Playing Nice (20 page)

"What's wrong?" I ask, my voice coming out breathless.

"You make me do and say things I shouldn't."

DOUBLE YELP! I go back at him, running my fingers through his hair and groping his chest and back. I taste his tongue and lips until our mouths are so mixed up, I don't know who is leading and who's following. I don't even know my name anymore. It's all been replaced by his lips on mine and our tongues touching and his fingertips on my cheeks and then my collarbone and then back into my hair. I'm on the verge of letting it all go. It's like the caged animal inside of me has been set free and now I can't control it. I want every single piece of him.

"Look, Marty, I like you," Matt says, out of breath.

"I like you, too." I pull down on his neck and kiss him again.

"I better go." He drops his arms from around my body and grabs his coat off the ground. "Keep the slippers. They're sexy." He looks at me, his green eyes wicked and sweet at the same time. My arms want to reach out and grab him, to never let go, but I hold them down tight at my side. Matt leaves me alone outside of the record store, his breath still in the cold night air that travels up my legs and around my dress, chilling my bones to the core.

Everything moments ago was hot and sweaty and delicious.

Another gust of arctic wind blows down the alley, scorching my burning cheeks like ice on fire. My phone buzzes with a text message and I jump.

Mom:
Get home right now young lady.

I stare at the phone. My mind spins with thoughts of Matt pressed against me, his tongue on my lips and neck and ears. And his body, disappearing into the blackness of the night.

***

All the guests have left when I pull into the driveway, but every light is on. I park behind my dad's Audi and cut the ignition.
Let's get this over with
, I say to myself.

My parents are cleaning the kitchen when I walk in. My mom is rinsing dishes and handing them to my dad to load the dishwasher, their movements synched like a well-oiled machine. I hang my keys on the key hook and they turn around.

"Well, that was quite a display," my mom says, smacking the Santa towel over her shoulder.

"It wasn't a display," I say.

My mom shakes her head and grabs the edge of the sink. "Where did you go?"

I stare at them, tight-lipped, the smell of Matt still on my dress.

"Did you go to Lil's?" my dad asks as he pours detergent into the dishwasher and starts it. At least he used the right name. I still don't answer.

"Are you a lesbian, Marty?" my mom finally asks when too much silence has passed between us.

"What?" I bark.

"I just can't wrap my head around a daughter of mine defying my very explicit rules."

I run my hands over my lips, lips that were just kissing the hottest guy in school. Lips that want to do it again and again and again.

"I'm going to bed." I turn and head for the stairs.

"You're grounded for a month," my mom says as she turns back to the sink. "Leave your phone on the counter."

I stop in my tracks, my fists clenching around the one thing I don't want to give up. Taking a deep breath, I smack the phone down and step my way up the stairs as lightly as I can.

Once in my room, I slam my bedroom door so hard specks of pink paint chip off the wall and land on my white carpet.

***

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

I'm grounded for a month. A month! No phone unless I'm at school. Don't text me.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Grounded? What'd you do? Get sloppy drunk at the X-Mas party and take ur bra off?

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Yelled at my mom and left the stupid party. Told Sarah to fuck off. Went to Vinyl Tap and made out with Matt. :)

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Shit, Polly. Maybe I should've come to the party. I would've liked 2 c that. Not the making out w/ Matt part. No offense. :) U didn't let him... strum ur guitar, did u?

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

LOL!! NO! I did NOT let him strum my guitar... but I might. :)

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

With u in the slammer, there go my New Year's Eve plans. Maggie will be bummed. I'll c u next year, Pollyanna.

PS- Matt doesn't deserve ur guitar strings.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

HAPPY NEW YEAR! *throws confetti* I'll c u at school.

PS- U R a Juliet, whether u like it or not. :)

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Hi Matt!

I wanted to wish you a Happy New Year! It was great 2 c u the other night. I'm grounded for a month, but it was worth it. :) Maybe when I'm released we can hang out again?

–Marty

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Have I told u I think it's cute u use email? Very vintage, just how I like it. Sorry to hear ur locked up for the month. I was thinking about you 2day. I miss ur slippers.

–Matt

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

It's OK. What were you thinking about?

PS- I'm wearing the slippers right now.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

How I want to marry someone just like u 1 day.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Did u just ask me to marry u over email?

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Maybe I did. In 10 yrs will u marry me?

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

I don't know if I can wait 10 yrs.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Don't wait. I'm a mess.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

I like ur mess.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Hey, I saw u down the hall earlier and wanted to say hi. Hi. I'm still thinking about u. R u thinking about me? Maybe we could run away together and I'll play my guitar and u can sing and we'll make money street performing.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Where would we go?

