Future Perfect (8 page)

“You okay?” he says to me. He rests his forearms on my shoulder and peers into my face like he's going to find answers in my eyebrows.

“No,” I say.

“Come on, it's your birthday,” he says, rocking me side to side. “You love parties! You love cake!”

“Everyone loves cake.”

“You love cake like a fat kid loves cake!” he says, grinning at me.

I yank myself away from him. “I love cake the way a fat kid loves
his friends and family
.” I turn and stalk down the aisle away from him.

“Sure,” he says, following after me. “But seriously, what's up?”

“I don't want a party.”

“You don't have to have one,” he says.

“My father wants me to have a party,” I say.

My father throws these parties because that is how he shows he loves me. He understands love as noisy and demonstrative, messy and full of streamers. But he is fairly useless when it comes to practical issues. His eyes glaze over when I try to talk to him about fixing the irrigation system in the garden because it is, literally, a hundred years old, or suggest we find out what that knocking sound in the Volvo is. It is faster to do these things on my own, which is why I'm the one buying the napkins and the plates and the food and the cake and the soda. I do love parties. I still don't want this one.

“It won't be so bad,” he says soothingly as he ambles next to me. He is almost as unhelpful as my father when it comes to shopping and making practical decisions, even about tiny things like how many packages of forks we need.

“I don't want Grandmother's coupon,” I say. I told Hector about the coupons when we first started dating. He had looked puzzled by the idea. He looked at my body as if he was trying to
understand the problem. The birthday bribes have always seemed like an abstract thing to him. This will be the first year he'll be around when I get one.

“The coupon,” he says. “Oh. Well. Maybe you won't get one this year?”

He leans in to kiss me again. He knows I don't like it when he does it in public. I dodge him by leaning down to grab a package of Wonder Woman paper plates. Her head is still dangling from my wrist. On the plates she's punching the air. She looks determined, and she looks focused.

“Superhero theme,” I say. I wave the plates at him and he is distracted.

“Really?” he says, delighted. “Everyone will wear masks!” I am pleased to have made him happy. “And have secret identities! What's your secret identity?” He pulls out the plain napkins I had given him and starts piling in the superhero-themed ones.

“I don't need a secret identity. Secret identities are for people with something to hide.”

“You never hide anything,” Hector says.

“Of course not,” I say.

He kisses me on the forehead and brushes my hair back behind my ear. “Let's get masks anyway.” He darts ahead of me and around the corner.

I pull Wonder Woman streamers off the rack and follow him to the masks. Superheroes and masks will be whimsical. My father
is always telling me I need more whimsy in my life. Less taking things so literally and seriously.

Hector piles masks into my arms because there's no more room left in the basket he's got. He pulls my ponytail holder off and pushes a tiara into my mess of hair because my arms are full and I can't nudge him away. He snaps on his own squirrel mask like it's a hat. It mashes down his curls. I am looking for a cart, and then hear Hector talking to someone behind us.

“Does your sister need a basket?” the girl says. Our age. She doesn't go to our school, because I don't recognize her. She is white and pretty and pink-cheeked. She looks like the kind of girl who goes to all her school's games, both home and away, and has six football boyfriends.

I think that, but how do I know? I shake my head. I'm just as bad as anybody.

“No,” Hector says to the girl. He smiles at her and turns away. He doesn't know what she was implying? I catch up to him. I am glad to resist the urge to glance back at her when he drapes his arm over my shoulder and rubs his thumb on my bare arm. He is just a little bit taller than me. When I look over at him he's smiling. Brown eyes almost gold. I press my cheek against his just briefly, a short hug, and he grins at me as if I have just thrown my arms around him and squeezed him until he was breathless.

The first time we had sex was on the beach behind my house, on a blanket from the trunk of the car, and I tried to cover myself
because it was cold, because I couldn't imagine wanting to know what anyone else thought about my body. I just wanted him to touch me and he did, moving his hands across my body and down my sides and touching me everywhere, all of my skin, all of it bare and the moon up in the sky and his face close to mine and that smile on his face and his whisper that he loved me, he loved me, he loved me and I was so beautiful and he loved me, until I buried my face in his neck, not sure I could withstand the force of him anymore.

The force of him is sometimes too much to bear. Even at a party shop. This boy.

