Driving With Dead People (16 page)

On December fifth I called Dad and invited him to go Christmas shopping. It was the first time I’d ever called without asking for money. He was hesitant, but accepted. The following Sunday I rode along with him to Cincinnati. It was always harrowing to be in the car with him, so I pretended he was someone I didn’t know. I’d decided to start over.

Dad wore a red sweater and a tweed Bing Crosby–style hat. I tried to look festive too, in a green-and-white-plaid jumper with a white turtleneck underneath. We rode along without speaking, Christmas carols playing on the radio, a cold rain peppering the windshield of his pickup.

I learned how he shopped. He liked to pick things up and really look them over, especially the price, and more often than not, he wouldn’t buy it. I decided to forget my urgency to finish my own Christmas shopping and follow Dad around instead. He even treated me to a sandwich at Denny’s.

Maybe the divorce had been good for him. He was definitely changing, softening. He spread the divorce papers on the counter a few more times, and then just started giving me the money.

I also found a job working after school and on Saturdays at Photography on Main to supplement my meager hearse-driving income. This helped both of us feel that we were on more equal ground—that I was making an effort to take care of myself.

One day when Julie and I ran into the Valley Inn Restaurant to buy a Coke, we saw Dad sitting with Dave Kilner and a couple of other men.

“Aren’t you proud of Monica for becoming a member of the National Honor Society?” Dave asked Dad. Dad didn’t know what he was talking about. He sort of grunted.

“I’m going to be initiated into the National Honor Society on Friday night,” I told him. And responding to Dave’s expectant look, I said, “You can come if you want.” I knew Dad wouldn’t come to any goofy event of mine.

“Okay,” Dad said, slurping up a spoonful of vegetable soup.

“Okay?” I asked.

“I’ll come,” Dad said, not looking up. I looked at Dave, who winked at me.

“Okay,” I said.

Dave walked Julie and me out to the parking lot. When we got to the car, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Kid, you gotta start somewhere.”

One thing Mom and Jim never missed were my awards ceremonies. They liked taking credit as “my parents” at these happy, prestigious functions. Mom was furious when she saw Dad walk into the room in a suit.

“What’s that
thing
doing here?” she asked, nodding in Dad’s direction.

“I invited him,” I said.

“Why would you do that?” she asked.

“Because he’s paying for the pin they gave me and the new shoes I needed for the ceremony,” I snapped.

“Jim is the one who provides for you,” Mom said.

“What?” I burst out laughing.

“You don’t appreciate what Jim gives you?” she asked, and I swear to God, I thought she was joking, but she gave me this peculiar look, like she’d smelled something nasty.

“You
can’t
be serious,” I said.

“It would kill Jim if he knew you felt this way,” she continued,

“after all he’s done for us.”

“For
you
,” I said. “All he’s done for
you
.”

“You ungrateful little shit,” she said, storming off to find her table.

Ten minutes later my name was called. I walked onstage angry and confused. Was I crazy, or was she?

During the fall of my senior year, I went to a basketball game in Harrisburg with Julie and some friends. We were eating popcorn and cheering on the Elk Grove Braves when I noticed a tall, skinny blond boy with shoulder-length hair walking in front of the bleachers. He had light blue eyes and the look of a kid who’d seen too much—a little sad and definitely interesting.

The second time he walked by, he looked right at me and smiled. I smiled too, and when I did, a flush started in my chest and ended (surprisingly) in my crotch. I shivered.

I watched the boy climb into the stands but lost track of him in the crowd. The ball game was still going (with Elk Grove losing) when the kid tapped me on the shoulder. He was leaning in from the aisle. I turned around and he waved a finger for me to follow him. I was intrigued—especially by that flushed feeling.

“I saw you in the stands,” he said. Up close he looked pale, almost anemic.

“Right,” I said, completely flustered. Suddenly I didn’t know what day it was, my favorite album, or my address.

“Could I take you on a date sometime?” he asked. No one had ever flat out asked me on a date without knowing me.

“Okay,” I said, feeling awkward. He seemed about ten years older than me, but he couldn’t have been.

“What’s your name?” he asked. I laughed, realizing I’d accepted a date from someone who didn’t know my name.

“Monica. What’s yours?”

“Adam,” he said. “Let’s find a piece of paper so you can give me your number. I’ll call you this week.” I tapped Julie on the shoulder and asked if she had paper in her purse. She only had the back of a deposit slip, so I used that.

My writing was sloppier than usual because I was sure that life was about to become a lot more stimulating. I handed Adam the paper and he winked at me. The body flush came back.

As I watched him walk away, I decided that if he
was
trouble, I wanted it. He wasn’t like Phil Robinson or John Mitchell from my high school—with short hair, Future Farmers of America jackets, and glasses. And he sure as hell wasn’t like Keith “Mom’s a Homosexual” Phillips. He walked like Mick Jagger, loose and sexy.

