All We Know of Love (11 page)

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.

“It’s great, Dad. The snow is great.” Just as I say this, a bright light flashes across the highway and illuminates the raindrops outside like a strobe. They appear to freeze in time, followed by a loud clap of thunder.

“Gotta go, Dad,” I say. “Love you.”

I flip my phone shut and the magazine lady gives me the dirtiest look, like she’s got something to say about all this.

Get a life, why don’t you?

Who does she think
she
is? Like she never lied to anyone?

Bet you didn’t have any friends in high school, lady.

Seventeen
magazine assured Marissa that her prom night would be the best night of her life — if only she were sure to follow seven important steps.
Glamour
magazine had a whole spring issue dedicated to how to look the best at your high-school prom. Have a snack, take a bath, make a list, have some water, strike a pose, advised
Cosmopolitan.
Marissa devoured every magazine article as if starving, hungry for the words that would shape her story. And make her happy.

One magazine suggested getting a tan, so as not to look washed-out in the photos. After all, photos last a lifetime. This was promised to be the best, most important night of her entire life.

Still, as she lay under the lights at Sunsations Tanning Salon for her final twenty-minute treatment before the prom, for some reason Marissa’s mind fell backward. And back, so that she couldn’t stop it. And it landed her the summer before boys, the summer before sixth grade.

At the Mohonk Mountain resort, where her best friend’s father worked maintaining the hundreds of wooden gazebos that sat along the trails, and in the gardens, and beside the lake, in all places of magic. Lying flat as she could, Marissa remembered that she spent almost every night that summer at her best friend’s house, and they spent every single day up at Mohonk.

Marissa never took off all of her clothes in the tanning booth, but she lowered the straps of her bikini so she wouldn’t have embarrassing white lines. Her prom dress was a strapless A-line, pink. Marissa adjusted the plastic cups over her eyes and settled into the warmth of a coffin that emanated ultraviolet light.

Even though they say you are not supposed to, Marissa felt heat as she fell ever backward.

A single bead of sweat raced down her back, thirst dried her mouth, still Marissa and her best friend wouldn’t hide inside, where it was cool. They had to run. It was summer. The whole world was theirs. The entire hotel, the cold glacier lake, the paddleboats, the trails up to the tower, the lemon squeeze, the candy shop, horse stables. Everything but the golf course. You were not allowed on the golf course.

Except of course, late at night, when together they snuck out of their beds. In the moonlight, their white nightgowns glowed like cobwebs after a rain. Freshly cut grass stuck to their bare feet, thick between their toes. No time to stop. They ran. Reaching up into the night sky, pretending to fly, pretending to swim. Pretending, and not having to, because there was nothing but this moment. No need for anyone but each other — to see them, or watch them, or tell them they were content.

They dropped to the damp ground with their arms above their heads, holding each other’s hands, and rolled down hill after hill. They stood up, dizzy and laughing, and ran to the next. Never letting go.

Marissa opened her eyes because something gripped her like a panic. She pushed open the lid of the tanning bed just enough to sit up and swing her legs over the side. She didn’t even look at the timer. Or worry about her uneven tan lines, or her diet, or the party bus, or whether her date even knew her last name, which she knew he probably didn’t.

What was that friend’s name?

She couldn’t remember. It wasn’t that long ago, damn it. What was her name? They had been best friends, the summer before sixth grade, the summer before boys.

Adam wanted me, and I never got a chance to consider whether I had wanted him back or not. Then after a while, that distinction became irrelevant. Because I had fallen in love.

Adam had a way of holding me in his arms that made the whole world disappear. Part of it was his height, that my head rested perfectly in a hidden-away place just under his shoulder. Part of it had to do with the length and strength of his arms, which wrapped completely around
me,
hiding me away.

It was easy to forget about everything else.

“I’m crazy about you, Natty,” Adam said.

I liked that, too. Loved it.
I’m crazy about you.
It was better than “I love you.” It meant that he was out of control, somehow couldn’t help himself. Not responsible for his actions, just as I wasn’t.

