The Best of Enemies

by Jen Lancaster

  Welcome to Jelly-Glass City, Population, Us.

  “Ahh! I can’t do a coed dorm, Jack!” Sars squeals, eyes huge behind her thick tortoise-shell Lisa Loeb glasses. “No way!”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Um, boys!” she replies, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world. She seems so keyed up she’s practically vibrating in her chair.

  My brother Bobby looks up from his spot on the leather couch. He’s seated next to Gretzky, one of our enormous black Labs, while inhaling a mixing bowl full of Count Chocula. Until a moment ago, he was intently watching cartoons.

  Sometimes I wonder how he’s nineteen and not nine.

  Bobby claims his deep and abiding love for Scooby-Doo has only grown more deep and more abiding after taking his first bong hit at college last year. He says he finally understands why Scooby and Shaggy are perpetually so hungry.

  “The munchies are real,” he’d said, like he was sharing a sage truth.

  “Why, what’d we do, Sars?” Bobby asks, through a mouthful of cereal. He seems genuinely confused and a bit hurt. Bobby and Sars have been buddies for as long as she and I have. The neighborhood’s called us the Three Musketeers for years.

  “You didn’t do anything, Bobby,” Sars explains with a giggle. “I just can’t live with boys.”

  “Is it the smell?” he asks. He sticks his face inside his shirt and takes a whiff, then shrugs. “You get used to it after a while.”

  It’s true.

  You do eventually become immune to the masculine stink. Live with it long enough and it’s like someone playing a jam box too loud on the el train; you tune it out. For me, three brothers minus one mother plus a host of flatulent dogs and perpetually unwashed bags of athletic gear over many years equals a lifetime of olfactory indifference.

  I explain, “Sars, the dorm’s segregated by floor—guys on the evens, gals on the odds. Boys won’t live next door. You’re not going to bump into dudes walking down the hallway wearing nothing but a towel.”

  “Wanna see a dude in a towel? ’Cause I could make that happen right now if you’d like,” Bobby teases, waggling his eyebrows.

  Normally, this would prompt Sars to effortlessly lob an insult in return, but today she says, “Um, can I take a rain check?” and shriek-giggles some more as her face turns pink.

  Wait, is Sars blushing? Over something Bobby said? And what’s with the affected laugh? I peer at her flushed cheeks. Nah, not blushing. She’s probably just coming down with the flu.

  “Offer’s on the table when you change your mind,” he says, returning his focus to the television. He’s not sure what to make of her odd reaction, either.

  To deflect, I tell him, “Hey, Bobby? I’ve seen this episode before. Turns out the old man would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.”

  Bobby slumps down at this news. He seems legitimately disappointed at my having wrecked the ending, and now I feel bad. He’s never as good at taking it as he is at dishing it out.

  To appease him, I say, “I think Daphne wears a bathing suit in this episode,” and he quickly rallies. Bobby’s smile returns and he focuses on the screen again. While he watches, he finishes the cereal portion of his breakfast and tips the bowl in order to drink the remaining half-and-half, which he had to use because, guess what? We’re out of milk. Dad said for all we drink, he should have been a dairy farmer, not a trial lawyer. In Saint Louis, my mother would make sure we always had at least two gallons in the kitchen and a spare in the garage fridge. Said she hated having to run out in the night to buy more. Yet the one time she did finally run out for more, she didn’t come back.

  The cream trickles out the sides of Bobby’s bowl and travels in twin tributaries down either side of his mouth onto the couch. In Sars’s house, this would be tantamount to treason, but no one worries much about sanitation around here. Really, it’s not like our house is a showplace, at least not since we moved in. This place reminded me of a small chateau when Dad bought it, what with the stone exterior, pointy roof, and the turrets. But years of indoor touch-football games and ill-groomed Labrador retrievers have turned this castle into more of a dungeon.

  Bobby absently dabs at the stray liquid with the bottom of his college logo shirt. Our family consensus is that he applied to USC strictly because he thought it would be funny to wear “Trojans” gear. (Related note? The only other place he applied was the University of South Carolina. Go, ’Cocks!) I guess this is the upside of not having a mom like Sars has. No one’s here to cry over the milk spills. Gretzky ambles off his side of the couch to bat cleanup on the spots Bobby missed. See? All fixed.

