The Distance from A to Z (8 page)

Except it really does seem very easy. She's using a computer program to generate different fonts and combinations of fonts, and then we simply trace them on the mugs, outline them with the colored Sharpies she's brought, and the guy behind the counter at Tea and Sympathy will bake them in the oven for the half hour necessary to set the designs. The woman beside Rebecca, another art student, is helping someone create a drawing of one of the wild things from Maurice Sendak's picture book to accompany the quote “We'll eat you up—we love you so” on a dinner plate.

And while I've agreed to be the courier back and forth to the counter, bringing the mugs to be baked, after the third
trip, I buy myself two sea grass–green mugs. Worst case? It's four dollars down the drain.

And maybe I can make something for Alice. Something to make things right.

I don't let myself think about it too much. Flipping through the quote books, I scan for keywords that describe Alice.
Passion
.
Drive
.
Creativity
.

I read through the quotes and some of them are okay. Some of them could probably work, and I make a list of those. But none are quite right.

Then I think back to the awesome black-and-white striped tights she wore to the poetry reading last night. The look on her face before she left, shoulders back, determined to make it through. The look on her face when she came home, all light and bright and filled with joy.

And then the look when I reacted to her taking medication, like I'd burst a balloon she was trying so hard to keep inflated. All that sadness she was trying to keep at bay.

Courage. The word that best defines Alice is courage.

And that's when I find the quote from the poet e.e. cummings that's so perfect, it's almost painful.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

I spend two hours making Alice's present.

Rebecca stays with me after everyone's left, until I feel like it's perfect. Swirly purple letters for all the words, except
courage
and
really are
, which I set apart with a different font—a bold one, lines straight and thick in a strong dark red.

The mug is gorgeous.

It's so Alice, and there's a little part of me, a niggling part, that wonders why it doesn't feel like me too. After all, aren't I walking away from everything, from all that is important to my family, my home? But it doesn't fit.

I bury that thought, and when the mug comes out of the oven perfectly I hug Rebecca, and then hug the barista behind the counter, and I buy a ton of different herbal teas to go along with it. For every minute that my phone doesn't ring, I realize how much I messed up.

So when I walk into our room and Alice is huddled in the corner with her notebook, it takes so much energy to calm down, to stop bouncing, not to interrupt her.

Even when it takes more than fifteen minutes for her to look up from her notebook.

Seventeen minutes, to be exact. Seventeen minutes when she doesn't even say “one sec,” doesn't look at me. Seventeen minutes, which is about enough time for me to realize that my gift is ridiculous and she'll hate it and misunderstand what I'm trying to say and it'll ruin everything. Even more than it's already ruined.

“Sorry,” Alice says, closing her notebook and clipping the fountain pen to the cover. She's still not quite looking at me.

In fact, she's staring at her lap.

“I—” I take a deep breath and slip off my bed, my paper bag of treats slightly behind me. Because maybe—

“I'm sorry I freaked out on you,” she mumbles, head tilting farther forward until her chin hits her sternum.

“No, no, no.” I take two steps until I'm at her bed and then slide in front of her. “No, I'm the one that messed up.”

“I just don't want you to think less of me—”

“It would probably be a good thing if I could think less of you because I think it's almost creepy how much I adore you.”

Alice looks up, a perfectly lovely smirk on her face. “Creepy?”

“It's a little bit creepy.”

“How creepy is a little bit creepy? Like one of those movies where the roommate starts stalking the other one and trying to become her?”

I giggle. “Not that creepy. But only because I lack imagination. I bought you something. Because I felt like crap about making you think—”

“I didn't think—”

“But you did. Because I made it seem like—”

“But it's really only my own stuff—”

“But still. I actually made it. And you can throw it out if
you hate it. And it's probably dumb, so feel free to hate it. And throw it out. And—”

“Give me my present.” Alice laughs, leaning across her bed to grab my bag.

“Please don't hate it,” I whisper, and I hope the rustling of the paper as she opens it covers up my words.

She
ooh
s and
ahh
s over the tea choices I bought and then pulls out the mug. Holding it gently in both hands, she doesn't say a word, doesn't look up at me, doesn't move a muscle.

She doesn't
ooh
and
ahh
.

