I'm Not Your Other Half Page 11

  “How about Annie?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t know that either.”

  How bizarre, I thought. My best friend. I truly don’t know where she’s thinking of going to college. I remember when one of my biggest fears was that Annie wouldn’t write to me, because she never writes to anybody. If things keep going the way they have been, I won’t even know her address a year from now.

  “What happened to Annie anyhow?” said Ben. “I never see her any more.”

  “She’s pretty tight with Price Quincy,” I said. “She doesn’t have much free time.” Probably Annie would try to go wherever Price went, and the chances of that were good. Price could get into any college whose only requirements were breathing and paying.

  “And how is Michael these days?” said Ben. I gave him a look and he looked away. He doesn’t usually interrogate me. Lynn had probably assigned him to snoop.

  “We broke up,” I said.

  “Oh, my,” said my brother. He struggled to form another question, but I gave him another look and he shrugged, embarrassed, and nodded his head at Lynn. “I forgive you,” I said. “Just don’t let it happen again.” Our eyes met—adult brother and sister, ancient quarrels over who got the bathroom first long gone, nothing left but the affection.

  We sat down and Dad served the spaghetti. Lynn put so much Parmesan cheese on hers it looked like a sand dune. Michael was a cheese freak. He even sprinkled Parmesan cheese on his salad, in his soup, over his pizza. Don’t think about Michael.

  “We played bridge with the Hollanders once,” said my mother. She looked at Dad for confirmation. “About ten years ago. We were in that couples tournament. You remember that, dear?”

  “Vaguely.” My father made a big deal of twirling spaghetti around his fork. I was very aware of him and Ben trying not to get involved in anything emotional that might come of a discussion about Michael and me.

  “They were such good partners,” said my mother. She leaned forward and waved her fork in my direction, and Lynn leaned forward too. They were trying to locate something emotional so they could get involved. “Mrs. Hollander brought her crochet to do when she was dummy,” my mother added.

  “Michael’s mother is long gone,” I said. “Presumably taking her deck of cards and her crochet with her. Now stop fishing, Mom. We split up, and that’s that.”

  Dad and Ben were visibly relieved that they were not going to have to face tears and details. Lynn and Mom were irked, but before Mom could protest that she had not been fishing, that she never pried, Ben said, “So, Dad. Did you sign up for that travelogue series you were talking about a few weeks ago?”

  Transparent, but it worked. “Yes,” said Dad. “Tomorrow’s the first film lecture. China is first. Then Japan, then India.”

  “The Far East?” I said, surprised. I turned to my mother. “But I thought Scandinavia was your dream. Fjords and reindeer.”

  “The East is where the action is,” said Dad, and he rambled on about emerging economic strength.

  His wanting to go to the East is enough for Mom, I thought. If he wants it, she will. It’ll override her own wants.

  I stared into my spaghetti. The tears came not just from behind my eyes but from inside my throat, thickening it, filling my chest till it ached and throbbed with pressure.

  I’ll never have a boy friend again, I thought. I’ll never date seriously. Never have a love affair. Never get engaged or married. No matter how much I want a boy in my life, it won’t happen.

  There’s something wrong with me.

  I can’t share that much.

  “Fantastic meal,” said Ben contentedly. “What’s for dessert?”

  I swallowed at the blockage in my throat.

  My mother said, “Mud pie. Fraser made it this afternoon.”

  Ben crowed with delight. “I knew there was a good reason to have a sister. Mud pie!”

  Mud pie is the one dish I’m always willing to make. You crush chocolate wafers for the crust. Then you take softened ice cream and beat crushed cookies, crushed pecans and slivered chocolate into that. You layer it with whipped cream and top it with more whipped cream, sprinkling the last of your crumby bits on top. It’s heavenly.

  I got up to start clearing and bring in the mud pie. The doorbell rang.

  “Front door?” said Ben. “We never use the front door. Must be Michael. Nobody else ever bothered with the front door.”

  Michael.

