For Keeps

  “You’re an idiot,” the girl in the mirror says to me. Or I say to her. Either way, it’s true.

  Of course I don’t expect my mom and Paul Tucci to get back together. That would be ludicrous. Asinine. But I can’t help the image; it just pops in there. It’s because, when you’ve spent sixteen years without something, and that something suddenly appears, you don’t know what to think. You have no way to process it. All you can do is stare at yourself in the mirror until you are ready to leave the bathroom.

  Am I ready?

  No.

  But somehow my feet are moving.

  Walking down the hall, I picture another gem of a scenario. I picture Paul Tucci on the couch next to my mom. “Katie, please,” he’s saying. “Let me buy you and Josie a beach house on the Carolina coast.”

  “No,” my mom says, shaking her head and frowning.

  “It’s the least I can do,” he says, “after all you’ve been through.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “But I feel responsible.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Maybe not,” he says. “But I do.”

  “OK,” my mom says. “You can buy us a beach house.

  “Great,” Paul Tucci says.

  “And we’d like a ski condo too. Josie’s never been skiing.”

  “Of course. She’s my daughter. She can have whatever she wants.”

  Am I an idiot? I am such an idiot.

  In the real den, not the den in my mind, they are sitting in separate chairs. When I walk in they are gasping for air, like something hysterical just happened and they can’t stop laughing. Which throws me.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  “Josie,” Paul Tucci says, pulling himself together right away. “Hi.”

  I stare at my mom, who is still giggling. I say, “Are you drunk?”

  She shakes her head, unable to answer.

  “Just reminiscing,” Paul explains. “High-school stories.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  I take a seat on the couch, across from them.

  My mom gives one last shuddering snort, then smiles.

  “You should really lay off the booze,” I tell her.

  “Honey,” she says, ignoring my comment. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Why?”

  She looks at Paul, who clears his throat and looks at me.

  I’m about to blurt out that it’s time for dessert—Dodd’s world-famous cheesecake—but I don’t. I realize I want to hear what he has to say.

  “Josie.” Paul’s brown eyes are on mine.

  “Uh-huh.” My mouth is a cotton ball. I know this is where the big pronouncement comes in, but I have no clue what it will be.

  Paul takes a deep breath. “I want to be here,” he says.

  When I speak, my voice is so low I can barely hear it. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . . in whatever capacity you want me to be”—he hesitates—“a presence, in your life, I will be. From now on.”

  I shake my head. I’m not saying no, I’m just trying to understand. “Do you mean moving back here?”

  “That’s a possibility,” he says, “at some point.”

  I can’t speak, so I nod.

  “I’m committed to my job until the end of the school year. But it’s only a two-hour plane ride from Raleigh-Durham . . . and we can talk on the phone, and e-mail. . . . And if you want, at some point . . . I’d like for you to meet Lauren.... .”

  “Lauren,” I repeat.

  “My fiancée.”

  It takes me a beat to remember—Big Nick told Liv that Paul had a girlfriend, and Liv told me. But apparently we never got the engagement memo. And now it feels like a bucket of ice water has been dumped on my head.

  “Right,” I say.

  I turn to my mom, to see how she’s taking it. Her face is smooth and she’s nodding, like she already got the news. And for some unfathomable reason, she’s OK with it.

  “Lauren’s great,” Paul Tucci says. “She teaches first grade,” he adds, as though this proves her greatness.

  I nod again, not knowing what to say. Then something comes to me. “I hated my first-grade teacher.”

  Paul laughs.

  “I did! Remember her, Mom? Mrs. Butterfield? She was mean. And she smelled like Limburger cheese.”

  “Limburger cheese?” my mom says. “Did you even know what Limburger cheese was when you were six?”

  “I love Limburger,” Paul says. “All the stinky cheeses, in fact. Camembert. Stilton. The stinkier the better.”

  Something hits me. We don’t know each other at all. I swallow, look down at my lap.

  “Josie?” he says.

  I shake my head.

  “What is it?” my mom says.

  “Nothing. Just . . . this is so weird. How do we do it? Where do we start? You know?”

