21 Stolen Kisses Read online

  Did you have to read Ulysses in English class? What did you think? I hated it.

  Of course I hated Ulysses, but why are you asking me and who are you?

  I glance up and down my street, as if I can sweep the block for the culprit. I see no one, so I figure it could just be some Upper West Side smarty-pants type who found this copy floating down the block and decided to offer his or her two cents. Someone who just had to weigh in on James Joyce.

  But as I walk up the steps to my mom’s brownstone, I haven’t managed to fool myself. After all, Bailey called my mom the other day about a postcard. Now, she must have figured out the whole thing. I stop at the door, my hand hovering over the doorknob, as I weigh the scenarios, and the possibility of Bailey stirring things up. Since nobody knows for sure that I sent the letters, would it be such a bad thing if Bailey confronted my mom on her own? Wouldn’t it, in fact, be a very good thing? Isn’t this everything I’ve ever wanted? A sly smile creeps onto my face. The letters are returning; but they’re not coming back to me. They’re on track to hit the person who messed up all these lives.

  Her.

  Maybe by seeing her actions slam into her face, she’ll stop. This is what I have wanted all along.

  As I walk inside she gets the first word in. “I went shopping for you today, darling.”

  I’m taken aback, so I take off the gloves. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to get you some early birthday presents. Now, come sit down, so I can show you all these delicious purchases.”

  She pats the couch and I take the spot next to her. My stomach rumbles. I didn’t eat much today. “Want me to make you something?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I can make you a toasted peanut butter and honey sandwich if you want,” she says.

  My favorite food of all time. I wish she was all bad.

  I shake my head and gesture to the shopping bags at her feet. She rubs her hands together, then considers each bag. “Ah, let’s go through this one first,” she says. She dips her hand into a white shopping bag with the words “Les Bijoux” in curlicue script on the side. “First, I thought, wouldn’t it be nice for you to have something extra pretty for college, and I found this gorgeous piece.”

  She extracts a silver necklace with a gleaming faux diamond pendant hanging in the middle.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say.

  “Put it on.” She unhooks the necklace, pushes my hair off my neck, and fastens it. The pendant falls above my charm necklace. I touch the silver strands of the new one.

  “It’s perfect for your eyes.” She doesn’t suggest I take off my charms, even though her fancy jewelry would look better riding solo on my neck. For this, I’m glad. She doesn’t know where my charms came from, but she knows I wear them every day. She knows I don’t take off the charms. She knows me so well.

  She digs into another bag and pulls out a handful of the soft faded tees I like. One is dusty pink with a green stylized dinosaur, another light blue with an upside-down monkey, still one more is black with a pair of cat’s-eyes in the upper right hand corner. From another bag she gives me new jeans—the size and style I like.

  “You were always a good shopper,” I say. My mom can shop for anyone. I’ve never once had to return an item she bought for me, and I’ve never once faked liking something, like I do when I’m reading her scenes.

  “It’s good to know if the writing thing doesn’t work out, I can always have a fallback career as a personal shopper.”

  “Mom, I think the writing has already worked out,” I say, reassuring her.

  She twists her own necklace absently, a double-stranded heavy gold braid. “I’m worried about the story arc for next season. They say you’re only as good as the next season and this one’s a mess, Kennedy. A total mess.”

  “I’m sure it’s not a mess. You’re a great writer.”

  Another twist on her necklace. “I just don’t know …”

  “Mom, it’ll be fabulous! LGO will be thrilled. Your fans will love it,” I say, and I mean it with my whole heart.

  My mom breathes out. “Thank you. You have no idea how much I rely on you. How much I trust you. You’re the only one who I know is telling me the truth.” A sad thought flickers through my mind—does my mom distrust everyone too? “Do you want to do something tonight? Go see a movie? Go out to dinner? Just us girls.”

  “Sure. Let’s go out. Let’s go to Mr. Pickles,” I say quickly because she sounds so damn eager and hopeful. I don’t want to crush her.

  She beams. “Your favorite sandwich shop.”

