Words and Their Meanings (5 page)

10

W
hatever cohesive feeling Mom and I shared last night has vanished. She's sitting across the table, fiddling with a spoon left over from Bea's late-night ice cream raid. I stare at my breakfast/lunch bowl of cereal, eating tension with every bite.

“I want to make sure you are feeling okay. I understand what you've been going through more than I think you realize.”

The way it comes out, I know the lines have been well rehearsed.

“You disappeared upstairs and didn't come down until you left with Nat, which is why I didn't talk about it with you yesterday, like I'd planned. I just don't understand why you haven't been able to say it to me, how this whole makeover is about not dealing with grief. It's so obvious to us, Anna, and you can't seem to see it. We're all going through it too, and you need to talk to me about it … You and I, we can face it together.”

Sure. Because “it” is a topic so easily broached, “it” can be discussed without even using a name. I want to scream,
JOE IS NOT AN IT
!

Instead I chew my organic Cheerios-like cereal. Tap out a beat on the table with my fingers. Hope the noise will drown her out. No such luck.

“There's a lot I wish I could change … about everything … after you found out … I'm not sure what happened next was 100 percent tied to you not getting to … to say goodbye, like all the therapists have suggested.”

Her words are paralyzing darts. I can't leave. Can't tell her to shut up, right now, please and thank you. I can only listen. And hold my breath.

Her gaze shifts out the window. The leaves on the big maple in our front yard shift back and forth, a thousand hands waving.

It wasn't just about not saying goodbye. No kidding.

–––––

The night Joe died, I'd promised my parents I would stay home with Bea. They, in turn, promised Joe was improving. But Bea was restless and I couldn't get her pajamas buttoned straight, and finally we both looked at each other and understood what we needed to do. She walked wordlessly into her room, grabbed her big bunny slippers (which were mine before hers, and Joe's before mine), and went to the car.

On the way to the hospital, I told her a story about a land of stardust and bright colors, where all the buildings were made of origami just like Gramps creates. I don't remember the point of the story, but I do remember the first line: “Birds sat on a wire, fluttering paper wings.”

I also remember Bea fell asleep by the time I pulled into the parking lot. I sat there, my head against the wheel, knowing the right thing to do meant going back home. I'd already started the car and clicked it into reverse when I saw Nat getting dropped off near the entrance.

Sliding back into park, I jumped out and waved my arms under the dim parking lot light.

“Nat! Nat!” I hissed as loud as possible without yelling.

She paused for a second before realizing it was me. Looked up toward Joe's room, which was lit, but just barely. “I was just coming to check on you,” she said, jogging over and giving me a quick squeeze. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, my parents wanted Bea to have a night away from all this.” I swept my hand toward the hospital. “But I hate sitting there, waiting. We decided to come anyway. And then she fell asleep. I guess I have to go home.”

“I'll take her,” Nat said, pulling the keys from my hand. “Go on inside.”

“Um, you don't even have your license yet.”

“Details. I drove the car here. My mom didn't have to yell at me about a rolling stop once. Honest.”

“I don't know.” I peeked in at my little sister, sprawled across the seat, bunny ears flopped against her ankles. “I mean, Bea's in the car.”

“It's less than three miles to your house. I will keep my hands locked at ten-and-two. I will go five miles under the speed limit, without the radio or my cell phone on, and when I get there, I'll tuck Bea in and hang out until someone can run you back home. Besides, I told my mom I was having a sleepover. Other option would be you driving us. Or I could go up and check on things in your place, if you'd rather not get into it with your folks.”

I must have known deep down that he'd stopped breathing. Because I sent Nat and Bea home, but couldn't step away from the empty parking lot space until long after the taillights disappeared. I remember glancing up at Joe's room. It went dark. Then light. I craned my neck to watch his fifth-floor window as I walked.

I never made it all the way to the front door.

Halfway up the sidewalk, I saw Gramps stagger out and sort of fall against a bench. A bunch of moths flitted around a beam of light above him. I didn't have to get any closer to know. His head rested almost on his knees. His body jerked back and forth, muffled with sounds of pain and loss. I'd come to know these signs well in the three weeks Joe was in the hospital. Physical manifestations of what happens when hope ceases to exist.

