Kissing in America (18 page)

T
rent didn't ask about the dress or the whole incident; we were silent as we drove back to the ranch. We stopped by the barn first so he could do his night chores.

“Need help?”

He grinned and shook his head. “You're off duty now. Next time you come this way, I'm going to put you to work fixing fences, though.”

“I'm an expert fence fixer,” I said. He said he'd be done soon, so I walked outside to the pasture and waited.

The air felt warm and heavy. The sky swirled with stars—so many stars—glittery dots and white wisps and planets blinking. I began to relax a little. Tomorrow I'd see Lulu, and she could help me figure everything out. My dad used to call her the Truth Machine, because when they were in graduate school together, streams of students would come to Lulu's office hours just to ask for life advice.

She could tell me what to do about Will, the news about my dad, and the wedding.

At least we'd have a break from Janet for a couple of days
in Arizona. My shoulders relaxed, thinking about it, though we had another epic bus ride the next day—twelve hours to Tucson.

For now, I wanted to enjoy our last moments in cowboyland. Janet had mentioned renting a car for the return trip from LA and driving us home, so who knew when we'd be back here again. Or if we won—
when
we won (on the bus, before we'd lost cell phone service, Annie had read a positive psychology website that said we needed
to believe
we'd win)—we could splurge on train tickets back instead.

Secretly, though, another plan had begun to brew inside me: what if when I got to LA, I stayed there? What if when I finally saw Will, it felt exactly as it had before—or even better? I could get a job. I could get emancipated. I'd read about that in a magazine once—you could get a court order to be an emancipated teen and live on your own. I could stay in LA and finish school out there. I could have a whole new life. I could use the money I'd win on the show—$10,000, or maybe even the whole $50,000. It was possible.

After a while Trent came outside and stood nearby. We leaned against the wooden railing along the pasture.

“The books are right about Texas,” I said. I felt like a different person in the country; I could feel my soul unfurl, this opening up I'd never felt before, this quiet. “There's something mesmerizing about all this space. The giant sky.”

I felt like I'd never been farther away from my old life.
My mother had a framed cover of
The New Yorker
in her room, which pictured a map of America with New York, the Pacific Ocean, and almost nothing in between. Now it was all reversed. New York seemed like a tiny, inconsequential corner of the world.

“I'll switch places with you,” Trent said. “I always wanted to see the city.”

“Really?”

“I don't want to stay here forever.”

“Where would you go?”

He shrugged. “I've been taking classes in graphics, web design, and digital development in West Stockton. Thinking of moving to Dallas next year.”

Web design?
Digital development?
“I can't believe you'd want to leave this place. It seems like such a romantic life.”

“Romantic? Cow shit and no pay? Chance is into the science of it, but what I do is mostly grunt work. Not what I want to do forever.”

“Irma said your family's been ranching for generations, though.”

He shook his head. “Not the same now. Can't make a living like people used to. You know what town kids called us in high school? Shitkickers.”

“They never say that in
Cowboys on Fire
.”

He laughed. “I should write one of those books.”

We headed down the path to the house. He told me how
he'd designed a new website for the ranch, and Irma's husband and Farley were getting interest from breeders all over the world.

As we walked along the meadow, I looked back up at the sky. I wondered if we'd see stars like this in Tucson. I thought of how few nights in my life I'd actually seen stars for real, even though I'd memorized all the constellations for a test in seventh grade. My dad had practiced with me. He'd spent hours gluing glow-in-the-dark stars to my ceiling in the shape of constellations, in our old apartment. I missed that old apartment. I'd cried when we left the stars on the ceiling. My mom had bought me a new set and reattached them all on the ceiling in our new place. I'd told her they weren't in the right positions and I took them off. I felt a little guilty about that now.

I saw Lyra and Cassiopeia and Ursa Major. “My dad taught me to remember Ursa Major because it's in the shape of an anteater,” I said, barely even realizing I was saying it out loud.

Trent turned toward me. He paused. “Irma told me you lost your dad. She said to take good care of you while you're here.”

Oh. It felt weird that she'd told him. Was he spending time with me just because he had to?

“How did he die?” Trent asked me.

“A heart attack,” I said. “In his sleep.” The words came out automatically, without thinking.

It had always felt easy to lie, and so much better than telling the truth. The lie was a kind of protection: my safe, peaceful fantasy of how he died. But I felt empty this time, after saying the lie, and not protected at all.

I thought of the
Stages of Mourning
book my mom had given me. It had said,
Someday, when you look back, you will be able to see how your grief progressed from Denial to Anger to Bargaining to Acceptance.
But how could you progress when the news never ended, when nothing was ever simple or certain?

O
n the porch, I hugged my elbows. “Thank you,” I said. “It's been . . . fun. Different.”

