House of Wonder (13 page)

Halloween

“D
amn, it's cold,” whispered Maggie, shivering as we stood on the sidewalk, watching as Rose and Maggie's sons, Sam and Henry, lifted their bags for one of their neighbors to drop in shiny little foil-wrapped candy bars. “I don't remember ever having to wear coats for trick-or-treating when I was little.”

I held Gordo's leash, and smiled as I heard some older children across the street point and laugh at his costume, with its green body and purple spikes down the spine. Gordo was a dinosaur for Halloween and he seemed pleased by the attention it garnered him, his tail swinging spastically. Most dogs I knew hated to be dressed up in anything, but Gordo couldn't be more agreeable about it.

Rose, Sam, and Henry turned away from the door and
ran toward us, all bundled in down jackets and mittens over their costumes. Rose was a cowgirl, and Sam and Henry were two- and four-year-old clone troopers. “Thanks, Ann!” called Maggie as the older woman smiled, then let the door shut as she disappeared back into her house with her enormous bowl of candy.

“How are those bags looking?” I asked, peering into Rose's. “Holy smokes!” I declared, and Rose giggled, delighted by her haul. I gently pinched her chin, which was cold to the touch, her cheeks nearly as red as her little birthmark.

“All right,” said Maggie. “What do you say to one more house. Then we'll go home and I'll make some hot cider?”

Rose wrapped her arms around Gordo's neck, which he minded only as it made licking her face more difficult. He swung his head from side to side as he tried to get to her. “Gordo, you're a
dinosaur
,” she said, giggling.

Back inside, Rose and Sam peeled off their jackets and immediately lay belly down on the floor, sorting meticulously through their stash while making sure the contents from their respective bags didn't mingle. Little Henry found a corner and started unwrapping candy and shoving it in his mouth as fast as he could before Lance spotted him. “What!” Lance declared, as Henry's sudden urgency to swallow the sugary wad caused three half-chewed, saliva-covered Tootsie Rolls to spill out of his mouth and onto the floor.

Lance scooped him up and started tickling him mercilessly, his laughter so clear and bright and joyful that we all looked, including Rose, who often sought from Lance the fatherly roughhousing that she so craved.

“Now me!” she said, bouncing over to Lance and Henry.

“Now you?” joked Lance. He set down Henry and took Rose up in his arms, fluttering his fingers over her belly and sending her into a fit of giggles.

“Thank you,” I mouthed to him, thinking of my own father: Stewart Parsons, Captain of Industry. I had been trying to get in touch with him since I'd seen our grandfather's watch in Lydia's car. But first he was in Europe for a meeting with the board. Now he was in Singapore for the global Snacks and Confectionary business unit conference.
He's just totally swamped,
Lydia had said.
And I think his cell phone acts up when he's overseas. What do you need to talk to him about?

Maggie called us into the kitchen and we all took our seats at the table. Lance began ladling mugs full of cloudy, amber-colored liquid, which he had mulled with cinnamon while manning the door for trick-or-treaters.
“And . . . ,”
he said with great ceremony as he headed back to the stove and lifted the lid on another pot.

Maggie peered into it. “Ohhh,” she said. She opened the overhead cabinet and reached for a stack of plates. “Guys, Dad made Grandma's meatballs. Are you all hungry?” Lance's mother was famous for making time-saver, stick-to-your-ribs recipes; dishes with unlikely combinations like Vienna sausages and pineapple or, in this case, frozen meatballs and grape jelly.

From behind Maggie, Lance wrapped his arms around her neck and kissed the top of her head as she sank a wooden spoon into the pot.

I pointed to each of the kids, waiting for their yea or nay on the meatballs. “I'll just get a big plate for the kids,” I said.

Maggie gave me a happy wink as we passed, she on her way
to the table, me on my way to the stove. Then she groaned with delight as she took her first bite. “Oh my God, I
love
you,” she said to Lance.

I was opening the cutlery drawer when I heard Rose's voice. “My mom loves
Gabby's daddy
,” she teased.

Grabbing a handful of forks, I shuffled back to the table; I would face Maggie's inquisition later. “Rosie, honey, I don't
love
Gabby's daddy,” I explained. “We're just old friends.”

