The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (46 page)

She was almost as light as Tammy, with thick black hair tamed into a tight and neat French braid. They seemed like a good fit for future best friends. Tammy, who had always been a giggler, peppering every sentence with a laugh—much to the consternation of her mother, who didn’t believe that young ladies should be so silly—agreed to the judge’s daughter coming over the next week. Dressed in tank tops and board shorts, they ran through a list of routines in the rec room, culled from their separate middle school squads.

“You’re good, but you have to stop laughing,” the judge’s daughter told her. “You can smile, but you can’t laugh like that.”

Tammy covered her mouth, and giggle-proclaimed, “I can’t help it.”

“Stop,” the judge’s daughter said, getting closer.

“I can’t help it.”

“Stop.” The judge’s daughter was whispering now.

When the judge’s daughter removed Tammy’s hand and kissed her laughing mouth, it felt inevitable, like something Tammy had been waiting for her whole life without knowing it. She had kissed a few boys before that, chastely, nervously, but this kiss tingled, and this kiss made Tammy want to kiss some more.

She invited the judge’s daughter back to practice again. Her mother approved, so much so that she decided to surprise them, bringing the ham salad sandwiches that their cook had made into the rec room herself. Her mother screamed when she saw Tammy and the judge’s daughter, and dropped the silver tray. People came running, including Veronica and James, and the cook who made the sandwiches in the first place.

“What happened?” they asked.

Her mother stared down a red-faced Tammy, then said she thought she saw a bug, but it was just a shadow.

The judge’s daughter was not invited to the second pool party of the summer. And they didn’t end up at the same school. A congressional spot unexpectedly opened up during an odd-numbered year in Mississippi, where Tammy’s father could run because the factory for Farrell Fine Hair was located in the district that he was being urged to represent. The family moved to Mississippi. And even though Tammy was no longer a giggler, had not in fact laughed since being discovered by her mother in the rec room, her mother continued to give her the same frosty stare that she used to give her for laughing at inappropriate times. Tammy suffered under this stare for the next three years, all the way until college. The frosty stare didn’t relax until she brought Mike home for Christmas in her early twenties, when Tammy realized that if she wanted her mother back, she had to be exactly what her mother raised her to be.

Tammy woke up to find Thursday next to her bed, holding her hand. She wanted to tell Thursday why she did what she did. She wanted to explain that she wasn’t hiding Risa but hiding herself. She wanted to tell her the truth.

But when she took off the mask, she used the little breath she had to wheeze, “I got a nose job when I was nineteen.”

“I don’t believe you,” Thursday said, not letting go of her hand.

“Really?” Sharita, who Tammy now noticed in the guest chair, said.

“It’s very subtle,” Tammy said. “I had it done in Europe. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“I never would have guessed,” Thursday said.

“Me either,” Sharita said.

Each word was a piece of pain, delivered with great effort, but Tammy felt she had to go on. “Thursday, I asked to meet you because I was jealous,” she said. “Risa talked about you. I thought she was in love with you. I knew there were other girls, but I thought maybe she was secretly in love with you. So I told her that I wanted to have girlfriends, too. I asked to meet you and Sharita, because I was jealous of you. But when I met you, I got it.”

“No, she’s only ever been in love with you,” Thursday said. “It’s always been you.”

“I know,” Tammy said, the now-familiar nausea of regret rising up inside of her. “I was afraid that people wouldn’t like me if they knew who I really was. I’m not like you and Risa. I need to be liked.” Then Tammy realized, “I
needed
to be liked. I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“We like you,” Thursday said. “But we would have liked you even more if you’d been introduced to us as Risa’s girlfriend. We would have said, ‘She’s great, Risa. Hold onto her.’”

Hold onto her.

Tammy wished for this alternative history, wished for it so hard, she was sure it must be unfolding in some parallel universe where she was with Risa, where she was brave, and not so self-conscious that she’d let a
skin cancer go unchecked rather than have a doctor see anything ugly on her body. Where she was still living and living and living for many years more.

As if responding to her longing, Risa appeared at the door.

When Thursday saw Risa standing in the doorway, she gently set aside Tammy’s hand and came over to her. They talked on the phone every week, but it had been nine long months since they’d seen each other in person. The longest they’d ever gone without seeing each other, since the day they met. And when they hugged, Risa felt every one of those two hundred and seventy days. Friends could be selfish and frustrating and, let’s face it, all kinds of stupid at times.
But thank God I have them
, Risa thought.
Thank God.

Tammy’s coming out marked the beginning of the end. She went downhill fast after that. More doctors were called in, more drugs were administered. More family members showed up, including Tammy’s parents, who were still married, but estranged and living in separate states.

“We didn’t want to upset them,” Veronica said when Risa asked why it took her and James so long to call their parents. “Our mother has been fragile since my father moved out. And we’re not close to my father anymore. We didn’t want to call them in until we absolutely had to.”

The Farrell family, Risa imparted in whispered conversation to Thursday and Sharita, was very strange. Both alluring and off-putting. They tried to control each other, but they also kept their distance from each other. They lived very public lives, but tended to keep to themselves. They were, in a way, just like every other super-rich family, but not so much, because there were very few black families who had as much money as they did. They were, Thursday declared, thinking back to the New Yorker who approached Tammy on New Year’s Eve, the black-American equivalent of royalty. And like royalty, they didn’t gather everyone around a dying member of their family until that person was formally on their deathbed.

To Risa’s surprise, Veronica introduced her to her mother as Tammy’s partner. And when Tammy’s mother said, “Tammy had a business?” Veronica said, “Partner as in her girlfriend.”

