Yes, You Are

I loved the way his heart fit into my hands. Pink still and fresh, the same smooth tissue as his lungs. Unlearned, unused, easily captured.

I remember last summer in faded sunshine and sweat trickling down my back as I scanned the green fields for him. The camp was swarming with children, and us, the small army of red-shirted counsellors, trying to bring them to order. Our eyes would meet at unbelievable distances, him out on the baseball field waiting to bat, me passing with my flock of five year olds. I could always recognise his form, no matter how far away and how many other children he was among. Other children would run up to me giggling and shout “Ryan loves you! Ryan said he’d die if he kissed you!” They expected anything but my smile. And if Ryan was there, and they said it to me to tease him, they only received his quiet retort: “I don’t care. She knows I love her. I told her a hundred times.”

This summer I have to give him up. But what could I say now? You see, Ryan, last year when I wasn’t letting you put your arm around me, I was in the bathroom of a dingy café sticking a needle in my thigh. You could see the bruises when I wore my bathing suit.

He ran up to me with red Kool-Aid stains at the corners of his mouth and held out a water bottle.
“Thirsty?”
“No. Yes.” I took the drink to my mouth. It was cool down my throat, burning. My stomach turned every time I saw him. He would pick the heads off yellow dandelions and pour them into my hand with a big smirk on his face.
“These are for you.” Eyelashes fluttering, as if in a play, knowing his friends were watching.
“Why don’t you kiss her?” one of the girls asks. She puckers her lips, caked orange with cheese puffs.
“Your shoelaces are untied,” I say. She extends a dirty pink sneaker. I bend down and tie the wet gritty laces, and stand back up, hands on my hips.
“I have to go pee,” she says.
“I’m coming, too,” says Ryan. We cross the gravel path and the child runs ahead to the locker room, clutching the crotch of her corduroys, and disappears behind the wooden door. There is a flash of white tiles, and I lean against the wall and smile at him.
“Why do you always look at me and smile?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” He leans his head on my shoulder, turns his face into the cloth of my sweatshirt. The girl bursts back out of the bathroom.
“Eeew!” She says and screws up her mouth.
“What?” Says Ryan, a smile sneaking onto his face, his blue eyes flattening. Back at the playground, he runs to the side of the pavilion where milkweed grows in thick bunches. He harvests quickly, filling his hands with the green pods, and runs towards me. He peels open the plants and rubs handfuls of the dense white fuzz onto my arms and shoulders as I squirm away, shouting “Stop it!” laughing and grabbing at his wrists. He pushes more cottony down onto my face and hair. I grab some off the ground and put it down his shirt.
“OK, cut it out!” I say and take off my smile. He throws the rest of the milkweed at me and runs a short distance off, turns and looks back at me, grinning.


He was so earnest. I asked him if he went to church.
“Ye-s,” he says. His voice hits two tones, grave. “And I have a rosary, and my priest, he blessed it for me.”
“Oh,” I say, and smile.
“Ryan! We’re leaving!” His counsellor beckons.
“Bye,” he says, and runs off to his friends, boys all shorter than him. He smiles at me and they disappear down the path.

The lapping water skirts my ankles, chilly at first but now almost warm on my skin. A small artificial sea, a sloping bowl of white concrete, and me at the edge of it. I lost my sunglasses again. I strain to keep my eyes open, but the brightness forces them into slits, so I can only see patches of watery blue and white dints of harsh sunlight. He hasn’t come swimming today. His group came ten minutes ago and he’s not here, but my eyes still skim the pool and grassy area for him. After swimming lessons, he used to drape his towel around my shoulders and put his arm around me. His friends and classmates would laugh and point.
“Kiss! Kiss!” They say. He turns his face to me, puckered lips wobbling in laughter. I roll my eyes and push his forehead away with my hand.
At lunchtime once we were sitting by ourselves at a picnic table.
“I humped a girl once,” he said.
“Yeah right,” I said and looked away.
“Well, it looked like we were, but we weren’t really.” I didn’t say anything. “But we could do it. Boys are usually on top. I’d have to be on top because you weigh more than me.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. I walked quickly up the grassy path along the pool fence, the warm thickness of the air stifling me. My shirt clung damply to my back, and I couldn’t get a deep breath.
When I came out of the bathroom there was a steady stream of children passing, and Ryan standing by the tree. He walked over to me and handed me a paper bag.
“You forgot your lunch,” he said.
“Oh, thanks.”
“Bye!” he said and took off.

The next day at lunch one of his friends came up to me with half a bag of potato chips. He was smiling that embarrassed smile I recognized from other children. I never saw the expression on Ryan’s face, often a joking or a funny face, but always sure.
“These are for you. From Ryan,” the kid said, and handed me the bag. “He really loves you.” I smiled and took the chips, and ate them with difficulty, almost choking on them. He came over to me.
“Thanks,” I said and smiled. “Why the messenger?” He sat down next to me.
“I don’t know. He wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh.”
“He said I can’t be your boyfriend because I’m only nine.”
“Well.” I say, and empty the bag’s last crumbs into my mouth, “It’s only ten years.”
“Yeah.” He rubs my shoulder.
“They don’t understand us,” I say, and scratch his head, and he starts laughing, his hand over his face.


