And Then Things Fall Apart (10 page)

No response to my business letter. Even though he's a wrestler, Matt can be a wuss. I lie here, sipping iced tea from a glass with hunting scenes painted on it. I'm dressed, sort of. I mean, I wouldn't go out in this ensemble, but it works for a housebound pox victim on the mend. Hair in a clip, T-shirt, bra, and underwear, totally comfy flowy jersey miniskirt. Flip-flops. Pox hither and thither on my so-white-it's-blue skin. I don't usually miss Matt like this, but today, because I am feeling better, because Gram's out food shopping, because my adulterous father is meeting with the soda syrup rep and Vienna meat distributor (thanks for the Post-it note, Dad), I feel so lonely I could die.

My addiction to
The Bell Jar
is interconnected with everything else going on with me of late. It is a work of great emotion and drama, and so is the Great Dine & Dash Divorce. And so is My Life. It's not so much that I identify with Esther (though I do). I just appreciate the way she
sees the world. The ways she describes things, the things she finds funny, the ridiculous situations she gets herself into. Having this quasi-fictional character around all the time is comforting. She's not an invisible friend. It's more like she is living in a dollhouse in my brain. She is eating raw hamburger, breaking up with Buddy, playing with mercury on her bed at the asylum, working on her poems, all in the frontal lobe of my own head. Her entire existence is trying to figure out what her life is supposed to be while her heart breaks a little bit every day over the tragedy of being alive. And the writing is inspiring. I read
The Bell Jar
and I feel less alone. I feel smart. I feel like I have total permission to be as much of a smart-ass as Esther is because being a smart-ass is always preferable to being a dumb-ass. And to be entirely honest with myself, I don't always understand the poetry. Or parts of
The Bell Jar
. Or Sylvia Plath in general. But that is what is appealing to me! I don't understand most of what goes on in my own family, often in my own heart.

Speaking of the genius within, Gram hasn't mentioned anything remotely related to my pages recently, which is great news. Superb. I wanted to fake her out, plant big red herrings about my crystal meth addiction and penpal boyfriend in prison, but the real things that are happening in my actual life are disturbing enough. I never thought that the mundane hurts and betrayals of family and friends
would be ten times more life-changing and gut-wrenching than dramatic made-up situations in fiction. Nothing is as it seems in my life anyway. Everything feels surreal. Mom's call really freaked me out the other night. As if I don't have enough to worry about, now I'm adding alcoholism and child abandonment to the list.

Being locked away with the chicken pox isn't helping matters. I haven't been outside in days. I have been kidnapped and held in an undisclosed location. When I'm not typing (and sometimes even when I am), I feel like I am underwater, trudging along the bottom of the ocean in weighted boots while Judge Judy, typewriters, and babies in jars float past my diver's mask, as elusive and ephemeral as jellyfish. I feel like everyone who is supposed to care about me—Mom, Dad, Gram, Nic, even Matt—are all on the surface, not looking deep enough to find me. Maybe when I come up for air, it will turn out that I don't really have chicken pox, Dad didn't really sleep with Amanda, Mom isn't really in California, Matt really is the person I thought he was when we met. And Aurora? She doesn't even exist. Ha. Ha. Ha. It's all been an elaborate mermaid dream. How about we turn your tail into legs and just get on with it?

I'm feeling better, anyway.

Although the coverlet still feels like it will smash my lungs to my spine if I don't keep it off me, I think
the fever's coming down, because my hair has stopped hurting. Never fear. I still feel like typing. About nothing and everything. Matt mostly, today. I didn't dream about him last night as much as I thought of him during the day, between naps, egg salad sandwiches, and JJ. I thought of him, dreamily. When Matt and I are alone on the L-shaped couch, there is nothing else. No family, no D&D, no school, or even time. This voice in my brain that is, essentially,
me
, and talks all the freaking time? It is blissfully silent as Matt flutters his hands across my stomach and up the insides of my thighs, making me shiver. He smells like Downy fabric softener and sometimes tastes like it too. For the record, I don't use softener. It is made with animal fat. That's part of what gives it its softening effect. I don't like the idea of—basically butter—clinging to my clothes or towels, but I love it on Matt. He smells like clean comfort and tastes like flowers, mint, and salt. His arms are hard, his hips and thighs solid with muscle, mouth hot, tongue alive, and all I want is wanting when we are in the darkness in the L.

