The Guy Not Taken Read online

  • • •

  At three o’clock that morning, Nicki poked me in the side. “Josie?”

  I grunted and rolled over. She poked me again. “Josie, wake up!”

  I opened my eyes. “What?”

  “Can you die from a kidney infection?”

  I exhaled and flipped my pillow over. “No.”

  She shook me again. “If I needed a kidney transplant, would you donate one of yours?”

  “Nicki, it’s three in the—”

  “Would you?”

  “I’ll give you a kidney first thing in the morning if you’ll please just let me go back to sleep.”

  There was silence until 3:02. Then Nicki asked, “Do you think there are alligators in the pond?”

  I flicked on the light and glared at my sister, a hundred and five pounds of distilled pain in the ass in a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top with “Where’s the Beef?” emblazoned across the chest. “Nicki, we’re on the second floor.”

  “Oh.”

  I turned off the light, flopped down hard on the bed, which creaked in protest, and shut my eyes. I’d finally managed to drift off when Nicki whispered, “I’m failing everything.”

  I sat up in the darkness with my heart pounding, thinking that I might still be asleep, that this might be the continuation of a bad dream. “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Dad never sent the tuition for the next semester. I’m going to have to leave anyhow.”

  I flicked the light on again. “Turn it off!” Nicki snarled, and rolled over so that I was talking to her back. Her boxers and tank top were striped with light and shadow from Nanna’s plastic blinds, and her head was tucked into her chest like a turtle’s.

  “Nicki, have you talked to anyone? Does Mom know?” I winced, imagining how our mother was going to react to this news, now that she’d finally started getting herself together. She’d planned a vacation, and even if it was only to her mother’s house, and Nanna had probably paid for our plane tickets, that counted for something. “You can apply for a loan, you know, or maybe emergency financial aid.”

  “I’m dropping out,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t even like it there.”

  “Nicki . . .”

  “Forget it,” she said, and reached across me to turn off the light.

  “You can’t just drop out of college.”

  “Yes, I can.” Her bony shoulder blades pulled together. “Not everyone needs to go to college. Not everyone’s like you.” She yanked the covers up to her chin. “Can you bring me a snack, please?” All those years of training had conditioned me well. I got out of bed, padded to the kitchen, located crackers and juice, a glass and a napkin. By the time I got back to the guest room, Nicki was sleeping. I set her snack on the table, pulled the blankets up to her chin, and eased into bed beside her.

  • • •

  When we woke up at eight in the morning, Nicki was raring to go, as if our late-night conversation had never even happened. She yanked the covers off me and hooted at my drab cotton nightshirt until I grabbed my swimsuit and slunk off to the bathroom. “How’s your kidney?” I inquired on the way.

  “Much better, thanks,” she replied. She’d turned her back to me and was wriggling into the scraps of screaming yellow spandex that constituted her bikini. “In fact, I think I am well enough to take some sun.”

  Nanna dropped us off at the beach at ten, along with an ancient red-and-white Thermos full of ice water, a beach blanket, and a bottle of sunblock. “Be good,” she said, as we stood on the sidewalk in flea-market sunglasses and flip-flops, and sun hats that had once been my grandfather’s. As soon as Nanna’s Cadillac pulled away from the curb, Nicki shucked off her tight pink tank top and stalked along the sand in cutoff shorts and her bikini top, basking in the sun and the admiring glances as she looked for the perfect spot. Laden with the blanket and the Thermos, my bag and my sister’s, I struggled to keep up. “How about here?” I asked, jerking my chin toward the scant shade of a palm tree.

  Nicki nixed it. “We have to find interesting people.”

  I put down the bags and wiped my face. “Why?”

  She stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “So we can eavesdrop, of course.” After ten minutes, she found three bathers who suited her: a very skinny blond girl in a white string bikini sharing a blanket with two short, swarthy, heavyset men whose chests and backs were thick with hair and whose necks and wrists were festooned with gold.

  “Ew,” I whispered. Nicki motioned me to be quiet, and helped me spread out our blanket.

  “Drama!” she said, her brown eyes sparkling.

