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I can’t believe I’m writing this to you, my little twelve-year-old baby! It’s hard to imagine you’ll ever be old enough to need this advice, but for what it’s worth, there it is.
THE ROOM SHE SHARED WITH RONNIE WAS NOT MUCH bigger than a closet. Their twin beds were perpendicular to each other, and two narrow dressers lined the wall, leaving barely enough room to walk across the floor. Two nights after her date with Tim, CeeCee came home after working a double shift.
“Any messages?” she asked, her attention darting toward the phone. She’d seen Tim at breakfast that morning, but the coffee shop had been crowded and there’d been no time to talk.
“Uh-uh, sorry.” Ronnie looked up from her bed, where she was painting her toenails. “But there’s a package for you.” She nodded toward CeeCee’s bed, where a small, square box wrapped in brown paper rested on her pillow.
“Weird,” CeeCee said. It was rare for her to get mail. She picked up the package by the cord tied around it. Light as air. Her name and address were printed in black ink.
“I shook it and it sounds empty to me,” Ronnie said. “How’d tonight go? I take it Tim didn’t stop in?”
“No.” CeeCee sat on her bed and kicked off her tennis shoes. Her feet hurt and she massaged her toes through her kneesocks. “Is he ever going to ask me out again?”
“I hope so.” Ronnie sounded genuinely sympathetic.
“Why can’t I just ask him?” CeeCee pulled one end of the cord, but it was tightly knotted. “Why do we always have to wait to be asked? Can I borrow your nail clippers?”
Ronnie tossed the clippers to her. “If he doesn’t ask you out again, he’s a cretin. You don’t want him.”
Yes, I do. She had constant fantasies about Tim picking her up after her shift, driving to a park, someplace quiet and private, and making love to her on the mattress in the back of the van. “I should never have told him I was a virgin,” she said.
“Well, that’s a no-brainer,” Ronnie agreed. She’d screamed so loudly when CeeCee told her about her “I’ve never had sex” comment that their landlady rushed in, afraid they were being murdered.
CeeCee clipped the cord and ripped the paper from the package to reveal a flimsy white cardboard box. She lifted the lid and gasped.
“There’s money in here!” she said.
“What?” Ronnie set her nail polish on the windowsill and rushed to CeeCee’s bed. “Holy crap,” she said, peering into the box. “How much?”
CeeCee pulled out the wad of bills and started counting.
“They’re all fifties,” Ronnie said.
“Six hundred, six-fifty,” CeeCee counted, shaking her head in disbelief. “Seven hundred, seven-fifty.”
“Oh my God,” Ronnie said as the number grew. She grabbed the brown paper the box had been wrapped in. “Was there any name anywhere?”
“Shh,” CeeCee said. She was up to twelve hundred and her hands were starting to shake.
Ronnie watched in silence until CeeCee had counted one hundred fifty-dollar bills. Five thousand dollars. They looked at each other.
“I don’t get it,” CeeCee said.
“Maybe, like, your last foster mother sent it?” Ronnie suggested. “You said she was really nice.”
“Really nice and really poor,” CeeCee said.
Ronnie picked up one of the fifties, squinting at it as she held it up to the light. “Are there any marks or clues or anything on the bills?”
CeeCee riffled through the bills and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Well,” Ronnie said, “when you were baring your soul to Tim the other night, did you happen to mention that you were penniless?” She was reading CeeCee’s mind.
“But why would he do this?” CeeCee asked in a whisper.
“That—” Ronnie gnawed her lip “—is a very scary question.”
She poured Tim’s coffee the following morning. “I got a package in the mail yesterday,” she said.
“A package?” He looked innocent. “What was in it?”
“Money.” She set the coffeepot on his table and whipped out her order pad. “Tim, tell me the truth. Did you send it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His blond, sun-lit curls gave him a soft, angelic look.
“It was five thousand dollars.”
Tim nodded as though impressed. “That would take you through a couple of years of college and then some, wouldn’t it?”
She slapped her order pad onto the table. “It’s from you?” she asked.
“CeeCee, settle down.” Tim laughed. “If it were from me, I wouldn’t tell you because I wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to me. I wouldn’t tell you because I’d want you to have it, no strings attached. If you and I broke up tomorrow, I’d still want you to have it. If I’d been the one to give it to you, that is.”
If they broke up? He considered them a couple? She didn’t allow the elation to show in her face.
“I’m getting angry,” she said, instead. “Tell me.”
“Look, CeeCee.” He patted her arm. “Whoever sent it wouldn’t have done it if they couldn’t afford it, right? So, you need it. Just enjoy it. Buy me supper with it tonight. And put the rest in the bank the first chance you get.”
