Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa

by OSTOW, MICOL

  “Um, thanks,” I say, my voice hoarse. “It was great having pizza.”

  Egad. It was great having pizza? You’d think I’d been raised by a nomadic tribe of tree dwellers. I cringe.

  “Yeah,” Ricky says, short, noncommittal. He doesn’t sound angry as such. Just deeply detached. It’s unsettling. “Glad you liked it.”

  I grab my door handle, click open the door. The rush of night air is a stark contrast to the climate-controlled environment of the car, but it’s welcome nonetheless. I think I’m choking. Siddhartha probably never had AC, I think wildly. Siddhartha. Almost forgot about him.

  This is the mental equivalent of babbling, this train of nonsensical thought. I gather myself, take a deep breath. I peek at Ricky through the corner of my eye. His gaze is focused; he stares directly forward, as though willing himself not to falter, not to cave and look my way. I realize: this moment is overwhelming and not in a good way, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. “See you soon,” I say, too softly for him to hear me clearly.

  I step out of the car, and it’s all I can do not to dart up the front steps. I pace myself, force myself very deliberately to walk like a normal person or as normal as I can be now that I’ve been possessed by the spirit of someone much, much spazzier than I. When I get to the front door, I grab at it, open it, step eagerly into the foyer. I fight the urge to glance back over my shoulder. Only after I’m inside do I collapse back against the door.

  I’m listlessly nursing a cup of lukewarm coffee the next morning when my mother comes into the kitchen. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she says, smiling. My mother has never been one to smile in the morning, not even under the best of circumstances. This is an interesting development. I must say that the island agrees with her.

  “Morning,” I mutter. I’m too preoccupied with running through the events of last night to make idle conversation.

  “You got in late last night,” she comments.

  “I didn’t realize I woke you. Sorry.”

  “You didn’t. Well, just for a minute. But it was no problem. Did you like the movie?”

  Suddenly I go blank, can’t even recall what movie we watched. Oh, right.

  “Uh, yeah,” I tell her. “It was . . . action-y.”

  “What are the movie theaters like here?”

  “Same as movie theaters back home,” I snap, surprising myself. What is up my butt? I am not one to talk to my mother that way.

  Fortunately, she chooses to ignore my minor temper tantrum. “I’m going to shower,” she says. “Rosa took the girls this morning.”

  “Cool,” I say, feeling guilty but unsure of how to go about apologizing. Sometimes I am such an ass. Not often, but sometimes. More and more lately, I guess.

  My mother exits the room without fanfare just as Lucy is entering. “Don’t you have work?” I ask.

  “I’m doing a later shift today,” she says. “¿Qué pasa? What did you say to your mother?”

  “Huh?”

  Lucy shrugs. “She looked upset.”

  Okay, so I wasn’t super-polite and perky at this semi-ungodly hour, first thing in the morning. But please. It’s not like I freaked out on my mother or anything. Lucy is totally overreacting. For a change.

  Of course, so am I. I’m totally having an internal tirade. More mental babbling. Perfecto.

  “It’s nothing,” I brat. Not that it’s any of Lucy’s business.

  “Sure, whatever,” she says.

  “What does that mean?” I ask, trying but failing somewhat to keep the edge from creeping into my voice. I’m overtired and apparently more than a little crabby and confused about the events of the previous night.

  “Nothing,” Lucy says. She adds under her breath but loud enough for me to hear, “Just that I wouldn’t expect you to care about someone else’s feelings.”

  My skin prickles; my blood boils, tingling in my veins. I hate, hate, hate conflict, would rather douse myself in hot oil than deal, but Lucy is pushing exactly the wrong buttons. She’s jealous, I know, of the fact that Ricky likes me. She’s pissed that I blew him off—though how she knows I blew him off, I have no idea. Either she’s making an incredibly lucky guess or they talked this morning. Either way, screw it. Screw her. Does she think this is easy for me? Any of this? That I wanted to hurt Ricky in any way?

  I haven’t been this furious in a good, long time.

  “What would you know about it?” I say. My voice is low, but my tone is unmistakable. “You’re so totally open-minded.” Not exactly fighting words, I know, but for me, it’s practically a physical assault. I’m shaking with nerves, rage, frustration.

