“Why bother? I want people to know the real me. No putting on airs.”
Tommy let himself collapse onto the bed. “Fine with me. It’s cozy in here. I feel like I’m a hibernating bear.” He pulled the comforter onto his head, like a veil with a long train.
“Here,” Alice said. “Use this instead.” She yanked her shirt off over her head and threw it at him. Tommy caught it and smiled at her, unable to mask his feeling of lucky confusion.
“Oh yeah?” Tommy said. “Is there any more where that came from?” He raised an eyebrow, but not an inch of him expected her to do it.
So many people had seen Alice naked—not just her sexual partners but also her friends and people at Fort Tilden Beach and in the locker room at the YMCA on Atlantic Avenue and a string of gynecologists and who knows who else. When she was a teenager, Alice had buckled and unbuckled her bra under her shirt, even when she was alone. But she didn’t hesitate now—she undid her pants and slid them down, rocking side to side until they were in a puddle on the floor.
“Whoa,” Tommy said. He pulled the comforter off his head and slid it onto his lap, where, Alice had no doubt, his body had noticed her. Part of her knew that she shouldn’t, but a larger, momentarily stronger part of her knew that this was her chance, and she was taking it. She hadn’t spent the last twenty-odd years wishing that she’d been with Tommy, that she’d married Tommy, but she had spent the last twenty-odd years learning that waiting was an inefficient way to get what she wanted. If Alice was going to do anything better, it was that—making her wishes known. She had wanted him, and she hadn’t known how to say so. Now she did. Alice felt her adult brain recede to the back of her consciousness—it wasn’t in charge anymore. She was looking away, and giving herself—her teenage self—privacy.
“You have no idea,” Alice said, and walked toward him as slowly as she could, knocking him backward onto her bed with a single finger. She climbed on top of him and hovered her face half an inch above his, waiting for him to come up to meet her.
“Are you sure?” Tommy asked, and she was.
31
Something crashed to the floor in the living room. Alice could hear Sam shouting at someone to clean it up, and then the music got louder and all she could hear was the Fugees. Tommy was flat on his back, his face pink with exertion and delight.
“I’m going to go check on that,” Alice said. “Actually, you know what, I’m going to kick everyone out. I’m done.” She was wasting time. Teenagers were fickle, crazy beasts, and Alice suddenly felt she was chaperoning her own party—her own body—and she needed to get out. It felt a bit the way Alice imagined conjoined twins had sex—this part of her was over here, this part of her was over there. They were sharing oxygen but they weren’t a hundred percent the same. The sixteen-year-old hadn’t been raptured out in order for the forty-year-old to move in—they were roommates.
Tommy pushed himself up on his elbows. “Yeah, get them out of here. I couldn’t agree more. Everyone needs to go, and then you need to come right back here so that we can do that one hundred more times.”
Alice laughed. “Easy, tiger.” Still, she slapped him lightly on his rib cage. “Okay. Time to get dressed and go home.”
Tommy opened his eyes wide. “What? After that? I thought . . . you know.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” Alice said. She smiled at him. “And we will. But you know what? I have to go do something.”
“Can I come with you?” Tommy asked, his voice plaintive. She hadn’t heard that before.
“Maybe,” Alice said. “Depending on how fast you can clear out the house.”
Tommy leaped out of bed, tugged on his underwear and pants in one fluid motion, and yanked his shirt over his head. He vanished into the hallway before Alice even had her bra fastened. There were groans and laughs and high fives, but soon, they were followed by the satisfying clunk of the front door. Alice could imagine the looks on their faces—judgmental, annoyed, amused, put out—because they were the same looks they’d have at forty when they were standing outside her office, watching Melinda interact with their children. People changed and they didn’t. People evolved and they didn’t. Alice imagined a graph that showed how much people’s personalities shifted after high school on one axis and on the other, how many miles away from home they had moved. It was easy to stay the same when you were looking at the same walls. Layered on top would be how easy your life was along the way, how many levels of privilege surrounded you like a tiny glass object in a sea of packing peanuts. Elizabeth Taylor probably marked time based on her husband. Academics who moved from Ohio to Virginia to Missouri in search of a tenure-track job probably marked time by their shifting health insurance or the school mascots. What did Alice have to mark her time on earth? She was frozen in amber, just pretending to swim. But she was ready to try. Tommy jogged back a few minutes later and slapped his hands together, triumphant.