For Keeps Page 8

  “I’m sorry, honey,” my mom says, cutting me off. “Hold on a sec.” Things get muffled in the background. “It’s Josie,” I hear her say. There’s a lot of murmuring. Then she says to me, “I’m sorry, what were you saying? Tessa, the cheerleader? ”

  “Who were you talking to?” I say.

  “Jonathan.”

  “Doesn’t he have to work? I thought he was a music teacher.”

  “He is. He took the day off. . . . Tell me about Matt—”

  “He took the day off, to hang out at the bookstore ?”

  “Yes. . . . So—”

  “Huh,” I say.

  In an instant, she seems to forget what we were talking about and launches into how Jonathan asked her to go to the movies with him tonight—some German film playing at the arts cinema in town. They thought they’d grab a bite at that new bistro on Broad Street—

  “So, go,” I say.

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Why would I mind?”

  “So . . . can you get a—”

  “Ride home? Yeah. I’ll hitchhike from work. I’ll eat biscotti for dinner. Whatever.”

  “You sound irritated.”

  “I’m not irritated. I don’t care if you go out. I just . . . maybe next time you could give me a little advance notice. Maybe I would make other plans for my night.”

  “Josie.”

  “What?”

  She’s quiet for a second. Then she says, “Do you want to join us?”

  “I have a job, Mom.”

  “We could go to a late show. . . .”

  “It’s a schoolnight,” I say. “I have homework.” Then, “Look, I have to go. I’m late for practice.”

  “OK. . . . So, you’re really OK with tonight?”

  “Asked and answered.”

  After we say good-bye I snap my phone shut so hard I drop it. It almost lands in the toilet, which would be very poetic. Because I’m pissed. Even though I know I have no right to be, I am. I just am.

  I shove the phone in my duffel and sprint out to the field. I hope Coach makes us run the entire practice. I’ll go for hours. I’ll run and run and run and run, until I stop feeling this way. Until I’m numb.

  Eight

  SEVEN FIFTEEN P.M., and we have customers. Incredibly. At Bananarama we hardly ever had customers on Monday nights, but Fiorello’s is hopping. There must be twelve, fifteen people in here, and I’m determined not to spill anything. Or burn anything. Or drop anything. Or otherwise upset Bob’s exquisite order of things. He wasn’t exactly pleased with the boob-scalding incident, so I am doing what I can to redeem myself.

  My cappuccinos are improving. My foam is as fluffy as cumulus clouds. I’m working on a mixture of chocolate shavings and nutmeg for toppings when I hear a deep voice from the other end of the counter. “What’s good tonight?”

  I look up and my stomach jumps, but thankfully the rest of me stays where it is.

  “Sorry to startle you,” Paul Tucci’s father says. “Again.”

  He’s grinning, a flash of straight white teeth. Dentures, I am thinking. They’re too perfect to be real. Dentures that sleep in a jelly jar on his bedside table, which is dressed in a doily crocheted by Paul Tucci’s mother.

  I can feel my eyelid start to twitch.

  “Are you recovered?” he asks. “From . . . last time?”

  I nod, my face heating up. Where is Bob? He’s supposed to be here, working the pastry shelves while I make drinks. I look around, but he’s nowhere to be seen. . . .

  “Nico Tucci,” Mr. Tucci says, extending one hand. “Call me Big Nick. Everyone else does.” His fingers are thick, hairy at the knuckles. His watch is gold with a cracked leather strap.

  “Um,” I say. His hand is huge compared to mine—huge and warm, with a ridge of calluses across the palm. “Josie.”

  I don’t say my last name. I can’t say my last name.

  My eyelid is twitching like crazy.

  “Josie,” he repeats. “Nice. . . . So, what do you recommend tonight, Josie?”

  “Uh. . . . I recommend the uh . . .” I can just see my freshman-year speech teacher, Mrs. Ostenek, shaking her permed head.

  I am about to tell him I like the almond cookies when Bob comes gliding up behind me.

