If He Had Been with Me (15 page)

I am asleep in my bed, dreaming something that I will not remember in a few moments, because my cell phone is ringing. The glow of the screen in the dark night wakes me as much as the chirping song. I fumble instinctively for it on my nightstand, and somewhere in my mind, I am registering the late time on my clock, somehow trying to sort through the dream I am losing. My fingers wrap around the phone and hold it close to my face for reading.

Finny.

My dream is gone, and all that is left is the reality of Finny’s name glowing at me in the dark. I sit up in bed. The phone chirps again.

“Hello?” I say.

“Dude, it’s a girl.” I do not know the voice or the laughter in the background.

“Hello?” I say. My sleepy logic thinks that if I say my correct lines, the other side will follow.

“Hey, what are you—” There is a shout and some shuffling, and the noise stops. I look down at my phone, which dutifully tells me that the conversation lasted fifteen seconds. I blink down at it, and the phone rings again. Finny. I press the button. I hold it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Autumn? I’m sorry.”

“Finny?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” I fall back on my pillows and close my eyes. I feel relieved, but I’m too tired to try to sort out why. It’s just that it’s him, so it’s okay.

“What was that?”

“Some guys got a hold of my phone—I’m at a party—I guess they called you because you’re first in my phone—”

“I’m first in your phone?” I feel the corners of my mouth turn up and hope he cannot hear my surprised pleasure.

“Well, yeah. Alphabetical order. You know.” His voice trails off at the end.

“Oh, right.” I rub my eyes and sigh. “I’m still half asleep.”

“I’m sorry,” Finny says.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Really.”

“They’re drunk and being stupid. It won’t happen again.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No, I’m driving.”

“That’s good,” I say. I don’t know what I mean by that, but it feels true, so it’s what I say.

“Hey, hold on,” he says. And then quietly, not to me, “Is she sick again?” Another voice, female, answers him. “Okay,” he says. “Hey, Autumn?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna let you get back to sleep, okay? Sorry about before.”

“It’s fine. Good night.”

“Good night.”

I wait for him to hang up first. I can hear the noise of the party in the background. I count to three slowly, and I can still hear him breathing.

He hangs up.

The phone drops to the floor and I roll over and bury my face in my pillow. The ache in my chest pounds and hums with my heart. When was the last time his voice was in this room with me, in the dark? A deluge of memories hits me. Us, such small children, sleeping curled together like baby rabbits. Older, we whisper secrets to each other at night. We place fingers over each other’s lips to stifle our giggles. Our despair when The Mothers said we were too old to sleep in the same bed. Finny signaling me with a flashlight from his window, and me taking the cup and string to my ear, “Can you hear me?”

The love I’ve tried to hold back breaks its dam and flows over me, curling my toes and making fists of my hands as I breathe his name into my pillow.

“Finny,” I say to the lonely dark. “Finny. My Finny.” My breath shudders and my eyelids close against the pain of loving him. Finny. My Finny.

On the last day of school, Jamie and I make out in his pool after the others have gone. The concrete rim digs into my back when he presses into me. My hand is down the back of his trunks and I can feel his muscles clenching. I want to bite his shoulder but he wouldn’t like it. Instead, I draw my lips back to his and he slides his tongue inside. His groan vibrates in my mouth.

“Jamie, I love you,” I say.

“How much?” he says. He presses into me again.

“So much,” I say. The urge comes over me again and I kiss his shoulder instead.

“Please?” he says, and as he presses, my skin scrapes against the concrete.

“Ow,” I say.

“Do you want to go inside?”

“Yeah.”

We pad barefoot across the patio and inside. It feels as if my heart is beating between my legs. The scrape on my back aches as my skins tightens with goose bumps. Chilled from the walk through the air-conditioning, I start to crawl under his covers when we reach his room.

“Don’t,” he says. “You’ll get my sheets wet.”

“I’m cold.”

“Then take off your swim suit.”

“Yeah, right,” I say. He slides in next to me, holding my eyes in his. We lie on our sides facing each other.

