Apartment 1986

by Lisa Papademetriou

  Plus, the woman behind the counter is frowning at me and my head starts to throb because I think maybe she can tell that I am skipping school because I am still wearing my uniform after all, but I decide that if she asks I will tell her that I am doing an independent study project and I am fully and completely supposed to be here.

  Uggggh. Now I’m next in line. I turn to the kid behind me and say, “I can’t find my wallet.”

  “Well, I didn’t take it.” He’s kinda huffy.

  “No, no—I just . . . I didn’t mean that.” I really didn’t mean it. But now I’m maybe suspicious. He is about my age—maybe a little older—and what is he doing here? Maybe he is skipping school, too, and is a hooligan. But then I realize that probably hooligans do not go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or do they? Because, like I always say, you can’t judge a book just by the shelf it’s on.

  He is giving me this look like I’m something dusty and sticky, like a raisin stuck to the bottom of a backpack, and it makes me nervous.

  “I just can’t find it,” I say. “It should be in here.” Then I giggle, but the kid doesn’t smile. Like, at all.

  “Why are you telling me?” he asks. He isn’t tall—I can tell that I’m at least two inches taller than he is—but something about him makes him seem . . . like a tall person. And he has these really, really dark eyes that don’t quite meet mine and are just a little bit scary. Not psycho scary. Just, like, in the way principals are scary, or rock stars, or, like, Santa when you’re a little kid.

  “I just mentioned it because you’re, like, behind me in line?”

  “And I had motive and opportunity?”

  “Um, what? Is this, like, an episode of Law & Order?”

  “More like disorder,” he says, eyeing my bag.

  “Just—the point is—just go ahead.” I wave toward the counter, like, go, go, shoo, then I dip my hand into the bag.

  He hesitates, and just in that moment, my fingers wrap around a familiar shape. “Yay!” I say, pulling out the wallet and holding it up.

  “You found it,” he says. His voice is flat.

  I’m happy and relieved and then I feel badly all of a sudden because I realize that this kid was innocent all along and even though I never actually suspected him, not really, I feel bad for the nanoseconds in which I did, totally, suspect him.

  I decide to try to salvage this awkward moment.

  “So listen,” I say to the guy. “My family has a membership. It’s a plus one. I can get you in free.”

  “Because I look like someone who can’t afford to get into the museum?” he demands, and I’m like, whaaaaa? I am literally speechless, and then he says, “The museum is free, anyway. It’s pay-whatever-you-want.”

  I roll my eyes. Yeah, it’s pay-whatever-you-want, but they have these signs all over the place with their “suggested donations” in big letters, that are basically designed to make you feel like a jerk if you don’t pay them. So I was either going to save this guy some cash or save him some embarrassment, but clearly he doesn’t care, either way. “Okay, whatever. Forget it.”

  “I’ll try.”

  And I slap the membership card down on the counter and the woman gives me a little sticker and I tell her, “I am doing an independent study project,” and walk off without looking behind me.

  I head straight for the Temple of Dendur because there is something about ancient Egypt that really feels special to me. I think I must have been an Egyptian queen or princess or something in a past life, even though I do not believe in reincarnation. Because of math. I mean, there are seven billion people on the planet, and there used to be way less, so if reincarnation were real wouldn’t the population be more or less, like, even?

  The Temple of Dendur, if you haven’t been there, is a really beautiful place. It is on the side of the museum, and one wall is nothing but windows looking out onto Central Park. The buildings are sand-colored, and there is a line of enormous and serious-looking lion goddesses who watch everything very calmly. Light comes pouring in, even on a cloudy day, and you can sort of feel the sun and think about Egypt under a wide, wide sky. And sometimes you can see kids playing or families walking past the windows, enjoying themselves in the park. Grandma Hildy used to bring me here all the time when I was younger, whenever I would have an overnight at her apartment. So when we moved to the Upper East Side I asked Daddy if we could get a family membership to the museum, and of course he said yes because he likes things that are educational and classy, which the Met definitely is.

