The First Time (7 page)

Mattie gave her ticket to the parking lot attendant, who waved her away without any refund on her deposit. She pulled out of the lot, turned right at the first corner, left at the one after that, paying no real attention to where she was headed, wondering what to do with the
rest of her day. A woman without a plan, she thought, trying to figure out what she’d say to Jake when he came home—if he came home. Maybe she should see a psychiatrist, she decided, someone who could help her deal with her frustrations, with all her pent-up hostility, before it was too late, although it was already too late, she realized. Her marriage was over. “My marriage is over,” she said simply.

Nothing is ever as simple as it sounds
.

Mattie saw the traffic light several blocks ahead, registered the color red, and transferred her foot from the gas pedal to the brake. But it was as if the brake had suddenly disappeared. Frantically, Mattie began pounding her heel against the floor of the car, but she felt nothing. Her foot was asleep, she was kicking at air, and the car was going much too fast. There was no way she was going to be able to slow down, let alone stop, and there were people in the crosswalk, a man and two little children, for God’s sake, and she was going to hit them, she was going to drive her car into two innocent little children, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was crazy or she was having some sort of seizure, but either way, a man and two little kids would be dead if she didn’t do something about it soon. She had to do something.

In the next instant, Mattie twisted the wheel of the car sharply to the left, catapulting her into the lane of oncoming traffic and directly into the path of an approaching vehicle. The driver of the car, a black Mercedes, swerved to avoid a head-on collision. Mattie heard the squeal of tires, the crash of metal, the shattering of glass. There was a loud pop, like an explosion,
as Mattie’s airbag burst open, smacking her in the chest like a giant fist, pinning her to her seat, pushing up against her face like an unwelcome suitor, robbing her of breathing space. Black and white colliding, she thought, clinging to consciousness, trying to remember what Jake had said in his summation about few things being black or white, only varying shades of gray. She tasted blood, saw the driver emerge from the other car, screaming and gesticulating wildly. She thought of Kim, beautiful sweet wonderful Kim, and wondered how her daughter would manage without her.

And then, mercifully, everything disappeared into varying shades of gray, and she saw nothing at all.

K
im’s earliest memory was of her parents fighting.

She sat at the back of the classroom, blue ballpoint pen scribbling a series of connecting hearts across the cover of her English notebook, her head tilted toward the teacher at the green chalkboard at the front of the class, although Kim was barely aware of his presence, hadn’t heard a word he’d said all period. She shifted in her seat, looked toward the window that occupied one whole wall of the tenth-grade classroom. Not that there was anything outside to see. What was once a grassy courtyard had been paved over the previous year and filled with portables, three in all, ugly prefabricated gray structures with tiny little windows too high to look out or see in, in rooms that were either too hot or too cold. Kim closed her eyes, leaned back in her seat, wondering which it would be by the time her math class rolled
around. What was she doing in this stupid school anyway? Hadn’t the whole point of moving to the suburbs been to get her out of overcrowded classrooms and into an environment more conducive to learning?

Wasn’t that what all the yelling had been about?

Not that her parents did that much actual yelling. No, their anger was quieter, trickier to get a handle on. It was the kind that lay coiled and sleepy, like snakes in a basket, until someone got careless and removed the protective lid, forgetting that the key word here was
coiled
, not
sleepy
, and that the anger was always there, ready and waiting, eager to strike. How many times had she woken up in the middle of the night, roused to consciousness by the sound of strained whispers hissing through tightly clenched teeth, and run into her parents’ bedroom to find her father pacing the floor and her mother in tears? “What’s the matter?” she would demand of her father. “Why is Mom crying? What did you do to make Mom cry?”

Kim remembered how frightened she’d been the first time she’d witnessed such a scene. She’d been, how old? Three, maybe four? She was having her afternoon nap, sleeping in her small blue brass bed, nose to nose with a large stuffed Big Bird, a slightly ratty Oscar the Grouch tucked tightly underneath her arm. Maybe she’d been dreaming, maybe not. But suddenly she was awake, and she was frightened, although she wasn’t sure why. It was then that she became aware of muffled noises from the other bedroom, Mommy and Daddy whispering, but not the way people usually whispered. These were really loud whispers, as cold and biting as a winter wind, whispers that made her cover Big Bird’s
ears and hide him under the covers beside Oscar the Grouch when she went to investigate.