Trent gave me a gentlemanly handshake and then squeezed my shoulder.

“Ow,” I said, touching that spot. “My shotgun injury.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Forgot about that. You did good, though. Next time you come here, you can shoot a 10-gauge.”

“Okay. Whatever that is,” I said.

He kissed me on the cheek. “Come back this way sometime,” he said.

Something warm traveled down my spine. He put his hands in his pockets, turned, and said good night.

Upstairs, I settled in bed with my book. Annie wasn't back yet. I felt a tiny humming inside, thinking of the kiss on the cheek. Maybe Trent
liked
me. Was that even possible? Maybe he wanted me to join the other sixteen girlfriends. Before Will had kissed me, I used to lie awake at night and worry that something was deeply wrong with me, since I'd never had a boyfriend. In seventh grade, Joey Braga made a chart ranking
all the girls by three different measures: body, face, and personality. I got a ten on personality, but a measly three on body and a five on face. I had braces and hadn't hit puberty, unlike many of the curvy girls in my grade. That three and five had stung so deeply that they seemed stuck in my mind forever. But maybe I wasn't a three and five. Will wouldn't like a three or five. Trent wouldn't kiss a three or five girl on the cheek.

After a while, I fell asleep. A couple of hours later I awoke to the sound of a car door slamming shut. I thought it was Annie; I got up and peeked out the window.

Not Annie. It was Janet.

Farley held her hand, and they walked to the wooden fence. Then he kissed her. I gasped. She leaned back and he kissed her again, like in a romance novel. Her arms around him—Janet!—dipping backward in a long, lingering kiss.

My mouth fell open. Janet was enacting
Cowboys on Fire
.

I watched them hold hands and wander to the porch; I couldn't hear what they said. They sat there for a while and kissed again. I kept watching. I wanted a bowl of popcorn. I imagined the Lifetime movie ad: an embittered middle-aged woman finds passion with a cowboy. I watched them kiss and hold hands and kiss again until Farley reluctantly got back in his car, sadly waved good-bye, and drove off.

After he left, Janet walked over to the fence and stared up at the moon. She looked wistful and in love. I almost wanted to say something to her—
It's okay, Janet, love is good!
But of
course if she knew I'd seen her, she'd probably murder me, or at least subject me to endless iPad presentations.

Janet in love. I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't wait to tell Annie, but she didn't return until it was light out. I opened my eyes when she snuck in. “Where have you been?” I asked.

She clutched something to her chest. A giant, crumbling book.
Fairy Tales and Mythology
, with sepia covers. “We went to a used-book store.”

“What?” I squinted at her. Next she was going to say they observed baboons, recited calculus axioms together, and ate cold Pop-Tarts.

“Then we got hungry, so we stopped at a Waffle House to get something to eat . . . we stayed up to watch the sunrise. Talking.” Her face glowed.

“What is happening? What have you done with my best friend?” It was like
A Midsummer Night's Dream
in Texas.

“He's just so . . . cool. So different from anyone I've ever met.”

“What about
We're driven by biology and I'm not wasting time with a boy till I get into MIT
and everything?”

She shrugged and looked embarrassed, then smiled to herself.

“You're not the only one to fall in love tonight,” I said. I told her about Janet.

“Your aunt Gonorrhea got some?”

We stayed up talking until it was breakfast time. Irma was nowhere in sight—she'd left a note on the table, beside a tray of biscuits, saying she'd be back to say good-bye before we left for the bus.

Janet teetered downstairs looking bleary-eyed. She ate a biscuit and drank coffee as if nothing had happened.

“You had a good night?” I asked her. I tried hard not to smile.

She looked unsteady and bewildered, as if she'd just stepped off a carnival ride. She wore blue pajamas and her hair was loose and frizzy. She cleared her throat, opened her mouth to say something, and then seemed to think better of it. She devoured three biscuits, washed her dishes, then popped back to her room to get something. When she returned to the table, she handed a worn brown box to me.

“This is for you,” she said. “I meant to give it to you in Tennessee, or while we were traveling, but there was never the right moment. I've been carrying it around all this time—well. Here.”

I opened it. Inside was a leather-bound diary. It was blank inside.

“It belonged to my mother,” Janet said. “Your father gave it to her ages ago, before you were born, but she never wrote in it. They both would've wanted you to have it. To use it.” She opened the leather cover. “For your poems. Not writing for Irma, or anyone else. Just for you.”

I fingered the pages, touching this thing that my father had touched, that Freda had touched. “You should keep it,” I told Janet, and handed it back to her. I didn't deserve it. I didn't even write poems anymore.

As if reading my thoughts, Janet said, “Just take it. You don't have to write in it if you don't want to. Just see what happens.” She placed it back in my hands.

