Hold Still (20 page)

“I can try,” she says from behind the open pages.

“So, anyway,” I say. “Parties. What do you think about them?”

“They’re fine.”

“Want to know a secret?”

She sets the book down. “Sure.”

“I’ve never been to one.”

She blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve never been to a high school party.”

“You’ve never had beer from a keg?”

“No.”

“You’ve never sat around with a group of tanked kids and talked about who was hot?”

“No.”

“You’ve never locked yourself in someone’s parents’ bedroom and made out?”

I tilt my head, like I’m trying to remember. “Never.”

“Hmm,” she says. She opens her notebook and scribbles some words and numbers
.
Then she settles back in her chair and scrutinizes me.

“Caitlin,” she announces, “that is a disgrace.”

9

Taylor calls me later that night. “Can you come out?” he asks, his voice so ridiculously sweet and hopeful.

“I’ll try,” I say. “Call you back.”

I find my parents out in the garden.

“Look!” My dad beckons me. He holds a green artichoke in each hand like trophies. “They’re the first artichokes of the season.”

“What do you think?” my mom asks. “Should we grill it? Maybe just with a little olive oil and salt so we can really taste the flavor . . .”

I shift from one foot to the other. I don’t want to hurt their feelings, but I don’t want to call Taylor back with bad news, either.

“You’re cooking them tonight?” I ask.

“Why wait?” says my dad.

“Well, I was kinda wondering if I could have dinner with Taylor tonight . . .” I let this thought trail off, and check my parents’ reactions. Disappointment flashes across my dad’s face. My mom smiles wider, which I know is her way of masking what she really feels.

“But,”
I say. “I would hate to miss out on the
first artichokes of the season
.”

My dad nods. “It would be a shame.”

“And besides, I’m pretty sure that Taylor likes artichokes.”

My parents turn gleeful—both Dylan
and
Taylor on the same day? They are in troubled-teen-parent heaven.

“Dinner will be on the table at eight-fifteen,” my mom says, all principal now. “Richard, trim some basil, will you? I just need to get out of these clothes.”

Back upstairs, I call Taylor.

“So,” I say when he answers. “How do you feel about artichokes?”

“Artichokes?”

“The food.”

“My parents are kind of conventional vegetable people,” he says. “You know, carrots, peas, corn . . . that sort of thing. I don’t think I’ve ever had artichokes.”

“Well,” I say, scrunching my face up in nervousness. “Tonight’s your lucky night. Artichokes at my house.”

I hold my breath, wait to hear how he’ll answer. Somehow, I know that if there’s reluctance in his voice, I’ll be crushed.

“They invited me?” he asks, and to my amazement, his voice sounds almost eager.

“Yeah.”

“Wait, but was it like, you asked them and they said, ‘Okay, we didn’t really plan for it so the servings might be small but if you really want him to come then go set another place at the table’? Or was it like, ‘We’d really like to get to know Taylor better and it would make us really happy to have him for dinner’?”

He says this all hurried and I’m laughing even before he’s finished.

“The second one.” I giggle. “Definitely.”

“What time?”

“Eight.”

“Okay.” I hear movement, things rustling. “Shit, it’s already past seven! I’ll be right there.” And he hangs up.

He arrives a few minutes early, freshly showered like the last time he came over, and smelling like a bottle of cologne. My dad shakes his hand. My mom gives him a light hug. I think I see her trying not to choke, but I could be imagining it.

“Hey,” he says to me from four feet away. He lifts his hand in this stiff little wave.

“Hey,” I say back.

I want to kiss him.

When we’re ready to eat, my mom, my dad, and I all sit in different places at the table. We’re so used to being three—having a fourth person throws us off. So I sit on the side where my dad usually sits, and my mom sits across from me, instead of at the end, and my dad sits next to her, and Taylor sits next to me.

For a while there’s a lot of small talk, but not the really awkward kind.

“Do you play any sports?” my dad asks.

“Not really,” Taylor says. “I skate a little, though.”

“He means skateboarding,” I add real quick, so my parents won’t make fools of themselves by asking about hockey or Rollerblading or something equally embarrassing.

