TONY LOOKS SHIFTY EYED AND NERVOUS when he steps through the doorway. He also looks way too cute. Hair combed back, jeans hanging just right. He’s wearing sneakers I’ve never seen before, and his coat is new, too.
I want to kiss him. I want to smack him. Mostly, I want to hug him for coming here when I know it means he’s skipping school and risking getting into trouble. Not that he’s never skipped before, just that since we broke up and I know what his mom thinks about me, I didn’t really think he’d do it for me.
“Thanks for coming,” I tell him as I close the door behind him. “Tony, thank you so much—”
When he kisses me, I’m too surprised to do anything but kiss him back. It feels like forever since we broke up, even if it’s only been a week or so. His mouth is familiar. I taste his toothpaste, the same brand he’s always used. I have time to pray I don’t smell or taste like garlic from the frozen pizza pocket I had for breakfast. Then I remember Tony’s a guy—the taste of pizza probably makes him want to kiss me more.
He pulls back. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I’m not sure where this is going. We broke up for a reason. I don’t know if he thinks I should forgive him, or even if he wants to get back together. Maybe he thinks he can come over and make out with me … just because.
Tony strokes a hand over my hair. “You look different.”
“Lack of sleep.” I shrug, wishing I could melt into his hug like it would save me from everything else. The fact is, I might still love Tony a little, in that secret place in my heart that will always belong to him because he was first. But I don’t trust him.
“No, no. You look … harder.” He studies my face. “I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
“I’m not sure how you could mean that in a good way.” I let him kiss me again, but when he tries to get all handsy and turn this from a hello kiss into a full-on make-out session right there at the front door, I pull away. “Not now.”
“Aw, c’mon, Velveeta. Are you still mad at me?” Tony has a cute pout that used to make me giggle.
Now I’m just annoyed. “Why would I be mad? Because you cheated on me? Huh, imagine that.”
He winces. “I’m sorry. I’m not going out with her anymore, if that makes it better.”
“You know what, Tony, it doesn’t. Not really. And besides, I know your mom hates me, so it’s not really going to change things between us.” I push a hand between us to hold him off when he tries to kiss me this time.
Tony looks confused. Still cute, but not so smart. “So … what did you want? Why did you call me?”
“I need you to drive me home. I wouldn’t be asking if I had any other way.” I’ve thought about how to approach this, but it was so easy to get him here, I think it’ll be a piece of cake to get him to agree to the drive.
“Oh.” Tony frowns. He looks around. “What do you mean, home? I mean, this is your home.”
“No. Home, to my house. The one I lived in with my parents. Before.” I shake my head. “We’re moving back there.”
“You are? Cool.” Tony grins. He has no idea about anything.
I realize that if I hadn’t broken up with him after catching him with that skank, I’d probably break up with him right at this moment. Not because I don’t love him or want to be with him. Not even because his mother despises me. But because there is no possible future for me with a boy who has no idea of what I’ve gone through.
Tony lived through the Contamination by watching it on the television or hearing it on the radio. Neither of his parents got sick. So far as he’s ever said, he was kept inside during the worst of it. Nobody attacked their house. Their life has only changed in the grand picture, the way the whole country’s has. The small, normal details of his life have stayed the same.
It’s his mother, I think, watching his pretty face twist in confusion at what must be my strange reaction. She protected him. And I envy him that, there’s no denying it. “What’s wrong?” Tony asks. “Nothing. Will you give us a ride?” His car is big enough to fit me and my mom and a few bags. We won’t be taking the furniture or anything like that. I just hope everything’s still left in our house, that it hasn’t been looted and ruined.
“Yeah. I guess so.” He grabs for my wrist and pulls me closer. “Opal’s at school?”
“Yeah.” I’m already calculating what else needs to be packed up, what can stay.
“So … we’re alone.” His eyes gleam. I recognize that look. It’s the one he always gave me when he said those words. “Not exactly … Tony … c’mon.”
“C’mon, Velvet.” He pulls me a step closer. “I came all the way over here for you. I thought maybe we could, you know. Talk.”
I have to laugh. He’s so transparent. “Yeah, somehow I think talking’s so not what you want to do with those lips.”
He grins. “Yeah, well, didn’t someone say kisses are the language of love?”
Whoever did wasn’t a seventeen-year-old boy who wanted to make out with his girlfriend. Or maybe it was. All I know is that I want so much to be back in the days when all I could think about was what would it be like if Tony Batistelli kissed me. Two years ago and the girl I was back then seems like so long ago, like a dream.
For the first time, life does behave like a movie would. Tony takes me in his arms. He kisses me. I feel protected and cherished and beautiful and loved.
For about three minutes, and then he’s shoving me away with a look of horror on his face. His back slams up against the front door hard enough to set the broken chain lock swinging. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open. He gives a single, high-pitched squeak.
I know before I turn around what he’s afraid of. “It’s just my mom, Tony!”