But that was last summer, and now I am afraid of him. I overheard the camp director on the telephone in the office. Her professional voice floated down to my ears through the screen door. I heard her say my name with the intonation of a question and follow as an answer “She’s very sweet.” I knew she was talking to his mother.
Last year had been marked by a feeling of abandon. I’d thought it was my last summer at the camp. But here I was again, back among the same grass and trees and gym equipment, back among the same kids, who remembered everything with a kid’s perfect memory.
The first day back, my eyes chased the fields for him. I recognized his group. One of his friends, the blond chubby kid, came up to me.
“Ryan Patterson still loves you,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” I said, terrified and pleased, playing it cool. The kid ran back to his group. Where did he get this information? Ryan is not with his group. Must have been at school. He must not be here this week. He’ll surely be here next week.
Only later, by the swimming pool, wrapped in my towel and staring at the reflections of sun, I turn my head and he is standing right next to me, silent. I know it is him, but somehow I can’t believe it.
“Hi!” I say, in a cheerful counsellor voice, and look away. I look back to see his skinny legs and blue trunks receding from me. I dive into the pool and swim the length of it, wishing to remain submerged, mute and blameless as a fish.

He was the opposite of me as a child. I hid in the bushes when a school bus passed my house. He was loud and funny and a talker. He orchestrated several shows with his friends, lip-syncing and dancing on stage in front of the whole camp. He was sent to the director’s office once for leading them in ‘an inappropriate dance.’ I tried to react as the other counsellors did as I watched him swing his narrow hips and mouth the words ecstatically- “I want you back, baby, ooh yeah!” His friends, the back-up singers, were all laughing and being silly, but Ryan was dead serious. He sang like he was famous. After the show, I stood talking to another counsellor. One of the little girls was holding my hand.
“He’s a great kid,” the other counsellor said of Ryan. “Really talented.” I nodded. The little girl swung her arm, moving my hand back and forth like a wacky pendulum.
“I don’t like him,” she said.
“How come?” I asked.
“He’s too weird. He acts like he’s a man.”

There were glances exchanged but they were sparse. And though he avoided my eyes, he seemed to always be near me, lingering behind the bushes at lunchtime and peeping at me. Finally he made his approach to my lunch table, followed by the blond chubby kid who was smirking and pushing him from behind.
“Hi,” I said. He looked alert and quiet. Like a deer in the forest.
“Ryan still loves you,” his friend betrayed. I smiled.
“That’s ok.” He stood a moment and turned sharply before I could breathe. After that my smiles were not returned, but his blue eyes darted away from me painfully.
The summer dragged on. When I drove to camp in the mornings, I would smoke a cigarette and try to savour it. I would promise myself not to sneak one in the bathroom, smoking being forbidden on the campgrounds. I did not look forward to the end of the day, not to dinner or going into town to float and come to rest on stoops or to follow my companions into indistinct apartments where people hunched over tables and rented time next to other people they did not know.

It was the last week of camp the day the science counsellor brought in a baby robin he had found. He had it in a little cage lined with a towel, and he got the children to find tender young worms for it to eat. At the end of the day the groups all sat on the grass and waited for their parents to pick them up. At the corner of the field by the soccer goal, I saw Ryan squatting by the cage. A few others were resting by their backpacks on the grass. I went over to him and looked at the bird.
“Oh, he’s so cute.” I said. He nodded.
“Did you find any worms for him?”
“Nah, there was too many for him to eat.” The bird was chirping and hopping around in the cage, fuzzy and awkward.
“I found a baby bird once a few years ago,” I said.
“You never told me that!” He said. He looked reproachful.
“I guess I forgot.”
“Oh, it’s my mom,” he said. He gathered up his bag and ran off to the car.


The kids goggled over us. “They’re back together! Do you love her, Ryan?” He squirmed.
“They think I still like you, but I like someone else.”
“I know,” I said.
“She’s sixteen.”
I smiled wanly. She was a junior counsellor who flirted with the other juniors and wore skimpy shorts. I had seen him walking with her and wearing her sweatshirt, the sleeves covering all but the tips of his fingers.

In the evening I drove downtown. When I found myself in one of the old apartments overlooking the park, and one of my companions’ head nodded onto my shoulder, I went into the bathroom and thought about shattering the mirror, ripping the door off its hinges and hurling it into the living room where they all sat like a bunch of corpses. Instead I rolled up my jeans and took another shot and laid down on the bath mat. There was a damp patch under my cheek where someone had stepped with dripping feet.
Later, when I was walking down the street, someone I knew saw me. He stopped me and gave me a hug.
“Hey, what’s up?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“You look fucked up.”
“I am,” I said.
“On what?” he asked, amused.
“K.” I said. I had looked in the mirror earlier. My eyes were red and my pupils were black holes.
“Wanna get a coffee?” he asked. I looked at him. I had loved him for about a year but had forgotton him over the summer. His eyelids were pink; his skin seemed old and soiled by dirty air. His lungs were probably grey and tired with the smoke of hundreds of joints, pipes and straws.
“I gotta go,” I said, summoning a weak smile. “I have work tomorrow.”
It was the last day of camp. Ryan stood by me, and asked me if I ever smoked cigarettes.
“You better not smoke cigarettes,” I said. “It’s stupid, they’re really bad for you.”
“I won’t,” he said. “Did you ever smoke?”
“Yeah, I did. But I quit. It was stupid of me to ever start.”
“When you’re twenty-one, I know you’ll drink, too,” he said. “I can tell.”
“I’ll probably taste it,” I said. “You’ll have to wait ‘til you’re twenty-one, too.”
“I will.”
I ruffled his hair. He smiled hard and looked at the ground. He looked at me.
“I do still like you a little,” he said. I smiled. His mother’s green caravan swept into the dusty circle.
“Your mom’s here.” He slung his book-bag onto his shoulder and straightened up. He’d gotten a lot taller since last summer.
“Am I your favourite camper?” He asks, looking up at me hopefully.
“Yes,” I say. “You are, Ryan.” And he smiles and runs off.


c. 1999
© RMT, 2009