All You Get Is Me (22 page)

We whisk the empty plates away and new trays of food magically appear, loaded with cups of chilled cucumber and dill soup with crème fraîche from an organic dairy near here. We refill the wine and water and clear endless plates as course after course is delivered. The table is full of appreciative diners and there’s a lot of oohing and aahing.

As I’m clearing my section I’m noticing that my dad is heavy into a passionate conversation with Reynaldo, and Tomás is leaning in too. He appears to be involved in whatever they’re talking about. I’m curious to know what it is but I’m too busy to go over there and see what’s going on. Steve is entertaining a group of city women, his regular Ferry Plaza Market customers. He no doubt charmed them into buying tickets. I can tell that he’s deep into the wine already. Nothing pleases Steve more than free wine and lots of women. Jane, who’s working with us, watches him and rolls her eyes at me.

The main course is finally served on big platters, family-style. Roasted ears of corn rubbed with chipotle butter, links of chorizo sausage made from pork and grass-fed organic beef, barbequed chicken, roasted artichokes with romesco sauce, potato croquettes, and stuffed bell peppers. As soon as we set down the platters, the servers fill their own plates in the tent and we sit in a circle and dig into the food that’s been making our mouths water for almost two hours.

A band wanders onto the small makeshift stage carrying their instruments. They look like they might have started hitchhiking in Mississippi about four days ago. There’s a stand-up bass player in a porkpie hat, a washboard player/drummer, and a hangdog guitar player. They start in with some old Hank Williams tunes, the perfect accompaniment to a country dinner. I heard that Uncle Ned, who looks nothing like a lawyer and everything like a banjo player tonight, is going to sit in later. Storm is sipping from a pink plastic tumbler of white wine and she’s getting pretty cozy with the tall dark waiter. Watching her, it occurs to me that Storm might start to feel very old when she actually reaches the age that she tells everyone she is now. It’s like she’s robbing herself of her own youth. She sees me watching her and winks at me.

The sun starts to dip in the sky and the smell of sweetgrass and cornstalks fills the air. Forest and I sit next to each other, eating without any table manners. He’s never experienced anything quite like this and he’s taking it all in like a Boy Scout on a field trip. After every bite of food he makes a comment and then after a while he just groans with pleasure. He’s never tasted food like this. I brush some hair out of his eyes and look at him with so much love that I must look like I’m going to burst. I start to think about him leaving. He reads my mind and shakes his head. I’ve told myself that every moment till he leaves has to mean something (with time out to go to the bathroom and sleep a little). I want him to leave here with a head full of memories, enough to last him till we see each other again. I’m having trouble imagining my life here without him. I snap a photo of him shoving a forkful of food into his mouth. He’s become so used to me taking photos that he barely notices. I take one of Storm too. It’s hard to get her when she’s not posing. She sticks her tongue out at me.

As the main course is cleared away, my dad gets onto the stage and talks a bit about Field of Greens. He brings all the chefs and their staff out from the tent to cheers and wild applause, then he gets all the waitstaff to stand, more applause, and then he says a few words about the people who dig and haul and plant and weed and do all the backbreaking work to get this wonderful food to the table. There’s only a handful of workers at the table but my dad makes them stand up and the table claps for them. Storm whistles like a sports fan and we all cheer for Tomás, Miguel, and Steve.

Dessert is served: strawberry and peach shortcake and plates of lavender shortbread and meringues. The only thing we’re serving that didn’t grow here is the coffee. We walk around the tables with big thermoses but most people are out of their seats by now and the band is playing again. Ned is up there with his banjo and people are waltzing politely in the grass and gathering in small groups. The volunteers join the party and someone lights tiki torches next to the band and lanterns on the table as darkness closes in on us. The kitchen is lit by the generator-powered lights and we pile up all the dishes in there until Millie tells us that our work is done. I look around for Storm and see her making a discreet exit into the cornstalks with Tall Dark and Handsome. Forest and I grab hands and take off like schoolkids at dismissal time.