She—

“I chose the quote because you're so brave. So much braver than me. And because it's from a poet, and you're a poet, and—”

“It's amazing,” she says, and when she finally raises her head, her eyes are filled with tears. “Thank you.”

Her arms circle around my shoulders, and she's clearly still holding the mug tightly because I can feel it digging into my back. Hard.

And so when the rest of the weekend passes by in a daze of French verb charts and vocabulary lists and news article after news article, I think about the look on Alice's face when she finally let go of my shoulders. The way she sighs and pats the mug every time she walks by it. The way she
begs me to go with her next week so that we can both make more quote mugs.

I think about Alice's face even when I don't see Zeke, when I find Stephie crying in the bathroom Sunday morning, whispering to a faraway friend on the phone. Something about a guy putting the kibosh . . .

I read more French, decode more foreign words, play with them in my head as I take a long walk around the lake on Sunday. Alone.

And try not to think about Zeke. Zeke, who hasn't called to set up a French session.

Sentir. Mentir.
Stephie crying in the bathroom. Zeke is my French partner, that's all.

No need to be disappointed when he texts Sunday afternoon to say that he can't meet Sunday night to study.

No need to be excited when he calls an hour later asking if I would practice for our vocabulary test over the phone with him as he drives back from Boston, his voice tired and craggy. No need to feel anything at all when I fall asleep Sunday night, papers strewn around me on the bed, his voice quietly conjugating verbs in my ear.

WHEN ZEKE SHOWS UP IN
a Red Sox T-shirt the next morning, I give him the evil eye. There was something unbearably nice last night about talking to Zeke without having to see his endless supply of baseball tees. I could almost forget the distance between who he is and who I am.

“Is something wrong with your eye?” Zeke frowns, and I can't tell whether it's a joke or not. I mean, I know I'm no expert at the evil eye, but he should be able to tell that I'm angry, at least.

I try squinting harder, but it only makes his eyes widen. “Abby?”

“Your shirt,” I finally say.

He looks down as though he couldn't remember what he'd put on this morning.

“You have a problem with the Red Sox too? I mean, yes, they did used to be cursed but they've moved past it, unlike
the Cubs.”

I don't care about baseball, I remind myself, as my insides turn to molten fire at the mention of the curse. I shouldn't care if he says mean things about the Cubs. I think mean things about the Cubs all the time. Daily, in fact. Even more than daily.

And this ongoing monologue of seething rage and reminding myself how much I don't care causes me to miss Marianne's entrance into the classroom.

“Mesdames et Messieurs, bienvenue. Alors, on va commencer.”
And class starts with a bang as we plow through our vocabulary test. And while I don't remember how I know to spell the words I need to spell, apparently I learned by osmosis because when we send our papers up to the front, I'm quite sure I aced the test. But there's no time to high-five myself because Marianne is handing out copies of this morning's
La Presse Internationale
and suddenly we're in the midst of a debate about school funding and subsidies (
subventions
). And despite the fact that none of us, with the possible exception of Zeke, is fluent, the discussion moves faster than I can keep up with, and I spend most of the first hour of class hastily scribbling down words I don't understand.

But what's more surprising than the fact that I love this back and forth without fully understanding it, and that I'm able to even interject every so often, is that Zeke, with his
left hand, is writing down translations of almost all the French words I'm listing. All while making comments that are mostly on point.

Mostly. Because he also directs us into a whole discussion about school uniforms and skirt lengths.

“So explain to me your problem with my shirt?
En français, bien sûr
,” Zeke asks as we settle ourselves on a stone bench under a canopy of trees. I've already explained, in halting French, how I don't enjoy sitting in the sun, how I burn like a tomato, and how when I get dehydrated, I tend to talk too much. Which prompted a forced march by Zeke to the nearest water fountain to fill up our water bottles because it's hot as hell outside and apparently I've been talking nonstop for the past ten minutes. Including a tirade about how much I despise disposable water bottles.

But I hate that he's brought us back to his T-shirt, especially as we're supposed to be working together to mount an argument defending our fictional political party's position on an ideal vision for public education. I think about asking why he was driving back from Boston so late last night, how he had permission to do that, what he was doing there, but I don't want to go back to the tense looks he gave me Friday afternoon, so I let us go back to his shirt.

“It's ugly,” I spit out.

