The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (5 page)

I
'm dying a slow death at Wallman's
, Tibby decided the next afternoon under the whirring fluorescent lights. This job probably wouldn't cause death any sooner than the normal time. But it would be very painful.

Why don't stores like this ever have any windows?
she wondered. Did they imagine one glimpse of sunshine might cause their caged, pasty employees to bolt?

Today she was back in aisle two, this time restocking geriatric diapers. What was it about her and personal hygiene? Last night her mother had asked her to use her special discount to get diapers for her brother and sister. She didn't confess that she'd already lost her discount.

As she stacked packages of Depends, her body and brain functions seemed to slow to their lowest setting. She could imagine her brainwaves flat-lining on one of those hospital machines. Just dying here at Wallman's.

Suddenly she heard a crash, and she snapped her head around. In fascination she watched her entire pyramid of roll-on antiperspirants collapse under the weight of a falling girl. The falling girl didn't catch herself, as Tibby expected, but dropped right to the ground, her head making a hollow
thwonk
on the linoleum.

Oh, God,
Tibby thought, running over to the girl. Tibby had the sensation that she was watching it happen on TV rather than actually experiencing it. Antiperspirant rolled in all directions. The girl was maybe ten or so. Her eyes were closed. Her blond hair fanned out over the floor. Was she dead? Tibby wondered in a panic. She remembered her headset. “Hello! Hello!” she shouted into it, pressing various buttons, wishing she knew how to work it.

She sprinted toward the front checkout. “Emergency! There's an emergency in aisle two! Call 911!” she ordered. It was rare she spoke so many words in a row without a hint of sarcasm. “A girl is lying unconscious in aisle two!”

Satisfied that Brianna was making the call, Tibby ran back to the girl. She was still lying there, not moving. Tibby took her hand. She searched for a pulse, feeling like she'd suddenly landed on an emergency room show. A pulse was pulsing away. She reached for the girl's wallet in her purse, then she stopped herself. Weren't you not supposed to touch anything until the police got there? Or, no, that was if it was a murder. She was mixing up her cop shows and her doctor shows. She went ahead and got the wallet. Whoever this girl's parents were would certainly want to know that she was lying unconscious in the middle of Wallman's.

There was a library card. A handy horoscope card cut out from a magazine. Some girl's toothy school picture with the name Maddie and a lot of Xs and Os on the back. Four one-dollar bills. How completely useless. It was just the kind of stuff Tibby had carried in her wallet when she was that age.

At that moment three EMS guys carrying a stretcher stormed the aisle. Two of them started poking at the girl, and the other studied a silver medical bracelet encircling her left wrist. Tibby hadn't thought about checking the girl's wrist.

The third guy had questions for Tibby. “So what happened?” he asked. “Did you see?”

“Not exactly,” Tibby said. “I heard a noise, and I turned around and I saw her crashing into the display there. She hit her head on the floor. I guess she fainted.”

The EMS guy was no longer focused on Tibby's face, but on the wallet she held in her hands. “What's that?” he asked.

“Oh, uh, her wallet.”

“You took her wallet?”

Tibby's eyes opened wide. She suddenly realized how it looked. “I mean, I was just—”

“Why don't you go ahead and give that back to me,” the man said slowly. Was he treating her like a criminal, or was she being paranoid?

Tibby didn't feel like ridiculing him with her famous mouth. She felt like crying. “I wanted to find her phone number,” she explained, shoving the wallet at him. “I wanted to tell her parents what was going on.”

The man's eyes softened. “Why don't you just sit tight for a second while we get her into the ambulance. The hospital will take care of contacting her parents.”

Tibby clutched the wallet and followed the men and the stretcher outside. In seconds they'd loaded the girl up. Tibby saw by the stain on the girl's jeans and the wetness left behind that she'd peed on herself. Tibby quickly turned her head, as she always did when she saw a stranger crying. Fainting and whacking your head seemed okay to witness, but this felt like too much information.

“Can I come along?” Tibby didn't know why she'd asked. Except that she was worried the girl would wake up and only see scary EMS guys. They made room so that Tibby could sit close to the girl. She reached out and held the girl's hand. Again, she wasn't sure why, except that she had a feeling that if she were zooming down Old Georgetown Road in an ambulance, she would want somebody to be holding her hand.

At the intersection of Wisconsin and Bradley, the girl came to. She looked around blinking, confused. She squeezed Tibby's hand, then looked to see whose hand it was. When she saw Tibby, she looked bewildered and then skeptical. Wide-eyed, the girl took in Tibby's “Hi, I'm Tibby!” name tag and her green smock. Then she turned to the EMS guy sitting on her other side.

“Why is the girl from Wallman's holding my hand?” she asked.

There was a knock. Carmen glanced at the door and sat up on the rug. Her suitcase was open, but she hadn't put anything away. “Yes?”

“Could I come in?”

She was pretty sure it was Krista.

No, you can't.
“Uh, yeah.”

The door opened tentatively. “Carmen? It's, um, dinnertime? Are you ready to come down?”

Only Krista's head came through the doorway. Carmen could smell her lip gloss. She suspected Krista was an uptalker. Even declarative statements came out as questions.

“I'll be down in a minute,” Carmen said.

Krista retreated and closed the door.

Carmen stretched back out on her floor for a minute. How did she get here? How had this happened? She pictured the alternate-universe Carmen, who was polishing off a burger with her dad at a downtown restaurant, before challenging him to a game of pool. She was jealous of that Carmen.

Carmen trudged downstairs and took her place at the elaborately set table. Multiple forks were fine at a restaurant, but in somebody's own dining room? There were matching white covered dishes that turned out to contain all kinds of homemade food. Lamb chops, roasted potatoes, sautéed zucchini and red peppers, carrot salad, warm bread. Carmen jumped when she felt Krista's hand reaching for hers. She yanked it away without thinking.

