On the other hand, Schmule has Dad’s curly hair and square jaw, and dimples like me and Mom. He could just as easily be Mom and Dad’s.
Then again, he has blue eyes. Fran and Dad have brown. Mom had blue.
All that time Mr. Twohig spent on genomes and alleles? Worthless. I’m completely mystified.
“Take a picture! It’ll last longer!” Schmule quips.
“Actually”—I wave my camera—“that’s exactly what I want to do.”
Schmule mugs obligingly, first alone, then with Arye, who’s much less eager to be immortalized by yours truly. When Fran pokes her head in to let us know dinner is ready, I draw her into the act, too. She poses gamely—her heart, I notice, doesn’t seem to be in it—and then herds us to the dining room.
This time it’s Rina who solemnly leads the table in prayer. I sit awkwardly between Arye and Schmule, resisting the urge to cross myself.
“What are the candles for?” I whisper to Arye after the prayer.
“One for each person in the family.”
I count them. Fran . . . Arye . . . Schmule . . . and my mom, I guess. I sigh. Across the table, LeeLee smiles at me, then leans closer to Tovah to resume their conversation.
I eat slowly, examining each guest. The tattooed woman intrigues me when I find out she plays the flute for the Cleveland Orchestra. Her more feminine companion teaches Russian at Case Western Reserve. Tovah’s “dads”—Leo, bald and flashy, and beefy Will, the guy who wore the lavender scarf to Mom’s funeral—crack me up with their endless political arguments.
Over strawberry blintzes, I ask Arye, “Are any of these people related to you?”
“Only Aunt Rina. I have grandparents in Wisconsin, and my mom has three sisters, but . . .” He shrugs. “I never met any of them. I guess they like it that way.”
I get it. I glance at Fran with a tweak of sympathy. Her whole family hates her because she’s gay. Then I think of Aunt Colleen and all the nasty things she’s said about Mom and Fran for the past ten years. Would she treat me the same way if I were gay?
Would Dad? Anyone? Surely not Nonny or Uncle Dieter.
But what if they did? How would I feel?
How did Mom feel when I cut her off? Not because she was gay, though that didn’t help. I’m sorry, but yes, that was embarrassing. But, worse, she left me behind. And the last time I visited, she almost let me die.
Did she care when I stopped visiting? When I stopped returning her calls?
I squirm, wishing away the unsettling memories. Trying to picture myself without a family to fall back on. All because I chose to love the wrong person.
A jet-propelled strawberry lands on my plate. Lucky for LeeLee, nobody else notices.
“Behave!” I mouth as she winks at me.
Well, one thing I know: LeeLee wouldn’t write me off, no matter what I did. So why am I acting like this because she found a new friend?
Ashamed of myself, I pop the strawberry into my mouth and suck the sweet juice.
Grow up, Shawna.
I’m trying. I really am.
50
Arye can be pretty good company when he’s not acting like a jerk. As he, Schmule, and I walk Charles through the snowy streets, he announces, “My mom found a job.”
“Doing what?”
“Teaching. Yeah,” he adds at my curious look. “She hasn’t done it for years. Plus it’s a Catholic school, and it’s in a real crappy neighborhood. But then she’ll be home for Schmule so he won’t, you know, get kidnapped by some weirdo.”
“No way.” Schmule waits while Charles whizzes on a snow-crusted bush. “Only, like, twenty-five percent of all kidnappings are done by perfect strangers. The rest I think are like custody battles and stuff.”
Thanks for cluing me in, I think dejectedly.
It’s after nine by the time we get back. LeeLee, Tovah, Leo, and Will are playing a rowdy game of Uno. Everyone else has left. Fran is nowhere around.
“Where’s Mom?” Arye interrupts Will, who just called Leo a bonehead for voting Republican.
Will’s fleshy neck ripples. “Lying down, poor darling. I think we wore her out.”
Well, I’m worn out, too. “We’d better go,” I suggest to LeeLee, who then launches into a thousand good-byes with Tovah.
Yes, I remembered to bring back those pictures. But the blue-checkered album is not in sight and I can’t exactly scavenge the house. Instead, with no one else apparently paying attention, I slip the photos under the sofa. Maybe Fran will think they simply fell out.
