Love and Other Foreign Words (17 page)

My birthday dinner is a misery, which is partially my fault. I insist on having it where we always have it—our club, Columbus Country Club, which is where Kate and Geoff's reception will be if I cannot find some way to prevent this wedding.

Kate spends the entire evening verbally visualizing, down to the last shrimp, exactly how the club will look on the evening of November eighth, when three hundred guests, gorgeously attired in tuxedos and evening gowns will mingle, dance, and toast the happy couple.

Three hundred guests. That's my whole class and one-fourth of Sophie's.

By the end of the evening, Mother has thrice admonished Kate to stop the wedding blather and at last resorts to a stern, “Katriane, that is enough. It is your sister's birthday.”

Yes, I say thrice but only to inveterate speakers of Josie. If I said it at school, I definitely would have been stuffed in a locker before now. I would have deserved it and wouldn't have put up much resistance.

Mother gave us all French names in honor of her heritage. She only uses them when we've overstepped our boundaries. Naturally, I hear Josephine frequently, but it is rare to hear Katriane and rarer still to hear Maggie called Magdeleine.

I enjoy the sound of Katriane and further enjoy the chagrinned blush it produces in my sister's cheeks. I must see if I can make Mother use that name more frequently.

Kate has it coming. When I climbed into Ross and Maggie's car this evening, Ross said, “I'm glad you're riding with us. It'll give us a chance to hear more about this guy you like at Cap. I hear he bought you breakfast this morning. What's his name? Kate wouldn't tell us.”

“No, it's nothing,” I lie. “He's just a guy in one of my classes.”

Judging by the quick glance Ross and Maggie shared, my lie failed to convince them, but they had the sensitivity to change the subject.

Ross turned on his radio, queued up to play “The Best of Times,” and I hear,

Tonight's the night we'll make history,

Honey, you and I . . .

It was in Ross' car and to these very opening lines that I fell in love with Dennis DeYoung. I was eleven. He and Maggie were newly married, and, like tonight, I was riding with them to the club for dinner. Seconds after he turned the car on, Dennis DeYoung's glorious voice flowed through the speakers, and I fell in love. No doubt. No confusion. I just knew.

After that particular dinner, I found that Ross had slipped the CD
Paradise Theater
into my purse, and before I fell asleep that night, I wrote him a long, gushing thank-you note in which I used the words
mellifluous
and
ineffable
.

Mellifluous—Dennis DeYoung's voice.

Ineffable—my gratitude for
Paradise Theater
.

I was already nursing an eleven-year-old's crush on Ross. The gift of the CD only secured his place in my heart.

But even this song earlier tonight could not sufficiently extinguish my smoldering anger at Kate, who I then knew was telling my entire family every single thing I've been sharing with her in confidence. Everything except Ethan's name, as if that somehow counts as keeping my secret.

• • •

The night improves with dessert, but what night doesn't? We congregate at home in the living room, where everyone sings Happy Birthday as Mother carries in a tray of iced brownies Mrs. Easterday and I made earlier. Mrs. Easterday gave me a card too, and wrote in her perfect, teacher handwriting,
You're becoming a lovely young woman, Josie, one whom I am pleased to know
. She wished me a happy birthday and sealed the benediction with a kiss on my cheek.

Each of the brownies has a candle in it. I prefer brownies to cake, which makes Geoff say at the end of the song, “Brownies are cake-like. In fact, lots of cakes are as dense as brownies, so can you
really
say you prefer one to the other?”

“Yes,” I say. “The same way I can
really
say I prefer Sophie Wagemaker to Emmy Newall. They're both girls, but they're different.”

“Excellent,” my dad says with a chuckle.

• • •

Later tonight, after everyone has gone home, and Kate has gone upstairs to work, I help my parents with the dishes and use a knife to scrape excess chocolate icing from the pan of brownies, which I wipe off with my finger and eat.

“On a scale of one to ten, Josie,” my father begins, “one being poor and ten being excellent, how would you rate your sixteenth birthday?”

“Nine. A goat would have made it a perfect ten.”

“It's important to always want something,” Mother says.