  I never made mud pie for Michael. If this is Michael, I will kiss him a hundred times. I will promise to share everything always, from ice hockey to computer kills. I’ll fix him the best mud pie that ever—

  “Why, Mrs. Lipton,” said my father at the front door. “What a pleasure. Come on in for dessert and coffee with us.”

  I sagged against the counter. Mrs. Lipton. Not Michael.

  If you want Michael back so much, call him up, I thought. Make an effort. Start the compromises.

  “Fraser dear,” said Mrs. Lipton, and we did kiss, but it was about twelve inches lower and considerably less passionate than I had in mind. “I wanted you to be the first to know,” she said. Her voice was quivering, but a smile decorated her face. She was no longer a worn-out old woman. She was like a little bird at the winter feeder, darting in and out. Pudgy, small, brown but bright. Definitely the mother of a Kit. “Kit had her first food by mouth today. And today she uttered her first syllable. It even made sense. She said anks when I fixed her pillows.”

  “She said thanks?” said my mother. “Oh, Mrs. Lipton, that’s absolutely wonderful!” Mom came over and hugged Mrs. Lipton, and then Lynn hugged her, and the four of us hugged like a cheerleading squad and laughed with delight.

  “The doctors think she’s definitely going to recover most of what she lost,” said Mrs. Lipton. “And Fraser, if we hadn’t had the money you raised for us, we couldn’t have gone to see her every day. There’s no doubt she’s made all this progress because we never gave up. We talked and sang and worked and struggled with her every minute of every day. So the thanks are yours, Fraser. You did it.”

  Then we were all crying. My father and Ben slipped away, but we women sat and talked of hospitals and doctors, of parking spaces and the number of pennies in a mile. “Men,” said Lynn to me, shaking her head. “Never can stand talking about emotions and hurt.”

  Is that true? I thought. Is Michael the same? Did he ache for Kit the way he’d ache for Katurah, but he couldn’t say that to me? All he could do was drive me to the hospital?

  Oh, Michael. Did I hurt you, breaking up? And all you could say was Okay because it hurt too much to say anything else? Are you out there having a wonderful time on a date with some other girl? Or are you sitting in your basement, your computer screen blank, stereo silent, scanner off, tilted back in your chair thinking about me?

  Chapter 12

  “MAY I JOIN YOU?” said Annie.

  I was so delighted to see her that I was slow to answer. Smedes said, “Sure.” Annie sat down next to me and we grinned at each other, as if there had never been a rift, as if we had last talked only hours before. “We’re just figuring out where we stand on the Lipton Fund,” said Smedes. “Whether we need to launch another project. We had such phenomenal success with the Road Rally that we could do another of those if we have to. Are you just passing through, Annie, or do you want to work with us?”

  “I’m just passing through,” she said. “Price has started coaching Little League. He’s off rounding up his fifth-graders and I’m supposed to be filling this water jug with cold water. I was hoping you were talking about something interesting, but you’re not.”

  “Certainly it’s interesting” said Connie. “Hard work is always exciting, fascinating, intriguing. You came to the right place. We’re short forty feet of a mile of pennies and somebody has to figure out how to get that last bit. Now that’s interesting, Annie. Beats Little League any day. What are your thoughts?”

  “Haven’t got any,” said Annie, laughin
g. She shook her head, and smiled at me again, and it was the same smile, a watermelon smile, the smile of friends, but it was no more directed at me than at Smedes or Connie. She was just in a cheery mood, and we were just there.

  “Let’s ask Lacy for more publicity,” said Connie. “I think she’d do it. And Fraser, this time I want to go on television, too.”

  “Being on television is about as exciting as sitting in this student center,” I said.

  “You just don’t want to share the thrills,” said Connie. “Come on, let me go too.”

  “You and Robbie and Anselm and Smedes can do it all,” I said. “It’s definitely your turn.”

  “Oh, goodie,” said Connie.

  “Oh, yuckie,” said Smedes. “I’m certainly not going on television. At least your name doesn’t make people break down and laugh insanely, Fraser. Smedes? You do realize it’s the name of one of the pirates in Peter Pan?”

