You Know Me Better Than That (A Short Story) (2 page)

By the time Lisbeth came back upstairs, it had been half an hour.

“You didn’t do the straw,” I remember saying. She told me to grow up, that she didn’t feel like playing anymore. Her lips were stained maroon at the corners, and her hair was in a loose braid that ran over her right shoulder and across her chest.

“Did you braid your hair for him?” I asked. She shrugged, and it made me want to bite her arm, for old time’s sake.

“Do you want me to redo yours?” she said, and she began plucking out bobby pins.

Jessie:
So when did you start working at The Springs?

Miranda:
How old are you anyway? You can’t be older than twenty-one.

Jessie:
I’m twenty-two.

Miranda
: Good for you. It was impolite of me to ask. To be fair, I bet you’ve got plenty on me: never married, no children, shut-in failed poet with one good story about a kid she knew in high school. It’s not self-pity—all poets are failures.

What else is there to know? Two weeks ago I installed handicap rails in my shower. That’s important. I know, I’m forty-two, still young, but “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” becomes less of a joke when you live alone. Write that down. I buy bundles of carnations every Wednesday that I throw out on Sunday, as soon as the petals brown. Then I make myself live Monday and Tuesday without flowers, just so I get to need them again.

I’m sure you’ve done your homework, Jess, but you were only half-right earlier. I did save Luke Wilson’s life, but he wasn’t exactly drowning.

Jessie:
Go on.

Miranda:
Wil and I first spoke during my only winter at the pool, when I was training for summer guard. We were sophomores, and I spent Tuesdays and Thursdays on my lifeguard chair, swallowed by a red down jacket and rip-away track pants. I’d show up with my hair up in a knot, and with two puffs on my inhaler, just in case. It had never crossed my mind to dress up for work. That was a Lisbeth thing.

Have you been to The Springs in the winter? The water is sixty-eight degrees all year long, fresh and dark, with turtles the size of small boulders asleep in the deep end. We were the only pool open in December, and we were the only pool open until eight. The air was too chilly for recreational swimmers by the holidays, so I spent hours watching triathletes and composing everyday haiku: “The pool can’t be held / responsible for your child’s / safety. Keep him close.” And I read trashy stuff. I loved
Your World
magazine, which was like
Us Weekly
but with more news and human interest.

Wil came in around six and swam an hour of laps. Like the others, he wore a Speedo, Lav High purple and orange, and got straight to business. When he was done, he’d pat himself dry, working his way up: one foot, then the other, one leg, then the other. He was tall by then, the same height as now. I felt pretty lucky about how long it took.

Then one day, the routine changed. It was February, and I was hiding my hands in my coat sleeves, pawing at the pages of
Your World
’s “Stranger Than Fiction” section, when Wil snuck up on me. I’d been watching him dry off a few minutes earlier, but I always made myself look away once he got to his chest.

I swore and clutched my magazine.

He said something like “That assembly today was pretty illuminating, huh?” He stood below my perch, his face in my knees. I shaved twice a week in the winter and thanked God I was wearing pants, even the rip-away ones.

My homeroom hadn’t gone to the assembly, but I nodded.

Wil grabbed hold of the middle rung on my chair like he meant to climb it. In one split-second motion, he lifted himself up to the top step. I felt my pulse in my hands and a wild heat on my chest, which was probably covered in red splotches. I remember wondering what it would feel like to have him sit on my lap.

His nose and cheeks were red from the cold, and his nostrils were flat, steep slopes. A cluster of dark hairs ran from one eyebrow to the other. I tell you this because he was handsome, but up close, you noticed the possibility of a unibrow. And how half of his top lip was puckered around a scar.

He balanced a magazine subscription flyer on my knee. It must have fallen to the ground.

“Well, you clearly didn’t learn anything at the assembly,” he said. “It’s called recycling, Miranda.”

Speaking proved hard. Luke Wilson knew my name. “And clearly,” I spit out, “you don’t know how to respect other people’s personal space.”

“You’re the lifeguard,” he said, walking backward toward the parking lot. “Isn’t your job getting in everyone’s way?”

That was it.

Any questions, Jessica? I agreed to this interview for a reason, so I suppose I should at least be nice about it.

