Gingerbread

by Rachel Cohn

  "Skipping school is probably my favorite subject. I just cannot get myself interested in anything that goes on there."

  "Don't you want to go to college?"

  "Eh," I shrugged. I know it's super cool to be one of those hyper-achieving teens who kill themselves on extracurriculars and cram for SATs and write extra credit reports about saving the environment to get higher GPAs, but I am just not one of those people. I may, in fact, be one of those people who will be content just to make great coffee and hang out on foggy broody beaches and not worry too much about the great issues of the world. I don't think that makes me a bad person.

  "Your sister," Frank said proudly, "was a stellar student. Went to Harvard, my alma mater. She's now an investment banker with a top Wall Street firm."

  "When am I going to meet this sister?" I asked. Rhonda lisBETH was like the dark shadow of my visit so far. Everyone seemed to dance around the issue of her, like she was some kind of monster who couldn't be unleashed upon love children.

  "Soon," Frank said, although I don't think he believed that. Clearly, lisBETH was the person who did not want to meet me.

  We arrived at the grand steps of the Met where swarms of people were milling about, sitting around and drinking

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  sodas, taking pictures, chilling in the hot summer breeze. "So what'll it be," Frank asked as we walked up the steps. "Egyptian artifacts, Asian pottery, Renaissance paintings, what's your pleasure?"

  I said, "I don't like that portraits of ancient kings and queens and velvet tapestry stuff. I dig on more modern kinda art. Not that streaks of paint splashed across a canvas that a four-year-old could do, but like that cube stuff and Picasso-ness and that guy who drew windows and that lady who did the erotic flowers and oh, I especially like that guy who did the intricate mathematical-like black-and-white pictures of like hands and buildings and such."

  Frank looked impressed, actually. I have no idea why. "You mean you like Magritte and Georgia O'Keefe and Escher?"

  "Yeah!" I exclaimed. "Those guys!" Shrimp used to love dragging me to museums on the days we skipped school together.

  "Hmmph," Frank said, pleased.

  While we were standing in the admission line, some old white guy wearing golf pants and a shirt with a little alligator came up to us. "Frankie!" the guy exclaimed. "Good to see you, good to see you. What brings you to the Met in the middle of summer when most respectable people are on the Vineyard or in the Hamptons? Heh heh heh." I locked my eyes into place to prevent them from rolling in disgust. I hate snobs.

  Frank gestured toward me and said, "I'm showing my nie ..." He looked at me and I bore my eyes straight to the center of his soul, and he continued, "my...my...my

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  goddaughter, showing her a little bit of the city. She's a modern art fan! Quite knowledgeable, too."

  Oh, please. I know Frank wanted me to give an innocent and sweet smile to his friend but I didn't. I just stared ahead blankly.

  You could tell the old guy was confused and had probably never before seen a goddaughter that looked exactly like her godfather, but if he suspected anything, he didn't let on. The old guy gave me a friendly tap on the shoulder. "Well, enjoy! See ya later, old fellow. Lunch at the club soon?"

  Frank said, "Definitely. I'll have Dolores call your girl."

  "Excellent, will do," the old guy said, and proceeded back toward his own family.

  When he was gone, Frank cleared his throat again and said, "That was the CEO of one of my biggest clients."

  I suppose "goddaughter" was the best compromise he could give. I wasn't even mad. I wasn't. That's just Frank, I guess.

  He must have mistook my silence for my wanting an explanation because he added, "CEO. That's the Chief Executive Officer. It's the head guy for an important company."

  "I know what one is, Frank," I said. "My dad is one."

  We both knew I meant Sid-dad, my real dad.

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  Twenty-seven

  So in the Biological Father of the Year category, Frank might not be winning any awards anytime soon. He asked if I would like Luis to hang out with me on a Saturday night. Would I! Nancy would have choked on her LifeSavers before allowing a Luis-like hottie to "baby-sit" me for a Saturday evening, but Frank didn't think twice about it.

