Lemon Reef (7 page)

“I have all but one of the ten incarnations now.” Del plopped down on the bed beside me. “I still need Kurma.” She was excited about this.

“Which one is Kurma?” I asked.

“The turtle. It carries the world on its back.” She ran her fingers along her neck to sweep her hair back from her face and gave me her green-gold eyes. “Well, actually, she carries a mountain, but it might as well be the world.”

I noticed the bruise on Del's cheek again and touched it gently.

“It's nothing, don't worry about it.” She shrugged nonchalantly. I sensed she felt ashamed. Del paused, glanced away thoughtfully, changed the subject back to me. “So,” she said matter-of-factly, “are they flipping?”

“My parents?” She nodded. “Yeah, they're going on and on about ‘nipping this in the bud' or something like that. Mostly they're talking to each other about it, but when that's not possible they walk around the house talking to themselves.”

She laughed once. “I nipped your bud eight months ago.”

We exchanged a mischievous grin.

I said, “They don't know that.”

She asked softly, “What do they know?”

“My neighbor told them he saw us fooling around when we were babysitting for him the other night.” My tone rote, I numbly recounted for her. “Came home early, didn't have a key, knocked, went around the back when we didn't answer, saw us through the window. Something like that. I didn't wait around for the details.”

“He couldn't have seen much,” she said. “We didn't take our clothes off.” Suddenly a little shy, Del looked at me sideways. “What were we doing?”

“He said we were making out.”

Del put her hand on mine. She watched my eyes and moved my hand to under her sweater. I lightly touched her nipple, buried my face in her hair, breathing in the scent of the Paris cologne I'd given her for Chanukah. I kissed her once on her neck.

“What happens now?” she asked sadly.

I could tell by her breath and her firming nipple she was getting stirred. I let my palm fall to the soft inside of her upper thigh and come to rest there.

“I don't know.” I paused, wishing I didn't have to say what was coming next. I said it lightly while my heart pulsed with pain. “They've got these bizarre new rules, like I can't see you outside of school anymore.”

No response. She just looked at the floor.

“And,” I was embarrassed to say it, “I can't be out with girls at all, unless I'm with at least two people. Well, except for Gail.”

“Wait, you mean…?” With her sweet smile and crinkly eyes she said, “You have to be with at least two girls because…” She paused, shook her head in amazement. “You're kidding.”

“Yes,” I said, with a straight face. “I can't be trusted to be alone with another girl—except Gail. Oh, and I can be with Katie, because, well, you know her reputation.”

The exchange was playful, but the gravity of the content and the imminent separation were weighing on us—that and knowing we were at the mercy of such fools.

“Leave it to Norma.” Del smiled at me, then looked the other way. Her words were slightly strained, her movements more mechanical than usual. I could tell she was trying to seem relaxed, but she felt frightened and small. Del slid onto the bed on her side and patted the space next to her. I folded in beside her.

“You better not be alone with Katie.” She was playing at being jealous, but it was also true that Del and Katie Dunn were competitive over their looks, and they tended to be interested in a lot of the same guys.

Del's head was resting on her open hand propped by her elbow, her copper hair spilling over, her eyes, the color of straw, cradling mine. I watched her silver earring dangle, another trap for light. She played distractedly with my necklace—a gift from her neck to mine prompted by a compliment.

“I love you more than anything,” I said. I was stroking her hair. “I will always love you.”

“Jenna, don't…We both knew this could happen.” Her tone was both pleading and angry.

“Del.” My voice was softer than usual, imploring her to look at me. “I promise you I won't let go of you. I promise. No matter what happens, I will
never
let go of you.”

“You're the only thing I care about.” Her inflection was accusatory. “How I feel about you is the only thing that matters to me, it's the only thing keeping me here.”

She kissed me, her confidence returning. I heard her submit to what was taking hold between us, her now-familiar sounds launching my stomach in fits and starts.

I stopped, took hold of her face, and whispered, “I've never been able to handle that.”

