Nine Inches (28 page)

“I know it’s none of my business, but are they . . . ?”

Liz shrugged, trying to hide her discomfort. It was weird how many other parents felt that it was okay to inquire about her daughter’s sex life just because she’d been dating the same boy for the past couple of years.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We don’t really talk about it.”

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING,
this wasn’t a lie.
Th
e one time Liz had asked her daughter straight out if she and Chris had
gone all the way,
Dana just rolled her eyes and said,
Mom, I’m really not comfortable with this conversation,
and that was where they’d le
ft
it.

Of course, this exchange had taken place over a year ago, and a lot had happened since then. But what was Liz supposed to do? Tell Sally the truth, which was that Chris sometimes spent the night in Dana’s bedroom and, in fact, was doing so that very night? Because Liz knew exactly how that would go. Sally would pretend not to be shocked and then say,
Really? And you’re all right with that?
And then Liz would either have to lie and say yes or admit that she hated the situation, but felt powerless to change it.

It was a fait accompli,
she would have had to explain.
Nobody asked my permission.

Ever since freshman year, Dana had been spending the occasional weekend with Chris’s family at their vacation house in Vermont. It was a lovely second home, by all accounts, just twenty minutes from Killington, and Chris’s parents were lovely people.
Th
e dad, Warren, was a
fi
nancial guy, and the mom, Jodie, a working artist with her own studio and a gallery in Boston, the kind of limber, fresh-faced woman who could let herself go gray and seem all the more youthful and attractive as a result. Both parents thought the world of Dana, repeatedly telling Liz what a pleasure it was to have her as a houseguest, such a polite girl, always helping with the dishes — something she rarely did at home, Liz always wanted to interject, though she never did — and so beautiful, too, such a graceful, fearless skier.

Th
is past winter, Jodie had phoned Liz a
ft
er Presidents’ Day weekend. She started by reciting the usual compliments, but then her tone changed, turned solemn and careful.

“I thought you should know,” she said. “
Th
e kids have been sharing a bedroom. At the ski house.”

“What?”

“Dana said you were okay with it, but I wanted to double-check.”

“She said I was okay with it?”

“More or less. She said you wouldn’t care.”

“Of course, I care.” Liz was glad Jodie couldn’t see the color spreading across her cheeks. “
Th
ey’re just so young to be — ”

“I know.” Jodie’s voice was dreamy and forgiving. “But they love each other. And they seem really responsible. To tell you the truth, Liz, I think they’ve been sneaking around for a while now, playing musical beds in the middle of the night. At least this way it’s out in the open. I just don’t want them to think there’s anything to be ashamed of. As long as you’re all right with it.”

Liz knew the moment had arrived to state her objections.
Th
e problem was, she wasn’t quite sure what she was objecting to. She’d slept with college boyfriends when she was just a little older than Dana, guys she’d known for a lot less time than Dana had known Chris, guys who didn’t even pretend to be nice to her, let alone love her. And besides, she knew it wasn’t Dana’s age or the sex itself that bothered her. It was more that she resented her daughter for getting everything all at once, for being so pretty and happy and lucky, skiing all day and then slipping under the warm covers with her ridiculously cute, totally adoring boyfriend. But how could you even begin to talk about that?

“Liz? Are you there?”

“No, you’re right, Jodie.
Th
ere’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just as long as they’re being careful.”

“
Th
at’s exactly what I told them.”

At the time, Liz had consoled herself with the knowledge that winter was almost over, that there wouldn’t be many more Vermont getaways before the snow melted and club soccer started up. Pretty soon everything would be back to normal.

Th
e trouble was, Dana and Chris liked sleeping together, and it didn’t make sense to them that they could share a bed in Vermont, but not in Gi
ff
ord. Before long, Dana was heading out on Friday night and not coming home until Sunday a
ft
ernoon. Liz made a belated e
ff
ort to put a stop to the sleepovers, telling her daughter that she missed her and needed to spend time with her on the weekends, but the only result of this intervention was that the lovebirds started switching o
ff
, spending one night with Chris’s parents, and the next with Liz, like newlyweds trying to keep both sets of in-laws happy.