  “You’re such a princess,” Lucy hisses. “Everything is easy for you.”

  “Right,” I say. I rise, somehow manage to deposit my coffee mug into the sink without shattering it into a thousand tiny porcelain shards the way that the fantasy me is dying to do, and storm out of the room. “You’re exactly right.”

  That second part I say in my head, naturally.

  Eleven

  My mother is still in the shower; I can hear the rush of water coming from the direction of the bathroom. Lucy has disappeared into her bedroom, and I have nothing to say to her right now anyway. Or at least nothing pleasant. In my head I’ve begun and abandoned several scathing diatribes that I know I’ll never have the guts to speak out loud.

  We decide to visit El Yunque for the afternoon, the rain forest. We drive the two hours, watching through the windshield as the landscape evolves from desolate strip malls to rickety low-income housing and finally to twisting, winding roads leading into lush, leafy mountains. The car winds up a hill, slow and steep.

  We watch a little filmstrip in the visitor center. (“The coquí is a small amphibian that inhabits El Yunque; you can hear its cry if you listen closely.”) Then we decide to hike.

  I must confess, I am not much for the physical activity. Back home I am occasionally talked into a half hour on the elliptical machine when Isabelle is facing an “obesity crisis.” But left to my own devices, I’m very sedentary. I huff as we make our way up the craggy inclines of the hiking path.

  “Are you sure this is the easy trail?” I gasp, weary.

  “Emily!” my mother exclaims. “It’s only been twenty minutes. Besides, I’m the smoker.”

  “Not today,” I point out.

  “And I think, soon, not anymore.” She smiles. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  I stumble, regain my footing. She reaches out, touches my elbow as if to steady me. It’s a beat too late, but it feels good anyway.

  “It is nice,” I agree.

  She points over the railing, over a ravine. All manner of trees poke, prod, and lean, as if the rain forest could come alive at any moment. She taps the edge of a bumpy, squashed-looking plant. “It’s breadfruit,” she says.

  “Someone was paying attention to the filmstrip.”

  “You do realize that this is my home, don’t you?” my mother asks.

  I do. I stare at her for a moment. I do, and I don’t.

  “We should have brought our bathing suits,” she muses. “We could have gone in. There’s a waterfall at the topmost peak of the rain forest.”

  I’ve seen pictures. Supposedly it’s breathtaking. But I don’t know what my mother is thinking; I, for one, am not sorry about “forgetting” our suits. In addition to avoiding strenuous activity, I’m also not one for getting my hair wet when styling products are not close at hand.

  When we come home, I’m in an inexplicably good mood. I decide to try Noah.

  I had a good day. It’d be nice to tell him about it, I think.

  Miraculously, he picks up on the second ring.

  “Noah!” I forget my promise to myself to play it cool; it’s been over three weeks since I’ve heard his voice live and in concert. I’m delirious, geeky, and heady with excitement. God, I’m such a dork. Yesterday I wasn’t even sure if I really liked him.

  “Hello?” He sounds confused, sleepy.<
br />
  “Noah, it’s me,” I say, determined to miss the confusion in his voice. Noah was never really one for catching the worm, if I recall correctly. But it’s 4 p.m. Maybe he was taking a mid-afternoon nap? A late-afternoon nap?

  “Babe! How is it down there?” His voice still sounds fuzzy and thick with sleep, but at least some recognition is in there, I realize, breathing hard.

  “Hot,” I say, illogically. “It’s hot down here. But in a good way. I mean, there’s not too much humidity. Good hair and stuff.” Dear Lord. What the hell am I talking about? “So,” I continue, speaking too quickly, “how are things? What’s new up there?”

  “Aw, the usual,” he says. “You missed a good party last weekend. Shana’s house.”

  Shana Rivers is tall, redheaded, thin. A cheerleader. A party at her house is considered a big-time thing. It’s not great news that I missed it, worse news that Noah went without me. Not that I blame him. What was he supposed to do, sit at home and stare at my pictures? There’s an interesting mental image.

  Anyway, he’s not the cheating type. I don’t think. It dawns on me: neither am I. But just barely, apparently.

