And Then Things Fall Apart (11 page)

Remember when you were a little kid and some adult would come up to you and sweep your hair out from under your collar, and it felt so good and cool and it made you shudder with delight? This is what Matt was making me feel. New. And brave and so good that my body. Was. Not. Listening. To. Me. My hands became the hands of some kind of Victorian libertine—aka, total horndog—and before my intelligence or my fear of pregnancy, heartbreak, and disappointment could intervene, those same hands that had just tangoed with a tarantula were fiddling with his belt buckle. Fearless.

Matt grabbed my wrists. “Are you sure you want to do this?” And I didn't even
know
what THIS was, but still, I nodded and licked my lips. We were going to have our first times together, and this could have been it but not if he kept talking.

I have seen Matt wrestle, and he is fierce and so heavy
that seniors can't even knock him over. So to make him quiver as my polished nails slid between his underwear and his hot skin was intoxicating.

And I was pulling his gray boxer-briefs down his hips, and there was all this hair! Straight hairs and then this, like, penis. Nestled in this dark hair nest like a defenseless blind baby bird. It was the most naked thing I have ever seen. As I looked at it, it grew before my very eyes, plumping and elongating, transforming into this thing with power and heat. I could see Matt's heartbeat in it. I wanted to protect it, wrap it in angora and cashmere, not drop on my knees or let it anywhere too near me.

When Esther first saw Buddy's penis, she thought of poultry parts—particularly neck and gizzards—and was totally disheartened. I totally remembered this there in Matt's room, and it was so identical to my own feelings that I could hardly stand it. This is the thing about great literature. It reads like truth and sticks to you forever and lets you know that you are not alone.

That's when I pulled Matt's underwear back up and over, careful not to bump or further agitate the throbbing beast, and said, “I gotta go.” Not because I was disgusted or anything but because I was freaked out. And trembley. And embarrassed. It was just all too much.

Matt's pupils were big. “Come on, Karina. Don't I get to see you?”

And, um, no. Well.

“Come here,” he whispered, and he hugged me and kissed me on the neck, like he understood that I was about to cry. You know those devices they sell on late-night TV that you put inside an egg to scramble it while it's inside the shell? I felt like the egg inside the shell. Every emotion in
Roget's Thesaurus
: shy, adventurous, ashamed, afire, terrified, enamored, invincible, vulnerable, happy, depressed, joyful, shocked. You name it, I was feeling it. The whole omelet, all scrambled up in the center of my guts, and it made me want to weep like a baby. So I sat on the bed, patient, letting Matt lift my shirt and gently pull down the bra cups and look at me, a little naked. He seemed impressed. Quiet with awe. And
that
made me want to cry. And then he knelt over and put a nipple in his mouth, like the baby in the health class video, and
that
made me want to cry. His tongue flicks sent thrills down to my groin and back up that were so intense I thought I was going to dry-heave. This was when I stood and said, “Matt, I gotta go home,” grabbed my bag, and escaped.

In
The Bell Jar
, when Esther Greenwood finally bites the bullet and gets rid of her virginity, she almost bleeds to death. Unbeknownst to her, she has this rare condition and she almost dies. This sounds like something overprotective parents would make up to scare the crap out of their virgin daughters. Could this happen to me? Not likely. But it is an
excellent metaphor for the power of virginity. It's not leaving without a fight.

I'm sure if I started to bleed to death, Matt wouldn't dump me in the doorway of the nearest ER and head for the hills like Esther's deflowerer. Matt is, in most regards, a gentleman. Besides, who knows if Matt is even still my boyfriend? Hours before I got seriously sick, we had this vicious fight and I'm sure he thinks of me as an inexperienced idiot with a virginity hang-up. I'm the black and pink Plath-loving freak show that is more than he can handle with his junior year coming up, and all.