That was the word; Adam was sexy.

None of my friends had ever heard of Adam. In Elk Grove that was unusual.

He grew up about twenty miles east in Greenville but was attending college at Otterbein College in Westerville. He was twenty-one and had come to the ball game with a friend who’d moved to Elk Grove. I was seventeen and ready for a huge distraction.

On our first date we went to see
Breaking Away
in Cincinnati. In the parking lot of Northbrook Mall, Adam gave me my first romantic, sexy kiss. Suddenly nothing mattered more than Adam and that kiss.

He drove me home in his light blue 1973 Ford Galaxy. It was a goofy car, but I didn’t care. I was so mesmerized, he could have picked me up on a John Deere tractor. When he walked me to my door, he said he’d pick me up the following Friday at seven o’clock. He didn’t ask, he told me.

The next Friday we drove to Rocky Fork State Park and kissed on a picnic table. He laid me down on top of it and pushed his hand under the waistband of my jeans. Fear leapt into my throat but I didn’t stop him.

Suddenly, and to my surprise, lying on the picnic table under a million stars, I had no worries. I was connected to Adam in a way I’d never been connected to anyone. I decided it was real love.

Sitting in his car at the park, I asked, “How do you know what to do with me?”

“I’ve been with lots of girls,” he said, pulling out a pack of Marlboros.

“How many?” I asked.

“I don’t know, plenty,” he said, lighting a cigarette.

“Did you have sex with them?” I asked.

He blew smoke out of his mouth as he laughed. “Yes, I had sex with them.”

“Will you have sex with me?” I asked, shocking myself.

He flicked his cigarette out the window, took my chin in his hand, and kissed me. “I would love to have sex with you. When you’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” I said quickly.

“You’re not ready.
I’ll
let you know when you’re ready,” he said. He drove me home, kissed me good-bye, and headed back to Westerville. I listened to the forty-five of “My Sharona” over and over that night.

Adam made me wait three more months. I used that time to drive to Planned Parenthood in Manning, where no one would know me, and got on the pill.

Finally, we had sex in his friend’s trailer. If I hadn’t been so hell-bent on doing it, I would have opted for a more romantic place, but I would have done it on top of the Galesburg water tower by the time Adam finally agreed.

He went slowly and gently, but it didn’t matter. Sex was a colossal letdown, the biggest lie I’d ever been fed—not only from friends (including Susan and Julie)—but from my girl manual,
Seventeen
magazine. Who the hell was actually enjoying
that
?

It was the most searingly painful, bloody, hideous thing I’d ever experienced. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t pleasant, it wasn’t even humane. I was beyond pissed.

“That’s the way it is the first time. Didn’t anyone tell you that?” he asked casually.

“No,” I said, looking for my panties.

“Then I’m sorry,” he said, pulling me close to him. “I should’ve told you. You’ll see. It’ll get easier.”

“I can’t imagine
ever
enjoying that,” I said. He laughed and lit a cigarette.

“You’ll love it, trust me,” he said.

“When?”

He looked up at the ceiling, dragging on the cigarette. “In less than two weeks, it’ll feel great.” I smiled.

It took less than two weeks—it took more like three days, and it didn’t just feel great, it was life-altering, mind-boggling, perfect. My faith in
Seventeen
was restored.

Adam drove back and forth from Westerville to Elk Grove on weekends, but we decided we wanted to see each other during the week too. His grandmother had an apartment in Cincinnati, so he picked me up after school and drove me to Cincinnati.

During the week I’d stay in Cincinnati and he’d drive me down in time for school the next morning. No one was keeping track of me anyway.

I couldn’t imagine loving anyone more than I loved Adam. I even understood, for the first time, how Mom must have felt about Jim.

Adam and I continued like that through the fall of my senior year. He drove down, sometimes I drove up, and we had sex all the time. We couldn’t even sit through an entire movie, instead leaving in the middle of it to rush to his grandmother’s apartment to attack each other. She stayed in her room the whole time. I’d never even seen her.

One night he told me that his grandmother was schizophrenic and he thought he might be as well. That would explain his occasional erratic behavior. I’d sometimes find him on the couch completely spaced out or giggling to himself. Sometimes he became very quiet and would then make weird faces at me. I always got the feeling he enjoyed scaring me. That it was deliberate, made up.

I stayed with Adam. I was in love with him and he was separate from Galesburg, Elk Grove, and my family, which only made him more attractive. And there was the mind-blowing sex, which trumped his probable insanity.

Also, I wouldn’t have broken up with him; I’d never been in love before and wasn’t sure it would happen again. I wasn’t sure someone sane and straight would even date me.

