Something was happening inside my body. But no blood came.
Every night I thought about the man who was probably downstairs in the family room at that very moment, having a beer and watching the Red Sox, or giving Regina her final doses of pills for the night. If it was late, he might even be asleep, in the bed one flight down, in the room directly below mine. Lying awake himself, like me.
Now came my nighttime life—the secret world I entered, alone in my bed at Wonderland. I imagined Forrest Emerson’s scratchy beard rubbing against my skin, his strong back, his arms encircling my body as he did when he picked me up that first day, and that other time, out on the boat.
Sight for sore eyes!he’d said.You’re just my kind of girl.
I unbuttoned my pajama top and climbed into bed. I opened my journal. I began to write:As we were clearing up the dishes in the kitchen after dinner, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, so nobody else could hear him. “I wish I could take you out on the lake tonight,” he told me. “Just the two of us in the moonlight. I think about you all the time.”
This was Pretend Forrest talking. Now came Pretend Frances’s response: “I’d love that too,” I said. “I never stop thinking about you.”
“I want to wrap my arms around you and never let go,” he said.
Leaning up against the headboard of my little single bed under the eaves, I gripped the open covers of my leatherbound journal and scribbled hard.
He pressed his mouth against mine,I wrote.I’m glad I don’t wear braces, like some of the girls down at the club. I could feel his tongue. It was like we were one person.
For over a year now, my mind had been occupied with thoughts about bodies—mine, and those of other people around me, and what peopledid with each other in their bedrooms, or wherever else sex took place—as much as I could imagine any of this with my own extremely limited understanding of what that might be.
I didn’t just think about it anymore. I wrote it down. I was on the yellow bike, no hands, racing down the steep hill all the way from town. No brakes.
After that, there were no more journal entries about the Emersons and me playing Trivial Pursuit by the firepit, Forrest making up funny songs and pulling quarters out of Hayward’s and Jilly’s ears. If I wrote about Forrest roasting s’mores now—and I did—the focus of my story had nothing to do with heartwarming family times. What mattered to me about that event was how Forrest had picked out just the right stick for me to roast my marshmallow on. Most significant of all was what Forrest had done afterward, the tender way he’d wiped chocolate sauce from the melted Hershey’s bar off my cheek.
In my real life, that part actually happened. In the version I created for my journal, he hadn’t just wiped the chocolate sauce from my face. He’d licked it.
Of course I’d fallen in love with Forrest Emerson. Who wouldn’t?
19
Gin and Tonics
Iinvited that nice woman who brought the kids home to stop by for drinks tomorrow with her husband,” Forrest told us. We were all out on the boat, taking in the sunset. Even Regina had come, which was unusual.
“You could have checked with me first,” she said.
He had his hands on the steering wheel of the Chris-Craft. But he took one off just long enough to pat her leg. “You’re right, darling,” he said. “Sometimes I’m an idiot. I just thought it would be fun to make new friends.”
No comment from Regina.
The Barnetts showed up a little after five o’clock the next afternoon. Forrest had the gin and tonics ready. G&T’s, he called them. Before that summer, the only alcoholic drink I knew was vodka. That and beer. Though in the weeks I’d spent at Wonderland, I’d learned about others.
Brenda Barnett had the kind of hair you might expect to see in a shampoo commercial. The day I met her, I thought she was beautiful, though on closer examination, a lot of this had to do with makeup. Her skin was unusually white, and she wore a great deal of foundation. Regina’s skin was not so much white as pale, almost gray.
“Sunscreen is my religion,” Brenda told Regina, not that Regina had said anything about her complexion.
“Good for you,” Regina said. I knew how much she’d been dreading this event.
“I love your dress,” Brenda added. This was the moment I knew not to trust a word Brenda Barnett ever spoke from that day forward. She couldn’t possibly have meant what she just said. Regina’s dress was awful, not to mention unflattering—a sort of floaty tent dress you’d think a person would choose because they were fat, though in Regina’s case the opposite applied. Maybe she hoped it would make her look less scrawny, but it didn’t. This as opposed to Brenda’s dress, which wouldn’t have seemed all that distinctive on anybody else, but which allowed her to accentuate more of her breasts than most of the mothers I’d observed at the club did. All of them, in fact. Then again, I’d been right about this part: Brenda wasn’t a mother.
The couples made their way into the living room, facing the French doors that opened onto the lake. The children were installed in the den, watching a video, as usual. I headed to the kitchen to retrieve the platter of cheese and crackers Prudence had prepared, while Forrest poured the drinks.
The four of them gathered on the patio. I floated between worlds: the den, where the children were glued to their video and calling for refills on the chips, and outside, taking in the late afternoon sun over the lake with the adults—Brenda looking ridiculous in a New Jersey Devils cap she’d borrowed from Forrest to protect her skin. I could tell she thought she looked adorable in it.
Passing the tray of appetizers, I mostly just listened, my eyes returning to Forrest more than any of the others—his calf muscles, the hair on his chest just barely showing under his shirt, unbuttoned partway. At one point Hayward passed by the French doors on his way to getanother soda. As he walked by me, he whispered, “Va-va-voom,” under his breath. I ignored him.
Brenda offered the opinion that the cheese—cheddar from the local market, nothing special—was amazing. “I try not to eat dairy,” she said. “But sometimes I can’t resist.”
“It doesn’t look like you’ve got a problem,” Forrest told her. Eyes on her cleavage.
