Crossroads (8 page)

I knew the maps like the back of my hand, but suddenly they seemed foreign to me. The blue spots marking available building space, the green spots for available landscape space, the red arrows for traffic circulation, and the brown slums, the black spots where neighborhoods had been destroyed—now they seemed like mountain ranges, like jungle habitats. Poor neighborhoods were tropical isles. Puerto Rico, Galapagos, Fiji. I was looking at a pirate's map. Certainly no place to live.

It needed rearranging. I knocked down skyscrapers, hauled in trees. I erased Eighth Avenue completely and put crosstown subways under Central Park, little red and yellow trolley cars moving above the ground. I gave everyone a view.

In the morning Zap and Anna were ready to head out. Anna kissed me on the cheek. Jennie squeezed Zap's hand as if she were offering her condolences. Zap took me aside. “I've got some things to work out. But I'll see you soon.”

“Just give me a call before you arrive, all right?”

Tom and Jennie came out onto the porch to say good-bye. “Take care of my little sister, will you?”

Sean was there. “I don't think she needs much taking care of.” Zap got on the bike and motioned me to come near him. As he hugged me, I whispered “Mind your own business” into his ear. Zap hit and accelerated, and Anna hopped on back. They put on their crash helmets and my brother winked at me. Then they took off down the dirt road and left behind them a trail of dust that took twenty minutes to settle.

I
STAYED
a couple of days longer than I'd planned, long enough for Tom and Jennie to drop their reserve and have a fight during the evening news. A husband had killed his wife after escaping from a mental hospital. Tom said, pointing to the television, “I bet she was fooling around. That's probably what made him crazy in the first place.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Jennie asked.

Tom said, “Nothing. Just what it says.”

Jennie seemed to forget I was in the room. “Well, I know what it's supposed to mean and I think you've got a lot of nerve. You think I'm going to get involved with Zap, don't you? Or with somebody, with anybody. God knows who I could get involved with out here. Of course, it doesn't stop you, does it? It didn't stop you, did it?”

“Give me a break, will you?” Tom was shouting. “Zap came here to see you. You guys spent thirty minutes making four egg salad sandwiches. What am I supposed to be? An idiot?”

“You know, you're really driving me away.”

Tom walked out of the room and Jennie asked me if I
wanted to go with her for a ride. When he came back, she said, “We're going out; I don't feel like discussing this now.”

“Go wherever you want,” he said. We left him staring blankly at the television.

I looked out the window as we drove and I watched as the trees zipped past, illuminated only by our headlights. Neither of us had noticed how fast she'd been driving. “You see, he's had a few affairs,” Jennie was saying. “Nothing serious. Just once or twice, and he's told me about them. They always happen when things are bad between us.”

A rabbit, startled and afraid, froze by the side of the road, then disappeared back into the woods. Jennie told me, “I found out a lot of things I never knew about Tom after I married him.” But I understood Tom. He'd never felt good enough for Jennie. Her parents had convinced him of that and perhaps Jennie in her subtle ways had convinced him as well.

“You see,” she went on, “the problem is . . .” She laughed softly. “I still love him. I just don't trust him. God knows, I've tried. You can't almost trust somebody. You either do or you don't.” I knew that only too well. If Mark left Lila that same night and begged me to try again, it would never be the same. Actually, I wasn't sure.

“What are you going to do about Zap?'' I asked quietly.

She frowned. “I'm not going to do anything. It would be wrong to do anything.”

“I saw you . . .”

“I know you saw us. So we were holding one another. That doesn't mean we're going to take off together.”

“It's just that he still thinks he's crazy about you.”

She laughed. “Oh, your brother. He always wanted what he couldn't have.” Then she grew serious again. “I don't want to hurt him. But, of course, I'm not leaving Tom. Or the children.”

I sighed. “Nobody ever wants to hurt anybody.”

I hadn't noticed that she was pulling over to the side of the road. “Did you see that kid?” she asked.

I shook my head. “What kid?” I hadn't seen anything.

“He was back there, hitching. He'll never get a ride on this road.”