I closed my eyes. My lids were made of bricks. I stepped backward again and again until my foot fell off the curb.

Above me, the biggest meteor shower in a century started dropping stars into the light-polluted sky. I stood in the middle of the street, trying to breathe. I thought about the end of a poem, how we are here, but not really, no different than stars.

There were too many words tumbling, stabbing, pounding agains
t my skull. I had to start walking.

Joe

Gone

My father's family, wiped away

Gone

Joe

Empty

Forever

Erased

Joe

I followed traces of light, away from the hospital, away from the bent silhouette of my grandfather, away from the truth.

I walked five miles, to the highway.

I moved past the “motorized traffic only” sign. Walked down the C-shaped on-ramp. Down to the four lanes of Friday-night traffic zooming north.

The short yellow lines between lanes reflected against car headlights like stars on the ground. I wanted to lean
down and touch one. I wanted to stand on an island of yellow paint, a thing whose only purpose is to keep people moving forward, in the right direction, a safe distance apart.

So I stepped onto uneven asphalt, pocked with filled and refilled potholes. Cars honked. Swerved. But I never flinched. Not once.

Yes, Mom. I remember.

And no, we don't need to talk about it.

11

T
he rest of today hasn't been much better. I stayed (un)locked in my room cranking Patti's record “Piss Factory” until I heard Mom scream. I ran downstairs just in time to see her pull Bea out of the washing machine. She unfolded my drenched little sister like a beach chair with busted hinges.

And then I had to go to Liza's office, and she wanted me to tell her a story about Joe. Any story, she said.

So I told her about the time when he was ten and I was seven, and his appendix burst. He had to have emergency surgery. Gramps came to babysit but he never found me because I was hiding in an oven. At this point, Don't-Call-Me-Doctor Liza stopped to say I needed to tell a real story, not one with bits recycled from Bea's perpetual games of hide-and-seek.

“Fine,” I snapped. So I told her about when he came home from surgery—he really did have a burst appendix—and Dad bought us a tent to set up in the living room, and Mom let us eat bright-colored Popsicles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We stayed up late watching movies. At some point he looked over with his goofy grin and said my mom and dad got married all because of him. I didn't believe it, because my parents were the lovey-dovey kind, so I yelled for Mom.

“It's true,” she said, and beamed at Joe like he was Cupid or something. Then she hummed, kissed my dad extra, and everything was warm and perfect and right.

“Is that good enough?” I asked Liza. “Because that's how it went with us. It sums up everything. Joe was the universe. And he made us all stars, twinkling and sparkling like we'd never burn out.”

–––––

The shrink said I did well, but I've spent most of the minutes that followed our session staring at the words on my arm.
You can't let emotions consume you.

Bea is standing in my room while I get ready for work. She looks so innocent it makes me want to smack her for pulling what she did this morning.

“Why do you keep putting yourself in these idiotic, dangerous places? I mean, you could end up seriously hurt, or worse, hiding this way. Haven't you ever heard stories about cat
s who end up—”

“The cat stories are always about dryers. I was in a washer.”

“I'm not kidding around, Beatrice.”

She stares at me with hollow blue eyes. The same as our mother's.

“I just needed to take a break.”

I'm still searching for the right words to tell Bea that I understand when Dolores shudders up the driveway.

“Nat's here,” Bea says, her head tilting toward the window. Dolores's stereo is blaring the last song off the
Wicked
soundtrack.

“You better go,” she adds, not looking at me.

Nat doesn't come to the door this time. She doesn't even honk. She rolls down all the windows, opens the sunroof, and cranks the music so the words of Glinda the Good Witch, singing about people who come into other people's lives for important reasons, echo right into my room.

“Coming!” I shout into the open window.

The music follows as I move down the stairs.

“Bea, stay out of dryers and dishwashers and anything else that spins, heats, or potentially suffocates!”

Mom is walking out of the garage just as I get in the car, and Nat slams into reverse before there's a chance to strike up a conversation. She gets something like stage fright whenever there's a reason to be near my mother for longer than two minutes. Mom and Dad found Nat and Bea asleep in Joe's bed the night he died. They'd come home to tell us he was gone. But then, they found out I was gone too.

