For the rest of the week, we were pretty much back to our routine: Darren would get home from work, do a couple of errands with Stacy. Mom would come home and start dinner, then Stacy and I left for work, us pulling out as Dad pulled in.
I spent a lot of my time working out what I’d say to Lee. It felt exciting and nerve-wracking all at once, this big important thing that I wanted to do right. I played it all out in my head, the words I’d use and the different things she might say back . . . what I would do if she refused to listen.
I had it all under control, I thought.
What actually happened was this:
Lee called me the day after she got back from camping.
“Hey,” she said, sounding not exactly like herself. Which wasn’t surprising, considering our last conversation.
I’d assumed I’d be the one calling her when I was ready; I didn’t think she’d call me. “Hi.”
“So, I’m back,” she said. “Obviously.”
Awkward pause.
“How was it?”
“Okay. If you don’t mind giant mosquitoes and spiders and digging holes whenever you have to go to the bathroom.”
Now, Deanna, I told myself. Jump in anytime.
But Lee kept talking. “Me and Jay are going to Taco Bell. In, like, twenty minutes. Can you meet us?”
I hesitated. Maybe my memory of our fight was different than hers. Maybe I hadn’t been as much of a bitch as I thought. “Um, yeah. I’ll be there.”
My heart pounded as I got ready. On the bus down to the beach, I ran through the script in my mind, remembering all my main points, like:
1.
I was sorry about what I said at the pizza place, that I wasn’t a friend when she needed me to be
2.
It was just both our bad luck that I was having the worst week of my life when everything happened
3.
Kissing Jason was stupid, stupid, stupid and I didn’t mean anything by it and I’d never do it again, and I knew honesty was important to her and I just wanted everything out in the open
The thing was, it all sounded like bullshit.
I got off the bus and crossed the highway to the Taco Bell on the beach, the nicest Taco Bell in the history of Taco Bells, with a fireplace and a deck overlooking the Pacific, and a window where surfers could walk up and order without having to change out of their dripping wet suits.
I could see them inside, Lee and Jason, standing around looking up at the menu board. I opened the door. Lee walked over to me, but stopped short of hugging. She looked different: she had a little tan and her hair had grown some.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
Jason nodded his head. “Hey.”
It was the first time I’d seen him since that day at his house. I still had his shirt. “Hi.”
“Let’s get, like, a
lot
of food,” Lee said, turning back to the menu. Abruptly, maybe, or maybe I imagined it. “Half our food went bad on the camping trip and my stepdad kept using the phrase ‘meal rations.’ It got a little desperate.”
We ordered and sat out on the deck. I kept thinking about what to say and when to say it, but Lee talked almost nonstop about her trip: swimming in the Russian River, the sheep that showed up at their campsite every morning, her leaky air mattress. “I already suggested a new family tradition that involves staying home and watching TV . . .” She pushed her quesadilla toward me. “Have some. It’s yummy.”
“Thanks.”
Jason kept his eyes on his food, mostly. Either that or watching the surfers, not looking at Lee, not leaning into her, not reaching over for her food the way he usually did.
“How’s work?” Lee asked. “You know, the Tommy situation and everything.”
“It’s . . . it’s fine. We worked it out.”
“Really? That’s cool.” She shoveled more food in, still talking fast. “How much have you saved up? When are you moving out?”
“Oh. I’m not. Not this year.”
She didn’t seem surprised. “Drag. Maybe next summer?”
“Maybe.”
The wind kicked up and blew our chips off the table and onto the deck. Seagulls swooped down and fought each other for the food. “Shit!” Lee said, jumping up and kicking in the direction of the gulls. “Get away, you piece of shit shit-ass birds! God, I
hate
you!”
My eyes met Jason’s. Something had happened. I didn’t know what, but something, because Lee a) rarely swore, and b) didn’t get upset over little stuff, ever. Jason looked away, and got up to dump his trash.
Lee came back and sat at the table. Her eyes welled up.
“Lee . . . ,” I started, helpless.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Just don’t say anything.” She lifted her head, looked right at me. “It’s okay,” she said, quietly. “It’s okay.” She wiped her sleeve across her face. “Let’s get some of those cinnamon thingies. I’m still hungry.”
Jason called about an hour after I got home.
