Better Than Running at Night (20 page)

"I just thought we had an understanding," he said, still packing his snowball.

"Are you jealous?"

"Are you kidding?"

"No," I said. "I feel like you're looking for excuses to be mad about me hanging out with another guy, which is so stupid."

"I'm not saying I'm jealous," he said, passing his snowball from one red hand to another, "but even if I was, why would that be
stupid?
"

"Because
I'm
making myself
not
be jealous."

"Why?"

"So we can stay together."

"Who are you jealous of? Clarissa?"

"Sometimes it's Clarissa!" I shouted. "But right now it's Sloane! I thought you were staying away from her!"

"I was!" he yelled. "I am!"

Then he threw the snowball with all his might, screaming "Aaaagh!" It hit the side of a house across the street and exploded into white powder.

I was fighting back the tears.

"Ellie, can't you see that since we've been together I've been trying harder than I've ever tried to be honest? Ever since I met you, I've been trying not to mess around. And I know it would really hurt you if I did because messing around is the whole reason you don't know who your dad is. But sometimes a guy's just gotta have some fun. It doesn't mean anything to me, and it's not so bad anyway. But I've been trying my hardest! For you! And it hasn't been easy!"

"What do you mean by
trying?
" I asked, concentrating on not crying.

A car passed us, headlights illuminating our stillness.

"Do you really want to know?"

"No," I said quietly. "Not really."

"Well, I guess this is a Valentine's evening down the drain."

I nodded. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, tears would start spouting.

"Let me walk you home," he said.

We walked slowly beside each other without talking. When we got to my door, he asked if I wanted him to come in. I shook my head no.

"I'll see you when you get back then," he sighed. "You'll be back Friday?"

I nodded.

"Have a good trip." He sounded defeated. "Call when you get in. All right? Make sure you call."

He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips for a kiss. His hands were still cold and a little wet from the snowball. His lips were warm.

"Okay, bye," was all I could say.

In the morning I caught a train to Manhattan.

Towns whizzed by the windows as the train whistle blew.

I was trying to draw my view from the window in my sketchbook. I wanted to capture the movement, like in Ed's fish assignment. I thought that concentrating on such a difficult task would keep my mind off Nate.

It didn't.

I kept losing interest in the window blur and thinking about Nate's body. I sketched his back, with the rib cage tattoo. I wondered what it would look like if his entire body was tattooed with the underlying bones. I tried drawing a few parts like that, but it was hard to do from memory. Arms and legs were so complicated.

Maybe I should've made up with him last night, I thought. After all, he
had
said he was really trying to change for me. If he thought I didn't appreciate that, maybe he'd stop trying.

I drew the back of Nate's leg. I made his gastrocnemius flexed, the way it looked when he stood on his toes.

I thought about how I'd yelled at him. I should've been more calm and tried to work things out. I had let my emotions get the better of me.

Maybe I should've just stayed at the party and kept talking to Sam.

I looked out the window and tried to draw the passing trees. But what I ended up drawing looked like Nate's hair. I pressed harder with my pencil, to block out the Nateness and make the image more treelike.

The heavy lines only made my drawing look more like thick tufts of hair than like thin branches. I tried erasing certain parts but that didn't work either. Then I erased the whole thing. That just left me with a lighter version of the original drawing. I didn't want to look at it anymore.

I drew a big X over the page, then scribbled and scribbled, covering up the hair.

But I had to stop before concealing all my old marks; the pencil's tip broke and the remaining wood shards ripped through the paper.

"It's a great way to lower your sex drive," Dad said, patting me on the back. "You teenagers have such raging hormones, they need all the help they can get."

"Oh, give it a rest," Mom sighed. "Don't turn her into a stoner, all right?"

We were sitting in the kitchen, waiting for our pizza delivery.

My dad got up and paced around the table.

"I don't think you get it," I said. "I tried it once and I didn't even like it."

"Which is absolutely fine," Mom said, glaring at my dad.

Dad paced his way out of the room.

Mom leaned in close and touched my arm. "So, I'm dying to know—are you seeing anyone?"

The doorbell buzzed.

"I'll be right down!" Dad shouted into the intercom in the hallway.

"I've been dating a guy," I said.

"That's great!" she said. But her face looked relieved, like what she really wanted to say was, "Finally."

"It's all right."

"Just make sure you use protection," she cautioned. "You never know where people have been."

And sometimes you do, I thought.

Dad came back with the pizza.

"Sorry to dwell on this raging hormones thing," he said, "but I can't imagine growing up as a kid in the nineties. You have to worry about birth control
and
AIDS. It would drive me absolutely bananas."

I thought about Nate that night. I wanted to think about feeling him in bed, about his soft thick hair against my skin. But every time I tried, I pictured that snowball smashing against the building.

I wanted to make myself forget the images of him at the party and of our fight.

They wouldn't melt.

"Were the sixties a total blast?" I asked my mom.

We were chopping vegetables for dinner that night.

