Kissing Kate

  So when I got home on Friday afternoon, I was almost giddy with relief. The week was over and I didn’t have to see Kate until Monday, and I felt like I could breathe again. And eat. I dropped my backpack on the table and opened the refrigerator.

  Pickles. Yogurt. Cold spaghetti left over from last night. Eggs. Applesauce. Half a stick of butter. Milk.

  I closed the door and leaned against it. I wanted something comforting, something rich and fattening and full of calories. Homemade doughnuts. Grits casserole. Fried bologna sandwiches. When I was little, Mom used to make fried bologna sandwiches for me. The slice of bologna would puff up in the middle like a turtle shell, and Mom would slit it with a knife to make it lie flat on the bread. Then she’d cut the sandwich into four smaller sandwiches and serve them to me with apple juice and Goldfish crackers. While I ate, she’d tell me stories about my day: Lissa Gets Her Toenails Cut, Lissa Makes Up Her Bed, Lissa Finds the House Key and Saves the Day. Never anything remarkable, but the way she told them, she made me feel like a star.

  Once I asked Jerry for a fried bologna sandwich, back when he first moved in with us. He didn’t butter the pan, and the bottom of the sandwich turned black. I ate it anyway, eyes on my plate while Jerry read the paper, until he saw my expression and dumped what was left in the trash.

  Kate’s mom stocked their freezer with Lean Cuisines, and except for the times when her dad did the shopping, the only cookies in their pantry were fat-free oatmeal raisin. Jerry was a horrible cook and he knew it, but at least he made the effort. One time he invented a pretty good recipe for peanut butter-coconut bars, and every so often he whipped together a batch of fudge that we could snack on for days. The first time he tried, he turned the stove up too high, and the fudge hardened around the wooden spoon like cement around a flagpole. Jerry let the pan cool, then gave knives to Beth and me and let us chip off as many flakes as we wanted. Beth didn’t remember, but I did.

  I checked the contents of the pantry, but there were no tins of brownies I’d forgotten I’d made, no secret loaves of banana bread. From the den, I heard the old cartoons Beth loved: Bugs Bunny’s wise-guy laugh and spurts of lively music. I tapped my thumbnail against my teeth, then reached to the top shelf and grabbed the graham crackers, which I set on the counter along with a jar of peanut butter, a box of raisins, and a bag of jumbo marshmallows. I grabbed two plates from the cabinet and got to work.

  “What is it?” Beth asked when I presented her with my creation.

  “It’s a snack. I made you a snack. Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Not really.” She poked the marshmallow and wrinkled her nose.

  “Beth, it’s good. It’s like peanut-butter-and-marshmallow cream, which you love.” I sat down beside her and took a bite, but the marshmallow made the peanut butter sandwich too tall, and raisins rained to the floor as I struggled to bite down. I’d tried pressing the raisins into the marshmallow—I thought it would look cheerful—but the marshmallow was too doughy and it didn’t quite work.

  “Mmm,” I said. A raisin zinged the coffee table.

  “Don’t we have any potato chips?” Beth asked.

  “Just try it, Beth.”

  She picked up her snack and took a small bite from the corner. Her expression stayed suspicious, but she took another bite. “Vanessa got elected class leader,” she said with her mouth full.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “She gets to pass out all the handouts, and if Ms. Hutchinson needs a note taken to the office, she gets to take it.”

  “Huh.”

  We watched as Bugs Bunny stole a row of carrots from a neighbor’s garden, pulling them from the soil as if he were ripping the seam from a pair of pants.

  “And Toby Norton asked her to go steady with him, but she said no.” Beth plucked the raisins from her marshmallow. “She says his teeth look like vomit.”

  “Beth.”

  “Well, they do. They’re yellow and kind of speckled-y. I don’t think he brushes them enough.”

  I finished my last bite of graham cracker and wiped the crumbs off my mouth. “What about Nikki? Are you two still best friends?” I liked Nikki. Nikki rescued daddy longlegs and wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up.

  Beth shrugged. “Nikki’s kind of babyish, don’t you think? She doesn’t even wear a bra.”