  “Well,” my mom says slowly. She looks at Paul, and then she looks at me. “I think you already did.”

  I know what she’s doing. She’s trying to sound all supportive and encouraging. She wants to prove that she’s fine with everything. Fine with Lauren. Fine with me and Paul Tucci suddenly starting this . . . relationship . . . when he hasn’t been here for the past sixteen years. He’s missed my whole life. How can she be OK with that?

  “Whatever,” I mutter.

  I hear how snotty my voice sounds, and it’s not how I mean it. I mean that she doesn’t have to pretend; she should just admit how she’s feeling.

  Maybe Paul Tucci can read minds, or maybe he wants to put things in perspective. Either way, he reaches out to punch my mom’s shoulder—lightly, like a brother—then turns to me. “We just . . . muddle our way through it.”

  I understand now—he means all of us. We’ll muddle our way through it together.

  I start to make a crack about him and Lauren, my mom and Jonathan on a double date, but then I remember my mom and Jonathan are on a break. Anyway, Paul’s face is serious. He’s looking for a real response, not a joke. So I tell him I wish he hadn’t missed the last sixteen years.

  “Me too,” he says, and his voice sounds a little choked. “But I’d like to be here for the next sixteen. And the sixteen after that.”

  I pause to do the math. “I’ll be forty-eight,” I say. “And you guys will be . . . sixty-four. God.”

  My mom shakes her head, as though she can’t imagine herself old.

  Neither can I.

  Suddenly I want to see my whole future. I’d like to deal out some of those tarot cards and see the three of us, thirty-two years from now. How many marriages will there be? How many children? Will we all be in the same place for Christmas?

  Everything I’m imagining is hopeful, but then I worry I’m deluding myself. I want to believe what Paul is saying—about being here—but I’m scared he’ll change his mind. No matter what, I will take my mom’s side. She’s been here from Day 1. And she has never left.

  “Josie?” my mom says now. “Are you OK?”

  I nod.

  “Are you sure? You look—”

  “I’m just thinking.”

  “About .... ?”

  I shake my head, trying to come up with an answer. When I finally say, “Cheesecake,” Paul laughs.

  “Cheesecake?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Then, “How do you feel about cheesecake? Do you like it, or is it not stinky enough for you?”

  “I love cheesecake,” he says.

  So I gesture toward the doorway. “Dodd’s cheesecake is out there . . . you know, waiting for us.”

  Paul says, “I hate to leave a cheesecake in the lurch. . . .”

  I take this as my cue to stand. Also as my cue to hold out a hand to my mom, to pull her up. So the three of us can walk out together.

  Twenty-one

  TEN DAYS LATER, Paul Tucci calls from North Carolina. He’s back at work, zip-lining through the woods with juvenile delinquents, but soon he’ll be on winter break, and he already bought his plane
ticket. He’ll stay with his parents, so he can keep an eye on Big Nick—make sure he lays off the eggnog. If there’s snow, he says, he wants to teach me to ski.

  I thought it would be awkward, talking to him on the phone. But it happens not to be so bad. The weird thing is when he asks to talk to my mom, or when she asks to talk to him. Listening to the two of them converse is like walking straight into the Twilight Zone. I sit here, thinking, My parents are talking on the phone. My parents are talking on the phone!

  The novelty still hasn’t worn off. I blab about it to anyone who will listen: Liv, Riggs, even the Makeup Mafia, who, after a week of intense shunning, finally forgave me and Liv for our suspensions. It helps that they lost only one of their three games without us. It also helps that we finally told them what happened—that we didn’t ditch practice just to ditch; there was some legitimate drama behind it. I’d forgotten how much Jamie and Lindsey and Schuyler love the drama.

  Liv hasn’t told them about Finn, though. She is still nursing a sore heart, is my theory. Or at least a bruised ego. I know she says it was all physical between her and Finn—no strings attached—but still. I keep trying to make her laugh with my dumb jokes, and I’ve put Riggs on the case, to help find a new and improved boy toy—an anti-boy toy—which Liv may not be ready for. But she deserves it.