  “The crumiri,” he says smoothly, “those little crescent-shaped ones, are excellent. Baked fresh this afternoon.”

  “Great.” Big Nick smacks his hands together. “I’ll take six.”

  Bob nods approvingly and begins plucking cookies off their tray, placing them in a white bakery box. “Josie,” he says low.

  “Yeah.”

  Bob frowns, jutting his head in the direction of the coffee bar.

  “Oh,” I say. “Right!” I turn to Big Nick and say, in precisely the manner I have been instructed, “May I interest you in a beverage? A cappuccino, perhaps? We also have a fine assortment of gourmet teas. . . .”

  Paul Tucci’s father raises both eyebrows, as though to say, You’re a very strange young lady.

  If I were watching me, I’d be saying the same thing.

  But now he is smiling and asking if we have hot cocoa.

  We do, of course. And I say, “Would you like whipped cream with that?”

  “I can’t believe he came in again,” I tell Liv on the phone. I’m calling from the PVTA—the public bus—which I had no choice but to ride home.

  “Maybe he’ll become a regular,” Liv says. “Your best customer.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “But you could get to know him. Not as a grandfather, just as a regular guy. It’s a golden opportunity, Jose.”

  I snort.

  Liv ignores me and keeps going. “OK, so what are you going to tell Kate?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Nothing,” she repeats.

  “She’s way into this Jonathan thing.”

  “And your point is . . .”

  “My point is she’s at a German film tonight. Since when does my mother watch movies with subtitles?”

  “People evolve.”

  “Exactly. She’s evolved. Beyond the Tucci thing. . . . Well, OK, maybe not evolved. But let’s just say she’s transitioned to Jonathan. . . . Anyway, she doesn’t need to hear about this.”

  “Your call,” Liv says.

  “That’s right,” I tell her. “My call.”

  When I get home, I phone Liv again. “She’s not back yet,” I say. “Should I be worried?”

  “No,” Liv says. “It’s only nine thirty. And it’s a hot date.”

  “It is not a hot date.”

  “Fine. A cold date. It’s still early.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you freaked, being there alone? Do you want Dodd to come and pick you up? I’d do it myself, but I still have three weeks until my license test. . . .”

  “That’s OK.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I have a ton of homework to do. Anyway, she won’t be too late.”

  “Unless he takes her parking after the movie.”

  I groan. “Please.”

  “What, you think no one over the age of eighteen hooks up in a car? What about that movie where the mom and dad are in the minivan and he’s all stressed about work, so she unbuckles her seatbelt, right there on the highway, and gives him a—”

  “Liv,” I say, cutting her off. “Do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Stop talking about my mother and hooking up in the same sentence. Or the same paragraph.”

  “You mean you don’t want to think of your mother as a physical being, with physical needs.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “You know that’s warped, right?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “If you ever have sex, Josie, you’ll see the world in a whole new way. Believe me.”

  “Maybe you should try thinking about something else for a change. Get your head out of the g
utter.”

  Liv laughs.

  After I hang up the phone I go into the kitchen for something to eat. I stare into the refrigerator for a long time, until I realize I’m not hungry after all.

  It’s 11:57 when my mom walks into my room. I know this from the digital clock on my windowsill.

  “Josie?” she says—whispering, in case I’m asleep.

  I’m tempted to say, “About time.” But I don’t. I just make my breath go deep and even, then wait to see what she does next.

  She leaves. That’s what she does.

  After she’s gone, I lie there in the dark, wide awake. I think about how she used to come into my room in the middle of the night, when she couldn’t sleep, and she’d wake me up. “Do you want to come in my bed?” she’d ask.

  And I’d say, “No, thanks, Mommy.”

  “OK,” she’d say.

  And then I’d say, “Do you want to come in my bed?”

  And she would, every time. She’d slide under the covers next to me, and we’d talk—or, more accurately, she’d talk, and I’d drift off to sleep again, smelling her balsam shampoo and feeling the cool smoothness of her palm against my forehead, brushing back my hair.

