The Red Book (30 page)

It occurs to Trilby that she has no means for contextualizing this new experience, no way of wholly expressing it in a way that doesn’t sound vulgar, crass, or sentimental. “Love” comes close, which is ridiculous, she knows, considering she and Max have met less than a handful of times over the years,
through their mothers
—there are even photos in a predigital album somewhere of the two of them taking a bath together back in the late 1990s—but she decides to own this feeling and to respect its awesomeness, and no, she doesn’t mean awesome in the way her classmates have overused the word to the point of meaninglessness but awesome in its original incarnation, i.e., (a thing) worthy of awe.

Max, though similarly moved by the act of missionary lovemaking, which—fuck! he knew it!—is so much more pleasurable than the absurd burlesque he enacts with Evangeline, has lost any intellectual capacity to ponder its meaning or his feelings or to give them a name. Or to even worry about giving them a name. His one and only thought right now is really an antithought set on automatic repeat, like when his dad’s old record player does that thing where the needle can’t move beyond the second chorus on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” except instead of, “can’t always, can’t always, can’t always,” his refrain goes like this:
don’t come, don’t come, don’t come
.

He is able to heed this inner voice and remain in a blissful state of full-masted attention for all of 139 seconds before the official deflowering is over. “I’m sorry,” he says, collapsing onto Trilby’s chest, winded, yanking off the condom immediately, as per his health teacher’s instructions. But where to put it? For the time being, he simply drops it onto the floor next to the Aerobed and covers it up with the Vaginal Discharge T-shirt he bought at the show on a kitschy whim. Over the next decade, whenever this T-shirt reappears at the top of his drawer, it will remind him of this moment, and he’ll involuntarily smile.

“Sorry for what?” says Trilby, breathing equally as hard.

“For . . . you know . . .”

But having nothing with which to compare Max’s short-lived performance, she doesn’t know. All she does know is that they just spent nearly an hour together, exploring one another from head to toe, the latter which she never dreamed could feel so good inside someone else’s mouth. In fact, Max touched and licked and caressed her in corners of her body she didn’t even realize she possessed before tonight. He brought her to the lofty brink of heights that made her sweat and shudder on the freefall down. Hell, she just lost her virginity, it suddenly occurs to her, to someone with whom she’s not ashamed to have lost it. Really, for all she knows, Max could become the next president of the United States. Or a brain surgeon. Or one of those super-smart movie directors, like Jean-Luc Godard. He’s totally that kind of guy, with limitless potential—in a little over a year from now, he’ll no doubt be in a freshman dorm in Harvard Yard, she’s sure of it—and when he’s up there many years from now on whatever dais is lucky enough to support him, she can point to the TV and turn to her kids and say, “I loved that guy once.” Maybe those kids will even be his kids, who knows? Max’s dad made a whole career out of happily ever after. It has to be possible, if people aspire to it, right?

For once in her life, she has made a good choice: a choice based on something instinctive and unnamable deep inside her, rather than on some nebulous force or antiforce outside herself. To thine own self be true: a life-altering epiphany for a fourteen-year-old, when the words finally click in, one to which she will soon cling during her parents’ messy divorce, and during the next four years of high school, and even years later, as she navigates the shoals of early adulthood. “Stop,” she says. “That was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Don’t ruin it with an apology.”

“Sorry. I mean I’m not sorry. I mean, that was the best thing that ever happened to me, too,” Max says, flipping onto his back and pulling Trilby’s warm body toward him until her head is resting in the crook of his arm, and this is when he finally notices the tears streaking down her face, as her cheeks catch the light of a moonbeam now striking the small basement window. “Wait, why are you crying? Did I hurt you?” He props himself up on his elbows, inspecting her for injury.

“No, silly. Not at all.” She pulls him back down.

“Are you upset?” he asks.

“Are you kidding? I’m happy. It’s a rare feeling. Quit your yakking so I can soak in it for a little while, okay?”

“Oh, sure. Okay. No problem.” He tries to remain silent, but he bites his tongue for about as long as he maintained his erection. “I’m really happy, too,” he says, and not just to make her feel good. He means it. He’s frigging
happy
.

