I thought she was going to say something else but she didn’t. We had a couple of brownies, talked a little more about nothing terribly important, and then it was time for me to go.
We were a few blocks from my house when Beth pulled the U-boat over to the curb and put it in park. “Listen, I want to tell you something, okay? Something that’s just between us, right?” She was a long way past serious; she seemed almost scared. “Right?”
I nodded my head.
“This is gonna sound weird, okay, but…I never had any friends when I was your age, I never got to do any of those things that kids your age get to do, right? I always felt mad about that, about missing out on things. Hell, I’m not even sure if I know what kids your age like doing ’cause I never did it.”
“Could you please not…not say that?”
“Say what?”
“‘Kids your age.’ ”
She shook her head and smiled. “But you are still a kid; you’re not even ten yet.”
“I know, but…” I looked down at my hands, which I couldn’t feel.
“Okay, I guess you deserve that. If I live to be twice the age I am now I doubt that I’m ever gonna know what it feels like to get shot, so you ought to be entitled to age points for that. Deal-I don’t call or refer to you as ‘kid’ anymore.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I wanna know what it is you like to do, I guess. Will you show me that? Will you teach me how to have fun like a person of your age has fun?”
“You might think it’s stupid.”
She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. “Bet’cha I don’t.”
And she didn’t.
Over the next year and a half I taught her (in no particular order): how to build a fort from boxes, blankets, chairs, and umbrellas; how to climb a tree; the fine art of thumb wrestling; how to make a kite from scratch; how to tell if Godzilla was going to be a good monster or bad monster before he even made his first appearance in the movie (not as easy as it sounds); the proper way to build and paint the Aurora monster models; why Steppenwolf kicked Three Dog Night’s ass; how Mr. Terrific was just as cool as Captain Nice but The Green Hornet was by far the coolest of them all; why the Bazooka Joe comics sucked monkeys but the bubble gum could be rechewed at least three times before it lost its flavor; and, probably the most valuable tidbit of wisdom I tossed her way, how, if you sat or stood in the proper position and had the right muscle control, you could make a fart last up to thirty seconds and not dump in your pants (eating popcorn at least twenty minutes before attempting this difficult stratagem is immensely beneficial to a successful outcome).
Whenever we were together, which was often, Beth had a childhood, and I had the woman against whom all others would be measured and come up lacking.
But for that night, it was her kiss lingering on my cheek as I walked toward my front door and my father’s putting his hand on my shoulder for the first time in an eternity (“How you holding up there, son? Ever tell you about when I got shot during the war?”) that made me feel that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t such a worthless little kid, after all.
I spent the next seven years becoming an honorary member of Beth’s and Mabel’s family. By the time Beth turned twenty-four she had grown into her shopworn beauty and grace with all the poise I’d come to expect from her. In the years since the hospital we had shared every secret, every dream, every sadness, pettiness, fear, hope, want, triumph, and failure of both childhood and adolescence; I knew her better than anyone, and she, in turn knew more about me than any person ever had or ever would. There had been so much between us, so many shared moments and experiences: our first trip (the first of many) to King’s Island where she took me on my very first roller coaster ride, then didn’t laugh her head off or make fun of me when I threw up as soon as we climbed out of the car; a terrible afternoon a few weeks after I’d gotten my driver’s license when I drove her over to Columbus to get an abortion because her boyfriend at the time (all her boyfriends were so physically interchangeable to me they became faceless over the years) had dumped her and quickly skipped town after she told him she was pregnant; the day she picked me up at four in the afternoon on my fifteenth birthday and drove all the way to Cincinnati so I could see my first circus; an Emerson, Lake amp; Palmer concert where we were nearly trampled to death after the crowd-who’d been standing in near-blizzard conditions for over three hours-rushed the doors when they were finally opened; all the times I helped her to take one of the dogs to the vet, times when I stood beside her after the animal had been given the Last Injection and she needed to say good-bye-then, later, her infectious near-giddiness when the dead pet was replaced by a new one; and, most of all, a certain picnic in Moundbuilders Park on my seventeenth birthday when Beth asked me if I had a girlfriend. When I said no, she leaned in and gave me the sweetest, longest, most tender kiss against which all others would forever be compared and come up lacking, then shyly handed me a birthday card inscribed: Just wait until you’re legal!
I read the inscription twice before clearing my throat and saying, “Um, I, uh…is this a joke?”
She put her thumb and index finger under my chin, lifting my head so she could look straight into my eyes. Whenever she did this, it meant Something Serious was about to happen or be said. “Can I ask you something?”
“You mean besides that?”
“Don’t try to be funny, you’re not all that good at it.”
“Okay.”
She kept her thumb and finger under my chin, making small, maddening circles against my skin with the tips of each. “Do you love me?”
I blanked out for a second-what was happening here?-then shook myself back to the Right-Now and said, “Yes, of course I do. We’ve known each other for-what is it now?- eight years?”
“Almost nine now.”
I reached up and held her wrist. “You are the best friend I have ever had, Beth. Hell-you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had.”
She cupped my face in both her hands and kissed me again. “And you’re my best friend. You’ve never judged me, or lied to me, you’ve never been cruel or thoughtless to me, you’ve appreciated everything I’ve ever done for you and you’ve done so many sweet things for me, even when I was acting like a real bitch on wheels-”
“Your words, not mine. Go on, I’ll speak up when I disagree.”
She smiled, moving closer to me. “You know that in high school I was kind of… oh, what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Popular?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Well, I suppose that’s one word for it.”
“Friendly?”
She bit her lower lip and shook her head.
“Available? ‘Open twenty-four Hours’?” I began to laugh. “ ‘One Mattress, No Waiting’?”
“You’re dangerously close to losing one of your nuts.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“You do know what I’m trying to tell you, right?”
“That you were kind of easy in high school?”
“Don’t sugar-coat it, kiddo-Oh, shit! I didn’t mean-”
“Too late.” I held out my hand. “You owe me a buck.”
“But we were having a moment-”
“-that will continue once you pony up the dough.” Ever since the day she’d taken me home from the hospital, Beth and I’d had an agreement: any time she slipped up and called me “kid” or “kiddo” or any other variation thereof, it would cost her a dollar. She had promised never to call me anything like that again, and my charging her for her digressions seemed a solid way to remind her of the importance of keeping her word.
She dug into her pocket and produced a crumpled dollar bill, which she slapped into my hand with a lot more force than was called for, in my opinion.
Shoving the buck into my pocket so the lint would have some company, I smiled at her and said: “You were telling me something about your being easy in high school?”