“And on a scale of one to ten,” he says, “one being poor and ten being excellent, how would you rate your mother's skill at parenting you?”

“Dad,” I say, and smile at them as he wraps his arms around Mother's waist while she rinses the last dish at the sink.

“Come now, Josephine. Your mother requires feedback.”

“I'm giving myself a ten for putting up with you both,” she says, and I quickly kiss both their cheeks, thank for them for a nice birthday, and say good night.

• • •

I have been in bed for about twenty minutes, trying to read but distracted by my mental replay of the day's events. Verbatim. My dad knocks on the door, waits for me to say
come in,
and sits on the edge of my bed, where he presents me with a small, wrapped package.

“It's something special,” he says as I slip the heavy cream paper off to find a red leather journal with lined pages—extremely small lines, just as I like them.

“Dad.”

“Now, Josie, I want you to listen to me. There is some work involved in this gift. I want you to use this journal daily and with intention.” He touches the book as he speaks. “It is for you and you alone to record your thoughts and your experiences and your views on everything having to do with all the things going on in your life right now, the real things about you and your friends and school and Kate and your heart.”

“I know she told you about”—I shrug—“certain things I've told her lately. And that should show you how she's changed as a sister.”

“It doesn't matter what she told me. I want you to write for you and about you, from the depth of you. We can talk about it if you want. Or not, if you don't. But I want you to write in it daily so that you have at least one safe place to record your most searching thoughts. This is important.”

“Thank you,” I say, and corroborate my gratitude with a kiss.

“You're a good girl, Josie. Most of the time.”

After he shuts the door, I flip through the notebook a couple of times, fanning the pages to un-stick their gilt edges—I love that crisp, cracking sound—and I take a pen from the top drawer of my nightstand. And I pause, fully prepared to write. Legs crossed. Notebook open. Pen perfectly poised over the first gorgeous new page. And for what feels like ages, I stare at the paper until my eyes lose focus and the thing blurs into white fluff.

I blink a few times and finally write this:

I find this very uncomfortable and wish my dad had just given me a sweater.

Saturday morning I receive my driver's license bearing a frighteningly accurate picture of me, and later drive home from Sutton Court. My dad and I ride home in occupied silence, a complicated session on his mind, my driver's license photo on mine.

• • •

Sunday night finds me at the kitchen table before dinner. I'm working on my Language Variation Project and need the uncluttered space of our long breakfast table for shuffling through papers and books. This project turns out, as I had predicted, to be extraordinarily easy, but begins, tonight, to bother me in a strange manner. It feels a little prickly, like a stiff thread on a seam I cannot quite locate.

At dinner, Geoff makes some remark about my being quiet, intended, I think, to draw me into a conversation or at least into the role of audience for one of his monologues. I don't even know if he's speaking when I say to my mother, “I'm done,” and promptly carry my plate to the sink.

We understand silence in this house. My parents support it and never intrude, so Kate has no basis for complaint when later, after Geoff leaves, she barges into my room and calls me rude.

I walk past her to my bathroom, where I shut and lock both doors and sit on the closed lid of the toilet. I'll stay in here all night if I have to.

Soon I forget about her and soak in a steaming hot bath while trying to locate, without success, that stiff, prickly thread that bothers me so.

• • •

I continue my thread-searching efforts before, during, and after Sociolinguistics, when Ethan calls to me, stopping me at the door.

“You seem lost in thought today,” he says. “Everything okay?”

sigh
—
good sigh
—
imperceptible good sigh

“It is, thanks.”

“Headed to Fair Grounds?”

“Of course.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“I never mind,” I say, and walk with him outside into the first sunny, cool day of the season.

“ . . . like this in Chicago . . . . lake effect . . . . but the winters . . . around here? Josie?”

We've come to the corner.

“Sorry,” I say. “What was that?”

“I was asking what winters are like around here.”

“Gray and slushy,” I say.

We start to cross.

“You sure everything's okay?” he asks. “You seem distracted.”

“Just thinking.”