  So, actually, I come to the Temple of Dendur pretty often. It’s usually very quiet, and I like that you can go into the temple and see all of the graffiti that ancient Romans carved on it, which just goes to show that people never change. I took a very nice selfie in there, once.

  I’m feeling kind of happy and reckless because I’ve never skipped school before and I’m getting away with it. I have a sudden urge to tell the small knot of German tourists near me that I am skipping school, and yay for me, but I am afraid that they might actually speak English, and then what would happen? I don’t want to get arrested. So I decide to just enjoy my secret and the Temple. I kind of wish I had someone to share this with, but that just makes me think of Anna, so I close my eyes and Keep It Happy! for all I’m worth.

  After I’ve soaked up some of the peacefulness of that place, I head back into the main Egyptian collection, which I also like. Egyptians had excellent taste in jewelry and gold things, which I also have, and which is kind of incredible considering how hard it was to make things back then. Like, they had to do smelting, which is a word that I know but do not really understand, now that I think about it.

  I even like the mummies and the sarcophagi and the canopic jars, which are actually jars that they put dead people’s organs in, true fact. The Egyptians thought a lot about death, and spent a lot of time getting ready for it, which I do not like thinking about but still find interesting. They did not believe in reincarnation. They believed in building giant pyramids and burying all of your stuff along with you. Which is a philosophy that I think Althea Orris could get behind.

  Anyway, I am standing near my favorite sarcophagus when I hear someone muttering to himself. It’s that kid. The guy from the line, the grouchy one. He’s holding up his phone and whispering into it while staring intently at a small blue icon. I know the little statue—I actually happen to love it—and I happen to know that it is called Winged Nut, which makes me giggle because you can’t help giggling when something is titled Winged Nut, even if you know that Nut is the Egyptian goddess of the sky.

  He stops and looks over at me, only sort of above my head and over my shoulder. I am just about to say Winged Nut, and giggle more, but I feel like he is deliberately ignoring me, so I turn away and head out.

  I’m going to the other end of the museum. Another floor. Grouchy Boy can have the Egyptians for a while. I’ll come back later, when hopefully he’ll be done with them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Where I keep a secret and maybe discover one, too

  THE MINUTE I WALK back into Grandma Hildy’s apartment I can tell she’s home. The air has changed. I can’t really explain it, but before the space was still, and quiet, and now it’s just, like, a place that someone has been moving through. The energy is different, and my grandmother’s perfume hangs there.

  Also, she is sitting on the couch reading a magazine, so . . . that.

  “Hi, Gran.”

  “Callie! This is a nice surprise!” She always says that, even though I drop by at least three times a week. “How was school?”

  “The usual,” I say, which I assume is true. I feel a little bad about hiding stuff from my grandmother, but mostly I’m just sad that I can’t tell her about the interesting things I discovered in the Met’s Persian collection, which I had not looked at before today, and which I had also never known was the same as Iran, so that was very educational right there. And I can’t tell her about the amazing painting I saw by
Kay Sage—it’s called Tomorrow Is Never, and looks like these falling-down towers, or maybe they’re under construction, rising out of some misty water. And I can’t even tell her my new saying (If you’re having an off day, take a day off!), because I can’t really have her knowing that I skipped school. That’s sad, because I think that she might just be a little proud of me—especially since I went to her favorite museum—but she would also tell my parents about it, so that is out.

  “How was tennis?” I ask instead. She is wearing her whites and her lucky gold bracelet, which is bright against her tan skin. Grandma Hildy is in good shape and her personal motto is, “Don’t go gray—go blond.” She always wears this pale shade of brown lipstick and a dab of Happy perfume, but she still looks like a grandma. To me, at least, if not to that guy on the street who called her a silver fox last week. It’s a little embarrassing to walk around with your grandma and have her get catcalled. “What was the score?”

