Like It Never Happened (15 page)

“Where is it?” asked my mother hopefully, like seeing a painting of Mary's would redeem the whole evening.

“In the guest bathroom upstairs. It's got so many warm, rosy colors. Matches the fixtures just perfectly.”

Jeffrey at least looked embarrassed at all the right moments. He opened his mouth—most likely to say that my sister's painting deserved better exhibition than the guest bathroom. Mary had always been a good artist.

But before Jeffrey could defend his future wife, my father coughed out a golf reference. “I have to say, Jeffrey, I've been following your career long before”—he gestured haphazardly at his oldest daughter—“and, boy, my heart just stopped when you hit that eagle in Gold Beach three years ago.”

Jeffrey's lips spread in delight. He had some kale in his teeth. “
Your
heart! Sir, mine nearly burst out of my chest. I don't think there has been a prouder moment in all my life.”

Mrs. Cline looked at my mother expectantly. Like now that the men were engrossed in golf talk, my mother should compliment her curtains or something.

“Darlene.” My mother took a sip of ice water. “Those curtains are just lovely.”

C
harlie took to delivering his lines in this really crazy voice. Sort of like he was drunk, or had a sock in his mouth. The first time he half slurred, half honked his words, the cast looked at each other in shock and waited for Mr. McFadden to protest. He didn't. We had to finish the scene wondering if Charlie had experienced some kind of stroke. At the end of rehearsal, our director said, “Nice job, Brando,” and I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic.

When I got home I did some research. Apparently the original stage production of
A Streetcar Named Desire
—and later, the movie—featured a ridiculously good-looking actor named Marlon Brando as Stanley. I watched the movie and quickly deduced that Charlie's new voice was an eerily accurate imitation of Brando's. And by the end, I could understand why Charlie would steal another actor's interpretation. It was suddenly hard to picture Stanley any other way.

Every day Charlie grew more dedicated to his role. He started wearing plain undershirts beneath his signature sweaters and stripping down for rehearsal. The flimsy white sleeves revealed his increasingly muscular upper arms. He perfected a way of leaning against the set and staring at his female costars with animal hunger. It was kind of funny to watch from a distance, like when he was acting with Liane, and I was offstage. Charlie was a lot of things, but he had never been overwhelmingly masculine. His shoes were always very clean and teachers praised him for things like “shrewd insight” into Robert Frost poems. Even at camp, where he went barefoot and tan, he had been more boyish than manly.

But as Stanley he was rough and rude—shouting, stumbling, grabbing Liane by her wrist and yanking her across the stage. It was all very mesmerizing or embarrassing, depending on my mood.

As for my part, Mr. McFadden explained to me that Blanche was kind of a poser. She wanted everyone to believe certain things about her—like that she was innocent, so prim and proper that everything about Stanley's life scandalized her. But in reality she had slept with every man in her hometown, including one of her high school students, and always within the walls of a seedy motel. The first page of the script called Blanche a moth, which I knew was meant to describe her skin: all white and translucent. But when I played Blanche, I pictured the brown speckled moths infesting our front porch. Every time I slid my key into the lock, they rushed toward the light and beat their wings against hot glass.

Liane, for the record, made a perfect Stella. She was even better than the actress in the movie. Liane made it clear that Stella was not actually oblivious to the tension between her sister and her husband. Her silence was partly owing to the fact that she was pregnant and she wanted a good life for her baby. And the other thing you understood after watching Liane was that Stella's love for Stanley was not necessarily pure, or selfless. She used him just like he used her.

There was one scene we had together, a particularly iconic scene, in which Liane had an incredible line.

STELLA:
But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant.

I was so jealous of Liane for getting that line. She delivered it perfectly, like she knew all about it.

BLANCHE:
What you are talking about is brutal desire—just—Desire!—the name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another . . .

Liane held an unlit cigarette at eye level and thrust her jaw slightly forward.

STELLA:
Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?

When she looked me in the eye, I would flash back to that night in her tree house. I would almost break character, wanting to ask if we could ever go up there again, or if my stealing Charlie from her had been one of those unforgivable things.

But I never actually broke character, not after we repeatedly nailed that scene. Because Mr. McFadden yelled at Charlie when his accent got sloppy, and at Tim for giving his character a limp, and at Tess for trying to make Eunice a bigger deal than she was. But he never uttered a word when we finished that scene.

Silence was the biggest compliment Mr. McFadden ever paid to anyone.

There was a day toward the end of October when Mr. McFadden kept interrupting Charlie midscene to say unhelpful things like, “You have to
be
Stanley, you can't just
parody
Stanley.” And the problem was, Charlie didn't actually react that well to criticism. His skills dissolved right onstage, leaving him flustered and embarrassed. I guess I was the same way, and so rehearsed obsessively alone in my room. But Charlie had a hell of a lot of stuff to do when he got home—such as lift weights and learn German past participles—so I couldn't really blame him.

Rehearsal ran long that night. Afterward, Charlie walked me home, which was fairly out of character. It was unreasonably cold outside and Charlie didn't have a hat, so I took mine off and pulled it over his eyes. I just wanted to make him laugh.