  I was good, though. I said no. Frank didn't expect to be home until very late and he seemed like he almost felt bad about leaving me alone. Danny and Aaron had invited me to par-tay with them in the Village, but they had spent all their evenings of the last week working with me and laughing with me, so I figured they needed a night for just them without Cyd Charisse, third wheel. God only knows where Rhonda lisBETH was, not like I cared anymore.

  I knew that the warm and sultry summer air was beckoning Temptation just too strongly, so I said, don't you worry about me, Frank. I don't need Luis to chaperone me. I'm gonna watch this here satellite TV and order me some moo shoo something or other and we'll be just fine. Gingerbread and I will hang out and hit the sack early, no problemo . I meant it when I said it, too, and Frank was all, Well, Luis said to call him if you want company, and I said, Right.

  So even though TV usually bores me, I got sucked in by this cheesy '80s movie about this dorky pizza delivery boy who mistakenly becomes this gigolo to all these posh

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  women. And the thing about the pizza delivery boy was that he was kinda skinny and scrawny and average-looking, but he was all heart, and somehow, he managed to turn himself into what each of the women's fantasies were.

  This, of course, made me think of Blank, because of (a) the pizza boy's good heart, (b) he was a great loverboy, and (c) did I mention the warm and sultry summer weather that just seduces your skin?

  But still, I was good. Gingerbread gave me a look like, Don't do what I know you're thinking about doing, by which she meant, Don't be fooling with my boy Loo-eese. I told her, Don't you worry, it's cool.

  I had another plan in mind. A call-by. A call-by is what I call the telephone equivalent of a drive-by, when you're crushing on someone so you figure out a way to drive by their house to see if they're home, if the lights are on, if, oh my goodness you're hanging out on the porch and I just "happened" to be driving by, why don't we go out for coffee or something? Coincidence! Call-by's usually end, however, when you listen to the object of your affection saying, "Hello? Hello? Who is this? Goddamnit, who is this?" and you sigh because you love that person so much and then you hang up. Call-by's, by the way, are not advisable if the person on the receiving end has Caller ID, which I knew for a fact that the recipient of my call-by did not have, or if that person is a chronic '69er (which is an interesting numeric choice on the part of the phone company, in my opinion).

  So I picked up that phone and Gingerbread closed her eyes, and the phone went ring ring and my heart went flutter flutter. After six rings I was about to hang up when a voice answered very sharply, "Ya, what?" Java. My lust

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  factor shot through the ceiling even though I wanted to ask him, How is you-know-who? Is he okay? Does he miss me like I miss him? Have you fired that incompetent piece of shit Autumn yet?

  But my mouth froze and my body grew warm and almost instantly, there was a fire inside me that was going to need to be quenched. I could almost hear the roar of the Ocean Beach surf in the distance and see Java standing in his wet suit on the roof, the cordless at his ear as he stared longingly at the water, hungering for the cold curls.

  To the silence, Java said, "Who's there? Hello? Delia, is that you? Listen baby, you know I'm sorry about last night..."

  I hung up.

  I remembered how Blank's last words to me had been, "And maybe you need some time to figure out your crush on my brother." I looked at my Mickey watch. Seemed to me like that time had come. I looked at Gingerbread and she was giving me that same look she used to give me before I would sneak off to Justin's room to fool around. I took Gingerbread into our bedroom and tucked h
er in for the night. I whispered in her ear, "Don't worry, I'll be careful." I gave her an eskimo kiss and placed my sleep mask over her eyes so the moonlight would not keep her awake or distracted.

  I returned to the living room and called Luis's mobile phone.

  "Hey, buddy," I said in this indifferent but kind of sexy way.

  "Uh-oh," Luis said. "What, you don't like being home alone on a Saturday night?"

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  "Maybe," I said, coy. "Maybe not."

  This is how I used to be around Justin. And he actually fell for this, too. Men. I don't get them.

  Luis said, "So what do you want me to do about it?" I could hear laughter and music in the background of wherever he was.

  I said, "I was thinking of going out clubbing tonight. Got any recommendations for places to go?"

