Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (7 page)

Tibby needed to ask a question that summed up her dread. But she was afraid, so she waited until the connection was dead.

“Which window?”

Lena sat on the back steps of the restaurant during her break. Inside was hot, outside was hot. She was sticky, and her apron was spattered with tomato sauce. It looked vaguely gory. Like maybe a customer had made one nasty comment too many.

She hated this job. She hated the careless food, all hurried and overcooked in vats. She hated the constant pressure to turn tables over. She hated the green vinyl booths and the way the coffee cups rattled in their saucers, filling the saucers with hot coffee, which she inevitably spilled on her apron. She felt embarrassed by the lame painting of the Parthenon frieze that stretched across an entire wall of the dining room. She hated the fake windows and the fake ivy. She was bothered by the fact that her manager, Antonis, the one with the fuzzy gray hair spilling out of his ears, still thought she spoke Greek in spite of several one-sided conversations.

She would happily sit out here in the back alley and smell the garbage if it meant not being in there. She needed time by herself. She was constantly being talked at, complained to, harassed. Even the polite customers were always waving her down, catching her eye, needing her to bring one more thing.

Some people liked being in communication with other people all day long, but Lena was not one of them. Looking back on the relative peace of Basia’s clothing store the summer before made it seem like a dream job.

Her father had pressed hard for the restaurant job. He had personally recommended her to the owner of the Elite. It was what his parents had done back in Greece. It was the life he had grown up in. Since his own father’s death less than a year before, these things had become more important to him.

For most of his life her dad had rebelled against Bapi and against his upbringing. He had eschewed the restaurant business in favor of law school. He had changed his name from Georgos to George. He made a point of being American, not even teaching his daughters to speak Greek. It seemed sad to Lena that he had waited until his father was dead to start caring about the stuff his father had always wanted him to care about.

“The restaurant business is very practical,” her dad had told her on several occasions, implying that being an artist was not very practical. “It’s a good business,” he’d say, and she was sure it was a good business. For somebody else. She sort of wondered whether he’d ever stopped and considered who she was. Did he really imagine she was going to start a restaurant in the proud Kaligaris tradition? Could he not see how wrong it was for her?

It had been four days since the disaster in her drawing class. She hadn’t been back and she was missing it terribly. She could stand this job if she had her drawing to look forward to. She could tolerate Valia’s loud misery and her parents’ tension at home if she could draw. But without it, she felt like she was sinking.

She could take some other class maybe. There were still openings in metalworking and mixed media and something called Gender Issues in Three-Dimensional Representation, but she knew in her heart she wasn’t going to be that kind of artist. Her love of art wasn’t particularly philosophical or political. She wasn’t an avant-gardist or a rule breaker. She wanted to learn to draw and paint people like Annik could.

Back in April she’d visited Capitol Street to pick up an application for summer classes. There were lots of showy, strange pieces in the gallery when you first walked in, but they didn’t mean much to Lena. Then, just as you turned the corner to the office, there was a quiet, simply framed drawing on the wall. It was a figure drawing of a young woman holding her hair back with one hand. It was quiet, but so beautiful it made Lena’s throat ache. It gave her chills from her scalp down to the balls of her feet. The drawing not only exhibited technical mastery and intricate detail, but it contained so much grace, so much feeling, it made Lena know what she wanted to achieve in her life.

Lena had squinted down at the messy signature and then compared it to every teacher’s name in the brochure. Annik Marchand. Lena walked into the office of the art school with uncharacteristic boldness and signed up for Annik Marchand’s figure drawing class on the spot. For that drawing alone, she loved Annik before she’d even met her.

“Break it down,” Antonis called at three-thirty, indicating the end of the lunch shift. Lena put chairs on tables so the busboys could mop the floor. Then she faced the unhappy prospect of going home. She cared deeply for Valia. That’s partially why Valia’s surliness made Lena so sad.

Instead of taking the bus north, Lena took it south. She got off and walked a block to the Capitol Street School of Art and Design. She didn’t intend to go back to class, exactly. She just wanted to stop by and say something to Annik.

