The Things You Kiss Goodbye (29 page)

“I’m here. I’m fine,” I called from my spot on the bench. I hoped that might turn him back. Instead, he crossed the terrace.
Damn
. I wanted to have my smoke and watch the boys through the glass by myself.

“You left your bedroom window open,” he said.

I fed him the next line before he could say it: “‘I do not need to heat the out of doors, Bettina.’”

“Well, it’s true, you know,” he said. “At least you are not smoking inside.”

“You could say I’m
always
smoking inside, Bampas.” I gave my chest a thump.

He sat down next to me and asked me if I was cold. I shrugged, then hid a shiver. “Almost March,” he said, and he looked up at the night sky. “Hard to believe it, my bulbs will come up soon.”

I nodded.

He sighed heavily and let the breath go out his nose slowly. Men do that, I have noticed. You don’t usually hear women nose-sighing but men do it all the time.

“You know, your momma, she tells me to notice you better,” he said.

“That must be hard,” I said. I blew a smoke ring and watched it disappear.

“She says I should hug you and not to be the first to let go,” my father said.

“Hmm. We could have a contest.”

Bampas laughed softly. Together, we watched Favian and Avel run through the lighted living room. “Wild boys,” my father mumbled. “How many times do you suppose we have told them not to roughhouse in the living room?”

“How many times have you told me not to heat the out of doors?”

My father waited. Both of us stayed fixed on the living room windows. The boys went on boxing with the sofa pillows—close to the lamps with their back swings, accurate on each other with their uppercuts. Bampas pulled a few breaths now and then as he watched. “I suppose they do what they want anytime that I am not looking, hey?”

“Well, they put a lot of heart into it,” I said.

Bampas kept watching the boys. I realized something; he didn’t really care that they were being disobedient, breaking rules. I felt captivated by this. What about all the rules he set for me? Did he actually expect that I’d break them?

“Bettina . . . you were close to this Silas Shepherd?” my father asked. My train of thought snapped in two.

I closed my eyes tightly and opened them again. “Yes,” I said. “Very much so.”

“What does that mean, Bettina? Did you . . . Did he ever . . .”

Then I knew what he really wanted to know, and I burned with insult. But this was a chance—my chance—to stand up for Cowboy. I flicked the ashes off the tip of my cigarette and scrubbed at them with the toe of my boot. “He was faultless with me, Bampas. No agenda but to love me, and that only came at the end. He had been a good friend before that. We kissed. Only once.” I stared across the garden and blinked off a bit of moisture. “I wish it had been more times,” I said.

I felt my father breathe out. He leaned back and put his arm around me. I nestled the least-offended side of me into him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You are right, what you said to me—you are much too young to suffer this loss.”

Loss. Well, there
. He had said it.

“I want you to be strong. . . .”

“I know that. I’m trying. But you know what I learned this year? I learned that if you don’t acknowledge pain, you’re not really safe.” I collected the next thought. “Pain is . . . a message. True for heart, body, and soul.” I let the words go in a veil of white smoke. We sat closely and quietly for a moment.

“One of us will have to be the first to let go,” I said, “or we’ll freeze our butts to this bench.”

Bampas laughed out loud. I passed the cigarette to him—down to half now. I meant for him to snuff it out. Instead he held the butt in front of him, regarded it a moment, and then put it to his lips. He took a drag then blew the smoke away. “Terrible,” he mumbled, and he handed it back to me.

“Awful.” I agreed. “This is the last one.”

Bampas and I polished off that cigarette together while we watched Favian and Avel slug on.

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S
OMETIME AROUND THE BEGINNING OF
A
PRIL
, T
ONY
Colletti’s schedule became filled with music. Concert season was coming and the band was all doubled up on practices. It was Tuesday and I was set to head to Regina’s on my own. But first, I crouched at my locker in the silent hallway and tried to concentrate. If I could remember to pack up all the things I needed, then school might start to go better.

“Bettina?”

I looked up and saw Emmy.

“Hi,” she said. She gave a sigh followed by a gentle smile.

“Hey,” I said. I had not spoken to any of the Not-So-Cheerleaders. Who could guess what they believed about
me? I had no energy for it. I turned my attention back to the inside of my locker to buy time.

