Lemon Reef (28 page)

Madison laughed appreciatively. “What makes you think Anita is high maintenance?”

“Well,” I said playfully, “there was the time she was stood up by a blind date and called the police to report the person missing.”

“Right.” More laughter.

We continued chatting happily until Madison had to go.

An hour passed, still no sign of the driver of the Jeep. Nicole sat with her eyes closed, a cigarette burning between her fingers. I watched the people walking by, many of them elderly. I had forgotten this about Miami Beach, the huge elderly Jewish population that I had been surrounded by when I was growing up, many of whom had numbers on their arms. In my home, the Jewish Holocaust was dinner conversation. That is, when climbing out of working-class status wasn't.

The sun had moved and was now shining directly on us. My face rose to meet it, sweat trickling down my back. The mild burning sensation on my cheeks felt familiar and comforting. I closed my eyes and breathed it, absorbing it in my lungs as well as my skin. When I closed my eyes, the warm, moist air swathed my body, reminding me of the humid Everglades. I had visions of first the road we'd been on the day before and then the slow-moving current that gently divided around the mahogany islands. Now the cars passing on Biscayne Boulevard sounded like a river, and I pictured the current gaining speed, rising, swelling into waves that crashed against the trees and erased the mounds. The sound of the crashing waves turned into a cacophony of voices, many talking at once, urgently. One person after another asking if I knew what had happened to Del, to her face.

*

By third period, rumors of Del and a car accident were circulating, and scores of students and teachers had asked me if I'd seen her. I finally found her in the girls' locker room with Katie and Edie and other soccer friends. Sitting on the bench by her gym locker, Del watched me approach. One moment the gym teacher and others were there looking on, the next moment they were gone, and we were alone—or thought we were.

“Del, your face.” I stopped some feet away, suddenly nauseous and light-headed. I took deep breaths and swallowed to keep from retching. Her eye was puffy and purple, her bottom lip was split. I could see it hurt her to talk. I steadied myself by putting my hand on the wall of lockers near me. “Why didn't you just stay home?”

“I wanted to see you.” She stared at the floor, her cut lip twitching. “She went berserk on me last night.” It sounded like “burshurk” because of her lip. “'Cause you haven't been around. She thinks I dropped you to do drugs or have sex or…
whatever
. She gets these ideas in her head and…She's fucking crazy. I don't know how much more I can take.” Del's voice cracked as she said, “I miss you
so
much.” Her face stretched into a grotesque clown-like grimace, her head fell forward, and she began sobbing.

I moved toward her. She met my hand with hers, slipped her fingers between mine. I went down on my knees in front of her, my face near hers. My other hand went reflexively under the side of her shirt to find her skin. When her shirt lifted, I noticed her side was the color of a storm—blacks and blues and reds and purples and tints of yellow. Starting up, I said, “That's it. I'm telling Fernandez. She can't keep doing this.”

Del tightened her grip on my hand. “You can't. Foster care. We'll get separated. Who's gonna take four kids, Jenna? Who's gonna take Nicole?” Her breath was an overnight stale mixed with something mediciney.

I sighed, settled back down in front of her. “I'm really sorry, Del.” Not knowing what else to say, I added, “I love you.”

Del tenderly kissed my face. I felt the rough edges of her bottom lip, where a scab had begun to form, tasted traces of blood when I kissed her back. Then we were both sobbing, wisps of her hair sticking to her skin and mine, our spit and snot intermingling, drawing lines between our faces.

I was the first to let go. I sat back against the wall of lockers and groped for something to say to keep us afloat. What came out was, “It's gonna be okay.”

“What is, Jenna?” She shifted her position, her physical discomfort apparent. “What about this is going to be okay?”

Right
. I changed the subject, said playfully, “I saw Nicole today. All the kids were heading into school, and she was heading in the other direction. I yelled at her to go to class.”

