In Stereo Where Available (19 page)

“I like him. He’s a nice guy.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. Even so, there was still a hint of a smile on her face. “Usually that’s why girls
don’t
like him.”

“Oh, really?”

“They think he’s
too
nice. They think he’s a pushover.” She leaned toward me secretively. “He’s not a pushover.”

“He’s not?”

“No. He’s forgiving, but once he gets fed up, stand back. Even at his school, he’s got a reputation for it. That’s why they always try to get him to break up fights, because he’s not afraid to dislocate somebody’s shoulder in the process. He’s finally found a good use for his lousy impulse control.”

“Did he tell you my little sister’s in one of his classes?”

“No. Did she set you up or something?”

“No, actually, I tricked him into going out with me when he thought I was somebody else.”

She gave a delighted laugh. “Did you really? That explains a lot. You didn’t seem like his usual type.”

“What’s his usual type?”

“The high-maintenance ditz. You know the kind. Those bubbly girls who want to be treated like royalty.”

I braced myself as Marco plunked himself down on my lap. “Yeah, I went to grad school with a girl like that.”

“Well, he gravitates to them. And then two months later, when they figure out all he really wants to do is stay home and watch movies, they get bored and dump him. His last girlfriend was one of those. She cheated on him and ditched him right before Christmas. That was two or three years ago.”

“Oh, that’s mean,” I said. I wondered if she was talking about Serena, the ex-girlfriend Holly had told me about. “I could never do that to anybody.”

“Has he invited you down to Florida for Christmas?”

“No. I don’t think we’re really at that stage yet. He hasn’t said anything about it.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s going to. He talked about you nonstop at Thanksgiving. Mom wants to meet you.” She peered around the corner into the kitchen. “Hey, Jerry,” she called.

“Almost ready,” he called back.

“Are you inviting Phoebe to Mom and Dad’s for Christmas?”

There was a long pause. “I was planning to.”

She smiled at me. “See?”

I sighed and shielded my eyes in embarrassment. Jerry appeared into the threshold of the living room, holding a spatula.

“What
is
this?” he asked Stella. “Matchmaking at gunpoint?”

“I’m just helping you along.”

“I’m perfectly capable of managing my own relationship.”

“Not from what I’ve seen.”

He shot her a bloodcurdling look and pointed the spatula toward the kitchen. “Pancakes are on the table. You and the kids go eat while I repair the damage.”

Lauren was stretched out on the sofa when I got home around lunchtime, a mug of coffee resting on her stomach. “I saw you in line at Safeway this morning,” she said.

“I didn’t go to Safeway this morning.”

“No, I mean in a magazine.” She handed me a copy of
In Touch
that was sitting on the coffee table. “It’s dog-eared.”

I sat down in the armchair and stroked the cat that had just crawled into my lap. “‘Famous Siblings,’ you mean? This article?”

“Yeah, bottom left corner. Right under Britney Spears and her sister.”

I scanned the page. Sure enough, there was a photo of Madison sitting on the sofa in
Belle of Georgia
, beside a photo of me that had been taken at Christmas three years ago at my father’s house.

“Oh my gosh,” I said angrily. “One of my relatives must have sent that in.”

“Did you read the caption?”

“‘Dixie vixen Grace Kassner, 24, is little sis to Phoebe, 29.’ Oh my—Lauren, she’s
older
than me. She’s four minutes older!”

“Not anymore. Now she’s five years younger.”

“Who sent that in? Oooh, that makes me so mad! I bet it was my cousin Janet. She’s the type who would do something like that. Ugh.”

“You should be happy. You’re in
In Touch
magazine, for God’s sake. You’re on the same page with Britney Spears. I’d
love
to be that close to fame.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You can’t stand Britney Spears.”

“Well, no, but it would be cool to get my picture in a national magazine, anyway.”

I set the magazine back down on the coffee table. “You know, I’m getting tired of this. It might be kind of neat if Mad-die were a real actress, but she’s famous because people hate her. They’re
laughing
at her. And that’s not even
her
. She’s really a sweet person. She catches bugs under a cup and takes them outside so she doesn’t have to kill them. She watched the end of
Titanic
through her fingers and then cried all night anyway. And she was
in
that movie. She saw it behind the scenes. She’s only evil on TV. It’s just how they’re editing it.”

Lauren laughed. “That sounds like my old boyfriend telling me he only reads
Penthouse
for the articles.”

“No, I’m serious. And everybody I know is following the show because they know she’s my sister, even if they don’t normally watch those things, just because they think it’s fun that they’re like two degrees of separation from her. So then I’m famous for being the sister of that…
bitch
. Who wants to be known for
that?”

“That’s kind of like the women who get famous for being groupies who slept with famous guys.”

“Yeah. Kind of like that, I guess. At least they
wanted
to be famous. You know what the death knell is for a teacher?”

“Getting pregnant by one of your students?”

“Basically, yeah. When the parents start thinking you’re of questionable moral virtue. Nobody wants you to teach their kid if they think you’re a bad influence. It doesn’t even matter what a crummy influence
they
are at home. They could be living with two men at once, and they’d still pull their kid out of your class. I already have one parent who thinks I’m a Satan worshiper. And all the fifth-graders watch the show. It’s going to be total guilt by association. They’ll
hang
me at the next PTA meeting.”

“I think you’re being too pessimistic. Have you talked to your English teacher boyfriend about this?”

“Sort of. It’s a little different for him because he teaches high school, and the parents aren’t micromanaging their kids’ lives the way my kids’ parents are. He’s actually been using the show to teach historical revisionism. He’s comparing it with
Across Five Aprils
.”

“But do you really think he’d still be dating you if he thought the county was about to fire you in disgrace?”

