The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (6 page)

Bridget nodded. “I could help you with that.”

“I warn you, there’s a lotta junk up there. Boxes and boxes of old things. My kids left all their stuff in this house.”

Bridget shrank back. She hadn’t imagined that would come up quite so fast, even indirectly. In fact, as she sat there, she’d sort of forgotten the connection she had to this woman.

“You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Greta nodded. She squinted at Bridget’s face for a long moment. “You’re not from around here?”

Bridget tapped her toes inside her sneakers. “No. I’m just here for, uh, summer vacation.”

“Are you in high school?”

“Yes.”

“And your family?”

“They are . . .” These were answers Bridget should have prepared ahead of time. “Traveling. I wanted to work to earn some extra money. For college next year.”

She stood up and stretched her legs a little, hoping to ward off follow-up questions. She looked through the hallway to the back porch, her memory stirring at the big pink dogwood in the backyard with good low branches for climbing.

She turned to look at the mantel. A framed photograph of six-year-old versions of her and her twin brother, Perry, looked back at her. Her breath caught. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. She sat back down.

Greta pulled her eyes off Bridget and consulted her knotty knuckles for a while. “Fine. I’ll pay you five dollars an hour. How would that be?”

Bridget tried not to grimace. Maybe that was the pay scale in Burgess, Alabama, but in Washington you wouldn’t flip a burger for that. “Uh, okay.”

“When can you start?”

“Day after tomorrow?”

“Good.”

She got up, and Bridget followed her to the front door. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Randolph.”

“Call me Greta.”

“Okay, Greta.”

“I’ll see you day after tomorrow at . . . how’s eight?”

“That’s . . . fine. See you then.” Bridget groaned inwardly. She had gotten very bad at waking up in the morning.

“What did you say your last name was?”

“Oh. It’s . . . Tomko.” There was a stray name that could use a new owner, even temporarily. Besides, she liked thinking of Tibby.

“How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Just about to turn seventeen,” Bridget said.

Greta nodded. “I have a granddaughter your age. She’ll be seventeen in September.”

Bridget flinched. “Really?” Her voice warbled.

“She lives up in Washington, D.C. You ever been there?”

Bridget shook her head. It was easy to lie to strangers. It was harder when they knew your birthday.

“Where are you from, anyway?”

“Norfolk.” Bridget had no idea why she said that.

“You’ve come a long way.”

Bridget nodded.

“Well, nice to meet you, Gilda,” the woman who was her grandmother called after her.

“The restaurant was really fabulous. I thought we’d just go to a neighborhood place, but he’d made a reservation at Josephine. Can you believe that? I was worried I was underdressed, but he said I looked perfect. Those were his exact words. ‘You look perfect.’ Can you believe that? I spent the longest time trying to figure out what to order so I wouldn’t end up with béarnaise sauce down the front of my blouse or salad in my teeth.”

Christina laughed so heartily it was as though no one had ever soldiered through that predicament before her.

Carmen looked down at her whole-wheat toaster waffle. The four middle squares contained full pools of syrup and the rest of it lay dry. The things her mother was saying were things Carmen should have been saying. She couldn’t help noting the irony with a certain amount of sourness. Carmen wasn’t saying them because her mother was saying them and saying them and saying them and not shutting up.

Christina widened her eyes dramatically. “Carmen, I wish you could have tasted the dessert. It was to
die
for. It was called
tarte tatin
.”

The overeager French accent with the uptilting snap of Puerto Rican just under the surface made Carmen unable to be as mad at her mother as she wanted to be.

“Yum,” Carmen said dully.

“He was
so
sweet. Such a gentleman. He opened the car door for me. When was the last time that happened?” Christina looked at her like she really wanted an answer.

Carmen shrugged. “Never?”

“He graduated from
Stanford
University. Did I say that already?”

Carmen nodded. Christina looked so pathetically proud, Carmen couldn’t help thinking shamefully about her own pride the night before when she’d said her dad went to Williams.

Carefully Carmen tipped the syrup bottle, attempting to fill each individual square of her waffle with its own small puddle. “What’s his name again?”

“David.” Christina seemed to enjoy the taste of it even more than
tarte tatin
.

“How old did you say he was?”

Christina depuffed a little. “He’s thirty-four. That’s only four years’ difference, though.”

“More like five,” Carmen said. It was a mean thing to say masquerading as a true thing to say. Her mother was turning thirty-nine in less than a month. “But he does sound really nice,” Carmen added to make up for it.

That was all her mother needed. “He is. He really is.” And she proceeded to rattle on about just how nice he was straight through two additional waffles. About how he had brought her coffee a few times at the office and helped her when her computer froze.

“He’s a third-year associate,” Christina blabbed informatively, as if Carmen would care at all. “He didn’t go to law school right after college. He worked for a newspaper in Memphis. I think that’s what makes him so
interesting
.” Christina said the word like it had only ever deserved to be used this one time.

Carmen poured herself a glass of milk. She hadn’t had a glass of milk since she was about thirteen. She wondered, with a scientific sort of curiosity, how long her mother would keep talking if she herself didn’t say
anything at all
?

“He’s always been so friendly and helpful, but I never imagined he would want to take me out on a date. Never!” Christina took the opportunity to circle the small room a few times. Her church shoes
clack clacked
on the peach linoleum.

“I know it’s probably not a good idea to date somebody from the office, but on the other hand, we don’t work in the same department or even on the same floor.” She waved her arm, grandly allowing the concept of an office romance before she’d even finished disallowing it.

“I mean, last night, watching you go, I felt so old and lonely thinking about how it would be with you gone next year. And then this! The timing is straight from God, I think.”