I was annoyed that our talk was being cut short. “Are you crazy? Isn't that dangerous?”

But she had her heart set on picking up a hitchhiker. She shifted into reverse. “There are two of us and one of him.”

The argument didn't hold up for me. “I don't care. We were going to get a drink.”

I turned and saw a blond-haired boy rushing toward the car, a look of gratitude on his face. “We'll get a drink after we drop him on the main road,” Jennie said, rolling down her window. “How far you going?”

The boy looked to be about eighteen and he kept pushing his long hair off his face. He wore an orange and black Princeton T-shirt and a pair of bleached-out jeans. He had a nice smile, so I assumed he wouldn't drag us off into the bushes somewhere.

Bobby Jones introduced himself to us and jumped into the front seat beside me while I leaned forward so that he could climb into the back. He was going to a party outside of Cranford and if we could get him to the highway, that would be “just super.”

“You would have been on that road all night,” Jennie said.

“I would've missed the party if you girls hadn't stopped.”

I was taken aback at the word “girls.” Both Jennie and I were old enough, technically, if I did a quick calculation, to be this boy's mother. “Do you go to Princeton?” I pointed to his T-shirt.

“I'm here on a swimming scholarship. I broke their butterfly record last year.”

We were pressed tightly into the car and I could feel his arm muscles against mine. I pictured him as a butterfly, a yellow swallowtail, beautiful, elusive, transient, touching down on a soft petal, then moving on. “You look like a swimmer,” I said.

“You girls just cruising?”

Jennie switched on the radio. The BeeGees were singing “Stayin' Alive” and Bobby Jones started bouncing his left leg up and down. “We're going drinking,” Jennie said.

“Well, it's going to be a great party. Why don't you come?”

“I told my boyfriend I'd be over.” Jennie started to speak with Bobby Jones's relaxed, laid-back inflection.

“So give 'im a call.”

Jennie glanced at me and winked. “Well, we could give you a ride to where you're going, but I don't think I'll go to the party. We've gotta get back.”

“It's a long drive. I'll jump in the back.”

I didn't want him to jump in the back. “The dog sleeps in the back,” I said.

“I sure don't want to smell like a dog tonight.” He fluffed his golden hair. He looked Nordic, Aryan, the opposite of men I'd known, completely uncomplicated. “You girls go to school?”

We gave him our names, so he stopped calling us “girls.” Jennie used her maiden name. I'd never changed mine. “I go to Rutgers,” Jennie said. “Debbie's a junior at Barnard.”

“They got a nice pool at Columbia.” He turned to me. “What're you studying?”

“She's going to be an architect.” Jennie spoke for me, knowing I had a hard time lying.

“I'm not sure,” I put in. “Maybe journalism. Journalism and urban planning.”

“Sounds pretty heavy to me.” It seemed he had trouble absorbing the heaviness of my professional choices. He returned to the pool. “You swim in it?”

“All the time.” Jennie had started the game and I knew that for half an hour or so I could pretend.

“You swim distance or speed?”

Distance sounded as if it would entail less discussion, so I said I swam fifty laps three times a week and he nodded,
impressed and silenced. What I liked about lying to him was that Jennie and I were conspiring again, the way we had when we were kids. And if Bobby Jones was dumb enough to believe we were college students cruising in our father's car, if he wanted to ignore the fact that we were wives, mothers, divorcees, so be it.

He leaned against me and looked toward Jennie. “You go to Rutgers?”

“I'm studying art. I'm a ceramicist.” He didn't understand the word. “A potter. I make pots.”

“Guess I got a ride with some very talented ladies.” And he took a flask from his back pocket. “Can you make bread with pots?” He handed Jennie the flask.

It took her a moment to translate that sentence into English. “Sure, people buy dishes, don't they?” She took a swig, grimaced, and passed it to me.

“Wish I had some smoke, but those guys back there, my friends, they cleaned me out. I'll get some more at the party. Why don't we go? C'mon. Call your boyfriend. Tell 'im you've got a flat tire, but make sure he doesn't come and get you.” As I passed him the flask, his fingers slid over mine. Then he took his left arm and put it across the back of the seat, and when I put my head back, it rested on his arm.

