Inevitable and Only

by Lisa Rosinsky

  Maybe that was the real reason I loved the stage. Or maybe it was okay for both reasons to be true.

  Zephyr came back just as the waitress brought our check, and we pulled out our wallets to figure out who owed what.

  “Oh, I never tried the eel!” I said, looking at his empty plates.

  Zephyr grinned. “Part of my master plan. Now we have to come back.”

  We rode home in contented quiet, our stomachs full, the car warm.

  “Thanks,” I said, when he dropped me off at my door. “I’m glad you owed me a rain check. That was a lot of fun.”

  All he said was, “Yeah,” but he smiled and waved as I closed the car door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next few weeks flew by, what with play rehearsals, mid-terms, and the occasional driving lesson. And then, just to make things worse, Elizabeth passed her driving test. On her first try. I still had six months until I’d be old enough to take the test, but now I had that to live up to. I’d never pass on my first try.

  Dad took Elizabeth out for ice cream to celebrate. I declined his invitation to join them. Instead, I stayed home with Josh and pulled out all our old favorite board games, Clue and Battleship and this weird communists-vs.-capitalists game from the 1970s Grandma Ruth had given us called Class Struggle. For a little while, I forgot about everything else going on. Until I made the mistake of asking Josh how his competition piece was going. Then he shrugged and said he was tired of playing games, and went downstairs for a snack, leaving me to clean everything up.

  Elizabeth and Farhan went on a few more dates: to the movies, the ice-skating rink in the Inner Harbor, the Charmery. I tried to pretend they were just characters in a TV show I didn’t really care about watching. I still walked Elizabeth to church every Sunday, as per Mom’s orders, but we each listened to our own music instead of talking on the way, and I hung out with Heron at the BMA instead of going to Mass. More than once, I lost track of time, and we ended up walking home separately. She didn’t say anything about it.

  That was the thing about Elizabeth. I could tell she was unhappy about the tension between us, but she never said a word. And I didn’t have the energy to figure out what to do about it. I had enough to worry about, between school and Much Ado.

  Besides, I told myself, she’s Dad’s problem. He should help fix things. But Dad was spending more and more time at Fine Print. He and Mom were still feuding, obviously, and he’d even started avoiding dinner at home—in the olden days, B.E., a total no-no in Mom’s book. (Messenger: “I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.” Beatrice: “No; an’ he were, I would burn my study.”)

  I’d started quoting lines in my head all the time. Robin was right; once I had the lines memorized, the character of Beatrice felt like my second skin. When I put myself into the “given circumstances” of the play on stage, her words came out of my mouth as easily as my own.

  If only it were that easy in real life to morph into someone else, to know the right words to say in every situation, to—

  To stop thinking about kissing a gorgeous, brilliant, talented senior who happened to already have a girlfriend. Really kissing him, not his thumb.

  I’d never thought about Farhan like this. Thought about him randomly a million times throughout the day, like in the middle of doing my homework, or when I was on the bus, or when I was trying to fall asleep at night. Every little thing reminded me of Zephyr—something he’d said, or the way he smelled, or how he smiled.

  Sushi Below became our regular hangout for the next few weeks. We never ran out of things to talk about over sushi, although he was still quiet at rehearsals, focused, intent on his role. But in mid-November, he told me that his dads said he couldn’t go out at night anymore, except for rehearsals, until all his college applications were turned in.

  “When are they due?” I asked.

  He sighed. “January, although I’m trying to finish them before Christmas.”

  January. By then, the play would be over. Without sushi nights, I wouldn’t see him outside of class anymore. I didn’t know what that meant—what did I want from him, anyway? We weren’t dating. Obviously. But still, it felt like he was putting a lid on—something.

  “He can’t possibly still have a girlfriend,” Raven kept insisting. “There’s no way she’d be okay with him going on dates with you all the time.”

  “They’re not dates,” I argued. “We never hold hands or even hug. We just eat dinner together and talk.”

  “Yeah, and talk. You talk about him all the time, Cadie. It’s Zephyr this and Zephyr that. Face it, you have a colossal crush on him. And he is totally into you.”

