Getting Warmer (9 page)

She threw back her head and let out a musical laugh. “Maybe something a little bigger,” she joked (I think she was joking), giving him a quick peck on the lips.

“Can’t we just go eat?” Jonathan said in what sounded suspiciously like a whine. I swung my head to look at him, surprised by his tone. Neither Jack nor Krista seemed to notice.

“I just thought your friend would enjoy seeing the grounds,” Jack said mildly.

Your friend. “Yes, thanks,” I said. “It was really interesting. And I’m really looking forward to dinner.” Every time I try to be diplomatic, I end up sounding like a weenie.

“You haven’t seen the pool yet,” Krista said.

“Aren’t the reservations for seven?” Jonathan said. “It’s five after.”

“It’s September,” Jack said evenly. “They’re half empty.”

“You’ve got to see the pool,” Krista said. “Jack and I had our rehearsal dinner next to it.”

“Maybe after dinner,” I said, finally taking sides. “I had an early lunch, and I’m starved.” At that, Jonathan took my hand and squeezed.

The maître d’ greeted Jack and Krista enthusiastically and ushered us to an outside table surrounded by bougainvillea and candlelight. A year ago, I would never have considered eating outside in ninety-degree heat, but my body had grown oddly accustomed to the ever-present warmth. The day’s glaring sun still seared, of course, and waves of heat greeted me as I opened the door of my car when I left work, even if I’d managed to score a spot in the spindly shade of a paloverde tree. But I’d learned to love the warmth of a desert night.

I really wanted a margarita, but when the waitress took our drink orders, I ordered a glass of chardonnay because it seemed more sophisticated. Since I wasn’t familiar with any of the chardonnays the waitress offered by the glass, I chose one at random, hoping it wasn’t the most expensive. “Excellent choice,” the waitress said. Damn. It had to be pricey.

Having a menu to peruse was a relief, as it provided a natural time-out from conversation. It wasn’t that Jack or Krista were difficult to talk to; on the contrary, they had already shown themselves to be skilled conversationalists—so skilled, in fact, that the inevitable inquiry, “Tell us about your job,” was just around the corner.

Eventually, I’d end up lying to them, I knew, but I could limit my sins. I wouldn’t rack up too much of a dinner bill. I really wanted the arugula salad with mango and raspberries, but I vowed to make do with an entrée, no matter how hungry I was (and I was pretty hungry). I was trying to decide between the spit-roasted chicken and the barbequed salmon when the waitress glided over with our drinks (a beer for Jonathan, a Manhattan for Jack, and, for Krista, a sparkling water with lemon). My wine was delicious. I had definitely overreached.

“We have some additional specials tonight,” the waitress said. She had strawberry blond hair and the kind of freckly skin that should never be exposed to the sun. She described a curried butter-nut squash bisque (I couldn’t imagine eating soup in this heat, though it did sound good), a roasted goat cheese salad, and “miso-marinated sea bass served with baby green beans and roasted garlic mashed potatoes.” Miso-marinated sea bass? I loved miso-marinated sea bass! The last time my parents took me out to dinner (last spring, before they fled the heat), we had gone to an Asian fusion place where I had foolishly ordered a sesame halibut, while my mother opted for, yes, miso-marinated sea bass. It was quite possibly the best thing I have ever tasted. She allowed me three bites before telling me I could order it next time and, “Eat your own food.”

The chicken and salmon were both mid-range items. I hadn’t even bothered to consider the lobster. “How much is the sea bass?” I inquired as discreetly as I could.

“Thirty-two fifty,” the waitress said. Wow. Her tips must be impressive.

“I’ll have the salmon,” I said bravely.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Jack said.

“Have the sea bass,” urged Jonathan.

“Don’t worry about the cost!” Krista instructed. “Dinner’s on us!”

“Oh, no, it’s not that,” I said. “I just—I’m really in a salmon-y mood. Is it good?” I asked the waitress.

“It’s very popular,” she said. “Anything to start?”

“No, thank you.”

Krista touched my arm. “Get a salad!”

“I’m really not very hungry.” I hoped no one had heard my stomach growling.

“Ten minutes ago you said you were starving,” Jack said. “Try the mussels. They’re fantastic.”