  I don’t know why I’m thinking about this now. She hasn’t done it for years. And believe me, I wouldn’t want her to start up again. It’s just weird that she didn’t even try to wake me. Not even to talk. Not even to tell me she was home.

  I wake up to nothing. No pounding of my mom’s running shoes on the stairs. No banging of pans in the kitchen. I peek into her bedroom and there she is, a lump under the covers. Which is what a person gets for staying out all night.

  I clear my throat, and she mumbles something, but she doesn’t wake up.

  So I go downstairs to the kitchen and pour myself a bowl of cornflakes because, even though I’m not hungry, it’s a game day, and on game days, Coach makes us promise to eat breakfast.

  Coach is big on “carbo-loading.” He’s also big on telling us that, on game days, we are “representing” EHS, which means we’re supposed to look “presentable.” No jeans, no sweats, no sneakers. Some girls on our team use game days as an opportunity to break school records. This morning it’s Schuyler (tightest dress); Jamie (shortest skirt); and Liv (most liberal interpretation of the word “presentable”). Here is what she’s wearing: one of those faux tuxedo T-shirts complete with corsage, black velour pants, patent leather Mary Janes with three-inch heels, and—I kid you not—a maroon velvet top hat.

  “Wow,” I said, when she first stepped onto the bus. “Willy Wonka goes to the prom?”

  Liv laughed. “Something like that.”

  Now, walking down the junior corridor, she’s getting all sorts of looks—the kind of looks your average person would die of embarrassment to be getting.

  Liv doesn’t notice—she’s mastered the art of walking and texting—and even if she did notice, she wouldn’t care.

  Now I’m at my locker, going through my assignment book, making sure I have everything. English essay? Check. . . . Trig homework? Check. . . . Finger, tapping my shoulder? . . .

  Finger, tapping my shoulder.

  I turn, and there he is. Here he is.

  “Hey,” Matt Rigby says, smiling. “Game today?”

  “Yeah,” I say. I’m wearing a denim skirt, shortish, and a red sweater, tightish. Not too revealing, but not too boring, either.

  “You look . . . really nice.” I notice his eyes linger just a moment on my chest before he lifts his head and blushes.

  “Well . . .” I say. “You do too.” He’s wearing the standard guy’s game-day uniform: oxford shirt, khakis, loafers. His sleeves are rolled up. The hairs on his arms are golden.

  “Are you home or away?” he asks.

  “Home. East Longmeadow. You?”

  “Away. Chicopee.”

  I nod. “Chicopee’s tough.”

  “Yeah. . . . So, I was wondering if I could have your number?” He reaches into his shirt pocket and takes out his cell. “That way we can . . . you know . . . talk after our games.”

  “OK,” I say. No doubt my face is the color of my sweater.

  “Cool.”

  “Let me just get your number too,” I say, reaching casually into my backpack to pull out my cell, like this kind of thing happens every day.

  My mom comes to my game like she always does, but she brings Jonathan with her. There they are, snuggled up together on the bleachers under some plaid blanket, with their matching Dunkin’ Donuts cups. I try to do what Missy Travers used to tell us: “Keep your head in the game.” But that’s easier said than done, even when I’m harsh about it. Keep your goddamn head in the game, Josie. We’re down 1-0 and I’ve missed three shots already.

  There are so many things I want to say to my mother right now.

  “I suck today,” I tell Liv, who’s playing center-half and keeps passing to me. “Schuy’s wide open on the right, though. Dump it to her.”

  “You sure?” she says.

  “We need to score.”

  Liv nods. “Let’s do this thing.”

  My mom hugs me afterward. Even though I played like crap, we won, 3-2. “Way to go,” Jonathan says, clomping me on the shoulder. His sandy hair is blowing sideways in the wind. His nose is red at the tip. “Great game.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say. What I really want to say is, Why are you here? Don’t you have violins to tune or something?

  I turn to my mom. “We should go. I have a trig test tomorrow.”

