Tell It to Naomi

by Daniel Ehrenhaft

  I guess what I’m really asking is: are we friends? Like not just advice colum-NIST and colum-NEE, but real friends? Because I feel like we are. Maybe it’s just because your e-mails have changed so much over the past couple of days. You never used to come up with crazy ideas to DO things together. Or as close as you can get to doing things together without breaking the advice columnist wall … and it’s not that I mind … God … hardly … I’m SO PYSCHED! I’ve been WAITING FOR THIS!

  I have a feeling I know who you are.

  I have a feeling you’re Naomi Rosen. (And if you’re not, please spare me the embarrassment. Just tell me, and I swear I’ll never write to you again.)

  But the reason I’m so sure I know is because we spoke on the phone once, a long time ago. Before you even started writing the column. (I also called you again after that—did you ever get the message? Never mind …) I know this sounds completely crazy, but I felt like we made a connection on the phone that day. And … oh, boy … this is going to sound even MORE crazy. But I feel like, maybe, just maybe, you got the advice columnist idea from ME?

  Is that possible? I’m sure I’m just patting myself on the back. I don’t know if you even remember me. So here it goes … (I’m dying here … )

  I’m Celeste Fanucci.

  I actually know your little brother Dave from school. (He’s so funny, btw!) But if I’m not going out on a limb, if you DO remember me … I just want to thank you. You really showed me how an advice column should be written. And the reason I never wanted to ask YOU for any advice is because I know how hard it can be as an advice columnist. I guess that was how we started exchanging e-mails about other stuff and becoming friends and …

  Oh, God! Listen to me! This is so embarrassing! But I’m not going to censor myself. I’m just going to plug ahead and finish this e-mail and send it, for better or for worse. Because most of all I want to THANK YOU for making me see the light about my boyfriend. Because when you wrote that stuff about Spiral Lounge … see, the thing is, he PLAYS there. Every single open-mike night, he plays. He played tonight! And I just couldn’t bring myself to go. It IS silly! HE’S silly! And he got all mad at me, like: Oh, what? You have to sit at your computer all night, like you always do? Talking to your “friend”? Rather than see me play?

  He’s JEALOUS of you! Can you believe that?

  Maybe I should have seen him play. Maybe I should break up with him. I don’t even know. Because he is sweet, if a bad musician and a little lacking on the humor front. And he IS hot … hee, hee …

  Okay, now I’ll stop.

  Again—if you aren’t Naomi Rosen, you don’t have to respond. But if you are …

  a) I’d like to meet in person, too. SO MUCH!

  b) You RULE!!! I can’t even tell you.

  c) What should I do about Zeke!!??? (That’s my boyfriend. )

  —Celeste “FONY” Fanucci

  The color had drained from my face.

  I’d been turned into a sponge. Call it symbolism; call it anything you want. But I was a sponge: a stupid, simple organism, the simplest—existing in perfect ignorance, floating blindly through wherever, not knowing squat about the real world … until the moment of death. (Death being the lone reality every organism understands.) Because Celeste Fanucci, without ever laying a hand on me, had ended my life. She’d wrung all the blood from my body. She’d twisted and squeezed me, milking every last drop—

  You get the picture.

  This changed things.

  I wasn’t so upset about Hospital Girl anymore, for starters. I turned away from the computer, catching a glimpse of my reflection in one of the windows. I was white as a sheet. I just … Okay. I just didn’t understand how this was possible. FONY was a freshman. She’d said so in her first e-mail—the very first one she’d ever written. Or she’d implied as much. And that wasn’t my imagination. No! She’d lied to me. She’d misled me. If I’d known …

  I laughed coldly.

  No point in asking. If I’d done X, then I would have known Y. That was algebra. I didn’t need algebra. I knew there was no variable in this equation.

  I knew the truth.

  What else did I know? I knew that I had nothing to say to this ditz who wasn’t a ditz, this actress who pretended to believe in palm readings because she thought Zeke Beck was so freaking hot. And, plus—I knew that I wasn’t Naomi Rosen. I was her funny little brother. So technically, I didn’t have to respond to the e-mail. But …

  I couldn’t just leave it at that. Celeste and I had a history together.

