Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love

by Maryrose Wood

  But we are up against the clock. Today is Wednesday, the science fair is Monday, and Saturday I’m supposed to go to Lauraville. Before then we have charts to draw, handouts to type up, and the required oral presentation to write and rehearse, so there’s hardly time for one more experiment. However:

  Randall is still really, really mad at me. I don’t think he’s too pleased with Matthew, either.

  And, Matthew, though 99 percent accepting that Jess is not interested, can’t help 1 percent wondering if Jess would feel differently about his Dawgappeal if she weren’t busy brooding over some Russian wolfhound.

  In short, we both want one more chance to find X. Not in a chart or a graph or a hypothesis, but in a hand-holding, joke-sharing, be-my-valentining kind of real-life way. And Experiment Number Five is going to be IT!

  The rules of the Best-Friend Switcheroo are simple. You scorn the person you really want and pretend to be in love with his (or her) best friend. So:

  If I have to scorn Randall and pretend to be in love with his best friend, and . . .

  If Matthew has to scorn Jess and pretend to be in love with her best friend, then . . .

  Are you following me, people?

  Matthew and I have to pretend to be in love with each other!

  O, X-cellent irony! X is a trickster, all right, a mustachioed carnival barker who’ll take your last nickel for one more spin of a wheel that’s rigged. But that’s what we’re going to do. We don’t have two years to wait for the Switcheroo to work its mojo, like Boobalicious Norma did, but we’re hoping a single strategically planned encounter will make an impact.

  One sweet, romantic episode of me and Matthew holding hands, calling each other baby darling and honey smoochums, his arm round my shoulder, my adoring eyes batting away at him for all the world to see.

  But wait! Won’t that be—because wasn’t I—and didn’t he—

  Forget all that. This is going to be total fun. Because, face it, despite some tears shed by yours truly over his truly, no tighter bonds of paldom have ever been forged between our two tribes of Kitten and Dawg as those between me and Matthew. We have been (thanks for the tip, Mom!) as open with our feelings as open can get, and we have come out on the other side with a clean slate of friendship.

  But how could I have been so Xed over Matthew for so long, and now, not? Believe me, I have given this a lot of thought, ever since that balmy-on-the-outside, storm-tossed-on-the-inside night on the Betty J.

  And since the next morning, when tear-streaked me woke up in my mom’s bed and told her, as best I could, how I seemed to have mucked up my entire life’s chances for love in a single evening. She listened, carefully and without saying a word, while she fixed us both some breakfast (something tasty for a change, featuring generous amounts of white flour and refined sugar, so you know she was feeling sorry for me).

  “No one does anything perfectly on the first try,” she said, pouring maple syrup all over the sweet concoction and putting it in front of me. “Next time you’ll make different mistakes. You want some hot chocolate with that?”

  And, as I’m sitting there, eating and feeling my blood sugar zoom into the stratosphere, I realize the old girl is right. If Kat has to practice for hours and hours, day after day, year after year to play a single eight-minute piece of music to her own satisfaction, then isn’t it possible that X needs a little practice, too? False starts, wrong choices, big mistakes, and some hurt and even a few angry words? And I know how hard it is to keep starting over, because often enough I’ve watched Kat suffer and swear, turn her pages back to the beginning, and try again.

  Yes, practicing is hard. But that’s how you get to Carnegie Hall.

  “Do you know that old joke?” I say aloud to Matthew. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

  “Practice,” murmurs Matthew, sketching something on graph paper. “Look here. The tricky part is, we need to do the Switcheroo in a place where both Randall and Jess will see us. Any ideas?”

  And so, the intrepid investigators get back to work. We conceive and quickly discard various hare-brained schemes (sorry, Frosty!): a coed esoteric sleepover party at my mom’s bookstore? A Kitten-and-Dawg Hacky Sack challenge match in Central Park? But how would we get Randall to come? He’s so over us right now.

  Once again, Deej offers the solution.

  “Miss Doris says you’re all invited!” she announces at the Pound the next morning, happy as can be. “She’s having her Sunday salon!”

  Deej explains that now and again on a Sunday afternoon, Miss Doris opens her Harlem home to friends and neighbors and music lovers everywhere for one of her legendary salons. There’s food, there’s punch, and most of all, there’s jazz.