“If I ate all that, I couldn’t possibly eat my entrée. Just the salmon.” I shut my menu with a snap and handed it to the waitress.

The waitress turned to face Krista. “And for you, miss?” I wondered whether she called all women “miss” or if she thought Jack and Krista couldn’t possibly be married.

“I’ll try the sea bass,” Krista said. “With the arugula salad to start.”

“Excellent choice,” the waitress said.

I held in a whimper.

By the time the entrées arrived, I had eaten three pieces of bread with olive oil and wasn’t really hungry anymore. My salmon was okay, certainly better than anything I would have eaten at home, but I was overcome with food envy. Krista put a delicate forkful of white fish in her mouth, closed her eyes and moaned. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to taste this.” She forked off a chunk and transported it carefully onto Jack’s plate.

He chewed and nodded with appreciation. “Fantastic.”

“Natalie, would you like to try some? Jonathan?”

I was on the verge of saying yes when Jonathan said, “No, thank you.”

“Thanks, but no,” I said, glancing involuntarily at her plate.

Krista smiled at me. “So, Natalie, tell me about your job. Jonathan tells me you work out at the . . . prison?” Her eyes widened slightly.

“Well, I’m a teacher,” I said, hoping I’d get eventual credit for speaking at least a shred of truth. “It’s stressful but rewarding.” I picked up my wineglass to take a drink before realizing it was empty. I placed it back on the table. “Do you have any children?” I asked, desperate to change the conversation. I was pretty sure she didn’t, but maybe she’d talk about her sister’s children or her neighbor’s children or children she’d seen on
Oprah
. Honestly, I didn’t care what we talked about as long as we didn’t talk about my job.

My question stopped the conversation dead. Krista and Jack traded glances. Her lips twitched upward. She took the napkin from her lap and dabbed at the corners of her mouth.

“She doesn’t have any,” Jonathan said, looking up when the silence dragged on.

“Well . . .” Krista said. Jack took her hand under the table.

“We weren’t going to tell anyone yet,” Jack said, breaking into a grin. “But Jonathan, you’re going to be a big brother!”

Krista laughed and flushed. Jonathan stared.

“Wow!” I said. “Congratulations! When are you due?”

“In thirty-six weeks. We’ve only just found out, but we’ve been hoping for a long, long time.”

Jonathan still hadn’t said anything.

“Well, son,” Jack said. “What do you think?”

Jonathan looked at Krista. “Aren’t you too old?”

She stopped smiling. I think she may have stopped breathing. I certainly did.

“Apparently not,” she said quietly. She lifted her glass of sparkling water and took a long drink, staring over the rim at the candle that flickered in the middle of the table.

So it wasn’t exactly the time to tell Jonathan that I’d lied about the prison thing and the mother thing.

He was quiet as we drove away from the restaurant. I don’t know what had shocked me more: Jonathan’s rudeness or his father’s response. Jack had merely laughed (none too convincingly) and said, “And here I was thinking you considered Krista too young for me.” From there, Jack turned the conversation to his favorite restaurants and his friends’ favorite restaurants and managed to avoid any awkward silences or uncomfortable topics as we sprinted through our entrées. Jack ordered dessert and coffee. Krista stuck with water. Jonathan, without consulting me, said we’d better get going. I thanked Jack and Krista for the dinner with what I hoped was politeness that didn’t cross the line into effusiveness and scurried after Jonathan, thinking, “He owes me a key lime tart.”

When we left the restaurant, Jonathan started driving up Camelback Mountain. That would have been nice had I lived on Camelback Mountain—or even if he lived there. I considered asking why we were headed up the rust-colored, triple-humped formation, but I feared he might misinterpret a simple, “Where are we going?” He might think I was afraid that he had split personalities, that the good Jonathan had disappeared, leaving the bad Jonathan to rape and strangle me before bashing in my head with a jagged rock and throwing my lifeless body into a patch of creosote to be thrashed beyond recognition by coyotes, rattlers, hawks and all those prehistoric-looking bugs that I forever feared would take up residence in my shoes.

We wound up the mountain in silence. When we reached the top, Jonathan killed the engine. Below us, city lights sparkled. Outside the car, giant saguaros—those cactuses that come to mind when you hear the word “cactus,” the ones they put on margarita glasses and Southwestern-themed Christmas cards—looked like malformed giants holding up their arms to worship an unseen god.

