by Rachel Cohn
I liked Aaron, and not in a dangerous Java-my-heart-beat-races-when-he's-within-five-feet-of-me radar kind of way. Aaron was not pretty-boy cute, or smoldering like Java. He was tall and chunky and scruffy, and for an upstanding
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homosexual, not that great a dresser, what with his faded decal Aerosmith T-shirt and his worn-out pajama pants he wore because of the oven heat. He was a mellow type of dude with a shock of strawberry red hair creeping out under his tall white chef's hat that he wore even though he cooked for a little café and not a four-star shi-shi restaurant, and he had big baby blue eyes that softened every time he looked at Danny. How could you not like him?
Danny and Aaron met at boarding school. They have been together that long, like almost ten whole years. High school sweethearts. They gave me hope.
Sid and Nancy have been together for just a little bit longer, but you would never see them sharing a business together, or not freaking that the business doesn't make a ton of money--hardly any actually--or bring them lots of influence and admirers. You would never see one of them bring the other ice wrapped in a washcloth when the other burned a finger and then kissing the finger to make it better, you would never see them laughing over old jokes and having hearts open enough to allow a new sister into their lives without feeling threatened or put out.
Danny wanted to take the evening shift off to spend time with me and Aaron was all, "Cool, go, have fun." One time Blank and Java didn't come to work because their cousin was visiting, and I counted the minutes until my shift ended that day, I was so uptight about them having fun without me and forgetting about me. I broke three glasses that day and sulked when Blank asked me how my day was on the phone that night. Ouch.
I was grateful that Aaron was a lot sweller about sharing Danny than I would have been about Blank. I had only
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known my brother for a day, and I wanted to spend as much time with him as he would give me. I wanted to suck information from him like a sponge. And anyway, when Danny called Frank-dad to tell him he was kidnapping me for the night, I swear I could hear the sigh of relief coming from Frank's end of the phone, even though Danny said "daddy" was annoyed with him for making my acquaintance without consulting Frank first. I had a feeling that's how things were done in his biological corner of the family: Everyone just did what they wanted and then told Frank, because you couldn't rely on him to take care of things the right way.
"So tell me about yourself, charm girl whom I'm going to call CC," Danny said when we finally sat down to dinner at about eleven that night. We had planned on ditching the Village Idiots much earlier, but the cafe got so busy, and I was churning out the lattes so smooth and Danny was dishing out the cakes so fine, that we ended up just staying a couple extra hours because Ella blasting from the stereo sounded so good and the all-over vibe, with customers chattering, forks clinking, coffee slurping, people happy, we just couldn't desert Aaron until after the crowds left, they tummies full, they teeth tingling.
"No," I said. "You first." I wanted to bask. We were seated at an outdoor cafe, which you can never do in San Francisco because it is too cold at night; it felt great to sit outside at night wearing only a black tank dress and combat boots and not be freezing. I liked Greenwich Village much more than Frank Land on the Upper East Side. There were no skyscraper office buildings or condo complexes, but loads of old brownstones, funky restaurants, and little parks where people played rapid-fire dominoes and chess
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with timers set on the sides of the tables. From where Danny and I sat perched for dinner, you could see the Empire State Building bursting in a red spoke to our north, and the Twin Towers humming in gray clouds to our south. It was like being in the center of an Oreo whose black sides were opened in a V shape.
Being the little sister, even though Danny is about my same height, being looked after and cherished, was even better. I hope one day when Ash and Josh are grown up we can come back to the Village and have dinner and bond. Hopefully Sid and Nancy will keep it together and we won't have to spend our sib time talking about our parents' secrets and lies, the way Danny and I were going to have to spend our first dinner.
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Twenty-five
So this is how it went down," Danny explained. "I was barely in middle school at the time, and so I've had to put together the pieces over the years, and my facts are not one-hundred percent reliable, but here's what I know. Daddy and your mom were having an affair and then she got pregnant. I'm sure they talked about having an abortion--if I'm making you uncomfortable just tell me--but she decided to have the baby. I think she expected Daddy to marry her, and I think Daddy wanted to. My parents' marriage was awful, you should know that. My mother spent most of her time at our house in Connecticut, and Daddy had an apartment in the city where he spent weeknights. Really, we only saw him on weekends when I was a kid. He was a workaholic and was, and still is, a womanizer. This is fact. CC, I can tell by looking at you and talking to you that you're not so innocent and naive that you can't hear this stuff--I think you get it and I think you can understand that our father can still be a loving father even though as a husband or lover, he was no angel. Right?" Danny looked a little worried that he had said too much too soon.
I nodded. I was sad to hear Danny proclaim what I already suspected to be true, but at the same time, I think I felt a little relieved not to have to put Frank real-dad up on any pedestal anymore. Also, I liked Danny for laying down the facts without sugar-coating, much as I love sugar.