She was mildly annoyed by the interruption. “What?”

“Your sounds.”

She bent her face away. “You're embarrassing me, Jen.”

“Why would you be embarrassed?” I kidded. “I'm the one it makes quick-cum like a boy.”

She laughed.

I touched her bruised skin.

She smiled and wrapped her hand around mine, holding it tightly against her face.

“I'm worried about you,” I said.

“Don't be.” She was staring at me intently, almost transfixed. Then, in a resigned tone, she said, “Some people make it and some people don't.”

I started to fight with her, but she looked so sad. I was afraid anything I said would make her sadder still. Without moving her gaze from mine, she played with the button on my jeans until it came undone and then pulled clumsily on my zipper.

I stopped her hand. “I don't think we should do this now.”

“Please,” her lips pressed against mine, “I need to.” The “to” fell off at the end, nearly indiscernible.

I spread my legs for her and kissed her back.

*

A jolt in the plane left my stomach hanging a few rows behind me. The stewardess, approaching with my second drink, performed that trick of her trade of turning momentarily to rubber rather than clutch a passenger or even a seatback. My Bloody Mary lifted and fell slightly in her hand as though she was offering a silent toast, and then she delivered it to me with notice of ceremony, collecting my four dollars as part of the same efficient gesture.

I thought about a nine-year-old boy I had represented right out of law school. While visiting with him at his foster home, I watched in disbelief as he stepped to the edge of a tall slide, called out to me, and then took an elaborate swan dive, landing headfirst in hard sand. I leaped from the bench to the ground beside him, taking hold of his arm.

“Are you okay?”

Working to bring me into focus, he said of the sand, “I thought it was water.”

He was mildly embarrassed, but mostly confused, and even a little amused. Glad that he was not physically injured, I brushed the sand from his forehead and hair and helped him to his feet.

The professionals around me wondered why I was not more concerned about this “hallucination”—why I did not feel the need to rush this boy to the nearest psychiatric hospital and insist that he get some kind of medication. I couldn't explain it to them because I didn't understand my reaction myself. I didn't feel casual about what he had done, exactly. It's just that I had recognized this moment, and I saw his confusion more as a right to be protected than as a symptom to be eradicated. Now, seven years later, I understood. I could see how on that night with Del in her room, I had swallowed many mouthfuls of water before realizing that it was sand. And I would not trade all of the horror of that realization and the pain of what followed for those few moments when I believed we could survive.

Seat-belt indicators went on overhead, simultaneous with the universal single chime that sounded in anticipation of the pilot's announcement. “Remain seated, fasten seat belts, and prepare for more turbulence.” I downed my second drink and fell asleep. The next thing I knew, we were landing.

Tuesday

The plane landed. Tombstone gray whizzed past the oval window, matching the color of the dream from which I'd just awoken. In the dream, Del and I were at a park. I was a mime dressed in a sari, and I was gesturing to her, communicating something. Now I couldn't remember what I was trying to say. The low-grade hum of the plane's engine, a sudden rush of air, and the rough-and-tumble of the wheels on the runway added to my disorientation and stirred in me momentarily the belief that I was shooting through a portal. Carts piled with luggage zipped by, driven by dark-skinned people in beige uniforms with drenched armpits.

*

As I exited the terminal and started toward the baggage claim, I saw Katherine Dunn among the many anonymous faces awaiting arrivals. She raised her brows and smiled, surprised, it seemed, that I remembered her. I wasn't. I would recognize Katie forever. And anyway, she looked the same. Like yesterday—the bleached-blond, sun-bronzed, I've-been-at-the-beach-all-day look that had worked so well for us once still clung to her (or her to it). Threadbare Levi's hung off her slim hips. A snug-fitting tank top emphasized her full breasts, slight midriff, and wiry arms. By the time I got to the worn-in flip-flops, I half expected she was wearing a bikini under her clothes and wondered if she still got carded at bars.

