Wedding in Great Neck (9781101607701) (13 page)

“So, what’s with you?” Portia said when Ennis had left. She picked up her hairbrush and began to pull it through her hair. Tamed, the hot pink streak grew smooth.

“What do you mean, what’s with me?”

“You’re acting all weird.”

“I am not,” said Justine. But she averted her eyes. It was the ring, of course. The stolen ring, with its ugly nugget of a stone, which was still in her pocket. Portia could sense it.

“Justine, this is me, remember? Portia, your other half. Your
better
half. There is no way you can pull this shit with me, okay? So don’t even try.”

“Are you going for a swim with Dad?” Justine decided that changing the subject was a better plan.

“Maybe,” Portia said. The brush sat idle in her lap. “I thought I might go to that hairdresser Grandma Betsy hired.”

“Whatever for?”

“I’d kind of like a streak of blue right next to the pink.” She touched her head with the tip of the brush handle. “Or maybe green. What do you think?”

Justine turned to scrutinize her sister. “Green,” she said. “Add a strip of green. But do you really think any hairdresser Grandma hired is going to have the stuff she’ll need to do that?”

“You’re right,” Portia said. She stood, and the brush clattered to the floor. “She won’t.” Justine picked up the brush from near her foot, where it had landed, and handed it to her sister. “Still, I’m going to see her anyway. Maybe she’ll have some other ideas. You never know.”

Justine highly doubted this, but “Okay” was all she said. “We can swim later if you want.”

“Mom and Uncle Caleb were out earlier,” said Portia. “Are they still there?”

Justine shrugged. “I don’t know.” She felt ready to implode. She wished she’d brought along a little something to help her wind down; she did have a couple of her beloved Adderall capsules, but they would do nothing to calm her.

She stood and stretched, a phony stretch that allowed her to run her hands across the front of her thighs to feel the subtle bump the ring made in her shorts. God, she wished she could show it to Portia. She had never, ever in her life kept something this major from her before. It felt terrible, as if in hoarding her secret, she had somehow been cut loose from her sister and was left adrift in some strange and hostile new atmosphere.

“As long as Uncle Teddy isn’t around,” Portia said, moving toward the door. “He’s
such
an ass wipe. Has he been hounding you about college yet? Oh—excuse me. I mean, the
right
college. If I hear that again, I’ll barf.”

Justine grinned a broad, face-splitting grin. All at once she felt drenched in relief. “Let’s tell Uncle Teddy we’ve decided not to go to college at all,” she said. Portia was still Portia. The cord was not severed. “You can say you want to go to some technical school and learn to fix refrigerators. Or air conditioners. And I’ll tell him that I want to go to…dog grooming school! I’ll learn to groom nasty little lapdogs like Grandma Betsy’s. Listen.” She paused. “I can hear it barking now.” And it was true: the dog was at it again, the high-pitched sound penetrating the windows and walls with insistent, irritating clarity.

“Can you believe she puts up with that?” Portia said. She shook her head. “I’ll look for you at the pool later.”

Justine nodded, still smiling. “Green,” she said. “Definitely green.”

As soon as Portia had left, Justine changed into her bathing suit—navy, one-piece, kind of like her mom’s, in fact—and topped it with a short navy-and-white terry robe. She actually thought the robe, a present from her grandmother, was dorky, but it conveniently had a pocket, into which she slid the diamond ring. She’d just amble back upstairs, put the ring back in its leather case, and no one would ever know. She still had to find Ohad; she had a whole other plan to put into action. But somehow the urgency of that had receded a bit in the face of this new imperative.

Justine managed to avoid the activity in both the kitchen and dining room, but as she breezed through the entryway, the bell chimed, and one of the maids answered it. Grandma Betsy was right behind her, saying, “I’m so glad you’re here. I was beginning to worry!” The young woman who entered—small, with a bunch of tiny reddish-brown pigtails that poked up all over her head, and a neatly pierced septum in which a gold hoop shone—looked scarcely older than Justine was. It was only the load of equipment she carried—camera cases, tripod, lights—that identified her as the wedding photographer. Interesting. Maybe Justine should have had her septum done, instead of just the puny nose stud.

