Words and Their Meanings (14 page)

Daily Verse:

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

32

I
t's been a week since Bea, Mom, and I went to lunch. A week of balancing where we were with where we are now. I've started doing coffin yoga in weird places. I can't make it to nineteen minutes without getting distracted or letting my leg do this constant nervous bounce. I'm a top wound too tight. Especially right now, because I'll be away from the hospital for a full evening, and the outside world already feels like a foreign planet.

Mateo begged me to take a night off from the waiting room. He offered to make a picnic. For some reason, I insisted on cooking instead, even though my skills in the kitchen match my ability to solve Fermat's Last Theorem (which is the most difficult math problem in existence). I can't even compute cook times. I tried baking lasagna but set the smoke alarm off (twice).

Just before leaving for Dad's house, Bea asked why I was going on a date with a boy I didn't like, because I'd never make a boy I cared about eat my cooking.

“That stuff smells even worse than the last batch of burned gunk,” she said of my last-ditch attempt at pesto pasta.

Good thing I stopped by the bakery and bought cupcakes as big as our heads before picking Mateo up. Chocolate can make up for just about anything. I think. I hope, since we're officially picnicking now, and I'm about to serve a chef some of my cooking. Pretty certain our definitions of what passes for food don't match up.

I kneel on the orange-and-yellow-and-brown quilt he brought. His mom got it at a neighborhood garage sale, to use for picnics. Except they don't go on picnics, he said, so it just sits folded on the floor of the linen closet.

“Do you hang out here often?” I ask, pulling the glass container full of pesto-slathered noodles from my backpack. We're sitting by the bank of the Grey Iron River. The East Side of the Grey Iron, which is a place as famous for its constant violence as it once was for the gleaming new automobiles that rolled off its assembly lines.

“I hang out here sometimes.” He looks around, turning his head in slow motion, taking in the patchy grass littered with mystery metal, broken boards, faded beer cans. He follows the long line of empty factory buildings with his eyes. They go on and on and on along this side of the river, rectangles and smokestacks stretching far enough to get small in the distance, like perspective drawings we did in eighth grade art class. I say so, and it makes Mateo smile.

“Do you like art? That kind, I mean?”

“Perspective drawings from eighth grade?”

“No,” he laughs. “Visual art.”

“I do, but I don't understand it very well. You'd think I would, because of the whole word thing … ”

“What do you mean?” He's trying not to wrinkle his nose, because I just opened the pesto dish I made. It's like a garlic bomb exploded between us. Maybe one clove only meant a piece, not the whole bulb. I root around in my backpack and pull out the cupcakes.

“Dessert first?”

“Nah. I like garlic. Besides, cooking for us doesn't really fit the tough-girl image, so I gotta at least try what you made. It makes me … I don't know. Want to know what other secrets you're hiding.” When he says this, he leans into me. Like we're sharing a joke.

I stare at him hard. I want him to see I'm still a shell of a girl. I want him to understand there's nothing beneath the surface to discover.

“So you were saying,” he says between bites. “About not understanding art?”

“My Gran was an artist. She did all these beautiful abstracts. I like to look at them, but honestly, I have no clue what any mean, besides brush strokes on canvas. I guess it's always kind of bugged me, because I'm supposed to be this deep … ” I catch myself. “I mean … ”

“What do you mean?”

Mateo twirls some pasta onto his fork. He watches me push mine around my plate. I try not to meet his eyes, but then I start counting his blinks. Seven. Eight. Curtains closing, opening, drawing me inside.

I shrug.

“But that's the thing about art, isn't it?” he says. “I mean, maybe the meaning you take from your grandmother's paintings
is
her brush strokes. Like the story of the painting is more about the painter for you, the person who made color move across the canvas.”

“Whoa. You're pretty deep.” I nudge his knee.

“I'm only saying I think some people get too caught up in trying to find big, dramatic messages in art. And I like how you're cool admitting you have no clue what a lot of it is supposed to say about life. I don't think there should be pressure when you look at something like a painting. There should just be you and the art and the moment. Even if it doesn't mean a thing.”

