Authors: Deborah Blumenthal
“So now you’re playing like my dad?”
“No, like your law enforcement officer.”
“Then fuck you…Officer Hottie.”
“Hang up,” he says, a smile in his voice.
“You hang up.”
“Resisting,” he says, getting into the game.
“Take me in,” I say back.
“Is that your idea of fun?”
“Definitely,” I answer. Then I press end and leave him hanging.
It’s been almost a week
and we don’t have a school president, or we do and it’s Brandy, but not really because they’re still recounting. Only why is it taking so long? The day before Thanksgiving, Clive and I and Ro and Candy meet in front of the school because somebody said that there might be more information about the election.
“Let’s look at the bulletin board,” Clive says.
“One for all and all for one, united we stand, divided we fall,” Ro chants, and we chime in along with her. But we stop when we get to the sign.
Based on irregularities in the tabulations, the school will be recounting the ballots.
Now it’s officially out there.
“This is huge,” Clive says. “Because if you win, it means we’ve caught them at their dirty game.”
“I love that,” says Ro.
“
Moi aussi
,” says Candy, raising her fists in the air.
Maybe justice will prevail and I had a hand in it. So I am now in an extra good mood because of the recount and Thanksgiving coming and the trip to Europe that no one knows about.
I haven’t asked my parents yet, but I’m sure they’ll let me go because it’s with Clive’s parents and it’s totally chaperoned and I’ll be away and safe and everything will be five star.
“Come for Thanksgiving,” I say to Clive.
“I would love that.”
His parents are away of course, this time with friends in the south of France and he doesn’t want to go there because the French don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, duh, so he brings pumpkin pies and cookies from Daniel Boulud and crusty baguettes, and my mom and dad really like Clive because he’s totally respectful and worships me and he’s always telling them about how the teachers love my work, which they want to hear because of what they pay for my school. I think that at some level they think of Clive as one of their own and I tell everybody I’ve adopted him and that he’s my new brother. Even Anthony laughs about that because he wouldn’t mind having another brother so there is someone else around the house to deal with all the garbage he doesn’t want to.
My dad motions to Clive to come talk to him. I casually walk toward them, pretending to be fixing the flowers on a side table. From the corner of my eye I see my dad put his hand on Clive’s shoulder.
“You’re a good friend to Gia.”
“She’s very special to me,” Clive says.
My dad nods. “You are always welcome in my home, and I am here for you, whatever you need.”
“Thank you,” Clive says and then falls silent. I don’t have to see his face to know how touched he is.
We both head for the kitchen to help my mom baste all three turkeys and Clive gives her a pottery cup with a hand-printed label that says
Herbes de Provence
that has fennel and basil and lavender and stuff so we sprinkle it on the turkeys and it makes the house smell like a kitchen in the south of France, or that’s what Clive says, because how would I know. Everyone who walks in says, “Omigod, what
is
that?” and presses their hands to their hearts.
That of course makes Clive feel very special and then we also help my mom mash the forty-five hundred potatoes, a job that Anthony hates to do, but Clive doesn’t mind. So Anthony goes upstairs to look at pornography on his computer or whatever, and then finally, everything is ready.
All forty of us descend on the table like locusts and everyone looks at my dad who says grace and makes a speech about thanks, and of course my mom and I get teary-eyed even though we hate that.
But I am thankful.
For having my dad with us. For my crazy family. For Clive. For the recount. For what hasn’t happened yet, but will, like my secret plan for the future.
When all the emotional stuff is finally over, we dab our eyes and take a breath, then pass around big platters of white meat turkey and then dark and of course we start with my dad. After the meat, we move on to gravy and then the mashed yams and mashed Yukon Gold potatoes and string beans and brussels sprouts and carrots and parsnips, cranberry sauce with walnuts and oranges, sausage corn bread stuffing with sage, and then the bread and then the pumpkin and chocolate pecan pies and the sugar cookies and espresso and tea and then after-dinner drinks, and then Frankie drops to the floor because he has a massive heart attack.
