Modern Lovers (16 page)

W
ednesday nights were slow at Hyacinth, and so Jane and Zoe were home early. Jane was on the couch, watching something dumb, and Zoe was upstairs in bed. They were both pretending that they weren't waiting up for Ruby to come home. Jane's phone began to vibrate on the coffee table, and when she didn't recognize the number, she ignored it, reaching for the remote instead. A minute later, she heard Zoe's phone ring upstairs, and Zoe said,
“What?”
Her feet thumped to the floor. Jane sat up straight, suddenly at attention. She debated checking upstairs to find out what was going on, but Zoe was hurrying down before she had the chance.

“We have to go to the fucking police station,” Zoe said. She had a scarf wrapped around her hair, and it looked like she'd dozed off, with a pillow line running across her left cheek. “Ruby and Harry were fucking
fucking
in the fucking park. In the fucking playground!”

Jane slipped into her clogs and patted her pockets. “I have my keys. Let's go.”

The 67th Precinct was not one of the glittering bastions of justice like on
Law & Order: SVU
, with computerized screens everywhere and cops with good haircuts. The floor was dirty, and the desks were messy. Jane had been there a number of times before, in the early days of Hyacinth, when they couldn't seem to go a month without an
incident of one kind or another—a stolen credit card, a break-in, a shattered window. The cops were overworked and exhausted. She nodded hello to Officer Vernon, whom she knew from his work with the neighborhood watch. Zoe was hysterical, her silver bracelets jangling like a thousand bells. Jane took her hand. “It's going to be fine,” Jane said.

“I'm going to murder her,” Zoe said. “As soon as I know she's okay. If Harry had been rolling around with some white girl, they would have sent him home. I am going to murder
everyone
.”

They stopped at the desk, and Jane peeked around the side—she could see Ruby's legs through an open office door in the back.

“We're here to pick up our daughter,” Jane said, pointing. “Ruby Kahn-Bennett?”

The woman at the desk nodded, and reached for the phone. They stood there for another minute, and then another female officer came clomping down the hall to get them.

“I'm Officer Claiborne Ray,” she said. “Come on back. The other parents are already here.” She beckoned for them to follow. Zoe hurried in front, as if they were walking into a Cambodian prison and she might never see Ruby again.

•   •   •

T
he office was small, and seemed even smaller, because in addition to Ruby, Harry, Elizabeth, and Andrew, there was another police officer sitting behind a desk. The guy was young, maybe twenty-five, with a smug look on his face. He was, no doubt, the one who had caught them. Jane wanted to slap him. As if he'd caught actual criminals. He'd probably been promoted from animal control and had just stopped rescuing cats from hoarders' apartments.

Andrew was rocking back and forth in the chair, which made an irritating squeak. Elizabeth had an arm wrapped around Harry's shoulders. Ruby was picking at her nails. They all looked up when
Jane and Zoe walked in. Ruby waved, unable to force even a fake smile. Andrew shook his head and clenched his jaw.

“Come in,” Officer Ray said.

Zoe dropped quickly into the chair next to Ruby and squeezed her knee. There were no more seats, and so Jane leaned against the wall. She felt Andrew's and Elizabeth's angry stares boring into the side of her face so acutely that she put her hand on her cheek.

“What exactly happened?” Jane asked.

The young male officer cleared his throat. “These two were having sexual relations in the playground.”

“Sexual relations? Who are you, Bill Clinton? You mean you actually saw them?” Zoe's voice was high and loud. Zoe got angry so rarely that when it came out, it was like a volcano after a hundred years at rest. “I really doubt that. Ruby, please. Can you tell us what actually happened? I very much doubt that you caught them doing anything. So they were in a playground after dark. Fine. Fine! Please.” She was breathing out of her nose like a bull about to charge.

The officer cleared his throat again. “The young lady was on top of the young man. Her underwear was on the ground. There was a used condom. I'm not making this up, ma'am.” The little prick was practically smiling. “This is a serious offense.”

“A used condom?” In comparison to Zoe's, Elizabeth's voice was tiny, as if her lips didn't want to let the words out. She took her arm off Harry's shoulders and leaned back.

“That's right, ma'am.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And Ms. Kahn-Bennett is over eighteen, which makes this much more serious.”

“Oh, come on,” Harry said.

Elizabeth covered her face with her hands.

“Ruby, is he telling the truth?” Zoe leaned in, offering her daughter her ear.

Ruby shrugged. “I mean, I guess so. Mr. Marx and I were not
having sex when we were so rudely interrupted by these fine officers, but we could have been, and it is humanly possible that we very recently had been, so I guess I can't really say anything other than I deeply apologize for so rudely using the park after dark for my own purposes.”

Harry stifled a laugh, and his mother put her finger in his face. “Do not.” Elizabeth shook her head. “I just can't believe this,” she said.

“Well, I think we all know whose fault this is,” Andrew said. He raised his palms. “Harry has never been in any kind of trouble before, Officer, not once. Whereas Ruby . . .”

