How It Ends Page 20

  “Are you kidding? You just blew me away.” He kissed me. “You’re really something.”

  “Well, I try,” I said demurely, and he laughed and kissed me again.

  “Here,” he said finally, putting the key ring in his jacket pocket and handing me my gift. “Now you.”

  Now me.

  I ran a slow nail along the taped edge and unfolded the wrapping paper. Opened the little white box, heart pounding and blood thrumming with an anticipation that was way bigger than anything I’d felt before, even at Christmas, and as I lifted the lid I couldn’t help hoping gold ring and—

  “Oh,” I chirped, staring down at the delicate silver chain with three plain silver balls nestled on the bed of cotton. “Wow. Look at that.” I held it up, watching the tiny links twinkle as they caught the light. “How pretty. I don’t have anything silver, either. Thank you.” The chain looked too small for a necklace and kind of big for a bracelet but that was just one of the several shocked WTF thoughts whirling through my mind. “Uh…put it on me?” I handed it to him and held out my wrist.

  He looked at my wrist, puzzled, and then grinned. “Sure.” Ignoring my waiting hand, he shoved back his chair, bent, and grasping my ankle, laid my foot across his lap, never noticing my sudden stillness. “I should be a pro at this by now.” He flicked his hair out of his eyes and, lowering his head, fumbled with the clasp. “Christ, you’d think they’d make them easier to put on, though. If I ever get it hooked, you’re never going to be able to get it off again without breaking it.”

  I was glad he wasn’t looking at me.

  “There,” he said, leaning back and smiling. “What do you think?”

  And I looked at my ankle with the silver chain looped around it and the three silver balls and my eyes burned with tears, which turned out to be good, as he thought it was because I loved it.

  Later that night we parked off a deserted, dead-end street and climbed into the way back of his SUV. It didn’t take long for my dress to go up, but when he tried peeling off my panty hose, the ankle bracelet snagged on the sheer fabric. He tried tugging the panty hose off beneath it, swearing good-naturedly and squinting to unhook the clasp in the dim light. I laid there waiting, cooling off, letting him wrestle with it and listening as his muttering took a sharper turn, wondering if he’d notice my detachment and, if he did, what he would make of it.

  “Think maybe you could help me out here?” he finally snapped.

  So I sat up and, without a word, calmly peeled the panty hose off the other leg, leaving it bunched and torn under the bracelet, and laid back down.

  He laughed softly, good humor restored, and eased back up beside me, kissed me, and ran his hand over my stomach, hip bones, and lower, down my bare thigh and up again, where he lingered as the windows steamed, the breathing deepened, and finally, when the hand I had on him didn’t take him there, he stopped kissing me and urged my head south.

  I called Sammi when I got home.

  “He got you what?” she said, sounding shocked.

  “An ankle bracelet,” I repeated.

  “But you don’t wear those,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You don’t even like them.”

  “I know.”

  “Does he know you hate them?”

  “He should,” I said. “I’ve said it a hundred times.” Yeah, whenever he’s admiring one on another girl.

  “Why would he buy something he knows you don’t like?”

  “Because he likes them,” I said, and then, feeling disloyal, added, “I mean, it’s not ugly. It’s silver—”

  “Silver?” she blurted. “Oh my God, Hanna, has he ever even met you? You don’t wear silver.”

  “I know,” I said again. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Tell him to take it back and this time remember who he’s shopping for,” she said promptly.

  “I can’t do that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s too late,” I said, lying back on the bed and gazing up at the ceiling. “It would only hurt his feelings and make me sound like an ungrateful bitch. And he did try, Sam. I mean at least he got me something, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “But he’d tell you, you know, if you got him something he never wanted and didn’t even like. God, he’d tell you in a heartbeat.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but my voice rang hollow.

  Later that night I ended up cutting my panty hose off with a scissor so as not to disturb the ankle bracelet.

  Chapter 28

  Hanna

  I took my ankle bracelet off, put on my panty hose, reattached it, and wore it to school. Seth smiled when he saw it and hugged me.