I put it in my backpack, inside my pillowcase. Why did my dad give Freda this journal? Had he wanted her to write down her story, too? I'd never realized I wasn't the only person he gave notebooks to.

“I'm going to miss you girls, but you'll be in good hands with Lulu in Tucson,” Janet said. “Don't talk to strangers on the bus. Don't let your bags out of your sight. And keep your phones on and charged at all times—you should have service on that leg of the trip.” She checked her watch. “I have to get ready for my meetings in Dallas. Give Lulu my best. I'll see you very soon.”

We hugged her. Irma arrived just as we were saying good-bye.

“I'll see you at the wedding,” Irma said cheerily, as if yesterday hadn't happened, though she whispered to me when Janet was out of earshot, “I'll be shipping the dress to you when it's done.”

The wedding will never take place
, I told myself, and Annie and I thanked her for hosting us.

Chance and Trent drove us to the bus stop in Farley's sedan (Janet insisted, so nobody would have to ride in the backseat of the pickup). Chance and Annie talked through most of the ride; Trent and I were quiet, watching the scrub trees and fields of cattle flash by.

They carried our bags for us and gave them to the driver. Trent shook my hand good-bye, and Chance kissed Annie on the lips quickly—Annie seemed embarrassed in front of us. As our bus pulled away, I watched the two boys lean against the car, and I thought that real-life cowboys were better than fictional ones. And then I thought about Irma and her four husbands, and Janet and her kisses, and it amazed me how even grown-ups seemed so confused by love.

W
e had claimed our front seats. Annie curled up in hers and immediately fell asleep holding Quarky.

I watched hills and grass and trees float by. To go from state to state in one day—it knit the country together. I thought of how the air in Cleveland had felt crisp in the morning, and Tennessee felt swampy in the afternoon, and the Texas heat made us feel like we'd landed on Mars—but it was all one country. Before we'd left, people had told me,
Every small city in America looks the same, one strip mall after another
. That wasn't true. Each state, each town, each neighborhood we traveled through was as different as a snowflake. Even the monsoon of 7-Elevens and Circle Ks, Allsup's, Valeros, Sav-O-Mats, Minit Marts, Kwik Shops, and Speedy Farms were as odd as the random things they sold: the pie shakes, hand-knit doll clothes, live crickets, alfalfa, elk jerky, stuffed javelinas. We passed billboards that said, “Daddy Bo's—It's Pig-Lickin' Good!” and another one telling us, “It's Your Choice: Heaven or Hell.” We saw signs for Roustabout
Services, Dirt Contracting, Bob's Taxidermy, and Papa Joe's Feed and Seed Store, and we watched the oil pump jacks—our bus driver called them nodding donkeys—drill in fields and even in people's backyards, bobbing up and down like giant metal dodo birds pecking the ground.

I loved to travel. I loved seeing other people's houses, the kinds of beds they slept on (Janet's pristine white Tempur-Pedic, Irma's fluffy pillow-tops); and the foods they ate, the Youngs' eggs from their neighbor's chickens, and Irma's biscuits from a tube. As every mile disappeared behind us, I felt parts of me weaving and unweaving. So many different feelings at the same time.

I loved visiting unfamiliar places where I had no memories. In New York, so many street corners and shops and subway stations and parks and bookstores held reminders of my dad—on good days they were like little keys to him, unlocking doors I could open. On bad days, reliving those memories made me feel soggy, weighed down by grief. To travel felt free from all that. Was that why my mom wanted to move to a new apartment after he died? Was it this freedom that she was looking for?

I opened the journal Janet had given me. It seemed too old and intimidating to write in, with its leather cover and yellow-tinged pages.

I thought of the times I'd written with my dad, how we'd sit in coffee shops or by Turtle Pond and how, back then, I
loved that feeling of a new page. All hope and expectation—that's how it had felt.

I thought of how Anne Frank started all her diary entries
Dear Kitty
, writing to an imaginary friend. Maybe that would be an easier way to start.

Dear Kitty,

Dear Freda, Bubbe 409,

Dear very old book I'm afraid to write in,

Dear Daddy,

It came out fast.

Last night I told a cowboy in Texas that you died of a heart attack. In your sleep.

I feel like in my regular life I spend so much time pretending.

Mommy and I pretend that you never existed.

I pretend with Mommy that I've never fallen in love.

I love traveling, though (I love traveling!), because you're escaping into life instead of hiding from it. For the
first time in ages, I feel like I'm me. (Whoever that is.)

Will I ever feel like I can stop pretending?

How do I have a life that's real?

What will happen when I go back home after this trip? Will it be back to the same old life?

I know these are pretty heavy questions to ask a dead person. Look at me, pretending even now, writing to you as if you can read this. Pretending you're still alive.