Forever in Blue (24 page)

“I think so,” he said. His eyes were intense, but in a way particular to painting. He was gathering his impressions, transferring them to his canvas without holding on to them.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“It’s—I don’t know. I’m afraid to say.”

That meant it was going well, she understood. “I think I should take a break for a couple minutes,” she said. Her arm was prickly all the way down to her fingers. She sat up and moved to the edge of the bed before he could put down his brush and his palette.

He paused halfway to the door. “Do you want me to go?” he asked.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

Leo watched her stretch and yawn on the edge of his bed. He was as unfamiliar with her behavior as she was. He drifted back to his canvas in some disbelief.

“What time is it?” she asked, shaking out her sleeping arm.

There was a clock on his desk. “Almost four.”

Her eyes opened wide. “God. I really did fall asleep.”

He nodded. “You sleep very still,” he said.

Silence had fallen over Tibby’s life. Lena claimed to know nothing. Tibby’s mother claimed to know nothing. Carmen claimed to know nothing. Bee claimed to know nothing, but Bee was in Turkey. Bee was the only one Tibby believed.

In a low moment Tibby found herself on the phone with Katherine. She couldn’t help herself.

“So have you seen Brian lately?” Tibby asked casually, hating every word as it came out of her mouth. And also hating her mouth and the weak body to which it was attached.

“Yes,” said Katherine. Tibby suspected she was watching cartoons.

“Did he take you to camp on Friday?”

“Uh-huh.” Now Katherine was chewing on something.

“Did you see Effie?” Oh, the shame.

“Huh?”

“Did you ever see Effie with Brian?”

“Effie?”

“Yes, Effie.”

“No.”

Tibby felt the relief flood through her body. Maybe Lena and everybody else were telling her the truth after all. Maybe there really wasn’t anything going on.

“But she picked up Brian in her car,” Katherine mentioned over the opening song of Blue’s Clues.

“She did?”

“Two times.”

What? What? “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You know what I think?”

“What?” So intense was Tibby she had practically shoved the phone into her ear cavity.

“She has big boobies.”

In the last hour of his light, Leo grew agitated.

“When’s your mom coming home?” Lena asked, moving her mouth but not her head.

“Not till tomorrow. She went to the Cape with friends this weekend.”

“Oh,” Lena said. She began to consider a different explanation.

When the music ended, Leo put down his brush and stowed his palette. He walked over to her, and the fading light showed only half of his face.

“Are we done?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, but he touched her calf lightly with his fingers. He put the palm of his hand against her hip. He waited to see if she would protest or move away, if she would feel around for the robe as she had done before. She considered doing all of these things, but she didn’t. She liked the feel of his hand on her skin. She wanted to know what came next.

He sat on the bed and leaned over her, kissing her. She drew in her breath as she felt his hand find her breast. She resumed the kiss as his hands explored her body, finding out a few things his eyes couldn’t tell him.

He lay next to her and she unbuttoned his shirt. She recognized her own clumsiness, but it didn’t register as shame.

She wondered at the intimacy of the sounds in his throat, the smell of his neck and his chest. She pushed her body against his wide, muscled expanse of skin. It was intimate, but not like what she’d had before. Her mind was peaceful. Her body was stirred and it was curious. She wanted to know how it would go.

This wasn’t like it was with Kostos: the fierce want bordering on anguish, the longing intermingled with ache. It was something else. It was a simpler pleasure. Maybe you didn’t have to go around feeling that much.

Two years ago, she’d stopped when she’d wanted desperately to go. Why not let it unfold? What was she waiting for?

She’d had enough dreams, enough fantasies. She’d read and she’d heard and she’d imagined. She knew what this was about.

“I have something,” he murmured. She realized that he meant he had a condom and that he was asking her if she was ready, if this was what she wanted.

She paused, but only for a moment. “Okay,” she whispered back.

To: [email protected]; [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: home

*

I’m flying back to D.C. I’ll be there Saturday.

Maybe even in time for the Rollinses’ bash. I want to see you so much.

