Roomies (31 page)

My mother calls a little later and asks me to swing by the nursery and pick up some plants from Tim, who occasionally helps her out with stagings, and drive them over to the three-million-dollar house. I don’t feel like I can refuse so I call Tim to tell him I’m coming and he says he’s out on a consultation but that he set the stuff for my mom by the back door and left it unlocked. “Be sure to lock up when you go, and hey,” he says. “Don’t forget to come by to say good-bye if you can.”

“I’ll try,” I say, and I feel a weird sort of impatience to be gone already and not spending all the time I have left here
leaving
.

At the nursery I load up the plants—several of which are more like trees—and am about to leave when I notice a small bonsai tree
near the register. Maybe it’s completely dorky to give Mark a tree to remember me by, but I take one look at it, with its tiny twisting trunk—like two entangled limbs—and know he has to have it. Or that I have to give it to him. Which may or may not be the same thing. I leave money and a note and lock up and go.

After delivering the plants and helping my mom figure out where to put them, I make a quick stop at home to shower and change and then drive down the beach road and wonder about whether this is the last time I’ll drive this way before I leave. And when I’m about to pull into the restaurant parking lot, I find myself missing the turn and driving right up to the beach instead. I get out of the car, because I’m suddenly afraid that if I don’t take a minute, the next few days will get away from me and I won’t get to breathe all of this in. I stand there and study the ocean—dark and greenish against the whitish sky of dusk, where stars are about to appear—and I let my mind go blank. I want to very deliberately feel whatever it is I am feeling, and then that seems almost dumb, if not impossible, and I am a little bit late to meet the girls, so I go.

The lasts are going to keep coming now, hard and fast.

The last time I see the ocean.

The last time I see Mark.

The last time I sleep in my bed and wake up in my house.

The last time I drive this car.

The last time I walk through these restaurant doors…

It isn’t until a few seconds after Justine shouts “Surprise!” that I look at the faces around hers and see that they include Morgan’s,
yes, but also my mother’s and Tim’s and Mark’s. Justine’s folks are there, too, and Danny and Mitch, and even the Schroeders. Mrs. Schroeder is holding Vivian and comes up to me and says, “We’re not staying; we want you to enjoy your meal in peace. But we had to at least say good-bye.” Vivian dives at me and I take her and give her this huge hug and I think I’m going to cry but then the swell fades and I don’t and I watch them go.

“You guys are amazing,” I say, turning to Justine and Morgan. I give them hugs and hold Justine’s, especially, a little too long. Morgan says, “Well, it was your mom’s idea.”

So I go hug my mom and then I look over at Mark and see him looking up at the wall and blinking a lot and swallowing hard a few times. Fighting tears. Like me.

“Hey,” he says as I go to take the seat next to him, and he kisses me quick. I don’t even need to look at the menu to know what I’m having. They make the best shrimp scampi on the shore here, so it’s decided. I introduce Mark around, then, and he and Justine seem to hit it off, talking about how neither of them really knows what they want to major in yet. Morgan and Mitch start talking animatedly to Tim, though I can’t imagine about what. Even Justine’s boyfriend, Danny, who in all our time spent together has barely said more than two words directly to me, those words being “Hey, EB,” seems to be chatty and having fun. He pulls me aside and says, “She’s really going to miss you, you know.”

“I know,” I say. “Me too.”

Then salads arrive. “I got you something,” I say to Mark as we sit down, and his eyebrows go up.

“It’s a pony, isn’t it?” His smile is tinged with sadness. His
parents—both of them, together—are taking him out for a farewell dinner tomorrow and we have decided that it would be best if I don’t go. I’m glad we never actually put “meet the parents” on our list.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s a pony.”

Dinner comes soon after we’re done with salads and my mother and Mark start to talk about Northwestern—when he’s leaving, how he’s getting there. Then she asks, “And any plans to visit California?”

Mark looks at me. We haven’t sorted out all the details but we have a general game plan. Neither of us will do anything with anybody, no matter what, before Thanksgiving, at which point we’re both going to come home to Jersey and check in about where we stand. If we’re solid, we’ll revisit the idea of defining our relationship. To my mother he says, “We’re going to let ourselves get settled before making any plans.”

“Well, that sounds wise.” She nods approval at me and I start to think that if my mother and I can find our way to Zumba, and to each other, maybe there’s hope for me and Neil. Maybe we can have a kind of new relationship that breaks away from the whole wounded father-daughter abandonment thing. Only time will tell.

Mark stays with me when I say good-bye to everyone in the parking lot—the girls and I plan one final beach outing in the morning—and then I pop open the back of my car and pull out the bonsai, which I wedged between some random junk so it wouldn’t fall over. I turn and present it to him. “For you.”

He looks a little surprised and smiles a touch and then says, “That is completely awesome.”

Still, I feel dumb. “Do you really think so?”

“I do.” He seems entirely entranced as he takes it in his hands. “All this time I’ve been thinking,
Please don’t let her get me something boring like a watch or a pen. Please please please let it be something fun and cool and totally Elizabeth
.” He smiles. “Or should I call you EB?”