  “It’s not like that, I swear.” But I couldn’t convince her.

  Friday, November 18 was my sixteenth birthday. I’d been dreading it for weeks. Dad always made a special three-course dinner for birthdays—with double-chocolate ganache cake for mine, and caramel-frosted carrot cake for Josh’s. But this year I’d insisted I didn’t want a family celebration at all.

  Elizabeth was in the bathroom when I woke up, so I pulled on a sweatshirt and brushed my hair at the vanity mirror. There were dark circles under my eyes, and the colorful streaks in my hair were fading a little—I’d have to redo them soon. Did I look any older? I quirked an eyebrow, pouted my lips, tried to smirk. Nope. I just looked tired. I wished I knew how to make myself look cooler, more sophisticated. More, well, sixteen. I touched the edge of one eyebrow, tried to imagine a ring there.

  “Girls!” Mom called. “Ten minutes!”

  I sighed and went downstairs.

  Something smelled amazing. Dad was at the kitchen counter, piling pumpkin waffles onto two paper plates. Josh was already eating his at the table.

  “Voilà, ze gourmet birthday breakfast,” Dad said in Parisian Chef Voice, grinning at me.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  Mom was bustling around by the door, ignoring the sizzling waffle iron and the cloud of cinnamon and nutmeg in the air. My stomach growled despite myself.

  “So,” Dad said, in his usual Weatherman Voice, “are you sure about tonight? I can’t even tempt you with five-cheese mac ’n’ cheese?”

  I shook my head.

  “I mean, sixteen. It’s a big year. We should celebrate!”

  “I can’t. Raven and Micayla are taking me out to dinner at Papermoon.”

  Dad frowned. “Now, wait a—”

  “It’s fine, Ross,” Mom called. “Cadie and I already discussed it.”

  He blinked and looked like he was going to say something else, but just then Elizabeth came downstairs. “Mmm, that smells amazing, what’s—oh! Happy birthday, Cadie.” She smiled awkwardly.

  “Thanks,” I said. This. This was why I didn’t want a family birthday party. I didn’t want to watch Josh shrink into his chair and force Mom and Dad to sit at the same table. I didn’t want to listen to Elizabeth trying to be cheerful, and spend the whole night avoiding talking to Dad.

  I ducked my head, took a paper plate of waffles, and said to Mom, “I’ll meet you at the car.”

  The school day dragged on forever, but I was only called for one short scene at rehearsal that night, and at least I had dinner with Micayla and Raven to look forward to.

  Papermoon is this quirky Hampden diner decorated with decapitated dolls and broken knickknacks and glitter and beads glued all over the rainbow-painted walls. It’s creepy and weird and, most important, serves breakfast all day and all night. “Like any self-respecting diner should,” Micayla said as we walked in.

  Raven agreed. “I am so ready for second breakfast.”

  We ordered pancakes, French toast, and milk shakes. Raven or Micayla must’ve told the waitress it was my birthday, because she stuck candles in everything and brought the food out with three other waitresses, dancing and singing a loud, cheesy “Happy Birthday.” The whole diner clapped.

  “You guys!” I groaned, pulling my sweatshirt hood up over my head.

  “… are the be
st?” Raven prompted, and even though my face was burning, I grinned.

  But as we ate, I kept wondering what everyone was doing at home. Were they eating dinner together without me? Or was Dad working late at Fine Print? Maybe Elizabeth was out with Farhan. Josh was probably practicing in his room. If I’d stayed home, we’d be eating five-cheese mac ’n’ cheese together right now. Maybe Mom would’ve made an effort to be nice to Dad, for my sake. Elizabeth would’ve tried extra hard to be friendly, and Dad—well, Dad would’ve pulled out all the stops for a sweet-sixteen birthday dinner. Maybe we would’ve all gone out to the movies afterward. Birthdays were the only time all year that Mom ever agreed to go to the movies.

  My stomach twisted a little, and I set down my half-finished milk shake.