“We know,” my mom says teasingly.

Taylor loves the artichokes, and asks about their garden, and says that he would really like to learn how to grow vegetables.

“You’re welcome to join us anytime,” my dad says. “We’re out there most evenings and on the weekends. Just come by.” He seems to have forgotten all about Taylor’s less-than-perfect first impression.

Taylor says, “Really? Awesome,” and it’s all I can do not to reach over and touch him. He’s so close. Did I mention I want to kiss him?

After we’re through eating, I go to the kitchen and open the freezer.

“Serious problem,” I say. “There’s no dessert.”

Mom and Dad exchange looks.

“Do you two want to run to the store for some ice cream?”

“Sure,” I say, trying to sound casual. “What kind do you want?”

“You choose,” my dad says.

As Taylor and I are leaving, my mom brushes past me. “Straight to Safeway and back home, okay?” she whispers.

My face gets hot. “Of course,” I hiss.

As soon as we get in the car, my hand is on Taylor’s leg. I lean toward him.

“Wait!” he says. “They might be watching!”

He pulls out slowly, responsibly, drives down the block, turns the corner, and parks.

I unbuckle and climb into his lap, he puts his hand on my face, we kiss hard like in movie scenes that usually make me uncomfortable and squirmy. I open my eyes and see the reflection of his taillights in a house’s window.

“Turn off your lights,” I tell him.

He turns off the lights.

His hand moves, softly, up my shirt, across my back. I kiss his neck and taste salt, kiss harder. I squeeze my legs around him.

“We should get to the store,” he murmurs, then touches my hair.

The steering wheel digs into my back but I hardly feel it, and he runs his hand down my thigh, traces the groove of my knee.

“Yeah, we should,” I say.

We kiss until my mouth feels swollen.

When I pivot off his lap and back into my seat, exhausted, happy, the clock says 9:55.

“What time did we leave?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “We should hurry.”

“7-Eleven’s closer.”

“Yeah, let’s go there.”

He turns his lights back on and starts the car. I watch him as he drives. I touch a small curl above his ear, the place where his neck fades into shoulder, down to his arm that rests on my lap.

His beautiful, freckled, perfect arm.

“Taylor,” I say. And I’ve said his name a million times, but this time it sounds different, like I’m the first person to ever say it, like he’s the only person in the world with that name.

“Yeah?”

I lace my fingers through his. He parks the car. I don’t answer. All I wanted to say was his name.

“What flavor?” he asks.

“Anything with caramel.”

He squeezes my hand and lets go. Opens and shuts his door. Walks into the fluorescent glow of the 7-Eleven.

10

“I think it best that you focus on moving forward,” Ms. Delani tells me, consulting her grade book.

It’s after school and we’re in her back office. Books sit neatly on shelves, tins of tea rest on a table in the corner, her motel images line the walls.

“I love these,” I tell her.

She follows my gaze to her photographs. “Thank you,” she says. “They aren’t anything yet. Well, yes they are. They are the
beginnings
of something.”

“What do you mean by the beginning?” I’ve never thought of a photograph as something leading to another. I want her to explain.

“All of my work is intimately connected to the process of coming to understand myself. My last series, the one you came to see at the gallery, dealt with fragmentation and unification.”

She pulls a drawer out from a tall, wide cabinet and spreads a few photographs in front of me. “These were the beginnings of that series.”

Each photograph is of a different woman in a different room. I recognize Ms. Delani in our classroom, leaning against the whiteboard, which is covered in photography vocabulary and diagrams. The next photograph was taken in a small, cluttered kitchen. A girl sits at a round table next to a stack of newspapers. She looks familiar, but I can’t place her.

“That’s my dad’s kitchen,” she says.

I look closer at the girl. She’s wearing a roomy university sweat-shirt and her hair is in a high ponytail. She’s sprawled across the table, leaning on an elbow.

“It’s
you,
” I say.

“Yes.”

“When you were in college?”

“No. Two years ago. You already knew me then.”

“Are you serious?”

