The Option Play, page 7
“I don’t know,” I said vaguely, and changed the subject slightly. “Some of the girls I graduated from high school with are already married. They have kids, and houses, and real jobs. Their own accounts at warehouse stores.” I didn’t know too many details of their lives since I never really saw any of my old friends anymore, not since I got on the Wonderwomen. I looked around my room and picked up the teddy bear that Kellen Karma had spotted. No, I wasn’t going to bring him along in my luggage.
“Everyone does things at her own pace,” my mom told me. “There’s no right or wrong with timing and there’s no reason to rush.”
Rush? I was twenty-one and didn’t even have plans for Saturday night! The most I had was this fake boyfriend. “The Wonderwomen are settling down, too,” I went on. “MC’s been dating Ray for two years and they’re talking about getting engaged. They already have an apartment together and went to some bank about a mortgage! Macy’s pretty serious with her guy, and Bexley got married in Vegas last year. I bet she has a baby soon.” She would for sure, since she talked about having almost constant sex with her husband and protection wasn’t always on her mind.
That was on my mom’s mind, though. “If you’re really going to take a trip with Kellen Karma, we need to discuss birth control,” she said.
“Mom, no!”
“Caitlyn, the most you should come home with is a souvenir t-shirt or two, not...” She looked at my stomach. “Should we have the talk again?”
No, I really, really didn’t want to do that. My mom believed in spelling everything out scientifically, with graphs, diagrams, and full-color photos of body parts (all of them, including internal). I’d been the best-informed girl in elementary school and also the most terrified.
Now I put my hands over my ears. “I’m an adult and I’m in charge of my life? I mean, I’m in charge of my life! I’m not going to talk about this with you,” I said. But just as the discussion of Kellen Karma wasn’t over, my mom wasn’t done with the contraceptive chat either—there was a pile of brochures about various options on my bed the next day when I came in from the body shop but I ignored them to get ready. I hadn’t worried about how I looked with him before, but Kellen Karma had just paid me a bunch of money. I felt like I should put in an effort.
He looked good, too, when I opened the front door to him a little while later. He wore another dressy shirt, one with a collar and buttons like he’d had on at the Silver Dollar bar, and another pair of nice pants. Not the ones I’d spilled on, I was pretty sure. He was also carrying a huge, gorgeous bunch of flowers. “Hello,” he said to me. He didn’t smile or seem at all happy to be on my porch.
“Hi. Woah, those are beautiful!” I reached for the bouquet but he didn’t let it go.
“Those are for your mother.” He held up a bottle of wine in his other hand. “I knew I had to bring something even though I don’t think it’s necessary and I didn’t want to come here in the first place.”
Now I wasn’t smiling, either. “Great. Happy to see you as well,” I said flatly. “Follow me.”
My mom loved the flowers and my dad nodded like he appreciated the wine. They settled on one couch in our living room and Kellen Karma and I faced them on the other, as far apart as the cushions would allow. He sat just like he had in the Silver Dollar—what had Macy said about it? Right, like he was tied to a flagpole. Yeah, that was how he looked. He stared at one parent and then the other, making such direct and unblinking eye contact that my dad looked away, rubbing his own eyes.
“Kellen,” my mom said, smiling. But she held up her hand, like there was a bright light on her, and I knew it was coming from his glare. “We’re so glad that you could join us tonight,” she went on. “Bill and I wanted to get to know you better before you and Caitlyn leave on your trip.”
He nodded back, his face totally serious, still not blinking too much. “Thank you for inviting me,” he answered. He turned to my dad. “Your eyes are the same color as the upholstery.”
“I guess…yes, that’s true about Bill’s eyes.” She smiled again but it faded very fast. “We read so much about the Woodsmen, everything you do on the field, I mean, but I’ve never known a professional athlete on a personal level. I was wondering…” Then she started spewing questions at him like an auctioneer taking bids. Where had he grown up? Where were his parents, what were their names, what did they do? How far had he gone in school, and which school? Where? What were his hobbies? Favorite authors? Could he provide a list of references?