Jennie cut into the next Mobil station. “Got a dime?” she asked me. We got out of the car and I followed Jennie to the pay phone. “Fill 'er up,” she called to the gas station attendant.

“We're not seriously going to that party, are we?”

“I could use a party.” She picked up the receiver to dial. “But we've told him all these ridiculous lies.”

“If he goes to Princeton, I'm a Rhodes Scholar. He's just trying to impress us.”

“You think he's lying?” But she motioned for me to be quiet and closed the door to the phone booth, shutting me out. I caught bits of what she said. That I wanted to see a film in Princeton; did he mind?

The station attendant finished putting gas into the car by the time Jennie was off the phone. She'd convinced Tom I was depressed by their fight and needed a film to cheer me up. In the car, Bobby Jones watched us, flask in hand, and he waved for us to come along. Jennie signaled for him to wait. “Let's find a newspaper.” She handed the attendant her credit card and asked if he had one. He pointed to the office, where we found yesterday's covered with grease. “O.K., did you see
Star Wars
?” I nodded. “Fine. We'll tell him we saw
Empire Strikes Back
. I hear it's more of the same.''

This time Bobby Jones slid over and he sat in the middle, between us. He handed me the flask as I slipped in beside him. His arms were broad and I was wedged between his swimmer's arms, his butterfly wings, and the window. “You girls paid with a credit card, huh? Not bad.” He laughed as Jennie started the motor and I tried to figure how old you had to be to pay with a credit card.

The party was in the garage of someone whose parents lived somewhere half the year and somewhere else the other half. We parked a good two blocks away, even though Bobby kept saying, “You can park closer.” But if the police raided, we didn't want them to get our auto registration. The house, Bobby told us as we walked into the garage, was “off limits” without special permission of the host. “You know,” he said, saying the obvious, “if you'd like a little privacy.”

Everyone knew Bobby. He was slapping hands with all kinds of people and kept saying, “Gimme five, brother.” He made a general announcement that he'd brought “a couple of chicks along.” “This is Deborah,” he said, pointing to Jennie. “And this is Jennifer,” pointing to me.

“It's the other way around,” I said.

He corrected the announcement. “I'm bad with names. Let's get a drink,” and he took me by the arm. We were greeted by a black man named Victor, who wore coveralls and seemed gay and was serving some kind of brownish punch. And by
Rupert, our host, who wore white jeans and red suspenders but no shirt. His chest was covered with thick, black hair. They called Rupert's girlfriend, whose real name was Natalie, Chiquita Banana, and I never found out why. Natalie, who told me to call her Chiquita because everyone else did, took me aside. “You here with Bobby?”

“Well, he brought us to the party.”

“So that means you're with him.” She wore a black T-shirt and no bra and she chewed a wad of gum in the side of her cheek. She was a freshman at Douglass and told me that almost everyone at this party went to Rutgers. “Oh, good,” I said. “Jennie should feel right at home.” I was growing more comfortable with misrepresenting ourselves, but I wondered if our clothes were correct. We wore jeans, T-shirts, sandals, but we both had bras. But it wasn't just the clothes. I knew that, in no way, was I still able to resemble Chiquita.

“I go to school in New York.”

“It's dangerous. I hate that city.”

“You get used to it.”

“Have fun with Bobby.” She grinned at me, envious, I thought. Then she disappeared into the crowd.

I found Jennie talking with Victor and helping him pour hard punch. “Watch out,” Victor said, handing me a cup and straightening his earring. “It's a real sleeper. Bottles of hard stuff.”

The punch was in an old bathtub and there was plenty of it.

“We can't stay late,” I whispered to Jennie.

“Would you relax and have some fun?”

Rupert had fixed up the garage for the party. It was clear that he came from some wealth. The garage was equipped with a quadraphonic system, complete with tape deck, headsets, a million records, and a tuner that looked like an EKG. Sound floated around me and seemed to come from all directions. I sipped my punch until I found I was having trouble standing, so I sat down on one of the three mattresses on the floor.