I sneak back to the boys’ room to retrieve a thoroughly spoiled Charles, and say good-bye to Schmule. Amazingly, Schmule and Charles are both asleep, exhausted from our twenty-block trek. Schmule’s bare feet, uncovered, dangle off the mattress.
Now I have something else to add to my list: I sleep with my feet hanging off the edge of the bed, too. And so did Mom.
Secretly I snap one last picture before I tuck a drowsy Charles under my arm and tiptoe out. There, I stop dead when I hear someone crying across the hall. Another door stands open an inch or two, and I can’t control the urge to peek in.
Fran, slumped on the side of the bed, sniffles into one hand, holding something else in the other. Even in the semi-dark I recognize the heart-shaped picture of Mom and Fran, on their wedding day, holding hands, beaming into the camera.
“I miss you,” Fran whispers into dripping fingers. “Oh, God, I miss you! I miss you, I miss you, I mi—”
Although I swear I haven’t made a sound, her damp face whips in my direction. Our eyes meet for a guilty microsecond—and then I spin, rush back to the living room with Charles, and drag LeeLee, mid-sentence, away from Tovah.
Of course I hear Tovah-Tovah-Tovah all the way home in the car. I barely listen. Because I’m remembering another time I peeked into a room.
That other night, the night my mom left, I wandered to their bedroom and this is what I saw: Dad, groaning and lunging, and Mom’s kicking legs. At the time I didn’t know what was going on. I only knew I was witnessing something not meant to be seen by anyone’s eyes.
I felt sick. I felt betrayed. And that’s how I feel now. If I wasn’t meant to see it, then why did Fran let me?
I hate her for that.
LeeLee infiltrates my jumbled thoughts. “I invited Tovah over tomorrow to spend the night with us.”
“Tomorrow? New Year’s Eve?” LeeLee and I always spend New Year’s Eve together. We watch DVDs, play Yahtzee, and stay up till dawn. It’s a tradition with us, since we never have dates.
“Well, Tovah’s leaving on New Year’s Day, so I thought it’d be fun. You don’t mind, do you?” she adds worriedly.
Do I mind? I tell myself no.
“Okay,” I say lightly. “That’ll be fine.”
51
By the stroke of midnight, after a couple games of Yahtzee and countless bowls of buttered popcorn, I feel myself relax, sprawled on LeeLee’s bed. LeeLee, without looking—another ritual of ours—runs her fingers through a stack of DVDs and randomly selects two. “Okay, chicas. Muriel’s Wedding or The Devil Wears Prada?”
“Muriel” I say, not wanting to watch Meryl Streep and be reminded of Susan and the Snow Ball.
Tovah flips her long braid. “Fine with me. I’ve seen them both anyway.” She tosses a kernel of popcorn into the air, catching it neatly with a silver-studded tongue.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I waggle my own tongue so she’ll know what I mean.
Tovah taps the stud against her front teeth. “Only when I first got it. I couldn’t talk for a week and it, like, bled for-ever.”
LeeLee pokes me. “I’m thinking of doing mine. Wanna go together?”
“Ri-ight.” I grimace. “A doctor with a tongue stud? How professional.”
“You don’t have to wear it to work,” Tovah points out.
“I won’t wear it anywhere because I’m not mutilating my body.”
“It’s not mutilation, it’s self-expression. An
yway, Lia has a nose stud. You have pierced ears.”
“Piercing your tongue is morbid,” I insist. “Don’t you know your tongue is the most vascular part of your body? Plus your mouth is full of bacteria, and—”
Tovah holds out a palm. “Don’t lecture us, doc.”
“Who’s lecturing? I’m self-expressing.” At LeeLee’s thin look, I add pleasantly, “Hey, it’s up to you if you want to risk your life.”
“Well, thanks for your permission. Not that I asked for it. Jeez!”
Disgruntled, I settle back to watch the movie, wondering why I care if LeeLee shoves an ice pick through her tongue. Muriel’s Wedding turns out to be about a weird, homely outcast whose lifelong dream is to have the perfect wedding. How lame is that? Plus, LeeLee and Tovah chatter nonstop, so I miss half the dialogue.