“I’ve missed you,” Emmy said. “On the squad. I mean it.”

“That’s really nice,” I said. I stood up and looked her in the eye. Emmy shifted her feet where she stood.

“Hey . . .” She hesitated. “Brady Cullen asked me out.” She gave me an apologetic shrug.

“Did he?”

“Yeah . . . and I know a lot has happened with that . . . but I consider you a friend, Bettina. So I just wondered . . . would you be hurt if I went?”

Quickly, I shook my head no. I fussed with the books and papers in my arms. Then I stopped. I looked at Emmy again. Little-bitty,
happy
Emmy. “I wouldn’t be hurt,” I said. “But you might be.”

“
I
might be?” She put her finger to her breastbone. Her mouth hung open for a few seconds. “But what do you mean?” Slowly, her eyes opened up wide. “Are you talking about . . . like . . . that time you had the black eye—”

“Emmy . . .” I drew my mouth into a line and shook my head as if to say,
Don’t do it
. I backed myself against my battered locker door. I pushed once then again, harder, to get it to close. “Look, I have to go. I have to be somewhere,” I said. I started away.

“Okay. Hey, Bettina, I’m not going to cheer next year,” Emmy said.

That stopped me. “Oh, no?”

“What I really want to do is dance. The school charter says anyone can start any kind of club they want. But the thing is, I haven’t done that much dancing. Like, none. But if you—”

“Eh . . . I don’t know, Emmy.” I was about to tell her that I was pretty sure I’d be poison for any club. But then I remembered back to the day Tony and his bandmates had set up in the lobby, how much fun that one-number dance party had been. “Actually, Emmy . . . this could be brilliant,” I said. “If I had time I’d talk it out with you right now. I really do have to go. But, yes. I’m in. As long as we don’t have to ‘make states’ I’m in.”

“Oh, good! Put your number in my phone. Please!” Emmy said. “I’ll call you.”

I did that. Then I hustled on down the hall, crossed over the White Tiger mosaic in the lobby, and headed out the door.

I must have been walking fast because before I knew it, I was in the same block as Alcott Elementary. Tony and I had passed the school on plenty of Tuesday afternoons and I never stopped noticing how beautiful it was. Funny how in a town where there is more than one place to attend the early grades, you never really lose that sense of mystery about the school you
didn’t
go to. In junior high when everyone is
tossed together, you hear little bits about the
other
principal, the building, and the teachers you never had. I had gone to Whitman, the new school outside of the village. It was built from block that could only be described as dust-pink. Alcott was generations older, made with real red bricks and layers of yellow paint on the window trim. Much better. Add that to the ancient maple trees in the play yard and the fact that it had been named for a woman and, well, I’d always wished I’d gone there.

I looked up at the maple buds all about to burst. I was thinking about Emmy’s idea and wondering what it would take to wake my body up and get it to dance again. I was glad I’d had the guts to warn Emmy about Brady, and just as that thought came and was about to go, I heard the hollow sound of a basketball thumping on the pavement.

Speak of the devil
.

Brady Cullen was all by himself on the blacktop at Alcott Elementary. He bounced the ball a few times—not seven, I noticed. He was about to take a shot when he caught sight of me. He froze. I too, stopped in my tracks.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I answered.

So how great is this—six feet of chain-link fence standing strong between you and me
. I would have loved to say it. But what I felt wasn’t fear.

Brady bounced the ball and pumped it toward the hoop. The ball hit the rim with a reverberating
chink-a-ching
sound. I hated that noise. A few dirty gray strings were all that remained of the net and they quivered after the shot.

“What are you doing here?” Brady wanted to know.

“Passing by,” I said. “But I’m sort of glad I ran into you. I . . . I’ve actually wanted to tell you something. I know it has been weeks, even months . . . but I was wrong.”

He turned away from me and shot the ball at the hoop again.

“Is this about that guy you were seeing behind my back?”

I thought for a second. “Not so much,” I said. “I was wrong not to break things off with you. Not because of him. Because everything was wrong with us.”

