The Museum of Heartbreak (24 page)

ON MONDAY, KEATS WAS WAITING
for me in chemistry, giving me what was clearly meant to be an übercharming boyfriend smile.

I ignored him and sat down, pulling out my chemistry book and flipping to the day's reading.

I was tired from last night. After saying good-bye to Grace, Miles, Oscar, and May, I went home, ready to happily fall asleep thinking about the journal. Instead, I couldn't stop fixating on Keats's crappy behavior: his attitude when he discovered his story hadn't been picked, how I could hear his and Cherisse's irritating whispered murmuring throughout most of the reading—how everyone probably could.

I must have fallen asleep at some point; my alarm jerked me up. But if I didn't already recall being awake at four, the bags under my eyes when I got to chemistry would have confirmed it.

“How are you, babe?” he asked.

I grunted, feeling distinctly unpleasant.

“Scout.” He reached across the desk and grabbed my hand. “I was up all night feeling like crap about how we ended things yesterday. Let me make it up to you?”

“I don't know,” I said.

Mrs. Carroll came in as the first bell rang.

“I know, I know. Last night wasn't my thing. But you are. You're my girl. Please?”

I had never been someone's girl before.

Maybe this was just what relationships were like—you fought, you made up, you made out.

I felt myself thawing. “My birthday is on Saturday. Want to come over and have dinner with me and my parents?” I asked.

“Celebrating the day you were born? The best day in the history of the world? Scout, I wouldn't miss it.” He leaned across the aisle and kissed me in front of everyone as the second bell rang.

It wasn't until halfway through Mrs. Carroll's endless lecture on the Bohr model of the atom that I realized Keats hadn't apologized for last night.

•  •  •

On Saturday, when Keats got to my house for my birthday dinner, he was forty-two minutes late. I opened the door, anger making my breath fast, but he was clearly flustered, his cheeks red, his nose running.

“I texted you—where were you?” I asked.

“Sorry, I'm so sorry, Scout. Subway problems. You're totally mad at me, aren't you?” He stood hesitantly at the doorway, his chest heaving, and I wanted to point out that he should have left
earlier, that in New York you
always
give yourself a subway-delay buffer when you're going somewhere important, but he was here, celebrating my birthday, a big bouquet of pink peonies in one hand, a small wrapped gift in another.

Let it go, let it go, Penelope.

“Come on in,” I said.

He handed me the flowers and started to unpeel all his layers of clothing—hat, scarf, gloves, two coats.

“Is your young man here, darling daughter?” my dad called from the kitchen.

I rolled my eyes. “Get ready,” I whispered to Keats.

He smiled, taking the flowers back.

“Hey!” I said.

“They're for your mom,” he said, and I took his hand and led him to the welcome warmth of the kitchen.

The sweet smell of my mom's tomato sauce as it bubbled on the stovetop filled the room. The windows were fogged up, the whole place on the edge of being slightly too hot but somehow managing to be just right.

“Hey, Mom and Dad, this is Keats.”

My dad put down a glass of wine and jumped up from his seat at the table, extending his hand to Keats's. “Theodore Marx. Nice to meet you.”

“You too, sir.”

“Please, call me Theo.”

Keats nodded. “Sure, Mr. . . .” He stumbled, turning red. “I mean Theodore, Theo.”

I felt myself thaw even more—there was something endearing
about a nervous Keats. “Here, Mrs. Marx, these are for you,” Keats said, handing her the peonies.

“Keats, these are lovely. Thank you so much. Let me find something to put them in. Have a seat, guys.” She started digging under the sink for a vase.

My dad began pulling out the dinner plates.

“I can help,” I said, but my dad motioned me back to the table. “It's your birthday. The one day of the year you don't have to help out.”

My mom started spooning fettuccini on the plates. “So, Keats, is your family from New York?”

“Um, yeah, my mom grew up on the Upper East Side, but my dad grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut,” Keats said, twisting at a paper napkin. “They met between junior and senior year at Yale, when they were summering at Martha's Vineyard.”

