Intentions (22 page)

I sat there, shivering underneath the green and gold afghan
Grandma had made, watching Mom run up and down the backyard. She yelled and cheered for the kite, trying over and over again to get it to fly. Our backyard has trees on the edges, so she had to be really careful not to get it caught.

“It’s not going to go up,” I said to myself. But she heard me.

“Oh yes it will, Raebee. I got you well enough to come home, I’m going to get this kite to fly.”

Finally it caught the wind, and oh did that bird soar! It stayed up there for a long time, dancing in the wind, and I slowly got out of my chair to stand at the edge of the porch. Watching Mom and the kite, I felt like I was out there flying it myself. I
felt
the wind tug at it, I
felt
the kite find the breeze. Mom turned to me often to look at my face, which was one huge grin. After a while, the kite started to shake. Because Mom was shaking.

Crying. Sobbing. I could hear her. I wanted to go out, but I was too tired. So I sat back down in my chair and watched and waited.

Eventually, the wind changed and the kite floated down. Mom came in, her face tear-streaked.

“You flew it for me,” I said to her.

“Yes I did,” she said.

I pedal and pedal, working up as much of a sweat as I can.

When you’re little, your mom can make the world all right, most of the time. But when you’re older … and when she’s part of the problem … well, shit.

I would do almost anything to feel my mom’s hand on my forehead, feel her arms around me, and think that she is pure and good and all-powerful.

But you can’t go back, can you?

I tell myself it’s OK.

I tell myself it’s better to be older and to know what’s what. I tell myself it doesn’t feel the same to watch somebody else fly a kite. You have to fly it for yourself.

CHAPTER 31

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW
I LEARNED IN …

It’s not that I chicken out, but when I get to the temple, I have an epiphany: it’s not about the rabbi. Not anymore. It is way beyond that.

I have pictured the scene so many times: I go into his office. I tell him what I heard. He denies it at first, but I give him details, salient details. He looks chagrined, apologetic. Or angry, defiant. He cries. He laughs, evilly. Threatens me. No, I know he wouldn’t do that. But what could he do that would make it better?

What I come down to is this: there’s nothing he can say that will undo what he did, and more so, what I have done. I am furious at him, I am, but I don’t blame him anymore, not really.

He started the ball rolling, but I’m the one who made the touchdowns. I think I just mixed sports metaphors, but I don’t care.

I get off my bike and sit down on the curb across from the temple. Almost immediately, as if to prove my decision correct,
the rabbi comes out of the building and walks to his car. How could my mother, the Prius lover, have kissed a man with an SUV?

He stops, turns around, looks at the temple as if he’s left something there, but then opens the car door, gets in, and drives away.

When I’m sure he’s gone and not coming back, I walk up the steps, slowly, dragging my bike with me. I prop Sir Walter inside by the front door. I plan to go sit in the sanctuary, to Get Over It, but that’s not where my feet take me.

They take me to the kindergarten room. The room where I first fell in love with the rabbi. The block corner where Jake and I used to play. The brightly colored rug, finger paintings on the wall, the smell of Play-Doh. It all comes back to me.

Tiny little-person chairs, the blond wood cracked and stained, do headstands until they are rescued and set right.

I take one down, try to sit in it. I do not fit, of course. Not anymore.

He sat on that big oak desk and played his guitar for us. He told us about right and wrong, about atonement, about the golden rule.

I text my mother.

I’m going to sleep. I’ll call you when I wake up.

And I do sleep, right there on the rug in the kindergarten room.

I wake up to noises—oh no, not again—but these are knocks, not groans. I look up. Someone is standing outside, on the
playground. He is knocking on the glass. It is not someone I want to see.

Adam motions to me to come outside. I shake my head, and he makes a sad face and crosses his heart. It’s a promise of some kind. OK.

I rouse myself, walk out through the glass door.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him.

“I could ask you the same question.”

He sits down on a swing and lights a cigarette. I sit on the swing next to him.

“Why do you smoke?” I ask him. “You’re going to die before you’re twenty.”

“I should be so lucky.”

“Very funny. Why do you have such a death wish anyway?”

“Why were you in the kindergarten room?”