  “Presents!” said Micayla, reaching into her giant tote bag and pulling out a wrapped package.

  I blocked out thoughts of the family celebration I’d refused, and ripped the paper off Micayla’s present. It was a new thrift store painting—this one was a scene with three little blond-haired, blue-eyed girls at a ballet lesson. She’d painted in a T. rex, also in a pink tutu, trying to do a pirouette.

  Raven pulled out two smaller packages. One was a gorgeous pair of turquoise earrings she’d found at a craft fair, and the other was a T-shirt that said, A world without adjectives would be, which made me laugh.

  “You are the best,” I told them. “Thank you. I really, really needed this.”

  Raven put an arm around my shoulders, and Micayla reached across the table to squeeze my hands.

  “Of course,” said Raven, “we’re just getting started. Tomorrow, we’re taking you downtown.”

  I tried to protest. “I have to work on my lines this weekend.”

  But Micayla said, “Dude, you only turn sixteen once,” and Raven said, “Seriously. Plus, you need to stop thinking about that play for a few hours.”

  A distraction did sound great. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to take my mind off sushi nights, too—or the lack thereof.

  I hadn’t told Zephyr it was my birthday. I didn’t want him to feel like he had to do something special. Besides, what would I even want him to do?

  When Raven and Micayla dropped me off at home, the house smelled like chocolate.

  “How was your dinner?” Mom asked, her voice a little higher than usual. “So nice of your friends to take you out.”

  “It was fun,” I said.

  “Fun? Just fun?” said Dad, coming in from the kitchen.

  I shrugged.

  “Well, I seem to have found a cake in the oven—still hungry?”

  “Dad … I said I didn’t want to do anything.”

  “I know, but I like baking,” he said. Then, switching to Robot Voice: “Besides—programmed I am—to bake a cake—on birth date of daughter.”

  I gave him a weak smile. “Okay … well, I’ll have some tomorrow. I’m pretty full right now.”

  Dad’s face sagged. Just for a moment. Then he squared his shoulders and said, “All right, but we aren’t going to let you get away without some birthday presents!”

  So we all sat in the living room, and I opened presents. Mom gave me a matching knitted hat-and-scarf set that I couldn’t imagine ever wearing, but she’d helped Josh with his present, too—an awesome new pair of noise-canceling headphones. Elizabeth gave me a gift card for a clothing store at the mall. “I didn’t know what you’d like,” she said. “I hope you can use it.”

  “I shop there all the time,” I lied. “It’s perfect.”

  Dad presented me with his gift last, a heavy book-shaped package. I peeled the paper away slowly. It was a brand-new, leather-bound Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The pages were onion-skin thin and edged in gold, and there were two silk ribbon bookmarks sewn into the binding. I traced the engraved lettering on the cover, remembering how I still hadn’t even made it through the introduction in the paperback Much Ado he’d given me.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I managed. “It’s beautiful.”

  Mom was already cleaning up the wrapping paper and Josh was yawning, so I said, “Well, I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll get ready for bed.”

  Elizabeth followed me up to our room, and Mom poked her head in to say good night a while later.

  I lay awake for what felt like hours, but I didn’t hear Dad come upstairs—he must’ve gone to sleep on the couch again.

  I closed my eyes and imagined playing my future self on a dark stage, with a single spotlight shining on me. Doing a dramatic monologue about my stressful teenage years.

  So that was my sixteenth birthday, my character told the dark theater. I lay in bed and said to myself, “At least it was finally over.”

  The next day, Raven and Micayla and I wandered around the Inner Harbor. It was sunny and windy out, warm enough that I only needed a denim jacket—but that’s not unusual for November in Baltimore. We did a little shopping, listened to a few street musicians, watched an impromptu poetry slam. Then Micayla convinced us to go to the American Visionary Art Museum.

  I’d never been there before, and my first thought was that whoever ran this place probably designed Papermoon, too. The walls were filled with enormous mosaics created by street people; psychedelic paintings by mental hospital patients; trash sculptures, life-size statues of invented saints, and intricate carvings on the tips of lead pencils so tiny you had to use a magnifying glass to see them. Artwork by factory workers and grandmothers and hermits.