Mom turned vicious within seconds. She shook Nat. Grilled her about where I could be, and then later, after I was tucked into the sixth floor of the hospital (while Joe grew colder in the morgue), the interrogation turned to what I tried to do (walk, that's all, walk with a little stardust under my feet). Were there signs? Were there warnings? Could my parents count on Nat to swear she'd tell all my secrets in order to save me?

12

T
here's always tension after moments like this. We don't talk about why. Nat doesn't ever ask what I was doing in the middle of a four-lane highway on a Friday night, knowing without knowing that Joe was never coming home (walking, just walking with stardust beneath my feet). We don't talk about what followed: six days in the hospital, one evening at the funeral home, one morning of some stranger making promises of eternity, and then me puking and screaming and refusing to leave the family car at the cemetery.

We don't talk about the pressure I know Nat still feels to bear witness to every one of my moods, waiting for a warning sign.

So I tell myself to make small talk. Ease the tension.

“I met that boy last night, while I was hiding from Mrs. Fala. The one from the kitchen. You know—the cute one?”

“Good for you.”

“His name is Mateo. But you probably know that. It's a pretty cool name, don't you think?”

Nat doesn't answer. She grips the steering wheel with both hands. Her knuckles are white.

“You okay?” I ask, although it's clear she's not.

“Fine. I'm in a bad mood, that's all.”

“What is it? Play troubles?”

The volume on the radio gets jerked up.

“Uh-oh. This looks more like trouble in lovers' paradise.” There's a hint of mean in my tone.

Nat's lip trembles. She takes a turn with too much speed. I hold on to the door handle.

“You guys didn't break up again, did you?” I ask, counting in my head the number of times Nat and Alex have called it quits over the last three years—thirteen maybe? Drama kids.

Nat cranks the music up even louder. She lets out a bitter laugh.

“I don't want to talk about it.”

Since I'm the queen of not wanting to talk about things, I take her words at face value. We listen to a sappy Broadway mix the
rest of the way to the local university, where we're working some fancy dinner ball. It's my first foray into formal service, which means two extra hours of pay to practice synchronized meal delivery. How very exciting.

The kitchen is huge and metal and cold, but it still feels warmer than the Fala house.

“You didn't go all addict on me and start smoking a pack a day, did you?”

His voice in my ear. His body heating the right side of mine.

“No. Two packs, actually,” I say without turning around, hoping he doesn't notice the Pavlovian reaction I'm experiencing.

Mateo helps dish up dinners. It's clear I'm not the only one watching him drizzle demi-glace onto steaks, moving a ladle up and down, painting. A line of waitresses—lowly underclassmen from my school and Catholic Central girls who know how to tighten uniform shirts and skirts in all the right places—gather around him. They're practically drooling, elbows up on his counter as he fixes sprigs of parsley on beds of brown rice. They giggle. They ask where he goes to school, if he wants to party, if he has a girlfriend. I know this because their voices are loud. His, on the other hand, is quiet. A low rumble. I try not to strain to hear his answers. I try not to look over, but when I do, he's sneaking a spoonful of vegetarian pasta into his mouth. His eyes meet mine. I swear I hear a click.

Just before our last five-count plate drop, Nat's phone vibrates. She pulls it from her skirt pocket and frowns.

“What?”

“Alex,” she says, stuffing the phone back and picking up two strawberry shortcakes.

“You want me to tell him to leave you alone?”

She gives me a surprised look and shakes her head.

“You were crazy pissed at him four hours ago, remember?”

“Oh.” She moves the plates like a seesaw. “Yeah, well, he always knows how to weasel his way out of trouble. He wants me to meet him at the drive-in; there's a Fred and Ginger marathon until 1 a.m. My parents would probably let me break curfew for it, but—”

“You can't get out of here, take me all the way home, and make it to the drive-in,” I finish for her.

“No worries. Might be better to just go home anyway.”

“Go,” I say firmly.

Nat looks around.

“There's nobody here to give you a ride.”

“There's Charlotte, the sophomore. I'm pretty sure she lives only a few blocks from my house. And I used to play softball with a couple of those Catholic Central girls. Besides, I can always call my mom. Who can call my dad. Who won't leave me stranded, despite his mid-life decision to become the world's biggest ass. Go. Make up with your Romeo.”