I've never heard Mateo talk like this. Not even last night, when he called to tell me about how he scored a job at Table, the fanciest restaurant in our area. The chef held a sort of audition, letting him craft the asparagus salad that accompanied a Kobe flat iron steak with red onion jam, herb yogurt, and Parmesan lavosh. I asked if lavosh was even a word, and we spent the next forty-five minutes talking about flatbread (lavosh, apparently, is a flatbread that originated in the Middle East). He went on and on about ingredients and cultural menus and fusions and the million ways to slice, dice, and chop an onion—which he claimed as the only skill set he'll need for the next “million years” until moving up on the line.

When he repeats “just you and the art and the moment,” I want to curl into his arms.

“I used to feel like that about writing.”

I say it before I can swallow the words. My lips pinch together too late. Mateo takes my plate away and pulls me toward him. My back against his chest, he circles his arms around me. We fit like spoons. I draw invisible infinity signs on his hand. It's better this way, not looking at each other.

“Tell me.”

And so I do.

I tell him I wrote poems and stories because I liked the way sentences could become music. I admit out loud, for maybe the first time ever, how exhausting it was when people started analyzing every single line to find hidden metaphors or allegories or anything, really. Writing became less mine, I say, and turned into something I had to do because there were expectations to meet and awards to win and adults to make proud. My dad said some folks go through their whole lives without a passion, and he loved knowing I found mine so early. But I didn't even know if I felt passion or just obligation, and then I lost this one big contest and I thought because I'd been so selfish maybe my talent was gone. I thought maybe I did love words but didn't know it until it was too late. And not long after, it stopped mattering.

I tell him things I've never told anybody. Not Nat. Not Joe.

When I stop, we sit without speaking. This time the silence isn't as bad. Mateo leans to one side and turns my wrist gently. Then he kisses all nine words inked on my arm. Today is the first time I've worn a short-sleeved shirt around him. It's my favorite Patti tank, white ribbed. I don't have any jewelry on other than my key on thin twine.

I wonder if he's going to ask about my daily verse. I wonder what I'll tell him.

He kisses up my arm, around the twine on my neck, rests his lips on top of my head, and asks me nothing at all. My chest explodes. Red and yellow and orange sunbursts blast inside, reverse meteor showers. Empty darkness has been there for so long, and now it's suddenly, unmistakably, filling up with light, with Mateo.

Reaching across my lap, he tugs at the camera sandwiched between my legs. He moves until we're face to face again. “Don't smile,” he says. “Just … look at me the way
you do … ”

I imagine his words in typeface, font size growing smaller and smaller until “do” is barely visible. And so I look. The shutter clicks. This moment is good. It's almost enough.

33

T
he heat of day has long disappeared. We sit by the river's edge, a few feet from the orange-and-yellow-and-brown quilt. Behind us, the cracked parking lot is empty but buzzing with a handful of still-working lights. They come on at dusk every night, Mateo says, waiting for workers to return.

He's been telling me about his grandmother's house a few blocks away. She refuses to move even though there are gangs and drug lords around, because it's her home. She is too proud, he says. I say maybe she's hopeful. I have to pause mid-sentence, though, because a bunch of sirens are blaring for t
he fiftieth time, which makes Mateo laugh in a sad way.

As the sky gets darker, so does the river.

“I don't know why I didn't think about this before now, but are you okay, being here? With your grandfather … and the river?” Mateo asks. His eyes are fixed on slow-moving currents.

I trace lifelines on my right, then left hand. Above us, a crow shatters sky with its cawing.

“Why wouldn't I be? It's not like it intentionally sealed my Gramps's fate. It's just a river. And we all die. We all die anyway.”

For a long moment, we watch the water. Watch the same noisy crow swoop down to pick at a glittering piece of garbage on the bank. When it flies away, I think I hear its wings flapping.

“He's not gone,” Mateo reminds me. His voice is quiet, warm.

“But he is,” I say. “He is. The ending for this story has already been written. It just hasn't actually happened yet.”

