The Disenchantments (8 page)

Meg stops pushing but cuts the consoling short.

“Question three is for Colby. ‘Colby, if you could make out with any of us, who would you choose?’”

She smiles brightly at me. I lock eyes with her and force myself to smile back.

“You, of course,” I say. “I’m going to go outside now and imagine it.”

I grab my music and my headphones and go out onto the balcony. I lie down on top of Alexa’s sleeping bag and
look at the stars. Even through the closed glass door I can hear them giggling, reading my question, saying, “Bev, it’s pretty clear that one’s from Colby.” I listen for Bev’s voice but I don’t hear it.

I call Uncle Pete.

“Hey-it’s-me-everything’s-fine,” I say, which is what I’ve said since I was a kid and my mom’s voice was panicked when I would call her from a friend’s house. I’d be calling to know what time she was getting me or if I should wait to eat dinner, and she’d respond by saying something like,
Thank God, I thought you might have been hurt
.

“How’s Melinda?” Pete asks.

“She’s running great,” I say. “No problems yet.”

“Don’t say ‘yet.’ Why would you say ‘yet’?”

“Did I say that? What I meant was she’s running so smoothly that I have no worries at all.”

“Better,” he says. “Have you been checking her oil?”

“No, should I be?”

“Do it in the morning. Just to be safe. There’s extra oil under the driver’s seat if you need it. Fill her up with that, not any other kind.”

“Okay.”

He goes on for a while, asking me more questions about the bus and how it’s running, and even though he’s worried over nothing it’s sort of calming to answer his questions and to say yes to all of his requests.

“What are you doing?” I ask him once he seems less worried.

“I was looking through some things from the old days. Tour stuff. You’ve got me feeling nostalgic.”

“What kind of tour stuff?”

“Some snapshots. Jesus, I was a good-looking kid. I had almost forgotten. Also, business cards from every place we played a show. Sometimes we played at people’s houses. They didn’t have business cards so we’d have them write their names and addresses on scratch paper to go in the tour journal.”

“I want to see the pictures.”

“Yeah, there are some great ones. I found one of the night your mom and dad met.”

He says this and, for a moment, I feel like I’m sinking. There is a question I need to ask, but I don’t know how to ask it. An uneasy feeling that’s been getting stronger the longer Ma has stayed away.

“Have you heard from her?” I say.

“We talked a few nights ago. I had to keep reminding her that I don’t know French.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Paris, her classes, your trip.”

The sinking gives way to nausea.

“How she’s so proud of you for making your own decisions,” Pete continues. “Living your own life. You know,
she was worried at first about you not going straight to college, but we talked about it together. I told her she raised the best kind of person: an independent thinker.”

Pete
, I want to say.
Something happened.

“Because, like me, you’re a traveler. But unlike me, you have a plan. And unlike your mother, you know what it is you really want. You aren’t going to squander your opportunities.”

“Uh-huh,” I mutter.

“It’s inspiring, you know that? Knowing you’re out there now and soon you’ll be country-hopping with Bev, spending time on those islands you’re crazy about. Your dad and I were talking last night about hitting the road in Melinda for a couple weeks after you go. Visiting the old haunts, seeing how they’ve changed. You make me want to stir up my life a little.”

I want to tell Pete everything, but how can I—especially after this? He never had his own kids, so somehow I’ve become the only child to all three of them, and no matter how great they are, even if they hold secret conferences to discuss my choices and praise me, it’s a lot of pressure to carry their hope and admiration and worry all on my own.

I want to ask Pete to tell me what’s next after all of this. But it’s a question that feels too huge, too impossible. So I let the conversation end, promise a million things about Melinda, and tell Uncle Pete good night.

It’s still warm outside but a breeze has picked up. I browse through song choices and settle on “Modern Girl,” the track Bev listened to on repeat for the entire summer before ninth grade. I choose this song because it’s connected to what I was trying to remember earlier, after Bev didn’t answer the question, and even though I would rather be thinking about anything else, I can’t stop thinking about what else she’s keeping from me.

I close my eyes as the guitar starts.

“Listen to the lyrics,” I remember Bev saying.

