Zen and Xander Undone

  She holds out her hands and the little girl bounces herself in Paul’s arms until he hands her over, his eyes on mine, asking if it’s safe.

  “She might not give her back,” I warn.

  It’s too late. Grandma’s arms have snaked around the baby and she’s pulled her away from him, bouncing her and cooing in the poor little thing’s face. I couldn’t stand that kind of attention from the Droning Crone, but the kid seems to love it.

  “So that’s your cousin?” I ask Paul.

  “Mirabelle,” he says, and nods sheepishly.

  “Adam!” I call over the din in the kitchen. “Your date’s here!”

  Nancy snorts at this.

  “So what’s everyone doing in the kitchen?” Paul asks, standing much closer than most people stand next to me. This must be one of the signals Xander was talking about that means he wants to kiss me. It takes a little effort, but I stay where I am, standing close. I can smell the soap on his skin. Nice clean white soap.

  “We’re waiting for Margot to bring Xander through the front door,” I tell him, “and then we’re all supposed to rush into the living room yelling ‘Happy birthday.’”

  “I won’t let you down, captain!” He salutes.

  We smile a little goofily, until Dad comes up to us. “So I see you have tracked down my daughter.”

  “‘Tracked down’ might be overstating things. I left a note, she called.”

  Dad’s eyes narrow, and he takes a long, speculative sip on his hard cider. “Okay then.”

  “This is Paul, Dad,” I say, to force him to be nicer.

  “Pleased to meet you properly, Paul,” Dad says, offering him his hand to shake. “Soda?” He points at the fridge.

  “Sure!” Paul gets two bottles of ginger ale and opens them both, handing one to me. This seems to soften Dad up, and he saunters away to go talk to Nancy, who is telling Neil a very loud story about the time she hit a BMW while trying to parallel park her junky Civic. She got out of the car only to find she had rear-ended the mayor. Neil roars with laughter. Grandma takes a break from cooing at little Mirabelle to shush him, then Dad yells, “You forgot to tell him your registration had lapsed!”

  “What’s going on?”

  We all turn to see Xander standing in the kitchen doorway, her arms folded over her braless chest. She’s wearing her flannel pajama bottoms, and her hair is sticking up in a mess of tangles. “I could hear you all the way across the street!”

  The entire room shushes, except for Mirabelle, who says, “Ucky?”

  We all burst out with, “Happy birthday!!!” and rush at her. She backs into the living room, totally shocked, and that’s when Margot comes in the front door looking confused. Behind her are two guys, both of them wearing jeans and clean T-shirts, which for them, I think, must be the same as dressing up.

  “Happy birthday!” Margot cries, jumping up and down, bracing herself on the shoulder of the guy who I guess must be her boyfriend. With his greased black hair and pierced bottom lip, he’s not really what I think of as cute, though I guess he has a kind of animal magnetism. There’s something about his joyless smile that I don’t like.

  The other guy is cute, and he steps toward Xander. “I’m Topher. Happy birthday.” His hair is a nice clean strawberry color, and he has lots of freckles on his nose and forehead. As he shakes hands with Xander, I can tell he thinks she’s hot even though it’s clear she hasn’t even showered today.

  Xander narrows her eyes at Margot, who tosses her enormous hair. “Happy birthday!” she says again, grabbing Xander’s arm.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Adam take a step forward, his eyes fixed angrily on something. I follow his gaze and realize that he’s looking at Margot’s boyfriend. For a second I don’t understand why, but then it hits me.

  It’s Frank. It’s the guy I kicked in the head.

  The one who tried to drag Xander into his car. He shaved off his goatee. That’s why I didn’t recognize him at first.

  Xander looks at us, unsteady, as she realizes we’ve recognized him. Adam shakes his head, furious, and melts back into the kitchen. Nancy rushes forward to make everyone at ease. As she cries, “Everyone grab a plate and dish up some food!” she puts a casual hand on Frank’s shoulder.

  He looks at her with cool dark eyes and smiles.

  The Same Mistakes

  THERE’S SOMETHING CARNIVOROUS in the way Frank looks at Xander. He has his arm around Margot the entire time, but it’s Xander he wants. He licks his lips as he watches her blow out the candles on the birthday cake.

