After my mother left for what she claimed would be the final time, I returned home one evening to find her hosting a welcome back party for one of her new, young friends. The house was packed with people who were laughing and shouting over one another. Empty beer bottles and dirty plates were stacked on the counter. A girl was sitting on the couch, cutting up lines of white powder on an oval mirror she had taken down from my wall. Another guy was rolling a joint, busting the weed by hand.
“Grace, come here,” my mother beckoned. “I want you to meet someone.”
She was elegant and conservative, dressed in black pants and a black blouse that draped off her slender body. Her ankles were exposed, the legs of her pants rolled up. Her feet were bare and flawlessly manicured. I thought of the stinging smell of nail polish remover as, each night, for as long as I could remember, she stripped the red polish from her toes before reapplying a fresh coat.
With arms folded close to her chest, she slowly swayed back and forth, gently shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she often did. She wasn’t drinking. I had never seen her drink.
I walked past the painting of a nude woman, her arms bound behind her back, nipples jutting forward, tied to a flaming stake. Her face was soft, her eyes closed, a cigarette dangling between her lips as her head bowed, seemingly about to light her cigarette on the blaze. I crossed the crowded room, making my way between people, dipping and flattening myself to avoid a collision, approaching my mother and the stranger. He was tall, just over six feet, with dark curls piled on top of his head. He had sharp, high cheekbones that protruded just below his eye sockets. His lips were uneven, the bottom much fuller than the top.
“Where’s my father?” I whispered to my mother.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She flicked her wrist dismissively. “In the city with his new girlfriend, I’d imagine.” She turned to the stranger. “This is my daughter, Grace. The one I was telling you about.”
The young man reached for my hand and shook it, his emerald eyes lingering on my face. “I’m Jack.”
His front teeth were slightly crooked, hugging over one another, the outer edges lifted higher than his canines. His nose seemed ornamental—as if it weren’t meant for breathing or smelling at all—with tiny nostrils and meticulously carved cartilage that curved upward. He was wearing a cornflower blue cashmere sweater and holding the roach of a joint between his thumb and forefinger.
“I’ll let you two get acquainted,” my mother said, as she turned and disappeared through the back door to the patio.
He bent to drop the roach into a half-empty can on the coffee table. It sizzled before dying out. He pointed to the couch, “Join me for a drink?”
Surrounded by a group of unfamiliar people, I sat with Jack as he told me that he and his friend had been on the road for three weeks; they’d driven across the island, taken the ferry, then crossed the border, headed for California.
“Our engine caught fire as we were driving through Arizona.” He smirked, taking a long swig from his beer bottle. “We had to call the fire department to put it out.”
“No way.” I laughed, noticing I was clutching the edge of my sundress. I let go, smoothing it repeatedly. “What did they do?”
“The firemen doused it with some sort of foam,” he replied. “We had a pound of weed in the glovebox. Luckily the cops didn’t show up. We would have been fucked.”
“Was the car okay?”
“No, we had to abandon it and fly home.” He sighed. “We never made it all the way.”
“That’s too bad,” I teased. “How are you going to write your Kerouac-inspired memoir now?”
“Well,” he paused, intertwining his fingers and pressing them into the back of his head, “maybe you could help me with that. I thought you were the writer.”
I titled my head and glanced down, embarrassed for some reason. “I wouldn’t say that. Not yet, anyway.”
He grinned. I liked the way his front teeth overlapped, his confidence in movement and articulation. The way he smelled: sweet, like almonds, with a hint of spruce.
“How old are you?” he asked, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the coffee table.
“Seventeen. How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
I nodded. “Cool.”
“Let’s do a shot, kid,” he said, pouring the booze into two glasses. A red-haired girl stumbled and nearly fell over, cackling as she caught herself against the bookcase.
Jack handed me a glass and I tossed the whiskey down, turning away from him, trying not to gag. “Smooth,” I said as I retched.
He chuckled, squinting his bloodshot eyes. “You good?”
“Oh yeah, I’m fine.” I laid my shot glass on the Bible my mother used for doodling.
“Hey, don’t be so sacrilegious.” He nudged me playfully on the shoulder.
“You believe in that stuff?”
“Fuck no. I know God doesn’t exist,” he declared, his speech slightly slurring. “Science hasn’t been able to prove it.”
“So you think science is the new religion?” I raised an eyebrow, smirking. “How original.”
He allowed his head to fall slightly, shooting me a look. “You’re funny. Your mom said you were smart, but what mother doesn’t think that about her kid?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shifted, pulling a package of flattened cigarettes from his back pocket, offering it in my direction. “I just wasn’t expecting to like you so much, that’s all.”
At four o’clock in the morning, after everyone had gone home, I went looking for my mother. I found her outside on the balcony in the still night. She was staring intently into the dark woods, smoking a cigarette.
I walked up behind her, standing silently for a few moments gazing up at the sky. The moon was yellow, cratered with grey, nearly full. A few days away from completing its cycle.
“I’m going to marry him,” I told her.