  Also still trying is Jonathan, who, while he hasn’t materialized on our front porch again, has been calling my mom constantly. I am starting to understand what she meant by the word “needy.” At first when he called, it was sweet. She would get off the phone and say, “It was sweet of him to check in.” And I would say, “Yes, it was.” But then, like an hour later, he would call again. And an hour after that. And an hour after that.

  Now I am thinking, needy doesn’t gel with Kate Gardner. It’s not that Jonathan is a bad guy; he’s not. . . . It’s just, here is the thing: Kate Gardner is a strong, smart, incredible, beautiful person. Kate Gardner deserves someone who’s not only nuts about her—who not only holds his arms open wide, with no pretense, no bull—but can stand on his own two feet, watching her do her thing.

  This hits me when I swing by the bookstore on Saturday, and my mom is running story hour. She is reading Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and I see the kids sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring up at her, their little mouths gaping open. She isn’t just reading; she’s doing different voices for all the characters; she’s making engine noises; she’s standing on her chair, peering down into an imaginary cellar, calling, “Hey, Mike Mulligan, how are you going to get out?!”

  I forget, for a second, that she is my mother. And then I remember. And my heart squeezes in on itself, proud.

  Later, when we get home, there’s bouquet of roses waiting for my mom on the porch. Shocker: They’re from Jonathan. Now I have to ask, “So what’s the deal with you guys?”

  Again, she gives me the party line: they’re taking some time apart, time to think things through, time to let things marinate.

  “How much time?” I ask. I sound exasperated, even to myself. “Just what are you waiting for, exactly? If you think he’s too needy, why don’t you break up with him for good?”

  While she thinks, I hold on to my biggest point: I hope she’s not waiting for a Paul Tucci miracle.

  “I guess,” my mom says finally, “I want to be sure that whatever I decide about Jonathan, I’m doing it for the right reasons.”

  “You mean not just because Paul’s getting married.”

  I can’t believe I’ve said it. But it’s what I’ve been thinking for the past week—ever since Paul informed us that Lauren will be coming with him for Christmas.

  My mom shakes her head slowly. “More that I don’t want to stay with Jonathan just to avoid being alone.”

  “Mom. You’re not alone.”

  “Oh, I know. But next year you’ll be a senior. You’ll be applying to colleges, and then . . .” She looks at me, shrug-smiles. “You’ll be off.”

  “Well, not permanently!” I say. “And who knows, maybe I’ll go to UMass. Or Elmherst College. Maybe I’ll only be five minutes away and we’ll still see each other, like, all the time.”

  “Oh, honey.” She sighs. “I don’t want that.”

  “Why not? If you need me to—”

  “No. It’s my job, Josie, to sort out my life. Not yours. Your job is to hang out with your friends and have fun and play soccer and . . . you know . . . be young. I haven’t let you do enough of that.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “I want you to do it more, though, is the point. . . . I want you to really cherish this time. OK? I want you to live it up.”

  “OK,” I say, shrugging. “Great.” I tell her I’ll be all over it: keg stands, drag racing, ditching school to shoplift at the mall.

  Even though she knows I’m kidding, she pinches my thigh. And even though I know there’s no one here to save me, I squeal for help.

  Because that is what we do.

  I am at Fiorello’s, standing at the coffee bar, restocking plastic lids. Bob is behind me, hovering. Ever since the thing with Big Nick, Bob has been hovering. My first day back, when he asked for a Big Nick report, I told him everything I knew—including that minor tidbit I’d left out from the beginning. “By the way . . . did I mention he’s my grandfather?”

  At this, Bob practically fell over from shock. So of course I had to tell him the whole story.

  “It’s true,” I said, when I’d finished. “You saved my grandfather’s life.”

  Now, whenever I bring it up—the enormity of what he did—Bob brushes it away, embarrassed. But secretly, I know he’s pleased. He keeps the bouquet of lilies from the Tuccis smack in the middle of the pastry counter, where everyone can see them, and he hasn’t even bothered cleaning up the petals that have started to fall off. The card is cream-colored with a green leaf border and a single line of script:

  Yours forever in gratitude, Nico, Christina, Peter, Patrick, and Paul Tucci.

