Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (5 page)

“Your smock?” he pressed.

“Oh.” She pulled the rumpled smock from under her arm. From the pocket she pulled her wallet and . . . a partly used roll of Scotch tape. “Oh, that,” Tibby said. “Right. See, I just used it for the . . .”

Duncan’s face took on a resigned “I’ve heard all the excuses under the sun” expression. “Look, Tibby. We have a second-chance policy here at Wallman’s, so we’ll let this go. But be warned: I am forced to suspend your best-employee benefits, namely a fifteen percent We-Are-Wallman’s discount on all items.”

After that Duncan carefully noted that the price of the Scotch tape be deducted from her first day’s pay. Then he disappeared for a moment and came back with a see-through plastic bag with two handles. “Could you please keep your possessions in this from now on?” he asked.

Dear Carmen,

I guess when you have close blood relatives you’ve never met, you can’t help but kind of idealize them in your mind. Like how adopted kids always believe their birth father was a professor and their birth mother was a model?

I guess with my grandparents it was kind of the same thing. My parents always said I was beautiful just like Grandma. So somehow all these years I pictured Grandma as Cindy Crawford or something. Grandma is not Cindy Crawford. She is old. She has a bad perm and an old-lady velour sweat suit, and horny-looking toenails sticking out of her pink, flat sandals. She’s pretty ordinary, you know?

Bapi, the legendary businessman of the Kaligaris family, I pictured as being at least six feet two. He’s not. He’s teeny. Maybe my height. He wears thick brown double-knit trousers even though it’s over a million degrees here, and a white shirt with a zipper at the collar. His shoes are cream-colored vinyl. He’s sort of moldy and speckled in that old-man way. He’s very shy.

I feel like I should just love them right away. But how do you do that? You can’t make yourself love someone, can you?

I’m taking good care of the Pants. And I miss you. I know you won’t judge me harshly for being a brat, ‘cause you always think better of me than I deserve.

Love you lots.
Lena

T
he sunset was too beautiful. It almost made Lena feel panicked because she couldn’t save it. The blobs of paint on her palette, usually inspiring, looked hopelessly drab. The sunset burned with a billion watts of light. There was no light in her paint. She put her palette and her carefully prepared panel on top of the wardrobe so she didn’t have to look at them.

She perched on her windowsill, gazing at the lurid sun soaking into the Caldera, trying to appreciate it even though she couldn’t have it. Why did she always feel she had to
do
something in the face of beauty?

She heard the bustle of a feast being prepared downstairs. Grandma and Bapi were celebrating their arrival with a big meal and a bunch of neighbors. Her grandparents had sold their restaurant two years ago, but they hadn’t lost their love for food, Lena guessed. Spicy, rich smells, one after another, floated upstairs into Lena’s room, mixing together for a preview of the full meal.

“Lena! Almost ready!” Grandma shouted from the kitchen. “You dress and come down!”

Lena threw her suitcase and her duffel bag on the bed, so she could keep her eyes on the window. Getting dressed was rarely exciting to her. She wore practical clothes, “stodgy, dull, and pathetic,” according to her friends. She didn’t like people having more reasons to look at her, to think that how she looked made them know her. She’d been the show pony too often as a child.

Tonight, though, there was a little carbonation in the bottom of her stomach. Carefully she dug under layers of clothes to find the Pants. They felt a little heavier than they deserved. She held her breath as she unfolded them, letting loose a thousand wishes into the air. This was the beginning of their history, their life as the Traveling Pants. As she pulled them on she felt the enormity of making them count. She momentarily tried to picture herself having big moments in the Pants. For some reason, she couldn’t shake the vision of Effie wearing them instead.

She stuck her feet into a pair of beat-up brown loafers and headed downstairs.

“I made a meatball,” Effie declared proudly from the kitchen.

“Keftedes,”
Grandma clarified over her shoulder, equally proud. “Effie is a Kaligaris. She likes to cook and she likes to eat!” She gave Effie a hug to confirm what a good thing this was.

Lena smiled and went into the kitchen to praise and investigate.

She and Effie were already putting on their turtle-and-hare show. Everyone paid lots of attention to Lena at first, because she was striking to look at, but within a few hours or days, they always fully committed their attentions to exuberant, affectionate Effie. Lena felt Effie deserved it. Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn’t easily cross.

Grandma cast a look at her outfit. “You are wearing that to our party?”

“I was thinking so. Should I wear something fancier?” Lena asked.

“Well . . .” Grandma did not look particularly stern or judgmental. She looked more mischievous, like she had a secret she wanted you to ask her about. “It isn’t a fancy party, but . . .”

“Should I change too?” Effie asked. Her shirt was dusty with breadcrumbs.

Grandma was about as good at keeping her secrets as Effie was. She looked at Lena conspiratorially. “You see, there is a boy, he’s like a grandson to Bapi and me. He’s a
nice
boy. . . .” She winked.

Lena tried to freeze the pleasant look on her face. Was her grandmother seriously trying to set her up with a guy less than six hours after she’d arrived? Lena
hated
being set up.

Effie looked pained on her behalf.

“His name is Kostos,” Grandma plowed on, oblivious. “He is the grandson of our dear friends and neighbors.”

Studying her grandmother’s face, Lena had a strong suspicion Grandma hadn’t just cooked up this idea in the last hour. She suspected Grandma had been plotting something for a long time. She knew arranged marriages were still popular among Greek parents, particularly in the islands, but God!

Effie laughed awkwardly. “Um, Grandma? Boys love Lena, but Lena is very hard on boys.”

Lena’s eyebrows shot up. “Effie! Thanks a lot!”

Effie shrugged sweetly. “It’s true.”