  After Dad became our sole caretaker, he realized our table manners were devolving into that of prison inmates, so he started to take us out to eat more often. He figured we’d learn how to conduct ourselves from watching the other diners. So, thank you, random polite people at Carmen’s Pizza, for showing at least most of us how to use a napkin.

  “Why can’t you live around guys?” I ask. I’m genuinely flummoxed. Hell, I’m nervous to live around all the girls. Guys I understand. Girls confuse me with their secret hierarchies and ever-changing alliances.

  Sars wrings her hands in a way that looks like she’s washing them. “Because it’s too much pressure! When you live with boys, you have to be groomed all the time! You can’t just go down to breakfast with no makeup on, hair in a ponytail, and sweatpants. Can’t be done!”

  “Of course it can,” I reason. “It’s called ‘every day of my life.’”

  My morning routine entails washing my face and sticking my hair in a scrunchie. That’s thirty seconds, tops. Seriously, my makeup bag contains a tube of tinted Chapstick. Once, I tried to use eye shadow and blush, but John-John said I looked like Dee Snider from Twisted Sister. I can’t disagree.

  “Yeah, you can go without all the trimmings because you’re naturally gorgeous,” Sars says. “Some of us are going to need Maybelline.”

  My eldest brother, Teddy, comes shuffling into the kitchen wearing a wrinkled oxford and striped boxer shorts. I notice Sars peeking at his thighs, which are still really buff from years of playing hockey. Who can blame her for looking? I’m jealous of his muscle definition, too.

  Teddy’s bedhead borders on magnificent and he smells like that time we visited the Anheuser-Busch factory. Since he’s over twenty-one, he’s done little but hit the bars on Rush Street with his buddies ever since he arrived home for Christmas break earlier this week.

  “Who’s naturally gorgeous?” he asks. I swear, Ted’s always on the prowl. He can run into the Jewel for athlete’s foot powder and bulk toilet paper and he’ll still come out with some girl’s digits scribbled on a scrap of grocery bag.

  Teddy cracks open the fridge, which contains a stack of near-empty pizza boxes, petrified containers of moo shu pork and Hunan beef, and fifteen crusty mustard jars that will eventually be used as drinking glasses. He has to move a lacrosse ball to get to the orange juice and then chugs straight from the carton.

  “Dehydrated much?” Bobby chuckles to himself.

  “Munchies much?” Teddy counters.

  Sars clears her throat and blinks rapidly. Her throat must be scratchy and her eyes itchy. Makes sense, it is cold season. “Um, Jack’s naturally gorgeous, of course.”

  From across the room, Bobby snorts so loudly that our other dog Mikita jumps up from her bed and trots out of the room, her fat rump undulating.

  “Whassamatter, spaz? You don’t think your sister’s good-lookin’?”

  Bobby snorts again and Teddy beans him right in the head with the now-empty Tropicana carton. Ted’s arm is still a lethal weapon. He was as skilled at football as he was at hockey in high school, which is why so many Big Ten colleges tried to recruit him. However, he had his heart set on Whitney’s architecture program, so that’s where he went.

&nbs
p; I’m so bummed that our time on campus won’t overlap, despite his major taking five years. Sure, John’s at Whitney, too, but we probably won’t hang out much. He’s not as close as the rest of us are, likely because he’s a narcissistic jerkwad. He’s so different from Bobby that everyone forgets they’re twins. Fraternal, but still.

  Teddy’s awesomeness makes up for John’s shortcomings. He’s very protective of me. (Maybe too protective?) Although Bobby and I are the best of friends, my relationship with Ted is almost more parental. He’s always tried to fill in for Dad’s logging such long hours to make partner.

  Bobby rubs his temple, unwilling to admit defeat. “No, I’m concerned that you think she’s good-looking.”

  Teddy pulls up a barstool next to Sars and me, flexing and preening. “’Course I do. We look exactly alike.”

