by Ariella Papa
I also kept thinking about the firemen running up the stairs. They had been fearless. It didn’t make any sense to me. How could you risk so much for people you didn’t know? I didn’t know anything about those guys, but because of them I still had my computer, which, while it wasn’t as valuable as my life, still meant a lot.
I caught myself daydreaming about those firemen—good-looking men coming to my rescue in all sorts of ridiculous circumstances. I felt like a walking cliché.
7
Every day for almost a month I stared at the Warren Tucker tape, which had survived the fire, but didn’t watch it. Then, when Jamie and I were leaning over the railing of the New London ferry, Block Island-bound, she told me that Warren had made the first cut. There would be one more cut before they brought the guys on air, which meant that Raj’s schedule was going to get super busy once the Block Island trip was over. When would he find the time to impregnate her?
I had left the tape at home for our Memorial Day weekend trip. I half expected the place would be burned down when I got back and I would never see it, but obviously I wasn’t prepared to face the image of Warren Tucker anyway.
“My temperature has been up for fifteen days,” Jamie whispered as we grabbed some seats.
“Do you think you should be going to Block Island with a fever?”
“No, silly.” The laugh came again, the “haven’t you figured out yet that everything I say revolves around procreating?” laugh. Jamie pointed down. “My temperature down there.”
“Oh.” I nodded. Did she expect me to remember her scientific lecture? She knew I struggled through AP bio. “What does that mean again?”
“It means—” she looked over at Raj, who was smoking a cigarette against the railing “—I might be pregnant.”
“Really,” I said. I felt a bit queasy, but I was certain it was from the sharp dips the ferry was taking and not her revelation.
“Yeah,” Jamie said, smiling but clutching the back of the seat.
This kind of turbulence was not uncommon, but it was certainly a pain in the ass.
“That’s terrific,” I said as my stomach flip-flopped. I smiled over to where Raj was, to prove how excited I was. The horizon rose and fell behind him.
“He’s going to quit smoking the moment I get the EPT results. I figured I would take a test on the island.”
“How nice,” I said, pretty sure I smelled vomit. I wasn’t looking forward to finding out that Jamie was pregnant on the island. I guess I had sort of been hoping she would put all this stuff aside for the weekend. Block Island could be so much fun. I loved getting drunk on Mudslides or Dark and Stormies and sitting on the big chairs getting too much sun. Right about then I would have given anything to be on solid land.
One of the women who worked on the boat came around handing out bags. I took one and so did Jamie. Raj made his way to our bench, holding on to anything he could grab.
“Hey,” he said.
“I just told Voula our news,” Jamie said, trying to smile but starting to look a bit green.
“About Warren?” Raj said.
“No, silly, about us and the baby.”
It was a baby already? I thought we were just talking about a very warm cootchie.
“Don’t jinx it,” Raj said.
“Come on, Raj. You just don’t want to stop smoking,” Jamie said, and then she puked.
Raj rubbed her hair as she filled her bag, and then I gave her mine. I felt bad for her, but suspected she might be happy about the symptom.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” Jamie said. She smiled at me, then puked again.
The sea calmed as we spotted land. Jamie felt well enough to get up as we slowed and coasted into the harbor, past the jetty where I had once sat with Warren Tucker.
“There’s Mom,” Jamie said.
I looked over to where Maura Jacobs was standing in a long white linen dress. She wore a floppy sunhat and sunglasses. She waved furiously and so did the three of us, laughing.
We gathered our luggage and were the first ones off the ferry. I was thrilled to be on solid ground. Then, I had that familiar feeling I had when I returned to Block Island: I immediately had a sense of slowing down and relaxing. Still, I always worried that I was tagging along. It had nothing to do with Maura, who wrapped me up in a big hug.
“How are you, Voula? You look great.”
“Thank you. And thanks for the package.” Maura had sent me a bunch of funny little presents after the fire, including a water gun and a pair of thong underwear with a flame on the front.
“You deserve it, honey. Tell me you got one of those big beefy firemen’s numbers.”
Sometimes I thought there was a gay man trapped inside of Maura. The only word I could think to describe her was flamboyant. She enjoyed drama, but at the same time knew when to take things seriously.
“I’m working on it,” I lied, as the image of Torrisi in his giant Ghostbuster-type backpack flashed through my head.
“How was the trip?” Maura said, after she’d kissed everyone and we’d loaded our junk into the Jeep. Maura pawned the car keys off on Raj. She hated driving because she had trouble staying focused on anything for too long.
“Your daughter hurled,” Raj said.
Maura looked back at Jamie and raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know, Mom, but I think this could be it.”
Maura gave a little yelp and Jamie laughed.
“We haven’t taken any tests yet,” Raj said.
“We’re going to do that tonight,” Jamie added, sounding defensive, even though Raj was just being practical.
“Are you late, honey?” Maura asked.
“No, but her twat’s hot,” I interjected, knowing that Maura would enjoy that.
Maura yelped again and threw her head back, laughing, so her big hat fell into my lap. “What does that mean?”
“My basal temperature, Mom.” Jamie sounded as if this was something everyone should know.
