In Stereo Where Available (21 page)

“What the hell am I supposed to say? Not unless you dump your girlfriend?
Then
what? So I can get the guy who’ll do the same thing to
me
whenever he’s out of town?”

“You don’t want that.”

“I can’t
believe
it. That’s totally against the rules. If you’re going to drop the news that you have a girlfriend, you either do it right at the beginning, in the car, or on the phone the next day if you’re
really
a piece of shit. You don’t drop a bomb like that when you haven’t even left the bedroom yet. The bedroom’s a sanctuary from that kind of crap. People have been killed over things like that.” She grabbed the towel hanging from the refrigerator door, thin white terry cloth with the word
PRILOSEC
on it, and angrily wiped up the water.

I moved out of her way as she stomped off to the living room. “Don’t overreact.”

“Overreact?
How would it be
possible
to overreact? That asshole. He totally misled me. I hate men. I’m just going to give up and become a lesbian.”

“Good idea.”

She flopped down on the sofa and put her hand against her forehead, staring at the ceiling. “Except that sex would be a problem.”

“Well, I’m sure your medical resident will probably still be available for that, if you still needed him.”

She gestured angrily toward the ceiling, a jerky little karate chop of frustration. “He was
so perfect
. I looked at
everything
, Phoebe. He should have been
exactly
the one for me. An ESTJ, a Virgo, a Dog—”

“Sounds like he was a dog, all right.”

“Ugh
. I’m
so
pissed. I’m glad I’m not going home for Christmas. I don’t want to deal with my mom and sister after all this.” She looked over at me. “Are you going to your mom’s or your dad’s?”

I sat down on the edge of the coffee table. “Um, actually, I’m going down to Florida with Jerry to meet his parents.”

She raised her head a bit from the sofa pillow, her eyes getting buggy. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. We’re driving down on Christmas Eve. I was actually going to ask you if you’d watch the animals for me, but I guess this isn’t the best time.”

She dropped her head back against the pillow and closed her eyes. “Go out and get us some Chinese food before I strangle you.”

On the drive down to Florida, we talked about things. Big things and little things. Smart things and dumb things. Driving on the interstate, Jerry was completely at ease. His hand rested on the gear shift, rubbing back and forth like putting chalk on a pool cue, the palm of his left hand easy on the bottom of the steering wheel. We talked about the kids in our classes. About John Dewey and
Savage Inequalities
and what we liked about teaching. About my sister and reality TV in general and what it said about our culture. About whether, in a package of Fun Dip, it was the flavored sugar or the sticks that tasted better.

“Definitely the sugar,” insisted Jerry.

“No way. The sticks are the best part.”

“The sticks are a gimmick. An accessory. You know that originally the sticks weren’t even there? You ate it with your fingers, and your fingers would turn green from the dye.”

“There’s no green anymore. It’s a color-changing one that starts out green and turns blue.”

Jerry shook his head. “What’s this world coming to?”

We stopped at a gas station in North Carolina and took two bags of potato chips from the metal clips beside the register, one cheddar, one salt and vinegar. Jerry’s Southern Maryland accent grew thicker as he talked to the cashier. He put his arm around my waist when I handed him his root beer, and when the cashier called me “the missus,” Jerry only smiled. His slate-blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he looked at me, and I took the breath that was meant to come out as
I love you
, but then exhaled without a word.
If I say it now, it’ll make everything awkward
. No sense in ruining Christmas with the impatient truth. And in any case, I was happy.

Jerry was happy, as well. He was looking forward to Florida and Christmas and seeing his family, but having company for the trip, he said, made it that much better. I drove all the way to the South Carolina border, and as we passed the singlewide trailers that bordered the road, we traded potato chips and talked about race and poverty and population control.

“I could go for four kids,” he said.

“Four?” I looked over at him. He was munching on one of my salt-and-vinegar chips, his eyes obscure behind his sunglasses. “I was thinking more like three.”

“I could do three.”

“Madison only wants one.”

“I could do one.” He popped another chip into his mouth, his chest shaking in a silent laugh. “And then screw up three more times.”

In South Carolina we pulled off the highway long enough to get a drive-through dinner from Burger King, switching seats in the parking lot so that Jerry could drive again. It was Christmas Eve, and he wanted to arrive at his parents’ house as early as possible on Christmas Day. I passed him French fries as he drove, holding his insulated coffee cup between my knees. He scanned the radio stations and complained about all the country music, fondly reminiscing about all the Metallica concerts he had been to when he was younger.

“All the way up until they released the Black Album,” he said. “They sold out on that one.”

“Isn’t that the one with ‘The Unforgiven’ on it?”

He pretended to stick his finger down his throat. “Whiny dreck. That was a grunge song. It’s a
stain
on heavy metal.”

“A lot of people liked it. It was like a breakout song.”

“That was Nirvana’s fault. Heavy metal’s supposed to say, ‘’F’ you.’ It’s not supposed to say, ‘Why me?’“

Somewhere around Columbia I told him about my trip to the doctor and the nurse who had made assumptions and my birth-control pills.

“I’m just being precautionary,” I explained.

“That’s probably not a bad idea.”

“Why? Did you have plans?”

“Me? No. The ball’s in your court. I told you I can wait forever.”

“You’re happy with things the way they are?”