  “Enjoy,” I told her. I smeared sunblock on every body part that wasn’t covered by my extra-large T-shirt and plodded past the palm trees down to the edge of the ocean. Maybe I could call the financial aid office on Nicki’s behalf, I thought as the blue-green water churned and waves sent grit and seaweed splashing over my ankles. Or call the bank where I’d gotten my loan and see if they could arrange one for my sister. Or maybe I’d just drop out and give her my loan, and start again next year. My roommate would undoubtedly be delighted to have our double to herself.

  When I got back to the blanket my calves and thighs were aching, and Nicki was full of news. She rolled over to face me, words tumbling over one another as she filled me in on the tenants of the blanket next to ours. “The girl—her name’s Dee Dee,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth, as if spies from People magazine were lurking in the palm trees, waiting to catch every word. “Well, she went up to their hotel room to get some Cool Ranch Doritos, and as soon as she was gone, they both started talking about all the action they were getting. Not from her.”

  I looked over at the hairy guys with new interest. One of them was asleep on his back, his mouth lolling open and his hands loosely cradling his hairy belly. The other was lazily flicking through an issue of Playboy. Dee Dee sat between them, her bony chest dusted with Cool Ranch Dorito debris, smoothing suntan lotion over her arms. “You should hear how she pronounces Bain de Soleil!” Nicki whispered. She fished the ten dollars Nanna had given us out of her pocket. “Now go buy me a hot dog.”

  “Don’t you want to come with me?” I asked. Nicki flapped her hands impatiently, waving me away. “I wish I had binoculars” was the last thing I heard her say as I headed off down the boardwalk.

  When I returned with lunch, my sister had torn a page from the back of Madame Bovary and was busy composing a letter. “Dear Dee Dee,” she’d written. “Your boyfriend is seeing other women. Ban de Soleil is not pronounced exactly the way it is written. You can do better than Richie.”

  “How do you know his name is Richie?” I asked. Nicki nibbled daintily at her hot dog.

  “Because I am a champion spy.”

  “But of course,” I said. I pulled off my T-shirt and put my head down for a nap.

  When I woke up two hours later my face was drool-glued to my forearm and my back was on fire. I looked around for Nicki, whose own skin was an unhealthy maroon. “You need sunblock,” I said, grabbing the bottle.

  “Oh, no,” she said, wriggling to the far edge of the blanket. “No unnecessary touch!”

  “It’s not unnecessary. You’re getting burned and so am I, and we’re sisters!” I tossed her the bottle. She flung it back.

  “Forget it.”

  I knew when I was beaten. I slathered myself as best I could, stretching my hands as far as they’d reach down my back. Then I put my shirt back on, pulled the blanket over my legs, and read until pickup time.

  When Nanna arrived at four p.m., she was deeply displeased. “I told you two not to get too much sun!” she scolded from underneath her own wide-brimmed sun hat. She pointed one manicured fingertip at me. “Make sure you get the sand off that blanket before you put it in my car!”

  I shook the blanket vigorously toward the street. “Nicki wouldn’t touch me.”

  Nanna was bewildered. “What? But she’s your sister!”

  “Do
esn’t matter,” said Nicki, hissing as her legs hit the cream-colored leather of the backseat.

  “Meshuggenah!” Nanna snorted.

  “Oy vey!” Nicki replied

  Dinner was late—five fifteen—at Nanna and Horace’s favorite Italian restaurant, the Olive Garden. Nanna and Horace both ordered eggplant parmigiana. I got rosemary chicken, a desiccated breast the size and consistency of a hockey puck centered on an oversize plate. “Should have gotten the eggplant,” Horace boomed. Nicki poked halfheartedly at her meatball.

  “Eat!” said Horace.

  “Ess!” said Nanna, pointing her own fork at my sister’s plate. “Mangia!” said the waiter, zipping by holding a platter laden with pasta.

  Nicki shredded the meatball with the tines of her fork and asked for a doggie bag. “She barely ate a bite!” Horace whispered loudly enough for people in neighboring restaurants to hear.

  “She doesn’t like food,” I explained.

  “I don’t like chewing,” Nicki amplified.

  “I don’t understand,” said Horace.

  “Crazy,” said Nanna. The meatball was stowed in Styrofoam and a plastic bag, and off we went to the movies, with Nicki toting her leftovers along, in case she got hungry during the feature.