  Luis said, "No, you're not! Frank'll kill me!" I think he covered his hand over the phone because there was a pause and what sounded like a voice softly exclaiming, "Fuck!" Then he came back to the phone and said, "What do you say I come over and you and me go get a coffee or some tea?"

  "Long Island Iced Tea?" I asked.

  Luis said, "NO! I'll be over soon. Man, girl, I took one look at you and knew you were trouble." The tone of his voice was not entirely displeased by that observation. "Don't go anywhere, I'll be over soon."

  '"Kay," I said, and hung up.

  Her natural psychic abilities must be greater than Sugar Pie's because guess who called exactly when I hung up with Luis? My mother. How does she know when I'm about to score?

  "Oh, hi," I said, nervous. Since arriving in New York I had talked to Nancy once, when I was in the car on my way to Frank's from the airport and I had called to tell her I arrived okay. She had promised then she wouldn't call me every two minutes and she had been pretty good about it. She had promised we would give each other "space."

  "How are things going, sweetie?" she asked. "Is your

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  da...is he...is Frank there?" I don't know what is wrong with people. Nobody knows how to address what Frank and I are.

  "No, he went out," I said.

  Nancy sighed, of course. "Surprise surprise," she said. "What are you doing now? Are you home alone?"

  "Gingerbread and I are watching TV," I said.

  Nancy sighed again. "Don't you think it's time for you to give up that doll?"

  Silence.

  "NO."

  "Did I hear you say you're watching TV?"

  Silence.

  "Yes."

  I could hear Ash and Josh in the background screaming and knocking things around.

  "I can't hear anything!" Nancy shouted to them.

  "I wasn't saying anything," I told her. "You didn't miss anything."

  "Well," Nancy said sternly. "We miss you here. You stay out of trouble and if you need anything, call me."

  I suppose she was trying to be nice but all I could think about was how she grounded me so I couldn't see the love of my life and how she was responsible for him dumping me. Who was she to tell me to stay out of trouble? She was my trouble.

  "Yeah, right," I said. "Say hi to dad and the kids."

  "Love you...," she started to say into the phone but I hung up.

  So now I was fired up by Java's voice and pissed off by Nancy. I took a shower to try to cool off. No dice. And

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  who should swim right into my trouble brew but Loo-eese, arriving all glassy-eyed and somewhat tipsy.

  "You're stoned," I told him as he walked in.

  He didn't respond to my proclamation but handed me a package of Twizzlers red licorice. "Hungry?" he asked.

  "Way," I answered. I could feel my wet hair cascading down the bare part of my back, snaking drops of water down my spine, making me shiver with warmth and excitement.

  Luis plopped down on the sofa and said, "So, what's really on your mind?"

  I am a get-to-the-point kind of girl so I told him, "I know you have been checking me out since I came here and I have been checking you out too and I think we should do something about it."

  Luis looked sad and said, "Can't. You're too young. You're Frank's...you're Frank's... whatever."

  "Do whatevers do this?" I put his hand on my hip and leaned in toward him.

  Please let me live my Wallace fantasy out on you, I thought, please help me get it out of my system.

  "Brazen" was the word the headmaster at boarding school used to describe me.

  I straddled Luis on the sofa and kissed his neck. "Please, Luis," I whispered into his ear. "Do me this favor. We don't have to go all the way. I don't want you to like have to go to church and say a million Hail Marys because you had consensual sex with an underage girl. But bases one, two, and three are wide open, so why not take a shot at bat?"

  Oh, it felt so nice to kiss a guy again after Alcatraz. He

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  did not even pause to consider my proposal, he just pulled me toward him and our lips went right at it. The great thing about making out with someone who is stoned is that it doesn't necessarily have to lead anywhere; neither of us seemed to need it to. It was just all hands and hair and hot breathing, languorous into forever. And let me tell you, those tight biceps and abs felt great to the touch.