“If you want,” I say, happy either way because it’s all just me.

He holds out the tree and says, “This is totally EB. And I love it.”

“Cross it off the list!” I say.

“Consider it crossed.”

I give him a quick kiss and ask, “Anything else we should try to knock off tonight?”

He has the list on his phone so we lean against my car and look at it together. There’s not much left. “I have an idea that isn’t on the list,” he says then. “We can walk there, come on.”

So we head up to the boardwalk and toward the amusement parks, past shops selling taffy and stuffed sea animals, past the stands where you can throw darts at balloons or baseballs at stacks of milk jugs. Soon we are staring up at the massive swing ride. It has a top like a carousel, painted elaborately and lit with thousands of lights, and the chair swings hang from it on long chains. The ride is spinning right now, and the top has tilted so that the swings are really shooting up into the night, and just looking at it makes me sort of want to scream. Down below, on the mat where riders are loaded on, sit tons of pairs of flip-flops that were kicked off before the ride began.

“What do you say?” Mark says.

“You’re serious,” I say.

“All this going-away-to-college stuff is starting to feel very grown-up.” He nods at the ride. “This’ll make us feel young again.”

I can hardly argue with that. So we go to a booth for tickets, queue
up with some others, and then find two swings side by side, close enough where we can hold hands. I kick off my flip-flops and in a minute we’re spinning. We start slowly, going round and round, but I can feel it, somewhere deep in my gut, when some new force starts to propel us out into the sky. Mark and I hold hands as long as we can but then the force is too strong and he laughs and I scream and we have no choice but to let go.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28

BERKELEY

It’s a little bit of a letdown. The room. I mean, after this whole summer and the e-mails and counting the days, in the end it’s a dingy little box filled with wooden furniture from the early eighties. There are two of everything, matched:

Two desks. Two desk chairs. Two beds. Two closets. Two small bookcases. The Noah’s Ark of living arrangements.

“So this is what I’ve been daydreaming about for months.” I laugh at myself. “My room at home is nicer.”

“I wonder if this is what it looks like at Chico,” Keyon says, sounding like he hopes not. He goes over to the window, which faces another building, and opens it a couple of inches to let in the fresh air.

When I first told my parents I wanted Keyon to be the one to bring me across the Bay, they were upset and confused. I explained that I didn’t want my entry into the dorms to be mobbed with kids and noise and all the stuff that comes with being a family of eight. But that I didn’t want to be alone, either.

“Lauren,” Mom said, sounding frustrated, “we only get to do this
once
!”

“Me too.”

“If you don’t want the whole family, at least let Daddy take you.” At the same time, Dad said, “You and Mom can go and I’ll stay here.”

“I want it to be Keyon.”

Dad shook his head, clearly disappointed in me. But what could I say? All summer they’d been pushing me toward my freedom and now I wanted to claim it.

We settled on a compromise.

Keyon brought me over and is helping me get settled before he has to go home and take care of his own moving stuff. Later, my parents will come with all the kids. They want to meet Ebb and make sure the room is secure and we aren’t going to get snatched on the first night.

I join Keyon at the window. “Nice view.”

He puts his arm around me, and I feel about a thousand times closer to him than I did at the fancy steak house we went to last night. There, we had candlelight, and the waiter kept coming by with different forks for the various courses and we were too out of place to really talk.

Here, it’s simple and bright. Us.

“You’ll see,” he says. “Pretty soon it’ll feel like a home away from home.”

“Which bed should I take?” I ask, turning to face inside the room again.

“Hmm. You’d better let me check it out. Come here.” He takes my hand and leads me to the bed that’s on the right as you come in the door. He stretches out and pats the very little bit of space left next to him.

I lie down and rest my head in the crook of his arm. “This one’s not bad,” I murmur.

“Smells a little dusty, Lo,” he says with an exaggerated sniff.

“That could be my hair.”

We laugh. Keyon pushes me out of the bed and we scuttle over to the other one and get into the same position. “Now, this is a straight-up
bed
!” Keyon exclaims.

“Who’s going to help you pick your bed, at your dorm?”

“I’ll flag down some chick in the hall.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Maybe your mom will do it.”

“I know you didn’t just say that.”

We’re teasing each other but our voices grow softer and softer until we’re silent, and as close as we can get. His body is so solid and warm and perfect with mine. About four seconds before I could fall asleep, he says, “We’d better get your stuff up here before my car gets towed.”

I groan, because I want to stay exactly like this for about seventy-two more hours. He pulls me up until we’re sitting on the edge of the bed, and he kisses the top of my head, and my neck, and my cheek. Everywhere but my lips and I think neither of us wants to. It would feel so serious, and only remind us that after we get me unpacked, we’ll be apart for a while.

It takes us four or five trips up and down stairs to get all the stuff. The last thing, from way in the back of the trunk of his dad’s car, is the microwave.

The microwave that started the whole thing with EB, and in turn started the whole thing with Keyon. “Where should we put it?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”