Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (16 page)

It was no wonder Valia was angry. Her son had brought her here by near force and now spent the entire time wishing she weren’t here. And Valia really
wanted
to go away, that was the thing. They wanted her gone; she wanted herself gone. What a mess.

Lena drew and drew. Valia was an exceptional model. Far better than the professionals at school, who got paid fifteen bucks an hour. For seventy minutes, Valia stood stock-still without a single sigh or moan or wriggle.

After a while, Lena felt tears in her eyes, but she didn’t stop for them. How lonely Valia was! How much she loved being seen, finally. What a tragedy for all of them that they had starved her so.

When Lena finished, she got up and kissed Valia on the head. They hadn’t touched each other in months. Valia seemed shaken by it.

Shyly Lena offered Valia the picture.
I’ve seen you. I think I finally have
, Lena said silently.

Valia looked at it for a long time. She didn’t say anything. She nodded brusquely, but Lena believed that on this strange Saturday afternoon, they had seen each other.

The next morning at breakfast, Valia was back to her usual tricks.

“Who made this coffee?” she demanded, acting as though she might very well spit it on the table.

“I did,” Lena shot back. “Don’t you like it?”

“It’s the vorst,” Valia said heartily.

Lena clapped her eyes on Valia’s and wouldn’t let them go. “So don’t drink it, then.”

Her entire family stared at her in astonishment, and Lena felt quite pleased with herself.

“Hi, Carmen? I hope this is the right Carmen. If this is the right Carmen, then this is Win. If not, it’s…it’s still Win and sorry to bother you. Even if this is the right Carmen, I might be bothering you and I’m sorry if I am. I found your number on the…well, never mind. I’m not like a stalker or anything. I swear to God. I’ve never called somebody up out of the blue like this. But I have to admit I’ve been thinking about you, and…”
Beeeeeeep.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Bridget felt a tiny tickle of hair against her arm. She opened her eyes without moving a single other muscle. In sleep, Eric had rolled toward her. His head had come so close as to graze her shoulder. She felt breathless. Their bodies were curled in the same direction, hers distantly cupping his. The bottoms of their sleeping bags almost touched.

What little sleep she had had that night was light and full of surface dreams. She couldn’t go under any deeper, being this close to him. She wondered if he noticed at all how close their bodies were, how their breath mixed. Or was his sleep innocent and sound?

Gingerly, glacially she moved her foot. She held her breath until, through her sleeping bag, she could feel, ever so lightly with her big toe, the shape of his heel. She prayed he wouldn’t notice or stir. He didn’t. He slept.

She withdrew her foot, feeling sorry.

She would have given anything for him to want her again. But she would have given even more for him to trust her.

Don’t ask me any questions right now. I’m grumpy and I’ll probably make fun of you.
—Effie Kaligaris

T
ibby was standing at the front of the theater, waiting for the one o’clock show to end. She’d stopped watching the movies altogether. These days she preferred to stand by the front windows and look out. One afternoon the box office lady was sick, and Tibby got to take over in the tiny room. That was fun—safe, contained, predictable.

Tibby wondered, once again, about the wisdom of her career choice. She wondered if maybe NYU had any openings in accounting. Or maybe they offered a program for future tollbooth attendants. Or cashiers. She pictured herself enjoying a career in one of those liquor stores in bad neighborhoods where you sat behind a thick sheet of bulletproof Plexiglas and people paid for their stuff through a slot in the window. That sounded about right.

She spotted a little group across the street, and she experienced that split second of objectivity when you see someone you know before you realize you know them. The tall one, of course, was Brian. Tibby constantly had to relearn what he looked like now. When he had been the lowliest of dorks, his unkempt hair—longish, unbrushed, needing a cut—had played a role in the vicious circle that had been Brian’s appearance. Now it looked conspicuously cool, neglected in exactly the right manner. She bought his clothes for him at Old Navy a couple times a year, so there were no pitfalls there. He had learned to like taking showers of his own accord. That helped too.

