Friend Is Not a Verb

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

  3. The reason we all have our own cell phones. Dad, in one of his more paranoid moments, told us to stop using our house landline. He believes that the government is spying on us. (I really, really wish I were joking.) According to him, our neighbor Mr. Aziz is on some sort of terror watch list, and anyone who shops at his deli near the Bergen Street F train stop is now under suspicion, too. All untrue, as Sarah confirmed simply by asking Mr. Aziz himself if he’d ever had any trouble with the government. (The closest he’d ever come was trying to return a tax refund that was too big.) But she’d pretended to go along, provided that Dad buy each of us our own cell phone. He’d agreed. Stooge!

  What else? The examples could fill a book…but there you have a snapshot of Mom and Dad’s madness and some of their more colorful wrongs.

  Let’s face it, though: They wanted Sarah around last summer as much as I did. Why hadn’t they pleaded with her to reconsider the sublet? At the time I’d chalked it up to some weird phase they were going through, a letting-go-of-their-firstborn type of thing, an unwanted rite of middle-aged passage…and Sarah kept insisting that she just wanted to “have fun” before she started the Columbia School of Social Work in the fall. But, what—she couldn’t live at home with us and still have fun on her own? No, she’d rather shaft us and be “autonomous”…And don’t forget the volunteer job at that homeless shelter in Tribeca, New Beginnings, all to prove how noble, how thoughtful, how grown-up she was—as if it somehow justified shacking up with her “pal” Gabriel in a sketchy part of town that reeked of old fish.

  Then she was gone. And with her, Gabriel and Madeline. Plus two more friends from Columbia, guys who were in Gabriel’s band: Rich and Tony. Without a warning. Without a good-bye. One day they were here; the next, they weren’t. They’d left zero evidence that they’d ever existed in the first place. Actually, that isn’t quite true. The cops later told us that they’d left behind a new air conditioner to replace the one they’d broken plus the rest of the money for the summer sublet.

  How noble! How thoughtful! How grown-up!

  Ticktock, ticktock…

  The front door lock clicked.

  My heart began to pound. I tried to make it stop beating so loudly. I couldn’t. The heart is an inattentive and all-around-annoying little organ. The lungs, generally obedient, are much easier to get along with. I held my breath.

  Sarah is home.

  The door opened. People entered.

  “Hen?” Mom called. “Hello? Hen, are you home? Hen…” The door closed. “For God’s sake, Irv, why is the door unlocked?”

  Three pairs of footsteps approached.

  Sarah is home.

  I wanted to appear relaxed, stoic. I fidgeted in my chair.

  Someone flicked on the kitchen lights—

  And there she was. The prodigal daughter, returned.

  I was expecting her to look different somehow. I was expecting her to look filthy and scrawny, her black hair tangled and even messier than Emma’s from months of living out of Dumpsters. I was not expecting her outfit to proclaim: Life as a runaway sure was sweet! Maybe I’d just been being naïve (again). Mom and Dad had picked her up at JFK International Airport. Rock stars flew in and out of that airport. Rock stars as well dressed as she was. Rock stars as stylishly dressed. Just look at her: suited up in black pants and a black tank top: neatly pressed, hip, and matching…She had a tan, too. Her face was goofy and bug-eyed, just as it had always been.

  “Hi, Hen,” she said with a smile.

  A smile? I thought to myself. Really? A prisoner freed from an unjust incarceration could have smiled. A cancer patient in remission could have smiled. But Sarah? Her voice was the same, too. Entitled. Upbeat. I stared at her. I stared for a very long time.

  Mom and Dad know everything, and they’re smiling, too.

  A hint, anyone? Hello?

  Then I remembered: I was done trying.

  Without a word, I stood and marched past my newly reunited family, up the stairs to my third-floor bedroom.

  “Hen?” Mom called after me. “Hen? What is it?”

  Sarah is home.

  I couldn’t hide forever. I could make it through the night, sure, but tomorrow Sarah would still be in this house, with her healthy tan. (Or maybe she wouldn’t.)

