For Keeps

by Natasha Friend

  I nod, a little too vigorously, hurting my neck. How did I not notice the medic alert bracelet? If I had, I might have been able to—

  “He’s lucky you were there,” the woman says, as the ambulance flies over a bump. “Otherwise he’d be in a coma.”

  Lucky. Uh-huh. I am still nodding. Coma.

  She reaches out to pat my knee. “You did good, honey. You did real good.”

  “Mom?” I’m calling from the ER lobby. From the pay phone, collect, because cell phones aren’t allowed here.

  “Josie?”

  “Mom?” My voice sounds high and thin. “Mom, I’m in the hospital—”

  “The hospital? What? Are you—”

  “I’m fine,” I tell her. “It’s not me, it’s . . . it’s Mr. Tucci. . . . He passed out in Fiorello’s. He came in, looking all sweaty and weird, and all of a sudden he just . . .” I pause, swallowing hard. I yank on the silver phone cord, wrapping it around my arm like a bracelet.

  “Oh, honey.”

  “Mom?” I don’t even think, I just say it. “Will you come?”

  “We’ll get in the car right now. It’ll be a while—a few hours, at least.”

  “That’s OK. . . . Mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  I put the phone back in its cradle. Letting go, I see that my hand is trembling, just slightly, like I’ve aged eighty years in five minutes.

  I am eating my third HoHo from the vending machine in the lobby when Paul Tucci’s mother bursts through the door. I recognize her right away: silver bob, crisp white shirt, khakis. You can tell she was in a big rush to get here, though; she’s wearing bedroom slippers. There’s mud caked along the bottoms. Everywhere she steps, she leaves a footprint.

  I get to observe Mrs. Tucci for a whole twenty minutes while she talks to the nurses. She’s asking a lot of questions. I can’t hear the words, but I can see her mouth move. She has thin lips, two straight lines, with creases all around.

  At one point, the shorter nurse, Patty—I met her when I came in—nods in my direction, and Mrs. Tucci looks over. I squint, pretending to read the clock above her head.

  But that doesn’t stop her.

  She’s walking over, leaving one muddy footprint after another in her wake. Now she’s standing in front of me, clutching her tan leather purse in both hands. “You saved my husband’s life.”

  My mouth feels sticky suddenly, each tooth encased in HoHo sludge. She doesn’t recognize me, from Shop-Co or from anywhere. That much is clear.

  “You saved my husband’s life,” she repeats.

  I shake my head.

  “You did. They told me.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I say. “It was Bob. Bob Schottenstein, from Fiorello’s Café. He did the rescue breathing. I just . . . you know . . . called 911. And then the paramedics really—”

  She bends down to hug me, her purse thumping against my back. “Thank you.” She smells like Lysol. “Thank you. . . . Thank you.” She holds on tight for a minute, then stands up straight again, dabbing her eyes with the back of one knuckle.

  “You’re welcome,” I say.

  “Christina Tucci,” she blurts, shooting out a hand. Long, tapered fingers, no polish.

  I nod. My throat is dry. “Josie. Josie Gardner.”

  It’s Liv I’m talking to when the Tucci brothers arrive, all three of them, bursting through the ER doors together, speed walking en masse to the nurses station. “We’re looking for Nico Tucci,” one of them says.

  And another one says, “He’s our father.”

  “Oh my God.” I almost drop the phone. “Oh my God. . . . Oh my God. OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.”

  “What?” Liv says. “Josie, what?”

  I turn my back to the nurses station, whisper, “I think my father’s here.”

  Silence.

  “Liv?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Would I joke about this?”

  Another pause. A bigger one. Then, “Holy shite, Josie, are you sure?”

  “Well, yeah. There are three of them, and they said Big Nick was their dad, so one of them has to be . . .”

  “Your dad.”

  “Paul. One of them has to be—”

  “Wait,” Liv says, cutting me off. “How?”

  “What?”

