or drop, rather. All her features that a second ago had been angled up into smiles were now angled down — her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. She tried to hide what she was feeling, but she couldn’t. We used to joke that she’d be a terrible government spy. If the CIA ever came to our high school to recruit her because of her 4.4 GPA, she’d better turn them down.

  Sarah was hurt, and I didn’t blame her. Everything had changed recently, however subtly. I didn’t call her as much, and when we were on the phone, I wouldn’t stay on long. I was constantly aware that I might get call waiting and that it might be Adam. I wouldn’t want to have to cut Sarah off if she was saying something important. I was thinking of her feelings, I told myself. So eventually it just became easier not to be on the phone with her at all.

  Sarah and I still ate lunch together every fourth day, when our lunch periods coincided and she didn’t have an extra bio lab. (Sarah was one of those girl science geniuses.) But that was only because Adam left school for lunch. He drove in his old vintage colorless car into town and bought pizza. Underclassmen weren’t allowed to leave school.

  What would he have done if I had been allowed? Would he have taken me with him? With his friends? Would I have missed class like he did? Come in late for eighth period nearly every single day? Drop a whole grade for every seven tardies?

  Oh, yes. Unequivocally. Yes.

  “No, I mean, Sarah, I do have a little time. We can go next door and get a mocha cappuccino or something,” I tried, but I watched as Sarah went from being really hurt to angry. To something I had never seen before.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  “I mean, I didn’t know if he could make it or not. . . . My dad wasn’t going to just drop me off in town. I had to tell him something . . . and then you called and I thought . . . maybe. Well, I didn’t know if Adam was coming. I just . . . didn’t know.”

  “You called me, Natalie. Remember?”

  The name Marissa is stitched onto her magazine bag, with a large appliqué flower growing out of the last letter. I try to ignore her, although she is practically falling out of her seat to eavesdrop.

  I press my speed dial for HOME, and after a long silence in which I can visualize my call as hundreds of molecules speeding around the universe looking for my house, it rings. Once. Twice.

  My dad picks up.

  “Hello, pumpkin.”

  He must have finally figured out caller ID.

  “Hey, Dad. Can’t talk long,” I say. I try cupping my mouth and the phone with my hand. I lean my head down toward my lap and hope no sirens race by on the highway, or the bus doesn’t beep its horn or anything identifying like that. “Sarah and I have to meet everyone downstairs for dinner in a few minutes.”

  The woman with her ten-pound Vogue is now lifting her head just a tiny
bit, keeping her face down, but her eyes shift toward me. I can feel it. I can see her hands tighten on her magazine.

  This Marissa woman should really mind her own business, I think.

  “It’s late. What time did you get up there?” my dad asks.

  Shit. It’s late? It shouldn’t have taken that long to drive to Vermont, four, five hours tops. It’s hard to concentrate. Lying takes concentration.

  “Well, we ate a late lunch on the road at Friendly’s. We all had ice creams, too. So we’re eating a late dinner in town. Ron and Debbie are waiting for us in the lobby . . . so I should probably go.”

  Now the Vogue lady is practically gripping a glossy page so hard it wrinkles.

  I learned a little bit about lying from my Adam days. I knew my dad wouldn’t have liked him being so old. Or wouldn’t have liked me spending so much time with him. He surely wouldn’t have approved of how I was spending my time. So I learned how to throw in a detail or two for authenticity but keep it short. Don’t talk too much. The longer you talk, the more likely you are to slip up.

  “Whatcha have for dinner?” I ask. I am breaking my own rules.

  “Oh, there was that leftover Chinese, remember?”

  “Oh, right. That’s nice.”

  I am about to say good-bye when my dad asks me, “So how’s the weather up there? Any good snow?”

  Now I’ve done it.

  Weather. Weather. Shit. Weather. Can’t lie about the weather. It’s too easy for someone to check.

  It’s a funny thing. If I were telling the truth, if I were up in Vermont with Sarah and her family, I wouldn’t think twice about getting off the phone, hanging up. Telling my dad I’d talk to him tomorrow. Even being rude. Telling my dad he asked too many questions.

  But when you’re lying, you feel compelled to be nice.

  Parents should always worry when their kids are nice to them. Then, outside, as if on cue, rain suddenly pelts the top of the bus in a nonstop metallic riddling.