Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (17 page)

In the lobby a while later, Carmen was hugging her mom good-bye when she saw Win. He smiled eagerly, doubling his pace to get to her, like he was afraid she might slip away.

“Carmen!”

“Hey, Win,” she said. She couldn’t help smiling at him. He was too sweet not to. Win and Christina were looking at each other. Win was probably wondering which distant relative of which distant acquaintance Carmen would be accompanying to the hospital now.

“This is my mom, Christina,” Carmen said. “Mom, this is Win.”

“Nice to meet you, Win,” Christina said.

Carmen saw him through her mother’s eyes and was again struck by his exceeding gorgeousness. Carmen found most guys who looked that good intimidating, but Win was different. He was not arrogant or scary. He had a self-deprecating smile and a shuffling posture totally at odds with the usual “I’m gorgeous” swagger.

“Nice to meet you, too,” he said earnestly. “I thought you must be related. You’re beautiful like Carmen.”

If Carmen had just heard about this statement rather than actually listening to it in person, she would have groaned and rolled her eyes and told Mr. Slick to get out of town. But hearing him say it and seeing the look on his face as he did, she believed it was the most innocent and sincere compliment she’d ever gotten. And so did her mother, apparently.

Christina flushed with pleasure. “Thank you. I like to think I look like her.”

Carmen felt unbalanced, buffeted as she was by all the goodness. She had no idea what to say.

“Carmen saved me today,” Christina volunteered to Win, emotion all through her voice. “My husband couldn’t make it to childbirth class, and Carmen came to my rescue. She’s my partner and coach. Can you imagine?” Christina was laughing, but her eyes were full of tears. Carmen had heard about pregnant women being extra emotional, but jeez, this was a bit much.

Win stared at Christina with rapt attention. And then he turned to look at Carmen. She’d wished many times for a boy like Win to look at her this way. But now it was wrong. The stuff her mom was saying made it all worse.

She opened her mouth to say something. And then she realized. “Oh, my God! I have to get Valia! I’m gonna be late for her.” Oh, God. She could practically hear the bone-splintering howl from the eighth floor.

“I’ll come,” Christina said, running after her to the bank of elevators.

“Bye, Win,” Carmen shouted over her shoulder.

He looked a little sad as she waved to him through the narrowing gap of the elevator door. As soon as it closed, Christina burst. “
Nena
, who is he?” She was obviously excited. “He is…he is just
adorable
! And the way he looked at you.”

Carmen’s face was hot. “He does seem…nice.” She didn’t want her mother to see her flustered smile. She wished she could get her mouth into a normal shape.

“Nice! He’s more than nice! How do you know him?”

Carmen shrugged. “I don’t really know him. Or I guess I do kind of know him.” She chewed the inside of her lip. “But he doesn’t know me.”

To the man who only has a hammer in the toolkit, every problem looks like a nail.
—Abraham Maslow

I
t took four evenings for Tibby to pounce on the garbage bags and take them out to the alley before Margaret could get there first. Margaret was so experienced at her job, having worked at this very Pavillion Theater for well over twenty years, and so dedicated to it, that it was nearly impossible for Tibby to manage to do her coworker even this one small favor.

“Tibby, thanks!” Margaret said brightly when she saw the empty cans. “You’re jis sweet.”

“I’m returning a favor,” Tibby said.

Tibby watched as Margaret put her sweater in her employee locker (no pictures pinned up inside, Tibby noticed) and collected her purse, in exactly the same manner she did every evening. Tibby knew Margaret would take the bus on Wisconsin Avenue to her home, which was somewhere north of here. She couldn’t exactly guess what Margaret did with her free time, but she felt almost sure Margaret did it alone.

Suddenly Tibby felt inspired. “Hey, Margaret?”

Margaret turned, her purse dangling neatly from the crook of her elbow.

“Do you want to get some dinner with me?”

Margaret looked utterly bewildered.

“We could just get something quick, if you want. We could go right around the corner to that Italian place.”

Why not spend some time with a gravely lonely person? Tibby thought, silently applauding herself. Wasn’t that a worthy thing to do? Tibby felt sure it was something a good person would do.