  “How could they get there so fast?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, assuming they came from North Carolina, even if they flew it would take, like, at least—”

  “Who knows?” I say. “Who cares? The point is, they’re here. I’m telling you—”

  “That’s it, I’m coming to the hospital. Wait right there. Don’t leave, even if Kate gets there. Especially if Kate gets there. Holy shite, Jose. HOLY FRIGGIN’ SHITE!”

  “I know!”

  “I’m coming right now,” she says. “As soon as I hang up.”

  “Well, hang up then.”

  “OK, I am! Chill!”

  Chill? How can I chill? How can I do anything? I flop back into a chair again, staring at the nurses station. The Tucci brothers are gone. Nurse Patty must have taken them to Big Nick’s room to join their mother.

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, let it out again. “Oh my God,” I whisper.

  It hits me that this is the Before. This moment, right here. Everything that comes next will be the After.

  Fourteen

  I AM IN the waiting room, waiting. There are two other people in here: a skinny blonde in Spandex and an iron-on cat sweatshirt, and a sketchy-looking guy with long, greasy hair. I can feel him staring at me, but I am avoiding eye contact.

  My mom texted me to say that she and Jonathan are still two hours away; there’s a pileup on I-95. Liv will be here any second. That is, unless she’s picking out the perfect emergency-room outfit, in which case it’s anyone’s guess.

  I’m not remotely hungry, but here I am in front of the vending machine again, considering the Cheez Doodles. No cheese in there, really. Cheez. Which can’t be good for anyone.

  I walk to the corner of the room, perch myself on the edge of a hard green chair, one eye locked on the door to the hallway. Stay where you are, Tuccis, I think. Just stay exactly where you are and don’t move. Down the hall, I know, in some antiseptic room, the five of them are gathered.

  Josie, is what I told her. Josie Gardner.

  Is Mrs. Tucci saying my name out loud? Are lightbulbs going on over anyone’s head? Gardner. . . . Gardner. . . . Hey, Paul, remember that girl you dated back in high school? Whatshername? . . .

  No. They are too focused on Big Nick right now. On how he’s doing. Big Nick in a hospital bed, hooked up to needles and tubes. There’s no reason for them to be thinking about me at all. I could be anyone. Just another teenage girl in a ponytail, perched on a hard green chair, waiting.

  I hear footsteps in the hallway, voices.

  I stand. I can’t help it. I pop straight out of my seat like a jack-in-the-box. Is it them? Paul Tucci and his brothers?

  I yank my hair loose from its elastic, pinch my cheeks to make them pink. Cat Sweatshirt and Greaseball are both staring at me, but I don’t care. I am picturing the yearbook photo I’ve seen a thousand times: Paul Tucci at seventeen. His baseball hat, his Tom Cruise nose, his white lopsided grin. If Paul’s mom told him about the girl who called 911, he could be coming to meet me. I have to be prepared. I have to be ready to—

  “Josie?”

  It’s Liv, rounding the corner. Liv, in a JUST ADD WATER T-shirt, holding out her arms. “Oh my God, Josie.”

  Glad though I am to see her, I am also weirdly disappointed.

  “Thanks for coming,” I mumble into her shoulder. Liv’s hug is as familiar to me as the scruffy patchwork quilt on my bed—the one I’ve slept with since I was three.

  “Of course I came! How could I not?” We walk over to the window, scoot two chairs together. “Well?” she says, leaning in close.

  “Well what?”

>   “Where is he?”She is whispering, but loudly, like she’s onstage.

  Cat Sweatshirt stares at us, popping her gum.

  “Shhh,” I say. “I don’t know. I think in Big Nick’s room, with everyone else.”

  “Well, what does he look like? Is he cute?”

  I tell her I don’t know; I didn’t get a good look. Anyway, there were three of them and they were all wearing hats. I couldn’t tell which was which.

  “What kind of hats?” Liv says.

  “Who cares?”

  “I do. A hat can say a lot about a person. Like if he’s wearing one of those puffy John Deere tractor caps he could be some right-wing nutjob, but if it’s just, like, a plain black stocking cap—”

  “Liv, I didn’t notice. OK? I was a little preoccupied with, you know, the whole my-dad-showing-up-out-of-nowhere thing.”