Kim slouched down in her seat, her right hand absently patting the tight little bun at the top of her head, checking to make sure there were no stray hairs at the base of her neck, that everything was rightly secured and in its proper place, the way she liked it. Miss Grundy, her mother sometimes teased, a laugh in her voice.

Kim liked it when her mother laughed. It made her feel secure. If her mother was laughing, it meant she was happy, and if she was happy, it meant everything was all right, her parents were going to stay together. She wasn’t about to become an unpleasant statistic and hopeless cliché, the child of a broken home, the product of a bitter divorce, like so many of her friends and classmates.

If her mother was laughing, then all was right with the world, Kim reassured herself, trying to block out the eerie sound of her mother’s laughter earlier in the day, a grating sound that was anything but happy—frantic as opposed to abandoned, closer to hysteria than genuine mirth, and like the angry whispers of Kim’s first childhood memory, too loud. Much, much too loud.

Was that it? Had her parents had another fight? Her father had gone out again last night after dinner, supposedly back to the office to prepare for today’s trial. But wasn’t one of the reasons they’d moved to the suburbs so that he’d have space for an office at home, one that came complete with computer, printer, and fax machine? Had it really been necessary for him to drive back into the city? Or was there another reason, a reason who was young and pretty and half his age, like the reason Andy Reese’s father found to walk out on his
family? Or Pam Baker’s father, who was rumored to have more than one reason for abandoning his.

Or the reason Kim had seen her father kissing on a street corner, full on the lips in the middle of a sunny afternoon around the time they’d moved to Evanston, a reason who was plump and dark-haired and looked nothing like her mother at all.

Was that the reason she’d come down for breakfast this morning and found her mother standing alone in the middle of the backyard pool laughing like a lunatic?

Kim had never said anything to her mother about seeing her father with another woman. Instead she’d tried to convince herself that the woman was merely a friend, no, less than that, an acquaintance, maybe even a business acquaintance, perhaps a grateful client, although since when did one kiss clients, however grateful they may be, on the lips like that? Full on the mouth, she thought, the way Teddy Cranston had kissed her on Saturday night, his tongue gently teasing the tip of her own.

Kim brought her fingers to her lips, feeling them tingling still, as she relived the softness of Teddy’s touch, so unlike the kisses of other boys her age. Of course Teddy was a few years older than the other boys she’d dated. He was seventeen and a senior, heading off to college next fall, either Columbia or NYU, he told her confidently, depending on whether he decided to study medicine or the movies. But Saturday night, he’d seemed more interested in getting his hand inside her sweater than in getting into either medical or film school, and she’d been tempted, really tempted, to let him. All the other girls were doing it. That and
more. Lots of girls her age had already gone all the way. She heard them giggling about it in the school washrooms as they hunched over the condom dispensaries. Guys hated condoms, she heard them complain, so most times they didn’t bother using them, especially after they’d done it a few times and knew the guy was all right. “You should try it, Kimbo,” one of the girls had teased, aiming a packet of condoms at her head.

“Yeah,” several of the other girls joined in, pelting her with condoms. “Try it. You’ll like it.”

Would she? Kim wondered, feeling Teddy’s invisible hand at her breast.

Her breasts, Kim thought with wonder, watching the swell of her no-longer-child’s bosom rise and fall with each breath. Last year at this time, her breasts were virtually nonexistent, and suddenly, about six months ago, there they were. No notice, no warning, no
I think you’d better prepare yourself
. Overnight she’d gone from an A to a C cup, and the world suddenly snapped to attention. Only with breast size, it seemed, was a C preferred to an A.

