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She laughed. “Funny thing was, I ended up really caring about her. That part was free,” she added.
He studied her for a long moment, a quizzical look in his eyes, before he opened his mouth. “I used to be fat.”
Carmen felt her eyebrows floating upward. “Excuse me?”
“I used to be fat.” Win shrugged. “I was the fat kid. Since we’re uncovering our inner selves, I might as well throw that in.”
She couldn’t help glancing over his body in case there was a hundred pounds she had forgotten to notice. There wasn’t.
“The summer I was thirteen my parents sent me to fat camp. The next summer I grew six inches and got serious about swimming. But still, a fat kid lives
inside me.”
Carmen tried to fit this piece into the puzzle of Win. It did fit, in a funny way.
He cleared his throat. “So as I see it, I’m the pretender. You’re too good for me.”
“That’s impossible,” she said.
He moved closer again. He looked in her eyes for a long time. Then he tugged, most intimately, on a belt loop of the Pants. “If you’re too good for me and I’m too good for you, what does that mean?”
“We’re just right?”
He smiled. “Can I?” He wanted to put his arms around her again.
“Please.”
In front of the candy machine, under the glare of fluorescent hallway lights, surrounded by the smell of old people, he put his lips on hers. He kissed her soft and slow at first, and then deeper.
He buried his head in her neck. He pushed her hair aside and kissed her there. She let out a small sigh.
“I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he murmured into her ear.
“Mmmm,” she said. She found his lips again with hers. With abandon, she kissed him. Perhaps for the first time ever, she kissed without a single thought about how it was or what it was or what it meant. She kissed from the inside.
An old lady wheeled out of her room and caught them in the act. “Can you two lovebirds take that somewhere else?” she clucked.
Carmen and Win both started laughing, running for the elevators. They held hands as they descended and as they strode through the lobby.
Carmen walked, and squeezed his hand, and suddenly she had the strangest impression that Good Carmen walked before her, a few feet in front of her, like a ghost, a glistening spirit.
This was a day for miracles. Carmen overtook that spirit. She walked right into Good Carmen and absorbed her into her soul. Let her fight it out with Bad Carmen if she needed to.
And, thus, the hospital doors opened and Whole Carmen emerged, newly born, into the world.
My shoe is off My foot is cold I have a bird I like to hold.
—Dr. Seuss
Tibby wasn’t done leaping yet.
Dazed in the fading light, she stumbled down Connecticut Avenue. Cars rushed by; people went around. Tibby felt like she’d been sucked into a wormhole of heightened experience and then spat back out into the regular world. The world was regular, but she wasn’t regular anymore.
The wormhole happened to be pretty messy. Back at the hospital she’d washed her hands and face and shed her stained gown. She’d taken off the Pants and made away with just the pair of scrub pants on her legs. She hoped she wouldn’t get arrested for it. Still, she felt sticky. She didn’t want to think about that too much.
She needed to find Brian. She didn’t want to get comfortable with the ground yet.
She knew he’d be at home. At her home. She pointed herself in the right direction.
A block from her house she saw him walking toward her. She didn’t question that. It was one of those days.
They didn’t run into each other’s arms or anything. He walked toward her and when he reached her, she turned 180 degrees so they were walking in the same direction. They walked like that for a while. She reached for his hand. He held on.
“I have an idea,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t ask what it was. He was willing to go along.
They walked blocks and blocks and then up a long hill up to Rockwood pool. Then they step-jumped over moving water. And then ascended that long staircase. By the time they got to the fence, it was dark. And they were good and high. A high place was what you needed for a leap.
“Here’s where it’s good to climb up.” She pointed to the break in the barbed wire.
Brian seemed to think that made sense. She led the way; he followed. For such a chicken she really was a pretty good climber. She jumped the last five or so feet to get herself in the right spirit. He appeared gracefully by her side.
“You ready?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said faithfully, even though he didn’t know what she was talking about.
She began unbuttoning her shirt and his eyes widened slightly. She cast it off. She was wearing a pretty bra. That was nice. She saw her skin glowing in the warm evening air. She pulled off the aqua green scrubs. This was new. She slipped them off and folded them carefully. Her underpants were pink and not embarrassing.
Brian’s eyes glanced off her and then back on. They were careful, surprised, hopeful. And longing. There was that, too. He was looking for permission to let his eyes stay on her. And with her eyes, she gave it.
“Now you,” she said.