“Hector,” I say, and stop. I'm not sure what I want to say to him. I can't stop myself from glancing behind us this time. The girl is still at the end of the aisle. Her white shorts are very short and her legs are very long. A girl who should run down the beach in slow motion with wind blowing through her hair.

I don't know what I want. To have the difference acknowledged. To have the difference dismissed. It's like he doesn't even know he has these options.

I say, “Thank you for helping me shop for my birthday party.”

Hector smiles at me again. I wonder if he has ever had a moment of doubt.

He says, “It's your birthday!” He gives me a kiss on my temple with a smacking sound. “Everything is going to be awesome.”

I know he genuinely does not notice those tiny kinds of
moments. Nobody seems to notice them as much as I do, I have realized. Hector is talking about superheroes, and the girl in the shorts is gone. I cannot decide if I am relieved or angry. Wonder Woman is dangling from my wrist and she is no help at all.

“A
shley, is this a joke?” Jolene asks. I drape a feather boa around her neck and put a tiara on her head before I even let her off the veranda and through the front door. She pushes a paper streamer out of her face and it catches on her rhinestones. She is grinning though. The light is low in the foyer and her eyes are shining bright. She says, “Was this Hector's idea?”

I look at her and say, “Yes. And you are in a
dress
,” because she is. She never dresses up. She wears tailored khaki shorts and button-down shirts. I can't remember if I've seen her in a dress since that day in fourth grade. This one is red gingham, with a small white collar and a row of shell buttons down the front. She dislikes what Laura calls “excessive displays of egregious status-quo feminine trappings,” but she's dressing up for my birthday because she knows that symbols are important. She is smiling at me, and then she hugs me and I hug her back. She always seems so small. Sometimes I worry about overwhelming
her and breaking her into bits.

I clear my throat when I step back. I never know when to stop hugging. She changes the subject. “Tiara!” she says. She's pointing at me.

I reach up and find one on top of my head. “I don't know where that came from,” I say. I start to pull it off but it gets caught in my hair.

“You should wear it,” Jolene says, reaching up to untangle the little sparkly crown. “It looks nice on you.” She holds it out for me to take. “Here. It's your birthday.”

Everyone keeps saying that. I find myself ducking my head and she is settling the tiara back into my curls.

She pats me on the shoulder. “There,” she says. “That's perfect.”

“Wait!” I say. I grab a cardboard box full of flimsy plastic Halloween masks from the mantel and shake them up. They're all twisted together. “It's whimsical,” I say.

She raises her eyebrows at me. “Hector again.”

“Who else?” I say.

She grins at me and takes the box, digging through it as we head down the hallway and into the kitchen. Paper streamers are everywhere. They brush across my face and hair. Her nose wrinkles. “Is that a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?” She tilts the box to get a better look in the overhead light of the kitchen.

“I don't know,” I say. “He is a turtle in a mask. He must be
ashamed of being a mutant if that is what he is.”

The kitchen is chaos. All the cupboard doors are open and coolers are stacked up by the door to the patio. Catering trays full of tamales and rice and beans and empanadas cover the entire kitchen island, and discarded wrappers from all the streamers and stars and napkins are a safety hazard all over the floor, and the dogs are circling around the island wondering when someone is going to pay attention to them, then stopping at the least convenient moment. I had wanted to cook all the food. Pinto beans bubbling all day, potatoes fried with onions, and warm, handmade tortillas. Soaking corn husks and kneading masa. My mother's recipe. She never taught me. I found it on an index card stuffed in one of my father's romance novels. But we did not have time for that. And it felt weirdly personal, too.

Mateo says, “If you knew anything about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles you'd know that the masks are an essential part of their identities.” He opens the fridge and takes out a can of Coke.

“I don't know what that means,” I say. “Give me a Coke.”

“You don't need one,” he says. “It's all sugar and chemicals.” He takes a long sip from his can. He doesn't burp, but that's just because Jolene is in the room. Sometimes he has dignity, though he never worries about what he says in front of her. He has known Jolene since her parents were still calling her David.

I say, “Shut up, Mateo,” and he rolls his eyes and throws a can at me.

“Jolene?” he says, and hands her a soda very carefully.

“You suck,” I say to him.

“You should open that before the fizz goes down and it doesn't explode all over you.”

