Roomies (26 page)

When they were all settled, Mom bounced Francis on her knee and I told her and Dad about Keyon. “That’s who I’m going out with tonight,” I said.

At first I got strained smiles and quizzical looks, my mom saying things like “I didn’t realize you were dating….” and “Oh, I see, you’re not dating but you’re going on a date….” “So, more than friends but not officially a couple?” “Oh, sort of officially a couple now?”

“ ‘Couple’ is pushing it,” I said.

Dad stood up from the table and carried plates to the sink. “But this isn’t your first date,” he said, stating it rather than asking.

“Well, it
sort
of is.” I rationalized dinner at Keyon’s parents’ house, which mine didn’t know about, as less than a “date” and more like a “visit.”

“You’ve been hanging out with him,” Dad said, “in a boy-girl way, it sounds like.”

“He is a boy and I am a girl and we have been hanging out, yes.”

“Lauren, come on, you know what I mean. You didn’t want to tell us about this sooner?” His voice was loud over the running water as he rinsed dishes.

I looked at Mom. She had her nose in Francis’s hair, what little of it there was. I caught her eyes and gestured with mine toward Dad, like,
Say something to him.

“Of course we want to meet him,” she said. “To establish a relationship, not to give you
permission
.” To Dad: “Right, Doug?”

Dad flipped a dish towel over his shoulder and turned around. “Keyon, huh?”

“Yeah, Keyon,” I said, knowing what he was asking. “He’s black, by the way.”

Mom said, almost too quickly, “Not that it matters, honey.” She shifted Francis around so he faced her. “We’re just… surprised. It’s been a while since you went out on anything like a date.”

“Yeah, I know. I thought you’d be happy that I’m having some fun and exercising my freedom.”

“You’re totally missing the point,” Dad said; then, instead of explaining what that point might be, he tossed his towel on the counter and left the room.

Mom grinned at me, and wouldn’t stop.

“What’s so amusing?” I asked.

“I’m thinking about Grandpa, the first time I brought your dad home. You know Grandpa was one of the nicest men around. But he did
not like
Mr. Douglas Cole. He didn’t have any reason not to, but simply the very idea of him—of
anyone
who might take me away from him, from home… It can be hard for some fathers. And mothers.”

“I’ve been on dates before, Mom.” Several. Mostly dances.

“I know. It’s probably dawning on Dad that while you’re across the Bay, we won’t have any idea what you’re up to and who you’re up to it with unless you decide to tell us.”

“So he doesn’t care about Keyon’s… not-whiteness?”

“Oh, I’m not saying that. He might have something to work through there. But it’s probably quite a bit more about sex.” Then Francis burped, and Mom put him over her shoulder, patting his back rhythmically while saying “Sexy sexy sexy sex” with each pat.

“Mom, seriously? In front of Francis?”

“How do you think we
got
Francis?”

I groaned and rested my head on the table, immediately realizing I’d put it in a small puddle of syrup. “I’m not having sex,” I said, using my napkin to blot the sticky mess. “And I have no immediate plans to.” It surprised me, saying it aloud. And hearing it made me certain. “Tell that to Dad before Keyon comes over tonight, if it’ll make him act nicer.”

“My inner feminist says that’s none of his business,” Mom said. “It also wonders if you would like to talk about this sex thing with me now.”

“We had that talk three years ago.”

“I left a lot out.” There was a glimmer in her eye that made me nervous. “So if you want more details and—”

“Um,
no.
” I got up before she could continue. “I have to go wash syrup off my face. Immediately.”

She grinned again, like the whole thing was hilarious. I went into the bathroom, locked the door to prevent sibling invasion, and cleaned up. As I inspected my hairline for maple residue, I knew why I had said that I had no plans for sex with Keyon or anyone else:

I like the way I am. I don’t want to change myself right now, in the way that I presume sex would change a person. Or at least the way a person thinks about herself.

With so many things shifting this year, I want to hold one thing steady, keep one thing exactly in the perfect place.

Keyon shows up right on time and there’s immediate chaos.

Jack and Gertie run screaming to answer the front door. Jack opens it and Keyon gives him a big smile and says, “Marcus, right?”

Jack shakes his head and walks away, dejected. Not the best start.

I put my hands on Gertie’s shoulders. “That was Jack. This is Gertie.”

“Oops.” Keyon bends down and says, “Hey, Gertie,” and gives her a friendly shoulder-nudge.

She hovers around my leg, mute. “She’s shy with strangers,” I explain.

“It’s cool. Me too.”

My mom comes in, smiling hugely,
hugely
, as if Keyon is there to announce she’s won a million dollars. “
Key
on!”

Oh, lord. The force of her cheer is epic. And she gives Keyon this big hug.

I hope it’s not as obvious to him as it is to me the lengths to which my parents are going to show how totally fine and not at all complicated it is that he’s black. My dad is acting excessively jolly yet also not quite making eye contact with me. I don’t know if Mom told him about the sex conversation, or if he’s just being weird all on his own.

