“Well, sure, but that doesn't mean we can't shop now!” She is brimming with energy. I'll never catch up.
“How about instead I help you with your monologue?” I say. “Aren't you learning a new monologue for auditions?” I want to see her do her acting warm-upsâwindmills with her arms and swooping sounds with her mouth, followed by an intensive session of rolling around on the floor. There's nothing quite like watching Karissa roll around on the floor. She's as comfortable as a puppy and emerges vertical and dust-covered and victorious. Her hair turns into a tangled mess, which makes her even prettier, and by the time she is upright, her back is straight in a mathematically perfect way.
I could stand an afternoon with the Karissa that she used to be.
“I'm going to hold off auditioning for a few weeks,” she says. “I'm not quite ready to be auditioning right now. But soon.”
“Oh.”
“Your dad's helping me,” she says. I nod but don't know what help Dad could be. “He thinks I could make it in L.A. Or maybe London. There's a lot of theater in London. We're thinking of getting a place.”
I want to go back to bed for the rest of my life. But a tiny part of me wonders at Dad changing alongside Karissa. Changing for Karissa. I don't think he's ever thought about moving or supporting or adventuring with his wives and girlfriends. It's a little bit beautiful even if it's mostly awful.
“Dad loves New York” is all I can think to say.
“Well, sure. But what if we could love other things too?” Karissa shrugs like she hasn't asked the world's biggest question, or at least my biggest question. What are the things we are supposed to love the most? And what happens when we want to love other things too?
Karissa and I go to a street in the East Village that is crowded with bridal shops.
“It's like a fairy tale, right?” she says.
She knows I don't want to answer, but she keeps asking anyway. Like if she says it enough times, I'll give in. It makes me think she doesn't need my actual approval, only the surface of approval.
“I have a secret,” she says. “I already booked us an appointment at this one place.” She smirks and elbows me like it's all a big joke.
I think it's not cute and it's not okay, but I'm sort of held hostage by her energy and her dead family and the promise that every hour or so I get a moment of the person she was. Plus the tattoo of her own eye on her back and her crazy beaded sandals and the fact that she knows awesome places to get egg sandwiches and coffees, which we did before heading to Wedding Dress Row.
Karissa tries on eight gowns in an hour.
“You must be so happy for your sister,” the clerks say, one after the
other. I don't tell them she's not my sister.
“You try one on!” Karissa says, twirling around in something full-skirted and skimpy-topped.
“I'm just here for moral support,” I say. I try to imitate a person in a movie. I play with the train of the dress Karissa has on, holding it up and dropping it down. Smoothing it out with the palm of my hand.
“No. That's not how it's done. Get her something crazy expensive and crazy beautiful,” Karissa says. She slips back into the dressing room, and I try to signal to the clerks that I am seventeen and not in the market for a wedding dress, but they don't listen, and the gown they put in my arms is spectacular. Something a bohemian princess would wear.
“Holy crap,” I say. “Are you sure I can put this on?” The clerks nod and smile, but I'm pretty sure it's forced. They do not actually want me trying on gowns. My armpits smell like men's deodorant because I bought the wrong kind, and the rest of me smells like smoke because we split a cig on the walk here.
“Oh my God, did you find the one? Let me see!” Karissa says. She comes out in her underwear. I think the clerks want to shove her back in the room, but they're enchanted by something in her too. Something I used to call magnetism but now I am searching for a new word for.
Danger.
“Clothing!” I say. I don't want to see her in her underwear. But I especially don't want the East Village to see her in her underwear.
Before I have a chance to object, Karissa grabs my hand and drags
me into her dressing room with her. It's cramped and absolutely brimming with fancy white fabrics. Karissa is so close she's almost touching, and there's nowhere to look but at her body or the dress.
“Okay, okay, step out and I'll try it on,” I say. I take a mini-step backward to get some space, but there's no room, so I collide with all the hanging dresses, tulle and silk and satin and lace coming at me from all sides. It's like we are in the center of a cloud. The puffy kind. Cumulous or whatever.