Though curious to find out more about the photographer, Justine had no time to stick around. Still thinking about the pierced septum, she ran up the stairs, down the hall, and, in her haste to accomplish her mission, flung open the door to Angelica’s room. Bad move. There, stretched out on the wide bed with its crinkly duvet cover, was Ohad. He wore jeans and a white shirt like the one she had seen Angelica wearing. Except for the chunk of turquoise around her neck, they were dressed identically.

“Oh!” said Justine. “I am, like, so sorry! I should have knocked.” She had wanted to find him, hadn’t she? But not here, not now. She didn’t even have her phone, damn it. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her robe. She had the ring, though. The ring that she needed to return, like, this second.

“It’s all right,” said Ohad. Although his English was good, his accent was heavy.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you or anything,” she added. “Were you having a nap?”

“Just closing my eyes for a few minutes. I can’t get any peace back at the hotel,” he said. “Someone always wants or needs something. A question, a problem, a piece of advice.” He swung his legs around and off the bed. “Families. What can you do?” He smiled up at her, and she felt like someone had socked her in the stomach. He really was drop-dead gorgeous, just like Grandma Lenore kept saying. All at once Justine was overcome with a new sensation. This one was an intense, smoldering shade of violet. Hot. Sizzling. The
very violets
, that’s what she would call this new, electrified state.

Flustered, Justine tried to fight the heady cloud that swirled in her brain. But it was hard. There was that dark skin and the white, white teeth, for starters. There was also the sculpted nose and the scary-sexy eyebrows over the nearly black eyes. The hair, black too but totally unlike Angelica’s. While hers was smooth and glossy, his was matte and coarse; it stood up from his head like a pelt.

But no matter how hot he was, he could not be trusted. Forget the looks. Looks could lie. She imagined his life back in Israel: the army, the fighter planes, the firing of rockets and bullets into defenseless villages and towns where innocent people—babies, little kids, pregnant moms, and old women like Grandma Lenore—were wounded, maimed, killed. Legs and arms blown off, skulls crushed, blood everywhere, everything on fire. And he, Ohad, was the cause.

“You have a big family too,” he said. “Do you sometimes feel like you need to get away from them?”

“I guess,” she said. She could barely sustain this conversation. The violet feeling was sucking at her, making her imagine all sorts of wildly inappropriate things. What if she did let him kiss her, like, for real? And take off her shirt and touch her boobs? Suddenly this seemed like a very compelling scenario.

But she could not let herself think this way. She had to get rid of him. Now.
The ring, the ring. Return the ring.
Then she could deal with the rest of it. Of course she would have to get her phone somehow so she could take the picture. The picture was crucial.

“But, still, families are important, right?” he said. “Families are the starting point of…everything. Good or bad, they hold us like glue. Don’t you think so?” He rolled his shoulders back a couple of times as if he were getting the kinks out.

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” She knew she sounded rude. Also stupid—he would think she was a total moron. But what could she do? This was making her crazy, especially because Ohad was being so, well, nice. More than nice, actually. He had that way of talking
to
you, not
at
you, like so many people, especially adults, did. Angelica had it too; it was one of the things she and Portia loved about her. So Justine guessed it wasn’t such a surprise that she loved him. Even if he was a missile-launching baby killer.

“Were you looking for Angelica?” Justine nodded. “She’s downstairs, I think. I’m not sure what she’s doing, though.” He flashed her that smile again. The violet haze grew thicker.

“Angelica. Right.” She backed out of the room.

“If she comes up here, I’ll tell her you were looking for her, okay?”

“Okay.” She gave him a weak little wave and then instantly regretted it. God,
why
had she done
that
? Now she would really look lame. But he didn’t seem to mind, because he waved back. Except when he did it, it didn’t seem lame. Only friendly.

Justine went down the stairs as her heart smacked around in her chest like a tennis ball. She was so confused. Ohad. Angelica. The ring. And no one to talk to about any of it. She passed the room where the hair and makeup business was going on. Well, not the makeup. Not yet. But there was Portia perched on a stool and wearing a hideous flowered smock. She lifted her hand out from under it to motion Justine into the room. Justine shook her head, but Portia gestured again.

“Teeny, please,” she said, using one of the many childhood nicknames they had devised for each other. It was the
Teeny
that got her. It always did. Reluctantly she entered the room.

