Love and Other Four-Letter Words (14 page)

“He's petrified of thunder,” Phoebe shouted back, both of her hands still on the camera. “He's not going anywhere.”

“I can carry him to your place if you want.”

“But it's ten blocks up.”

“That's okay.”

I scooped up a cowering Dogma and carried him to the door of Phoebe's building, a brownstone I'd never seen before. I hadn't even known what block she lived on. As Phoebe started up the stairs, she dragged her braced leg behind her. She had invited me in, but since the news had said the storm would continue into the evening, I thought it best to hurry back to our apartment, especially since Moxie was with me.

I ran the rest of the way home, stopping only twice to catch my breath. By the time I reached our building, it was so dark out that it looked like evening, except for the occasional flash of lightning illuminating the sky.

As we waited for the elevator, Moxie shook, spraying water all over the mirror in the lobby. I glanced at my reflection.
Ugh.
I looked like I'd just plunged into a lake fully clothed. My hair was plastered to my head and my white T-shirt, clinging to my skin, revealed the complete outline of my bra.

“Hey there.”

The elevator doors had just opened. J.D. was standing inside. Holding an umbrella. Grinning.

“Got caught in the rain?”

He kept grinning. He stepped around me. He couldn't peel his eyes away from my boobs. If Moxie hadn't dragged me into the elevator, I doubt I would have moved.

“Sara, right?”

Sara?
Didn't Mom tell him my name the first time we met?

“Sammie,” I said through chattering teeth.

“Right.” J.D. nodded. “Sammie.”

As the doors closed, Moxie shook muddy droplets all over my knocking knees.

The phone was ringing as I unlocked our door. Racing to get it, I bumped into the air conditioner in the entranceway, exactly where the delivery guy had left it three days ago. I caught the phone on the fourth ring, just as the answering machine picked up.

“Hello?” I pressed the Stop button. It made five loud beeps as the tape began to rewind.

“I found out who it is.” Kitty's voice was barely audible.

“What?” I asked loudly. Moxie was shaking again, right next to the futon this time.

“It's not Jack's ex.”

“Who is it?”

“The girl who lives in your house!”

Oscar Mayer Wienerette?
I was incredulous. “How do you know?”

It took Kitty ten minutes, between whimpers and wails, to describe how she'd been overcome with a psychic impulse to drive around my cul-de-sac yesterday evening. And what should she spot but Jack's Jeep parked in front of my place? As soon as she'd gotten home, she'd dialed his cell phone. He said he'd call back later, neglecting to mention that
later
wouldn't be till the following morning. And when Kitty confronted him about it, he neither denied nor apologized, just saying that his head was
all messed up right now.

As Kitty sobbed, I began to shiver. Partially because that's a horrendous thing for your first lover to tell you. And partially because of the irony that the girl who inhabits
my
room is probably fooling around with Kitty's boyfriend. But mostly, I was overcome by the notion that Kitty, for all her perfection, had been jettisoned for the new kid on the block.

“I feel so awful,” Kitty said after a long pause. “Everything in Ithaca reminds me of Jack.”

A clap of thunder boomed and Moxie scurried under Mom's bed.

“Sammie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I could come visit you this weekend? I really need to spend time with someone who will listen to me.”

Ninety bucks an hour,
I was tempted to say,
is my going rate now.
But when I opened my mouth what slipped out instead was: “Yeah, sure you can.”

“Great,” Kitty sniffled, “because I already called Greyhound about bus fares for Friday.”

When we hung up, I continued to shake. I really needed to take a hot shower. As I peeled off my T-shirt, I remembered what Mom had said the other day:
I just said yes when I should have said no.

Oh, well.
I sighed, flinging my bra and underwear into a heap on the floor.
What's done is done.

M
om didn't cancel her interview with the friend of Shira's friend after all. At first I took it as a good sign. On Thursday evening, she pulled
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
off the bookshelf. As I was hunched over the subway map, figuring out the best route to the bus station, she kept murmuring and reading me passages from chapter 9, “Just Nod Your Head—Say ‘Yes!’

So I'm not sure what happened between then and Friday morning, when her interview was scheduled at the private school. I awoke to the sound of Mom grinding coffee beans in the kitchen. As I padded into the bathroom, I noticed her tan summer suit laid out across the bed.

But when I actually got a look at her, sitting at the
kitchen table swirling her coffee around in its mug, I knew something was up. Her face was pale, the halfmoons under her eyes practically black.

“I didn't get a wink of sleep last night,” she said glumly.

