The Second Summer of the Sisterhood 6

Lena loved Carmen’s kitchen. It felt safe and contained, unlike the sprawling renovation at her house, with all its gleaming white and silver steel and too-bright halogen bulbs. Also, Lena loved the food Carmen’s kitchen had in it. It was all avocados and low-fat chips and herbal teas—girl stuff. None of the giant twelve-packs of beer and endless pork chops that jammed up the fridge at her house. There were so many fewer compromises in an apartment for two than in a house for four.

“Honey, would you like a glass of iced tea?”

Lena looked at Carmen’s mom. She appeared to be rearranging the pots in the lower cabinets. Her hair was back in a ponytail, and she looked like she was about twenty. Christina was always pretty, but Lena had never seen her look as animated and happy as she looked today.

“I’d love one,” Lena said.

 

Carmen was scanning the movie section of the newspaper. “I’ll have one too,” she said without looking up.

 

“How’s your mom?” Christina asked over the noise of the sink. She always asked this of Lena in a slightly guilty way, as if she were trying to pick up her dry cleaning without the ticket.

 

“She’s all right.”

 

“And how is your boyfriend? What’s his name?”

 

“Kostos,” Lena said reluctantly, never eager to discuss her love life. “But he’s not my boyfriend anymore. We broke up.”

 

“Ohhh. I’m sorry. Was the long-distance thing too hard?”

 

Lena liked that explanation. It was succinct and it didn’t necessarily make her sound like a lunatic. “Yes. Exactly.”

 

Christina took a full pitcher from the refrigerator. “Reminds me of your mother. She must know what you’re going through.”

 

Lena was bewildered. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

 

Christina didn’t seem to realize that not all mothers talked to their daughters about everything all the time.

 

“Anyway, I don’t think she knows anything about long-distance relationships,” Lena said.

 

Christina lined up three glasses. “Of course she does. She was with Eugene for at least four or five years.”

 

Lena looked doubtfully at Christina.

 

Christina and Lena’s mom hadn’t been close for a long time. Christina’s memory seemed to be getting jumbled, maybe on account of her own love affair.

 

“Who’s Eugene?”

 

Carmen had now torn herself from the movie section. She was looking back and forth from Lena to Christina.

 

“Who’s Eugene?” Christina repeated. The look on her face slowly transformed from surprise to uncertainty to anxiety.

 

“Uh . . .” She turned her back to the girls and poured the tea.

 

“Mama? Hello? Helloooooooo?”

 

Christina took a long time stirring in the sugar. When she turned back around, her face didn’t look open anymore. “Never mind. I might be mixed up. It was all a long time ago.”

 

Christina was a lovable, big-hearted, totally sweet person, but she was a bad actress and a horrible liar. Lena had believed she was mixed up before. Now she felt certain she wasn’t. Carmen’s eyes were narrowed like laser beams on her mother’s face. “Never mind? Never mind? Are you joking?”

 

Christina cast a longing look at the door. “I’ve got to call Mimmy, honey. It’s already afternoon.”

 

“You’re not going to tell us?” Carmen looked as if she were ready to explode.

Christina’s eyes darted around nervously. “There’s nothing to tell. I was mistaken. I was thinking about someone else. It’s not important.” She snapped her mouth shut and left the kitchen in a hurry. She knew as well as anyone that Carmen didn’t let a person off the hook easily.

“It’s not important?” Lena echoed faintly.

 

Carmen looked at Lena knowingly. “That obviously means it is.”

 

“Who’s Eugene?”

Lena let it drop quietly between dinner and dessert as her mother loaded the plates into the dishwasher. Lena was clearing the table. It was just the two of them in the kitchen. Effie was at a friend’s, and their dad was reading the newspaper in the dining room.

“What?” Ari turned around.

 

“Who’s Eugene?”

 

Right away Lena knew she was causing a disturbance.

 

“Why are you asking me that?” Her mother was holding a plate in each hand.

 

“I just . . . want to know.”

 

“Who told you about him?”

 

“Nobody,” Lena said. If her mother wasn’t giving any information, then she didn’t feel like giving any either. Besides, she didn’t want to get Carmen’s mom in trouble.

 

Ari’s face took on a frustrated, unpolished look. She seemed to be calculating in a hurry. “Well, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

 

“Then why are you whispering?”

 

Lena hadn’t meant to torture her mother, but that was how it was working out.

 

“I’m not,” she said, also in a whisper.

Lena stopped. This was feeling a little out of control. She wanted information, badly. The harder it was to get it, the more critical it seemed. On the other hand, the look on her mother’s face scared her a little.
Lena’s dad ambled into the kitchen. “How about some cheesecake?” he asked agreeably.

Lena’s mother cast her a look that said, in no uncertain terms, Do not open your mouth or I will ground you until you are an old woman .

 

“I’m going upstairs,” Lena informed the granite countertop.

 

“Nothing sweet?” her dad asked. They had a common love of dessert.

 

“Not tonight,” she said.