  “Visionary art,” Micayla lectured us, “means artwork produced by self-taught artists. No training. No schools of thought. Raw, spontaneous, outside the rules. Anti-academic.” She groaned. “Maybe I shouldn’t be applying to art school. Maybe I should go work in—in a steel factory, or—”

  “Working in a steel factory,” said Raven, “would be very hipster.”

  I wandered off to look at an exhibit called Madonna. Paintings of the Virgin Mary hung side by side with photo montages of the singer Madonna. The way the pieces were arranged showed “the way our pop culture conflates or contrasts the divine with the deeply flawed, immortality with fame, purity with desire”—or at least, that’s what the exhibit placard said. I wondered what Elizabeth would think of it.

  On an impulse, I went to the gift shop to look for a postcard of one of the Mary paintings. Maybe I’d give it to Elizabeth, if we ever said anything besides “Excuse me” or “Could you pass the almond butter” to each other again.

  But instead, I got sidetracked just inside the gift shop by a small print. It was one of those scratchboard drawings, where you paint swirls of colors on a piece of card stock, color over it with black crayon, and then scrape an image into the crayon layer, revealing the colors beneath. This one showed a woman at a keyboard, leaning back, her arms straight out in front of her as her fingers danced over the keys. Her hair floated behind her as if she were underwater. Sitting on the piano bench next to her, but facing the other way, a man cradled a cello between his knees. He was hunched over his instrument, so the curve of his body was the inverse of hers. The paint beneath the black crayon was all metallic colors, golds and silvers and bronzes, so that the scraped-out figures seemed to shimmer and glow against the inky background.

  It reminded me of Mom and Josh, of course, but also of Mom and Dad. The way they used to complement each other, how their personalities fit together—Mom’s organization and drive balanced by Dad’s humor and sensitivity. The way they were both so creative, Dad with his cooking and his books, Mom with her music. The way Mom used to look playing the piano when we lived at Ahimsa House. I couldn’t even remember the last time she’d sat down at the piano. Was there any hope of things going back to the way they used to be? Or would we have to move back to Takoma Park—go back in time—to make that happen?

  I bought the print and tucked it carefully into my backpack.

  We always celebrated Thanksgiving with the Woodburys. When Raven and I had become friends in second grade, I’d told her about the Ahimsa House versio
n of social-justice-themed Thanksgiving, which we called Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving—ACT. We prepared a feast using only local vegetarian food, and everyone shared a poem, story, or song about colonization somewhere in the world today. Then we talked about nonviolent decolonization strategies and what we could do on an individual level to help. It was very Ahimsa and very Quaker. Even at the age of seven, Raven thought it was the coolest thing she’d ever heard. She went home and told Renata and Ruby about it, who also loved the idea and asked Mom and Dad to celebrate with them. Every year after that, we took turns hosting.

  It was our turn this year. School let out early the day before Thanksgiving, and when we got home, Mom changed out of her business suit into an old ratty pair of overalls—the first time I’d seen her wear them in recent memory. She tied a bandana around her head, turned on Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony at top volume, and attacked the floors and furniture with a spray bottle of tea tree oil and lemon juice. Pretty soon, the whole house smelled clean and lemony. Dad, who had closed Fine Print early as well, sorted through farmers’ market produce on the kitchen counter while I helped Mom haul the center leaf for the table up from the basement. We squeezed two extra folding chairs plus Josh’s cello chair between the other chairs around the table.

  Josh was practicing down in the basement, sitting on an overturned box since we’d taken his chair. I thought one reason Mom was blasting music was to cover up the faint sounds of his Popper Hungarian Rhapsody. He clearly still didn’t know the piece, although it was improving. But I could tell that Mom was nervous about his competition. She’d been scheduling extra lessons for him all month. She wouldn’t even let him help with the cooking. Josh and I always made the cranberry sauce together. This year, though, she told him to keep practicing, so I made the cranberry sauce myself.