Pearl continued talking. “I assume you aren’t comfortable with the two of them exploring their sexuality in your apartment.”
“No,” Gert said. “No goddamn way.”
Pearl nodded. “I agree. It probably isn’t ideal anyway.”
“Why not?” I asked.
She pressed her lips together and looked like she was thinking. “We’d want to make sure that your first time has as few complications as possible.”
“This whole thing is complications,” Gert said. “He can barely tie his shoelaces. There’s no way he should be having sex with anyone, especially not someone like Zelda.”
“I can tie my shoelaces,” Marxy said.
“And what do you mean, ‘someone like Zelda’?” I asked.
Pearl didn’t raise her voice. She put her chin on her hands and her elbows on the table. “Yes, what do you mean by ‘someone like Zelda,’ Gert?”
That was when Gert’s phone buzzed.
He crumpled up the napkin on his lap and rolled it into a ball and put it on the table next to his plate, which still had a lot of food on it. “I need to take this,” he said, holding up his phone.
He pushed his chair back and walked out of the dining room. I watched him go, and once I turned back to the food I saw that Pearl was watching me.
“Mom,” Marxy said, “you’re doing the thing where you have a staring problem again.”
“I’m not staring. I’m just curious. Can I ask you a question, Zelda?”
I nodded. “You may ask me a question.”
I did not get to hear what she was going to ask me because Gert came back into the room and said we had to go.
“Now?”
Gert said that our time was up.
“I am enjoying dinner,” I said. “We never have food like this at home.”
Pearl smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Zelda.” Then she addressed Gert. “If this stuff is making you uncomfortable, then maybe it’s time for you to grow up. Marxy and Zelda are comfortable talking about sex.”
“I’m putting on my coat and then we’re gone,” Gert said to me. He nodded at Pearl before he walked out.
“I love talking about sex,” Marxy said.
Even though Gert is part of my tribe and we always have each other’s backs and are loyal, I didn’t want to leave with him. I wanted to keep eating dinner.
“He’s wound up pretty tight, isn’t he?” Pearl asked.
I nodded. “Very tight.”
Pearl asked Marxy to go to the kitchen and get some Tupperware containers, and to start clearing the table.
“Already?” he asked.
“And take your time,” Pearl said. “I’d like to talk with Zelda for a minute.”
Sighing, Marxy tucked in his shirt and started to pick up one of the plates.
Pearl touched his arm. “And start with the chicken, please. Do you remember how to put on the plastic wrap?”
He said he did and went to the kitchen. Gert called from the other room and said he’d see me in the car. I sighed.
“Can I ask you a question, Zelda?” Pearl asked.
“Shoot.”
“What was it like before you and Gert moved out on your own? It’s my understanding, from the things Marxy has told me, that your mother passed.”
“Battling cancer,” I said. “She was very brave.”
“I had a cancer scare myself. Breast cancer. You should get screened for it regularly, by the way.” I blinked and asked what that meant. “It means having a doctor check to make sure. Do you know how to examine yourself?”
I shook my head.
“If you ever have a lump. Here.” She touched her chest. “You need to go to a doctor.”
Marxy came to take more of the food away and asked why we were touching our boobs.
“Nothing. Girl stuff,” Pearl said.
“Mom drank alcohol when I was inside of her, and then she got cancer and we had to move in with Uncle Richard.”
“Uncle Richard.”
I nodded. “He and Gert were not friends. They fought a lot.”
“And you and Uncle Richard?”
“I didn’t like when he hurt Gert.”
Marxy brought in Tupperware containers and started putting food in them. She asked Marxy to get a plastic bag, and when he came back she put all the Tupperware containers into the bag and spun the top, then tied the arms of the plastic bag.
“How do you know how to do those things?”
Pearl laughed. “My mother was pretty strict when I was a kid. I learned every kind of domestic thing you could think of.” She paused. “Domestic means—”
“About home and family. It was one of my Words of Today.”
“Exactly.”
I hugged Marxy and said I was sorry about Gert again, and Marxy gave me a kiss on the lips but didn’t French.
“Have a good night, Zelda,” Pearl said, handing me the plastic bag. “And tell Gert we should talk more. Seriously.”
* * *
Gert was sitting in the car, the window down, smoking a cigarette. He threw it on the ground when he saw me coming.
“Thanks for being a total fuck-dick,” I said, getting in the car and slamming the door.
“Yeah, well.” He started the engine. I reached over and turned the engine back off. He looked at me and threw up his hands. “Look, I’m sorry. That all just came out of nowhere. You should have told me. What happened to the rule about telling each other important things?”
“What about not telling me about school? You broke the rule first. Also I didn’t know we were going to be talking about me and Marxy having sex.”
“Can you stop saying that?”
“Sex?”
Gert said that the conversation was over. “I don’t know what kind of perverted bullshit Dr. Laird says to you, but I’m going to have a talk with him.”
“I am going to have sex.”
“We’ll see about that.” He turned the car on.
“It’s my legend.”
“Not under my watch. No way, nohow.”
We started driving. It was very dark on Marxy’s street and even when we got out of his neighborhood it was hard to see the city now. I did not like how Gert was acting. He was looking out the windshield, even though it was being a mirror and you had to look through your own face to see the other cars. The way he was looking gave me the feeling he didn’t want to be with me. It was not one of our rules—giving a silent treatment. Even if he wouldn’t see me, I tried to make THE LOOK.
“I’ll get my own apartment,” I said. “With Marxy.”
“And where are you going to get the money?”
“I’ll get a job.”
“Doing what?”
I crossed my arms. “I can do whatever I want.”
“You don’t have a job, you don’t have any references. Do you even know how much having a place costs? Do you know how to pay the bills?”
“I can learn.”
Gert snorted.
“Why did you do that?” I said.
“Do what?”
“Make that noise. You don’t think I can learn.”