“Sure, yeah. I’m not in any hurry. I know what you’re waiting for.”

“You mean love?”

“Yeah. That’s fine with me.”

“But you’re not waiting for anything?”

“No. I’m already in love.”

My heart stumbled. My first thought was that he was confessing he was in love with another girl. I laid my hands on the map that covered my lap and asked, “With who?”

He took his eyes off the road and looked at me over his sunglasses, his brows creasing, speaking as though it were perfectly obvious. “With you.”

I stared at him in wild-eyed wonder. Inside of me, my heart was breaking open, spilling out all the love that I felt for him and had kept a secret. If someone had tried to fit the whole night sky inside my heart just then, it couldn’t have felt any bigger.

Jerry caught the look in my eyes and laughed—that shy, wholehearted, pure-music laugh of his—and he said ironically, “But I’m waiting for just the right moment to tell you.”

I swallowed against my dry throat. “Now’s a good time.”

He checked his mirrors quickly and pulled onto the shoulder. Tossing his sunglasses on the dashboard and unsnapping his seat belt, he turned his whole body toward me and leaned in. The big green gas-food-lodging sign cast a shadow over the car, and the interstate was as empty of traffic as a country road.

“Phoebe,” he said, “I love you, and I’m so damn head over heels for you, I swear there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make you feel the same way about me.”

In his eyes there was an optimistic hope, plain and unguarded. For a long moment I savored it, the feeling of those words offered up and waiting for me to take them. Whatever answer I gave him would change everything.

“I already do,” I admitted.

He grinned spontaneously and kissed me, once, and then again, and again. It wasn’t the kind of kissing we could do in the car for very long. He smudged the fog from the windshield with the palm of his hand and jerkily shifted the car back into gear.

“What do you say we go find a place to celebrate?” he asked, pulling back onto the highway.

I nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

The hotel we stopped at was a Travelodge that included a game room and an indoor pool—not that I cared, but it mattered to Jerry. As he checked us in at the front desk, he pointed to the glassed-in pool area full of shrieking preteens and pointedly caught my eye.

“See?” he said. “It’s not a cheap motel.”

“I wasn’t worried about it.”

“Just for the record. I don’t want it to come back to haunt me in twenty years.”

“My, you’re making plans, aren’t you?”

He took the key cards from the desk clerk. “I’m just being precautionary.”

“Famous last words.”

We climbed the outdoor stairs and followed the numbered signs to our room. My insides did gyroscopic flips as I walked beside him through the corridors. There are times in people’s lives, every now and then, when they can see some kind of countdown taking place, as clear and rapid as the timer on the TV screen on New Year’s Eve. This was one of them. At the end of the hallway, a maid placidly stacked folded towels onto her yellow cart, as though nothing were strange.

Jerry jiggled the key card in the door, and we stepped inside. Before the door had even slammed closed, he’d tossed his jacket over the dresser and had his shirt halfway over his head. It felt like the first time I’d ever seen him undress. My eyes dropped to the front of his jeans and stayed there. I hadn’t even touched him yet, but he was ready to go. I sat down on the side of the bed and pushed my fists into the bedspread nervously.

“You want to, right?” he asked, dropping his shirt to the floor. “The whole thing?”

“Yeah. You’re going to go easy on me, right?” He was running on pure hormones. I’d seen him like this before, but only when he knew he’d eventually have to curb it.

“Absolutely.” He stepped around the bed and turned the radio on low. “No way would I let you down.”

Suddenly I felt unbearably anxious. I had a flash of a memory of being at the front of a roller-coaster line with Madison, the moment when they loaded the car just ahead of ours. I’d gone on it anyway, but not without feeling like I’d left my stomach back at the entrance.

“Have you ever done this before?” I asked him.

He smiled at me over his shoulder, turning the radio dial. “You know I have. Plenty of times.”

“I mean with a virgin.”

“Nope.” He settled on a mix station. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I can figure it out.”

In a few months I’d be thirty, but right then I didn’t feel a day older than fifteen. The desire I’d felt for him just a little while before was slipping away, and one intimidating thing after another was stepping into its place: Jerry’s buoyant enthusiasm, his inscrutable amount of experience, the strange room, my own fear of pain. I thought about the gynecologist’s office, the jabbing pain as I stared up at the Ansel Adams picture. That wasn’t how I wanted to remember his confession of love.

“Jerry,” I said.

He set his hands on his hips and smiled at me. “What?”

I bit my bottom lip and looked up at him uncertainly. He got the point. His eyebrows lifted, and he offered me a disappointed smile.

“You having second thoughts?” he asked.

“Kind of. I don’t know. I’m worried, that’s all.”

“I’m not going to get you pregnant, Fee. If you’re concerned about that, I can take care of it.”

“No, not that. I just think it’s going to hurt.” I didn’t know how to explain the rest of it—that his experience intimidated me, that the power of his desire scared me. I couldn’t possibly satisfy something like that. There was too much of it, all careening toward me at a hundred miles an hour.

“If it hurts, we’ll stop.
Phoebe
.” He sat down on the bed beside me. “Listen, it’s up to you. I didn’t tell you I love you because I thought it would get me in bed with you. But if you want me to make love to you, I’m happy to and I’ll make it worth the wait.”

I considered that. “Promise it won’t hurt?”