“Autumn,” he says. He has the look in his eye that tells me what he is going to say before he says it.

“Jamie, I—”

“This is ridiculous,” he says. “Look at us.”

“Can’t you just kiss me?”

“I want to make love to you,” Jamie says.

I cannot say anything in reply. I cannot say that I want to make love to him. I cannot say that I do not want to make love to him. He says nothing. I wonder what he thinks I’m thinking about as we gaze at each other. Perhaps he thinks that I am considering the idea, deciding if I’m ready or not.

He could have just asked me if I wanted to go on the roof and try to fly. He could have suggested that we drive to the airport, right now, and buy two tickets to Paris. It’s not that I don’t like the idea; it’s just not possible.

“We can’t just have sex,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Because,” I say, but I cannot find the words to explain what is so obvious to me.

“What can I do to make it right for you?” Jamie says.

“I need—” I don’t know what I need, so I hazard a guess. “I need time.”

“How much time?”

We look at each other. His gaze is intent, calculating. He studies my face.

“A year,” I say.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“After graduation.”

“Okay.”

Jamie kisses me.

Perhaps in a year, I will have found out what it is I really need. Perhaps if I can’t find it in a year, then I will never find it. Perhaps it will be better then to just give in.

Jamie kisses me. I close my eyes and lose myself in the pure physical sensation of it, the warmth and the skin and our breath. We’re barely clothed, in bed, and in love, and this is almost sex. And it’s almost right.

My mother may have to go back to the hospital. Aunt Angelina is on the phone with the doctors. My mother is crying in the kitchen. I’m sitting on the stairs. My father is at work, but he’ll come home as soon as possible.

I’m not allowed in the kitchen. I’m not supposed to know. But really, I’m always the first to know. My laundry starts to appear outside my door in a basket instead of already folded in my drawers. There are frozen pre-chopped vegetables in the freezer instead of whole heads of fresh cauliflower and bright yellow peppers and squash. She leaves a few dishes in the sink overnight. She isn’t wearing makeup when I come home in the afternoon.

And I’ve learned that if I try to warn anyone, they laugh. They don’t see that her tension and perfection are the only things holding her together. Even Aunt Angelina will frown and say that if my mother is learning to cut a few corners, it’ll be good for her, that perhaps she is learning to relax a little.

Aunt Angelina hangs up. I hear the chair scrape against the floor. Her voice is low as she talks with my mother. My mother’s voice answers shrilly, then quiets.

Finny and I loved to hear the story of how they met because it was never the same. Aunt Angelina told us my mother had rescued her from a blizzard or that they had been trapped at the top of a Ferris wheel together and had to climb down the spokes. They saved each other from drowning, met backstage at a Rolling Stones concert, and got shoved into the same locker on the first day of high school and were friends by the time they were rescued by the janitor.

My mother said they sat next to each other in math class in eighth grade. Once, she said it was seventh grade.

My mother’s sobs are softer now. Even though I’ve never seen them in one of my mother’s crises, I can imagine it clearly enough. My mother has her head in her arms on the table. Aunt Angelina strokes her hair.

They’ve loved each other nearly their whole lives, yet are not in love. They are passionate and devoted. They are bound to and balanced by each other—the outer chaos of Angelina’s life and my mother’s inner darkness, Angelina’s strength and my mother’s will.

I imagine Angelina’s fingers twine in her hair and rest there.

“I love you,” she says. She always will.

***

My father comes in the front door. He has his briefcase in one hand. He’s here sooner than I expected. He started dating my mother their freshman year in high school, just like me and Jamie. I don’t know what binds them together.

“Hi, Autumn,” he says.

“Hi, Dad,” I say.

“Rough day, huh?” he says. I’m not sure if he’s referring to me, Mom, or all of us.

“She’s in the kitchen,” I say. He nods. He looks at me.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say. I always am. Comparatively.