"My mother would not give him a divorce. She was a
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very devout and serious Catholic, and I think she wanted to spite him, too. She held him responsible for all of her unhappiness."
"Did you hate your mom?" I asked Danny. Because even though Nancy and I aren't exactly going to be cat-walking at any mother-daughter fashion shows anytime soon, I don't hate her at all, despite what she thinks. She makes me crazy and I think she totally does not get me, but I know that in her mind, she tries to do what is right for me, even though what she thinks is right usually results in decisions I hate, i.e., boarding school, puke princess room, Alcatraz incarceration. I realized it must have been a huge leap of faith for her to let me come to New York on my own and find out things that I might not like. I wondered if, in her own way, maybe she was trying to allow me an independence that would nudge my growing up process along.
"No," Danny said, "I loved my mother very much, even though she thought my being gay was a sin. She was very controlling, but she loved us and would have done anything for us. My sister is a lot like her."
"Do you miss her?"
"I do miss my mother," Danny said. "We fought a lot when I was a teenager. She didn't approve of Aaron and was always referring to him as my 'friend.' She never told her friends I was gay. But at the end of her life, when the cancer was eating her away, I spent a lot of time with her, nursing her, talking to her. Aaron did, too, and that made a huge difference. She finally got to know him and see how wonderful he was and appreciate him as my lover and my mate. The denial wore away, and I think she came to love him as
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much as she could. He was very good to her, especially considering that initially she had been awful to him."
"What about my dad?" I asked.
"Daddy has always been great about Aaron, but in a very stiff way..." When I asked about my dad, I had meant Sid-dad. Sid-dad who had always been there for me, who loved me as much as he loved Ash and Josh, who would never try to pass me off as his niece. "It's like he was trying so hard to be cool about the whole situation that eventually he just came to accept it."
"What about 'Uncle' Sid?" I clarified.
Now Danny smiled. "I miss him!" he said. "When I was little, he was like a hero to Lisbeth and me. He didn't have a wife or children so when he came to visit, he would take us to amusement parks and baseball games. He had an inexh
austible supply of energy for us. You could tell he wanted kids but he was also a workaholic and he didn't date much. And then Daddy made the mistake of asking his old pal Sid to watch over his girlfriend and love child in the city one weekend and it was all over after that. Uncle Sid, I guess, was so furious at Daddy about the way Daddy had behaved--leading double lives and lying to my mom and to your mom--that he stopped talking to Daddy, and soon after that, I guess your mom realized he was never going to marry her or help her raise their child, and she broke things off with Daddy. And then like a year or two later, Sid came back into town, got in touch with your mom, fell in love with you from the way I understand it, and whisked you both away to San Francisco, which worked out very conveniently for Daddy and my mom because the whole situation had become this silent onus
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that everyone knew about but nobody talked about, it made them total enemies. Lisbeth and I were trapped in the middle of a very unhappy family."
More score: For all that, in my opinion, Danny had a lot to be bitter about, he accepted everyone in his family for who they were, warts and all, and seemed to love them each individually just the same. I was starting to feel like my older baker brother was a helluva good inspiration, maybe even better than Helen Keller, should I choose to heed his enlightened call.
"Okay, Ceece, now it's your turn. Spill. Tell me about you."
For once I think I felt shy and I kind of rolled my eyes and shrugged and turned the corners of my mouth down. "Dunno!" I said.
"Boyfriend?" Danny asked. "Girlfriend?"
"Well," I said. "I had like a true love in San Francisco. He is an artist and a surfer and a barista, too." As I was talking, my skin was actually tingling from missing He Who Cannot Be Named.
"And?" Danny asked.
"My mother made me not see him anymore and then he dumped me."
Danny eyed me and said, "Something tells me there's more to the story than that."
"Well, I spent the night at his house and then my parents grounded me and then he decided that I was harshing his mellow and he needed some time to, like, do things with other people and do his art blah blah blah."
"Hmm," Danny said. 'Aaron and I had a period like that, right after high school. We broke up for like six
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months because we thought we wanted to see other people, thought we needed to experience more things separately, independently."
"But you worked it out!" I said excitedly. "You decided it's better to be together!"
"We did. But the time apart was good. We did need to work on our own individual identities. We still do."
"Oh," I said. "Right."
"Do you have lots of friends? You don't seem like one of those squealing teenyboppers who travel in packs and like to scream for pop stars in Times Square."
"My best friend is Sugar Pie. She lives in a nursing home. She is a psychic and can read tarot cards."
"Interesting! Do you get along with your mom?" Danny asked.
I hesitated, then said, "We try." I could try to try, I considered.
"Do you have plans for your future? Do you know what you want to do?"
I shook my head. "I don't understand those people who have it all figured out, who know 'I want to go to XYZ College and then I'll be a lawyer' or a weatherperson or whatever. I'll be lucky to get into junior college. Anyway, maybe I just want to be a barista."