They ate at a Moroccan restaurant, sitting on the floor in a small room all to themselves. Tim ordered a bottle of wine and, away from the eyes of their waiter, she drank from his glass. Soon the money was forgotten, and she felt relaxed and a little loopy. They told every old joke they could remember and sang songs from The Beatles’ White Album, which she knew because her mother had loved The Beatles. CeeCee told him about the time she saw The Beatles in Atlantic City at the age of five, because her mother’s friends had a bunch of tickets and they’d been unable to find a babysitter for her. It had been one of the most traumatic events of her early life. She couldn’t hear the music for the screaming of the fans, and everyone had stood on their chairs while she sat on the floor, her hands over her ears. Still, Tim was impressed. He’d never gotten to see them at all.
She tried to pay for their dinners, which had been the deal, but Tim brushed her offer aside. She wanted to tell him, No more tips, ever, and that she would pay for everything when they went out, but since he hadn’t acknowledged he’d sent the money, she couldn’t do that.
After dinner, he drove her to the house he shared with his brother, and she knew for sure that he’d been the one to send the money. The house—a tall, stately brick mansion surrounded by manicured lawns and boxwood hedges—was in the moneyed, historic heart of Chapel Hill. Once inside, CeeCee stifled a gasp. Tim obviously had someone to care for the grounds, but if he also had a housekeeper, she hadn’t worked in a very long time. Clothes, dirty plates and pizza boxes were strewn on the small antique tables and chairs in the otherwise elegant foyer. She spotted an overturned chair in the dining room on her left and a broken vase in the living room on her right. The odor of marijuana drifted down the curved staircase, along with the sound of the Eagles singing “Hotel California.”
“Maid’s day off,” Tim joked. “Hope you don’t mind a little clutter.”
A man, straggly haired and barefoot, walked into the foyer from the living room carrying both a beer and a cigarette. He stopped short when he saw them.
“What’s up, bro?” Tim asked.
The man looked at CeeCee, and she took an involuntary step backward toward the door. His eyes were bloodshot and he wore several days’ growth of beard. He looked like some of the homeless guys who sometimes hung out on Franklin Street.
“Who’s this?” He nodded toward her.
“This is CeeCee.” Tim put his arm around her. “And this is my brother, Marty.”
Marty’s nod was curt. “How old are you?” he asked. “Twelve? Thirteen?”
“Give her a break,” Tim said.
“I’m sixteen,” she said.
Marty let out a whistle and walked back into the living room. “Tim, get your ass in here,” he said over his shoulder.
Tim looked at her apologetically. “Kitchen’s in there.” He pointed toward one of the arched doorways off the foyer. “Help yourself to something to drink and I’ll be there in a second.”
The disaster in the kitchen made the foyer look like something out of Good Housekeeping. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes. The long blue granite countertops were littered with pizza crusts and beer bottles and dirty ashtrays. Gingerly she opened the refrigerator, expecting to be greeted by the stench of rotting food. It wasn’t bad, though. There were bottles of condiments, a few blocks of cheese, a shelf full of beer and a single can of Coke. She took the Coke, popped it open, then tiptoed toward the door, straining to hear Tim and Marty’s conversation. Their voices were muffled, but she heard Marty say, “You don’t have time for this shit now. You gotta focus.”
Was he talking about Tim’s schoolwork? It seemed bizarre for someone as clearly out-of-it as Marty to lecture Tim about anything.
“… mess up the plan,” Marty said.
“Up yours,” Tim responded, and she heard his footsteps approaching the kitchen. She leaned back against the counter and sipped her Coke.
“Sorry about that,” Tim said when he came into the kitchen. “Marty can be a little paranoid sometimes.”
“That’s okay,” she said, but she wished Marty would go out and leave them alone. She didn’t feel comfortable with him in the house.
Tim took the can from her hand and set it on the counter. Then he put his arms around her, smiled his green-eyed smile and bent down to kiss her. She’d stood like this with a couple of boys before. She’d kissed them and even let them touch her breasts, but that had been it. Tim, though, was not a boy. This kiss was a first for her—a kiss linked by delicate electric threads to her nipples, and that made her instantly wet.
Tim seemed to know the effect he was having on her. “Let’s go upstairs to my bedroom,” he said.
“I’m not on the pill or anything,” she said.
“I’ve got condoms. Don’t worry.”