The ambulance screeches up and the EMT guys give Frankie oxygen and it takes three of them to carry him out on a stretcher. By then everyone has switched over to speaking Italian because that way they feel closer to God and then they’re praying and throwing their hands up and everybody heads for their cars to follow the ambulance.
But my dad holds up his hands. “Please, I will go with Anthony,” and “we’ll call you when we get there.”
We all stay home and pray for Frankie and wait and wait and after that there’s a total pall over what’s left of the day. Clive and I help my mom clean up and then we go upstairs and watch a movie.
“Do you want to stay over?” I ask Clive.
“Would your parents mind?”
“Definitely not.”
But I put him in the guest room, not my room, anyway. At three in the morning the house phone rings and I know it’s my dad calling so I tiptoe into the hallway.
“Thank God, thank God,” my mom says, which means Frankie pulled through and we have something else to be thankful for. I start wondering how the hell we’re going to get him to lose weight because when you’re ninety pounds overweight, you’re basically a walking time bomb.
I am coming out
of school with Ro and Clive and now that Frankie is home recovering and Vinnie’s helping Frankie, my dad has actually agreed to let me cab it home or go with Thomas. And for once in my life I can breathe without a babysitter/spy waiting outside for me like I’m still in kindergarten.
There’s an ice cream truck that always parks by the school and I decide to get a chocolate ice cream sandwich. I get in line and then look across the street while I’m waiting and I see something I’ve never seen before.
At least not outside my school.
He’s wearing sunglasses and a worn leather bomber jacket over jeans and he’s leaning up against a car with his arms crossed over his chest. He looks so breath-stopping hot that I feel faint. Am I hallucinating? It takes a minute for reality to set in and then I start to wonder how long he’s been there watching and whether his plan was to just keep observing from a distance or to actually cross the street and come closer.
Instead of racing over, which my heart is telling me to do, I wait in line until it’s my turn. I buy two ice cream sandwiches and slowly cross the street.
“Hope you’re not allergic to chocolate.”
He half smiles as I hand him the sandwich, taking off his sunglasses and hanging them from the neck of his sweater. He looks at me hard, his eyes burning green like they’re lit from within, and he seems to forget the ice cream, but I start to rip the paper off mine with my teeth and point my chin at his to remind him. So he slowly and neatly peels away the paper and then holds my gaze.
“How are you, Gia?”
I manage to lick the ice cream first. “Hmm, better now.”
The sandwiches are already melting from body heat. I watch his mouth move and the slow, hypnotic way he slides his tongue along the long side of the dark chocolate wafers, catching every drip while he watches me mimic his moves because this is definitely a game.
Only my hyperactive brain is already firing questions: What’s next? What now? What exactly is his plan here, assuming he has one? But I’m not going to ask so I stand next to him and lean on the same black BMW and continue eating fast while he takes his time, which a shrink would definitely conclude means something major.
Ro is watching from across the street and probably going,
not that cop
, but I smile at her anyway. And Clive is watching too because I know he’s curious about Michael after all I’ve told him. I look back at Michael working on the sandwich, and then, because I can’t think of anything else to say and the silence is killing me and screw my resolve to not say anything, I say, “now what?”
“Work,” he says, checking his watch.
“So you just came by to see me or what?”
“Something like that.”
That sketchy bullshit answer infuriates me because if this stupid cop doesn’t make a serious move soon…
“So you saw me.” I turn to leave, but his arm reaches out and eases me back.
“Gia…”
“What, Michael?”
“Watch your back,” he whispers, his face dead serious.
I cock my head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“There are rumblings…retaliation. That’s all I know.”
I look at him curiously then cross the street. Did he come because he wanted to see me? Or just to pass on the vague warning because he felt it was his duty? Or both?
Ro and Clive both look at me like,
what was that all about?
I shrug my shoulders because I have no idea.