  My mom turns to Jonathan. As if she needs to check with him. I want to grab her hand and yank, the way I would when I was five and we were standing in a torturously long line at the post office.

  “I really have to study,” I add, for emphasis.

  You would think that Jonathan would take the hint, but he doesn’t. “I was horrible at trig,” he says. He crinkles his eyes at me. “I guess that’s why I became a music teacher instead of a math teacher.”

  I nod. As if I care.

  “Do you play any instruments, Josie?” Jonathan asks. His head is cocked to one side, like a parrot’s. A sandy-haired, red-nosed parrot.

  I start to say no, but my mom pipes in, “You play the recorder.” Then, to Jonathan, “Josie plays the recorder.”

  “I don’t play—”

  “The recorder!” Jonathan’s face lights up. “That’s great! If you can play the recorder, the clarinet is just—”

  “I do not play the recorder. I played it for a week, in third grade. And I hated it.” I shoot my mother a look, as in, What the hell?

  She smiles. “Miss Mundt said you showed a lot of promise.” To Jonathan, “Miss Mundt was Josie’s third-grade teacher.”

  Instead of sharing in the maternal pride-fest, I am annoyed—mad, in fact, that my mother is using me as a way to flirt with Jonathan. Listen to these cute little factoids about Josie from when she was a child. And even though my mother is the one I’m mad at, I turn to Jonathan and say, “I’m not a band geek, if that’s what you’re asking. . . . I’m more into sports, you know?”

  Yes. He’s turning red.

  My mother stares at me, surprised. Hurt.

  I stare right back at her, say nothing.

  Jonathan, finally taking the hint, says he has to go. He gives my mom a peck on the cheek and hightails it across the parking lot.

  “You were rude,” my mother says when we get to our car.

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “To Jonathan, back there. You were very rude.”

  I turn to her. “Are you serious?”

  “I would never act that way with one of your friends,” she says, and her voice is tight. “Never.”

  “Oh, he’s your friend now?”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “We were talking about your manners.”

  “No, we weren’t. You were talking about my manners. And if you want to talk about manners, let’s talk about the fact that
you invited someone to my game without my permission.”

  “What?”

  “I played like crap! Did you even notice? Or were you too busy playing footsie under the blanket?”

  She turns to look me straight in the eye. “Is that really what you think?”

  I shrug.

  Now she turns away, silent, staring out the window. After a minute, “You know something, Josie? Not everything is about you.”

  “Oh,” I say, nodding. “OK. So, what—everything’s about you now? Is that it?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She sounds angry. At me. I am the reason for her anger.

  “Well,” I say, “why don’t you try saying what you mean? ”

  She sighs. “What I mean . . . Josie, what I mean is I need to have a life too. Outside of being your mom. I don’t want to be just a mom for the rest of my life. OK?”

  I hold very still.

  “Josie.” She actually has the nerve to put her hand on my arm. “Jonathan is important to me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nod slowly. I am trying not to let the volcano that’s erupting between my ears spew out of my mouth.

  “Good.” She turns the key in the ignition, presses the gas.

  We drive about three yards.

  “By the way,” I say casually, like I’m about to mention some fun but inconsequential fact, like the soccer team getting new jerseys. “Paul Tucci’s dad came into the café last night.”

  My mother puts on the brakes and turns to me, stunned. “What?”

  I shrug. “Actually, he’s been in a few times. I guess they’re back in the area. . . . I would have mentioned it sooner, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. . . .”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  “Right,” she mumbles, nodding. “No, you’re right. It’s . . . not a big deal.”

  But I can see her face—the truth, smeared all over it.

  Was it a mistake, telling her? Am I supposed to feel bad now? This is what I’m asking myself on the ride home, which is dead silent, like a hearse full of guilt.

  But then I think, No.

  They did move back here. Big Nick did come into the store. These are the facts. And if my mother can’t handle it, that’s her problem. It’s not my job to tiptoe around her. She’s thirty-three years old. She’s an adult.