  I wouldn’t have thought that before now. That he would cheat, I mean. Or that I would. I wouldn’t have thought anything like that before I up and left for an entire summer, without any level of clarity whatsoever.

  But I have no one but myself to blame. And besides, I’m the one who almost sort-of kissed someone else last night.

  “I’m glad you had fun,” I tell him.

  “It would have been more fun if you’d been there.”

  And there it is. The reassurance I’ve been looking for. It’s not exactly poetry, yet it’s real. I heard it. The question is, is it enough?

  “I know,” I tell him.

  Speaking of too little, too late . . .

  “Your brother said you were coming home.”

  “He did?” I yelp.

  Aw, man. Screw Max. I mean, unless he was really speaking out of wishful thinking, in which case, I guess that’s cute and sweet and sort of sad.

  “Um, well, it was a thought. But . . .”

  “You were going to come home for his birthday.”

  “It was just an idea that my dad had,” I hedge. “But it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean”—I’m grasping—“to fly home on Wednesday for his birthday on Thursday, then to come back Saturday for the rest of the summer?”

  “Yeah?”

  He’s not making this any easier. I think he’s offended by the idea that it wasn’t worth coming home to see him. I get it; I’d be offended if the tables were turned.

  “Well, that’s a lot of money for a quick little getaway, don’t you think?”

  “Since when do you care about your parents’ money?” he asks. As though I’m some sort of over-privileged refugee from The OC. Come to think of it, I really should introduce Noah to Lucy. The two of them could have a long conversation about my perceived shortcomings. And what with the way she’s been fighting with Rafael . . .

  “Well, it’s not just that,” I backpedal, for some reason incapable of even disagreeing with Noah when I’m sure he’s being unreasonable. “My mom really needs me.”

  This is categorically Not True. If my mother needed me down here a few weeks ago, these days she’s much stronger. She’s gone from a pack a day to two cigarettes a day, and if I had to guess, I’d say she’s about a week away from being down to one a day. It’s reassuring. Whatever it was that she was looking for down here, it looks like she is finding it. She’s the one who wanted to plunge headfirst into the waterfall, after all.

  Meanwhile, my relationship with my boyfriend is disintegrating before my very eyes (or, at least, before my very cellular connection), and I’ve pissed off one of the few people down here who seems to genuinely like me. And—oh, yeah—I’ve pissed off Lucy too. Not that it was such a difficult task, but still.

  “Huh,” Noah grunts noncommittally. It’s uninspiring. And—actually—a little bit annoying.

  I try to change the subject. “My cousin Lucy has been really weird. Well, weirder than usual, anyway, these past few days. I guess mostly she was hostile before. The weirdness is something altogether new.”

  “I thought she was the unfriendly one anyway,” Noah fills in.

  “Oh. I told you about that?” I ask. Have I talked to Noah since I’ve been in Puerto Rico? I don’t remember it. Have I had some kind of mini-stroke?

  “No, Ade mentioned it,” Noah says. “She said that you told her.”

  Right, Ade. Right.

  “Have you spoken to them?” I ask. He knows exactly who “they” are, in this context.

  “Not lately. I’ve been, you know, mostly busy with stuff around here.”

  “Well, out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Shana Rivers’s parties and whatever,” I say—or try to say—lightly. I’m kidding, but it’s an opening for Noah. An opening that he does not take.

  “Yeah.” He laughs, a heartier laugh than I’m comfortable with. After a beat it dies down; he coughs, sniffs, clears his throat. “Anyway, what time is it down there?”

  I’m illogically irked. “Um, there’s, you know, no time difference.” Four p.m. is a perfectly acceptable time to call one’s maybe, sort-of-still boyfriend, isn’t it? And why is he so concerned with the time? He hasn’t spoken to me in weeks. If he isn’t going to display exuberance, at least he could try to avoid outright impatience. Maybe Shana Rivers is waiting for him, I think. It’s not a fair thought, but it’s in and out of my head before I even have a chance to really process it.

  “Right. Well, I’ve got . . . soccer . . . in an hour, so I’d better go take a shower.”

  Take a shower before soccer? Right.