When Jonathan finally spoke, I expected him to blow: to explode with resentment at his father, hatred for his stepmother. Instead, he sighed and said, “Maybe we should have just gone to a movie.”

I reached over and took his hand. “I don’t know. There’s nothing good out right now. And those concession stands are such a rip-off.”

He squeezed my hand. His hands were warm, rough. “When I was a kid, my father used to drive me up here. All you could see was mountains and land, a few neighborhoods here and there. We’d come up to look at the sunset, and after the light faded, it was just dark—I mean, really pitch-black except for the little clumps of civilization here and there.” Below us now, the Phoenix Valley glowed from the houses and shopping centers. Along the freeways, cars made trails of white and red. “My father bought land,” he continued. “Anytime he had any money, he’d buy some new patch of desert. Whenever we’d come up here, he’d look over the valley and say,
Someday this will all be houses
.”

“He was right,” I said.

“His first wife left because she thought he was throwing away their money. In the settlement, she got the house and the cash; he got the undeveloped land.”

“Bad move,” I said.

“Very bad move.” He turned to face me. He smoothed my short hair and ran a finger along my chin. When he finally kissed me, it wasn’t with the urgency he’d shown earlier, but rather with a sense of seeking. He trailed his kisses along my jawline, finally stopping at my ear. “I’m glad I met you,” he murmured.

“Me, too,” I murmured back, trying not to think too much about who he thought he had met.

The following Monday, I was on time for school. Actually, I’d been on time every day since my parents had returned. They were “still on Eastern time” my mother announced brightly every morning at 6 A.M. when she brought me my coffee. It almost made up for losing out on my parents’ double-headed shower. The one in my bathroom was a shower/bath combination, and the Waverly shower curtain, pretty though it was, was forever floating into my space and sticking to my wet legs. I know it’s stupid to waste emotional energy on an inanimate object, but that shower curtain really pissed me off.

I stopped by the office to debrief Jill on my evening. She wasn’t there, but Nicolette was—though it was hard to see her behind a wall of red roses.

“Two dozen,” Nicolette informed me, looking up from a Ross-Simons catalogue. “I told Rodney they were my favorite. He must’ve dropped them off here on his way to work.” She smiled dreamily and tilted her head back, revealing a stupendously large hicky just under her jaw.

“Sounds serious,” I said.

Nicolette leaned forward. “Yesterday he said the ‘L’ word,” she stage-whispered.

“Lesbian?”

“No—love!
Duh!
” She colored slightly. “I didn’t mean to say ‘duh.’ Sorry, Miss Quackenbush.”

“No offense taken. And, please. Call me Natalie.”

My first class was eleventh-grade college prep. As far as I could tell, these students were preparing for college by perfecting expressions of desperate boredom and downloading prewritten essays from the Internet. One student, assigned to write about
Great Expectations
, handed in an essay entitled, “David Copperfield: A Colonial Dissemination of Self.”

“Right author, wrong book,” I informed him before scheduling a conference with his mother, stepfather, father, stepmother and Dr. White. “Though you did a first-rate job designing the title page.”

Ten minutes into today’s class, there was a knock on the door—an unusual formality. I opened the door to reveal a model-tall, model-thin girl with long, dyed black hair and improbably pale skin.

“I’m your new student? They told me I was in this class?” She clutched a loose-leaf binder to her chest and smiled shyly. She had beautiful teeth and clear, green eyes.

“Of course! Come in!” I had no idea who she was, but she looked so nervous that I didn’t want to let on how unexpected her arrival was. I’d be getting new students all year long; Nicolette just couldn’t keep up with the paperwork, and not just because she was too busy picking out silverware. The Valley of the Sun—a monstrous sprawl that encompassed not only Phoenix and Scottsdale but also a seemingly endless list of stuccoed cities including Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert, Chandler, and the improbably named Peoria—was growing so fast, it was a perpetual construction zone. Last I’d checked, the valley had almost four million people spread out over 14,000 seemingly uninhabitable square miles. With new jobs came families needing houses and children needing schools. That, in turn, brought in more jobs—in construction, real estate development, and, yes, teaching.