Love and Other Four-Letter Words (15 page)

I settled back down again, shifting positions so she was no longer touching my leg. Maybe it's not so much that we've grown apart as that I've grown up. That I've been dealing with a pretty tough situation, not highschool drama but a real-life crisis. That I'm not the same person I was two months ago.

It's strange. I always thought Kitty and I would be best friends forever, e-mailing daily throughout college,
raising our kids in adjoining backyards, barbecuing skewers of shish kebab on warm summer evenings.

Then again, I always thought my parents would be
RozandJames
forever, and look where
that
got me. Who knows? I mean, it's only a trial separation so far. But sometimes it seems like a separation just prolongs the inevitable, the Big D. Like with this much water under the bridge, how can we ever go back to the way things used to be, all of us living together in the Ithaca house? And let's say we do, how can I be sure it won't fall apart again?

But if there's anything I've learned in the past few months, it's that the only thing that's certain in life is that nothing in life is certain.

The rain finally stopped on Sunday morning. When Kitty popped up a little after seven, the sky was clear and the sun was beaming through the windows.

“I don't think Marla Mueller is going to last, youknow-whats and all,” she said, inspecting her toenails.

I yawned loudly. I swear, if I hear the name Marla Mueller once more, I'm going to slap duct tape across Kitty's mouth.

“There's someone I want you to meet,” I said, stretching my arms above my head.

I was at the end of my rope. Kitty's bus was at onefifteen, which left us six more hours. Which meant that if Kitty mentioned Marla Mueller every five minutes, a conservative estimate, I could potentially hear her name seventy-two more times. Which, in the end, would require a lot of duct tape.

“Didn't you hear me?” Kitty asked. “I said, I don't think Marl—”

“Well, I said, there's someone I want you to meet.” Kitty glared at me. “A guy?”

Why does Kitty look so shocked by the notion that I would introduce her to a guy, as if she's the only one who can commune with the opposite sex?

“No.” I glared back. “Just a friend.”

“As long as I can get some coffee on the way. I don't think I've ever gone this long without a cup of coffee.”

We'd only been in the dog run a few minutes when Phoebe arrived. But it was long enough for Kitty to complain that:

1. it stank of dog-doo.
   

2. wood chips were scuffing her new sandals.
   

3. the sight of slobbery slaver dangling from the snout of a nearby mutt was enough to make her want to puke up her iced cappuccino.
   

I was about to ask her where she came up with
slaver
when Phoebe unlatched the metal gate and jogged toward us.

“You must be Kitty!”

Kitty seemed surprised that Phoebe knew her name.

“I'm Phoebe … and this is Dogma.”

As Dogma wagged his stubby tail, Kitty looked Phoebe up and down, pausing at her knee brace. Phoebe flopped down next to me on the bench so I was sitting in the middle. I massaged the stress ball in my hand. I could already feel tension in the air.

“Funny,” Phoebe said, after a bit, “I didn't picture you as a collie.”

Kitty made a face. “
What
are you talking about?”

“I have this theory,” Phoebe said, “that every person looks like a dog.”

“A
dog
?” “It's an interesting thing to figure out”—I shifted positions so I blocked Kitty's view of Phoebe—“like I'm a chocolate Lab and Phoebe's a Jack Russell terrier.”

“A chocolate Lab and a Jack Russell terrier?”
Kitty curled her lip disdainfully, as if she were the Queen of England and Phoebe and I were flea-ridden peasants begging for a hunk of moldy bread. “I'm sorry, but I'm not about to go around telling people I look like a dog. No thank you.”

We were all quiet for a few minutes, but not good quiet. More the kind of quiet where you can feel tension mounting. After a while, as Phoebe began tossing a stick to the dogs, Kitty started up again about Marla Mueller. But only to me, as if Phoebe weren't two feet away.

Before I knew it, Phoebe leaned forward, fiddling with the Velcro on her knee brace. “If you ask me,” she said, “cheating on someone when you're in a monogamous relationship is like holding a loaded gun to their head.”

Kitty shot an if-looks-could-kill look at Phoebe. I felt the color draining from my face. There are some moments in life when you wish you had one of those “get out of jail free” cards from Monopoly and you could make the entire situation instantaneously disappear.

“I didn't ask you.” Kitty's voice was razor sharp. “But while we're at it, how do you know about what happened with my boyfriend?”

“I'm sorry.” Phoebe nervously ripped the Velcro back and forth. “I thought it was …”

“What
else
did Sammie tell you?”

Turning to Phoebe, I was about to reassure her that she didn't have to say another word, when her face began to crumple.

“Kitty—” I started.

“Did she tell you how her father ditched her and
took off for California? Or that her mother is a selfhelp-reading basket case? Or—”

Phoebe grabbed her backpack and stood up. “It's time for me to go,” she said, not looking either of us in the eye.

I'm sorry, Phoebe
. I wanted to get up and run after her. But it was like one of those nightmares where you try to scream and no sound comes out, you try to run and your feet won't move. As I watched Phoebe walk out, her shoulders slumped, a stiff-eared Dogma in tow, I felt like the most awful person on the planet.