I can’t hide my amazement and she laughs. I’ve never heard her laugh like this. She sounds younger, like someone who might be seated at the table next to me at a restaurant, or in the row behind me at the movies. Like someone Davey and Amanda would be friends with. I move on to the next photograph. Again, I hardly recognize her. Her hair is down, lying perfectly straight, skimming the tops of her shoulders. She is sitting on her knees on a bed staring straight at the camera. On either side, candles burn on bedside tables. She’s wearing a tiny satin camisole. My first instinct is to be embarrassed that I’m looking at my photo teacher barely dressed, but then I remember the countless images of nudes I’ve seen over the last three years of her class and it seems less strange.

“I was inspired by Cindy Sherman,” Ms. Delani says. “You remember learning about her work, don’t you?”

I nod. “She photographs herself as different characters.”

“Right, only I wasn’t trying to become someone other than myself, I was working to reconcile the different parts of me: the teacher, the artist, the lover, the daughter, the friend. And so on.”

“These are amazing,” I say.

“They were a starting point. Much like these motel shots. The self-portraits were too literal. I moved on to household objects, but they were too static. I ended up with dolls. Still objects, but inherently representational of the female figure. By taking them apart, examining pieces separate from the rest, putting them back together, I was able to really wrestle with the issues I was working through.”

“What issues are you working through now?”

She gathers her photographs and puts them back into the file drawer. I worry that what I asked was too personal.

She sighs. “Well, Caitlin, I imagine that they are issues we share. A pervasive feeling that something is missing. Darkness. Vacancy.” Her photographs echo her from their spots on the wall. A dozen “Vacancy” signs glowing in the dark.

“I
always
begin too literally,” she says. “But as I was saying, it’s only the beginning of this project.”

She turns from her pictures to me.

“So, let’s get back to
you
now. What will you photograph to make up for a year’s worth of shoddy pictures and missing assignments?” Her words are harsh, but she smiles as she says them.

“Aren’t you going to give me an assignment?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “It will be more interesting to see what you can come up with on your own.”

She points to her collection of books. “If you’d like to browse these for inspiration, go ahead. I have hours’ worth of grading to do.”

I get up and run my fingers across their spines. Sarah Moon. Walker Evans. Mona Kuhn. All the photographers I love.

“Actually,” I say, “if it’s all right, I’d really like to look through the drawer you told me about. The one with all of Ingrid’s pictures.”

“Of course,” Ms. Delani says. She points toward her cabinet. “Bottom drawer. I’ll be up front. Take as much time as you need.”

Ms. Delani lets me use the classroom phone to let my parents know I’ll be here past dinner, and then I settle on the floor of her office and pull open the drawer. Just as she told me, there are hundreds of photographs of me. Some I recognize, others I never knew existed. I set the images of myself aside. Go on looking.

I find a photograph of Ingrid’s room—paper lanterns hung at varying heights casting soft light across her magazines and scattered clothes. I set it down in front of me. I place one of her mom and dad sitting by the pool in their backyard beside it. Buried near the bottom of the file is one of her desk with colored pencils and a soda and her journal, now my journal, open to an early entry. There is one of her bathroom counter strewn with makeup and hair spray and bobby pins. Another of her reflection—a close-up of her photographing herself in the mirror. Most of her face is hidden by the camera. I touch the tip of her chin. Place it next to the others.

Ms. Delani appears in the open door. “I’m going to make myself some tea,” she says. “Want a cup?”

I nod, keep searching.

Her record player. Her pink toes in brittle grass. The corner of Davey’s living room:
out the window, raindrops cling to telephone wires.

Ms. Delani steps around the photographs and sets a steaming mug on the windowsill next to me. She slips quietly away.

Her legs with a cut below one knee. Her dad, asleep on the sofa
. I discover and sort and stare, concentrating so hard that I don’t notice how dark it has become until Ms. Delani flips on the light. I blink. Stand up. Examine her office floor, covered with pieces of Ingrid’s life.

I gather all the photographs I’ve chosen and walk out to the classroom. Ms. Delani is sipping her tea, reading a novel. I look at the clock. It’s almost nine.