Intentions (5 page)

Oh man, there it is. I am going to stuff two pieces in my mouth. Oh God. I stuff in a third. It tastes soooo good.

CHAPTER 7

DEVIL’S FOOD CAKE
’N’ COFFEE MAN, MAN

Do I have frosting all over my face? Did I really have five pieces? Am I going to regret this tomorrow? I am
so
going to regret this tomorrow.

But it doesn’t matter … Alexis and Adam and I are having so much fun. I love Alexis! She’s whispering to Adam. He’s whispering back.

Wait. Are they whispering about me? Nah. They’re probably whispering about everyone else in the room, right? All the kids who didn’t go out back with us, the old people who are acting like it’s a regular Oneg. I mean, why would they be whispering about me? But why are they looking at me?

“Hey, guys,” I say.

They look up, deer in headlights.

“Shit, are you whispering about me?”

Alexis shakes her head in slow motion. Adam shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders, bursts out laughing. Cookie crumbs spray out of his mouth, which makes Alexis laugh hysterically, and now Mrs. Rabbi is walking over to us.

Oh, I should tell her! I should tell her right now. Mrs. Rabbi—I mean, Mrs. Cohn, I heard your husband in the sanctuary. He was screwing this bride chick.

“Adam, kids, what are you
doing
?” she says through gritted teeth. I’ve never actually seen someone talk like that. It’s kind of a miracle. Her teeth are clenched, but words are coming out.

I’m going to try it. I clench. I will tell her about her husband through gritted teeth.

Making noises but no real words. It’s too hard. How do you actually form words?

She is looking at me with a very weird expression.

Did she understand what I was saying? Was I even talking?

I feel a hand on me, a tug, pulling me away from Mrs. Rabbi.

I turn around and it’s Jake.

Jake!

Ah, Jake. Jake, who was my friend in kindergarten and then moved away for so many years. And now he’s back. With his beautiful back.

Hee. Jake.

He looks at me looking at him. He doesn’t say anything. I smile at him. I think. I hope I’m smiling.

His eyes are so sexy. He’s kind of a nerd but he has sexy eyes. Can you be a nerd with sexy eyes? Can you be a nerd
and
a jock? Can you be a nerd jock with sexy eyes and a back that women would jump through hoops for? Get it? Jump through hoops for? I’m cracking myself up.

“You think I’m a nerd?” he says.

I have GOT to stop thinking out loud.

“No. Yes. But I also think you have sexy eyes and a strong back,” I say.

Pot = truth serum.

I smile my most winning smile and try to talk my way out of this: “You are an enigma. A paradox. A mystery to me.”

“And
you
are a girl whose beautiful face is covered with cake and icing,” Jake says, taking a napkin and wiping off my face.

Did he call me beautiful?

“Thanks,” I say, and I feel really stupid. Does he know I’m stoned? Am I stoned? I am sooooo stoned.

“It’s pretty stupid to get stoned at temple,” he whispers.

“I’m not stoned,” I say.

“Shhhh, you’re shouting,” Jake says, nodding his head. Two old ladies are staring at me. Oh shit, one of them is Mrs. Silverstein. I wave at her and smile.
“Mazel tov!”
I mouth.

“I thought the pot hadn’t worked,” I whisper to Jake.

“Oh, it worked,” he says, and he takes me by the arm and leads me to some chairs under the windows on the far side of the auditorium, far away from all the people—and the food.

“What if I want more food?” I whine to him as he gently makes me sit down.

“I’ll get it for you. I’ll also get you coffee.”

“Does that help?”

Jake shrugs. “Never tried it.”

“Pot or coffee?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he says, and smiles.

“You have a sexy smile, too, and I know I said that out loud.”

“You are so going to regret this in the morning,” he says. “But I’m not.” He holds up his phone.

“You’re recording this?”

“Just that last part,” he says, and tucks his phone into his front pants pocket. I reach into his pocket, feel around.

Jake pulls my hand out. “Rachel,” he says. “Seriously.” He’s blushing.

I am so ashamed. But I’m not the one who should feel ashamed. The stupid rabbi should feel ashamed.

“What?” asks Jake. “Why should the rabbi feel ashamed?”

“Did I say that?”

Jake nods.

Oh shit. My heart starts beating wildly. I think I’m going to have a heart attack.