The first time it hurt.

It did. And I bled a little, like a ritual coloring, rite of passage. I coveted the brownish stain on the inside of my leg, the tiny spots on my underwear. I thrilled at the blood sacrifice. I would soak in every detail, regarding this a milestone. My ultimate passage into womanhood.

Adam drove me home that night; we sat in his car by the curb outside my house saying good-bye. I was still sore between my legs. I had to pee so badly, and I knew it was going to sting when I did. But I wouldn’t have shortened this time together for anything in the world, least of all for myself. Our warm breathing, our whispered talking, had already fogged up all the windows. It was mid-October, dark and chilly out. Condensation happens.

Adam wrote my name with his finger on the wet glass. He stopped saying anything. He kissed me, holding my face in his hands. That was his signal. I knew he was ready for me to leave.

Open the door. Get out of the car. Say good-bye.

Sure,
I told myself,
I can say good-bye.

Can’t I?

I wanted something in that moment, something more, something much more. A promise of some kind, a long cord. A long invisible cord that would stretch as far as either of us could travel. Good-bye didn’t feel adequate at all. In fact, it felt like the antithesis of what I was looking for. There should be some new words for this, another expression.
I belong to you now. I gave myself to you.

We are parting but only in a physical sense.
I am yours now.

But what I didn’t know then was that just because something belongs to someone doesn’t mean they know how to take care of it.

Richmond.

The bus has arrived in Virginia, and it must be dinnertime, because everyone is breaking out the brown bags and Tupperware again. The guy next to me offers me a piece of his sushi, but this time I have some snacks of my own. Everything I bought that Claire didn’t like. The woman across from me offers me one of her magazines.

“Thanks.”

She’s not so bad.

Richmond.

We have a forty-five-minute wait here.

Next stop in four hours. Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Just moving right along.

“Oh, sorry,” the man in the seat next to me is saying when his hand slips and touches my arm for an instant. He pulls it farther away than he needs, giving me more than my share of the armrest.

But I appreciate it. He is far too sensitive about my personal space
not
to be gay, and that makes me feel safe. Saf-er.

“It’s OK,” I tell him.

“It’s crowded,” he says.

“Yeah.”

He looks at me, and I know I am right. There’s just a sense I get from him. Or a lack of one.

Because there is always that radar in my brain that goes on whenever I am near a stranger, someone bigger, stronger. Male. Different. Because there is always a potential danger. Sometimes you can sense it; sometimes you can’t. Sometimes it is obvious, and crude, and even illegal, and other times it is not.

Some danger is avoidable; some is not. Some is in our control. Some is not.

In any case, I remember the exact moment I discovered what it was to be female in this world.

To be forever vulnerable.

We were riding bikes, Sarah and I, back to my house from town, our week’s library books stuffed in our knapsacks. It was late summer, maybe early fall. I just know it was beautiful out, not too hot. Perfect. Everything was perfect.

Sarah’s stick-thin legs, all muscle, stretched out long from her cutoff shorts. I remember my body had gotten rounder, that summer before sixth grade. I had the tiny beginnings of breasts where Sarah had none. The top part of my legs wider than my shins and calves, my hips fuller. It already bothered me; my body embarrassed me. I tried to never let my legs lie flat on a chair or a seat when anyone could see me.

But that afternoon we just pedaled and pedaled, letting our skin moisten with sweat and letting the air rushing by cool us off.

I could forget all those other things, with my body in motion. Free and unseen.

We came to the intersection, where the road split. One way up toward the mountain; the other stayed companion to the river and the cornfields. We both stopped, tipping our bikes with one leg for balance, when a pickup truck pulled up alongside. There was a stop sign, so we didn’t think anything of it.

I remember this as my last thought as an innocent little kid:
I am a car. Vroom. Vroom.

It was the three of us, revving our engines, preparing to pull away from the start with the drop of the imaginary checkered flag.