“Oh!” Zoe said. “Oh! I see how this is!”

“Am I making this up?” Andrew turned to Elizabeth for confirmation. She looked queasy.

“It doesn't really matter whose idea it was,” the female officer said. “Let's not get bogged down. This is the first time that either of them have ever been in here, and seeing as both Ms. Marx and Ms. Kahn are leading members of the local community, we are willing to let this go with a warning and a fine. But I do want written apologies from both of you kids on my desk tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Jane said, extending her hand to the officer. “We really appreciate that.” She clamped her other hand on Ruby's shoulder. “This will
never
happen again, I promise you that.”

They gathered their things and stood up. Jane watched as Elizabeth mouthed
I'm sorry
to Zoe. Then they made their way back out onto the street in single file, the Kahn-Bennetts first with the Marxes behind.

When they were all on the sidewalk in front of the station, Zoe was starting to usher Ruby toward their car, as if shielding her from paparazzi. “Hang on,” Jane said. She stopped and turned to Elizabeth. “What exactly are you sorry for?”

“What?” Elizabeth put on her best naïve face, the face of a choir girl.

“Inside, you just told Zoe that you were sorry. I want to know what you're sorry for. Are you sorry for the fact that my daughter had sex with your son? Because I have really had it with this bullshit. You think that you guys have this perfect kid and this perfect shit, but you're just as messed up as the rest of us, I promise you.” Jane felt her heart beating faster. She wanted to wrestle Elizabeth to the ground, to fold her skinny limbs up and throw her away.

“I really don't know what you're talking about, Jane,” Elizabeth said. The night air was cool, and there was a wind picking up, blowing trash at their feet. “I never said we were perfect.” They had never been perfect, not she and Andrew nor she and Zoe. Lydia popped into her head, Lydia, who had been arrested half a dozen times before she died. She would have laughed hysterically at all of this. How bourgeois! How parental! They couldn't even commit their own crimes.

“Oh, right.” Jane cracked her knuckles. She didn't mean to be threatening, it was just a habit, but she saw Elizabeth jump back a bit at the sound and wasn't sorry about it. “You think I can't see the way you look at Zoe, and me, and Ruby? Like you're above it all and looking down on us from your little throne?”

“Mom,” said Ruby. “Whoa.”

“Jane,” said Zoe. “First of all, please relax. Second of all, this is totally crazy and not at all true. Third of all, can we please not have this conversation in front of a police station? This is turning into an episode of the Maury Povich show.”

“I was apologizing for Andrew implying that this was Ruby's fault,” Elizabeth said. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt. “As for the rest of it, I'm really sorry that this is all happening at once, with you guys, and everything that you're dealing with, and
I'm sorry! I'm just sorry, okay? I love you guys! Come on! You know that.”

“You're apologizing to
her
about
me
?” Andrew asked, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

“Fine,” Jane said, raising her hands in surrender. “Fine.” She stalked back toward the car, kicking a newspaper off her leg and into the street, cursing under her breath, happy at least to know that they were not the only ones going home to have a fight.

O
berlin College (population: 3,000) had more lesbians than all of Wellesley, Massachusetts (population: 27,982), if you weren't counting the all-women's college, which Elizabeth wasn't going to apply to because it would mean that she could never leave home. Lesbianism was one of the things she always assumed she'd try in college, like a tofu scramble, or a cappella. She'd kissed a girl once, during a particularly good session of Truth or Dare at a party her senior year of high school, but the girl was just some random drunk sophomore who had dissolved into giggles immediately, and so it didn't really count.

Then there was Zoe Bennett. Elizabeth sometimes thought about the improbability of her life, starting the way it did, all in a dormitory that looked like a cellblock. What if Andrew hadn't lived on her hall? What if Zoe hadn't lived downstairs? Oberlin was a small school, but there were certainly people whose paths she'd never crossed, and people she met years later. She and Andrew had met during their freshman orientation, and she'd met Zoe that first week, when she was sitting in front of the dorm smoking. Lots of people had bleached-out hair, but not many of them were black girls in enormous goth platform boots. Elizabeth had lost her key to the building and was waiting for someone to come out so that she could get back inside. It was
the first day of September, and Ohio was beautiful, flat and sunny and full of flowers. Zoe sprang up and opened the door, and then walked Elizabeth all the way to her dorm room, as if she were the resident bellhop. They became friends so quickly that Elizabeth sometimes thought that Zoe must have confused her for someone else, someone prettier and funnier, someone with better stories and a higher tolerance for alcohol.

They hadn't had sex.

They hadn't done anything at all.