  “Beth, you don’t wear a bra.” I paused. “Do you?” I felt her shoulder for a strap and my eyebrows shot up. “Beth, you’re in fifth grade. You don’t need a bra. You don’t even—”

  I stopped. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the other girls in her class were all wearing bras, all except Nikki, and so of course Beth had to, too. I didn’t wear one until seventh grade, but I knew that was pretty late. And even then I’d had no idea how to buy one, or how to ask Jerry to buy one for me, which I was not going to do, and I still remembered how traumatic it was to go to Rich’s lingerie department and riffle through the rows and rows of light, silky undergarments. I bought my one white cotton bra and wore it day after day, until Kate’s mom somehow found out and bought me another. She left it on Kate’s bed one night when I was staying over, explaining that she’d found a buy-two-get-one-free sale at Neiman Marcus. “And Kate certainly doesn’t need three new bras. If it doesn’t fit, we can exchange it. All right, sweetie?”

  “Where’d you get it?” I asked Beth.

  She was mad at me for touching her, and she wrapped her arms around her ribs. “It’s one of yours. An old one.”

  There was no way a bra of mine would fit Beth’s skinny frame, even an old one. Maybe that’s why she was wearing a sweatshirt. God, what a nightmare, going through fifth grade wearing your big sister’s droopy bra.

  I switched off the TV with the remote. “Why don’t we go to Rich’s and get you some of your own. All right? Let me write a note to Jerry telling him we’ll be late for dinner.”

  Beth plucked at her jeans. “I want to go to Macy’s,” she said. “That’s where Vanessa got hers. And we don’t need to leave a note for Jerry, because he won’t be here anyway. He left a message on the machine.”

  “Working late?”

  “He said he was going to finish up some stuff, and then he and Sophie were going to grab a hamburger at Bennigan’s.”

  “He and Sophie? Did he, like, ask her out? Like, on a date?”

  “Lissa, please. This is Jerry, remember?”

  Exactly, and Jerry was not a grab-a-hamburger kind of guy. Occasionally he took me and Beth to dinner, but he rarely went out on his own and never with his co-workers. He said situations like that made him uncomfortable, and he blamed it on how he was brought up. He was raised along with my dad on my grandparents’ farm in Tennessee, where, according to Jerry, bread-and-mayonnaise sandwiches were considered a delicacy, and catching greased hogs at the state fair was the closest thing to culture they experienced. My dad went to college and taught himself to act more sophisticated, but Jerry was still a work in progress.

  I thought about how idiotic I’d acted around Kate these last couple of weeks, and it occurred to me that when it came to social skills, Jerry and I were a lot alike. Maybe it was genetic. I winced as I remembered the way I stopped and studied a “Say No to Drugs” poster when Kate passed me in the hall this afternoon, just so I wouldn’t have to meet her eyes. I had to tell myself all over again that it was the weekend, that for two and a half days I didn’t have to deal with anything I didn’t want to.

  I stood up from the couch. “Come on, Beth. Let’s go.”

  At Macy’s lingerie department, we were approached by a pinched-lipped saleswoman wearing a lime green suit. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Beth stepped a foot or two away. She fingered the strap of a black silk slip, then moved on to examine a cream colored camisole.

  “I think we’re okay,” I said. I headed for the junior-miss section, and Beth ducked her head and followed.

  “Oh, you’re shopping for your little sister,” the saleswoman exclaimed. She walked beside us, her panty ho
se swishing between her thighs. “Is this your first, dear? Your first brassiere?” She whipped out a tape measure. “Raise your arms, and let’s figure out your size.”

  Beth shot me a look of desperation.

  “You know what, uh”—I checked her name tag—“Edith? I think we’ll look on our own first. If we need any help, we’ll find you.” I steered Beth to a rack of nightshirts. “This one’s cute,” I said, pulling out a red-and-white baseball jersey with the word Bazooka spelled across the front. “You probably need something new to sleep in. What do you think?”

  Edith frowned. “Well. Call me if you need me.” She waited another moment, then swished away to assist another customer.

