Love and Other Foreign Words (23 page)

First thing this morning, my phone beeps.

Text from Stu, 7:01 a.m.

U riding 2 class with me this morning?

Text to Stu, 7:01 a.m.

Yes. Of course. Probably. Y? U want me 2 or not?

Text from Stu, 7:02 a.m.

Just making sure U R OK. Should I even bother asking you to stop over-thinking?

Text to Stu, 7:03 a.m.

Do you really need to ask that?

My phone rings.

“Yes?” I answer.

“Come out here,” Stu says, and when I look out my bedroom window, I see him waving to me as he jogs across the street, his breath visible on this chilly, pale morning.

When I meet him at my front steps, he says cheerfully, “We do have to talk about last night, you know.”

“Stu, I don't know what to say,” I admit. I also don't know what to say about the smell of him, which is spicy like dried fruit and cloves, which is from the cologne he wears every single day. I just don't remember it feeling this warm to me. And since when do fragrances have temperatures? I shake my head just a little. “But I know I need a lot more time to think about it than one night, especially last night, which turned out to be a good night but long, between Kate and the paper, which I finished by the way, and I probably have huge under-eye circles again, which Sophie will point out . . . Where was I?”

“Needing a lot of time,” Stu says, smiling at me.

“Well, some time.”

“Are you sorry I kissed you?”

“No,” I say quickly, so quickly it startles me. “No.” I clear my throat and try not to smile overly and try, unsuccessfully, not to turn red as I recall warm skin, soft tongues, and the very color of the inside of his lower lip. I wish it came in a lipstick. It would be more perfect for me than Candy Bliss. “It was nice. Surprising. But nice.” I consider that a moment. “Really nice,” I qualify. Then I reconsider my qualification and try to improve it with, “Definitely nice. Are you sorry?”

“No.”

“But it changes things.”

“I knew it would.”

“I hate change.”

“I know that too,” he says.

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because I couldn't stand not to one second longer.”

“Oh. Well, that's . . . kind of . . .” Oh, geez, the only word coming to mind is the one I say. “. . . cool.”

I roll my eyes at myself, which thoroughly entertains Stu.

“You have to give me time to think about this,” I say.

“By which you mean over-think it.”

“Probably.”

“Don't over-think this, Josie,” he says, and nudges my elbow with his before walking back to his house.

I, perfectly contented and nearly giddy, watch him all the way. Just after he reaches his front door, he turns and flashes me a very confident smile.

My dad walks out of his study, several papers in hand, as I enter the house, and he greets me with, “Out all night again, my dear?”

“You caught me.”

“Partying?”

“Over-thinking.”

“That'll get you in more trouble than partying,” he says, glancing at his papers.

“It probably will,” I say, heading toward the stairs. But I think I may be addicted. I'm not sure. I'll have to give it some thought.

• • •

A short time later, in Stu's car, we shoot each other ridiculous smiles—of the bottom-lip-biting kind—via his rearview mirror, but we remain quiet.

“What?” Sophie finally demands.

“What?”

“What?”

“What is with you two?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“Are you doing this to bug me? Is it to try to get me to say something? Or do something? What?”

“Yes,” Stu says.

“No,” I say.

“Then what?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing.”

We bite our lips some more, and when Sophie finally gets out of the car at school, she leaves us with, “You two are getting weirder by the day.”

Stu tips his head toward the passenger seat, and I step across the console into it.

“Music?” Stu offers, and I shake my head no.

No, I'm happy sitting here in silence full of possibilities, which we'll address once I've sorted through them all.

Or will I? Will we?

Stu parks, and we walk as we rode—in goofy, grinning silence from which a new thought starts to percolate. I try to ignore it all the way to my seat in Sociolinguistics, through settling in and pulling out my notebook and finding just the right pen and taking notes and sharing quick sidelong glances with Stu.

I try to ignore it later when I walk to Fair Grounds with him and Ethan, who asks us how our weekend was and who won the homecoming game. And I try to ignore it through a quiet lunch with Stu, who contentedly downs two bagel sandwiches and finishes my plain bagel when I cannot.

