Emily Franklin - Principles Of Love 06 - Labor Of Love (18 page)

as I am for you--it'll be great, sweetheart, really.

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Dad is clueless or na�ve enough to call Lindsay sweet and keeps talking up the boarding life as if at some point I'll sud denly cave and announce he's right and I am thrilled to be joining the ranks of the castoffs. I give him credit for trying but take off a few points for his use of the word jazzed.

Two other items of note:

--A letter from Mrs. Dandy-Patinko, who informs me of a couple of college visits. I'll need to line up a few more once I'm back in Boston, but it feels so far off, those inter views and tours.That choice.The waiting to see if I'll be ac cepted by the place I want--like having a major crush until April. From where I sit looking out at the pink sky, enjoying the heat radiating from the blacktop roof, it's another world, and quite frankly, I'm happy in this one.

I save for last a letter on paper so thin it hardly fits the name. On blue airmail paper I read about Nick Cooper's adventures this summer. He's a semifriend of Asher Piece's-- one of those odd situations where the person that you meet through your friend (in this case, Asher) turns out to have more in common with you than the introducer.We've writ ten a few times since I came back from London, and he made a donation to the Avon Walk I did with Chris, and even though I don't think of it daily, I look forward to his letters. We don't email.We don't call.We don't know one another like that. It's more travel, or thoughts, or theories. Books

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we've read and what they made us think. As I explained to Chris once (who is the only one I've told about them--not that writing to Nick is a secret but just not something I want to draw too much attention to), they are very thinky. Chris said that maybe we write the way writers do, in that old-fashioned form of communication that's timeless and kind of special.

Nick's letter details his travels to Iceland, to visit an aunt in Berlin, and then to Morocco. Reading his descriptions makes me jealous--not only of the places and his travels-- but of the words. Of his writing.

Just like that, I write a letter by hand to Mr. Chaucer, head of the English department, and beg him (albeit in an eloquent way) to let me take the advanced creative writing class even though I haven't taken the prerequisites. Why I never thought to do this sooner is a mystery. Maybe he'll give me credit for studying with Poppy Massa-Tonclair and doing her writing project, or maybe he'll stop me in my tracks and say no way--not even for senior year.The class is intensely competitive. I'm glad to have thought to ask, but add the outcome to a list of unknowns that spurs on some stress. If I did get in, it would give me a place to work on what to say for the Beverly William Award--if I even apply for that. Maybe Nick Cooper will have advice about that. Make a mental note to write back to him and ask.

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I put all the papers and letters back into the envelope, sealing my thoughts in there, too, and then hear a knock on the open window. I stay seated and wait for the knocker to appear.

"Want some company?" Jacob asks. His curly hair an nounces his entrance before I can say no. He sits on the only space available--a small spot next to me--while the sun starts to sink.

"What if I said no?" I ask, grinning.

"You'd be stuck with me, anyway." He gets up right after sitting down, leans as far into the window as he can without falling back inside, and reemerges with his guitar.

"What's that?" I nod to the thing.

"It's an instrument. Stringed.You'll like it." He smiles and tunes up, the notes floating into the air around us. "So . . . I'm leaving tomorrow." He doesn't look up from the neck of the guitar as he says this, and I don't register the info more than to say:

"Then we're back to school."

Jacob will leave the island to go home to Connecticut until Hadley starts. I will be here, doing family stuff and packing up, then the Silver and White event, then back to dry land.Then the summer selves we see now will be hauled into the school-year bravado with all those weird feelings that whatever did or didn't happen over the summer counts. It does, though, right?

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"I thought . . . ," he says, strumming aimlessly and finally looking at me,"that even though you're all . . ." He puts on a mock-surfer voice."I'm giving up tunes and I'm into writ ing now and whatnot. . . ."

"You know I hate whatnot."

"I do know that.That's why I said it. . . ." He smiles.Then he starts to play a familiar song."You've got Charlie . . ."

I blush."Yeah. He's . . ."

