Love and Other Foreign Words (8 page)

My parents refrain from involving themselves in this mess. When necessary, they mediate volatile arguments, which rarely occur in our family. They prefer that the people involved in a conflict resolve said conflict on their own before it escalates into a fight.

I hardly view an accident as a conflict, and there wouldn't have been one had Kate not shoehorned Geoff into our evening. So, in terms of a causal relationship, this is entirely Kate's fault.

I scroll quickly through my list of text messages and click the thing off without reading any of them.

“Nothing from Kate?” Stu asks.

I shake my head. “She's still not speaking to me,” I say.

We are walking this rare gorgeous spring afternoon back to the high school from lunch at Fair Grounds.

Stu bumps his elbow against mine and says, “She'll call.”

“When? On my thirtieth wedding anniversary?”

“Yes,” he deadpans.

“If she waits until then, I will not pick up the phone.”

“Yes you will.”

“Yes,” I quietly agree. “I will.”

He bumps my elbow a second time and says, “Josie, she'll call. Much sooner than you think.”

I thank Stu with a nod but hope rather than know he's right. Kate's never done this before, and I don't know the rules of this contest, but I know I miss her terribly. I try to ignore the ache, but it's there, waiting for my attention, continuously lurking behind my Spanish homework, and walks with Stu, and Stefan's contagious smile.

I feel it at home on the nights Kate normally comes for dinner but now declines, leaving Mother to tell me, “She's busy tonight.” I feel it at school when Stefan says something funny or sweet that I want to share via text with Kate but can't, knowing she won't write back. I feel it most at track practice when I try to run in quiet contemplation, but all my thoughts are drawn like a compass needle to the magnetic pull of that thing I am trying to ignore, which is this: Kate is not speaking to me, and that hurts.

At least at track practice I eventually find a good distraction. I run with Emmy Newall and listen to her colorful disparagement of Nick Adriani and what a “piece of shit” he is to break up with her so close to the prom, and she's thinking of suing him for the cost of her dress and hair and makeup. Days later I listen to how they've reconciled even though she's still angry with him but loves him or hates him. She can't decide and concludes with a laugh that it doesn't really matter “because, you know, they're so close to the same thing.”

“I really think they're not,” I say.

“You've never been in love before.”

Does the whole world know this?!

“I love my sisters, and I know that I could never easily hate either one of them,” I say.

“I'm talking about romantic love,” she says. “It's not the same thing.”

“So when I fall in love with a guy, I could, at any minute, start hating him?”

“Yes, especially if he's like Nick and nearly f-cks up your prom.”

• • •

Later that night, Stefan calls and I tell him what Emmy said about love and ask him if he believes she's right.

“Don't know,” he says. “Never been in love before.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I say, happy to admit it, at last, to a kindred soul.

“Cool.”

“So tell me what you mean when you say
cool
,” I say.

“What do you mean what do I mean?”

“Well, it could mean a lot of things.”

“Yeah, cool's cool, you know. Easy. Cool. Got it. Whatever you want it to mean.”

“Okay,” I say, and hope Stefan can hear my smile when I say, “Cool.”

I'm speaking Stefan, and it's a nice, sweet, easy language—just what I need right now as an antidote to the torturous silence that is the language of Kate.

• • •

Maggie tries to soothe me with an invitation to dinner at her house a couple weeks before the prom. I go, and we eat Greek takeout, and Ross wears my favorite cologne. Maggie tells me I don't need my ears pierced. Ross says my glasses suit me, and no one spills anything. Everything they do to take my mind off Kate makes me miss her all the more.

• • •

Her silent treatment continues right up to the prom. Maggie arrives around two thirty to help me with my hair and makeup.

“This shade of lipstick is perfect for you,” she says as she dabs it on me. “But you don't really need it.”

I pull my hair into a ponytail, of course, and let Maggie style the thing into one big curl with the aid of a round brush Kate gave me when she moved out.

Sigh.

“There,” Maggie says to my reflection, which I can see only when I put my glasses back on.

“Very pretty,” she says in a way that almost makes me believe her. In any case, I thank her for saying so.

Maggie's one of three beautiful women I know who doesn't make me feel bad about myself. Sophie's the second. Kate used to be the third.

• • •

“I like this,” Sophie says, bouncing my big-curl ponytail on the palm of her hand.

We're in her bedroom, overdressed for mere hanging out, but it is the prom, after all. Sophie looks like she stepped from the pages of a bridesmaids' catalog, with her one-shoulder, knee-length, chocolate-colored dress. I look like someone's prom date, but since I
am
one, I really don't mind.

“Stefan'll like it too,” she says, “but don't expect him to say anything. Guys are like that. They know you look different. They just don't know how exactly or how to say it, so they just say you look great. So when he tells you that, just say thanks. Don't ask him if he's noticed anything.”

“Including my perfect lipstick?” I ask.

“It
is
perfect. He just won't say so specifically.
Great
is the best you can hope for. Watch, I'll show you. Stu!” she calls as he passes her room, dressed in a tux but for the tie hanging loose around his neck.

“What do you think?” she asks, pulling me next to her and gesturing between the two of us as if we are prizes on
The Price Is Right
.

He shrugs and says, “You look great,” and leaves the room confused by our shameless snickers.

• • •

“You know Kate's still not speaking to me,” I say.

I pop a huge piece of a chocolate chip cookie into my mouth, careful not to drop a crumb on or down my dress as Mrs. Easterday slides another tray into her oven.

“That's not like Kate,” she says, directing me out of the backlight of her kitchen window with a wave of her hand. “Stop just there,” she says, and snaps a picture.