  Matthew and I strategize like five-star generals. Jess has been dying to meet Miss Doris, so wild horses could not keep her away from this event. And we think Randall won’t fail to show up for it, either. Deej is going to sing, and he came to Kat’s recital, after all. Besides, who could say no to Miss Doris?

  Clearly, the Sunday salon is our last, best chance to pull off the Switcheroo. Except how will I get there? A fine time to be stuck in Lauraville! And Fatherdear has been so touchy lately, the last thing he’ll want to do is make an extra trip into the city to drop me off in a strange neighborhood at some wild party filled with my out-of-control, hippie-school, head-kicking friends—

  But Deej just listens to my complaining and looks at me like, what’s the problem? “So BRING your people!” she says. “When you get an invitation to Miss Doris’s Sunday salon, that’s an INVITATION, girl! You gotta bring ALL your people! But don’t bring the dog, right? Miss Doris likes to keep all her rugs nice.”

  Would Dad and Laura and Charles (but not Moose) be interested in coming to Miss Doris’s Sunday salon?

  Would they ever! “Oh, that just sounds super!” says Laura over the phone. “Should I bring some macaroni salad?”

  “I’m sure that would be fine,” I say, glad she can’t see the look on my face. Pulling off the Switcheroo is going to be tricky enough. Pulling it off in front of my dad is another thing entirely.

  I hang up the phone with a sigh, foolishly convinced that the final complication has been added to this already complicated endeavor, and, though it’s all rather daunting, at least I know what I’m up against.

  “A jazz salon in Harlem with all your friends and your dad and his family? What fun! Am I invited, too?” Mom asks. She’s painting her toes with blue nail polish. Which is weird, because I haven’t seen her paint her toes in years.

  “Yes, actually,” I mumble, though it had not occurred to me to actually mention this to her, since I assumed she’d rather spend Sunday afternoon anywhere else on the planet than with Dad and Laura. “Do you want to come?”

  “Only if I can bring a date,” Mom chirps, fanning her toes.

  So Mom is coming the salon, too. With a date.

  NOW the final complication has been unveiled.

  Saturday morning, during the long drive to Lauraville, I weigh my two, equally horrifying conversational options. I can tell my dad that Mom is bringing a date to the salon. Or I can tell my dad about the Switcheroo.

  Walk the plank or be shot at dawn? I flip my mental coin and the Switcheroo wins. Cagey me waits till he’s distracted by having to drive through the toll plaza, and then, calmly, casually, I mention that Matthew and I are going to pretend to be madly in love at the salon, even though we’re just friends.

  “Matthew. This is the one that’s not your boyfriend?” he says.

  “Right. But just for tomorrow I’m going to pretend he is,” I say, trying to sound like this makes sense.

  “Why?” asks Dad. “Why not just let him be your boyfriend?”

  Why why why why? Why is this so hard to explain? Maybe I should tell him about Randall, but seeing as how Randall was the one who gave me the black eye that freaked my dad out to begin with, I decide against it. “It’s for a science project, Dad!” I say. “It has important ramificat
ions for, you know, the future of humanity.”

  The look of intergalactic dubiousness on his face seems strangely familiar, but for once he cuts me some slack, says nothing, and keeps driving.

  I hope I haven’t blown it. I bet Brearley is still taking applications for the fall.

  Matthew and I made plans to arrive at the soirée together, soul mate style, so my dad drops me off at the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue and 145th Street to wait for my faux beau while he parks the car.

  It’s a bustling Sunday afternoon in Harlem. Not so different from the East Village, except in the obvious ways. Women and children chattering in Spanish instead of NYU students chattering in hipsterese, hair-braiding salons instead of tattoo parlors, homeboys in homeboy outfits instead of punks in punk outfits. I hear traffic and radios playing and a million people talking at the same time, and I imagine blending all their different languages into a humungous new one that has a word for anything you’d ever want to say, and everyone could understand it. Sort of like Esperanto, but I think New Yorker is what I’d call it.

  I’m mulling this over when a gleaming black Mercedes makes a slow turn round the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue. The Benz pulls over right where I’m standing, and the tinted window rolls down.