  She smiles. “You realize you just called him your dad.”

  “So what! I’m nervous! This whole thing is, like . . . insanity!”

  She nods. “I know.” She reaches into her back pocket for something. “I brought Altoids.”

  “I hate those things. They always sound like a good idea. Curiously Strong Peppermints. But then you eat one and it burns the taste buds right off your tongue.”

  “Just take it. It’ll distract you.”

  I stare at the little white pellet in my hand. “Liv?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Paul Tucci is in this building right now. My father is in this building right now.”

  “I know.”

  “What do I say? I mean, if I see him again.”

  “You say what you say, Josie.”

  “Right.”

  You say what you say.Of course. This is the perfect advice. So organic, so natural. You say what you say. . . . Right.

  While I am pondering this, Liv brings me hot cocoa from the nurses station. It tastes horrible, like chalk and battery acid, warmed to a nauseating fifty-five degrees.

  I thank her.

  She shrugs. “What can I say? It’s a Livaccino.”

  For the next hour and a half, every hair on my body is standing at alert. My ears perk every time someone walks down the hall. Whenever we hear a male voice, Liv sprints to the doorway, peeks out. Then she slinks back in. “Just a doctor,” she tells me. Or, “Just some dude with a mop.” Then, the fifth time: “Holy shite.”

  There is no question in my mind who is coming.

  I want to see him, but I don’t.

  I’m scared, but I’m not.

  Liv sprints to the coffee table, grabs two magazines, tosses one to me.

  As the Tuccis walk in, we both pretend we are reading.

  “Josie?” Mrs. Tucci says. “These are my sons.”

  I make myself look up, make my mouth crack open. “Hey.”

  Fifteen

  THERE’S NO WAY to tell this story and do it justice. No possible way. But that is what I’m trying to do right now—tell Riggs everything that happened today. Piece it all together for him. Over the phone. At 1:17 a.m.

  It’s a terrible hour to call someone, I know. I could have waited to see him at school. I could have e-mailed. But I didn’t think about that when I was lying in bed, reaching for my phone in the dark. I didn’t think at all; I just dialed. Anyway, even though he was asleep when he answered, he sounded glad I called. “Josie,” he says, so sweetly. “Jo-sie. Jo-sie.”

  “Matt.”

  “Josie.” His voice is thick with sleep. “How are you?”

  “Good. And . . . well, crazy. It was a crazy day.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “The beginning?”

  “Yeah. OK.”

  “Or wherever. Start wherever.”

  “It’s . . . OK, here are the CliffsNotes: I wake up, go to work, watch my grandfather go into cardiac arrest, call 911. Then, when we get to the ER, I meet my grandmother for the first time, even though she doesn’t know she’s my grandmother yet. Then, my father, who I’ve never even seen except in my mom’s high-school yearbook, shows up with his two brothers. They were all at their ski condo in Waterville Valley, see, when they got the call. That’s how they got here so—”

  “Josie.”

  “What?”

  “Is this fiction or nonfiction?”

  I laugh, a tiny croak. All I’ve told Riggs up until this point are the barest essentials about the Tuccis. I think how ludicrous everything must sound right now, how ludicrous it is.

  “Josie?”

  “Would you believe me if I told you I’m not exaggerating, not even for effect?”

  He breathes out. “Whoa.”

  “Right,” I say. “Whoa is right.”

  I close my eyes, lie back on the pillow, and cup the phone to my ear like it’s my lifeline—like the hot-water bottles my mom used to give me when I had an ear infection. I start again from the beginning: quietly, calmly, without leaving anything out.

  “Oh my God, Matt. You should have seen my mom’s face when she walked into the waiting room and they were all sitting there. Can you imagine, just running into him like that? And then, it’s not only him, it’s his whole family? And everyone’s looking from me to my mom to Paul to Jonathan. And Paul’s face? It went, like, completely white. I don’t know which of them looked worse. I honestly thought he was going to keel over. And then he’s like, ‘Katie?’ and she’s like, ‘Hello, Paul.’ You could have heard a pin drop in there, I swear to God.”

