Kissing in America (5 page)

I
'd taken Will's advice: I wrote a poem, the first poem I'd written since my dad died, and submitted it to the contest.

(It wasn't exactly “writing”—I'd scrawled it really fast on the back of a Fresh Direct receipt while I stood at the kitchen counter at midnight. It was the night after Will asked, “Are you afraid?”
I'm not afraid
, I told myself. Then I ate an entire package of Chips Ahoy.) I hadn't written anything else since.

It didn't win the contest, but in June I found out that it received an honorable mention.

“They're printing it in a book and giving me a certificate,” I told my mom. “At this festival held at our school. It's called Urbanwords. It's next Friday.”

We were sitting at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning, eating breakfast. We lived in an old brick building with peeling green paint and cracked mirrors in the lobby, and hallways that smelled like overcooked cabbage and Mr. Clean. Out the kitchen window, the pink neon sign of Mega Donuts blinked on and off, though the “n” was broken. Mega Douts.
Mega doubts
, I always thought.

I had
Cowboys on Fire
(book 8:
Cousin Bryce
) propped in front of my fried eggs and potatoes. The
New York Times
lay in front of my mom's spinach omelet.

My dad used to be the cook in our family—pastas, roast chicken, and eggs were his specialties, and I was his assistant. Now I was the cook. My mom had never asked me to (for a long time, we'd order takeout when she came home from work, and scarfed down cold cereal for breakfast every morning), but I liked cooking. I liked going to the store and stuffing the fridge and cupboards full of fresh bread and cheese, eggs, ripe peaches, berries, cantaloupe, and other delicious things to eat, and standing over the stove with the recipes my dad had torn out of magazines. I even liked placing the Fresh Direct order, ordering bagels and whitefish salad.

“The ceremony starts at five o'clock,” I said.

She looked up from her newspaper and pressed her lips together. “I have a conference at Brooklyn College that day. I'm giving a keynote at five and I have events till late at night.”

I shrugged. “It's not a big deal.” But I felt this emptiness just the same.

She seemed angry—not at me—but she stared out the window at some uncertain point in the distance and seemed almost teary for a second. “Sometimes I get so frustrated that I can't be in two places at once,” she said. “Can you bring back extra copies of the book for me?”

“I'll get extra copies if you promise to read it.”

“Of course I'll read it.”

I didn't believe her. She'd glance at the poem, her face as blank as when she read her students' papers.

She put her hand over mine. “I'm sorry I can't be there.” She paused. “I hope the ceremony won't go too late. I don't want you taking the subway from the Bronx after eight.”

“I'll be fine. It won't go late.”

Ever since my dad died, my mom had been worried that something bad would happen to me. A year ago she signed me up for a Self-Defense for Women class where each week I repeated the phrase “I want I need I deserve” and practiced sticking my fingers into a dummy's jugular notch. She worried about muggings, crazy people on the street, kidnappers, and every crime that she read about in the paper.

Even now, the thought of me riding the subway at night set something off in her, and she passed her newspaper to me. “Read this.” She pointed to an article about pedestrian deaths. Kids who had been killed while crossing Manhattan streets.

“These people crossed with the light but the drivers turning didn't see them. When you cross, you have to make eye contact with the drivers. Make sure they see you,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “I'm always careful.” I stood up and put my dishes in the sink. I glanced at the clock. “I'm meeting Annie to go study. I promise I'll make eye contact with drivers when I cross the street.”

“I'm not joking,” my mom said.

“You be careful too, then,” I said. “You're spacier than me.” My mom was always doing her work on the subway and missing her stop.

“I will,” she said.

As I walked to Athens Diner to meet Annie, I thought about how my dad used to say that when he looked at me, he felt like he'd re-created himself in girl form. “You're both gooey lovecrumbs,” my mom had agreed. Now I wished she was a little bit of a gooey lovecrumb. A smidge of a lovecrumb. She used to be, before he died. When I was younger, we'd go to the park, and from the swings I'd watch my parents kiss. On weekend mornings, I climbed into bed between them, and the three of us read books together. We stopped doing that after he died.