  We got seats on the aisle (to accommodate Horace’s long legs), about three rows back from the screen (a nod to Nanna’s eyesight), with plenty of space on either side (because Nicki didn’t like people sitting next to her, or really, as she explained to Horace, people under any circumstances). As the lights went down, a couple attempted to ease past us to the seats next to Nicki. “Excuse me,” the man said, stepping first over Horace, then over Nanna. The man stumbled over my feet and then, having failed to notice her, sat down squarely on my sister.

  “Hey!” Nicki yelled.

  The man bolted to his feet. “Excuse me!”

  “Shh!” Horace said.

  Nicki, outraged by this gravest of unnecessary touches, whacked the man’s Bermuda-shorts-clad bottom with her meatball bag. “You pervert!”

  Half of the theater turned to look. The man sank into the seat beside Nicki with an air of abject humiliation as the lights finally, blessedly, went down.

  The first ten minutes of the movie were uneventful, but slowly Nicki and I began to notice something strange. As the actors on the screen said their lines, about half of the people in the theater repeated them in a loud whisper to their hard-of-hearing companions, resulting in a kind of three-part harmony.

  “I’ll be going now,” said the handsome leading man.

  “What did he say?” whispered half of the theater. “He says he’ll be going now,” said their seatmates. Nanna was busily translating for Horace. Nicki’s eyes gleamed in the light from the screen. Unceremoniously dropping her meatball bag on the floor, she leaned over in her seat and began feeding Horace misinformation.

  “I have good news,” breathed the leading lady.

  “Huh?” asked Horace.

  “She says she wants blue shoes,” whispered Nicki.

  Horace’s brow furrowed in puzzlement as Nicki’s whispers grew wilder.

  “I love you,” murmured the leading lady.

  “What?” whispered Horace.

  “She’s having his love child,” said Nicki. Nanna, who had finally figured out what was happening, pursed her lips and reached over to pinch Nicki’s arm. She got mine instead. “Ow!” I yelped. The two rows in front of us went “Shh!” at once. Nicki picked up her meatball bag and whacked me smartly on my sunburn. “Stop disrupting the entertainment,” she said.

  • • •

  The next morning, we were going to the flea market. By eight a.m., the temperature was inching toward ninety, and we’d poured enough black coffee into Nicki that she consented to getting dressed and exiting the condo. Nanna opened the door of her Cadillac, staggered backward two steps, and screamed my sister’s name.

  Nicki flung her hands defensively in front of her face. “What’d I do?” she demanded. Then, wrinkling her nose, she said, “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

  “My car!” Nanna groaned. I looked over her shoulder and noticed that my grandmother’s splendid Cadillac no longer smelled like her late husband’s cigars. Instead, the air was filled with the overpowering scent of oregano and decaying meat, emanating from Nicki’s abandoned meatball in the middle of the backseat.

  “Are there maggots?” Nicki asked, peering eagerly into the car.

  It was not the right question. Nanna turned toward her, lips pursed, hands balled into fists on her Capri-clad hips. “How could you be so careless? What is the matter with you, Nicki?” She stamped one Easy Spirit–shod foot on the pavement. “I’m never going to be able to get that smell out of the upholstery!” She flung open her door, shoved her keys in the ignition, and bent over as she rolled down all four windows. “Where was your head? Why don’t you think?”

  Nicki’s lip quivered. She ducked her head and stared down at her devil-red toenails. I quickly grabbed the offending meatball and deposited it in a trash can labeled “Keep Our Community Clean!”

  “Sorry,” Nicki muttered as she climbed into the reeking backseat without even making a play for the front. Nanna blasted the air conditioner and didn’t say another word to either of us until we’d pulled into the parking lot.

  The trip to the flea market was uneventful, save for my sister being on her best behavior. She wore her sun hat without protest, offered suggestions on watches and T-shirts, promised that if Nanna dropped us at the beach again she’d put lotion on my back, and went on and on about the improving effects the Florida weather had had on her troublesome kidney. She even offered to drive to the airport that afternoon to fetch our mother and Jon.

