The Things You Kiss Goodbye (7 page)

So, the next morning I stood, hesitating, in the doorway of the auto shop with a coffee in each hand. I heard a hissing sound and followed the trail of an orange air hose across the cement floor to a car. I could see only his boots until I squatted down.

“Hey!” I called, and then again more loudly. “Hey!”

The hissing stopped and the guy rolled out from under the car. He squinted at me. “Hay’s for horses,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “So original.”

He shrugged. “So, what are you doin’? Cramming for exams and now you need two coffees to get you started?”

I smirked. “Naw. I thought one could be for you. If you want it. But I didn’t know how you take it. One’s black, one has cream. You can have either.” I showed him two sugar packets as well, but he ignored those.

“I’ll take black.” He sat up and took the cup from me. I watched him peel the lid back while his dusty-blond head bowed forward. He took a sip and said, “Ahh. Thank you.” He put his cuff to his bottom lip as if to catch a small spill. All I saw was the perfect, roundish dimple in the center of his square chin. I watched him stand—again, it was a long way up somehow. He was older, but boyish-looking, and cleaner than your usual motor-head, I thought. I should stop staring.

“Uh . . . thank
you
,” I said. I looked down at the clean
cement floor. “I should’ve said that. The other day.” I looked back up at him. “You were . . . nice to me.”

He nodded, switched the hot cup from one hand to the other and rubbed his palm against his thigh. “I saw you yesterday,” he offered.

“I saw you too.”

“Yeah. Well. I saw you first.”

I took a drink of my coffee so I could hide an idiot’s smile from him, but instead I laughed and I burned my mouth. Then I tried to hide that too. It didn’t work. He winced for me.

“Be careful now,” he said. “So . . .” he said. He glanced up at the fluorescent lights above us, then eyed me pretty hard. “That guy you were with at Jack’s yesterday, is he the one who hurts you?”

“Hurts me?
Pfft!
” I pulled my chin back, then put the coffee to my lips again.

He gave me this all-knowing nod that kind of pissed me off. Then he asked me, “How’s the hand?”

At my side, I flexed my fingers and felt the ache, the thickness from the swelling. “It’s better. That was a dumb accident,” I said.

“Uh-huh.” He let it go. “So, you got a name?”

“Yeah. A terrible one,” I said.

“Come on now. How terrible?”

I pointed to myself and enunciated:
“Bettina.”

“B-buh-
what
?” He opened his eyes wide and pretended to choke on his coffee.

Oh, he was quick. I had to smile.

“Yep. I know. It’s awful,” I said.

“So, what do your friends call you?”

“Bettina.” We both laughed. “Yeah, I keep wishing for a nickname but . . .” I held my shoulders to my ears in a suspended sort of shrug.

He tilted his head at me. “What could we do about that?” He took it on. “Buh-buh-Betty? Bette? Tina? Ugh. Change a letter? Drop a letter? Bettina, Betweena . . .” He closed one eye at me.

I shook my head and thought,
Oh, please don’t let him say “P’teen-uh.”

“B-bah . . . Bay . . .” and then as if striking a match, he said, “
Beta!
Second letter in the Greek alphabet.” He probably had no idea how relevant that was. But he looked very satisfied. “May I? May I call you Beta?”

“Depends. What
may
I call you?”

“What do you wanna call me?”

I looked him over for about a nanosecond. “Cowboy,” I said, and I didn’t bother to ask if that was okay.

All through that day, during homeroom, morning classes, and then lunchtime with Brady sitting right next to me, I
thought about this nice guy—this Cowboy who’d called me Beta—oh, I liked that. He’d done it in a matter of seconds; I’d been waiting for a nickname most of my life.

Just before I’d left the garage, he’d said, “You know I was kidding, right? It’s not really that bad—your name.” But I wouldn’t let him take it back.

I wished the Not-So-Cheerleaders would call off afternoon practice so I could go back across the parking lot and playing fields, and through the chain-link fence to see him again. But I had no reason to go see some guy who was, for one minor thing, older than me
by years. . . 
.

Brady poked my shoulder. “Hey. You spacin’ out?”

“No.” I straightened my back. I watched him draw a chunk of bread through the gravy on his plate.

