by Delia Ephron
“Someone from camp is from there.”
“That boy.”
Might as well use Simon. He called me Fanny, I can call him Irish. I shrug.
“Is it also because of your dad? He was Irish.”
I’m not discussing Dad with Mel.
“So you’re half Irish.”
Duh. I pass on that, too. I hobble to the refrigerator.
“What’s wrong?”
My legs. They are so sore that the muscles in my calves are twanging. As for my left hip, when I sat down, I swear it screamed no. Why didn’t I realize this before? I mean, I realized it but didn’t. On the stairs this morning I was crippled with pain, but I guess I dismissed it as general exhaustion, a side effect of sleeping in boots. As I massage my hip, the pain travels south. I follow it, kneading, until I locate a sore spot where my hip and leg join up. “I hiked at camp,” I tell Mel, but the second I say it, I know that doesn’t begin to explain it. At camp I’d pooped out after a short ascent, lolled in moss, and returned on my butt. Hardly exertion. This trauma is clearly linked to that steep descent: plunge, squat, straighten, stone step to stone step. Even in recall I feel the shudder.
“What?” says Mel.
“What? Nothing.” He caught me drifting, mulling my strange adventure.
“Do you want to see a doctor?”
“I’m fine. Just creaky.” I open the milk and sniff. Is it fresh? Hard to be sure. Tilting the container to get a drop on my finger, I overshoot the mark. Milk runs over my hand onto the counter.
“In the Middle Ages there was a job called taster. The person tasted all the food first so the lord of the castle didn’t get poisoned. That’s what you need,” says Mel.
“You can be my taster.”
He bursts into laughter—a laugh that rolls and rolls and rolls until it peters out into a sigh. There is something sad about how happy I make him by cracking a lame joke. I concentrate on wiping up the milk, swiping the sponge across the counter. I swipe again more slowly, noting the arc of my arm across the countertop, the sponge in my hand.
“Your bus is here,” he tells me.
I’m thinking about the busboy, wiping the table, laying down the placemat.
“It’s honking, Frannie.”
I am in the bus, munching a granola bar, with Barbie One sitting behind me braiding my hair, when I tap Mr. DeAngelo on the shoulder and instruct him to let me out. Right here, at the gas station coming up, I’ll call my mom, I have a sudden and terrible toothache. When he resists—he’s not allowed to drop a person off willy nilly—I remind him that I’m not a camper but a counselor. I am not his charge, so he swings the bus into self-serve. Barbie One refuses to release my pigtail, but I pry off her hand, get out, and phone Jenna.
Unfortunately, I have to wait for her and James in the ladies’ room, which stinks. I can’t risk hanging around the pumps—one of Mom’s friends might arrive to fill up. A dashed-off e-mail—subject “Your Daughter”—and Mom would know I’d skipped out on my job.
As soon as they pick me up, I leave a message for Harriet that I have a toothache. I’ll be in tomorrow.
“Why did I hold my nose when I left the message for Harriet?”
Jenna giggles. “I don’t know.”
“I think I got my nose mixed up with my teeth. You don’t sound clogged when you have toothache, do you?”
“What do you think, James?” Jenna walks her fingers across his shoulder and pokes his neck, as if her finger is doing a high kick. From the backseat, I have an unobstructed view of the finger stroll.
“No,” says James. “Although you might if your mouth was swollen.”
I didn’t want him to come along, but as Jenna pointed out, otherwise who would drive? He clutches the wheel with both hands and cranes his head forward like maybe he’s checking out the front fender or searching for stray babies crawling across the road. He drives in gasps, frequently hitting the brake for no apparent reason. Jenna sits sideways so she can admire him and talk to me. “James made osso bucco last night.”
“Wow, that’s great.”
“I wasn’t that happy with the quality of the meat,” says James.
“What was it?” asks Jenna.
“Shank.”
Her brow furrows, as if she’s pondering…as if she has an opinion about shanks…as if, after serious consideration, she’s going to recommend another piece of cow for osso bucco.