Margaret looked around, as though to see if perhaps Tibby was talking to someone else. The muscles around her mouth twitched a little. She cleared her throat. “Excuse me?”

“Do you want to have dinner?”

Margaret looked a bit frightened. “You and me?”

“Yes.” Tibby was beginning to wonder if she had overstepped.

“Will, uh, okay. I giss I could.”

“Great.”

Tibby led the way around the corner. She had never seen Margaret outside the movie theater. It was kind of strange. She wondered how many times Margaret had
been
out of the movie theater—other than when she was home. In her pale pink cardigan, with her white vinyl purse with gold buckles and her bewildered expression, Margaret looked like an innocent victim of some time-travel mishap.

“Is this place okay?” Tibby asked, holding open the door to the restaurant.

“Yes,” Margaret agreed in a slightly quavering voice.

Tibby had been to this restaurant before and it had seemed perfectly normal. But now, with Margaret at her side, the place struck her as raucous, dark, nightmarishly noisy, and totally wrong.

The hostess showed them to a table. Margaret perched on the very front of her chair, her backbone stiff, as though ready to flee at a second’s notice.

“They have good pizza,” Tibby said feebly.

Did Margaret eat pizza? Did she eat anything? Margaret was terribly thin, nearly as small as a child. There were certain clues to her age: the loose skin of her neck, the texture of her blond ponytail. Tibby knew she had to be in her mid-forties. But in almost all other respects, Margaret looked just shy of puberty.

What had happened to her to make her like this? Tibby wondered. Had there been a tragedy? A loss? Was there some terrible thing that had caused her to step off the conveyor belt of life around the age of fourteen?

Or, more insidiously, had she just taken the cautious route time and time again? Had she cut off more and more potential branches of life until it had narrowed to just one?

Was Margaret scared of love? Could that be it? Had she left the building just around the time everybody else started hooking up?

Tibby looked at Margaret beseechingly. She wanted to say or do something to make Margaret feel comfortable, but she could not figure out for the life of her what that might be.

“Do you like pasta?” Tibby asked. “I’ve heard it’s pretty good here.”

Margaret looked at her menu as though it were a devilishly tricky test. “I’m not sure,” she said faintly.

“You could just get a salad,” Tibby suggested. “Or if you don’t like this kind of food, I totally understand.”

Margaret nodded. “Maybe a salad…”

Tibby felt a stab of sadness, because she knew Margaret wanted to please her, too. Margaret was desperately uncomfortable, but she didn’t want to let Tibby down.

Who was doing whom the favor in this exercise?

Slowly the hot air of righteousness leaked out of Tibby, and she realized what an idiot she was. She had dragged poor Margaret far out of her comfort zone, congratulating herself on doing Margaret this great charity. But Tibby wasn’t giving solace to a lonely woman; she was basically torturing her. What had she been thinking?

“Maybe I don’t feel like Italian food,” Tibby said brightly, wanting only to offer Margaret some salvation. “Why don’t we walk back by the theater and grab some ice cream and then I’ll walk you to the bus stop?”

Margaret look colossally relieved, and that gave Tibby a small piece of happiness. “Sure thing.”

As they walked, Tibby remembered how her uncle Fred had this line he brought out on the occasion of nearly all family birthdays. Her parents would moan about their children growing older, and he’d say, “Growing up is for crap, but it’s better than the alternative.”

Well, for the first time Tibby realized there was an alternative. It was walking right next to Tibby, licking her orange Creamsicle and breaking Tibby’s heart.

“He caught me again,” Carmen told Lena, sipping her iced cappuccino and enjoying the air conditioning at the Starbucks on Connecticut Avenue.

“What do you mean?” Lena asked. She wasn’t eating her cookie, and Carmen really wanted it.

“Win caught me in another random act of kindness at the hospital.”

Lena laughed. “Busted.”

“I feel like I was shoplifting or something. I didn’t know what to say to explain myself.”

“Did you tell him it was an accident? You didn’t mean it? You’ll never do it again as long as you live, so help you God?”

Carmen laughed too. “Good Carmen strikes again. What are we going to do with that girl?”

“Tie her up in the bathroom.”

“Good idea.”

Lena was squinting at her in thought. “Maybe you actually
are
Good Carmen. Have you ever thought of that?”

