Zigzag Read online

“Why do they hate me, Chris? They can’t wait to get you away from me.” Tears again, only this time they were angry tears—scalding and miserable. “Do you have to go? Are they making you go?”

  He sighed heavily. “It would really hurt their feelings if I didn’t go. And besides, this is too good to pass up. It’s not like I won’t miss you. I’ll think about you all the time, and I’ll write to you . . .”

  “You want to go away for the whole summer? Our whole last summer together?”

  He looked at me guiltily, the answer quite obvious. All of a sudden I felt like I’d just made the whole thing up, that the past two years had never even happened. Chris had never loved me. I had to get out of that car and away from his eyes.

  “Don’t follow me,” I commanded as I flung myself out the door and stumbled down the culvert by the roadside. “I need to be alone a few minutes.” When I reached the field I started thrashing through the cornstalks, which were sharper than I thought they’d be. I’d gotten about twenty feet in when I noticed the slices on my arms were starting to bleed, so I just sat down right there in the field, little corn ears swaying above me, and licked at one of the wounds on my arms. I used to do that a lot as a kid—I liked the salty taste of the blood. But then one day at school somebody saw me doing it and called me a vampire, so I stopped. I guess when you’re losing the best boyfriend in the world you turn into a little kid again, needing to know what’s inside you.

  It was obvious to me, sitting there in my little cornstalk home, that Chris did not love me as much as I loved him. Probably he was tired of me, tired of all my whining lately, and he figured why put up with it for the whole summer when he could just get rid of me right now. How could this be happening? We weren’t like other high school couples who argue, break up, and then get back together a few days later. We argued once in a while, sure, but there was no question of us breaking up, not ever. We only wanted to be with each other. “I love you,” we said, back and forth, over and over. It had seemed like a totally original idea, as if no one else had ever said it before.

  Now I wondered what the words even meant. How did we decide this was love anyway? People talk about love as if it’s a big mystery nobody can explain. You’ll know it when you feel it. Franny got mad when I said that to her. Maybe she’s right, maybe it’s not the same thing to everybody. All you know for sure is what you feel. I know I love Chris, but I don’t know if he loves me. When people say they love you, you just have to decide to believe them, because you’ll never know for sure.

  To me, love is when you want to be with someone all the time, you miss him when he’s gone, and he shows up in your dreams. But sometimes I think it must be more than that and I just don’t know yet what more there is. Maybe if I really loved Chris I’d be happy for him that he gets to go on this trip.

  I wish people could take a love test. Sort of like a lie detector test, only you’d find out if the person was really in love with you before you went ahead and fell totally in love with him. Before you handed him your life and he broke it in half.

  Finally I walked back to the car. Chris was sitting behind the wheel with his eyes closed, but when he heard me coming, he leaned over and opened the passenger door from inside.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded, even though it wasn’t true.

  “So, we still going to the lake?” he asked.

  I closed the door and looked at him. “When do you leave?” I asked. “When do you go to Rome?”

  “Um, well. On Thursday.” He swept his eyes over cautiously to locate mine.

  “This Thursday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s four days from now!”

  “The orientation starts Friday.”

  “You know what?” I said. “Take me home.”

  Chris let his head hang back. “Robin, come on. Don’t be mad at me again.”

  “I’m not mad. I just want to go home. I don’t feel like listening to you tell everybody your big news.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “Okay. Maybe tomorrow we can go to the lake?”

  I shrugged. “If you want.”

  “Of course I want! I want to see you as much as possible before I leave!”

  Why bother? is what I thought. This is torture. If you’re going, just go.

  Mom was on the phone in the kitchen when I came back into the house. She looked up and interrupted her conversation for a moment. “Forget something?” she asked.

  “Nope,” I said. We both listened to Chris’s car peel out of the driveway. I was not going to fall apart, go ballistic, or lose my mind. Not right this minute anyway. I would discuss it with Mom when she got off the telephone.

  “What’s wrong?” she called in.

