I know she means it as a joke, but Nikki would have used the question to prove just how witchy Veronica can be. I think about how if Nikki were here, after we went home, we’d stay up talking in bed like we used to when we were both a little drunk—and sitting now at Ronnie’s dinner table, the thought makes me feel sad and happy at the same time.
When we finish our pie, Tiffany stands and says, “I’m tired.”
“But we’ve hardly finished eating,” Veronica says, “and we have Trivial Pursuit to—”
“I said I’m tired.”
There is a silence.
“Well,” Tiffany finally says, “are you going to walk me home or what?”
It takes me a second to realize that Tiffany is talking to me, but I quickly say, “Sure.”
Since I am practicing being kind now, what else could I have said—right?
It is a warm night, but not too sticky. Tiffany and I walk a block before I ask where she lives.
“With my parents, okay?” she says without looking at me.
“Oh.” I realize we are only about four blocks from Mr. and Mrs. Webster’s house.
“You live with your parents too, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So no big whoop.”
It is dark, and I guess it’s about 9:30 p.m. With her arms crossing her chest, Tiffany walks pretty quickly in her clicky heels, and soon we are standing in front of her parents’ house.
When she turns to face me, I think she is simply going to say good night, but she says, “Look, I haven’t dated since college, so I don’t know how this works.”
“How what works?”
“I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me. Don’t bullshit me, Pat. I live in the addition around back, which is completely separate from the house, so there’s no chance of my parents walking in on us. I hate the fact that you wore a football jersey to dinner, but you can f**k me as long as we turn the lights out first. Okay?”
I’m too shocked to speak, and for a long time we just stand there.
“Or not,” Tiffany adds just before she starts crying.
I’m so confused that I’m speaking and thinking and worrying all at the same time, not really knowing what to do or say. “Look, I enjoyed spending time with you, and I think you’re really pretty, but I’m married,” I say, and lift up my wedding ring as proof.
“So am I,” she says, and holds up the diamond on her left hand.
I remember what Ronnie told me about her husband having passed away, which makes her a widow and not married, but I do not say anything about that, because I am practicing being kind instead of right, which I learned in therapy and Nikki will like.
It makes me really sad to see that Tiffany is still wearing her wedding ring.
And then suddenly Tiffany is hugging me so that her face is between my pecs, and she’s crying her makeup onto my new Hank Baskett jersey. I don’t like to be touched by anyone except Nikki, and I really do not want Tiffany to get makeup on the jersey my brother was nice enough to give me—a jersey with real stitchedon letters and numbers—but I surprise myself by hugging Tiffany back. I rest my chin on top of her shiny black hair, scent her perfume, and suddenly I am crying too, which scares me a lot. Our bodies shudder together, and we are all waterworks. We cry together for at least ten minutes, and then she lets go and runs around to the back of her parents’ house.
When I arrive home, my father is watching television. The Eagles are playing the Jets in a preseason game I did not know was on. He does not even look at me, probably because I am such a lousy Eagles fan now. My mother tells me that Ronnie called, saying it’s important and I should call him back immediately.
“What happened? What’s on your jersey? Is that makeup?” my mother asks, and when I do not answer, she says, “You better call Ronnie back.”
But I only lie down in my bed and stare at the ceiling of my bedroom until the sun comes up.
Filled with Molten Lava
The picture I have of Nikki is a head shot, and I wish I had told her how much I liked it.
She paid a professional photographer to take the photo, and she actually had her hair and makeup done at the local salon before going to the shoot; plus she also went to the tanning booths the week before the picture was taken, since my birthday is in late December and the picture was my twenty-eighth-birthday present.
Nikki’s head is turned so you see more of her left cheek than you do her right, which is outlined by her strawberry blond curly hair. You can see her left ear, and she is wearing the dangling diamond earrings I gave her for our first wedding anniversary. She had gone to the tanning booths just to bring out the freckles on her nose, which I love and miss every winter. You can see the little freckles clearly in the shot, and Nikki said this was the main idea and she even told the photographer to make the freckles the focal point because I love her seasonal freckles best. Her face is sort of like an upside-down triangle, as her chin is sort of pointy. Her nose is like the nose of a lioness, long and regal-looking, and her eyes are the color of grass. In the picture she is making that pouting face I love—not quite a smile, not quite a smirk—and her lips are so glossy that I can’t resist kissing the picture every time I look at it.
So I kiss the picture again, feeling the cold flatness of the glass, leaving a kiss-shaped smudge, which I wipe away with my shirt.
“God, I miss you so much, Nikki,” I say, but the picture is silent, like always. “I’m sorry that I did not originally like this picture, because you would not believe how much I like it now. I know that I told you this was not such a great present, back before I started practicing being kind rather than right. Yes, I had specifically asked for a new barbecue, but I’m glad that I have the picture now, because it helped me get through all that time in the bad place and made me want to be a better person, and I’m changed now, so I not only realize but appreciate that you put a lot of thought and effort into this present. It’s the only likeness I have of you since some bad person stole all the pictures of us that were in my mother’s house—because the pictures were in expensive frames, and—”