I set it down on the counter and take out a new one and smirk at him. “Check me out. I'm a criminal mastermind.”

“I've licked the top of one of those cans and you'll never know which,” he says. Jolene grimaces at her can. “Not yours,” he assures her.

“I'm tired of you now,” I say, hopping up onto one of the counter stools. “What are you doing? What have you been doing?”

“I napped,” he said. “Now I'm going to go have a couple of beers and call my girlfriend.”

“Grandmother wanted you to get chairs out of the studio.”

He snorts and heads out the back door.

“Get chairs!” I yell after him. He yells back something I can't hear but I'm guessing isn't polite, because he always has to have the last word.

The party is just a few hours away but things are not ready yet. Laura arrived at noon. I have been cleaning floors and finding places to stuff away my father's romance novels and gathering up my mother's plates. She collected ceramic from everywhere. I don't know if she started before my grandmother let them move into the house or after. But her plates and cups are in every room.
They are under the end tables and stacked on bookcase shelves and behind the couch. There is a pile in my closet that I will never move.

Laura's been putting up the streamers, accompanied by the gentle jingling chime of her bracelets sliding up and down her arms. Streamers are hanging in the foyer and the hall and the dining room and kitchen. Now she's back in the dining room, standing on a chair and sticking up glow-in-the-dark stars in between each streamer.

“Laura!” I call. “Jolene is here.”

“Jolene!” she yells. “Tell Ashley she's got to wear the sequined skirt.”

Jolene frowns at me. “Do you want to wear the sequined skirt?” she asks me.

“No,” I say.

Jolene leans through the door. “She'd prefer not to wear it,” she says. “Why are you not using a stepladder?” Jolene looks at me. She is tapping on the doorframe in an anxious rhythm. “She's standing on a chair.”

“I keep telling her she's going to fall.”

“I'm not going to fall,” Laura calls.

“You have the rug all bunched up under the chair legs,” Jolene points out.

“Well, that isn't very safe,” I say.

“Homeowner's insurance covers her, right?” my father says,
wandering into the room with a paperback in his hand.

“I'm not sure the policy extends to personal injury,” I say. Jolene is still peering around the corner and worrying her hands.

“I do what I want!” Laura shouts. Her voice echoes. It's louder than the ice cubes crashing in the freezer.

“Here,” I say to Jolene. “Will you help me wash my mom's plates?” I pat one of the piles.

Jolene is twisting her fingers together.

“Don't worry,” I say.

She puts her hands behind her back as if she has seen me notice her twisting them. “I don't want to break one.”

Lucas, hauling an armful of folding chairs through the door, snorts. “No one will notice. You know that.”

My father says, “Don't break them, though.” He reaches for the shook-up can of Coke Mateo had thrown at me.

“She will not break them,” I say. “You won't break them,” I tell Jolene. I take the can of Coke out of my father's hand and replace it with my unopened one. He shrugs and wanders off.

Jolene is looking at the stack I've made. We have no idea how many plates there are, or how many stacks we've missed. This is a very large house. I remember my mother saying they were important parts of history even though they came from mostly thrift stores. That's probably why she didn't take them with her.

My grandmother ignores them because my father wants to keep them. The house seems full of her, in every room.

I hand Jolene a stack and she looks alarmed but resolute. When she is given a task, she is very serious about it. Mateo shuffles back into the kitchen, talking on his phone, and Lucas throws himself at his back. They wrestle, and overturn the box of masks. My father wanders back into the kitchen with his Coke in one hand and a string cheese in the other.

Hector comes through the sliding doors from the back porch and hauls Toby up into his arms. Toby stares stoically off into the distance, all four of his paws sticking straight out as Hector bounces him gently, cheerfully singing the Toby song. “Toby! He's silly and he's cuddly! Toby! His belly's pretty fuzzy! Toby! Let's tell him that he's great! Good job, Toby!”

Toby doesn't seem impressed.

I find Laura in the study on her rickety chair. She has added dozens of pink bead strands around her neck. Her hair is a halo in the sun and she looks perfect. She always does and I am not sure how it is possible.

“I'm almost done!” she says when she sees me. She jumps off the chair. Her arms go around my neck and she squeezes. “I love you!” she says to me. “Happy birthday! Look how amazing this place looks, look at it!” The whole house is filled with stars and lights and streamers and it all comes together to make something beautiful. That's what Laura does.

