Love Edy (4 page)

She could live with that.

She would have to live with that.

Edy took her eyes off her father as he
turned the corner and a massive moving truck across the street
caught her attention. Washboard white, peeling, with sun-stripped
letters on the side, it proclaimed itself to be the property of
Joseph & Son. Odder still was the house it sat at. Unlike the
reserved Queen Annes and Victorian relics of their block, the pink
Painted Lady of 2265 Dunberry was lavish to the point of gaudy.
Empty since the departure of Widow Meade, the nauseatingly fanciful
dollhouse had whole sections of ruby paint chipped from its bulbous
towers and fanciful pearl trim that stood thick like the twisted
icing of a wedding cake. It beckoned in some misguided bid for
attention, like the sinister home in a Brothers Grimm tale. It was
a cheap imitation of the charm and splendor around it.

The truck’s back doors flung open, and a
spindly white boy backed out, shoulders hunched, the edge of a navy
couch in his grip. Lengthy and paler than a ghost in winter, only
his hollowed cheeks had splotches of red. Blond hair plastered to a
hard skull with a wayward bit blowing free in the wind as his mouth
clamped with the weight of his burden. Edy stood, curious. The
couch was a plain thing draped in simple fabric, no wood carvings
as far as she could see, and certainly not new, imported, designer
or antique. In fact, its lumps were so prominent she could see them
from across the street.

The other end of the sofa emerged, and with
it, a middle aged, beer gut of a man, and the reason for the boy’s
struggles. The man’s end of the couch rode low, nearly to the ramp
they moved down. He fumbled in his pocket for something, and Edy
caught snatches of the boy yelling. The man shot him a look of
exasperation, but picked up the slack anyway. Hair sandy brown,
skin oyster white, his five o’clock shadow, pouting belly, and
Dickey blue pants confirmed Edy’s suspicions. They were hired help.
But for whom?

The Pradhan’s front door swung open, and
Hassan stepped out. Clad in a fitted, long-sleeved ribbed sweater
and fashionably tattered jeans, he hopped the fence that separated
his house from Edy’s and made his way across her yard.

“I can’t believe someone’s moving in that
circus tent,” Hassan said.

He planted a kiss on Edy’s
forehead—habit—then paused—not habit—before giving her a once-over
as if to see how she’d taken it.

Edy couldn’t help but wonder if those lips
had been on the redhead the night before.

“Could be a family of architects,” she said,
turning away. Edy heard the raspiness in her voice and hesitated.
Get it together.
“With plans to fix the place up.”

She looked from the house across the street
to him. Still, she had his attention. Too much of it. His gaze
searched her face as if committing it to memory.

“Cake?” he said. She blistered with thoughts
of the night before, of fingers entwined, of ascending to privacy,
of a place Edy couldn’t follow. She had expected to fool the one
person she’d never been able to, to be nonchalant. And now that she
couldn’t, she hadn’t time for a plan B. He was looking right at
her.

“You okay?” Hassan said.

“Fine.”
Find something else to
do.

“You don’t look fine,” he said.

She looked at him. “Well, I am.”

Hassan exhaled. Contemplated. She could
feel
him thinking. “Listen, Edy. Last night—”

“Last night I decided to go home. End of
story.”

His mouth clamped shut, opened, then shut
again. Finally, he turned to the scene across the street. Minutes
ticked by. “What do they look like?” he said.

“Not sure. I’ve only seen the help.”

Hassan grinned as the pair emerged again
from the house. “Hired help? They must not charge much.”

As if to underscore his point, the
pot-bellied man dropped down on the porch and lit a freakin’
cigarette. Jeez. She couldn’t believe people still smoked.

Edy’s mother strode from their house, clad
in a stiff and layered Armani suit of runway perfection. It cut and
flared where it needed to.

“Oh. Hey, plum,” she said to Hassan. She
paused long enough to mess his hair and fuss and say whatever
mothers said to the child they wished was theirs. Whatever warmth
radiated from her evaporated when she turned to Edy.

“Today’s Saturday,” she said. “That means
study your Latin, brush up on the biology, and
then,
if
there’s time, make it to ballet.”

She started off for her Lexus.