She squeezes into a stretchy, short dress, the kind of thing a Playboy model would wear to her wedding. I don't make a move to take off my own clothes and try on my own gown. Karissa nods, getting it. Doesn't check herself out in the mirror before stepping out of the dressing room, which I sort of love.
She pulls the curtain closed behind her so that I can change alone. It doesn't feel any less cramped. If anything, the dresses seem to have expanded, ballooned. I am trapped in tulle. It's not easy getting into the dress. There are so many folds in the fabric I can't be sure where my arms or legs go, and it droops on top where my boobs aren't and hugs my hips too tightly. I'm worried little beads are going to fall off from the pressure of my not-rightness, but I step out so that Karissa can see and have her perfect, gown-shopping, best friend moment.
She has her phone out and trained on me, snapping pictures the instant I pull aside the curtain.
“Look at you!” she says, turning the screen to me so that I am face-to-face with myself. I look shocked and pale. The hints of scribbles make my arms looks unwashed. My dirty-blond roots are even
more obvious in the ugly overhead lighting. The pink in my hair even sadder, more depleted against the white of the dress. But there's something pretty in the contrast between me and the flounce of the dress.
Maybe not pretty, but interesting.
Karissa wraps her arm around my waist and holds the phone up so she can get us both in the picture. The clerks rush to help, and we have an impromptu photo shoot. It's awkward at first. The dress itches and keeps sliding around on top, the straps falling down every time Karissa moves my body this way or that. But with the clerks egging us on and telling us how beautiful we look, and Karissa's frenetic energy pulsing against my body, it's hard not to get caught up in the fun.
We try on a few more dresses, until each of us ends up in princess-y things. Skirts like bells. Bodices that cling and sparkle, ribbons crisscrossing up the back. Karissa gets behind me and twists my hair on top of my head, so I can see what I would look like if I were a whole different person.
“Gorgeous,” she says.
“You too,” I say, and it's the truth. We both look kind of incredible as princess brides.
“This is exactly how I always thought this moment would be,” Karissa whispers, and it sounds like truth. “We'll take them!”
“You're getting the dress?” I say. I pitch the question up, so it sounds excited, and I wonder how well I'm pulling off this whole maid-of-honor situation.
“We're getting both dresses.”
“That doesn't make any sense. I'm not getting married.”
“But for someday! Or for pretend! Or prom or a tea party or dancing in a fountain or going to a football game, because why not!” she says, and she giggles that loose, bubbly giggle followed by her patented unexpected snort, and I don't want to be a girl who says no, so I don't say anything.
Karissa has my dad's credit card and a mythical mania and this strong, strong, planetary kind of pull.
Besides, I looked good and strange and dreamy, and that's what my dad gets for marrying a twenty-three-year-old.
The next day, I go to the park at our regular time, not expecting Arizona and Roxanne to be there. It's surprisingly comfortable, the idea of being alone in the park again like I was all year. I'm used to the loneliness, and them being back in town for a couple of months doesn't change that.
In some ways, they're barely here anyway. Or barely here with me, at least. I know for certain that they've hung out a few times without me this summer. I noticed matching tans one day. And a conversation about this Thai place, Republic, that we all used to go to together but they clearly went to alone. The leftovers were in Arizona's fridge.
But here they are with big iced coffees and smiles.
“Let's have a normal day,” Roxanne says. “Like, a good day. We can pull that off, right?” She looks from Arizona to me, and I wonder what it's like to be her, always caught in the things that happen between us and around us.
“I could use a normal day,” I say. Arizona hands me a to-go cup of
hot coffee. She knows that even in the most extreme heat I stick with steamy drinks.
The coffee's good. And being in the park with Arizona and Roxanne is good too. Calm. The eye of a hurricane. Hurricane Karissa. Hurricane Falling in Love.
Roxanne has taken to wearing summer hats. Arizona has taken to wearing enormous sunglasses. I am in flip-flops and jean shorts, like I was last summer and the summer before, because I am the only one of the three of us who knows that whatever you wear this summer will look stupid by next summer, so you might as well wear what's most comfortable.