  “Cool, have fun,” I chirp, forcing myself to stay upbeat. I am not irked by my boyfriend. I am not irked by my boyfriend. I am not irked by my boyfriend.

  That is, if he even is still my boyfriend. Or if I still want him to be.

  “Well, I should be home in a couple of weeks,” I finish, still with the desperate, slightly crazed attempt to sound breezy. “See you then?” Do I even want to see him then? All things considered?

  “Definitely, babe,” he says, and hangs up the phone. And just like that, our conversation is over.

  Either my mother is still in the shower, or she’s come out and is now off doing something else entirely. Our room is empty when I come back to it, though I notice that the bed has been made up nicer than in a hotel. Hospital corners and everything. Mom does love to be tidy. I wish more of that would rub off on me. Fitted sheets are my enemy.

  I step outside for some fresh air. There’s nothing going on out here either, just Pilar and Marisa playing house. They’ve done up an old tree stump to look like a dinner table. Obviously Pilar is practicing to take over for me when my mother and I go back to New York.

  Marisa is humming under her breath but stops when she sees me. “You look sad,” she says, and not for the first time, I curse her perceptiveness. The mouths of babes, yadda yadda . . .

  “I had a fight with my boyfriend,” I say. “Sort of.”

  Her forehead scrunches up in surprise. “You have a boyfriend?”

  “Yeah,” I say, not sure why this is cause for such utter confusion and disbelief. “Sort of.”

  “Oh,” she says, as if she actually couldn’t care less. “It’s just I thought you liked Ricky.”

  Oh. Right. That.

  I flip my phone shut, toss it into my regular daytime tote bag. I contemplate clearing the call log so as to remove the temptation to obsess over my failed communication with Noah, but it’s not worth the effort. Besides, I’ll probably obsess either way.

  I wonder what’s on the schedule for this evening. I’m sure nothing groundbreaking, more of the same, but inexplicably, I’m in the mood for some sightseeing. I think there’s a fort somewhere in Old San Juan that we still haven’t visited. It’s a gorgeous night, por supuesto. Warm and breezy. Could be just th
e thing. I have a hankering to buy cheap beaded earrings from a local girl selling from a cart on the side of the road, and Old San Juan has no shortage of those: earrings, carts, girls, forts. You name it, I’m game. Which is a fairly new—and welcome—sensation.

  I head to the bathroom feeling oddly refreshed, hearing the shower run, turn the doorknob. My mother won’t mind me talking to her while she finishes up; it’s something we do all the time at home during the whole chaotic morning crush. Come to think of it, it’s sort of strange that we never do it here. I guess we really have settled into a new routine. I barge into the bathroom. “Ma, do you think we could—”

  I stop abruptly. It’s not my mother in the bathroom; it’s Lucy. And while the shower is running, she herself is crouched over the toilet, leaning so far into her cell phone that I think she’s going to swallow it. The look on her face is thunderous. I have no idea who she’s talking to, of course, but she’s having trouble getting a word in edgewise. And she is clearly not happy about it.

  “Ay, no, pero—”

  “Creo que—”

  “No sé for certain, pero—”

  “¡Mira, creo que estoy embarazada!”

  I cough, trip, stumble forward against the door. She looks up, startled. “Get out of here!” she hisses, waving her free hand at me impatiently.

  Once I’ve got my footing again, I do. I stagger backward and pull the door shut closed behind me, breathing heavily. I’m stunned. I’m not sure which is the more shocking news: that I understood all of Lucy’s one-sided conversation or the content of the conversation itself. It’s really a toss-up. And for the umpteenth time since I’ve arrived in Puerto Rico, I’ve got a problem that I have literally less than no idea how to deal with. Never mind that the problem is actually Lucy’s.

  Lucy thinks she may be pregnant.

  Twelve

  Lucy is pregnant.

  Or she thinks she is, and she doesn’t strike me as the hysterical, drama-queen type. I mean, sure, she loves to go all Mean Girls on me, but I don’t think . . . Well, I saw the look on her face just now. It was only for an instant, but there was no mistaking her expression. She definitely thinks there is reason to be worried. Which is, if you ask me, almost as bad as whether or not she really is pregnant.