After I told Amanda (Why
Amanda
? Why not Nicola? Or even MY MOTHER?) about the tarantula, the penis, the escape, she said, “God, you are such a tease.” But now that I've had a couple of feverish weeks to reflect on things, I'm like, Tease
this
. Teasing is taunting a boy with the promise of sex in order to manipulate him, and then not going through with it. Which is
so
not what I was doing. I'm not taunting anybody with anything. I'm making this up as I go along. I want things to feel right, and the more I mess around with Matt, the more right it feels and when it starts to feel wrong for me, we stop.

Why was Amanda trying to make me feel like crap about it? That was a red flag right there. She wasn't on my side. It would never occur to her to help me through this, to help me make sense of it, to explain to me how to prepare
emotionally for when I actually go through with it. She was on her own side. On experience's side and rubbing that in my face like I was a naughty puppy that had an accident on the living room carpet. Right then and there I should have done what Esther did with Doreen: decide to have nothing to do with her. Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Speaking of heartbreak,
oh, why isn't Matt desperately looking for me?
Maybe he's scared. Maybe he's at the gym, doing a thousand sit-ups a day trying to forget about me. Maybe he just doesn't care. But there should be
LOST
signs on telephone poles, a homing pigeon lookout station, a phone tree with Gram's number at the end of it. He could have at least popped his head into the D&D for two seconds. Jorge could have updated him. The address is on the business letter!

I am
here
. I have hardly moved for a week!

The world is coming to an end. Have you heard? In a hundred years there will be no more oceans. There will be no grass, clouds, or cures for all the diseases unleashed by the environment. All the coats, scarves, mittens, and waterproof boots often used in what was once known as “winter” will be better utilized making huts and teepees to shield us from the thousand degree sun in January. I mock, and yet I am terrified. This is a world full of horrible death and destruction. Breast cancer. Premature babies. Terrorists. Oil spills. Nuclear bombs. The Apocalypse. And what am I most upset about? My parents. Splitting up.

How noble.

Still.

People get divorced every damn day. JJ has exes on her show every night who can't agree who gets the dog, who gets the car, whose fault it is that the taxes on their trailer lot weren't paid last year. Five out of ten marriages end in
divorce. I'm no math star, but that is half—50 percent. Even at school you can't throw a rock without hitting some kid who is off to dad's for the weekend. But it is not happening to just anyone. It is happening to me.

The night Dad moved out was surreal. I was lying on my bed, listening to the house. Coffee was at my feet breathing with the regularity of a life support machine in a hospital drama. The rest of the house was so silent, I heard my parents' marriage die, the house icy still as the spirit of what I once knew as “my parents” floated into the ether.

And just as I felt as demoralized as I have ever felt, who walks into my room in a corduroy jacket carrying a crappy vinyl suitcase, but my father. He sat on my bed. I will never forget seeing his tears running into his stubble. It was right up there with my first French kiss with Matt outside the cafeteria and the chicken pox blood bath with Gram. My dad crying. I saw him cry, once, at the end of some war movie on HBO. But that wasn't even real crying. It was, like, oh-there-must-be-something-in-my-eye wetness.

It was only about four months ago, but I don't really remember what he said. I think it was something like, “I'm sorry.” Was there a light on? There must have been. “You know your mom and I have been having some trouble.” By this point Coffee had woken up, put her head on his knee, like,
Oh, beloved master, where are you going?

“I don't know if or when I'll be back, but I'll see you this
weekend. We'll do a movie or something.” Coffee looked like she was about to kill herself with woe. “I'm staying at Gram's. You can call me there or on my cell. This is all really”—he moved his hands, gesturing in the air, searching for the right words, and then he let out a weird choking man-sob—“complicated.”

I was stunned, okay? I hadn't realized it had come to this. No trial separation? No romantic getaway weekend to talk things out? What the hell is counseling for if you're going to break up and move out anyway?

I do remember, quite clearly, what I said to him. Now, this is my dad. My father. And he has been and always will be. He can be a real asshole, but I love him. I mean, he was crying on my bed and I wanted to throw my arms around his shoulders and tell him that everything was going to be okay. So what did I say? What were my loving words of wisdom and we'll-get-through-this-somehow comeback?