Leo wanted her to sleep over, but Lena realized she wanted to wake up in her own bed. He was sorry to walk her home, she knew. He walked her upstairs and to her door, and kissed her until she playfully shut the door in his face.

“We’ll have lunch before class tomorrow,” he said to her before he left. “I’ll bring the sandwiches.”

She sat on her bed for a long time without turning on the light. She considered the different parts of her body and how each of them felt. People said that the first time often hurt or felt bad. It didn’t for her. She’d been lying naked in his bed for many hours, drowsy and stirred among his sheets and his pheromonal boy smells. She was ready when it happened. Her pleasure was tentative and new, but she was also able to take joy from Leo’s more complete rapture.

She was his muse, he told her. The combination of the erotic and artistic had been a revelation to him. She was happy with that. Especially as she thought of her own painting and knew that he was a muse for her too.

Does he even know there is more?

Lena checked herself. She stopped her thinking and went back over the question, unsure of what she’d meant by it. More what? More sadness? More tragedy? More ragged exposure, like you had turned yourself inside out? Was that more?

What if Leo didn’t know? What if he never knew? Maybe that would be a piece of good luck.

With Leo she didn’t feel turned inside out. She was happy about that. She put on an old pair of pajamas, feeling very much outside in.

But when she woke up sometime in the early morning, she was crying. Her face and hair were soaked, her pillow was damp. How long had she been crying?

The crying kept going as she sat up and wondered about it, not seeming to will it. But she knew what the trouble was. She knew her dream self was permitting a sadness her waking self hadn’t allowed.

All this time she’d been waiting for Kostos. She’d always thought her first time would be with him.

Tibby tortured herself for the days leading up to her parents’ anniversary party. But there was a strange comfort in the fact that at least she deserved it.

Brian and Effie were acting like a couple. No one was even denying it anymore.

“They are the only ones left at home,” Bee said.

“Maybe they’re just friends,” Carmen said.

“Brian’s lonely. He misses you,” Lena said.

Tibby didn’t believe any of it.

If Effie had used even half of the tactical brilliance on Brian that she’d used on Tibby, there was no hope. Effie would probably be wearing an engagement ring the next time Tibby saw her. It wouldn’t even matter whether Brian liked her or not.

Silly old Effie, clueless little sister who couldn’t tell time without a digital clock. Ha. In Tibby’s mind, Effie had transformed into the devil herself.

Tibby’s subconscious produced a new anxiety dream just for the occasion. Tibby dreamed it night after night, all night long: Effie doing various bold things while wearing the Traveling Pants. Only once in all those dreams did Tibby get to wear them herself. And when her big chance came, Tibby somehow ended up with her whole body stuffed into one leg.

“Do you want me to disinvite Brian to the party?” her mother asked the week before Tibby was set to take the train home.

“Let me think about it.”

Tibby called her mother back an hour later. “No, he should come. It would be wrong to tell him not to. Anyway, I’m going to have to see him sometime.”

They were quiet for a minute.

“I can’t exclude Effie,” her mom said, naming the very thing Tibby was hoping for.

“You can’t?”

“Honey, they’re all coming. They are like our extended family. I couldn’t think of not having Ari and George. And Lena? That’s not a question. I can’t exactly say everybody come but leave Effie home.”

“Why not?” Tibby said sourly.

“Tibby.”

“So would you mind disinviting me?”

More and more, Tibby spent her time watching TV. She’d given up on the computer and her “Script.” She watched all the murder shows. All the makeover shows. All the soap operas. All the cooking shows. Even the bug shows and the history shows. She blew most of her savings buying a TiVo on eBay. With the rest she bought a used PlayStation. Everything she needed was right there in that little TV. She watched for Maria Blanquette, but she never came on anymore.

There were quiet moments, though, maybe in the middle of the night or the very early morning, when the countless hours of TV sanded her brain down so that she could see life’s bigger patterns. And then Tibby had the sad thought that while she was staring at the screen, Brian, former Dragon Master, was being with a girl and living a life.