  “Speech! Speech!” Paul yells. Mirabelle, who he’s holding on his hip, claps her chubby little hands. She has no idea what a speech is, but she can tell Paul wants one, and that’s enough for her.

  Dad holds up his third hard cider of the night and calls to Xander, “Let’s hear from our future Caltech graduate, Alexandra Vogel!”

  Dad is wearing a fresh shirt tucked into khaki pants. His hair is long, but he slicked it back from his forehead, and though he’s gained about fifteen pounds in the last year, he’s my dad. He looks like he’s having a great time too. Nancy keeps smiling at him over her hard cider, and I can tell she’s as happy as I am that he isn’t acting like he’s waiting for the world to end.

  “Hear, hear!” Nancy cries, and burps. “Speech!”

  Even Neil stops talking to Grandma and turns to look at Xander. Adam creeps out of the kitchen, where he’s been hiding, and smolders at her.

  “Okay, you pathetic losers. You’ll get your speech.” Xander puts down her slice of cake and wipes her frosting-covered fingers on her pajama bottoms. She takes her place at the center of the room and smiles graciously. “When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a pole dancer. There was something about the tassels, the glitter, the body paint. I don’t know. It spoke to me.”

  Nancy snorts at this. Dad buries his face in one hand in mock horror. Grandma sniffs and turns away.

  Paul looks at me wryly as if to ask, Is she always like this?

  I shrug.

  “I hit puberty,” Xander continues, “but my breasts never did, and I realized that pole dancing wasn’t in the cards for me. After a long grieving process, I unzipped my go-go boots, as it were, and slipped into a lab coat and protective goggles. In short, I’m geeking up.”

  “Thank Christ for that,” Dad says.

  “And now I will perform an interpretive dance that depicts my journey from aspiring pole dancer to hopeful particle physicist . . .” She gives Dad a teasing look. “Or maybe I’ll just quit while I’m ahead.”

  “I was hoping for the dance,” Frank says, and Margot elbows him in the stomach.

  Xander glances at him and looks away as though she never saw him. He raises one eyebrow, trying to look cool, but he seems stirred up.

  “Anyway, folks.” Her eyes are suddenly shiny, and she says through a reedy voice, “I wasn’t looking forward to my first birthday without Mom, but I’m glad you guys did this. Thanks.”

  Nancy rushes up to give Xander a hug, spilling cider on her shirt in the process. Xander laughs loudly, and people start chatting again. Topher, the guy Margot brought, leans close to Xander and gives her a farm-boy smile. She nods at him uncomfortably. He’s cute, but I can tell she doesn’t like him.

  “Isn’t that the guy you went to the prom with?” Paul asks, and I turn to see him looking at Adam, vaguely threatened.

  “Yeah, that’s my neighbor. He’s kind of our best friend.”

  “He seems kind of . . .”

  “Like he wants to kill someone?”

  Adam’s eyes are fixed on Frank with a predatory stare.

  “Yeah.”

  “He does.”

  “Okay. Fair enough.” Paul grins, and I notice the tiny whiskers on his upper lip are pale brown, like the hair on his arms.

  “Want cake?” I ask.

  “I was born wanting cake! But I need to sit down for a minute. She’s heavier than she looks.” He lowers himself onto the
sofa next to Neil and Grandma, who immediately crowds herself around Mirabelle again, cooing, “Who’s the little cutie pie! Who’s the little muffin? Is that you? Are you the little muffin?”

  I sidle up to Nancy’s dining room table, and I’m bumped from behind. I turn to see Frank staring at me. Until now, he’s acted like he didn’t recognize me at all. I figured he was too drunk that night to really remember me. Or maybe I kicked him in the head too hard.

  “Hi,” he says in an edgy voice.

  “Hello,” I say. I look over at Margot, who is trying hard to get Xander to like the blond guy. She’s saying, “See, you’re Xander, short for Alexandra, and he’s Topher, short for Christopher! I thought you two just had to meet!”

  Frank pulls a toothpick out of his mouth and points it at me. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” I say.

