Say the Word
Page 1
SAY THE WORD
jeannine garsee
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Acknowledgments
Also by Jeannine Garsee
Imprint
This book is dedicated to my sister, Karen Margosian, and to the memory of our mother, Myrlin Moeller Fischer.
1
When the phone slashes a machete through my brain at six fifteen a.m. it can mean only one of two things: Dad somehow found out I was sucking face with Devon Connolly last night. Or somebody’s dead.
I lean over LeeLee’s semi-lifeless body to snatch up the receiver. On second thought it might be my grandmother, Nonny: Shawnie, your grandfather’s fallen and he can’t get up! Yes, people say that. Nonny’s said it so often, EMS threatened to bill her if she hounds them again. “Hello?”
“Shawna?” A voice I almost but don’t quite recognize. “I need to speak to your father.”
LeeLee flips over with an irritated grunt. I stretch the phone cord, trying not to garrote my best friend. “Who is this?”
“It’s Fran.”
Fran? Francine Goodman. Dubbed the Frankfurter by LeeLee and a few nastier names by my dad. I make it a point not to call her anything at all.
“Is your father there?”
“N-no,” I stammer, awake now, but confused. “He’s in California.” At a medical conference at Cedars-Sinai, I could add. But it’s none of her business. Fran stole my mother away from me when I was seven years old. Why is she calling my house at the crack of dawn?
“When will he be back?”
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
No answer. I can picture her clearly although I haven’t seen her, or Mom, in three years. Short bristly haircut. A round face, deceivingly motherly. Brown eyes circled with spidery laugh lines, though Fran rarely laughs. Mom’s the “laugher” of the two; she takes nothing seriously. Only her photography, and Fran, and Fran’s precious little boys with the funny Jewish names. No wonder the last time I visited them in New York I almost dropped dead from appendicitis. Mom blew it off. At least Fran figured it out.
Fran draws a quavering breath. “Honey, I’m sorry, but—well, your mom had a stroke last night. The doctors don’t think she’ll make it. You really should come.” She chokes, and adds, “I’m so sorry, Shawna,” before hanging up on me.
I sit there, phone in hand, breathing in one breath after another. LeeLee, sensing something awful, drags the pillow off her face to peer at me through mascara-smudged eyes. “Huh? What?”
“My mom had a stroke.”
“Shut up!”
“That was the Frankfurter. She had a stroke. She’s not gonna make it.”
LeeLee scrambles up. “No way. Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!”
LeeLee bites her lip, maybe waiting for me to go berserk, or faint, or something equally dramatic. Breathe in, breathe out . . . breathe in, breathe out. . . My chest hurts, but the rest of me feels numb.
“Are you gonna cry?” LeeLee touches my hand as I shake my head hard. “Want me to call your dad?”
“He’s probably not up. It’s only three in LA.”
“God, Shawna, who cares what time it is? Call him! Now!” But my limbs refuse to work, so LeeLee grabs the phone out of my hand. “What’s his number?”
“I don’t know.” It’s programmed into my cell phone, but I can’t remember where I left it.
LeeLee punches zero and magically connects to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Then she punches more numbers, yells, “This is a dire emergency!” and then slams the receiver down in triumph. She takes my hand again, her fingers hot against my icy skin. “They’ll give him the message. You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. I promise.”
And I burst into tears.
2
My life wasn’t always this complicated. And Mom wasn’t always a lesbian.
Once when I was eleven and still hoping she’d come back, I said, “Maybe it’s not true. You don’t look like Fran”—who, at the time, looked pretty butch to me. “So maybe you’re not really, you know. One of them”
Mom snapped back, “I’m a lesbian, Shawna. Les-bi-an. Why are you so afraid to say that word?”
But what lesbian looks like a ravishing, Scandinavian faerie? Pale blond hair, Nordic eyes, a reed-thin frame—all of which I inherited, minus the ravishingness. People don’t expect Drop-Dead Gorgeous when they hear the word “lesbian
.” They think crew cuts, Harleys, and a wallet in the back pocket.
I haven’t seen Mom since I was fourteen. I’ve spoken to her on the phone, but mostly in grunts and monosyllables.
Now the worst thing I ever said to her springs to my mind: “Don’t come. I hate you. Just leave me alone.”
3
LeeLee toasts me an English muffin and coaxes what might pass for a chai latte out of my espresso machine. I sneak the muffin under the table to my mini dachshund, Charles, who licks my fingers clean with joyful slurps.
The phone shrills. LeeLee whips up the receiver. “Hi, Dr. Gallagher. Yeah, hang on.”
“What’s going on?” Dad, of course, half-asleep and quite perturbed.