“They’re cool. I like the donut part.”

“They’re perfect.”

“Yeah, they’re good,” I said. “They’re simple.”

Bev started the song over again.

“Listen,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve memorized it.”

She looked discouraged, and then I got the feeling that this was about more than how good the lyrics were. We were quiet. Carrie was singing,
Hunger makes me a modern girl
.

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

She turned up the volume.
My whole life was like a picture of a sunny day.

In the other room, her mom and dad were watching TV. I could hear them laughing. There was a line between her eyebrows, her mouth curved down. The lines came again.

I tried to figure out what she meant.

“Has something changed?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me.

I spent the rest of the night trying to get her to tell me what it was, but she didn’t. She just played the song over and over as we talked about other things. I thought about what my mom told me in one of our many awkward conversations about Bev and me now that we were older, about how teenage girls can be complicated and mysterious creatures. My mother had never been so right about anything. Because here was Bev, sitting in the bedroom that was as familiar as my own, looking at me with the same eyes I’d been looking into since we were nine, trying to get me to understand something by just listening to a song. Maybe there was something important that she wanted me to know. But probably Ma was right. Probably all Bev was trying to tell me was that she was now older and therefore complicated and mysterious and so fucking attractive and troubled in the way that all teenagers are troubled.

So I just listened to the song and watched every gesture she made, and searched for the clues to figure her out, and then the night got later and her dad appeared in the doorway to move me out to the couch, and I said good night and thought so much about what it would feel like to touch her that I forgot about everything else.

Later, Alexa wakes me with a squeeze of my shoulder. She takes an earbud out of one ear. “Hey,” she says, “we’re going to bed now, okay?”

It must be at least 3:00
A.M
. The air has gotten cooler.

“Were you talking to your dad earlier? When you first came out here?”

I shake my head. “Uncle Pete.”

“I have some questions for them. Research, for the play. Next time you’re going to call them will you let me know?”

“Sure,” I say. “How was the game?”

“It was good,” she says. “We left something for you on your pillow.”

I brush my teeth with Meg. We try not to crowd each other, take turns spitting into the gray, cracked sink. Bev isn’t here, but I don’t ask where she’s gone. She’s probably outside, leaning against a wall and smoking cigarettes like someone in a movie.

I slip off my jeans by the side of my bed, and see what they’ve left for me. On the other side of the slips of paper, Meg and Alexa have answered my questions. Meg’s says,
No, but that’s sweet of you to ask
; Alexa has written,
the color of melinda
.

Bev didn’t leave an answer. Of course.

I pull the comforter off the bed and settle under the sheets. Soon after, I hear the door opening and shutting, half a dozen locks being turned or slid into place. I close
my eyes and imagine that an hour has passed. Everyone has fallen asleep. I feel a weight on the mattress. Bev’s lips graze my ear. She says,
I need to be with you.
I turn, and kiss her, and her tongue is soft and cool.

I knew you’d change your mind
, I say. And everything we do we need to do so quietly, careful not to wake the others. She gasps every time I touch her, and she digs her fingers into my back because she’s never felt as good as I’m making her feel.

Suddenly, there is a clicking sound. Brightness behind my eyelids. I open my eyes to Bev digging through her purse in a white tank top and tiny yellow shorts. She’s moved a lamp from Meg’s bedside table to the floor next to her. I watch her open a little white tube and put stuff on her lips, and even though she’s across the room I know that the stuff is clear and smells like mint and makes her lips shiny. She screws the cap back on and drops it back into her purse. She finds a pen next, rips a strip of paper from one of Meg’s trashy magazines, and writes something down. Then she folds the scrap of paper in half and drops it into her bag. This is what Bev does instead of making to-do lists or writing words on her hand. I wonder what she’s hoping to remember.

She sets down the bag and walks silently to the foot of my bed. I close my eyes again, and hope. There is the noise of the blanket rustling, but no weight on the mattress, nothing
whispered. I look for her again. She’s moved my comforter to the couch, and now she’s draping it over her lap. She moves the lamp closer, takes a piece of driftwood in one hand and a carving knife in the other, and works all night long.

