Love and Other Four-Letter Words (3 page)

We met on the first day of third grade, when some boys on the playground were meowing at her, making fun of her name. She began to cry, not out loud, just little tears slipping down her pale cheeks. To this day it beats me how I mustered the courage to march over and say,
She's not crying … it's just allergies.
And then I led her to a shady spot under the poplar trees and
offered her a crumpled tissue that had been in my pocket, making sure to tell her it was still clean.

That's when she told me that her real name is Katarina Lundquist. And that her father is Swedish, so she's bilingual, which sounded like the pasta dish I'd ordered at dinner the night before. And that her American mother met her father in Stockholm on her junior year abroad. It all sounded so exotic, especially since my parents got married at City Hall and don't even have photographs to show for it.

And we've been Best Friends Forever since then. At least that's what we carved into a poplar tree on the last day of third grade, after deciding that the blood sister thing was passé, what with the AIDS epidemic. Kitty's father is a physician, so she was the one to point that out. Because up until that moment, AIDS had never crossed my mind, except as this thing school nurses warned us about, for when we got older. But by junior high, I'd written more than one paper on the HIV virus. And by high school, the PTA and school board were having scathing debates about handing out condoms in school, whether it was a means to prevent STDs or a green light for kids to have sex.

It was also by high school that Kitty started acting sophisticated on me. Suddenly she was hyperconscious
about how she appeared, clucking her tongue if I so much as cracked up in public. I think it has to do with wanting to be a Beautiful Person, which is absurd because we used to mutually disdain them as shallower than a wading pool. But when I reminded her of that, she accused me of putting up a defensive front, rejecting them before they could reject me.

Let's just say I do that,
I considered saying.
Have they ever given me reason not to?

In global studies a few weeks ago, Mr. Rizzoli drew a long horizontal line on the chalkboard, to illustrate the political spectrum. On the far left he wrote “radical” and explained that radicals are people who do things like strap themselves to redwoods to protest the lumber industry. Just left of center, he scribbled “liberal” right of center, “conservative.” And then, way off to the far right, he wrote “reactionary.”
Reactionaries are people who want to return to the way things used to be,
he said.

Then he gave us an assignment to detail three reasons for why we are where we are on the spectrum. For a split second I thought about writing an essay entitled “Why I Am an Emotional Reactionary.” Because the truth is, I wouldn't mind winding the clock back a few years. Back to when I could guess what would happen
on the next page of my life. Back to when things with Kitty were less complicated. Back to when Mom and Dad were a rock-solid institution. But, of course, I didn't. Instead, I declared myself a liberal, citing abortion, the death penalty and tax cuts, just like everyone else in the class.

I
was fast asleep when the phone rang the next morning. The sun had been glaring into my window since about five-thirty, when I'd wriggled out of my damp cotton nightgown and buried my head under a pillow to drown out the blue jays. I'd had a hard time falling asleep last night even though I was so exhausted I thought I'd conk out the second I closed my eyes. Instead I'd lain there thinking,
This is it. The last night in my room. As of tomorrow it's a pullout futon in the living room of a dinky apartment, with Mom a few steps away.
And it was like I'd downed a double shot of espresso.

The phone kept ringing. Mom must have already disconnected the answering machine. Where was she, anyway? The last I'd seen of her was in the middle of
the night, when I'd heard a crash from the hallway. I'd stumbled out of bed and cracked open my door. Shielding my eyes from the light, I'd glimpsed Mom, surrounded by a swirl of towels, picture frames and cardboard boxes. Even though her back was to me, I could have sworn she was sobbing.

After the millionth ring, I wrapped myself in my sheet and dashed down the hall. Clearing my throat, I lifted the cordless to my ear.

“Hello?” I asked as I sank onto the bed. Mom had already stripped off her bedding, so the mattress scratched against my bare skin. I rearranged the sheet so it was under my thighs.

“Sammie? Are you up yet?”