After the movie, LeeLee jumps up, checks the lock on her door—the sisters she shares her room with have been banished to the basement for the night—and hauls out, yes, a huge jug of sangria. “Party time!” I shush her, but she blows me off. “Those kids can sleep through a hurricane. And my folks,” she explains to Tovah, “sleep downstairs on a pull-out. They won’t hear a thing.”
Tovah blinks. “They sleep in the living room?”
“Well, that’s what happens when you run out of bedrooms.”
We toast the New Year, and then Tovah marvels, “Damn, Lia. Your folks. So, when do they ever, you know—do it?”
LeeLee laughs. “Beats me. I never caught ’em at it, though.”
Not in the mood to hear about Mr. and Mrs. Velez’s sex life, I bleakly take a sip of wine. Then another. Then two more. Then I refill my glass. Finally I’m feeling a little less bleak.
Tovah admits, “I’ve seen people do it, like, three times.”
“No way!” LeeLee screeches.
“I swear. I stayed overnight at a friend’s house once, and I walked into the john while her folks were doing it in the shower. The mom broke the soap dish right off the wall. I was never invited back.”
Okay, either this is really, really funny or I’m way more blitzed than I thought. LeeLee and I fall into each other, laughing our heads off.
“And then these friends of my dads? They’re gay, too, right? So they’re staying with us, and I walk in after school and one of them was—” She makes jerking motions with her fist in front of her mouth.
This is sick, this is sick! So why am I laughing so hard?
“So what’s the third one?” LeeLee demands, convulsed with snorts.
Tovah’s giggles fizzle out. She glances at me. “Never mind.”
I stop laughing, too. Because I think I know.
Clueless LeeLee pushes her playfully. “Come on! You started this.”
Tovah scrambles off the bed. “I forgot. Hey, we’re out of popcorn! Who wants to—?”
LeeLee continues to beg. She doesn’t get it. But I do. I didn’t even sober up this fast that night with Devon.
Slowly I ask, “So who was it, Tovah? Fran? And my mom?”
Tovah looks away. “It’s not important.”
“Shit.” LeeLee’s mental lightbulb blinks on.
“Yes, it is,” I persist, though it’s the last thing I need to know. “So what were they doing? Tell me. Exactly! I really want to know.”
“Shawna,” LeeLee begins.
I sneer at Tovah. “What are you, anyway? One of those weirdos who like to watch?”
“Stop it! Now!” LeeLee points to the wine. “Man, I am cutting you off before you go psycho on us.”
I wrench away. Tovah stares, her luscious lips transformed into a pink line. “I didn’t do it on purpose,” she says softly. “My dad sent me over for some books. We have a key.”
It’s too late to stop it. Paralyzed, I listen.
“I knew the books were in their room. And when I came down the hall, I heard them in there, and—”
“Forget it. Don’t tell me.” Why the hell did I ask?
“You wanted details,” she says icily. “Like you think they’re freaks or something.”
Enough! I swing my legs off the bed. Alarmed, LeeLee asks, “Where are you going?”
“I have to pee. Do you mind?”
I stomp to the john, do what I have to do, and wander downstairs to the living room, where, yes, I see LeeLee’s parents bundled under the covers on the sleeper sofa. Please don’t let them be doing it! I’ve had enough twisted visions of sex for one night.
But I only hear snoring. I tiptoe to the kitchen, pour a glass of water, and sit at the table taking nervous little sips. Two separate pictures flash through my brain—first one, then the other, over and over.
Mom and Fran, together in bed.
Then Fran, sitting alone on the side of that same bed. Crying over that heart-shaped picture frame. Whispering, over and over, I miss you! I miss you!
I miss her, too.
And I’ve missed her longer than Fran.
LeeLee, behind me, touches my shoulder. “Um, are you coming to bed?”
“No.”
“Well, what’re you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. I just want to sit here for a while.”
LeeLee reaches an arm around to pull me against her. “She shouldn’t have told you that. That was just, well, wrong. I told her that, too.”
“Whatever. I don’t care.” Like, what, I didn’t know? Of course I knew. I thought about it for years, wondering and imagining. I’ve seen movies, right? I’ve read stuff in books. But it was always so much easier to pretend Mom and Fran were just regular roommates.
