So Lyrical

by Trish Cook

  “Sorry about that,” Sully said, mopping up the spill with one of Mrs. M.’s crisp white napkins. And to think, just a second ago it had been folded into the shape of a swan.

  Aunt Rose continued on, oblivious to the scene she’d just created. “Next year, I hope to be grateful my husband has finally filled his Viagra prescription.”

  “I don’t need any pills to get revved up,” Uncle Mario grumbled. Then he patted his stomach and said, “I myself am thankful my gas has subsided for the time being. And next year, I hope to be grateful you haven’t poisoned me with bad calamari like you did this year.” He looked at Rose with daggers in his eyes.

  “I didn’t do any such thing, Mario,” Rose said, her voice going up a few octaves.

  “Break it up, break it up,” said Mrs. Maldonati, motioning for quiet. “Bebe, you’re next.”

  “I’m grateful I finally met a nice guy,” Bebe said, blushing.

  “You did?” said Brina. “That’s awesome, Bebe. Who is he?”

  “He’s—” Bebe started to say.

  “He’s nobody you know,” I said at the same time, praying Bebe would move on. She didn’t.

  “I thought maybe Brina would have known him since he works—”

  “Really hard,” I finished Bebe’s sentence before she had a chance to. “In fact, he’s a total workaholic,” I explained to Brina.

  Bebe looked at me like I’d gone off the deep end. “He told me he’s done every day by four thirty,” she said.

  “Yeah, but what you didn’t realize is that he gets there at six a.m.,” I told her.

  “How would you know?” Bebe asked me. Most days I’m still in total REM at that time of the morning.

  “I’ve seen him.”

  “At six in the morning? Since when do you get to s—?” Bebe started to ask.

  “Ssssss-tarbucks?” I said before Bebe could utter the word “school.” “I go early every Tuesday and Thursday before trig tutoring.”

  “So your new boyfriend’s a barista at Starbucks?” Brina asked Bebe. “Which one? Don’t tell me. The dark, mysterious guy with the soul patch, right?”

  “No. He’s—”

  I interrupted her again. “Why don’t you just keep it under wraps for now, Bebe?” I said. “You don’t want to jinx it or anything.” I knew she’d agree to that line of reasoning, because the last time she’d talked about how much she’d liked a guy after their first date was the last time she’d ever seen him.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’ll just move on to next year’s wish, which is—”

  Aunt Rose was the one who interrupted Bebe this time. “Wish for a ring!” she slurred drunkenly.

  “Not just a ring,” Grandma Ina piped in. “Wish for a wedding.” She turned to Grandpa and said in a stage whisper. “Belinda never did marry, you know.”

  “OK, fine,” Bebe said, still smiling. “Whatever you say.” I wondered if she was really falling for Mr. Perry.

  “Moving right along,” Mrs. M. said. “It’s your turn, Sully.”

  “I am grateful for the Dead,” Sully said. We kids all cracked up. Upstairs, we’d been flip-flopping between retro stuff and new tunes. Sully was referring to the last song we’d listened to before dinner: “Hell in a Bucket” by the Grateful Dead. “No, really, I’m thankful you invited me here for Thanksgiving, because the alternative was going to Milwaukee to watch my brother’s basketball tournament,” he said. “And next year, I’ll be grateful my nose is no longer the size of a football.”

  “He’s grateful for dead people? Do you think he’s one of those devil worshippers?” Rose asked Mario. “Maybe that’s why he doesn’t comb his hair.”

  “They’re called dreadlocks, Aunt Rose,” Brina explained.

  “You can fix whatever the hell they are with some shampoo and a good comb,” Grandpa muttered.

  I was next in line. I’d been dreading this moment since the game was announced. It reminded me too much of being onstage. “I am thankful to have all you wonderful people in my life,” I said. “And next year, I hope to have another rockin’ person in my life. My dad.”

  Brina gasped, knowing I’d just stuck a knife in Bebe’s heart in front of a tableful of witnesses. And Bebe just sat there, not moving a muscle. She was either too shocked, sad, or really freakin’ angry to do anything.

