Parts Unknown (23 page)

Stupid tarot cards. They never tell you anything you want to know.

~ ~ ~

Friday night, brushing sweaty hair out of my eyes, I put on my ugly pajamas—the stretched-out green pastel ones, with the little pink flowers on them. According to our indoor thermometer, the apartment was 90 degrees.

I got in bed, turned off the light, and turned to the wall. But there was George, right behind me, nuzzling against my back and kissing my neck. I lay there still for a while, letting his hands explore, being utterly passive. I had never felt less aroused in my life.

It still surprised me how inventive George was in bed, and yet paradoxically, how predictable. It was as if he’d memorized the entire
Joy of Sex
, and was determined, scientifically, to explore all the variations of lovemaking to find just the right, perfect one. He knew precisely what to do. Unlike a few previous fumbling lovers, he knew the exact location of my clitoris, and what to do with it, and when. But the way he did it was more clinical than arousing. You could time our lovemaking with a stopwatch if you wanted.

I had to play my part. I turned around, kissed him for a while with as good a simulation of passion as I could muster, and began pulling off his pajamas. His hands moving over me were like a brand: everything he touched could be his. He could do what he wanted to me. I belonged to him.

His eyes boring into mine as I arched my back in a simulation of pleasure, I knew what I would do.

Chapter 11

I had never forgotten our last day together. Monday, August 25, early, time tumbled backward. Josh’s room was completely tidy. Already, no one lived there anymore. My one duffel was packed and ready. Once again, I took the tube to Bloomsbury, this time exiting with Josh at Russell Square. It was tricky, carrying the enormous rubber plant and my bulging duffel up and down tube escalators, and dragging everything through the street on the way to the student residence hall. Just focusing on my arms hurting as I dragged that stupid duffel was a relief, instead of having to think, to be sad, to know Josh was leaving too, just a few hours from now. But at last, arms aching, we arrived at an imposing brownstone. Students were hurrying in and out, many with parents in tow, unloading suitcases and CD players. I had no interest in meeting any of them. I obtained my key from the mailroom on the ground floor, then climbed three winding flights of stairs with Josh. There appeared to be no elevator.

My room was palatial—an enormous space in a top floor annex, a space bigger than the entire downstairs area of Josh’s flat. And all mine—no roommate. The walls were painted flat white, though, and the carpet was an industrial puce color. The room featured a metal-frame single bed, a well-used wooden desk with knife-gouged initials in it, and a metal chair.

“Get out!” Josh admired. “Look at the view!”

I stared out the window. Spindly treetops, buildings, a bookstore far below. Far off, the spire of Big Ben. My life in this room flashing forward over a whole year. “I’m glad we brought the plant,” I said, managing a watery smile. “Brightens this room up a little—it’s so huge and empty.

“Well—let’s go,” I continued. “No point staying here. And we’ve got the whole rest of the day till your plane leaves.” Then turned to him. “Where do you want to go?”

“The Heath, of course.”

It was a beautiful August morning. The sun was bright, the sky a robin’s egg blue. We made out on the tube, all the way to Hampstead, not caring what anyone thought, offended newspapers rustling all around us. Like always, it was just us, in the world, as we walked down the gracious Hampstead roads laced with trees growing together over the sides of the street, meeting in the middle to become an utterly green, protective canopy. Past the shiny black sign at the Heath’s entrance, trying to force rules on London’s last wild place:

Corporation of London

Hampstead Heath

Horse Riders Keep to Designated Rides

No Litter or Dumping

We strolled by a strange zoo—flamingoes and deer behind chain-link fences. At last to an open area, empty but for us, a big green meadow surrounded by trees. There was too much green everywhere; I was overwhelmed. I lay with my head pillowed on Josh’s lap, and we stared into each others’ eyes for a long time, the way people do in romance novels. My green eyes into his hazel ones, each of us reflected in miniature, over and over. We lay down and kissed for a while, our bodies fitting together perfectly. I couldn’t imagine a future where he wasn’t right there, holding me. “How am I going to manage without you for a whole year?” I lamented. We’d planned: next summer I’d move wherever he was going to be after graduation. We’d be together for the summer, at least. I couldn’t bring myself to think of another whole year at Dawson College after that even, just waiting for my real future to begin.

