Waiting For Ethan

by Diane Barnes

  Luci stands when Neesha and I reach the table. She hugs me quickly. “I like your outfit, Gina.” Last week at lunch we went shopping, and she picked out the cranberry blouse and brown trousers that I am wearing tonight. Luci extends her hand to Neesha. “Luci Corrigan Chin,” she says. Neesha shakes Luci’s hand and introduces herself. “Your sweater is an interesting color,” Luci says.

  Neesha points to Luci’s cleavage. “Those aren’t real, are they?”

  I swallow hard, but both Neesha and Luci laugh.

  A few minutes later, Ethan and Jack arrive. Jack’s face sports the beginning of a goatee, and I wonder if that’s because Luci told him she prefers men with facial hair the first time they met. He slides into the booth next to her and stretches his arm out against the backrest. Luci pointedly looks over her shoulder and edges closer to the wall. Ethan kisses me and then reaches across my body to introduce himself to Neesha. “You two look alike,” he says, pointing at Neesha and then me.

  Jack leans forward toward Ethan. “You’re something else, man. You see a resemblance between Gina and her Indian friend, but you don’t think she looks anything like Leah, who just happens to be Caucasian like Gina.”

  Neesha’s sipping from the Scorpion Bowl and takes her lips off the straw. “Who’s Leah?”

  Luci pulls the drink toward her. “Leah is Ethan’s ex-wife.”

  “There’s no ex yet,” Jack corrects. “Leah is still Ethan’s wife.”

  I glare at Jack. Ethan takes my hand.

  The waitress stops at our table. She is Chinese and has long black hair. Jack tilts his head toward her. “Let me guess, you think she looks like Gina, too.”

  “No,” Ethan says. “I think she looks like Luci.” We all laugh.

  Luci drains the rest of the Scorpion Bowl. “We’ll need another of these, please.” Ethan and Jack both order beers.

  Luci asks Neesha what I was like as a kid. The next hour or so passes without incident as Neesha and I reveal stories from our childhood. “My archnemesis, Patty Ryan, saw Gina and I looking at crib notes during a vocabulary test,” Neesha explains.

  “Saw Gina and me,” Luci corrects.

  “We’re with the grammar police,” Jack warns.

  “Saw us looking at crib notes,” Neesha continues. “And she told the teacher, Mr. Moran, right?” Neesha looks at me. I nod. “Gina was scared her mother was going to ground her for life. Meanwhile, she doesn’t get punished, and I end up with no TV or phone privileges for two weeks.”

  I laugh, remembering when Mr. Moran called my house to talk to my parents. My father answered the phone. After he hung up, he playfully smacked me in the head, “Next time be smart enough not to get caught,” he said, but he never told my mother.

  “You didn’t get punished for cheating, though,” I remind Neesha. “You got in trouble for doubting Ajee’s gift.” The night before the test, Neesha and I locked ourselves in her bedroom to prepare crib sheets, tiny pieces of papers with the definitions, which we taped to the inside of our jean jackets. When I was going home, Ajee walked me to the front door so she could watch me cross the street like she did every night. This time, though, before she pushed open the screen door, she turned to Neesha and me. “Girls, if you cheat on your vocabulary test tomorrow, you will be caught.”

  The next day at the bus stop, I asked Neesha if she was going to use her crib notes. “Of course,” she responded.

  “But Ajee said we’d get caught.”

  Neesha rolled her eyes. “Ajee doesn’t know everything, Gina. She just thinks she does.”

  When Mr. Moran called the Patels’ house that afternoon, Ajee hung up the phone and turned to Neesha and me. “Stupid girls,” she hissed. “I told you that you would be caught.”

  “You couldn’t have possibly known that,” Neesha answered. “You do not have a psychic gift.”

  Ajee gasped, sent me home, and grounded Neesha for two weeks.

  “She hated it that I doubted her gift,” Neesha says. “I guess it wasn’t until she helped the police find Matthew Colby that I started to consider that maybe she was psychic.”

  Ethan tilts the mug in his hand so that the beer sloshes from side to side. “Your grandmother was psychic?”

