Intentions (19 page)

“
Tzedakah
. Charity,” I say.

“
Tzedakah
actually means fairness, justice,” he growls. I swear, he growls.

“Please, Jake? Will you give me a chance? Please?”

He looks at me, and then he nods.

“OK, Rachel,” he says, and my heart lifts. I don’t know how our talk will go, but this moment, right now, gives me hope. And a line from an old Joan Baez song Mom loves plays in my head. “Speaking strictly for me, we both could have died then and there.” Really. It would be fine with me.

But we don’t die, as romantic as that would have been. Instead the bell rings, and we go off to have our very earthbound high school days.

After school, I see him leaning against a tree. His back is to me, and although somebody else could mistake him for one of the other four hundred boys in the high school, every cell in my body knows it’s Jake.

“Hey,” I say when I reach him. It’s all I can manage.

“What’s up?” he says. I shake my head. No one ever expects an answer to that question, and I can’t speak right now anyhow.

We start down the street. It’s a mile and a half to my house, and to Jake’s, but in about a mile he has to turn left and I have to turn right. I worry about that moment for the first couple of blocks. But that’s all that’s worrying me, because for some reason Jake is acting like everything is OK between us. After all this time. I don’t get it, but I go with it gratefully.

At first we talk about school and classes and other stuff. I
catch him up about Randy, and he’s so happy. We both have McKelvy, different periods, so we compare notes on the last test we had (we both got As, though his A was a little higher than mine, damn it) and the papers we’re writing. I’m writing about Katrina, he’s writing about election fraud. It’s so easy talking with him; I don’t have to hide my smarts or my ignorance. I ask him a lot of questions, he asks me some, too, and it’s just
so good
.

And then out of nowhere, as I’m pontificating, “Do you know more than fifty levees and floodwalls failed? Fifty! And because of that …,” he pulls me toward him. He kisses me hard, harder than I really want to be kissed. I almost pull away, but I don’t. Because I want to keep kissing him.

The kisses get gentler and start to feel good. Really good. We drop our messenger bags by our feet so we can hold on to each other, and soon we move behind a big tree and kiss and kiss, and I feel him against me, and dreams come back to me quite vividly, dreams I hadn’t let myself remember, as I reach my hand up into his jacket and up inside his T-shirt and I feel his back, strong and hard, and I am vibrating, vibrating, and, oh, that’s my phone, which I ignore, ignore that and everything else as he reaches his hand up the back of my shirt and then down into the back of my jeans, and I feel him touching me and my phone starts vibrating again and I’m vibrating all over and then a car honks, and someone yells out of the window, “Get a room,” and we pull away from each other, laughing, embarrassed.

Jake touches my cheek, my hair, pushing it away from my face. “I’ve missed that!” he says, his face hot, flushed, his voice hoarse. “I’ve missed
you
.”

“Me too.” Understatement of the millennium.

We stare at each other, eye to eye, really looking. It is almost unbearable.

“I am so sorry,” I say. “About what I did with Adam. I am
so, so
sorry.”

“OK,” he says softly.

We both step back a little, pick up our bags, and start walking again.

“So, are you OK about it?” I ask. “Really?”

“No. Not completely. But I’m ready to talk.”

He stops, looks at me.

“So,” I say, “why are you ready to talk to me now—I mean, why did you say you’d meet me today?”

“I’ve missed you. And …”

“And?”

“I guess I don’t believe you really did go all the way with him that night, at that stupid party, in that basement? Did you, Rachel?”

“No, of course not.”

“Good. But … I mean, even if you didn’t—though you didn’t—you still fooled around with him. You cheated on me. You betrayed me!”

He turns away from me, says, “I shouldn’t have kissed you just now. I shouldn’t have. I
am
still mad.”

There’s a piece of me that wants to accuse him of what he did, but I push that away. This is
my
fault. I started it. I take a deep breath, walk around him so we are face to face.

I look him in the eyes. His beautiful eyes.

“Jake, I was really, really stupid that night. I completely lost control.”

I wish I could blame pot, but that was a lie. A lie I told myself. I could blame the rabbi, Alexis, Adam. I could. Yet I know it’s nobody’s fault but my own.