The path goes for a quarter of a mile till we come to the field where all the cars are parked. We jump into Forest’s car and bump along the field watching the bugs fly at our headlights until we find the main road. Then we barrel down the road to the tar pits. The car knows the way. When we get there, Forest turns off the engine and kills the headlights but he leaves the stereo playing. There’s a blues CD on. The sound of it puts me in a strange mood. The water looks thick and oily in the dark.

Forest turns to me and grins. “You’re probably wondering why I’ve asked you here tonight.”

“I asked
you
, remember?”

“Oh, right. What for?”

“I wanted to discuss the economic situation in sub-Saharan Africa,” I whisper, “among other things.” I take my camera strap from around my neck and hand my camera to Forest. He leans over and puts it on the backseat.

“Right. Other things.” He runs his hand along my jaw the way he always does before he kisses me. His hand smells like the awful pink soap from the sink in the tent. He presses his lips against mine and I move in a little closer. I feel my body responding to him but I’m all instinct, like a cat. The real me is in the backseat, watching, fascinated.

Forest runs his hand from the small of my back to my bra strap. I’m wearing the only nice bra I own, a soft pink lacy cotton thing that Storm made me buy “on the outside chance that anyone would ever see it,” she explained. Storm owns lingerie that comes with directions. I’m guessing that she’s helping Tall Dark and Handsome remove it right now.

I arch my back as Forest’s hand explores my body. He pulls gently at the hem of my skirt, revealing my bare, tan legs, which look to me very unlike the legs he’s been looking at all summer in my cutoffs. Somehow they’re part of a different package now. All the scrapes and bruises and Band-Aids are invisible in the moonlight and they look long and sensuous and new.

When I envisioned having sex with Forest (and I have a million times), I didn’t see how things would simply move along toward it like this. I imagined a more clinical setting with a lot of discussion about what we were going to do next. I imagined Forest reassuring me that it wasn’t going to hurt and that I shouldn’t be afraid, but none of that is happening. I’m not at all afraid. My hands are moving over his body on their own. They seem to know what to do and where to go. Our kissing is long and deep and as natural as breathing. We seem to share a tongue and our lips are exactly the same temperature. The kissing sends an electric charge through my body all the way into my toes. Forest gently pushes me back on the seat and I struggle out of my skirt, a little awkward but manageable. He pulls my tank top over my head and looks at me before he kisses my belly and my chest. I pull at the straps of my bra and he undoes the clasp. (Storm highly recommended the front clasp for this very purpose.) I’m naked now except for my panties and I’m grateful for the darkness because they are nothing to write home about. I unbutton his shirt and help him out of it. I throw it into the backseat, where the real me is still sitting, impressed as hell.

The rest of our clothing somehow disappears from our bodies and we’re skin-to-skin for the first time ever. I feel him against me and marvel at how something can feel so hard and so soft at the same time. The words I’d heard to describe it always made it sound like a weapon to me, something made of cold, hard steel, something to be feared. Forest rifles through the glove box for a condom and, I have to admit, it’s awkward. All action stops while this weird little gelatinous thing is produced and put on. It’s like the person you’re about to have sex with suddenly decided to grow some sea monkeys and they just happen to have a package of them in the glove box.

Forest tells me that he loves me. It’s like he knows I need to hear it before we go any further. My hands pull him closer, closer than we’ve ever been.

When it happens, I suck in my breath and hold it. There’s a resistance inside me and then there isn’t. It does hurt a bit and then it doesn’t. I feel like Forest and I are working toward morphing into one being and then the connection is complete. I start to breathe again. I’m surprised when a tear rolls down my cheek. Forest sees it and kisses it away.

“I love you,” he says again. He lies next to me on the seat; our bodies are warm and the air is warm and we hang on tight to each other. I don’t want him to move. He doesn’t.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m great. It was so emotional. I didn’t expect that.”

“Neither did I,” he says.

“But you’ve had sex before. Wasn’t it like that?”

“No. Everything is different with you. It’s us. We’re different.”

“Better different?”

“Yes, better different.”

“Hey, you wanna go swimming?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t have a towel.”