  “Finish your phone call,” I said, sitting carefully on the edge of the couch. I picked up a copy of the University of Iowa Alumni Bulletin from the coffee table and pretended to look at it while I eavesdropped on my mother’s conversation. There were only a few people in the world she could be talking to—it shouldn’t be hard to figure out which one this was.

  “She and Chris must be arguing again,” Mom told the caller. “You know, about his going to school so far away.”

  It was someone who knew me pretty well. Not, for example, Mr. Hemingway. Must be Esther, although Esther doesn’t like to hang on the phone either.

  “I know, it would be great if the kids could see each other more often.”

  I sat forward. Could it be Dad? But why would he be calling now—I just talked to him on my birthday last month. I hadn’t seen him in three years, not since he got remarried and moved to Arizona with his wife. They had a two-year-old son I’d never seen either: David, my half brother. I was barely fourteen when Dad left—he doesn’t even know what I look like anymore.

  But, no. Mom seemed too at ease to be talking to Dad. Not that they were unfriendly, not anymore, but their limited conversations were kind of formal, and Mom always seemed to be faking cheerfulness.

  “I will ask her, but I don’t think you should get your hopes up. You and the kids could stop at the farm on your way west anyway, couldn’t you? You haven’t been here since Dad died.”

  Okay, I got it. I should have guessed by the tired sound of her voice that she was talking to her sister, Dory, a labor-intensive job. Aunt Dory is Mom’s younger sister by two years, her only sibling, and the one who did everything right, according to Grandad. Didn’t get pregnant until she was married and done with college. Married Allen Tewksbury who made a lot of money. Had two children instead of only one. Didn’t get divorced. But Grandma and Grandad died before they could see Dory’s perfect life begin to unravel. Last year Allen was hit by a car and killed in downtown Chicago, walking back from a business lunch talking on his cell phone. So, I guess even if you do things “right” it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re safe forever.

  “Listen, I should go, Dory. Let me talk to Robin and I’ll get back to you in a few days. Okay. Love you, too. Give my best to the kids.” She hooked the phone back onto the wall and sighed. “Poor Dory. She’s so high maintenance, and now there’s nobody around to take care of her.”

  “What? You mean Iris and Marshall aren’t a big help?” Sarcasm was the most pleasant tone I could muster.

  “Don’t be mean.” Mom came into the living room shaking her head. “I feel bad for the kids. They were both very close to Allen.”

  I didn’t, at the moment, feel like extending my sympathies to my cousins. Sure, it was terrible when their father died; they were like zombies at the funeral last fall. But those two have never really warmed the cockles of my heart. Iris is probably thirteen by now, and I guess Marshall is ten or so, but I never really thought of them as kids. They’re just no fun. The few times we visited them in Chicago all they wanted to do was show me their expensive belongings. Of which there were many. I knew they looked down on me because I lived in the country. They go to private schools and they think they’re très sophisticated, especially Iris.

>   I don’t think they got that from Aunt Dory, though. I always liked Dory, even though she’s high-strung and nervous sometimes. She and Mom are so different you can hardly believe they’re sisters.

  Mom brought in a dust cloth and started wiping down the mantelpiece, removing each picture frame and then setting it back in exactly the same place. “So, why are you back already? Surely you couldn’t have had an argument in this short a time. You’ve only been gone half an hour.”

  I intended to tell her the whole story, in a calm, rational manner, but I barely got the first sentence out before meltdown occurred.

  “The Melvilles’ graduation gift to Chris was a trip to Rome on some kind of summer program. He’s leaving Thursday and he’ll be gone for the whole summer and I’ll hardly ever see him again!” Full-fledged crying. “They just hate me and they couldn’t wait to get us apart!”

  Mom stopped dusting and sat down next to me. For a minute she was quiet, her hand rubbing my back. Then she said, “It was only a matter of a few weeks until Chris left anyway, honey.”

  “But they were our weeks! We had plans! Now everything is ruined.”