“What the
hell
was up with her?” Kitty said as Phoebe turned up Columbus. “Calling me a collie and talking about my boyfriend as if she's some kind of sex-ed instructor? And did you see the way she sprinted in here? I don't think there's anything wrong with that knee of hers.”

I couldn't speak. I couldn't think. All I could do was feel furious, so furious that if my fist hadn't been clamped around the stress ball, I probably would have hurled it at Kitty.

“What a freak,”

Kitty murmured, shaking her head. “Don't call Phoebe a freak,” I said through clenched teeth.

Kitty shot me a cold glance. “I hardly think you're
one to be making judgment calls, after you go and spill my personal life to the entire world.”

“I told one person.
My friend.
And what do you think you just did, telling Phoebe about my parents?”

“If she's such a great friend, then why hadn't you told her yourself?”

I swallowed several times. I could feel anger building up in my throat.

Kitty didn't wait for a response. “You've changed, Sammie,” she said, her pale eyes narrowing. “I've been feeling it all weekend. You've changed … and I have to say, I don't like it.”

“You don't like it because I'm not your personal therapist anymore.”

“You know what?” Kitty stood up so quickly her plastic cup toppled onto the ground. “You're a freak just like her. You two freaks should be awfully happy together!”

“Well, at least I'm not an egomaniac!” I shouted back, so loudly that some people paused outside the metal gate.

And that's when Kitty marched out of the dog run, her head tilted in the air, as if she were some kind of celebrity. I must have been digging my fingernails into the stress ball, because the next thing I knew it exploded in my hand, millions of sand grains filtering onto the wood chips at my feet.

I
once heard this saying, “The best thing about hitting your head against a brick wall is how good it feels when you stop.” That sums up how I feel about Kitty right now. I didn't see her again after our fight because by the time I made it home she'd already flagged a cab to Port Authority. Although I was surprised when Mom recapped Kitty's brief entrance and exit, saying how she'd cited “irreconcilable differences,” I also felt a weight lifted off my shoulders, knowing I didn't have to deal with her anymore.

What I'm really worried about is Phoebe. I went to the dog run the following morning, ready with an apology I'd prepared in my head the night before. Even though I know I'm not responsible for Kitty's outburst,
I still feel like I could have prevented it, by following my initial instinct not to introduce them. And I definitely owed Phoebe an explanation about my parents, especially since she's always been so open about everything in her life.

But I was completely unprepared for what awaited me on Monday morning. Nothing. No Phoebe, no Dogma, nothing. I sat on our favorite bench for over an hour, watching waves of dogs and owners come and go. After a while, I started to feel nauseous, probably from the thick odor of dog crap, which I'd never noticed until Kitty had pointed it out.

I must have looked pretty distressed when I got home because Mom launched into a sermon about how
friendships have their ebbs and flows.
How
you and Kitty have a long history together, and with some breathing room, a long future, too.

Is that what you and Dad are doing?
I wanted to say.
Ebbing and flowing? Well, please let me know when you've stopped being a tidal pool and started being parents again.

But I didn't. I was too busy flipping through the phone book for the number of the veterinarian Phoebe once mentioned she takes Dogma to. The patch on Moxie's back had improved for a while, after I'd washed her with that shampoo Charlotte had recommended. But in the past few days it has returned, and much
worse this time. It's raw and pink and she won't stop gnawing at it, even though I'm constantly pushing her snout away.

The receptionist at the vet's office was beside himself when I said I knew Phoebe Frank.

“Any friend of Phoebe's is a friend of ours,” he chirped.

I felt like bawling on the spot.

But when I tried to schedule something, he informed me that there were no available appointments for several weeks. “We're only open a few days a week in August, since most of our patients are out of town.”

“Can you refer me to another vet?”

He paused. I could hear the tap-tapping of a keyboard in the background. “Hold on! We have a cancellation tomorrow at four P.M., if you can swing by then.”

I dashed into the other room and made sure Mom could take Moxie over there, since I had to pick up Becca from gymnastics at the same time. Just before we hung up, after I'd spelled Amoxicillin twice, the receptionist said, “Any friend of Dogma's is a friend of ours.”

Phoebe would have been thrilled to discover we were going to her vet. She probably would have cracked some joke like
Moxie is as sick as a dog.
Or she would have asked Moxie how she was feeling, waving
a stick just out of her reach until she barked,
Rough, rough, rough.

But Phoebe wasn't in the dog run Tuesday morning either, and I waited for almost two hours this time, hoping to catch her if she decided to come later instead. I wasn't sure what else to do. I mean, we don't even have each other's phone numbers. I know where she lives but I'm not about to march up there, only to find out that she never wants to see my face again.

After lunch on Tuesday, my mood started to spiral downward. I grabbed my guitar, stuck a Post-it to the bathroom mirror reminding Mom about Moxie's appointment, and headed into Central Park. By midafternoon, I was sitting in the Sheep Meadow, which is this gigantic lawn where people lounge around in their bathing suits as if it's a beach, just without the water. I rested my arms on my guitar and looked out at the Midtown skyscrapers looming in the distance. And that's when I noticed the giant digital clock on the side of one of the buildings. And that's when my heart started racing. I was supposed to meet Becca in less than twenty minutes!

