Love and Other Foreign Words (2 page)

I can determine the average size of a rat. That's easy. What I cannot determine is the consistency with which they fall into vats at meat-processing plants or the number of times I have eaten processed meats from the plants where rats have accidentally become part of the product, coupled with the frequency with which my mother has bought certain brands from certain stores. And this is all based on the assumption that rats do fall into these vats and find their way into hot dogs and hamburgers I've eaten. So it appears Stu was right. There are too many variables, and I'll just have to live without knowing. Or guess.

But I hate guessing, also estimations, and much prefer the precision of mathematical formulae and exact translations. Math is a language, and I like languages. Look at all the foreign words I've used just today:

hieroglyphics: Greek

serape: Spanish

ensemble: French

concerto: Italian

minuet: French

hamburger: German

Pgeofff: Josie

The single greatest word, of all languages in the world, is
teepee
. Comes from the Sioux. I could be born into a family of French-speaking goat herders in the Swiss Alps and still know immediately what a teepee is the moment I hear the word. No confusion. Perfect clarity. It is the epitome of lingual greatness.

Teepee.

If only every language were as clear as Sioux.

• • •

I enter the kitchen through the back door and am alone there long enough to deduce tonight's dinner. Mother has arranged an easy culinary formula for me with limited variables. Based on the juxtaposition of ground beef, an onion, and fresh tomatoes in the refrigerator, and red beans and spices on the counter, I conclude we're having chili. (Possibly with trace amounts of rat. I'll never know.) Neither of my parents gets home until six most nights. Chili needs to simmer, so I promptly get to work as sous chef, trained and frequently employed by my sisters and mother.

I have barely placed the appropriate pot on the stove when Kate breezes through the back door, holding her cell phone like a walkie-talkie.

“No,” she says into it, setting her purse and briefcase down, “I've got to be in Cincinnati on Tuesday and Dayton on Wednesday, and Thursday I'm in a training meeting most of the day, so I could only fit you in on Monday or Friday.” She shoots me a smile, blows me a kiss, points at the phone, tosses both hands up, rolls her eyes at herself, makes me smile, and points, questioningly, at the pot.

“Chili,” I say.

“No,” she says into her phone. “I've been to his office three times, and he kept me waiting over an hour each time, and I won't apologize for finding my time as important as his,” she says as she shoulder-presses the phone to her ear and pulls the meat and the onion—I grab the tomatoes—out of the fridge. “And he still won't switch from Squat-in-Lederhosen,” or something like that. She names some drug I've never heard of and pours some olive oil into the pot, and then I follow her pantomimes to get dinner started. She hangs up after the onion is browned and all the tomatoes have been thoroughly diced.

“Well,” she says, beaming another smile at me. “Hello.”

Then I get a real kiss from her and ask her how many pounds of processed meat she thinks she's eaten in her life.

Kate's a drug rep—a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company—so she's forever visiting doctors in their offices and in hospitals to hawk the latest treatment for baldness or vaginal dryness.

She keeps me supplied with pads of paper and pens, all bearing the names and fancy logos of prescription drugs. My favorite was a four- by six-inch pad with large blue letters at the top—
CYLAXIPRO: One daily dose to reduce herpes outbreaks
. I asked Mother to write my school absence excuses on that, but she refused. I wrote last year's birthday thank-you note to Uncle Vic and Aunt Toot on it. They sent me ten dollars in a card with a monkey on it, and I felt genuinely grateful for both and said so. But then I had to use Mother-approved stationery to write them a note of apology for the references I made in my original note to genital herpes and the part Kate plays in preventing its spread.

Since then, most of my pens and pads of paper have borne the names of allergy and cholesterol-lowering meds.

• • •

Today, Mother arrives home before Dad. She teaches four days a week at The Ohio State University's College of Nursing, which is about thirty minutes from our house in the old suburb of Bexley. Yet it seems, somehow, closer than Kate's condo, a mere fifteen minutes away in downtown Columbus, which has felt like a world away ever since she moved out. Especially since she comes for dinner less and less frequently, depending on work and boyfriends who only eat corn or have maladies she refuses to disclose.

By seven thirty—a dinnertime my dad calls cosmopolitan but never with a straight face—we four Sheridans are seated at the kitchen table, where Kate appears too entirely happy over chili. It's good, but not blissful.

“I'm just thinking about Geoff,” she says when Mother tells her she looks happy.

“I was thinking about him earlier,” I say, “and I bet we were not thinking the same things.”