“En français, s'il te plaît.”

I curl my lip.
“Il est laid.”

“It's old,” he says:
ancien
. “But if you tell me what decade this is from, I'll promise to never wear it again.”

“Nineteen seventies,” I answer without pause, and Zeke laughs.

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess?” I suggest, and he seems to buy it.

“I won't wear it again this summer, at least not while I'm here.
Bien?
”

Not yet. But really, I'm not his mother or his girlfriend.

“C'mon, Abby. What will make it better?”

Does he actually care?

“You'll think I'm crazy.”

He chuckles. “I already think you're crazy.”

I shake my head, though I can't stop my lips from curling up. “I seem to have a visceral reaction to baseball paraphernalia.”

As in, it reminds me of the wardrobe of every guy I've dated, not to mention every member of my family.

Zeke frowns, biting his bottom lip. “I'm not sure I have enough T-shirts to make it through the summer without baseball shirts.”

I know this truth well. I don't think both of my brothers together own enough nonbaseball shirts to make it through
a week.

I'm about to tell him to forget it, that it's a free country, that I'm clearly way too crazy, when he surprises me. “We have to work together every day. And I'm not sure if I can take you making shifty eyes at my shirts that often. So if I can find other shirts . . .”

He's willing to change his wardrobe to make me feel more comfortable. That more than makes up for the crazy-town looks he's giving me.

“Well, why don't we make today's talking assignment to go shopping for new shirts for you? We can hit up a secondhand store in town, and a couple of other places. I'll even buy you one.”

Zeke's eyebrows almost reach his hairline. “Only if I can buy you one also.”

Seulement si je peux t'en acheter un aussi.

I love French.

“D'accord.”

We barely squeak by our assigned debate on public education. Not because we couldn't argue our position clearly, but because we spent most of our preparation time arguing about his clothing, how many T-shirts we'd buy, and how much I was allowed to spend.

That and we fundamentally couldn't agree on a position on
public education. Though it would have helped if we'd come up with one in advance, instead of me making the cardinal mistake of allowing Zeke to wing our opening remarks. Which he made about the necessity of public education because private schools are only interested in the development of the mind and not the body; and public schools lead to a balanced curriculum of sports and study. Thank the gods he added the arts also, as otherwise I would have had to vault over tables and throttle him up at the front of the room.

Either way, it was probably not a good idea for me to contradict my team member during my debate portion. But he was grinning, and I figured our grade wasn't about winning the debate, but about speaking French. So in my speech I may have publicly outed Zeke as pushing his own agenda rather than that of our party and suggesting that he was being paid off by the sports franchises in France. And then I described, in my best halting French, the importance of strong public education for the masses, the necessary quality needed to ensure a populace that valued the mind and the cultural endeavors of the soul.

At least that's what I was trying to say. I'm not completely sure what I actually said.

After class, we're flipping through the racks at A New Look, the local secondhand store, trying desperately to translate
the T-shirt slogans we find into French. And then we argue about colors. And styles. And cut. And how geeky my choices are. And how boring his choices are.

Which means when we walk out, we each have a bag filled with new shirts. Including the one I bought for him. The plain white one with
Nerd Is the New Black
printed in big, bold letters. And while he could argue with that, he doesn't when I present it to him. Though that may be because I ask him if maybe he's too insecure to wear it.

He waltzes back into the store to change out of his ugly Red Sox shirt.

And five minutes later, he's back with the new T-shirt, and an additional bag.

“I'm not wearing a sports shirt,” I warn, backing away.

“En français s'il te plaît.”
He smirks, pouting his lips.

“Pas de T-shirt sportif pour moi.”
I laugh, taking additional steps to get away from the bag that is now dangling from his fingertips.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, taking small steps toward me.
As-tu confiance en moi?
The grin on his face is bordering on maniacal; his eyebrows waggle up and down over his glasses.

“Non!”
I laugh.
“Je ne veux pas ton T-shirt.”

I don't want your T-shirt.

Even though I do.

I do.

“Vraiment?”
Zeke says, as though reading my thoughts.

I shake my head.
“Pas de T-shirts.”

“As-tu confiance en moi?”
he asks again.

Do I trust him?

Would he buy me a baseball T-shirt to punish me? He could have said no to the nerd shirt but he didn't even debate it. He went and put it on.