Later at night when I’m in bed, the ambiguity eats away at me and the scene keeps replaying in my head. The warning. The truth behind it, if there is. More than that my brain fixates on the video in my head of Michael eating the ice cream sandwich. His mouth moving. His eyes. The way the air seemed charged.
I sleep fitfully, turning and twisting, obsessed with trying to get to know someone who seems intent on being unknowable.
BOOM
, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
Gunfire!
Then another barrage of gunfire. BOOM, BOOM BOOM!
I jerk awake, trying to figure out what’s happening. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, my stomach seizing, recognizing the sounds but panicking because I have no sense of where they’re coming from.
“Gia, Anthony, get down, get down on the floor under the bed!” my dad yells as my mom screams in panic.
Like a terrified kid who wakes up with nightmares, I dive under the bed for cover, pressing my hands over my ears to muffle the deafening sounds and trying to stop my body from shaking like I’m having a seizure.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, the shots continue, hitting the windows and sending chunks of glass raining down, crashing everywhere, splintering and cracking, our home being shot up and destroyed, like we’re in the middle of a war zone—only we’re letting it happen, powerless, unable to fight back and we’re all cowering on the floor like scared sheep. I want to run down the hall into my parents’ room but it would be stupid to stand so I stay scrunched up under the bed, my heart pounding so hard I’m sure my parents can hear it.
“Gia, stay where you are, but answer me!” my dad yells. “Are you okay?”
I try to answer but can’t at first. “I’m okay,” I manage to say, my words coming out haltingly, ragged, through my tears.
“Gia, are you okay?” he yells again.
“Yes, Daddy, I’m okay!” I manage to shout.
“Thank God!” my mom yells.
We all wait one minute, two minutes, three…and then hear sirens and know that help is coming and whoever did it is probably far away already. I crawl out from under the bed and make my way to the door. The floor is splintered with shattered glass and my feet start to bleed from the cuts, but I don’t care and keep going.
My parents are crouched on the floor of their room, huddled together and it’s like I’m seeing them for the first time because they look old and scared and helpless. My mom is lying there with her legs pulled up and I see red veins crisscrossing her milk-white skin and she’s crying and screaming, “God help us, God help us, what’s wrong with this world?”
Anthony comes in and his arm is bleeding because a bullet must have grazed it, and my mom yells, “Oh my God, what happened? What happened?”
“It’s nothing, Ma,” Anthony says, but the blood is dripping down his arm in a steady stream, leaving a red trail on the pale blue carpeting. My mom jumps up and goes to the bathroom to get peroxide and gauze and I grab a towel to press against his arm to stop the bleeding. And my dad is calling 911 for an ambulance and Anthony’s yelling, “they’ll pay for this,” and everybody is searching for their clothes and I run back to my room to find jeans and shoes and when I come back my dad is buttoning his shirt and standing by the side of the window. He presses numbers into his phone and stares into the night.
“You know what to do,” he whispers. “Now.”
And just the command of his voice makes me feel sick inside. When will this war ever end?
When someone tries to wipe out an entire family—or at least scare an entire family—that’s big news.
“If it bleeds, it leads,” TV reporters say, so pictures of our house with the windows blown out are all over the papers along with pictures of Anthony being driven to the hospital in the ambulance even though the bleeding slowed down and the bullet didn’t lodge in his arm.
The phone is ringing constantly and flowers start arriving, which is dumb, but people like to show they’re sympathetic. And I am walking around thinking about Michael’s warning and how he knew something and then in spite of everything around me spiraling out of control, it happens to be a school day, so I bandage all my cuts and stuff my feet into boots and get dressed and go.
Everyone is either looking at me like I’m radioactive or coming over and saying, “Gia, Gia, I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I say about a thousand times, only I’m not because I’m totally freaked by the thought of going home and sleeping in my bed again. If that isn’t enough, my mind keeps replaying the warning from Michael, but I don’t have to think anymore about him because my phone rings at lunch and it is him.
“Gia, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, we’re all fine, except a bullet grazed Anthony’s arm and he had to have stitches.”
He exhales. “I was worried. I’m glad you’re okay.”