I cannot imagine not wanting to live. I cannot imagine not believing that it will be better someday. I cannot imagine that there is nothing left to see, that there is nothing to tie me to Earth. As long as I want to live, then I must be fine.

My father goes in. Aunt Angelina comes out.

“Hey, kiddo,” she says. I don’t say anything.

“Everything is going to be fine,” she says. I know that. Everything is fine already. It’s always fine. Everything is fine, fine, fine.

I nod.

“Do you want me to call Finny?” she says. I might flinch; I’m not sure. Her face changes in reaction to me though, so I must have done something. “Okay,” she says.

“It’s not what you think,” I say. I do want him. I want him here, and I want Jamie and I want Sasha and Angie and Noah and Brooke and my grandmother who died all those years ago. I want Mom. I want Mom to be okay, really okay. What other people mean when they say okay.

Aunt Angelina nods. One corner of her mouth twitches up, just for a moment.

“Love is complex,” she says.

I nod again. And then I lay my head on my knees and I do not cry.

In front of me sits a glass of rum and Coke. It has three ice cubes in it. Brooke is pouring Coke into Noah’s glass. Jamie is sitting next to me at my mother’s kitchen table. He already took a sip from his, until we protested and said we all had to take the first drink at the same time.

My mother is still in the hospital, and my father is on a business trip. This is the first time I’ve ever been left alone for days. Every evening, I have to check in with Aunt Angelina. She wants to know how I’m feeling and if I’ll come have dinner with them. I’m fine, and I always have plans, like tonight.

Jamie and the others parked around the corner so that Aunt Angelina wouldn’t see all the cars in the driveway. Brooke’s older sister bought us the alcohol. None of us have had any since that New Year’s night. We decided it was time we gave it a try again.

“Okay,” Brooke says. We all raise our glasses. The ice in our glasses clinks all at once like a melody that has lost its way.

“To us,” I say, remembering Jamie’s Christmas toast. And I mean it. I look at each of their faces. We lower our glasses again. At first it tastes the same, as if there is only Coke in my glass, but when I swallow, my throat burns and my stomach is warm. Angie makes a face. Alex coughs. Jamie takes another drink.

“This is okay,” Noah says. I take another sip.

***

Alex is trying to put up Sasha’s hair. He has a brush and a handful of my bobby pins and a rubber band.

“You’re going to look fabulous, darling, simply fabulous,” he says to her. We’re sitting on the living room floor, watching them and the television and laughing. My head feels heavy and light at the same time. I’m happy. I love my friends.

“Ouch,” Sasha says.

“No pain, no gain, darling,” Alex says. We laugh again. I hold up my glass and Brooke leans over to fill it. Some of the rum splashes onto my arm, and Jamie leans over and licks it off.

“Gross,” I say. I rub his saliva off my arm and glare at him. He grins at me. Brooke fills up the rest of my glass with Coke and I bring it to my lips. The ice in our glasses melted a while ago, but no one cares. On the television, a car flips over and catches on fire.

“Oh no,” I say.

“What?” Jamie says.

“He died,” I say.

“No, that’s the Russian spy’s car.”

“Oh.”

Jamie leans over and licks my arm again.

“Don’t,” I say. I push him away. Everybody else laughs. I try to stand up and have to steady myself on the arm of the couch. They laugh again. “I’m going to wash my arm,” I say.

“What?” Jamie says.

“You licked my arm twice. I have to wash it.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’m going to go wash my arm now,” I say. I let go of the couch and step my way across the floor. My feet aren’t quite going the way I tell them to; they step to the side and fling me forward before I’m ready.

“Bring me some more hair thingies, darling,” Alex says.

“You’re not done yet?” Sasha asks. I grab at the doorframe as I go into the hall, and I don’t hear what Alex says in reply. Ever since my second drink, I have had a warm and happy, free feeling, like I’m in a nice hot bath and invincible. I’ve had four drinks now, and something is bubbling up in me like a laugh caught in my chest, tickling me nicely as it struggles to break out.