Unlike Fran, I can’t ease my way into it. “Mom had a stroke,” I blurt out. “She’s not gonna make it, and Fran wants me to come to New York, and—”
As Dad shouts something unintelligible in my ear, I drop the phone and bolt from the kitchen with Charles scuttling beside me on stubby, excited legs. I hear LeeLee mumbling to Dad as I curl up on the window seat in the dining room and stare out at the leaves on the trees, glinted with red and gold.
A minute later, she joins me. “You owe me a thanks. I convinced him you’re not about to have a complete mental breakdown.” She eyes me nervously. “You’re not, right?”
I shake my head, my forehead pressed against the windowpane. “So what’d he say?”
“Well, after he got done bitching about how he’s not pulling you out of school to go visit that beepity-beep mother of yours, and I politely reminded him that, um, this might be your last visit. . .” LeeLee hiccups apologetically. “He gave me his credit card number and wants you to book your own flight.”
That figures. “He’s not coming with me?”
LeeLee knows a stupid question when she hears one. She answers it anyway. “No, he says he’s got an awards dinner tonight.”
I guess an awards dinner is more important than the fact that the mother of your only child may croak any second. Not that I blame him, I guess. Mom left him, and for a woman, no less. How humiliating is that? Of course he’s bitter.
But I dread flying to New York alone. I dread seeing my mom, gazing into the gaping jaws of death. And I dread facing the Frankfurter, dread fighting to maintain my usual polite persona when, yes, I’m bitter, too. Because Fran’s the reason Mom also dumped me.
LeeLee hands me the paper with Dad’s credit card number. I crumple it up and toss it aside. “I know the number.” Dad makes me use it a gazillion times a year to order stuff for the house, gifts for his employees, and flowers, or whatever, to impress his floozy of the week. He tends to forget I’m his daughter, not a live-in secretary.
“I wonder what happened.” LeeLee touches her nose jewel thoughtfully. “Did she just, ya know, fall out? Did Fran find her?”
I hug myself. “Can we possibly talk about something else?”
“Okay,” she says quickly. She drops down beside me and draws up her feet. “Um, so, wanna talk about last night? You and Devon Connolly? Wow, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes . . .”
I can’t believe I forgot about Devon Connolly. And it seems wrong to be talking about him at a time like this. “We were just goofing around.”
“Yeah, right. I never knew you liked the dude.”
Neither did I, till last night. I’ve known Devon my whole life—he’s the twin brother of my ex–best friend, Susan—and I never thought of him that way. Last night sort of happened out of the blue.
“I can’t believe Susan even invited us to that party,” LeeLee goes on. She sticks a finger down her throat for emphasis.
“She didn’t invite you. You crashed, remember?”
“Well, it was the least I could do for my BFF.” She winds an arm around my neck. “Why don’t you come over for breakfast? I’ll make you a Puerto Rican omelet.”
I lean my cheek briefly against her glossy hair. “Thanks, but I’ve got stuff to take care of. You know, call the airline . ..” Maybe clue in a few people. Like Nonny and Poppy, Uncle Dieter and Aunt Colleen . . . Oh, hell, I can just hear Aunt Colleen.
“Well, if you change your mind, chica . ..”
I’m tempted to go. I love the Velezes. They’re so very different from my own uptight, neurotic, totally-not-down-to-earth family. Dinnertime at my house, for example, consists of me at one end of the table, Dad on the other, neither of us speaking as our housekeeper, Klara, dishes up broccoli florets and vichyssoise. Dinnertime at the Velezes means industrial-sized pans of beans, meat, rice, and tortillas planted on the table, a general free-for-all, every kid for himself. A sloppy, noisy house booming with Spanish music, where I can kick back, practice my español, and pretend LeeLee’s brothers and sisters belong to me.
I know Dad would prefer me to find a more “suitable” best friend. Somebody not Puerto Rican. Somebody whose parents speak English.
Somebody who can afford to pay Wade Prep’s heavy-duty tuition without depending on scholarships and grants. But who in their right mind would give up a best friend like LeeLee?
With a hug and a cheerful “Adiós,” LeeLee takes off.
I scoop up Charles and hug him, already wishing I’d gone with her.
4
Sometimes I swear I have three personalities.
Perfect Shawna is the one I present to the world. Perfect Shawna would slit her throat before she’d ever be unkind. She makes perfect grades. She makes her daddy proud. Perfect Shawna is polite to a fault, admired by everyone.
Pathetic Shawna hovers at the edge. She grovels for attention. She’s the one who let Devon Connolly grope her boobs in the Connollys’ basement last night. She can never make an independent decision of her own. She’s also the biggest suck-up on earth.