Nat chews her cheek for a second and then nods. I scan the kitchen, taking in the clumps of girls who look like me from the neck down. I'd rather walk.

By the time I'm done cleaning up, the parking lot is almost empty. The night air is perfect. Like, literally perfect. It isn't warm and it isn't cold, but I still feel it brush my skin. A full moon is halfway to the top of the sky. Planes of light shoot out, vertical and horizontal, and in two small diagonal peaks.

It's the kind of night I used to wait for all year. The kind when I'd drag a sleeping bag and pillow to the flat overhang of roof just outside my window. It covers the front porch, and it goes under Joe's window too. Our secret fort. I learned all the constellations sitting out there. Or thought I learned them, until I had an exploratory astronomy class in ninth grade and discovered there is, in fact, no cluster of stars designated as a constellation for the Little Prince's airplane. Joe said being gullible is a rare and admirable quality in teenagers.

It's at least seven miles to my house. I know I'll have to call Mom at some point, or she'll call Nat's mom looking for me. And that will be a great big mess. But I want to stay outside a little while longer. So I start walking down the road. On the grassy shoulder, not the yellow lines.

I've probably only made it a mile or so when an older green Jeep blasts past. The brake lights blink twice, then stay on as the Jeep kicks up dust pulling to the side of the road.

I freeze.

The college is off the main drag of our township's sprawl, but close enough for me to not question if it's safe to be walking alone. At night. I try to remember self-defense moves Nat taught me two years ago. I try to remember, although I'm not even sure I'd want to use them.

“Hey!” A boy leans out of the driver side window. His voice sounds familiar.

I walk a little closer.

“Anna? It's Mateo,” he calls, opening his door and holding up his hands as if I need to see he's safe.

I don't answer or speed up, but I keep moving in his direction, and he keeps moving in mine. In my head, chefs are always pudgy. The shadow walking toward me is lean, athletic. He reminds me of one of those 1950s boys in white T-shirts and jeans. Cool. Confident.

When we're only a few feet apart, he nods his head once. Studies me for a second.

“Nice night,” he says.

It makes me laugh. We're standing next to an empty road and Mateo is dead serious, looking up at the moon and its beams of light.

“Ah, yeah,” I say. “It's, um, lovely.”

“Do you need a lift?”

“No.” I can tell there's an edge in my voice because Mateo shakes his head a little, the same way he did when I told him I
parle fran
ç
ais
.

“Okay, let me try again,” he says with a smile. “Would you like a lift? May I please give you a ride?”

He has a perfect chin. This is what I notice while I'm thinking about how I don't like chivalrous smartasses. I make a big show of blowing a puff of air in his direction while stomping past him, but then I'm stopping next to the passenger side and pulling the door handle and all of a sudden I'm buckling the seat belt and saying, “I don't really feel like going home yet.”

Mateo makes a noise I assume is akin to a smirk. I don't really know though because I'm looking everywhere but at him, all light-headed from the spice and boy smells filling the Jeep.

“You need a shower.”

“What?” Mateo laughs. “What kind of thing is that to say to the person nice enough to pull over and give you a ride—”

“I was walking! You stopped. I didn't flag you down. Besides, you do. Need a shower.”

“Well, if that's the case, I guess I better take you home now, so you don't have to smell me. Although you were in the same kitchen. And had to run around a lot more. Just saying.”

He sniffs the air like a hound. I smack him, as if we know each other.

“Since we both stink”—he grins—“where do you want to go?”

I savor this, just for a second.

“Anywhere.”

We drive for a few blocks without talking, and I'm wondering if he regrets picking me up. This is a bad idea. Everything about his mannerisms indicates he's “that” boy. He's too comfortable with the quiet, and with me in his passenger seat. He's too relaxed, one hand on the wheel, like he expected I'd accept the ride.

“Where do you go to school? How come we've never met?” I ask after waiting out the silence as long as I can stand it. “Are you at Catholic Central?”

“No, I go to Gerald Knoll,” he says, checking to see my reaction. It's smooth as butter. The Knoll is deep inside city limits.