She stops and looks at me and says, “Are you okay?”

I shake my head. “Noise,” I say. “You know. They're so loud.”

“I know,” she says. She hands me a roll of streamers and gets up on a chair. “Hold this for me please? I have developed a system that has made it slightly more efficient to tape and hold and move and arrange but I am the first to admit that it's also very nice when you have someone come and be your backup tape-holding person.” She grins at me and drags the chair over to the last corner, the throw rug still stuck on one of the back legs.

Laura is good at being silent, too, even when there are so many things we should be talking about. She tears off lengths of crepe paper and tapes them up. I steady the chair for her when she hops down and then I hold it when she hops back up. We fill the corner slowly. The noise in the kitchen gets louder but it seems far away, and it feels like we're leaving a comet tail of streamers behind us.

“There,” Laura says. With a hand on my shoulder, she jumps down and says, “Okay?”

I say, “Thank you,” and things are okay.

She kisses me on the cheek. In the kitchen Lucas is lugging in yet more chairs from the garage.

“Wait, do we need
even more
folding chairs?” I say.

Lucas shrugs. With one hand he pops open one of the catering trays and scoops a bunch of empanadas. He tosses an entire one into his mouth. “Where's Clara?” he asks me with his mouth full.

My grandmother is in her office at the top of the stairs because she will help fund a party but she will not help plan it or set it up.
The details are important but they're for someone else to worry about. Not her. My grandmother has very particular ideas about delegation and taking care of the work you're best suited for. She is not suited to getting her hands dirty, she says. Know where your skills lie and maximize your talent, she always says. She will come down for the party later, circulating through the crowd and remembering everyone's names, shimmering in something elegant.

“She is probably hiding from us,” Jolene says.

“Hiding from your noise,” Laura says. She is covered in star-adhesive backing.

“Mine?” Mateo says. “Ashley's a thundering herd of wildebeests.” He pokes me in my knee and I kick him hard.

I have heard this enough. My brothers are the only ones who dare say a word to me and Laura is astonished and enraged every time. She is only sputtering now, but not for long. Before I have to listen to her lay into him, I gather up all the boxes and bags and trash, and their clatter drowns out her voice. I carry my mountain of refuse to the front door. I can't reach the handle, but I can't just drop everything. I am inching toward the floor to set the boxes down when the front door swings in toward me, knocking everything out of my hands and me almost onto my butt.

“Watch it,” I say. I stagger to my feet and am looking at Laura's twin. Brandon. As stupidly gorgeous as ever. We haven't been alone since I asked him out last year, and my heart staggers to a halt.

Brandon takes my hand and says, “Are you okay?” He says it like he means it. He is narrow-shouldered and thin and not graceful. Though he looks like he should be graceful.

I like his mouth, I think. I shake that thought off and shake my hand out of his. “Yes!” I say. “Embarrassed about being clumsy mostly, I guess?”

He's got olive-colored eyes and he has cropped his afro short so it is dark against his scalp and I want to touch his face. “I'm early,” he says, looking around. “I'm sorry. Are you still getting ready for the party?”

I look down at myself. “Is that a comment on my fancy formal wear?” I say. It's a joke because I'm still wearing ratty jeans and my T-shirt and I can feel my hair sticking to my neck.

“No, you look beautiful,” he says. He says it emphatically and I'm sure he is sincere. I remember him saying, “You're beautiful” when I asked him out. It was something I know he wanted me to believe, because he had looked very steadily into my eyes. He said, “You're beautiful. You're just not my type. You understand that, right? It just happens sometimes.” Then he smiled and said, “It's chemistry,” and tapped the chemistry textbook he was holding under his arm, since it was directly after class.

“Sure right okay,” I had said, because I am not one to mourn for lost causes and I didn't want to stand in the hallway for much longer. I didn't laugh at his joke, because it wasn't funny.

“Is that okay?” he had said. He looked so anxious.

“Yes of course it's okay,” I said. And I meant it. Because there was no way I'd let him think any differently. I didn't want him to think I gave a damn that, whatever came out of his mouth, it was obvious that he thought—that
he
thinks
—I'm too fat to date.