  “Do I really need to be measured?” Beth asked, as I draped the nightshirt over my arm and led Beth to the rows of bras.

  “Nah. Just try on a few to see which fits best.” I selected some 30-As in different styles and handed them to her. “Start with these. You might have to adjust the straps.”

  She disappeared into the dressing room, then reemerged several minutes later. “I think it fits,” she said. She stood very straight with her stomach tucked in and shoulders back.

  “Does it lie flat against your skin? Does it feel like it’ll stay in place if you move around?”

  She walked a few steps away from me, lifting and lowering her shoulders like a strange gawky bird. Then she froze, reaching into her shirt to fish for an escaped strap. “Do they come any smaller?”

  The style she finally selected was Warner’s “My First Bra” in size 28-AA. We bought two: one white, one peach. Beth wanted to wear one immediately, so we made a pit stop at the bathroom so she could change. Since we had to cut through the food court anyway, we decided to get Chick-fil-A’s and waffle fries, and afterward ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. Mint chocolate chip for me, bubble gum for Beth. The whole trip home, she spit chunks of gum into her hand, so that by the time we arrived, she had a huge pink wad to put back in her mouth and chew. I tried not to watch.

  That evening, I made a point of going to Beth’s room to say good night. I’d taken her to buy her first bra, and I felt like I’d handled it pretty well. Still, it should have been Mom. I thought again about my first bra. It should have been Mom for both of us.

  Beth was only two when Mom and Dad died, so she didn’t miss them in the same way I did. She asked about them occasionally, questions about what they were like or whether they thought she was cute as a baby. If I didn’t know the answers, I made them up. But mainly I tried to do what they would have done if they were still alive. It wasn’t enough, but it was the best I could offer.

  I sat on the edge of Beth’s bed and listened as she told me about a quiz she’d taken in Seventeen. It was called “Are You a Fashion Victim?” According to the quiz, Beth was a “fashion fiend,” which apparently was a good thing. I let her go on until her voice grew drowsy, and then I leaned over and gave her a quick hug. As I pulled back, my fingers grazed her shoulder blade.

  “Beth?” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you wearing your bra?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Beth, you don’t wear a bra to sleep in. You only wear it during the day.”

  “Okay,” she mumbled.

  “Well, don’t you want to take it off?”

  No answer. She was asleep.

  CHAPTER 8

  I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING determined not to think about Kate. Anyway, I had plenty of other things to think about, like my incredibly dirty truck, for example, which I’d promised myself I would wash today. Inside and out, just in case Vanessa was right and it did smell like pepperoni. I threw on jeans and a sweatshirt and jogged downstairs, where Jerry stood at the stove making blueberry pancakes. He whistled as he flipped them in the skillet, and he made a special one for Beth in the shape of a B. He asked if I wanted an L. I told him I didn’t think so, but thanks.

  “So what’d you two do last night?” he asked, once we were seated at the table.

  “Nothing,” Beth said.

  “We went shopping,” I said. “And then we watched a movie on TV—Sabrina.”

  Beth put down her juice. “It was boring. The remake’s better.”

  “Audrey Hepburn,” Jerry mused. “I’ve always been fascinated with her. If you look at her features one by one, you realize she’s actually fairly ordinary looking. But somehow, when you take in the whole picture, she comes across as beautiful.” He stabbed a bite of pancake. “Strange, huh?”

  I’d say. I’d never heard Jerry say word one about how beautiful a woman was, movie star or not. I didn’t think he noticed that kind of thing.

  “What about you?” I said. “What’d you do?”

  “Stayed late updating some orders, then went to Bennigan’s with Sophie.” He paused. “It was fun.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Nah, it’s not that. It’s just . . .” He carved off another bite of pancake, which he chewed and swallowed before downing a sip of coffee. When he spoke again, his tone was all business. “Gotta go in this afternoon. Resoil some azaleas. Either of you want to come?”

  “I’m going to Vanessa’s,” Beth said. “We’re giving each other makeovers.”

