The Girl Who Invented Romance (17 page)

“I’m glad you’re including me. Yes, I’ll come. What’s the game about?”

“Secret. What’s your project about?”

“Not secret. I’m a Cummington native, the only one I know of. I’m going to find out what percent of the town was born here, and of the ones who moved here, I’m breaking it down into one year, five years, twenty years ago categories. I thought I’d also ask who plans to move on and when, so we can see how transient a town we are. Statistically correct phone poll. What do you think?”

“I think,” I said, my mind racing forward at the speed of romantic light, “that we could do a second party for that. We’ll ask everybody playing my game to show up another night and bring their cell phones and we’ll have a poll party for you.”

“Awesome!” said Will, laughing. “That would be so great. Because I don’t really like the idea of calling strangers. Actually, I hate being on the phone. Maybe I can delegate phone powers and I’ll just collate the answers.”

“Then it’s settled,” I said.

“I’m on my way to the library,” said Will, “because I need to look up any statistics they might have in annual reports and abstracts. Want to come?”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Yes, I want to come.”

“I’m on my way.”

Faith thought this was approximately a perfect conversation. I agreed.

Faith went home.

I was so buoyed up, I couldn’t even stay in the house but went outside to sit on the curb and wait. The weather was raw and nasty but I had inner heat from excitement.

Parker suddenly appeared next to me. “Mom is hyperventilating,” he said. “I can’t stand it. I’m going to freeze out here with you instead.” He sat down next to me.

“Do you think there’s more to it than we know? Do you think Mom has some facts and some details that we don’t know about and we don’t want to know about either?” I said.

“Like a girlfriend? Like a long-term long-distance affair with this Ellen?”

“You wouldn’t have said that so fast if you weren’t wondering too.”

“I think it’s only Mom who’s wondering,” said Parker. “I don’t believe Dad has done anything like that.”

The cold came up into my body from the stone curbing.

Parker amended his statement. “I don’t want to believe it, anyway.”

“Did you tell Mom that’s her same old ostrich-in-the-sand posture?”

“Sand is pretty nice, you know. Think Florida. A person gets a tan, does a little swimming, listens to the radio, checks out the girls. There’s plenty to be said in favor of sand.”

Will’s car turned into Fox Meadow, past the silly development sign with its gold-leaf foxes playing in high green grass, past the first three houses, which were raised ranches, and into our section of houses, which were phony Colonials.

How tall Will was in that driver’s seat. His head was pressed right up against the roof. We live just before the traffic turnaround, so Will passed me, turned around, came back and pulled up with the passenger door facing me. Parker opened the door for me.

“You coming as chaperone?” asked Will cheerfully.

“Nope. Just butler. Opening and closing the doors.” Park went back in the house, and I knew that he was going to try to brace Mom and I loved him for it.

“I’m actually incredibly hungry,” said Will. “I think it was the length of the drive over here. So before we go to the library, let’s get hamburgers.”

We went to the drive-in window and I had a small fries. I like to nibble, working my way up a single stick.

Will pulled into a parking space and ate pretty heavily until the edge was taken off his starvation. Then he turned sideways in the driver’s seat, leaned back against his door and said, “So what’s the board game?”

Right away I knew that front seats of large SUVs did not qualify as romantic. We were very far apart. We both still had our shoulder straps and seat belts on. Between us were enough cup holders for a basketball team who drank only supersize.

I leaned toward him for a little more intimacy. The strap held me when I’d gone halfway.

Will leaned toward me. His strap held him.

I arched beyond the grip of my shoulder strap.

He arched beyond the grip of his.

“It’s good you’re so tall,” I said to him. “I think we may actually meet in the middle.”

“It isn’t really the middle,” said Will. “I’m way over into your territory.”

“One more inch,” I said to him.

He covered the final inch. Our lips met. The kiss was salty and ketchupy and perfect. We kissed away the salt and kissed again and then Will straightened up, and when I started to straighten, the seat belt caught and hauled me back, like a chaperone displeased with the activity it saw.

“We’ll get back to that,” said Will. “It’s better in installments. So you’re not going to tell me about the board game. How’s your family? Get that out of the way and we’ll have our second installment.”

“You’re kind of pushy,” I said.

“All that basketball. Working on my offense. Come on, spill it.”

I spilled it. Will was a better listener than Faith, who gets so involved that it doubles my anxiety. Better than Megan, who accuses me of things such as needing a guide dog. “It’s a flimsy marriage after all,” I said finally. “When I thought it was all romance.”

“I think it’s very romantic. Your father accepts his wife’s
insecurity as part of life and he’s been nice about it year in and year out. That’s true love. He’s willing to sacrifice financially, and emotionally he’s willing to spend lots of time. I suppose maybe she could use counseling, but they used romance instead, and it worked.”

“Till now.”

“I bet when they’re at dinner with Ellen, your dad will go out of his way to be terrific with your mother, and keep his arm around her, and open doors for her, and tell great stories about how great she is.”

“But I don’t want a wimpy mother.”

“At least you’ve got a strong father.”

“And what if my mother’s view is right? What if he’s had an affair and she has reason to be afraid and the flowers are all some kind of cheap bribe?”

Will had some fries. “You’re making that up. You don’t have a bit of evidence. You’re just trying to justify your mother’s behavior. If I were you, I’d rather believe my mother was insecure and dumb than believe my father was sleeping around.” Will fed me a fry and I ate it down to his fingers, and his fingers wandered over my face and held my cheek. “So what’s happening at the party?” he said.

