Jersey Angel (4 page)

“Well, okay,” I said, making room. She squeezed in next to me, all smiles, and tucked into her smelly Swedish lunch was a good old-fashioned American donut, which she whipped out proudly for me to see. She took a big powdery bite and thrust it at me, so I took a bite too. We were instant friends, little Inggy Olofsson and me. Who would have thought she’d grow so tall and spindly. At five eleven, she’s the boniest and most glamorous person I know. Her white hair falls down her back and all summer long she’s slathered in 45 sunblock and wears enormous sunglasses that make her look like some beautiful bug. Tonight she’s wearing a red bandana skullcap and has a pencil tucked behind her ear.

“What were you furiously scribbling over there?” I ask.

“The dreaded personal essay. You’re supposed to make yourself shine. Show how noble you are. What an asset you are to the community and all that. So I’m reading all these samples and they’re
such
crap.” She folds her pillow in half and rests her head on it. “You know, stuff like befriending some old hag and shopping for her Depends. Loathsome, ass-kissing stuff.” Ing, I should mention, loves the word
loathsome
. “Total disingenuous bullshit.” She pulls the pencil from behind her ear and waves it at me. “I refuse to partake.”

“Good,” I say.

“Thanks, my friend.”

“Write about our parties in the benny houses.”

“Ha!”

Back in the winters in seventh and eighth grades we’d break into some summer bungalow and bring space heaters and candles, and we’d have small parties of the vodka and orange juice and Ouija board variety. After some rounds with the Ouija, couples would pair off and make out in the bedrooms. I made out with lots of boys in those benny bedrooms, shivering on the cold mattresses, our cold lips pressed together. Inggy and Cork were a couple even back then, so they only locked lips with each other.

Anyway, Inggy was very decent about our break-ins. She once replaced a tablecloth that one of us accidentally scorched with a cigarette. Another time she insisted we
return the next day to scrub a bathroom after one of our moron friends blew chunks.

“Look,” I say. “Think of the angles. You’ve got resourcefulness, responsibility …”

“There’s my essay,” she jokes.

“Bullshit-free.”

She sits up and smiles at me. “I’m glad to be home.”

“I’m glad you’re home.”

“And happy birthday! Let’s celebrate.”

“How about some hors d’oeuvres and cocktails?” I say.

Inggy rubs her hands together and springs off the bed.

We head down to the clean white kitchen, where Mrs. O is padding around in a baggy summer nightgown. “Angel, sweetie.” She smells fresh from the shower, soap and cold cream. “Tell me everything,” she says, plopping into a chair. She has chin-length blond hair and heavy bangs, like a doll’s, and two front teeth that overlap. But she has great bones and eyes—that’s where Inggy gets her good looks.

So I tell her about our renters. She likes hearing their antics.

“Lookie,” Inggy says, digging through the freezer. She holds up a box of mini hot dogs wrapped in dough.

“Excellent,” I say. We love pigs in a blanket.

“Don’t forget a birthday toast.” Mrs. O winks. Swedes like to drink.

“Yup.” Inggy pulls out a bottle of green apple martini mix and starts making a batch. Mrs. O hands me a little package with a bow. Inside is a three-pack of nail polish in amazing blues and purples.

“I bought one for me too.” Mrs. O laughs. “I want blue toes!”

“She does!” Inggy brings over the cocktails. We clink glasses, and Inggy hands me a bow-topped present too: big hoop earrings and a three-pack of lip gloss in sangria, watermelon, and guava-gold.

Yawning, Mrs. O kisses us and floats away, carrying her cocktail upstairs. Ing tops off our glasses while I grab ketchup, mustard, and a half container of double fudge icing from the fridge.

We clink glasses again.

“To summer,” I say.

“To summer,” she says. “To senior year.”

I take a long sip. “Nice and sour. So tell me what’s happening.”

She tells me about the schools and campuses and assorted dorms, including a story about a resident mouse named Herman on one of the floors that the girls refuse to kill. I fill her in on my boring days of cleaning and my nightly visits to Joey. “Might be a phase,” I say. “But I don’t know.… He’s just not budging.”

“He’ll budge.”

“I don’t know.…” I dip a spoon into the icing and lick
it clean. “I have a bad feeling this time, and I almost never do. Not with Joey.”

“You’ve got to stop dumping him.”