He didn’t answer. We kissed some more. I dug in my backpack and retrieved bread, cheese, and soda, echoing our first meal at the Heath. And a present for him—I’d secretly painted a miniature portrait of myself, and framed it in a tiny frame. “Open this on the plane,” I instructed. But he tore the paper off anyhow, and his eyes teared up. “Well, since we’re giving presents . . .”

He fished around in his pockets, and came up with a crumpled piece of lined yellow paper. “This is for you.” It was a poem:

My love

Moments

Let me hold them always

Never slipping away

And yet, they move—I grasp,

Touching a dream.

Eyes closed against daylight

I whisper three words always through the dark.

I cried then, although I’d promised myself not to, remembering the two boys, and their blood oath. Remembering more. Remembering the things I hadn’t spoken about. I trusted Josh completely. If I was going to tell anyone, it had to be him. Soon. This afternoon. Not yet.

I closed my eyes. We must have dozed for a while, arms holding each other tight, and then the sun was lower, a late-afternoon breeze stirring us awake. He fished in his backpack and retrieved his camera, holding it at arms’ length and pointing it back at us. “Smile!”

I couldn’t. It was now, or never. “Remember the first day we met? That night, at the Chinese restaurant? There was something I wanted to tell you then, and I didn’t,” I said.

He looked at me seriously. “I’m all ears.”

“It’s about my uncle,” I said. And I told him the whole story.

Uncle Paulie had been my portly, widowed great-uncle—a sad-faced jowly man. He lived alone in a house that smelled of cat pee, and wore polyester pants that almost reached the top of his sagging chest.

Mom and Dad would drive Alex and me there every Saturday when we were in elementary school, and we would visit for the whole afternoon with Uncle Paulie. My parents were nicer to him than they ever were to anyone. They made Alex and me talk with him for hours, long horrible conversations with lengthy pauses. He wanted to know everything: about what we did, every minute of the day, what our favorite soda was, our favorite TV shows, what clothes we’d worn that week, even what color underwear. He especially liked hearing about our friends. His fleshy lower lip would glisten as I described my few third-grade girlfriends. Sometimes he asked to see pictures of them, and I’d bring their school photos the next week. He’d always forget to give me the photos back, and when I’d ask for them weeks later, he’d exhume them, moist, from his nightstand drawer.

Mom and Dad would always discreetly be in another room, leaving us alone with him for the longest time, because really, he only seemed to want to talk to us. “Uncle Paulie just
loves
children,” Mom often said, but it was horrible, every week, Alex and me alone with him in that musty, dark room, he moving his armchair ever closer to where we were sitting on the sofa, until at last, when his thick knees were almost touching ours, Mom or Dad would breeze in and tell us it was time to leave.

So, he died when I was ten. And he had a lot of money, it turned out.

The week after the funeral, we’d see Mom in the kitchen in the mornings, her eyes red-rimmed, and she’d start drinking big glasses of Gallo wine when we got home from school. That week, whenever Dad got home from work, Mom would walk him downstairs to the office room on our house’s lower level, her jaw set, her face furious. We’d hear angry whispers and little shrieking sobs that Alex and I, our ears to the floor vent in the living room, could vaguely make out. We discovered, parsing the muffled sentences, that they had been angling for Uncle Paulie to leave them his money. That was why we visited him every week, and why every week Mom brought a homemade ham and cheese quiche and rocky road ice cream—his favorites. Why they made me and Alex sit with him, because he liked children so much. No one else ever went to see him. Just us.

And he had left us his money—all of it. But the funny thing was, Uncle Paulie had left his money to
us
. Not to our parents—to me and Alex.

Ultimately, that’s what got us away, all the way across the country to our respective colleges that our parents could never have afforded. And the worst thing was, whenever I saw the tuition bills I had to think of Uncle Paulie, and the drool on his lip, and the questions, all the questions. But actually that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was what my parents did. Forcing us to go. Making us pawns in their plan. Caring more about that filthy money than they cared for our well-being, maybe than they cared for us.

