Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (18 page)

For a moment I missed those rocket ship pajamas something fierce. My heart felt like it could break. Poe got up, shook the grass off his back with something that resembled patience. For his good behavior, I patted his side. Also for my own sake—there was something very comforting and solid about the
thup, thup
sound of patting the side of a dog.

I looked at Chip Jr. for a long time. A good long look, so he knew it was him I saw. “I’m sorry,” I said. And then, “Things I Hate. Paper cuts.”

“Sore throats.”

“Those paper seats in the bathrooms. You get them all positioned and then they whoosh off when you go to sit. Or stick to your legs after you’ve been swimming.”

“We don’t use those too much.” He thought. “When that elastic on the sheet pops up from the corner of the bed.”

“I hate that.”

Chip Jr. pointed to his head. “Bang massacres.” My mother had given him a bad haircut. You could never trust my mother with the scissors, or hedge clippers, for that matter. It was true; Chip Jr.’s forehead had grown to
embarrassingly huge proportions. He was calling it The Bang Massacre of July 27th.

“It’s not that bad,” I lied.

I looked at him, my brother with the glasses and the bad haircut and the odd way he had of watching out for me. He was always the one who noticed. I had the sudden longing to be back there in that car at the drive-in, jammed into the front seat next to those pajamas with the little balls of lint on them from so many washings, us passing the can of cream soda awkwardly to each other, our elbows maneuvering like people on a crowded dance floor. I wanted to see the movie reflecting in his and my mother’s eyes as they stared forward through the windshield. I wanted to look back over my shoulder where the other movie played, where mouths moved wrongly to the cartoon voices playing in our car. But most of all I wanted to turn back around again and face front, to be fully in the world we were immersed in, where the voices matched the moving lips, where everything fit just the way it should.

That night the air was cool and almost wet, the way it is when
the clouds are stuffed with liquid but it hasn’t rained yet. Heavy, lethargic clouds had lain around all day, a sudden and surprising interruption of the energetic sunshine we’d had for days before. That’s what happens in the Northwest during the summer—manic-depressive weather. Sun and optimism and bathing suits and the confident, playful smell of sun lotion, and then
bam,
you wake up to the sound of the furnace going on and the dusty smell of warm air whooshing through vents that haven’t been used in a while. You have to put on socks, and the browning lawn looks relieved. Mrs. Wong and Anna Bee had brought their sweaters to the book club that day; both sweaters had little pearl buttons.

Anyway, it was a bad night for a pool party, which just
goes to show that money can’t control everything. Of course, I didn’t know it was a pool party that I was going to, or even a party at all. I thought I was meeting Travis alone. I didn’t want to ask for the details. On one hand, it was like knowing your birthday present before the day. On the other, I didn’t want him to give me any information that my mind would get all parental about.

There was no way I was going to get out of my house without a sound lie, so I took a chance and asked Sydney for her help. She wasn’t happy about being an accomplice. She was, after all, a charter member of the Help Ruby Ditch Travis Club ever since the sleepover.
This is not, she said, what friends do. Friends don’t make excuses for friends to go see Mr. Hollywood who has a little taste for danger.
Did I know that everyone said he was a thief? Did I know that she would have to feel personally responsible if anything happened to me? Did I know that she would crush his nuts if he hurt me in any way?

My mother looked surprised when I told her I was going out with Sydney and her friends that night. I didn’t do this very often, mostly because I worried that Sydney was bringing me along to benefit humankind, like some people give away turkeys on Christmas. I could see that my mother was trying to wrestle with her facial expressions when I told her, trying not to let the doubt sneak out through lowered eyebrows. She won, for the most part, though her smile had the frozen, still-trying cheer of a
HAVE A NICE DAY
bumper sticker on some old, falling-apart Volkswagen.

I escaped fast, waited on Sydney’s porch for a while and then ran out to Cummings Road. It wasn’t the best idea, walking along there where anyone might see me, but the light was dimming and all that waiting around on Sydney’s porch made me late. A car sped past, music bumping from its open windows, and some guy yelled something my way, words that got snatched by the whoosh of air through his open window. The quick blast of bumping music filled me with something like confidence. The adrenaline of possibility made me feel fearless, almost as fearless as Travis thought I was. Why not be open to new experiences? Why be held back by someone like my mother, who for years hadn’t taken a chance on anything more extreme than the sweepstakes on the underside of the Pepsi cap? Making my mother into the villain was tougher than I thought, so I went back to the New Experiences theme. I let the things I loved surge into me and grab my heart, sending it soaring upward to an emotional high-dive platform, where it would wait to leap. I took in the calm yellow porch light of George Washington’s house, the goofy array of misfit cars at Ron’s Auto, waiting for a second chance. I watched the paragliders, fewer in number on that cloudy day, but soaring and drifting, their colors bright against the gray sky.

That’s where I was, high as those paragliders, until I saw the long line of cars snaking up Cummings Road and the driveway of the Becker estate. When I saw those cars, I came down, down, fast, as if the wind had abruptly ceased. I felt just as caught as one of those paragliders we
occasionally saw stuck in the trees, legs dangling, a fool on display.

I walked up the driveway. Another couple was ahead of me. They were my parents’ age—she wore a short Hawaiian dress that sucked to her butt tight as Saran Wrap to a bowl of leftovers and had hair sculpted into a Dairy Queen cone twist; he was packed snug into a polo shirt and shorts, and carried a gift with a perfect bow on top. Clouds of her perfume boldly stalked back my way. It was going to be a loud perfume night. All those perfumes in there would be competing for dominance with prizefighter determination. I walked behind them dumbly and smelling only of shampoo. Party noises—music, laughter, raised voices—drifted from behind the house and poured out when Hawaiian Dress rang the doorbell and the door opened. They were noises that made me slink back into myself and want to disappear.

