Love and Other Foreign Words (7 page)

“So,” Stu says, pausing for dramatic effect, into which pause he inserts a playful smile I see from the corner of my eye. “You and Stefan Kott.”

“So, you and Sarah Selman.”

He shrugs. It's Sunday night. I had dinner here at the Wagemakers', and now Stu and I are lying on his bed, staring at his ceiling.

“You're breaking up with her,” I say.

“No,” he says a little too unconvincingly.

“You're doing it after the prom, aren't you?”

He shrugs again.

“It's just not working,” he says.

“Imagine that. I do
love
being right.”

“You're not right,” he says as Sophie pops into the room, quickly examines the ceiling, and asks, “What are you guys doing?”

“Talking about why I'm right that Stu's the love-'em-and-leave-'em type,” I say.

“Not right,” he says as Sophie crowds onto the double bed on the other side of her brother.

“You so are,” she tells him.

“He's breaking up with Sarah,” I say.

“I knew it,” Sophie says. “Does she know?”

“Not yet,” I say.

“Before or after the prom?” Sophie asks.

“It'll be after,” I say.

“How did I literally get in the middle of this?” He turns his head toward Sophie. “And who invited you in?”

“Be quiet,” she says. “We're not done discussing this.”

“Okay, well, come find me when you are,” Stu says as he climbs off the bed and leaves.

Sophie and I are quiet for a few seconds before she says, “This is fun. We should talk like this more often.”

“We've driven Stu out of his own room.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “That's the fun part.”

• • •

Every day this week after school, Stefan waits at my locker, grinning nearly to the point of laughter. It's completely contagious. Then we walk together to my track practice, his baseball practice.

On Monday, we talk about the weekend and Mrs. Easterday.

On Tuesday, we talk about Cap and Early College, which he'll join next year.

On Wednesday, we talk about Emmy Newall's screaming break-up that afternoon with shell-shocked Nick Adriani in the crowded senior lobby, and on Thursday we keep talking about it because four of us were unable to calm or quiet her, and her truck-driver adjectives earned her two days' detention.

On Friday morning, I say to Stu as we walk to Cap, “He's a nice guy, and I like him, but we aren't exactly having great conversations. It's just about school.”

“Have you tried longer conversations?”

“Do you mean since homecoming?”

“Do you count homecoming as trying?”

“I count homecoming as an embarrassing disaster.”

“Well, so does he, probably. He's the one who told you he only asked you out because you're tall.”

“Yeah, and he apologized, and so did I for blathering all night. But now I think we're at the point of finding out just how much we like each other, so we need to show each other who we really are—beyond height and blathering—which creates a number of unpleasant possibilities.” I tick these off on four fingers and ignore the exaggerated look of bemusement on Stu's face. “What if I like him more than he likes me? What if he likes me more than I like him? What if neither one of us likes each other all that much? What if we have a repeat of homecoming?”

“What if his head explodes while you're talking?”

I raise my thumb right in his face.

“Josie, you think too much,” he says with a little laugh. “You also talk too much.”

“Okay, this is not helping.”

“No,” he says, now sounding a little serious. “I know.” Then he shrugs. “Relationships are tricky. You need to speak the same language. Or learn each other's, but that doesn't always work.”

“Is that why you're the love-'em-and-leave-'em type?” I ask, earnestly wanting to know.

“I'm really not.”

“You are.”

“Am not,” he says, shaking his head and confidently staring forward.

“You need to come see my dad about your denial,” I say, and we debate the issue for several more blocks.

• • •

At 3:05 this afternoon, there's Stefan, making me smile, casually leaning one shoulder against my locker, waiting for me.

“How was class this morning?” he asks. “Intermediate Spanish II and Sociology of Aging and Society, right?”

“Right,” I say. “And interesting. They were interesting. Let me ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

I've been thinking about this since Stu mentioned language this morning, so I inhale and forge ahead. “If you give up your seat every day on a bus to a pregnant woman but then discover she's not pregnant but faking it to trick her boyfriend into marrying her, would you still give up your seat to her? Also, would you tell the boyfriend?”

Stefan blinks at me for a second or two, his lips frozen halfway between his easy grin and a round-mouthed gape. I find myself frozen with nervous anticipation, immediately wondering if I should have just asked about baseball. But then his grin predominates his face, and I quietly exhale, and he says, “Cool question. Okay, ask it again.”