  He waits for me to elaborate, but I don’t. I busy myself with cutting two big slices of cake, and I back away from him with the plates held to my stomach. I don’t like his metallic eyes. I turn my back on him and head to Paul on the couch.

  “Do you want me to hold her while you eat your cake?” Grandma asks him, already lifting Mirabelle off his lap. The baby kicks at Grandma’s legs until she’s comfortable, and then she snuggles into the crook of her elbow, looking sleepy.

  I sit on the arm of the couch next to Paul and give him his cake. “Who’s that guy?” he asks warily, nodding in Frank’s direction.

  “Margot’s boyfriend, I guess,” I say.

  He doesn’t seem to taste his cake as he studies Frank’s black jeans and tattoos and unlaced sneakers. “He doesn’t seem to fit here. Everyone else is so nice, but he’s so . . .”

  “Oily.”

  “There’s something not right about him.”

  “What is it, do you think?” I ask, not because I want to find out about Frank, but because I want to find out about Paul. I like the way he sees things.

  Paul watches Frank snake one arm around Margot and nuzzle her neck with his nose. “It’s like he’s pretending to like being with people. He’s pretending to have fun.”

  To try to see what Paul sees, I watch Frank. He has one hand tucked into the front pocket of his jeans, and he’s listening to Margot talk, but he’s always a beat behind. When Margot says something, he has to ask her what she said, then he laughs a little too late.

  Paul is right. He’s pretending.

  “Poor guy,” Paul says.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he knows. He’s not really welcome here.”

  I look around the room. Nancy is sipping from a mug, standing not three feet away from Frank. She has her head down, and she’s watching him from the corner of her eye. Dad is standing by the kitchen talking to Adam, and they both keep glancing over at Frank. He is making everyone here nervous.

  Xander comes over and sits on the coffee table in front of Paul. “I’m Zen’s big sister.” Now, more than ever, I wish my sister would wear a damn bra.

  “Nice to meet you,” Paul says, and shakes her hand. I like the way he is friendly to her, but a little aloof too. It’s a way of being nice to me.

  “Can I see you on the porch?” Xander asks me.

  “Sure,” I say. I put my cake down on the end table and follow her out. We sit in the porch swing, and she gets it going with one slippered foot.

  “Thanks oh so much for this surprise party,” she says, and pinches my shoulder.

  “It’s not my fault you never bothered to get dressed today!”

  “I’m fully clothed.”

  “And what the hell about Margot’s boyfriend? Huh?”

  She jabs her finger in my face. “Don’t you breathe a word of that to her!”

  “I won’t. I wouldn’t want to hurt her.”

  “I’m not going into it with you, so you can keep your judgmental crap to yourself.”

  The screen door wheezes open, and Adam comes out. “What the hell is that creep doing here, Xander?”

  “I didn’t invite him.”

  “He’s with Margot!”

  “Yeah. So?” She bolts off the porch swing. “It’s not like we messed around. I accepted a ride home from him.”

  “Xander, come on.” Adam takes Xander’s shoulders and shakes her, gently. “You have got to get yourself under control.”

  “Or what?” She practically spits the words in his face.

  “God!” I yell. “I’m sick to death of you two fighting all the time.”

  “Who cares?” Xander takes a cigarette out of the pocket of her pajama pants and taps it on the back of a matchbook. Adam throws up his hands and marches back into the house.

  “Since when do you smoke?” I ask her.

  “I sometimes smoke. So what?” She lights the cigarette and draws in deeply. “Oh, that’s good.”

  “It smells like rancid incense.”

  She ignores me, and sits down on the top porch step. She kisses the cigarette quietly, tracing the blue smoke with her eyes as it floats up to mingle with the tree branches above her. “I got another letter,” she says quietly. “Came with the gas bill.”

  “What does it say?”

  She pulls it out of the rear pocket of her flannel pants and hands it to me. She laughs, as though trying to discredit it.

  Dear Xander,

  Happy birthday, my sweetheart! I hope that you’re celebrating and enjoying yourself today.

  You are, by now, preparing yourself for college. I ordered you a nice wool blazer for your birthday. It is a professional-looking jacket, and it will look good with jeans. It should be arriving this week. Now that you’re a college woman, I thought you might like to look the part a little. Gabardine never fails.