I wondered if, perhaps, every normal woman did. Was this something else I had missed out on thanks to my uptight, old world mother?
“Jamie, honey, what the hell are you talking about?” Maura asked, turning completely in her seat and unwittingly reassuring me.
“My temperature—you know, to chart my fertility.”
Maura looked at me and I shrugged. It was an old routine we had.
“I have a special thermometer.”
“Well,” Maura said, looking really surprised. “I never heard of anything like that. A special thermometer.”
“It’s pink,” Raj said.
“It’s pink?” I asked, squinting at Jamie.
“Well, yeah. It’s for fertility.”
Was it suddenly a given that everything for fertility was pink? What kind of cult was Jamie getting involved in?
Just then we pulled up to the summer house. Compared to some of the other houses on the island, it wasn’t much, but to me the four bedrooms, three bathrooms and front porch were heaven.
“Ana and Crystal are already here. Don’t say anything, Jamie, but they’ve already grabbed the big guest room. You and Raj will have to take the pullout.”
Jamie pouted a little. I always got the guest room with the daybed. If someone else wanted to crash in there, they could. Before she met Crystal, Ana used to.
“What about when Mike gets here?” Jamie asked.
“Well, so far it seems that he’s flying solo and will get the basement guest room.” Maura winked at me.
Jamie smiled, and because of her delicate condition I took her bags out of the car and up the steps. Crystal, Ana and Mr. Jacobs were sitting on the porch. They made quite a picture. For all of Maura’s flamboyance, Mr. Jacobs was a quiet solid rock. I winced imagining the kinds of things Crystal had said in his presence. Not that she was crass, she was just kind of self-obsessed and she never stopped talking.
“Hey,” I said, putting down the bags and hugging them.
“Margaritas are in the fridge,” Mr. Jacobs said. “Just worry about the bags later. I’ll bring them up.”
“Just water for me,” Jamie said, clearly hinting.
I wasn’t sure that she should be telling everyone about this yet. But she didn’t even have the chance to elaborate, because Crystal heard Raj telling Mr. Jacobs that the water was rough.
“Rough,” Crystal said. “You wanna talk about rough. We took the Montauk ferry this morning and I swear I lost twenty pounds in the toilet.”
Crystal also liked to tell you things you didn’t want to hear. Her allergy to wheat was one topic she went on about non-stop. Drinking only made the endless chatter worse. And she liked booze and cigarettes. It was a good thing there was no wheat in either of those things.
I went to the kitchen to pour some drinks and Ana followed me. I refilled her glass.
“That’s a jones about the fire, huh?” she asked as we went back to the porch.
“Yeah, it was really scary.” I was about to elaborate when Crystal started a long loud story about a fire in her dorm room when she was a freshman. We listened politely. I finished my drink. I would have gone back into the kitchen to refill and escape the description of Crystal’s charred stuffed animals, but Mr. Jacobs was on it. I was halfway through my second (strong) margarita when Jamie managed to get a word in.
“Well, I think Voula and I should head into town. I need to get something at the drugstore.” She grinned and looked around, waiting for Ana to quiz her.
“Honey, you just got here. Let Voula enjoy her drink.”
I wanted to kiss Mr. Jacobs, but I’m sure he was already too embarrassed as always by Crystal.
“I figured we could rent a bike for Voula, too.”
Great, just what I wanted: a drunken bike ride. Block Island, despite its relentless drinking, was full of people on bicycles trying to avoid the cars that were going about five miles an hour to avoid them. I always had to go on at least one ride, just to be a sport. The Jacobses could spring it on you at any time. I usually hung back, hoping no one would notice if I decided to get off and walk, fighting off thoughts of Cristina. She had been on a moped in Cyprus when she died. She must not have seen the car barreling toward her. Ever since, anything with two wheels freaks me out. I held on to the brake every time I went downhill, no matter how small the incline. I was scared that if my speed picked up, I wouldn’t be able to stop.
“It’s almost six, honey,” Mr. Jacobs said. “By the time you get the bike, the drugstore will be closed.”
“Should we really be biking?” I asked, letting my eyes drop. If Jamie was knocked up, maybe she’d think biking wasn’t a good idea and I could get out of it.
“Why, what’s going on?” Ana said, immediately suspicious. Ana always felt like people were trying to put one over on her. She had to be included.
“Nothing,” Jamie said quickly. “I just still feel queasy from the boat.”
In the morning, Mike arrived with Maura, who’d managed to pick up a pregnancy test when she got him at the ferry.
Mike looked like he’d stepped out of a Polo ad. I’m sure he never would have bought Polo, though. His clothes probably came from some obscure Boston tailor.
Like his big sister Jamie, Mike had been a really smart teenager. He had been accepted to Stuyvesant, but went to Bronx Science. Everyone had assumed he was going to be a scientist or a doctor or something. He was kind of a nerd, but once he got out of high school he shirked the full rides he had to places like MIT and Cooper Union and decided to be a font designer.
A what? That’s what I said, but apparently Mike was really good at coming up with new ways of making letters. He started working in a font firm and within two years had done so well that he started his own company.
