Helen seemed to deflate a little herself. She looked away, and I watched her catch herself just as she went to do that lip thing.
“See?” I said, pointing. “You lick your lip! You do it on purpose!”
“Um, hi, I’m not flirting with
you
, Gus. ”
“You flirt with everyone,
Helen.
You’ve been doing it since you were eighteen.”
“Anyway, it’s automatic,” she said, but she didn’t do it again.
We stood there for a moment, and the wretched absurdity of the situation rose up and threatened to choke me. Here Helen and I were, standing on a staircase, fighting over a guy I might have just realized wasn’t worth it. If I didn’t escape this situation that I’d helped make, I might be the first person in the history of the world to
actually
implode. I felt it coming, boiling up inside me like the stomach flu.
And with it, the unwelcome thought that none of this had ever been about Nate. Not really.
“Okay,” I said briskly. “This has been unpleasant and I guess I’m going to go—”
“Did you sleep with him?” she asked, cutting me off.
I was convinced I hadn’t heard that right.
“What?”
“I want to know if you slept with him that night,” she said, shifting on her feet a little bit so that she suddenly looked stiff and almost wooden. “Why else would he call you so many times?”
She didn’t look at me. It was the anti-Helen. No flirtatiousness or
leaning.
Just words.
I stared at her. “Is this a joke?”
She pursed her lips slightly. “I have to know.”
“And you can’t ask him?” I asked. The evil part of me started to enjoy herself. “It must suck, not being able to trust your boyfriend.”
Helen just watched me, saying nothing.
Maybe Helen was right. Maybe there really was a
girl like me.
Because the urge to mess with her almost overcame me. Why shouldn’t she get to feel the way I felt? Why shouldn’t she taste a little bit of her own medicine? Her performance in my apartment the day after the Park Plaza came to mind. How would she like it if I pulled that on her? Why shouldn’t I play her game?
Because he just wasn’t worth it, I told myself. Reluctantly. I could tell her I’d slept with him, and embroil myself in who knew how much further drama with the two of them, or I could tell her the truth and wash my hands of them both right there and then. I could continue being an immature brat or I could grow up, for once.
It was a harder call than it should have been.
“No,” I said, without realizing that was what I’d decided. “We didn’t sleep together. I never even saw him that night. He just left me messages.” I held her gaze and remembered something she’d said to me once. “I’m not like you.”
She didn’t like the last part, but still she looked relieved. And why shouldn’t she? I’d just given her my boyfriend.
Her
boyfriend. I wasn’t sure, suddenly, that he had ever been mine.
She knew it, too. Her eyes were calculating as they swept over me, no doubt looking for my angle.
I didn’t know it myself.
“Merry Christmas, Helen,” I told her softly, and then I went to find my coat.
F
or the first time in years, since I’d left for school when I was eighteen, I was
delighted
to escape to my childhood home for the holidays. Everything in Boston had gotten way too out of control, and the best way to deal with that was to relax into the embrace of my mother’s decidedly anti-Atkins, anti-Food Pyramid holiday cooking.
Which I did with such dedication that I thought about very little else for days, except, occasionally, my expanding waistline. Happily, that was what sweats were for.
Things I was not thinking about included:
Nate Manning, and his conspiratorial smiles. The ones that reeled you in and ruined you, because you thought they were something special.
Amy Lee’s deafening, spine-crushing silence.
Helen Fairchild, who had said things I found I just couldn’t dismiss, much as I tried. I could dismiss a lot of her
that girl
behavior, but I couldn’t dismiss the fact that despite it, we’d remained some form of friends for over a decade.
The way Henry had looked at me at that last party, as if I was a deep disappointment to him. As if he’d never known he was supposed to be off-limits in the first place. Which made me ache.
My emotional immaturity, particularly as pointed out by Amy Lee.
Nate, Helen, Henry, and me; my rectangle of ridiculousness.
And finally, the fact that my family clearly thought I was “going through something,” if their overly careful manner around me was any indication. It reminded me of my actual teenage years. (On the upside, they’d all seemed to enjoy their presents, which was a point in my favor, I thought.)
After a few days, the joys of ingesting cookies by the handful in between three square meals a day paled somewhat, and I headed back into Boston. I might have been imagining my father’s sigh of relief when he left me at my place, but I wasn’t entirely sure. He could just as easily have been cursing the snow as my unpleasant attitude.
I picked up Linus from the kennel that same day, and despite his tremendous joy at seeing me again—which he expressed in the form of big, slurpy kisses and a lot of protest barking—my apartment seemed lonelier than before. I kicked my duffel bag into the bedroom and then returned to look around at the exact same things I’d been looking at for the past decade. I sat in my living room and glowered at the posters on the wall for a good long while, and then, just like that, I decided I’d had enough.
Unless I planned to move, which I didn’t, it was time to stop brooding and start living up to my conception of myself.