Zeke bought me a shirt.

“D'accord.”
Okay.

“D'accord quoi?”
he asks.

“I want my shirt.”

“No matter what it says?”

I try to remember if I saw any baseball shirts when I was going through the racks. I couldn't remember anything that was smaller than an XX-large.

Do I trust him?

“Oui.”

“Peut-être plus tard,”
he says instead, flipping around and walking toward the diner we'd decided earlier would be our reward if we didn't kill each other during our shopping expedition.

“What do you mean maybe later?” I ask, following behind him like a lost puppy. “Give me my shirt.”

“It'll be another reward for not being mean to me this
evening,” Zeke says.

Mean.
Méchante
.

“Je ne suis pas méchante,”
I protest, but he doesn't even slow down.

Am I mean?

“Viens,”
he says instead of answering. Come. Like I'm a puppy.

I'm about to open my mouth when I remember his comment. Am I mean?

Over dinner we talk through the newspaper articles we're supposed to discuss, adding more and more words to our ongoing list. Cherry pie for me (
tarte aux cerises
) and chocolate cake for Zeke (
gâteau au chocolat
).

“Was it hard to learn all this French on your own?” Zeke asks when we walk back to campus. I know that cherry pie is not an appropriate dinner, but I think I could eat the pies from Sweetie Pies for dinner every night and never get bored. “I mean, having no one to talk to.”

“No,” I say, thinking through the words I want to use. While my mouth is still aching from the unfamiliar positions it's being forced to make to create French words, they've started coming more easily, like they're meant to be my words.

Except right now, when I feel like it's important that I find the right ones.

“It was always my own private language, like this special thing just for me. It gave me something that was my own. My oldest brother, Jed, was the baseball statistics guy; he knew everything about the sport, every player's stats. And my middle brother, Si, was the one who always had a half dozen baseballs banging around in his backpack. He played catcher, the one who could sit for hours as Jed and I would practice our throws.”

Zeke chuckles. “
You
used to throw a baseball?”

If I admitted the truth, it would unleash a conversation that I really, really didn't want to engage in. So instead I glare at him until his hands rise up in a surrender position.

“Sounds like it was a lot for your parents.”

“Ha!” I can't help the sound this time. “Who do you think lied about our ages so we could get on little league teams younger than we should have been? All three of us came home from the hospital in infant-sized Cubs onesies. And that was before they invested everything they had into a Cubs merchandise store, always so sure that this would be the year that the Cubs would finally make it.”

Zeke wisely doesn't touch that one with a ten-foot pole. “What did you do during all this?”

I tread carefully, winding around the land mines like an expert.

“I spent years watching and playing little league games.
We'd go from one ballpark to another, first to my games, then Si's then Jed's, then Si's travel team game. And then there were the professional games during the years we had enough money for Cubs tickets. And the trips to Iowa to see the Cubs prospects play.”

What I don't tell him: how I loved it all. Loved it. How until I turned fourteen, there was rarely a day that I wasn't wearing a Cubs shirt or ball cap. How I dreamed of being the first woman to play major league baseball. Baseball, not softball. I'd play for the Cubs and my whole family would get free season tickets. How it was my everything.

“Sounds like a great childhood.” His voice is almost envious.

“Eh.” I shrug, calming my voice into sounding blasé, like the whole thing was nothing. “It was great until I got tired of baseball, and then it was terrible when I didn't tell anyone that baseball bored me to tears, and then it got worse when they looked at me like I was speaking to them in Klingon when I finally admitted it. My family is wonderful and wacky, but they don't understand that there is life beyond baseball. I mean, they sort of understand people who like hockey or football, but to them baseball is American culture. That's it. Nothing else really exists.

“Thank god I found French. It was something that was actually worth the time I spent on it, a culture that was worth
investing in. I get that it's a language most people don't care about, but I love it. I love learning about France and French history, love watching kooky French movies and listening to pop music from Quebec. And they look at me like this is a phase; they tell me that baseball is in my blood.”

I know I sound crazy, but he doesn't know what it's like to live in a family who cancels holiday dinners for Cubs games, that misses graduations and ceremonies for Cubs games. A family who tried to rearrange the time of a funeral in order not to miss the ball game.