Kiss Me Again (16 page)

“She hates hammocks, by the way,” I said. “My mom.”

“Not this one. This one’s sweet.”

“All hammocks. She gets seasick on them.”

“Maybe you’ll be surprised,” Kevin said. “I think it was Gandhi who said, ‘The time to make up your mind about people is never.’”

“Really? Gandhi?”

“What?”

“I like that, and it sounds familiar, but are you sure that was Gandhi?”

“Yes,” he said. “I know stuff, too, you know. You’re not the only … ugh, never mind.”

“The only what?” I asked.

“Nothing. I don’t know why you’re mad at
me
all of a sudden.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m not. Sorry. I’m just, I can’t find my phone, and I haven’t talked to Tess since this afternoon, when she was in the middle of—damn, it must be in the shed.”

“You don’t need it. Shhh.”

“No, you don’t know Tess. She gets mad, and …”

Kevin shrugged. “She’ll get over it.”

“Yeah. No. Not really.”

“You are not going out to the shed right now. Mice, bats …”

“Ew, no. Really?”

“Absolutely. I’m not going out there tonight. Stay here with me.”

He kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Okay.” I kissed him back. “Maybe you’re right, and Gandhi’s right. Or whoever.”

“Mark my words. She’ll love this hammock. Bet you a kiss.”

“You’re on.”

Soon our arms were wrapped around each other. Whatever was on TV, and my mother’s opinions on hammocks, the news anchor’s blather about an earlier traffic snarl-up in Jamaica Plain, and whatever Tess wanted to gossip about—none of it mattered at all. Only Kevin and me, and the soft couch below, the warm blanket above.

“Hey, seriously. Don’t fall asleep,” I said when his sleepy eyes closed.

“Same mistake twice,” he murmured.

“Yeah, not,” I said, beside him.

Then Mom was whispering my name. I opened my eyes. Not my room, living room. I was asleep on the couch. Mmmm. Mom smelled like white wine and fresh air. For a few seconds, I just breathed in the beauty and comfort of her, my eyes blurring her pretty face.

“Charlie,” she whispered again. I rested against the sound of my name in her voice as she pushed my hair off my forehead gently, like she used to when I was little and woke up in the car at night, having arrived somewhere.

“Mmm,” I said.

“I’ll walk you up,” she whispered. “Joe’s already upstairs, taking a shower.”

“Who?”

“Oh, Charlie.” Her chuckle might be my favorite sound in the world, especially when I am sleepy and off-balance.

I jolted awake and looked around. Kevin wasn’t there. It was just me and my mother. Maybe the whole thing had been a dream. “Mom.”

“Come on.” Her arm was around my shoulders as we walked up the stairs together.

“Joe … your husband.”

Mom laughed. “Yup.”

“I thought maybe it was all a dream.”

“Sometimes it feels like that to me, too,” Mom said. “But no. It’s real. Come on, no, don’t sit on the steps. Up to bed.”

“Where’s—was—are Kevin and Samantha already in bed?”

“Yes,” Mom said. “Only my rascal stayed up to fall asleep in front of the TV.”

I pretended to scowl at her, to cover my smile of relief that at least Kevin had dashed upstairs. Though why hadn’t he woken me up, when he ran? My pretend scowl morphed into a real one. “Why is your husband in the shower?”

“He likes to shower before bed,” Mom whispered.

“That’s just odd.”

She giggled a tiny bit, conspiratorially. Like I was her best friend, and we were gossiping about a boy a grade above us.

“Maybe you should trade him in,” I suggested.

“You think?”

“Not often,” I said.

Mom giggled as if I had come up with that bit of wit on the spot. At the door of her room, with the shower water cascading loudly in the bathroom and, I swear, the sound of her husband singing “Wonderful Tonight,” off-key and exuberant, Mom turned to me. “Well, good night,” she said.

I had to walk the rest of the way to my room alone, trudging past the dark other bedrooms with their slightly open doors.

WHEN I GOT
down to the kitchen in the morning, Samantha was sitting at the table alone, looking glum.

“What’s wrong, Sam?”

“They’re fighting.”

“Who?”

“The parents.” She closed her eyes and kept them closed. “Already. Fighting.”

“My mom and your dad? No way. The lovebirds?”

She nodded, and one tear leaked out onto her pale, smooth cheek.

“Where are they?”

“Outside.” She opened her huge eyes then and stared at me, her mouth curving into a frown. “If they get divorced …”

“They’re not getting divorced, Sam.”

“You didn’t hear them. Kevin went back to sleep, to get away from them.”

I pulled out a chair and sat across from her at the table. “What did they say?”

She swallowed hard and didn’t answer.

“The hammock?”

Sam nodded, crying. Her cheeks blotched up, and her nose started dripping. Oh, girl of my heart—an ugly crier like me.

“So, grilled cheese for breakfast?” I asked, eyeing her barely touched non-breakfast-food breakfast. “You gonna eat that whole thing?” I asked.

She pushed the plate toward me. I picked up half of the sandwich. It had been cut diagonally, the way I like it best, and it had clearly been actually grilled, rather than just heated up. I took a bite.

“Mmmm! This is SO good,” I told her, my mouth still half-full.

“It’s the thing my dad is out-of-proportion proud of.”

“Out-of-proportion proud of? Meaning? Yum.”

“Everybody has something,” she said, eyes downcast, sniffling in the nose goo. “That’s my dad’s theory anyway. Something you are way prouder of than the thing deserves. Like, I’m proud of doing well in school, but that’s a normal thing. That’s in proportion. I am out-of-proportion proud of how good I am at blowing bubbles.”

“Gum? Or, like, soapy?”

“Gum,” she said. “Bubble gum is my favorite food. And I can blow excellent bubbles.”

