The Sky is Everywhere(43)
Author: Jandy Nelson

When I get to the driveway, I see a man dressed all in black with a shuck of white hair, waving his arms around like a dervish, shouting in French at a stylish woman in a black dress (hers fits her), who looks equally peeved. She is hissing back at him in English. I definitely do not want to walk past those two panthers, so I sneak around the far side of the property and then duck under the enormous willow tree that reigns like a queen over the yard, the thick drapes of leaves falling like a shimmering green ball gown around the ancient trunk and branches, creating the perfect skulk den.

I need a moment to bolster my nerve, so I pace around in my new glimmery green apartment trying to figure out what I’m going to actually say to Joe, a point both Sarah and I forgot to consider.

That’s when I hear it: clarinet music drifting out from the house, the melody Joe wrote for me. My heart does a hopeful flip. I walk over to the side of Maison Fontaine that abuts the tree and, still concealed by a drape of leaves, I stand up on tiptoe and see through the open window a sliver of Joe playing a bass clarinet in the living room.

And thus begins my life as a spy.

I tell myself, after this song, I will ring the doorbell and literally face the music. But then, he plays the melody again and again and the next thing I know I’m lying on my back listening to the amazing music, reaching into Sarah’s purse for a pen, which I find as well as a scrap of paper. I jot down a poem, spike it with a stick into the ground. The music is making me rapturous; I slip back into that kiss, again drinking the sweet rain off his lips—

To be rudely interrupted by DougFred’s exasperated voice. “Dude, you’re driving me berserk – this same song over and over again, for two days now, I can’t deal. We’re all going to jump off the bridge right after you. Why don’t you just talk to her?” I jump up and scurry over to the window: Harriet the Spy in drag. Please say you’ll talk to her, I mind-beam to Joe.

“No way,” he says.

“Joe, it’s pathetic … c’mon.”

Joe’s voice is pinched, tight. “I am so pathetic. She was lying to me the whole time … just like Genevieve, just like Dad to Mom for that matter…”

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Boy, did I blow it.

“Whatever, already, with all of that – shit’s complicated sometimes, man.” Hallelujah, DougFred.

“Not for me.”

“Just get your horn, we need to practice.”

Still concealed under the tree, I listen to Joe, Marcus and DougFred practicing: it goes like this, three notes, then a cell phone rings: Marcus: Hey Ami, then five minutes later, another ring: Marcus: Salut Sophie, then DougFred: Hey Chloe, then fifteen minutes later: Hi Nicole. These guys are Clover catnip. I remember how the phone rang pretty much continually the evening I spent here. Finally, Joe says: Turn off the cell phones or we won’t even get through a song – but just as he finishes the sentence, his own cell goes off and his brothers laugh. I hear him say, Hey Rachel. And that’s the end of me. Hey Rachel in a voice that sounds happy to hear from her, like he was expecting the call, waiting for it even.

I think of St Wilgefortis, who went to sleep beautiful and woke up with a full beard and mustache, and wish that fate on Rachel. Tonight.

Then I hear: You were totally right. The Throat Singers of Tuva are awesome.

Call 911.

Okay, calm down, Lennie. Stop pacing. Don’t think about him batting his eyelashes at Rachel Brazile! Grinning at her, kissing her, making her feel like she’s part sky… What have I done? I lie down on my back in the grass under the umbrella of trembling sunlit leaves. I’m leveled by a phone call. How must it have been for him to actually see me kiss Toby?

I suck, there’s no other way to put it.

There’s also no other way to put this: I’m so freaking in love – it’s just blaring every which way inside me, like some psycho opera.

But back to BITCHZILLA!?

Be rational, I tell myself, systematic, think of all the many innocuous unromantic reasons she could be calling him. I can’t think of one, though I’m so consumed with trying I don’t even hear the truck pull up, just a door slamming. I get up, peek out through the thick curtain of leaves, and almost pass out to see Toby walking toward the front door. WTF-asaurus? He hesitates before ringing the bell, takes a deep breath, then presses the button, waits, then presses it again. He steps back, looks toward the living room, where the music is now blasting, then knocks hard. The music stops and I hear the pounding of feet, then watch the door open and hear Toby say: “Is Joe here?”

Gulp.

Next, I hear Joe still in the living room: “What’s his problem? I didn’t want to talk to him yesterday and I don’t want to talk to him today.”

Marcus is back in the living room. “Just talk to the guy.”

“No.”

But Joe must have gone to the door, because I hear muffled words and see Toby’s mouth moving, although he’s quieted down too much for me to make out the words.

I don’t plan what happens next. It just happens. I just happen to have that stupid it’s-my-story-I’m-a-racehorse mantra back on repeat in my head and so I somehow decide that whatever is going to happen, good or bad, I don’t want to be hiding in a tree when it does. I muster all my courage and part the curtain of leaves.

The first thing I notice is the sky, so full of blue and the kind of brilliant white clouds that make you ecstatic to have eyes. Nothing can go wrong under this sky, I think as I make my way across the lawn, trying not to wobble in my platforms. The Fontaine panther-parents are nowhere in sight; probably they took their hissing match into the barn. Toby must hear my footsteps; he turns around.

“Lennie?”

The door swings open and three Fontaines pile out like they’ve been stuffed in a car.

Marcus speaks first: “Va-va-voom.”

Joe’s mouth drops open.

Toby’s too, for that matter.

“Holy shit” comes out of DougFred’s perpetually deranged with-glee face. The four of them are like a row of dumbfounded ducks. I’m acutely aware of how short my dress is, how tight it is across my chest, how wild my hair is, how red my lips are. I might die. I want to wrap my arms around my body. For the rest of my life, I’m going to leave the femme fatale-ing to other femmes. All I want is to flee, but I don’t want them to stare at my butt as I fly into the woods in this tiny piece of fabric masquerading as a dress. Wait a second here – one by one, I take in their idiotic faces. Was Sarah right? Might this work? Could guys be this simple-minded?