I can’t blame Tovah. I dragged it out of her.
LeeLee steps back when I shake her off. “We can talk about it when you come back up. Okay?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I whisper. “It’s just, well, weird, hearing about it.” Silence. “I’ll be up in a bit. I promise. I just have to . . .”
Think.
52
When I finally straighten up from the table, the clock on the microwave says 4:45. My neck hurts and my temples vibrate. Rising gingerly, I make another trip to the bathroom and return to LeeLee’s room. I hope I can crawl in, go back to sleep, and not wake up with this headache.
First, in the silvery moonlight shining through the window, I notice the empty wine jug on LeeLee’s nightstand.
Second, I see LeeLee and Tovah curled up together on one side of the double bed.
So together, in fact, I can’t tell where one ends and the other one begins. Both fast asleep. Tovah has her arms wrapped around LeeLee, one hand resting inside LeeLee’s nightshirt.
Not resting there like it landed by accident. Resting there on purpose. Touching LeeLee’s breast. Holding it deliberately. No question about it.
Now I know what I think my heart tried to tell me the first time I saw LeeLee flip open her cell phone and scream Tovah’s name.
Heart hammering in my aching skull, I grope around for my clothes and pull them on over my nightshirt. I find my purse, coat, and boots, and head for the front door, closing it softly so as not to wake LeeLee’s parents.
What does LeeLee expect me to do? Crawl into bed with them?
My nostrils ice up in the unbelievable chill. The streetlights shine painfully on the snow while the black sky shimmers with twinkling pinpoints.
I drive home in a semi-daze, wondering if I’m dreaming.
53
I don’t turn on my cell phone till after dinner the next day. I knew LeeLee would call and I don’t know what to say to her.
Eight messages waiting. Well, five, actually:
1. “Hey, chica, where’d you go? I was flipping out! Anyway, call me later.”
2. “Hey, I said CALL ME!”
3. “Why the hell do you have your phone turned off?”
4. “Um, Shawna, are you, like, pissed about. . .” Pause. “Look. Just call me.”
5. “Okay, fine, whatever. Be a bitch. See you in school tomorrow. If you’re alive.”
The last thre
e are hang-ups from her number. I guess she got tired of talking to dead air.
If I call her back, do I tell her what I saw? Or should I act like nothing happened?
I can’t think about this now.
54
I swear I don’t know how I make it to school the first day after vacation.
LeeLee doesn’t make it at all.
Miraculously, I ace a pop quiz in A&P, breeze through a Spanish test, get back an A on my latest English paper, and survive economics without lapsing into a coma. No “dyke” comments from Devon, Susan and Paige ignore me, so all in all it’s a decent day.
Too bad I can’t stop thinking about LeeLee and Tovah.
Last period Miss Pfeiffer drags me aside. “Shawna, by any chance did you get a surprise in the mail a while back?” I draw a blank. “A brochure from MassArt?” she prompts, noticeably disappointed at my lack of enthusiasm.
I never got a brochure from MassArt. Why would she send it to me anyway?
“MassArt? I’m going to Kenyon, remember? Then med school, and—”
“Then the Peace Corps.” Yes, Miss Pfeiffer knows the drill. “I understand. And I’m proud of you, Shawna, if that’s what you want to do.” She waves dramatically. “Granted, I’m not scientifically inclined. And medicine is a noble profession. I’m sure you’ll excel at Kenyon. I just wish you wouldn’t give up your art so easily.”
“I’m not giving it up.” How can I give something up that was never a part of my plan?
“Well, I’m glad to hear it, because”—Miss Pfeiffer whips an envelope out of a torn pocket in her skirt—”I’ve been a bad girl, I’m happy to say.”
“What’s this?”
“Take it home and read it. It’s from my friend at MassArt.” I open my mouth, but she hustles me to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Shawna. Run along! I have some cleaning up to do. Honestly, for a bunch of soon-to-be-graduates, this is the sloppiest class!”
I yank out the letter and read it in the hall.
Dear Agnes, So nice to hear from you! Things have been hectic to say the least—Blab, blab. I scroll down till I find my name.
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