Dear zoe, p.11
Dear Zoe, page 11
“Tess, I’m not pulling the release until you open your eyes.”
We had stopped with a jolt that brought my stomach into my throat and now we were swaying in complete silence like two fish at the end of a giant pole.
“Good! Don’t pull it! Mickey! Let us down!”
“He’s not going to do that, Tess, so you can either open your eyes or we can stay just like this for the rest of the night.”
“You’re an ASSHOLE!”
“Shh. Sound really carries from up here.”
“JIMMY FREEZE IS A GIANT ASSHOLE!”
He was quiet for so long after that it was almost like he wasn’t there anymore. There was just this soft swishing sound of the air in my ears. Then when he finally spoke again I swear this is what he said.
“Tess. I love you. Open your eyes.”
“What?”
“Open your eyes.”
“No. The other thing.”
My stomach had started to settle and the rocking, locked together like that, felt really nice all of a sudden.
“I love you.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know. I just do.”
“Me too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I opened my eyes and didn’t look down but right at Jimmy Freeze.
“No worries,” he said and released us and we dropped weightless together into the night.
Mom
After David asked I called Mom more often, at least twice a week. It was hard because I thought I was starting to feel better but she seemed just the same. Our calls got shorter and we talked about less and less important stuff until it was like I was calling some old aunt I never saw to thank her for the puzzle map of the United States she sent me for Christmas. There were these long silences while both of us tried to think of what to say next. I think it was because we never talked about you. You were this sort of hum in the background that made it hard to concentrate.
Then a few weeks before my sixteenth birthday I was telling her about Frank, how he was getting these skinny deer legs and pumped-up paws and she laughed a little bit and said it sounded like me a few years ago. After that she got real quiet but it wasn’t the kind of quiet that felt like she didn’t know what to say. Instead it felt like one of those times she was trying not to say something she wished she could say.
I said, “What, Mom?”
She said, “Nothing.”
I said, “No, really, Mom. What?”
She was quiet again. Then after a while she said, “Do you think you might come home for your birthday?”
This time I was the one who got quiet. Because it felt funny that I’d never even thought of that.
“I don’t know, Mom.”
“We could have a little party, just us. Your Dad could come too if you want. After all, it is an important birthday.” She was talking real fast, like she’d rehearsed it and needed to say it all at once before she forgot. “Or we could do something bigger. Invite friends from school, maybe rent the pool for the night and get a DJ or something. Whatever you want. With something bigger like that we could have all the space we needed and Em could have a couple of friends too. She’s already made a card for you and she asked me whether she should send it or if she’d be able to give it to you, so I promised I’d ask. Next time we talked.”
After a while I said, “I don’t know, Mom.”
“Well.”
“I mean, thanks. That’s really nice.”
“Whatever you want. That’s all I meant to say.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay then.”
She was quiet again and I could tell this time she was trying not to cry. This happened a lot but she usually just pre-tended to cough or something and then thought up something else to talk about. This time she said what she must have been think ing all those other times.
“I can’t lose both of you,” she said softly. “I can’t.”
“No, Mom.”
“I just can’t, Tess. I wouldn’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re not losing me, Mom.”
“We’re flying apart. All of us. Like something exploded in the middle of us.” She was crying now and not trying to hide it from me. “We love each other, Tess. Don’t we? All of us? Isn’t that supposed to help? Why isn’t it helping? Why are we running from each other? I mean, not just you. All of us.”
“I don’t know.”
“Nothing happened, you know.”
“Mom.”
“With Justin.”
“Mom, I told you. That’s not why I . . .”
“Nothing happened. He was just someone, I don’t know. He was just someone who wasn’t you or David or Em. He was someone I could talk to, even laugh with, without feeling guilty about actually feeling good for a few minutes, you know? Do you know what I mean, Tess?”
I thought about Jimmy. “Yeah, Mom. I do.”
“He just thought it was going to be something it wasn’t. And maybe I let him think that because I didn’t want to lose those few minutes of forgetting every once in a while.”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“No it isn’t. You’re there and I’m here. That’s never been okay. That’s never been. It’s always been you and me, Tess. Remember when it was just you and me?”
I put my hand over the phone for a few seconds because I did remember, and that made me start to cry with her.
“Yeah, Mom.”
“You were my best friend, you know? Even before you could talk. There was no one else anymore, once you were born. Your father, all my friends, they all seemed so silly after you. I went from being a stupid kid one day to seeing I was surrounded by stupid kids the next. You were the only important thing, the only thing I could never lose, and now I’m losing you.”
“No, Mom.”
“Yes. I am. I can feel it.”
“No, Mom. I promise.”
We were quiet for a while, both of us, I think, wondering what I was promising. I didn’t know, but I didn’t feel like I was lying either.