It was actually kind of fun to have them around. Sometimes the three of them would watch a movie together or play Scrabble or go out for ice cream; Dana and Chris were less self-centered, a lot more available to Liz, now that they knew they’d have all the alone time they wanted once they went to bed.
Th
e only real awkwardness came a
ft
er lights out, when Liz had nothing to do but lie awake and listen for the telltale sounds of passion coming from down the hall, wondering how two teenagers managed to be so utterly silent, making it seem like the only sex in the house was taking place inside her own muddled, dirty-minded head.

THE CHILLING
Station was a smart concept, a makeshi
ft
living-room/rest area that glowed like a mirage at the end of a deserted corridor, a cozy, lamplit oasis. It was equipped with a motley array of furniture — couches and chairs, two army cots, even a freestanding hammock — along with a stack of board games and some rickety card tables to play them on.
Th
e only thing missing was the kids.

“It’s been dead,” grumbled Craig Waters, the volunteer on the eight-to-midnight shi
ft
. He’d been napping on the recliner when Liz and Sally arrived and still looked a little out of it. “
Th
ere were a couple of chess nerds early on, but nothing for the past two hours.”

“It’ll pick up,” Sally said. “
Th
e kids get pretty tired around four in the morning.”

Craig pondered Liz with groggy curiosity. “How late are you staying?”

“Till the bitter end,” she told him. “Six
A
.
M
.
”

“Wow.” He yawned. “Good for you.”

And then they were gone, leaving Liz alone among the mismatched furniture, with nothing to do except kick herself for not having brought something to read. It was a ridiculous oversight, considering that it was her policy never to leave home without a book, a soccer mom’s best friend when practice ran late. But she happened to be reading
Th
e Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,
and the library hardcover was massive, not the sort of volume you could easily slip into your purse on the way to a graduation party. So she’d le
ft
it on her bedside table, where it was doing no one any good.

She could hear music and voices from the other end of the building, the sound of young people having fun, and it struck her almost like a taunt, a reminder of everything she was missing, not just tonight but every night, the void that had become her life. She felt a minor panic attack coming on — or maybe just an urgent need for fresh air and human contact — and wondered what would happen if she marched back to the sign-in table and demanded a better assignment, something that would at least allow her to join the party, to interact with the kids and the other volunteers.
Th
e worst they could do was tell her no.

Oh, come on,
she scolded herself.
Don’t be such a baby. It’s not even twelve-thirty.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? She still had
fi
ve and a half hours to go.
Five and a half hours.
A whole endless night. Just the thought of it was exhausting. She found herself sneaking glances at the beige velour recliner that had been Craig’s undoing, imagining how sweet it would feel to crank back the handle and put her feet up. But there was no way she was going to allow herself to fall asleep in public, to be that vulnerable in front of people she didn’t know, especially teenagers.

Hoping to clear her head, she slipped into the narrow space between the hammock and the
fi
re doors and did a few yoga stretches. She’d been trying to
fi
nd a regular class for a while now, but somehow the timing was never convenient, or she didn’t like the teacher, or the other students were show-o
ff
s. It was too bad, because yoga never failed to cheer her up. She could feel the magic working right away — her muscles warming and loosening, the tension dissolving in waves, her mind emptying itself of negative thoughts — despite the cramped space, the lack of a mat, and jeans that hadn’t been designed for sun salutations.

It’s just one night,
she reminded herself.
It’s going to be
fi
ne.

Arching into upward dog, she was startled by the sound of so
ft
voices and mu
ffl
ed laughter. It was coming from right in front of her.

“Hello?” she called out as the
fi
re door creaked open. “Excuse me?”

Th
e intruders froze in the doorway as Liz scrambled to her feet.
Th
ey were a couple, a tall boy in a
WESLEYAN
LACROSSE
shirt and a short, plump girl with multiple piercings and too much makeup.