I didn’t even unpack my bag, I just set about the most intense spring-cleaning my apartment had ever undergone. I pulled down all the posters, sorted all the books, and hauled everything collegiate, untouched, ridiculous, or otherwise embarrassing out of the apartment in garbage bags.
It was brutal, and there were many painful moments. In the depths of my closet, for example, I located the baggy flannel shirt my post-grunge college crush had left in my possession. It was right next to a selection of old mix tapes from high school, piled high in a dusty brown bag, all of them so old the song lists had faded away. I got rid of both the shirt and the bag, but it hurt more than I wanted to admit.
It was mid-afternoon on my second day of Total Life Reorganization—which had involved, that morning, the purchase of actual bookshelves I planned to hang on the wall as opposed to the rickety mishmash of bookcases I’d picked up here and there over the years—when there was a knock on my door.
My heart raced a little bit, but I had, thankfully, gotten it under control by the time I opened the door. Which was a good thing, since the person standing there was Irwin.
“Oh,” I said, blinking at him. Partly because I was feeling a touch crazed, and partly because Irwin wasn’t wearing his trademark robe, preferring to rock the holiday appliqué sweater and a pair of elastic-waisted jeans. “I must be making a lot of noise. I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” he said, blinking right back at me and the chaos that must have been clearly visible behind me. “Are you moving out?”
He restrained his probable joy at this prospect, which made it possible for me to be polite.
“Just cleaning out the college-era stuff,” I said, not pausing to consider the possibility that Irwin might not be as fascinated by this process as I was. “Which is pretty much my entire apartment and everything I own. All I have to do is get this ratty furniture out of here, and figure out how to get my new bookshelves on the wall, and I’ll be good to go. Don’t worry, I shouldn’t make too much noise after dark.”
Irwin stood there, the gold menorah on his dark blue sweater practically glowing in the hallway. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again, then shifted his weight from foot to foot, and I was starting to think we would stand there forever when he finally spat it out.
“Why don’t I help you?” he asked, and then turned bright red.
He didn’t
blush a little.
He
turned crimson.
It was somewhat alarming.
The old Gus would have screamed
no way
, slammed the door, and mocked the man mercilessly with her friends.
The new Gus decided that the man just wanted to be neighborly, and maybe even friendly. If our shared history was anything to go by, he didn’t interact with others often, and if his continuing blush was any further indication, this was a big deal for him.
The new Gus also wanted the damn furniture out of her apartment, and she couldn’t do it alone, superhero fantasies or no. She also had few options for mocking calls to friends, since Amy Lee was off the list and Georgia had all her calls forwarded to voice mail.
“That would be really nice of you,” I told Irwin with a big smile and let him inside.
With Irwin’s help (his name, I discovered, was Steve, but I was never going to be able to think of him as a
Steve
), I removed all the mismatched curbside furniture I’d collected since college and left it on the curb for the next owner to locate. There was a sense of closure in that—from the curb my furniture came, and to the curb it was returned. I was confident that Boston’s student population would help themselves to it all before nightfall.
Irwin/Steve turned out to be handy with power tools, and before I knew it, the walls in my living room and bedroom were lined with matching, uniform bookshelves—the kind that weren’t made of crappy plywood, and which housed my books without taking up floor space. It turned out that my apartment was significantly more spacious than I’d realized—since I hadn’t
seen
parts of the floor since I’d moved in.
It also turned out that Irwin/Steve was significantly nicer than I’d imagined. He was a freelance writer of nonfiction articles who lived on caffeine and deadlines, which explained his rage over my numerous interruptions to his routine. He was also the owner of a pickup truck, so the next day my new friend and I took a trip to the Pottery Barn near Copley Square and I blew a huge chunk of my savings on an overstuffed love seat, chair, and ottoman, all in a deep burgundy color with plentiful pillows. This was furniture that made me happy just looking at it. Irwin helped me haul my new, grown-up furniture back to the apartment, and I ordered us a pizza to celebrate.
After he left that night to work on another article with a looming deadline, I sat in the quiet of my new, improved home, and liked what I saw around me.
In a few short days, my apartment had been transformed from a sad and pathetic dorm room into a cozy, comfortable place that I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave. I needed a few accents, to be sure, but my home was
homey
for the first time. A place to read and relax, and, I was sure, grow up. You would have to, in such an environment. The apartment itself demanded it.
And if I could effect that kind of change in my apartment—the
pit of dormitory despair
as Amy Lee had once called it—I figured it couldn’t be too difficult to work a little spring-cleaning on myself. A new year was coming, I was turning thirty in just two days, and it was high time I introduced the new, improved Gus to the world. I was fuzzy on the details, but I knew the basic outline. I knew how I
wanted
to be, it was simply a question of
being
who I wanted to be.