“Cool. Was never good at blowing them, myself.”

“I could teach you sometime.”

“I’d like that,” I told her.

“Your mom is out-of-proportion proud of her parallel parking.”

I almost drooled grilled cheese out of my mouth, I was laughing so unexpectedly. “That’s true!” I said when I eventually regained control of my mouth. “She totally is! She is so freaking proud of how well she parallel … how did you know that?”

“She mentions it,” Samantha said. “Often. Any time we’re in the car with her. She is obviously a very accomplished person, but the only thing I have ever heard her brag about is—”

“Parallel parking!” I finished for her. “You are totally right!”

I guess I was grinning at her, because she was looking at my mouth, and she smiled shyly back at me. I nudged the plate toward her again. “I think your dad might be in proportion with this, though. It’s epic. Eat that. Share it with me. It’s even better that way.”

She slowly picked up the second half and bit off a millimeter, then, weirdly enough, chewed it, before asking me, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yes,” Samantha said. “What are you proud of, out of proportion to its worth?”

“Hmmm.” I put down the last corner of my half of grilled cheese sandwich to think. “I’m pretty good at humiliating myself.”

“Not something negative,” she said. “Something you are actually proud of.”

I thought again. “Losing my phone? No, negative. Ummm …”

“You can tell me,” Samantha said. “I think I know already.”

“What is it? Can you tell me?”

“It doesn’t really matter what I think you’re disproportionately proud of. You’re the one who has to be proud of it.”

“Maybe if you tell me, I’ll start being proud!”

“Oh, Charlie.”

“What’s Kevin’s thing?”

Samantha smiled. “His is pretty funny. He can—”

The back door slammed. We both turned toward it. Mom dashed across the kitchen to the stairs. The door opened again. Joe, his eyes drooping down in the outside corners where normally they crinkle up, dashed by us, in Mom’s footprints.

“Elizabeth,” he called after her. “Come on.”

He followed her up the stairs.

Samantha and I sat at the table in silence, our unfinished portions of grilled cheese rapidly cooling on the plate between us.

“People argue,” I whispered.

“She was crying,” Samantha said.

“People cry.”

She nodded.

“Hey,” I said. “People forgive, too.”

“Not really,” she said. “They pretend to, but really they don’t forgive.”

I wanted to argue with her. But her words hit me like a punch in the nose, so I was unable to operate my mouth. Was that true? They pretend to but don’t really forgive? And what if you blow off their phone calls and texts and don’t even open up your email or Facebook all weekend, just take a vacation from everybody but your own weird, romantic, intense family for one weekend? Would a friend pretend to forgive again? Or was it too late for that, for me and Tess now, too? Was it all just pretending, this reconnecting?

Samantha watched me for a moment and then stood up in her solemn, graceful way and carried her plate to the sink. “He can name all the presidents in order, in under a minute.”

“Huh?” I managed. “Who?”

“Kevin. That’s his thing. One of his two things.”

“Is the other his drawings?” I asked. “Because I think he should be really—”

“No,” Samantha cut me off. “That’s proportional. The other is, well, do you have a crush on him?”

I felt my face turn bright red, faster than ever before. “No!”

“Yeah, I thought so. He does that, to girls. I’m gonna go up to my room and read now.”

“Samantha,” I called to her back. She stopped.

I looked at her hair, knotty in two spots and raggedly uneven in the back, and felt a wave of tenderness crash over me.

“Sometimes people make up,” I told her. “They fight, they’re mad, and then, sometimes, they move on.”

“Yeah,” she said. “They move on.”

“And sometimes,” I said, “seriously, Samantha, I think sometimes they really do forgive.”

She stayed still for a few breaths, letting that thought sink down on her, and on me. Then she went upstairs, leaving me to marinate in wonder all alone about whether anything I’d just said was true.

I BROUGHT THE
water to a boil. Anya told me to pour about a half cup into the teapot and slosh it around.

“No tea leaves?”

“Not yet,” Anya said. “I know Penelope doesn’t believe me, but tea is going to be bigger than coffee within a year and we have to be ahead of the curve. This is the magic that is going to get us out of debt, I swear it. I’m not gonna lose this place, if tea catches on.”

Penelope and I made eye contact. She looked away first.

“Are you—is there a financial problem?”

“Always,” Anya said. “But tea is going to save us. Now pour it out.”

I poured the steaming water down the drain. “Why did I do that?”

“You have to warm up the pot first.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why?”

“So as not to shock the tea,” Anya explained, handing me a beige sleeve with loose tea leaves spooned into it.

I placed the sleeve in the warmed pot and poured boiling water over it, with Anya watching. “Wouldn’t want to shock the tea,” I said.

“Life is shocking enough.”

“Absolutely.” I almost hugged Anya for that image, of the tea being all shocked, the way I so often am. I couldn’t help appreciating how kind it is to warm the teapot to protect the tea from such an experience.

“And then you wait while it steeps,” Anya said, wrapping a clean towel around the teapot like a swaddled, much-loved baby. “Four minutes. Then throw away the bag of tea leaves. Got it?”

Ten minutes later, I was leaning against the shiny, clean counter sipping my deliciously un-shocked cup of English Breakfast with milk but no sugar. Anya was right; it was completely different from the tasteless, sad versions of tea I’d ever had before. I held the mug with both hands, warmed inside and out, and put thoughts of angry Tess, squabbling adults, and solemn Sam out of my mind. I closed my eyes and thought about coming out of the shower, before work, and seeing the fogged mirror.
Cool space
was written there, invisible without the steam, but then revealed like a secret message to me, standing damp and charmed in my towel.

I had wiped it clean with one swipe of my hand. But, sipping Anya’s warm, magic tea, I promised myself the memory would never be erased from my mind.