When we're on the L, he stares straight through to my center, his mouth half-open, pupils dilated. I am his drug. His must-have, surrender or die. He is so hard against my thigh I can feel the pulse in his lap through the denim. And when he whispers “You are so beautiful,” I want
him to bite right through my neck as we rub against each other, wet feral creatures.

That was just for you, Gram.

The thing is, we never really get much further than that. Although I do not want to die a virgin, I'm not quite ready to not be one anymore. Despite everything, Matt's very polite about my virginity situation. Sometime he treats me like a burn victim, like he doesn't want to touch me too much because something might sting or ooze or get sticky (!). Having said that, he totally knows how far he can push me without pissing me off. Or, before I freak out. Which are usually the same thing.

When you are Dorothy and the rest of your life is the tornado, the last thing you want to do is add lost virginity to the mix. For real. But if I were looking for the perfect candidate for my historic deflowering, it would be Matt. His beautiful face and body are merely a bonus to the amazing guy he is on the inside.

Have I mentioned that he makes dinner once a week for his family? And not just mac 'n' cheese and frozen pizzas, but roasted chickens. Mashed potatoes. Sautéed spinach with garlic. And they light a candle and all sit and eat dinner together. I'm not even kidding.

Once, I helped Matt make a family dinner of potato
curry from a recipe I found online. We chopped and stirred and set the table, and sometimes it felt like we were little kids playing house, and other times it felt like we were totally married. And I loved it. We sat there by candlelight, talking about
The Scarlet Letter
and
A Tale of Two Cities
with his parents while I held Matt's hand under the table. I haven't felt that safe or calm since before my parents started the restaurant. The potato curry was definitely missing some important ingredient we must have forgotten, but Matt went on and on about how delicious and amazing it was, and just thinking about it now is making me burn up with love. I should just look past any and all of his faults and love him to pieces. Oh, but for the virginity.

I'm as neurotic as Esther Greenwood when it comes to this particular subject. I want to be both a virgin and a nonvirgin at the same time. Which is impossible. Just because I don't want to “lose” my “virginity” doesn't mean I wouldn't mind misplacing it for a while. It's exhausting, this always thinking about it and wondering about it so it becomes this great fulcrum of my existence. But much to my chagrin, that's exactly what's happening.

Even Esther saw the world as being split into people who had done it and people who hadn't. She imagined that once she slept with someone, she would transform in an invisible yet spectacular way. And for some girls, I think this is true. The Monday after the weekend of the senior formal, some
girls seemed more alive than the others. They tossed the hair from their eyes in a new, knowing, and glamorous way. They even rotated the combinations at their lockers with a new sensuousness that to me indicated that over the weekend they had happily abandoned their virginity at the side of the road. It was
obvious
that there was absolutely a before and an after.

Anyway, I've seen Matt's penis before, Gram. And I use the word “penis” because that is what it looked like. There are really no better words to describe it.

It wasn't like I woke up that morning, looked at the calendar, and thought,
Hmm what a fantastic day to take a good long look at my boyfriend's nakedness
. That whole Saturday was weird. Raining and humid. The streets smelled like wet puppy, and the air seemed to press against my skin, making me languid and tired. Matt's parents were away for the day. I didn't have much going on, aside from pulling all the Post-it notes from my copy of
The Bell Jar
so when I read it again it would be with fresh eyes.

Usually when he called, I'd tell Matt to meet me at the D&D because there was free food. There's an old Centipede video game in the corner. And there were no beds. The only door you could close was the freezer. But Amanda and Dad had already been in there, contaminating the cheese with their illicit lust, so when Matt asked if I wanted to come over, what was I going to say—no?

