Thirty
After the new year, still on their endless holiday break, Clara started cleaning.
She cleaned with a vengeance, an unholy concentration fueled by rage and more than a little fear.
If her mother was going to move out, fine.
She would scrub her mother right out of the house.
She started with the upstairs closets, reorganizing and donating and refolding and discarding whatever was ripped or yellowed beyond fixing.
She scoured the wooden floorboards on hands and knees as if she were excising something.
She rearranged furniture and flipped cushions and vacuumed woodwork.
She cooked and cooked and cooked. She only slept on the nights she fell into bed bone tired.
“I don’t want to see her,” Clara told Sam.
Nina had only been inside the house twice, including for the most awkward Christmas morning in history.
Sam chilly. Nina overly chipper. Bridie, the traitor, quietly thrilled their mother was there, following her around like a puppy.
Nina had arrived with a ludicrous stack of gifts and the pan of hot cinnamon buns she made every Christmas morning as if nothing had changed.
As if nothing had changed! Clara locked herself in her room until Nina left, and she refused to open her gifts.
“Why are you so awful?” Bridie pleaded. “It’s like you want to hurt her. Clara, she’s our mom.”
“I do want to hurt her,” Clara said matter-of-factly.
Clara didn’t want to think too hard about why she was spending all her time setting the house in order because the answer was embarrassingly obvious.
As if she could scour away her pain. As if alphabetizing books would vanquish the emptiness she felt.
As if arranging the spice shelf would somehow lead to Dune returning to her, on bended knee, hat in hand, asking for her forgiveness instead of what he was doing now—refusing to speak to her.
“What I don’t get,” she said to him during their one awful conversation, the conversation where he called her mother unspeakable names and blamed Nina for ruining his senior year, a charge Clara had leveled at her mother herself but that sounded ridiculous coming from Dune’s mouth, “what I don’t get,” she’d said, “is how you can be this mean to me.”
She pierced his composed furor for a second.
But then he shook his head sharply and said, “What I don’t get is how you are making this all about you and me.
” They were in his living room. She’d tried going upstairs when she entered the house, but he stopped her.
“We can talk here,” he said, feet apart, arms crossed, in the middle of the living room.
She approached him now where he was standing next to the fireplace that clearly hadn’t been used in weeks because his father was the one who always built the fires.
The room was bitterly cold. “Dune,” she said meekly.
“I love you. I miss you so much. You are my best friend. You are the first boy I’ve loved. ”
His eyes welled up. She would hold on to that moment for far too long, but there was no denying it.
As he stood saying nothing, she could almost hear his brain worrying the problem.
His face softened and her heart lifted. She took another step closer, and he didn’t back away.
He didn’t flinch when she gently linked her pinkie with his.
She remembered the illustration in The Joy of Sex—the woman in her disheveled dress and fancy updo.
She started to slowly unbutton her blouse.
For a moment Dune stood rooted in place, stunned. Then he grabbed her wrist. Hard.
“Stop,” she said, “you’re hurting me.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
And apparently she had because she went for it. She shook off the top and grabbed his jeans around the waist and tried to get her hand inside his pants.
“Stop it!” he said. She reared back and sat down on a chair and hid her face in her hands. He picked up her blouse and put it on the chair next to her. “You can go now,” he said.
“But what’s going to happen to us?” she asked, heartbroken. “What about the play?” She could tell by the look on his face he hadn’t considered the play. Rehearsals wouldn’t start until after winter break. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have enough problems now. Go home, Clara. Go. Home.”
The day after school resumed and right before Godspell rehearsals would begin, Mr. Goodwin asked her to meet him after school. He told her Dune had threatened to quit the play unless she was replaced. She’d barked a quick, indignant laugh. “He can’t. Who does he think he is?”
“I guess he thinks he’s—Jesus?” Clara’s mouth fell, flabbergasted.
“Sorry. Sit down, Clara.” He took her arm and gently led her over to the beat-up sofa he’d dragged off the street and installed in his office.
It was mustard-colored, and the fabric was dingy and worn where it had been sat upon the most, but the seat cushions were deep and comfy and whenever they had bigger meetings in this office everyone jockeyed for a spot on the couch.
Even now, Clara enjoyed having one side all to herself while Mr. Goodwin sat on the other side.
He was avoiding looking her in the eye. He released a long sigh.
This wasn’t good. “You aren’t going to fire me, are you? ” she asked.
“I’m not.”
“Oh, good. For a minute—”
“But we do have a problem. A conflict needs to be sorted.”
“Sorted how?”
“Here’s the thing,” Mr. Goodwin started then stopped. Put his hands on his knees and looked toward the door like he was wishing someone would burst through and save him. “Dune has made it clear he won’t participate in the play if the two of you have to work together as a team.”
“But in the play, we are a team,” Clara said.
“And therein lies the problem.”
“Who’s the director of this play anyway?” Clara said, she could see how the conversation was going to unspool; she could feel it in her bones.
“I’m the director, and that’s why I’m speaking to Dune and to you. I want you to know I’ve had many, many conversations with Dune. He’s not completely unreasonable. If you want to stay, he will quit. But he’s not willing to, in his words, ‘rat-a-tat tap around the stage with someone he hates.’”
