Love and Other Four-Letter Words

by Carolyn Mackler

  Kitty made a face. “What are you talking about?”

  “I have this theory,” Phoebe said, “that every person looks like a dog.”

  “A dog?” “It's an interesting thing to figure out”—I shifted positions so I blocked Kitty's view of Phoebe—“like I'm a chocolate Lab and Phoebe's a Jack Russell terrier.”

  “A chocolate Lab and a Jack Russell terrier?” Kitty curled her lip disdainfully, as if she were the Queen of England and Phoebe and I were flea-ridden peasants begging for a hunk of moldy bread. “I'm sorry, but I'm not about to go around telling people I look like a dog. No thank you.”

  We were all quiet for a few minutes, but not good quiet. More the kind of quiet where you can feel tension mounting. After a while, as Phoebe began tossing a stick to the dogs, Kitty started up again about Marla Mueller. But only to me, as if Phoebe weren't two feet away.

  Before I knew it, Phoebe leaned forward, fiddling with the Velcro on her knee brace. “If you ask me,” she said, “cheating on someone when you're in a monogamous relationship is like holding a loaded gun to their head.”

  Kitty shot an if-looks-could-kill look at Phoebe. I felt the color draining from my face. There are some moments in life when you wish you had one of those “get out of jail free” cards from Monopoly and you could make the entire situation instantaneously disappear.

  “I didn't ask you.” Kitty's voice was razor sharp. “But while we're at it, how do you know about what happened with my boyfriend?”

  “I'm sorry.” Phoebe nervously ripped the Velcro back and forth. “I thought it was …”

  “What else did Sammie tell you?”

  Turning to Phoebe, I was about to reassure her that she didn't have to say another word, when her face began to crumple.

  “Kitty—” I started.

  “Did she tell you how her father ditched her and took off for California? Or that her mother is a selfhelp-reading basket case? Or—”

  Phoebe grabbed her backpack and stood up. “It's time for me to go,” she said, not looking either of us in the eye.

  I'm sorry, Phoebe. I wanted to get up and run after her. But it was like one of those nightmares where you try to scream and no sound comes out, you try to run and your feet won't move. As I watched Phoebe walk out, her shoulders slumped, a stiff-eared Dogma in tow, I felt like the most awful person on the planet.

  “What the hell was up with her?” Kitty said as Phoebe turned up Columbus. “Calling me a collie and talking about my boyfriend as if she's some kind of sex-ed instructor? And did you see the way she sprinted in here? I don't think there's anything wrong with that knee of hers.”

  I couldn't speak. I couldn't think. All I could do was feel furious, so furious that if my fist hadn't been clamped around the stress ball, I probably would have hurled it at Kitty.

  “What a freak,”

  Kitty murmured, shaking her head. “Don't call Phoebe a freak,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Kitty shot me a cold glance. “I hardly think you're one to be making judgment calls, after you go and spill my personal life to the entire world.”

  “I told one person. My friend. And what do you think you just did, telling Phoebe about my parents?”

  “If she's such a great friend, then why hadn't you told her yourself?”

  I swallowed several times. I could feel anger building up in my throat.

  Kitty didn't wait for a response. “You've changed, Sammie,” she said, her pale eyes narrowing. “I've been feeling it all weekend. You've changed … and I have to say, I don't like it.”

  “You don't like it because I'm not your personal therapist anymore.”

  “You know what?” Kitty stood up so quickly her plastic cup toppled onto the ground. “You're a freak just like her. You two freaks should be awfully happy together!”

  “Well, at least I'm not an egomaniac!” I shouted back, so loudly that some people paused outside the metal gate.

  And that's when Kitty marched out of the dog run, her head tilted in the air, as if she were some kind of celebrity. I must have been digging my fingernails into the stress ball, because the next thing I knew it exploded in my hand, millions of sand grains filtering onto the wood chips at my feet.