“Do you do that a lot?”

“Do what?”

“Write other people's stories for them?”

I try hard to follow a branch as it flows downstream. It's getting too dark. The brown water has turned black. I tell myself to watch the shadowy branch. I shake my head back and forth a little too hard and say no, no I don't write anyone else's story. Not ever.

34

I
t's
too dark to stay, Mateo says, packing up. He stays close as we walk across the parking lot, and holds his finger to his mouth twice, yanking me to a stop. We listen in silence before moving a little faster toward the car. I don't notice I'd been holding my breath until we drive back across the bridge. Air sort of hisses out of me like a flat tire.

Mateo shakes his head, but he's grinning.

I ignore him and turn on the radio. The song “Landslide” is playing. I turn it up and wish I wasn't driving, so I could close my eyes.

“The tattoo on my wrist,” Mateo says, holding up his left hand. “I got it last year for my brother, Val. He has this thing called Fragile X syndrome.”

When I glance over, I see he's leaning his head against the headrest. His eyes are closed. I want to be a good listener, so I stop making up images of what Fragile X is in my head. Instead, I ask what it means.

“It's a genetic disorder. I probably carry a pre-mutation of the gene, but my brother, he got the full deal. It basically means he's different. A lot of people call him retarded. I hate that word. You kn
ow?”

I nod, because I do know. “Retarded” is a terrible-sounding word. It's full of sharp edges.

“Anyway, he sees things differently. Doesn't process stuff like everybody else. It's not like he needs full-time care, but I'm not sure he's ever going to be able to get it together and live all alone either. On the whole Fragile X scale, though, he's one of the lucky ones. He's got a job through this post-high school program. He folds towels for a hotel. He really likes it because he loves the smell of the detergent they use.”

Mateo starts to laugh a little and I laugh a little too.

“That doesn't seem too bad,” I say. “To be happy folding towels and grateful for the scent of detergent.”

“He's definitely happy most of the time. But when he gets upset, it's wicked. Last year, he got arrested because he saw a guy in our neighborhood kicking a cat. He went up and started kicking the dude hard enough to put him in the hospital. Anyway, I got the tattoo in his honor. He just sees stuff the way it is. Or maybe I got it to remember not to ever be a kick-worthy asshole.”

Mateo pulls a smushed pack of Kools from his back pocket. The windows are already down so he lights up and sticks the cigarette out to keep most of the smoke from coming into my car.

“You know, you haven't had one of those things all night.”

Mateo cocks his head to the side, thinking. Then he does his little head shake, the one I replay like a one-scene black-and-white movie when I'm falling asleep.

“I guess I didn't need to take a deep breath,” he says.

“That might be the weirdest reason for smoking I've ever heard.”

“Or the most truthful. I mean, think about it. When do you feel yourself breathing more than when you are inhaling smoke? It goes in and it goes out and poof! There's proof you are here.”

“Or proof you are trying to kill yourself.”

I half expect him to say “pot calling the kettle black” (except he doesn't know about me walking, just walking, with a little stardust beneath my feet). He flicks the cherry out of his cigarette and puts the half-smoked stick back in the pack.

“Hey, pull in there.” Mateo points to a gas station with only half its sign lit. The building is spray-painted to look like it's underwater. Sunken junky cars have fish floating through broken windshields. The long green stalks of seaweed look so real, I swear I see them sway in the breeze or current or whatever. Two kids lean against the bottom of the building, which looks like the bottom of a river. They're drinking two liters of Mountain Dew and squint against my headlights.

“Be right back,” Mateo says before jumping out and jogging into the gas station. He comes back a few minutes later with two cups of coffee and a bag of almonds.

“You are not like any boy I know,” I say as I sip the too-hot coffee, wondering how he knew I wanted it with a little sugar but no cream.

“Ditto, but switch the word ‘boy' for ‘girl.'”

“Is that a good thing?” I ask before I cannot ask.

“You tell me.”

When I don't, he goes ahead and answers. His hand brushes against my hair.

