Len, you awake?
Yeah.
Let’s do Mom.
Okay, I’ll start. She’s in Rome—
She’s always in Rome lately—
Well, now she’s a famous Roman pizza chef and it’s late at night, the restaurant just closed and she’s drinking a glass of wine with—
With Luigi, the drop-dead gorgeous waiter, they just grabbed the bottle of wine and are walking through the moonlit streets, it’s hot, and when they come to a fountain she takes off her shoes and jumps in …
Luigi doesn’t even take off his shoes, just jumps in and splashes her, they’re laughing…
But standing in the fountain under the big, bright moon makes her think of Flying Man’s, how she used to swim at night with Big …
You really think so, Bails? You really think she’s in a fountain in Rome on a hot summer night with gorgeous Luigi and thinking about us? About Big?
Sure.
No way.
We’re thinking about her.
That’s different.
Why?
Because we’re not in a fountain in Rome on a hot summer night with gorgeous Luigi.
True.
Night, Bails.
(Found on a piece of notebook paper balled up in a shoe in Lennie’s closet)
chapter 15
THE DAY EVERYTHING happens begins like all others lately with Joe’s soft knock. I roll over, peek out the window, and see only the lawn through the morning fog. Everything must have been moved back into the house after I’d gone to sleep.
I go downstairs, find Gram sitting at her seat at the kitchen table, her hair wrapped in a towel. She has her hands around a mug of coffee and is staring at Bailey’s chair. I sit down next to her. “I’m really sorry about last night,” I say. “I know how much you wanted to do a ritual for Bailey, for us.”
“It’s okay, Len, we’ll do one. We have plenty of time.” She takes my hand with one of hers, rubs it absentmindedly with the other. “And anyway, I think I figured out what was causing the bad luck.”
“Yeah?” I say. “What?”
“You know that mask Big brought back from South America when he was studying those trees. I think that it might have a curse on it.”
I’ve always hated that mask. It has fake hair all over it, eyebrows that arch in astonishment, and a mouth baring shiny, wolfish teeth. “It always gave me the creeps,” I tell her. “Bailey too.”
Gram nods but she seems distracted. I don’t think she’s really listening to me, which couldn’t be more unlike her lately.
“Lennie,” she says tentatively. “Is everything okay between you and Toby?”
My stomach clenches. “Of course,” I say, swallowing hard, trying to make my voice sound casual. “Why?” She owl-eyes me.
“Don’t know, you both seemed funny last night around each other.” Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
“And I keep wondering why Sarah isn’t coming around. Did you get in a fight?” she says to further send me into a guilt spiral.
Just then, Big and Joe come in, saving me. Big says, “We thought we saw life in spider number six today.”
Joe says, “I swear I saw a flutter.”
“Almost had a heart attack, Joe here, practically launched through the roof, but it must have been a breeze, little guy’s still dead as a doornail. The Lennie plant’s still languishing too. I might have to rethink things, maybe add a UV light.”
“Hey,” Joe says, coming behind me, dropping a hand to my shoulder. I look up at the warmth in his face and smile at him. I think he could make me smile even while I was hanging at the gallows, which I’m quite certain I’m headed for. I put my hand over his for a second, see Gram notice this as she gets up to make us breakfast.
I feel somehow responsible for the scrambled ashes that we are all shoveling into our mouths, as if I’ve somehow derailed the path to healing that our household was on yesterday morning. Joe and Big banter on about resurrecting bugs and exploding cakes—the conversation that would not die—while I actively avoid Gram’s suspicious gaze.
“I need to get to work early today, we’re catering the Dwyers’ party tonight.” I say this to my plate but can see Gram nodding in my periphery. She knows because she’s been asked to help with the flower arrangements. She’s asked all the time to oversee flower arrangements for parties and weddings but rarely says yes because she hates cut flowers. We all knew not to prune her bushes or cut her blooms under penalty of death. She probably said yes this time just to get out of the house for an afternoon. Sometimes I imagine the poor gardeners all over town this summer without Gram, standing in their yards, scratching their heads at their listless wisteria, their forlorn fuchsias.