Jacob cuts me off. "And I've got Chloe." His green eyes meet my blue ones, not that I can see my own eyes, just reflections in his.

My nod is the only gesture I make--no words--to say oh, you're together now? One kiss in the tunnel of hell and now they're a couple? It's not my business. It's not a big deal. It's just . . ."I guess that's the way it is, huh?"

"But . . . ," he says, his fingers plucking strings that re sound in my chest."There's no law saying we can't still sing together, right?"

I nod."Right."

As he strums away, the sunlight dims so that we are both surrounded by filmy hues that people call the golden hour. We look it; golden, that is--young, together, happy, unmarred. "Hey," he says, his hand stuck in chord position, "how come you don't sing as much?"

I put my arms up to the sky, remembering that my dad

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used to tell me to "tickle the sky" when I was little--I won der now if Gala knew those kid tricks, if she did the same ones to Sadie, or if everything was split after she left and nothing of my growing up resembles the alternate one in California. "I think it's all the same place, you know? Like the creative energy. Wherever that comes from. So the time--not just the actual minutes, but the feelings--I used to put toward singing and wanting to perform is all chan neled into writing now."

"So you're writing up a storm then? Novels abound?" He looks at me and smiles. Not all the way, but from one side of his mouth.Then it hits me.All summer long I've been waiting for Charlie to have that expression--when I put my fingers to his mouth that night and tried to get him to grin halfway-- and all along it's been someone else's move. Jacob's.

"The mind is so weird," I say but don't explain the pre- thoughts that spur on that statement. Jacob nods. "It's not like I'm sitting here every day and pounding out pages. But it's just . . ." I pause and think, soaking up the rippling light rays that cast a pink sheen on my already rose-toned skin. I feel pretty right now, that elusive satisfaction with my body, my face, my being. Random, but nice.

"We have only a certain number of words."

"Exactly. All those ones I sang are now in my mind for plot or description or dialogue."

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He stops playing the guitar, the side-grin back on his face. "Think you could spare a cup of them? The words, I mean." He watches my face while I sigh and start to protest. "I'll tell you what.You sing for me now--with me--and the next time we're due to have a conversation you won't have to participate."

"Why's that?" I let my legs unbuckle from their crossed position and lean on the roof 's eave.

"Because--I'm making you use up extra words and creative energy now, but it's okay because you know you'll make up for it at a later date."

I tilt my head and twist my mouth. "Okay." He smiles. "One song." It's not that I've grown stingy with my voice or that I like music any less--only that it seems to be oc cupying a smaller space in my life and brain.Where once I just quoted, or struggled with lyrics, sentences are building in me. If only I have the time to put them on paper--maybe pleading with Mr. Chaucer will produce results.

"Which one?"

Jacob resumes strumming and I hear a thousand songs in all the notes. "Oh, I don't know.With your knowledge and mine we could probably sit out the night up here starting songs or trying to choose the right one."

"That we could," he says.Then he looks only once more at me before his fingers begin.

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"A lovestruck Romeo . . . ," he starts. He begins to play "Romeo and Juliet," but it feels too much like we're mak ing a statement.The time was wrong. I don't want the time to be wrong with him, with Charlie, with Gala, with Angus Piece.

"No, not that," I say."Even though I love that song."

"Got a better idea?" He clamps his hand over the strings and there's sudden quiet.

I nod. "Richie Havens." I can almost hear the music in my head."His cover of George Harrison's--"

" `Here Comes the Sun,' " Jacob finishes for me. It's in timate when someone completes your sentences for you-- how many people in your life really can and do it with great accuracy? Could Charlie? Will my mother ever be able to? Does it mean something? Does it mean everything?

Jacob's playing is immaculate, as though he's practiced for this request and this time with me on a borrowed rooftop of a place I'm leaving in three days. I listen to his intro--it's hap pier, more buoyant than the Beatles' version, faster.When it's time for me to sing, I falter at first, but Jacob doesn't flinch; he just lets me keep going until I'm there--fully into the rhythm and the words, feeling maybe for the very first time what George Harrison meant, no matter what the tempo. It will be alright. It's not sad, this passing of what was, what you had or missed; it's part of you and who you are. The song

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sings of winter, which it's not now, and being lonely, which I'm not either, but the mood fits: me and my old friend, one whose definition is blurred at the edges (and I do love edges), and that's okay.