I go to the upstairs bathroom, my favorite because of the clawfoot tub. The year I was ten, I could lay on my back with my feet at one end and my head grazing the other perfectly. I have to bend my knees now. I step inside and wiggle around until I’m comfortable. Then I have to wiggle again to get my cell phone out of my pocket.

I shift around, trying to find the comfortable spot again as the phone rings. When he answers, I stop moving.

“Autumn?”

“Finny, hi,” I whisper.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m drunk.”

“Oh,” he says. And then, “Oh.”

I feel a swell of pride in my chest; I surprised Finny. And I’ve been drunk now, just like him. I laugh, then remember that I’m trying to be quiet. “Now I know why you do this,” I whisper. I cover my mouth with one hand to stifle my giggle.

“Where are you?” he says.

“In the bathtub,” I say.

“Whose?”

“Mine. With the feet. I’m hiding from my friends.”

“Why?”

“So I can call you, silly.” He laughs, one short bark that turns to a sigh. I frown and shift again. The porcelain sides are digging into my elbows. “Was that mean to say?” I ask.

“No, it’s not mean. Just true.”

“But I still have to tell you why I called you.”

“Why’d you call me?”

“When we go to visit Mom tomorrow night, will you come too?”

“You want me to come?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come, but you have to promise me two things.”

“Fine,” I say.

“Number one, when we hang up, I want you to go downstairs and drink a big glass of water. And before you go to bed, have another one.”

“Why?”

“You won’t be as sick tomorrow, hopefully.”

“Okay.”

“Number two is very important, Autumn.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t have sex with Jamie while you’re drunk,” Finny says. I close my eyes. I know what I want to say, but I am silent. My words can’t find their way through the fog of my mind and out of my mouth. There is something here, something significant, if I could just find it. “Autumn?” he says.

“I wasn’t going to,” I say. The words fall from me like stones dropping into water—one, two, three, four.

“Okay,” he says. We’re both quiet now. There is a thump downstairs, and laughter. “I was going to come on Thursday anyway,” he says.

“Jamie and I are going to have sex after graduation,” I say. There is a pause. I can hear him breathing.

“Why then?”

“I dunno.” I want him to tell me that it’s okay, that it’s the right thing to do.

“How many drinks have you had?” he asks.

“Three,” I say, “and I have one waiting for me downstairs.”

“I think you should stop after that.”

“You’re always so bossy,” I say.

“Promise me,” Finny says.

“I promise,” I say.

“Okay then.”

“I’m supposed to be washing my arm. I should go.”

“Why are you washing your arm?”

“Jamie licked it. Twice.”

“Is that something he normally does?”

“No. He’s drunk too.”

“Don’t forget to drink your water.”

“I won’t. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Downstairs, the good spy is flying off on a helicopter with the girl. I’ve forgotten to get any “hair thingies” for Alex, but Sasha’s head is on his shoulder now and he doesn’t notice. My arm is red and itchy where I rubbed it with hot water, proof that I was washing it upstairs. I sit down next to the other boy I’m in love with.

“What’s that?” he says.

“A glass of water,” I say. “You want some?”

“Sure,” he says. I hand him my glass. He takes two gulps and passes it back to me. I finish it and cuddle up next to him. He leans his head against mine. The spy kisses the girl and the music swells. The screen fades to black.

Tonight I will sleep all night with Jamie in my bed but we will not have sex. In the morning, he will kiss me and breathe his hot breath on my neck and I’ll bury my head in his shoulder. Angie will be vomiting in the bathroom down the hall. Alex will be sick too. Jamie and I won’t be sick. Those of us who can eat will fry eggs, and with glazed eyes we will all watch the morning news on the couch. No one will talk much. I won’t tell them that I’m visiting my mother later. When they are gone, I will be relieved, and I will go back to sleep.

That evening, I will put on a skirt and go next door. I will decline when Finny offers me the front seat. Aunt Angelina will turn the station to oldies and no one will sing along. I will watch the back of Finny’s head as the car turns into the hospital parking lot because he is there, right there, and he was going to be anyway.