Principles of Love (14 page)

I jump to my own defense. “Lila, listen. I want to help you. Of course. Tell me what I can do — aside from driving — I got in trouble for giving rides and my dad’s gone ballistic about it, so I can’t do that. Why don’t you just take the test here. Now.”

Lila looks at me. “Well, I’m five days late. I told myself I’d test on day nine — don’t ask — it’s my lucky number — if I haven’t gotten it yet.” She tries for a smile. “Sorry about bitching at you. But you know what it’s like in times like this.” She hugs me and I think about telling her that I actually have no idea. That the concept of conception is totally out of my realm, but I don’t. I shut my mouth and mind and just try to make her feel better. We wind up listening to the cheesiest of my 1970s songs and cracking up as we try to count the
sexy mamas
in one hit from 1978.

That night, my dad tucks himself away into his study, out of reach both physically and mentally from me — I’m sure he is backing off intentionally, making me feel bad for breaking rules, but I also get the feeling he’s distracted. Maybe he’s got a job concern or maybe, at long last, he’s considering dating. Lana Gabovitch the hippy dance teacher wouldn’t be bad, though I think she smokes pot and that wouldn’t fly (heh) with him. Or maybe Mable’s set him up with one of her friends (the female coffee distributor? The filter woman?).

I call Mable and start to tell her about Lila, not using her name lest it leak back to my dad (which it probably wouldn’t — Mable’s mouth is usually a locked door). Halfway through my description of the whole deal, Mable’s attention fades and I know from her “uh-huhs” that she’s only partially tuned in.

“Mable?”

“Yeah, honey.”

“Are you listening? Do you think I did the right thing? Should I have told her again to take the test right now?”

“Oh, I’m sure exams will be fine,” she says, way off base and clueless as to what I’m talking about.

“You’re not listening!” I say. I don’t go over the details like I usually would have, instead I do punishment of my own and just say, “Forget it. Never mind.”

And instead of being peeved, Mable’s voice goes up to crush-level and she says, “So…Miles and I might move in together.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that,” I say. “You know, without a ring, no such thing…” I sing-song her words back to her. See, I pay attention.

“That’s what I’m saying — we might go to Tiffany’s this weekend.” Tiffany’s? My hip aunt is more apt to buy a twenty-five cent ring from a gumball machine or shop for a funky antique store emerald cut stone from the 1920s than head to the blue-box sanctuary of THE Tiffany’s. “Want to come with us?”

I can feel myself in some widening pit with my dad walking away on one side, Mable on the other, and all the spokes of my social life (Robinson, Lila, Cordelia, even Colorado) pulling out in various directions.

“Maybe,” I say, and I’m already scripting my email to DrakeFan in my head. “Talk to you soon.”

I hang up and log on, confessing my not exact loneliness but trapped in a bubble feeling to DrakeFan. I reread his early emails for humor and comfort. Just letting myself indulge in this act lifts my spirits slightly. Then I get a new message from him and first I’m happy — he goes into details about his family life and how he knows what I mean about feeling isolated in my own head and not really getting what I need from friends or my tiny family. But my heart sinks when he says he’s leaving tomorrow for Anguilla, some island where probably numerous educational films are shot (sun warnings, STDs), but he says he’ll try to find computer access there.

It’s stupid that I care that he’s leaving. I don’t know who the hell the guy is and yet knowing that he’s going to be far away makes me feel weird. Even more alone.

As of thirty-two minutes ago, I am a free woman! Exams (aka Hell spread out over one week) are finished and I’m fourteen pages into my history term paper. Plenty of time to finish that fucker during my
Sixteen Candles
/
Philadelphia Story
/
Some Kind of Wonderful
rerun fest this Christmas.

I don’t bother searching the campus for goodbyes to warm-weather bound friends. Even Harriet Walters (hair tinted ultra-blonde on the tips) is headed to Barbados. Some people have left already, with boarders shoving clothes and books into duffels and Lily Pulitzer canvas totes (just how many batik frogs and flowers can one person handle?) and jump into pre-ordered taxis or the infamous New York Bus. The Greyhound leaves from in front of the school and schleps the city folk back to their natural Upper West and East Side homes, stopping ever so briefly at 125
^th
Street and the Bronx. According to Cordelia (whom I’ve been avoiding since her vaulting mat spy episode), the New York Bus is a scene — sex in the back row, drinking in the middle, all advantages taken in the consequence-free environment. Kind of like how eating French fries on the road doesn’t count, neither does getting felt up on the bus.

