Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [79]
“Do what?” I asked innocently.
“Leave home to live in the most dangerous city on earth!”
Whammo! We’ve got a winner!
“Mom, the show was taped way before 9/11.”
“Even still,” she said. “I wouldn’t want any child of mine living there. Ever!”
Could you get any more clear than that? I think not.
Knowing that I’ve just done something that will take decades off my parents’ lives with worry, you’ll excuse me for not getting into the fa-la-la-la-la Yuletide spirit this year. There really isn’t much to tell. The only difference between Christmas 2001 and Christmas 2000 is that I don’t have a visit from Hope to look forward to. And Bethany has already packed on some major fetal flab. Oh, and now Gladdie doesn’t need to ask a bizillion questions about my boyfriend, because she’s already gotten the dirt from you know who.
“Tutti Flutie says you and this Len character are getting serious!”
“He does, does he?”
“Tutti Flutie says that you two make him want to be with someone he loves.”
“Really? He said that?”
“He sure did!” Then she turned to Moe, who was by her side, as always. “From what I hear, Tutti Flutie used to be quite the lady-killer, like you back in the day!” They both slapped their arthritic knees in laughter.
“Then what happened?”
“I got tamed by a tigress,” Moe shouted. Gladdie purred. Oh, Christ.
“No, I mean to Tutti Flutie,” I said.
“He won’t say,” Gladdie said. “If you ask me, I think some dumb girl broke his heart!”
I refuse to take whatever a senile ninety-year-old double-stroke victim says as fact.
“Len is such a smart, cute, and polite boy,” my mom piped up, dulled by Chardonnay and a few steps behind in the conversation.
My mom is right, you know. Len is all those things. He gave me the Best of Morrissey CD, Fast Times at Ridgemont High on DVD, and a yoga mat as nondenominational tokens of his affection. SO PERFECT. I bought him—SO MORTIFYING!—a tie. A very nice, not-too-shiny blue silk tie from Banana Republic, one that he said he’d need for his Cornell interview next week. But Christ, it’s still a tie. I am so girl-friendly inept.
Len’s family celebrates some vague combination of Christmas and Hanukkah, hence, the nondenominational gift-giving. Len’s dad was Jewish. He was a cardiac surgeon who died of a heart attack when he was forty-three years old. If that’s not ironic, I don’t know what is. He died just a few months before Kurt Cobain, and I can’t help but think that Len’s obsession with the latter has something to do with the former. Len doesn’t talk about his dad’s death, just like my family never talks about my dead baby brother, Matthew, and Hope’s family never talks about Heath. I think this is how our parents’ generation would like to deal with everything: deny, deny, deny! I only know what I know because I asked and Len very reluctantly told me.
Anyway, Len’s mom, Sandra, is Catholic. I haven’t met Mrs. Levy yet—too busy perfecting my application—but I will tomorrow night, before we head to Sara’s New Year’s Eve party. Chaos Called Creation was such a hit at the Anti-Homecoming that she asked them back. I’m so lucky to be the girlfriend of a guitar god. Or so the freshman Hoochie Babies tell me. Anyway, Len says his mom is very eager to get to know the girl who is dating her son. Yikes. This freaks me out because it kind of makes this real.
Looking over my entries for the past month, I realize I have not written much about Len. I would love to say it’s because I have no words to describe my birds-are-singing, bells-are-ringing so-in-love delirium. But this would be untrue. In my nondocumentation of my relationship with Len, I have realized that I am unable to write about not only happy moments, as I’ve already pointed out, but any moments that do not fall into the angsty category. Things are going well, I guess. We hang out, make out . . .
The physical aspect of our relationship is progressing at a reasonable rate. Long kisses, vertical. Longer kisses, horizontal. Hands over the bra. Hands and mouth under the bra. Hands over my skivvies. Under . . . Ack.