“But you’re a vegetarian,” I remind her.
“Not anymore, she’s not,” James says. “There was marbling in the meat.”
“I loved it. I thought it was perfect.” She offers me limp, oily, red things from a plastic container. “Sun-dried tomatoes, want one? They’re totally delicious.”
“No, thanks.”
While we’re stopped at a light, she pinches one between her fingers and feeds it to James. At least I assume that when she dangles it in front of his face, his tongue shoots out and she drops it on. From the backseat, I’m spared that sight. “Mmm,” Jenna says, although he’s the one eating. Then her hand pops up with a napkin, which he takes, uses to wipe his mouth, crumples, and hands back to her.
I peek over the seat. They have a picnic. A bottle of water, sun-dried tomatoes, cocktail napkins, and biscotti, which Jenna now offers, and I accept.
When we finally arrive at Dad’s (after stopping at Starbucks because James needs an espresso), the place looks unfortunate. Curly moss has grown wild, more pasture now than front yard. The FOR SALE sign has a SOLD slapped across it.
“Frannie, who bought your dad’s house?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know it was sold.”
“Do you want me to wait?” asks James.
“If you don’t, how will we get home?”
“I mean, do you want me to come with you?” He hunts through the biscotti bag.
“Oh, sorry. No.”
“We’ll be right back. Won’t we be right back?” Jenna appeals to me.
I nod.
“No problem, Pickle.” He selects a biscotti, eyes it from both sides, and crunches while Jenna explains, “He likes them crisp, almost burned.”
Severely sore muscles cause me to moan as I unfold from the car and attempt to straighten up. I do not quite make it to vertical. Jenna watches. “What’s wrong with you, Frannie?”
I wave her off—it’s not worth discussing—and pull her around to the back of the house. It’s unbelievable how much my hip aches. “Isn’t he sweet? Isn’t he just the sweetest,” she crows while I walk as if I’m wooden. “Weren’t we wrong about him?”
I locate the key hidden under the shingle, but Jenna grabs my hands. Her eyes beseech me. “Frannie, don’t you like him? Wasn’t that considerate of him to ask?”
“To ask what?”
“If we wanted him along. That practically makes me cry.”
“He called you Pickle.”
“I know.”
“Isn’t he into Italian food?”
“So?”
“It’s the same thing as the rosemary and à la mode.” I angle the padlock to insert the key more easily. Jenna holds it steady.
“I don’t get what you’re saying. God, this lock is heavy. James is so strong. I think it’s from chopping or carrying around iron skillets. You should try to squeeze his biceps. I hope he’s not mad at me.”
The key clicks. I lift off the padlock and we enter the studio. Above the drafting table, next to Dad’s paintbrushes, the wall is bare. “It’s gone.”
“What?”
“That watercolor. Don’t you remember the little painting of grapes?”
“I never knew those were grapes. Do you think he’s mad at me?”
“Why would he be mad at you? Jenna, this is important. The painting was on paper with scalloped edges, the size of a placemat. I think it was a placemat—that was why Dad liked it. I’m sure that’s why he liked it—because it was a painting on a placemat.” I examine the wall. “It was here, I can tell it was here.” I sho
w her the holes where the pushpins were stuck.
“I remember the painting, Frannie, but are you sure those were grapes? I thought they were little balloons.” Jenna sits in Dad’s chair and spins.
“Jenna, don’t.”
“What?”
“It seems weird, your spinning in his chair.”
She grasps the drafting table to stop herself. “Sorry.” She starts to handle some paintbrushes, then catches herself. “I hope he’s not mad.”
“Why would James be mad?”
“Usually when I tickle his neck, he takes my hand and kisses it. Sometimes he says, ‘Bellissima.’ ”
“Bellissima?”
“‘Beautiful’ in Italian.”
“Well, I was in the backseat, maybe he didn’t want me to throw up. Jenna, listen, this is serious. This is life or death.”
“Sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry. It makes me crazy. Those were grapes. They were all watery, kind of impressionistic, and it wasn’t anything Dad normally liked because it was pretty—he was always carrying on about how great art wasn’t sweet or pretty, it didn’t remind you of lollipops or lambs, it should shock or jar you.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I know what it means.”
“Are you sure?”
“I understood my dad, okay? He liked that watercolor because it was on a placemat—remember how he loved the Laundromat that not only had washing machines, but also sold red velvet cake, and the mobile phone store with a manicurist?—but they were definitely grapes and they reminded me—”
“Of what?”
“Last night, in the puzzle—”
“In the puzzle?”
“I was in the puzzle, Jenna. That’s why I can’t walk. I had to hike down steep stone steps. I’ve been in three times.”
She seizes my shoulders and shakes me. “Frannie. Tell me, you’ve got to tell me everything.”
I push her away and duck under the table.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for the drawing.” I crawl around, move stacks of newspapers, and feel behind things. Dust. Cobwebs. An old fork. Stray nails. No painting. Jenna has to assist when I try to stand. “This is awful. It was here when I came with my mom. Maybe the person who bought the house stole it.”
“Frannie, how did you get in the puzzle? How could it have happened? That’s impossible.”
“I know, but it happened.”
“Frannie, no.”
“Yes. I can’t believe that painting’s gone.”
“You’re absolutely positive that you didn’t have another dream?”
“Last night I swear I was there twice.”
“Where?” James strolls in.
“Nowhere. Nothing. It’s not here.”
“What isn’t here?” he asks.
“Nothing, we’re done, let’s go.”
While I’m locking up, Jenna throws me pleading looks. When you’ve been friends forever, you don’t need words to get the message: eyes so wide they’re pulsing coupled with the tiniest jerk of the head toward James. Finally we’re in the car ahead of James, and in those two seconds before he opens the door and slides behind the wheel, she explodes, but in a whisper, “Can’t we tell him?”
“No.”
He sticks the key in the starter. I wait for the sound of the motor. Nothing. I stretch my neck to get a view into the front. He’s just sitting there. James the Albert-Waldo might be waiting for a herd of goats to cross the road. “What’s going on?” he asks. “Is this about me?”
“It’s not about you,” says Jenna. She throws me another desperate look.
“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to keep a secret.”
“James is so great at that.”
“Actually, I am,” he says.
23
He opens the refrigerator, tunnels through. “Aha.” He unearths a plastic container. “Ricotta.”
“Cheese,” Jenna tells me.
He pops off the top, sniffs, and sighs. Jenna checks to see if I’m digging him. He opens the crisper, dives in, and surfaces with a bunch of weeds that he waves under my nose. “Parsley, dill.” Out comes a lemon.” He closes the crisper with his knee, extracts a box of eggs from the top shelf, and asks Jenna to “grab that half and half, and take two eggs out of this.” He shoves the egg box into her arms.
“What are you making?” she inquires.
“Ricotta tart.”
Jenna looks my way, chin tucks down, eyebrows rise. Translation: I hope you heard that, I hope you’re impressed.
“Cut this in half.” He hands her a lemon. “You relax, Frannie.” He cracks the eggs and empties them one-handed, selects a whisk from a host of kitchen doodads, and starts beating. “You should always eat when you unburden your heart.”
Jenna’s eyebrows nearly fly off her forehead. I pull a long face, dittoing “impressive” in our silent conversation, but frankly I think James read that line somewhere and is quoting. What normal guy says that?
“James’s parents are never home,” says Jenna.
“Never home,” James echoes.
“His little brother’s at day camp. His mom and dad own a hardware store in Cold Spring, and they work all day.” Jenna does a split. The kitchen’s a galley, and when she sinks down and raises her arms, each hand proffering a half lemon, she pretty much takes up the space.
