Someone Like You Page 16

  “I know you are,” I said, and I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you’d think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous, or so I was noticing.

  As December came, and everything was suddenly green and red and tinseled, and holiday music pounded in my ears at work, “Jingle Bells” again and again and again, I still hadn’t made any real decision about Macon. The only reason I was getting out of it was the pure fact that we hadn’t seen each other much, except in school, which was the one place I didn’t have to worry about things going too far. I was working extra holiday shifts at Milton’s and busy with Scarlett, too. She needed me more than ever. I drove her to doctor’s appointments, pushed the cart at Baby Superstore while she priced cribs and strollers, and went out more than once late in the evening for chocolate-raspberry ice cream when it was cru cially needed. I even sat with her as she wrote draft after draft of a letter to Mrs. Sherwood at her new address in Florida, each one beginning with You don’t know me, but. That was the easy part. The rest was harder.

  Macon was busy, too. He was always ducking out of school early or not showing up at all, calling me for two-minute conversations at all hours where he always had to hang up suddenly. He couldn’t come to my house or even drop me off down the street because it was too risky. My mother didn’t mention him much; she assumed her rules were being followed. She was busy with her work and arranging Grandma Halley’s move into another facility, anyway.

  “It’s just that he’s different,” I complained to Scarlett as we sat on her bed reading magazines one afternoon. I was reading Elle; she, Working Mother. Cameron was downstairs making Kool-Aid, Scarlett’s newest craving. He put so much sugar in it, it gave you a headache, but it was just the way she liked it. “It’s not like it was.”

  “Halley,” she said. “You read Cosmo. You know that no relationship stays in that giddy stage forever. This is normal.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes,” she said, flipping another page. “Completely.”

  There were still a few times that month, as Christmas bore down on us, when I had to stop him as his hand moved further toward what I hadn’t decided to sign over just yet. Twice at his house, on Friday nights as we lay in his bed, so close it seemed inevitable. Once in the car, parked by the lake, when it was cold and he pulled away from me suddenly, shaking his head in the dark. It wasn’t just him, either. It was getting harder for me, too.

  “Do you love him?” Scarlett asked me one day after I told her of this last incident. We were at Milton’s, sitting on the loading dock for our break, surrounded by packs upon packs of tomato juice.

  “Yes,” I said. I’d never said it, but I did.

  “Does he love you?”

  “Yes,” I said, fudging a bit.

  It didn’t work. She took another bite of her bagel and said, “Has he told you that?”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  She sat back, not saying any more. Her point, I assumed, was made.

  “But that’s such a cliché,” I said. “I mean, Do you love me. Like that means anything. Like if he did say it, then I should sleep with him, and if he didn’t, I shouldn’t.”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said simply. “All I’m saying is I would hope he did before you went ahead with this.”

  “It’s just three words,” I said casually, finishing off my Coke. “I mean, lots of people sleep together without saying, ‘I love you.’”

  Scarlett sat back, pulling her legs as best she could against her stomach. “Not people like us, Halley. Not people like us.”

  My mother, who is serious and businesslike about most things, is an absolute fanatic about the holidays. Christmas begins at our house the second the last bite of Thanksgiving dinner is eaten, and our Christmas tree, decorated and sagging with way too many ornaments, does not come down until New Year’s Day. It drives my father, who always loudly proclaims himself a Christmas atheist, completely bananas. If it was up to him, the tree would be dismantled and out at the curb ten seconds after the last gift was opened—a done deal. Actually, if given his choice, we wouldn’t have a tree, period. We’d just hand each other our gifts in the bags they came in (his chosen wrapping paper), eat a big meal, and watch football on TV. But he knew when he married my mother, who insisted on a New Year’s Eve wedding, that he wouldn’t get that. Not even a chance.

  I figured Grandma Halley’s being sick would make the holidays a little less important this year, or at least distract my mother. I was wrong. If anything, it was more important that this be the Perfect Christmas, the Best We’ve Ever Had. She took a day, maybe, after we got home from Thanksgiving before the boxes of ornaments came out, the stockings went up, and the planning was in full swing. It was dizzying.

  “We have to get a tree,” she announced around the fourth night of December. We were at the dinner table. “Tonight, I was thinking. It would be something nice to do together.”

  My father did it for the first time that year, a combination of a sigh and something muttered under his breath. His sole holiday tradition: The Christmas Grumble.

  “The lot’s open until nine,” she said cheerfully, reaching over me for my plate.

  “I have a lot of homework,” I said, my standard excuse, and my father kicked me under the table. If he was going, I was going.

  The lot was packed, so it took my mother about a half hour, in the freezing cold, to find the Perfect Tree. I stood by the car, more frustrated by the minute, as I watched her walk the aisles of spruces with my father yanking out this one, then that one, for her inspection. Overhead, what sounded like the same Christmas tape we had at Milton’s played loudly; I knew every word, every beat, every pause, mouthing along without even realizing it.