  An hour after she’d arrived, I was still in bed, staring angrily at various parts of my room. But wait: Was it even my room? Everything I called my own had changed after Sarah had run away—either abruptly or in subtle increments—but, no, this was not the room that belonged to the Hen Birnbaum I’d been last July, the one with an older sister who could be counted on and sniped at and taken for granted.

  First, there was the Lego fort. Until August, it had been sitting on top of my dresser, since the very day Sarah had threatened to destroy it. Maybe I was a little old to display a Lego fort on top of my bureau (though it was cool in an infantile sort of way, a replica of the Tower of London), but if Sarah hadn’t run away, I guarantee it still would be sitting there. I’d destroyed it myself the first time the cops had questioned Mom and Dad—the night I knew for sure that Sarah had run away for real. It hadn’t started as destruction, more of a dismantling. I’d gritted my teeth as I pulled the plastic pieces apart, but then I just went ultraviolent. Pitiful and childish, yes, but tossing the little plastic pieces everywhere felt pretty awesome; and they’d sat on my floor for days.

  Then there was my erstwhile Dandy Warhols poster. Sarah had given it to me two years ago, right after I bought my bass. She’d heard that the Dandy Warhols had built some sort of huge recording studio/playland called the Odditorium, where they hosted huge gatherings with their friends. She’d told me that they hung out and jammed and recorded new songs and made videos—whatever they felt like—and she hoped that I ended up in band like that: a freewheeling, bohemian collective of tight pals where “the act of creating was more important than the paycheck.” (She actually managed to say this without sounding ditzy or pretentious, too—how, I’m still not sure.) The poster had managed to stay up on my wall until late December. But then I’d had the bad luck of catching one of those end-of-the-year countdowns on the one decent radio station left in New York City, and they’d chosen the Dandy Warhols’ “We Used to Be Friends” as song number 387 of the top 1,000 alternative rock songs of all time…and upon hearing it, I’d ripped the poster off the wall and torn it to shreds. That had felt pretty awesome, too—

  There was a knock.

  “Hen?” Sarah asked. “Can I come in?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she pushed the door forward. I turned to the blank spot on the wall, then back to her. She did look a little scrawnier than she had last summer, now that I thought about it.

  “Your room looks different,” she remarked.

  “So do you,” I said.

  “I guess I do. Can I sit down?”

  “If you want. Just don’t mess anything up on my desk.” It was an old line I’d used with her many times, and I instantly regretted it.

  “It’s okay. I’ll stand.” She paused. “Hen, this is hard…. I’m not going to BS you. I can’t tell you why I ran away. Not yet. I do want you to know something, though. It had nothing to do with you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you believe me? It’s important that you believe me.”

  “I didn’t think it had anything to do with me,” I said.

  She stared down at her expensive-looking black shoes.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Just—You can’t tell anyone that I’m home,” she said. “I mean, you can tell Emma, because I know you’re going to tell her anyway, but you have to make her swear that she won’t tell anyone.”

  “Got it. You’re not home. Is that it?”

  “Hen, come on,” she murmured as if she were a victim.

  “What?” I said.

  “Can’t you talk to me?” she asked.

  I closed my eyes. “About what? No offense, but I’m a little tired. I’
ve had a pretty crappy day. In your absence, my life did manage to go on. And right now, it’s at a low point. It has nothing to do with you, though.”

  Sarah sighed.

  “I’m not BSing you, either,” I added. “My girlfriend dumped me.”

  “Really?” she said. “I’m sorry, Hen. I am.”

  “Like I said, it has nothing to do with you,” I repeated.

  “What’s her name?” she asked.

  “For Christ’s sake, Sarah!” I flipped over, briefly mashing my face into the pillow, then glared at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry. Umm…” She brushed her hair behind her ear, an old nervous gesture. “Listen, I know this probably isn’t the best time, but I want you to do me a favor.”

  “A favor?”

  Sarah really was home. And that was it. The spell was broken. I was no longer in danger of crying.