“What about the Dine & Dash?”

Because it's all about the restaurant. Always is. Over our rare sit-down dinners or family outings (Cubs game, Art Institute, Gram's for lasagna), talk would end up being about the D&D. Lunch specials, customer service, dishwasher repair, license renewal, dough paddles, pizza boxes, lunch specials, on and on and on. It had become the replacement for talking about anything else. Anything important. So at the lowest point of this whole debacle,
when my insides felt like all my bones had collapsed into a heap in the pit of my being, what do I ask about? The freaking restaurant.

And he said, “It's open. We'll figure it out as we go along.” Then, “I love you, Keek.”

“I love you too,” I muttered.

Then he picked up the suitcase and walked out of my bedroom with Coffee following him, and I didn't even cry. Not one teardrop.

Alone in my pathetic bedroom, it was quiet like after the credits of a movie, after the “no animals were harmed,” “special thanks,” and the logo for the production company, when the whole wall seems like it's still moving. Then a whimper, a low growl. Coffee? No. Mom. I pictured her in her bedroom, gnashing her teeth, her pillowcase soaked with snot and saline. But at that moment I didn't care.

There's this part in
The Bell Jar
, right before Esther leaves New York, when she starts to cry at a photo shoot because she feels disillusioned and weak and basically, a shell of herself. Which is how I felt about my parents' marriage. Everything was a discarded useless version of what it used to be. I knew things were not good with them for a long time, and yes, there was a little ping of recognition because their breakup proved my gut instincts had been right, but some important part of me climbed out of the house that night. My joy? My sense of security? My childhood, I guess. And
what was left was me, feeling as weightless and insignificant as the skin shed by a snake.

I got up.

Even though it was after eleven at night, I ran a bath, as hot as I could stand. I closed the door and lowered myself in like a tea bag. My brain stopped thinking of anything except how to make a moment out of this, how to mark this night as the night I knew I would never be purely happy again. And when I say “purely” I mean just plain happy with no darkness beneath the glee, happy like little kids when they ride on carousels or blow out candles. Now I have the knowledge that the world is mostly a brutal place of treachery and heartbreak, where not even parents can keep it together. For Esther Greenwood, that moment was when her father died, but for me it was when mine left home.

When I raised my arms in the bath to push my hair out of the way, water dripped from my elbows like the tears that wouldn't come out of my eyes. When I was a kid, I pretended I was a mermaid in the tub. The faucet was an enchanted secret waterfall, the Suave shampoo a magical siren potion to enchant pirates and sailors. That night in the tub, I was just a girl, terrified of what would happen next. In the corner between tub and wall was a red and white striped can of shaving cream. Dad's. I pushed the top and covered the surface of the water with white foam
until air came out of the nozzle and pushed the white out of the way.

It was too late to call Nic to talk, and what would I have said? “Please be my best friend again now that I really need you, even though I don't deserve it”? Or “I still love you. Please help me”? “I'm so sorry I always take you for granted”? “I miss you”?

Dad used to take Nic and me to the movies and roller-skating birthday parties, and we'd slept over at each other's houses every weekend for the previous four years. Before high school. Before Matt. Before Amanda. Before everything started to fall apart. We were like a superhero duo, figuring out the most fun and efficient ways to thwart our common enemy—boredom. With Nic I could always be myself. I didn't have to try to seem older, pretend to smoke, or think of new ways to avoid going too far. We could be in a room together and read without music on or anything. How many people can do
that
together? A rare few.

Nic's parents were nice people who loved each other so much, they had four kids together. Nic was the baby and had a whole tribe of siblings to keep her laughing and busy, to keep a bell jar from descending upon her. I just had me. And I was ashamed and alone, and I still can't call her. She probably doesn't even know that I have the chicken pox. One day someone will invent a device that
will allow you to apologize without having to actually say anything.

Gram is home with fresh provisions.

Good thing too.

I'm sofa king starving.