The little figure with the giant, lolling, hockey-player head was Katherine, of course. Every time Tibby saw that hockey helmet, she felt her guts constrict. Her facial muscles pulled into a grimace, even when she fought against it. The sight of it made her feel angry and it made her want to cry.

Nicky was holding Katherine’s other hand. Even he had become more protective of her.

They crossed the street and approached the doors of the theater. Katherine caught sight of Tibby in the plate-glass windows. She waved so fervently her helmet slid to the side, the chinstrap bending her ear in half. Tibby opened the doors for them.

“We’re going to see a movie at
your
theater!” Katherine shouted.

Tibby straightened the helmet. She was always doing that.

“Hey, look.” Katherine pointed to her head.

“What?” Tibby said.

“Stickers!” Katherine was exultant. “Nicky helped me do it.”

The hockey helmet was indeed plastered with stickers, every superhero and cartoon character in the history of cheap merchandising.

“Wow. Nice,” Tibby said.

“Now I might never want to take it off,” Katherine declared triumphantly.

Tibby felt her breath catch. There was some torture in this she couldn’t even identify. God bless, Katherine. How could she be how she was? How could Tibby be so different? Why was she so pained when Katherine really was okay? Tibby wasn’t the one who fell out the window. Her concern for Katherine had become a waste; Katherine didn’t need it. Who was it really for?

Forgetting about what had happened for a moment, Tibby looked instinctively at Brian. And Brian touched her tenderly on the hand, enveloping her in a look of support that didn’t have anything to do with whether he wanted to kiss her or not.

Carmen had saved Win’s telephone message and replayed it fourteen times in one hour. So why was she in the hospital—the very place where he worked—hunkered over a book in a corner, wearing sunglasses and a hat? It was Wednesday afternoon and Valia had her usual physical therapy session. Carmen knew where to find Win. Win might even be looking for her.

Instead, she picked the most remote spot she could find, which happened to be a deserted hallway in labor and delivery. It was nice and quiet for a while, but suddenly there was a virtual gaggle of pregnant women waddling toward her. She bent her head and tried to read a few more pages, but she was distracted. So much for her solitude. There was nowhere to run in this place.

All the women and their spouses were piling into a room. Carmen was imagining what it could mean—a big, wild rave for the pregnant folks?—when something began to dawn on her. She looked at her watch.

For the most part, she meanly ignored anything her mother said that contained the words
labor, birth, pregnancy
, or
baby.
But vaguely in the back of her mind she knew her mom and David were coming to a childbirth class at this very hospital.

Could it be? Could it?

Oh, man.

She tried to get back into her book, but she couldn’t. For pages and pages, Jane Austen’s elegant banter went into her eyes and stopped short of her brain. Carmen was curious now. Once she framed a question, it was so hard for her not to answer it. She put her book in her bag and walked down the hall. She stopped at the room where the pregnant women had gone. It had a frosted glass window, fairly convenient for snooping. She saw the couples sitting on the floor. The men had their legs spread out with their rotund wives between them. It looked pretty peculiar, frankly. The teacher stood behind a table at the front.

Carmen had come to the conclusion that her mother wasn’t, in fact, part of this strange class when she peered farther in to the back and saw the familiar angle of dark hair. Christina was easy to miss because even with her big round belly, she seemed to be shrinking against the wall.

Everybody was a couple and Christina was alone. Why was that? The current exercise involved the men massaging their wives’ shoulders, and Christina just sat there.

Where was David? Carmen watched in puzzlement until Christina reached up her arms to massage her own shoulders. That was all Carmen needed. The ache in her chest caught her by surprise and propelled her straight through the door and into the room.

“Can I help you?” the instructor asked her.

“Hold on just a sec,” Carmen said. She went to her mother. “What’s going on? Where’s David?”

Christina’s eyes were pinkish. “There was a big emergency on his case. He had to fly to St. Louis,” she whispered. To her immense credit, there was lots of sadness in the way she said it, but no blame. “What are you doing here,
nena
?”

“Valia has physical therapy,” Carmen explained.

Christina nodded.