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. That's another thing about Kitty. She tends to forget that the only other humans who rise as early as she does are bakers and dairy farmers.

“Now I am,” I said, eyeing the book sprawled on the floor next to Mom's bed. The purple cover of
You Can Heal Your Life
was adorned with a brigade of boldly sketched hearts, three of which were pregnant with one-line affirmations. Something about the scrawled messages—
I am at Peace, I Love Myself, All is Well
— made me feel queasy.

“I just got back from running,” Kitty said. “I didn't want to miss you before you left.”

“What time is it?”

“A little before eight. Do you want to meet at Lincoln Street Diner around eight-thirty for a quick breakfast?”

I suddenly had to pee really badly. I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder and headed into the bathroom off the master bedroom.

“If you bike down, I'll drive you home.”

“Eight-forty-five?” I lifted the toilet seat lid and sat down.

“Okay. That'll give me time to take a shower.” She paused. “And, Sammie?”

“Yeah?” “Hope you had a nice pee.”

I waited until we'd hung up before I flushed.

I finally found Mom in the garage, duct-taping cardboard boxes and labeling them with a black marker. She was wearing the same overalls as yesterday, which made me wonder if she'd even gone to bed. Her hair was pinned on top of her head in a tortoiseshell clip, but judging from the sweaty strands that clung to the back of her neck, it didn't look like she'd taken a shower.

Our chocolate Lab, Moxie, was sprawled on the ground, gnawing a ratty hunk of rawhide. Moxie wagged her tail as I dragged the stepladder over to where the bikes were hanging from a high hook. Mom frowned.

“I'm just going to meet Kitty for breakfast.” I attempted to release my bike as quickly as possible. “I'll be back in an hour.”

“One hour,” Mom repeated, glancing at her watch. A few minutes later, I was pedaling through Cayuga Heights on my burnt-orange Trek Hybrid, aka Mariposa. That means “butterfly” in Spanish, the language I started taking freshman year. It's halfway between a mountain bike and a touring bike, and one of my most treasured possessions, along with my guitar. I'm going to miss Mariposa in New York City, but Mom was firm that she remain in Ithaca: no room, not safe, will not budge.

It's not like I'm this star athlete or anything. I mean, I wouldn't know what to do with a ball if it landed in my hands, so I steer clear of things like softball and soccer. But cycling is a whole other story. I'm not sure whether it's the gliding motion or the wind splashing against my face, but cycling relaxes me. Cycling is what I do to get away from the world.

But as I turned into the cemetery, with the dew
still glistening on the grass and the sunlight barely peeking through the leafy trees, my shoulders were tensed up to my ears. I scuffed my Birkenstocks against the pavement to bring Mariposa to a stop while I unbuckled my helmet and looped it around my arm. As I began coasting down the steep incline that leads to Fall Creek, my hair whipped into my mouth and in front of my eyes, obstructing my vision. But I didn't care. Because for one split second, as I pedaled so fast I thought I'd lift off the earth, I'd been able to forget that this whole mess was happening.

Kitty was already in front of Lincoln Street Diner by the time I arrived. She was leaning against the hood of her mom's station wagon, which is unofficially becoming her car. Clutching a handful of wilted dandelions, she was flicking their golden heads into the street with her thumb. Her long blond hair, still damp, hung loosely around her shoulders.

“Hey …” I stopped pedaling and let Mariposa roll the rest of the way to the curb.

“What happened to you?” Kitty asked as she tossed the flowers onto the sidewalk.

“What do you mean?”

“You look like you've come through a typhoon. Are you going for the wild child look?”

My hand wandered self-consciously to my hair, tucking wayward strands behind my ears.

“Here.” Kitty reached into her pocket and produced a rubber band. “A ponytail cures all.”

I hooked my helmet around my handlebars and gathered my hair back. As Kitty popped open the rear of the station wagon, I hoisted Mariposa into the folded-down seat.

“Much better.” Kitty nodded approvingly. “Now you're presentable.”