Thankfully she’s usually rescued by Perfect Shawna. Well, except for last night . . .
Evil Shawna lurks, always planning, always thinking. Always blurting out crap that neither of the others have the guts to say out loud.
Secretly, I kind of like Evil Shawna. But I’m scared of her, too. She could easily get out of hand and mess up my life.
Of course it’s Perfect Shawna who makes the necessary calls.
Phone call #1: The airline ticket counter.
I find that I can’t catch a flight to New York till seven a.m. tomorrow. When the unsympathetic booking agent drones, “Ma’am, you’re lucky to get that one,” Perfect Shawna jots down the info, and thanks her, no less.
Phone call #2: Nonny.
“Oh, dear God, oh, dear God” is all she says for five minutes. Then: “You’re not thinking of flyin’ all the way to New York by yourself?”
“I have to. Dad’s in California.”
“Oh, no! Oh, Shawna, dearie, why don’t ye wait till he comes back? Then you—”
“She could be dead by then!” Instantly, I’m ashamed as Evil Shawna creeps in. Nonny and Uncle Dieter are the only ones who don’t try to remind me every second how worthless Mom is. More quietly, I add, “Fran says she won’t make it, so, well, I guess I should go.”
“How will ye get to the airport?” Nonny pronounces it “ayr-r-r-port” in her husky Scots brogue. “Ye know I can’t leave your granddad for more than a wee second.” Of course not. Last time she left him for more than a wee second, Poppy rolled his wheelchair down the basement steps and blew out a hip.
“Nonny. I have a car, remember?”
I endure all the reasons why I should not drive myself to the airport. Then, after severe instructions to keep my valuables in my bra and not to drink anything on the plane that doesn’t come in a sealed container, Nonny bids me a mournful good-bye. I hang up a teeny bit harder than necessary. Hello? I’m seventeen, not seven.
Phone call #3: Aunt Colleen.
Aside from Susan Connolly and her entourage of winged monkeys, Aunt Colleen’s my least favorite person in the world. Her response explains why: “Well, I’m only surprised it’s not cancer. That woman smoked like a chimney.”
>
I clench the receiver. “That woman”—my mom—has a name. And I don’t mean dyke or any of the other nasty names Aunt Colleen likes to throw around.
“Well, I’m leaving in the morning,” I say curtly. “I thought I’d let you know.”
I picture her battling the Botox to draw her face into a scowl. “How long will you be gone? What about school? You can’t miss school! What about—” And on and on. Poor Uncle Dieter, who has to live with this witch.
Phone call #4: To my own cell phone, which I haven’t seen since that party last night.
I call my number three or four times, but I can’t hear it ringing, not in the house, not in my car. I must have left it at the Connollys’. Well, I am not climbing onto a jet with no link back to earth. I’ll want to say good-bye to Nonny, at least, if a mad shoe bomber shows up.
Phone call #5: Fran, of course. After I work up the nerve. A male voice answers. “May I speak to Fran?”
“Who’s this?”
“Penny’s daughter. Shawna?”
“Are you coming?” he asks abruptly.
Annoyed, I ask, “Who is this?”
“Arye.”
Oh, ri-ight, Arye, Fran’s older son. My last impression of him: a chunky, bucktoothed, zit-riddled, short-tempered smart-ass. We met only once, on my last visit to New York. We did not hit it off.
“Well?” Arye prompts. “Mom’s not here, she’s with Penny. Are you coming or not?”
“Of course I’m coming.” I rattle off my flight details, and everything grows quiet. I think he’s waiting for me to ask about Mom. “Um, how’s she doing?”
“She’s on life support. You better fly fast.” Click.
5
I dawdle on the sidewalk in front of my ex-best friend’s house. Up until ninth grade we’d been tight our whole lives. Same baby playgroups, dance classes, Brownie troops, etc. Not only that, but we were kind of famous at one time. Susan’s mom, a writer, and my mom, a photographer, did a picture book series called Susie and Shawna. For our first seven years, till Mom took off with Fran, we starred in over a dozen books, like Susie and Shawna Go Trick-or-Treating, Susie and Shawna Have Fun at the Circus, blah, blah. The books made scads of money. Everyone knew Susie and Shawna.
Susan dropped the “Susie” at the end of eighth grade. She also dropped me for a new best friend, the intolerably evil Paige Berry. That summer Susan had a sleepover and invited a couple of girls I barely knew: Brittany Giannelli, who could benefit from some serious nourishment through a stomach tube, and Alyssa Hunt, currently the top slut of Wade Prep’s upper school.