I put my hand on the doorknob and I meant to go in, but it was like we’d been drinking magnets. I pulled into him instead, like we’d been sitting at a bar together, finishing off a pitcher of melted-down horseshoe. The longest minute. Is the minute up yet?
No, I say, even though the sun is rising now. The minute isn’t up yet. I’ll just be a minute but I still have a minute left. He put his hand on my cheek and held me there, and we kept kissing, over and over, lips sticking together, my body sealed to his, and I was blooming out of control, and the melting inside was unbearable, and I took myself away.
Be right back, I whispered.
I think you’re beautiful, he said. No you don’t, I said.
4 Panic rose. I knocked on the bathroom door. No one’s in there, he said.
I know, I said. It’s not that. He was kissing my neck into cellos.
4 Wait, I said. Stop.
He looked up. I slipped into the bathroom and shut the door and locked it and confronted my face-pink, eyes bluer than normal. Turned on the water. Took the bar of soap right into my hands. Held it like a slippery bird for a minute and then ran it under the tap. My friend, soap, that small ball of ruin. I washed my hands vigorously, gulping in the smell, and the nausea kicked in right away. I watched my face, watched as the smell heightened the thickness of the longing, then took it away; merged with it, then got big enough to surround and defeat it. I brought the whole bar up to my lips and rolled it halfway inside my mouth, sucking on the white curves, lolling the smoothness over my tongue, drinking the water off the white; I ran it over my mouth, lathered my lips, and I licked the froth off again and again, licked the smooth curve of the bar, reglaze, re lick swallowing it down, forcing the upset, feeling my stomach unravel, rocking back and forth like the autistic kid who came to the school one day and never returned, and Mr. Smith was standing outside the door, I could hear him humming an oldfashioned big-band tune, and when I came out, completely sick to my stomach, he took me back into his arms.
Mona Green Blue Gray, he said. Now your hands are clean.
We walked back to the couch and my body went limp and dead and he was kissing me but it might as well have been nothing then; I was gone. After a few minutes, he looked up.
What’s wrong? he asked.
And I said nothing nothing I’m just tired out that’s all, and he sat next to me, touching the side of my leg, waiting for me to shift back; he sat, with me until the sky dimmed down and the living room was a dark sea with furniture poking up in darker islands. He kissed my fingers. I wanted to shoot him. Blam.
I’m sorry, I said. I’m not into it. I’m just going to lie here until it’s bedtime. Please go home.
He took my fingers in his and stroked them down. What happened?
he asked.
The air was still and dark, and I could feel myself beginning to blend in with the couch.
I’m just tired, I said finally. I’ve been tired this whole time.
My heart was thumping, very low and slow. I wished he would get out. I scraped at the oil of soap on my tongue. The science teacher’s eye whites were bright in the darkness, disappearing and reappearing when he blinked, and his hand was on my thigh; he wouldn’t stop touching me, and it was burning there and I wanted to get it off and I shifted my body so I was all me, alone with the air, none of him on me. Off. Away.
But you were with me before, he said. I was not, I said.
What happened to you? he asked. Just what exactly did you do in that bathroom? Did you take a pill or something? Come back.
I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t believe he’d said that.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, I said. Eyes on the pillow. I’m sorry, I said. I just don’t want to.
But before-the science teacher said.
That was all acting class, I spit out. None of that was me.
He leaned forward again, but I shrugged closer to the couch, pressing myself into the pillows. Finally, he leaned back.
It was you, he said simply.
The pillows smelled like dust and old sun. I was monitoring my 4 breathing, lungs shallow and vague, heart sluggish, wondering if I’d suffocate, so tight I was against the fabric. I wanted him to get out so I could stare at the 50 and nauseate myself with helplessness. The couch lightened as his weight left it and I could sense the height of him, even with my face pressed against the pillow.
Bye, I mumbled.
Then in the room, his voice, low: Liar, he said, an echo of his earlier self. The delight in the word gone.
The air stiffened. I pressed my face deeper into the pillow. The clock in the kitchen suddenly ticked loudly.
Believe me, I muttered. My head got dizzy.
No, he said. This part is acting class-I give you an A for acting class. But the rest was real. This stuff, he said, this stuff about you I don’t like at all.
What am I lying about? I said. I’m not lying, I said.
Stupid Mona, he said, and his voice was one notch louder now, I was here, remember?
The clock was ten decibels louder now, each tick a bomb. I could almost feel the couch pattern peel off my skin. I pressed the pillow against my mouth, a gag, hard, shoving it in as hard as I could to contain what was breaking inside me.
I heard him move away. Turn the doorknob and let himself out.
Shut the door. Click. Gone. Quiet. Empty. I rolled away from the pillows, which stuck to my cheek and stomach from the pressure and sweat; it was silent in the living room and I was ready to turn into stone if my heart hadn’t been beating so fast; I was ready to turn into stone if I hadn’t felt, all of a sudden, like dancing.
I clicked on the light and the room jarred into shades of yellow.
Listen. There was this pretty music teacher who wore red boots and visited school for private piano lessons. On her breaks, she talked about her sex life a lot. Math and music tend to get along, supposedly music is just math in its best dress, so within ten minutes of meeting her, she’d told me how she’d gone out with some man for months and she’d really liked him but then one day announced to him that she only
liked women. He was confused for a while and said, Was there space for both? And she said, Nope, it was only women. She meant it at the time, she told me in the kitchen, picking apart a biscuit with her fingers, tapping her red boot heel on the floor in a four count. But, she continued, he never really thought about it, never once said to her: Well what about all those times you were so happy? And what about all those times we rolled around in bed all morning and made pancakes at two in the afternoon? Instead he said: I guess that’s the way it goes and I understand, and they broke up. She said it was just weird how certain things were respected without question and if he’d only listened to himself, he might have fought her a little harder. Would you have gotten back together? I’d asked, opening up the refrigerator and closing it again and then opening it again. I don’t know, she said. Probably not. But regardless, she said, there is something so awful, something so gross about watching someone who loves you struggle to believe what you both know. deep down. is partially a lie.
I didn’t talk to the science teacher all week at school. I wanted to staple an apology to my forehead, hold his face and look into his eyes and thank him over and over, but I knew if he touched me again I’d do the exact same thing. I’d be back in the bathroom in seconds, making love to that soap, sticking the soap anywhere I could, just get the human material off.
I managed to see him only twice-once on lunch duty, in a heated debate with Danny. He had more marks up and down his arms, burns riding the split of his sinews.
The second time, I kept my head low. I walked past him in the hallway and mumbled hi and he said hey and that was it.
For Friday, Danny was assigned Numbers and Materials. All week he’d chattered about what he was going to bring, in a vague, excited way, e.g.: I’m going to bring the greatest thing, just you wait! and twice he came over to me at recess to make sure I wouldn’t stop him in the middle like I’d done with Mimi. Well, I’d said, sitting on the purple plastic bench, what are you bringing?