“You want my salad?” he asked. I shook my head. He gave me a handsome grin, put an arm around me, and pulled me close. I went all soft and just a little guilty inside.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“I
CAN
’
T TELL YOU HOW MUCH MY FAMILY AND
I
APPRECIATE
this.” Tony Colletti bounced along beside me through the crosswalk. I listened to my heavy boot heels making contact with the street.
Tony’s shoes must weigh nothing
, I thought. “I hope I’m not making trouble for you,” he added. I knew that he meant trouble with Brady.

“No, I’m glad to do this,” I said. It was at least a half lie, maybe more. I was up for seeing the old neighborhood. In fact, it seemed ridiculous that I hadn’t been back before this. But the prospect of having to hang in Regina Colletti’s apartment this afternoon was making my stomach roll. I was already thinking of ways I could leave.

But Tony was talking on about the fall mums he was putting into the garden for his nonna to look down on from her bedroom. His voice and his bounce carried me along the increasingly familiar rows of homes and garden Madonnas.

There was a place in the sidewalk that looked like a broken cracker where the root of an enormous oak had pushed on it for years. That root had been our “home free” spot during games of tag and hide-and-seek. Tony laughed when I took an extra-wide stride to plant my foot on it. The crack also marked the place to turn into the narrow passage between the two-family houses—“up and downs,” I had called them when I was little—and to the stairs that led upward to Regina Colletti’s door. I gripped the white iron railing and followed Tony. With every step, I wondered what I’d find for skin and bones and attitude at the top. Bampas and Momma would want a report at dinner.

“Nonna? I brought an old friend,” Tony called as he pushed the door open. “Can we come in?”

I wiped my feet on the little carpet of fake grass that covered the decking while I waited. It would be just like me to piss Regina off at the start, though maybe if I did, she’d want me to leave and all would be done. Hmm. I felt one of my eyebrows pump upward.

“In the bedroom, Tony,” Regina called, and he ushered me in.

There it was—the garlicky air in the kitchen, and the eye-burning scent of seashell soaps everywhere else. In the hall outside her bedroom door, I smelled her lilac perfume—the same one she’d worn how many years ago? Eight? I thought so. I reached out and touched Tony’s elbow. I don’t even know why, perhaps a reflex. He turned quickly, and we stood there staring at each other for a moment.

“Don’t be scared,” he whispered. “It’s not so bad.”

“Who’d you bring for me?” Regina asked in a gravelly voice. I expected Tony to call out:
Sacrificial lamb!
I came around the doorjamb. Regina squinted at me.

“It’s Bettina Vasilis, Nonna,” Tony said. “Remember?”

“Dinos’s girl?”

“That’s right.”

Queen Regina sat high on her wide bed. Her hair and makeup were perfect but she looked tired—like someone had come along and hollowed her out somehow. She adjusted a seed-stitched afghan over her legs. She had the same velvet pillows on her bed, the same crystal water carafe and tumbler on her nightstand, and a few snow globes from a collection that she kept out year-round. I’d seen them all before. She would have slapped me if she’d known how I sneaked around at the Colletti parties. I’d shaken up every one of those snow globes—had a contest with myself to get them all snowing at once.

“I haven’t seen you in years. Look at you! Gorgeous! You have your mother’s mouth—those lips!” Regina raised her eyebrows at Tony. He blushed. So did I. “I saw that coming years ago,” Regina claimed. “And those weird, wonderful golden eyes—now those are all your own. Always were.”

“Nonna, you need anything? Tea?”

“Yes. Black tea for me.”

“And for you, Bettina?” he asked. “Tea?”

“Of course she’ll have some. Go get it!” Regina told him. She made a whisking motion with her hand as if to get rid of him. I felt panicked not wanting to be left alone with her. “Sit down.” She patted the bed. I reluctantly propped myself on the very edge—in that bad spot where you need to be either more on or more off.

“So tell me about yourself,” Regina insisted. “You got a boyfriend?”

Interesting she should start there. I still had a bad taste in my mouth from the scene Brady had created in front of Tony in the glider field. Was there any chance that she knew about that? Or could I try lying?

“Y-yes, there is a boy I date,” I said.

“So . . . it’s serious?”

I shrugged and felt another blush coming on. I didn’t want to talk about Brady—not there—and suddenly the thought of Cowboy came swimming through.
Cowboy!
He had nothing
to do with any of this.

“Oh, for the love-a-God!” Regina squawked. “You’re a shy one! Fine. You don’t want to talk? Then you can listen to me, girl.”