“Shut up,” Edy and Hassan chimed under their
breath in unison. She hadn’t kept her mother’s impossible schedule
since the day she realized no one made sure she did. That had been
a year ago, thank God.

Hassan led the way into her house, shoving
open the door and heading straight for the kitchen. Once there, he
snatched a plate from the cabinet, grabbed a fistful of pancakes,
and stuck his head in the fridge for more food. When he came away
again, it was with a carton of strawberries and a can of whipped
cream. He stacked that on his plate and took a seat.

“Your dad’s going over some stuff with me
this week. He’s been studying film and working out theories.
Something’s got him wired. He thinks we can make a run for a state
championship, if you can believe that.”

Hassan rolled a pancake, toppings and all,
and jammed half of it in his mouth. “West Roxbury’s the monster to
fear, though.”

Edy’s father was a professor by trade, but
football was his lifelong passion. A former kicker for Harvard with
a talent too short of his love, it had been her dad who’d bought
Hassan his first football, taught him game fundamentals, and sat
huddled for hours with him, cultivating an understanding and
philosophy so nuanced that only the two of them could make sense of
it.

“We start this morning,” he said
apologetically. “I’m heading up to Harvard Yard in a bit. He has a
break he wants to spend with me.”

Of course. This was the way it started. And
he probably wasn’t even meeting her dad. Maybe he was meeting the
redhead. She would know by Monday in any case. Toenails didn’t get
clipped without making the South End High grapevine.

“So. You’re not walking me to ballet.”

She’d meant to say it with more
indifference, with a slice that cut him instead of her. Instead,
the words only depressed her, a reminder that three years of a
ritual could disappear in an instant.

He reached over and yanked on her
ponytail.

“Hey, long face,” he said. “I’ve been
walking you there forever. Don’t I get credit for time served?”

Time served.

When she didn’t answer, he snorted and
returned to his pancakes.

“What are you in for today?” he said in that
oblivious way that belonged only to boys. “After ballet?”

Edy unclenched her teeth. “I don’t know.
Bake some cookies and bringing ’em to the newcomers. Extend the
Suzy Homemaker welcome.”

“Like hell,” Hassan said, surprising her
with his fervor. “This isn’t 1950, June Cleaver. And I don’t like
the look of them, anyway.”

“You didn’t even see them.”

“That’s what you think.”

Edy raised a brow. It was his habit to
assume the role of big brother, taught to him by their parents,
perfected with practice, despite them being exactly the same age.
Nonetheless, he had little room to talk, after boinking the
redhead. “Funny. Turns out I can ignore you as easily as Mom.”

“Listen to me,” he said. He stared at her,
stared until her outrage, her annoyance; her urge to defy him began
to melt—because hard feelings between them always did. Edy snorted
at the trick. He then rose, loaded his dishes in the dishwasher,
and planted a kiss on her forehead in what had to be goodbye.

“Stay away from the new neighbors.”