  I have no idea how long we fooled around, could have been twenty minutes, could have been an hour. The strange part was that for as good as it felt, the whole make-out session made me feel kind of sleazy, too. It was so absent any kind of connection other than lust. I realized the feeling was one I would also experience if I hooked up with Wallace. My longing for Shrimp--say his name loud and proud--increased exponentially the longer I made out with Luis. I wanted kissing-of-the-soul kissing variety, and not of the sleazy entice-a-stud-over-to-your-place variety.

  Not like the sleaze factor stopped me from gettin' a little booty from Loo-eese. Let's be real. My hormones were digging it. But then, as his hands were smoothing over my bare thighs under my short skirt and I was running my fingers through his hair and I was wondering if we shouldn't just go for home base after all because why not we were so close already, what should we hear but a door slam and a female voice exclaim, "Well, I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

  Luis and I jumped up, all tussled and guilty, to stand before our accuser.

  "Aw shit," Luis said, zipping up the pants my hands had only seconds before unzipped, and tucking his shirt back in. He took his bag of licorice off the coffee table and

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  said, "I'm outtie." I don't know which scenario was worse for him: appearing stoned and inebriated or fooling around with the family love child. He scrambled toward the door and muttered, "This family," as he walked out to leave me alone with the monster who was my older sister Rhonda lisBETH.

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  Twenty-eight

  If Danny was the shorter, thinner, and happier of Frank, Rhonda lisBETH was surely the Nellie Olson version: beautiful long hair, but pulled back with a preppy headband, framing a face that would be very pretty but for the scowl that looked, from the lines around her eyes and lips, permanently attached to her face. You could tell right away from looking at Rhonda that she only wore clothes she ordered from catalogs of companies in Maine and she was probably never going to meet a love child-sister she liked.

  She said, "Cyd Charisse. Do you have a nickname? I can't imagine being called a movie star's name."

  "I like my name," I said, then added, "Rhonda."

  She demanded, so abruptly I nearly jumped, "Who told you to call me that!"

  "Who told you to drop by without calling first?" I answered. I smoothed my hair down and pulled down the ends of my rumpled short skirt, but my heart was racing, as if on attack alert.

  "I thought it was about time we met," she said, all huffy.

  "Here we are," I said. "We're meeting."

  We stood in front of one another staring one another down, like we were preparing for a shootout. I towered over her by a good four inches.

  She
couldn't stop staring at me. I wondered if my resemblance to Frank tweaked her out. She asked, "Was

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  that Luis? I haven't seen Luis for years but I could swear that was him." When I didn't answer, she said, "Daddy will not be happy."

  Like what, I'm supposed to be afraid that Frank will ground me? Mister Love Child-Spawning Indiscretion man? Yeah, right. He'd probably applaud me for scoring. Chip off the old block, eh? Wink wink. Whereas Sid-dad would have given me a lecture about ladylike behavior and making sure I respected any boy I dated, and making sure that said boy appreciated and respected me.

  "That was a friend of mine," I said. In hip-hop speak, I added, 'Awright?"

  Now Rhonda lisBETH was not just mad, she was confused. She answered, in a very slow and clipped manner, 'All right," as if she was correcting my English. Then she kind of sized me up and announced, "So, you're Daddy's little indiscretion."

  If she hadn't been so completely nasty, I might have felt bad that she probably had a really unhappy childhood and now spent hours in an overpriced shrink's office working on her anger issues.

  I asked, "Have you been tested for Tourette's Syndrome?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  I let Sugar Pie channel my body and I said all sassy, "Girl, don't trash talk to me. I ain't hearin' it."

  My so-called sister got a look of deep offense on her face. She said, "Well, I never!"

  "That's right, you never," I said.

  She headed toward the door. "I'm not going to stand here and be insulted," she said.

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  "You started it," I reminded her. "Who are you to call me 'Daddy's little indiscretion'?"

  Maybe Rhonda lisBETH was embarrassed she had behaved so badly, or maybe she was just that p.o.'d, but she walked out and slammed the door behind her. I opened it back and said, "Better luck next time!" as she proceeded toward the elevator.