Tammy’s mother did not accept this. “Well, I don’t want to hear about Tammy’s business,” she said. And then she proceeded to treat Risa as if she didn’t exist for the time that she spent in Tammy’s condo. Risa, who loved to be controversial but secretly hated actual confrontation, appreciated this.

In the movies, there were always speeches and declarations and people dying with dewy music in the background. In real life, death was noisy and unmelodic. There was lots of standing around and people saying things like, “Is anybody else hungry? Want to order some food?”

There was a lot of crying, but there were also a lot of stories, which Sharita was happy to bear witness to while Risa sat with Tammy and Thursday wrote in one of the back bedrooms. Stories like the time Tammy fell off the cheerleading pyramid, and the time Tammy insisted on dressing up like Sacajawea for a week after Halloween was over, and wasn’t that just like Tammy to pretend to be in the Maldives when she was actually dying? Why the Maldives of all places?

Risa, who decided to stay by Tammy’s side, lost track of time. As the days ran together, she eventually stopped reading to Tammy and settled for holding her hand. She listened to the machines, which were both administering drugs and monitoring her death. She remained unsure of which ones did which, only that they would do so quietly until Tammy died, at which point they would emit a loud sound to let everybody know that she had left the building.

It seemed to Risa that every day Tammy’s sleeping heart rate got slower, the spikes on the monitor indicating that she was still alive getting farther and farther apart. She spent a lot of time watching that machine, and whenever Tammy was awake Risa made sure to say, “I love you,” no matter who was in the room. Tammy had a tube down her throat now, so she couldn’t
talk. But she pointed to herself and then pointed back to Risa, which meant, “I love you, too.”

Any day now, the nurses said.

James Farrell pulled Risa aside and thanked her for sticking by his sister. Davie Farrell pulled her aside and assured Risa that she wouldn’t let the Farrells come after her or the money that Tammy was willing her.

Tammy’s family went home at night and left Risa and the evening nurse in charge, but Thursday and Sharita stayed behind. They came every day to sit with Risa while she sat with Tammy. Sharita made sure that Risa’s stomach stayed full and that she always had water in the large cup that Risa kept for herself on the nightstand beside Tammy’s hospital bed. When she wasn’t writing, Thursday talked with Risa while she watched Tammy, and when Sharita was not running all over mother-henning, she came into Tammy’s room and talked with them, too.

Tammy’s favorite activity had become lying there quietly, listening to them talk with her eyes closed, while she waited to die.

It was on the last night of Tammy’s life that Sharita brought up the one and only class that all three of them took together while at Smith College: Afro-American Studies 100.

“Remember that one South Carolina slave legend we read about?” she asked.

Risa should’ve forgotten by now, but she remembered it right away. “Miss Missy.”

However, Thursday had a more difficult time recalling. “How did that one go?” she asked.

Risa explained: “You know, Miss Missy’s a slave, but she’s always laughing and it’s really weird. She falls in love with this big handsome Mandingo slave, but then the massa’s son takes her as his mistress, starts raping her and shit. The Mandingo slave tries to save her, but then the massa’s son shoots him dead. And then Miss Missy springs wings, because it turns out she’s an angel. She picks him up and flies away to heaven. And the slaves tell
everybody, but of course nobody believes them. But in South Carolina they’re still like, if your baby laughs a lot, then it’s probably an angel in disguise.”

“Oh yeah,” Thursday said. “I remember now. So do you think it was a mass hallucination or something? Too much tobacco got into their bloodstream?”

Sharita shook her head. “No, I think they really saw it. I mean, what are the chances of them all hallucinating the same thing?”

“Maybe it was the power of suggestion,” Thursday says.

“I think they really saw it,” Sharita said again. “And I’m bringing it up because Tammy’s family says that Tammy used to laugh all the time when she was a kid. They were all saying earlier that she was the laughingest baby they’d ever seen and she kept it up until they moved to Mississippi.”

Risa thought about that and turned to Tammy. “How about it, Tammy? Are you an angel in disguise?”

Tammy heard the question but could not answer, occupied as she was with the silent countdown on her life, on the last ten breaths she would ever take. Ten … 
Risa
 … nine … 
I
 … eight … 
love
 … seven … 
you
 … six … 
Risa
 … five … 
I’m
 … four … 
sorry
 … three … 
Risa
 … two … 
I’m
 … one … 
sorry
 …

A few minutes later, the machine that signaled one of Tammy’s vital organs had failed and that she had stopped breathing let out a loud shrieking sound. The night nurse rushed in and pushed Risa aside. Sharita covered her mouth with her hand and put her arm around Risa’s shoulders. And though Thursday did not believe in angels, she also came to stand beside Risa, putting an arm around her waist. They all stared at Tammy.

Waiting to see if she became an angel.

Go on ahead and make a list of all the physical qualities you want in your lifelong mate. It’ll give you something to laugh about when you finally find him and he don’t look anything like that.

—
The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
by Davie Farrell

SHARITA

E
ver since Tammy died, my own life seemed to be going by at lightning speed. There was making up for all the time I had missed at work. There were my now-daily chats with my sister. There was spending as much time with Ennis as I could squeeze out of my busy schedule. And there was helping Risa move again.

Risa had lasted a whole two days alone in Tammy’s condo before she called Thursday and asked to move into Mike Barker’s pool house. “I couldn’t stay there,” she told me while moving all the stuff that couldn’t fit in the pool house back into a Silver Lake storage unit. “Too many ghosts, and none of them are Tammy.”

Risa insisted it would just be for a couple of weeks, until Tammy’s funeral, and then she was planning to go to some place called Merida.