  The only thing that bugged me was that Sammi told me she’d seen Lacey McMullen haunting the upstairs hall near Seth’s locker, looking all tragic.

  What is it about Seth being stalked by lovesick girls?

  I hate the irony of this, I really do.

  Good-bye, virginity.

  Hello, woman of the world.

  He did it when I wasn’t expecting it, was already inside me when I remembered about a condom, freaked, and stiffened up. He said, Don’t worry, I won’t come in you, and I was like, You’d better not, and it didn’t take hardly a minute before he yanked it out in time, but I’ll tell you this: I never worried so much in my life until I got my period and spent money I didn’t have on two early pregnancy pee tests—both negative—that I had to take at school so no one but Sammi would know.

  He tried to do it again two days later, and I was like, No, not without a condom, and he got pissed off and said I worry too much and he knew when to pull out. I was like, Easy for you to say, you wouldn’t be the one stuck with a really bad decision to make, and it just got worse from there. I felt bad saying no because it was like rejecting him, but I also felt bad because I wanted him to understand that I would be the one who got stuck, not him, but I don’t think he ever really got past the fact that he couldn’t budge me on that.

  Of course I ended up crying because I hate when he pulls away and won’t talk and leaves me with all these unresolved problems. It’s like he’d rather step out of it, and because he does that, it gets real quiet and we hit a stalemate. I can’t stand the stalemate so I either get even more emotional trying to make him respond to me, which freaks me out because I’m not usually so high drama, and crying makes me feel weak and needy, like I’m begging. Sometimes I wish I could just say whatever I want to, like a guy does, just say it flat out, and he would be the one to have to humble himself to make nice and bring us back together, but it doesn’t seem to happen that way.

  I mean, I watch his mom and she’s always chatty and cheerful, filling the silences with her words, and I don’t know whether his father thinks she likes to talk to herself, but if he does, he’s wrong. I bet she does it because she’s trying to connect with him somehow, to make him look up and see her as a person, someone who is interesting and worth looking at and listening to.

  Like the other day, when we were in his room, and his mom got home, I heard his father say, “Bull. Nobody goes shopping four times in one week, Ellen.”

  “You don’t know much about women,” Seth’s mother said.

  “I know about you,” he said, and it didn’t sound like a compliment.

  “Seth has company,” his mother said evenly. “Do you really want to start this now?”

  “Come on,” Seth said, grabbing his wallet and keys. “Let’s go to Burger King.”

  “Okay,” I said, because it was always embarrassing when they got into it.

  “So what did you buy?” Seth’s father said.

  “Window-shopping! I was window-shopping—”

  “You must think I’m really stupid, Ellen.”

  And we just kind of sidled out and Seth was in a distant mood that night, a bad mood, and he said something really mean while he was watching some group of girls talking and laughing and acting up a little out on
the street, like, See how slutty you look when you act like that?

  I didn’t say anything and he must have been itching for a fight because he said, What? You don’t think every single one of us can be replaced? And I got really quiet then and sad because I felt so bad for him and that seemed to deflate him because he just sighed and tipped his head back on the seat and looked at me and said, Face it, Hanna; if it wasn’t me, it would just be somebody else. And it came out tired, but it was like an accusation, too, like I didn’t love him and all the things that were so beautiful between us could have just happened with anybody, and that really hurt.

  I’m watching my mother now, too, how sometimes when my father’s cranky, she gets nicer, like to try and smooth his time at home and make it a place he wants to be instead of a place that’s unpleasant, but I notice something else, too: when she feels something, she just says it. She doesn’t dilute it so as not to piss him off, especially if it’s a strong opinion. And he’s apparently okay with it or, at least, he’s used to it because most of the time he just shrugs and says, You’re entitled to your opinion, and I’ve heard him say that for years, but I think I’m starting to understand what it really means.

  The Schoenmakers do this, too.

  Interesting.

  I feel like the weak link in a family of Amazonian women.