Ok, no, she didn’t really ask for references, but almost. But the more she asked, the more aware I became of how good he was at not answering. I’d noticed before that he only said what he wanted to, and he did that thing again. She blasted him with questions for a while, but at the end of them, the only thing I’d picked up was that he’d gone to an Ivy League college, and he was one of the only people from his school to make it into the United Football Confederation.
“They sent a kicker in the eighties, but that was the extent of their involvement in professional football,” he concluded. And that was all he said.
There was a long silence. My mom looked totally confused and a little mad but Karma’s expression hadn’t changed at all. He took a sip from his glass of wine and didn’t speak another word.
“I better get the food on,” my dad broke into the quiet. He pointed across the coffee table. “Kellen, what do you know about barbecue? Come on, let’s get dinner started.”
Karma didn’t have much to say to that either, but he did follow my dad outside. In order to avoid the discussion my mom would want to have about my new “boyfriend,” I grabbed my coat and followed along also.
Unlike Kellen Karma, my dad didn’t have a shortage of things to chat about, not when the subject was outdoor cooking. Fortunately, he didn’t expect a lot of responses, but then the two of us started talking about jobs going on at the body shop and pretty much forgot that the big Woodsmen player was even standing there until he pointed out that the flame was getting too hot.
“He does know something about a grill,” my dad muttered to me, which earned Karma a gold star next to his name.
His name was also what my mom brought up after we sat at the table. She wasn’t done with her interrogation and she tried another tack. “Karma,” she said as she served the salad she’d made. She wasn’t a fan of what she called my dad’s “burnt offerings,” so there was always something large and full of veggies on the side during barbecue nights. “Karma. That’s an unusual surname.”
“Is it? No thank you, I don’t use that.” He waved away the pitcher of homemade buttermilk salad dressing, the kind I usually wanted to drink when my mom made it because it was so delicious.
“Are you sure?” I asked, looking at his bare salad, but he didn’t answer.
“I’ve never heard it before. Where did your name come from?” my mom persisted.
Karma crunched on his sad, nude lettuce. “My name came from my father,” he stated. He ate an undressed carrot, drank some water, and then sat in silence.
The dinner continued like that. My mom tried a few more times to get information from him but it totally didn’t work. He either didn’t answer or answered partially or answered something that wasn’t actually a real answer at all. Eventually, she got frustrated and then gave up. She was polite but basically ignored him through the remainder of the meal. She talked to my dad instead about the new book they were supposed to be reading for their club, but I was sure he wasn’t actually going to crack the cover of it.
Kellen Karma sat and ate the naked salad and didn’t touch any of the delicious ribs that my dad had made or the chicken, either, but I was hungry, so I took a share of both. He also didn’t even glance at the pie my mom had brought home, but I had a piece of that, too. Then I remembered how much less I was working out now and looked at the crumbs of crust left on my plate very guiltily. And right after that moment, my mom got mad because my dad admitted that he hadn’t read the last three books for their club and he didn’t plan to read the next one, either, something he definitely should have kept to himself.
All in all, it wasn’t a fun dinner. At the end of it, Kellen Karma watched me for a moment before he got up to help clear the table and I took my place at the sink. “No, Caitlyn, you two can go,” my mom said, and whipped the rubber gloves off of my hands to put on her own. She actually gave me a little push towards the driveway, too, and that was when I understood how little she liked my new Woodsmen “boyfriend.” She wanted me to get him out of the house! After all the fuss she’d made about not meeting my former boyfriend, Brown, now she was trying to rid of Karma.
Ugh, but he wasn’t really my boyfriend. I’d been so uncomfortable for the whole meal, so unhappy about the lies I was telling, that leaving the house and my parents felt like a great idea. But I glanced over at him, remembering that he’d said something before about how he didn’t like to go out to bars and restaurants. “Uh…” I hesitated. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“It’s Friday night, Little Bit! I’m sure Kellen has something fun planned for you,” my dad said, and then my parents and I all turned as one to look at him.