  “Hey, chiquita! Wanna ride?” Trip’s mischievous face appears. I see his dad sitting in the backseat next to him and I wave, but Mr. Mathis is on his phone.

  “This is close enough, Miguel, gracias,” Trip tells the driver, getting out of the car. “Embarrassing, right?” he says to me, gesturing to the car. “Pops insisted on dropping me off. Bye, Daddy-o!” Trip sticks his head in the car and gives his dad a smooch.

  “I’ll send Miguel to come get you in a couple of hours,” says Mr. Mathis, covering the phone with his hand.

  “Please don’t, Pops.”

  “Take a taxi home, promise?” says Mr. Mathis.

  Trip just smiles and waves. The window slides up and the Benz pulls away. I’m glad to have this chance to brief Trip on our plan. We’re going to need all the support we can get to pull off the Switcheroo.

  “So listen, Trip,” I say, “Matthew and I are doing our last experiment today, and we’d appreciate it if you’d just play along.”

  I briefly outline the parameters of the Best-Friend Switcheroo.

  “A bodacious experiment!” says Trip. “Kind of like how Randall fell for you when you were all hot over Matthew.”

  What?

  “Or like when Randall was pretending to be Kat’s boyfriend and you got interested in him all of a sudden.”

  Wait—is that what happened?

  Trip goes on. “But Randall’s not coming. You know that, right?”

  “He’s not?” I say, dumbfounded.

  “Yeah, Deej invited him and he expressed his sincerest regrets, but he had to be in Utica today for a karate tournament. He left with his sensei at like, six o’clock this morning. They won’t be back till late.”

  But, but but—

  At that point, my faux beau Matthew trots down the street, a bouquet of floppy carnations in one hand. They’re for me, of course. He twirls me in his arms twice before putting me down.

  “Darling!” he exclaims. “How is my gorgeous girlfriend today?”

  “Matthew,” I say.

  “Let me kiss that precious face!” he says, plopping a wet one on my cheek.

  “Matthew, he’s not coming—”

  “Mwah!” Matthew says, getting the other cheek. Trip’s hysterical already.

  “Matthew!” I yell, my precious face cradled in his hands. “Randall’s not coming to the salon!”

  Matthew straightens up. “He’s not?”

  “No, he’s not,” I say, wiping my damp cheek. “But it’s okay. We already did the Switcheroo.”

  “We did?” says Matthew, confused. He hands me the flowers. “Did it work?”

  Trip puts one arm around each of us. “Like a charm. Now let’s go hear my lady sing.”

  Dad, Laura, and Charles arrive at the door of Miss Doris’s building just as we do, and I make sure to lift Charles up so he can be the one to press the buzzer. My dad is confused as to who is Matthew and who is Jacob, and it takes some explaining to get him to understand that this is Trip, not Jacob, an entirely different non-Matthew teenage boy than the one he met before.

  When Miss Doris answers the door, she is warm and welcoming and elegant as a crane, in a long flowing print dress and big gold hoop earrings. “Oh, MY! What a super apartment!” cries Laura, zealously praising the gleaming dark woodwork and parquet floors, the wall sconces and picture molding and stained-glass transoms above the French doors.

  Laura is right. It’s a gorgeous old place, and the walls are covered with dozens of framed photos. Miss Doris introduces the people in them like old friends: Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk. There’s a teenage girl in many of the pictures who looks an awful lot like Deej, but unless there’s a time-travel machine nearby, the tall dark-eyed beauty in the fabulous 1940s dresses and hats can only be a younger version of Miss Doris herself.

  The living room has a baby grand piano at one end, prettily draped with a lacy throw. Near the back of the room is a refreshment table that holds platters of food and the biggest, fanciest cut-glass punch bowl I’ve ever seen. It reflects the light in the room from every angle.

  “Ooh! Hawaiian Punch!” says Charles, spying the enormous, sparkling bowl of cherry-colored liquid.

  “I have special punch for you, honey!” says Miss Doris. “That’s grown-up punch and it’d put you right to sleep. And I don’t want YOU to miss the party!” She takes Charles by the hand and leads him happily to the kitchen for a juice box.