“Yeah, but you’re happy all the time.”

“No, I’m not. Why would you say that?”

“I dunno. I just see your family, the way you all treat each other. I just assumed people like you are always happy.”

“That’s ridiculous,” says Max. “No one’s always happy. Most of the time I just . . . am. I exist. I go to school, I do my homework, I eat dinner, I brush my teeth, I go to sleep.”

“Yeah, but your parents like each other. That has to count for something.”

“I guess. Don’t your parents like each other?”

Trilby stares at him and shakes her head at his ignorance of the world. “Are you kidding? They can barely stand to be in the same room.”

“So why do they stay together?”

“God knows. To torture us?”

“Well, would you rather they get divorced?”

“I don’t know. Some days I think it would just be . . . easier. On all of us.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Is that so shocking to your innocent ears?”

“No.” Max laughs. “It’s just, you’re the first person I know who
wants
her parents to get divorced. I mean, don’t parents usually stay together”—here he makes air quotes—“ ‘for the sake of the children.’ ”

“Yeah. Of course. And I’m sure in many cases that’s the right choice. And I know it’ll suck if I have to keep packing an overnight bag like half of my friends already do, shuttling between two apartments, but I just think, in my parents’ case . . .” She turns her back to Max, eases into his spoon. “I don’t know. I just want to believe in love.” Her voice cracks. “I want to believe that it’s possible.”

“Hey, Trilby,” he says, pulling her toward him until all parts of his chest and stomach are contiguous with her spine. They really couldn’t get any closer if they tried. “Trust me. It is possible. I’ve actually seen it. On an MRI.” During the school year, because his mother thought it would look good on his college applications, Max worked as an assistant to a couple of researchers at UCLA who were testing the growth of cancer cells in mice exposed to the fumes of Teflon when superheated, but just down the hallway were superheated fumes that were of far greater interest to a teenage boy: a biology professor, whom Max befriended by going on coffee runs for her to Starbucks, who was mapping the areas of the brain that are stimulated when a person sees either the object of his affection or a photograph of that person, or if he hears the sound of her name or her voice, or if he is simply told to think about her on his own, without any visual or aural cues. “Turns out?” he tells Trilby. “All of them light up the same areas of the brain in the exact same way. It doesn’t matter if the physical person is there or not. The love . . .
exists
. Regardless. How cool is that? And there’s this other professor she was telling me about, at Syracuse,” he says, his voice getting animated, “whose thesis is that it takes only a fifth of a second for a human being to fall in love. Think about that: one fifth of one second. Mind-blowing, right?”

“Totally mind-blowing,” says Trilby, thinking that she might be falling in love with Max right now, but that they should probably get dressed and off the Aerobed pronto, as her mom called to say they’d all be home around midnight, and it was already eleven-fifteen. But she feels so comfortable in Max’s arms, and her body feels so warm enveloped in his, and anyway Eli promised he’d text them as soon as he saw the parental headlights appear in the driveway, that the two of them drift off to sleep, entwined.

•  •  •

Eli Zane is
too busy watching Houghton Griswold’s favorite bookmarked clip—the tattooed German lady who skillfully handles three penises simultaneously—to notice the beams of his parents’ headlights approaching. In fact, because he and his younger brother Josh and Houghton all are wearing noise-canceling headphones (Josh’s and Houghton’s are plugged into a splitter on Thatcher’s laptop, so they can better hear the wet, slurpy sounds of coital quintuplings on gangbang.com), and because Thatcher is passed out on the couch, after having devoured nearly an entire box of Oreos, and because Eli is simply mesmerized by the dexterity with which the German lady transforms herself into a human power strip, providing three distinct points of entry without losing either rhythm or concentration, not one of the boys notice their parents’ arrival in the house until well after all of the adults have been standing behind them for several long seconds, speechless. “Josh, Eli, what do you think you’re doing?” says Mia, removing her sons’ headphones and shutting down both computer screens with, it must be said, some violence.

Addison, who normally doesn’t yell at Houghton if she catches him watching porn—not because she supports the idea of a twelve-year-old boy watching videos of random couples or groups having sex but because she figures that the watching of such videos is both inevitable and within the realm of normal for a pubescent boy—decides to show some peer-pressure-induced backbone. “Houghton, what the fuck?” she says. She realizes, only after the fact, that her word choice may not have been the most prudent.