I poured myself a glass of grapefruit juice, two for the price of one at the local supermarket. As I sliced a bialy and dropped it in the toaster, I noticed Mom's pen-and-ink cityscape crumpled in the kitchen trash. I felt my throat tighten.

“I'm not even sure I even want to be an art teacher anymore. …” Mom's voice trailed off.

When the bialy popped up, Mom jolted forward, like she'd gotten an electric shock. Just as she did, her blouse, slippery in its dry cleaning bag, slid off the bed, the metal hanger clattering against the floor.

“You look stressed,” Phoebe pronounced a half hour later. “I can see it in your face.”

We were sitting on a bench in the dog run, watching Moxie and Dogma romp around with a pair of pugs.

“I don't know.” I sighed. “There's a lot going on.”

“Kitty?”

I nodded. “That's part of it.”

“Just so you know, my offer still stands.”

Yesterday, when I'd told Phoebe that I wasn't exactly thrilled about Kitty's visit, she'd suggested I bring her up to the dog run.

I'll cat-sit
. Phoebe had giggled.
Get it? Like her name is Kitty?

I got it,
I'd groaned.

But I really hope it doesn't come to that. The thought of introducing them makes me feel uneasy, especially since Kitty has this tendency to be ultrapossessive of me. Like this past spring when she got all huffy because I'd hitched a ride home with a girl from chorus rather than lingering until her softball practice ended.

Just as we were saying good-bye, Phoebe fished around in her backpack and produced a rubbery potato-shaped object.

“Here.” She handed it to me. “You can have this.” “What is it?” I asked, gripping the tightly packed beanbag.

“It's a stress ball. Squeezing it is supposed to help reduce tension.”

I massaged it in my hand. I can definitely see how this could absorb negative energy. But why do I have a feeling that there aren't enough stress balls in the universe to reduce the amount of anxiety inside me?

I arrived at Port Authority twenty minutes before Kitty's bus was due. Pacing at the gate, I squeezed the stress ball. The bus terminal reeked of a nauseating blend of
gasoline and body odor. If Phoebe thought my face looked tense before, she should see me now, after I'd just listened to the message back at our apartment.

Mom wasn't home when I dropped off Moxie. I'd assumed she was at her interview already, until I noticed the red light flashing on the answering machine. I'd pressed the play button, only to hear:

Beep

Nine-forty-seven
A.M
.

Hello.
(A woman paused to clear her throat.)
This is Karen Drabick, Shira Rosenthal's friend. I'm sorry to hear that the interview isn't taking place after all. Please get in touch with me if you'd like to reschedule. Thanks so much.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Kitty was the first one off the bus. She was wearing khaki shorts and a tank top, with a trendy messenger bag strapped across her chest. I saw her at least a minute before she saw me. As I watched her glancing around the terminal, I felt like I was seeing her for the first time—this tall, Nordic, confident-looking stranger. It made me want to turn and bolt in the other direction.

“There you are.” Kitty strode toward me. Her eyes looked tired but her face was tan, her nose sprinkled with the freckles that crop up every summer. “I didn't see you at first.”

As we hugged, I was swamped with emotion. This is
Kitty Lundquist. My soul sister for eight years. One of my only links to my life in Ithaca. Maybe I've been overreacting. Maybe all this business with Mom and Dad has screwed with my head. Maybe it'll be good to spend the weekend with her after all.

Less than an hour later, here's why I would eat those thoughts:

1. We hadn't gone two stops on the subway when Kitty mentioned Marla Mueller for the twentythird time. I guess I was distracted, trying to determine whether we should board the uptown local or express train, because I didn't register who Marla Mueller was. When I finally asked Kitty, she snapped:
   Marla Mueller is
   only
   the person who lives in your house, who's screwing
   my
   boyfriend. Haven't you been paying attention
   ?
   

2. When we arrived back at the apartment, Mom was buried under her covers with the shades drawn. As I closed the door so we wouldn't disturb her, I whispered to Kitty:
   Now you see what I'm talking about.
   To which she replied:
   Actually, I don't think your place is as small as you described.
   

3. I finally decided that the only way I'd survive this would be to bring Kitty to Central Park, to the dog run, anything but stewing in the apartment. And
   that's when it started to rain, for the first time since last week. And rain. And rain.
   

