Cecily Von Ziegesar (12 page)

I
n driver's ed they teach you that most accidents happen on familiar roads close to home. You relax and let your guard down. It is then that you are at your most vulnerable. Adam thought about this every time he drove home from Dexter. He never seemed to drive on roads that were unfamiliar, which meant, basically, that he was an accident waiting to happen.

“Adam!” Ellen Gatz hollered across the yard from the barn as Adam pulled up to the house. “Your sister's in there talking on the phone with some friend of yours named Shun Lee!”

Adam tore inside the house, only to find that Tragedy had already hung up.

“Shipley's down the road babysitting and the kid won't stop crying,” she explained. “Why in fuck's name she called here, I don't know, but I said I'd go over and help.”

“I'll drive you.” Adam lunged for the door. “Come on.”

The road was a blur. The car seemed to zoom along on its own. All Adam could think about was Shipley. She was all he'd been thinking about for weeks.

“Hi,” she said, greeting them at the door, cheeks puffy and eyes rimmed with pink from crying. “Adam, you came too?”

“Yes,” Adam answered robotically. From inside the house came a piercing, forlorn shriek followed by a series of breathless choking wails. The baby sounded like it was being tortured. “I came to help,” he said bravely.

Shipley backed away cautiously, as if she'd just remembered that it wasn't her baby or her house. “Well, I guess you should come in.”

The kitchen stank of cigarettes. A half-empty bottle of white wine stood open on the kitchen counter. Tragedy didn't wait for the grand tour, she just headed upstairs to Beetle's room, leaving Adam and Shipley to stare at each other in the kitchen.

“How was play rehearsal?” Shipley asked. Now that he was standing in front of her, she knew why she'd been avoiding him.

“Good,” Adam said. “Better than before. I think it's actually going to be good.”

“Great!” She glanced at the stairs. “Maybe we should go up and see how they're doing.”

“Okay,” Adam agreed, reluctant to give up this moment alone together, but eager for a distraction.

He followed her up the stairs, admiring the neat sway of her trim rear end. No awkward creases or excess flab. She probably looks even better naked, he thought, forgetting to breathe.

Shipley tried to march upstairs in the least provocative way possible. If only she'd worn her favorite jeans, the ones that made her legs look longer and thinner and her waist extra slim. She sucked in her breath, hoping it would make a difference from behind.

They reached the landing, panting. Beetle's room was directly in front of them.

“He's wet,” Tragedy explained, expertly picking up the baby
from his crib. She rocked him back and forth, her Amazonian body swaying with motherly grace. “Aren't you, bud? Well, I'm gonna fix it. Don't you worry. It's okay. I was a little squirt like you once. I remember how bad it sucks.”

Shipley and Adam stood mutely in the doorway as she laid Beetle down on the rug and removed the legs of his terry-cloth suit. His diaper was swollen and yellow.

“Lookit all that pee,” Tragedy crooned as she removed the soiled diaper and replaced it with a fresh one. Beetle had stopped crying. He smiled his toothless, goofy smile at his new adored aunty. “Lookit that little wiener. It's like a worm. Just a little worm.”

“Thanks so much for coming over,” Shipley said. The doorway was narrow. She and Adam were practically touching.

“It's hard to imagine how guys ever get to be guys looking at a precious little fucker like this, huh?” Tragedy zipped Beetle up into a clean terry-cloth jumpsuit. This one had orange and brown tiger stripes and four little points on the end of each of the footies, like tiger claws. “There you go, hot stuff.” She kissed the tip of Beetle's nose and picked him up, flying him over her head like a human airplane. “One day I'm going to have at least twelve of these things. My own crazy crew. Babies and animals everywhere.”

Shipley and Adam stared blankly back at her, both focused on the humming centimeter of space between them.

“Why don't you guys go make some coffee or something while I try to put him down?” Tragedy suggested. “Does he have a bottle?”

“Oh, I forgot about the bottle.” Shipley dashed downstairs and came back with the breast-shaped bottle from the fridge. “This is what they said to use.”

Tragedy took the bottle and held it against her chest. “Ha!
Mine are bigger.” She sat down in the rocking chair in the corner and settled Beetle in her lap to drink his milk. She watched him drink for a while and then turned to glare at Shipley and Adam, still standing in the doorway. “Would you please get the fuck out of here?”