  Neesha leans over me to get closer to Ethan. “How can you not know that?” she asks. “My grandmother was the one who predicted Gina would marry a man named Ethan.”

  Oh crap. I can’t believe she just said that. The noise in the room dims. The lights get brighter. Ethan’s mug freezes in his hand on the way from the table to his mouth. Jack stops shredding his napkin. Luci leans back and rubs her palms together. My face heats up, and my neck gets splotchy. “Speaking of Patty Ryan,” I say, “she’s the Realtor selling your old house.”

  “Whoa,” Jack whispers.

  “Hold on,” Ethan says.

  “You didn’t tell him.” Neesha figures it out.

  Ethan returns his glass to the table. “Her grandmother told you that you’d marry a man named Ethan?” His tone suggests he’d be more likely to believe that Bigfoot just entered the restaurant.

  I nod.

  “When was this?”

  “I was thirteen.”

  The mug is back in his hand, and he finishes his beer in one large swallow. “That’s nuts.”

  A look passes between Jack and Ethan. “How many other Ethans have you dated?” Jack asks.

  I shift in my seat. “None.”

  Ethan leans over me for a clear view of Neesha. “How often was your grandmother right?”

  “Almost always,” Neesha answers.

  “Give me some examples,” Ethan demands.

  Neesha runs through a litany of Ajee’s accurate predictions. Jack listens with a skeptical expression, every so often interjecting, “Bullshit!”

  Ethan sits quietly. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Neesha says. “But her predictions came true too many times. She definitely had some kind of gift.”

  Luci turns to Ethan. “So, you ready to exchange vows again?”

  The muscles in his face tighten. He stands. “Gotta take a leak.”

  We’re all quiet as he walks away. Jack stops slouching and sits up straight. “Listen, Gina,” he begins. I want to block my ears or start screaming. “Don’t get your hopes up. Ethan’s still working through his first marriage. It’s way too soon for him to be thinking of another.”

  “What is your problem?” I pull the Scorpion Bowl closer.

  “I like you. I don’t want to see you hurt,” Jack continues. “I love Ethan like a brother, but he’s not himself these days.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Jack sighs.

  The drink is almost empty. I make a slurping sound as I suck on my straw. Luci pulls the bowl away. “It means that Ethan isn’t ready for a serious relationship,” she says.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ethan making his way across the room. He’s typing into his phone, and then he slides it into his pocket. When he reaches our table, he leans against the edge. “I’m kind of beat,” he announces. “What do you say we call it a night?”

  Jack flags down the waitress. When she arrives, he hands her his credit card without looking at the bill. Luci opens her purse, but Jack stops her before she can pull out her wallet. “Tonight’s on me,” he says.

  As Jack settles the bill, Ethan walks me, Neesha, and Luci to the door. He holds my hand on the way. When we reach the exit, Luci and Neesha rush to the parking lot while Ethan and I pause in the doorway.

  I expect him to say something about Ajee’s prediction. Instead, he embraces me without saying a thing. I cling to him until he pulls away. “Good night.” He holds open the door, and I walk through it. When I reach Neesha and Luci talking by my car, I look over my shoulder to wave good-bye, but he is already gone.

  Chapter 28

  For most of the drive to Westham, Neesha has been talking nonstop. As soon as I turn on to Towering Heights Lane, though,
she stops speaking. As we make our way up the hill, she studies each side of the road. When I pull into my parents’ driveway, she races out of the car to the edge of the street and stands with her hands on her hips, staring at her old home. We are here on a reconnaissance mission today because Neesha wants to find the perfect spot for Ajee’s remains.

  Neesha’s eyes fill with tears as she studies the house she lived in until she was fourteen. We both stand silently looking at the house. I wonder if Neesha’s thinking about her mother. It was a warm April day much like today when the ambulance took her away for the last time. “It looked better green,” she finally says. One of the first things the Murphys did when they moved in was paint the house white.

  “What happened to the maple?” She points to the barren spot near the left side of the house where the leafy tree used to stand.