He disappeared.

~~~

Edy didn’t get a chance to venture across
the street until the following morning. Ballet practice ran long,
and afterward, she spent the evening making chocolate chip cookies
for the new neighbors, only to roast them to a fine, thin
crisp.

Instead of marching over empty-handed, she
waited for an opportune time to visit. Sunday morning, Edy plopped
down on the porch with a fresh glass of mango
lassi
, her
dancer’s feet creaking in protest as she watched her father back
out the drive. The
lassi,
a sort of Indian yogurt smoothie,
had as many variations as imagination allowed. Edy, who’d made her
first with the aid of a stool and Hassan’s mother, had an arsenal
assortment of the drinks under her command. Though she could make
them, she preferred his mother’s
lassis
still. Hassan’s
mother had a way of adding special touches just for Edy—flaxseed
for energy, ginger for pain, and extra honey when her sweet tooth
raged.

Shaded from the heat of a persistent sun in
ambivalent hot-then-cold-then-hot autumn, Edy waited for the new
folks to make an appearance. A baby blue Dodge F-150 sat in their
drive, chipped, rusted, and slumped to one side. Next to it was
yesterday’s truck. The old beat up Dodge, she figured, must have
belonged to a carpenter or contractor of some sort.

When the front door opened, yesterday’s pair
stepped out. They crossed the yard and disappeared into the back of
the moving truck, emerging later with odds and ends. They retreated
and returned again and again, bearing assortments on each turn—a
lamp, small boxes, garbage bags stretched full and misshapen by who
knew what. When the boy came out alone and with an oversized CVS
bag, hanger jutting from the bottom, Edy knew the contents wouldn’t
hold.

He struggled with it, even as the man
brushed past him and went inside the house, content with muttering
at his own burden. Edy was on her feet without knowing it.

“Your stuff!” she hollered and broke into a
trot as the plastic bag began to seep clothes. “It’s gonna
fall!”

She crossed the street, threw open the gate,
and scooped up the pile of fallen fabric, dashing to his side as
his bag tore completely, vomiting shirts and old Converses,
tattered boxers and ripped jeans right onto her feet.

They stared at each other, him red-faced,
her cringing, before Edy decided to pick up the escaped clothes and
be done with it. Except when she did, her hand brushed Swiss cheese
underwear and she jerked in revulsion. Resolve melted under the
fury of a blush they both shared.

“Please!” He puked the word. “Let me do it!
I can—” He snatched the clothes from her and shoved them into his
bottomless bag, so that they fell to the ground at once. He looked
straight at her, at her as if every item was exactly where he
intended it to be, and he had amply proven his point. He looked at
her as if all those shirts and pants and shoes, weren’t piled right
on their feet.

Edy’s cheeks inflated on a laugh she
wouldn’t let go. She
couldn’t
let go. She held it until her
insides ruptured and the dam burst, and oh, it broke free. He eased
her a reluctant grin, cheeks aflame, before sliding into a grin
himself. They dissolved into eye watering silliness. Underwear on
their feet and instant friends somehow.

“I’m Edy,” she said when their laughter died
down.

He let the bag drift to the ground. “Wyatt
Green.”

“I live across the street,” Edy said. “At
2260.”

They stared at each other.

“Well, then,” she said. “Guess I’ll see you
around.”

She began to back away.

His face pinched. “Wait! I mean—”

He glanced back at the house, just as the
front door swung open.

“Thanks for your help,” Wyatt blurted. He
scooped the fallen clothes in a single swoop and rushed to the
door, leaving Edy to frown in confusion.

Four

Edy saw the boy named Wyatt Green the next
morning and blushed with the recollection of touching his underoos.
Even as she leaned forward for a better view from the center
backseat of the twins’ Land Rover, two thoughts occurred to
her.

Wyatt wasn’t hired help.

He was headed to their school.

“Stop!” Edy cried, so loud that Matt stomped
the brake. He looked around as if expecting to find an animal, car,
or child in the road.

“What? What happened?” he said.

All eyes were on her. Mason, Matt, Lawrence,
Hassan, and even Chloe Castillo, with them once again.

“I know him,” Edy said, indicating the tall
and rawboned guy standing on the curb and muttering to himself as
he adjusted the strap on a battered backpack. “Give him a
ride.”

Every male set of eyes turned on the figure,
collectively sizing him at once.

“No room,” Matt announced and stomped on the
gas.

The sound of screeching tires jerked Wyatt’s
head up. Edy ducked in horror.

There they were, piled door to window,
squashed to make room for Princess Chloe. The boys shoved each
other to make allowances for her, barking commands to slide over,
nudging Edy if she wasn’t quick enough. She was never quick
enough.

“You guys aren’t being fair,” Edy said. “Why
can’t
we give him a ride?”

Already, Wyatt Green was out of view, left
behind on a corner they’d long since turned.

“I told you,” Matt said and shot her a look
of warning in the rear view mirror. “There’s no room.”

Edy met Chloe’s gaze evenly. She was a
pretty and sparkling thing who’d only noticed Lawrence when the
sureness of his hands and the quickness of his step emerged. Six
years of elementary school, three years of middle, and Edy could no
more place a conversation between Chloe and Lawrence than she could
between herself and Abraham Lincoln. There was room for tinsel and
glitter and falseness in the Rover, but none for anyone she
knew.

“If there’s no room” Edy said, “then maybe
she should get out.”