While your average person (myself included) really had no idea what he did, a select few art directors in everything from magazines to ad agencies considered him a god. What had been socially inept, nerdy behavior in high school, had turned into too-cool-for-school eccentricity. He was the quietest of all the Jacobs children, and I wondered if he was a bit disdainful to have to hang out with people who didn’t understand him.
We exchanged some quick greetings with Mike before Jamie pulled me into the bathroom for the pee test. I feigned revulsion, but I was secretly thrilled to be the first person to find out if the bun was actually in the oven. I sat on the corner of the tub and averted my eyes. She went through the process and I felt like we were on one of those pregnancy test commercials.”
When Jamie finished peeing, she put the stick on the sink, closed the toilet and sat on it. We looked at each other and smiled.
“Hey, how’s it going in there?” Maura called, banging on the bathroom door.
“C’mon!” Raj called.
“Another minute,” Jamie yelled, smiling.
“Am I going to be an aunt or what?” Ana yelled. She had interrogated Maura and gotten the information she wanted.
Then Crystal chimed in with, “I was once certain I had chlamydia based on my discharge, but luckily it was a yeast infection. It was before I came out.”
I heard Mike say that there was another bathroom downstairs.
I panicked. Jamie was already too invested in this. Raj had tried to be the voice of reason, but what if it was negative? We were all there. Raj, me, Maura. And then I got a little sad: her mother was there. Regardless of the outcome and whether or not she knew it, Jamie was going to be okay because she had so much support.
“Okay, it’s time,” Jamie said. Her left eye twitched the way it did whenever she was nervous. “Voul, I don’t know if I can look. Can you do it?”
“Okay,” I said. I picked up the stick that my best friend had just peed on. This was a true test of friendship.
I stared at the little window, unsurprised by what it showed. I looked up at Jamie; I didn’t have to say anything.
“No,” she said, her voice soft and incredulous-sounding. She took the stick from my hand and looked for herself.
I held onto her wrist.
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, stupidly.
“What’s going on in there?” Maura asked, banging on the door again.
“I just don’t get it,” Jamie said. She looked at the stick again, as if she was hoping the results would be different. “My temperature was up. According to everything I read, it means I should be—”
Jamie had always been good at making everything seem okay for me. I wanted to make this seem okay for her. I wanted to be there for her.
“We’ll be out in a minute,” I yelled toward the door, to Raj and her family, who still had hope. I pried the test from Jamie’s hand, wrapped it in toilet paper and buried it at the bottom of the trashcan.
Jamie didn’t look like she was ready to leave the bathroom, so I sat down, with my back against the door, and looked up at her.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing. I was just trying to think of the right things to say.”
“Yeah? What did you come up with?”
“‘Don’t worry, Tiger, you’ll get ’em next time’?” I said.
She looked at me, and for a second I thought she was going to cry. But she started laughing. And it wasn’t one of those “oh, you don’t understand” laughs. This was a real laugh, a Jamie laugh.
8
I got home late Monday night after three days with the Jacobses. I loved hanging out with them, but after three days of Trivial Pursuit, getting drunk in the sun, and taking hesitant bike rides, I was ready again for my own space and my own schedule. The Jacobses seemed to thrive on pretending they had a dysfunctional family. But they wore their quirks like a badge of honor. However much they labeled Ana as the paranoid one or Mike as the snob, they loved it. They loved being a part of their own little Jacobs group, but although they considered me a part of the family, I wasn’t. It was something I was always conscious of when I was with them.
> The music was blaring when I opened the door. In my living room I found a cosmopolitan crew of people who worked at Armando’s restaurant. I winced as I spotted the chef cooking stuff up on our stove. I had spent the weekend trying to avoid being by the barbecue grill. Fires still scared me.
“Voula,” Armando said, getting up and sending Nadia tumbling off his lap. “Howah you, bella?”
“Fine,” I said, looking around at the well-dressed group. I didn’t like feeling out of place in my own apartment. “Looks like you’re having a party.”
“Yes, nothing big, little come-together.”
I smiled. It was always funny hearing Armando use expressions that he hadn’t quite mastered.
“Pino is making some pasta. You must have some wine.”
That was all I had been drinking with Jamie. Once she got her period she started drowning her sorrows in alcohol.
“Actually, I’m kind of tired.”
“Oh. How was de trip?”
“Very nice, thanks.” I smiled at a couple of the other waiters I knew. “Hello, everyone. I think I’m just going to do some work in my room.”
“Okay, Voula,” Armando said, and walked me over to my door.
My office still had the slight stench of smoke and I didn’t want to be in there.
“Is it okay they here?” he asked.
“Sure, Armando, no problem.”
“Well, come eat someding when you finish.”
“Okay, thanks. I will if I don’t fall asleep.”
I went into my room and shut the door behind me. Was it too much to ask for a little downtime? A little quiet? I don’t know that I was meant to live with roommates. Maybe I was meant to live in a cave.
I flopped on my bed and pulled off my sandals. On the top of my bureau I noticed a stack of newspaper. I grabbed it and saw a note on top from Kelly.
Hey Voula,
Don’t have a call ’til Thursday, so I went to the Hamptons for a few days. Thought you might like to see the paper.