Impassively, Del said, “Sometimes I wish someone would just give those girls a shot and put them to sleep.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. When they did, I felt my spine tremor and my hands draw cold. I knew by her remark that this one week had been more time than was necessary for Del to realize just how little control she really had, or that her wanting mattered none, or that her attachments were a liability. I'd prefer, even now, to dignify her wish to put Ida and Nicole to sleep. I'd prefer to understand it as an impulse to spare her sisters, as a moment of profound empathy of which I knew Del to be capable. Whether it was that or something else, whatever had happened inside of her that week, whatever extremes she had visited, desperate states she had encountered, Del was letting me know—warning me—she had changed.

I put my hand on her knee.

Her face softened, and her tone became loving and precariously hopeful. “Can we go somewhere private and talk? I want to be alone with you.”

I started to say yes, and then remembered I couldn't. When I told Del I had plans with Katie, her brows crunched suspiciously.

“I haven't seen you in a week, Jenna. Where are you going with her?”

Reluctantly, I said, “I can't tell you.”

“You can't
tell
me?” She laughed. “Why not? We tell each other everything.”

The locker-room door, which we couldn't see from where we were sitting, opened. Some girl, I think it was Edie, called out, “Social worker is here, looking for Del. Some agency that protects kids.”

“We should go.”

Del glared at me.

“I promised Katie. I can go with you tomorrow, Del.”

Del's face was still and sad and cold—lifeless as steel. She turned away from me for a moment, as if responding to a distant voice or receiving counsel. “I'm going home.” She stood up and walked out, the heavy metal door slamming closed behind her.

Del was in and out of school the rest of the week, dodging the social worker. Annie Sloan had spied on us, seen us kiss in the locker room, and now people were talking about us, low-grade rumblings running the gamut from confusion to concern to perverse interest. The interest made any attempt at contact between us conspicuous, so when Del was in school, we avoided each other, passed in the halls with hardly a glance.

On Friday of that week, I invited myself to have a sleepover at Gail's. Around midnight, I borrowed Gail's bike and rode to Del's house, desperate to see her. I was relieved to find Pascale's car gone and Del's bedroom light on. I left Gail's bike on the porch, made my way to underneath Del's bedroom window, and lightly tapped on the glass. It felt like hours, searching for her face. In fact, it may have been only moments before she came into view, a look of surprise. I smiled and started to wave. From behind her another face emerged and came into focus—Andrew Torie's. Sharp pain shot across my chest. As if his moving toward me pushed me away, I lost my balance and stumbled backward, repeating, “I'm sorry.”

My hands shaking, heart racing, I returned to the porch to retrieve Gail's bike.

“Jen, wait,” Del said, as she came out, pulling sweats on over a pair of shorts.

“Andrew, Del?
Seriously?
Andrew Torie?”

“We're just hanging out. I promise.” I shrugged as if it didn't matter what they were doing, but it did. “Do you want to come in? Andrew has coke. You want to try it?”

“No. Tell
him
to leave.” We were suspended in a stare. “He doesn't care about you. He's gonna use you.”

“I'm just getting to know him.” She put her hand on my arm. Her touch reverberated. “I'm cold,” she said. “Are you gonna come in or not?” She tugged at me playfully. “Come on, just give him a chance.”

“I miss you.” I pressed my forehead to hers. The intensity of the contact seemed to take her by surprise. Her eyes closed, her lips trembled. Tears came on contact. I touched her hair, squeezed her hand. “Please, can't we just talk now?” Her lips were instinctually edging toward mine and mine toward hers, infants rooting. Our tongues touched slightly. “I can hang all night.”

“I can't.” Slowly, she said, “If you want, we can try to be friends. Come inside, hang with me and Andrew. I…” She stumbled over the words. “I can't be alone with you.” Her hand on my face, her mouth near my mouth. “Do you understand?” She whispered, “I need you. You're my best friend, Jenna. Isn't that enough?”

“
Friends?
And what are we going to talk about, Del, having sex with other people?”

Angry herself now, she said, “What is so wrong with that? I want to have sex with other people. It's having sex with you that's a problem. I don't want to do that anymore. I'm not gay.”

“Having sex with me is a problem?”