  Our history.

  Our history being (in condensed, Cliffs Notes form): I’d fallen in love with her; I’d sent her straight into the arms of a cheating scumbag with my brilliant advice; I’d fallen out of love with her; I’d fallen in love with someone else—someone smarter and funnier and my type—for once, a realistic possibility for me in the romance department, a freshman … and somehow I’d ended up right back where I’d started: in a lonely, lonely, lonely spongelike abyss.

  Right. That history.

  Still, regardless of all that, I owed Celeste a response. She wanted advice about how to deal with her boyfriend. And I was a published advice columnist—her published advice columnist.

  But this wasn’t the sort of advice I could give at two-thirty in the morning. I would have to sleep on this one.

  I might even have to do some research.

  Oh, yes. No doubt. I know just where to look, too.

  She’d said I was funny? I’d give her funny.

  There was only one suitable archive, one sick trove of blather (as in S-I-C-K)—one source alone that was vile, absurd, and altogether offensive enough to ensure that Celeste would never ask me for advice again.

  And I’d never even read it.

  But still, I was certain …

  Grandpa Meyer’s memoirs could set Celeste Fanucci straight.

  “This isn’t like him at all,” Aunt Ruth was whispering. “He never sleeps this late.”

  I blinked, rubbing my eyes. Sunlight was streaming through my windows.

  What the—

  Aunt Ruth was standing there with Cheese.

  “Hey,” I managed, wincing. “What’s going on?”

  “You tell me,” Aunt Ruth muttered. She turned and headed toward the kitchen. “This isn’t healthy, Dave. You’ve been in bed for fifteen hours. I really should talk to your mother. Your behavior recently …” Her voice faded into silence.

  Cheese grinned at me.

  “Really, Dave,” he said, doing a dead-on impersonation of Aunt Ruth. “This isn’t healthy at all.”

  I grinned back. For a beautiful, fleeting, disoriented moment, I’d been transported back into the past. All was well. Cheese was Cheese. He wasn’t wearing a black suit jacket or Doc Martens—just jeans and his old homemade KISS ME, I’M LEGAL! T-shirt, and socks, because he’d obviously just run up the stairs from his apartment.

  “Hey, man,” I said.

  “Hey, man, yourself.” He closed the door and leaned against it. “What’s going on? Are you sick are something?”

  I shook my head.”No. Why?”

  “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. “You’re passed out like a syllabus.”

  “Wow.” I yawned. “I must have … I had a hard time falling asleep.”

  “Yeah, well look—I, uh, I just wanted to tell you that I’m canceling the party tonight.”

  “You’re … what?”

  He looked down at the floor. “I’m canceling the party tonight. Mike and Darren and I wanted to play at it—you know, acoustic—but Darren’s sick. He can’t make it. So we’re gonna wait until next Saturday.”

  Now I was awake. He and his clones wanted to play “acoustic” tonight, huh? How nice. Too bad Darren was sick. Maybe Zeke Beck could fill in for him. Or at least provide Cheese with a tape loop. I almost suggested as much—but then I remembered, Oh, right. This had nothing to do with me. It was none of my business. I hadn’t been invited to t
he party in the first place.

  Cheese laughed to himself and looked up at me. “So … um Dave? Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  My face twisted in a scowl. That was the exact same question Joel Newbury had asked me last night. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I demanded hoarsely. “What would I want to tell you?”

  His face darkened. He turned and reached for the doorknob. “Nothing. So—”

  “You don’t have to invite me to your party if you don’t want to,” I heard myself snap. I wished I hadn’t, but there was nothing I could do about it now. It was out in the open. That dumb lump had found its way back into my throat, too.

  “That wasn’t what I was talking about,” he mumbled, his back still turned.

  “It wasn’t? Well, please, Greg. Tell me. What are you talking about?”

  He bowed his head. “Dave … I … forget it. I wanted to invite you to the party. That’s what I’m doing right now. It’s next Saturday. And your family’s invited, too.”

  Before I could respond, he hurried out of the room.

