The Best of Enemies (9 page)

Who
smokes
anymore?

Don’t answer that, because it’s apparently the same people who have
grandchildren
in their
forties
.
My God, woman, you are the poster child for bad choices!
We should pull Jerry Lewis out of the mothballs and hold a telethon for you!

I ball up his undershirt to use as a pillow while I shut my eyes, waiting for him to exit the shower.
I’ll steal a quick nap now because when he’s done, we’re running a load together; I’ll be damned if I have to hand wash my delicates myself again.

•   •   •

“Kit, wake up.”

I’m shaken into consciousness, muscles aching from not being able to stretch out on the love seat.

“I wasn’t asleep,” I protest.
Technically, I was passed out.
There’s a difference, although I’m not sure I should argue it.

He sounds anxious as he drops down onto the couch next to me.
“Listen, Kitty, you have to get it together, okay?
It’s important.”

I sit up and try to brush away all the cobwebs.
I’m all groggy and my light buzz has been replaced with a pounding headache.
This?
Right here?
Is why no one should ever day-drink, regardless of how festive a tight, backlit shot of wineglass condensation looks on Instagram.

I squint at the clock and see that I’ve been out for a solid three hours.
Stupid wine.
I scrub at my eyes and chug some water from a Mason jar.
I turn to Dr.
K and give him a come-hither smile while he takes my hand.
Maybe we’ll get in a quick cycle after all.
“I’m just peachy.
What’s up?”

He gestures toward the television with the remote.
The news is on, but it’s paused.
“Watch.”
I lean into him and rest my head on his shoulder, placing my hand on his thigh, but he doesn’t pull me toward him.
Instead he says, “Brace yourself, babe.
It’s about Betsy.”

And suddenly, I’m wide-awake.

Evanston, Illinois

December 1993

“We should live in Ellison Hall,” I suggest.
“Campus is kind of a hike, but the rooms are big.
Bonus, right?
Plus, it’s coed.
John-John lived there freshman year and I remember it being nice.”

Sars and I are sitting at the breakfast bar, poring over the colorful brochures we just received from the university’s housing department.
We started off in the family room at her house, but her mom chased us out due to her hosting a Tupperware party later this afternoon.
Too bad, because Sars’s mom always has fresh-baked cookies in a jar for us and keeps an endless supply of milk on hand.
We also never have to drink out of jelly jars over there when all the regular glasses are dirty at the same time, largely because their glasses are never all dirty at the same time.
I glance at the sink, brimming with dishes.

Welcome to Jelly-Glass City, Population, Us.

“Ahh!
I can’t do a coed dorm, Jack!”
Sars squeals, eyes huge behind her thick tortoise-shell Lisa Loeb glasses.
“No way!”

“Why not?”
I ask.

“Um,
boys
!”
she replies, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world.
She seems so keyed up she’s practically vibrating in her chair.

My brother Bobby looks up from his spot on the leather couch.
He’s seated next to Gretzky, one of our enormous black Labs, while inhaling a mixing bowl full of Count Chocula.
Until a moment ago, he was intently watching cartoons.

Sometimes I wonder how he’s
nineteen
and not nine.

Bobby claims his deep and abiding love for
Scooby-Doo
has only grown more deep and more abiding after taking his first bong hit at college last year.
He says he finally understands why Scooby and Shaggy are perpetually so hungry.

“The munchies are
real
,” he’d said, like he was sharing a sage truth.

“Why, what’d we do, Sars?”
Bobby asks, through a mouthful of cereal.
He seems genuinely confused and a bit hurt.
Bobby and Sars have been buddies for as long as she and I have.
The neighborhood’s called us the Three Musketeers for years.

“You didn’t do anything, Bobby,” Sars explains with a giggle.
“I just can’t live with boys.”

“Is it the smell?”
he asks.
He sticks his face inside his shirt and takes a whiff, then shrugs.
“You get used to it after a while.”

It’s true.

You do eventually become immune to the masculine stink.
Live with it long enough and it’s like someone playing a jam box too loud on the el train; you tune it out.
For me, three brothers minus one mother plus a host of flatulent dogs and perpetually unwashed bags of athletic gear over many years equals a lifetime of olfactory indifference.

I explain, “Sars, the dorm’s segregated by floor—guys on the evens, gals on the odds.
Boys won’t live next door.
You’re not going to bump into dudes walking down the hallway wearing nothing but a towel.”

“Wanna see a dude in a towel?
’Cause I could make that happen right now if you’d like,” Bobby teases, waggling his eyebrows.

Normally, this would prompt Sars to effortlessly lob an insult in return, but today she says, “Um, can I take a rain check?”
and shriek-giggles some more as her face turns pink.

Wait, is Sars
blushing
?
Over something
Bobby
said?
And what’s with the affected laugh?
I peer at her flushed cheeks.
Nah, not blushing.
She’s probably just coming down with the flu.

“Offer’s on the table when you change your mind,” he says, returning his focus to the television.
He’s not sure what to make of her odd reaction, either.

To deflect, I tell him, “Hey, Bobby?
I’ve seen this episode before.
Turns out the old man would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.”

Bobby slumps down at this news.
He seems legitimately disappointed at my having wrecked the ending, and now I feel bad.
He’s never as good at taking it as he is at dishing it out.