“Lena hasn’t met Kostos,” Grandma said confidently. “Everyone loves Kostos.”

“Sweetheart!”

Carmen’s heart took off faster than her feet at the sight of her dad waving his arms at her from behind the Plexiglas half wall delineating gate forty-two. She felt like a cliché, running like that, but she loved it anyway.

“Hey, Dad!” she called, throwing herself at him. She savored that word. Most kids got to use it constantly, thoughtlessly. For her it lay unused, stashed away so many months of the year.

He held her tightly for just long enough. He let go, and she looked up at him. She loved how tall he was. He took her shoulder bag and tossed it over his own shoulder even though it was light. She smiled at the way he looked with her turquoise sequined bag.

“Hi, baby!” he said happily, putting his free arm around her shoulder. “How was the flight?” he asked, steering her toward the baggage claim area.

“Perfect,” she said. It was always awkward, their uneven strides with his arm around her shoulders, but she liked it too much to mind. Let other girls who saw their fathers every day complain. She saw hers only a few times a year.

“You look beautiful, bun,” he said easily. “You grew taller, I think.” He put his hand on the top of her head.

“I did,” she said proudly, always pleased at the idea that her height made her like him. “I’m five six and a half,” she reported. “Almost five seven.”

“Wow,” he said from his height of six foot two. “Wow. How is your mother?”

He always asked that dutiful question within the first five minutes.

“She’s fine,” Carmen always answered, knowing her dad didn’t want a full answer. Year after year, Carmen’s mother continued to be rabidly curious about her dad, but her dad only asked about her mom to be polite.

Noiseless drops of guilt colored Carmen’s pleasure. She was almost five seven, but her mother wasn’t even five feet tall. Her dad called her bun and said she was beautiful, but he didn’t care about her mom anymore.

“How are your buddies?” he asked, as they squished together onto the escalator, his arm still around her shoulders.

He knew how it was with her and Tibby and Lena and Bridget. He always remembered the details of her friends’ lives from the last time he talked to her.

“It’s a weird summer for us,” she answered. “It’s our first summer apart. Lena’s in Greece with her grandparents; Bridget’s at soccer camp in Baja California. Tibby’s home alone.”

“And you’re here all summer,” he said, with an almost undetectable question in his eyes.

“I’m so glad to be here,” she said, her answer loud and clear. “I can’t wait. It’s just weird, you know? I mean, not weird in a bad way. Weird in a good way. It’ll be good for us to branch out a little. You know how we get.” She was babbling, she realized. She hated for her dad to be uncertain.

He pointed to a conveyor belt, zipping luggage around in a circle. “I think this is for your flight.”

She remembered the time in Washington, when he held both her hands over her head while she rode the carousel halfway around. Then a guard yelled at them, and he pulled her off.

“It’s a big black one with wheels. It looks like everybody else’s,” she said. It was strange that he’d never seen her suitcase before. She’d never seen him without his.

“There!” she said suddenly, and he pounced. He pulled her suitcase off the conveyor belt as though his life had prepared him for that job alone. The turquoise sequins on her shoulder bag sparkled.

He carried the big suitcase instead of rolling it. “Great! Let’s go.” He pointed them in the direction of the parking lot.

“Do you still have your Saab?” she asked. Cars were one of the interests they had in common.

“No. I traded it in this past spring for a station wagon.”

“Really?” She couldn’t quite make sense of that one. “Do you like it?”

“It does the job,” he said, steering them right to it. It was a beige Volvo. His Saab had been red. “And here we go.” He opened her door for her and settled her in with her bag before loading her suitcase into the back. Where did dads learn these things? Why didn’t they teach them to their sons?

“How did school finish up?” he asked her as he maneuvered out of the parking lot.

“Really good,” she answered. She always looked forward to giving him the rundown. “I got As in math, bio, English, French, and an A minus in world history.” Her mother thought she worried about school too much. To her dad, grades mattered.

“Bun, that’s fabulous. And sophomore year is an important year.”

She knew he wanted her to go to Williams, just like he had, and he knew she wanted to too, even though they didn’t say it to each other out loud.

“What about tennis?” he asked.

Most people she knew hated these kinds of dad questions, but Carmen worked all year for them. “Bridget and I played first doubles. We only lost one match.”

She wouldn’t bother to tell him that she got an F in pottery—it wouldn’t go on her transcript—or that the boy she’d crushed on all year asked Lena to the prom or that she’d made her mother cry on Easter Sunday. These conversations were about her victories.

“I got a court for us on Saturday,” he told her, accelerating onto a highway.

Carmen studied the scenery. There were motels and strip developments like there were around almost every airport, but the air smelled heavier and saltier here. She studied her dad’s face. He had a tan already. It made his blue eyes stand out. She always wished she’d gotten his eyes rather than her mother’s brown ones. His hair looked recently cut, and his shirt was crisp and neatly cuffed. She wondered if he’d gotten a raise or something.

“I can’t wait to see your place,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said absently, glancing into the rearview mirror before he changed lanes.

“Isn’t it pretty amazing that I’ve never been here before?” she asked.

He concentrated on the driving. “You know, bun, it’s not that I haven’t wanted you to come long before this. I just wanted to get settled better before I brought you here.” There was a trace of apology in his eyes when he glanced at her.

She didn’t mean to make him uncomfortable. “Dad, I don’t care if you’re settled. Don’t worry about that. We’ll have a great time. Who cares about settled?”

He exited the highway. “I couldn’t see bringing you into my hectic life. Working so much, living alone in a one-bedroom apartment. Eating every meal out.”

She couldn’t talk fast enough. “I can’t wait for that. I love eating out. I’m sick of being settled.” She meant it. This was the summer of Carmen and Al.