Being in his house, just the two of us, was beginning to feel wrong and exciting, how I imagine shoplifting must feel. It was the same way I felt fake smoking with Amanda, reading
The Bell Jar
in algebra class, or eating spoonfuls of mayonnaise from the giant jar. At Matt's house there were big melted glass sculptures and copper cowboys swinging lassos in a giant oak bookcase. There were stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, which made it feel different from our house. Fancier and bigger and just overall a lot nicer. But more than that, it seemed more solid than our house. Half its contents were not about to be put inside a U-Haul and dragged away against their will. Everything, everyone, belonged there. I felt like a total intruder.

Up in Matt's room I sat on the edge of his unmade bed and leaned back as nonchalantly as I could, considering. The very smell of him emanating from his sheets made my breath quicken. Matt stood between my knees, bumping them farther apart with his khaki-covered thighs. And then he leaned forward and said, “Hi, Keek,” before doing that thing where he nuzzles his nose under mine till he finds the very center of my mouth and then goes in for the kill. As he was kissing me, he ran his finger from my earlobe down the front of my black T-shirt, bouncing over a nipple like it was a speed bump, and kept going down to my navel until I was practically panting. He stood up, his mouth hanging open a little, a slight bulge in his pants.

“Wanna see it?” Matt asked, breathless, and I was all,
Oh, really?
But I looked at him and said, “Well, all right, sure, I guess,” which is almost
exactly
what Esther said in a similar situation. Life imitating art, or what?

Before I knew it or could change my mind, Matt practically ran toward this empty-looking fish tank. My darling boyfriend rustled some leaves, lifted a piece of bark, gently cupped
something
between his hands, and walked toward the bed, where I was sitting, as prim and innocent as Miss-freaking-Muffet. Matt opened his hands as if opening a book, and there, sitting in his palms like a beating heart, was a—tarantula. The spider was the size of an iPhone. With fur. And eyes. And fangs. And then I was wishing it
was
his stupid penis, because that would have freaked me out sofa king less.

Despite my interest in eco-chic living and my high regard for the animal kingdom, my whole being wanted to leap up and grab the nearest broom, hockey stick, or rolled-up
Wrestling USA
magazine and squash it into a furry bloody mess before it killed us all. I could only think of it leaping onto my face and paralyzing me with venom so that I couldn't even scream, “You fool! Run for your life!” But I just sat there, waiting to see what Matt was going to do with the spider.

Matt put one hand in front of the other, hand over hand, climbing across the bed so the spider could use him as a stepping-stone to get closer to, er, me. “I just got him.
His name's Hogan. Like Hulk Hogan? That old pro wrestler? Is he awesome or what?” Slow and cautious, the spider seemed desperate for Matt's hands to guide it to safety.

“Here,” he said. “Pet him. He feels amazing.” Its fur was a silvery-orange color, and up close it looked stupid and vulnerable, a tourist downtown asking directions.

“Come on, Karina. Just be nice to him, okay?”

O-freaking-K. And to be nice, because I felt sorry for the thing and even sorrier for Matt, the boy who loved a spider, I gingerly put one finger—recently painted with Blue My Mind, the last nail polish I'd bought with Amanda—onto its back and petted it. It was warmish. And soft. And although I could not feel its heartbeat, per se, it was alive and it seemed to like me.

“Here.” Matt pulled my hand out so the tarantula could walk on it. And I let it. I let the spider slowly tiptoe over my trembling hand with my dark blue nails, and it looked like a photo on a CD cover. I found myself offering it my other hand, and then the other as Matt had. It walked all over me for about a minute as if we were a long-standing vaudeville act. Keek and Hogan, ladies and gentlemen!

Matt? He just stood there watching us, smiling like crazy. It tickled, the spider, terrifying and mesmerizing me at the same time. Then Matt scooped up Hogan and we gently placed him back in the fish tank with the bark and moss. Home sweet home. We held spider-germ-covered
hands as we walked back to the bed without talking.

I took hold of a belt loop while Matt slid his hand up my shirt, walking his fingers Hogan-style up toward the clasp of my bra. I stood on my toes, arching my back so our pelvises could touch as we kissed. While I was thinking about what I could do next to him, Matt somehow maneuvered his other hand to take the rubber band out of my pony tail, freeing my hair in pink and black ribbons, down to my shoulders.