“I always knew you might run to your father someday. I just never thought it would be for stability.” She laughed a little and sniffled. “God, I’m such a wreck. I don’t blame you.”
“Don’t worry, Mom.”
“Okay. Okay then.”
That was the closest we came to talking about you the whole time I was gone. And even though you were what we should have been talking about, I couldn’t help but be glad we were talking about me instead.
You & Em
Something that first doctor, Miss Soothing, kept trying to get me to admit was that maybe I was a little bit jealous of you. And Em too. That since you weren’t my full sisters and since you took a lot of attention away from me that I maybe felt isolated in my own family. She said the only way to deal with my guilt was to recognize that it might have a source beyond your death itself.
I never felt that way. Never.
I did get lonely for Mom sometimes though. She was so busy with you and Em that I got every teenage girl’s wish: I was left alone. I don’t mean I was neglected or anything, but when I closed my door it stayed closed. You or Em might come knocking but I think Mom thought of my need for privacy as a gift to her. I was one thing she didn’t have to worry about anymore. And for the most part that was okay with me. But sometimes I wanted her to myself again.
I never had a babysitter when I was a kid. Mom hardly ever went anywhere before we met David, and when she did she always took me with her. None of her friends even had kids, so I think I was sort of a novelty to them. If there was a party, I was invited too. I was sort of like Mom’s mascot. After we met David it was mostly the same thing. He understood that he was dating a package. Since Mom worked back then our time together didn’t start until she picked me up at day care at around six o’clock, so she kept me up late to play games or watch TV shows I was way too young for. When I think about it now I realize David must have been dying for me to go to bed so he could get romantic with Mom. But I don’t remember him ever trying to rush the process. He just became part of our routine.
Once you and Em came along, that all changed. Mom stopped working but it seemed like she was more tired than when she did work. They needed time to be alone together once in a while, Mom and David, and I was just getting old enough to babysit so that worked out perfectly. I got to make some money for clothes and stuff and I got time alone with you. I complained about it sometimes but I loved it. I never resented you. What I resented was Mom not choosing to spend any of her free time with me. I only wanted to be left alone until I was, if that makes any sense.
But as for you and Em, you were always my sisters, never less, and sometimes more. Maybe it was the age difference. Sometimes when Mom and David went out and we would play house and Em would make me the mom, that’s how I felt. Like you were my little girls. When Mom and David first got married, I prayed for you—literally prayed, between my Dad and my Gram in their old Catholic church—prayed for sisters. And when it didn’t happen right away I remember telling Mom that Amy Bregar had sisters and maybe Amy’s mom knew something she didn’t and could help her. And when Mom did finally get pregnant with Em, and when we all went to the hospital together for the sonogram and I watched the nurse spread the clear jelly on Mom’s stomach and then watched the screen, my eyes crossing from Em coming in and out of view, and the nurse asking if we wanted to know the sex and Mom and I smiling at each other and nodding and David putting his hand on my head, and the nurse saying you couldn’t ever be one hundred percent sure with little girls but this sure looked like one, I already knew. I knew that my first sister was coming and that I was going to be part of a family.
And whatever the psychology books say about what kids like me are supposed to feel, I never stopped feeling that way. Never.
Travis Chills Out
We had a hot spell late in July when it got up into the high nineties every day for almost a whole week, which meant it was about a hundred and ten on the pavement in the park. It was that really heavy wet heat like they get in the south that people up here aren’t used to, where you feel like you’re walking through baby oil. No one wanted to be outside, so the crowds at the park really thinned out, even my corner where people came to cool off. I know it was just because we weren’t busy but it seemed like the air slowed the days down too. Vicky and I spent most of our time sitting in the one shaded corner of our booth or trading off rides on the Logjammer, which helped for about five minutes until the water boiled off our bodies and got replaced by sweat again. The park was a totally different place that week. Families stayed home, so it was all older kids, scraggly looking couples and packs of shirtless, tattooed boys. I left right at six-thirty every day and spent the evenings sitting in front of the window-unit air conditioner in my Dad’s living room watching TV. I slept down there most nights too since there was AC in my Dad’s bedroom but not mine, so I didn’t see much of Jimmy after work that week either. I was pretty sure my Dad knew about Jimmy by then—not the nighttime stuff but that we hung out at the park together—but after I found out about his little “business” he didn’t seem as interested in questioning my choice of friends.
On the hottest day of that week I got a visit from one of my Dad’s own questionable choices. The pavement was sticky and the air was so heavy and still you could hardly move it with your own breath. Vicky had just come back from the Logjammer and was slumped in the shady corner trying to stay wet and I was tapping about my sixth Thelma’s of the day when I heard his voice. I recognized it but not fast enough to tell Vicky to take care of this one for me and when I turned around Travis was already holding his money out to me.