James accepts the lemon from his balletic assistant and, with one twist of each half, squeezes the juice into the eggs. He’s in constant motion. He may be awkward and gangly to the point that no limb appears to be aware of another when he lopes around in regular life, he may drive a car in fits and starts as cautious as a canary in fear of a cat, but here in the kitchen he’s as graceful as Jenna: reaching for this and that, sometimes simultaneously, spinning from one spot to another, deftly slicing/ dicing/whipping. The fish has found water, or maybe the octopus has: He beats the cheese into the eggs with one hand while he reaches for a glass with another and knocks a lower cabinet closed with his foot. Signor Waldo the Italian chef has another moniker now: Octopus Man.
He works with total concentration. His teeth seem less rabbit size even with his mouth hanging open; his normally placid eyes flash. Must be, yes, I spot it: passion. I remember Dad in his studio. The excitement, the lack of awareness of other people, total immersion.
Lunch was James’s idea. When I warned him, “It’s a long story,” and Jenna injected, “It’s amazing, James, totally amazing, wait until you hear,” that’s when he suggested that we all hang out at his place.
While his sous chef rubs suggestively against him every time she wiggles past in the narrow kitchen, I hang in the breakfast nook. Out the window, the parking lot is something I might draw: endless asphalt striped with white, one car with its hood up parked crazily across two spaces. A pizza box discarded nearby.
Looking at this vision of dullness (rife with suggestion), I could doubt my last night’s adventure, doubt it utterly, were it not for my tortured calves, pinging thighs, and a hip that wants to cry. Simon’s naked chest, sun-splotched pink, invades my ruminations. I wonder if he’s peeling. I even get a vision of him scraping away dead skin with his thumbnail. Jenna tugs my sleeve. “Frannie, look.”
James’s knife chatters across the wooden board as he mows down parsley. “Mincing,” she boasts.
Soon we all settle down together while the tart bakes. I have to begin at the beginning, for James’s sake. He keeps refilling wineglasses with lime zingers (lime and club soda) so sour my lips shrivel, but they do go extremely well with olives and some tasty glop he calls red-pepper paste. Jenna listens avidly, as if she’s never heard any of my tale before. When I get to the boat episode, new to her, she squeezes my arm for encouragement and sometimes from excitement. The incredulities mount, I’m painfully aware, even though this time I don’t embroider, not one bit. When I get to splashdown, my chest is so tight with anxiety that I rush through it: “Then I’m on the floor of my bedroom, so
aked, flailing, coughing up saltwater—saltwater, I swear. My mom can tell you that I was sopping wet, if you want to ask. But the tub and shower were dry, so then I knew there was no way, absolutely no way that I dreamed or imagined it.”
“I believe you totally,” says Jenna instantly.
We wait for James. He picks some olive between his teeth.
“You don’t believe me? You don’t buy any of this, do you? You think I’m crazy.”
“No he doesn’t,” Jenna assures me while I bet she’s kicking him under the table.
“Can I believe you and not believe you?” he asks finally.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, it’s weird, you know.”
I have to admire that. I really do. Let’s face it. If someone unloaded those tales on me, I’d want to cart O Delusional One to the nearest looney bin, but James is cool with me. It is weird, but he’s listening; that’s fair. I feel secure enough to ramble on about the GWW, how it tucked and turned around the edges of the water when I was in the puzzle, about the next trip in—the restaurant, the waterless lagoon (that crater) belching smoke in the ancient garden. All sorts of thoughts fall out as I try to make sense of things, impose logic on madness. “When I studied the puzzle this morning, I realized that I hadn’t completed the garden. I fell into the puzzle too soon. That crater wasn’t a crater. It was the missing part of the puzzle, and the jagged edge, well, it would be jagged because puzzle pieces end arbitrarily. I bet one missing piece had a little knob right where that man’s back was. That why he had ‘crater back.’ I mean, the guy was missing his lower back, but he was still smooching away.” I gulp some zinger, forgetting that a little goes a long way. My insides contract.
As I rant about the restaurant and the garden, James shifts in his seat, scratches his neck, and wings his elbows back. Finally he spikes a fork into the red pepper paste, so it stands straight up as if he’s stuck a flag in the moon, claiming it for America. I stop. “Now you really don’t believe me, right?”
There’s a pause long enough for a flower to wilt.
