She didn’t collect any of the books she’d taken to carrying around. She didn’t even take her script. She could no longer see the words for all the markings.
She did, however, pick up the bag of scones from her desk and take them with her as she walked out the door. Julia looked pleased with that, at least.
Carmen carried the scones as far as the big front doors, where she dumped them in the garbage can.
At rehearsal she kept to herself. Andrew had an eye out for her, but he left her alone. Judy left her alone. Carmen didn’t feel invisible to them. She felt they were trusting her to find her way. Either that or they had given up on her, but she didn’t really believe that.
She sat in the back row, in the dark, and listened to Leontes rage about nothingness. She thought of the idea she’d had on the hillside the night she’d met Judy. Where there is nothing, there is the possibility of everything. When you live nowhere, you live everywhere.
She wished she had the Pants right now, but she didn’t. She had to rely on herself. You have to be like a turtle, she thought; you have to figure out how to bring your home along with you.
She saw Hermione, Perdita’s lost mother, bustle down the aisle in full statue costume and makeup. That was a fantasy, wasn’t it? Your mother turns into a statue. William Shakespeare knew a thing or two about wish fulfillment. The statue-mother stays exactly where you left her. You always know where to find her. She doesn’t move, doesn’t change, doesn’t even age.
Carmen thought of her mother. She was hardly a statue. She didn’t stay still for two minutes. And yet, even with her new husband and her new baby and her new house—with her happiness—Carmen always knew where to find her.
She thought of what it was to begrudge someone their happiness, and this brought to her a stinging set of feelings. She didn’t want to think about Julia. She was afraid she would begin to seethe, she’d be sucked into the maelstrom of her old temper and it wouldn’t help her. She didn’t have the stomach for it. She didn’t have the power. She didn’t have the wherewithal right now to stake that kind of claim.
Instead, she thought of Ryan’s walking shoes. She touched the Pants charm dangling from a chain around her neck. For some odd reason, she thought of Tibby’s old guinea pig, Mimi.
Julia was waiting for her outside the theater when they broke for lunch. Carmen saw her there waiting with a smile and two big sweating iced teas, sandwiches, and bags of chips. She beckoned to Carmen and Carmen felt the familiar reactions, outmoded and dislodged though they were. She felt the old pull of gratitude. She felt needy and uncertain. She still clung to the notion of a friend, even a crappy one.
But Carmen didn’t move. “No, thanks. Not today,” she said finally, and she walked right by.
Bridget fretted out loud in Lena’s bedroom. Once the euphoria of getting to see Eric had quieted a little, she’d realized she had problems.
“I told Perry we’d all have dinner together again. He actually seemed like he wanted to. I can’t blow it off.”
“So you can eat together,” Lena said.
“Together?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
There were many reasons why not. But were any good enough to prevent her from doing it?
“Okay, so what do I do with Eric?”
“What do you do with Eric?” Lena smiled craftily. “Only you can answer that.”
Bridget pretended to punch her. “Come on. I mean where do I put him?”
“In your house.”
“In my house?”
Lena shrugged. “That’s my only idea.”
Bee never brought anyone to her house. Not since middle school. Not even her friends. She hardly brought herself there. Certainly not a boyfriend. It was almost too strange to imagine. Did she need to ask her father? What would he make of it?
And more terrible, what would Eric think of them? How would he feel about her if he saw her house? If he met her father and brother? She had wanted to protect him from the truth.
“Lenny, you know how my house is.”
“I think Eric can handle it.”
“Do you honestly think that?”
“If he’s good enough for you, Bee, I honestly do.”
On the walk from Lena’s, Bee’s adrenaline started pumping. At home, she couldn’t be still if she tried. She started with vacuuming, then dusting. She sprayed Fantastik on the walls, trying to make them look a little less gray. She opened all the windows. She brought a fan down from the attic. She mopped. She found boxes in the garage and started putting the ugliest stuff in them—plates, pictures, papers, odd bits of furniture. She stuffed them all out of sight in the basement. She shook out the rugs. She tried to rearrange them to cover the vomitously ugly wall-to-wall carpets. She cleaned the bathroom tile on her hands and knees. She stole more flowers from the neighbors’ yard.