“Ooh, la-di-da,” my dad said.

“Theo!” Mom said.

“Dad!” I said.

“Nah, it's okay,” Keats said, settling in the chair. “We're pretty much as Waspy as you get. My parents' wedding party included both a Vanderbilt and a DuPont. But if it gets me early acceptance into Yale, I'll take it.”

“Hmmm,” my dad said.

I cringed. There were few things my dad liked to complain about more than Ivy League privilege and the benefits that came with it.

“Dad, Keats is super into college football,” I said, cutting off my dad's counterpoint at the pass.

“Yeah, my dad and I went to the Rose Bowl last year,” Keats said.

Mom put our plates down on the table, steam rising from each, and I reached for the bread basket and passed it to Keats.

My dad leaned forward, excited. “So you got to see OSU take Michigan to the bank?”

Keats grimaced. “Um, yeah.”

“Don't tell me you're a Michigan fan,” my dad said.

At this point Keats might as well have declared himself a creationist and a Republican, considering that after Ivy League snobbery and Michigan fandom those were the only two Theodore Marx deal breakers left on the list.

Keats cringed and nodded, and my dad grunted.

Time to change the subject.

“Mom,” I said, wiping tomato sauce off the corner of my mouth. “Keats and his brother are planning to take a road trip for a few weeks this summer that replicates Jack Kerouac's trip from
On the Road
.”

“Oh goodness,” she replied. “Isn't your mom worried about you two boys doing that? What if your car breaks down or one of you gets sick?”

I cringed.

“Uh, we're still figuring that stuff out. But I think it'll be okay?” Keats said.

My dad, sensing an opportunity, jumped back in. “Keats, has Penelope told you about Willo?”

I shook my head imperceptibly at Dad, but he ignored me.

“You'll have to come to the museum event next weekend! It's going to be amazing. You see—”

“What's the museum event?” Keats asked me, cutting him off.

“Oh, a thing for my dad's work, no big deal.”

“No big deal?” My dad slapped the table good-naturedly. “It's only going to be the most amazing dinosaur exhibit we've had to date.”

Mom smiled, rolling her eyes. “He's so modest,” she said to Keats.

Dad got that telltale crazy-professor expression on his face.

“Willo, the dinosaur everyone thought had a heart!” my dad proclaimed. “Of course, it was probably just sand at the end of the day, but Willo's very celebrity allowed us to mount the exhibit in the first place. The dinosaur circulatory system is fascinating. . . .”

It was just the beginning. Keats nodded politely as my dad steadfastly plowed over any of my mom's and my efforts to politely change the conversation.

Finally, when a ten-minute discussion of the wonders of the dinosaur circulatory system started to veer into the marvels of the reproductive drive, my mom abruptly stood up.

“How about cake?” she asked. “Theodore, come over here and help me with the candles.”

“Sorry,” I said under my breath to Keats. “When he gets going, it's hard to stop him.”

“I thought we'd be in there forever,” he said.

And it was weird then, because even though mere seconds ago I wanted to clobber my dad to get him to stop talking about Willo, I didn't want Keats to agree with me. I wanted him to tell me my dad was cool.

Because he was.

He was
my
dad. Sure, he wasn't old-time movie-star suave, and he was crap at picking up conversational cues, but when he talked
about what he loved, his eyes glowed with pure magic. And I loved that about him.

I thought about saying something, but my parents dimmed the lights and began singing the opening bars of “Happy Birthday.” There were seventeen candles glowing above my favorite type of cake, the one I'd had for every birthday that I could remember: boxed Funfetti mix with strawberry icing.

My parents sang, and Keats smiled, resting a hand on my knee.

His palm felt like five hundred tons.

When it came time to blow out the candles, I felt strangely empty, like I didn't have any breath left in me to make a wish, or any wish left in me to breathe. I thought about Eph's dinosaur drawing, the one in the thrift store, about things changing, and about how a year ago I wouldn't have been able to imagine celebrating my birthday with a handsome boyfriend.

And without Eph.

I didn't make a wish.