  I once heard this saying, “The best thing about hitting your head against a brick wall is how good it feels when you stop.” That sums up how I feel about Kitty right now. I didn't see her again after our fight because by the time I made it home she'd already flagged a cab to Port Authority. Although I was surprised when Mom recapped Kitty's brief entrance and exit, saying how she'd cited “irreconcilable differences,” I also felt a weight lifted off my shoulders, knowing I didn't have to deal with her anymore.

  What I'm really worried about is Phoebe. I went to the dog run the following morning, ready with an apology I'd prepared in my head the night before. Even though I know I'm not responsible for Kitty's outburst, I still feel like I could have prevented it, by following my initial instinct not to introduce them. And I definitely owed Phoebe an explanation about my parents, especially since she's always been so open about everything in her life.

  But I was completely unprepared for what awaited me on Monday morning. Nothing. No Phoebe, no Dogma, nothing. I sat on our favorite bench for over an hour, watching waves of dogs and owners come and go. After a while, I started to feel nauseous, probably from the thick odor of dog crap, which I'd never noticed until Kitty had pointed it out.

  I must have looked pretty distressed when I got home because Mom launched into a sermon about how friendships have their ebbs and flows. How you and Kitty have a long history together, and with some breathing room, a long future, too.

  Is that what you and Dad are doing? I wanted to say. Ebbing and flowing? Well, please let me know when you've stopped being a tidal pool and started being parents again.

  But I didn't. I was too busy flipping through the phone book for the number of the veterinarian Phoebe once mentioned she takes Dogma to. The patch on Moxie's back had improved for a while, after I'd washed her with that shampoo Charlotte had recommended. But in the past few days it has returned, and much worse this time. It's raw and pink and she won't stop gnawing at it, even though I'm constantly pushing her snout away.

  The receptionist at the vet's office was beside himself when I said I knew Phoebe Frank.

  “Any friend of Phoebe's is a friend of ours,” he chirped.

  I felt like bawling on the spot.

  But when I tried to schedule something, he informed me that there were no available appointments for several weeks. “We're only open a few days a week in August, since most of our patients are out of town.”

  “Can you refer me to another vet?”

  He paused. I could hear the tap-tapping of a keyboard in the background. “Hold on! We have a cancellation tomorrow at four P.M., if you can swing by then.”

  I dashed into the other room and made sure Mom could take Moxie over there, since I had to pick up Becca from gymnastics at the same time. Just before we hung up, after I'd spelled Amoxicillin twice, the receptionist said, “Any friend of Dogma's is a friend of ours.”

  Phoebe would have been thrilled to discover we were going to her vet. She probably would have cracked some joke like Moxie is as sick as a dog. Or she would have asked Moxie how she was feeling, waving a stick just out of her reach until she barked, Rough, rough, rough.

  But Phoebe wasn't in the dog run Tuesday morning either, and I waited for almost two hours this time, hoping to catch her if she decided to come later instead. I wasn't sure what else to do. I mean, we don't even have each other's phone numbers. I know where she lives but I'm not about to march up there, only to find out that she never wants to see my face again.

  After lunch on Tuesday, my mood started to spiral downward. I grabbed my guitar, stuck a Post-it to the bathroom mirror reminding Mom about Moxie's appointment, and headed into Central Park. By midafternoon, I was sitting in the Sheep Meadow, which is this gigantic lawn where people lounge
around in their bathing suits as if it's a beach, just without the water. I rested my arms on my guitar and looked out at the Midtown skyscrapers looming in the distance. And that's when I noticed the giant digital clock on the side of one of the buildings. And that's when my heart started racing. I was supposed to meet Becca in less than twenty minutes!

  Throwing my guitar into its case, I sprinted across the grass and rooted through my pockets for change. Hopefully I could hop on the next crosstown bus, transfer on the East Side and still arrive on time, give or take five minutes.

  “Whose guitar is this?” I overheard Eli asking Becca.

  I paused in the hallway, where I was coming out of the bathroom.

  “Sammie's,” Becca said.

  “She plays guitar?”