I know this, because I don’t sleep either.

Sunlight in an unfamiliar room.

A scratchy pillowcase.

The smell of coffee and eggs and burned toast.

I open my eyes and sit up, and Meg, pink haired in a red dress, hands me a mug. Steam rises.

“You’re amazing,” I say.

“I know,” she says.

When I carry my coffee into the kitchen, Bev is already seated with her toast half finished, reading Meg’s gossip magazine. Her hair is messy, sticking up on one side. Normally I’d make some joke and smooth it down for her, but I keep my hands by my sides. I don’t know what it would
feel like to touch her anymore. I sit in a green vinyl chair, and Meg sets a plate in front of me.

“Alex-a,”
she calls.
“Your eggs are getting cold.”

There are only two chairs, so Alexa hops onto the windowsill.

She stares in wonder at the eggs and toast, and I know how she feels, how everyday things are rare and exciting when they turn up in unfamiliar places.

“How did you do this?” Alexa asks.

“Breakfast is only a part of it,” Meg says. “Today is going to be fantastic. What happened is this: I woke up really early and came in here because I was thirsty. So I opened the cupboard and saw that there were plates and a pan and some mugs, and then I looked up and I saw…” Meg pauses for effect. I take another bite of eggs.

“This!” She points to a woodcarving on the wall. Like the well-trained art students we are, we stand and gather around it.

“It looks pretty old,” Alexa says.

“Yeah,” I say, “but the colors are still so saturated.”

The colors are the arches of a rainbow, and a sun rising over the dips in two green hills. In black italics, under the hills, is written:
Good morning, sunshine
. Despite our cocked heads and intent gazes, this is not something that would ever hang in a museum. It’s more like something a kid would make in a wood-shop class, or something left over from the
seventies, hanging on a motel wall because there is no better place for it.

But, still. I like it.

“So I thought,
This is perfect!
Obviously. And then I knew right away that I needed to get it tattooed. I’ve been searching for the right tattoo forever, and now I’ve found it. My next step was to find a good tattoo shop nearby, so I went into the market and that girl was there again and she said that her friend, some guy named Jasper, works at a place half a mile from here and that he’ll be there today at eleven. And then I bought some eggs and bread and coffee.”

Alexa steps back from the carving.

“Don’t you think you should think about it?” she asks. “This feels kind of fast.”

“It doesn’t matter that it’s fast,” Meg says. “It’s perfect.”

“Maybe you could think about it for the next couple of days, though. You might regret it. This is your body and your body is sacred.”

Meg shakes her head as though she is hearing crazy, incomprehensible things.

“But, Alexa,” she says, “the beautiful thing about me is that I never regret anything. Ever. If I had gotten your question last night I would have disappointed all of you.”

Meg looks at me. She looks at Bev.

“Guys,” she says to us. “Help a girl out.”

I can see that Alexa’s worried, so I feel like an asshole when I say it, but I can’t lie.

“I think it’s rad,” I tell Meg. “I think you should do it.”

“Thank you,” she says. “Bev?”

Bev leans against the wall and contemplates. I follow her gaze as it moves from Meg to the carving and back to Meg. She takes a slow sip of coffee and swallows.

“Yeah,” she says. “It suits you.”

“All right!” Meg smiles, triumphant. “It’s three against one. Jasper, here I come.”

The conversation shifts to the carving itself, and how Meg will need to bring it with her, and how it will probably require stealing—a prospect that in no way excites Meg, who never steals and never lies and believes wholeheartedly in karma. I don’t listen that closely, though, because I’m busy watching Bev lean against the counter and sip her coffee, not sure how I feel about this small agreement.

Finally, Alexa stands on her tiptoes to reach the carving, and, sighing, removes it from its hook.

“Done. Okay?” And she shakes her head as if to ask if she really has to do everything for us.

The tattoo parlor is in the upstairs of an old building with high ceilings and shiny white walls. Huge windows open to telephone wires and blue sky. Meg plops down on a couch; Alexa and Bev and I grab binders of tattoo designs; and a
skinny kid walks out from the room in the back and says, surprised, “Hey, I know you guys.”