“The thing is, Ing, most guys would love a time-out every now and then.”

“He’s not a time-out kind of guy. Quit dumping his behind.”

I get up and open the toaster oven. The puff pastry is steaming hot and the juicy smell of hot dog fills the room. I put on an oven mitt and place the sizzling tray on a cutting board. “Dig in.”

“Another toast,” Inggy says, leaning toward me. “A close call … but the little pink stick said negative.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“How late were you?”

“Well, I should have gotten it this morning.”

“What?”
I cry.

She gives me a withering look. That’s another word she likes—
withering
. “I happen to be like clockwork, so wipe that smirk off your face. It was due early this morning and morning came and went, then afternoon, then night. As soon as we pulled in the driveway I was in a complete panic, so I hopped on my bike, went to CVS, and bought two tests—you know, the early-response kind. Both negative. And then twenty minutes later it started.”

“I’ve got news for you, dodo. That’s not late.”

“For
me
it is.”

I shake my head and laugh. “You’re cuckoo. You know that, right?”

Inggy squirts mustard over one of the little dogs and pops it in her mouth. “God,” she says with her mouth full. “I wish I could take the pill. I hate the loathsome paraphernalia.” She got bad headaches from the pill, though, so she and Cork switch off with condoms and a diaphragm. The first time she used the loathsome diaphragm, she couldn’t get it out and she called me one afternoon, crying from the bathroom. “It’s stuck! I can’t reach it!”

“Relax,” I told her.

“It should come with a handle or a plunger or something,” she sobbed. “Help me!”

“You’re all worked up and you’re probably, like, sucking it in.”

“Will you come over and try to get it out?”

“Me? Can’t you get Cork to do it?”

“He’s out back taking a nap.”

“Wake up his lazy ass and tell him to get in there and get it.” Luckily they were able to fish it out. Remembering this gets me to thinking about Joey. If I had a diaphragm and it got sucked up in there, I know in a second he’d help me fish it out. I wouldn’t have to ask twice. And of course, this makes me feel really lousy, things being as they are.

“Back in a sec.” Ing runs upstairs and a minute later comes flying down with the bathroom garbage. “The
evidence must be disposed of.” She shows me the negative signs on the sticks, then ties up the bag.

“Phew. What a close call,” I try to say with a straight face.

“Shut up.” She pokes me in the side with a bony elbow.

We finish our drinks, and Inggy dips a finger in the icing and licks it, her forehead sweaty and glistening. “Tipsy?”

“A little.” The ceiling fan stirs the warm air.

She looks down at the tied-up bathroom garbage bag. “Come on. Let’s get rid of this.”

We walk a block to the ocean. At two in the morning, most of the houses are dark and quiet. Inggy tosses the bag into a garbage can by the beach entrance. “Adios.”

“Come on,” I say. We walk to the water’s edge, where there’s a breeze.

“Oh, nice,” Inggy says, flapping her arms.

I let the cool water rush over my feet and splash up my legs.

“I’ve been thinking about next year,” she says, swirling her foot through the wet sand. “I have this little fantasy, so hear me out. You’ll probably go to Ocean Community, right? So I’m thinking this:
instead
, you and Cork come with me wherever I go. There’s bound to be a nearby community college, and we could all rent a house maybe—”

“You have
got
to be kidding me!” I cry. “Yeah, Inggy goes to Syracuse, and when she trots off to some party she brings her tag-along doofus friends who go to the
community college down the street.” Inggy gives me another withering look. “Think about it,” I say. “God, Ing!”

She runs her foot through the wet sand. “I just want to figure out a way for all of us to be together.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And you’re not a doofus.”

“Hey, thanks.”

As the water washes over my feet, I look around at the dark, empty beach and peel off my tank. “Let’s go in.”

“All right.”

We run up to the dry sand and strip down to our underwear. “What the hell,” I say, wriggling out of that too. Inggy takes a quick look around before flinging off her bra and pushing down her panties. Then we rush at the waves.

I glance at her, the shocking whiteness of her, all long, skinny arms and legs, not an ounce of fat, her little boobs. She dives under a breaker, and when she surfaces, her white, wet hair is plastered to her. It’s low tide, so we swim out a ways, and she floats on her back, spitting a stream of water into the air.

“Angel, you’ve got some great boobs.”