  “I’ve got some stuff to do, too,” I said. “And I’ve got to be at Darlin’s by five-thirty.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Today’s Saturday, isn’t it?” He stood up and took his dishes to the sink, then circled back and rested his hands on the back of the chair. He cleared his throat. “Listen, there’s a chance I might be late again. Beth, think you can stay at Vanessa’s while Lissa does her deliveries?”

  “Sure,” Beth said. “She said I could stay for dinner.”

  “Great. And Lissa’ll pick you up when she’s done.” He looked at me and wrinkled his brow. “Unless you were planning to go out.”

  I forced a smile. “Nope.”

  “All right, well, you two have a good one.” He grabbed his jacket and banged through the screen door.

  “Maybe it was a date,” Beth said as soon as we heard his car start.

  “Maybe.”

  “Hey,” she snickered. “If Jerry can get a date . . .”

  “Thanks, Beth. I love you, too.”

  “Lissa, I was kidding. Geez, can’t you take a joke?”

  I focused on my pancakes, sopping up as much syrup as possible with one double-stacked bite. I crammed it into my mouth, as sweet as I could stand.

  After breakfast, I backed my pickup into the middle of the driveway and hosed it down. I filled a bucket with soapy water, grabbed some old towels from the garage, and started scrubbing. The monotony of the work was soothing, and I gave myself over to the warmth of the sun on my back and the back-and-forth pull on my biceps.

  This isn’t so bad, I found myself thinking. I was alone, yeah, and my only immediate plans were with my ten-year-old sister, but it wasn’t like I was miserable or anything. I knew plenty of people who couldn’t bear to be on their own—people who turned on the TV just for the sound of conversation, for instance—but not me. I could handle solitude just fine.

  I was rinsing the last of the suds off the windshield when a car horn snapped me out of my daze. I jerked up, shoving my hair out of my eyes, because I knew that horn. It was Kate’s horn. How many times had I heard it when she came to pick me up?

  But the Jeep across the street was red, not black. A kid holding a baseball bat dashed out of the Albertsons’ front door, yelling, “Good game! See you tomorrow!”

  I braced myself on the hood of the truck. My heart whammed in my chest, and sweat pricked my armpits. Which was crazy, because it wasn’t Kate; it was just some kid being collected by his mom. So why was I reacting like this? Why was my body reacting like this?

  I walked to the side of the house and turned off the hose. I lowered myself to the grass, resting my elbows on my knees and letting my head fall forward. The sun warmed my neck and hair, and slowly, my body came back to me. I leaned against the brick wall, lift
ing my head and staring into space.

  It wasn’t just that I thought it was Kate. It was that I wanted it to be Kate and at the same time was terrified of it being Kate, although I knew that was ridiculous. I mean, I knew Kate as well as I knew myself. At least, I used to.

  But if I didn’t know Kate, then maybe I didn’t know myself—and it was that not-knowing that made my gut clench. Like losing your balance, that whoosh of almost falling, before pulling yourself back in line.

  I stood up. I grabbed a rag. I wiped the sides, the hood, the back of my truck, focusing only on the job at hand.

  CHAPTER 9

  “LISSA,” DARLIN SAID when I showed up at her house that night. She sounded tired. “How are you, sweetie? Come on in, I’ve got your things on the table.”

  I stepped into the entryway and searched her face. Her mascara was smudged, and the lines around her mouth seemed more pronounced. “Um, I’m fine,” I said. “How about you?”

  “The truth? Not so good.” Her voice trembled. “Burl called it quits. Said he felt smothered.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Darlin waved her hand and tried to laugh. “Well, you win some, you lose some. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about an old lady’s troubles.”

  I shifted my weight. I was sorry about her and Burl, but it wasn’t like I knew him that well. I was afraid anything I said would make things worse.

  “So . . . has Mr. Rossey called?” I finally asked. “Shrimp scampi as usual?”

  Darlin looked blank. Then she straightened up and said, “Yes, yes. Shrimp scampi and a house salad, blue cheese on the side. You surely do know your customers, Lissa.”

  I felt bad that she would even say that. She was the one who knew the customers, not me. But I wasn’t good at articulating that stuff, so instead I said, “What, uh, about Kimberly? Is she working tonight?”