“She wants to cut it,” Portia said. “What do you think?”

“Your hair?”

“Duh!” When Justine did not reply, Portia asked, “Do you think I should?”

“It will be fantastic,” said the stylist. She had the kind of artfully applied blond highlights Justine despised.

“How short?” she said, turning back to her sister.

“Maybe to here,” Portia said, indicating her collarbone.

“Dull,” Justine said. “Megawatt dull.”

Portia looked questioningly at the stylist.

“Well, we could go shorter if you wanted…” the stylist said.

God, but she was useless. “Cut it short,” Justine said to Portia. “Really short.”

“A pixie cut?” ventured the stylist.

“A buzz cut,” Justine shot back. “Bzz!” She made the sound of the electric razor as she drew her hand along Portia’s head in an imaginary swath.

“I don’t want a buzz cut, Teeny,” said Portia, looking alarmed. “I really don’t. But I do like the idea of going shorter.”

“Pixie, then,” Justine told her sister. “Think of what everyone will say; it will be such a surprise.” Too bad about the buzz cut; maybe she should go for it herself. But then she looked again at the stylist, who was blinking in an especially clueless way, and she decided,
Not.

“Okay,” Portia said. “Pixie.”

“Sweet. I’ll be back in a little while to see how it’s going,” Justine said before leaving. She stepped out of the house and headed in the direction of the pool. No sign of her mother or Caleb, though there were plenty of other people around, moving potted plants, setting up chairs under an enormous, pennant-capped tent.

There was one guy, shaved head and shirtless, with the most amazing set of tats on his shoulders: big wings that seemed to undulate when he moved. She’d have to make sure Portia saw him; they were both into tats, though neither of them had actually gotten one yet. They were still trying to convince their mother to let them. Maybe Justine would sneak off to St. Mark’s Place and have it done without telling anyone, even Portia. There was a guy at school who, for the right price, could come up with a highly convincing fake ID.

Justine approached the pool. No one was in it. Carefully she folded the robe and put it on a chair with the pocket facing up. She patted it just to be sure the ring was inside. Then she dived in and sped along the surface. Like her mother, she was a strong swimmer. So was her dad; Portia was the only one in the family who didn’t like swimming.

Justine flipped over and did a backstroke until she got tired of that and simply let herself float, looking up at the sky. A few clouds had rolled in; would they bring the rain that everyone had been talking about? Hard to tell. They were puffy and white, not gray or black. But, still. The sky—like everything else—could change in a nanosecond.

“Having a swim, hey?”

Justine lifted her head out of the water. Dad. She had not heard him approach. He wore faded, baggy swim trunks, and he seemed, oh, a little thinner, maybe. A little thinner and a little older too. More tired than she remembered. But still her dad. She was glad to see him.

“Come on in,” she called. “I’ll race you.” He dove in with a minimal splash and joined her at the shallow end. “On your mark, get set,” she said, positioning herself in the water. “Go!” She shot ahead, arms slicing the water in clean, even strokes. She was aware of him at her side, stroking furiously. His arms were longer, true, but he was older. He had strength and size on his side; she had youth and speed. She kept her pace and touched the wall only a second before he did.

“The winner!” he said and, grasping her hand, pulled it into the air for a victory pump.

“The winner,” she echoed, and let herself surrender to the feel of his hand as it closed around hers.

They swam back and forth a few more times at a more leisurely pace before getting out.

“So, how are things?” he said as he toweled off. “You seemed kind of quiet before.”

“Oh, everything’s fine.” The lie slid out easily.

“School’s okay?”

“School’s great,” she told him. “I mean, it was great. We just finished finals.”

“But no grades,” he said, wrapping the towel around his shoulders.

“Not yet. But I’m in good shape. My average so far is 3.98. I’m getting an A in my British and American Poetry class; the teacher already told me.” Justine knew he’d care about that grade above all the rest.

Her father whistled his approval. “I’d say that’s pretty terrific.” He rubbed the towel across his back and legs. “But it’s not a surprise. Not to me. Always knew you were my poetry girl from way back, hey? Remember when you memorized Blake’s ‘The Tyger’? You must have been seven.”