Phantom Limbs (9 page)

By 4:00, I was getting nervous that I hadn’t heard from her yet. According to my dad, Meg and Jay should have gotten in just after one. Why hadn’t she called or texted to let me know they’d landed? Had their flight been delayed, or had it just not occurred to her to text me? Or had I ruined everything by disappearing from chat last night? Fuck, what if she was mad at me?

My stomach cramped up and then, next thing I knew, I had diarrhea. After a few bouts of that fun, I decided I’d better shower again. So I took yet another shower and then examined the toilet again to make sure there was nothing gross anywhere on or in it.

Three additional costume changes later, I was dressed and ready. And shaking. I had the paranoid thought that maybe the bathroom still smelled from when I had the diarrhea, so I ran in and sprayed some air freshener. While I was there I brushed my teeth again, because you never know. And then I noticed there were splashes of water on the mirror, so I took some toilet paper and tried to wipe it off. And that’s when the doorbell rang.

A gasp rattled down my throat, making me cough, and I turned left and right, not knowing where to go or what to do. Let my parents answer it? Wait for them to call me and then saunter down, all casual-like? Go down there on my own? What the hell was I going to say? Would it look weird if I hugged her in front of everyone? Would it look weird if I didn’t? Holy Christ, I had toilet paper in my hand! What if I’d gone downstairs like that, clutching a fistful of crumpled toilet paper?

I flushed it and washed my hands, just in case Meg had heard the toilet flush from outside our house — the windows were open, after all — and would think it was gross that I hadn’t washed my hands after. I tried to move toward the stairs, but my body didn’t want to move. My breathing was labored. My lips were numb. My pits pumped out sweat like fire hydrants. This was
not
how I envisioned greeting Meg.

I took a last look at my face, my hair, my nostrils, my clothes, and I moved toward the stairs like a man sent to walk the plank.

My mom met me halfway up. She pulled me back up the stairs and into the hall.

“What?” I asked.

“She didn’t come.”

I stood there for long moments, trying to process. If my mom’s agonized expression was any indication, I must have looked pathetic.

“What do you mean? Why?” I finally managed.

“She — I guess she doesn’t want to leave the cat.”

“The
cat
?”

My mom winced. “Apparently she feels the trip was traumatic for him, and she feels bad leaving him alone.”

Meg cared more about a cat than about me. Things were worse than I thought.

“Otis, you have to come down.”

I felt like punching the wall. “I’ll be down in a minute,” I told her, heading for my room.

“Make it a fast minute, Otis,” she called, but I was already closing the door.

Was Meg just avoiding me? Why didn’t she tell me herself? I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check for messages.

One from Dara:
You suck.

And one from Shafer:
THE MASSIVE PENIS YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED — IN JUST TWO WEEKS!! CHECK OUT THIS LINK!!!

Typical Shafer, with another PSA to the team. Personally, if I had reason to be interested in penis enlargers, I wouldn’t be sending out announcements.

But nothing from Meg.

I worked on a text to send her.

Delete.

Delete.

Delete.

Finally I settled on,
Hope your cat is doing better. See you soon, I guess.

I wasn’t halfway down the stairs when my phone buzzed in my pocket. She wrote:

Followed by:

I paused on the stairs, wondering whether I should text and tell her to get her dad to go back and get her. Damn license! Damn Dara, damn swimming for taking up all the time I could have spent getting in the damn fifty hours behind the wheel. Damn my parents for being such fascists about the stupid fifty hours. If not for all of that, I’d have my license and I’d be able to drive over.

Another text came through:

I smiled. Of course she was. I texted,
Want me to bring food to you?
I’d have to do it on my fucking bike, but let’s face it, I’d crawl naked through rusty razor blades to get to Meg, so I certainly wasn’t going to let a bicycle stand between us.

She sent a smiley back.

I RAN THROUGH THE HOUSE AND TOWARD the deck, where Meg’s dad and my parents sat with several bottles of wine for their nerd tastings and a bunch of moldy, stinking cheeses that Meg probably would’ve devoured with glee.

“So we thought, fine, we’ll try the oh-six, and we actually liked it
better
than the oh-seven,” my dad was saying as he poured wine. “It still has that eucalyptus thing on the nose. Oh, hey, Otis,” he said as I stepped outside. My mom, who was slicing one of the cheeses, glanced up at me and gestured at Meg’s dad, as if I wouldn’t figure out to greet him on my own.

Jay jumped up and reached out a hand. “Hey, Otis. Great to see you. Jesus, have you grown!” He’d put on weight, and his hair, which was mostly brown the last time I saw him, was now thick with gray. He gave me something like a smile, but it was forced.

“Good to see you, too,” I echoed, shaking his hand and trying to smile back. It struck me how strange it was without Meg’s mom there, without her chatter and loud laugh. I wondered how hard the split was for Meg.

“So sorry about Meg.” He turned his hands up apologetically. “That damn cat . . . I had to take him, though, because —” He hesitated, glancing down. “Uh, Karen’s place doesn’t allow pets.”

“Get yourself a plate, Otis,” my mom said. She gestured toward the cheese with both arms, then clasped her hands together. She seemed nervous. They all did.