“Where did you come from?” Liz demanded. She’d been told that the
fi
re doors were o
ff
-limits, except in case of emergency. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Th
e boy let go of his girlfriend’s hand. He was clean-cut and preppy, with the bland good looks that were his Gi
ff
ord birthright. She was more of a townie, in skimpy denim shorts that did her thighs no favors, and an orange V-neck tee that was two sizes too small.

“Mr. Waters told us it was okay,” the boy explained a
ft
er a moment. He looked Liz straight in the eye, his voice calm and con
fi
dent. “Jenna needed her medication.”

Th
e girl giggled a little too loudly. She had dirt on her knees and a big pink blotch spreading across her chest.

“I have asthma,” she said. Something about the way she pronounced her ailment made Liz realize she’d been drinking. “Hadda go home for my inhaler.”

Liz knew they were lying. She
fi
gured that they’d slipped out while Craig was sleeping and had hoped to slip back in undetected, but what was she supposed to do? Report them to the authorities? It was their graduation night, and they weren’t hurting anyone. And besides, how could she object to a teenaged tryst when her own daughter was home in bed with her boyfriend? She was a lot of things, but she tried not to be a hypocrite.

“Just get outta here,” she said, waving them in the direction of the cafeteria. “Go enjoy your party.”

•••

A FLOCK
of artsy girls descended upon the Chilling Station around one o’clock, packing themselves into the couches and chairs, talking in low, animated voices, as if hatching a conspiracy.
Th
ey were a strikingly multicultural bunch, at least by Gi
ff
ord standards — there were two Asians in the mix, a tall black girl who looked like a ballerina, and a round-faced, red-lipped Muslim girl in a headscarf. One member of the group was in a wheelchair; another wore a bandanna to conceal what Liz assumed was chemo-induced hair loss.
Th
e smaller of the Asian girls — she had an adorable teardrop face, and a streak of purple in her hair — sat on the lap of a butch white girl in a baseball cap.

Liz didn’t recognize any of them from the soccer
fi
eld; she
fi
gured they were denizens of the art room and the dance studio, editors of the literary magazine, o
ffi
cers of the Gay/Straight Alliance, members of the Performing Arts Club. Some of them were cute, but mostly not in a way that a high school boy would appreciate — not that all of them would be equally interested in eliciting the approval of high school boys — and they seemed collectively resigned to their wall
fl
ower status at the All-Night Party. Liz’s heart went out to them; she wanted to hug each and every one, to let them know they’d be happier in college, that the world was about to become much larger and more forgiving, at least for a little while.

A
ft
er they moved on, a handful of other visitors trickled in and out. A pair of identical-twin boys played a cutthroat game of Yahtzee, insulting each other with language so vile Liz had to ask them to tone it down. A scru
ff
y-bearded troubadour — he looked a little too old for high school — strummed an acoustic guitar, serenading his hippie friends with evergreen songs by Cat Stevens and Neil Young. Four football players held a round-robin arm-wrestling tournament, grunting and grimacing like constipated old men while their girlfriends cheered them on from the sidelines.

By two-thirty it was dead again, but at least Liz had a yearbook to keep her occupied, a copy le
ft
behind by someone named Corinne. She leafed through the glossy pages, reading the inscriptions, searching for familiar faces.
Th
ere was a photo of Dana in the section devoted to Girls’ Soccer, an action shot in which she leapt for a header, her ponytail a golden blur:
Striker Dana Mercatto rises to the occasion against Rosedale.
Liz
fl
ipped ahead to the junior-class pictures, locating her daughter’s face among the rows of black-and-white thumbnails. It was a photo she knew well — a color version of it was framed on her dresser — Dana gazing coolly into the camera, so lovely and self-possessed, utterly at peace with herself. Liz couldn’t help remembering her own senior picture, the too-big smile, the desperation in her eyes, as if she were begging the world not to hate her.