I took a breath, steadied myself, felt confused by how nervous just seeing Katie made me feel. Strange, really—the reaches of these early friendships and what insecurities they can stir. I was no longer an adult, married, considering having a child of my own. I was no longer a commissioner responsible for life-altering decisions. I was twelve, and beautiful, blond Katie Dunn was my hero, my sense of myself rising and falling on the whimsy of her approval. One important difference between the then and the now, however, was that I had learned how not to let such vulnerability show. It was even easier once I remembered how angry I had been at her and why.

Moving with intentional casualness, I slung my backpack over my shoulder, walked to a few feet away, and lifted my chin in her direction. “Hey.”

“Hey. How are you?” She smiled slightly. She wasn't at all surprised to find me there, and I realized in that moment that she had been waiting for me.

“What are you doing here?”

She nodded, as if she were asking herself the same question.

Friends since the third grade, Katie Dunn, Gail Samuels, and I had attended the same elementary, middle, and high schools. We played soccer together and traveled to tournaments every summer with the team. We knew each other's families, slept over at each other's houses, and did our homework together over the phone on weeknights. I was Katie's best friend and she trusted me, counted on me more than she did anyone else. Still, in high school, when Katie found out that Del and I were lovers, she got mad at me over it and made things worse by talking about it with other people. High school hadn't been easy for either one of us. She was giving guys blow jobs to get rides home from the beach and waking up at the bottom of empty pools without a clue how she'd gotten there. I was expected to show unqualified support and keep her confidences as if I'd sworn in blood. But my being in love with Del was something Katie did not feel the least bit obliged to try to understand. She didn't take the relationship seriously, and she neither protected me from nor helped me with the judgments of others or my pain around the loss. I had never forgiven her for that.

“Norma called me. She said you were coming home to go to Del's funeral.” Katie laughed a little, shrugged sheepishly. “What can I say? She's worried about you. She didn't say it directly, but I think she's hoping Gail and I will look out for you around Del's family.” Katie's face fixed curiously as she mumbled, “Not sure who's gonna look after me and Gail.”

In the background fresh coffee was brewing. The expanding aroma pushed aside the otherwise sterile smell of recirculated air and synthetic carpet. Magazines and newspapers lining the coffee-stand shelves hurled headlines of Bush's lead in the primaries as the Republican nominee. On the other side of the dense glass walls, nimbus clouds gathered, and the August Miami air was thick with moisture. The atmosphere was daunting—a huge, invisible, saturated sponge. I began walking to the baggage claim, signs in both English and Spanish pointing the way.

Katie fell in gracefully beside me. She held her wallet and keys in her hand, and her sunglasses were propped strategically on her head, serving simultaneously as an adornment and an incidental hair band. “You look great. You've lost weight?” She was referring to the thirty pounds I'd gained after Del and I broke up. “I don't think I've seen you this thin since tenth grade.”

“I lost it a long time ago.”

“Well, we haven't hung out since high school. I hear about you from Gail, but I should have called you or something.”

“I haven't been back much.”

“No, I know. Norma tells us your visits to Miami are basically layovers on your way to other places.”

I laughed appreciatively at my mother's pithiness. I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but it was true. My body was stiff from the flight, and my backpack felt heavier than usual. As I rotated it to my other shoulder, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass wall. My light hair fell in crescents to my shoulders. My face was thinner, my cheeks more hollow. Seeing us side by side, I was surprised to realize at five foot six, I was almost as tall as Katie. She'd always been a lot taller than me. My jeans were bundled loosely at my waist and straight at my ankles, and I was wearing a fitted T-shirt with a long-sleeve button-down open over it. Although I characteristically looked younger than I felt, in that moment, it seemed unusually so. I looked as young, I thought, as Katie did.

“Seems like you talk to my mother more than I do.”

“She comes into the deli where we work. And she knows I'm always glad for news about you.” She said this lovingly, and with a tinge of sadness.