“Actually,” I hazarded, “I just heard from Meg and she’s hungry. I thought I could bring food over there.”

They all blinked at me like I was speaking in tongues.

“I could take my bike,” I added.

“That’s far to go on a bike,” my mom said, glancing at my dad.

“It is not!” I exclaimed, exasperated. “Meg and I —”

I stopped. They didn’t know we used to ride our bikes to the cemetery. My mom would stroke out on the spot. I finished with, “Meg and I would like to see each other.”

“I could go back and get her,” Jay said, glancing at my parents. “Would only take ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Well, I think she wants to stay with the cat,” I said. Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. But what had me so excited now wasn’t just the idea of seeing Meg, but the possibility of being alone with her.

“Well,” Jay said, “at least let me drive you over.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I kind of feel like a bike ride anyway.”

That was a fantastic stretch, since I only grudgingly rode a bike, and only when there were no other choices — and I rarely failed to complain about it.

“But then you’ll be coming home in the dark,” my mom protested. “On the highway!” She shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

“Laura, he’s not a five-year-old,” my dad said mildly. He put a hand on her back. “He knows what he’s doing, and his bike has reflectors.”

There was an awkward moment of silence while my mom processed the idea, her forehead doing its trademark origami. “I haven’t even cooked the burgers yet,” she finally said. “We just sat down for drinks!”

My dad got up and turned the grill on. “I’ll cook off two burgers now, and we’ll do the rest later. No problem. Easy peasy.”

It took everything I had not to tackle-hug him.

After a half an hour, which felt more like nine days, I had a picnic of oozy foil-wrapped cheeseburgers, Meg’s potato salad, and pie. I packed it all in my backpack, where Herbert the skunk was already tucked away. I bid a cheerful farewell, managing not to roll my eyes as my mother fired off her laundry list of reminders and safety warnings. “Text me as soon as you get there,” she finished, hugging me as if I were going off to war. My dad appeared and put a glass of wine in her hand, raising his eyebrows at me to acknowledge that she was kind of a case.

And then I was on my way.

It actually was a perfect evening for a bike ride. A warm breeze carried the smell of spring blossoms, and puffy white clouds scattered all over the bright blue sky.

But by the time I’d pedaled through the neighborhood and reached the highway for the longer stretch of the journey, fears began to nudge out my optimism. I thought about Football Guy, and how he probably had a nice car and loads of confidence, and suddenly I felt like a stupid little kid, pedaling along on my bike. On top of that, I was starting to sweat; after spending half the day in the shower, it seemed a gross injustice that I should end up biking to see Meg.

Cars zoomed by my left shoulder as I pedaled the last mile or so to the hotel. Of course the final leg of the ride had to be uphill, just in case I wasn’t sweating enough already. When I pulled into the parking lot, I realized I didn’t know where her room was. I stopped my bike by the main entrance, texted my mom as instructed to let her know I’d arrived alive and intact, and then texted Meg to figure out where she was. But of course, Meg being Meg, she wasn’t sure where she was, either, and it took a few minutes of virtual Marco Polo to get me to her door.

When I found it, I leaned my bike against the wall and ran a hand through my hair. I wanted to sniff my pits, just to check, but what if she was watching me from a window? So I rapped on the door, my heart in my throat.

The door opened a tiny crack. I heard her take a breath and blow it out. And then she swung the door open.

Neurons ping-ponged in my brain, trying to piece together the visual puzzle of all the ways the girl standing in the doorway was and wasn’t familiar. She was Meg but not Meg. Other than the obvious metamorphosis of her figure, I couldn’t quite put my finger on how she was different. But I had the sense of her having changed more than I’d imagined, and suddenly I felt like I didn’t know anything anymore.

I was conscious of the fullness of her breasts in her sort-of-clingy pink T-shirt, of the smallness of her waist, of how much shorter than me she was, but that was all in the periphery. I couldn’t let go of her eyes, that fantastic aqua-sea color, the familiarity and strangeness and all the shared and unshared secrets contained in them.

“Otis.” It was a whisper, an exhale, barely there.

I stared at her, not knowing whether or not to hug her. Was she the same, or was she new? Did we know each other, or not? Was a hug the right thing? The only thing more bizarre in my mind than not hugging her was the thought of how she’d feel in my arms in the bodies we were in now.

“Come on in,” she said, stepping back.

I stepped inside and set my backpack on a table by the door. The smell of the room conjured an era when cigarette smoke was as popular as air and dark green stripes were the decorating rage. The TV — a modern touch, flat-screened and on a swivel base — was muted on a cooking show.

“My God,” Meg said slowly as her eyes swept over me. “Is that really you?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. All I could think was how beautiful she was, and I certainly wasn’t going to say that.

“You’re so tall! I’ve never looked up at you before!” She had a look of wide-eyed wonder on her face that was giving my imagination all sorts of probably erroneous ideas. “God, you must be so strong! Sorry,” she added hastily, flapping her hands. “I’m just — taking you in.”

There was a lot of in-taking going on. Her fragrance had infiltrated my senses, a welcome interruption from the seeped-in secondhand smoke. Like everything else, it was familiar but different. Her damp hair hung in long waves. Had she just showered? A thought not to linger on . . .