“About what?” Then he grins almost playfully as he asks me the single worst possible thing he could ask me, short of my age, which he already knows. “Penny for your thoughts.”

sigh
—
disappointed sigh
—
imperceptible disappointed sigh

“Just, uh—actually I'm thinking about the Language Variation Project.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“No, thanks. I'm just kind of writing it mentally.”

“I do a lot of that when I run,” he says. “But that's why I like to have a jogging partner. Good to bounce ideas off of.”

“Huh,” I say, and later write in my new journal:

Monday, October 6

I don't really need a jogging partner. Anyway, I've always thought couples who jog together are one boring step away from becoming couples who dress alike.

By Friday I realize I have not embraced the spirit of this journal as my father intended. He asked me to write about real things, but here's what I've written so far:

Tuesday, October 7

Stu farted on the walk to Cap this morning, but I did not. He was not embarrassed, but I was for him. We both have boundary issues.

Wednesday, October 8

Walked with Stu and Ethan to Fair Grounds. They talked about soccer. No one farted.

Thursday, October 9

Had my eye exam today. Contacts will be in next week. Two sets—thank you, Kate—and I cannot wait for just the right occasion to show her how much I appreciate such a thoughtful gift.

Friday, October 10

[blank]

Then I say to my journal, out loud, “I'm out of things to write today.” It holds me accountable, so I thought I should explain.

But, no, I'm not out of things to write, and it and I know this. And I swear this thing plagues me. I know its purpose in my life and that I have failed it—and my dad.

Great. I get an F in Journaling 101.

• • •

Later this evening, I position myself with some solemnity at my desk, open my journal, and write
Dear Ethan
. Here I pause, allowing my thoughts to stream through every encounter, every smile, every walk, and every word we've shared since the moment our eyes met across a crowded room.

Dear Ethan,

Do you believe in love at first sight? I didn't until I met you, but since then I've read some articles about the science behind it, and it appears to be a valid phenomenon—or valid experience if not phenomenon. I don't know the statistics of its frequency, but I can tell you that, to my knowledge, I am the only person I know it has ever happened to. I think—I believe—I'm nearly certain enough to say I know that it happened to me when I first saw you. Something happened. Something strange and exciting and wonderful happened, and, as I get to know you, this something grows stranger and more exciting and more wonderful, because we are so alike, so connected in our similarities. You yourself even spoke of the connection we have the first time we walked to Fair Grounds—how we understand each other, how we speak the same language—well, I said that, or meant to. I thought it, anyway. You said you understand where I'm coming from and how rare that is. You're right—opposites don't attract.

“Whatcha writing?”

I jump half a foot and spin around in my chair to see Kate.

“Don't you ever knock?”

“What is it? A looooove note?”

“Shut up, by which I mean shut up.”

“Oh, it is. Let me see.”

“Get away,” I say, slapping her hand as she reaches for my journal, which I quickly stash in my desk.

“Sorry,” she says. “I'm sorry, Josie. I was only teasing.”

“Well, it's not funny. And it's not a love note. I was just—writing about the day.”

“Okay. Okay,” she says, dropping with a bounce onto a corner of my bed.

“Do you want something?”

“Wow, are you in a bad mood.”

“Well, what do you want, Kate? I'm kind of busy.”

“How come you're not at the game tonight?” she asks about a football game at the high school.

“Cramps,” I lie.

“Ah. That explains your mood.”

“
You
explain my mood.”

“Geez. All right. I'm going. I just found out from Mom that you were home, and I thought you might like to watch a movie with Geoff and me.”

“Something about ticks, maybe?
The Tick of Oz
?
Tick-tanic
.”

Kate starts to leave.

“
Ticks and Sensibility.
”

She's out of my room, nearing the stairs.

“I know. I know,” I call. “
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Tick
.”

I close the door, return to my desk, and finish my note.

Someday, I will be brave enough to say these things to you in person. For now, I remain in happy, quiet contemplation over you and can say tonight that I just might love you. Or could someday.

Love—eventually,
Josie

Later I fall asleep content with my new journal used as my father intended it. I wish I had a red pen handy. I'd give tonight's entry an A.