It was almost true. Elizabeth and Andrew were already together, more or less, kissing at the end of the night and never talking about it during the day. Kitty's Mustache was playing shows at house parties once or twice a week, their flyers up all over campus.
“MEOW,”
they'd say, and then the address. Two dollars for the keg. Everyone knew who they were. Both Zoe and Andrew were living off campus now that they were allowed to, Zoe in a one-bedroom apartment next door to Oberlin's crumbling movie theater, the Apollo, which meant that the neon marquee lit up her living room every night after dark until about ten o'clock. They were a funny match—even once they were in the band together, Elizabeth still felt like an amateur next to Zoe—an amateur woman, an amateur college student, an amateur cool kid. Even so, they had more fun together than seemed possible. They went to the Salvation Army and bought bags of clothes for ten dollars, they went bowling and came out reeking of cigarette smoke and french fries, they went to the movies and got drunk and laughed all night long. Elizabeth wanted to be Zoe's best friend, to wear matching necklaces and everything. They were almost there, maybe, but Zoe had so many friends already, from so many corners of the campus, that it was hard for Elizabeth to know where she stood.

Elizabeth was embarrassed at how well she remembered it—Zoe probably had forgotten it by the time she went to sleep that night. She and Elizabeth were lying on the couch in Zoe's apartment, watching
a movie—
Bonnie and Clyde
, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Zoe was waxing rhapsodic about Faye's clothes. They were head to foot, overlapping at their stomachs, but then, near the middle of the movie, Zoe said she was getting tired and did a half somersault, half flop, so that she was lying right behind Elizabeth, both of them facing the small television. Zoe looped her arms around Elizabeth's middle and snuggled up against her back.

“I'm going to sleep,” she said. “Wake me up if Bonnie's going to die.”

But she didn't go to sleep—at least Elizabeth didn't think so.

On-screen, Faye Dunaway was leaning against a car, smoking. Zoe's nose rubbed against Elizabeth's spine. The sky was vast and cloudy, flat and endless. The room glowed green. Zoe's hand moved flat against Elizabeth's stomach.

Despite her open mind and abstract curiosity, Elizabeth still hadn't found a girl to kiss. She thought it would just happen eventually, the way it happened with boys, that someone would flirt with her at a party and then they'd find themselves tumbling against a wall and maybe going back to one dorm room or the other, hands over the clothes, hands under the clothes, mouths on skin. But it hadn't. There were a few other boys, and then there was Andrew, but that was it.

Elizabeth didn't think she was a lesbian. She just thought that it was a possibility, like a groundhog seeing its shadow. Despite the fact that she'd slept with several guys, Zoe said that she'd always known, since she was a child. She said it was like knowing whether you were right- or left-handed. Obviously you didn't get to choose—Elizabeth knew that much—but she wasn't sure about anything, not even what she wanted to have for lunch, so how could she be so sure about this?

Zoe's right hand, the hand that was slung over Elizabeth's shoulder. Zoe's mouth, now on the back of her neck. Elizabeth didn't move—if she moved, Zoe might stop. If she moved, she might wake Zoe up. Zoe was probably dreaming about someone else, one of the
girls from the co-op down the block, the ones with nose rings and sourdough starters and special woven baggies for their Ecstasy that they wore around their necks. The room was getting warmer. Downstairs, the movie theater was showing
The Bodyguard
, and there were probably beer bottles rolling down the sloped floor under everyone's feet. She and Zoe had gone to see it the night before, everyone laughing at Whitney Houston until she opened her mouth and sang, and then they all got quiet and just listened. That's what Elizabeth wanted to do now, to lie still and listen. If she tried hard enough, she thought she could hear the squirrels in the park across the street, or the airplanes flying overhead. It was kissing, what was happening to her neck. Zoe was kissing her, and Elizabeth felt it all over her body, like a hundred electrical sockets all licked at once.

Someone knocked at the door—this happened a lot when you lived across the street from the only bar in an otherwise dry town. Zoe stopped what she was doing, and they both waited for a moment. Whoever it was knocked again, more insistently.

“Hmm,” Zoe said.

Elizabeth sat up and turned her face away from the door. “I should go home anyway,” she said.

“Just let me see who it is,” Zoe said. She crawled over the edge of the couch to the door and reached for the knob. Elizabeth pulled on her shoes.

“Zoeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, open the door!” The door swung wide, knocking Zoe over. It was Zoe's friend TJ, a girl with enormous tattoos up and down both arms. She was a senior, older than both of them, and rough in a way that Elizabeth didn't like. Zoe crawled clear of the door, and TJ stepped over her. “Do you have any cigarettes? Gibson's is closed.”

“I'm going to go,” Elizabeth said. She couldn't look Zoe in the face, and so instead she inspected the filthy carpet, which had probably never been cleaned, ever.

“Are you sure?” Zoe said, her voice soft. She stood up slowly. Elizabeth squeezed by her and into the hall, being careful not to touch. She heard TJ turn off
Bonnie and Clyde
and put on music instead.

“I'm sure,” Elizabeth said, even though she wasn't. She got all the way to the top of the stairs and then down the first few before she looked behind her. Zoe was still standing there, waiting, her head poking out. It would have been so easy to run back up those steps. Elizabeth's whole body was pumping with blood. She felt like she was in the middle of a relay race, running between places she'd never been. Zoe must have felt it, the elastic cord between their chests. Before the pull got too strong, Elizabeth hurried down the rest of the stairs and out the door, into the clear night.