  Grandma Ina put her two cents in this time. “Poor thing is fatherless,” she told Grandpa.

  “That’s enough!” yelled Mrs. Maldonati. “On second thought, let’s eat now. The food is getting cold. We’ll finish this up later.”

  Bebe and I left the Maldonatis’ loaded down with leftovers. I hugged the big wads of tinfoil to my chest, trying to warm up as we walked the ten long blocks home. Hoofing it had seemed like such a good idea when we thought of it in the morning, and it certainly seemed to have exhilarated Bebe on her little jaunt home to get the poetry book. Now, arms and stomachs full of food, it just seemed seriously misguided.

  Bebe still hadn’t said a word to me since the “grateful” game. I knew I had pushed things a step too far, and I also knew I should probably apologize. But seeing as I was too stuffed to eat even my words, we kept walking in silence.

  “It’s not like I haven’t given you roots,” Bebe finally said after the third block. “That’s why we’ve never moved, why you’ve known the same people your whole life.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I appreciate that, but—”

  “But nothing,” she interrupted. “Your dad isn’t part of our lives, and he hasn’t been for eighteen years now.”

  I scrunched down farther into my coat. The tinfoil package with the stuffing in it plopped to the ground. “If you won’t tell me who he is, can’t you at least tell me something about him?” I asked her, scooping it back up.

  Bebe sighed. “OK. Here goes. Your dad was all that and a bag of chips—talented, hot, smart, wildly popular. He saw something special in me that all the other girls who chased him around couldn’t offer. The rest is history.”

  “So what went wrong?” I asked her. The leaves covering the sidewalk made a crunch, crunch, crunching noise as we walked.

  “We were young,” she said, shaking her head. “I guess it just didn’t seem like the right time to be pinned down.”

  Now it was my turn to sigh. “I could understand that if it wasn’t for one little thing. You were pregnant. If there’s any time to be pinned down, it’s when you’re having a baby together.”

  “Trace, I know it seems confusing, but somehow it made sense back then,” she said. “And besides, I have no regrets. I have everything I could ever wish for—a great daughter, a great career. . . .”

  “The only thing missing is a great relationship, right, Bebe?”

  Silence except for the loud leaves. “Mr. Perry seems pretty great,” she finally said. “I think I could end up really liking him, Trace.”

  “But can you imagine loving him?” I asked, afraid of the answer. The thought of having Mr. Perry as a permanent fixture in our lives was just too weird, especially if he was the one writing my best friend secret love notes. Talk about sticky situations.

  “I can’t imagine loving anyone as much as I loved your dad.”

  “Was his name Steve, too?” I asked quickly, trying to trip her up. It always worked for me in Simon Says. “Or maybe Bruce?”

  “I’m not falling for that one, Trace.”

  “It was worth a try.”

  “Anyway, it looks like you have company,” Bebe told me, nodding toward Zander, who was sitting on our front doorstep with his tie undone and dress shirt rolled up to his elbows.

  “Aren’t holidays a bitch?” Bebe asked him as she unlocked the door.

  “You have no idea,” Zander told her. “The Ritz-Carlton is no picnic on Thanksgiving.”

  “You poor, deprived baby.”

  “C’mon in,” I said, pulling Zander to his feet. “I’m sure we can get over the trauma of it together.”

  “Night guys,” Be
be said, retreating to her room to leave us alone.

  Zander and I headed for the library, where I told him the very limited scoop I’d dragged out of Bebe. The most significant clue, I thought, was the “all the other girls who chased him around.” If that didn’t make it sound like my dad was a rock star, I don’t know what did.

  “That’s great, baby. One step at a time.” He put his arms around me and said, “You know what?”

  “No, what?”

  “I’m still hungry.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “For you.”

  “Yum.”

  “I’m going to eat you all up,” he said, growling and pretending he was getting ready to pounce on me.