  I didn't hear Becca respond, but I could picture her sitting on a tall stool, swinging her bare feet. We'd been home for a few minutes, enough time to devour the left-over blueberry pie that had been in the fridge. Eli hasn't gone to the gardens for two days now, Becca had explained, due to a raging case of poison ivy. He hadn't shown his face since we'd gotten home, but I'd been keeping an eye on the door to his room, which happens to be connected to the kitchen because it was the maid's room in the original apartment.

  I headed through the doorway.

  “Hey,” I said. I was glad I'd picked the blueberry seeds out of my teeth when I'd been in the bathroom.

  “Hey.” Eli scratched his neck.

  His poison ivy wasn't as bad as Becca had described, just some bumpy patches on his cheeks and arms.

  “You play guitar?”

  I nodded, leaning against the counter.

  “What kind of music?”

  “Pretty much anything … but I really like folk music, old stuff…”

  Eli's eyes widened. “You like folk music?”

  “Oh, no,” Becca moaned. Her braces were dotted with blueberry skins. “You've only mentioned Eli's second-favorite obsession, after tree-hugging.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that's mostly what I play.”

  “Would you mind playing something?”

  I tapped my Birkenstock nervously against the floor, like I was keeping time. I never thought twice about playing in front of Mom, Dad, Kitty or all of Central Park for that matter, but I haven't ever performed for someone before.

  “Only if you want to,” Eli added.

  My heart was thumping as I unclasped my case and lifted out my guitar. I sat on a stool, the familiar curves of my instrument pressing against my thighs. I quickly tuned my strings, which tend to slip in warm weather, and began playing Bob Dylan's “Blowin' in the Wind.” It was one of the first songs Dad taught me. A folk singer's staple, he'd said. I didn't sing or anything, but I've figured out a way to fingerpick the melody so it doesn't just sound like a jumble of chords.

  “Wow!” Becca said as soon as I'd finished. “You're really good!”

  “Thanks.”

  I looked over at Eli. “That was beautiful.” Eli caught my eye. “I actually have an early recording of Dylan playing that song.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” Becca moaned again, “now you're going to hear about his famous record collection!”

  “You have a record player?” “Yeah … it used to belong to my dad.”

  I glanced from Eli to Becca. Neither of them has ever mentioned their father before. But I once noticed this photograph in the living room of a man sitting on a swing, holding a redheaded baby in his lap. Hanging upside down off a neighboring bar was a miniature Eli, maybe five or six years old. They all are smiling, even Becca. When I saw the picture it made me feel sad, because none of them knew that in less than a year, he would be dead.

  “Do you want to hear the song?”

  “Sure.”

  Becca patted her hand over her mouth in an exaggerated yawn as she switched on the computer, which is set up in an alcove near the kitchen. “I'm going to do something a little more twenty-first-century.”

  Eli's tiny room was draped floor to ceiling in brightly colored tapestries and a huge poster of the planet Earth with lettering below it that said Love Your Mother. As I sat cross-legged next to his bed, just a single futon mattress directly on the floor, I watched him dig through a pile of records stacked in an orange milk crate.

  “Here it is.” Eli held up a battered album with a picture on the cover of a young Bob Dylan walking arm in arm along a snowy street with a long-haired girl.

  There was a scratchy sound as the needle dropped onto the record. As Dylan's familiar strumming piped through the speakers, Eli slid over so he was sitting next to me. We didn't say anything throughout the whole song, or the next. But midway through “Masters of War,” Eli reached over me to retrieve a tube of Caladryl that was on the crate next to his bed. When he did, his hand brushed against my arm.

  He'd just finished smearing the lotion on his neck when he turned to me.

  “Sammie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know my mom sort of pushed it on you a while ago—” Eli was screwing and unscrewing the Caladryl cap—“but I'm going camping at Bear Mountain this weekend … and the invitation still stands. …”

  “When are you leaving?” I asked, stalling for time.

  “Saturday morning … and we get back Sunday afternoon.”

  My mind suddenly flashed to Jenna. What if she's coming too? I'd rather spend a weekend chained in a torture chamber than with that coyote, but it's not as if I can ask Eli something like that. I began picking at my toenail polish.