I’m so tired of saying this over and over, with nobody listening. I turn. My mom’s not even doing anything weird, just standing in the doorway to her bedroom. She’s wearing normal clothes, she’s clean. She’s not frothing at the mouth or coming at him with fists clenched. She doesn’t smell bad, she’s not making any of those weird noises.
“It’s my mom,” I tell him. “You’ve seen her, like, a thousand times. It’s how she is.”
Tony tries to pretend he didn’t act like a little girl, by shaking himself and putting on a brave face. “You could’ve warned me.”
“I told you I’d found her and brought her home,” I say, as nicely as I can. I don’t want to make him mad. I need him, and not for kissing. “Mom, you remember Tony.”
I feel stupid, acting like I’m giving introductions at a tea party, but I act like I don’t know this is pretty ridiculous. Tony doesn’t say hi, but he can’t stop staring at her. My mom, on the other hand, ignores him and makes her way to the couch, where she sits in front of the TV. She doesn’t turn it on. “It’s just my mom, see? Nothing to be scared of.”
“I’m not scared.” Tony sounds so scornful, I wish I’d said it a different way.
Boys can be such a pain sometimes. “Mr. Garcia says she can’t stay here,” I start to tell him, but he interrupts.
“So, you’re going to send her back, right? You can do that? Don’t they have places for you to put … them? Her?”
At least he didn’t call her it. I think of the long rows of cages, the sour smell, the darkness. “I’m not sending her back. She’s home with us now. I’m going to take care of her.”
“She’s got the whattayacallit, right? The collar? I saw it on the news.” He moves a step or two closer but still looks as though at the first wrong move from her, he’ll be jumping through the front window to get away.
“Yeah. She’s neutralized. She’s fine. And, Tony, everything they say about them … about how they can’t really act normal. It’s not true.” I’m talking faster, trying to get my point through to him as though he’s cutting me off again, but Tony’s not saying a word. “She has a little trouble with some stuff, but she’s getting better. Even in the couple of days she’s been home, I can see an improvement. I think she just needed to be with us.”
There’s no way I’m going to tell him about what happened with Jerry. “Like …”
I don’t really want to tell him the rest, either. It’s private. It’s embarrassing. I wouldn’t want anyone saying it about me. “Like what?” Tony asks. He looks fascinated. “Getting dressed. Eating. Umm, bathroom stuff. Like that sort of thing.”
He swivels his head to stare at me. “Like, you mean she can’t go to the bathroom herself and stuff? You have to help her?”
“Yeah.” I lift my chin. “It’s not so bad. She’s better off than a lot of the people I see in the home.”
“Yeah, but …” Tony shudders. He swipes a hand across his mouth. “That’s gross, Velvet. How could you do that? I mean, you have to, like, what, help her go?”
“You’d do it for your mother,” I tell him.
I see in his eyes that he doesn’t think he would. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Mrs. Batistelli’s smothering of her little boy hasn’t created the obedient little robot drone she intended, and besides, this kind of care can’t really be taken on out of obligation. You have to really want to help the other person, I think suddenly. I’m not sure I’ve ever known Tony to really help anyone else. I don’t think he’s ever had to.
“So. The ride. Can you give us a ride to my house, Tony? I have to be out of here in time to get there and then pick up Opal at school … and crap! Work, I forgot about work.”
I’ll have to call off. I’ve never called off before, but I did ask for the day off yesterday, which won’t work in my favor. My boss, Ms. Campbell, is okay, but she’s not my friend. I think about how many other people could probably use my job, and my stomach again leaps and twists. At this rate, I’ll get an ulcer before the month is over.
“I can’t drive you.” Tony says this so flatly, so firmly, I almost give up right then and there.
Defeated, I put my hand on the back of the kitchen chair and hang my head. “Please, Tony. You said you’d help me.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?” I ask, looking at him. “Before you knew my mom would be with us?”
“Yeah,” Tony says.
I want to cry but there’s no time for that. Also, I can’t cry anymore. I don’t have the tears, I can’t give in to them. I have to get me and my mom and our stuff to someplace safe. I have to pick up my sister. And I have to figure out how to keep my job. I don’t have time to worry about saving Tony’s feelings.
“Then get out,” I say, already heading for the phone to call my boss.
“What? Wait! Velvet!” He follows.
I can’t believe it, but Tony pushes down the button on the phone to keep me from calling out. I glare at him, but he takes the phone from my hand. I don’t want to break it, so I let him.
“Don’t be like this,” he says.
“Tony, I don’t have time for this. Really. I need to call my boss. I need to figure out a way to get us where I need to go. I’m … Tony, I’m getting ready to lose everything here. If you won’t help me—”
“You’re not going to lose everything,” Tony says as he takes my hand. “You still have me.”
“What?” I stare at our fingers, linked, in disbelief.
“I still want to be your boyfriend, Velvet. That other girl wasn’t anything.”
“You … I …” I am speechless. I can say nothing. I can only stutter.
I do have enough gumption in me to pull away when he tries to kiss me again, though.
“I want to be your boyfriend,” Tony repeats.
