“We’ve been friends for so long, B. You know I would never hurt anyone. But she said I hurt her. And maybe, I don’t know. Maybe I was too intense. You know I wouldn’t do anything to anyone.” Sean’s crying now. He’s a hurricane of emotions. He’s quivering. He’s mumbling about school and how he’ll get kicked out and how he’ll never get into college.
“Sean. Sean. You have to calm down.” I stroke his hair. It’s silk. You know it had to be that way. Silk.
“Of course you didn’t hurt anyone.” The words slip out of me. Somehow, it’s all so clear and I know exactly what to say. Maybe it’s the Ritalin finally working. “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her it’s going to be fine. She’ll understand. I’ll fix it for you.”
He cowers in the window, his head now resting on the inside of the door. I stroke his cheek down to his chin. I promise him it’s going to be fine.
4
ALI
I get to my front door, and it’s weird because all the lights are off except for this glow near the kitchen. I’m nervous to walk inside, sweaty. I wonder if this is my life. If this is happening to me.
Maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m dead.
The buzzing in my back pocket jolts me. It’s Sammi looking for me. I know it’s awful, but I shut off my phone, shut her out—I just want to get into my house. I know I’m going to have to talk to her.
And then I hear a low humming, a woman’s voice. Is it music that’s playing? Billie Holiday? Some kind of jazz. Then a laughing, a cackle. I walk in farther, and my stomach drops at the sight of flesh.
There is a woman in my living room. She has a T-shirt on and is lying on her back. I can’t see her face, not that I’d know her. Underwear. White granny panties.
The man’s face resting next to her face is for sure . . . for certain . . . my father. With no shirt on. The two of them, whispering and kissing.
Then the woman opens her eyes and screams—and her voice crashes around me and I flinch, because for a second, I think, What now? Did something else horrible happen? And then I realize, no, she’s screaming because of me. Because I walked in. And I look away because, God, it’s my father in some weird postcoital position.
My father, in the fastest move I’ve ever seen in my life, whips his head around to face the doorway toward me, then rolls her away from him, away from my view.
“Holy shit—” my father says, and scrambles for his T-shirt. “You weren’t supposed to be home tonight!”
The woman scurries to the bathroom, tugging her jeans on as she moves.
“Who is she?” I say, my voice garbled. She is no one I’ve ever met before. Not that there have been many. There was one ex-girlfriend that enlightened me, let’s say, and that’s a nice way to put it. If you want to consider enlightenment showing me how to use tampons. My mother was not happy about this. “You could have waited until you saw me so I could teach you,” she had said to me, utterly wounded. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t run away to live in some hippie town, you’d be around when some idiot boy decides to have a pool party two days after I get my period so that you can show me how to use a tampon,” I said and hung up on her.
The woman walks out of the bathroom, jeans on now. She swings her long, curly, blond hair away from her face. Her lips are pink and raw looking.
“Ali, this is Sheila.”
“I’m going to my room. I’m pretending like this isn’t happening.”
I storm off to the steps, but my thighs ache as I walk. My head spins. I’m still drunk.
“Alistair! Stop right there.” My father rarely screams. But his voice bellows now.
“Explain to me what is going on. You were supposed to be sleeping at Sammi’s.”
“I wanted to come home,” I say. “Is that so bad?” My voice is quivering now. I’m going to cry, explode all over the place. It’s all settling in. The vodka. My head pounding. The soreness between my legs.
“Where are your shoes?”
“Who cares about my shoes, Dad? Shoes are so unimportant right now. Trust me. Shoes are so, like, the last thing that any of us should be thinking about.”
“Did you and Sammi get into a fight or something?”
“I don’t want to talk to you about anything,” I say and face the wall because I could break into tears so easily. I could drift right into it. This is the night I need my father most. Sometimes a girl just needs to sit and cry with her dad on the couch. Except tonight, that’s out of the question, because Sheila the She Woman is here. I suck the damp air of the den in through my nostrils and close my eyes.
“Ali, are you drunk?”
“John, I don’t mind leaving,” I hear Sheila the She Woman say. She’s got a super-low voice, like a weird old cow.
“No, no. Just hold on a sec.”
I’m dying to turn around to get another glimpse of her, except I don’t want my father to study my face. I’ve still got traces of eyeliner smudges, I’m sure. There are other things he might notice too. That I’ve been crying. That I’ve been kissed—hard. That a boy strapped his hand across my mouth. My dad is perceptive that way. He’s clued in to my emotions.
I want to blab about the whole night, but what would I say?
Hey, Dad. I got drunk. Oh, and Sean Nessel popped my cherry. We were swigging straight vodka from airplane bottles because I’m absolutely stupid. We lied to Sammi’s parents. And Sammi—she doesn’t even know where I am! Use protection? Ha! What protection?
All those years of my father and his excruciatingly painful monologues about how important it is to protect yourself from HIV, herpes, pregnancy . . . all out the window in one traumatic night with Sean Nessel.
Oh, I’m totally going straight to hell on a roller coaster. I’m, like, on the Space Mountain express to the earth’s flaming pit.
“Can I just please, please, go upstairs and go to bed if I promise to talk to you in the morning?” I say. “It’s been the worst night, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
Fine, he tells me. But he’s not letting me off the hook, he says. He wants to know what’s going on. He wants to know why I smell like a brewery. Oh, and he makes me apologize to Sheila the She Woman. I oblige.
* * *
* * *
In my room, I crawl into bed. My legs are sore and my inner thighs hurt as I pull my knees up to my chest. No matter how badly I want to, I can’t take a shower now. Besides my father questioning why I’m taking a shower at eleven o’clock at night, any residue on my body is the only evidence that this night happened. I want my body to feel this experience. Feel the cracked blood around my vagina, feel my sore back, feel the imprint of Sean Nessel’s hand on my shoulder. This is what being an adult is, right? This is how people become mature. They suffer and move on.