  “You don't have to tell me right away,” Eli added, “you can even decide at the last minute.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Just so you know, I didn't invite Jenna. It'll just be me, Shay, my cousin Max and his girlfriend, Ellen.”

  Eli reached across me again, to put the lotion back on his bedside table. This time, when his hand touched my arm, it rested there for a second, which sent a feeling through my body that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  When I unlocked our front door a half hour later, Moxie galloped out to greet me. I noticed that the raw patch on her back had some bloody crevices where she'd been gnawing it this morning.

  “Mom?”

  “Ummhmm,” Mom called from the bathroom, where she was brushing her teeth.

  “What did the vet say?”

  I heard the faucet running. After a minute, Mom appeared in the doorway, a dollop of froth in the corner of her mouth. She just stood there for a few seconds with this uncomfortable look on her face.

  “What did the vet say?” I repeated, clenching my teeth.

  “Sammie …”

  “You didn't forget, did you?” I suddenly felt all the emotion from the past few days, from Kitty, from Phoebe, from everything, welling up in my throat.

  Mom nodded solemnly as she pointed to where Ten Days to Self-Esteem was sprawled facedown on her bed. “I was reading … somehow the hours just slipped away. I called them a few minutes ago and they're closed for the day.”

  “How could you? I left you that Post-it and everything!”

  “These things happen. …”

  “These things don't just happen. I asked you to do one small thing”—my tone grew louder as I snatched up Mom's book and flung it against the wall—“and you were too consumed with your emotional suffering to care for a poor dog in pain!”

  Mom's face paled as she stared at the mark on the wall where her book had made contact. “I think you're overreacting … you're being completely unfair….”

  “Unfair?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Do you want to talk about unfair?” I stormed around the apartment, the words springing off my tongue faster than I could think. I paused in front of the air conditioner, still in its box in the hallway, exactly where it had been since it was delivered two weeks ago. “Let's talk about how nothing ever gets done around here unless I do it! Let's talk about how I have to worry night and day about our lives!”

  Mom froze in
the doorway, watching my tirade.

  “I know separating with Dad is hard for you,” I shouted. “And I know starting over in this city is hard. But it's hard for me too. Dad leaving was the most painful thing …”

  I paused. I'd never said it out loud before and it was making my throat tighten up.

  And that's when Mom slipped into her sandals, not even pulling the straps over her heels, and grabbed her set of keys. As she started out of the apartment, I shouted after her, “Did you ever stop to think how any of this makes me feel?”

  But she didn't answer. She just ran out, the toothpaste still on her face, leaving the door swinging on its hinges. As soon as I heard the elevator arrive, I slammed the door as hard as I could. And then, just because I felt like it, I opened the door and slammed it again.

  Pacing around the apartment, my hair flipping wildly in front of my eyes, I didn't feel the least bit of remorse. In fact, when I noticed my dictionary sitting on the floor, I slid Dad's card out of the back, quickly scanned the note and dialed his phone number.

  I hadn't expected to get his answering machine, but I was so fired up by this point that nothing was going to stop me. When I heard Dad's voice say, Leave a message after the beep, I spewed every thought that crossed my mind. All about how life is anything but fine, how Mom had fallen apart, and how, most of all, he had betrayed my belief that he was the one person I could always count on. I was in the middle of a lecture about washing hands of family responsibilities when his machine cut me off. Even though I'd said practically everything, I pressed Redial, listened to his message again and then shouted into the phone, “And by the way, I'll tell you when I'm done talking, not your stupid machine!”

  After I slammed down the phone, I looked out the window for a while, feeling small and alone, yet strangely connected at the same time. I began humming this old Janis Joplin song, “Me and Bobby McGee.” There's this part where she sings, Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose….

  And that's when it hit me. Over the past few months, I've given up my entire life, my parents have orbited into a galaxy far, far away, my best friend has been completely self-absorbed and now my new friend wants nothing to do with me. But in this inexplicable way, it all makes me free. Free to take risks I wouldn't ordinarily take because, in the end, I haven't got much to lose.