With one angry gesture, he yanked it off and shoved it at me.

“S-sorry,” I stuttered.

“Whatever.” He pulled a cigarette out of his jacket and furrowed his eyebrows as he thumbed up a flame. He knew he looked good, mad and smoking. I could always tell when Charlie thought he looked good because he would avoid eye contact for a long time, staring moodily off into the distance. Mary did the same thing.

We walked down the boulevard in silence. Eventually the silence added up to forgiveness and Charlie snaked his arm around my waist, pulling me close. It was awkward in my new winter coat, but also nice.

My house was dark and obviously empty. This had been happening a lot lately, since my parents were always out with Mary, auditioning string quartets and wedding cakes. But tonight I wished they were home.

“Where's everybody?” asked Charlie. When I said I didn't know, he flashed me a wild grin.

“They might be home soon,” I warned. “Let me check for a note.”

Stepping to unlock the door, I tripped over a package left in the center of the welcome mat. Presents had been arriving for my sister on a daily basis. She and Jeffrey had sent out save-the-dates and all of my parents' friends, who hadn't actually seen Mary in years, were suddenly compelled to buy her expensive spatulas.

Inspecting this particular package, I realized it had been delivered by hand. There were no stamps and the label said only:
TO MARY.

“What's that?” asked Charlie impatiently. “Did you order something?”

I shook my head and unlocked the door. I carried the package into the kitchen and set it on the counter, where I expected to find a note from my parents. There was no note, and no message on my phone. “Weird,” I muttered.

Charlie was kissing the nape of my neck. “Let's go upstairs,” he said. He slipped his hand beneath my sweater and flattened his cold palm against my rib cage. I could imagine how my bones felt to him, smooth and secret. Wordlessly, I led him upstairs.

He did not even pretend to scrutinize the photographs taped to my mirror, or the stacks of DVDs in my closet. He kicked off his shoes and dropped his bag to the carpet. Seizing my waist, Charlie pushed me to the bed. Before I could register any kind of emotion, he was attempting to pull my sweater off my shoulders. It was like he had never observed the physical properties of a sweater.

“Buttons,” I struggled to explain through Charlie's frantic tongue.

Interpreting this as a command, he started to undo them.

I grabbed his wrists, somewhat forcefully. “I just meant that there
are
buttons.”

He blinked at me. He slid his hand between my legs, like I was a malfunctioning machine and he was searching for the switch.

“Stop!” My scream sounded pitiful, echoing through the empty house.

Annoyed, Charlie sat up on his haunches.

“What are you doing?” I reached for my bedside lamp. The sudden light caused Charlie to rub his eyes.

“It's pretty obvious what I'm doing.”

I tried to determine which one of us was crazy. Obviously, we had come close to having sex before. I thought so, anyway; I wasn't totally clear on how many events came before sex. But there was always some reason to stop, such as being in a gross alley. Or being in Charlie's room, right off the kitchen and mere steps from where his mother always seemed to be washing silverware.

And now I thought there were still plenty of reasons. My parents and sister were likely to pull into the driveway at any moment. Charlie seemed mad at me, about the hat incident or because Mr. McFadden had criticized his performance and not mine. Plus, there was the simple fact that we had never
talked
about it. He didn't even know if I was on the pill or not. And I was scared. And he was scaring me.

“Are you a virgin?” was, for some reason, the question I asked. And I hated that word,
virgin,
which sounded all religious and fussy, like something you only said if you were one.

I could see Charlie trying to choose between the truth and a lie. “You are,” he said. A statement, not a question.

I nodded.

He exhaled a ribbon of air. “Funny.”

“Excuse me?” It wasn't funny.

“Everyone,” he said, “and I mean
everyone,
thinks you sleep around.”

I stuttered in disbelief. “That's just something people have said since middle school. I thought you knew that. You said you knew that!”

Charlie frowned. “When?”

But I couldn't answer, because he had been in a canoe with his friends, and I had been lurking secretly in the lake.

“Are you a virgin?” I asked again.

Slowly, Charlie shook his head. I knew he was telling the truth. He was the kind of boy who completed the correct milestones at the correct times.

“Only once,” he said. “A long time ago.”

And for a second, the truth seemed manageable. Even like something I could relate to. Because if I had slept with Connor at the beach last year, then the same thing would have been true for me: once, a long time ago.

Only now I realized Charlie had not gone to the beach to seek an anonymous stranger. No, Charlie had taken the opposite approach.

“Who?” I said flatly, already knowing.

“Liane.”

Her name was like an open wound revealed beneath a person's Band-Aid. I wanted to groan and turn away and tell Charlie to cover it back up.

“Why?” I whimpered.

Charlie appeared exasperated. “We wanted to know what it was like. I don't know, it was like practice for—” He softened, clearly impressed by his own brilliance. “For when I really—”

I waited for
love
. The only word that might excuse him.

“—
liked
somebody. The way I like you.”

He pressed his palm against my cheek. I backed away, leaving his hand in midair. “You have to go,” I said.