  Mimi, my mom’s mother, was half Japanese, so there’s a hint of something exotic in both our faces. Ted and I inherited the high cheekbones and stupid-thick, straight, dark hair from her side and freckles from Dad’s Scotch-Irish side. We all have the same small, straight nose and dimpled, determined chin, but John-John and Bobby are more fair, with wavy hair. Ironically, those two actually look like they could be Kennedy offspring, which is one of the many reasons Ted calls them chowderheads.

  Teddy, Bobby, and I share a genetic abnormality called heterochromia iridum, meaning our eyes are these weird, multicolored patches of green and yellow with dark blue outlines. I don’t like them because the question “What’s your eye color?” requires an explanation. We inherited this trait from our mother. Her mutation was much more pronounced, with one eye of golden-green, and the other a smoky blue-gray. When my parents met in law school at Whitney in the early seventies, Dad would always sing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” because her name was Lucy and she had kaleidoscope eyes.

  I hate that song now.

  “I always thought you resembled Pierce Brosnan, Teddy,” Sars says in a rush, anxiously biting her bottom lip. Again, color flushes across her cheeks. What the hell, Sars? Does she seriously have a fever? She’s practically steaming up her glasses.

  “Then that means Jack looks like Pierce Brosnan in drag,” Bobby crows.

  Teddy bristles. “Stop hurting her self-esteem, you douche.”

  “Make me.”

  Teddy rises imperiously from his stool. “I will.”

  Bobby considers his threat and backs down. “Good thing I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He clicks the remote. “Hey, be sure to keep it down. Ninja Turtles is coming on.”

  “What are you kids doing?” Teddy asks, returning his attention to us.

  “We’re trying to figure out where to live on campus. We have to fill out our housing forms and send them in together so we can be roommates,” I explain. “And now Sars says she doesn’t want to live in a coed dorm, so that seriously narrows our options.”

  “I thought you got into Stanford, Sars,” Teddy says. “Whitney’s good, but it’s no Stanford.”

  “I can’t go to college without Jack!” she replies.

  John-John, self-appointed God’s Gift to Evanston, comes sauntering into the kitchen, wearing track pants and Adidas soccer sandals with socks and a perfectly gelled coif. I just want to run my hands through his dumb, stiff, prissy hair and make it messy. I swear he thinks he’s Morrissey. I share a bathroom with him and when he’s home in the summer, his toiletries fill up the entire counter. “Those two looking for a dorm? They should live in the Virgin Vault.”

  We consider John-John our most expendable brother, in case anyone asks.

  “Wait, where?” Bobby asks, interest momentarily diverted from his beloved break-dancing reptiles. I’m not sure he watches anything that isn’t animated.

  John replies with his ever-present smugness. “That’s what everyone calls Haverford Hall. It’s by the Bio building. Killer campus location, but no male visitation, except for fathers on move-in day. That’d probably work best for you, squirt. May as well pack your Melissa Etheridge albums now and greet your lady-lovin’ destiny. I see a lot of plaid shirts and big watches in your future.”

  That’s so unfair. Just because I’ve never had a boyfriend doesn’t mean I want to play for the other team. I like boys. A lot. I’m just not sure how to let them know I want to do more than arm wrestle with them. (Should I let them win once in a while?)

  And if I look just like Teddy, how come guys don’t throw themselves at me like the girls have been doing at him since he was twelve?

  Ted doesn’t mind the attention, though. He’s a total playboy. Last summer, he had three dates in one day. He went to lunch with the first girl, hit the beach with another, and took a third to a party. I figured his plan would devolve into a Peter Brady level of sitcom hilarity but he juggled them just fine.

  He’s probably a better brother than he is a boyfriend.

  Bobby takes the juice carton Ted whipped at him a few minutes ago and hurls it at John-John before any of the rest of us can dog-pile on him for being his usual unpleasant self. Pulpy liquid splashes his sweatshirt and he dampens a dish towel to absorb the stain before it sets, grumbling to himself about how he never gets the respect he so richly deserves. I’m not kidding—this kind of stuff happens a hundred times a day here. Dad says this is why we can’t have nice things.

  Righteously indignant, John tells us, “Whatever, losers, I’m going over to Donnie’s house to play Nintendo,” instead of good-bye as he heads out the back door. In ten minutes, he’ll have forgotten this incident.