“Thanks, I like them,” I say, looking down. They’re full and firm, perfect handfuls.

She swims over. “Oh, I wish I had bigger boobs. Let me touch them.”

“Get out!”

“Come on,” she says, splashing me. “I’ve never felt big ones. Give me a thrill.”

So I fall back into the waves and let her feel me up. “They are simply amazing.” She giggles.

I reach out and touch her little boob, a booblet. “Don’t!” She slips away, giggling some more. “God, I’m so flat!”

“I don’t know, Ing. I think you got a mouthful there.” And we both flop back into the water, laughing. I tip my head and gulp in the dark, starry sky. “Hey, what’s going to happen to us?” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you wish we could just hang out … be seventeen for a few years?” I think about Joey, this summer that’s about to bloom, senior year … and then it’s like I can’t see any further.

“We’ll have a good year, Angel.”

“Oh, I know.” But I wish she knew what I meant.

I’ve never had trouble with guys; maybe it’s because I really like them. I’m driven to put myself right in their paths—like the cartoon mouse that’s roused by a delicious smell and lifts its nose in the air and follows the scent. That’s me. But I also don’t get hung up on them. If I put myself in a guy’s way and he doesn’t do anything, well, later for him.

But with Joey things have always been a little bit different. He’s someone I’ve known all my life but never really knew. Then in eighth grade he shot up and got cute, his shy, dark eyes glancing out at the world, and girls started noticing him. At the only benny break-in party he ever came to, we wound up together in a bedroom. He lay on his back on the benny mattress with his hands folded behind his head, trying to look all cozy, but honestly the guy was stiff as a board. I snuggled up to him and said, “So? You want to make out?”

“Shouldn’t we talk first?”

“Okay then.” I flipped over on my stomach.

“You do the algebra homework?”

“Not yet.”

“I did most of it. The last two were hard. I’ll take another look tomorrow.”

“That’s enough talking,” I whispered, moving in for a kiss. And he gave me a dry, cold peck on the lips.

“I don’t want to make out with every girl here.”

“You don’t have to, dummy,” I said, trying to move in again.

“I know who I don’t want to make out with.”

“But do you want to make out with me?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

Then he got quiet for a minute. “We were both starfish in that play. In third grade.”

I flopped on my back with a sigh and stared up at the dark ceiling. “I was supposed to be a jellyfish but Franny James got sick, so yeah, I substituted as a starfish.”

“Sea Creatures on Parade,”
he said.

“Huh?”

“That was the name of the play.”

“Look, Sherry and Leo are next. So it’s now or—”

“All right, all right,” he said, as if I’d asked him to hop into the dentist’s chair. He leaned toward me, and just as his lips reached mine—

“Time’s up,” Sherry called, and she and Leo bounded into the room. Joey never came to another break-in party
after that one, but we did talk from time to time over the next couple of years. And sometimes I would see this look in his eye and think
Here it begins
, which is what I always think when I first get together with a guy. But then, zip. He wouldn’t do anything. So I had a lot of boyfriends, and quite honestly, I didn’t think much about Joey Sardone.

Then last year I was standing at my locker, wiping my forehead with an acne pad and considering my afternoon options, when he came up and said, “Hey, Angel.”

“Hello there, Joey Sardone.”

He looked in my locker at the mess of books, papers, and candy wrappers. “You’re a slob.”

“True.”

“Want to get a snow cone?”

A snow cone! I burst out laughing. A snow cone. It was like one of those old-fashioned movies where the guy says to the gal,
Let’s have a root beer float
. But I’m a friendly girl, so I said, “I’d love a snow cone.” I gathered my stuff and we got on the bus and stopped off in the Heights. It was a beautiful spring day, the kind with a hint of summer in it, the kind that makes you wish you were wearing flip-flops. We walked along the boardwalk, where rows of seagulls watched us from the railings, and off we headed to the Kohr’s stand.

He took out his wallet. “You want ice cream instead? ’Cause apparently a snow cone is hilarious.”

“But I would love a cherry snow cone.” I sidled up next to him.

We sat ourselves on a bench with our snow cones—his lips turning blue with each bite—and we talked into the afternoon. When the breeze kicked up and my crazy hair blew all around, I gathered it off my face and tied it up with an elastic. Watching me, he said, “I love the way you look.”