For New Year’s Eve of my senior year, Adam told me he was going to Westerville with friends but would drive down New Year’s Day to see me.

When my friends and I walked into a New Year’s Eve party in Elk Grove, Adam was on the couch with a brunette sitting on his lap. I stayed long enough to see him kiss her on the mouth.

I swallowed my humiliation with Mr. Boston ready-mixed screwdrivers and drove seven of my friends to the elementary school parking lot to do about a hundred doughnuts in the snow. There was no one home at my house, so my friends told their parents they were staying with each other and stayed with me instead. These were the nights it was great to have no parents. At my house we drank more vodka, smoked Virginia Slims, and threw bottles at our back fence. Then everyone picked a bed and slept until noon.

I woke up feeling hungover and heartbroken. I played Air Supply’s
Lost in Love
album on the downstairs stereo. Julie woke up and wandered into the kitchen.

“You should kill that music,” she said. “It’s only going to make it worse.”

I was sobbing, mascara from the night before running in long Alice Cooper–like streaks down my face.

“Why would Adam do that?” I asked.

“He’s an asshole,” she said. “Maybe he wants to break up but didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Why would he want to break up?”

“I don’t know,” she said, opening the fridge and staring inside. Julie appeared to be more hungover than I was.

I started a pot of coffee.

Adam pulled into my driveway two hours later. I still hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth. I met him at the door.

“What the hell, Adam? Why are you here?” I asked.

“Looks like you had fun last night,” he said, laughing.

“Are you going to act like you didn’t see me at the party, you fucking asshole?” I was standing in the doorway.

“What party?” he asked.

“Oh my god, I’m going to kill you,” I said. “The one where you were kissing that girl.”

“She’s just a friend who I kissed because it was almost midnight. Don’t be so possessive,” he said.

“Possessive? You said you were going to be in Westerville. If you were in Elk Grove, you should have been with me, right? WE ARE DATING, RIGHT?”

“I’m gonna let you cool out. I’ll call you later in the week,” he said, turning to leave.

I stood in the doorway and watched him back out of the driveway. I slammed into the house, walked to the stereo, and lifted the needle on the turntable to “All Out of Love.” When the intro began, I burst into tears again. Julie was making scrambled eggs.

That week I found out from several people at school that they’d seen Adam with a bunch of different girls over the last few months; they just hadn’t known how to tell me. But since we were close to graduation and I had caught him anyway, they thought I needed to know what a creep he was.

Girls in Elk Grove had seen him with me and had gotten his phone number. I found out who these girls were. I knew them, had gone through school with them, but they weren’t friends. They were the “wild” girls, and I acted like a “good” girl, which was probably the reason they felt okay screwing me over.

I felt worse than duped, not to mention that my heart was broken.

I pulled out the phone book and looked up Stephanie Knox. I sat on my white leather beanbag chair and dialed her number.

“Is Stephanie there?” I asked when her mom answered. She put down the phone to find her. I waited.

“Hello?”

“Stephanie?”

“Yes.”

“This is Monica Peterson. I just called to thank you for screwing my boyfriend.”

There was silence on the other end.

“I’m sorry, Monica. But he, you know, he came after me. I wasn’t looking for it.”

“That makes me feel SO much better. I hope this happens to YOU someday so you’ll know how I feel,” I said.

“Oh, it’s happened to me. Twice,” she said. This threw me. Stephanie was a sad case.

“Didn’t you learn from that? What the hell’s wrong with you?” I said.

“Adam’s really, really cute,” she said.

“NO SHIT! That’s why he’s MY boyfriend.” I was fighting tears now.

“I know. I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Do me one favor, since you already fucked me over. Don’t tell Adam I know. I’m going to tell him myself this weekend. And then he’s all yours.”

“Can I take him to the senior prom?”

“What?”

“Would you care if I took him to the prom?” she repeated.

“Oh my god, this is a nightmare.” I hung up.

I didn’t call the other girls on the list.

Tuesday night, Adam called.

“Hi, sweetie, have you calmed down?” he asked.

I bit my tongue and said, “A little.”

“Can we have a date and I’ll make it up to you,” he teased.

“Friday night,” I said. “Pick me up around six.”

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“I don’t even care,” I said.

“I love you.” I didn’t say anything. “I can’t wait to see you,” he added.

“Okay, see you Friday.” I hung up and burst into sobs again. I put on Barbra Streisand’s album
Guilty
and put the needle on “What Kind of Fool.” Adam had sounded like he always did. I loved him and wanted to have sex with him at least fifty more times. But that wasn’t going to happen.

I told him to come to my house because I wanted him to make the long drive to Elk Grove so I could break up with him and send him back to Westerville. The phone was too easy.