“Jake,” I whisper frantically into his ear, “was I talking when you pulled me away before? Away from Mrs. Cohn? Was I saying something out loud?”

If my life were a movie, it would be called
Rachel and the Temple of Doom
.

“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t hear anything. I think you were just staring at her.”

“How long were you standing there?”

“Long enough.”

“Oh, thank God.” Maybe there
is
a God! And He/She is looking out for me! I feel so happy all of a sudden. Happy, happy, happy. And strong and relieved and powerful and—

“How about we go back to me telling you that you’re sexy? Get out the phone,” I say in my sexiest voice.

“Are you kidding? I’m not falling for that. You’re going to grab it from me and erase what I recorded. You may be stoned, but you’re not stupid.”

I nod again. I am very stoned. I feel like I might start to cry. “Please, Jake,” I whisper. “Help me.”

“Don’t move,” he says, and runs his fingers gently through my hair as he pushes it back off my face. “Do not go anywhere or talk to anyone. I am getting you some coffee.”

I sit and wait for Jake. I love him. I pledge myself to him forever. But it is taking him so long to get my coffee. Why does it take four hours to get coffee?

“It took me three minutes,” he says, shaking his head sadly. “You are really gone. I am going to kill Adam.”

“It’s not Adam’s fault. Besides, it was Alexis’s stuff.”

“Huh,” he says, and he hands me the coffee. “I put lots of sugar in it. And cream. Drink up.”

The coffee tastes delicious going down, but I’m afraid now I am just going to be a highly caffeinated stoned person.

“I bet there’s a market for this,” I say. “Coffee with pot. Get it? Coffee pot!” I am so funny. I’m usually funny, but when I’m stoned I’m a riot.

“You’re funnier when you’re straight,” Jake says.

He gets me another cup, makes me drink it, and then insists we take a walk outside. As we leave the auditorium, I see my mother smiling at me with approval. She likes Jake. I won’t let that bother me. I like him, too.

“You’re my savior,” I tell him.

“I am not your savior,” he says. “I’m merely your coffee man. For tonight …”

I don’t know what he means. I don’t want to know what he means. I’m never having sex, never having a boyfriend. Not after that stupid rabbi …

I am sad. I whimper, whine. Very attractive, Rachel.

“Hang in there, Rachel,” Jake says. “You’ll feel better when we get outside.”

He steers me out the front of the building.

When the cool air hits me, I laugh. “Oh, that
does
feel good!”

“I’m so glad!” Jake laughs too. “Let’s walk.” He holds my arm as we go down the steps. They are very steep, these steps. I never realized that.

“Can we get on flat land?” I ask him.

“We’ll walk around the block, silly, stoned Rachel.”

I know this block so well, but in my current state I am seeing all kinds of things I never saw before. Trees that need to be touched. How can bark be rough and smooth at the same time? A window that has to be looked into. An ordinary family watching TV. How nice. Steps to a house that have to be climbed up and down a few times, with Jake holding my arm.

Jake talks, and keeps talking, about school, about swimming, how he sometimes thinks about trying to go to the Olympics, but he doesn’t think he’s good enough. I want to ask him more about that, but it will have to wait until I can actually form sentences from complicated thoughts. Or at least complete thoughts.

“I don’t like feeling this way,” I say. “What if someone knows? What if I get arrested?”

“Shhhh, shhhh,” Jake says. “I’ll protect you.”

After a few minutes, or years, a few times around the block, I feel less panicked. And “I need some more cake!”

Jake reaches into his pocket and says, “Ta-da!” He pulls out a chocolate chip cookie.

“Aw,” I say. “I want the devil’s food cake.”

“The icing in my pocket, not so good,” Jake says, and I don’t know why, but I reach up and kiss him on the cheek.

“That doesn’t count as our first kiss,” he says, handing me the cookie.

“It isn’t our first kiss!” I say.

“Huh?”

“Don’t you remember?” I feel so sad that he doesn’t remember. Dejected. Rejected. Ejected. “
Don’t
you?”

He looks at me with a question in those intense eyes.

“In the kindergarten block corner. Remember?” I say. “I was wearing a cowboy hat and spurs. You were wearing a pink gown and pearls?”

Jake laughs. “That was
you
?”

“Yes that was
me
!” Angrily I pull away from him and walk quickly by myself, chomping on the cookie.