Keats declined a piece of cake. “Artificial coloring,” he said, shrugging apologetically.

“Your loss,” my dad said, cutting himself an extra-big piece.

Soon after, my parents retired to the living room, and Keats and I sat quietly in the kitchen as I finished my cake.

From his pocket he pulled out the small wrapped box. “Here,” he said, pushing it my way.

“Keats, you didn't have to—”

“I
wanted
to,” he said. “Happy birthday, Scout.”

The present was tiny and exquisitely wrapped.

“Nice job with this,” I said, trying to conjure up the girl I was a
year ago, the one who would have given her left arm to have a curly-haired boy give her a beautiful little wrapped gift on her birthday.

“Clerk at the store,” he said, smiling, and I automatically smiled back.

I opened the box. Nestled on a deep blue velvet cushion was a tiny gold wishbone charm on a gold necklace.

My first thought was,
I hate gold.

My second was,
This was expensive.

And then,
This is not me at all.

“Wow,” I said, pulling it out.

“Here, let me put it on you.” He swept my hair out of the way and, without asking, took off my subway-token chain, which I had rescued from my purse after the launch party. He handed it to me, putting the new necklace around my neck.

I studied the subway token in my palm, the chain kinked, the coin tarnished, as his fingers fumbled with the tiny clasp, his warm breath against my skin.

“There,” Keats said. “You're gorgeous, Scout.”

No one had ever called me gorgeous before.

I slid my subway token in my pocket and fiddled with the tiny wishbone, sliding it back and forth on the chain.

It was my seventeenth birthday, and not only had I finally been kissed, I finally had what should have been my fairy tale, my John Hughes, everything-turns-out-awesome romance.

Only I wasn't sure I wanted it anymore.

•  •  •

The next day, after school ended, we took the subway to West Fourth and then walked to his brownstone.

I thought about the last time I was there, his First of October party, and how that night was perfect.

“Anyone home?” Keats called as he unlocked the door, and when no one answered, he took my hand and I followed him, the old wooden stairs creaking slightly. When we got to his room, I dropped my bag on his floor and put my coat and scarf on his desk chair. Sitting on his bed felt too forward, so I slid down next to it and stretched my legs in front of me, leaning my head back against the side.

He clicked on his computer, and the Flaming Lips started filtering through the room like a subtle headache, one that won't leave.

I
told
him I hated this band.

Keats sat on the edge of his bed and patted the spot next to him. “C'mere.”

“I don't know,” I said.

“We don't have to do anything you don't want to do,” he said. “It's just more comfortable.”

I rose, smoothed my skirt, and sat down next to him.

Without another word Keats leaned over and started to kiss me, slow and careful, starting at the exposed spot on the slope of my neck and moving up, until he kissed my eyebrows, the spot between them, the gold wishbone sitting against the pulse of my throat.

My fingers felt cold.

Keats moved to my lips and I kissed him back, returning to the familiar taste of his mouth.

His hands pushed my shoulders down, and I lay on the bed, and he was above me, kissing my collarbone, the hollow dip in my neck.

I raked my hands through his curls, the softness of them.

“Your hair smells good,” I said, and he was sliding my shirt up halfway, running a hand lightly across my belly, and I shivered, and he was leaning down and kissing my stomach, gently.

“Keats,” I said, and my skin was tingling awake, and I realized no one had touched my stomach like this before, it was new land that he was discovering, and he lifted my shirt higher.

I closed my eyes, letting him kiss me, letting go . . .

. . . and I saw:

Miles looking affectionately at Oscar.

Kieran's confidence around Grace.

The three freckles across Eph's nose . . .

My eyes shot open. I pushed out from under Keats.

“Do you want me to slow down?” He seemed so regretful that I wasn't sure what to say.

He traced my clavicle, and goose bumps rose on my arms. I bit my lip.

No. I needed to be sure about this. This, this was a big deal.

I stood up, straightened my shirt down, smoothed my hair back into place. As I did, my eyes fell upon the picture of Keats and Emily, still sitting on his bedside table.

He saw me notice it.