He looked like a dead body that had been dug up. He had no shirt on and his jeans sagged real low under his little pot belly. Skin just sort of hung off the rest of him and he slouched like he was walking downhill.
He said, “Hey Tess. How ’bout a cold one for an old friend?”
I said, “Okay. You want one too?”
“Heh. You’re a funny one. Like your old man. You still samplin’ the inventory? Your Dad’s I mean.” He put an imaginary joint to his thin lips, sucked in and smiled. His teeth looked like corn. He was very stoned.
I asked him, “Didn’t you get enough last time, Travis?”
“That a threat?”
The shiner my Dad had given him had faded to a greenish-yellow bruise but it glowed with sweat and there was still a broken blood vessel in his eye. It was all teary in the heat. Vicky was familiar enough with trouble to know when it showed up for a Thelma’s and she stood up to help. Travis didn’t even pretend not to look her up and down.
“Who’s your friend?” he said.
“No one. What size do you want, Travis?”
“Depends on what sizes you’re offerin’ little lady.” He said it to me but he was still looking at Vicky. She baited him too. She was still wet from the Logjammer and her T-shirt clung to her like she’d been in one of those MTV Spring Break contests.
She said, “I don’t know about you but I think the bigger the better.” She moved her hips and said it real sexy but mocking and anyone but someone like Travis in his current state would have known they were about to get taken for a ride.
“I bet you do,” he said.
Vicky said, “You like what you see?”
“Oh yeah.”
“How big do you think you can handle?”
“I think that’s a better question for you.” Travis put his thumbs in his pockets and let them pull his jeans down even further until you could see the very beginning of the line of black hair that attached his white crotch to his white belly. I wanted to puke.
Vicky said, “Think you can handle this?” She made a show of bending over to get one of the thirty-two-ounce souvenir cups out of the box under our counter and when she straightened she held it up and sort of brushed it across her boobs. Travis looked like a dog being made to sit for his dinner.
He said, “Yeah, that looks just about my size, fit me like a one-fingered glove.”
“ ’Cause we’re running a little contest just to keep a slow day interesting,” Vicky said.
“You the prize?”
“Could be.”
Travis kept smiling with his eyes half closed, trying to act sexy, but it just made him look more stoned. “Go ahead. I’m game,” he said.
“For today and today only, anyone who can chug one of these Big Thelma’s in ten seconds or less gets a ride with one of us on The Olde Mill.”
The Olde Mill was one of those ancient boat rides through a bunch of dark tunnels and supposedly scary scenes no one’s even looking at because they’re too busy making out. I knew what she was up to now but I pretended to be shocked.
“Vicky!” I said, real loud and exaggerated.
“Quit worryin’, girl. I wouldn’t pick you anyway,” Travis said. “Would we get a boat to ourselves?”
“Just you and the lady of your choice.”
“What’re the rules once we get in there?”
“I’m not aware of any rules.” Vicky was good at this. If she hadn’t been talking to Travis I would have believed her. “Just finish what you’re doing before the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Fill ’er up girl!” Travis said.
Vicky turned to the Thelma’s dispenser and pulled the valve. She didn’t have to bend over but she stuck her butt out anyway and wiggled it. When the cup was full she turned to Travis, stuck a finger in it, then slid her finger into her mouth slow and easy and pulled it back out the same way. A big drop of sweat rolled into Travis’s bad eye and he winked it hard.
Vicky said, “I don’t have a second hand, Tess. You got one?”
“Yep, got it.” I held my wrist up level with my eyes.
“Okay now, Travis. It’s Travis, right? When Tess says one two three go, you got ten seconds.”
“You don’t know who you’re dealin’ with, honey. I can do a pitcher of Bud in less than that.”
Vicky smiled at him real sweet. “I don’t mind telling you Thelma’s is a little tougher than beer. At least for me.”
“Gimme that thing.”
“Here you go. Wait for Tess.”
I looked at my watch. “One, two, three, go!”
I have to give Travis credit. I wasn’t even looking at my watch but he gulped that thing down pretty quick. And he stayed standing longer than I would have thought. Then the king of all brain freezes hit him like two wrecking balls from either side of his skull and he was down on the pavement holding his head and screaming.
“Aawwwwwwk!”
Vicky said, “Twelve seconds. So close, Travis.” “Aawwwkk. Fuck!”
“You can try again if you want.”
He started to get his voice back a little but he was still holding his head.
“Fuckin’ bitch DeNunzio! I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”
“Me? I was just the timer.”
“I’ll fuckin’ kill both of you!”
Vicky said, “You dropped your souvenir cup, Travis. Don’t forget to take it with you.”
Jimmy must have heard the screaming from his platform because he was already on his way over by the time Travis was pulling himself to his feet. Travis managed to clear all the napkins and spoons and straws off our counter with his forearm before Jimmy got him under the armpits from behind.