 

“Do you think Mom had a boyfriend before Dad?” she asked Effie when she appeared in Lena’s room awhile later.

 

“No. Nobody important.”

 

“What makes you so sure?” Lena asked.

 

“Because she would’ve told us about it,” Effie reasoned.

 

“Maybe not. She doesn’t tell us everything.”

 

Effie rolled her eyes. “Mom has a very boring life. Maybe there isn’t anything to tell.”

 

Lena thought for a while. “I think Mom had a boyfriend named Eugene. I think she lived here and he lived in Greece, and I think she might have really loved him.”

 

Effie raised her eyebrows. “You do, do you?”

 

Lena nodded.

 

“Well, I think you should stick with your own tragic love story.”

 

“David wants to take us both out to dinner,” Christina announced that evening, as though Ed McMahon had just arrived with the giant novelty check.

 

“Why?”

 

“Carmen!” Christina was too happy to be mad. “Because he wants to meet you!”

 

Christina had the Weight Watchers cookbook open on the counter and onions sizzling in a pan.

 

“When?”

 

“Tomorrow night?” Christina suggested.

 

“I’m going to the movies with Lena.”

 

“Thursday?” “Baby-sitting.”

 

“Friday?”

Carmen studied her mother in annoyance. Usually a person got the hint by the third try. “I’m . . . going out with Porter,” she said, satisfied with her answer even though it was a lie. Her mother wasn’t the only one in the world with a boyfriend.

Christina’s eyes turned from disappointed to pleased. “Bring him! We’ll go out, all four of us!”

 

“David wants to take us out to dinner,” Carmen announced into the phone an hour later. Her tone was somewhat different than her mother’s had been.

 

Tibby exhaled. “It sounds like it’s getting serious. You know, time to meet the parents. Except the other way around.”

 

“I told her I was going out with Porter, and she wants him to come too.”

 

“A double date with your mother?” Tibby said, at least partly enjoying the absurdity of it.

 

“I know,” Carmen moaned. “It might be better this way, though. I’ll have something else to pay attention to. And maybe the guys can talk about tire irons or something.”

 

“Maybe.” Tibby sounded doubtful.

 

“The only thing is, I don’t actually have a plan to go out with Porter. I made that up.”

 

“Oh, Carmen.”

 

“Yeah, so now I have to ask him.”

 

Tibby laughed, but Carmen could tell it was appreciative. “Do you like him?” she asked.

 

“Who?”

 

“Porter!”

 

“Oh. Uh, I guess so.”

 

“You guess so?”

 

“He’s really good-looking. Don’t you think?”

 

“He looks fine,” Tibby said a little impatiently. “But Carmen, you shouldn’t ask him out if you don’t like him. It kind of sends the wrong message.”

 

“Who said I didn’t like him? Maybe I do like him,” Carmen snapped.

 

“Gosh. You make it sound so romantic.”

 

Carmen laughed. She bit at a loose piece of skin next to her thumbnail. “Did I tell you my mom put us on a diet?”

 

“No.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Poor you.”

 

“Except I walked to Giant and bought three flavors of Ben & Jerry’s.”

 

Tibby laughed again. “Atta girl.”

 

Hey Bee Bee,
I am a big fat loser, but what else is new? The big event on my social calendar is a double date with my mother. I am totally serious.
How did this happen? A week ago my mom’s big plans were a dentist appointment. Now she’s doing something with David like every other night.
Don’t say you’re happy for her. You said that last time. You’re not the one eating the frozen pizza.
Last night she went out wearing this cropped shirt. I swear you could see her belly button. Not pretty, Bee.

This morning I called her at the office to see if I could go to a ten o’clock movie and she said, “Use your judgment.” !!!! How come my judgment was never good enough to use before David came along?

Am I just being a selfish brat? Be honest.

 

But not too honest.

 

Write soon and tell me everything about Gilda Tomko. I miss you so much.

 

Love,

 

Carmen “the Brat” Lowell

 

“Meet us for breakfast if you want,” Maura called later that night as the elevator door closed. “We’re walking down the highway to IHOP.”

“All right,” Tibby said through the door. Being New Yorkers, Maura and Alex liked to joke about how other places didn’t have sidewalks, only highways. Tibby nodded along like she was a New Yorker too, not a product of pure suburbia.

The pulsing sleep light of her iBook greeted her. “Hi,” she said to her computer.

 

“Hi,” it said back.

 

Tibby started. She felt her blood zooming around her body. The computer laughed. It had the voice of Brian. Tibby switched on the overhead light.

 

“Oh, my God! Brian! You scared the crap out of me.”

 

He came over to her and pulled on her arm. “Hey, Tibby.” His smile was giant.

 

Her smile was giant too, and automatic. She had missed him. “What are you doing here?”

 

“I missed you.”

 

“I missed you too,” she said without thinking.

 

“And also, I thought I’d bring you home.”

 

“You mean for the weekend?”

 

“Yeah,” he said.

 

“That’s not for three days.”