  “Yeah,” she said. She laughed sadly—the way she used to laugh when she was in trouble with Mom and Dad. “This is going to sound really bad, Hen.”

  I had to laugh, too. “As compared to what?”

  “My friend Gabriel came back home with me. I mean, to New York.”

  For a horrible instant, I wondered if that meant our house. But, no, it couldn’t. Sarah wouldn’t have pushed her luck that far.

  “Good for him,” I said.

  “And, see, he wants to try to get his life back on track. He needs structure…a new purpose. Something positive. He says he wants to start teaching kids how to play bass. You remember that he plays bass, too, don’t you?”

  “Nope. Can’t say that I do.”

  “You remember Gabriel though, right?” she asked.

  “I remember that when I met him, he said he liked the theme song from the TV show Friends. I decided to stop paying attention to him after that.”

  Sarah laughed again.

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” I said.

  “No…it’s just, Gabriel was in a band called Friends,” she explained, as if this somehow made sense. “They were a nineties nostalgia act. They opened every show with that song. But anyway, I was thinking, since you play bass, too, maybe you could be his first student? It would mean so much to him, and to me. Besides, Mom and Dad mentioned you were probably going to get some summer tutors, anyway. So why not make Gabriel your first? I bet your bass playing would get a lot better—”

  “Sarah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know who you are. But I’d like you to leave.”

  “Hen, please—”

  “You don’t understand, do you?” I asked.

  “Understand what?”

  “Anything!” My face burned. I clutched the pillow. “How do you know I even need bass lessons, Sarah? For all you know, I could have become the next Flea in the past year. For all you know, I’m a superstar. For all you know, I should be giving Gabriel bass lessons.”

  “I’m so sorry, you’re right.” She backed out the door. “Wait. Flea’s the guy from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, right?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I buried myself under the covers. “Forget it. Just—Please turn off the light on your way out.”

  “Okay, Hen.” I could hear her shoes scuffling, then a pause. She flicked off the light switch. “I’ll let you sleep. Just one more thing: Gabriel is crashing in the East Village right now, so when you go to his place, be sort of careful, okay? The police or the FBI might still be looking for him. Everything is going to get cleared up soon; I promise. That’s why we came back. And I know Mom and Dad are waiting for me to tell you…but that’s another story. Just try not to attract so much attention to yourself at first, okay? It’s not a big deal; things are in motion…just, if you see something weird—like guys in black suits with wires in their ears—you know, go back home and call to reschedule the lesson. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I replied, not knowing or caring what she was talking about. “Anything you say. Welcome to the Birnbaum house, whoever you are.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Diary of My Life on the Lam, by Gabriel Stern

  When I awoke the next morning, I felt a surprising calm. I’d slept well. Miraculously well: It was a heavy, black, dreamless sleep. I yawned and stretched, refreshed. Not that I’d forgotten what had happened. Of course not. My first thoughts were of Sarah, then of Petra, and then of the horrible confluence of events, the great cosmic practical joke that had been played on me with the coincidence of Sarah’s reappearing and Petra’s firing, all on the same rainy night.

  Still, I was okay. The proverbial arm had indeed been beaten senseless.

  I felt good.

  So. My sister wanted me to take bass lessons from a fellow fugitive? No problem. Even less of a problem than that she couldn’t tell me why she’d run away or why she’d suddenly come back—or why my parents were still mysteriously silent on the subject. It was the opposite of a problem; it was a crisi-tunity. If I took bass lessons from Gabriel, then maybe he could tell me what happened, and I could also gain the necessary musical skills for Petra to rehire me for PETRA.

  Look out, George Monroe!

  I hopped out of bed and marched to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and threw on some frayed old jeans and a plain white T-shirt. I packed up my bass in its case. With a broad smile, I sauntered downstairs, where—how wonderful!—my newly reunited family was silently eating a scrambled egg breakfast in our sunlit kitchen. All of them looked haggard, worse than the night before, Sarah worst of all. Of course, Mom and Dad always looked haggard. Both generally gave off a vibe of quiet, stooped suffering that was a lot more nineteenth-century Siberian shtetl than twenty-first-century Brooklyn brownstone. They were still wearing the same clothes. Good for them! I’d slept in my clothes last night, too. Only, I’d had the good sense to change.