I do. He repeats it. Emmy steps between us with a curt hello to us both and hurries me off to track practice, and Stefan and I say
see ya
to each other.

“You're so cute, you're sickening,” Emmy says.

“So are you with your hair like this,” I say as I remove several strands from her gooey pink lips.

• • •

Tonight, Stefan calls me at home with his well-reasoned answer. He would keep giving up his seat, but if he ever met the boyfriend, he'd tell what he knew.

“You can't stay quiet in the face of a lie,” he says.

“Even if it causes a more disturbing scene than Emmy and Nick?”

“Oh, yeah. I mean, you know what they say. I'm just the messenger. What would you do?”

“I'd say something immediately and let her stand for all eternity.”

“Cool.”

“And even though I'd just be the messenger, I'd be prepared to get shot.”

“Yeah, that's it! Don't shoot the messenger,” he says.

“No one likes to be told bad news,” I say.

“Yeah, but sometimes you have to, right? And I think most people understand eventually, so that's cool. And the ones who don't, hell with them, you know.”

“I guess,” I say, giving it some thought.

“Hey, you want to go to breakfast tomorrow?” He names a popular diner just outside Bexley.

“I can't,” I say.

“Sunday?”

“I can't Sunday, either,” I say, and before I have a chance to explain, he says, “Well, that's cool. We'll do it some other time maybe.”

Cool,
I'm discovering, has many different meanings in Stefan, a language I think I like learning. But like all languages, fluency takes a very long time.

• • •

On Saturday mornings, I volunteer at Sutton Court Assisted Living Center, a formal redbrick manor sitting on three acres of land in New Albany, an entire community of formal, redbrick homes about twelve miles outside of Bexley. Schools, churches, synagogues, even shopping centers create a sea of Georgian and slightly corrupted Georgian architecture that is surprisingly beautiful in its redbrick uniformity, not at all monotonous.

My dad drives. He volunteers his therapeutic skills there, while I volunteer my literacy, conversation, and knowledge of roughly three dozen card games, courtesy of Mrs. Easterday. My dad sings, in his perfect baritone voice, with the radio during the drive out. If he has had a troubling session, he stays quiet on the drive home. Lately, he tells me it will be a relief when I finally get my temporary driver's license this summer so that I can drive us home and he can lose himself in thought.

He drives the way I run.

I've been volunteering at Sutton Court every Saturday morning for over a year now, having first come out with Mrs. Easterday to visit her sister, who lived there only temporarily following a hip replacement. The Schmader sisters—their maiden name—are sturdy women who, Mrs. Easterday often says, come from good, hardworking, long-lived German stock.

“Our husbands knew before they married us that we'd have healthy babies,” she said to me once. “No one thinks of that anymore, but they should.”

• • •

Breakfast out on weekends is impossible. Sutton Court Saturday, church and youth group Sunday. Between that, track meets, homework, baking cookies with Mrs. Easterday, and keeping a piece of my schedule open for Kate or Maggie, I don't have much free time on weekends.

Stefan calls Saturday afternoon, asks me over to his house tonight for pizza and a DVD, which I think should be called a movie since DVD is the vehicle by which we watch the movie and not the movie itself. But I am in the minority, so I translate movie to DVD, but it still privately bugs me.

I explain I have plans with Kate, which he pronounces
cool
.

He's going to see his grandparents in Indiana the following weekend. I have an away track meet the Saturday after that. We compare schedules and find they don't coordinate until prom night, four weeks from today.

“That's cool,” he says, sounding resigned. “At least I get to see you at school.”

After I hang up, I think about
at least I get to see you at school
. I think about these words as I pack my bag for Kate's. I think about these words as Kate drives me to Nordstrom, out at the ever popular Easton Town Center, and I think about these words as I try on the first three of seven dresses Kate has picked out in Shopping Commando Style.

I love her Shopping Commando Style. She dons her imaginary shopping-vision goggles, declines all help from salespeople, moves with intention, speed, and determination, and obtains the target or targets within minutes. Minutes. Unlike Sophie and Jen Auerbach and other friends I go shopping with, who take forever, leave with nothing, and consider the excursion a success, which makes absolutely no sense to me, even though I go along with it.

The only person I enjoy shopping with is Kate.