To: [email protected]; [email protected];

[email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: It

*

I truly cannot believe I’m writing a shotgun e-mail to tell you this, but I couldn’t tell one of you without telling the others.

I did it. It it. Or we did it, I should say. Me and Leo.

Bee, I think it was you (was it not) who bet a dozen crullers it wouldn’t happen before I was twenty-five. Ahem.

It’s not that I was in a hurry or anything. I really wasn’t. I would have forked over the donuts. I think I just realized that I was waiting for something that wasn’t even real.

I’ll have to give you the details in person when we are together. (Carmen??)

I’m suddenly picturing my dad seizing my computer and reading everything I write.

Love, love, love, love, love,

Your Loving Lena (Lover of Leo)

Originally, Bee’s return trip took her from Izmir to Istanbul to New York and ended with a short flight to Boston. Her plan at the time was to end up in Providence with a week and a half to get in shape for preseason soccer training camp.

But at the airport in Istanbul she switched the flight to Boston to a flight to Washington, D.C., instead.

And what made her happy, after a disorienting number of hours in transit, was seeing Tibby and Lena at the very front of the baggage area waiting for her. She ran at them, almost flattening them in her joy.

“I’m so glad you are here!” she shouted at them.

“We missed you,” Lena said as Bee hugged and hugged them.

“I missed you,” Bee avowed.

There was too much to say, so they didn’t bother quite yet. They drove to Angie’s downtown and stuffed their faces with pancakes and bacon even though it wasn’t breakfast time, and felt happy to be together. Bee realized they were good at trusting that the moment would come when all would be shared and all would be known. They would wait until Carmen was with them for the true unburdening.

Bridget was lucky, she really was. In the ways that counted.

“I’ve got to take care of some things at home,” Bee said as Tibby pulled her mom’s car up to Bee’s house. “But I’ll come by your parents’ party later, okay?”

“Good. It’ll be you, me, Len…Brian and Effie,” Tibby said darkly.

“Oh, no,” said Bee. “Really?”

“Yes.”

Bee looked at Lena, who shrugged. “Has Effie ever done what I wanted?”

“I’ll bring my riot gear,” Bee said.

Bee realized after she’d waved good-bye and watched them go that she did not have the key to her house. She didn’t feel like knocking. She left her bags in front of the door and went to the back of the house. She still knew the tricks of the kitchen door. She jimmied it patiently and it opened for her. She walked purposefully inside.

Her dad was still at work, she guessed, and Perry would be in his room. She got her bags from the front of her house. She marched them upstairs. Without stopping to think too much she unzipped her duffel bag and began putting her things in her old, emptied drawers.

She opened a window in her room. When she was done unpacking, she walked down to the kitchen and opened a window there, too. She made a quick circuit around the small and overgrown backyard, stopping briefly to pull a few hydrangea balls from the neighbors’ bush. She put the blue flowers in a glass in the middle of the kitchen table.

She looked in the refrigerator. There wasn’t much there. A bottle of ginger ale. A half-full carton of milk. Some takeout boxes. A wilting bunch of celery in the bottom drawer.

In the cabinet were various cans, who knew how old. Then she remembered the cereal. She opened the pantry door and saw the impressive lineup of boxes. Both her father and her brother were big on cereal.

She found a bowl and a teaspoon. She poured herself a short layer of cornflakes and added some milk, pleased that it had not yet expired. She sat herself down at the little kitchen table. She wasn’t hungry and it didn’t taste particularly good, but she ate it.

She left her bowl and spoon in the sink. She left her purse dangling on the chair.

For better and worse, this was her home, and she would remember how to live in it.

The magic had worn off. The loveliness had vanished absolutely. She was back to sweatshirt Carmen, though it was too hot to actually wear one.

She stayed in her bed, trying to sleep through rehearsal. She felt the old Destructo-Carmen impulse, and she tried to work it.

Julia was sympathetic. She brought her cookies and tea from the canteen. She brought her bags of salty Fritos and let her borrow her iPod. She promised they would never talk about meter again if Carmen felt like it was making it worse.