“All the girls I've ever gone out with are all really … what's the word?”

“Beautiful?”

He frowns and tells me I'm beautiful. I chew on my bottom lip, but don't tell him to shut up.

“They were all … I don't know. The same? Like they want to hear about cooking, but what they really want to hear about is where cooking will take me—like will I get to be on Iron Chef or will I get tables at the best restaurants for free or will I get to meet celebrities and see inside their kitchens. Same with basketball. They want to wear my jacket or have me wave to them when I'm on the court, but they don't care about the game. It isn't even that. It's more how they fake care about things. All the girls I've dated want to be somebody they aren't. I don't normally tell people about Val because I don't want them to fake feel bad or get weird about it … but I wanted to tell you.”

“Hate to break mit to you, but I'm just using you for the best tables in town and so I can wear your varsity jacket.”

“Well, at least you're honest about it.” He kisses my cheek.

We drive and park and park and drive, but not for the typical reasons. At my old elementary school, we swap funny way-back-when stories.

Underwear frozen stiff and raised on a flagpole for snitching on kids who were stealing lunch money. (his)

Detention for eighteen days for breaking eighteen No. 2 pencils as a brilliant but failed attempt to keep an entire third grade class from taking the Michigan Educational Assessment Test. (mine)

Telling Steve Williams kissing was a necessary part of playground marriage, but must be done with no-tongue-or-I'll-punch-you. (me, again, because pencil breaking apparently isn't that funny)

In the Masonic Temple circle drive, we circle back to favorites.

Food: Nopalitos (this gives away the “him” factor, since I don't even know what Nopalitos is); book:
The Outsiders
; song: I already forgot because I'd never heard of it; movie: some 1990s flick called
Poetic Justice
.

I can't stop giggling about that one.

He liked my food
choice (chocolate) and said he'd never read my favorite book,
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
. I admitted I haven't read it either. It was Joe's favorite and I worried I wouldn't love it as much as I was supposed to. I said my favorite song was “B
e My Witness” by the Bahamas, but quickly retracted that and replaced it with “Dead City” by Patti Smith.

Behind the church my family used to go to we talk about our friends. I tell him I'm a floater who sort of turned into a sinker. He says maybe I just floated a little out of reach. I want to cry so I eat a bunch of almonds and ask a lot of questions about his friends. They play basketball and soccer and have plenty of girls hanging around and work after school and are generally pretty chill, but aren't into the township crowd because we have a reputation for being sheltered and stuck up.

“Fair enough,” I say.

“But you aren't stuck up.”

“No. But I'm not sheltered either.”

He doesn't ask, but the air gets thick all the same. I start the car and creep back onto the empty road.

“Basketball players are all good at jumping, right?” I ask like I might not remember him telling me a week and a half ago how he made varsity as a sophomore.

“Yeah—why?”

“No reason.”

We stop at a big-box store, but I ask Mateo to wait in the car. Standing in the checkout aisle with a giant can of red spray paint, I smile. It's a mischief kind of night. When I get back in the car, I crank up the radio volume until my car speakers rattle. We head out of town toward a giant blue cylindrical shadow in the sky.

“The water reservoir,” Mateo says, half like a question, when I pull in and turn off the engine.

“Get out. We're going up!”

I point to the enormous round silo's metal ladder, which starts about seven feet off the ground. As if that's a good enough security measure for a bunch of bored kids. Please. It's almost insulting.

“I'll need a boost to the bottom rung, but you can just jump and grab it I'm sure.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Do you have to ask?”

“Is this okay?”

“No one has died yet, if that's what you mean. And I've been up here a zillion times. Come on, chicken!”

As with any other American teenage boy, this last dig is enough to make Mateo walk beneath the ladder and lock his hands together like a step.

“All right then, hop on.”

He throws me high. I almost miss the second rung.

“Easy there, Tiger! Now wait till I get up a little more, then get a running start and pull yourself up.”

It only takes Mateo twice to get it, which I know is impressive but don't tell him. I'm already sitting on the particle-board top, feeling the echo of feet against metal as he climbs up to meet me.