“I'm sorry. We need to talk about these jean shorts. They are truly, truly disgusting,” Roxanne says in her too-loud voice. I hike them up a little, like that will somehow help. “Like, there are strings. Hanging off of them. Long strings. I'm gonna say it. Tampon-esque strings. Your cutoffs are tampon-esque.”
“Don't say tampon in public,” Arizona says.
“
You
just said it,” I say. Roxanne laughs, and Arizona huffs and takes a long sip of iced coffee that results in her bitching about her teeth hurting from the cold. I am so happy not to be Arizona.
“How about sex? Can we talk about sex?” Roxanne says. She's got a smirk on her face, and I finally notice a hickey on her collarbone and specks of last night's mascara gathering in the corners of her eyes.
“No,” Arizona says. “Stop trying to rile me up. I get it. You guys are edgy and I'm a prude.”
She turns away from us, toward a pack of ladies crossing their legs and checking out one another's manicures.
“I slept with someone last night. Met at a party. Goes to Cornell,” Roxanne says. I wasn't invited to the party. I look at Arizona to see if she was there, but she looks shocked, so she must not have been.
“Whose party?” she says.
“Friend of a friend in Chelsea,” Roxanne says.
“I would have gone,” Arizona says.
“Me too!” I say.
“You were with your roommate, and she gets all weird and possessive,” she says to Arizona. “And Mon, I bet you anything you were with your guy. So.”
“Bernardo,” I say, because they never say his name. “Sorry I'm all in love and doing that whole thing.” I'm not sorry, but I feel like there's an empty space where my apology is supposed to be, so I fill it.
“Don't apologize for being in love,” Roxanne says.
“Do we have to keep saying they're in love?” Arizona asks.
“I love him.”
“You met him, like, yesterday. You know better. Come on,” Arizona says.
“Please stop hating the only thing I actually like,” I say.
And just like that, I miss Bernardo with as much ferociousness as I missed Arizona and Roxanne all year. I miss him even though I saw him last night, like they assumed. I miss him even though Arizona thinks I barely know him.
Arizona pushes her glasses and watches a violinist gather up coins
and lock up his case. It's like a whole performance series out here. As soon as the violinist vacates, a human statue takes over. She's dressed as the Statue of Liberty and is so unmoving it's scary.
Little kids throw things at the statue lady, trying to get her to wince. She doesn't. She stays solid and still. She's sort of incredible. Her eyes don't even blink as almonds and drops of water come flying at her painted face.
“The park doesn't feel the same today,” Arizona says. “Maybe I'm over New York.”
It's meant to be the meanest thing she can possibly say.
“You need a day on my roof and Mexican and sushi delivery at midnight,” Roxanne says. “Then you'll love it again.”
When our coffees are gone and the statue lady has been replaced with a little boy break-dancing, we leave. And I call Bernardo. His family's having chicken and rice and beans tonight, and I want to be in that warm house with people who are positive they are doing it right.
“Absolutely not,” Bernardo says the next day as we're walking around the Upper East Side, Bernardo in a suit and me in one of Janie's old dresses, like we belong there. We're near my dad's office, heading to this French place I've been going to since I was little and wanted to show Bernardo.
“I don't mean I'd be getting surgery, like, tomorrow,” I say. “I'm just wondering if I should consider the possibility.” It's getting harder and harder to stop thinking about that photograph. I've been avoiding my father in the house, playing a weird kind of hide-and-seek that he doesn't know is going on. I don't want to see his gaze slip from my eyes to my chin. I don't want to see what I know he's thinking.
“When I was with Casey and after she dumped me, I felt like I had to change everything,” Bernardo says. “But you made me feel like I can be who I am. Or we can become new people, but together.”
“Casey wanted you to change?” I say.
“I mean, not my chin. But be older. Be different. Have more
direction or something. Be a different kind of better person that she'd like more. It's a losing battle, though.”
“I made you dye your hair,” I say, covering my face in embarrassment for being every bit as bad as Casey.
“You did not make me dye my hair. You inspired me to be a weirdo,” Bernardo says.
I want to cover him in kisses but I can't, because we reach the restaurant and I catch sight of Karissa in the window.