Adam backed away and headed downstairs.

“Are you sure?” Shipley asked, desperate to follow him.

“Uh-huh,” Tragedy said without looking up.

Downstairs Adam opened and closed the kitchen cupboards. Shipley went over to the sink and flushed the mound of cigarette ash down the drain.

“They don't have any coffee,” she told him. “I checked.”

He opened the refrigerator door. “Are you thirsty?” he asked.

“No.”

“Me neither,” he said, closing it again.

It was dark outside. The house was quiet save for the rattling November wind. Shipley glanced at the radio, wondering if she should turn it back on.

“Did you see the scarecrow?” she asked.

“No. Yes. I've seen it before,” Adam said. “Pretty crazy.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Adam's hair was a deeper red than Shipley remembered. It was auburn. And his freckles had faded a little. He looked thinner too, and taller. “Your sister got mad when I called. She said you were…upset.” She leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Are you…Is it…better?”

Adam watched her mouth move, reveling in the notion that it was moving for his sake. In his incessant Shipley fantasies they never did much talking, only kissing. He wasn't prepared for talking.

“I was disappointed,” he admitted, pressing his back against the fridge. “Because I thought we were…friends.”

Maybe it was the wine and cigarettes going to her head, but Shipley was suddenly struck by how very similar this scene was to the laundry room fantasy she'd had at home while packing for college.

Her mother, who dry-cleaned everything except her underwear, insisted that Shipley learn to use a washer and dryer.

“There won't be any cleaning lady at college, and you can't use the laundry service because they shrink everything. Your dorm will have a laundry room,” she instructed, handing over the manuals to the household Maytags. “The best times to wash your clothes are first thing in the morning or late at night. Otherwise the laundry room will be so busy your clothes will wrinkle waiting for the dryer.”

The task of washing her own clothes was so foreign to Shipley as to seem romantic. The words “gentle spin” and “tumble dry” evoked thoughts of a handsome stranger who would wander into the laundry room while she was folding her clothes.

“Let me help,” he'd say, picking up her laciest bra. He'd continue folding her panties and bras until, unable to control his desire, he'd tear off her clothes, dropping them one by one into an open washer. Then he'd remove his own clothes and ravish her on top of the warm, agitating machines. It would be their secret, these late-night laundry room trysts, with the washing machine spinning so noisily they'd never even learn each other's name.

The refrigerator hummed. Shipley smiled shyly up at Adam, as if he were reading the part in her diary where she'd written about him.
He
was the handsome stranger in the laundry room. She took a step toward him, and then another. “I'm going to kiss you,” she whispered as she slipped her arms around his neck. And then she did, slamming his head back against the freezer door like the uninhibited adulteress in her daydream.

They kissed in the kitchen for a long time. Adam tried to
remain calm and keep his hands quietly at her waist, but Shipley slipped her hands beneath his T-shirt, causing his heart to explode out of his chest, and then his hands were all over her.

“Is it safe to come down?” Tragedy whispered from the top of the stairs.

Adam tore his mouth away from Shipley's. “No! Keep playing with the baby.”

A moment later headlights flashed through the kitchen windows. Professor Rosen and her partner were back.

“They're here!” Tragedy called.

“Shit.” Shipley wiped her mouth on her sleeve and tucked her hair behind her ears. “It's okay. I'll tell them you stopped by to study,” she said quickly. “They won't mind.” She corked the wine and stuck it back in the fridge.

Tragedy came downstairs with the empty breast bottle in her hand. “At least he's asleep.”

Beetle. Shipley had forgotten all about him. Adam just stood there with his hands in his pockets, grinning.

“Hello, hello. I see you have company.” Blanche pushed open the kitchen door, her cheeks flushed from red wine and cold wind.

“How was it?” Professor Rosen asked as she came into the kitchen. “Oh, hello, Adam.” She removed her jade earrings and tossed them on the countertop. Her cheeks were flushed too. “Is everything okay?”

“We had to go over something for Geology,” Shipley blurted out, even though Adam didn't take Geology. “Beetle's asleep. He's fine. What an easy baby!”