  “Hi, Halley.” I turned around and saw Elizabeth Gunderson, standing there holding hands with a little girl wearing a tutu and a heavy winter coat. They had identical faces and hair color. I hadn’t seen her much lately; after the scandal with her boyfriend and best friend, she’d been away for a couple of weeks “getting her appendix out”; the rumor was she’d been in some kind of hospital, but that was never verified either.

  “Hey, Elizabeth,” I said, smiling politely. I was not going to make a mute fool of myself again.

  “Lizabeth, I want to go look at the mistletoe,” the little girl said, yanking her toward the display by the register. “Come on.”

  “One second, Amy,” Elizabeth said coolly, yanking back. The little girl pouted, stomping one ballet slipper. “So, Halley, what’s up?”

  “Not much. Doing the family thing.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” She looked down at Amy, who had let go of her hand and was now twirling, lopsidedly, between us. “So, how are things with Macon?”

  “Good,” I said, just as coolly as I could, my eyes on Amy’s pink tutu.

  “I’ve been seeing him out a lot at Rhetta’s,” she said. “You know Rhetta, right?”

  The correct answer to this, of course, was “Sure.”

  “I’ve never seen you over there with him, but I figured I was just missing you.” She tossed her hair back, a classic Elizabeth Gunderson gesture; I could still see her in her cheerleading uniform, kicking high in the air, that hair swinging. “You know, since Mack and I broke up, I’ve been spending a lot of time over there.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “I mean, about you and Mack.”

  “Yeah.” Her breath came out in a big white puff. “Macon’s been so great, he really understands about that kind of stuff. You’re so lucky to have him.”

  I watched her, forgetting for the moment about being cool and friendly, about maintaining my facade. I tried to read her eyes, to see beyond the words to what might really be happening at Rhetta’s, a place I’d never been. Or been invited to. Elizabeth Gunderson obviously hadn’t been grounded, her life controlled by her mother’s hand. Elizabeth Gunderson could go places.

  “Elizabeth!” We both looked over
to see a man standing by a BMW, a tree lashed to the roof. The engine was running. “Let’s go, honey. Amy, you, too.”

  “Well,” Elizabeth said as Amy ran over to the car, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow in class, right?”

  “Right.”

  She waved, like we were friends, and her dad shut the door behind her. As they pulled away, their headlights flooded my face, making me squint, and I couldn’t tell whether she was watching me.

  “We found one!” I heard my mother say behind me. “It’s just about perfect and it’s a good thing because your father was almost completely out of patience.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Was that one of your friends from school?” she said as Elizabeth’s car pulled out.

  “No,” I said under my breath. The Christmas Mumble.

  “Do I know her?”

  “No,” I said more loudly. She thought she knew everyone. “I hate her, anyway.”

  My mother took a step back and looked at me. As a therapist, this was almost permission for her to pick my brain.

  “You hate her,” she repeated. “Why?”

  “No reason.” I was sorry I’d said anything.

  “Well, here’s the damn tree,” my father said in his booming radio voice; a few people looked over. He walked up and thrust it between us so I got a face full of needles. “Best of the lot, or so your mother is convinced.”

  “Let’s go home,” my mother said, still watching me through the tree. You’d think she’d never heard me say I hated anyone before. “It’s getting late.”

  “Fine,” my father said. “I think we can stuff this in the back, if we’re lucky.”

  They went around to the back of the car and I sat in the front seat, slamming the door harder than I should have. I did hate Elizabeth Gunderson, and I hated the fact God gave me virginity just so I’d have to lose it someday and I even hated Christmas, just because I could. In September I’d told Scarlett that Macon belonged with someone like Elizabeth, and maybe I’d been right. I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come so easy for, someone like me.

  The next afternoon, when I was supposedly at work and Macon and I were over at his house, his hand crept back again to our familiar battleground. I grabbed it, sat up, and said, “Who’s Rhetta?”

  He looked at me. “Who?”

  “Rhetta.”

  “Why?”

  “I just want to know.”

  He sighed loudly, dramatically, then flopped back across the bed. “She’s just this friend of mine,” he said. “She lives over on Coverdale.”

  “You go over there a lot?” I knew I sounded petty and jealous, but there was no other way to handle this. I was prepared, soon, to hand over something valuable to him. I needed to be sure.

  “Sometimes.” He traced my belly button with one finger, absently. To him, this was obviously no big deal. “How’d you know about her?”

  “Elizabeth Gunderson,” I said. I was watching his face closely for a sign, any suspicious ripple at the sound of her name.

  “Yeah, she’s over there sometimes,” he said casually. “She and Rhetta are friends, or something.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah.” I was watching him, and he just stared back, suddenly catching on, and said, “What, Halley? What’s your problem ?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just thought it was weird you never mentioned it. Elizabeth said she’d seen you there a lot.”

  “Elizabeth doesn’t know anything.”

  “She acts like she does,” I said.

  “So? Is that my fault?” He was getting angry. “God, Halley, it’s nothing, okay? Why is this important now?”

  “It isn’t,” I said. “Except half the time I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing and then I hear from Elizabeth you’re off somewhere you never told me about hanging out with her.”