Krista's cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” she murmured. “We hold hands for grace.”

She looked at her father. He was happily holding Paul's hand on one side and reaching for hers on the other.
That's what they do. What do we do?
she felt like asking her father.
Aren't we supposed to be a family too?
She submitted to hand-holding and an unfamiliar grace. Her father was the one who'd refused to convert to Catholicism to please Carmen's maternal grandparents. Now he was Mr. Grace?

Carmen thought forlornly of her mom. She and her mom said grace now, but they hadn't when her dad still lived with them.

She stared at Lydia. What kind of power did this woman have?

“Lydia, this is fabulous,” her father said.

“It's great,” Krista chimed in.

Carmen felt her father's eyes on her. She was supposed to say something. She just sat there and chewed.

Paul was quiet. He looked at Carmen, then looked down.

Rain slapped against the window. Silverware scraped and teeth chewed.

“Well, Carmen,” Krista ventured. “You don't look at all like I was imagining?”

Carmen swallowed a big bite without chewing. This didn't help. She cleared her throat. “You mean, I look Puerto Rican?” She leveled Krista with a stare.

Krista tittered and then backtracked. “No, I just meant . . . you know . . . you have, like, dark eyes and dark wavy hair?”

And dark skin and a big butt?
Carmen felt like adding. “Right,” Carmen said. “I look Puerto Rican, like my mother. My mother is Puerto Rican. As in Hispanic. My dad might not have mentioned that.”

Krista's voice grew so quiet, Carmen wasn't even sure she was still talking. “I'm not sure if he . . .” Krista trailed off till she was just mouthing words at her plate.

“Carmen has my height and my talent for math,” her dad piped up. It was lame, but Carmen appreciated it anyway.

Lydia nodded earnestly. Paul still didn't say anything.

“So, Carmen.” Lydia placed her fork on her plate. “Your father tells me you are a wonderful tennis player.”

Carmen's mouth happened to be completely full at that moment. It seemed to take about five long minutes to chew and swallow. “I'm okay,” was the big payoff to all that chewing.

Carmen knew she was being stingy with her little answers. She could have expanded or asked a question back. But she was angry. She was so angry she didn't understand herself. She didn't want Lydia's food to taste good. She didn't want her dad to enjoy it so much. She didn't want Krista to look like a little doll in her lavender cardigan. She wanted Paul to actually say something and not just sit there thinking she was a stupid lunatic. She hated these people. She didn't want to be here. Suddenly she felt dizzy. She felt panic cramping her stomach. Her heart was knocking around unsteadily.

She stood up. “Can I call Mom?” she asked her dad.

“Of course,” he said, getting up too. “Why don't you use the phone in the guest room?”

She left the table without another word and ran upstairs.

“Mamaaa,” she sobbed into the phone a minute later. Every day since the end of school, she'd pushed her mother away little by little, anticipating her summer with her dad. Now she needed her mother, and she needed her mother to forget about all those times.

“What is it, baby?”

“Daddy's getting married. He's got a whole family now. He's got a wife and two blond kids and this fancy house. What am I doing here?”

“Oh, Carmen. My gosh. He's getting married, is he? Who is she?”

Her mom couldn't help letting a little of her own curiosity creep through her concern.

“Yes. In August. Her name is Lydia.”

“Lydia who?”

“I don't even know.” Carmen cast herself upon the floral bedspread.

Her mother sighed. “What are the kids like?”

“I don't know. Blond. Quiet.”

“How old?”

Carmen didn't feel like answering questions. She felt like getting babied and pitied. “Teenagers. The boy is older than me. I really don't know exactly.”

“Well, he should have told you before you went down there.”

Carmen could detect the edge of anger in her mother's voice. But she didn't want to deal with it right now.

“It's fine, Mom. He said he wanted to tell me in person. It's just . . . I don't even feel like being here anymore.”

“Oh, honey, you're disappointed not to have your daddy to yourself.”

When it was put like that, Carmen couldn't find the appropriate space for her indignation.

“It's not that,” she wailed. “They're so . . .”

“What?”

“I don't like them.” Carmen's anger made her inarticulate.

“Why not?”

“I just don't. They don't like me either.”

“How can you tell?” her mom asked.

“I just can,” Carmen said sullenly, loathing herself for being such a baby.

“Are you mad at these strangers, or are you mad at your dad?”

“I'm not mad at Dad,” Carmen said quickly without taking even a moment to consider it. It wasn't his fault he'd fallen for a woman with zombies for children and a guest room straight out of a Holiday Inn.

She said good-bye to her mother and promised to call the next day. Then she rolled over and cried for reasons she didn't quite understand.

Some sane part of her brain told her she should feel happy for her dad. He'd met a woman he loved enough to marry. He had this whole life now. It was obviously what he wanted. She knew she should want for him what he wanted for himself.

But still she hated them. And so she hated herself for hating them.

Slowly Bridget waded into the warm water. A thousand triggerfish darted around her ankles.

“I want Eric,” she told Diana, who was on team four. “Will you trade places with me?” It wasn't the first time she'd proposed this.

Diana laughed at her. “Do you think they'd notice?”

“He's leading a run at five,” Emily said.

Bridget looked at her watch. “Shit, that's in five minutes.”

“You're not seriously going to go,” Diana said.

Bridget was already out of the water. “Yeah, I am.”

“It's six miles,” Emily said.

The truth was Bridget hadn't run even one mile in over two months. “Where are they meeting up?”

“By the equipment shed,” Emily said, wading deeper into the water.