Twenty-One
The Golden Tuba Awards are in exactly two weeks. I’ve drained almost the entirety of my college savings on a round-trip flight to Orlando and a two-night stay at the Embassy Suites, where the conference is being held. My remaining trip budget is tight. I’ve already planned on making a clean sweep of the continental breakfast and sneaking some waffles and fruit back to my room for a makeshift lunch, but I know I’m going to have to pay for a couple meals at some point.
At least Thom will treat me to an iced coffee. Probably. Hopefully.
After a week of what I call our “social media fast,” Jack and I get back online with a new plan: We will weed through notifications in an efficient manner, disregarding the hate as best we can and responding only to fellow web series accounts or very pressing questions. It isn’t ideal, but we agree it’s the only way to stay sane.
Since our cemetery sunrise, Klaudie and I haven’t been fighting. We haven’t been giving each other mani-pedis, either, but we’ve reached an understanding. Our splendifying morning with Gramps and Nana made me see things differently. I guess I secretly thought it was Klaudie’s fault we weren’t ever closer. She was the one who was too snooty to hang out with me and Jack and Paul. She was older, so it was up to her to draw me closer. But she didn’t, and we spun further out from each other, growing irreconcilably different. I blamed that on her. But I don’t think it’s her fault anymore. It was personality and birth order and a lot of other factors neither of us can control.
So now we’re two grown sisters with a sizable gap between us. I still can’t cross the gap, but I can at least see to the other side, to a place surrounded by the pressure to perform. Klaudie was right: That’s pressure I’ve never felt, never even thought about. I may not feel it myself, but at least now I know she does, and that makes it a little better. And while Klaudie hasn’t made peace with our parents just yet, she’s been much milder in her interactions. There are fewer quips, no more sullen eye rolls, and she’s begun to eat most dinners with us again.
The day after my Nashville trip is one of those days when you sleep in so late that you’re completely worthless for the rest of the day. Despite getting a solid twelve hours, I’m a wreck when I walk into the dining room that night. But then I see what Dad’s fixed, and I perk up. He’s made his homemade calzones, each one to our liking: green peppers and onions for Mom, mushrooms for Klaudie, bacon and pepperoni for himself, and four cheeses for me. The only dish I like more than Dad’s traditional Czech meals is his calzones. The sight of them, piping hot on the table, is like a shot of adrenaline straight to my heart. I’m suddenly wide awake. I need all my senses on red alert to fully appreciate this explosion of cheese.
“What’s the special occasion?” I ask, taking my seat.
“Family movie night,” Dad says. “That’s a very special occasion.”
In a way, I guess it is. The last movie night all four of us were together was way back in February, when we were snowed in and Mom and Klaudie had the flu. We snuggled in the den with blankets and cider and watched all three of the original Star Wars . For a while after that, once the roads were clear but the snow was deep on the lawns, Dad would leave for work each morning brandishing his windshield scraper like a lightsaber and yelling, “Just another day on Hoth!”
Tonight, we’re watching The Goonies , which means before Dad will press play on the DVD menu, we must do our best truffle shuffle. Klaudie and I whine and moan, but we secretly love it. We hop onto the couch and raise our T-shirts above our bellies, wiggling them as best we can with accompanying growling sounds. Dad nods approvingly and says, “All right then.” We point fingers at him and demand he do it too. So Dad turns around very solemnly, untucks his button-down shirt, and wiggles his tubby midsection with the most dramatic and accurate gurgle-growl yet. I don’t think Dad missed his calling—he makes a great salesperson—but he could’ve totally made it on the stage, too.
Mom joins Klaudie and me on the couch. I suspect it’s a calculated move when she sits between the two of us. I know it is when she oh-so-casually slips her arms around both our waists.
“Mom,” I say. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Mom presses a kiss to my temple. I lean forward to check Klaudie’s reaction and am shocked to find she’s resting her head against Mom’s collarbone. Mom’s begun to show—a small bump beneath her emerald-colored blouse. And since she’s taken the liberty of wrapping a hand around my side, I press the tips of my fingers to the bump. None of us say anything. We relax into each other’s bodies and watch as a giant skull and crossbones fills the TV screen.
• • •
Later, once I’m in bed, I text with Thom. I’ve brought up the Golden Tubas again. I can’t help myself. With the end of filming fast approaching, the awards seem like a culmination of everything Jack and I have been working for in the past year. It’s like some universe-ordained close to the whole Unhappy Family experience. It’s reached a beyond-epic proportion in my mind, which I know is dangerous. The ceremony and convention aren’t going to live up to my expectations; I keep reminding myself that. I have no chance of winning the Golden Tuba for Best New Series. None whatsoever. Half my mind is wholly convinced of this. The other half is on a wild rampage of boundless optimism. I think about it way more often than is healthy, so it’s inevitable that some of it leaks out into my conversations with Thom.