“See, you're doing it right now.” She backed away. “Either I have sex with you or we're not friends, right? Is that what you're saying? I'm cold. I'm going in. You can come if you want to.”

“Del.” Confused and desperate, I grabbed her arm. “Stop walking away from me.” She stopped. “I didn't know you wanted to sleep with other people. Is this because Annie saw us?”

She yanked her arm away. “It's not gonna work for us—that's all I know.”

Her solution that night, to just be friends, felt like the “sleep” shot she had wished for her sisters. It was a way to be rid of us, but without having to watch me suffer—to have us fade into nothingness. I felt my insides heaving as I returned to the bike. I wanted her to call me back, hoped she'd relent, get rid of Andrew, be with me. She didn't. I turned back to look for her, and she was already in the house going to Andrew, the door quietly closing behind her.

My heart felt like a rag having the life wrung out of it. I flashed on the pills in the medicine closet in my parents' house. I didn't have a shot to put myself to sleep, but I did have those pills. Had I been going to my parents' house, I might have taken them. I don't know. The pull to do so was very strong; I resisted it with everything in me, like riding into a strong wind, the whole way back to Gail's.

It was upon returning to her house in this devastated state that I told Gail about Del and me. Once I started talking, I couldn't stop, and in answering the many questions Gail asked about how it started, how far we'd gone, what it was like to have oral sex, I opened up about my feelings for Del, my fears about being gay, and my sadness over the breakup. Gail's response—accepting, curious, impressed—made my feelings for Del seem more normal and legitimate and eased my fear of having to now face this loss alone. It was also true that Gail's interest and acceptance pulled for more and more detail, and before long what had begun as a wrenching outpouring turned into boisterous bragging.

I woke up the next morning, my stomach in knots, my head throbbing, my memory hazy. I knew there had been a betrayal the night before. With heart-stopping angst, I remembered telling Gail about Del and me. I hadn't just told her about us, I had gone into great detail about very intimate things. I can say I was drunk on grief. I can say I was saving myself. I can say I was hurt and angry because Del had chosen Andrew over me. I can say all those things, and they might be true. But I had to tell Del what I'd done, and now, in the light of day, anything I thought had justified my actions the night before seemed indefensible. I knew she would never forgive me. For Del, it was not so much the secrecy, but rather that the privacy of our relationship had been an invisible membrane protecting us from the abuses and exploitations that all other realms of her life had been subject to. Now that I had exposed us and her feelings for me, like everything else precious to her, we could be used against her.

*

As I waited for the driver of the Jeep and watched the people passing by, I thought for the first time that the ways in which Del and I kept missing and hurting each other in those last days were not so much mistakes or misunderstandings as decisions that each of us was making to let the other go.

It was five p.m. when a woman exited from the apartment building across the street, made her way toward us in the crosswalk, and then headed in the direction of the Jeep. Nicole was fast asleep on the bench. She was snoring, a string of drool dribbling from her open mouth. I thought about waking her up and then decided I was better off doing this alone. I stood up and walked quickly to catch the woman, reached her as she was opening the car door.

She posed, sandal on the cabin threshold. One hand rested on the top of the open door. Her expression inscrutable, her accent subtle and of Latin origin, she said, “Can I help you?”

I was taken aback by how beautiful she was: late twenties, tall and lithe. She was wearing a straw-colored fedora and dark sunglasses. Her light-brown hair was woven into a french braid that fell past her shoulders. She was tan with red lipstick and rouged cheeks. And she wore a floral pattern tie-neck halter top and matching wraparound skirt, with her slight midriff left bare.

“Why are you following us?”

Now she recognized me and her face softened a bit. “I thought I lost you at the intersection.”

“Apparently not.”

Nicole came running up, panicked and out of breath, wiping the drool from her face. To me, she said, “Where did you go? What are you doing?” When she saw the woman together with the car, she said, “Who the fuck are you and why are you following us?” As Nicole spoke, I noticed the woman's wrist, which bore the unmistakable years-old scars of vertical razor cuts. I also noticed she was driving a rental.