Jersey Angel (7 page)

I can stop it anytime. And I will. It’s not cool. It just isn’t. But this is my first fall, and doesn’t everyone fall sooner or later? I’m basically good. Yeah, I copy homework sometimes and sometimes cheat on tests—who doesn’t. But I don’t lie. Not really, not about the stuff that counts. So I’m allowed this little thing. Plus I don’t love Cork. He loves Inggy and she loves him. They’re meat and potatoes. I’m just a dessert. I won’t let it go on too long. And Inggy can never, ever know. Cork will never tell. I’ll never tell. She won’t know.

Inggy. I wonder if someday when we’re like eighty—when I allow myself to smoke like a fiend—I wonder if one day when we’re, say, sitting on folding chairs under an umbrella on the beach, me sucking on my smoke and Inggy upwind of it, I wonder if I could say,
Cork and I had a thing—a little fling back in senior year. Did you know?

Get out
, she’d say. We’ll both be grandmothers, maybe great-grandmothers. It’s possible. Inggy won’t have married Cork. I don’t see that in her stars, though it’s hard to tell what she sees. She doesn’t know what college will do for her. I mean, of course she knows what it will do for her. But she doesn’t know how it will change the basic fact of
her and Cork. He’ll go to Ocean Community with me, if anything, and Inggy will meet new guys, smart guys, and slowly Cork will be uncorked. I know it. I bet he knows it. Only she doesn’t.

But I’m rambling. Back to the future: we’ll have married, we’ll have maybe a couple divorces between us. I hope not, but it happens. And I’ll say,
Did you know? About me and Cork?
She won’t have, but if she chews it over for a few days she’ll say,
Yeah, I’m not completely shocked
. And she’ll have a secret or two herself, it’ll turn out. It won’t be my kind of secret, but she’ll have something good, and we’ll laugh into each other’s wrinkled faces—my wrinkles will be worse since Ing slathers up with 45 sunblock.

It’ll be okay. I’ll say sorry, and she’ll shrug a little sorrowfully. And I’ll say that in the end friendship is the most lasting thing. Maybe we’ll have outlived our husbands. It’s possible. And she’ll agree. We’ll be sexed out by then, so it won’t be a big deal.

Maybe, though, it’s better if Inggy never knows. Not even if we’re old and grandmothers and all sexed out. Some things you just keep to yourself always.

Afterwards we lie twisted in my sheet and sweaty. A cool wind blows off the bay. We lie close and breathe.

Cork is skinny. In his clothes, he’s bigger somehow. Naked next to me, he’s lean and hard, with pale hair on his
long arms and legs. His belly button is botched, a round button that would look right on a fat man. I like that it’s all wrong. His dick is small and soft, and his breathing slows. I give him a nudge.

“You booting me already?” he says with closed eyes.

“Don’t fall asleep.”

“Five minutes.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say.

He does his putting-on-his-pants dance—little hops around the room as he hoists them up. Then he sits on the edge of the bed.

“See you tomorrow.” I touch my fingers to his back.

“Yup.” He slides his feet into his flip-flops. “Has she said anything?”

“Like what?” I ask.

“She doesn’t know, right?”

“She doesn’t know. You worried?”

“Nah.”

I sit up and give him a hug, pressing my boobs into his back. “Have a meatball on the way out.”

“She’d hate me,” he says.

“I’m pretty sure we’d both be in deep shit.”

“Yeah, but she’d hate me,” he says matter-of-factly.

I look at him. “You’re an ass.”

He pins me in one quick move and climbs on top of me. “Stop calling me an ass.”

“Stop being one.”

And this gets us hot. When I break free, I unzip him and tug at his shirt.

Later, when he goes, I hear the squeak of the screen and his crunch over the stones. I feel full and curl up in the middle of the bed.

After school one day we’re sitting at my kitchen table eating cookies. Mossy’s sweaty and pink from pushing a puck around the street with his hockey stick. “So, Mossy,” Inggy says, slinging an arm around him and with her other hand pinching a Thin Mint from the wrapper. “Where would you take a girl on a date?”

“I don’t like girls,” he says, sharpening a pencil.

“You like us,” I say.

He checks the point and goes back to twisting the pencil. “You and Inggy. Mom. Mrs. Fishbaum and Mimi sometimes.”

“Okay, let’s say you’re taking
me
on date,” Ing says. “Where do you take me?”

“Dairy Queen.”