For the first time in my life, I want him to ask
Penny for your thoughts
. I want him to rudely interrupt the silence with a question about what is on my mind because what is on my mind is this:
I don't know what to say to you now. And I want you to tell me, “Everything's going to be okay
.”

Stu would say it. I know he would if I asked him to. But I recall my dad's admonition from some weeks back.
Forcing a subject to respond the way you want him to only confirms your bias, my dear. And it makes your results worthless
.

Suddenly I am not convinced that everything between Stu and me will be okay, and I do not want that confirmed by his honest answer. Surely he senses what transpires between us. This isn't self-possessed silence anymore. It's awkward, and I have no idea how to fill it.

Stu was right. So was Stefan. Love—the possibility that it exists between two people and the possibility that it doesn't and never will—changes everything. I already lost one friend to this. I look across the table at Stu, who finishes my bagel and asks, “You weren't going to eat that, were you?”

I shake my head.

I cannot lose another.

On the quiet walk back to the car, I apologize for my silence, which I've never done before, and add, “Thinking.” Then, like an idiot, I point to my head—for what? Emphasis?

“You realize your head's going to explode someday.”

You'll clean it up,
I say, and whew, talking as usual. Except we're not, because I meant to say that but didn't. I couldn't get the words out for all the thoughts overburdening me. And now that I want to say it, the moment is gone, and I only know that I want it back.

• • •

Stu's soccer practice runs late today, so I walk home with Sophie, who berates Josh Brandstetter, without repeating herself, for nearly a whole mile. Closer to home, she tells me, “But Danny Shiever is kind of cute, don't you think? Not real chatty, but so what? Find out if he likes me, okay?”

I nod, relieved to have the distraction of Sophie's life, and doubly relieved she never notices how lost in my head I am.

Text to Stu, 6:44 p.m.

I like us how we are.

Text from Stu, 6:45 p.m.

I like us how we are too.

That's not what I mean. And he knows it.

Geoff comes for dinner tonight. He comes almost every night now that the wedding is only two weeks away. After dinner, he and Kate spend a few minutes opening the presents that arrive and writing thank-you notes together at the desk in Dad's study. Tonight, they laugh quietly about their ability to gush so effusively over their sixth set of candlesticks.

“It is impressive,” I say, popping into the room for a handful of M&M'S from the leeches jar, which, I see from Geoff's expression, is a hidden treasure to him.

“Want some?” I offer.

“Thanks,” he says, indulging in a handful just as Kate's phone rings.

“Work,” she says to us, by way of apology, and takes the call out of the room.

I return the jar to its proper spot on the shelf, next to a Civil War field surgeon's kit complete with amputation saw and tourniquet. Dad keeps the worn leather lid closed. He really needs a new hobby.

I pretend to straighten the leech jar a couple times, twice shooting a sideways peek at Geoff, who contentedly munches on M&M'S and reviews his and Kate's note. Finally, I turn toward him to say—I don't know—something about the wedding, maybe, when he winks at me, and I say, “You know that really freaks me out when you do that.”

“Why do you think I do it?” he asks, smiling almost victoriously, and I concede his win with a self-directed eyeball roll before taking a seat in the nearest armchair.

“You know last summer when you said you knew how hard it was to lose a friend because I didn't have that many?” I ask.

“Yes, and I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean it—”

“I know what you meant,” I say quickly. Too quickly. I exhale and say earnestly, “I know what you meant.”

“Everything okay, Josie?”

“I don't think so. I think I'm about to lose another one, and the list is shrinking.”

“Who?”

I shake my head, which he translates correctly.
I don't want to say
.

“Okay,” he says. “Can I help?”

“I don't think so,” I say, and stand. “But I like that you understand.”

“Sure,” he says, and I start to leave, but stop in the doorway to say, “Oh, and the spaghetti
was
an accident.”

And then—and I have this coming—he winks at me.

• • •

I am not two steps up the stairs when I get a text from Stu:

I'm at your front door. Come out here.

“Come in,” I say when I open the door.

“No,” he says, holding his phone up for me to see my previous text. “Tell me.” I step outside and close the door behind me. “You've made a decision about us. Already?”