  Knowing you, I’m sure that you’ll conquer college just like you conquer everything else. I do want to warn you, though, honey, that your professors might not respond as indulgently to your big personality as your high school teachers have. A small amount of reserve in this arena might serve you well.

  You’re like me in this way. You hold back when you should declare yourself, and you’re flamboyant where you should be still. Sweetheart, don’t make the same mistakes I’ve made. Don’t sell yourself short professionally. Work your tail off in undergrad so that you can get your Ph.D. And don’t shortchange yourself personally, either. A lot of people get only one love. Don’t squander it.

  I love you, my beautiful little hellion,

  Mom

  I fold it back up, careful not to make any new creases, and hand it back to her.

  “What do you think that means?” she asks me darkly. “Don’t make the same mistakes?”

  I have to swallow around the big lump in my throat. “I don’t want to take it apart with you, Xander.”

  She sits back down on the swing and whispers through smoky breath, “Do you think it means she regretted marrying Dad?”

  “I don’t know.” I look through Nancy’s lace curtains at Dad, who is leaning against the kitchen doorway, nodding uncomfortably at Neil, who is telling him some story about being a mechanic. “She always seemed pretty happy with him, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, she did.” She takes a long drag on her cigarette before flicking ash into a flowerpot. “I just wish I knew what it meant.”

  This makes me very angry. “It doesn’t matter what it means, Xander. That letter isn’t even to you anymore.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Xander looks pale and hard, so far from who she was a year ago.

  I want to hurt her. Maybe then she’ll wake up out of this awful nightmare she’s become.

  “That letter was written to the old Xander, before you started going out every night, and smoking, and doing drugs, and sleeping around.” I measure my words like gunpowder. “If Mom came back alive today, she wouldn’t even recognize you.”

  I expect Xander to scream at me, but she doesn’t. She just rolls her eyes, laughs, and throws her burning cigarette into the rosebushes before marching back inside.

&n
bsp; It takes me five minutes to find it, smoldering in dry leaves.

  When I get back inside, I find the party already breaking up. “What’s going on?” I ask Xander, who is gathering paper plates.

  “I’m going home to get dressed, and then Margot and I have another party to go to,” Xander says. She straightens, a teasing glint in her eye. “Want to come?” she asks, knowing that I won’t. I hate parties like the one she’s talking about, where there are tons of people I don’t know expecting me to act the way they act, drink what they drink, and measure myself by how they treat me. If she thought there was a chance in hell I’d take her up on the invitation, she’d never have offered it. Which really makes me mad.

  “Hmm. Maybe I will come along,” I say, just to tease her. “If Paul can.”

  “I can come,” Paul says eagerly. “I just have to drop off Mirabelle first.”

  Adam steps forward, his eyes hard. “That’s a great idea. Let’s all go see what Xander does in her spare time.”

  Xander narrows her eyes angrily at him, but she tosses her hair, the picture of nonchalance. “Fine. Sounds like a great time,” she says.

  All the while, Frank is watching our conversation with determined eyes.

  The Other Party

  THAT’S HOW ADAM, Paul, and I ended up sitting on a scratchy log, watching Xander and Margot take beer bong hits under a canopy of stars somewhere in the deep Vermont woods. Topher is holding the girls as they lean backwards, and Frank is pouring the beer down their throats. As he fits the nozzle into Xander’s mouth, Frank looks at her almost tenderly. It’s a weird combination to force a liter of beer down someone’s throat with gentleness. It doesn’t match up.

  “Booyah!” Xander yells as she wipes the beer from her chin.

  I can tell Xander thinks she’s being naughty and interesting. That she’s sexy like this. But I watch Adam as he watches her weaving around, and there’s nothing in his eyes but disgust.

  She is disgusting like this. Beer has spilled down her shirt, which sticks to her skin in a mess of wrinkles. Her jeans are hanging on her hips, making her look sloppy. She can’t walk straight, and she’s trying to act cool, but her performance is false and sad. Everyone else at the party is watching her, but not with admiration. They’re laughing at her.