  While I restock, I think about the night before Paul left for North Carolina, how he brought his parents by my house, and we all sat around the kitchen table. It was the first time my mom and I had seen them since the hospital—the first time since Paul told them about me.

  It could have been horrendously, torturously awkward, and, in a way, it was. One thing about Christina Tucci: she doesn’t mince words. She thinks Paul and my mom screwed up royally, and she wasn’t afraid to say it. She thinks she and Big Nick were robbed of the opportunity to be my grandparents, and she wasn’t afraid to say that, either. In a way, my impression of her hasn’t changed since that first night at Shop-Co, when she badgered the checkout girl and slapped her husband on the wrist for picking up a Peppermint Pattie. But I think I might admire her too, a little. For speaking her mind. For putting her feelings out there.

  And anyway, Big Nick’s humor is the perfect antidote for Christina’s crustiness. Like how, in the middle of her tirade, he winked across the kitchen table at me and said loudly, “You can be glad of one thing, Josie. You didn’t get the Tucci nose.”

  “What’s wrong with the Tucci nose?” Christina said. Then, to me and my mom, “He thinks there’s something wrong with his nose.”

  Big Nick shrugged. “It’s a Rocky Balboa nose.” He elbowed Paul in the ribs. “A prizefighter nose, right, Paulie?”

  “Right, Dad.”

  “Well,” Christina said, “it’s a fine nose. I like it.”

  Watching her lean over and kiss his cheek, I had to hand it to Big Nick. He knows how to break the tension. That is a skill everyone should have—tension-breaking. A skill that can take a person far.

  Like now, for instance, when Bob is still hovering six inches behind me, I can turn to him and say, “Are you afraid I might slip?”

  “Sorry,” he says quietly. He is shuffling his feet, twisting the towel in his hands. I realize what he wants is for me to move, so he can scrub down the coffee bar properly, leaving no germ unwiped.

  “
That’s OK,” I say, feeling bad. “You go ahead.” I sidestep out of his way so he can do his thing.

  I still don’t get why Bob is the way he is, but I’m beginning to think he’s not any more freakish than the rest of us. Me, my mom, Paul, Big Nick, Christina, Riggs, Liv, Jonathan. We may not be germ-a-phobes, but we all have our peccadilloes, our irrational fears: the fear of falling too hard, or of never falling at all; the fear of screwing up, or of getting screwed; the fear of being held too tight, or of not knowing when to let go.

  This morning before school, my mom walked into my room with the box from the attic. Paul’s letters. “I think you should have this.”

  I looked at her carefully. “Why?”

  “It’s your history,” she said. “How it all began.”

  “It’s your history too,” I reminded her.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Yes, it is, Mom. You lived it.”

  I felt sad, watching her put the box down on my bed. I felt like she should be sad, too, for what she was giving up.

  “If you thought you could get him back,” I said, “would you try?”

  She smiled a little when I said that. Then she shook her head again. “I’m tired of looking backward, Josie. I’m ready to move on.”

  “With Jonathan?” I said.

  “Maybe with Jonathan. Maybe on my own. . . . Maybe in a nunnery somewhere . . . you know, swearing off men forever, until I’m too old and withered to care . . .”

  I stared at her.

  “Kidding, Josie,” she said, laughing. “I’m kidding.”

  “You’d better be,” I said.

  The last thing I want to imagine is my mother in a wimple, hunched over a cane. I want her to stay exactly the way she is, with her spiky hair and penchant for cheesy ’80s movies, and when people see her coming they say, “Look, there’s Josie’s mom.” They tell me she’s a babe, and they’re right. They tell me I’m lucky to have her for a mother, and they’re right about that, too. For sixteen years she’s been the only parent I’ve ever known—the only one I’ve needed. I don’t know how things will change now, with Paul Tucci in our lives. It remains to be seen, I guess. But I know that whatever happens, my mom will be OK. We both will.