Jersey Tomatoes are the Best (20 page)

That’s when I surprise myself. I throw my arms around her in a big, grateful hug. It’s all good with Yoly. Positive energy gushing from every pore in her body. Just the sort of karma I need right now. I need to focus on all the good stuff. An exciting tournament. A new girlfriend and dinner out at a real Cuban restaurant. David. Who, it turns out, kisses as well as he plays tennis. Maybe even better.

“Okay, but promise me one thing: you have to help me order from the menu. The only Cuban food I know is rice and beans. And your mom’s
empanada
thingies.”

Yoly sits up straight. She doesn’t need more encouragement.

“Let me tell you about
cerdo asado
,” she begins.

Chapter Twenty

“Y
es, she actually used
that word
! In front of Eva! I have never experienced anything more … thoughtless. Irresponsible.”

Rhonda is ranting to my father on the phone. I listen from the den, where I recline on the overstuffed couch. My cracked toe is elevated on one of the embroidered pillows strewn there; my head rests on another. They are part of a collection my aunt brought back from her trip to India last year.

“And then, as if we weren’t upset enough, she ordered an EKG for Eva. Refused to release her until they’d monitored her
heart
!”

My family hardly ever takes vacations, let alone zips around the world to an exotic place like India. The last semivacation I remember taking was to Cape Cod, last summer, for a long weekend. We stayed at a little inn, in a town called Wellfleet. I remember on one side of the Cape the ocean was cold, way colder than the Jersey Shore, and on the other side the beach was littered with razor clams.

Here’s what I don’t remember: getting my period. Not last
summer, or last fall either. I vaguely recall that at some point my period was late. Then really late. Then gone. But since I knew I couldn’t possibly be pregnant (I’ve never even
kissed
a guy), I didn’t bother mentioning it to Rhonda. She continued to stock my bathroom with sanitary pads, and I just kept shoving the unused packs farther and farther into the back of the cabinet under the sink. I wasn’t worried. I mean, it felt like a gift. Especially since I’ve always loathed, hated and despised my period.

I still remember the first time. I was ten. It was fourth grade, and I got it in school. I had no clue what was happening to me; Rhonda and I still hadn’t had the “becoming a woman” talk, and when I went to the girls’ room after lunch, my underpants were soaked with blood. I was petrified. I figured I had cut myself down there … maybe I sat on a splinter on the playground during recess? … and after I rolled my bloody underwear into a ball and shoved it into the trash can, I ran, crying, to the nurse’s office.

She was very kind but didn’t enlighten me much. I guess she felt that was a mother’s job, so she called her to pick me up and I left school early. I have to admit, Rhonda did her best, and was very sweet and frank and factual about the whole thing, even though it had totally taken her by surprise as well. I mean, I was ten.

But the fact is all the signs were there. My mother should have noticed. Should have prepared me.

Our family doctor gave it a name: early-onset puberty. When a girl grows faster and develops earlier than the growth chart says she should. It explained a lot. I was the class giant in
second grade. I had pubic hair in third grade. I had breasts in fourth grade. I had jerky boys staring at me and whispering. I had cramps. More than anything, I had the feeling that I was the biggest, fattest, hugest elephant on the face of the earth. I was a little girl stuck in a woman’s body, and I wished there were something, anything, I could do to change it.

Rhonda continues ranting.

“Well, I want a second opinion, and tomorrow we are going to speak to a
reputable
doctor.” Pause. “Yes, of course I called the school. They’ve been very nice.” Pause. “She’s relaxing on the couch right now.”

Relaxing. There’s an interesting word for how I feel. All floaty and light. The painkillers the hospital prescribed have turned me into cotton candy. I look like I occupy space, but in fact, I’m mostly air. This is good stuff. My thoughts belong to someone else; my mother’s voice emerges from a dream. Which is fortunate. Because reality sucks.

Basically, I’m out. Bye-bye, New York School of Dance. At least for this summer. The doc says I need to take a month off for my toe to heal completely, and while the rational side of me thinks that is just not a big deal, the catastrophizing side of me knows it’s the end of my career. All those years of ballet lessons and classes, all those summers when the schedule and the budget didn’t allow for a vacation … for nothing. Madame will forget me like yesterday’s headache. The Three Musketeers will probably
help
them move my stuff out of the dorm.…

I can’t think about them. I can’t think about what they’re
doing right now. Because if I start looking at my watch and imagining
pointe
class proceeding without me, I may start crying so hard that I’ll never stop.

My mother’s voice is suddenly close. She’s carried the phone into the living room.

“She’s right here. I’ll put her on.” She holds it toward me. “It’s Dad.”

Inconveniently enough, my father is in Chicago on business. Quite a bummer, because the only thing that stands between me and a complete Rhonda-freak-out-fest is my father’s low-keyed presence. The man doesn’t have a pulse, and is very, very good at hugs. As my hand reaches out in drug-induced slow motion for the phone, I suddenly feel an overpowering need to hear his voice, to close my eyes and curl up against him here on the couch and feel the low rumble in his chest as he speaks.

“Daddy?” I say, and to my astonishment, my voice breaks. Something inside my chest splits open, and I’m not floating anymore; I’m drifting, cut loose in space, and there’s no air to breathe, no sound, nothing to tether me. I’m so lost.

“Honey, everything is going to be okay,” I hear him say. He sounds solid. Grounded and sure. I want him to hold on to me, keep me from disappearing.