And the only reason I stop thinking about
at least I get to see you at school
and the pleasant feeling it induces is because a tag on the inside of dress number four is trying to lacerate my flesh over my bottom rib.

“This one's no good,” I call to Kate through the dressing room door.

“I need to see it.”

“No you don't.”

“Josie, let me see,” she says, opening the door and peeking in. “Okay, that one's perfect. Stop fussing.”

“I'm not fussing,” I say, holding a pinch of dangerous fabric out from my side. “I can't wear this.”

“No. That's the dress. I'm telling you, that's the one.”

“Then I have to wear it like this all night,” I say.

“What? A tag?” She knows me so well. “A seamstress can remove it.”

“No.”

“Yes. She can.”

“No. She can't because what if she misses one little piece? What if she creates a big or bigger knot or bump where there isn't any? What if she—”

“Okay, stop,” Kate says, and sighs. “I get it. Let me see the others.”

Eventually, she chooses a long dress of navy blue satin with spaghetti straps and a fitted, ruched bodice gathered at the waist with a large teardrop-shaped crystal brooch.

“It gives you the illusion of having hips,” she says.

“Well, then I ought to have brooches here and here,” I say, grabbing my non-existent bust.

“Josie, it fits you perfectly. You don't need a thing, but that reminds me,” she says before grabbing her phone out of her purse and typing notes.

“Reminds you of what?”

“Reminds me,” she says, dropping her phone back in her purse and shooting me a quick smile, “that I need to get you a strapless bra before the wedding.”

“I have a strapless bra. It doesn't stay up.”

“I need to get you a padded one, and we'll find one that stays up. You're going to need it for the bridesmaids dresses I chose.” And her description of them and how she found them carries us through Nordstrom, to the parking lot, back to her place. At least I think it does. I have stopped listening and am thinking only
at least I get to see you in school
.

I am sitting with my backpack on my lap, underneath the glowing light on the front steps of Kate's condo in German Village, a historic but trendy part of the city consisting mostly of red bricks and young lawyers. German Village abuts downtown Columbus, sharing nothing but proximity with the city. The sweet scent of crabapple blossoms fills the air tonight, courtesy of a warm start to April. It's quiet too, but for the clicks the moths make overhead against the light.

Positive phototaxis,
I say to myself, looking up. So succinct. Two words to describe the attraction of bugs to light. Some bugs. Roaches run from light, which is negative phototaxis, and I realize I sound like Geoff and his Traveling Tick Show, but it is not my fault that I remember the entomology section of eighth-grade biology. And I'm not at a dinner party. Not anymore.

Mother arrives about fifteen minutes after Kate has called her. I climb in, drop my bag on the floor, shut the door, and try to avoid Mother's unavoidable look. The car does not move. I know my mother will out-wait me, but I have to challenge her a little.

So one second after just long enough, I say, “It was an accident.”

“I'd like your version of it.”

“My version is the truth. Kate's the one who gave you a
version
, completely biased because of her association with Geoffrey Stephen Brill. I think he's corrupting her sense of reality. You and Dad should be worried.”

“I'm waiting.”

“Here's what happened.”

• • •

“I want to do your hair and makeup for prom,” Kate said the minute we entered her condo, which is decorated in warm shades of burgundy and white and predominated by candles on tables, counters, and the mantel.

I had not yet set my backpack down nor hung up my dress.

“Okay,” I agreed.

“Let's practice now. Oh, and I have the perfect necklace you can borrow, and . . .” She leaned in close to examine my ears and sighed with mock disappointment. “Well, I was going to say the perfect earrings too, but . . .” She shrugged. “Just get them pierced before the wedding.”

She picked up a stool from in front of her breakfast bar, and I followed her to the bathroom. We do this all the time—relocate a stool so I can sit comfortably while Kate plays with my hair.

“You want me to get my ears pierced?” I asked along the way.

“Everyone has them but you. I want everything to be uniform for the wedding pictures, and I know exactly what earrings I want you to wear.”

“I'm not getting my ears pierced,” I said as I sat down.

“Why not?”

“Do you have any idea how common infections are from ear piercings? Bacterial infections, abscesses, allergic reactions,” I said, raising fingers. “Some of these are disfiguring. With yellow discharge.
Yellow discharge
. How's that going to look in your photos?”

“Josie, you're not going to get a disfiguring, weeping ear infection. Have Mom do it. Your ears will be sterile for a month.”