Maggie, who was wiping her smiling mouth with a paper towel, looked at me with a single raised eyebrow, while Rose pressed the palms of her hands hard against each other and moved them up and down, as if trying to create friction. “Then why did you smoosh together like this?” she asked, a mischievous lilt in her voice.

“We were just hugging good-bye,” I said, as I pulled up a chair.

“I only hug people I love,” said Rose, as she plucked a meatball from the pile, finally deciding that they were monochromatic enough to be palatable.

“You can hug people that you
like
, too,” I offered. “You can hug people to say hello or good-bye, or to make them feel better—”

“I think you should love Gabby's daddy,” interrupted Rose as she took a tiny bite. “He's nice.”

And I was left staring at my daughter, whose small feet bucked under the table. I was left not knowing how to explain that love isn't that simple when you're a grown-up; that you don't meet someone who is nice, smoosh your bodies together, and decide to be in love. So instead I said simply, “He is nice.”

•   •   •

Music by Vince Guaraldi was playing softly in the kitchen while Maggie and I cleaned up. Lance was reading the kids Halloween stories in the family room. We had changed them out of their costumes, wiped their faces and hands with warm, wet washcloths, and put them in their pajamas. Rose was leaning up against Lance and biting on her thumb, her pointer finger rubbing her nose. I was rinsing out cider mugs and wondering how long it would take before Maggie asked about the man I had smooshed my body against. It was halfway through the third mug.

“So,” she said. “Tell me more about
Gabby's daddy
.”

I tutted dismissively. “He's just this guy I grew up with,” I said, hearing the steady rush of water from the faucet. “He's got a little girl Rose's age and so we took them to see a movie.”

Maggie was watching me closely, a small smirk on her face, her eyes narrowed. “Stop staring at me with your shrink smile,” I said. That's what we called it, having discovered that all psychiatrists wore the same smug expression of vague amusement.

“I think it's great,” she said with a shrug, reaching for a cup from the dish rack and returning it to the cabinet.

I moved to face her. “Maggie, it is
so
not like that,” I said. “I don't even know what his situation is. He was married to this gorgeous woman and now I guess they're divorced, and she's out west and he's got Gabby. . . .” My head tipped from one side to the other with each point. “It all sounds very messy.”

Maggie nodded as she arranged the mugs in an orderly line within the cabinet. “That's the way it goes. Things get complicated. We aren't all twenty-five anymore.”

For a moment it seemed Maggie had been dissuaded from pursuing the topic any further, but after a few moments she asked, “So, what's his name?”

“Bobby Vanni.”

She seemed to roll his name around in her mind for a moment, probably trying out variations of our coupling.
I asked Jenna and Bobby to dinner. Bobby and Jenna are having a barbecue.
“I like it. It's old-school.” She nodded, warming to the person she was shaping in her head. “He sounds like a character in a John Hughes movie. Like a
Jake Ryan
.”

My laugh was low and full. “He was
totally
a Jake Ryan.” I shut off the water and wiped the small splashes of water from the counter around the sink.

“Did you guys used to date or something?”

“No,”
I said. “Definitely not. Bobby dated girls like Nicki Waldron.”

“Who was Nicki Waldron?”

“You were probably a Nicki Waldron.”

“No,” she said. “I probably
beat up
Nicki Waldron.”

I laughed, giving my friend a bump in the hip with my own as I draped the dishcloth over the handle of the oven.

I went back to the eating area to grab a few stray napkins from under the table. On my way back I said, “He did ask me out once in high school. To a party.”

“And . . . ?” asked Maggie.

“And I got drunk, tried to kiss him, and spilled beer on his shirt.”

“Parsons,” said Maggie, shaking her head in pained amusement. “You are a disaster.”

I remember the feeling of sinking and soaring all at once
when I saw him waiting for me at my locker on the last day of school in junior year.
There's a party Friday. At Rick DeSesso's.
That phrase was repeated to all of my friends, countless times, as we analyzed the intonation, the possible meanings behind its nuanced delivery. The length of the pause between sentences, the emphasis on Rick DeSesso versus Friday—we examined these details with nearly unimaginable intensity.