“Stu, you're my best friend in the world. I don't want to lose that.”

“You're the person I see myself with forever. I don't want to lose that.”

“We risk losing everything if we end up on a path that doesn't lead where you think it's going to.”

“You're worth that risk, Josie. Aren't I?”

“I am not”—my voice thickens with impending tears— “willing to risk losing you as one of my only friends.”

“You're not going to lose me,” he says.

“How can you be so certain?”

“How can you not be?” he asks, and this time, instead of holding his mouth halfway between a smile and a laugh as he so often does, he holds it halfway between nothing at all. Nothing I can read.

It startles me into a silence full of rotten possibilities. Finally I remember to breathe and confess, “I don't know. I am sure of very few things right now, but one of them is . . . that we are already changed.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, we are. I thought it was for the better.”

“I think it isn't,” I say.

He turns and jogs across the street to his house. I step inside and jump half a foot when I hear his front door slam shut and echo down our quiet street.

Text to Sophie, 7:00 a.m.

Tell Stu I'm getting a ride with my dad to Cap this morning. Have to be there early.

Text from Sophie 7:22 a.m.

OK! XOXO

The language of Sophie does not involve too many probing questions, especially when she is consumed with the grief of yet one more break-up. It is exactly the language I need to hear today.

• • •

Stu arrives late to class by only a few minutes. He takes his seat next to mine, leaving me wondering if he's as wholly wrenched as I am. I feel and suffer my connection to him. Our unique bond of friendship and lifelong history has become all the more palpable because of its injury. It's similar to that acute, sudden awareness of how often you swallow each day only after you develop a sore throat. And all you want—all
I
want—is restoration. But to what now?

Neither of us can even look at the other.

After class, he leaves with, “See you later.”

I barely even remember Ethan at the front of the class and am startled when he calls out to me afterward, “Fair Grounds, Josie?”

“Library today,” I say.

“Studying for a class?”

“Yes,” I say. Just yes.

Ethan catches up with Samantha and Mr. Football then and asks Mr. Football, “Who are you playing Saturday, and are you ready?”

• • •

I see them—Stu and Jen—hanging out in the senior lobby after school this week. By Wednesday, Jen leans in close to him, speaking pleasant things in a low voice. On Thursday, they pass by me at my locker, Jen smiling her hello at me, Stu staring abstractedly ahead, searching, it appears, for the former comfort of our relationship, which is nowhere to be seen. On Friday, Jen kisses him, there in the senior lobby, but he pulls away quickly, sharply, stung. After, our eyes connect for the briefest moment before he grabs his backpack and walks out, leaving Jen hurrying to catch up.

“What's with him?” Sophie asks.

“Oh, you know. Love-'em-and-leave-'em,” I say.

“He's never going to change,” she says, walking past me to join a group of her friends and to flirt with Danny Shiever, who is standing next to Stefan Kott, who looks my way and nods. No smile. No grimace. Just a nod.

I nod back and produce that warm smile I had so long ago practiced because that is my natural response in Josie. And I don't feel like speaking anything else at this moment.

• • •

Later, I consider texting Stu, calling him, sending him an e-mail, throwing pebbles at his bedroom window. Something. Anything. And nothing. There's no time this weekend, this last weekend before Kate and Geoff's wedding.

On Saturday we have our fourth and final dress-fitting, which takes remarkably little time. Afterward, we congregate at the hair salon for a rehearsal of hair and makeup. Kate stands with her stylist the whole time she does my hair, instructing her how, precisely, to do it so that I won't bolt screaming from the chair.

I have not gotten my ears pierced. Kate apologized this morning for pressing that issue and said, “Geoff got a little irked with me for suggesting it. He said I was going over the top in small details.”

“You should listen to him more often,” I said. “It's amazing how insightful he's become in the last few days.”

We enjoyed ourselves—we bridesmaids and Kate—once I manually shifted into the culture, which I found rather pleasant. I had little but questions to contribute when they spoke of work and boyfriends, but we found common ground over the wedding itself, and then weddings in general.