  For some reason Seth gets cranky when I read, especially when I read while he’s practicing his guitar. He says he’s playing for me, so I should watch and listen, and I do watch and listen for like fifteen whole minutes, but sometimes he plays for an hour, and there’s no way I can sit there and do nothing but watch him for an hour. I told him that and he got pissed and said, Oh, but you can read about people who aren’t even real for an hour? You don’t live in a fucking novel, Hanna, you live in real life, and I was like, Yeah, I know, but what’s the difference between you disappearing into music and me into a book? And do you know what he said?

  “I don’t do it to get away from you,” he said.

  Oh my God.

  This is one of those tense spots we just can’t seem to get around, but it’s no big deal.

  He’s also working more hours at the bowling alley, almost full-time now, and he says I have too much free time, and that’s irresponsible, and I should get a job, too, and save for a car and stuff. So I think I’m going to.

  I told Gran that if she could stay awake a little longer, we could listen to a few more chapters of the book. I mean, I don’t want to tire her out, but this few-chapters-a-day stuff is killing me.

  How It Ends

  Nurse has taken to scrubbing everything in the house with foul-smelling disinfectant as if she were driven by demons and will not stop to answer even the simplest questions.

  March brought the first crocuses of spring poking up through the snow, and my mother’s birthday. I’d been near tears all week, missing her, remembering her last party, when we’d gathered around Kitty’s kitchen table singing (oh, so stupidly) “Young at Heart,” and then “Happy Birthday,” pretending not to see the blue tinge to her lips and secretly hoping she’d have enough breath to blow out the candles.

  I missed her and needed a way to mark the day, so while Nurse was busy scrubbing and Dr. Boehm was off in the woods with his rifle, I decided to go cut some of the forsythia by the shed, bring it in, and force it into blooming in her honor.

  I found a pair of scissors and crunched my way across the bleak yard. I’d cut three slim branches when someone said, “Hello.”

  I turned, startled, and the handyman was standing there. He was younger than I’d thought, in his early twenties perhaps, with ruddy skin, dark eyes, and a tight, hesitant smile. He had an accent I couldn’t place and very broad shoulders.

  “Oh,” I said, clearing my throat. “Hello. I’m Louise.”

  “Peter,” he said, stepping closer, pulling off his work glove, and offering his hand.

  I hesitated, not knowing whether I should take it or if shaking hands would be considered fraternizing, and by the time I decided it wasn’t, he’d already lowered his hand and was turning to leave.

  “No, wait, I’m sorry, it’s just that…” I stopped, flushing. How could I tell him I wasn’t allowed to talk to him without sounding ridiculous?

  “The boss doesn’t want us to get too friendly,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “He told you that, too?” I said, astonished.

  “Sure,” he said with a shrug. “But this is a free country, right?”

  Before I could answer, a door slammed down at the workshop.

  Peter winked and melted back into the tree line behind the pines.

  I turned back to the barren forsythia bush and cut a few more branches, nodding at Dr. Boehm as he strode past me into the shed, reappearing a moment later with a large and lethal-looking pair of grass clippers, and returned to the workshop.

  I set the branches in a glass of water on the nightstand in my room. Took the Ciro’s souvenir photo out from under my pillow and studied my parents’ faces. My mother looked sparkly with pent-up excitement, my father handsome in his uniform, leaning back and giving the camera an arched eyebrow and a cocky smile.

  Had it been love at first sight, an instant knowing that they were meant to be together? Had the hazy Army-chaplain wedding behind the nightclub been real or just a ruse used by a randy GI to take advantage of a young girl? And if it had been real, why hadn’t my mother put Walter Closson on the birth certificate? I wish I knew.

  I touched her face, the girl in the photo who was only three years older than me. Kissed it and pressed it to my cheek, then slid it back under the pillow and went down to make Mrs. Boehm’s dinner.

  That evening Mrs. Boehm told me of her wedding day and the night that followed.