“I—I was just—stupid. And I never, ever wanted to do anything to hurt you. I swear.”

Jake stops, looks at me. There are tears in his eyes. “I want to forgive you. I do.”

My heart is beating wildly, I feel sick to my stomach, but instead of pleading I say, “But?”

“But how do I know you’re not going to cheat on me again? How do I?”

How do I know you aren’t going to cheat on
me
again? I want to ask aloud, but I don’t. Instead I say, “I won’t, Jake. I won’t.”

He looks at me hard. “If you really care for me, and …”

“I do, Jake. I do care for you. So much.”

“Let’s walk for a bit,” he says, and he takes my hand.

His hand feels so good, so strong. I want to just enjoy this moment, but I can’t let myself. I have to tell him about Morrison’s.

“Jake—I—there’s something else.”

“Wait, Rachel, I have to tell
you
something. I am scared to tell you, to ruin it, but …”

I don’t say anything.

“I fooled around with Alexis.”

I nod.

“She really came on to me. It was weird, and I didn’t want to, but I was hurt and …”

“Yeah, I know. She told me. I didn’t believe it, but …”

He doesn’t say anything for a while, keeps walking.

“Did you really sleep with her?” I ask him.

“WHAT?” he yells. “NO! No way. We made out. She wanted more, but I said no. Rachel, I’m not an idiot!”

“I didn’t think so. But she said—”

“I’m sure she did. Shit, I was embarrassed enough by what I did do with her. That’s a big part of why I haven’t been, you know, coming back to you.… I was too pissed off at myself, even though I was angry with you. It all felt so complicated.”

I nod. “Yeah,” I say. When did this happen, that life got so hard, so frigging complicated?

He stops, turns toward me, takes my face in his hands. “I only wanted you that night, Rachel. Only thought of
you
,” he says quietly, and my heart leaps. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe I should question this, but I look back into his eyes, and I know he’s telling me the truth.

I wonder if Alexis knew—knows—he was feeling that way that night? She probably hates me. Well, I
know
she hates me. Which brings me back to my awful reality.

“There’s still something else, Jake,” I say, and before he can say anything, I barrel on. “I did something really horrible after that.”

“You fooled around with someone else?” he says, looking upset.

“No, no, no.”

Jake stops walking, turns to me, but, thankfully, doesn’t let go of my hand.

“How bad could it be, then?”

I could go back. Just make a joke. “Bad,” I say. “I think maybe worse.”

“Oh, Rachel, you know deep down I can’t believe you’d do anything really bad,” he says, and kisses me lightly on the cheek. I turn to kiss him, not lightly, on the mouth, to change the subject, but I stop myself. I pull back a little to look at him, but I can’t. Too nervous. Instead I look beyond him and see two little girls on tricycles, a mom watching them.

“Let’s sit down,” Jake says, gesturing to the curb. We walk a little farther up the street, where there aren’t any cars parked, sit. He puts his arm around me and gives me a little squeeze. Oh, that feels nice.

“Tell me,” he says. But he is
so
not prepared. I can tell by the indulgent way he says “tell me.” This is not good.

But maybe what he’s saying is, Nothing you could do would be that bad. So I start.

“You know how Alexis was caught shoplifting? At Morrison’s? Did you know about that?”

“Yeah, I heard. But she said that you did it and planted the jewelry on her. How ridiculous is that?”

“You didn’t believe it?”

“How could I? You would never do that, Rachel!”

Um.

“Yeah, well …” I take a breath. I smell Jake. That smell of his that I love—lemon and chlorine and sweat, the Jakeness of him.

I take another breath. “It’s true. I did that. I took stuff, and I put it in her bag. I hoped she would get in trouble. I
wanted
her to get in trouble.”

Jake takes his arm away. Turns to me. “Are you kidding?”

I shake my head.

“Why? Why would you do that?”

Because I really messed up. Because I
am
really messed up. I look at the ground.

Jake doesn’t say anything.

Finally, I speak. “Because I was mad at her. For lying to you about what I did with Adam. For seducing you—she told me right before I did that. And just—she’s been really mean to me for months, and … And then, that day, she was really awful to me, and I didn’t really plan it, Jake. OK, I sort of did, not, like, ahead of time, just at the moment, and I just … I just … I
had
to get back at her. And I did.”