I was glad to drop the problem of my parents, but not glad when his hands dropped back to his food. “We’ll play the game and see if it works and if it’s fun,” I said, “or if I need more stumbling blocks or more chances to accomplish things or more squares because it goes too fast, or if it’s better with two players at a board instead of four. So
people have to be critical, or I won’t learn anything, but they can’t be very critical or I’ll cry.”

Will laughed. “I’ll stay in the noncritical camp. That looks safer. You know, Kelly, you’re a mystery to me.”

“A mystery? I’m an open book. I’ve told you things I haven’t even told Faith.”

“Really?” Will was immensely pleased. He savored that. “You’ve told me things your best girlfriend doesn’t know? I thought girls shared everything. That’s one of the things that make me so nervous when I face packs of girls.”

I could not imagine Will nervous about anything. “Kelly Williams, woman of mystery,” I said. “It has a nice ring. But maybe we should head for the library, because it sounded as if you had a lot for us to work on.”

“I don’t have any interest in working on anything at the library and I never did,” said Will. “It was a ruse to get you in the car with me.”

Boys.

They are all men of mystery.

“M
other? How could you? After I swore you to secrecy, you went and told the whole town?”

“It wasn’t the whole town. It was just Katy, Kevin, Donny and Julie. I ran into them at the mall.”

“I can’t stand it. They’ll laugh at me. They’ll tease me. They won’t even come now! They’ll be embarrassed to play a game of romance. I’ll be embarrassed. I’ll die.”

Mom thought that was a bit dramatic. She made a face at me and drove slower. The more she talks, the slower she drives, so that if she’s really involved in her story, you’re crawling along, an accident waiting to happen.

“What time was this?”

“Maybe five o’clock.”

“It’s seven now. All Cummington knows I invented a romance game. By nine the entire state will know and by eleven o’clock the national television networks will be preparing a feature.”

“But if you’re going to market the game nationally, isn’t that what you want?”

“I want to be in control of my own fate,” I said.

“Good luck.” Mom turned into a vast parking lot. Cummington has many malls, none of which has enough parking, except this one, which has ten times the parking it needs. There’s always a sea of black pavement waiting to be parked on. But it was the end of January, and pockets of old snow and slick spots of ice reached out to ruin your footing.

The pharmacy at this mall carries everything from closet dividers to picnic baskets. I went to the candy section. I didn’t really like Faith’s game pieces. The nail polish had not stuck very well to the painted Parcheesi pieces and they looked—well—cheesy. I was going to buy a big bag of those tiny pastel valentine hearts that say
LUV ME TRULY
and
BE MINE
and I’d cover them in clear nail polish so they’d last for the evening and remind people not to eat them and they would be perfect game pieces and nobody could mix theirs up with anybody else’s.

My mother went to look at greeting cards. I could see her way down the aisle, fingering card after card. Was she buying Dad a Valentine’s Day card? An “I’m sorry” card? Should I buy Will a Valentine’s Day card, and if so, should
it be mushy or literary or slapstick? Did they have cards that said, “I hope you really do love me, because if you don’t, I’m going to die”?

I hoped Mom was choosing a card that said, “I love you completely; let’s kiss and make up and have everything the same as before.”

I bought a very large bag of hearts. Either nobody would come to my party at all now that Mom had said what the game was about, in which case I could console myself for a long time popping candy hearts, or everybody in town would come, in which case I would need this many hearts.

Mother went to the checkout counter and I followed. “Let me see our card,” I said.

She showed me willingly. A soft photograph, blurred like watercolor, of two people in a canoe, drifting beneath a weeping willow. It was very romantic. I couldn’t wait to read the verse, but inside, it was blank. “You couldn’t find a verse that fit?” I asked her.

“I think this time I have to write my own.”

There were episodes in my life lately that nobody knew about. Mom, Dad, Faith, Megan—they hardly knew a thing about Will. Parker knew a little. What episodes in Mom’s life did I not know about? As she and Dad drew closer and closer to Ellen Day, what was happening between them?

It was amazing how we could live under the same roof, share the same genes and meals and furnace, eat the same snacks, use the same sinks and glasses and stairs and yet be
so separate. Glimpsing each other’s pain or joy, but sideways, catching only shadows and reflections.

Mom and I returned to the car. Nobody was parked around us. Nobody was parked anywhere. It was a marvel the mall was still in business.

“Candy hearts?” said my mother. “Oh, perfect. You drive, Kelly. I want to pick out the best hearts to tuck in my card.”

My real heart soared. We opened the bag carefully, so the hearts wouldn’t spill, and my mother sorted through, eating some, throwing some back and cupping a few in her palm, where I couldn’t read them.

“Are you choosing
I’M YOURS
and
FOREVER YOURS
?” I said.

She had chosen four of the same slogan, one each in pale pink, pale yellow, pale green and pale blue:
I LUV U
.

I thought of all the questions I would like to ask.

All the answers I would like to have.

All the interrogating I would like to do.

All the advice I would like to pass on.

But instead I turned left toward Fox Meadow, and when I came to a red light and stopped the car, Mom held up the candy bag for me to choose. I chose a heart that said
I’M
4
U
and I gave it to her and she said, “That goes right in my bloodstream,” and she ate it and we laughed.

When we got home, my mother said, “Relax, Kell. We had a rough spot, neither of us handled it very well and now we’re past it. Since you’re spending every waking moment
working on romance right now, I’ll tell you that romance is something you can see, like a note tucked under your pillow. It’s something you can smell, like a bottle of fragrance or a bouquet of lilacs. It’s something you can wear or taste or show off. But love—it doesn’t package well. You can’t tie it up with ribbons and bows. You couldn’t make a board game of love. Love won’t sit in neat little squares and pause obediently for other people to take a turn.”