The instructor appeared in front of them. “Are you registered for this class…?” she asked Carmen. She didn’t say it in a snotty way, but she obviously preferred complete order.

Carmen looked from the instructor to her mother and back again. She pointed to her mother. “I’m her partner.”

The instructor looked surprised. Politically, it was her responsibility to be open to all kinds of couples. “Fine. That’s fine. We’re starting with some labor massage techniques. Just follow the rest of the class to get started.”

Carmen situated her mother between her knees and began massaging her tense shoulders. Carmen had strong hands. She felt like she was good at this. She heard a little hitch in her mother’s breathing, and she knew Christina was crying.

But she knew Christina was crying because she was happy, and that gave Carmen her own feeling of happiness unlike anything she’d felt in a long time.

Hey, you beautiful girls!

My dad just sent me a pile of stuff from Brown.

My roommate’s name is Aisha Lennox. Doesn’t that sound cool?

I’m gonna live with her. We’re gonna know her. How weird is that?

Bee

Lena thought the drawing of Effie would be the easy one. She didn’t dread it. She didn’t overprepare. She sauntered in. Lena was not a saunterer, and for good reason, she decided. She always ended up regretting it.

“Where do you want to be?” Lena asked. “Your room? Your bed? Someplace else?”

“Um.” Effie was painting her toenails. “Can you just do it here?” She was sitting on the floor in front of the TV in the den. Some reality show was blaring. Effie had her chin resting on her knee and was giving full attention to her toenail, as though it were one of the more demanding things she’d ever grappled with.

“I guess,” Lena said. “Do you mind if I turn the TV off?”

“Leave it on,” Effie said. “I won’t watch.”

Lena didn’t question this. She had an instinct that bossing your model around was no way to get her to loosen up. No matter how stupid she was being.

Lena settled on a profile. Effie’s knees bent, her chin down, her toes flexed. She started sketching.

Effie was no Valia. She moved around as though modeling for Lena’s picture wasn’t even on her to-do list.

“Sheesh, Ef. Can you hold still?”

Effie flashed her a look. She went back to her toenails.

Lena tried. She really did. It was hard to draw a moving hand. Lena let it blur. It was hard to draw someone’s character when they kept their face turned away. She tried to suggest the resistance in Effie’s pose. It was the only thing that felt true.

And then Lena had to ask herself, why was Effie resisting so hard? It was true they’d been missing each other this summer. They’d both gotten jobs early. They’d both spent as much time away from the house as possible. Was her relationship with Effie another casualty of the Valia debacle?

Had it gone more wrong than Lena knew?

“Effie?”

“What?” Effie snapped, still not turning her head.

Lena’s mouth seemed to work a little better with a charcoal in her hand. She opened it. “Ef, I feel like you don’t want this to work. Like you’re mad at me.”

Effie rolled her eyes. She made a show of blowing dry the shiny pink polish on her big toe. “Why do you think that?”

“Because you won’t look at me. You won’t sit still.”

If Effie had been Lena and Lena had been Effie, this could have taken all day. But luckily, Effie was Effie. When she finally turned, her face was full of expression.

“Maybe I don’t want you to go to art school.”

Lena put down her pad. “Why not?” She couldn’t help showing her astonishment. She always just assumed that Effie sided with her in any struggle against her parents, just as she always sided with Effie, even when Effie was wrong. Did Effie actually agree with her parents this time? Did she resent that Lena was causing more turbulence in their already turbulent home?

Effie’s eyes were full of tears. At long last she capped her polish and tossed it aside. “Why do you think?” she demanded.

Lena felt her own eyes pulling wide open. “Ef. I don’t know. Please tell me.”

Effie put her face in her hands. “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to leave me here…with all of them.”

On her knees, Lena made her way the few feet to her sister. She put her arms around Effie. “I’m so sorry,” Lena said honestly. “I don’t want to leave you.” She felt Effie’s tears against her shoulder and she held her tighter. “I hate to even think about leaving you.”

The beautiful thing about getting someone to tell you what was wrong was that you could tell them something to make it a little better. Lena made a mental note that she should try it more often.