I head for coffee sanctuary — via T of course, since I still have no car. I sit by the window and watch the world (world = my small, semi-urban world) slide by, and end up nodding off, missing my stop and having to go back through the turnstile and retrace my public transportation steps until I finally reach Slave to the Grind where I have only a quarter of an hour before I have to head to WAJS.

Mable flits around like she’s been mainlining espresso beans, pausing only to tell me Miles has scoured the Jewelry District and presented her with ink sketches of rings (why does this bug me when I should just feel happy for her forthcoming engagement?). She wipes counters, refills biscotti jars and answers the phone then, as she’s talking into the receiver, writes on a piece of paper:

Love — do me the biggest favor?

I look up at her — she waits for my affirmative nod but I gesture I’ll need further explanation (further explanation = I am not spending break cleaning toilets with or without Shiney Hiney Bowl or hand-grinding beans).

Host open mike night??

I sigh.

Please?????

The five question marks are enough to guilt me into the project so I say I will and head out to do my radio spot. On my way, I walk a different route than I normally do and go past a Starbucks. Even with the wintry glare through the windows I’m pretty sure I see Lila (with her tell-tale shiny blonde locks gathered in a neat nape of the neck knot) sitting in the far-corner with Robinson. Are they holding hands? I peer in and then, afraid of being caught, I move away and out of sight. As if walking in the now-snowing afternoon wasn’t enough, the irony is that the advertisement I’m about to sing and record is for a car rental agency. Between this and the giant mattress, I’m pretty convinced that life is playing games with me.

Two double-features and a Moo Goo Gai Pan later, I confront my dad. Not with the
when can I have the damn keys back
but with a white flag in the form of father-daughter outing. We used to have weekly lunches, trying new places (the crepes place in the square, the crab shack by Singing Beach), even activity afternoons of bowling or shopping (I’d make him play a game I call “is this appropriate” whereby I show him articles of clothing and ask his fatherly opinion about what occasion the skirt/dress/accessory would work for). We haven’t done anything remotely considered quality time since getting to Hadley. Either a sign of the times (his job, my work load) or just natural distance. Or both.

We walk towards the campus squash courts and my father opens the locked door with his master key. We drop our racket covers and jackets on a bench and head into court two, the one with the glass back wall. I’m decent at squash — it’s all pivoting and bursts of energy, but dad is tall and able to reach obscenely high or far in front and capture my tricky corner shots. I always prefer to play games without a score — just for fun, no set time limit or end point. I still play hard, just not for some number. So when my dad shouts out his current lead, I make a face.

“No points, Dad,” I say and get ready to serve.

“Let’s keep it this time, Love.” He sees me stop moving and continues. “A little competition is good for you. Scoring isn’t a bad thing — it’s what the game is based on.”

“Oh,” I say in bitchy teen mode, “Here I was thinking that it was based on sportsmanship.”

He has his don’t use that tone with me young lady look on and adds, “One can have a healthy sense of competition and still be a good sport.”

Somehow this smacks me with the Lila-Robinson scenario and girlish competing for a guy and my own unsportsmanlike-like behavior. And then I’m distracted by counting the days since Lila was in my room. Has she tested yet? Why didn’t she call me if she did? Are she and Robinson back together? Did they even ever split or was that Cordelia’s master plan to confused me? And will a Lawrence-Hall progeny make an appearance eight-plus months from now?

I miss an easy shot and my dad wins.

“Good game,” I say and walk out of the court. We sit catching our breaths on the bench with the empty squash court in front of us.

“Want to go record shopping?” he asks. This is his truce. A couple times a year we go to the used records shops in Somerville and flip through the bins searching for the funniest record (best so far =
Bagels and Bongos
, traditional Jewish songs set to a Latin Rhythm). I nod. He smiles at me — a real smile for the first time in a while. “You want to drive?” I accept the sorry and hug him.