Travis Becker’s mother answered the door. It was apparently a Hawaiian-themed night, as Mrs. Becker too wore a Hawaiian dress—tasteful, not bold—and a lei of fresh flowers. She had an orchid tucked behind one ear, her hair coiffed around it and flipping up at the ends. I’d never seen her up close before. She was beautiful, it was true—Travis had to get his looks from somewhere—one of those women who maintained her appearance as a part-time job. Travis’s mother would be nothing like my own—she would not accidentally suck up socks and drapery hems with the vacuum, and she would not carry a roll of toilet paper in her car for nose-blowing emergencies.
She would have those tiny packets of Kleenex in her purse, and one for the glove compartment.

Mrs. Becker kissed the woman ahead of me, and then the man, and they wished her a happy birthday. I stood on the sidewalk behind them. I felt like those little kids on Halloween night, the reluctant trick-or-treaters that stand on the bottom step looking at you as if you are the monster. The ones who won’t come forward no matter what is held out in the bowl in front of them. I thought Mrs. Becker might shut the door. She looked at me quizzically, as if maybe I’d come to ask about my lost cat. For a second it seemed like the perfect escape.
I’m sorry to bother you! I was just wondering if you’d seen Binky? He’s a gray Persian.
But then Travis appeared behind his mother.

“Hey, finally,” he said. “Come in.”

I stepped inside, in the half space Mrs. Becker’s body made. “Hello,” I said. I forced my voice out. It was that overly polite one that squeaks with misuse and insincerity. “It’s your birthday?”

“Don’t remind me,” she said, although if she wanted to quietly forget it, the loud music and the guy shouting “Your glass is empty, Becker!” probably wasn’t the way to go.

“Be sure to get your friend something to drink,” Mrs. Becker said.

“Ruby,” I said. But Mrs. Becker had already turned around and was heading outside. “I didn’t know there was going to be a party. You could have told me. It’s her birthday. I would’ve at least brought a present.”

“She’s a bitch,” he said. “Besides. You like surprises.” That was the thing about Travis Becker, I guess. The new ways he defined me. I was never one who could be said to like surprises. Surprises usually meant being caught unprepared in some embarrassing way, and I was the kind of person who always carried enough money for a phone call. I liked the idea that I was someone who could capably handle what was thrown her way. That me would be a person who would wear scarves and click along capably in high heels. I decided that meant I would have to discard my urge to beg for us to leave while clinging to the cuff of Travis Becker’s shirt with the surfers on it.

It was the first time I’d been in Travis’ house. I caught glimpses of things as we walked through the house to the backyard. Marble floors, a staircase with shiny wood handrails that curved up, a modern living room with pillars and a creamy yellow carpet and paintings that looked like someone stepped on a mustard bottle. I saw a violin in a glass case, as if suspended in air. I felt sorry for it—crafted to make beautiful music and yet as silent and closed as Lillian. We walked through a huge kitchen, large enough that if you made a nice cup of steamed milk with a splash of vanilla before bed, it’d be cold before you crossed the room. Big trays of food were set about, large discs of cheeses and hors d’oeuvres of such varying shades and shapes that they made me think of the pretend food Chip Jr. and I used to make with our Play-Doh. Smells drifted in from outside on curls of barbecue smoke; outside the first thing I noticed was a waiter carrying a tray
of salmon fillets, pink and shiny and ready to be singed. I got a tiny bit of pleasure out of the fact that salmon are not exactly Hawaii’s state fish.

“Pork is too fattening,” Travis said, reading my mind. “You wanna lei?” he shouted over the music and put his hand up the back of my skirt. I swatted him, and then he reached into a huge basket of plastic lei’s, choosing a pink one for me, and put it around my neck. The thought crossed my mind that Travis Becker lacked imagination, resorting to the old lei joke. “My brother’s in the band. Keyboards. They play their own stuff on the weekends.” It was a live band—five guys doing sixties oldies that sounded better than my father’s, I realized with equal portions of guilt and shame. I looked around at the pool area. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. It looked like it was out of a movie—small white lights in every tree, a canopy of lights across the patio. Candles in glass holders sat on tables draped in white linen; rose topiaries sat as centerpieces. Candles floated on the pool, and a few people swam among them.

“You know them,” Travis said, reading my mind again. Boy, at that rate, he could have his own show in Las Vegas. “My mother is so pissed at the fact they are actually swimming in a swimming pool at a pool party.”

I looked more closely, and could see that two of the swimmers were Seth and Courtney, though it was hard to recognize them with their hair wet and slicked back. Courtney was riding around on Seth’s shoulders. She leaned over his head, her boobs spilling out of her
bathing suit just like the waitresses at the Gold Nugget Roller Coaster Amusement Park, one on each side of Seth’s head, a giant pair of wobbly earmuffs. She was shrieking as some other girl on some other guy’s shoulders kicked water at her. The floating candles all began to group together like frightened ducklings.

I was glad for a moment I didn’t know it was a pool party I was going to. I would have had to think about whether or not to wear a bathing suit. I know I couldn’t ride around on someone’s neck with my boobs swinging around sure as a pair of water balloons just before they’re flung. Really, I don’t know how the rules for things get made up. It’s not okay to wear your underwear out in public, but it’s okay to wear bathing suits, and Courtney’s, I could see, appeared to be a piece of yarn that she just sat on and, oops, it got stuck. It looked like it hurt. You kind of wished someone would snap it like a rubber band. I knew I didn’t fit in here. Maybe I need therapy, but I get embarrassed undressing in front of my dog.