  “I know this is upsetting to you, Robin, but you were going to have to face it sooner or later. And I’m sure the Melvilles don’t hate you—they just worry because the two of you are awfully young to have such strong feelings for each other. I have to admit, it’s worried me, too.”

  “Why? Chris is the best thing that ever happened to me!” I was choking on tears now, my voice contorted with hiccups and sobs.

  She nodded. “You were lucky to meet such a nice boy, yes. But there are other interesting people in the world, and other people you’ll come to love.”

  “How do you know that? You never met anybody else after Dad!”

  She chewed her cheek. “I wasn’t looking for anybody else.”

  “I don’t even want to feel this way about another person! I just want Chris!”

  “Oh, Robin, you’re so young—”

  “So what if I’m young! Don’t you get it, Mom? I need him! I’m nobody without Chris! I’m nobody!” The truth of it hit me like a wrecking ball and I slumped over onto the arm of the couch.

  Mom pulled her arm away from me and sat forward so she could see my face. The look on hers was a cross between shock and horror.

  “I hope you don’t really believe that!”

  “It’s true! I was nobody before I met Chris and when he leaves I’ll be nobody again! I don’t know what to do without Chris!”

  Mom didn’t say anything for a while then. She got the tissue box and sat next to me and let me bawl until finally I was sick and tired of it and just stopped. Little spasms made me shiver and breathe raggedly, but I sat up and blew my nose.

  “Maybe you should do something this summer, too,” Mom said finally. “Something different.”

  “I’m working at the Tastee-Freez,” I reminded her.

  She shook her head. “No, I think you should get out of this town for a while. See something new.”

  I gave her a sideways look. “Yeah? You wanna send me to Rome?”

  “No, but Dory has a proposition for you—that’s why she called this morning. I didn’t think you’d be interested, but now that Chris won’t be around, I don’t see why you shouldn’t do it. It’s an opportunity.”

  I sniffed and coughed a few more times. “What kind of an opportunity?”

  “She and the kids are taking a car trip this summer—from Chicago to Los Angeles, kind of a zigzag route, stopping along the way to see the sites and the countryside. She’d like you to go with them, to help her drive, but also to keep the kids company.”

  “Me, in a car with Iris and Marshall all summer? I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t like them. I’m sorry, Mom, I know Dory is your sister, and she’s okay, but her kids are the biggest brats going. Besides which, I have nothing in common with them.”

  “You’ve hardly spent any time with them, a few visits to Chicago and that one time they came here.”

  “Thank God! No, Mom. I’ll be miserable enough this summer without being trapped in a moving vehicle with those two!”

  “It would be a chance to do some traveling—except for Chicago you’ve never been any place but Iowa. You don’t know what this country looks like.”

  “I’ve seen pictures.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to see the West?”

  I rolled my eyes. “What’s in the West? Cowboys?”

  “Dory would pay for everything—food, hotels, all of it—just to have the help. I can’t afford to give you a trip like that, Robin. I hate to see you pass up an opportunity.”

  Mom had always wished we could afford to take vacations. She’d gone to New York City once with a girlfriend before she got married, and she often talked about what a great trip that was. Maybe she should help Dory drive to California and I could stay home and be wretchedly depressed by myself.

  “Just think about it, will you?” Mom said as she stood up. “It would be good for you to see a wider world.”

  “I don’t need a wider world,” I said. “I just need Chris.”

  She sighed and went back to her dusting, running the cloth over the tops of all the books on the shelf. I imagined myself looking out the window of Dory’s minivan for hour after hour, day after day, Kansas, Colorado, Arizona, whatever else is between here and California. What a living hell that would be. Except . . . wait a minute. Arizona.

  “If I did go, do you think Dory would stop in Arizona for a few days? So I could see Dad and my . . . brother?” Brother. It was weird to imagine that I even had one.

  Mom smiled. “I think there’s a good chance.”

  Watching Mom get ready for her date was at least comic relief. After her shower she puffed on enough talcum powder to choke herself and anyone who came near her. She was so shaky with the razor she sliced one of her knees open and needed a large Band-Aid to staunch the blood flow.