"You could do worse," Danny said. "You're great at that, and the most important first steps in figuring out what you want to do, you already have--a good work ethic and loving what you do."
Hmm.
I yawned and looked at my watch. It was past one in the morning, and the streets were still teeming with people
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and life, laughter and music. I was drained, not just sleepy tired, but emotionally exhausted.
'Are you tired?" Danny asked. "Maybe you want to just crash at our place tonight rather than go back uptown to Daddy's?"
I surprised myself when I said no. It was almost like we had sprinted to the finish line of our sibling learning curve, and now we needed a breather, because we had cheated past years of growing, struggling, fighting, and adoring to get to this one day and night of perfect togetherness. "I'll take a cab back to Frank's," I said.
I looked up at the Empire State Building to the north and the World Trade Center to the south. I had been born at a hospital on the Lower East Side sandwiched between those two monoliths. Pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is Cyd Charisse started to feel like they were being identified and put in their proper place.
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Twenty-six
After five days of me grabbing a slice with Luis at lunch and then working the dinner shift at the Village Idiots, Frank has decided that I am worthy of his time. He has done me the immense favor of clearing his social calendar on Saturday until five o'clock, after which he has to get dressed and leave for the theah-tah. We are going to be father-daughter until the clock strikes five and I am flying solo and Frank is off wining and dining clients and hopefully not impregnating impressionable young dancer-models.
We started with a walk through Central Park. For once the weather was not that sticky and the sun beamed down through the midtown skyscrapers onto the lush greens of the park as we strolled, not walking close like chums, but at a slight distance from each other as, I suppose, wayward dads and their love children are wont to do.
Frank was very proud of himself when we arrived at Strawberry Fields on the West Side.
"See," he said. "This area was dedicated to John Lennon, who lived right over there." He pointed to a haunted-looking old apartment building creeping over the trees in the distance.
"Who's John Lennon?" I asked, and Frank's face fell.
"He was a musician and a songwriter and a revolutionary. People come from all over the world to see this tribute to him." How much do you want to bet he gleaned this information from a commercial? I offered a blank stare back
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and Frank added, "Ever hear of the Beatles?"
"I think so," I said, but I was humming a song to myself: Yeah yeah yeah. Torturing Frank on the generation gap like this was somewhat amusing.
"Many people thought John Lennon was a hero," Frank said very seriously. "Your brother Danny worshiped him." You could tell Frank was real pleased with himself for knowing about this spot with the oval that proclaimed "Imagine."
"Oh, I remember," I said. "Wasn't he also the guy that was like doped up all the time and having an affair with some other Asian lady that wasn't his wife?"
Frank looked down and then back at me. "You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?" he asked.
"Nope," I answered, but in a very pleasant way.
We walked in silence for a while. As we approached the middle of the park, Frank said, 'Are you interested in art? We could walk over to the Metropolitan Museum from here."
"I like art," I said. "I especially like artists."
Frank gave me a quizzical look back. We changed directions and started heading back to the East Side. We stopped for crushed lemon ices from a rolling cart vendor, and as we proceeded with our stroll, sour-sweet lemon quenching our thirst, Frank kind of cleared his throat and then said to the open air in general and not directly at me, "So, are you...uh...managing to stay out of trouble?"
I realized that in his way Frank was trying to make sure I was okay and part of me suspected that was probably the best I would ever get out of him. "Yup," I said. "I'm on the pill now."
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Frank blushed, which was funny considering all the women with spaghetti-strap sundresses and bloodred-painted toenails whom he had been covertly eyeing all afternoon. And even with his East Coast docksiders on his feet and his goofy polo shirt and khaki shorts and his sixty-something self, they had been scoping him back. Blech!
Maybe Frank has produced too many public service announcements as the King of the Advertising World because he said, "Your boyfriend and
you...you practice...you be sure to be safe. The pill is not enough."
"I know," I said. It's funny that I would not want to have this conversation with Nancy, but since Frank is a certified dawg, it did not bother me at all. "Condoms are good, too." I gave him a friendly punch in the arm and said, "You remember that, old buddy!"
Frank did laugh. I think he realized that there was just too much awkwardness between us so why not just suspend it entirely?
Frank relaxed and said very bluntly, "This boyfriend of yours. He was the one that got you into trouble?"
"Nope," I answered. "That was the boyfriend before." I could tell Frank was a little relieved that he wasn't going to have to give me a speech about continuing in a relationship with a boy who knocked me up and then stuck me with looking up my secret father to wire me the money to pay for the abortion. "I'm actually not seeing anybody right now. My boyfriend in San Fran broke up with me." Now Frank looked double relieved. Not only did he not have to give me the aforementioned speech, but he also did not have to worry about me fooling around with a current
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boyfriend. And yet he was the one that threw Luis into my hormonally challenged world! Irony.
Having dispensed with the safe-sex talk, Frank was free to move on to tamer topics. "So, do you have a favorite subject in school?"