Bernardo hadn't understood why I wanted to come all the way uptown to go to a bistro when there are so many identical French bistros all over the city. I couldn't fully answer except to say I like the predictability of the menus and the always-red chairs and the waiters' accents. So I like Café Moche. Especially for their french fries.
I've known my dad comes here for lunch when he has to work on weekends, so maybe Karissa in the picture window shouldn't be so much of a surprise, but it is. A breathtaking one. I stop Bernardo before he barrels in to say hello and steal some of her fries.
“Jesus,” he says, his exclamation for everything from terrible weather to great kissing. “Tiny city we live in, right?” I nod but keep holding him back.
“What's she doing?” I say.
“Probably waiting for your dad?”
As soon as he says it, my dad comes back from the bathroom, and they make out right there in the window. It's disgusting and I turn away. I can almost see Central Park from here. It's a green haze in the distance, and I wish I could leap straight into it. I keep wanting to be
somewhere other than the place I am.
Maybe I simply want the summer to be over, even though it's what I waited for all year.
“I'm sorry,” Bernardo says, like he's responsible for me witnessing this reality. “It's over. I think they stopped.”
I turn back to look at them, hoping they have taken up residence on their own separate sides of the table. I don't even want to see them holding hands after that display. But I catch something else, a last gesture that looks affectionate except for how well I know it.
My father uses two fingers on her jaw and turns her face to the light. Even in the daytime, French bistros manage to stay pretty dim, so he has to move his face closer to hers to see properly, and he does. He inspects her face. Not for loveliness. For flaws.
I know because he's done it to me.
Karissa doesn't wince away from him. She smiles. She nods her head when he's done telling her what I'm sure is a laundry list of things that would make her better. She grips his arm while he's inspecting her.
He is going to change her.
He keeps chipping away at this person I thought I had, and soon she won't even exist.
“You wanna say hi, or no?” Bernardo says. I picture, for a moment, eating burgers and fries and drinking big mugs of latte with Karissa and my dad and my handsome, perfect, crazy, solemn boyfriend. It could almost be nice, but I can't shake the nausea of Karissa giving in to Sean Varren, like the rest of them do.
The sad-happy look on her face isn't something I can look at while eating.
“I hate my father,” I say to Bernardo. Karissa's settled back in her chair, but her grip on my dad's forearm hasn't loosened, and she keeps touching her hair and her face like she wants it to stay in place.
“Nah,” he says, and I know he's right. He's all I have, parent-wise, and he's good, sometimes. He's even great on occasion. For small spurts of time. For moments.
Across the way there's a whole bunch of scaffoldingâbuildings getting torn down or built up. I try to remember what used to be under the bars. Maybe a bakery or a frozen yogurt place. Somewhere I used to go when Natasha and I would meet my father after work. Now who knows. It will probably be a bank.
“You know what I love?” I say. “That your dad makes rice every night and guac on Sundays and that you get pizza every Thursday and watch TV with everyone and that your mom grew up with in the place you now live.”
I must look like I'm going to throw my shoe through the window or something, because Bernardo holds me unprompted. Pulls me to him. Lifts my face up.
“It looks like something perfect,” he says, “but it's not. There's no room there to be your own whole person. They want me to be the oldest kid and not much else. And I don't want pizza every Thursday. Some Thursdays I want sushi. Or steak. Or pancakes for dinner. And guess what? I don't like rice. I don't like rice and beans or knowing what's going to happen next.”
“I want to know what's going to happen next,” I say.
“I don't,” he says. He runs his hand through my hair and smiles at the way it curls and splits and knots.
“I'm tired of everything changing,” I say.
“We'll change together, then,” he says. And maybe he understands me more than I think. Maybe he has some instinctual blueprint of me. He touches my face but doesn't hold it to the light to examine it. His fingers find their way to my mouth and he traces my lips. Pulls on the bottom one a little. He's about to kiss that same spot, maybe pull on it with his teeth, something I didn't know I'd like so much, but I get an idea and stop him before his lips have landed on mine.
“I should pierce it,” I say. I didn't even know the words were in there. I've never wanted a pierced lip.