But behind the hair and the makeup and the infectious happiness of Kate's fast-approaching Big Day, I continue to feel the ache of missing Stu, of missing what really was a Pperfect friendship and knowing now we can't go back to it and find it as it was.

• • •

Sunday night. Geoff comes for dinner. Afterward, long after I thought he had gone home, he knocks on my bedroom door, asks if he can come in. I open my door to find him standing with both hands behind his back.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

“Wh—”

“And don't ask why,” he adds quickly, making me grin just a little as I comply. “Okay, open them,” he says, and I find him holding a stuffed, plush white goat with yellow horns and pink ears.

“I saw this today and thought of you,” he says. “Next best thing to a real one.”

“How did you know?” I ask, delighted and taking it from him and happy to find it has no prickly parts.

“Kate,” he says. “She tells me everything, you know.”

“I know.”

“I also thought it might cheer you up.” He shrugs slightly when I look questioningly at him. “You haven't mentioned Stu at all lately. From the other day, I figured it out. It wasn't tough to deduce. I'm . . .” he says. “Well, I've been there too, Josie. And I just want you to know that, if you ever want, you can always talk to me. Anytime.”

“Thanks,” I say, and following the permission of mutual smiles and polite head-bobs, I close my door.

Seconds later, I open it and lean over the railing and call to him at the bottom of the steps, “Hey, Geoff.”

“Yes?”

I am on the verge of asking “If you give up your seat on the bus every day to a pregnant woman,” but instead I say, more sincerely than before, I hope, “Thanks.”

He shoots a crooked smile up at me. I'll ask my thirty-seven questions later. I'll also define
irony
for him and tell him that oregano is Greek, not Italian. And someday I will convert him to a true Dennis DeYoung fan. If he's going to be a member of the Sheridan family, he's going to have learn.

• • •

I walk alone to Cap each morning this week. Sophie asks me why one afternoon at school.

“It's just better. Right now.”

“Okay,” she says, and produces a sad if knowing smile, which reminds me that, when she wants to, she speaks Josie very well—and probably Stu and Stu Chewing too.

In Sociolinguistics, Stu sits a few rows behind me with Mr. Football and laughs with him before and after class and then seems to disappear. Stu more than Ethan, more than this class, more than anything, occupies me entirely. I look for him at Fair Grounds, at the library, and later back at the high school, but I never catch more than the back of him, walking away. And I refuse to run to catch up.

I still don't know what to say to him, anyway.

• • •

At the rehearsal dinner, which Stu skips, we finally meet Geoff's parents, Alan and Dee, in from Wisconsin. Apart from an unnatural interest in the flora and fauna of state parks—and that Dee Brill sounds like something you do to a duck before you pluck it—they seem perfectly normal. Moreover, they respond to Kate exactly as their son does—gently and attentively, content in the background while Kate shines.

Auntie Pat explains, regrettably, that Stu worked himself into exhaustion this week, and he just couldn't rouse himself in time for the rehearsal dinner.

“But believe me,” she says, “he will be making his apologies to his hosts and reimbursing them for the cost of his dinner.”

“He'll be at the wedding tomorrow, won't he?” I ask.

“I hope so,” Auntie Pat says. “If he isn't, his car will be mine until he has made amends to your parents and to Kate and Geoff.”

“Huh,” I say, which, as usual, means a whole lot more than
huh
.

“But you'll insist he goes.”

“I'll do my best,” she says.

Seventy-two are in attendance tonight. Earlier tonight, Aunt Toot gave me a mint and a package of tissue. “Just in case you need them tomorrow,” she whispered.

Uncle Vic addresses me as “you young people.”

“You young people listen to music too loud.”

“You young people drive too fast.”

Youyoungpeople Sheridan. That's me, tonight. If Stu were here, that's what he'd call me.

I am seated next to a bridesmaid called Stephanie, at the far right end of the head table. We are arranged in ceremonial order—Happy Couple in the middle, honor attendants next—so that's Maggie—and then the rest of us according to height, shortest to me. My seat allows me to survey the room, round tables of eight decorated with flickering white votives and strategically placed vases of ivory roses and red berries that Dee Brill earlier told me are hypericum berries and warned me not to eat since they are poisonous.