  “How can you argue with a sandwich shop that offers not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six vegetarian sandwich options?”

  “I can’t argue. Especially not when the roast beef with pesto mayo and corn spread on grilled sourdough is positively divine.” She stands up, reaches for her ruby-red purse, the size of a feedbag, and nods toward the door.

  “Let me change first. I want to put on my new clothes.”

  Her sweetness is almost enough to make me forget what I overheard the other day. It’s nearly enough to erase the accidental text message she sent me. But I have to stay strong. She has my best friend’s father in her crosshairs, and I am tired, I am so damn tired, of all the collateral damage from her affairs. I can’t let the clothes and the kindness and the way I am the only one wear me down once more.

  When I reach my room, I empty my new sartorial booty on my red chair. I take off the jeans and brown lacy tank I wore for my “car date” earlier and pull on the blue monkey T-shirt, then the new jeans. I move over to the door and consider my outfit in my full-length mirror. I’m still wearing the new necklace, which doesn’t quite match the rest of the ensemble, and my charms. It’s kind of a haphazard look. I peer closely, and I swear I can see whisker burn on my chin, around my lips. I touch my face, feeling for the remnants, the marks of kissing someone who has a five-o’-clock-shadow. I can see them. Does my mom not see them? I lean my nose to my neck and sniff myself, wondering if I smell like him, if I smell like I’ve been kissed by a man. I can smell his scent on me.

  In the mirror, I can see all these parts of me. I can see all the different pieces, all the ways I assemble myself for different people—for Noah, for Lane, for Amanda, for Caroline, for my dad, for my mom.

  For me.

  I don’t look like myself. I don’t look like a girl who’s about the pull the rug out from under her mom.

  But that’s who I’m about to become.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kennedy

  The next day, I make a mental note of Caroline’s shoes—a satiny taupe—as I walk in the door. I say hello, but I don’t give her a chance to make shrinkie-dink small talk. I dive in.

  “I’m seeing Noah again, nobody knows, my mom is fooling around with Amanda’s dad, Lane asked me to prom and I said yes, Jay Fierstein is following me around and also suing my dad, the women I leave letters for are figuring it out and calling, and someone is also sending letters back to me by leaving them on my doorstep.”

  The corner of Caroline’s lips curls up. “Just your average week in between visits.”

  “Also, I decided that I’m going to send more letters to everyone, so eventually this whole thing blows up on my mom and she’s forced to stop.”

  Caroline raises an eyebrow. “Really? You think she’ll stop?”

  I nod, my jaw set. I’m resolute. “She’ll have to. She’ll have no choice. Her covers will all be blown.”

  Caroline purses her lips. “I’m not so sure you can do that to an addict.”

  “I’d be forcing her to hit bottom,” I say, my voice rising as I stab the air for emphasis. “What choice would she have?”

  “She’s an addict, Kennedy. A junkie. You can’t force her to hit bottom. She has to find it on her own,” Caroline says, her tone so calm that it rankles me.

  “She’ll find it this time. She’ll have to.”

  “Bottom
isn’t something other people make you find.”

  “I’m expediting it for her. Moving things along.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “Then I move out, go to college, move in with Noah, and live happily ever after,” I say, holding my hands out wide as if to say isn’t it obvious.

  Caroline nods. She doesn’t scoff or smirk or laugh. She should do those things. I recognize the incredulity in what I’ve just said. But it’s also what I desperately want.

  “How are things with Noah now that you’re back together?”

  “Never been better,” I say, straightening my spine, energy coursing through me as I think of him, and how being back with him is like having gravity work correctly again.

  “Are you going to tell your dad this time? That you’re involved with your mother’s agent?”

  I shrug. Consider my cuticles. Tug at a dead piece of skin.

  “Do you think you should?”

  Another shrug. Another push of my finger into the nailbed. I don’t meet her eyes.

  “Kennedy. Look at me.” The tone in her voice, strong and commanding, forces me to look up.