  “Four to six, six to four, six to love.” She smiles. “If I don’t let Anita win one, she gets cranky. Are you hungry? Do you need a snack?” Grandma Hildy worries a lot about people not eating enough, and also about people eating too much. I think people in her generation thought about food a lot. “Would you like some kourabiedes?”

  “Of course!” I say, because I love anything covered in powdered sugar, especially almond cookies, and we head into the kitchen, where Biddy is lounging in the windowsill. I give her a little scritch-scritch behind the ears, and she sticks her head way out, her eyes closed like ahhhh, as my grandmother flips the tape in her cassette player. I told you she likes antiques.

  “Don’t give her any treats,” Gran says, and I give her this horrified, innocent look and say, “Me? Never!”

  “I can’t figure out why she isn’t losing any weight.”

  “Maybe she has, like, a thyroid problem?” And then, thank goodness, the doorbell rings.

  Which never happens in New York City, so this is a miracle.

  Grandma Hildy goes to answer it and I trail behind her and out in the hall is a tall, leathery man with a silver moustache and a bald head. “You forgot something,” he says to Grandma Hildy and holds out her favorite pink fleece and she blushes and says thank you and I’m like, hm.

  He cocks his head for a moment, listening, and then says, “You’re playing the tape!” which makes me realize, aha! The cassette in the plant was from this guy!

  Grandma Hildy laughs. “I guess you’re making me nostalgic.”

  “That’s what I do.” Then he spots me and says, “Hello there, I’m Earl!” His whole face crinkles with smile lines, even his forehead.

  “I’m Callie.”

  “My granddaughter,” Grandma Hildy explains.

  “Nice to meet you, Callie,” Earl says. Then he peeks out from under his dark eyebrows, gives me a wink, smiles at Gran, and says, “See you later!” before giving a wave and taking off down the hall. “Don’t forget about what I asked you!”

  “I won’t,” Gran says. Still smiling, she looks down at the fleece in her hand. Then we spill back into the apartment, and she drapes it over the back of the chair and pauses for a moment, as if she’s thinking of something. And then she heads back toward the kitchen without saying a word.

  So now I am getting a little idea, and I ask, “Where were you this morning?”

  Gran looks at me, her brown eyes sharp. “Why?”

  “I dropped by before school.”

  “Oh, well. I was with Earl.” And she smiles in this strange mysterious way that kind of reminds me of the time that Desmond stole Mom’s eyeshadow and gave himself a makeover. He was three years old then, and when I found him in the bathroom, he smiled at me in just exactly that same way and said, “Do you like my glamour?” like he wanted me to see what he had been doing, but also wanted to be casual, like green eyeshadow was something he smeared on his forehead every day.

  “That same Earl?” I ask, as though we are falling over Earls in our day-to-day.

  “Yes, Mr. Johnson. He lives downstairs.” And then that little smile again.

  “I’ve never met him.”

  Grandma Hildy lifts her eyebrows. “I don’t introduce you to all of my friends, Calliope.” She laughs and puts two sugary almond cookies on a plate and I go and sit down at her pretty round oak table in the dining room just beyond the kitchen. She hands me a blue linen napkin and sits down beside me. In some ways, Gran is an old-school ladylike lady. She is a major cook and baker and always wears a dress or maybe “slacks” and she actually gets her hair “done” once a week.

  Even though her theme song is “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” my gran’s idea of fun is flower arranging and collecting antiques and playing tennis and leading tours at the Met and keeping everything tidy and sparkling clean and her kitchen full of treats, so her apartment is a very nice place to visit.

  Grandma Hildy has got it together, is what I am saying.

  “So—Mr. Johnson is . . . your friend?” Interesting. My grandfather has been dead for ten years, but Grandma Hildy has never had a boyfriend.

  “Yes.” She sips her seltzer delicately, and I know I’m not going to get any more information. This is just exactly how Min is when she talks about a boy she’s into. She’ll mention him five zillion times, but when you’re like, So, Min, what’s up, do you like him?, she’s like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and giggles and changes the subject.