“Josie,” she says, adding a cheery little
tsk
, “you are going to love him.”

“When do we get to meet him?”

“Well,” she says, shooting eager looks in Mother and Dad's direction, “I was hoping to bring him over Friday. For dinner? Maybe a big family dinner?”

Special Family Dinner, in the Sheridan language, is Mother and Dad, Maggie and her husband, Ross, and Kate and me. We fill a room with height and words, making our number seem more than six.

For just a second, Mother and Dad share a look, a curious little nod too, which Kate misses entirely.

“That will be nice,” Mother says. “Any special requests for dinner?”

“Spaghetti,” Kate and I say in happy unison, since spaghetti has long been our family's preference for any and all special occasions that don't require a giant animal carcass on display. It doesn't signify exceptional dining to most people, but then most people haven't tried my mother's homemade sauce. Auntie Pat wants her to market it, and Mother accepts the compliment each time with only the slightest trace of satisfaction visible on her face. For such an exhibition, its roots must run deep.

By the end of dinner, where we were endlessly entertained by lists of Pgeofff's vague but extraordinary qualities—gorgeous, brilliant, interesting, brilliant, gorgeous—plans for this coming Friday's Special Family Dinner are set.

“Are you staying over tonight?” Dad asks Kate, checking his watch against the clock in the kitchen, which means—in our private Sheridan language—stay or leave, but now is the appropriate time to decide.

“She's staying,” I answer for her, and I grab her hand and say, “Come on,” and we run up to my room.

I hop on my bed, fold my legs underneath me, straighten my glasses, and say, “Now tell me everything you haven't told Mother and Dad about Pgeofff.”

“I've already told you everything.” Kate is rummaging through my pajama drawer. She pulls out two nightshirts—both of which she gave me—and I point to the blue one, leaving the burgundy one for her.

“Does he eat green vegetables?”

“Geoff has very sophisticated taste in food,” she says as she starts to peel off the layers of her suit. “And, yes, I've cooked for him, and, yes, he likes it. We cook together frequently.” She thinks a moment. “Yes, we do seem to cook together a lot.”

“That's not a euphemism for sex, is it?”

“Josie! No.”

“Because it could be, but I'd prefer it if it weren't.”

“Stop. Geoff and I cook together. With pots and pans. And he likes and appreciates the meals we make.”

“Well, I'm inclined to like him,” I say, emphasis on
inclined
.

“I'm not worried at all,” she says. “Did I tell you he's brilliant?”

“Couple times.”

She pops into the bathroom and emerges minutes later in my nightshirt, looking like she just got home from cheering at a professional football game. Even at this hour, her hair is nearly perfect. I fool absentmindedly with my ponytail for a few seconds before she grabs the brush off my dresser and orders me to turn around. I promptly obey.

She slips the band off my hair and starts brushing as I take off my glasses and place them safely on the nightstand. Kate's brushing my hair is my first memory. I was three and a half. She was almost fourteen, and we talked about birds. I wanted to know why they didn't freeze to death in the winter and drop with loud clunks into the yard. Kate said angels flew down from heaven and used their wings to keep birds warm, but she had no answer when I asked why birds' wings don't keep their own bodies warm.

“I imagine you want to grill me now about Geoff,” she says, and I bristle at my predictability.

“No,” I say. “But I am going to grill
him
.”

“Josie,” she laughs.

“You should warn him before Friday that I have a list of thirty-seven questions I need to ask him.”

“Only thirty-seven? Why not an even forty?”

“Because the number of questions has nothing to do with the questions themselves. I have as many as I need.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“Give me an example.”

I twist around to face her. “For example, if he gives up his seat every day on the bus to a pregnant woman but then discovers she's not pregnant but faking it to trick her boyfriend into marrying her, would he still give up his seat to her? Also, would he tell the boyfriend?”

“Is that one question or two?” she asks.

“One,” I say, “with two parts.”

“Hmm,” she says. “It's a good question.” She twists my head around to continue brushing. “You should ask him that. I can't wait to hear his answer. It's going to be brilliant,” she says as I simultaneously mouth the word.

I'm glad I'm facing away, since I feel my lip starting to curl.

“What are his faults?” I ask.

“He doesn't have any.”

“That's impossible, and you know it.”

“Well, then, I haven't noticed any because everything else about him is so wonderful.”

“So you could say you're blind to his faults?” I ask.

“Happily. That's what happens when you're in love. You overlook the unimportant things. Satisfied?” she asks as she sets the hairbrush down and climbs into bed.