  Margaret and Thaddeus Boehm had a beautiful ceremony, from the orange blossoms in the bouquet to the Viennese lace on her late mother’s veil. Everything had been perfect. Twenty-eight-year-old Thaddeus, her father’s protégé, had grown up to become a dashingly handsome, if not a touch solemn, young man, leading his class in medical school and wooing Margaret with charm, respect, and just the right degree of fervor.

  But the wedding night, well, that had been puzzling.

  Margaret, twenty and armed only with scant, skewed advice from the unmarried nanny; an abrupt, “Be a good wife, accept your lot, and do your duty,” from her father, who had then turned and given Thaddeus a long, speaking look before wishing them well on their honeymoon trip; and pink-cheeked giggles from her second-cousin bridesmaids, had stood beside her husband at the Niagra Falls hotel desk trying not to blush when the clerk smiled, rang for a bellboy, and directed them to the honeymoon suite.

  A week earlier (and without mentioning it to Nanny, who was a staunch believer in serviceable cotton nightgowns), Margaret had slipped away and gone back to the bridal store to spend two full, blushing hours trying on peignoir sets, beautiful gossamer silk and satin nightgowns with alluring lace straps and strategically placed inserts, plunging necklines and gathered bodices, all in drifts of clinging, nearly sheer fabric that was both frightening and thrilling.

  She purchased three, one in white for the wedding night—a creation so angelically lovely and wickedly revealing that she hoped she’d have the nerve to wear it and nearly fainted imagining the look in Thaddeus’s eyes when he saw her in it—a pink one with pin tucks, and a simple blue one with sheer panels across the bodice that she’d first thought too forward but afterward, in a frenzy of excitement, had run back for.

  And because her father would be getting the bill, she asked the salesgirl to write the receipt as wedding accessories instead of lingerie, as that would have been terribly embarrassing.

  The honeymoon suite was lovely, a living room with a bar and a TV, two bathrooms, and a bedroom with the lights low, champagne on ice, a double bed turned down, and chocolates on the pillows.

  She had turned to Thaddeus, overwhelmed with love and nerves, happiness and hazy expectations, and he’d put a
tender hand to her cheek, kissed her briefly, and said he had forgotten his pipe tobacco and would run down to the smoke shop in the lobby to get some.

  She smiled, thinking he was giving her a chance at modesty. When he left she quickly opened her suitcase and shook out the dreamy white peignoir set. Rushed through a quick toilette, taking a sink bath with a fluffy washcloth and rose-scented soap, freshening up all the parts she thought might be necessary, then slipped into the shimmering rayon satin negligee and chiffon robe. She brushed her hair, dabbed Arpege perfume behind her ears and her knees, brushed her teeth, reapplied her lipstick, and taking a deep breath, opened the bathroom door and went into the bedroom.

  He wasn’t back yet and she didn’t want to open the champagne without him, so she drank some tap water instead, just to ease her dry throat, and reclined on the bed in what she hoped was a provocative position.

  And she waited.

  He returned forty-five minutes later, his expression remote and unapproachable, his pipe full, and oddly enough, he had a smudge of what looked like—but certainly couldn’t be—pancake makeup on the front of his trousers. “I’m sorry, Margaret, but I believe one of the wedding guests may have passed on some type of stomach flu and I was the unlucky recipient. I don’t want you to catch it, too, so I’m going to sleep out here on the sofa.”

  “Oh, no, Thaddeus, please. I don’t mind if we both get sick,” she said, sitting up and giving him a shy smile. “It is our wedding night…”

  “And you look lovely, but I refuse to taint you with this,” he said, shaking his head. “No, don’t get up. It will only make my removal more difficult.”

  “But, Thaddeus,” she said, rising anyway and approaching him. “Won’t you even—”

  “Margaret, please,” he said, suddenly stern. “A lady does not beg for affection and a wife does not embarrass her husband by demanding more than he can give. I’m not fit to be a proper groom tonight, so please go to bed and I’ll see you in the morning.” And nodding, he stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him, leaving her openmouthed and sick with embarrassment.