To appease him, I say, “I think Daphne wears a bathing suit in this episode,” and he quickly rallies.
Bobby’s smile returns and he focuses on the screen again.
While he watches, he finishes the cereal portion of his breakfast and tips the bowl in order to drink the remaining half-and-half, which he had to use because, guess what?
We’re out of milk.
Dad said for all we drink, he should have been a dairy farmer, not a trial lawyer.
In Saint Louis, my mother would make sure we always had at least two gallons in the kitchen and a spare in the garage fridge.
Said she hated having to run out in the night to buy more.
Yet the one time she did finally run out for more, she didn’t come back.

The cream trickles out the sides of Bobby’s bowl and travels in twin tributaries down either side of his mouth onto the couch.
In Sars’s house, this would be tantamount to treason, but no one worries much about sanitation around here.
Really, it’s not like our house is a showplace, at least not since we moved in.
This place reminded me of a small chateau when Dad bought it, what with the stone exterior, pointy roof, and the turrets.
But years of indoor touch-football games and ill-groomed Labrador retrievers have turned this castle into more of a dungeon.

Bobby absently dabs at the stray liquid with the bottom of his college logo shirt.
Our family consensus is that he applied to USC strictly because he thought it would be funny to wear “Trojans” gear.
(Related note?
The only other place he applied was the University of South Carolina.
Go, ’Cocks!) I guess this is the upside of not having a mom like Sars has.
No one’s here to cry over the milk spills.
Gretzky ambles off his side of the couch to bat cleanup on the spots Bobby missed.
See?
All fixed.

After Dad became our sole caretaker, he realized our table manners were devolving into that of prison inmates, so he started to take us out to eat more often.
He figured we’d learn how to conduct ourselves from watching the other diners.
So, thank you, random polite people at Carmen’s Pizza, for showing at least
most
of us how to use a napkin.

“Why can’t you live around guys?”
I ask.
I’m genuinely flummoxed.
Hell, I’m nervous to live around all the girls.
Guys I understand.
Girls confuse me with their secret hierarchies and ever-changing alliances.

Sars wrings her hands in a way that looks like she’s washing them.
“Because it’s too much pressure!
When you live with boys, you have to be groomed all the time!
You can’t just go down to breakfast with no makeup on, hair in a ponytail, and sweatpants.
Can’t be done!”

“Of course it can,” I reason.
“It’s called ‘every day of my life.’”

My morning routine entails washing my face and sticking my hair in a scrunchie.
That’s thirty seconds, tops.
Seriously, my makeup bag contains a tube of tinted Chapstick.
Once, I tried to use eye shadow and blush, but John-John said I looked like Dee Snider from Twisted Sister.
I can’t disagree.

“Yeah, you can go without all the trimmings because you’re naturally gorgeous,” Sars says.
“Some of us are going to need Maybelline.”

My eldest brother, Teddy, comes shuffling into the kitchen wearing a wrinkled oxford and striped boxer shorts.
I notice Sars peeking at his thighs, which are still really buff from years of playing hockey.
Who can blame her for looking?
I’m jealous of his muscle definition, too.

Teddy’s bedhead borders on magnificent and he smells like that time we visited the Anheuser-Busch factory.
Since he’s over twenty-one, he’s done little but hit the bars on Rush Street with his buddies ever since he arrived home for Christmas break earlier this week.

“Who’s naturally gorgeous?”
he asks.
I swear, Ted’s always on the prowl.
He can run into the Jewel for athlete’s foot powder and bulk toilet paper and he’ll
still
come out with some girl’s digits scribbled on a scrap of grocery bag.

Teddy cracks open the fridge, which contains a stack of near-empty pizza boxes, petrified containers of moo shu pork and Hunan beef, and fifteen crusty mustard jars that will eventually be used as drinking glasses.
He has to move a lacrosse ball to get to the orange juice and then chugs straight from the carton.

“Dehydrated much?”
Bobby chuckles to himself.

“Munchies much?”
Teddy counters.

Sars clears her throat and blinks rapidly.
Her throat must be scratchy and her eyes itchy.
Makes sense, it
is
cold season.
“Um, Jack’s naturally gorgeous, of course.”

From across the room, Bobby snorts so loudly that our other dog Mikita jumps up from her bed and trots out of the room, her fat rump undulating.

“Whassamatter, spaz?
You don’t think your sister’s good-lookin’?”

Bobby snorts again and Teddy beans him right in the head with the now-empty Tropicana carton.
Ted’s arm is still a lethal weapon.
He was as skilled at football as he was at hockey in high school, which is why so many Big Ten colleges tried to recruit him.
However, he had his heart set on Whitney’s architecture program, so that’s where he went.

I’m so bummed that our time on campus won’t overlap, despite his major taking five years.
Sure, John’s at Whitney, too, but we probably won’t hang out much.
He’s not as close as the rest of us are, likely because he’s a narcissistic jerkwad.
He’s so different from Bobby that everyone forgets they’re twins.
Fraternal, but still.

Teddy’s awesomeness makes up for John’s shortcomings.
He’s very protective of me.
(Maybe too protective?) Although Bobby and I are the best of friends, my relationship with Ted is almost more parental.
He’s always tried to fill in for Dad’s logging such long hours to make partner.

Bobby rubs his temple, unwilling to admit defeat.
“No, I’m concerned that
you
think she’s good-looking.”

Teddy pulls up a barstool next to Sars and me, flexing and preening.
“’Course I do.
We look exactly alike.”