“Oh, thank you, because I do like to nibble on centerpieces,” I said to her bewildered face and to Mother's directed
ahem
.

Through the steady buzz of conversations, sporadic laughter, clinking glasses, and heartfelt toasts, my attention is drawn, as an arrow to magnetic north, to the one empty chair in the room. One table away, between Sophie and Ethan, who is here as Madison's date, I can even read his place card, thanks to my nifty new contacts. Stu Wagemaker. At last, when I can no longer endure its pull, I excuse myself for the ladies' room and tip the card facedown on my way.

• • •

The morning of the wedding passes in a delirium of bridesmaids and brunch foods and caravans and makeup artists. Fortunately, my mother has scheduled two hours of quiet in the Sheridan house, from four o'clock until we must depart for the church. She stands sentry downstairs while Kate flits about the house, and I retreat to the dark solitude of my bedroom.

There, I sit on my bed, propped up against three pillows, and tell myself I have two or three hours before I see Stu, two or three hours to figure this out. Because he and I
need
to talk.

But by the time my mother gently taps on my bedroom door to let me know the limousines have arrived to ferry us to the church, I have come to absolutely no conclusions about what to say when I see him. In the limo, I begin to wonder if I'll see him at all. By the time we reach the church, I worry I won't, but I am happily distracted, then, by the sheer collective fun of us bridesmaids changing into our gowns in the undercroft, where coffee hour is usually held on Sundays. And we all practically swoon—no, we do swoon—when Kate enters the room in her gown and veil. I really wouldn't have missed this for the world and am overjoyed to be included as a member of this particular group. I wish we had ID cards, though. But I suppose the dresses serve that purpose well enough.

• • •

I don't see Stu during the ceremony. Once I see Kate on my father's arm, I forget to look for him. I forget about fights over contacts, tick lectures, and Aunt Toot's tissues stuffed in my bra since I left my foam falsies at home. My mind is wholly occupied first by the sight of Kate, and then by the sight of Geoff, waiting patiently for her to join him at the altar.

The service proceeds with the tradition and speed of all Episcopal wedding services complete with homily, exchange of vows, and seemingly endless hymns that force
G-d
and
blood
to rhyme. There follow prayers and blessings and of course, just before the recessional, the wholly secular kiss.

The wedding party and both sets of parents exhale laughter in the undercroft while the guests depart the sanctuary. Kate fairly pushes through the crowd straight to me for a reassuring hug that brings tears to both our eyes.

I pull two of Aunt Toot's tissues out of my bra for us and we hug again, giggling through sniffles.

• • •

Columbus Country Club buzzes with the joyful chatter of two hundred forty-eight friends and relatives—give or take a Wagemaker—who break into applause when Geoff and Kate finally enter. I make my way through the club's crowded living room, stopping repeatedly to say hello to my parents' friends, who, in the language of wedding guests, repeatedly compliment me on a “job well done,” and say, “Isn't that a gorgeous dress.”

At last I find Sophie, talking with some girls I don't know, and pull her aside to ask, “Is Stu here?”

“He didn't come. Can you believe he'd miss this? He's such a guy.”

“Yeah,” I say, not even attempting to mask my disappointment.

I continue mingling, or moving about, anyway, while the band plays and people dance and excuse themselves in and out of small crowds around the buffet stations. I move from group to group, receiving more jobs-well-done, letting people admire the dress, and agreeing with Millicente DeGraf among others that,
oui,
Kate makes a beautiful bride.

At last, I find myself face-to-face with Ethan, who promptly tells me “job well done.”

“Thank you, but Kate's job was harder, even though she made it look effortless, like she's doing now,” I say, pointing across the room to the star of the show with her husband proudly supporting her nearby.

“So how's your Language Variation paper coming?” he asks.

“I'm done,” I say, adding “Excuse me,” as I indicate by pointing that I need to keep circulating, but, in truth, I don't want to speak Student-Teacher with him. I'd much rather be alone in my thoughts tonight than have to translate one more language.