  “Will you two keep it down?” Bebe called from upstairs. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “I will not keep it down,” I said quietly, grabbing Zander’s cheeks—not the ones on his face—and pulling him close. “I have every intention of keeping things up.”

  “Now, that sounds like a plan,” he said, pushing me up against the wall and burying his face in my neck.

  I’ve heard that kissing burns a lot of calories. If that’s the case, I must have worked off my entire Thanksgiving meal over the next hour.

  Later, when we were just lying on the couch wrapped in the yellow afghan my grandmother had made me a few years back, I asked Zander, “Would your parents let you take off for a couple of days during Christmas break?”

  He propped himself up on his elbow. “That depends on where I was going and who I was going with,” he said. “What’d you have in mind?”

  “Me. And the East Coast. Maybe we can shake some skeletons out of the closet together,” I said. “Bebe’s closet, that is.”

  “Where would we stay?”

  “At my grandparents’ house, at the Jersey Shore. That’s where all my mom’s stuff from high school is. Maybe we’ll find an old letter . . . or phone number . . . or, I don’t know, something that will lead us in the right direction.”

  “Your grandparents would let you have a boy sleep over?”

  “Well, not in the same room or anything. But otherwise? Sure.”

  “Sounds great. Like a romantic vacation for two,” he said. “Or should I say four? Me and you, plus your grandparents.”

  I winced. “Did I mention Brina really wants to come? I could tell her no. . . .”

  “Who am I to break up a great friendship?” Zander said, laughing.

  “And anyway, I think it’ll be fun to watch her self-combust when we go out.”

  “It can be pretty amusing,” I said. “If nothing else, she’ll certainly be an interesting fifth wheel.”

  Zander nodded. “Trace, there’s something I haven’t been able to get out of my head the past couple of days.”

  “I know,” I groaned. “Me, too. I’m so sorry Bebe played ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ twice last time you were here.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that, but now that you mention it . . .” Zander laughed, starting to sing the mind-numbingly inane chorus.

  “Don’t get me started,” I told him. “If you’ll believe this, when I was little, I thought it went, ‘Wipe a booger on me.’ ”

  “I have absolutely no problem believing that,” Zander said, pulling me close again. “The thing I really can’t get out of my head is your list. I keep thinking that with everything we know right now, Mr. Springsteen might really be the one.”

  “Well, my dad sure isn’t Billy Squier,” I said. “So where does that leave us?”

  “Sitting in neutral until we go on our double date plus one with your grandparents.”

  CHAPTER 8

  When we got back to school after Thanksgiving break, my already good spirits went through the roof. Thanks to our vacation plan and Bebe’s confessions—however minimal—I felt like I was finally on my way to finding my dad.

  Everyone else seemed hyperhappy, too. Except Brina, that is. She was moping and slogging her way through the season. Ever since the Rob-buh debacle, she hadn’t had a date. Not even a one-night stand. A girl like Brina needs a little adulation here and there or she starts believing her mother’s bogus claims.

  “Maybe I’ll go on the grapefruit diet,” she said with a pathetic sigh.

  “Why when you’ve already got two perfectly enormous ones hidden underneath your T-shirt?”

  Brina let out a hurt little yelp and punched me in the arm. “That’s not funny,” she said. “But you know what is? Even slp has given up on me.”

  I couldn’t believe he would just blow her off after all those tantalizing letters. “What did he say about the note you left him?”

  Brina grimaced. “You knew I’d never send him a goddamn Emily Dickinson poem!”

  “Well, then, what did you expect?” I asked her, all exasperated. “That he’d just keep adoring you forever with no encouragement at all?”

  “Yeah. I guess that is what I thought,” she said, scuffing her shoe on the old marble floor.

  I took her by the shoulders and tried to shake some sense into her. “You know unrequited love sucks. So requite it! Write him a note. Right here, right now. What do you have to lose?”

  “My pride,” she said, looking embarrassed. “You really think I should?”

  “I really do,” I said. “And instead of a poem, why don’t you take it one step cooler? Write back in lyrics.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Brina said, brightening. “Any ideas?”