  “Hi, Hen,” Mom said, looking up from her plate of eggs. “Are you okay?”

  “Never better,” I said.

  “What’s with the bass?” Dad asked. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to take bass lessons from Sarah’s friend Gabriel,” I said. “Didn’t Sarah tell you?”

  “Excuse me?” Mom asked.

  She and Dad exchanged horrified glances. My smile widened.

  Sarah bolted up and grabbed me by the shoulders. She whisked me down the hall and out the front door. I didn’t bother fighting back. Her painful sisterly grip was just as unforgiving as I remembered. “What are you doing?” she said.

  I shrugged, breathing in the morning air. Last night’s rain had cleared away the stickiness. The tree in front of Emma’s house was as green and leafy as I’d ever seen it.

  “Hen?” Sarah pressed. “I’m not joking. What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to my bass lesson,” I answered. “Wait, you did call Gabriel and set it up, didn’t you? You said it yourself. For reasons you can’t tell me, Gabriel needs to get his life back on track. And I definitely need tutoring. My grades sucked this year. It’s so funny: My college adviser said that taking bass lessons from a fugitive would increase my chances of getting into Harvard.”

  “Shh.” Sarah peered back into the house, chewing her lip. “All right. I screwed up. I owe you. I’ll call him right now.”

  “Who?”

  “Gabriel,” she said.

  I opened my mouth to stop her.

  Was she really…? Yes, she was. She was calling Gabriel on her cell phone.

  She ran downstairs to the sidewalk in front of Emma’s house and engaged in a frantic, hushed conversation. The only word I heard clearly was: “Gabriel?”

  I shifted my weight, wondering what I was doing.

  “Sarah?” I whispered, but she didn’t hear.

  Mom burst out of the door, holding a tinfoil cube.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I made you a whole-wheat egg sandwich for the road.” Mom shoved it into my hands. “You may be a vegetarian. I may have cooked you your own separate main courses for going on a deca
de now, even on the High Holidays—out of the goodness of my heart—but you’re not going to start skipping breakfast, like your sister did. You’re not going to do anything like your sister did. Somehow, somewhere, somebody has to make some rules. And somebody has to stick to them!”

  What happened next was a little hazy.

  There were flashes: Mom, slamming the door…Sarah, giving me directions to Gabriel’s East Village crash pad…me, gobbling down the breakfast sandwich…

  My memory only sharpens with what happened when I stopped outside the Bergen Street subway entrance and dialed Emma.

  “Wow, that’s so weird!” she answered.

  “What is?”

  “I was just going to call you,” she said.

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “I know we made a deal never to talk about dreams, but last night, I went to bed early and dreamed that your sister came home.”

  Without thinking, I hung up and shoved the phone into my pocket. I stopped, clutching a sweaty palm against my white T-shirt. I clung to the strap of my bass case as if it were a life preserver.

  Seconds later, my phone rang.

  I took a deep breath. Okay. No reason to freak out. This was Emma. This kind of stuff happened. It was nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. Maybe she’d seen my parents’ soggy note on our door. But even if not, why should I even care about what she dreamed? Dreams meant nothing—we’d decided that. Still, my hands began to shake as I fished the phone out of my pocket. I decided not to let her get the edge on the conversation. Instead I initiated and rambled, Emma style: “Hi, Emma—yeah, listen, I’m sorry I hung up on you. But I really can’t talk right now. Your dream came true, okay? Your dream came true. And I’m sorry if you have plans, but can you block some time for me this afternoon? I think I might be on the verge of…I don’t know. I see a lot of jabbering involved.”

  She took a deep breath and spoke soothingly. “Of course. As long as you promise you’ll never hang up on me again. Bye, Hen.”

  Gabriel’s East Village crash pad wasn’t quite what I expected.