“You guys went through an entire box of Oreos?” says Jonathan, picking his battles and the empty wrapper, which he could have sworn was full when they left, up off the floor. He actually finds it a feat of superhuman restraint and courage that any boy growing up in today’s world manages to
not
watch porn 24/7. Oreos, on the other hand, are another story. “Trans fats will kill you.” He, like so many men of his generation, learned this lesson too late, before the research came out and the arteriosclerosis set in. It pains him, literally, to think of all the Oreos and Ritz Crackers and frosted Pop-Tarts his mother left out on the kitchen table for him every day after school. For years.

“Thatcher ate ’em. Me and Josh only had one,” says Houghton.

“Josh and I,” says Addison.

Thatcher lifts his head off the couch’s pillow and opens one eye long enough to say, “Liar! You both had two.” Then he passes out again.

Clover—who’s invited herself over tonight both to be with the rest of the gang and to avoid having to deal with a possible reappearance of Bucky in her hotel room—can’t help but giggle at the boys’ antics. Then she thinks to herself, oh my God, I have no idea how to raise children. No wonder it’s taken her this long to settle down. If her ex-roommates think eating Oreos and watching porn on a computer are harmful to kids, what would they have made of all the pot brownies and live orgies that took place in the living room and garden of her family’s commune? Sometimes, triggered by the sight of a beard or a macramé vest, or by the opening notes of certain songs on classic radio, a memory of one of those primal scenes will hit her, and she will have to stop whatever she’s doing to walk it off.

“Where’s Sophie?” says Jane.

“Thatcher put her to sleep,” says Houghton.

“
Thatcher
put her to sleep?” says Mia. “What about Max?”

“I’ll go check on her,” says Jane. She rushes down the hallway to her daughter’s room. When she sees her fast asleep, snuggling Ga, her stuffed bear, still wearing her grass-stained clothes from the afternoon picnic but otherwise fine, she chokes back a handful of tears. She can survive just about anything, but not something happening to Sophie.

That’s when she spots Ga on the floor and realizes Sophie is not snuggling her stuffed bear but rather an infant child. Tightly. On a single bed off of which Zoe could have easily plunged if she weren’t first crushed or suffocated. Jesus, she thinks, prying her daughter’s fingers from the baby, who thankfully remains sleeping once repositioned in the crook of Jane’s arm.

Meanwhile in the living room, Eli is equivocating as fast as his withering erection will allow. “Max couldn’t put Sophie to bed. He was busy.”

“Doing what?” says Mia.

“Studying for the SATs.” Eli mentally pats himself on the back for quickly coming up with the one fail-safe excuse she won’t question. Mia even forced Max to take the Barron’s book with him this weekend, even though the last practice test Max took yielded him a more than adequate enough score to put him within spitting distance of his mother’s alma mater.

“Okay, then what about you? Why didn’t you take the reins and put her to bed?”

“I was busy, too,” says Eli.

“I’m sorry, but watching a woman degrade herself with three men does not count as ‘busy.’ ”

Eli, in his utter embarrassment at being caught—not literally, thank God, but still—with his pants down, and harboring unconscious anger toward his older brother for getting it on with Trilby, whom he’d been dreaming about
for years
, or at least since two summers ago, when Trilby and Addison showed up unexpectedly at their house in Antibes at the end of a mother/daughter European tour, and he and Trilby were forced to share a room for two glorious nights, one of which had her lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, rereading the British version of the first
Harry Potter
in her strawberry-print pajamas, whose top’s neckline hung down from the sharp jut of Trilby’s collarbone just low enough for Eli to catch a mind-blowing glimpse of her budding breasts that will haunt him well into middle age—says, “Jesus, Mom, it’s not like I was
having
sex like
some
people I know in this house. I was just watching it.”

Jonathan, who incorrectly assumes his son is referring to the clandestine quickie he and Mia shared on the Aerobed after she came back from the Loeb, all flushed, says, “Eli Zane, were you spying on your mother and me this afternoon?”