It was like my dad was the glue between my mom and me, and the glue had been washed off.

Annie waited in a booth. We ordered hot chocolates with extra marshmallows and I told her about the poem.

She squealed and hugged me. “Did you tell Will?”

“Not yet. He hasn't been in school the last couple of days, and there's no point in texting him—his phone doesn't work half the time.” I'd never even told Annie or Will that I'd written it and submitted it—I wanted to spare myself the humiliation if it didn't get picked.

She propped her head on her chin. “I heard a rumor this morning about why he was absent. Jill in my lab group is in
AP English with him, and she told me he was out because his dog died. The Undead was not sympathetic.”

“Silas?” I pictured the three-legged, sixteen-year-old dog that he'd had since he was two. I couldn't believe Silas was dead. I thought of everything he'd told me—how Silas slept at the foot of his bed every night, and how even when Silas lost his leg—he was hit by a car—he just went on so happily as if nothing was ever wrong. He was able to walk and run again, though a little strangely, and he slept with his head in Will's lap while Will studied. Will had told me that without Silas maybe he'd never have gotten over his dad's leaving them, his brother's death, everything.

I stared into my mug. “I should go see him. Today. I should stop by the bakery. He told me he works there on Saturdays.”

“Really? To say you're sorry about his dog?”

I nodded. “It's what you're supposed to do. Like a shiva call.” We'd never sat shiva for my dad—we'd barely survived the funeral, and my mom decided sitting shiva would be too much. We never even went to synagogue anymore. My mom didn't want to see our rabbi and be reminded of my dad's death and funeral every time we went.

“People sit shiva for dogs?” she asked.

“I don't know. They should. If it had been my dog, I'd want him to come.”

She looked skeptical. “Are you sure it's a good idea? What about Gia?”

“She leaves in three weeks. She'll be doing her photo shoot in Greenland.” In my mind, I watched Gia drift away on an ice floe with a crowd of hungry walruses. “Anyway, I'm not going to
do
anything with him. I just want to tell him I'm sorry.”

We studied a little while more, but all I could think about was going to the bakery. I'd visited the bakery's website dozens of times but never had the guts to go in person before. Finally, I gave up studying and told Annie I was going to head over there.

“Maybe he'll give you some free cupcakes. You can pretend you like them,” she said.

I'd never liked frosting—I loved cookies and chocolate, but cake and cupcakes with their thick layers of too-sweet buttery goo weren't my thing. Still. “I know I'll like his cupcakes,” I said.

“And his man frosting,” she said.

I hesitated. “I don't even know what that is.”

“Me neither.”

“Well. I'll tell him that you asked about his man frosting.”

“He'll love that. Thank god you have me here to give you romantic advice,” she said.

I packed up my backpack and stopped at home—my mom was grading papers, and barely noticed I was there—and grabbed a copy of an Edward Gorey book called
Amphigorey
that had once belonged to my dad. Not cartoons exactly, but dark and funny and perfect. I said good-bye to my mom and
told her Annie and I were headed to the library—but she just nodded and went back to work.

The whole subway ride I could barely focus on anything but seeing him. I couldn't read. I kept staring out the window of the 7 train and the 1 train, into the dark tunnels, and dreaming.

I got off at the 96th Street station. I walked a few blocks. I froze for a second when I saw it on the corner.

Sugarland. Its polka-dot awning fluttered in the breeze. A little blue bench sat in front. Inside, its turquoise-and-chocolate-brown walls were decorated with framed black-and-white posters of old New York. I was the only customer. A chime rang when I stepped on the front mat.

Will poked his head out from the back.

“It's you,” he said, and smiled. He was hauling a sack of flour. “Just one sec.” He stacked it in the back room and dusted himself off.

Will's muscles glimmered with a light coat of man frosting as he placed a forty-pound bag of flour in the corner.

He looked sincerely happy to see me.

“I heard about Silas,” I said. “I'm so sorry. And I'm sorry for saying sorry.” I reached into my backpack. “I brought you this.”