I’ve left two messages for Lila — one on email one on her cell phone — but who knows if she’s even checking messages from Val d’Isere, the alpine resort where she goes to ski and sip champagne in a hot tub. I’d be more focused on hearing from her but my mind and body are otherwise preoccupied with open mike night, which is in full swing.

Two bands, five solo singers, and one small gospel choir have come to perform here to a packed house (people are so thankful for something to do in between the lag that follows New Year’s). Mable’s barista, Bella, tends to the drinks and delicacies (enlarged rice crispy squares dotted with icing snowflakes, chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks rolled in rainbow sprinkles) while I circulate and work the sound system, ushering the next performer on the small stage until there’s no one left and it’s nearly midnight. Closing time.

With just the dregs (people, not coffee) of the crowd left, I decide to try my luck again and sing, unaccompanied. The hollow applause doesn’t bother me. I didn’t do it for the accolades. I just did it for me. When I come down from the stage and start to unplug the mike, I notice a pair of boots in front of me. Familiar boots.

“Hi,” Quiet Jacob says. “Mind if I do one quick song?”

“You’re back early,” I say. He looks cute, wind-blown. Secure.

“History term paper calls,” he says. He looks good. Vacation tanned and yet New England rugged with his navy blue jacket and gloves, which he takes off and puts on a tabletop so he can unlatch his guitar from the case.

“Wow — guitar and piano,” I say twisting my mouth to show I’m impressed. “Bi-musical.” When he doesn’t respond I add, “A man of many talents.” I wonder if this last part came out too complimentary — and now I’m the female equivalent of Cheeze-Whiz. Never mind.

He tunes up, strums, and sings a song I don’t know which he tells me later (later = when I’m complimenting him and trying not to gush since he’s really, really talented, with a voice like the earliest Dave Matthews mixed with Ryan Adam) is called
Which Will
and no, he didn’t write it, but it is a great tune.

I ask him to write down the lyrics for me — they’re all about which will you choose, this person or that, what roads in life you will set out on. He’s jotting the words onto paper while I clean up and the place is empty.

“You’ll love the ending,” he says and I don’t question him even for a second. “The whole song is just a great question. It’s so well done I feel almost guilty singing it.”

“I know just what you mean,” I say and look over his shoulder as he dots the last 'i'. “Sometimes I get the feeling that if all the amazing songwriters out there heard al the crappy renditions of their music, they’d cry.” Jacob laughs.

“Hey — isn’t bad flattery still flattery?” he asks.

“I guess,” I say, noticing how empty Slave is. Even Bella has waved her goodnights after mopping the floor and shutting the till. Jacob and I bring the glass canister of white and dark covered grahams over to the double chair and sit facing the deserted snowy street.

“Okay,” he says, unashamed of his cookie-full mouth, “Best summer you’ve had.”

I think for a minute and then say, “Hasn’t happened yet.”

“Fair enough,” he says.

We take turns posing questions and responding to real (worst insult) and hypothetical questions (would you rather travel the world or never leave this city but be famous) until we get bored. We head to the kitchen and create what we deem to be By Jove (Jove = a combination of the ‘J’ from his name and the ‘ove’ from mine), a sickly sweet but tasty concoction of cocoas and colas and hot milk, topped with mini marshmallows.

“I love sweet things,” I lick my spoon free of caramel sauce.

“One of the best things in life,” Jacob adds.

“What’re the other things?” I ask. It’s quiet in the kitchen and my question hangs there with extra weight.

Jacob looks down and licks a bit of chocolate from the corner of his mouth. “Love, I guess,” he says softly. I assume he means the emotion, not the girl in front of him and we sit there in not-awkward silence then clean up.

In the lounge, we sip and sing bits of songs that would feature in the soundtrack of our lives and then Jacob nearly makes me pee in my pants doing a lounge singer version of
Hey Ya
mixed with Jingle Bells. Bizarre and funny and so natural I don’t even care that when I go to the bathroom I have smears of chocolate and frosting on my lips like some post-ice skating kid, and my hair’s seen better days, weeks, months. I just look happy and am wheezing from laughing.

My final thought before giving way to sleep is how I’ve been too wrapped up having a blast to think or plan or worry or give directorial camera angles or script edits. This makes me smile and snuggle a little closer — not entwined, but nestled — to Jacob in the double chair, with no sense of the time nor of the consequences of not going home.