“Welcome to the unofficial Lovers' Lane of Grey Iron Township,” I say, eyebrows raised and suggesting things I won't say.

“Really?” Mateo takes a few steps, listens to the hidden sea of water sloshing beneath his feet, and promptly sits down.

“And this board stuff is, like, safe for people to stand on?”

His doubt is cute.

“I think so. I mean, it used to have a metal roof but there was some problem with it rusting and contaminating the water, so they removed it and this is the temporary fix. But I've been up here plenty of times—”

“Have you now?”

I roll my eyes. “Not like that.”

“I bet that's what you tell all the boys.”

“Maybe.”

He stands up, making sure his eyes never leave mine. I can feel the buzz of his hands even before he reaches me.

I let him pull us together. He's warmer than the air. My fingers slide under his shirt. His back is smooth. Muscles tighten as I move up his spine, back down, over to where his hips meet his jeans.

I've never touched a boy in this way. In this moment, I never want to stop.

“Hey,” Mateo says in my ear. His voice is honey and electricity all at once. My body hums in response.

“Hey,” he repeats, tilting my chin up with one finger. He's making me look at him. Not just look at him. Look into him, through those huge almond eyes. I let out a muffled whimper. This feels too close, too close, too …

His mouth meets mine. It isn't like the kiss we shared in the closet that day. No, this kiss was supposed to be the first kiss, the answer for each goodnight or goodbye when he didn't put his lips against mine. He was waiting. He wanted to show me the way it feels to be seen and wanted. It's like he's telling me, with his lips and without words, that I'm good. I'm a good person.

I pull back, swallow, step away. The heat whooshes between us, and I'm shivering.

“What's wrong?” he asks. His concern hurts as much as his kiss.

I sit down and wave him off like its nothing, pulling out my phone and searching through its extensive playlists. I settle on a Simon and Garfunkel song called “America.”

“Dance with me,” I say.

Mateo relaxes as I move toward him. He laces his fingers through mine. His other hand reaches under my tank top, settles against the skin on the small of my back. His thumb moves in circles, slow and purposeful. The music is faint, a whisper.

We're barely swaying when he murmurs into my hair.

“It's good.”

I try to pretend I didn't hear him.

“This thing with us. It's good. I don't know, I … ” He trails off, scoops me closer with one hand. He's strong.

It's hard to remember how impermanent feelings, relationships, love, life, all of it is. It's hard to remember this makes no sense, this “us.” Because his hand is on my back. His lips are on mine. Because right now, right now, right now.

I push away, twirl back to my bag, pull out the can of spray paint.

Mateo sits back down, legs stretched toward me, muscled arms holding his weight against the particle board.

“What are you doing?” His eyes widen when he sees the paint. “Nothing about that looks like a good idea.”

To answer, I spray big cursive letters across the width of the particle board. Song lyrics. It's not an original idea—a real artist was on NPR for doing this exact thing all across the city—but I feel like I'm tapping into something genius.

“To being empty and aching and not knowing why!” I read out loud when I finish. Red paint is streaked across my thumb and forefinger.

“Will you stop messing around so close to the edge?”

Only now do I notice my feet moving heel-toe like a tightrope along the edge of the reservoir tank.

“Anna!” Mateo's voice is strained. “Knock it off!”

The tension doesn't leave his body until I'm close enough for him to cup my face. His thumbs embed in my cheeks. This time, his kiss comes fast and desperate. He locks against me, grip weaving into my hair. He roots us together.

Every move he makes aches with urgency, and even though my head is saying stop, there's something about his skin and muscles and bones and the way they all fit together with my skin and muscles and bones, something about his long black lashes fluttering against mine. Something about something about something. I can't help holding the back of his head, velvet against palm. I can't help crushing my lips against his.

He hesitates when, after a long while, we drift apart. We don't speak, probably because we're panting. I've never felt more alive. Every inch of my body is on fire but I'm trembling. I want to reach out and start that kiss all over again. Instead, I walk toward the ladder.