Jessie:
Why did you agree to this interview?

Miranda:
I was surprised you didn’t ask Lisbeth. Did you ask Lisbeth?

Jessie:
I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know what the guys in charge did.

Miranda:
Of course you don’t.
Cigarette?

[Silence.]

What’s the point in talking to you? There’s no point, except to say that I saw Wil first. You say you don’t care what he’s like in bed, but you want him, and I saw him first.

Jessie:
Sure, I’ll take a cigarette. Like I said, I’m twenty-two. He is middle-aged. I do not want Luke Wilson. Do you?

Miranda:
I’ll tell you what, that’s the first hard question you’ve asked me. That kind of question makes me nervous.

I wore my hair down the next Thursday, the ends curled below my shoulders. A little blush on my cheeks. Wil asked if I’d gotten my hair cut, and I frowned like I didn’t know what he was talking about. He asked me what I was reading, leaning up against my lifeguard stand, and I showed him this terrific
Your World
story. A boy in Louisiana had broken into his landlord’s apartment with a few friends and stolen a TV and stereo. They were on their way out when the kid in charge spotted the landlord’s goldfish. He didn’t want any witnesses—that’s actually what he said. “No witnesses.” So they scooped the fish out of the bowl with a net and set it on the kitchen island to suffocate.

The next week when Wil asked me for the news, I told him another story.

By the time summer came around, I’d put in enough winter hours to dictate my work schedule. I took the late shifts, like before, but after the first week Wil stopped showing. I eventually ran into him one afternoon while picking up my paycheck.

“You don’t like my stories anymore?” I said, laughing before he could say anything back.

I’d been saving one for him about a man and a woman who’d met through their computers, one of the world’s first Internet dating disasters. The chat-room element was interesting, a modern way of meeting through the classifieds, but what made it special was how close they’d felt after only a handful of exchanges. After making out on their third date, they discovered they were brother and sister. Well, half brother and sister—they shared a philandering father—but the story absolutely thrilled me. It’s an obvious punch line now, but I clung to it then: two people meant for each other. It didn’t matter that the romance was off or that he’d groped his sister and she’d liked it. I just liked the possibility. I couldn’t tell him any of this during the day, with juniors and seniors sunbathing on the grass behind him.

Jessica, would you like to hear about Wil’s first love? I introduced them.

Jessie:
Absolutely, but what about your dentist appointment?

Miranda:
Oh, that was a lie. In case you and I didn’t hit it off.

I’d begun showing up at the pool when I wasn’t scheduled, which was a weird thing to do, or at least I felt the weirdness of it. I told myself I needed a tan for the one-piece I wore during the night shift. The pool at the house had sunk by a foot and had to be drained and reset, so I couldn’t lay out at home. And if I was driving to the pool and it was a cloudless day, Lisbeth always wanted to join me.

At this point my sister and I were friendly but not friends. She’d grown beautiful, brown all year long, and she had this subtle meanness to her. She would cut to the front in the hot-plates line at school, telling the girls behind her—always other girls—to relax, she just had to get this one thing. She’d start a two-person conversation in a group of ten.

On our second or third trip to the pool, I introduced them. I knew Wil was there even before I saw him. I was propped up like a seal, reading something, my sunglasses on a slow slide down my nose. After about ten minutes, he walked over from a group of boys to tell me to reapply sunscreen.

“You’ll get the cancer,” he said, and he winked at Lisbeth, who was on her back squinting up at him. We had a freshmen-only campus back then, so this was the first time he’d seen her, wet, just out of the pool, smelling of chlorine and coconut.

“You’re funny,” she said, flipping onto her front.

I felt his friends watching us from the snack stand, but when I pushed my sunglasses up to check, they weren’t there.

Lisbeth sighed and stripped a blade of grass down to a string. She was staring at the entrance arches when Wil crouched down beside her.

“This must be your kid sister,” he said.

He knew I had a younger sister, but he also knew she was only a year younger. And now he knew that she was beautiful in a beachy way. She smiled and snapped one of her pink bikini straps against her shoulder. I remember that because it reminded me of a move from
Grease
. I wanted to tell her to shut up, but she hadn’t said anything.