“Your lip?” Bernardo looks fully surprised. He finishes his journey to my mouth and kisses me so hard I think I might faint. His hands tug at my hair, and I'm glad I've kept it long and messy. There's so much of it for him to pull and play with and weave through his fingers. When we're done, I have the chaos of my hair as proof of passion, and I like it. I won't brush it out when we've broken apart.
“Maybe not my lip,” I say, and I can tell from his rare smile that that was the whole point. He likes my lips the way they are. A lot.
He looks at my face for a long time. Pedestrians have to change their paths on the sidewalk. They sigh and their dogs bark and little kids barrel into our legs because we are taking up too much room. It's one of those gorgeous summer weekends and the Upper East Side is packed, absolutely drenched, with men in bright-colored shorts for their weekend-wear and women in expensive sundresses that are meant
to look inexpensive. We get whiffs of cologne after terrible cologne, a parade of smells and frustrated noises and elbows and shoulders banging against our bodies, but we don't move until he's done looking.
“I got it,” he says. “Nose.”
I almost say yes. It feels natural, to let him look at my face and tell me how to change it.
Until it feels awful. I start walking toward the subway and let him follow behind me, asking if I'm going to do it. I get Karissa and my dad out of my head.
“Eyebrow,” I say.
“Cool. Me too.”
“Really?” I reach behind me for his hand and pull him so we are walking side by side. It's annoying for everyone else on the cramped sidewalk, but I don't care anymore.
Shit, I'm in love.
“You definitely don't have to do it,” I say. He'd look good with an eyebrow ring. It would fancy up those serious eyebrows.
“We're in it together,” he says.
“I love you,” I say. Nothing has ever felt so true or big. Everything is melting away. Or I'm melting into him. Or maybe it's so hot and humid on the streets of New York today that it feels that way, and that's close enough. Maybe we're simply melting, period.
“Let's go say fuck you to the world and pierce our faces,” he says, which is basically the same as
I love you too
.
We take the subway down to the East Village and find a place that's the right mixture of dirty and clean.
“Here?” I say. There's graffiti outside, but the pretty kind. The artsy kind. Inside there are chairs that look like they could be in Dirty Versaillesâgold arms and red velvet seatsâand a neon sign.
“Here,” Bernardo says, completely sure of himself. “I've heard of this place. They don't check IDs.” I wish I could have a little of what he has, so I launch myself at him and press against him, sucking on his neck a little, like sureness and stability might be something I can extract from that one place.
I've never thought of myself as a girl who would get a facial piercing, but that's sort of the point.
“Do you think Victoria and Veronica will be mad at me?” I say. I'm not sure why I'm even thinking of them now, standing in the doorway of this place. But they're so small, I don't want to freak them out. “Like, will they think I'm a monster or something?”
“Who?” Bernardo says. It hurts, his forgetting. He's the only person in my life who knows them, who's met them, who knows what they mean to me. I need him to know without explanation.
“The girls. Natasha's girls. My, you know, my not-sisters,” I say. I should have said sisters. Or stepsisters. Or almost-sisters.
“Oh, of course,” Bernardo says. He kisses the place that I'm about to pierce and squeezes me again. “They'll get used to it,” he says, a thing I'm not sure is ever true. “This is a you and me thing, anyway. Not a them thing.”
I feel a pull of missing them. A gasp of it. Then it's over and I want to be with Bernardo.
I tap my eyebrow when the guy asks me what I want. Bernardo
mimics the gesture. The guy rolls his eyes, but I don't care. He doesn't get it. He doesn't know.
He does me first, then Bernardo. It hurts, and I hadn't realized it would be a real needle. It's not like with ears, where there's a gun punching a hole in your skin. This seems more hard-core.
I feel hard-core. He slips in a silver ring with a shiny red bead. And like that, I'm new. I'm more. He lets me stare at myself in the mirror, and I move my head this way and that, seeing myself from every angle.
Bernardo needs me to hold his hand while his is done, but he doesn't yelp or anything at the pinch. His ring is gold and thicker than mine. I want to play with it. I want to ruffle his hair and touch his face. I want to feel the way he belongs to me.
We walk down the street after and probably aren't getting any more looks than usual, but it feels like they can all see the way we fit together.