Love and Other Foreign Words (3 page)

On Friday, it's nearly five thirty by the time I get home. I walk into the kitchen pungent with the smell of fresh, chopped basil, collected into a tidy pile on the cutting board by the stove. Mother, who has Fridays off, emerges from the pantry carrying a large bottle of olive oil, and we greet each other with kisses on cheeks.

“Did you have an interesting day?” she asks. She never asks if I had a good day. If it was interesting, it was necessarily good, and my mother is never redundant.

“I did,” I say, and tell her briefly about a conversation I had in French class today—one of those spontaneous scenarios between two students in front of the class—that involved bread, cheese, the mayor, a cello, and death.

“
C'est une longue histoire,
” I say.

It's a long story.

• • •

I run upstairs to shower and change for dinner, texting Stu on the way to remind him of tonight's momentous occasion.

Text to Stu, 5:31 p.m.

Pgeofff's coming to dinner tonight.

Text from Stu, 5:31 p.m.

Pwho?

He knows who Pgeofff is, and he'll be curious about the details later.

• • •

It's a little after six when I return to the kitchen, where Ross and Maggie greet me with hugs and quick pecks. Ross is wearing my favorite cologne.

“You smell better than day-old pizza grease,” I tell him.

“Well, we were out of pizza grease,” he says, “so I went with aftershave.”

He bends his neck toward me, and I enjoy another sniff.

“Josie, I do hope we have a daughter like you someday,” Maggie says.

“One with my impressive sense of smell?” I ask.

“One who says hello in the most unpredictable ways.”

“I wouldn't mind one with an impressive sense of smell,” Ross tells Maggie.

“When
are
you going to have kids?” I ask. They've been married five years now and are finally out of residency. Maggie's a pediatrician. Ross is a pediatric endocrinologist. They've joined viable practices. They bought a house a few blocks away. They really have no excuses for not starting a family, and I'm desperate to stop being the youngest Sheridan.

“We'll let you know,” Ross says.

“Just don't expect me to babysit until the kid is old enough to clean up her own mess. I don't do sticky or gross,” I say.

“We know,” Ross and Maggie say in cheery unison.

“Hey,” Ross says, pulling out his phone. “Did you see this?” We stand shoulder to shoulder looking at the latest list of
Dennis DeYoung and The Music of Styx
concert dates.

“Nothing in Columbus yet, but at least he's getting closer,” Ross says.

It was Ross who introduced me to Dennis DeYoung's music, for which I am eternally grateful.

I love my sisters and never longed for a brother, but since Maggie forced one, in law, upon me, I'm very glad she chose Ross. He plays guitar and piano and does sticky and gross in his job—all things I cannot do—all of which increased his standing in my estimation and made it easier for me to grant Maggie permission to marry him. Which I did in writing. I was eleven at the time. Maggie framed the letter, and it hangs now in their home office—a permanent reminder of the blessing I gave their union.

• • •

Dad arrives home shortly, and we settle into the kitchen, remodeled and enlarged three years ago to include a small sitting area around a fireplace we never use. The remodeling lasted months longer than predicted and was the source of the one and only meltdown my mother has ever had. Before she became an instructor, she was a surgical nurse. Normally, nothing rattles the woman. Not even me.

Kate is late, of course. It's her mildly passive-aggressive response to Maggie, who inadvertently steals all the attention in any room simply by entering it. She is, without exaggeration,
that
stunning, made all the more gorgeous by her utter obliviousness to her own beauty. Strangers have stopped her in public—I've seen it—just to tell her how pretty she is, and she receives the compliment every time with a blush and an embarrassed
thank you
.

Friends—myself among them—constantly tell Sophie Wagemaker how beautiful she is too, which she receives with a casual
shut up,
which is the high school translation of
thank you
.

Sophie and Maggie, to varying degrees of formality, speak the language of beautiful women. I can translate it because I grew up hearing it, but it is not my mother tongue.

It is nearly six thirty when Kate finally arrives, thirty minutes late and happily unconcerned. Behind her comes a tall, hazy, male-like creature, an artist's sketch of a man becoming a stork, erased and redrawn several times and never fully defined. Since he bears no resemblance to Kate's description, I can only deduce that this is not Pgeofff.

We stand. Kate hooks her arm through the human rough draft and says with some alarm, “Hey, you're engaged!”

Okay, that was me.

“Josie.
Erm
. Mom.”

That's Kate.

“That's an engagement ring,” I say, pointing. “So who's the guy?”

“Josie. This is Geoff,” she says.

“No, it isn't,” I say, and get shushed by Mother, who then asks, “Kate?”

“Well, eh—” She deflates.

“Do you have something to tell us?” Mother says, trying to re-inflate her.

“Josie already did.”

“If you wanted it to be a surprise, you shouldn't have worn the ring,” I say. “Though I'm definitely surprised by Pgeofff. You're sure that's him?”

“That's Josie,” she says as an aside to Pgeofff, and then announces, “Yes, we're engaged.”

The room swells then with congratulations and happy chatter, and I hug Kate but reserve my enthusiasm until I have thoroughly vetted Pgeofff, who waits until the merriment subsides before introducing himself.

“Geoffrey Stephen Brill. Nice to meet you,” he says to my dad.

To my mother:

“Geoffrey Stephen Brill. Nice to meet you.”

To Ross and Maggie:

“Geoffrey Stephen Brill. Nice to meet you.”

To me:

“Geoffrey Stephen Brill. Nice to meet you.”

“What was that again?” I ask.