“Who are you?” she said.

“Luke,” he said, and he held out his hand.

Most of this dialogue is approximate, of course. It’s right enough—it would be good enough for a memoir—but there are a few lines I can guarantee you. He said Luke. Not Wil, but Luke. I’d never heard anyone but teachers call him that before.

Jessie:
Did you ever consider telling Lisbeth how you felt?

Miranda:
You mean Wil?

Jessie:
Either.

Miranda:
Once, on their first date. I’m not a monster, though—it was a group date, fifteen kids sneaking into
Aliens
. Lisbeth had invited me along, who knows why, and I agreed to go because I didn’t want to hear about it from her or a friend and because I assumed it was my last chance to throw myself at him.

Wil picked us up in his dad’s truck, which only had front seats, so we all crammed in, with Lisbeth in the middle. She was wearing a white tank top that didn’t cover her stomach. I had on a white sundress I thought looked pretty on me, cinched at the waist and floaty in the thighs, so you couldn’t see all my muscles.

Pulling out of our cul-de-sac, Wil flipped on the classic rock station and reached over to roll my window down, probably to keep me distracted while he and Lisbeth got to know each other. His wrist sat on my knee as he rolled. I spent most of that twenty-minute ride sweating through my shirt on the leather seat, trying to sit so that my elbow wasn’t touching Lisbeth.

When we got there, Wil bought Lisbeth a jumbo Cherry Coke and malted milk balls at the concession stand. As he handed over a twenty to pay, Lisbeth stopped him.

“What about Miranda?” she asked. “Do you want anything, Mira?”

“Mira?” Luke said. “Like ‘mirror’ with a gangster accent. Mira, Mira on the wall.”

His jokes had a way of getting cornier when he was nervous. I hated myself for knowing that about him.

“No. Mira, like Miranda,” Lisbeth said, stabbing a straw into her Coke. “It’s called a nickname, Willy. You’re not the only one who can have one.”

My stomach felt empty except for a coating of bile, so I ordered a medium popcorn.

“And you can share your milk balls,” Wil said to her.

“What’s mine is yours,” she said, and she smiled so big that her gums showed. She turned to go before the cashier had counted back Wil’s change.

“How generous of her.” He passed me the popcorn. “You cool with sharing, Mira?”

I shook my head. I felt Wil watching me. We were alone, and my body had started buzzing. The couple behind us pushed past to order. I remember the smell of liquid butter and the sound of George Strait on the loudspeaker. I pinched one piece of popcorn, trying for daintiness, and set it on my tongue.

“That was sarcasm,” I finally said. “She doesn’t share.”

“I’ve been warned,” he said. He looked right at me.

“I’m not that great at it, either.”

“That’s just bad parenting.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, steering us toward the theater. I thought he might kiss me.

“Are you?” I started. “What I mean is, I just want you to know that you and Lisbeth . . .” I paused so that maybe he’d jump in with something like “There is no me and Lisbeth,” but no. “Do you like her?”

“What’s not to like? The Davis girls are good people.” His arm felt really light on my skin, like it was hovering above it. I still thought he might kiss me.

There was a series of booms from inside the theater.

“The previews are the best part,” he said, walking ahead.

We didn’t sit together. They sat at one end of the group, and I sat at the other. I glanced over during the movie, but I couldn’t tell that they were holding hands until the lights went on during the credits. I hid in the bathroom for like ten minutes after, trying to throw up, but I couldn’t even make that happen. When I came out, it felt like half the school had been waiting for me. Someone asked if I was okay—I knew I looked green—and Lisbeth told them to leave me alone and then started talking about Taco Cabana, so everyone walked toward the food court. I’ll always remember that, how easy it was for her to redirect everyone’s attention.

Jessie:
That’s as close as you came?

Miranda:
Pathetic, right? Do you like
her
? I was pathetic.

It was never my plan to break them up, not once they were together. I wasn’t looking to save Wil from her.

What was that ending you’d heard? How does your story end?

Jessie:
I’m here to get your story.

Miranda:
I bet my ending is pretty different. I’ll bet you lunch, somewhere nice. It’d be my pleasure.