Joe says, “I’ll walk you to work. I need to go to the music store anyway.” All the Fontaine boys are supposedly working for their parents this summer, who’ve converted a barn into a workshop where his dad makes specialty guitars, but I get the impression they spend all day working on new songs for their band Dive.
We embark on the seven-block walk to town, which looks like it’s going to take two hours because Joe comes to a standstill every time he has something to say, which is every three seconds.
“You can’t walk and talk at the same time, can you?” I ask.
He stops in his tracks, says “Nope.” Then continues on for a minute in silence until he can’t take it anymore and stops, turns to me, takes my arm, forcing me to stop, while he tells me how I have to go to Paris, how we’ll play music in the metro, make tons of money, eat only chocolate croissants, drink red wine, and stay up all night every night because no one ever sleeps in Paris. I can hear his heart beating the whole time and I’m thinking, Why not? I could step out of this sad life like it’s an old sorry dress, and go to Paris with Joe—we could get on a plane and fly over the ocean and land in
France.
We could do it today even. I have money saved. I have a beret. A hot black bra. I know how to say
Je t’aime.
I love coffee and chocolate and Baudelaire. And I’ve watched Bailey enough to know how to wrap a scarf. We could really do it, and the possibility makes me feel so giddy I think I might catapult into the air. I tell him so. He takes my hand and puts his other arm up Superman-style.
“You see, I was right,” he says with a smile that could power the state of California.
“God, you’re gorgeous,” I blurt out and want to die because I can’t believe I said it aloud and neither can he—his smile, so huge now, he can’t even get any words past it.
He stops again. I think he’s going to go on about Paris some more—but he doesn’t. I look up at him. His face is serious like it was last night in the woods.
“Lennie,” he whispers.
I look into his sorrowless eyes and a door in my heart blows open.
And when we kiss, I see that on the other side of that door is sky.
chapter 16
I
can’t
shove
the
dark
out
of
my
way
(Found written on the bench outside of Maria’s Italian Deli)
I MAKE A million lasagnas in the window at the deli, listening to Maria gossip with customer after customer, then come home to find Toby lying on my bed. The house is still as stone with Gram at the Dwyers’ and Big at work. I punched Toby’s number into my phone ten times today, but stopped each time before pressing send. I was going to tell him I couldn’t see him. Not after promising Bailey. Not after kissing Joe. Not after Gram’s inquisition. Not after reaching into myself and finding some semblance of conscience. I was going to tell him that we had to stop this, had to think how it would make Bailey feel, how bad it makes us feel. I was going to tell him all these things, but didn’t because each time I was about to complete the call, I got transported back to the moment by his truck last night and that same inexplicable recklessness and hunger would overtake me until the phone was closed and lying silent on the counter before me.
“Hi, you.” His voice is deep and dark and unglues me instantly.
I’m moving toward him, unable not to, the pull, unavoidable, tidal. He gets up quickly, meets me halfway across the room. For one split second we face each other; it’s like diving into a mirror. And then I feel his mouth crushing into mine, teeth and tongue and lips and all his raging sorrow crashing right into mine, all our raging sorrow together now crashing into the world that did this to us. I’m frantic as my fingers unbutton his shirt, slip it off his shoulders, then my hands are on his chest, his back, his neck, and I think he must have eight hands because one is taking off my shirt, another two are holding my face while he kisses me, one is running through my hair, another two are on my breasts, a few are pulling my hips to his and then the last undoes the button on my jeans, unzips the fly and we are on the bed, his hand edging its way between my legs, and that is when I hear the front door slam shut—
We freeze and our eyes meet—a midair collision of shame: All the wreckage explodes inside me. I can’t bear it. I cover my face with my hands, hear myself groan. What am I doing? What did we almost do? I want to press the rewind button. Press it and press it and press it. But I can’t think about that now, can only think about not getting caught in this bed with Toby.
“Hurry,” I say, and it unfreezes and de-panics both of us.
He springs to his feet and I scramble across the floor like a crazed crab, put on my shirt, throw Toby his. We’re both dressing at warp speed—
“No more,” I say, fumbling with the buttons on my shirt, feeling criminal and wrong, full of ick and shame. “Please.”