"A total blast?" she asked. "That doesn't sound like something
you'd
say."

"It's something my friend at school said. I think he wishes he could've been alive then."

Mom chopped two carrots for every one I got through.

Grandma and Phil were coming over.

"You know, those days were exciting," Mom said, slicing a pepper. "But exciting isn't everything."

"Looks from the mother, brains from the father," Grandma said when my mother told her I'd gotten an A in Foundation class. My report card had come that day.

"Mom!" my mother yelled in defense.

"Marsha, you know you never did well in school." Grandma always had a way of shutting her up. She turned to me and raised one eyebrow.

We were all sitting at the table. Mom and Dad at each head, Grandma and Phil across from me. Beside me was an empty chair.

The chicken was in the oven.

On the table was Mom's traditional assortment of vegetables and dips. I think this premeal snacking was Phil's favorite part of family gatherings; I've never seen anyone else eat chopped liver with such gusto. Mom had placed a dish full of it by Phil's plate.

Grandma and Phil weren't really married, but he was my Grandpa's identical twin and he agreed to take care of Grandma after Grandpa died. Now Phil shared her bank account and her bed.

"Ladybird," Grandma said.

"Bug, Mom. Not bird," my mother scolded.

"To you she may be a bug, but to me she is a bird." She never missed an opportunity to mock my mother's hippie days. "Lady, have you heard about the call? The one from the PBS?"

"We thought we'd let you tell her," Dad said.

"Okay, well I'll do it then," Grandma said.

Phil spread some chopped liver on a celery stick.

"A few days ago I got a call from the PBS. They want me to do a talk on the television. About the Holocaust."

Grandma was a Holocaust survivor. She rarely talked about it with us. As far as she knew, she was the only surviving member of her family.

"Are you gonna do it?" I asked.

"Well, I don't know."

"I told you, you shouldn't," Mom said. "It upsets you too much."

"But it would be a great educational tool for generations to come," Dad said.

"They'll find other people," Mom said.

"Not if everyone has this attitude," Dad said.

The oven timer rang. Mom got up to get the chicken.

Phil dipped a carrot in his chopped liver dish. It was almost empty.

"Save some for dinner," Grandma warned him.

"Of course," he nodded. "What would I do without this woman?" It was the first time he'd spoken since we sat down.

"I don't know what you should do about PBS," I said.

"Right. This is what we were speaking about," Grandma said.

"I just can't imagine going through something as awful as the Holocaust. I mean, it sounds like this is a good cause. But who am I to say whether it would be good for you or not?"

Mom came back with the chicken and started serving Phil.

"People, they go through the tough times and they make it okay," Grandma said. "My husband passed on, but I'm all right."

Of course you are, I thought. His replica is right beside you.

But how did she ever get through losing her entire family? I wondered what the other relatives I'd never met were like.

Phil cut a piece of chicken and spread chopped liver on it. He raised it in the air and said, "Without this woman, I would've forgotten to save the chopped liver for the meal. She's always looking out for me!"

Grandma smiled at him.

My parents shot each other looks, as if to say, What happened to Grandpa?

He never liked chopped liver.

Ivan was there. In New York City. That's what the lady at the Met said on the phone.

I wished I knew how to drive the subway, so I could make it go faster.

At the Met, I passed the rest of the nineteenth-century Russian paintings. They and the cooing crowds were blurs in my peripheral vision. Finally, I got to the room of Repins.

There he was. Larger than life. Grasping his bleeding son on Oriental rugs. I sat on a bench in front of him.

Ivan was the only one who would understand what I was going through.

"I shouldn't have done it," I wanted to say to him.

"Tell me about it," he would've said, but in Russian.

"Look at us. Two losers," I'd say. "Your son, my virginity—gone forever."

But that's where my fantasy ended.

What could Ivan say to that? "Oh, honey, you've got a lot to learn" or, "Come back when you've killed someone. Then we'll talk."

"She doesn't have that sad look anymore, but she still looks sad," Dad said.

I heard him through the wall, talking to my mom, as I tried to fall asleep.

"She'll be fine," Mom said. "She's adjusting to her new life."

"I think she's still not fitting in."

"Well, I don't think the pot is gonna do it."

"Can you imagine how cool we would've thought our parents were if they'd given us pot?"

"We might have thought they were a little strange."

"I just wish we could communicate. You know, real father-daughter bonding. But she always gets so sarcastic on me."

"You don't seem to mind."

"I laugh it off so she doesn't think it bothers me. And so we don't get in a fight."

"Maybe that's part of the problem."

"No, the problem is that she's not mine," he said. "That's always been the problem."

I'd never heard him admit I wasn't his child before. I pressed my ear against the wall.

"Oh come on," Mom said. "That's never bothered you."

"Marsha, it bothers me every day. Every day. Every time I look at her, trying to imagine whose features she has." His voice got closer, then went farther away again. He must have been pacing. "But I never say anything about it because I know I can't change it."

"She might as well be yours. You raised her."