He was looking right back at me. “Yes. Let’s go out.”
“Really? I mean, yeah, ok,” I agreed, still staring at the Woodsmen player. Maybe he’d been just as uncomfortable tonight. Maybe he was itching to leave, too. “I need to run upstairs first,” I told him, because I had to check my face and hair, of course.
“I’ll come,” he stated, and he did, right behind me. I saw him staring around the room as he followed me into it. It was slightly messy—very messy, with a lot of clothes in unusual places and also stuffed animals strewn about.
“I’m organizing those and giving some away. Almost all of them,” I said, as he picked up my teddy from under the comforter. Not that one, though. “I’m also going through my summer clothes to get ready for Florida. You know how at the end of the season, you shove your summer stuff into the back of the closet and then you forget if you like it anymore?”
“Not really.” He put down the bear and snagged something else from the bed. “Your IUD and You,” he read aloud from the paper in his hand.
“That’s not mine, it’s my mom’s,” I said, snatching the brochure back from him.
“Your mother needs information about IUDs?”
“Let’s just go.” I grabbed around his biceps again, and even in my rush to get him out of my room, I had to give it a little squeeze of appreciation. I was definitely going to get his arm routine.
Before we left, I put my big, winter coat back on. Yes, as my dad had said, it was spring—but as my mom had also noted, it was only thirty degrees. It felt colder as we walked to the Bronco. With a real boyfriend, I might have snuggled into his side or hung on his arm to warm up, but with this guy, I stayed the same distance apart as we’d been before on the couch.
He held open the door to the car for me but I hesitated and didn’t jump right in. “We don’t actually have to go out,” I told him. “You already met my parents, which I know you didn’t like at all.”
“I didn’t mind it. Get in.” He closed the door behind me, too.
He hadn’t minded it? He could have fooled me—I’d thought that his silence meant that he’d hated every moment at my house. “Where do you want to go?” I asked.
“What do you usually do on a Friday night?” he asked me back, and once again, shared no information.
I frowned. “You mean before the ‘unfortunate incident?’ I would have been with my friends from the Wonderwomen. Not Bexley all the time because she got married or Mary Claire because she and her boyfriend live together now. And Macy is getting closer with her guy.”
“So you didn’t really go out,” he concluded.
“No, I totally did! I was out every weekend, every night almost. Shae and I were together for sure and at least one of the other girls, and not so long ago, I was going out with Brown, too.”
“The one who tore your dress and then just stood there.”
Yeah. The one who’d torn my dress and then just stood there, not helping, not even saying he was sorry. He hadn’t in any of the time since that night, either, long after he’d sobered up. I shrugged.
“Where’s your friend Shae now?” Kellen Karma asked me, but I didn’t feel like explaining that I hadn’t heard much from her since that night, either, just a few things at first about how ashamed she felt for me and how utterly awful it was and wasn’t I dying, and then not a lot since. But she had posted a bunch of pictures about what she’d been doing and in a few of them, she’d been out with Brown and his gang. I’d spent a while studying those.
Instead of explaining all that, I did exactly what Kellen Karma did when he didn’t want to answer: I said nothing at all.
“Did you hear me? I asked where your friend Shae is,” he repeated.
“I heard you,” I said. “I’m just not telling you. Like how you don’t give out any information, either. I can also keep it zipped.”
He laughed. I hadn’t heard him do that yet, and I turned and stared at him, surprised. He looked back at me with a smile still on his lips, and it made him look so different. Not like a Greek statue from olden times that might stand behind a velvet rope to be admired in a museum, but just a really cute, really present human sitting next to me right now.
“What information did you want to have?” he asked.