“Good choice.” Ing and I smile across the table. “Do you pay?”

“How much?” he asks, a little exasperated.

“Well,” Ing says. “Let’s say we have burgers, fries, and two thick shakes. So let’s say fifteen bucks.”

He shakes his head. “Nope.”

I lean across the table and whisper in his ear. “That’s not very romantic, my little man.”

“Okay, the playground,” he says. “Girls like swings.”

“While Inggy’s on the swings what will you do?”

“Ride my board on the dock.”

“But then it’s not a date,” I say. “You have to do it together, see.”

He dunks a cookie in his milk and pops the whole thing in his mouth and chews slowly. “I’m not going on the swings,” he says finally. “You want a ride on the back of my scooter?”

“That sounds romantic,” she says. “I’ll have the wind in my hair. Then afterwards will you buy me a Dilly Bar?”

He looks up at her pretty face and blushes. “Okay,” he says.

“I’m going to have to marry you,” Inggy tells him.

“I’m eight,” he tells her in that totally serious kid way.

“I’m forced to wait.”

He tests out the point of his pencil. “Let’s think of all the words we can for
butt
.”

“Let’s,” Ing says.
“Tush, ass, derriere.”

“
Booty
and
patootie
and
behind
,” I add.

Mossy scribbles away. “Don’t forget
can
,” he says. “And bum. That’s what they say in England.
Bum
.”

“You’re very worldly, my man,” I tell him.

“Maid service,” Mom says, coming in with a clean load of laundry. She dumps towels, sheets, and underwear in a pile on the couch. “You do the next load,” she tells me.

“Yup.”

“You have great undies, Angel,” Inggy says, eyeing the heap. “I like that silver pair.”

“Oh, that’s mine.” Mom plucks the thong from the pile and gives it a twirl before stuffing it half in her jeans pocket.

“Oh, a thong.” Inggy leans over and covers Mossy’s ears. “I hate the string up my crack.”

“You get used to it,” Mom says.

“I don’t know,” I say, “either it works for you or it doesn’t.” I personally love thongs and have always been surprised about Ing’s thong issue, but there you go. I’m sure Cork’s given her a hard time, because like any horndog he loves them.
Come on, Ing
, he’d say.
For me. Nope
, she’d say.
I want to see the little triangle riding up your tailbone when you bend over in your jeans. Sorry
, she’d say.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself wondering about them really going at it. I know that sounds kind of pervy, me wondering about my friends in bed. And it’s not like I want a ringside seat or anything. I sure don’t. But here’s what’s kind of weird and interesting when you think about it. That that part of you—the naked, horny you—is tucked away, hidden. I mean, the only people who know what you’re like in the sack are the people you’ve been
with. It’s this whole other life and with each guy a new secret. I love that.

“Earth to Angel,” Mom says.

“What?”

“You didn’t tell me all the places Inggy’s applying.”

“I can’t keep track of them all.”

“Good luck, honey,” Mom tells her.

“Thanks.” Inggy ducks her head shyly. “Cornell might be my first choice, but I don’t know.”

“Inggy has
choices
,” I say, slinging an arm around her. We smirk at each other.

“If you cracked open a book now and then you’d have choices too,” she says.

Mom sighs. “I was the same way.… Hey, how about real estate, Angel?”

“Real estate!”

“You take some courses, get a license, sell houses.”

“Who said I want to sell houses!”

“So don’t sell houses.” Mom shrugs. “I’m just saying.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Inggy says, but she doesn’t look so sure. Which sorta pisses me off. I’m seventeen. Do I need to decide my life this second?

“Ma, what’s another word for
butt
?” Mossy asks.

“
Fanny
. As in get your fanny in the House and find Oscar. He escaped.”

“No, he didn’t. He’s right here.” Mossy reaches into his
sweatshirt pocket and holds up the little mouse with his twitching nose and whiskers.

Inggy shrieks.

“Mossy and Oscar are a package deal,” I tell her.

“Then I will find a place in my heart for Oscar.”

“He’s very small for a mouse.” Mossy cups him in his palm.

“Hello there, Oscar,” Mom says. “I had you pegged for an escape artist.”

“He does look a little sneaky,” Inggy says, running a finger down Oscar’s quivering back.

“Knock, knock,” a voice says.

“Look who it is. Hello, handsome,” Mom says.

“Hey, Mrs. Rossi,” Joey says.