It’s all slightly reminiscent of the way Keyon’s mom talked and talked when I went to his house, and now I’m pretty sure she was as nervous as my parents are.

Worried that he’ll try to fist-bump Keyon or something, I shove Gertie in my dad’s direction. “Will you round up Marcus and P.J. so we can say hi and then be on our way?”

He does, and we all stand around the living room for a while chatting and watching the kids run wild. Mom asks Keyon if he wants to hold Francis, and to me it sounds like “You may be tall and black but we trust you with our infant!”

Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe I’m the one with the problem. Before he can say yes or no, I grab Keyon’s arm and say, “Well, we better get going….”

Finally, we’re through it. Once we’re in Keyon’s car, he looks at me and asks, “You okay?”

“Yeah!” I say brightly. “Why?”

“You seemed nervous in there.”

I laugh self-consciously. “Weren’t you? Meeting the parents and all?”

“Nah, I don’t worry about it.”

“I guess I’ve never really had a guy over to meet them.” I don’t know why I’m lying. Good old honest Lauren, who, on principle, just
had
to tell Ebb about her dad! Here she is, lying to Keyon about this dumb little thing. The truth is that at the beginning of junior year Chris Manieri came for dinner a couple of times. But I don’t want Keyon to think this race stuff means anything more than… whatever it means.

“And it’s got nothing to do with me being black?” He says it teasing, with a smile.

I make a pretend shocked face and press my hand to my chest. “What? You’re
black
?”

He laughs, and reaches over to put his hand on my thigh, like he does all the time now, whenever we’re in the car. “Where we going?”

“Hey, you’re the guy. You decide.”

We wind up at Nizario’s, where there are some other kids from school and it’s kind of hard not to join them, since the only empty table is a foot away from theirs, so we do. They’re more from Keyon’s circle than mine and seem a little surprised to see us together, but there we are, together.

I’m getting used to it. Getting used to it being true, and not only something that happens in a parallel universe that exists at the sandwich shop and in Keyon’s car. Saying aloud we like each other: check. Meeting parents: done. On a date: yes.

Having the “we’re going to college in two weeks what now?” talk…

We can no longer pretend this isn’t something that needs to happen, and soonish.

He holds my hand under the table while we wait for our order. I can’t stop exploring his fingers with mine, each of them individually, the roughness of the cuticles and the smoothness of the nails. The landscape of his palm. The wrinkly part of his knuckles.

After we eat he slides his chair so it’s touching mine and puts his arm around me. I press myself against him, too, and it feels good and right and safe, and is this what you feel after you know you like someone, and they like you, but before you know if you love them?

We drive down to Ocean Beach after dinner and sit in the car. I assume we’re going to make out, but after a few kisses Keyon says, “I ate too much pizza. My stomach is feeling kind of gnarly.”

So we talk.

Keyon tells me about his big brother, Joe Junior. How they used to get up to all kinds of nonsense when they were kids, driving his mom mad. “When she’d had it with us, my dad would take us to work with him. Man, we loved that. We would sneak sourdough rolls and tubs of chicken salad and hide out in Pop’s office during the rush and make ourselves sick on that junk.”

“It’s weird,” I say, staring out at the fog coming in over the water. “I have all these brothers and sisters but I don’t really know what it’s like to have a brother or sister. I mean, they’re all too young to do that kind of stuff with. Mostly it’s like I’m an extra parent.”

“Yeah, I could see how it’d be like that.”

“Maybe when the kids get older, it will be different. But they’re going to have all these experiences without me. They’ll know every detail of each other’s lives.”

“You’re going to have a bunch of experiences without them, too. It’s good. It’s life.”

I snuggle against Keyon, with the emergency brake in my lower ribs, and we’re quiet a long time. My mind drifts all over the place, from imagining what our kids would look like and if I could learn to do their hair right, to going over in my head the words I should use to break up with him in two weeks, and back to our wedding, or at least visiting each other in school…

“Do you know who your roommate is going to be yet at Chico?”

“Uhh, maybe? There’s a letter around my house somewhere, I guess.”

“You were right about EB,” I say. “I shouldn’t have told her about her dad.”

“Pissed?”

“Ohhhyeah.” I bury my head in his shoulder and sigh. “She’s acting like… I don’t know. The way you’d act if someone purposely ran over your dog or something. It wasn’t like that.”

“Don’t want to say I warned you. But…”

“You warned me.”

He touches my neck. “Your intentions were good, Lo.”

“Apparently that’s not always enough.” My back is getting all twisted, so I sit up and shift so that I’m leaning against the passenger door. “I thought we were friends, me and her. Or getting to be friends. It proves my point about e-mail and all that. Like Zoe thinks she has all these ‘friends’ online, people who watch her videos and whatever—”