Carmen made herself not mention that God had a lot of better things to think about.

“I shouldn’t leap ahead. What if it goes nowhere? What if he isn’t looking for a real relationship? What if he’s in a different place than me?”

First off, Carmen hated when her mother used the word
place
like some great metaphysician. And second, since when was her mother looking for a relationship? She hadn’t gone out with a guy since Carmen was in fourth grade.

Not answering didn’t do the job. Even going to the bathroom didn’t stem her mother’s flow of words. Carmen wondered whether actually leaving the apartment would make her mother stop talking.

At last Carmen consulted the clock. It was never on her side. For the first time in Carmen-Christina history it said they were not late for church. “We oughta get going,” Carmen suggested anyway.

Her mother nodded and followed her companionably from the kitchen, talking all the while. She didn’t take a break until they pulled into the church parking lot.

“Tell me,
nena,
” Christina asked as she dropped her keys into her purse and steered Carmen into church. “How was
your
evening?”

Lenny,

I know you’re just a few blocks away and I’ll be shoving the Pants into your arms in about five (okay, ten) minutes when I pick you up (okay, late) for work. But it made me a little sad not to be writing a letter from a faraway place, and then I thought, well, hey, just because we can e-mail and call and see each other all we want this summer doesn’t meant I can’t write a letter from a near place, does it? That’s not exactly a felony, is it?

So, Lenny, I know it’s not like last summer. You don’t miss me, because you saw me several times yesterday and then I blabbed you into a near coma last night. But even though you are about to see me and possibly yell at me for being late (again), I can still take this opportunity to tell you that you are the best, greatest, awesomest Lenny ever and I love you a lot. So go crazy in these Pants, chickadee.

Carmen Electrifying

L
ena didn’t go crazy in the Pants. The first day she left them at home in her room on top of the pile of letters from Kostos. The second day she wore them to work, got reprimanded by Mrs. Duffers, and had to take them off before lunchtime. She left them on the chair in the back of the store, where a customer saw them and tried to buy them.

Her heart was still pounding from the horror of that experience when Effie strode in. It was closing time, and Lena hadn’t finished cleaning out the fitting rooms.

“So guess who called today?” Effie demanded.

“Who?” Lena hated Effie’s guessing games, especially when she was tired.

“Guess.” Effie followed her back to the fitting rooms.

“No!”

Effie looked sour. “Fine.
Fine
.” She cast her eyes upward for patience. “Grandma. I talked to her.”

“You did?” Lena stopped picking up clothes. “How is she? How’s Bapi?”

“They’re great. They had a big anniversary party in the old restaurant last month. The whole town was there.”

“Ohhh.” Lena could picture it. Her mind drifted slowly to Fira, to the view of the Caldera from the terrace of the restaurant her grandparents owned. “That’s so nice,” she said distantly. Picturing the harbor of course made her picture Kostos. Picturing Kostos gave her that zoomy feeling in the bottom of her abdomen.

Lena cleared her throat and resumed gathering clothing. “How are the Dounases?” she asked evenly.

“Good.”

“Yeah?” Lena didn’t want to ask about Kostos outright.

“Sure. Grandma said Kostos brought a girl from Ammoudi to the party.”

Lena tried very hard not to move her face one single millimeter.

Effie’s eyebrows went down. “Lenny, why do you look like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like . . . that.” Effie pointed at Lena’s tight, miserable face. “You’re the one who broke up with
him
.”

“I know.” Lena bumped her foot spasmodically against the mirror. “Your point being . . . ?” Lena needed to play stupid. Otherwise she might cry.

“I don’t get you. If you feel this way, why did you break up with him?” Effie asked, not seeming to care that they weren’t having the same conversation.

“Feel what way? How do you know I feel any which way?” Lena asked. She began sorting pants by size.

Effie shook her head, as though Lena were a hopeless and pitiable moron. “If it makes you feel better, Grandma doesn’t like the girl he brought.”

Lena pretended very hard not to care about that.

“And she also said, and I quote, ‘Dis girl is not nearly as boootiful as Lena.’”

Lena kept up with the pretending.

“Does that make it any better?” Effie wheedled.

Lena shrugged, impassive.

“So I said, ‘Grandma, that girl probably didn’t break up with him for no reason.’”

Lena threw the clothes down. “Forget it,” she stated. “You are not getting a ride to work.”

“Lenny! You promised!” Effie said. “Besides, what do you care? I thought you said you didn’t care.”

Effie always won. Always.

“I
don’t
care,” Lena mumbled babyishly.

“So drive me to work like you promised.” Effie was a genius at turning a favor into an obligation.

The sky had turned so dark Lena couldn’t believe it wasn’t nighttime. Cradling the Pants in one arm, she locked the front door and pulled down the gate. Outside, heavy, warm splashes of rain landed in her hair and dripped down her forehead. Effie ran to the car and Lena walked, protecting the Pants under her shirt. She liked rain.

The Olive Vine was less than two miles from the shop. Effie bounded into the restaurant in a couple of giant strides.

Lena drove on. The rain drummed and the windshield wipers squeaked. She liked being alone at the wheel when nobody was expecting her anyplace. Sometime in the last few months she had passed into the stage of driving where she didn’t have to think consciously about how to do it anymore. She didn’t have to think
Okay, blinker. Brakes. Turn.
She just drove. It left her mind free to wander.

She found herself driving past the mailbox where she used to mail the old letters, before she had stopped caring so much. Or before she had started pretending she had stopped caring so much.

She still held the Pants close to her body. She’d worn them when she and Kostos had kissed so exquisitely at the very end of the summer. She took a deep breath. Maybe a few of his cells still clung to them. Maybe.