I showed him
Amphigorey
, and I told him my dad had gotten it for me during one of our trips to Gotham Book Mart before it closed.

He opened the cover and read the beginning. “Can I keep it for a few days? I'll give it back to you in school this week.”

“Of course.”

He pointed toward the tiny marble tables. “Have a seat,” he said. “I know it's hard to find one, what with the swarms of customers.”

I sat down. He grabbed a plate from behind the counter. I gazed around, taking in the surroundings, trying to imprint them on my memory. It was decorated so elegantly—an antique crystal chandelier hung from the pressed-tin ceiling, and the glass case holding the cupcakes was trimmed with aged, polished wood with brass hardware. Stacks of turquoise gift boxes sat on the counter, tied with brown ribbon.

“Which would you like to try?” he asked. “Chocolate? Red Velvet?”

“I can't decide.”

“Here.” He put four cupcakes on a china plate, grabbed two blue napkins, and sat at the table with me.

I took a bite of the chocolate. I even liked the frosting. I let it melt on my tongue and bit into the cake—dark, rich, delicious. “I love it,” I said.

“Judging from the crowds, you're the only person in the city who feels that way.” He didn't take a bite himself.

“Don't you want one?”

“After working here, I never want to eat another cupcake in my life.”

I glanced at the chandelier and the photos on the walls. “It's so pretty here, though. Maybe it just hasn't been discovered yet.”

“The problem is my mom opened this place at the same time as a thousand other cupcake bakeries were opening. It's kind of a brutal business.” He ruffled the corner of the Edward Gorey book and shrugged. “Thanks for coming, though.” He said each word slowly, then lowered his voice. “It means a lot.”

“Of course. I mean—well. Was the end—with Silas—okay? Did you get to say good-bye?”

He made a sort of laugh. “Yeah. I appreciate your asking. The vet was great—he died in my arms. It was okay. Peaceful.” He paused. “No one else wants to hear you talk about your dead dog. Even my mom. I missed two days of school over it. I told my mom I was sick. I don't think she even got it, why I stayed home. For a dog.”

“I've done that. I mean—feeling sick over grief. Missing school.” I'd never said it so plainly before. Sick with grief. “In my head I call it a griefy feeling.”

“That's exactly what it is. A griefy feeling.”

I told him about my cat, Lucky, who died when I was ten. She was a stray; my mom was allergic so I couldn't officially adopt her, but I fed her every day and snuck her into my room whenever I could, and she slept in a little plastic house on our fire escape every night. “A few weeks after my tenth birthday, I saw blood in the corner of Lucky's eye,” I said. I told him
how my dad and I took her to the vet and they diagnosed her with squamous cell carcinoma. The tumor had started in her mouth and spread toward her brain, creating pressure that made her bleed. I snuck Lucky into my room each night, and we paid the vet hundreds of dollars to do surgery—we never told my mom what it cost. Lucky never woke up from the surgery.

“That's awful,” he said.

“I cried on and off for two months. My mom said that was too long to mourn a cat. ‘Try not to be so thin-skinned,' she said.” It was a phrase she repeated when Joey Braga started calling me “Jewfro” in fourth grade, after a bad haircut, and more recently when I cried at the end of
Roman Holiday
and
An Affair to Remember
.

“I spent more time with that dog than I did with my dad. Than I have with either of my parents,” he said. He looked down at the cupcakes on the table. “Gia hated Silas. He drooled on her. When I told her he died, she seemed relieved.”

“That's terrible.”

“We broke up,” he said.

“Oh.”

“It wasn't just the dog.”

I tried to process what he'd said, but it was almost too much to absorb. I wanted to text Annie and tell her.

We were quiet for a minute, and then I said, “I took your advice. I wrote a—thing—and I sent it to that poetry contest.”
I told him about the honorable mention. “It didn't win but, you know. Thanks.”

He smiled, seeming the happiest I'd seen him yet today. “I knew you had it in you.” He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “I'm coming to the ceremony. So it better not suck.”