  I swallowed.

  A moment later I heard the front door slam.

  My eyes began to sting.

  Nice, Dave, I thought. Way to go. Free, again!

  Somehow, at some point, I’d developed a serious problem. I’d started handling every single situation exactly the way it shouldn’t be handled. I needed a Rewind button for my life. A big, huge, cosmic Rewind button—for all sorts of things … to go back to the day Cheese asked to borrow my stupid guitar, for one. Why hadn’t I just let him borrow it? Why had I picked this stupid fight in the first place? I never played my guitar. I hadn’t picked it up in over a month. I hadn’t noticed it, to be honest—or anything else I owned, really—not since I’d begun locking myself away in Naomi’s room at all hours…

  Which reminded me.

  I had work to do.

  And I was just angry and demoralized enough to do it.

  “Hey, Dave?” Mom yelled from the kitchen.

  “Yeah?”

  “Ruth and I are going out to shop for a DVD player. Do you want to come?”

  “No thanks,” I shouted back.

  There was a pause.

  “Oh, Dave, come on,” Aunt Ruth pleaded. “We’ll wait for you, okay? It’s so nice out. We’ll take you out for lunch. It’s not good to be cooped up here so much—”

  “I’m FINE!“ I barked.

  She didn’t answer.

  I could hear them muttering. Oh, brother. I threw the covers aside and tumbled out of bed stomping across the room to poke my head out the door.

  “I’m fine!” I repeated, peering down the hall. “Okay? Just go ahead!”

  They stood huddled together in the kitchen, gaping at me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’d just caught them in the middle of committing a crime. Or vice versa.

  “You really don’t want us to take you to lunch?” Aunt Ruth asked tentatively

  I forced a smile. “No. Thanks. It’s just … I have work to do. That’s all. Everything is fine. Really.”

  She opened her mouth again, but Mom grabbed her arm.

  “We’ll just go by ourselves, then, Ruth,” she stated in a loud voice. She marched toward the front door, dragging Aunt Ruth along with her. “We’ll be back by suppertime. Dave can stay here. If that’s what he wants, that’s what he gets. He’s old enough to make these sorts of decisions for himself. He knows we’d love nothing better than for him to come with us, and to open up, and to share—to get whatever’s troubling him so much off his chest—but we are not going to interfere with his decision-making …”

  The door closed behind them.

  Whew.

  I let out a deep breath.

  Now: to dig up Grandpa Meyer’s forbidden memoirs.

  * * *

  Mom’s tiny bedroom is just around the corner from the bathroom. For some reason she has the smallest room in the apartment even smaller than Aunt Ruth’s. It was originally intended to be a study, I think, but since the four of us need privacy, we’ve always had to be a little creative with our living space.

  I hurried down the hall. I was pretty sure she kept Grandpa Meyer’s old chest in her shoe closet. Not that I’d ever seen it in there—or looked—but Naomi had once told me that Mom and Aunt Ruth hid all the family’s embarrassing belongings in Mom’s shoe closet …

  And as usual, when it came to secrets, Naomi was right.

  The chest sat on the closet floor, smack in the middle of a bunch of boxes.

  I grinned, kneeling down beside it. It looked exactly the same as I remembered it from the shivah at the retirement home—dust and all. The jimmied lock still hung open.

  Carefully with both hands, I raised the lid and peered inside.

  The pages were neatly stacked, if a little dirty. But they were still legible.

  Rosen on Rosen:

  The life and Times of a Jewish American Romantic

  By Meyer I. Rosen

  I begin with a question. What is Love?

  Ah … indeed. It is the oldest question.

  Is Love merely a savage duet? Is Love the sweaty ballet that occurs between two people at their most intimate? Or perhaps more than two people, as is rumored to occur in some exotic countries, such as France? Can Love be defined by that uncontrollable moment when our tangled passions scream to be released, in wanton abandon, like a good sneeze?

  Friends,I believe that Love is more profound than that.

  For the mind does not exist apart from the body. Mind and body are one.