I finished my story, panting a little.

Josh placed his hand over mine. “But don’t you see? It’s got a happy ending,” he said comfortingly. “He gave you the freedom to leave, to try something new. If you remember anything, remember that.”

“Yeah, but of all people, I have to owe my freedom to
him
?” I asked. “I hate having to think about him. Because thinking about Uncle Paulie makes me hate my parents too.”

 Josh held my hand tightly. “Do you feel you’re far enough away now?”

“From what?”

“From home. From your parents. From what happened with Uncle Paulie.”

“Oh! Yes, definitely.” I gave him a trembling smile. “You’re home. This is home. My family—they’re a million miles away. But it’s all over now. You’re leaving. And I waited so long to tell you—I shouldn’t have waited.”

“It’s okay. I’m honored, that you told me. I know it was hard.”

“I wanted to. You’re right, it’s so hard, to talk about it. Alex and I never did, really. No one talks about it in my family, they just pretend it never happened. It’s been weighing me down, all these years.”

“Your silence gives it power. You can scatter those memories out in the world, now. They can’t hurt you anymore. And nothing happened—I was expecting something, you know, awful to happen, the way you built it up.”

“No,” I whispered. “I guess not. And it feels better, now that I’ve told you.”

“I’m glad, sweetheart. And I hate to say this”—he checked his watch—“But it’s time to go. But you’ll call me, and we’ll email, and if there’s more you want to say, we’ll work it out that way.”

“My own personal psychiatrist. Thanks.”

I breathed deeply as we walked hand in hand to the Finchley Road tube stop, even though it would take us a great deal out of our way—we had to change trains at Farringdon, and then go back north to Camden Town. Which was silly really, but each minute wasted kept us together. It was over. It was true: nothing had happened. It was all the possibility, the menace, the betrayal—that was what hurt the most. They wouldn’t have let anything happen, would they? I didn’t know. I never asked. They always came into that musty, dim room just in time. And after he died, no one spoke of it again, letting it all vanish—poof—as if it had never happened. But Alex and I never forgot.

I should have told Josh sooner. Now he was leaving, taking my secret with him, and to him it wasn’t so big, I could tell, when it had meant so much to me and Alex and for so long. It was huge to me, but it didn’t affect Josh in the least. My troubles, my horrible memories, they weren’t his, and he wasn’t interested in making them his. I shouldn’t have told him at all.

I needed to put it all away again, the memories, and Josh’s reaction—far away, because all that mattered was London, and right now, holding Josh’s hand. Nothing else, damn it.

My mind was in a quandary as we returned to Camden Town at last, extremely late by that point, and dashed toward Bonny Street. We were in such a rush, grabbing forgotten items—toothpaste, a mateless sock under the bed—then it was four o’clock, suddenly, and his flight was leaving at seven. I wanted to say goodbye to Dov and Trevor, but they were out, the only sound in the flat strange suction noises emerging from Boris’s room. On the kitchen table as we made a last sweep, I saw a brown paper bag with my name scribbled on it. Surprised, I pulled it open, to find three crocheted hacky sacks.

I whirled around, silently saying goodbye to everything, breathing for the last time the lingering smell of Trevor’s stew wafting from the stovetop. The back door was ajar, floating in aromas from the damp late-afternoon air—that persistent cloud of nicotine, mixed with the unmistakable scent of fresh-cut grass. Finally, the gardener had come by.

It was surprising, how quickly a whole life in London could be dismantled. Josh had boxed and shipped his books a few days ago, so we just needed to take the two big gray suitcases and a backpack, which we’d left under that black phone near the front door.

A lengthy wait in the Camden Town station, then changing trains at Leicester Square for the Victoria Line—my life the past three and a half weeks seeming a series of tube stops, each framing some precious memory in subway tile. As the train jolted toward the airport, it seemed impossible that less than a month ago I had emerged from the opposite direction.