Kate giggles. Mother shoots me The Look, and Geoffrey Stephen Brill says with grim sincerity, “Geoffrey Stephen Brill. Nice to meet you.”

“I'm done,” I announce, and try to leave the kitchen but am scruffed by Mother, practically picked up by the back of my neck and set right back down next to her. This nearly jars my glasses loose, and I promptly straighten them.

All thirty-seven of my carefully prepared questions evaporate the moment Pgeofff presses his cold, damp hand against mine and grips it for a queasy one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .
ew
 . . . seconds and says through a crooked smile, “Josie. I've heard a lot about you.”

“Really?” I ask, wiping my hand dry on my jeans.

“I think we're going to get along very well,” he says, and then smiles at my parents when he adds, “I have a pretty good rapport with adolescents.”

“I'm eating at the Wagemakers' tonight,” I say to Mother.

“No, you're not,” she says.

“Well, then I'm eating alone in the kitchen.”

“No, you're not.”

I am about to protest when Dad intervenes. He shanghais Geoffrey Stephen Brill, nice to meet you, into a tour of the house with Kate in tow. First stop, the study to view and admire Dad's collection of odd and slightly gruesome medical antiques. He presses every new visitor into this temporary service. He's a psychiatrist, which means he's insane.

“‘Good rapport with adolescents'?” I practically shout at my mother. Then I turn to Ross and demand, “You would never use the word
adolescent,
would you?”

“Not to you I wouldn't.”

“See!” I say, pointing at Ross for emphasis, which fails to impress my mother.

“I expect you to give him a chance, my dear,” she says. “You've just met him. At the very least, I expect you to be pleasant and not ruin this evening for your sister.”

Those words always pinch my heart.
For your sister
. I love my sisters, and, unlike Stu and Sophie of the future, I hope we never live in separate states.

“I'll try for Kate's sake,” I say. “But if he uses the word
adolescent
again while I am one, I'm going to have to insist they break up. At least until I'm twenty-one.”

A few minutes later, with our little crowd reassembled in the kitchen, Maggie asks Geoff—who is clearly not the type of guy whose name translates into Josie, so I shall miss that silent
p
; maybe I'll give it to Pstu—“Did you enjoy Dad's tour of the house?”

“For the most part. It's nice,” he says. “It's a little large and excessive to suit my sense of intimacy, but it's exactly what I expected when Kate told me she grew up in Bexley.”

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“Oh, forgive me if I just made a faux pas,” he says. “I assumed everyone was familiar with Bexley's reputation.”

“We are. We are,” my dad says as he pours glasses of wine and as my mother—
ow
—pinches my arm. It never really hurts. She means to warn me to consider my next response.

True, Bexley does have a reputation throughout Central Ohio as home to families with generational wealth where inheriting is considered a talent, and the schools are filled with kids who would much rather sue than fight. But that's the reputation, not the whole population. We have lovely friends here and a lovely house my parents worked hard for, and I'm bristling at Geoff's remark.

Ow
.

Okay. I won't say anything. Yet.

“What do you do, Geoff?” Ross asks.

“I'm the director of the medical library at Mount Carmel West,” Geoff says, citing a downtown hospital, as he sets down his glass, settles himself against one of the counters, crosses his ankles, folds his arms, and gets comfortable.

My dad copies his pose—a favorite psych trick he employs without thinking sometimes—and tries not to smile when he asks, “And what exactly does the director of Mount Carmel West's medical library do all day? I imagine it has something to with books.”

“Uh. Well, it's a little more involved than that. My job entails eight particular elements, each with its own subset of duties and responsibilities, beginning, naturally, with administration.”

“Not books?” my father teases.

“Administration,” Geoff says, and for the next fifty-eight hours he lists every single detail of his excruciatingly boring work-life and its subsets of toe-curling monotony. And all the while, Kate stares dreamily at him. The whole scene is nauseating.

“Excellent,” my dad finally says. “As fine a job description as I have ever heard.”

“I suppose I do go on about it. It's really a great job,” Geoff says. “And I owe it a debt of gratitude since it's where I met Kate, which really was ironic.”

“Ironic?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“It would only be ironic if neither one of you could read,” I say.

“Josie,” Mother says. I have moved across the kitchen, away from the reach of her very long arm and lobster-like pincher claw.

“Well, it was ironic because I never expected to meet someone so amazing in a place so dusty and serious,” Geoff says.

“That's not irony,” I say. “That's not even a coincidence.”

“Enough,” Mother says, and I concede with, “Okay, but it's still not irony.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear you enjoy your job,” Dad says.

“Plus I get to read all day,” Geoff says.

“Do you like to read, then, in your spare time?” Maggie asks.

“Geoff reads everything, I mean everything, you could ask him about anything and he's probably read about it,” Kate gushes as Geoff smiles paternally at her.

“Who are your favorite authors?” Ross asks.

“Well, I'm an intellectual, so I go for the highbrow stuff. I don't know how familiar you'd be with some of the authors I like. They're pretty obscure.”

“Yeah, our family just likes books with pretty pictures in them,” I say, and he produces a sound like a laugh, more an airy snort, accompanied by that half smile.

“Oh, that's right,” he says as he snaps his fingers—
excuse me?!
—and points at me. “I forgot I was talking with the gifted sister.” He pantomimes quote marks around the word
gifted
.

“The what?” I ask, equally irritated and offended.

“Josie,” Kate says, dismissing me with a combination smile/eyelid-flutter. “You're so cute. You know you are.”

“Well, then, what sisters are you and Maggie?”

“Maybe I've met my match,” Geoff says.