  “I think you should. I’m just going to say it. I definitely think you should. You and Noah have enough challenges in this relationship and the least you can do is start it honestly.”

  “My dad will flip.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Um, maybe because he flipped in the first place when he found the letter!”

  “And you told him the letter was to Jay. To his forty-five-year-old business partner. Not to your mother’s twentysomething agent. So it’s hard to know what he’d do, isn’t it?”

  “He has a history of flipping,” I say through clenched teeth. “And you know what? I don’t need this crap from my parents anymore. I am this close,” I say, holding up my hand and showing a sliver of space between my thumb and index finger, “to getting out of their homes. I don’t need to mess it up.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I flash back to my kamikaze rides through traffic, to the balancing act I pull off of weaving daredevil-style through cars and cabs and buses. I can do that. I can do anything. “Not mess it up.”

  “Okay then,” Caroline says, and folds her arms across her chest, imitating me.

  “Okay then,” I say, like a copycat.

  She skips a beat, waits for me. “Kennedy,” she begins, and tells me I am setting myself up to be hurt even more by my mom. She tells me too that relationships with older men rarely work.

  “You’re wrong. You’re just wrong,” I say, crossing my arms.

  We have reached an impasse. She doesn’t bend, and I won’t either.

  When I leave, I am fueled by tankers full of frustration. I am driven by years of the pent-up pressure of secrets and lies. I want to light them up, watch them catch fire and burn into the night sky.

  I am huffing and puffing when I meet Lane downstairs. “We need to send more letters. Lots of them,” I inform him.

  He shakes his head, clucks his tongue. “Kennedy, I think it’s time we call this whole thing off.”

  “No,” I say, tension reaching new heights inside my bones. “I have to do this. I want to finish the amends. I want to do this right. I can’t do it without you.”

  “Kennedy. Let’s just get a coffee.”

  “I don’t want to just get a coffee. I want to finish this off. C’mon. I’m leaving the Balzac letter tonight. My favorite love letter ever and you know it.”

  He raises one eyebrow curiously. “I thought you’d never leave the Balzac, since it came out of an affair.”

  “It’s for Mrs. Steigler,” I say, staring at him sharply. Using her name. He knows what happened with her. The name should jar him.

  But it doesn’t. He shakes his head. “K,” he says in a low voice. “I think we need to stop this. Let’s do something else. Plan a skydiving trip. Go bungee jumping. White water rafting.”

  I grit my teeth and purse my lips. “Please.”

  He sighs, shakes his head. “You’re on your own.”

  But, really, that’s all I’ve ever been.

  *

  I know Mrs. Steigler.

  Well, know is a loaded word. I don’t know what she does for a living, how old she is, or even her true hair color.

  But I know she cares deeply about keeping her family together.

  I know because she told me. She tried to stop my mom through me.

  She is any woman. She is everywoman. She is the devastated face of a woman scorned.

  I’m not even sure how my mom’s affair with her husband began, but I can tell you how it ended in excruciating detail because the cuckolded wife caught on. The conversations I overheard between my mom and Mr. Steigler indicated something bad was about to go down. Mr. Steigler said things to my mom like “I think my wife might suspect something,” and my mom said things like “How much do you think she knows?”

  That’s why I was enlisted in the cover-up. I was told to answer the phone any time it rang from here on out. My mom was only taking calls from her agent. This rule applied to both the home phone and the cell phone, since evidently Mrs. Steigler had found a potentially incriminating text exchange on Mr. Steigler’s phone, which meant she now had the mobile number of a certain LGO showrunner and was dialing it A LOT.

  The orders from on high were clear. Never give in, never surrender.

  My mom figured Mrs. Steigler would eventually stop calling if she only reached a gatekeeper. In a one-week period during my junior year of high school I fielded no less than twenty phone calls from Mrs. Steigler. I put on my smile each time, saying “Ms. Stanza isn’t available. May I take a message?” Sometimes I delivered the messages, but mostly I just pretended to write them down, while I closed my eyes and cringed as Mrs. Steigler said through her teary rage, “Please tell her I want to know how she could do this to another woman.”