I thought I had had it all figured out before. I’d had
the plan
perfectly clear in my head. I wasn’t going to cross over into thirty without the triple crown in hand: serious boyfriend, career, and great friends. But then Nate hadn’t acted according to the plan. And I didn’t know what had happened to my friends. I didn’t know if anything was fixable, either. But I had the career, sure, so score one for me.
It was time to accept that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to have it all figured out by the time I turned thirty. Maybe I could just work on me, and see what else fell into place.
I was pretty sure that was otherwise known as
living.
“I haven’t heard a peep out of Amy Lee and I’m guessing we’re not going to,” Georgia barked down the phone line late that night, without the slightest preamble. “Because as we’ve discussed, she’s better than us and therefore not required to behave the way she wants other people to behave.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know what to say,” I suggested, as an alternative view.
I was lounging on my new love seat, enjoying the feel of the fabric and the view of my new bookshelves. Some people lusted after cars, which had never made sense to me. For me, bookshelves could inspire whole spontaneous sonnets, so maybe it was an
each to her own
scenario.
Anyway, just being near them made me feel optimistic and charitable.
“Whatever,” Georgia said. She was clearly nowhere near any bookshelves. “The point of this phone call is that I rented a car and I’m picking you up tomorrow morning at ten-fifteen. And don’t you dare do that thing you do, with all that
oh I’m
almost
packed
nonsense, okay?”
Our friend Lorraine, who was famous for over-the-top parties ever since a memorable graduation extravaganza back in school, had taken over the entirety of a sprawling cliff-top mansion of a hotel that commanded nearly panoramic views of the bay below. According to Lorraine’s e-mail,
The place is unbelievably high class—in the summer you practically have to be a Kennedy to get a room in the Hill House—but this is the off-season, people! We’re gonna just PRETEND to be Kennedys!
Perhaps because she was feeling thirty approach, Lorraine had decided the time had come to be famous for a new extravagant party.
Everyone we knew was going.
“Ten-
fifteen
,” I told Georgia, with extra emphasis on the
fifteen.
“I hate it when you show up early. You know that’s as rude, if not ruder, than being late, right?”
“Just be ready,” Georgia ordered. “These are dark days, Gus. Don’t force me to take out my mood on you.”
That was why I didn’t tell her that we had a problem, which I had opened my mouth to do. I didn’t want to have the fight in advance. I just wanted to bask in the glow of what felt like a brand-new apartment and thus a brand-new life.
Everything else—Amy Lee, Nate, Helen, even my assorted misconceptions about Henry—was just so much detritus.
I’d taken the actual detritus of my life and placed it on the curb.
I could do it emotionally, too.
All I had to do was start cleaning out the corners, and work from there.
“What the hell happened in here?” Georgia demanded the next morning. She’d arrived—as I’d expected—a few minutes before ten. Now she was standing just inside the doorway, actually gaping at the apartment as if she’d never seen it before.
Which, of course, she hadn’t.
“I had a sudden attack of adulthood.” I finished off my coffee and grinned at her. “It’s good, right?”
“I think I’m in love with your couch,” she said with a lustful sigh. “Yum.” She walked over and sank into it, and sighed again, with pleasure. “I can’t believe how great this place looks! It’s so …”
“Grown up?” I fished.
“Exactly.” She grinned. “Way to go, Gus! I didn’t think you had it in you!”
I was still feeling the buzz. I’d had no idea what a difference it could make to truly love the place where you lived. Who knew happiness was as easy as spring-cleaning?
“Are you ready?” Georgia asked around a yawn. “We have the open road to conquer, or anyway, the Mid-Cape Highway, so let’s get a move on.”
I smiled. “About that. We have a small, slight problem.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t try me.”
I waved my hand at the dog.
“The kennel was booked through New Year’s,” I said, unperturbed. “I had to pick Linus up when I got back from New Hampshire, because they were above capacity.”
Georgia looked over to where Linus was stretched across the passageway between the living room and kitchen, his shaggy tail pounding out a staccato beat against the floor. He sprang to his feet the moment he realized we were looking at him, and came trotting over, all licks and wriggles.
Georgia dislodged Linus from her thigh, and then she looked at me.
“You want me to share a hotel room with this animal,” she said.
I opened my mouth to deliver the perfect retort, but she held up a hand.
“Don’t say it,” she said.
“You have no idea what I was going to say.”
“That I’ve shared a hotel room with far more offensive animals?” Georgia snorted when I tried to look innocent. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“He’s actually in a really obedient phase lately,” I lied. “It’s going to be fun, I bet.”
Georgia looked heavenward, and then heaved a sigh.
“If I ever find out that this was deliberate, I will make the rest of your life an exercise in misery,” she promised me.
“That was a very impressive threat, Georgia,” I retorted. “But you might want to consider doing something with your hair before you try it out again. No one takes Raggedy Ann seriously.”
Georgia reached up and tugged at one of her wild curls, which had escaped the bun she was sporting.