The diner was bustling with its morning crowd: a mix of townies, high-school kids and Cornell students. As the waitress gestured us to a booth near the back, some guys hunched over their coffee gaped at Kitty. She didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she's so accustomed to the attention that it didn't faze her.

Once the waitress had taken our order, Kitty rested her chin on her fists and sighed. “Is it just me or do the guys in our grade have yet to hit puberty?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, swirling the mound of whipped cream into my hot chocolate.

Kitty took a sip of coffee, which she started drinking this past winter. I personally find coffee repulsive, even when doctored up with milk and sugar. But Kitty
explained that you have to grow accustomed to the taste, like with beer and chili peppers.

“When I was at that party last night, I noticed that half the sophomore boys don't even shave … or maybe just their mustaches.” Kitty paused. “The seniors, on the other hand, they're already real men.”

I almost said,
Easy for you to say when you've got one.
But instead I asked, “How was the party?”

“It was okay. Jack and I slipped out early and drove to his lake house, where we …”

Kitty paused, relishing the suspense. I lifted my hot chocolate to my lips.

“… Did it in his parents' bed.”

I coughed into my mug, spraying whipped cream onto the table. I quickly smudged it away with a napkin, which I then stuffed in my pocket. I don't know why Kitty and Jack's sexual escapades still throw me off balance. It's not like it's anything new; they've been official lovers for two months now.

Just a lot of pushing and sweating,
Kitty had reported after they'd done it for the first time.

What was the best part?
I'd whispered across our table in the snack bar, hardly able to grasp that my best friend was no longer a virgin.

At the end, when he let out this long groan, like a bullfrog,
Kitty had said.
It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.

I'd nodded. It hadn't been quite the response I was looking for.

But now Kitty was sipping her coffee and describing how Jack wanted to “spice up our sex life.”

I thought about cracking some joke, like
Jack must have renewed his subscription to
Glamour, but I knew Kitty wouldn't find it very funny. Either that or she'd call me
juvenile,
an adjective that she utters in the tone one generally reserves for pedophiles or granny'spurse-snatchers.

“Like how?” I asked, feeling a bit like a TelePrompTer.

Kitty leaned forward and in an exaggerated whisper mouthed, “He wants me to give him a you-know-what!”

I scrunched my eyebrows quizzically.

“I say,
dis
-gusting,” Kitty continued, her lips curling back from her perfectly ivory, perfectly spaced, neverset-foot-in-an-orthodontist's-office teeth.

“Kitty?” I paused for a second. We the chaste, as much as we'd rather not admit it, often need things spelled out for us. “What's a ‘you-know-what'?”

Kitty's back was to the grill, so she didn't see the waitress approaching, a tray balanced on her shoulder.
Just as Kitty prodded a finger toward her cheek, pushing her tongue against the inside of the other cheek in a rhythmic motion, the waitress plopped a plate of hash browns in front of her. Kitty's earlobes turned crimson, her pointer frozen in the universal “blow job” gesture. The waitress chuckled knowingly as she handed me my pancakes. I attempted to swallow the laughter mounting in my throat.

“Toothache?” the waitress asked her, grinning as she tossed the syrup onto the table.

And that's when I began to giggle maniacally, the way you do when someone's tickling you and you want to get them to stop but you still keep laughing. I turned to face the wall, hoping it would sober me up, but all it did was make me sputter harder.

Kitty looked mortified as she tip-tapped her manicured fingernails against the tabletop. “Really, Sammie,” she hissed, “you're making a scene!”

I began to hiccup.

“Can I get you some water?” The waitress had started to walk away, but she stopped a few strides from our booth.

I nodded desperately, attempting to hold my breath. A minute later, I plugged my nose as I slowly sipped the icy water.

“Well.” Kitty sprinkled pepper over her potatoes in quick, jerking motions. “Let's hope that's all for today.”

I attempted to respond, but when I opened my mouth all that came out was a loud hiccup.