The class was just setting up. Even the look and smell of the studio raised Lena’s mood. Annik turned, and when she saw it was Lena, she rolled over in her wheelchair. She looked happy and a little surprised.

“Nice to see you,” she said.

“I’m not here to draw,” Lena said.

“Why not?”

“Well…the whole thing with my dad.” She waved her arm in the direction of Andrew. “My dad’s pretty tough when he makes a decision. He already got most of his money refunded.” Lena glanced down at her fingers, her nails bitten short. “I really just came by to say thanks.”

“For what?” Annik asked.

“For your teaching. I wasn’t here long, but it’s a great class.”

Annik sighed. “Listen, I’ve got to help set up. Why don’t you stay for a few minutes—until the first break? You’re welcome to draw if you want. I’ve got extra pads and charcoal. Or you can do whatever. Then we’ll have a chance to talk for a minute.”

“Okay,” Lena said. She didn’t really want to leave anyway. She would stay and water the plants if that were her only excuse.

Annik left supplies out on a free easel. It was like leaving drugs out for an addict. It had been Lena’s easel; that’s why it was free. At first Lena just stood in the back of class and watched people draw. Then her fingers started itching for a piece of charcoal. She ambled over to the easel, just drawing with her eyes at first. She hesitated. Then she picked up the charcoal and she was lost until the bell rang.

Annik came over. “That’s lovely,” she said, studying the three poses of Andrew laid out on the sheet. “Do you want to go outside and talk for a minute?”

“Okay.” Lena expected they’d talk in the hallway, but Annik led her down the hall, up a ramp, and out into the courtyard. Annik rolled up to a bench, and Lena sat down on it. The dogwood trees rustled and a small fountain gushed appealingly in the middle. Various sculptures and found-object works, one involving a stack of car tires, decorated the perimeter.

“Are you comfortable drawing Andrew?” she asked. Annik’s hair was a beautiful red, made only more so by the sunlight. There was orange and gold and chestnut and even pink in it. Annik was fairly young, Lena realized, probably in her late twenties, and her face was delicate and pretty. Lena wondered, absently, if there was a man who loved her.

“Yes,” Lena said. “I felt a little awkward the first day, but then it went away. I don’t think about it anymore.”

“That’s what I thought,” Annik said. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen at the end of the summer.”

Annik nodded. “Can I tell you what I think?”

Lena nodded.

“I think you should take the class.”

“I think I should too. I wish my dad felt that way.”

Annik put her hands on her wheels like she was getting ready to roll away.

Lena wondered, as she had many times before, what had happened to Annik that made her need a wheelchair. Had she always been in a chair or had she grown up on her legs like a regular kid? Had she had an accident or a disease? Lena wondered what of Annik’s worked and what didn’t. Could she have a baby if she wanted to?

Though Lena wanted to know, she didn’t dare ask. She shied away from the intensity that might come from asking such a question. Intimacy came faster when a person wore their pain and poor luck for all to see. And yet, not asking felt like an act of neglect or cowardice. It kept a distance between them that Lena regretted.

Annik rolled back and forth a little, but she didn’t go anywhere just yet. “You do what you need to do,” she said.

Lena wasn’t sure whether this meant take the class or listen to your father, but she had a pretty strong suspicion it was the former.

“I’m not sure how I’d pay for it, for one thing,” Lena mused.

“I’m allowed a second monitor,” Annik said. “You’d need to help set up and clean up every day, including mopping. But you’d get free tuition.”

“I’ll do it,” Lena said instantly, not aware of making the decision.

Annik smiled openly. “I’m so glad.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to tell my dad,” Lena murmured, half to herself.

“Tell him the truth,” Annik said.

Lena shrugged, knowing that this was the piece of Annik’s advice she was not going to take.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
—Oscar Wilde

T
ibby sat frozen on a chair in the den watching Nicky watch cartoons. Her thoughts came together and broke apart, occasionally punctured by the sadism of
Tom and Jerry
. Her whole body hurt; every bone ached when her mind flashed on Katherine. She let herself think of Katherine for only a second at a time and then she pulled away, because it hurt too much.