Clara winced. Dune did not hate her. It wasn’t possible.
“I’m sorry if that sounded harsh. For what it’s worth, I think Dune doesn’t know where to put his feelings right now and he’s dumping them on you. He also believes people in the audience will gawk at the two of you given—given recent developments.”
Clara was rubbing the arm of the sofa where the fabric had worn away and morphed into a bunch of slender threads barely covering the foam filling, looking like a balding man valiantly trying to cover his pate.
Dune was right. She hadn’t fully considered that part.
It did sound awful. “I don’t hate Dune,” she said quietly.
“I don’t hate him. I miss him.” And to her complete horror she burst into sobs for the first time since Nina walked across Cambridge Road carrying her suitcase and sat herself in Finn Finnegan’s car and then flew south.
Mr. Goodwin slid over a little and awkwardly patted her back.
Then he stood and got a box of tissues and waited patiently while she blew her nose for what felt like one hundred times and tried to collect herself.
As her sobs became hiccups, he started to speak.
She had to look awful; she was an ugly crier.
“This situation stinks,” he said. “I tried to talk Dune into being more accommodating, but you’re both confused and angry. He admits you’re a victim of this situation, too, but feels he won’t be able to—”
“To act?” Clara said. “Isn’t he an actor and isn’t that what actors do even when they have to work with someone they hate?” She put a little spin on the word hate and Mr. Goodwin slumped a little.
“Clara, here’s the thing. You and Dune? You’re still . . .” Clara could see him biting back a word. Children? “You’re teenagers” was what he landed on. “I’m sorry you have to deal with this situation. It’s not right. But I can’t fix any of it.”
“Dune thinks it’s all my mother’s fault. He called her a whore.”
“I’m sorry about that, too. I’m sorry this play that should have been a highlight of your senior year has become something quite the opposite. But Clara, I will do whatever you decide. If you want to stay, I will find a replacement for Dune.”
Did she want to stay? For many weeks it was the only thing she cared about.
Getting a part where she and Dune could perform together.
But if she was honest, as outraged and furious as she was with Dune, when she imagined getting onstage with him wearing their dumb straw boaters and carrying canes and singing the big number—
When you feel sad (heel-toe, step, step) or under a curse (walk, walk, pivot)
Your life is bad (shuffle tap, ball change) your prospects are worse
—she dreaded it, too. How could they sing those lyrics cheerfully, jauntily, and look at each other and ham it up and not cry.
Or take a swing at the other person. And practically everyone in the auditorium would know what had happened and might show up out of morbid curiosity because Finn Finnegan’s son and Nina Larkin’s daughter were performing together.
Every one of those people would have an opinion on recent events, and if some people felt sorry for her, an equal number didn’t. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“Do you want to talk it over with your parents?” Mr. Goodwin asked. “Do you want me to talk to your parents? Yours and Dune’s?”
“No!” Clara said. The only thing that could possibly make this situation worse was to involve Mr. Goodwin and the parents.
He would want them all to sit on cushions on the floor and access their feelings.
So far, the Finnegans had successfully avoided the Larkins and vice versa, except, of course, for the two newlyweds.
“Take tonight to think it over,” Mr. Goodwin said. “Talk to your dad or your mom or maybe even Dune. But I need to know tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she said as all energy and anger drained out of her at once.
“Clara,” Mr. Goodwin said. “I know this is hard for you, and I’m not taking any sides here, obviously. I don’t know your parents and I don’t know Mr. and Mrs. Finnegan. The former Mr. and Mrs. Finnegan, I mean,” he added.
“Yeah, I figured,” Clara said.
“I imagine right now you think you’re never going to get over this, but you will. You all will. And I hope I’m not stepping out of line by saying this, but you’re going to be okay, and you can come here and talk to me whenever you want. Let off steam. Whatever you need.”
“Thank you,” she said. She felt like she could sleep for weeks. How delightful to pull a Rip Van Winkle and take a decades-long nap and wake up sometime in the future when her entire world wasn’t exploding.
“I’d also like to recommend yoga,” he said, perfectly straight-faced.
“Sure,” Clara said, needing to get out of the room. “I’ll consider yoga.”
“Feel free to reach out to Priscilla. She would love to help, and the practice opens up so much.”
“Okay. Well, I better get home.” She stood as Mr. Goodwin sat up straight and took a deep long yoga-y breath, his hand on his stomach, and raised his eyebrows as if to say: See how much better I feel?
Clara gave an anemic thumbs-up and grabbed her backpack and walked out to the school hallway, which was deserted at five p.m. She didn’t want to go home.
She didn’t want to stay. She had the sinking feeling that this floaty emotion of not belonging anywhere—existing in the in-between—wasn’t going away anytime soon.
As she got to the parking lot, she saw Dune’s car idling.
He was sitting behind the wheel. Her heart lifted.
He was waiting for her. Maybe they could get through this.
He was vibrating with anger the last time they spoke, but maybe he was equally as tired, missing her as much as she missed him.
She was carrying her winter coat over one arm, but she didn’t stop to put it on.
She hurried across the parking lot only to come up short when Dune looked up, put the car in drive, and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving her behind, alone and shivering from the cold.