“Perhaps your apology wasn't sincere enough,” she says, examining the photo for a second.

“I didn't”—I cringe at the realization—“apologize.”

“Didn't you? Hmm,” she says, still finding great interest in her camera.

“Well, the whole thing was an accident.”

“Yes, of course it was,” she says, and smiles up at me through pale blue eyes, slightly magnified by her glasses.

“I'll . . . apologize. But don't you think Kate should apologize to me too, for refusing to speak to me?”

“I think you and Kate will work this out in your own special way,” she says, and offers me another cookie, which I eat while she describes formal dances she attended when she was my age. They were all held in the school gymnasium. They drank punch and ate cookies, and everyone went home by eleven thirty. I think I'm nostalgic for a time I never experienced.

Text to Kate, 4:47 p.m.

I'm sorry about the spaghetti.

Text to Kate, 4:48 p.m.

And the wine.

Text to Kate, 4:49 p.m.

The whole thing WAS an accident.

She doesn't text back.

• • •

Stefan arrives at five o'clock just ahead of Adam Gibson. Jen Auerbach and the eloquent Danny Shiever—who are just going as friends—and Emmy and Nick arrive within minutes. We're triple dating, but having group pictures taken at my house and the Wagemakers'. Ross is here with Maggie, just to watch, and when Nick Adriani stares too long at Maggie, Emmy slaps him, hard, on his chest.

Stu and Sarah are dining alone tonight at her request, something romantic and private that Stu has already described to me as uninteresting. Adam is taking Sophie out with a group of his friends tonight to flaunt the most beautiful girl in the school as
his
date. He glances a little too long at Maggie too, and Sophie doesn't even notice.

He tells her at hello that she looks great.

“And I mean great,” he says.

“Shut up.” She beams.

Emmy tells her, “You are so beautiful, I hate you,” and Sophie receives the compliment with her standard “Shut up, I am not.”

Stefan says “Nice dress” to me in lieu of hello, so, in speaking Stefan, I say “Nice tux” back.

Later, I produce sufficient if forced smiles for Dad's and Uncle Ken's cameras. Behind the poses, I think of Kate, still not speaking to me and not even here. And the ache is hard to mask. Not impossible, but hard.

It is a gorgeous blue Saturday, made even sunnier, I think, by Mrs. Easterday's blooming forsythia bushes. At seventy-three degrees this May tenth, it's just a bit warmer than normal. Sophie got her wish. No hideous coats required.

After many minutes of posing in the Wagemakers' front yard and many more minutes of mingling with Mrs. Easterday and some of the other neighbors who turned out to watch, we in gowns retrieve our purses from those we assigned to hold them and start toward our dates' cars. Stefan opens the door for me, and I step one foot in when I hear, “Josie! Josie!” and look up to see Kate dashing across the street. She greets me with a quick hug and kiss, ending, if not our conflict, then this minor and awful campaign of hers.

I will never tell her how she has wounded me.

“I'm so glad I didn't miss you,” she says.

“Thirty seconds and you would have,” I say. I am not letting her off the hook so easily, especially since she hasn't apologized for her part.

“I'm Kate,” she says cheerily to Stefan and shakes his hand, repeating my earlier line, “Nice tux,” but in a language entirely different from the one I used, a language I wish I had spoken instead. She actually looked at the clothes before offering her assessment, making her compliment sound like a compliment instead of a jokey greeting.

“Let's get a picture,” she says to me. “Dad!”

Dad directs us to a spot in the Wagemakers' yard. On the way, Kate gently places the palm of her hand against the curl of my ponytail and says, “Nice. I like it. We'll have to think of something like this for the wedding.”

Dad snaps a couple of shots and pronounces each one excellent after scrutinizing it a good four seconds—the man can't see the screen without his glasses, which he isn't wearing—and Kate beams when she whispers, “Can you imagine how funny he'll be at the wedding?”

And all the while I feel strangely sick, worse than an unexpected bump on a smooth country road. More as if a great weight repeatedly drops from my throat to my stomach.

“Okay, have fun,” Kate says, and sends me back to Stefan with a hug.

As I wave good-bye to my family, I allow the barely suppressed thoughts I've had about Kate into the forefront of my mind and ride to the restaurant in quiet if irked contemplation, interrupted a time or two by Stefan asking me, “What's on your mind?”

“Kate,” I say each time and return to contemplation.

• • •

I am not soothed by this so-called détente. I like it, but I'm not soothed. In fact, I feel more concerned—or
as
concerned—certainly not
less
concerned—than before, since the entire episode was so utterly uncharacteristic of Kate. Well, of Kate before she met Geoffrey Stephen Brill.

“How can Person A claim to love Person B if Person B is completely wrong for Person A,
and
how can Person A fail to see it?” I ask.

“Sorry?” Stefan says. “Who?”

“Kate and Geoff,” I say. “He's all wrong for her. She doesn't see it. He's wrecking my relationship with her. He's going to wreck my entire family, so I need to get rid of him. But not in a felonious kind of way. I just need Kate and him to break up.”

“Felonious?”

“Yeah. Related to a felony.”

“Did you ace every single vocabulary test you ever took?”

“Actually, yes.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“Do I sound weird?”

“No, you sound cool. And I'm glad you're talking about your sister. I thought you were talking about us.”

“Us? We're not completely wrong for each other, are we?”

“
I
didn't think so.”

“We do have height in common,” I tease, which makes Stefan smile. “But, no, don't worry. I wasn't talking about us. Anyway, that would imply that I believed one of us was in love with the other, and, as far as I know, we're not.”