Take a Lemon

“Oh, Marsh,” Tina laughed, while trying to sound sympathetic at the same time, “I didn’t mean to walk in on you like that!”

“My fault,” I acknowledged, sheepishly. “I lost track of the time.”

“Do you do that a lot?”

“No! I mean… this is the first time, I’ve… well, my first time.”

“Really?! You mean, all this time…? I had the impression that guys did it a lot, so I just assumed…”

“I… I didn’t know how, OK?” I said, more than a little embarrassed. “It’s different for boys. I had to ask a friend, and I found this in my closet, and… this was the first time I’d gotten a chance to try.”

Tina  bit her lip, probably to keep from laughing at me. “Um, why don’t I just leave you alone so you can get dressed? Grandma bought ice cream for the four of us and we’re eating it in the kitchen.”

She left before I could say anything more, which was probably just as well. I would have liked to shower as well, but was afraid to take the time, if they were really waiting for me.

The ice cream – a butterscotch sundae – was delicious, and I concentrated on it and tried to ignore the excited talk about the movie. Even Joey was excited, and I couldn’t remember too many times in the last half dozen or so years I’d ever seen him excited about anything but cars.

“You really missed something great, Marsh,” Joey declared. “Is there a 3-D movie theater near your school?”

I tried to think; usually, we just watched movies on-campus, and they tended to be a bit older films. “I’m not sure – I might have to watch it in 2-D.”

“You don’t want to do that, Marsh,” Tara insisted. “You’ll miss half of the impact of the movie.”

My cousins seemed really enamored of this movie. I couldn’t imagine what the big deal was, and I shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to wait until Christmas break, then. Just means that I’ll have to figure out somebody else to go with.” That would be very strange. Obviously, I couldn’t go out with my old group. Chad would be OK with it, I was sure, but I had the impression that the other guys hadn’t been that close to Marsha.

“Don’t you have any girlfriends that you hang out with over the summer?” Tara asked, looking puzzled.

I hesitated a moment, at least in part because, to me, “girlfriend” still meant a girl I had dated, even though I had learned to use it in the sense that Tara intended. But even then it wasn’t all that easy. Marsha’s “girlfriends,” according to Chad, were Dinah, Maddy, and one other girl I couldn’t remember. But the only one I really knew was Maddy, and she would be a problem. Not only did she count as a former “girlfriend” in the way I was used to using the term, the way we had ended our relationship would make going to the movies with her kind of awkward for me.

“I’ve… sort of lost touch with them,” I finally said. “At least, I haven’t spoken with them in some time.”

“But you need to fix that, Marsh,” my cousin advised me, looking very serious. “You were in Girl Scouts. Don’t you remember singing, ‘Make new friends, but keep the old…’?”

… One is silver and the other gold, I finished in my head. I did remember that, although I hoped that I remembered it from Tina singing it, and not from hearing it at Girl Scout meetings. “Yeah, I suppose I should call, or something.” That would be strange, though; I’d have no idea what to say to them. Maybe it would be easier to let one of them call me.

But the idea of calling up old girlfriends reminded me of something I did need to take care of on my own. Vicky. We hadn’t spoken since that dance, and I was trying to be more proactive, so…

“I’ll call one of my girlfriends tomorrow,” I promised. “I guess it’s too late, now.”

Tara nodded approvingly, while Tina, who had been quiet through most of the conversation gave me that curious look that I was seeing a lot this weekend. I was pretty sure I knew what it meant. I had said something that she wanted to ask me about, but couldn’t in front of somebody who wasn’t supposed to be in on my secret. And with Tara sharing the bedroom with us, we had to look hard for opportunities to speak privately.

In the meantime, I had to worry about what exactly I was supposed to say to Vicky. She was the one who had walked out on me, and my inclination would normally have been to wait until she was over her mad and called me, but I was trying not to be so passive about things. And that just reminded me of Chad’s comment about letting Eric do all the hard lifting in trying to find the guys responsible for all this, and that reminded me of Eric and the fact that I hadn’t heard from him yet…

“Hello? Earth to Marsha…” I looked up to see my sister waving her hand in front of my face.

“Oh! I did it again, didn’t I?” I said, coming out of my reverie.

“’Again’? Are you doing this space cadet thing a lot, lately?”

“I guess… I’ve just had a lot on my mind, lately.”

“Tell us,” demanded Tara. Then with an eye toward her brother, she added, “This could get really girly, Joe, so you might not want to be here.”