Nicky didn’t know anything yet. They didn’t want to scare him. Whereas Tibby was good and scared, wanting desperately for the phone to ring, but only if it was good news.

Tibby was not raised religious. For the early part of her childhood, her parents were devout atheists, spewing Marx’s “opiate of the masses” rhetoric. Nowadays Tibby wasn’t sure what they believed. They didn’t talk about it anymore.

But Tibby was not them. As far as Tibby was concerned, you couldn’t have someone you loved, really loved, die and not believe in some kind of god. It was the only way to look at it. And besides, Bailey herself—as she had lived, not as she had died—had been proof that somebody or something existed beyond the realm of rational things.

And when Tibby thought of Bailey, it made sense, because a god who was smart enough to want Bailey back as soon as possible was also smart enough to see the beauty of Katherine. Katherine was too good for the world Tibby lived in. Tibby belonged there just fine, but not Katherine. Katherine was brave and generous and passionate. If she weren’t on God’s dance card, then who would be? Tibby would stand in the corner of heaven, if she ever made it there, but Katherine, like Bailey, would be doing the polka or the bunny hop or maybe the bus stop with God.

Please don’t take her yet
, Tibby implored.
She’s only three and we love her too much to survive without her.

Tibby was asking selfishly. Because she knew it was her fault. She had opened a window that was always shut. Why had she done that? She knew Katherine wanted to climb the apple tree. She knew that was how Katherine fell out the window.
It wasn’t on purpose. Please, God, believe that.

It was an accident. It was horrible, but not nearly as horrible as the ways in which Tibby had failed her little sister on purpose. Tibby was jealous and resentful. She hurt Katherine’s feelings on the pretense that small kids didn’t have actual feelings. And yet Tibby knew in her heart they did—possibly the deepest feelings of all.

If Tibby had loved Katherine as she deserved, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen out the window. If Tibby had paid attention to her and given her a boost to the branch of the apple tree, then Katherine wouldn’t have been climbing out anybody’s window. If Tibby hadn’t been so preoccupied with Brian, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

Love was the best padding anybody could have. And though irrepressible Katherine deserved it a million times over, Tibby hadn’t given it.

I do love her, God. I love her so much.
Tibby just wanted a chance to do better.

The phone rang and Tibby threw herself on top of it.

“Tibby?”

It was her dad. She ran the phone into the kitchen so Nicky wouldn’t hear. “Dad?” Her body was shaking.

“Honey, she’s doing better. The doctors say she’s going to be okay.”

Tibby gave herself full permission to cry now. She wept and sobbed and heaved and shook. Her dad was doing similar things on his end.

“Can I come?” she asked.

“She’s still getting X-rays. Her skull is fractured, which is the most serious thing. She also broke her wrist and her collarbone. We’re hoping that’s the extent of it. She’s talking and alert now, but I’d rather you stay home with Nicky for a couple more hours. Bring him over around six when things settle down here, okay?”

“Okay. But I want—I want to see her so bad, Daddy….” Tibby’s voice got swallowed up in tears.

“I know, honey. You will.”

“Tib, it’s me, Carma. We’ve been terrified all day. Lenny made me stop calling your house, and then she called five more times. I’m so glad K’s gonna be okay. I’m thinking about you. Please call when you get a second. I love you.”
Beeep.

“Tibby! It’s Bee! God, Lena called me here to tell me about Katherine. I’m still shaking. She’s going to get better so fast, though. I know it. Call me? Love you.”
Beeeep.

“Tib, sorry I kept calling before. It’s Lenny. I just couldn’t stand waiting. I’m so glad the news is good. I’ll come visit tomorrow, okay? Hang in there. We love you.”
Beeeep.

“And I saw it really close, so I wanted to get it.” Katherine was propped up on pillows in her hospital bed, slightly woozy from medication but still eager to recount her adventure to Tibby and Nicky, who were both sitting cross-legged on the foot of her bed.

Tibby nodded eagerly, trying not to show her agony at each word of the retelling. Her heart ached at the sight of Katherine’s bruised, bandaged head, her cast, her sling and multiple cuts and scrapes. It was made almost more heartrending by the fact that Katherine didn’t seem to notice.