The negativity online didn’t get any better after Thom’s video. Not that I expected it to. But despite Jack’s disapproval, I’m grateful for Thom’s PSA , not only because it showed he cares about my feelings but also because it served as a kind of turning point. Our conversations really began to pick up after that. And even though Thom mainly wants to talk about sci-fi or his work or the latest online phenomenon, I like those topics well enough too.
At the moment, I am expressing some cutely worded anxiety, and Thom, as always, is cutting straight through it.
Tash, RELAX . If you don’t win, you don’t win. At least you’ll get a good vacation out of it.
What I want to text him is, But not a real vacation, because I don’t have enough money to go to Harry Potter world.
Instead, I write, I know I know I know, you’re right.
There’s a pause. No text bubble on his end, and no typing on mine. I’m about to tell him good night, when he begins typing. I wait for his message.
Are you in bed?
Yup, I write back. All snuggled up, no makeup on. I would scare you so badly.
It’s only a joke, but the moment I hit send, I second-guess myself. Maybe that was too far. Did it sound like I was fishing for a compliment? I hate when people do that—smash themselves to pieces and then hand you the glue stick, screaming FIX ME . I make an antsy squeal and shove the phone under my pillow, as though this will somehow prevent Thom’s reply from coming through. I only take it back out a minute later and read his reply: I’m sure you look beautiful. ESPECIALLY all snuggled up in bed.
I turn to stone.
My bones have transformed into marble, my tendons to granite. My blood has hardened into vein- and artery-shaped stalactites. Because Thom Causer really texted that. He called me beautiful. He basically said he was picturing me in my bed. And I want to think so badly that’s all it is. Just an innocent, offhand comment. That he’s picturing us snuggling together, and that’s it. But that can’t be all there is, because he is a guy, and he is seventeen, and the chances he could be like me are about a million to one. It’s there, between the bubbles of our rambling, flirty conversations: sex . It snakes through our exchanges, stealthy and sure, flicking its forked tongue to coat every word with the hint of its presence. I hate it. And I know I should probably tell Thom at this point. I just can’t figure out the when, the how . There is no un-awkward way of bringing it up, and once I do, everything will change.
I’ve done my research on relationships between aces and sexual people. There are a lot of different perspectives out there, but the general consensus is this: It’s really hard. It requires openness and compromise. Sometimes the sexual person stays committed emotionally but finds sexual satisfaction elsewhere—either on their own or with other people. Or sometimes the ace is cool with having sex every so often, to make their partner happy. Sometimes it all ends in tears. But any way you slice it, the details sound so clinical and ugly, and is it wrong of me to not want to think about them yet?
I stare at the ceiling, remembering all the nights I’ve stared at this ceiling before, my imagination in a totally different place—trying, trying to picture any scenario where I would want sex, where I’d crave it. One weekend, when my parents were away for a mountain getaway in Pigeon Forge, I hauled a stack of movies up to my room. Movies I knew had sex scenes in them. I watched them, I rewatched them, I paused them, I tried .
This is the conclusion I came to: My lack of desire isn’t due to any lack of effort. I’ve tried it for myself plenty of times. I don’t hate the feeling. It’s fine—satisfying, even, to reach that point of release. But it’s not what I’m supposed to feel. Not according to the movies and television shows I’ve seen, not according to the talk at school, or my conversations with Jack. I’m supposed to feel more. I’m supposed to want it like they do. Either that, or everyone around me is just faking it. Sometimes I wish they were. It would be disillusioning, but at least I wouldn’t be the freak.
At the beginning of last year’s English class, my teacher, Mr. Fenton, told the class that the motivation behind every single piece of literature is sex or death, and usually both. Jack dissented very vocally in class, and outside of it she said that Mr. Fenton only thought everything was about sex because he was a guy.
“I guarantee you,” she told me, “Jane Austen’s main motivating factor wasn’t sex. Or death. It was satire and social commentary, because she was a grown-up. Men can be so effing basic. It’s hard for them to get around their own damn phallic-shaped monument to manliness. That’s why the best male writers are almost always gay or bi. Give me Wilde! Whitman! Capote! Impeach Fenton!”
Mr. Fenton was not impeached, but it became a running joke in the classroom that when pressed for an answer we didn’t know, we should say, “Sex.”
Maybe Jack and I didn’t agree with Mr. Fenton, but I think he got what he wanted, anyway. The thought of sex hung heavy on that room, the same as it did outside, in the school hallways, and farther outside, in the world at large. It’s everywhere, like a second skin on everyone I know.
I wonder if it’s too much to ask for a pass into an alternate dimension, where it’s just not an issue. Because stuck in this particular dimension, I wonder if I’m only ever going to be a disappointment. A not-quite-right human. A girl in need of fixing. If there are a mere two driving forces behind every story out there, does that mean the only driving force left to me is death ?
I’d like Mr. Fenton to answer that question. I’d like anyone to answer it.
I don’t reply to Thom’s text.
I stare through the dark at the fuzzy outline of my Tolstoy poster.
“Leo,” I say. “Will you be the only man in my life?”
It’s too dark to see, but I know he’s scowling back at me.