“Oh, probably. We’re getting pretty serious.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Do I need to find a new roommate? Tell me honestly. I just want to know in advance.”

I laughed. “I’m not going anywhere. I made an appointment with the gynecologist next week, though. I think at this point it might be prudent to go on the Pill, just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“You know. In case it gets that serious.”

She looked at me blankly. “But you just spent the entire weekend at his house.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t, you know.”

“You didn’t? Why not?”

“We just didn’t.”

“But you slept in the same bed? All three nights?”

“Yeah.”

She rolled her eyes and put her forearm over them. “I’m not even going to
pretend
to understand your relationship.”

“Speaking of relationships.” I sat down on the ottoman. “How’d it go on Friday? You never told me.”

“Oh—really well.
Really
well. He’s smart and good-looking, and he’s got a great sense of humor. Did I mention that he’s a resident at Holy Cross?”

“You said he was in med school.”

“Yeah.
Perfect
. His car’s clean, he’s got nice teeth. No tattoos.”

“Are you sure? Jerry has some, but you can’t see any of them when he’s got his clothes on.”

Lauren grinned. “I’m sure.”

“Oh.”

“We’re going out again next Saturday. It’s
so
going to happen, Fee. I can see the stars just lining up for it.”

I patted her knee. “Well, I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you. I’m just waiting for it to be ten o’clock in Arizona so I can try to call my sister again. She’s going to be
so
excited.”

I sat in the waiting room of the gynecologist’s office, twirling my ankle in a slow circle and turning the pages of a battered copy of
Redbook
magazine without really looking at them. Two small, messy-haired children were sitting about a foot away from the screen of the giant TV in the corner, watching
The Lion King
with the volume turned up several notches too loud for the small room. Their mother, I assumed, was back with the doctor. In the row of chairs perpendicular to me were a tired, heavy-looking new mother with a receiving-blanket-covered portable car seat on the floor beside her, and a tiny woman with a Jheri curl, black stockings, and a gold ankle bracelet. Mystified, I wondered why you’d wear things that complicated for a visit to the gynecologist.

“Miss Kassner?”

I set the magazine down on the coffee table and followed the nurse back to the examining room. She was short and chubby, her pink-and-white scrubs printed with cartoon clipboards and syringes. No wedding ring. When she popped the thermometer into my mouth, I smelled a hint of cigarette smoke in her gold-highlighted brown curls.

“Get on the scale,” she said. She moved the markers around sloppily. “Five-five. One-forty-three. Sound right to you?”

“I hope not.”

She smiled wryly. “Everybody says that. Reason for your visit?”

“I want to talk to the doctor about birth control.”

She scribbled something on my chart. “What are you currently using?”

“Nothing.”

Her curls shifted a bit as she stared at me for a moment, then clicked her pen and reached with a pair of tongs into a metal container beside the sink, pulling out a speculum and setting it on the tray beside the examining table. “You can leave your socks and shirt on if you want. Everything else off. The coverings are down there.” Nodding to a shelf in the corner, she plunked my chart into the holder on the door and closed it firmly behind her.

I unfolded the stiff paper sheet across my lap, swinging my legs like a kid at the dinner table. The doctor, at least, was nicer than she was. It was Lauren’s gynecologist, not my usual one. Mine had moved the previous year after his partner lost his license for improprieties. Lauren loved this guy, swore by him. “He’s like a grandpa,” she had said. That had given me a mild case of the creeps, but I’d made the appointment anyway. I couldn’t totally reconcile the idea of getting a Pap smear from a grandpa.

“Birth control, huh,” he said, peering at my chart through his bifocals. “Any preferences?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the Pill, I guess. I’m not totally sure what’s available.”

“That’s fine. Let’s get the exam out of the way and I’ll explain it all to you. Lie back, please.”

The nurse was still hovering in the corner of the room—liability, I supposed. I thought of my previous doctor, the whole scandal with the other guy kissing his patient. Maybe it wasn’t all that uncommon. It had to be difficult to be doing that particular job all day long and—

“Ow!
” I yelled.

“Sorry, did that hurt?”

“Yes.”
I stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed. There was an Ansel Adams print of a waterfall taped crookedly to the tiles. Through the pain, I thought of Jerry’s bedroom. I couldn’t remember a pelvic exam
ever
hurting this much. I’d been getting them every year since I was seventeen, just like I was supposed to. Maybe I was shrinking in my old age, from sheer lack of use. My sister used to tease me about that, back before I got a real boyfriend and she started assuming I was doing what everyone else had been doing for years. The doctor took one of those long scary Q-tip things the nurse handed him and, a second later, blinked in alarm.

“Have you ever had intercourse?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Apparently not.” He turned around and looked at his nurse. “Did you ask her?”

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, quickly, like a fish. “She’s twenty-nine years old,” she said.

“What difference does
that
make?” I asked.

“She’s a virgin. Get me the other speculum.” He let his breath out through his teeth and clinked the first one into the metal can beside the examining table. Instantly all the pain went away.
“Ask
next time, will you, Nancy? Good
gravy
. Sorry about that.”

I went home that day with a prescription for the Pill, a box of free samples, and a stack of literature three inches high that the nurse had given to me on my way out. At the first stoplight I flipped through the brochure on the top of the stack.
How Pregnancy Occurs
, it said. It was illustrated with colorful pictures like Disney cartoons.
You cannot prevent pregnancy by jumping up and down after sex
. I rolled my eyes. I had a master’s degree, for goodness’ sake. In a way, though, it was funny. You get to a certain age and everyone assumes that you’re sexually active. Then, if they find out you’re not, they assume you’re mentally retarded.