Joey said, “I’m going,” and gobbled the rest of his ice cream so quickly that I winced, imagining the brain freeze he had just assured himself. But he just laughed and walked out, dropping the remains of his sundae in the trash.

Tara looked at me expectantly, while Tina looked simply curious.

“No, no, nothing girly,” I protested. “I just had a fight with… with one of my girlfriends. She walked out when my roommate sort of fixed me up with that guy I told you about.”

“The one you slow-danced with?”

“Mm hmm.”

“And why did this girl care?”

Oops. I couldn’t exactly tell Tara the real reason, so I paused for a second to think. “I guess she… just didn’t think it was appropriate for me… plus, she despised my roommate.”

“Why?”

Now I wasn’t sure which point she was asking about, so I answered the second, since I had a mostly easy answer. “Um… well, she says that Lee Ann stole her old boyfriend.”

That got Tina’s attention, too. “And did she?” my sister asked.

“Well,” I started, now having to confront the situation myself, “Lee Ann had been sort of flirting with the guy, but not seriously, since she has a long-term off-campus boyfriend. But the guy didn’t know that, and sort of cooled down towards Vicky – my friend – and she sort of let him go.”

“Why did she let him go?” Tara demanded.

The question took me aback. I had mostly focused on my own behavior, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to question Vicky’s. “I… I don’t know. I guess she thought she’d lost him and was just getting out of his way.”

Tara didn’t buy it. “That’s stupid,” she said. “If another girl was flirting with my boyfriend and he started buying into it, I wouldn’t let him go so easily. It sounds to me as though she really didn’t care so much about him.”

“No!” I protested. “She said that he was the best boyfriend she’d ever had, and after… after she had some other issues come up in her life, she tried to get him back.”

“And what happened then? Did he take her back? And if he was such a great boyfriend, why was he flirting with your roommate and why did Vicky let him go?”

“I… don’t know.” I didn’t have any good answers, never having thought all of this through. “I always thought… well that the two of them had just sort of decided they weren’t interested anymore. She says not, though.”

“And what about the guy? Did he take her back?”

‘Um… I think he would have… I mean, I know he would have… but he had to… um, he left campus and… he’s not around any more.”

Tara sat back and crossed her arms. “Well, that sucks. No wonder your friend doesn’t like your roommate. I mean, the guy sounds like a real jerk, but Vicky sounds like a wimp or something. Or maybe she just doesn’t think she deserves to have a ‘great boyfriend.’ You probably just got caught in the middle of her fight with Lee Ann.”

Nikki had said sort of the same thing, now that I thought about it. She had asked if Vicky had self-esteem problems, and we hadn’t pursued the question. Now I really felt that I needed to speak with her. If she was feeling bad about herself, it sure sounded as though I had contributed to that.”

“I think you’re probably right about the guy,” I admitted. “I’ll call her first thing in the morning and talk things out.”

“Yeah, and if she’s hurting over him enough, she’s going to need a good friend to talk to.” She put down her empty ice cream cup. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired. You guys ready for bed?”

Tina and I looked at each other. “We’ll be right up,” she said, and waited until Tara had left.

“So, Vicky is the girlfriend you meant?” Tina asked, lowering her voice so that we wouldn’t be overheard. “About calling, I mean?”

“Yeah, I have no idea what I’m going to do about Maddy and Dinah.”

“What was the fight really about?”

I put up my hands. “It was pretty much as I said, except that I was the boyfriend who had been flirting with Lee Ann… and Vicky was upset about my going along with the dancing thing. She really doesn’t like it when I do girl things.”

Tina twisted her face. “She’s going to have to get used to it, isn’t she?” Then she laughed. “I guess it’s a good thing she didn’t hear you last night,”

“I guess so,” I nodded, still embarrassed about how I had reacted to Dad.

My sister stood up and came over to hug me. “I know this is really hard for you, Marsh, but you really shouldn’t be embarrassed. You’re a girl, and you’re going to be doing girl things and acting girly, more or less. You’re not quite the same as Marsha; I know her – knew her, I guess – better than most people, and I see a difference. I mean, I known you – her – all my life. You’re strong, and I’ve always looked up to you. I know that you’ll be fine.”

“I guess I’m pretty lucky, at least,” I told her, “I can’t even imagine going through all this without somebody close to talk with. And I’m somebody who never thought that having somebody to talk feelings with was important.” Our eyes met. “Thanks, Teen. I’m going to finish my ice cream and I’ll be right up.”