Carmen considered the way she’d knowingly polished off her mother’s last coveted pint of Ben & Jerry’s the night before. “Nah.”

Lena still wasn’t eating her cookie, so Carmen broke off a piece of it and ate it. “So guess who’s sleeping on my couch tomorrow night?” Carmen asked.

“Who?”

“Paul Rodman. He’s driving up from South Carolina and I convinced him to crash here. I haven’t seen him in months.”

Lena shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“He asked about you.”

Lena nodded timidly.

“He always does. It’s the part of the conversation he actually initiates.”

Lena looked down at her large feet in their large cork-bottomed flip-flops. “How’s his dad?” she asked.

Carmen stopped chewing. She had been corresponding with Paul by e-mail. She got more words out of him that way. “He’s not good. Paul drives hours to see him every week. It’s so sad.”

Lena was nodding as Carmen’s cell phone rang. Carmen scratched around in the bottom reaches of her bag until she found it.

“Hey?”

“Carmen, hi. It’s David.”

“What’s up?” Most of the warmth in her voice evaporated.

“I just wanted to thank you. The way you took care of your mother yesterday. You don’t know how much it meant to her. And to me, too. I wanted to be there so bad myself and I really just can’t tell you how—”

“It’s fine,” Carmen interrupted. “No problem.”

“Really, Carmen. I really—”

“Okay.” She didn’t want him to keep going on about this. “Are you still in St. Louis?”

“No, I’m home,” he said heavily.

Why was she annoyed at him? It wasn’t his fault he worked like a dog. He had a family to provide for now. He took his responsibilities seriously. Blah blah blah.

“So I’ll see you later,” she said.

“Oh, Carmen—one other thing?”

“Yeah?”

“I left my phone recharger in the hotel in St. Louis. Could I borrow yours?” It was well known that they had the exact same cell phone. Sometimes it seemed like the only conversation piece between them. He had the ring that sounded like a polka. He thought it was hugely entertaining.

“Sure. It’s in the outlet by my night table,” she said.

“The hotel said they’d send mine back. I told them I’m going to need it.”

Why were there conversations always so stilted? “Yep. You are,” Carmen said. “Well, bye.”

“Bye.”

She hung up. When she put her phone back in her bag, she realized the recharger was coiled in the bottom of it. Oh. Oops.

Lena was squinting, trying to figure out whom Carmen was talking to. “David?” she finally guessed.

“Yeah.”

“I knew it wasn’t anybody you liked very much.”

“I like him all right,” Carmen said, the slightest petulance creeping into her voice. She sighed. “I should be nicer, shouldn’t I?”

“I’m not answering that.”

Carmen got a mischievous smile on her face. “I know what to do. I’ll invite Win to have dinner with my mom and me and David.” She laughed. “That’ll set him straight.”

Tibby:

Beach equipment & tunes.

No techno crap, as per discussion.

Bee and Me:

Food. A lot. Mostly high-calorie snacks with
extra trans fats. (I think I like those. What
are they, anyway?)

Lena:

Other household goods.

(Kleenex in
addition
to toilet paper, missy.)

Please make your donations ($60, and I mean cash
money) to the Rehoboth Beach First Annual Precollege

Dream Weekend Fund, aka Carmen’s wallet.

And I mean soon, dang it.

Since Lena had heard about Paul’s being in town overnight, she’d been thinking of him. Finally she got up the nerve to call him at Carmen’s, and she asked him to come over. He wasn’t in her family, obviously, but she felt a pressing urge to draw his picture.

She didn’t want to avoid him anymore.

That afternoon, charcoal in hand, she met him at the door. She hugged him stiffly. She felt her heart jump a little at the way he looked. Older, sadder, even more handsome.

Somewhat mutely, he followed her to the kitchen.

You two are way too much alike
, Carmen said about Lena and Paul and their combined inability to carry on a conversation. Carmen had had high hopes for them once.

“Do you want anything to drink?” she asked him.

He looked nervous. “No, thank you.”

She gestured for him to sit down across from her at the kitchen table. She ran a hand through her hair. She’d brushed it for this occasion. “I have kind of a weird favor to ask of you,” she said.