  So there’s my pretty Gran, smiling and drinking a glass of seltzer with a slice of lime, fat with bubbles, floating in it, and I realize something mighty interesting, which is that Gran seems happy and maybe just maybe she is in love with a bald guy who puts 1980s music on tapes. Maybe he is her boyfriend!

  It is a funny feeling to maybe kind of know a secret about your grandmother when everybody knows that grandmothers are not supposed to have love lives. It makes me feel happy, in a silly way, like one of the bubbles that is floating up through her seltzer, because I love my grandmother and I want her to be happy.

  And it turns out, not all secrets are bad.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In which our heroine (still me) remembers that most secrets are bad

  WHEN I GET TO my brother’s school, he is already waiting for me at the gate with his backpack on, although he is not allowed to leave until I sign him out. His eyes look red and puffy, and he stares straight ahead and I touch him on the shoulder and say, “Are you okay, Des?” but he twists away from me and doesn’t say anything. Hm. My little brother is usually happy to see me when I pick him up on Mondays and burbling over with news like one of those baking soda volcanoes we made in third grade. So this is very unusual.

  I figure that I had better sign Des out in a hurry, but I run into Rosario, and she tells me that her son, Felipe, just won a huge scholarship and is going to Hunter College in the fall and she is so proud and I am so happy because Rosario is the nicest person in the world and also kind of broke (because being a nanny to twin six-year-olds doesn’t pay what it should) and so of course I have to hug her and hear all about it. So then I wave good-bye to Max and Jack and David and Simon L. and Simon Y. and the three Sophies and Zephyr and all the rest of the kids in Desmond’s class who are also in the after-school Funzone Program, and I wave good-bye to the teachers and finally we are on our way, holding hands as we walk up Park Avenue.

  We are quiet for a few minutes, and I point out some yellow tulips that sprout by a tree near the curb. Des sighs a tiny sigh, so I know the flowers have made him feel a little better. The median is also planted with blooming tulips and the trees are nice and green, and we stand still and look at it for a few minutes as the traffic rushes past, because if flowers can’t make you feel better, then things really are hopeless. Then a man with a pug puppy walks past, but the puppy is interested in Desmond’s shoe, and if there is anything cuter in the world than a pug puppy I would like to see it, and Desmond bends to pet the puppy and the man says, “I’m trying to train him not to be afraid of kids, woul
d you please give him this little treat?” and so Desmond takes the treat and gives it to the puppy and then the pug puppy is his best friend, and Desmond actually laughs, and who says that people in New York City aren’t nice? Here we are, enjoying nature and flowers and puppies and Desmond’s mood lifts like fog that is burning off once the sun comes out, and then we say good-bye to the man and the puppy and start back on our way, and Desmond is lighter, I can feel it in the way he is walking.

  We take another ten steps, and Desmond says suddenly, “I hate Simon.”

  “He’s one of your best friends! What happened?”

  “Not that Simon. The other one.”

  “Oh. What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s a big, dumb bully! And he’s stupid!” He spits the word, which is a word that our mother does not like for him to say. “Stupid Simon!”

  I am confused again. “Are we talking about Simon Y.? The little Asian kid?”

  “He isn’t small. He’s taller than I am,” Desmond points out.

  “True,” I admit. Des is the shortest in the class because he skipped a grade, and being tall is relative. “What did he do?”

  Desmond holds up his lunch bag, which now has a hole in it. I gasp. “He tore a hole in Sparkle Pie?” I am horrified. Desmond loves his Rainbow Puppies lunch bag. That show is basically his favorite thing on this planet, and Sparkle Pie is his idol.

  “So then I called him a canker blossom, and he called me a loser.”

  I groan. “Why did Mom take you to that performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” My brother has been using Shakespearean insults since last July, and I must say that they are shockingly effective, mostly because it’s hard to know exactly what they mean. Like that: “canker blossom.” How do you respond to that?

  “Why would Simon even care about your lunch bag?”

  “Because he is a stupid bully,” Desmond says. “And now my lunch bag is ruined.”