  One morning I saw her across the street. She stood on the opposite side of the block, wearing dark sunglasses, a raincoat, and what was obviously a long black wig. I wanted to go to her, to put an arm around her, maybe even give her a hug, to tell her he wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth anyone’s tears.

  She came to me, instead, running across the street, cutting me off. “Please tell her to stop,” she said, her palms pressed together as if in prayer.

  Someone had just punched a hole in my chest. I could feel my skin and bones collapsing around my heart. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered, letting my hair fall around my face like a shield.

  “Yes, you do. You’ve been answering the phone. All I want is for it to end. All I want is for her to stop.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated, like the cover-up robot I’d become.

  “Please. We have a daughter too,” she said, grasping for something, anything, to get me to go along with her.

  “I have to go,” I said, my heart caving in. She grabbed my sleeve.

  “I’m begging you,” she said, her voice like gravel.

  I never said anything to my mom about the incident. If I had told her, she’d just have laughed. My mom would end it when she was good and ready.

  Two weeks later, Mr. Steigler stopped coming by. I knew it had nothing to do with Mrs. Steigler’s time frame and everything to do with Jewel Stanza’s. When Jewel Stanza is done with a man is when Jewel Stanza is done with a man.

  Our Stolen Kisses

  Sometimes, I picture all the kisses to come. The places we’ll have them. I see us kissing in the rain on a cobblestoned street in Paris, under the sun while strolling on a San Diego beach, next to a waterfall in Kauai. I don’t just imagine what the kisses will be like though, because I know they’ll be wonderful. I think about how we’ll feel. If we’re in Paris, in San Diego, in Kauai, we’ll feel free.

  That’s what I long for the most. The freedom to be in those places with you. The freedom to be anyplace with you.

  Someday, r
ight?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Kennedy

  For the first time in months, Lane and I go our separate ways after a shrink appointment. I do not go home. I do not call Noah. I do not get coffee. Instead, I tell my mom I’m with my dad and I tell my dad I’m with my mom, and I spend the next few hours doing my best approximation of a bike messenger, crisscrossing the grid of Manhattan, making my deliveries around the island, even as it rains, even while the drops mat my hair and turn my clothes into wet layers I’ll have to peel off later.

  I feel nothing as I tack up the letters outside homes, near doorjambs, around archways. I’m only creating these public displays because that’s how we’ve done it, though what matters are the words inside the envelopes, hidden for now behind addresses and stamps, but soon to be revealed when they arrive in cramped New York City mailboxes. Anticipation runs under my skin, the wish that I could speed up time, like a movie reel watched in fast-forward, until I reach the scene when my mom’s life comes crashing down, splintering into broken pieces around her. I’d watch that scene in slow motion, with a bowl of popcorn, hitting Rewind over and over, popping kernels into my mouth.

  I wouldn’t laugh, but I’d be satisfied. Because that scene would mean I’d made it to the other side.

  Somewhere in the East Eighties, the rain stops and the streets glisten. I cross back over to the West Side, taking pride in my ability to maintain my catlike agility even on a slick New York City street. I slow down when I reach the final house, one that’s just a few blocks away from the brownstone where I grew up with both my parents, the place where my mom still lives. I hop off my bike, walking it down the street with my hands pressed lightly against the handlebars. I turn the corner onto the block I’m targeting and as I do I have this sense that I’m being followed. I turn around quickly, expecting to see Jay Fierstein. But he’s not around.

  I push a few strands of drenched hair off my face and pull my wet shirt away from my skin.

  I keep walking, my bike alongside me, tense and watching.

  I have that feeling again, so I stop again. The result’s the same—no one darts into a doorway or slinks behind a potted plant to hide. I hop back on my bike and ride up and down the block, but I don’t see anyone I might know. I resume my task. I affix the final letter to the doorway of Mr. and Mrs. Steigler’s brownstone, wondering what color her hair really was beneath the wig. Did she stay with him? Did she stay together for their daughter? Does her daughter know?