  “It fell during a storm junior year. Tore a hole through the roof.”

  “My mom loved that tree,” Neesha says. “We used to collect the bright red leaves every fall and press them between wax paper.”

  An image of Mrs. Patel, Neesha, and me gathering leaves under the tree pops into my head. The sky above was bright blue, and the air had that crispness it only has in fall. Sanjit appeared from the back of the house and tossed acorns at Neesha and me when he thought Mrs. Patel wasn’t looking. Then suddenly she had the garden hose in her hand, and she was spraying water in her son’s direction. “Apologize or I’ll soak you,” she threatened. Stunned, Sanjit muttered, “Sorry,” and slinked away toward the backyard.

  The Murphys never use their garage. Today neither car is in the driveway so I tell Neesha we can explore their yard. Hesitantly, she crosses the street, and I follow. She immediately heads to the rosebush on the right side of the house. “This is it,” she says quietly. We hear a car. Both of our heads turn to the street, but it’s not the Murphys. “Let’s get out of here,” she says.

  We head back to my house, and I enter my parents’ code on the keypad outside the garage. Neesha and I squeeze around my mother’s car and up the stairs to the door that leads inside. I open it and step into the family room, but Neesha freezes in the doorway. “It’s like a wormhole to my childhood,” she says as she enters. She walks through the family room to the kitchen, and I follow. She runs her hand across the counter. “I think of your mom every time I make macaroni,” she says.

  On Sundays, Neesha and I helped my mother prepare an afternoon meal. More often than not, it was homemade pasta. I’d get bored rolling out the dough, but Neesha never grew tired of it. She and my mom would stand side by side at the kitchen counter laughing while taking turns cranking the handle of the pasta maker. I’d retreat to the couch in the living room, where I’d read a book while my dad slept in his recliner with the TV tuned to a sporting event. If I dared to change the channel, he’d start awake. “I’m watching that.”

  “Gina,” my mom would call from the kitchen. “You need to learn how to do this.”

  “Does she still refuse to buy boxed spaghetti and jarred sauce?” Neesha asks.

  “Of course!”

  Neesha pulls a chair away from the table, the seat we used to refer to as hers, and plops down in it. “I miss it here,” she says. For a moment I think she’s talking about my parents’ kitchen. “I’ve always hated Texas. Ajee hated it, too. That’s another reason she wanted her ashes spread here.”

  I sit in the chair next to her. “You loved Texas. That’s why you didn’t want to go to school here.”

  Neesha fingers the collar of her fuchsia sweater. “Gina, I didn’t get into BC.”

  I freeze. “What?”

  “I didn’t get accepted,” she says.

  My eyes go to the phone on the wall. It’s the exact phone I was on when Neesha told me she’d decided not to go to Boston College. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. “You told me you wanted to stay in Texas with your high school friends.”

  She looks down at the table. “I was embarrassed.”

  “I don’t understand. We were best friends. We told each other everything.”

  “I was really mad you got accepted and I didn’t.” She spins her chair so she is facing me. “I hated you for it.”

  “You hated me?” My voice cracks.

  “I guess I was jealous.” Neesha spins away from me, puts her elbows on the table, and buries her face in her hands. “You were living the life I wanted, in a house in Westham, with a mother who took care of you and a father who adored you. Then you got accepted to the school that more than anything I wanted to go to. I was stuck in Texas with a father who was never home and a grandmother who . . .” Neesha stops, looks up at the ceiling, and then turns to face me again. “Ajee didn’t save any little boys there, Gina. Most people just thought she was crazy, and Sanjit and I were known as the crazy woman’s grandchildren.”

  “You didn’t get into BC,” I repeat. “You lied to me.”

  “Sorry.” She says it so quietly that I’m not even certain she said it.

  “You knew how upset I was that you chose your Texas friends over me. I wrote you letters about it, and you just kept on letting me think that.” My voice and body shake with rage.

  “I’m not proud of what I did. After, I was too ashamed to tell you so I avoided you.”