  “Try this one,” I said, handing her the latest Heather Horton CD. “It’s my new favorite.”

  Brina flipped through the liner notes, running her finger along the words like she was speed-reading. An instant later, she was scribbling madly. “So, what do you think?” she asked, handing me a sheet of notebook paper when she was done.

  What did I think? That she was insane. It wasn’t a love note she had written. It was more like a sex-crazed stalker note. It read:

  Now baby, I’m not looking for love

  I’m looking for some action

  And some traction in your hooves

  So I’ve got push

  In order to go in and out

  In and out and in and out of love with you

  “That’s . . . uhhh . . . great,” I told Brina. “But isn’t it a bit much?”

  “Naaah,” she said. “I actually think it’s just enough. Nothing like the promise of some serious nooky to get slp back in gear again.”

  I had to admit, it was pretty ballsy of her. And pretty funny, now that I’d had a little time to get used to the idea. If slp didn’t like it, it just proved he had no sense of humor.

  “How’s this for another idea?” I said. “You burn a CD with the song on it and I’ll design a great label. It’ll make an amazing Christmas present.”

  “I am totally going to do that,” Brina said, jumping up and down. “Steven will love it!”

  “For the millionth time, it is not Mr. Perry.”

  “That’s how much you know,” she said. “Today he came by my locker to give me Purdue’s viewbook.”

  “So what?”

  “So it was obviously an excuse. He must know I’d never go to school in Indiana,” she said. “Plus, there’s the bumble bee factor. He would definitely realize black and gold are all wrong for me.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell Brina that Bebe and her beloved Steven were going out again tonight for the third time this week. And it was only Tuesday.

  The next day, armed with her CD and the sexy stalker note, Brina and I marched up to the abandoned locker next to hers.

  “So what should I do?” she asked, examining the locker this way and that.

  I grabbed the handle and pulled. “Open it up and put the stuff in, brainiac.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” she said. “I was just trying to figure out how we should let him know it’s in here.”

  I thought for a second and then unveiled my undeniably brilliant plan. “You have lipstick in your bag?”

&nbs
p; She rustled around in her fake-fur purse and came up with a tube of MAC. “Here,” she said, handing it to me.

  I uncapped it, scrawled slp: Look inside! on the locker, and tossed the lipstick back to Brina.

  “Subtle,” she said. “Real subtle.”

  I stepped back and surveyed my work. It looked like a murder scene. “Gosh, that’s a little creepy,” I said. “What color is it, anyway?”

  Brina turned the silvery little case over and read the label. “Vampire State Building.”

  I smiled. “One thing’s for sure. It’ll definitely get his attention.”

  But it was hard to tell if we actually did catch slp’s attention, because Brina still hadn’t heard from him by the next week. She was in a piss-poor mood, and I knew she was regretting reaching out to him. Even if it was in a kind of funny, kind of scary, kind of sarcastic way.

  “Well, it’s not like you liked him anyway, right?” I said, patting her shoulder.

  She shrugged my hand off. “Right. It was all a big joke. Just like my life.”

  Oh, jeez, I thought, bring on the drama. I’d be soothing her bruised ego all Christmas break at this rate.

  Still frowning, Brina spun her combination and tugged the locker open with a jolt. A second later, her whole face lit up. She turned to me holding a tiny locket on a fine silver chain. There was a note attached.

  “Let me see!” I begged her.

  Brina cradled the jewelry in her outstretched palm. “ ‘I like to walk right there beside you / Always try to match your pace,’ ” she read. “ ‘But I don’t want to rush things / Maybe you should slow down for me.’ ” She looked at me with her eyes wide.

  “Brina, this guy is freakin’ amazing,” I told her. “You should go out with him even if he looks like Urkel and hangs out at Star Trek conventions.”

  She hugged me and said, “Trace, I’ve been thinking. Lots of poets have that smokin’ long-haired, tattooed thing going. Probably poet wannabes, too. So that means there’s a possibility slp’s really hot even if he’s not Mr. Perry, right?”