I sing loudly at the end, and Jacob's guitar-playing picks up.Then, when it's over, we sit with the hum and buzz, the intimacy that feels to me even greater than sex, but then again what do I know about that act, really, having melded our voices, up here, away from it all.

"You ready to meet her?" Jacob asks, his voice breathy. He doesn't say her name, and I'm grateful for that.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I say, and before I can second- guess that statement, I go back into the song--not singing it--but living in it, right now, here.

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= ere is what it's like meeting someone you've never met, even if they come with a giant, important label like mother: just like meeting someone you have met. Even though Gala brought me into this world, even though her biology formed half of my being, when we stand in front of the ferry terminal amidst pairings of other people, it's not a big bang. It's a small burst.

After a morning filled with coffee and a churning stom ach, I slide into my favorite beige shorts, the ones with frayed edges, and a classic navy blue T-shirt that can't be construed as too tight, too loose, too anything; in fact, that's my goal-- not to be definable. I don't want Gala getting here, seeing me in person for the first time since infancy, and categoriz ing me.

I position myself near the front of the ferry building near

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where the cars drive off, where in a mere three days I'll be returning with my own car's coveted Labor Day reservation back to Wood's Hole. Before I push my hands in my pockets, I tuck the long strands of my hair behind both ears, and then, thinking that makes me look too young or too eager, I shake it out so some is in front of my eyes, true teenage style.

Then I see her. It's clear that she sees me, too, right away from the ferry ramp. But she doesn't wave and neither do I. As she approaches, my insides dip and rise like the shore line, and for a minute I'm so lightheaded I could pass out. Then that feeling leaves and I'm calm, feet firm on the hot tarmac.

She stands a couple feet away from me like we're trying to figure out if she's the person I'm meeting, like I'm a tour guide and she's signed up for a ride, which maybe she has. I allow myself one good look at her--the white linen sleeve less shirt, the pants in some color I don't know a name for, only that it reminds me of cut dried grass, and a mouth and face that reflect an older version of me. I always thought I looked like my dad--when you have only one parent I guess that's what happens; you find resemblance or connection where maybe there isn't so much. Now I'm standing here at this point of returning and leaving knowing I'm gaining a parent.

"Hi," I say. It's obvious who she is, from her hair that

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would have to be the twin to mine had I not cut it. Maybe I agreed to the snippage for that reason: so I wouldn't match her.

"Love." She steps forward and then stops."Can I . . . ?"

I swallow. I always pictured that she'd have the upper hand--she was the leaver after all; I was just the person left. But now, right now in the chilled air and pull of fall, I realize that's not true. I get to decide. I'm the one who can reject her now--she already did the damage to me.

"Go ahead," I say and let her hug me. She doesn't cry then, just pulls me into her chest the way she might have done when I was an infant, but not again since. I hug back, but with a degree of detachment. She doesn't pat-hug, which is a point in her favor.

"Thank you," she says, and we go to the car. In her words I think I'm meant to understand an apology, a connection, but I'm not sure if this is my inference.

I can't help but study every motion--how she walks, toes slightly out in her wedge espadrilles, how her head cocks to the side when she's asking a question, which she does frequently, and her eyes, how they contain parentheses to everything she says.

"I do that," I say when she leans forward to the radio in my car and begins to flick through stations.

"Really?" Gala looks at me but keeps scanning. "I drive

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everyone crazy--Sadie . . ." She stops, as though mention ing the daughter she stayed with could ruin anything we're starting.

I overlook it, wanting to show her she can say whatever she wants and it won't change what happened."It's funny, it's only here--on the Vineyard--that I leave the radio tuned to one station.WMVY. I just put it on as soon as I'm closer to the bridge than to Boston and keep it on until I'm on the way back."