  Unless he was a girl, in which case I imagine he’d take the slight to the grave.

  Ted says, “Live in Wadsworth Hall. Square footage is on the small side but if you’re lucky, you’ll get a fourth floor assignment. A couple of them have fireplaces, but all the rooms have leaded glass, wide molding, and box beam ceilings.”

  “They have what?” I ask. Sometimes he forgets he’s not speaking to other architecture students.

  “That means those rooms retain the original Craftsman style of when first built. Aesthetics aside, Wadsworth’s centrally located. You won’t care in August, but wait till you pass under the breezeway of the Engineering building in January and the wind hits you. Coldest spot in central Illinois, guaranteed. You’ll thank me for shaving any distance off of your walk.”

  Before we can fill out our forms, the doorbell rings.

  “Got it,” I say, running down the long hall in my stocking feet. I pull open the huge double doors (large enough to drive a John Deere tractor–lawn mower through, but don’t ask us how we learned this) to find Sars’s mom.

  “Hi, Mrs. Martin! What’s up?”

  “Hey, sweetie, how are you?” Mrs. Martin places a warm palm on my cheek and it’s all I can do not to lean into it like Mikita does when we pet her. She’s almost more like a grandma because she’s older. The Martins call Sars their miracle baby because they were both well into their forties when she was born.

  Mrs. Martin is like one of those sitcom moms we watch on Nick at Nite. Her graying hair’s always brushed really nice and she smells like roses. She knows how to make a million different kinds of food and she’s always trying new recipes at dinner. She loves to throw dinner parties and on my birthday, she cooks something she calls “Coquilles Saint Jack” in my honor. It’s this crunchy, creamy, fishy casserole. Sounds gross, but it’s the best stuff I ever tasted. Around here, we know only how to make hot dogs, spaghetti, steak, and reservations. John says he can cook omelets, but won’t show us how.

  Sometimes when I go to Sars’s house for supper, I envy her being an only child and the center of her parents’ universe. Then I see all the empty chairs at their dinner table (which is never covered by an ongoing game of Risk) and I remember you can’t be lonely in a house like mine.

  Mrs. Martin asks, “Can you please send Sars home, sweetie? I could use her help getting the house ready for the party
. I wasn’t quite as prepared as I hoped!”

  “You need an extra hand?” I volunteer.

  When she smiles, her eyes get all crinkly and I feel calm and safe whenever she’s near. She was once a nurse, so she’s really good at making everyone around her feel at ease. “You’re such a doll, but, no. The party won’t take too long, so don’t worry about it. But swing by later—I’m making Peanut Butter Wonder Bars. See you in a bit, sweetie!”

  I return to the kitchen where Sars has scooted closer to Teddy. She’s pressed against his shoulder, and . . . did she just surreptitiously smell his hair? Blech. She jumps when I approach.

  “Great news! Your mom’s making Peanut Butter Wonder Bars later!”

  “She came over to tell you that?” Sars replies, puzzled. “Weird.”

  “Are those the chewy sort-of-a-cookie, sort-of-a-candy deals?” Bobby asks, suddenly very attentive again.

  I nod. “Roger that. Hey, Sars, your mom says you’ve gotta go home. She needs party help or something.”

  Sars deflates. “Oh. Okay.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it’ll take long. I’m coming over for Wonder Bars later, so no worries. We’ll get this figured out before the deadline.”

  She grabs her stuff from the counter and begins to walk backward toward the door. “Um, yeah, so, like, see you later, alligators! Ha! Maybe we can all go to the movies or something later? As a group? Mrs. Doubtfire looks really funny.” Except when she extends this invitation, it seems as though it’s directed more to Teddy than the rest of us.

  When we hear the click of the front door, Bobby turns to Teddy and says, “Someone has a big crush on you, bro.”

  “Impossible. You guys are her family.”

  “That’s a negative, Ghost Rider. She was practically drooling over your boy here,” Bobby replies.

  “Wait, you?” I say, sitting back down on my barstool, swinging around to Ted. “I mean, no offense, but really? You? Does she like you? I just figured she had a fever or something.”