“How can you say that?” Brady’s volume rose. His voice was rough and his face was turning red. “You know, P’teen-uh . . . you really
hurt
me!”

“You hurt me too,” I said. “Bruises, in fact.”

“Bruises? Bullshit on that,” he said.

“Short memory,” I said.

He kept his eyes on the ball while he pounded it into the ground a few times. “I—I might have done some things,” he mumbled. “But I was always just joking around with you. Just playing.”

“It wasn’t fun,” I said.

“You know what I can’t believe about all this?” Brady stood with his hands up, the basketball balanced in one of them. “I just always thought I had you. We were good. With all the other bad stuff—you were the one thing I thought I didn’t have to worry about.” His eyes began to rim up red. “Ya know, P’teen-uh, I never loved anything like I loved you.”

“Yeah? Well, don’t ever love any
thing
like that again.”

I turned to go. Brady must have heaved that ball at the hoop because it hit the backboard like a hundred slamming doors. The noise made me turn around again.

“So that guy, he really did die, huh?”

I wondered if he’d meant to sting me so. “Yes,” I said. I took a few slow, backward steps.

“That must have sucked.” He jumped and shot the basketball again.

“Still does,” I said. I don’t think he heard me over the rattling of the hoop.

“So, P’teen-uh,” Brady said, and he didn’t look at me, he bounced the ball through his legs and turned to grab it up again. “Listen, about that stuff with the guys from the team—I didn’t know they were bugging you. It won’t happen anymore. If it does, I’ll rip somebody’s face off.”

“Right.” I sighed toward the sky.

I walked away from Alcott Elementary School. I walked away from Brady Cullen.

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I
WOKE BEFORE DAWN THIS MORNING
,
AND NOW
, I
AM
standing across the street from the high school. I’m getting it together for the first day of senior year. I’ve got my skirt. I’ve got my boots. I’ve got one cup of coffee. There’s a breeze and it’s rolling the corkscrew curls on my head this way and that way. There is a key in my hip pocket. I keep checking for it—not going to lose that.

It is September. But I keep running snippets from June. I’m thinking about the ways people cheer. Oh, I know, that isn’t supposed to be my thing. But all through the longest June of my life, it happened all around me. It was the season; things culminated and they all wanted to be clapped for.
Like when Tony Colletti absolutely killed a saxophone solo at the stage band concert, you can bet I cheered for him—a little payback for a guy who has always rooted for me. The cheerleaders made states and, guess what, people cheered for them.

It can be loud. But sometimes cheering makes no sound at all.

Momma cheers with a breath and a smile, from across the room. I saw that the day Bampas gave me this key. And Bampas, well, he packaged a cheer for his daughter in a business transaction. But that was okay by me. I wanted a job and when he said the words “Money for art school,” well, that sounded like a cheer too.

My teachers cheered; they gave me Incompletes instead of F’s, and summer school wasn’t really so bad. I did most of the work at home.

When I kicked the potter’s wheel for a final pass up the ugliest cylinder of clay ever, Bonnie stood by. She clutched her ruler and we both hoped for a tall form that would be tall enough. When my pot swallowed up those inches, she hollered, “
Yes! That’s tall!”
I spent the next class breaking open all the too-thin places on the walls of that form. I was flirting with disaster; it was supposed to be a vessel—something to hold water. But it seemed more like a place to me, a place crying out for dwellers. I sculpted tiny clay women and nestled
them into all the waiting spaces, while poor Bonnie fretted for my grade. But Mr. Terrazzi saw what I was up to.

“Aha! That’s right!” he cheered. “It’s not about the assignment now. It’s about the art.”

In June, Regina Colletti’s little-boy fountain became a beautiful, pissing thing again, thanks to Tony and me—and Bonnie. Bonnie snuck a winky’s worth of porcelain, crafted by yours truly, into the kiln for the final firing of the year. When the little boy started to shoot his stream again, Regina leaned from her open upstairs window. Arms spread wide, she cheered,
“Gloria! Gloria! In tutta la sua gloria pipi!”
Her neighbors came to their windows and cats arrived to drink. The next week, I cheered for Regina when she said the word “Remission,” and she cheered for me when I passed my driver’s test.