She slipped my hair out of the black band holding my ponytail in place.

“Maybe.”

“Come on. Please. For me?” she asked via the mirror, and I found the reflected plea difficult to resist, so I responded with a considered nod. “You're the best,” she said as she kissed the top of my head.

Kate is the only person in the world I allow to touch my hair because she is the only person in the world who manages to do so without driving me crazy—touching me too much, tickling my head, roughly scratching my head, or, worst of all, moving my hair against its natural bend, which makes me want to crawl out of my skin screaming.

Plus she knows I only ever wear it in a ponytail and knows how to create at least seven different ponytail looks I endorse.

She set to work and talked mostly of her wedding and how all of us bridesmaids would be getting our hair and makeup done professionally, and she ignored my suggestion for Candy Bliss lipstick and how guys will appreciate the color. Kate's talented enough to do our hair and makeup herself but plans on being a Psychotic Freak on her Big Day. She said
stressed
. I've seen Kate stressed. It's the same thing.

I changed the subject three times—or attempted to. Nothing took. I felt like asking her, “If you give up your seat on the bus every day to a pregnant woman,” but didn't.

As she applied what little eye shadow I can tolerate—it's the feel of the spongy applicator dragged across my eyelids that I cannot stand—she said I ought to consider getting contacts, that I'd be much prettier without glasses and then tried to cover what could have been a horrendous insult with, “Oh, but everyone is.”

“It's okay,” I said. I know I don't look like Maggie. Or Kate. But I didn't agree to the contacts. I like my glasses and tend to feel incomplete without them.

Then she finished, and I pronounced it nice, and I washed my face, and Kate returned my hair to its normal, tight, neat ponytail.

I had just set the stool down in its rightful place when Kate announced that she had a surprise for me—a surprise that caused her own shoulders to rise as she smiled in private anticipation.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Well, we're going to cook. Spaghetti.”

“Okay.”

“Not Mom's but a new, different, authentic sauce.”

“So—surprise?!” I said with mock cheer.

“No, that's not the surprise,” she said just as her doorbell rang. “That's the surprise.”

She fairly ran to the door on her tiptoes, and just as I began to apprehend the source of the adoring look on her face, Geoffrey Stephen Brill stepped inside, and they kissed. Kate shortened and sanitized what Geoff's hands on her back told me he hoped to prolong. Still, I felt my lip curl but managed to merely grimace when Geoff chirped hello at me and winked.

“You're not staying, are you?” I asked.

“Josie,” Kate laughed nervously.

“Now, what kind of greeting is that for your future brother-in-law?” he asked.

“When I meet him, I'll let you know.”

“Josie,” Kate laughed again.

“You're quick. I like that about you, but you say things like that often enough and I just might believe you,” Geoff said.

“Well, you know how we adolescents can be,” I said as he made his way past me into the kitchen, allowing me an unobstructed and explicit glare at Kate.

“I've been invited to give you both a cooking lesson,” he said.

“Well, I'm sure the issuer of the invitation”—glare, glare, glare—“was mistaken about the date. This was supposed to be just the two of us tonight.”

“Now, Josie,” Kate said, drawing close and grasping my hands. “I know. But I thought you might like this.”

I allowed my eyebrows, raised contemptuously, to answer for me.

“Okay, I'm hoping you like it,” she said.

“You've gone insane, which is actually good. You're not legally well enough to consent to marriage.”

“Josie, please. Please. I knew if I said anything in advance, you wouldn't stay.”

“So you opted for an ambush? Good thinking, Kate.”

“I know how you feel about Geoff,” she whispered.

“I
might
have given him a chance. I was just starting to think about it.”

“Really?”

“Something Mrs. Easterday said.”

“What did she say?”

“I'm not telling you, particularly now that I'm mad at you.”

She ignored my remark and hugged me quickly.

“I didn't know you were coming around, but I love that you are,” she said. “I thought I
had
to ambush you.” I sigh in defeat. “And he's here now, so please? Please? You love studying foreign cultures. So does Geoff. You have that in common. And he knows how to make an authentic Italian spaghetti sauce that he's made for me before, and it's really good.” She leaned in close. “Josie, you and he are two of the most important people in my life, and I want you to love him, and him to love you, so, please, will you try to have a good time, for me?”