  “Well, that looks lovely,” she said. “I’ll guess I’ll wear a long skirt.”

  Thank God she didn’t have a big wardrobe because the woman tried on every last thing in her closet.

  “I don’t have any nice clothes!” she said.

  That was pretty much true. She wore uniforms to work and jeans around the farm. The few times she went anywhere that required a dress she wore an old green one she’d had for several decades.

  “Where’s he taking you?”

  “Some restaurant in Iowa City. I think it’s fancy.” She was tossing clothing onto the floor. “Most of this should go straight to the Salvation Army. Why did I say I’d go out with this man? I’m too old and weird to be dating.”

  “What about the skirt you bought for Allen’s funeral?” I suggested.

  “It’s black! You don’t wear black when it’s this hot.” If she kept fuming around she’d have to take another shower and re-powder herself.

  “People wear black all the time,” I said. “It’s hip.”

  She stared at me. “Is it? Anyway, I’m too old to be hip.”

  “Mom, put on the black skirt.”

  Between the two of us we managed to make her look presentable: the skirt, my cream-colored silk blouse, the turquoise earrings Chris gave me for my birthday last year, a silver necklace she’d had since college, my black sandals, a size too big for her but better than her eight-year-old Birkenstocks.

  She was still cursing her hair when the doorbell rang. Seven on the dot—the guy was punctual. Mom’s eyes grew huge and dark. “I’m going to throw up,” she said.

  It was amazing to watch my calm, reasonable mother turn into a puddle of goo over one little date.

  “Mom, you’ve been talking to the guy all week. All you’re doing is eating in a restaurant with him, not running off to Mexico.”

  I went downstairs to let him in. With the Hemingway image in mind, I was expecting a large man with a bushy beard, but Michael Evans was even larger and bushier tha
n I’d been led to believe. He was a Hemingway and a half.

  “You must be Robin,” he said, extending a humungous hand. I hesitated, then put mine out to be engulfed and possibly smothered, but his handshake was very gentle. “I’m Michael Evans. Is your mother ready?”

  “Come on in. She’s almost ready,” I said. “Would you like to sit down?”

  Michael Evans ducked his head to get through the doorway. Then he and I looked over at our ancient sofa and armchairs, left over from the days Grandma and Grandad lived here, and I think we both had the same thought: Mr. Evans could do a lot of damage to those old springs. It wasn’t that he was fat exactly—that is, the fat wasn’t all collected in his belly like it usually is with large men. He was just big all over. Even his beard, black with a few gray stripes, was longer and fuller than any I’d ever seen, except maybe in old pictures of Woodstock or something.

  “I’ll just wait here,” he said, then smiled at me. “Too nervous to sit down, anyway.”

  I glanced up the stairs to see if my equally apprehensive mother was on her way. No sign. What do you say to a guy who’s picking up your mother for a date? Have her home by midnight. I didn’t think so.

  “So, do you live in Iowa City?” I asked him.

  “Yes, I do now,” he said. “I was offered a job in the English department at the university last year and since my sister lives here I decided to take it.”

  “Oh, right. Your sister was in a car accident. I hope she’s okay.”

  “She will be. Her leg was badly broken and she’ll need quite a bit of therapy. Your mother has been wonderful with her, though.” His eyes got shiny.

  I looked back up the stairs. “Uh-huh. She’s a good nurse.” Hurry up! Finally I saw her approaching, slowly, inching her way toward the stairs. “Here she comes!” I said, thinking she might disappear again if she wasn’t announced.

  It was the oddest feeling watching my mother come down those stairs, like she was the child and I was the parent. She looked prettier than I’d ever seen her look, and scared, too. Michael Evans thought she looked good, too—you could tell. They didn’t say much to each other in front of me, just got very smiley. Mom gave me a big hug good-bye as if she thought it might be the last time she’d ever see me, and then they were gone.