I look at him. Shrug. “Why are
you
here?”

“Well, first I was getting reamed out by my father. Now I’m planning how to burn down the temple.”

“Very funny again.”

“I really am. Don’t you think it’s a great idea?” he asks me, taking a big drag. “Make it seem like my Dear Old Dad did it.”

“Huh,” I say articulately, and I kick the cedar shavings under my feet.

“Wow,” he says. “Rachel, who has an answer for everything, has no answer for this.”

“If you think I have an answer for everything, you have no idea.”

He looks at me. “Why do you hate him so much all of a sudden?” Adam asks me.

“Who says I do?”

“Well, it’s pretty clear. I don’t think he’s the only one you hate, but …”

What is
that
supposed to mean? I push myself and start to swing hard and high. Adam does the same thing, and soon the swing set starts to shake, and it feels like it’s going to fall over.

“Shit,” Adam says. “I guess this is not made for big kids.” And he laughs, swinging even harder and higher.

I slow down and, as soon as I can, stop myself by touching my feet to the ground. “You better stop, too,” I tell Adam, getting off.

He doesn’t.

I stand back, near the slide, and watch him swing for a few more minutes. With me off, the thing is not going to fall over. But he’s still being reckless, swinging high, holding on with only one hand so he can keep smoking.

“Adam, come on,” I shout. “You’re going to get hurt.”

“You care?”

“Yes I care,” I say.

Adam slows himself down and then jumps off the swing and comes over to me.

Before I can stop him, he kisses me, starts to put his hand on my butt.

“Dude!” I say, and pull away. “Shit, Adam! Are you so one-track?” I shake my head and laugh a little.

“But you said you cared.”

“I do care,” I say.

“You do?”

“Yes, I do.” And I realize it’s true. “You’re my friend. But
just
my friend, Adam. Not my boyfriend, not my fool-around buddy, but my friend. Can you handle it?”

“Aw …” Adam kicks at the dirt. “You sure? Just friends?”

I nod.

He walks back over to the swings and sits down on one. He doesn’t swing. Motions me over. I sit down next to him.

“OK?”

“If that’s what you want,” he says to me.

“That’s what I want,” I say. “What about you? Do you want to be friends?”

“Yeah. I’d like you to be my friend,” he says. “I’d like to be
your
friend. I really would.”

“Good,” I say.

“And I’m really sorry about—you know, everything.”

“Me too.”

“I’ll give you your shirt back.”

“My shirt?”

“From the party.”

“Oh, thanks,” I say, and we put our arms around each other for a second, swing to swing.

“Hey, did you really do that to Alexis? At Morrison’s?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Dude!” Shakes his head. “Man.”

“I know, pretty stupid. I’m going to have to fix it.”

“Yeah,” he says, shrugs. “I guess.”

“So why do you hate your father so much?” I ask him after a few minutes of silence.

“Let me count the reasons,” he says.

I don’t say anything.

“Everyone thinks he’s such a great guy,” he says.

“I don’t.”

“You used to.”

I nod. “Not anymore.”

“You tell me why you don’t think he’s a great guy anymore, and then I’ll tell you why I have hated him since I was nine.”

“Why should I go first? What if I say something horrible about your father and then you tell him and …”

“That’s not going to happen, Rachel.”

“Please,” I say. “You first.”

Adam takes out another cigarette, lights it, inhales long and hard. I’m going to make him quit.

“He makes a fool out of my mother,” Adam says, and blows smoke toward the building.

I take the cigarette out of his hand and stub it out on the pole of the swing set. He doesn’t light another one.

“He cheats on her. All the time. These stupid women go to him for marriage counseling and he sleeps with them.”

Mom? Oh, Mom.

“He preaches about being good and honest, the fucking hypocrite.”

Adam walks over to the slide and sits at the bottom of it. I want to ask him if he knows if my mother is—but he has his head in his hands and, oh, Adam is crying.

“Adam.” I walk over and put my arm around him. I hold him and let him cry. He slows down, picks up his head, goes to light a cigarette, but I take the pack from him. He doesn’t protest.

“Give me the lighter, too,” I say. He squeezes it in his hand.