He’s straightening the bedding, frenetically puffing pillows, his face flushed and wild, blond hair flying in every direction. “I’m sorry, Len—”
“It doesn’t make me miss her less, not anymore.” I sound half resolute, half frantic. “It makes it worse.”
He stops what he’s doing, nods, his face a wrestling match of competing emotions, but it looks like hurt is winning out. God, I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t want to do this anymore either. I can’t. And what is this anyway? Being with him just now didn’t feel like the safe harbor it did before—it was different, desperate, like two people struggling for breath.
“John Lennon,” I hear from downstairs. “You home?”
This can’t be happening, it can’t. Nothing used to happen to me, nothing at all for seventeen years and now everything at once. Joe is practically singing my name, he sounds so elated, probably still riding high from that kiss, that sublime kiss that could make stars fall into your open hands, a kiss like Cathy and Heathcliff must have had on the moors with the sun beating on their backs and the world streaming with wind and possibility. A kiss so unlike the fearsome tornado that moments before ripped through Toby and me.
Toby is dressed and sitting on my bed, his shirt hanging over his lap. I wonder why he doesn’t tuck it in, then realize he’s trying to cover a freaking hard-on—oh God, who am I? How could I have let this get so out of hand? And why doesn’t my family do anything normal like carry house keys and lock front doors?
I make sure I’m buttoned and zipped. I smooth my hair and wipe my lips before I swing open the bedroom door and stick my head out just as Joe is barreling down the hallway. He smiles wildly, looks like love itself stuffed into a pair of jeans, black T-shirt, and backward baseball cap.
“Come over tonight. They’re all going to the city for some jazz show.” He’s out of breath—I bet he ran all the way here. “Couldn’t wait ...” He reaches for my hand, takes it in his, then sees Toby sitting on the bed behind me. First he drops my hand, and then the impossible happens: Joe Fontaine’s face shuts like a door.
“Hey,” he says to Toby, but his voice is pinched and wary.
“Toby and I were just going through some of Bailey’s things,” I blurt out. I can’t believe I’m using Bailey to lie to Joe to cover up fooling around with her boyfriend. A new low even for the immoral girl I’ve become. I’m a Gila monster of a girl. Loch Ness Lennie. No convent would even take me.
Joe nods, mollified by that, but he’s still looking at me and Toby and back again with suspicion. It’s as if someone hit the dimmer switch and turned down his whole being.
Toby stands up. “I need to get home.” He crosses the room, his carriage slumped, his gait awkward, uncertain. “Good seeing you again,” he mumbles at Joe. “I’ll see you soon, Len.” He slips past us, sad as rain, and I feel terrible. My heart follows after him a few paces, but then it ricochets back to Joe, who stands before me without a trace of death anywhere on him.
“Lennie, is there—”
I have a pretty good idea what Joe is about to ask and so I do the only thing I can think of to stop the question from coming out of his mouth: I kiss him. I mean
really
kiss him, like I’ve wanted to do since that very first day in band. No sweet soft peck about it. With the same lips that just kissed someone else, I kiss away his question, his suspicion, and after a while, I kiss away the someone else too, the something else that almost just happened, until it is only the two of us, Joe and me, in the room, in the world, in my crazy swelling heart.
Holy horses.
I put aside for a moment the fact that I’ve turned into a total strumpet-harlot-trollop-wench-jezebel-tart-harridan-chippynymphet because I’ve just realized something incredible.
This is it
—what all the hoopla is about, what
Wuthering Heights
is about—it all boils down to this feeling rushing through me in this moment with Joe as our mouths refuse to part. Who knew all this time I was one kiss away from being Cathy and Juliet and Elizabeth Bennet and Lady Chatterley!?
Years ago, I was crashed in Gram’s garden and Big asked me what I was doing. I told him I was looking up at the sky. He said, “That’s a misconception, Lennie, the sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.”
Kissing Joe, I believe this, for the first time in my life.
I feel delirious, Joelirious, I think as I pull away for a moment, and open my eyes to see that the Joe Fontaine dimmer switch has been cranked back up again and that he is Joelirious too.