By Saturday evening, I was about to go out of my mind. The rain was still coming down, mostly just drizzle by this point. Kitty and I had only braved it once, when we dashed out to Tower Records to rent a movie. We hadn't been able to agree on anything. Kitty wanted to rent a comedy,
to bring her up.
I suggested tear-jerking dramas,
to show that our trials aren't as arduous as we think.
Slapstick won out, with Kitty insisting on the new Austin Powers movie.

I handed my video card to the guy behind the counter. He was pale and slight, with metallic silver fingernails and lusterless black hair that had
home dye job
written all over it.

“Austin Powers.” He nodded at me in a subdued, goth sort of way. “Cool choice.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I actually—”

But Kitty cut me off. “She wanted a Julia Roberts movie. I had to twist her arm to get this.”

He raised his pierced-with-several-hoops eyebrow as his gaze panned from me to Kitty and rested there. “Julia Roberts is
so
cheesy.”

“Amen,” Kitty answered, flashing her I-know-you-findme-sexy-but-I'm-way-way-out-of-your-league smile.

Once Kitty and I were on the street, I pulled Phoebe's stress ball out of my pocket and began working it in my fist.

Shira was there when we returned to the apartment. Yesterday evening, when Mom finally dragged herself out of bed, she'd called Shira to explain how she'd gotten last-minute cold feet about the interview. Shira must have reassured her that she'd do it when she was ready because Mom had sighed and said,
At this point it feels like I'll never be ready,
which made me doubly relieved that Kitty was still in the shower. Before they'd hung up, I heard them make a plan to check out a new Thai place tonight.

As I was setting my umbrella in the tub to dry, Kitty explained to Shira that her real name is Katarina and her father is originally from Stockholm.

“So that's where you get your height,” Shira said. “Actually, my maternal grandmother is over six feet.”

I flopped onto the futon, watching Kitty dazzle Shira with her grace and eloquence. Adults are always impressed upon meeting Kitty, shaking their head when they discover she's still in high school.

Shira set her empty coffee cup in the sink as Mom searched the closet for a light sweater.

“That's quite a necklace.” Kitty pointed to the ropes of turquoise and silver around Shira's neck.

“Thanks.” Shira reached up and touched it. “It's Native American, from the Southwest.”

“Was it made by the Navajo?”

“Yes.” Shira nodded enthusiastically. “Someone I work with took a trip to New Mexico.”

The second they were out the door, Kitty flounced down next to me. “Your mom has always gravitated toward Earth women.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Shira's the original Venus of Willendorf.” Kitty crammed a pillow under her tank top to emphasize the curvaceously chunky prehistoric statuette that we'd learned about during the art and culture unit of global studies last year. “And what was up with her neverending necklace? She looked like some kind of rapper.”

“Why did you tell her you liked it?”

“I didn't say I liked it. I said it was
quite
a necklace. Which, I might add, it was.”

“You still shouldn't have said anything.”

Kitty turned to me. “What's eating you? Ever since we left the video store you've been acting like someone died.”

“Nothing,” I said as I stomped into the kitchen and started up water for hot chocolate. How could I tell Kitty that I was sick of hearing her drone on about her life? Whether Marla Mueller would give Jack the
youknow-what
that Kitty had been denying him. Whether Marla Mueller was a mid–high-school crisis or the Real Thing. Whether she'd put on a few pounds over the summer. And if so, whether she should go on this new protein diet her father has been recommending to his patients.

As Kitty yanked at her nonexistent love handles, I was tempted to say,
Unless there's body fat in freckles, shut your fucking trap!
If there's anything that can push me over the edge, it's girls who are bonier than runway models complaining that the skin on their thighs is cellulite.

Right before we went to sleep, Kitty suggested we give ourselves pedicures with the polish she'd brought. I'd selected Brazenberry, which I splashed on in about a minute and a half. Kitty, after inserting a cotton ball between each toe, meticulously applied two coats of Teak Rose. As she waited for the second layer to dry, she glanced up at me.

“We really are different, aren't we?”

I didn't say anything right away. But later, as we were tucked under the sheets on the futon, I was ready to
talk more about it. I was lying on my back, with my hands under my head, my elbows splaying out like wings. Kitty was turned on her side, with her foot touching my shin.

“Kitty?” “Mmm …” “About what you said before, about us being different …”

“Mmmhmmm …”

I paused, trying to find the right words to express how it seems like we've grown apart this summer. And how it's really important that she listens to me also. I wanted to say it in a diplomatic way, so it didn't make her defensive but still got the point across.

That's when I noticed Kitty's steady, rhythmic breathing. I sat up and leaned across her. Even though the lights were out, I could tell she was fast asleep.