He took off his own shirt and jeans in a matter of seconds. He left them in a pile. His skin glowed just as brightly above and below the boxers that she herself had picked out for him, three pairs for nine dollars at Old Navy. She hadn’t realized she’d be seeing them again in this context. She drew in a sharp little breath. She had pictured him in her mind many times before. This was better.
She held his hand again. They let their eyes run over each other unchecked. What was there to hide anymore? She didn’t want to hide anything.
She led him to the edge. She picked the deep end on purpose.
They stood side by side, their toes curled over the edge. She looked at him, right in his eyes and he looked in hers. This was going to be fun.
One. Two. Three.
And so they jumped together.
Bridget’s body felt better. Dramatically ill, dramatically better, that was her all over.
Learning about the birth of Carmen’s baby brother gave her great joy. The news came like a dash of cold, fresh water on her soul. She spent almost a week’s pay sending flowers and balloons to Christina.
But, still, her heart hurt. She wanted to see Eric. She needed to see him. She craved his presence. But he was gone. Saturday he disappeared without a trace.
He wasn’t in his cabin. He wasn’t in the dining hall for three meals in a row. Finally she sucked it up and went to Joe. “I seem to have lost my partner,” she said, trying to sound casual.
“You like him now, do you?” Joe said smugly.
She felt like smacking him. “Do you know where he went?” She couldn’t bring herself to say Eric’s name.
“No idea,” said Joe.
She tapped her bare foot against the floor planks of the main office. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“He better be back by Monday,” he said. “We’ve got a tournament starting.”
She hated Joe at this moment, San José Earthquakes or no. He was a guy who rode his own agenda hard, and he didn’t care about yours. “Did he say anything to you?”
“He said he had to take off for a couple days. That was it.”
Bridget stalked away angrily. She practically screamed when a chunk of the pine floor dug itself deep into her big toe. Why didn’t she wear goddamn shoes? What was the matter with her?
Where had Eric gone? Why? Did he need to get away from her? What had happened between them?
That evening she tried running, but she felt weak. She couldn’t eat. She called Lena, Carmen, and Tibby on the common phone in the staff lounge and left messages for all of them. That made her feel panicky. Why couldn’t she find them? She felt terribly alone.
She thought to call Greta, but she didn’t know how to get her feelings up and over the transom. How could she explain? Eric wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t her anything. Why did she feel like she needed him so desperately?
She sat on the dock at the lake and watched the clouds thicken. She wished it would rain hard and long and clear everything away. Rain never came when you asked for it.
She couldn’t sit. She paced. She kicked a soccer ball around an empty field. The lightning in the distance wasn’t the real thing. It was empty, dissipated and fake: heat lightning. It brought no rain.
As much as she prided herself on making this summer with Eric different from the one before, it was beginning to seem eerily similar.
Like before,
she was laid open by a glimpse of intimacy, and when she tried to find it again, there was no one and nothing there. Eric offered, whether he meant to or not, some giant idea of love. But she only grasped it long enough to know her poverty. He pushed her to destroy herself. He made her want and then gave her no satisfaction.
Why did he do this to her? Why did she let him? How could she give herself away like this, even after she’d already learned such a bitter lesson?
She wished he hadn’t found her in that feverish, vulnerable state. She wished he hadn’t worried over her and taken care of her and held her all night. Having it was ecstasy, but its sudden, inexplicable loss was too painful to bear. She’d rather go through her life doubting such a thing was possible than knowing it was real and she couldn’t have it.
What a pitiful waste she was. She was willing to give away, to throw away, the very best she had. For what? It was one thing to sacrifice yourself for a great cause. It was another to destroy yourself for a person who didn’t even want you. It was an act of self-immolation, a sacrifice nobody wanted, that did nobody any good. What could be more tragic than that?
She thought she was independent and strong, but she got one small taste of love and she was hungrier than anyone. She was ravenous.
All the drawings had been difficult, but Lena saved the hardest for last.
She’d procrastinated. She’d gotten a manicure and pedicure with Effie. She’d spent mornings shopping and cooking for Carmen’s household, wanting to help out with the new baby. She and Carmen had spent happy evenings together on the floor talking about drawing and Win and the beach, simply watching the baby breathe.
But now the time had come. Her portfolio had to be postmarked by the following day; she couldn’t put it off any longer. When the house was quiet and the light was good, she pulled on the Traveling Pants and sat herself in front of the mirror in her bedroom, and got to work.
It was one thing looking at other people’s troubles. It was another looking at your own. If feelings and expectations made it difficult to see a loved one’s face, how blind were you to your own face?