“Please.”

Shakes his head. “Might come in handy.”

“Adam, you were kidding about setting fire to the temple, weren’t you?”

“Listen, Rachel, there was this rabbi, in New Jersey, and he had his wife killed, and he almost got away with it, so I could—”

“Don’t even say it, Adam.”

“No, I wouldn’t have Abba killed, but I would flame this place, make it look like he did it so he’d get put in jail and …”

“Oh, Adam, please!”

“Yeah, see, I’ve thought about it. I have a plan.”

“Adam, that other rabbi, the one in New Jersey, isn’t he in jail? He
didn’t
get away with it!”

“That’s just the point. My father wouldn’t either.”

“Yeah, and neither would you, Adam.”

“No, I would. I’m smart enough.”

I look at him.

“I AM smart. I’m not book smart like you, but I’m really smart.”

“You’re also out of your fucking mind.”

He looks at me. Starts to laugh, and tears roll down his cheeks again.

“You can’t do anything like that, Adam. Promise me you won’t. That you won’t do anything stupid? Promise me?”

“Why? Why should I promise?”

“Don’t let him ruin your life any more than he has, Adam. You have the power. You do.”

“I do?”

“Yes. Promise?”

He shrugs.

“Give me the lighter.”

I stick my palm out. He gives it to me.

“I can always get another one, you know.”

“I know. But don’t. Now say it.”

“I promise.”

“Say it.”

“I have the power.”

CHAPTER 32

GOING DOWN(TOWN)

I walk into Morrison’s through one of the revolving doors, and like a scene in a comedy I find myself outside again.

Breathe, Rachel, breathe.

I turn around and go back in through a regular door.

“Can I give you a spray?” a very made-up woman asks me. Does she think that’s pretty?

And why would I want to put on men’s perfume? We are in the men’s department after all. “Is it for men?”

“No. It’s for you. It’s called Truth,” she says. Of course it is.

“Sure,” I tell her, “go on ahead.”

“You like it?” she asks, and hands me a coupon.

I smile vaguely and walk away.

How, exactly, am I going to do this? Is there an office where you go to confess a crime? I could act suspicious near the jewelry counter and hope I get picked up. I remember Grandpa once told me that the easiest thing to shoplift was a canoe. No one would believe you hadn’t paid for it as you walked out of the store holding it high above your head. Why would he have told me that? He was a lawyer, honest to a fault. Could not tell a lie. There
must be a lesson for me in that story, but damn if I know what it is.

On Task, Rachel, On Task. I’m in the middle of men’s underwear. A clerk is giving me the hairy eyeball. What would that look like, exactly, an eyeball with hair coming out of it?

Oh, for goodness’ sake. I am totally losing it. And my nerve.

I grab myself by the scruff of the neck and do the only thing I can think of. I go to the jewelry counter and ask Mrs. Elliot’s advice.

“You shoplifted something how long ago and you want to confess now?”

“Yup. Or I could put a canoe over my head.”

She looks at me like I’m a creature from another planet—certainly not Planet Teenage Earth. “Huh?” she says.

“Yes. Sorry. I shoplifted some stuff and someone else got blamed for it. I need to make it right.”

“Do you have the things you shoplifted?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

“Then how, what—”

“Look, I planted them on a girl I was with right here, at your counter,” I say, and it sounds so horrible I can barely get out the rest. “And—she—not I—she was caught. And I was let go.”

Mrs. Elliot looks at me. “So why now?” she asks, not unreasonably, I guess.

“If not now, when?”

She shakes her head.

“Look, I can’t stand it anymore. It’s eating away at me, OK? And I am here. Now.” And there I go, tears streaming down my face.

“OK, don’t move.” Mrs. Elliot picks up her phone and punches in a few numbers. Here we go. I called Alexis this morning, twice, and she didn’t pick up. Finally left her a message, telling her what I was about to do.

“Sam, we’ve got a girl here who says she wants to confess a shoplift.” She looks at me, her eyes searching mine. “No. I don’t think she’s a flight risk. Yup. At my counter. OK.”

“What should I do?” I ask when she hangs up.

“Wait here; Mr. Lawrence will be right down.”