At the party, Rick played master of ceremonies, nodding his approval at Bobby's unconventional choice of a date for the evening. “Parsons,” he said, giving Bobby a high five as I passed in front of him. “Nice.” Rick DeSesso's house had a detached garage with an empty apartment above it, so he used to have epic but exclusive parties to which his parents would turn a blind eye. With the cool music and dim lights, the wonderfully shabby little space seemed to exist in a sort of eight-millimeter haze, outside the influence of parents or teachers or authority of any kind.

There was a pony keg of some terrible yellow beer that I drank without restraint, feeling the effect of the alcohol make its way slowly through my body, sinking down into my legs. I was smiling and nodding my head to the music, surrounded by the popular kids and their drunken laughter. And I was there with Bobby Vanni.
He's just going to try and get in your pants,
my friends had said. And I hoped they were right.

When I stumbled out of Rick's strange little bathroom—which had a toilet and a shower, but no sink—and Bobby was standing outside the door, leaning coolly against the wall across from me, his arms folded over his chest, one hand holding a red plastic cup full of beer, for a moment I thought I was a different girl. For a moment, I thought he had been waiting for me. I took
a step toward him, lifted my chin, and closed my eyes. My slight stumble, one I couldn't blame entirely on the alcohol, caused me to bump him, sending a slosh of yellow beer onto his sleeve. Still, I wrapped my arm around his neck; I pressed my lips to his mouth, feeling them answer once before I felt the heat of his hand on my shoulder, firmly but gently pressing me away. At the sound of his chuckle, I opened my eyes. “You're pretty hammered, Jenna.” He was looking at me with amused affection. “We should probably get you home.”

I just stood there, blinking dumbly. “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” My mind was working slowly, but the thundering hooves of humiliation were drawing closer. I didn't want to be little Jenna Parsons anymore. I didn't want to be the girl from the neighborhood.

Nicki Waldron, who throughout our senior year would claim to have been offered a modeling contract that she opted to turn down, leaned her head into the hallway, her tiny pink T-shirt lifting on one side to reveal a stretch of tanned stomach.
Finster just called and said his parents are in the city. We're all going to hit his pool.
She was speaking to Bobby, not me.

I stood there staring at the floor. “Cool,” he said. Without taking his eyes away from Nicki's very pretty face, he nodded toward me. “I'm just going to make sure Jenna gets home first.”

Then, with as much dignity and nonchalance as I could muster, I waved him off, telling him I had a ride. That I was all set.

“Are you sure?” he asked, skeptically.

“Totally,” I said. “I'll see you later.”

Warren met me at the end of the street. I sat tucked behind a shed, twirling a small blade of grass between my fingers while
I waited for him to pull up in my mother's station wagon. When he caught sight of me, our eyes locked for a moment, everything being communicated silently and immediately. Warren's eyes moved down the street to the soft glow of Rick DeSesso's, to its steady thrum of music and laughter and voices, and watched it with a guarded interest. But he never asked me what had happened. He never asked me about my date with Bobby Vanni. Instead, we glided over the smooth, black suburban streets with the windows down and the early summer air on my bare arms, and I rested my head on the seat back, thinking about how much I wanted to get out of Harwick and my mother's house. Thinking about how much I wanted to become someone new. Maybe when I went to college, I'd dye my red hair jet-black and pierce my nose. Maybe I'd major in art and smoke cigarettes and have sex with someone without telling him first that I was a virgin. Maybe I'd get a tattoo. And as I tried on all these rebellions in my mind, Warren was silent until he finally said to me, his stare focused on the manicured world beyond the windshield but acutely aware of my reaction, “Grandpa's been coughing a lot lately.”

“He's probably just got a cold, War,” I said dismissively.

In the end, I did get my nose pierced, having taken the train into New York and finding a little West Village storefront. I stood in front of their window display, running my eyes up and down the rows of savage-looking hoops and bars, breathing New York's distinct smell in and out. I remember the popping sensation as the small stud I'd selected punctured my skin. I remember how it made my eyes water, and how the world went blurry for a moment as I blinked the tears away. That nose ring
was in for two months before my grandfather died. I took it out for the funeral and never put it back in.