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

New York? LA? Paris? U pick.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Tokyo.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

When u get married, I'm going to watch from the back of the church and think it could've been me. U'd look nice in a white dress. As long as u wear ur slippers. :)

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

I thought we were getting married in 10 years? :)

Matt never responds.

So I write this:

I live out my sentence tucked away in my room, writing for hours and hours. I grumble when I go downstairs for dinner so my parents think their master plan has worked, but really I feel freer than ever. I spend time with Lil at school and email with Matt and nobody seems to care. The people around us become quiet, like the new year has brought a new beginning and even though I'm banished to my pink room, I'm calm.

On my last day of grounding, I decide to go into our basement storage room and clean out my bin of spring clothes to give to charity. Something inside tells me that by the time the weather gets warm, I won't have any use for the clothes I wore last year. I pull out dress after dress and stack them in the giveaway pile. The one I wore for my yearbook photo. The Spring Fling knee-length lavender frock I bought with Sarah. Pink and purple and red and green. So many colors and yet the girl who wore them didn't see the world that way. Now, everything's a rainbow. When I'm done, all that's left of my old clothes are a few of my favorite mod-style dresses and the show t-shirt I got for
Guys and Dolls
. I stuff the giveaway clothes into a black garbage bag and smile at the bonus points I'll get for doing something my mom usually has to nag me about for weeks every spring.

When I place the near-empty bin back on the stack, my eye catches a brown box pushed into the farthest corner of the storage closet. The handwriting on the top is a thousand memories rolled into perfect cursive; it makes my stomach drop to my knees. My grandma. "Robert's Memory Box". Anxious, like a piece of her might be locked in this musty dark corner of our storage room, I push aside the bins in my way and tear it open. Inside is every school photograph of my dad from high school, a jersey from his basketball days, his Minster High School diploma. Even a spelling bee trophy. My grandma kept it all.

I rummage around, putting together the pieces of my dad's younger life. A life I wasn't part of, a life in which he played sports and went to dances and sat in a desk day in and day out. When he was like me, maybe, lost or confused. Before fixing braces and cavities became his passion.

At the bottom of the box, I find a stack of black and white photos. Each one is a different scenic shot. A cornfield in the middle of summer. A barren tree. An empty railroad track that trails into the distance until it meshes together with the sky. I flip over the photo and see my grandma's handwriting on the back. "Robert's Senior Photography Class". The railroad photo even has a note from my grandma:
this one's my favorite
.

"My dad was into photography?" I say out loud, looking at the photo like my grandma might answer back.

As I'm about to dig deeper into the box, my mom's car pulls up the driveway. I stuff everything back in its place as quickly as possible and shove the box in the corner again. I make it upstairs with my bag of old clothes just as my mom walks in the back door.

"Here," I say, and drop the bag on the floor, a plastic smile on my face. "I thought I'd clean out my bin in the basement."

My mom nods approvingly at the black bag and slips into her house slippers.

"I'll drop these off at the Salvation Army tomorrow."

I nod and go up to my room to finish out my grounding in silence. But as I sit at dinner that night, I stare at my parents, at my mom's eyes, almond-shaped just like a cartoon character's, and my dad's hands, thin and strong. So many wonderful physical features. Whether I've paid attention before or not, I know them because they're mine.

"Dad, did you always want to be a dentist?" I ask, his beautiful photos still on my mind.

He looks at me, mouth full of potatoes. "I don't know. I guess I just knew I didn't want to be a farmer."

"Why not?"

"Because farming is hard work and not a lot of money," he says.

"So you became a dentist for the money."

"Marty, you know we don't talk about money," my mom says, patting the side of her mouth with a cloth napkin. She's still dressed in her white Shady Willows Retirement Community and Nursing Home collared shirt.

"Why not?"

"Because it's rude." My mom cuts her meat with precision, the fork in her left hand and a knife in her right, sawing with just enough pressure on the pork. She takes the newly-cut piece and places it in her mouth, chewing quietly for at least ten seconds before swallowing.

I look back at my dad. "Did you ever want to be something else? Like an artist maybe?"

"Marty, where is this coming from?"

I keep wondering if my dad thinks about taking pictures. If he remembers that specific time in his life and wishes he'd held strong to what he loved. Maybe all this wanting and desire and need for life
is
from my parents, but they've spent so many years fixing people's gnarly teeth and decorating a house with meaningless shit that it's been suppressed too far below the surface, and they don't know how to let it out anymore.

"I want to know you guys better," I say.