“And who might you be?” Blanche smiled at Tragedy.

Tragedy didn't care for pleasantries. “Adam's sister.” She pushed past them and stepped onto the porch. “Come on, Adam, the sheep are waiting.”

Shipley remained in the kitchen, her ears tuned to the sound of Adam and Tragedy pulling away in Adam's car. Blanche went upstairs to check on Beetle. Professor Rosen rooted around in her purse for Shipley's pay.

She handed Shipley a wad of bills and sniffed the air. “Do you smell smoke?”

Shipley wrinkled her nose and shook her head. She was a terrible liar.

“Darren read your poem to me in the car,” Blanche trilled as she came downstairs. “It's very good. You should submit it to
A Muse
.”
A Muse
was Dexter's biannual literary journal. “I basically run the thing so I can tell you now we'll publish it.”

“Thanks.” Shipley stuffed the money into her sweatshirt pocket. Knowing that Professor Rosen had shared the poem with Blanche might have been more troublesome if her mind wasn't preoccupied with how fun it had been to slam Adam's head against the freezer door—who knew she had it in her?—and how fantastically illicit it had been to kiss him in Professor Rosen's kitchen. She considered driving straight over to his house so they could pick up where they left off.

Professor Rosen opened a cupboard door and took out two clean jam jars. “That boyfriend of yours—Tom? Wow, did he ever knock my socks off today at rehearsal.”

Shipley started at the mention of Tom's name. What was she doing kissing another guy in Professor Rosen's kitchen when she already had a perfectly decent boyfriend? In one of her more recent fantasies, Tom parked his dove-gray Porsche convertible in the two-car garage of their Hamptons beach house, right next to her red one, before making love to her on the beach while the surf crashed behind them. Adam was more lawnmower than Porsche. And Tom was already hers. He was probably waiting for her in his room right now, boxers off, socks
on, snuggled beneath his flannel sheets with his Economics textbook.

Blanche opened the fridge and located the half-empty bottle of wine. “Can I get you anything?” she asked Shipley.

“No, thank you.” Shipley swept her bag off the kitchen counter. It was best to leave before either of them noticed the rug burn on Beetle's forehead or the smelly cigarette butts in the trash. “I have to go.”

“Don't forget to vote on Tuesday!” Professor Rosen shouted after her.

 

T
om was not under the covers. He was just getting started on a new painting. He'd brought over a fresh canvas from the art building and was busy mixing shades of apricot and taupe, trying to achieve the perfect match for his own skin. His pulse was raging. He gnashed his teeth and tore off his shirt. He could paint himself. He could paint directly
on
himself! He selected a new brush and squirted a blob of black paint on the palette. He would paint himself to look like one of those Greek statues, with pecs like fucking Hercules.

“What are you doing?” Shipley opened the door and stared at him as he traced the outline of his godlike nipples.

Tom threw down his brush. “You! You're here! Oh, you're so freaking beautiful.”

“No, I'm not,” she protested.

“Come here,” Tom said. “Take off your clothes so I can paint you.”

Shipley went over and leafed through the finished paintings on his desk, an assortment of Eliza's outsized gory body parts in various stages of undress. She fidgeted with the zipper on her Greenwich Academy sweatshirt.

“Why don't you just do my head, with the window in the background? That might look sort of cool.”

Tom came over and pulled down her zipper. He brushed her hair away from her collarbone. “I want to paint you naked,” he said, kissing her neck.

Shipley stiffened. Something about Tom was different. His whole body was covered in a layer of slick, cold sweat, and his voice was throaty and hoarse. “Are you okay?”

“I took some E with the Grannies. And I knocked the balls off of play practice. I fucking ruled.” Tom yanked off her sweatshirt and unbuttoned her jeans. “I want to paint you right now,” he told her urgently. “Naked.”

Shipley was no exhibitionist—she never even wore tight jeans. On the beaches in Martinique all the girls took their tops off. They lay on their backs in the sand, soaking up the sun in calm oblivion. But when Shipley tried it, she felt like she was being cooked. Her nipples had shriveled into raisins. She'd tied her top back on and splashed into the water, hiding her shame beneath the waves.