Throwing my guitar into its case, I sprinted across the grass and rooted through my pockets for change. Hopefully I could hop on the next crosstown bus,
transfer on the East Side and still arrive on time, give or take five minutes.

“Whose guitar is this?” I overheard Eli asking Becca.

I paused in the hallway, where I was coming out of the bathroom.

“Sammie's,” Becca said.

“She plays guitar?”

I didn't hear Becca respond, but I could picture her sitting on a tall stool, swinging her bare feet. We'd been home for a few minutes, enough time to devour the left-over blueberry pie that had been in the fridge.
Eli hasn't gone to the gardens for two days now,
Becca had explained,
due to a raging case of poison ivy.
He hadn't shown his face since we'd gotten home, but I'd been keeping an eye on the door to his room, which happens to be connected to the kitchen because it was the maid's room in the original apartment.

I headed through the doorway.

“Hey,” I said. I was glad I'd picked the blueberry seeds out of my teeth when I'd been in the bathroom.

“Hey.” Eli scratched his neck.

His poison ivy wasn't as bad as Becca had described, just some bumpy patches on his cheeks and arms.

“You play guitar?”

I nodded, leaning against the counter.

“What kind of music?”

“Pretty much anything … but I really like folk music, old stuff…”

Eli's eyes widened. “You like folk music?”

“Oh, no,” Becca moaned. Her braces were dotted with blueberry skins. “You've only mentioned Eli's second-favorite obsession, after tree-hugging.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that's mostly what I play.”

“Would you mind playing something?”

I tapped my Birkenstock nervously against the floor, like I was keeping time. I never thought twice about playing in front of Mom, Dad, Kitty or all of Central Park for that matter, but I haven't ever
performed
for someone before.

“Only if you want to,” Eli added.

My heart was thumping as I unclasped my case and lifted out my guitar. I sat on a stool, the familiar curves of my instrument pressing against my thighs. I quickly tuned my strings, which tend to slip in warm weather, and began playing Bob Dylan's “Blowin' in the Wind.” It was one of the first songs Dad taught me.
A folk singer's staple,
he'd said. I didn't sing or anything, but I've figured out a way to fingerpick the melody so it doesn't just sound like a jumble of chords.

“Wow!” Becca said as soon as I'd finished. “You're really good!”

“Thanks.”

I looked over at Eli. “That was beautiful.” Eli caught my eye. “I actually have an early recording of Dylan playing that song.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Becca moaned again, “now you're going to hear about his famous record collection!”

“You have a record player?” “Yeah … it used to belong to my dad.”

I glanced from Eli to Becca. Neither of them has ever mentioned their father before. But I once noticed this photograph in the living room of a man sitting on a swing, holding a redheaded baby in his lap. Hanging upside down off a neighboring bar was a miniature Eli, maybe five or six years old. They all are smiling, even Becca. When I saw the picture it made me feel sad, because none of them knew that in less than a year, he would be dead.

“Do you want to hear the song?”

“Sure.”

Becca patted her hand over her mouth in an exaggerated yawn as she switched on the computer, which is set up in an alcove near the kitchen. “I'm going to do something a little more twenty-first-century.”

Eli's tiny room was draped floor to ceiling in brightly colored tapestries and a huge poster of the planet Earth with lettering below it that said Love Your Mother. As I sat cross-legged next to his bed, just a single futon mattress directly on the floor, I watched him dig through a pile of records stacked in an orange milk crate.

“Here it is.” Eli held up a battered album with a picture on the cover of a young Bob Dylan walking arm in arm along a snowy street with a long-haired girl.

There was a scratchy sound as the needle dropped onto the record. As Dylan's familiar strumming piped through the speakers, Eli slid over so he was sitting next to me. We didn't say anything throughout the whole song, or the next. But midway through “Masters of War,” Eli reached over me to retrieve a tube of Caladryl that was on the crate next to his bed. When he did, his hand brushed against my arm.

He'd just finished smearing the lotion on his neck when he turned to me.

“Sammie?”

“Yeah?”

“I know my mom sort of pushed it on you a while ago—” Eli was screwing and unscrewing the Caladryl cap—“but I'm going camping at Bear Mountain this weekend … and the invitation still stands. …”

“When are you leaving?” I asked, stalling for time.

“Saturday morning … and we get back Sunday afternoon.”

My mind suddenly flashed to Jenna. What if she's coming too? I'd rather spend a weekend chained in a torture chamber than with that coyote, but it's not as if I can ask Eli something like that. I began picking at my toenail polish.

“You don't have to tell me right away,” Eli added, “you can even decide at the last minute.”

“Thanks.”

“Just so you know, I didn't invite Jenna. It'll just be me, Shay, my cousin Max and his girlfriend, Ellen.”

Eli reached across me again, to put the lotion back on his bedside table. This time, when his hand touched my arm, it rested there for a second, which sent a feeling through my body that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.