I am blabbering. I decide to stop.

Jake moves away from me. Breathes deeply as if, I don’t know, as if he needs fresh air after sitting so close to me.

“You told Morrison’s, right? Told them it was you who did it?”

I shake my head, and even I can’t believe it as I say, “No. I haven’t. Not yet.” Lame, lame, lame.

Jake jumps up from the curb and walks away a few steps and then comes back to me, hands on his hips. He’s angry. I can tell he’s trying to control himself, which makes me feel worse.

“I was going to, I was. I
am
going to. I told Alexis I was sorry, almost right away, and I told her I would go to Morrison’s, but she said don’t, and then …”

Why didn’t I go anyway?

Jake looks down at me.

“I have other stuff going on, and …” Uh. Of course I should have gone to Morrison’s right away. But she was so awful, and Mom and Dad are fighting so much, and Grandma, and the rabbi, and the rabbi and
Mom
, and still I don’t know, no excuse, none, and oh damn, my phone is vibrating again.

I am a worthless piece of shit. I put my head in my hands.

“Listen, Rachel, I don’t like Alexis very much, especially since that night. But still, you shouldn’t have done that, and you should have told the store by now. How could you not? I don’t get it.
It’s just not like you
.”

“I know,” I say, picking up my head and looking at his knees, not at his face. “I know.”

“So you’ll go into the store, right?”

I don’t answer.

“Rachel …”

“I don’t know!” I yell.

“You have to tell them. You have to!” He is not yelling, but he wants to be, I can tell.

I know he’s right. Of course he’s right. But what if I do and it sends my parents’ marriage over the divorce edge? What if it breaks my grandmother’s heart?

What if the person you respect the most disappoints you beyond belief? What if that person is you?

“I am not perfect!” I shout. “Nobody is perfect!” I jump up, stand facing him now. “Nobody is perfect!” I shout again, tears streaming down my face. I bet those little girls have stopped in their trike tracks and are staring at me. I can’t look.

“This is worse than not perfect. This is wrong!” Jake is shouting now.

“Why are you being so hard on me?”

Jake shakes his head.

I hate him! How can he be so holier-than-thou? What makes him think he’s so great? So above it all? Like he hasn’t made any mistakes?

“Look, Rachel, it’s like what the rabbi says.”

The rabbi? The effing rabbi? “What does the
sainted rabbi
say?” I yell.

“You have to have
kavanah
, right? What was your
intention
in that moment?”

I don’t say anything. How can I? I had
kavanah
. It was evil
kavanah
.

“And the rabbi also says …”

Oh, God help me. Not more with the rabbi.

“… if you do something wrong, you have to ask for forgiveness and atone, right? I mean, we learned that, what, back in nursery school? You have to make things right, for God’s sake. That’s what Rabbi Cohn would say, and he’s right.”

“Rabbi Cohn? Fuck Rabbi Cohn! Jake! I heard him screwing someone on the
bima
. He’s a terrible person!”

It just came out, and I can’t help myself, I keep going. “And I think he’s having an affair with my mother, Jake. He’s a bad, bad man!”

“What are you
talking
about?”

“It’s true.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me,” I say. “Believe me.”

I want to walk away. But I can’t. I know it’s the only way through this for me. So I stay right there and I tell him. It all comes rushing out. About that night, everything, every detail. My mother and His Holiness in the driveway, my searching for clues. I tell Jake all of it.

He looks shell-shocked.

“Do you believe me?” I ask him. I so badly need him to believe me. I’ve waited so long to tell someone, someone who
would believe me, would care as much as I do, and it’s Jake. It’s always been Jake.

He shakes his head no, then nods. “I can’t believe it, but I don’t think you’re making it up, either.”

“I’m not,” I say.

“Wow,” he says, and we’re both quiet for a few minutes.

I hear screams from the little girls on the tricycles. I look at them—they are racing each other; happy screams.

“Jake—”

“Look, Rachel,” he says, “I know that the world can be a shitty place. It
is
a shitty place. People are born wrong, and die, and people do stupid things, terrible, immoral things.”