“I have an old blanket in the trunk.”

We jump out of the car and run naked, laughing, across the tiny beach. I hesitate a moment when I see the black bottomless water but Forest splashes past me and then turns back and grabs my hand. I follow him in. The water is only slightly cooler than the night air. I wrap my legs around Forest and we bob in the water.

“You’re not going to fall in love with some potato-growing farmer while I’m gone, are you?”

“Maybe. What kind of potatoes are we talking about?” I smile.

“I don’t know if I can bear being away from you. It could kill me.”

“Me too. How tragic would it be if we both died from missing each other?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” Forest looks up at the moon. “Hey, I wonder what time it is?”

I look up too. The moon is yellow and almost full, a harvest moon, they call it. “I don’t know, close to midnight, I think.”

“It’s your birthday.”

“I forgot all about it.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Best birthday ever.”

“Best summer ever,” says Forest.

“Best everything ever.”

“Run away with me,” he says.

“Okay, soon.”

Forest drives me home and in the driveway I hold on to him as tight as I can. I don’t want to get out of the car but I do, bit by bit, coming back to him several times for one more kiss. I finally close the car door and drag myself up the porch steps, feeling like a rag doll.

The party has moved to our kitchen and my dad and Reynaldo are going at it, having sampled a lot of wine. Tomás is with them too. Maria’s gone home. She’s too wise not to have brought her own car.

I slip upstairs. I don’t want them to see me. My hair is wet, my clothes are rumpled, and I feel years older than the last time I saw these people. I’m sure they’d see it too if they looked at me. I make it to the bathroom and lock the door. I pull off my damp clothes and run hot water into the old tub. I slide in and lay there, watching a water drop cling to the faucet and then lose its grip and fall into the tub with the others. I run my hand along my sixteen-year-old body. I feel changed. I’m not the girl I was when summer began. I’ve had sex with someone (someone who’s leaving me in a matter of hours) and I’ve fallen in love. In a few days I’ll have a driver’s license. Are there any other birthdays as life-altering as sixteen? Are there any other birthdays that set you free like this? I don’t think so.

I think about my mom and how excited she’d have been for this day. She’d want to talk about it openly and in full detail. I don’t feel that lump in my throat that I’ve felt so many times when I think about her missing another rite of passage in my life. This time I feel calm and confident that I did what I did for all the right reasons. I did it because I love someone and he loves me back.

Rufus finds me as I’m leaving the bathroom with a towel wrapped around me. I close my bedroom door and pull a tank top over my head and then I change my mind and take it off. At sixteen one should make substantial changes in the way one lives. I’m going to sleep naked tonight and maybe forever. The sound of laughter and slurred Spanish still carries up the stairs but it doesn’t bother me.

Rufus curls up on the rug next to my bed. He seems okay with the new me. He seems to like the idea that I’ve moved from the backseat into the driver’s seat and I’ve taken hold of the wheel.

I drift off thinking of nothing but Forest: Forest’s hands, Forest’s lips, Forest’s body, Forest’s heart.

Chapter 21

M
orning washes over me later than usual on my birthday. I finally wake up exhausted and exhilarated. I’m surprised at my nakedness until last night’s events come back to me. My dad’s still sleeping. I heard him climbing the stairs at four a.m. as I was drifting between dreams and consciousness, both featuring Forest. All night, I kept flipping through a stack of mental photographs: where our hands were and when; what he said to me and what it meant; what was playing on the stereo; the way he smelled; the way he felt. It’s ironic that I’ve spent my whole life snapping photos of the things I want to remember and here I am, having to recall what happened on the most important night of my life so far, frame by frame, without any visual aids.

I throw back the covers and pull on my ugly underwear and yank a T-shirt over my head. I pad across the wood floor to the window. Jane and Steve are in the midst of concocting a birthday message of some sort with balloons and crepe paper. I quickly step back from the window. I don’t want to ruin the surprise. The phone rings and I grab it.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” says Forest. “Happy birthday.”

“Hi. Thanks. I just woke up.”

“I know. I’m parked in your driveway. I saw you in the window.”