  “Not a chance,” said Nanna, gathering her purchases in their skimpy plastic bags. “I’m taking you out to breakfast, I’m dropping you off at the beach, I’m going to get the car cleaned, and I’m turning you over to your mother as soon as she gets here. No wonder she’s—”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “No wonder she’s what?” asked Nicki. Nanna just shook her head.

  “It’s not Nicki’s fault,” I said, too softly for anyone else in the car to hear me over the roar of the Cadillac’s air conditioner.

  “What?” asked Nanna. “Josie, speak up.”

  I shook my head. In the backseat, Nicki closed her eyes and rubbed the heels of her hands against the puffy pink flesh of her cheeks. “You okay?” I asked quietly, and she rubbed her face again, then turned toward the window.

  “I’m fine.”

  On the way to breakfast, Nicki rallied, chattering about her roommate, the parties she’d gone to, the guys she’d dated and dumped. Once we were there, she ordered the lumberjack special and proceeded to eat almost everything: eggs, bacon, homefries, pancakes. She dropped her fork queasily, silent for the first time since her plane had landed. “Ugh.” The waitress was sympathetic. “You want me to wrap that for you, hon?” she asked, pointing to Nicki’s bagel. Nanna snapped the clasp of her purse.

  “Absolutely not,” she said.

  • • •

  An hour later, we were back at the beach. The sun was shining. Families were sharing picnics or tossing Frisbees; girls in bikinis oiled themselves and stretched out on bamboo mats. I was lying on the blanket in my swimsuit, while Nicki, still in her shirt and shorts and sun hat, was huddled miserably beneath a palm tree, groaning that her stomach hurt. “I would say that that’s the least of your problems,” I told her.

  “I wasn’t that bad, was I?” she asked.

  I propped myself on my elbow. “Hmm. Let’s see. You faked a major illness, left clothes and wet towels all over the place, got us both the worst sunburn of our lives, convinced Horace that Working Girl is actually a movie about Elvis and prostitutes, and Grandpop’s car smells like a rotting corpse that was sprinkled with oregano.” And you’re flunking out of college, which our father won’t pay for anyhow, and it’s going to break our mother’
s heart.

  Nicki shrugged. “At least Nanna has something to remember me by.” Cheered, she spread her towel on top of the blanket beside me and stepped gingerly into the sun.

  Soon, things were back to normal. I was back with Madame Bovary and her endless discontent, while Nicki kept trying to pull the book out of my hands in order to regale me with recent doings on her soap opera, which she unfailingly identified as “the Emmy Award–winning Santa Barbara.”

  “Okay, so Gina’s house burned down, but Abigail owns it and won’t give her any of the insurance money ’cause she knows that Gina once had an affair with Chris—Abigail’s ex-husband, really her brother, but she didn’t know. . . .”

  Suddenly Nicki stopped talking. “Oh, dear,” she said.

  “What?” I asked . . . but then I saw. Through the white glare rising off the sand, marching toward us like soldiers in resort-wear, were Nanna, Jon, and our mother. Judging from my grandmother’s indignant gestures and my mother’s quickening stride, Nanna was in the process of spilling the beans. “Mom had to ride all the way back from the airport in the meatball car,” I whispered. Nicki grabbed my book and clutched Madame Bovary against her chest, while scanning the waterfront for the lifeguards.

  “I’m doomed.”

  The two women drew closer, glaring at Nicki with unforgiving eyes. “She hasn’t looked this mad since the last time she took Dad to court,” I observed.

  “She probably heard about the Horace thing,” said Nicki.

  “She probably heard about my sunburn,” I said, twisting so the pinkest section of flesh was front and center. Nanna parked herself on a bench beside the palm tree while our mother plowed on toward Nicki, who was seized by a new fear. “Oh, God,” she whispered, “what if she got my grades?”

  “Take your medicine,” I told my sister. Nicki gave me a desperate look, then pulled my giant T-shirt on over her bikini and slouched, head down, across the sand to meet my mother halfway.

  I pulled a towel around my shoulders and hurried toward the water’s edge, listening to Nicki’s voice rising indignantly. My feet slipped in the warm sand, and the sun was warm on my face, as the words meatball and kidney and utter ingratitude followed me out to the sea.