When her father arrived home, he looked as though he’d found himself in the wrong place.
“Hey, Dad,” she said. “My friend…actually my boyfriend is coming to stay for a night. Is that all right?”
Her father’s confusion was almost impenetrable. She had to explain it four times before he showed any light of understanding.
“Where will he stay?” he finally asked, with his faraway look.
“In the den. On the couch.”
“In my den?”
“Yes. Unless you want him in your room.” She meant that as a joke, but it didn’t go over like one.
“I don’t think so,” her father said solemnly.
“In the den, then? Is that okay?”
He nodded and she went back to her cleaning, getting crazier as the hours passed. At five o’clock she corralled the two of them in the kitchen.
“No headphones outside of your rooms,” she commanded.
They both nodded fearfully.
“Try to circulate a little. If Eric talks to you, it’s a plus if you answer.”
They both nodded again. They didn’t even look offended.
“We’ll have dinner at seven-thirty, okay? Dad, we’ll have the leftover pesto and I’ll make a salad.”
More nodding.
“That’s it. Just…be yourselves,” she finished, which was the least helpful thing she could possibly have said.
By seven o’clock she ran out of steam. She floated along the hallway feeling sorry and hopeless and sad. She wished Eric weren’t coming to this house. She wished she hadn’t bullied her father and brother into hostile resistance. She wished she lived any life other than this one. Sometimes the past and the future could not be forced together.
But when she walked past Perry’s room she saw him cleaning up his desk. When she went downstairs she saw her father carefully folding sheets and a blanket onto the couch in his den.
She’d thought they had nothing to offer her, but they did. She’d thought her efforts were lost on them, but maybe they weren’t. She’d thought they had no power to hurt her or make her happy, but at this moment she knew that wasn’t true.
They had meager offerings, all three of them. But if they could align what little they had, maybe they could start to make it better.
Tibby called Brian late on Sunday afternoon. “Will you meet me at the picnic table?” she asked him. It was their significant place, site of their first kiss. It stood under a giant copper beech tree in a tiny triangular park equidistant from their houses.
“Okay,” he said.
“Now?”
She got there first. She pointed her face in the direction of his house and watched for him. At last he came, the sun drooping faintly behind him. She felt joy spilling over in her chest. Something about his face made her stand up and greet him with her arms. She put them around him courageously. He
let her.
She took a step to the side so he could sit at the end of the picnic table. She was grateful that he obliged.
The perfect thing about this table was that when he sat on the end of it and she stood between his legs, they were at the exact right height for seeing each other eye to eye and also for kissing. They had done it many times in the past. She didn’t try kissing him this time. But she put her face against his so her mouth was near his ear. “I am so sorry,” she said.
He pulled away and looked at her carefully.
“I got scared. I panicked. I forgot everything that was important.”
Sometimes it seemed to her that he could extract everything from her mind with his eyes. Sometimes it seemed like her words just got in the way of it.
“I knew that, Tibby. I understood. Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”
A blink of her eyes released unexpected tears. “Because I can’t lie to you as well as I lie to myself.”
He nodded, seeming to understand even that.
“I promise I won’t do that again,” she said. His eyes tested her words, but she wasn’t scared. She knew they were true.
Softly she held his two hands in her two hands. Brutally she shoved aside her chronic instincts of pride and fear. She had no business with them now. “I missed you,” she said. “I wish we could go back.”
He shrugged. “We can’t.”
“We can’t?” Her agony stretched her words out over the abyss. Had she been wrong in believing that he would forgive her?
“We can go forward, though.”
“Together?” She did nothing to temper the abject hope in her face.
“I hope so.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I won’t be going to NYU, though.”
She winced. “Because of me. Because I ruined everything.” She was prepared to eat the blame like ice cream if he’d take her back.
“It’s all right. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing.”
“I’ll make it up. I really will. I’ll take the bus back every weekend.”