I go to the screen and he motions me outside. I hear Inggy whisper, “Maybe somebody’s getting interested.”

“No practice?” I ask, joining him in the yard.

He shakes his head. “Early one this morning.” He hasn’t shaved and his hair is long and flipping up on the ends, and he’s wearing an unzipped sweatshirt and a T-shirt that says
EAT BACON
above a sizzling strip.

“Thought I’d say hi,” he says, lowering his eyes and then looking back at me. His eyes are dark and soft. Oh, how I like Joey Sardone.

“It’s about time.”

“So what are you up to?”

“The usual.” I smooth out the stones with my flip-flop. “Nothing so interesting.”

“Yeah, right.” He smiles. “In third period I look up from my Spanish quiz and there you are walking along the ledge.”

“Oh, that.”

So I tell him. I was sitting on the radiator in humanities and leaning out the window and fiddling with my bracelet when I accidentally dropped it on the outside ledge. My dad gave it to me when I was little and I eventually grew into it. It’s silver and threaded with small sapphires. Very delicate, pretty, not exactly my taste, but it was a gift from him. So I got a pass to the girls’ room, climbed out on the second-story ledge, and walked past the Spanish classes to humanities, where I rescued my bracelet. Pickett, my teacher, who must be eighty, opened the window wide and when I tried to tell her I was fine she reached for me with her age-spotted hands and hauled me in, then sent me straight to the office, where I stayed all afternoon. You really have to think about the logic of that, me missing all my afternoon classes.

“I swung by the office after school,” Joey says, “but it didn’t look like you had detention.”

“Nah, Costello”—that’s our principal—“was having a root canal, and it was just the office ladies. Myrtle had to visit her mom at the nursing home and Tammy was headed for the super saver at Grand Union. To buy creamed corn. I kid you not. Creamed corn, whatever that is.”

“Sounds like something in a can.”

“Totally.”

“So you’re off the hook?”

“Yeah. Costello just said, ‘Really, Angel,’ and gave me the evil eye. I pointed out that the ledge is like two or three feet wide at least and I could practically do a cartwheel on it, to which Myrtle said I need to have my head examined.” I shrug.

“Troublemaker.” He taps my flip-flop with his sneaker and smiles. “Kinda makes me miss you.”

“I kinda miss you.”

Mom comes out with the empty laundry basket, the thong pushing out of her pocket. “How’s every little thing, Joey Sardone?”

“Pretty darn good,” he says, happily enough.

“Glad to hear it.” We all smile.

We watch her walk into the House, the laundry basket bouncing off her hip. “She misses you too. Obviously,” I say. “You like Carmella?”

“Yeah, I like Carmella,” he snaps.

“Okay, you like Carmella.”

“I should go.” He touches my shoulder and walks.

“It’s weird not to hang out with you,” I say, following behind and crunching over the stones. “Seeing you all the time at school …”

“We say hey.”

I shove him.

“I have a girlfriend,” he says, turning back and zipping his sweatshirt.

“So? You have a girlfriend. Fine.”

“You don’t follow any of the rules, do you?”

I lean against the side of the house and wonder for a sec if he knows. But no, he doesn’t know about me and Cork. “Gluteus maximus,” I barely hear Inggy say, and Mossy goes, “I think I’ve heard of that.”

“Do you ever think the rules are bullshit?” I ask.

Joey leans next to me against the house. I think he’s going to kiss me, and my heart starts to make a little racket, but he doesn’t, of course.

“I loved you, Angel.”

“Really?” I look up at his shy face, bright under the cool eaves of the house.

“Uh-huh.”

“How did you know?” I ask.

“What do you mean how did I know?”

I touch him. “I mean, what did you love about me?”

“I can’t dissect it.”

“But what did it feel like?”

“What a question.” He pulls away. “I just knew. All right?”

I wonder about Carmella, if he loves her, and if it happens to him all the time. Maybe it does for some people. But it must be special, love.

“I do miss you, you know.” He pulls a half-eaten Twix from his pocket and takes a bite and holds out what’s left.

“You eat it,” I say.

He eats the last bite, crumples the wrapper, and sticks it in his pocket. I reach in and take it out. “I’ll toss it for you.”

“Well, I should go,” he says, turning. I jump on his back for old times’ sake. He makes a soft groan but hoists up my legs and carries me alongside the house to the front stoop, where he drops me. I watch him walk along the bay, his hands buried in his pockets.