 

“That’s true.” He shrugged. “I missed you.”

 

“How did you get in here?”

 

“Somebody let me in downstairs.” He pointed to her door. “And you could pick that lock with anything.”

 

“Really? That’s comforting.” She missed Bee when she thought of lock-picking.

 

“Is it okay if I . . . ?” He pointed to a dark green sleeping bag in a roll on the floor.

 

“Sleep here?” she asked.

 

He nodded.

 

“Yeah. Of course. I mean, where else are you going to go?”

 

He looked a little uncertain. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

 

When she stopped to think about it, Tibby realized it was pretty profound having a boy stay all night in your room. It was really like college in that way.

But then again, Brian wasn’t a boy. Well, he was, technically speaking. But Tibby didn’t act or feel around him the way she did around any other boys she had ever known. Much as she loved him, Brian was about as sexy as tube socks.

She studied him for a moment. It was funny how much he had changed since the day she met him. He was much taller. (It helped that he’d been eating dinner at her house two or three nights a week.) He washed his hair sometimes. (Tibby was always taking showers; she suspected he had learned by example.) He wore a belt. (Okay, so maybe she had bought him one.) But still he was Brian.

“I could get in trouble, though,” Tibby said. “If the RA or anybody sees you.”

 

Brian nodded solemnly. “I thought of that too. I’ll make sure nobody sees me.”

 

“Okay.” She knew her parents wouldn’t get mad about it. That wasn’t the issue.

 

He sat down on her night table.

 

“I saw Nicky and Katherine yesterday,” he told her.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Katherine fell down the steps. She wanted you to fix it.”

 

“She wanted me?”

 

“Uh-huh.”

Tibby felt her cheeks warm. Mostly she kept those two small creatures at bay. She knew how much her parents wanted her to interact with them. Every time Tibby let Katherine climb on her lap, she felt her mother’s opportunism, her constant desire for free baby-sitting. When Bugs Bunny looked at Daffy Duck on the desert island, he saw a big, juicy roasted duck. When Alice looked at Tibby, she saw an able-bodied teenage baby-sitter.

“I played Dragon Spots with Nicky.”

 

“He must have loved that.” Brian was fostering in Nicky an early love of video games.

 

She felt a little bit uneasy that Brian was still going to her house when she wasn’t there. Was it really Tibby he liked or was it the Rollinses’ tinies?

 

“How’s it going here?” Brian asked. He looked at the sketches and notes scattered over her desk.

 

“Pretty good.”

 

“How’s your movie? Did you decide what it’s going to be about yet?”

Tibby had spoken to Brian many times since she had decided and started working on the movie. But for some reason she hadn’t told him about it. She gathered the sketches into a pile. “I think so.”

“What?”

 

“Maybe about my mom.” She didn’t feel like elaborating.

 

His face lit up. “Really? That’s a great idea.”

 

Brian had an annoying tendency to like Alice. “Yeah.”

 

“How are your friends?” Brian asked. “I mean, those new ones you met.” His eyebrows peaked over his nose in that earnest way he had.

 

“They’re . . .” She was going to say nice, but the word didn’t fit. Great seemed to carry the wrong connotation too. “. . . all right.”

 

“I’ll meet them tomorrow, hopefully.” Brian began unrolling his sleeping bag.

 

“Sure,” she said. She wasn’t quite sure about that.

He kept his toothbrush and toothpaste in a crumpled plastic Wallman’s bag. Her bathroom kit was made of thick, see-through blue plastic with a zipper. “You can go first,” she offered. She peered out the door. The bathroom was only a few yards down the hall. “Go ahead,” she said.

While she waited for him, she decided to fish her extra blanket down from the closet shelf to give him a little extra padding on the hard floor. A big Jiffy envelope with Lena’s handwriting on it came down with the blanket.

The envelope seemed to stare at her critically. She knew the Pants were in there, and yet she hadn’t even opened it. Why not?

She knew why, really. When she opened the Pants, she would remember about last summer and Bailey and Mimi and everything else. She would have to see the crooked red heart she’d embroidered onto the side of the left knee. She would have to remember those strange, long days after Bailey’s funeral when she’d sat alone on the back screened porch making endless ragged stitches. Maybe she wasn’t ready to think about it right now.

A few minutes later the room was dark and Tibby and Brian were both lying on their backs looking up at the ceiling. Her first-ever sleepover with a boy.

 

“Did you quit Travel Zone?” Tibby asked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Brian moved from one job to the next. He was a skilled Webmaster and all-around techno-dork. He could get hired at twenty bucks an hour no matter what he did.

 

They were quiet. She listened to his breathing. She could tell he wasn’t asleep yet. Her throat felt tight and achy.

In the first few months of their friendship, there had been quiet, full moments between them, and Brian had brought up the subject of Bailey. It was hard for Tibby every time he did. After a while she asked him not to. She said when they were quiet together, they would both know who they were thinking about.

Tonight in this small dorm room in this strange place, they both knew who they were thinking about.