“Hey,” he said. I pictured him in his room, stretched out on the bed with clothes piled all over and old bowls covered with food crust on the floor next to him. “Don’t be mad at me,” he said.
“Why would I be?”
“I know you wanted to tell her yourself so I’m sorry, but I had to. I felt like I was about to puke all the time until I told her.”
My stomach dropped and my heart sped up. “Wait. What?”
“I know I was the one who didn’t want to tell her in the first place, but I had to.”
I closed my eyes and pressed the phone to my ear until it hurt. “When?” I asked. “When did you tell her?”
“Yesterday. She called me when she got back and I kind of let it all out.” He sighed. “I know. I’m an idiot.”
She knew. She’d known when she called me, she’d known at Taco Bell, she’d known when she looked at me and said,
It’s okay
.
“I . . . I don’t get it.”
“Yeah. Well. Me neither. That’s just Lee.”
“I gotta go.” I hung up on Jason and sat on my bed. How could she do that? What kind of a person just said,
Yeah, okay, you kissed my boyfriend. It’s cool
. What did it mean? Were we still friends? We couldn’t be, I thought, there was no way. Not now that she knew the truth.
I got under the covers on my bed, pulled them all the way up over my head, and cried.
After work that night while closing up with Michael, I found Tommy mopping the men’s room.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I talk to you?”
“Go ahead.”
“Okay. Look at me.”
He looked at me and leaned on the mop. “Yes?”
“It’s
okay,
” I said. “I mean, as in, I forgive you, or whatever.”
He laughed. “What? What’d I do now?”
“I
forgive
you,” I repeated. “It’s okay. For everything before. You said you’re sorry, and now I’m saying . . . it’s okay.”
“Okaaay.” He went back to mopping.
“Do you feel any different?”
“Yeah. I feel horny.”
“Be serious for one second. Do you feel different?”
“I guess,” he said, wringing the mop. “Yeah. I kinda do.”
“You do?” He looked serious, but I just never knew with Tommy.
“Well, you mean it, right? You’re not just yanking my chain?”
I thought about it. He’d apologized, and I believed he meant it. I could look at him and not hate him. What else was there to consider? “I mean it.”
“Okay, then, yeah. I feel different.”
“Different how?”
He slapped the mop back onto the floor and swished it around. “Different like I don’t have to feel like a piece of shit every time you look at me.”
“Well, that’s something.”
Maybe that’s all there was to it. Except Tommy had said he was sorry to me, and I’d never had the chance to say that to Lee. Not yet.
Every day, I woke up thinking it would be the day I would call Lee. I’d call her and say what I needed to say, and then things could get back to normal. But every day, I didn’t call her. And I didn’t call Jason, even when his messages piled up. And then July turned into August, and every day the feeling that it was too late grew and grew.
One night Darren picked me up from work when I was expecting Stacy. “We need to talk,” he said.
I prepared myself for the Big Talk, the one about how he and Stacy were ready to move out and they loved me and everything but of course we all understood I had to keep living with Mom and Dad. It was okay, I was ready for it.
“How come you don’t talk to Lee anymore?” Darren asked, surprising me.
I could have given him some crap-ass excuse about being busy but he’d see through it. “I kissed Jason while she was camping.”
“You
kissed
Jason?” Darren sounded shocked, which made me feel sort of good, like he knew that wasn’t who I was, not who I really am.
“And Lee found out.”
“How?”
“Jason told her.”
“Brilliant.” Darren sighed and we drove up into the hills, away from our house. “So you’ll make up.”
I looked at him. “What would
you
do if your best friend kissed Stacy?”
“Okay,
my
best friend kissed my little sister,” he said. “But it’s different. Me and Tommy were drug buddies. You and Lee and Jason, you’re for real.”
“Well, Lee actually, like,
forgave
me or whatever.” I hated to even say the word. “But she has to. I don’t think she’s allowed to stay mad at me. It’s against her religion or something.”
“And you’re going to turn that down?” He laughed, shaking his head. “God, do you even
remember
what you said to me that morning? When I was going to string Stacy along a few weeks on account of her leaving?” He glanced at me. “I thought you had it all together with that stuff, Deanna. You actually sounded like you knew what the hell you were talking about.”
“Well I guess I didn’t,” I said. “Anyway, that’s different. You guys have April.”
“Oh, so it’s okay for
you
to turn out like Dad?”