The words
for me
landed right on my heart where Mrs. Easterday's remark about Kate being happy lodged itself. So for the second time tonight, I tacitly conceded and watched Kate glow with happy appreciation. Then I took my seat on the stool I had just set down and watched the cooking show that, after two minutes, neither interested nor included me. It was the
Master Chef and His Giggling Apprentice Spectacular
. Between prep work and stirring, they stole quick kisses and fed each other bits of bread with sauce. They looked almost as if they were dancing, which bothered me terribly because kitchens are no place for such foolishness.

Finally, Kate remembered I existed. By then, I was flipping through her mail, piled in a sloppy stack on the counter in front of me. I had no idea she spent so much money at Ann Taylor, but I wasn't surprised since she always looks perfect in her outfits. And everything she wears constitutes an outfit, complete with just the right shoes and one funky element—a huge ring, usually, or cool pendant—that prevents her seeming stiff or too studied in her appearance.

“Josie, you've got to try this,” she said.

“No, thanks. I'm waiting for the big moment at dinner.”

“Food should be a big moment,” Geoff said, and then proceeded to pontificate on what he considered The Only Way to Truly Experience Food.

“First with the eyes,” he said, gesturing to his own in case I forgot where eyes are generally located. “Then through the nose.” He demonstrated sniffing. “Then in motion,” he said as he began pouring ladles of sauce over the pasta. “And then, at last,” he said, producing a fork from a drawer. “The Big Moment.” He twirled a bit of pasta onto his fork. “When taste and texture combine on the tongue for the ultimate experience of pleasure. Food,” he said, and popped the bite in his mouth, “is meant to be a multisensory experience.”

We sat in the infrequently used dining room. It wasn't until Kate finished saying grace that I looked at my plate and saw noodles fairly swimming in sauce that looked and smelled perfectly edible and which I thought I would probably like. But the sauce-to-noodle ratio precluded me from even sticking my utensils in the stuff for a taste. At this rate, my bowl was more soup than sauce, likelier to spill, splatter, or drip, and I shuddered at the thought of a glob of it clinging to my shirt like a baby spider monkey hanging on to its mother's underbelly, or worse—much, much worse—dribbling down my chin.

Shudder

Shudder

Shudder

I picked up my plate and started toward the kitchen, saying, “There's too much sauce on this.”

“No, there isn't,” Geoff said, and put his hand on my arm.

“There is,” I said. “And actually, you need to stop touching me.”

“Oh, uh, Geoff, Josie doesn't eat a lot of sauce. I forgot to say.”

“No, this is how you eat it,” he said.

“This is how
you
eat it. This is not how
I
eat it,” I said.

“Josie,” Kate said worriedly.

“I think you should sit down and be taught,” Geoff said. “You're being very rude.”

“Because
you
put too much sauce on my plate?”

“Because you won't let me teach you the proper way—”

“I just need to fix this. Let go of my arm.”

“Geoff.”

“Josie, sit.”

“Let go. Let go.”

• • •

I blink at my mother, who blinks back at me.

“That's it,” I say. “That's how Geoff ended up with
my
plate of spaghetti in
his
lap. It was an accident. Oh, and by the way, he used oregano, which is not Italian. It's Greek, and you should be very proud of me for not correcting him.”

“Yes, you exercised remarkable restraint. Kate says you laughed.”

“I didn't laugh.” I reconsider. “I might have . . . tittered. But it was nervous anxiety, a totally spontaneous response over which I had no control.”

“And then?”

“Well, then, you already know this part.”

• • •

Kate and Geoff sprang to their feet in the confusion of sauce and pants and anger and distress and some, little, tittering. I offered Geoff my napkin, which he petulantly declined in favor of the massive amounts of paper towels and a big wet sponge Kate retrieved from the kitchen. They cleaned him up the best they could. He declared his pants ruined, and we resumed our seats, and Geoff fussed over his pants, and Kate fussed over Geoff's fussing, and I asked them to pass me the breadbasket that sat between the two of them, but they didn't hear me. So I reached for it myself in haste and annoyance, and I swear, I swear, I swear I did not mean to, but I knocked Geoff's glass of red wine over and, yes, right into his lap.

Kate erupted into a shrieking fit—especially when I said something about the crotch being part of the ultimate dining experience; who knew?—and she called my mother, who came to fetch me, alone on the steps of the condo and tittering ever so slightly.