  There are quite a few people here already, including Jess and Jacob and Deej, of course, but there’s one woman in particular who seems strangely familiar. She’s talking animatedly with a middle-aged man by the refreshment table. Her face is flushed, her hair is up, her toenails are painted blue. Whoops, it’s my mom. In lipstick, no less.

  She turns around at the sound of our voices, but it’s my dad who speaks first.

  “Frank?” he says, in wonder. “Frank Allen?”

  The middle-aged man who is my mom’s date approaches my dad with his arms outstretched. “Robbie, you crazy, crazy old dog!” he says, laughing.

  As Dad and Frank do the back-slapping buddy hug, I turn to my mom. “They know each other?” I ask stupidly, since obviously they do.

  “Oh, yes!” says Mom, giving her long dangly earrings a shake. She looks nifty, I have to admit. “They used to be best friends, a long, long time ago. Frank and I always kept in touch, and his wife died a couple of years ago, and he’s been wanting to get together for the past few months but I couldn’t bring myself to— well, anyway, he’s always loved jazz, so I thought he’d enjoy this.”

  What-EVER, Mom! My ears tuned out at “long, long time ago.” Inside my brain, my warning lights are flashing, my siren is sirening, I’m careening at dangerously high speeds around corners and through red lights in a state of total emergency. Ignorant and unwitting, without any idea of the potentially life-altering consequences of her actions, Mom is doing the Best-Friend Switcheroo!

  ON MY DAD!

  Won’t this make Dad fall in love with her again?

  Can it be that that’s what she wants? Does Motherdear know more about the secret workings of X than she lets on?

  I fantasize for a minute: what would happen if Mom and Dad got back together? If he dumped Laura and showed up in the East Village with a fistful of daisies (Mom’s favorite), asking the blue-toed Cheryl for a second chance? And what if she said yes, admitting their differences were minuscule compared to their long shared history and, most of all, the unadulterated joy they share in ME? Me, Felicia! The only thing they really have in common.

  What would happen? He’d never move back to the city; he wouldn’t be able to stand it now that he’s been gas grilled and suburbanized. And Mom would certainly not
want to give up the bookstore. So there’d be a big fight about where to live.

  And then there’d be a big fight about Brearley versus the Pound. And whether to keep white bread or whole wheat in the fridge.

  And poor Laura would probably starve herself to death, all alone in Lauraville, living on diet root beer and low-carb pretzels.

  And Charles—

  Enough. I turn off my lights and sirens, take a deep breath, and decide to simply Observe.

  I watch my mom help Charles stick the little straw into his juice box without squirting juice everywhere.

  I watch my dad chatting amiably with Frank, who once hung out with him in the parking lots of 7-Elevens, enjoying the Slurpee brain-freeze effect while they cranked Meatloaf up to earsplitting volume on the tape deck of my grandpa’s Chevy, back in the day when Meatloaf was new and music was on tape.

  I watch him and Frank, who’s here as the date of my dad’s ex-wife and seems to have lost just as much hair as my dad has over the last twenty-odd years, and I think— you know, it’s fine.

  Everything’s fine the way it is.

  The salon was divine. Boobalicious Norma and her soul mate Travis showed up, and they give off the same sparks that are starting to fly from Trip and Deej, except they’re older and engaged and that opens up a whole other world of spark-making possibilities. Deej’s mother and father were there, sweet and so proud of their talented baby. Even Shally and D’Neece stopped by for a bite to eat, rolling their eyes a bit when Miss Doris spoke to them sternly about “what you children are doing with your young lives, and there are worthier boys for two righteous girls to be spending time with than the kind you have to take the bus to Rikers to see on visiting day.” But they stayed for second helpings and gave Miss Doris big hugs when they left, so I don’t think they were really mad about what she said.

  Mom was tense at first, as befits a woman on her first date in years, but she eventually chilled out and found her party attitude. Dad talked real estate with Deej’s uncle Lester, who is raising money to fix up some of the beautiful old houses on the block without booting out the people who live in them. Laura drank too much punch, kicked off her shoes, and went on a cookie binge by the refreshment table (I’ve never seen her so happy). And Charles stood on one side of the stage all afternoon, dancing to the music. No matter who got up to play or sing, Charles stayed right there, shaking his little four-year old groove thang. At one point Laura tried to make him sit down but no one would let her, everyone thought he was just the cutest.