  Consider Mrs. Slotnick—the pretty young woman across the street. At this very moment, as I write, looking through the blinds, I can see her frolicking in the nude. Is she remembering last night’s romp with her husband? Is she listening to the radio? Is she just acting upon a wild animalistic instinct to dance?

  Friends, I believe that the answers are more profound.

  I closed the lid.

  There was no need to read any further. No, I’d gotten the gist. I flashed out of the room, nearly tripping on the hall rug.

  I understood something vital at that moment.

  For the past seven years Mom and Aunt Ruth had hidden the memoirs from me, not because they were “inappropriate for children” (which, of course, they were), but for a more protective reason: Mom and Aunt Ruth had been trying to shield me from the knowledge that I was the direct descendant of a Peeping Tom.

  I already knew that I had an irresponsible drunk on one side of the family. But now knowing for certain that I had a full-fledged pervert on the other? Good God. And what about all those people at the retirement home who used to say that Grandpa Meyer and I were “a lot alike”? How? How the hell was I like him?

  I shuddered.

  Sometimes it’s best to follow the rules, I told myself as I hurried back around the corner. Sometimes the rules are put in place for a reason. The next time I want to break a rule—no matter how dumb it may seem—I should remember what I just saw…

  Right.

  More to the point: consulting the memoirs was out. I would just have to trust my own instincts in responding to Celeste. But that was fine. My own instincts had always served me well when it came to the column. Just not when it came to anything else.

  I burst into Naomi’s room.

  To my surprise, Naomi was sitting at the computer.

  “Hey!” I said.”I didn’t even know you were here.”

  “How could you know?” she said. “You’ve been asleep all day.”

  I frowned. “Why are you here, by the way?”

  She kept her eyes fixed to the screen. “Dave, you do remember that this is my room, right? I know it can get confusing for you. I am extraordinarily generous with it.”

  I rolled my eyes and sat on her bed. “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “Why am I here?” she said absently. “Why am I here …?” She peeked at the keyboard. “I have work to do.”

  Interesting. That wa
s exactly what I’d told Mom and Aunt Ruth. “You know what I don’t get?” I grumbled. “It’s fine for you to stay ‘cooped up’ all day, sleeping until all hours and sitting at the computer, but when I want to do that, it’s suddenly cause for panic—Wait.” I stared at her. “You said you had work to do?”

  She nodded.

  I felt the beginnings of a smile on my face. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”What kind of work? Did you get a job?” I asked

  “Well … yeah. I guess I did.”

  “Naomi, that’s awesome! Congratulations—”

  “Wait, wait.” She spun around in the chair. “Thanks. I mean it. But look, don’t say anything about it to Mom and Aunt Ruth, all right?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s … see, nothing’s quite definite. It’s all so up in the air right now.” She smiled with a strange uncertainty.

  “What is?”

  Naomi leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Okay. Here’s the deal. You know how I’ve been hanging out so much with Joel and his friend Brian?”

  “No.” My voice was a dull monotone. “You have? Really?”

  “Dave,” she groaned. “Can you can the humor? See, the two of them are putting together a business plan to launch a magazine. They’ve decided to start their own company. And they want me to be the magazine’s centerpiece!”

  Centerpiece?

  My thoughts must have still been mired in “Rosen on Rosen” because for an awful moment … “What do you mean?” I asked, aghast. “They want you to pose for pictures? You don’t need a job that bad—”

  “Not centerfold, you moron.” She giggled.”Centerpiece. Jeez, Dave. You really have to get your mind out of the gutter. It’s going to be an educational magazine. Or maybe not so much educational as … well, it’ll be sort of like the New Yorker for kids—but hipper, more cutting-edge, more fun. It was Brian’s idea. He is, like, the hugest fan of the column. He thinks it’s brilliant. But he thinks we should scrap the whole anonymity thing and go in the opposite direction. He thinks we should turn me into a personality. You know, like Dr. Ruth. He thinks the reason it’s such a hit at school is because the kids who write in feel like they know me, like I’m their friend. And if they actually did know me—or, at least, if they knew who I was, if they could see my picture and learn about my life and stuff—then the column would explode. You know?”