“No way. Wow.” I shake my head. “Unbelievable. You won’t help me out when I need you. I really need you to do this—”
“I can’t drive that far and get back. My mom will find out!”
My shoulders slump. “Tony, just go. We’re not getting back together. You’re not my boyfriend.”
“I love you!” He whispers this fiercely and looks over at his shoulder toward my mom, who’s still staring at the blank TV.
“No, you don’t. If you did,” I tell him, “you’d already be driving me where I need to go. Don’t you get it, Tony? This isn’t a game or something. I’ve been kicked out of here. I have to find a place for us to live. I have to take care of my mom and my sister and me. I just … I have this life, Tony, that you can’t even begin to understand. You have no clue, okay? So if you’re not going to help me, then you need to leave so I can figure out what’s going on.”
Once, before the world spun out of control and we all spun with it, Tony and I had gone to a homecoming dance. He’d worn a suit and tie. I had a new dress and shoes to match. My mom had let me wear some of her perfume. I’d pinned a carnation on his collar and he’d given me a wrist corsage. The DJ had played a lot of popular slow songs and we’d danced together, one after the other. At the end of the night, he’d asked if I wanted to be his girlfriend, and I’d said yes.
That was the first time he kissed me, and I would always remember it.
Too bad I want to forget the last time he kissed me.
“Velvet …”
I ignore him. I pick up the phone, already dialing. I hear the door open and shut behind him, but I’m already on the phone with Ms. Campbell.
She isn’t happy to hear that I need another day off. “Velvet, this is really inconvenient. I wish you’d given me more notice. Are you sick?”
I think about lying, but don’t. “No. I’m sorry. It’s my mom. I need another day home with her.”
I’m not going to tell her I’ve been kicked out. I’ll have to tell someone there eventually, to get my address changed, but not right now. She sighs. I hear the shuffle of papers.
“We’re seriously understaffed today, Velvet. I really don’t think I can give you the day off when you already had yesterday off. If you’d asked for both days off, I might’ve been able to swing it.”
“I didn’t know yesterday!” I hear myself sounding too desperate and force myself to calm down. Ms. Campbell has a low tolerance for whiners. I’ve always tried to make sure she never regretted hiring me, even though I’m young. “I’m sorry. I mean, I didn’t realize. And something’s come up, I can’t just …”
“You can’t leave her alone? There are problems?” Like everyone else, her interest seems to perk up at the thought that everything they say on the news is true. “What’s going on? I thought you said she was taken care of that way.”
Ms. Campbell ought to know better than anyone else I’ve dealt with about what it must be like. Connies have been compared to patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and not everyone with that diagnosis acts the same. There are all sorts of levels of ability. She was the one who gave me the lecture about never assuming anything about anyone based on what a doctor had written on their charts.
“She is. She’s fine. I just can’t leave her here. I … um … well, we’ve decided, that is, my sister and I want to take her back home. I think it will be better for her to be in a familiar place.”
“Yes.” I say this out loud to make it true. “But we live pretty far out of town, and it will take some time to get her there, get set up, stuff like that.”
“Velvet, are you sure that’s what you want to do? Move out of town? You live in assisted housing right now. You know you’ll lose that income if you move.”
I might do my best to make sure Ms. Campbell doesn’t think I’m too young for the job, but she apparently never forgets my age. “I know. But we won’t lose our food assistance. That will be okay.”
I hope. I’m not actually sure about all the rules. They changed a bunch of times, and though they send a pamphlet with every check detailing what exactly has changed, I haven’t read the last ten or so.
Ms. Campbell sighs, long and hard. “Is this going to affect your work here?”
“No!”
“Because you know I took a real chance in taking you on full-time, and that was just last week, Velvet. It’s not that I don’t think you’re doing a good job. Our patients really enjoy you, and overall I don’t have any complaints with you in a part-time capacity. But with this move and the additional responsibilities with your mother, I’m not sure full-time is going to work out for you.”
“I’ll make it work, Ms. Campbell.” I have to. We’ll need the money. We need the benefits. Opal qualifies for the new youth health programs, but again, now that I’m an adult, I don’t. Neither does my mom. If we get sick, we’re in trouble.
“You’re not doing a very fine job of it so far,” she says.
This is so mean, I bite my lip. I want to say something sharp, but I bite extra hard so I don’t. “I’m sorry.”
She sighs again, louder this time. “I expect you back at work tomorrow, no excuses. Do you understand? You’re still in the probationary period.”
“I understand. Thank you. Thank you so much.” I hang up before she can say anything else or change her mind. Before I can get myself into trouble.
I look at my mom, sitting so quietly. There’s still the problem of getting us where we need to go. I sink into the chair and put my face in my hands. Not crying. Not even really thinking. Just trying to cope.
I startle at the soft touch of her hands on my hair, and I look up to see my mom standing over me. She’s not smiling, but her eyes don’t look quite as blank as they have in the past. This seems a little easier, all of a sudden.
My mom always believed in me, always told me I could do whatever I set my mind to. It’s time I start believing her.