Where would I start? I’d also been interested in how he might have answered my mom’s earlier questions so I went back to what she’d been quizzing him about. “Karma’s an unusual last name. Tell me about where your family is from originally.”
“That’s hard to say.” We stopped at a light and he turned on the radio, and some kind of symphony started. “I don’t know very much about my background. My mother’s surname is German or Austrian.”
“What about your dad? What’s his name?”
“Kevin. His family was British, I believe. He never had any contact with his relatives while I was growing up, so I never met any of them. If they exist.”
“Well, he didn’t spring from someone’s head, right?” I reasoned. “Somewhere, there’s family.”
He looked at me, sort of like he was confused. “Are you talking about Athena springing from her father Zeus’s head?”
I nodded. “My old coach, Rylah, made a lot of references to mythology. I looked some up because I never knew what she was talking about.” It had turned out that she’d been wrong about almost everything she’d said, anyway. “My relatives are mostly here in Michigan, with some cousins in Minnesota,” I mentioned.
“So you said. They’re part of your extensive travel history.”
“My mom’s family is from the Upper Peninsula and they’re all Finnish, and my dad’s ancestors are from Ireland and Poland,” I volunteered, then remembered that I wasn’t sharing information and switched back to asking questions. “You said you got the name ‘Karma’ from your dad. So it’s an English name? It doesn’t sound like it. I expect names from England to be a lot more lord-and-lady, like Trafalgar or Wellington or whatever the princes and princesses use.” But I wondered if those guys even needed a last name, because there probably wouldn’t be a lot of confusion about who you were if people had to call you Princess and it was a real thing.
“My name isn’t English. It’s made up.”
“Huh? By who, you?”
“No,” he said, and fiddled with the radio again. “My father wanted to be able to declare to the world that he and my mother were together, a couple. Rather than get married, they chose a new name together. Karma. Then they split up and my mom returned to her original name, but my dad kept it. I got it, too.”
“Huh,” I said again, thinking. “I didn’t know you could do that, just pick something out of the clear blue. So your name is just—what’s the word?
“Fictitious.”
I nodded. “Why didn’t they hyphenate their last names together?”
“Because then our surname would have been Swindlehurst-Von Grimmelshausen,” he said.
I tried to imagine Herb and Buzz calling the Woodsmen games and trying to get that out of their mouths. “That probably wouldn’t have worked well for football. I guess you got lucky with Karma.”
“Why does your dad call you ‘Little Bit?’ You’re not very small.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, miffed. Was that comment about my weight? My pie slice had been moderate, but I still shouldn’t have had it. Karma hadn’t even tasted it! Yeah, I was going to hit the gym hard tomorrow. “In terms of height, I’m almost five-seven,” I informed him. “But my dad calls me that because when I was born, I was really early and really small. I had to stay in the hospital for a long time in the NICU, and I was just a little bit of a thing. So, ‘Little Bit’ stuck with me. He’s not supposed to say it anymore, especially in front of people, but he forgets. I think that’s why my parents are still pretty protective of me,” I explained. “Because I was so small and I almost didn’t make it.” I looked across the car. “What do your parents call you?”
“Kellen.”
Ok, fine. I’d call him that, too. “And you can call me Caitlyn,” I said right back, and looked out the window rather than pressing my luck with more questions.
Some of the Woodsmen players pretty much left their cars idling in the street when they went out in town, and I didn’t think they ever got a ticket or towed. They were Woodsmen, after all. But Kellen parallel-parked in a long row and then got out as I looked up and down the sidewalk. I followed him a lot more slowly as I realized where he was heading and I frowned across the street at the busy bar.
“Do you really think the Silver Dollar is a good idea?” I asked. Because I didn’t. I didn’t ever want to go into that place, not ever again. I hadn’t even driven on this street since the unfortunate incident.
He stood next to me, his body blocking the wind, and followed my eyes up to the neon circles on the sign that were supposed to be coins. “It’s Zalamero’s idea.”