“Oh, cool. I don't know anybody who goes to school there.”

“Yeah, no surprise,” he says. “I'm guessing you go to Ancestry?”

“Am I so obvious?” I ask in mock horror.

“Well, you don't look like any carbon copy of the bleach blondes with fake tans, if that's what you mean,” he says, sweeping his eyes up and down.

No, just a carbon copy of a 1970s punk rocker. A copy all the same. His lips are full, sort of pouty without being too big. I can't stop looking at them.

“There's no way you're a church-school girl. And I'd definitely remember if we went to school together.” The way he says this, it makes me ache and feel filled up all at once.

He knows nothing about me.

Then Mateo touches my knee. Light. Like almost a non-touch. I hate the word swooning. But I might be doing it. A little.

“How 'bout a little greasy spoon dessert?” I want to stretch this ride home into one, or five, or five hundred minutes more. “Or are your culinary tastes too highbrow for the world's largest banana splits?”

Banter, spiked in his direction.

“Oh, those are fighting words. Just tell me where to go, 'cause I don't mess around when it comes to dessert.” His free hand draws imaginary squiggles on the center console between us.

I text Mom to say I'm getting some food with a new friend after work, and promise to be home by 12:30 a.m. She sends back a “:)” and I don't know whether I'm irritated or glad I got her hopes up about day 366 being the turning point.

“So …” I drag the word out as we approach a stoplight switching from yellow to red. If we don't talk, I'm afraid I'll forget to breathe.

“So?”

“So, um, tell me five things about you.”

I visualize how many lights are between the college and our all-night diner destination. Three. And another four before we get to my house. That's a total of thirty-five things I could know about him before I have to say goodnight. I know plenty of girls who make out with boys they only know one or two things about, and those things aren't even good.

Mateo lets out a one-syllable laugh. Oh, God. I hope I didn't say that out loud. In an effort to not die of embarrassment, I give myself specific tasks. Tasks I make sure to only say in my brain: Breathe. Watch the road. Stop blushing.

“One: I was accepted into the tri-county culinary program for my senior year. You ever heard of it?”

I nod. I've read about it in the paper. A guy named Julio Revolio, who grew up in Drisdale, which is the town next to ours, is a famous chef in California now. He started this program for seniors in high school who are super talented cooks. They go to school in a little kitchen classroom right in the middle of town, doing regular classwork part of the day, and spending the rest of the time learning from a bunch of superstar chefs Revolio brings in for a month at a time. The success rate for getting full rides to the top culinary programs around the country is like, 99 percent, and I think the other 1 percent is just because some of the kids have gone straight to work.

“Wow,” I say.

He nods.

“Yeah. My folks were pretty psyched.”

“Okay, so that's one.” He rolls his left hand to crack his wrist. I notice a tattoo, in small cursive letters. It reads, “Val.” My stomach flops. A girl. A love deep enough to leave a permanent mark.

“Hmm. Two: My favorite color is yellow.”

“My car is yellow. And also in the shop for a broken axle. Curb jumped in front of me the other day.”

“How about that. Meant to be,” he jokes, reaching over to poke my side.

“There is definitely no ‘meant to be' in my world,” I say, trying to get my voice hard while I scoot closer to the door.

“Three: I have an older brother named Valentino who still lives at home, because he's…” Mateo stops, smacks his lips together.

“Valentino?” I repeat. I don't dare ask, but my eyes flick to his wrist.

“He's … different,” he finishes with a shrug. I see his face falter. He holds up three fingers. “That's three.”

Popping a fourth, he tells me both sets of his grandparents moved here from Mexico when the auto factories were still fresh and gleaming, and most of the time his parents still speak Spanish at home, because his mom freaks about losing cultural identity.

“Actually, I can count that info as things five and six, but I'll give you another fact as a bonus: I think you're interesting,” he says.

Interesting. Interesting is not like being, say, hot. Or funny. Or smart. Interesting is the kind of word one uses to describe a stinky-cheese science project or a bad one-act play (starring your best friend). Which would make sense. This guy is gorgeous and talented and friendly with everybody. And I'm me. It's just a ride home. It doesn't mean anything.