  I take a breath, pulling the phone away from my ear, replaying the scene in my head. I picture the stunned look on my mother’s face—the moment our eyes met, and the way she opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. I remember thinking, This is it. I could feel Liv’s hand, warm and strong against mine, as we waited for my mom to say something else.

  But nothing came.

  Instead, it was Paul who spoke. “Katie . . .” he said. “Is this . . . ?” He was gesturing to me. “Am I . . . ?”

  And my mom choked out one word: Yes.

  “Josie is your daughter!” Liv practically sang out the news, like she was announcing the big winner on Miss America.

  For a second, the waiting room was dead silent again, except for Mrs. Tucci’s sharp intake of breath. Then one of the Tucci brothers, Peter, mumbled, “Jesus Christ.” And the other brother, Patrick, said, “Well, it’s about time.”

  Patrick Tucci was slapping Paul Tucci on the back, grinning. He was not following the I-am-completely-shocked protocol. Which could only mean one thing: he already knew. Which was news to me.

  “Daughter?” Mrs. Tucci spoke slowly, enunciating both syllables. “What do you mean daughter?”

  And there, right in the middle of the ER waiting room, Paul Tucci said it: “Mom, this is my daughter, Josie.” And then, just in case there was any confusion, he cleared it up in the next breath. “Mine and Kate’s.”

  My daughter. Mine and Kate’s. . . .

  “Matt?” I say now. “Are you still awake?”

  “Yeah.”

  “God, Matt, what do you think was going through his head?”

  “Paul’s?”

  “Yeah. Meeting me—the kid who helped his dad, right? Then, like an hour later, my mom shows up. The girl he used to love. The girl he knocked up, you know? And suddenly, the kid who helped his dad isn’t just the kid who helped his dad, it’s his daughter. . . . I mean, what could he have been thinking , in that moment? What was going through his head?”

  “I don’t know,” Riggs says.

  “Well, yeah,” I say. “How could you?”

  “Want to know what’s going through my head?”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  I smile in the dark. “That’s sweet.”

  “You’re sweet.” He lowers his voice. “What are you wearing right now?”

  “What?”

  “Nightgown or PJs? . . . Something lacy?” He’s using his sexy voice—his hook-up voice. Suddenly,
all the sweetness has been sucked right out of this conversation.

  “Who cares what I’m wearing?”

  “I do,” he says. “I want to be able to picture you when you’re talking.”

  “I’m trying to tell you something important.”

  “And I’m trying to tell you something important,” he says, soft and teasing. “I can’t stop thinking about the other night. You, next to me . . .”

  “Matt.”

  “Your skin is amazing . . . so warm . . . I just want to—”

  “Matt, God! Is that all you can think about?”

  It’s clear to me now. Everything I’ve been saying for the past half hour—about my day, about my dad—has gone in one ear and out the other. Suddenly, I’m too mad to talk anymore.

  “Look,” I say. “I have to go.” I hang up without saying good-bye, without having to hear another word.

  I’m so mad, I’m hot all over. It takes me forever to fall asleep.

  When I wake up, I remember everything that happened yesterday—Paul Tucci, Matt, all of it—and a tidal wave of feeling crashes over me: disbelief, mixed with nausea.

  I find myself standing outside my mother’s door, knocking.

  “Come in,” she says.

  So I do.

  I expect to find her in a lump under the covers, because it’s so early. But she’s not. She’s sitting up in bed, her bangs in a clip, holding the Paul Tucci yearbook in her lap.

  “How did you sleep?” she asks.

  I shrug. “Not great.”

  “That makes two of us,” she says, casually sliding the yearbook off her lap, onto the side of the bed farthest from me.

  I raise my eyebrows, smirk.

  “What?” my mom says.

  “You don’t have to pretend you weren’t looking at his picture.”

  She waves a hand through the air, like it’s no big deal. It’s no big deal that the love of her life—the guy who dumped us for another girl—just showed up out of nowhere after sixteen years, finally admitting he’s my father.

  “Didn’t you want to just slap him in the face, right there in front of everyone?”