“I am sick as a dog,” she began. She told me how the cancer had spread from her lungs to her brain, and when she said
brain
, the whole thing sounded so final to me. I winced and wondered how she could be so matter-of-fact about it all. “One thing I’d change, let me tell you. It’s the cigarette smoking. I don’t regret much, but I do regret that, Goddamn it. You don’t smoke, do you?”

I had smoked. A little. And mostly I hated it. But there were times that I wanted that hate. . . . Did those times count? I shifted on that lousy perch at the edge of her mattress. I was a good liar. I should be able to lie about cigarettes, with a lilt. Instead, I kept glancing out the door, looking for Tony.

Finally, he came in with the tea and he stayed to drink a cup with us. Regina wanted to know about my family, and so I tried to catch her up on everyone. I told her about the boys mostly. They were a safe topic.

Regina remembered my little brothers. “The pride of Dinos and Loreena Vasilis!” she said. “The sun, it rose and set on those two little bumbies.”

“Did you ever hear the story of how they got their names?” I asked. Oh, yes! This would take a while to tell. I
felt brilliant. I launched.

“Bampas always said that a baby boy will tell you his name in time. Maybe you remember that Favian came home from the hospital without a name. Bampas was watching him that first week and he saw him stick his fingers in his mouth. The baby scrunched his brow, looked right at Bampas, and sucked those fingers
hard
.” Tony and Regina both laughed, and I went on. “Bampas thought the baby looked like he was concentrating, trying to understand. Favian means ‘man of understanding.’”

“Ohh . . . I had forgotten.” Regina tapped her fingers against her teacup.

“That’s how it went,” I said. “And then Avel did not breathe right away—”

“Oh, now
this
I recall,” Regina said, looking rather serious. “The doctor, she sucked something out of his nose. The mucus. And just in time!”

“That’s right . . .” I slowed my speech. What were we to talk about when I was done? I sipped my tea, took my time to swallow. “That’s why they called him Avel. It means ‘breath.’”

“So, where does Bettina come from?” Tony asked.

I shrugged. “Bampas says you should name a girl the way you make a wish. Name her what you
want
her to be. But I’m not sure anyone knows what a Bettina is,” I said. That
sent both Tony and Regina into laughing fits, and then she coughed wildly.

“Your parents were very proud of their family,” she said when she had recovered. I nodded. It was hard to hear. Of the boys, yes, and maybe they had once been proud of me. For something. Or maybe they never really even looked to be proud of me. I toed the rug, fidgeted.

“Tell me more about Dinos? One of the handsomest men ever,” she said.

“He still has the restaurant,” I offered mildly.

“Yes, yes, Loreena’s Downtown. I remember. My Salvador helped him move the ovens in. What a chore! Dinos and Sal were the same age when they both came to the states. When Sal died, Dinos was there to carry the coffin. See that? Sal carried Dinos’s ovens, and Dinos carried Sal.”

Tony let out a quiet laugh. “I didn’t realize Grandpa knew Dinos from so far back.”

Regina pointed a finger at him and she shook it. “That’s
Mr. Vasilis
to you,” she said firmly. “You know better than that.”

Tony gave me a sideways grin and said, “You’re right, Nonna.”

“I’m always right.” Regina set her cup on her bedside table and leaned up slowly. “Right now, I have to use the toilet.” I took the opportunity to stand and get off my uncomfortable perch.

“You need help today, Nonna? Want me to walk you there?” Tony was careful—no doting, just offering. This, I thought, this must be the way the old lady wants it. I was betting Tony didn’t get too many of Regina’s wishes wrong. She’d been training him his whole life.

“No, no. You sit,” she told him.

I felt impolite standing there watching so I moved away to the window. I looked down to the tiny garden where Tony had planted the mums. They were like clusters of fuzzy embroidery all around the fountain—the pissing boy—who, I noted, did not appear to be doing his job.
Too bad
, I thought. I’d always liked him for the bit of sass he brought to the neighborhood. He was no Madonna and neither was his owner. Queen Regina had a reputation. She was, at the very least, a flirt. I knew that without knowing how I knew it. I had probably overheard something. My own parents loved her, but rumors were that she’d slept around with neighborhood men—not while her husband was still alive. But after he died fairly young. Whatever she’d done, Regina had developed a tough crust that kept her from caring what other people thought of her.
Maybe
, I thought,
that’s how one gets to be queen
.