Ouch! That bump in the sidewalk got bigger since the last time we went by. Jake picks me up and puts his arm around me, holding me tight.

“I remembered,” he says. “I was just trying to be, I don’t know, cool. But of course I remember.”

I look at him. “And then you moved away,” I say. “Why did you move away?”

“My dad had to go for his residency. We were supposed to move right back when he was done, but then …” Jake stops and looks at me, shakes his head. His eyes are really so beautiful. And sad. Why are they sad?

“What?” I say.

He shakes his head again and then looks like he’s going to say something, and for some stupid reason I start to giggle. The whole situation strikes me as very funny, but I couldn’t say why.

“Never mind,” Jake says. “Let’s keep walking.” And so we walk, and we talk about nothing much, but his eyes stay sad, and even in my stoned state I know something just happened, but I have no idea what.

By the time my mother calls me to say it is time to go home, I am still stoned, but I know to keep quiet.

She and Dad pull up beside us, and Jake helps me get into the backseat of the car. Grandma’s not here. Must have gotten a ride home with someone else. Before he closes the door, he bends his head toward me, and I reach up my hand to touch him, his face, his slightly too long brown hair. I want to run my fingers through the waves—why didn’t I do that on our walk?—but I can’t quite reach, and he doesn’t bend any farther. Instead he stands up, gives me a nod and a little smile. I mouth, “Thank you,” and give him a big smile. His grin expands to fill his whole face.

I don’t say a word to my parents, partly to hang on to that moment, partly in self-preservation. They don’t talk either.

When we get home, I mutter, “Good night,” go right up to my room, which is too neat to look like my room, and fall onto the bed and into a dream-filled, fitful sleep. I dream of devil’s food cake and Jake and Adam and Alexis. I wake up with a start, heart pounding, don’t know why.

It’s three in the morning. I am
parched
.

In the kitchen I drink a glass of orange juice and a gallon of ice water. On my way back upstairs I hear rustling in the living room. Dad’s sleeping on the couch again.

CHAPTER 8

THE MORNING AFTER

I think I have a pot hangover. And I’m stuck on the pot. Which makes me a captive audience to Mom and Dad’s fight downstairs.

Now I know what is meant by “the morning after.” I don’t ever want to do
that
again. I’m not sure what I mean by
that
—getting stoned or eating enough sugar to fuel a third-world nation. That nation being an angry and hungry one whose army is, at the moment, fighting my intestines—and winning, hands down. Or butt down, really.

If I ever get out of this bathroom, I’m going to go online and make a significant contribution to our armed forces.

Do they think I can’t hear them? And of course, to completely drive me mad, I hear only some sentences—the ones that are really screamed.

Dad: “I know you never really loved me! I know you think you settled!”

Can’t hear anything for a few minutes.

Mom: “How do you know anything? You never LISTEN to me!”

Dad: “All I DO is listen to you! You never let me get a word in edgewise!”

Could this be any dumber? It’s like they’re reading a movie script of a fight!

Dad again: “You wish you had married that other guy, don’t you? Steve whatshisname?”

Holy crap. What’s that about?

Mom: “What are you TALKING about?”

Dad: “I can tell you’re not here with me so much of the time. You’re somewhere else. Are you in touch with him, Evie? Is that what you’re doing every night, talking to him?”

Not Steve Somebody, Dad, I want to shout, it’s the
rabbi
! But no, I don’t know that. I don’t. It can’t be.

I don’t hear anything for a long, long time.

Then my dad’s voice, sad, soft, but loud enough for me to hear, which means they’re standing at the bottom of the steps by the front door. “I don’t know what to do. What to say to you. I just don’t.”

“I know you don’t,” says my mother loudly. “And that’s the whole problem.”

Slammed door.

“Shit!” says my dad.

Another slammed door.

Car engine. Another car engine.

I poop my guts out for a few more minutes and finally get up. I look out the window. Both cars
are
gone.

Not my parents. Please not
my
parents.

Two hours later and nobody has come back. I have to get out. My bowels have calmed down, so I text Alexis.

I need perspective. Maybe she can give me some. Because of her brothers, she’s always seemed older than me. That used to be a good thing. She was generous with her wisdom. It was one of the best things about her. Is. Still. I hope. Maybe she’ll come through for me. At least we could laugh.