“Okay,” I say quietly. Tears slide down my cheeks.

“We love you, Eva,” he says firmly. I look up at my mother. Her mouth forms a determined line.

“I’m sorry!” I burst out. “I’m so sorry I’ve wrecked everything,
Daddy!” My shoulders begin shaking. I don’t think I can make them stop. It scares me, being this out of control.

“Eva! You have nothing to be sorry about!” he says. I’m crying too hard to reply. My mother pulls the phone from my hands.

“Bob? She’s gotten herself all worked up. I’ll call you later.” She turns the phone off. She crouches beside the couch, her face level with mine. She puts both hands on my trembling shoulders, and speaks fiercely into my face.

“Eva, listen to me. First thing tomorrow we’ll see your doctor, and he’ll put all this in perspective. Do
not
overreact.”

My heart pounds wildly in the gaping hole inside my chest. I’ve gone from floating to frantic in under a minute, and that scares me, too.

You are going to get so fat
.

No dancing. Not even walking, except with crutches, for a month. Your ass is going to balloon. And when your toe does heal, you’ll be too enormous to ever dance again
.

“Eva, stop it!”

Horror, panic, in her voice, startles me. I open my eyes … when did I close them? … and see her staring at me. She’s gripping my wrists, hard.

“Stop hitting yourself! Why are you hitting yourself?”

You are such worthless vomit. You are such a pig
.

The cover’s blown off the shaky ground we’ve been dancing on. Some subterranean explosion, kindled by a long fuse that leads to barrels of dynamite, has blasted the house of cards to smithereens. Floating, floating, the small singed cards are
floating … while someone screams in the background. What ignites something like this? An injury. A disappointment. A missing friend. A missing period. A body that betrayed me. And finally, a word. A word my mother hopes some second-opinion doctor will diagnose away. A word the doctor in the emergency room didn’t hesitate to speak aloud.

Anorexia.

Chapter Twenty-One

I
’m a bottom-feeder. An unseeded, unknown player at the junior invitational tournament in Miami. And I’m
winning
.

Not only am I winning: I’m upsetting. Because I’m a sub, they’ve slotted me in as a wild card draw, which means I’m pitted against the top seeds right away. On Friday night, the opening-round match? I defeat number three. In straight sets. She was this college freshman from California who threw her racket when she didn’t like a line call. Bad move. ’Cause after that racket flew across the court … I owned her.

Not with words. Not with attitude or drama. I beat her with game, pure and simple.

It wasn’t easy. She kept giving me all these wonderful opportunities to crush her, to play with her head and make her feel like a loser. Like, the first time she double-faulted, and swore (a big no-no), I could hear a few gasps from the audience.

The old Henry would have rolled her eyes. Made some face that drew laughter. Maybe even shaken a finger at her and
said, “Now, now, none of that!” The possibilities were endless, and hard to resist.

Instead, I wiped the emotion from my face. I wore a mask of concentration and pretended I didn’t notice her self-destructing, and the only sounds from my mouth were the grunts I made when I hit the ball. I turned myself into a robotic tennis machine, which, it turns out, is way more lethal than a smart-mouthed jerk.

Afterward, Missy hustled me straight back to our hotel. We ended up in a dim corner of the restaurant’s lounge, downloading with David and his coach, Harvey. David wasn’t scheduled to play until Saturday morning, so he and Harvey had just arrived. As Missy entertained them with descriptions of the reactions following my upset win, I tucked into a chicken-salad sandwich.

“What’d I say?” David commented smugly to Missy. “Didn’t I tell you she was going to kick ass?” Missy smiled thinly.

“Our girl is very good, David. But let’s not forget that Carly is a head case and routinely blows matches she should have won.” Carly was the California racket thrower.

“Oh, please. Please!” David looked at Harvey entreatingly. “Can you get her to admit that I was right? For once?”

“Admit that he was right for once, Missy,” Harvey said, grinning. Missy shrugged.

“If Henry beats Stephanie tomorrow, I will admit that you were right.
For once,
” she said. David smiled knowingly at her. They have some ongoing jokes, these two, which makes sense. David spends more time with the coaching staff than he does
with his own family. He’s been living full-time at Chadwick since ninth grade.

*   *   *

As it turned out, I beat Stephanie, the number four seed, in straight sets the next morning. Two hours later, during the hottest part of the day, I took out number five. That involved some work. We went to three sets, one of them a tiebreaker. But when it was over I was lined up to play on Sunday. In the final.

That night, alone in my hotel room, I’m just about to turn the lights out when I hear the soft knock. I climb out of bed, pull the door open until the chain checks it and through the crack see David. His tennis bag is at his feet. He and Harvey must’ve only just returned.

I push the door closed, slip the chain and let him in. He wastes no time wrapping his arms around my waist. He keeps stepping, I stumble backward, and when we fall on the bed he covers my giggles with his mouth. I move my hands to the back of his head … I love to touch his hair … and it feels stiff with dried salt and sweat. He’s definitely smelled better.

He rolls back on the bed, so we’re side by side, our eyes inches apart.

“Guess what couple from the same club is playing in the finals tomorrow?” he whispers.

I jump up, with a little yelp of glee.

“You won?” I ask excitedly. Although I shouldn’t be surprised. He was seeded first.

“Yup,” he grins. “Took me four sets, but I’m there. And I hear, gorgeous, so are
you.
”