“No, because I need to know how you're defining
unimportant
.”

“What do you mean how I'm defining it?”

I turn out the lights.

“Unimportant like staying up too late reading,” I say, slipping into my side of the bed, “or unimportant like large hairy facial moles and compulsive nose-picking?”

“Compulsive— Josie.” She giggles some. “No.”

“Hunchback? Troll hair?”

“Neither.”

“Tertiary syphilis?”

“Good night, Josie,” Kate says, kissing me quickly before turning over.

“Unnatural interest in ventriloquism?”

“No.”

“Uncontrollable watery stool? Diapers? Does he wear adult diapers? Or does he wear adult diapers but doesn't really need them? See, that would be something important you shouldn't overlook, don't you think?”

Kate pulls her pillow over her head, and I grin and snuggle a little closer. How can Stu accuse me of not liking any of Kate's boyfriends when each one provides me with moments like these? I hope she's never single again.

Jen Auerbach bounces herself against my locker after school today and launches into a conversation well past its starting point. Her wide, dark brown eyes seem to smile even when she does not, making her look as if she's about to hear not good but great news. I'm always a little sorry when I don't have it to give to her.

“That far from my face,” Jen says. “I'm telling you he was that far from my face.” She holds her thumb and index finger two inches apart. “Oh, he smelled soooooo good. Why is it that great-looking guys just smell good, no matter how they smell, you know? I mean, it's like, if he smelled like day-old pizza grease, I would be thinking oh, I want pizza with him. Now. Right now.”

I mentally shift into Jen's natural language and realize she's talking about Josh Brandstetter, best-looking guy in our class and Jen's current chemistry lab partner, chosen by random name-draw back in January. She said she tried to look like she didn't care when he pulled her name out of a large beaker, but it's next to impossible for Jen Auerbach to look indifferent about anything.

I've been friends with Jen since seventh grade. We're the tall girls in school. Jen, Emmy Newall, and a couple others who play volleyball. I, thanks to my maternal DNA, am the tallest on the team but not the best. Jen and Emmy are. They already have my vote as next year's cocaptains.

“What were you doing?” I ask. “In lab?”

“I don't know. Some stupid whatever, but it was great because we had to be
this
close”—she shows me her thumb and index finger again—“to read the results.”

“You don't even know what they were, do you?”

“I have no idea. I just copied what he wrote down. I was too busy smelling how good he smelled.”

“Who smells good?” Emmy Newall asks, inserting herself into our space and conversation.

“Josh Brandstetter,” Jen says.

“What does he smell like?”

“Day-old pizza grease,” I say, making Jen smile as Emmy, wrinkling her nose at the thought, asks, “You think that smells good?”

“No. It was a joke,” I say.

“I don't get it,” she says, and Jen explains in a rapid, abbreviated manner, which Emmy unenthusiastically calls cool at the end.

I grab my stuff for track practice. Emmy runs track too, so she's waiting to walk down to the locker room with me.

“Oh, hey, Jen,” I say, shutting my locker. “I can't meet you at Easton on Friday.”

Easton Town Center is the fancy indoor/outdoor mall-hangout for half the city under thirty. Usually, I find it a kaleidoscopic maze of fluorescent light and pounding music and endless strangers, interspersed with moments of happy refuge when my friends and I reenergize with sodas and soft pretzels in the food court. And I like the recap in Jen's car on the way home when everyone assesses the outing so I know exactly how much fun I had.

“You're going to Easton Friday, and you didn't ask me?” Emmy, trying to liberate a strand of hair from her lip gloss, asks Jen. “Thanks a lot.”

“Check your phone,” Jen says. “I asked you like a week ago. We're all going.”

All
to Jen is all, most of, part of, or one friend from the volleyball team.

“Why aren't
you
?” Emmy asks me.

“My sister's bringing her boyfriend over for dinner, and I haven't met him yet, so I have to be there.”

“So can't you just meet him and then come?” Emmy asks. “Just tell your parents you have plans. I'll even pick you up if you want,” she offers, sounding irritated.

“No. I want to be there. She says she's in love with him, so I need to spend some time there to check him out,” I say, and Jen further defends me to Emmy with: “You know how Josie is about her sisters.”

“I know how she is about her whole family. It's completely bizarre,” Emmy says in a tone I dislike. But she has only a small repertoire of tones and none of them is particularly pleasant, so it's easy to ignore—or at least re-interpret—some of the things she says.

There's a lot more to meaning than just words. And sometimes, as in Emmy's case, there's a lot less.