  “At least your name isn’t boring,” said Annie. “My name is the pits. Every fourth girl I meet has the same name.”

  “I’ve always wondered what makes people choose the names they do,” I said. “My brother went and married a perfectly nice girl named Lynn and they saddled their poor little boy with Jake. It’s such an ugly name. Sharp and pointy.”

  “I wish we all had names like yours, Connie,” said Smedes.

  “My initials spell CAW,” said Connie. “I go through my life with CAW on my luggage, like some sort of crow.”

  Annie giggled and countered with the initials of Price’s cousin, GAG. It was so odd to have her there and know that she could be anybody at all, for all the impact she had on me on now. She was an acquaintance, but not a best friend. I waited for the pang, maybe even for tears, but they didn’t come.

  “Does anybody have a privateer?” said Connie.

  “A what?” I said.

  “A privateer.”

  “What on earth is that?” said Smedes.

  “That’s what my mother calls tampons,” said Connie. “I need one.”

  We began laughing helplessly. “That’s nothing,” said Connie. “You should hear the words she uses for bowel movement and vagina.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” said Smedes. “My life is cluttered with enough stupid words. But yes, I have an extra privateer.”

  We kept laughing, but nicely, as if we—who didn’t know Connie’s mother at all—loved her nevertheless, even if she did have to call tampons privateers. We moved naturally from this into various female problems and conditions, and from there to college, and from there to the act of leaving high school and family for good.

  It was girl talk. “I’ve missed this,” I said.

  “Missed what?” asked Annie.

  “Girl talk.”

  “Fraser,” said Annie, “for a liberated woman of our times, you certainly say some peculiar things. There’s no such thing as girl talk.”

  “There is, too. Boys talk about the scores of games or the cost of car accessories, but they don’t actually talk.”

  Annie gave me a look that would wither flowers.

  “Like us,” I said. “Like all the hours you and I talked.”

  “Oh, Fraser. What did we ever talk about except boys?”

  I stared at her. I was wrong. She could still affect me a lot. Because we had shared a thousand things—hope, joy, triumph, failure, success, anger. Not a boy in sight. She’s forgotten it all, I thought, or no longer cares.

  Smedes said, “I agree with you, Fraser. Conversation is different with all girls.” She began putting her things back into her purse. She had one of those purses divided into numerous zippered compartments. I always forget where I put things, or I forget that I even possess them. Smedes was far better organized. She tucked a short pencil here, a long pencil there, slipped a tiny notebook into a pocket just the right size, and whisked a tampon out of a compartment at the bottom.

  “It’s a lot more fun talking with boys,” said Annie, thus knocking the eight years in which she had talked exclusively with me.

  Smedes just laughed. “When Jim and I were dating really heavily, that was what got me the most. All that fun. I kept wanting not to be having so much fun all the time.”

  We all stared at her. Annie with confusion, me with excitement, Connie simply wanting the tampon. “I mean, sometimes you look at the evening ahead and you don’t want to party. You don’t want company. You don’t want to make an effort. You want to sit alone in the front of the television eating cheese Doritos and sour cream.”

  I was almost holding my breath. Say more, Smedes, I thought. I can’t believe you feel the way I do. I can’t believe another person out there—someone I like and admire—actually agrees with me.

  “But Smedes,” objected Annie, “if you feel that way, what’s the point in dating at all?”

  “I adore Jim. He’s perfect for me. But we were suffocating each other, having all that fun. Jim kept telling me he couldn’t breathe, and I felt the same. Now our relationship is semi-detached.”

  Connie said, “Now if I could only detach that tampon from your iron grip. If you’re going to give somebody something, you should do it promptly, Smedes, and without all this fanfare.”

  “Semi-detached?” repeated Annie, visibly horrified. “Smedes, that sounds like a building.”

  “Exactly,” said Smedes. She waved the tampon in the air like a cigar for congratulations. Connie caught it on to the second trip and abandoned us for the lavatory. “It is like a building, Annie. You have to build with the bricks you’ve got, and Jim and I decided to construct a semi-detached.”