Kim recalled the hoots and hollers of the boys the first time she wore her new white Gap T-shirt to school last spring, the envious looks of the girls, the not-so-veiled glances of her teachers. Overnight, everything changed. She was suddenly popular, the object of great conjecture and gossip. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion as to her new status—she was a slut; she was an ice queen; she was a cock tease—as if her breasts had swallowed her previous self whole, and were now totally responsible for her behavior. Surprisingly, Kim discovered, she was no longer
required to have opinions. It was enough she had breasts. Indeed, her teachers seemed surprised she was capable of coherent thought at all.

Even her parents were affected by this sudden and unexpected development. Her mother looked at her with a combination of amazement and concern, while her father avoided looking at her altogether and, when he did, focused so hard on her face that Kim always felt he was about to fall over.

Her phone started ringing night and day. Girls who’d never given her the time of day suddenly wanted to be her friend. Guys who’d never spoken to her in class, nerds and jocks alike, were calling her after school to ask her out: Gerry McDougal, captain of the football team; Marty Peshkin, star debater; Teddy Cranston of the melting chocolate brown eyes.

Once again, Kim’s lips tingled with the remembrance of Teddy’s gentle touch. Once again she felt his hand brush against her breast, so softly, as if it were an accident, as if he hadn’t meant to do it. But of course he’d meant exactly that. Why else was he there?

“Don’t,” she’d said softly, and he’d pretended not to hear, so she said it again, louder this time, and this time he listened, although he tried again later, and she was forced to say it again. “Don’t,” she said, thinking of her mother. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t be in too big a rush,” her mother had cautioned during one of their earlier talks about sex. “You have so much time. And even with all the precautions in the world, accidents do happen.” A slight blush suddenly stained her cheek.

“Like me?” Kim asked, having figured out long ago
that a baby weighing over nine pounds was unlikely to have been three months premature.

“The best accident that ever happened to me,” her mother said, not insulting her intelligence by denying the obvious, wrapping Kim in her arms, kissing her forehead.

“Would you and Daddy have gotten married anyway?” Kim pressed.

“Absolutely,” her mother said, giving her the answer Kim wanted to hear.

I don’t think so, Kim thought now. She wasn’t blind to the way her parents looked at one another, quick glances in unguarded moments that shouted their true feelings even louder than the angry whispers that emanated with increasing regularity from behind their closed bedroom door. No way her parents would be together had it not been for her unexpected interference. She had trapped them into marriage, into being together. But the trap was old and no longer strong enough to hold them. It was only a matter of time before one of them worked up the strength and the courage to break free. And then where would little Kimbo be?

One thing was certain: she would never allow her hormones to trap her into a loveless marriage. She would choose wisely and well. Although how much choice did she really have? Hadn’t both her grandmothers been abandoned by their husbands? Kim fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat. Were the women in her family fated to choose faithless men who would one day walk out on them? Maybe it was inevitable, possibly even genetic. Perhaps it was some sort of ancient family curse.

Kim shrugged, as if trying to physically rid herself of the unpleasant thought, the sudden movement knocking
her notebook to the floor, attracting the teacher’s unwanted attention. Mr. Bill Loewi, whose broad nose was too big for the rest of his narrow face and whose overly ruddy complexion betrayed his fondness for booze, turned from the chalkboard on which he was writing and stared toward the back of the class. “Problem?” he asked, as Kim scrambled to pick up her notebook, knocking over her copy of
Romeo and Juliet
.

“No, sir,” Kim said quickly, reaching for the book.

Caroline Smith, who sat in the row beside her, and whose big mouth was inversely proportionate to the size of her brain, leaned sideways, reaching for the slender text at the same time as Kim. “Thinking about Teddy?” she asked. She slid the index finger of her right hand into the hole created by the index finger and thumb of her left and waggled it in and out suggestively.

“Get a life,” Kim said under her breath.

“Get laid,” came the instant retort.

“Something you want to share with the rest of the class?” Mr. Loewi asked.

Caroline Smith giggled. “No, sir.”

“No, sir,” Kim concurred, returning the book to her desk, and her eyes to the front of the room.