  For almost twenty years I’ve been mad at her because she didn’t go to BC with me like she promised. It never occurred to me that she didn’t get accepted. I’m suddenly very hot. I take off my jacket and put it on the back of the chair. I roll up my sleeves and look at Neesha. She attempts a laugh. “Are you about to challenge me to fight?” she asks.

  I really would like to slap her. “Why did you lie to me?”

  “Why does it matter now?” she snaps.

  “Why? Because we didn’t talk for almost twenty years. And things in my life weren’t as great as you think. All my friends got married and had children, and I was sitting around waiting for a guy named Ethan, and you’re the only one who could possibly understand why, and I couldn’t even talk to you about it.”

  I grab my keys from the table and race outside. I look over at Neesha’s old house. The girl I thought was my best friend had hated me. I climb into my car and drive away, intending to go around the block. I end up on Cooper’s street. I slow down as I pass his house. A minivan is parked in his driveway. A minivan? Is he dating a soccer mom? Damn. His front door swings open, and a dark-haired woman steps outside. My heart races. What if Cooper sees me stalking him? I press my foot on the gas and navigate back to my parents’. Neesha is sitting outside on the stairs. I park on the street but don’t get out of the car. She slowly rises and cuts across the lawn. She climbs into the passenger seat. “The woman came home and saw me sitting here.” She points to the Murphys’. Mrs. Murphy’s car is now in the driveway. “She watched me for a moment and then raced inside.”

  As she speaks, I drive down the hill and head back to my apartment. Neesha turns the radio on. A few minutes later, my cell phone rings, cutting off the music. “There’s a Hispanic woman sitting on our front steps.” My mother’s panic-stricken voice blasts out of the stereo speakers.

  I glance at Neesha. We both laugh.

  “Gina, why are you laughing? I think we’re being robbed. I just called the police.”

  “Mom, I just left your house. It’s not being robbed.”

  “Well, who is the Hispanic girl on the stairs?”

  “It was an Indian woman.”

  My mother sighs. “I don’t understand.”

  I shake my head and look at Neesha. “Hi, Mrs. Rossi,” Neesha shouts into the speaker. “It’s Neesha Patel. I’m in town visiting.”

  “Oh my,” my mother says. “Neesha, how lovely to hear your voice.”

  “You, too, Mrs. Rossi.”

  “Gina sent me a picture of your family. Beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I wish I could be there to see you, dear. Promise me you’ll come back.”

  “I promise, Mrs. Rossi.”


  We say good-bye to my mother. A police car driving in the opposite direction zooms by us. After a split second of silence, Neesha and I break into hysterical laughter. I am so out of control that I have to pull over to the side of the road. After we compose ourselves, Neesha reaches over and touches my arm. “This is what I missed most. Laughing with you about the stupidest stuff. I’m sorry, Gina. I really am.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I say. “I shouldn’t have given up so easily. I should have kept trying to contact you.” I try to hug her, but my seat belt restrains me, preventing me from reaching her. We laugh again. “I missed talking to you. So many times I thought, I really wish I could tell Neesha about this,” I say. “You were the one person who understood me best. I could always be myself, and no matter what dumb thing I did or said, I knew you wouldn’t judge me.”

  Chapter 29

  The sound of Neesha’s voice from the living room wakes me early Sunday. “I miss you, Jayda,” she says. “I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon.” A few seconds later, she laughs. “Kisses for AJ, and be good for Daddy.”

  I pick up my phone from the nightstand, but I have no messages. I want to pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep. Even though Neesha is visiting, the weekend has sucked. I haven’t heard from Ethan since we left the Chinese restaurant Friday night, and I can’t say I blame him. If he told me someone had predicted he would marry a woman named Gina, I’d think he was nuts. Then there was Miss Minivan at Cooper’s house. I wish I had never driven by. Oh God, why am I thinking about Cooper?

  There is a knock on my bedroom door. “You up, sleepyhead?” Neesha asks. I remember when she slept over when we were kids, she’d be up by six making pancakes with my mother. Now she bursts into my room without waiting for a response. “I called Patty Ryan. She’s going to show us the house at eleven.”

  “Did you tell Ashley you were looking at it?”