  The phrase settled on my mind as if I’d been hunting for it since last November. Semi-detached. You share some, you separate some. How come nobody I know does that? I thought. Everybody I know is so attached they’re indivisible.

  Smedes turned to me and made a face. “I mean, Fraser, we’re talking here about a guy whose favorite activity is arm-wrestling. I kid you not. Jim goes hundreds of miles to watch people arm-wrestle. I went once and I said, ‘Hey, man, this is yours. I’m sticking to theater.’”

  “So that’s what you do?” I said. “Theater?”

  “Stage work. Musicals. Soap operas on television. Shakespeare. I’m not choosy. Anything that takes acting. It’s my only interest. Jim can’t stand any of it.”

  “Well, I don’t see what kind of relationship that is,” said Annie stiffly. “You always off doing your thing and him always off doing his thing. Although I have to admit if Price’s thing were arm-wrestling I would have real difficulties going along, too. But what do you do together?”

  “We eat. I love food. Jim loves it even more. We meet exclusively at mealtime, and we eat together.” Smedes began laughing. “Why, Annie, sometimes we even talk. And it must be successful, because he’s taking me to the Prom next week.”

  She stood up to leave. She was so pleased with herself about the way she and Jim had worked things out. And so calm. That was what impressed me most. As if any clod could see that that was how you worked things. You start to drown each other; obviously, you both get out of the water.

  I’ve been around the wrong girls, that’s all, I thought. I was with the Annie-Lynn-Mom-and-Judith crowd. I should have been with the Smedes types.

  “Well, I think it’s terrible,” said Annie. “You’re not even a couple.”

  “Sure we are. Just a different variety from you and Price.”

  Watermelon friends, I thought, looking at Smedes and not Annie. Maybe you have different ones all your life. Maybe some of them never even realize it. You get a truth from them, but they pass on. But as long as someone understands, you’ll be all right.

  I hardly noticed that Annie was leaving. I heard her say something about filling the water jug and I think I said goodbye, but I didn’t notice. I said, “Smedes? How did you know? How were you sure?”

  Smedes shrugged into her cardigan and draped her shoulder strap over it. She hoisted her books into her arms and checked around to be sur
e she was leaving nothing behind. “It was pretty obvious, Fraser. That kind of relationship is like ice on a windshield. You can’t see a thing beyond it.”

  The night of the Junior Prom I sat alone in my bedroom.

  It’s not a romantic bedroom. It’s an ordinary square room in an ordinary house, with one chest and two windows. The bed has a plain ribcord spread, the kind that lasts for years and years, although you keep hoping it’s going to tear and get spoiled so you can buy something new. When you lie down, you get rippled marks on your skin.

  Semi-detached, I thought.

  Like a building.

  But Michael isn’t like Jim. Michael never admitted to being trapped. Michael never said he wanted less. He said he wanted more. How could you have a semi-detached relationship with someone who wanted to emulate Annie and Price?

  I wandered around the room. Annie’s room is so romantic, I thought. Look at mine. A door set on two filing cabinets for a desk. I stared at the desk. My finished report on Eliza lay on top. A-plus. “Excellent research,” wrote Mr. McGrath. “The best organization I’ve seen in years.”

  I’m not good at being a girl friend, I thought. I’m not good at being a date. I’m not romantic.

  Even Smedes is more romantic than I am. At least she found a boy who matched her.

  And I couldn’t have called Michael up before the Junior Prom and asked him to be semi-detached. It would have sounded as if all I wanted was an escort and then I’d dump him until the next interesting weekend. How could a person even use the term semi-detached?

  Annie was right. It sounded like a building. Two people in love didn’t talk like that.

  I wanted to be at the Junior Prom.

  I wanted to be a girl like Jodie, my horizon only as wide as the next boy.

  I wanted to be silly and happy and pretty and flirtatious and romantic as roses.

  But it would not happen. I was no Annie, whose personality could shift as music changes keys, to match the boy she chose. I was Fraser, and I was stuck with myself, and I was not good at being romantic.