  “I’m not hanging out with her. I’m at the same place she is, sometimes. I’m not used to being accountable to anyone. I can’t tell you what I’m doing every second, because half the time I don’t even know myself.” He shook his head. “It’s just the way I am.”

  Back in the beginning, when P.E. was my life and nothing had happened between us yet, it wasn’t like this. Even two months ago, when I’d spent my afternoons just driving around with him, listening to the radio under a bright blue fall sky, there hadn’t been these issues, these awkward silences. We didn’t talk or laugh as much anymore, or even just play around. Everything had narrowed to just going to his house, parking out by the lake and battling for territory while arguing about trust and expectations. It was like dealing with my mother.

  “Look,” he said, and he slid his arm around my waist, pulling me close against him. “You’ve just got to trust me, okay?”

  “I know,” I said, and it was easy to believe him as we lay there in the early winter darkness, him kissing my forehead, my bare feet entwined with his. It all felt good, real good, and this is what people did; all people, except me. I felt closer than ever to telling him I loved him, but I bit it back. He had to say it first, and I willed him to just as I’d willed him to come over to me in P.E. when it all began.

  Feuilleton, feuilleton, I thought hard in my head as he kissed me. Feuilleton, feuilleton. Kissing him felt so good and I closed my eyes, feeling his skin warm against mine, breathing him in.

  Feuilleton, feuilleton, as his hand crept down to my waistband. I love you, I love you.

  But I didn’t hear it, just like I always hadn’t. I pushed his hand back, trying to keep kissing him, but he pulled away, shaking his head.

  “What?” I said, but I knew.

  “Is it me?” he asked. “I mean, is it just you don’t want to do it with me?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not. It’s just—it’s a big deal to me.”

  “You said you were thinking about it.”

  “I am.” Every damn second, I thought. “I am, Macon.”

  He sat back, his hands still around my waist. “What happened with Scarlett,” he said confidently, “that’s, like, an impossibility. We’ll be careful.”

  “It’s not about that.”

  He was watching me. “Then what is it about?”

  “It’s about me,” I told him, and by the way he shifted, looking out the window, I could tell that wasn’t the right answer. “It’s just the way I am.”

  We had come to the same place we always did, a place I knew well. Just standing across the battle line, eye to eye, no further than where we’d started. A draw.

  Christmas was coming, and everyone seemed suddenly giddy. All the mothers came into Milton’s in sweatshirts with wreaths and reindeer on them and even my boss, congested Mr. Averby, wore a Santa hat on the day before Christmas. My parents went to party after party, and I lay in bed and listened to them as they came home, half drunk and silly, their voices muffled and giggly downstairs. Grandma Halley’s move to the rest home was all set, and my mother was going up there in early January to help. I thought of my grandmother in that tiny room, small in her bed, and pushed the thought away.

  We had our tree, all the presents beneath it, and the Christmas cards lined up on the mantel. We had lights strung up across the porch and Christmas knickknacks on every free bit of table or wall space. My father kept breaking things. First, with a too-bold arm movement, he sent the chubby smiling porcelain Santa off the end table and into the wall, and later one of the three Wise Men from the crèche under the tree rolled across the floor and was flattened, easily, as he walked through the room. Crunch. This happened every year, which explained why all of our Christmas sets were short something—a baby Jesus, one reindeer, the tallest singing caroller. The Christmas Victims.

  Scarlett and I did our shopping together at the mall, in the evenings; she bought an ABBA CD for Cameron, his favorite, and I got Macon a pair of Ray-Ban su
nglasses, since he was always losing his. The mall was crowded and hot and even the little mechanical elves in the Santa Village seemed tired.

  I felt like I saw Macon less and less. He was always running off with his friends, his phone calls shorter and shorter. When he did pick me up or we went out it wasn’t just us anymore; we were usually giving someone a ride here or there, or one of his friends tagged along. He was constantly distracted, and I stopped finding candy in my pockets and backpack. One day in the bathroom I overheard some girl saying Macon had stolen her boyfriend’s car stereo, but when I asked him he just laughed and shook his head, telling me not to believe everything I heard in the bathroom. When he called me now, from noisy places I wondered about, I got the feeling it was only because he felt he had to, not because he missed me. I was losing him, I could feel it. I had to act soon.

  Meanwhile, my mother was so happy, sure that things were good between us again. I’d catch her smiling at me from across the room, pleased with herself, as if to say, See, wasn’t I right? Isn’t this better?

  On Christmas Eve, after my parents had left for another party, Macon came over to give me my present. He’d called from the gas station down the street and said he only had a minute. I met him outside.

  “Here,” he said, handing me a box wrapped in red paper. “Open it now.”

  It was a ring, silver and thick, that looked like nothing I would have picked out for myself. But when I slid it on, it looked just right. “Wow,” I said, holding up my right hand. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah. I knew it would be.” He already had the sunglasses; I wasn’t good at keeping secrets. He’d convinced me to give him his present the day I got it, begging and pleading like a little kid. They were only half his present, but he didn’t know that yet.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said, leaning over and kissing him. “And thanks.”

  “No problem,” he said. “It looks good on you.” He lifted up my hand and inspected my finger.