She took his hand and they walked back into the foyer and up the curved staircase, past the room that was the source of the blaring music and the sweet herbal scent of marijuana, and down the hall to Tim’s bedroom. It had once been a lovely room, she was sure. The wallpaper was a masculine blue stripe. The double bed and dresser and desk were all made from the same dark red cherry. But it was hard to notice the details with clothes and books strewn on every surface, and she didn’t let herself think about how long it had been since he’d changed his sheets. She didn’t care. He closed his door and locked it, then drew her down next to him on the bed, and she let the electricity in her body take over.
They cuddled together afterward. He’d left his closet light on, and she was just able to make out his features on the pillow next to her. He ran his fingers down her cheek and wound them in her hair.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Are you sore?”
“I’m better than okay,” she said. As her mother had warned her, the earth hadn’t moved. At least not when he was inside her. He’d already made her come three times by then with his expert fingers and amazing mouth, but once he was inside her, she didn’t feel much at all. Maybe it was the condom. If she hadn’t loved being so close to him in whatever way she could, she would have been disappointed.
There was a knock at the door and she tightened the sheet to her chest.
“Going out,” Marty said.
“Hold on.” Tim got up, the closet light catching the long line of his body. He unlocked the door and walked naked into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him. “Did you take your meds?” she heard him ask Marty.
“You know, if you need to get laid, you’ve got the van to do it in,” Marty said. “You don’t need to …” The rest of his sentence was muffled. CeeCee thought of getting out of the bed and dressing quickly, but her body felt frozen beneath the sheet. Could that be all she meant to him? An easy lay?
After a few minutes, Tim came back into the room, lying down next to her with a sigh that told her the mood was broken and unrecoverable.
“He thinks I just want you for your body,” he said. “And I want you to know that’s not it. I like you. I liked you the first day I met you in the restaurant when you spilled coffee on me. I think you’re … adorable and I love being around you because you have such a great attitude. You’re a little naive when it comes to what’s happening in the world, and maybe that’s why you’re so upbeat most of the time. Ignorance is bliss and all that. I don’t care.”
She listened until she thought he was finished, relishing the compliments and embarrassed by the allusions to her naiveté.
“You’re right,” she said. “I hardly know anything about Vietnam, for example, except that there were a lot of protests about being there. And it messed up some guys. Like, what happened to Marty. What kind of medication is he on?”
Tim lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. “You heard our conversation?” he asked.
“Part of it.”
“He’s paranoid. He thinks every sound is something coming to get him. And he doesn’t trust people much. If you could’ve known him before, you would have liked him. You’d understand why I care about him. I’m just glad he came back alive. So many people didn’t. And he’s still smart. Smarter than my sister and me.”
“You have a sister? Does she live here, too?”
“Nope,” he said in a way that told her the subject was off-limits.
She sat up, hugging her knees through the blanket, and surveyed the dimly lit trash heap that was his room. She had to face it: she was in love with a slob. An idea popped into her head. A way to put a smile back on his face.
“I’d like to clean up your house for you,” she said. “I’m a fantastic organizer.”
“No way,” he said.
“I want to do it. Please let me.” It was the least she could do for someone who’d, in all likelihood, given her five thousand dollars.
He stroked her bare back with his fingers. “Are you going to apply to go to school in the spring?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Then the house is yours,” he said. “Do what you like with it. Just … stay out of Marty’s room.”
“I plan to stay out of Marty’s way,” she said.
“Good thinking.”
“Do you have some studying to do?”
“I need to do some typing,” he said. “But I don’t need to—”
“I’ll start right here, right now,” she interrupted him. “You don’t mind me doing things in your closet and your drawers?”
He laughed, reaching beneath the sheet to stroke the side of her breast. “You’ve already done some pretty good things in my drawers,” he said, and it took her a minute to get it.
She gave him a little shove. “You study and I’ll straighten up,” she said.
He got out of bed and pulled on his jeans. She followed close behind him, feeling his eyes on her body as she got dressed. When she looked up he was smiling at her. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to just sit here while you’re slaving around in my room looking cute as a button.”
“You won’t be just sitting there, you’ll be working.” She flipped on the overhead light, took his arm and guided him to his desk. “And I love doing this kind of thing. Honestly. When I left one of the homes I was in, my foster mother told the social worker she’d miss how I always straightened up after everyone.”
“I’d miss a lot more than that,” Tim said, taking a seat at his desk.
She bent over to kiss the top of his head. It was hard to believe that twenty-four hours ago she’d thought this relationship was over. Now she felt at ease, as though they’d been together for years. She hoped that’s what was ahead of them: years of being together.
She started with his clothes, tossing the ones that were obviously soiled into the overstuffed hamper and hanging and folding the others. Then she worked on his bookshelf, where papers and notebooks were piled helter-skelter. Tim typed at his desk. He was a good typist, and she worked to the clacking sound of his fingers flying over the keys.