We cruised over the top of Crespi Drive. The night was clear and you could see the blue-black of the ocean under the moon.
“All I’m saying is look at him, right?” Darren continued. “He can’t forgive you, or me, or Stacy, or the paper company, not really. Or himself, you know? He can’t get past any of it and actually live a life. He can barely sit at the dinner table with all of us without looking like he’s gonna have a stroke.”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“So don’t go thinking you’re special or different, that if you let this thing with Lee just stay like it is that it won’t hurt you.”
“
Okay,
Dr. Phil. I get it.” We circled around and headed back down into the valley. I knew Darren was right, but it was harder than he made it sound. I could even understand, just a little, how it was easier for my dad to cut people off and shut himself down than to do what it took to make things right.
Still, every day turned into the next without me making a single step.
Darren did eventually get around to the Big Talk. He called me down to the basement when he and Stacy were both there and told me they were getting ready to move out. They already had some empty cardboard boxes from Safeway sitting around the room. Even though I saw it coming and thought I was ready, it still made me feel like I’d slipped from a high cliff, not sure where I’d land.
“It’s kind of a dump,” he was saying, “but we’re taking it.”
“I have almost five hundred dollars saved,” I said. “Like I said before, I want to give it to you.”
Darren shook his head. “And like
I
said, no.”
“It’s my money.”
“Yeah,” Stacy said, “it’s her money.” April sat in her lap, sucking on her little fist and watching us.
“Yeah, and it’s going to stay your money,” Darren said. “Use it for college, okay? Or something. Hell, maybe you want to take a road trip after you graduate or move to New York or something, I don’t know, but don’t give it to us.”
“You can’t afford to move without it,” I said, seeing the last shred of my fantasy blowing away. I knew I had to let it.
“Yeah, we can. It’s called a cash advance and there are five credit card companies dying to give me one.”
Stacy sighed. She’d bleached her hair again, but there was still an orange-gold tint left over from the Copper Sunset. “Darren, we talked about that.”
He waved his hand at her. “Yeah, yeah. I know. But we’ll pay it off fast. I’ll work overtime.” Darren put his hand on my shoulder, the closest he’d ever come to hugging me. “Look, you don’t have to pay us to not forget about you.”
Stacy eyed me and said, “Come here.”
I got off the floor and sat on the edge of the bed next to her. She put her arm around me, tough Stacy, who used to scare the hell out of me in the halls of Terra Nova. “You can keep a toothbrush at our place, okay?”
It was really going to happen. I nodded and tried not to cry.
“Yeah,” Darren said. “Think of all the free babysitting you’ll do.”
I forced a smile. “We’ll see.”
One morning in August, I walked in on my dad in the kitchen. He looked up and then back at the coffeepot. This is how it had been for weeks: us avoiding each other, tiptoeing around the house, peeking around corners to make sure the other wasn’t there. I went past him and got down a box of cereal and a bowl. I poured the milk and turned around. Dad was standing there holding a spoon, which he held out to me. “Here.”
I took it and sat down. He stayed standing with his National Paper mug, eyes on the floor. “So school starts soon I guess,” he said.
“Yeah. Two more weeks.” I watched him, in his striped auto parts shirt and fresh crew cut, looking like Darren.
“Well. You get some tough classes junior year, right? Might be hard to keep your grades where you had them.”
“Maybe.”
He dumped out his coffee and rinsed the mug, placing it carefully on the hook near the sink. “Your mom said you’ve been saving your paychecks. Maybe we can find you an old car.”
He walked out of the kitchen without waiting for my reply, back straight.
I smiled.
A spoon held out. A question about school. The possibility of an old car.
It came down to the smallest things, really, that a person could do to say I’m sorry, to say it’s okay, to say I forgive you. The tiniest of declarations that built, one on top of the other, until there was something solid beneath your feet. And then . . . and then. Who knew?
When I finished my cereal, I took a piece of the scratch paper we kept by the phone and wrote Lee a note.
Meet me on the front lawn first day of school, please? — D.
I found an envelope in one of the kitchen drawers and addressed it. Even though I was still in my pajamas, I put on my flip-flops and walked out to the mailbox. The morning was warm and bright and fog-free. On the way back to the house I felt light in a way that made me want to run, so I did, which wasn’t easy in flip-flops. I ran all the way back to the house, for once walking through the front door unafraid.