Chapter 21: Nicknames (Part 2).
Amy eats, and we slip into easy conversation, talking about waitressing and college and how hard it is to resist the urge to tip while in Europe, and how Swiss cuisine doesn’t have anything on my dad’s chicken masu or my mom’s cornbread.
And again it’s a photo negative of my time with Jenny — all the same ease for none of the same reasons. Unlike with Jenny, Amy and I share no history. We don’t know each other inside and out. But that also means there are no topics from a shared past that we cautiously inch around, no words that are better left unsaid, no double-meanings hidden like I.E.D.s inside volatile phrases or baby names. On the other hand, of course, I have to spend extra time explaining everything to Amy — when I tell her about what a wreck my father’s been, it’s not like she automatically understands that he’s more in love with his wife than any man I’ve ever met, and when we get to talking about what I’m going to do after basketball, I have to actually explain why I’d prefer Antartica to Ohio.
“They both have harsh winters,” I say, “but Ohio’s got a lot more fucking racists in it.”
When she finishes laughing, she says, “Maybe you’re giving the penguins more credit than they deserve. They’re pretty homogeneous, you know.”
I grin. “They’re pretty homo? Sounds okay.”
“No. Homogeneous.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“I doubt that.” She pats her mouth with the napkin. “But… you’re not the only one who’s thinking about leaving Switzerland.”
“No?”
She shakes her head. “It’s not just the wedding that brought me back to the States; part of the reason for my long vacation is that I’m trying to figure out what I want to do next. Where I want to be next, since I’m sick of traveling all over Europe for work. I got my fill of travel growing up. Some people fantasize about traveling; I’ve always fantasized about staying in one place for longer than a few years.”
“So what are your options?” I ask.
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Which — I meant to tell you last night — it looks like I’m going to be staying in Marcine for a few more days after the wedding.”
I smile. “That’s something I won’t argue with. What’s keeping you here? Is it my charming wit or my dashing good looks? I know it’s hard to choose between the two.”
She rolls her eyes, bats at my hand playfully. “Sorry to burst your bubble, hot stuff, but neither one. A friend of mine from business school got a job teaching recently. She knows how burnt out I am with the corporate world, so she keeps trying to get me to interview for a position. Which she swears I’d be perfect for. So… I thought that as long as I’m town, I should take her up on it. The interview’s scheduled for Tuesday.”
I cock my head to the side, because the thought that Amy might actually stay in the United States begins opening a few quiet doors inside my head. The janitor who lives inside my brain had previously attached a big red fucking STOP sign on one of the doors, with a caption underneath that read: Don’t bother looking for anything more than a quick fling with Amy; she’s going back to Switzerland in a few weeks and you aren’t.
Now the janitor walks by, whistling a pop song and casually pushing a wheeled yellow mop bucket in front of her, and when she gets to the door, she pauses long enough to take down the stop sign and its caption.
“Teaching what?” I ask Amy, careful to keep the question on the I’m-only-asking-to-make-conversation side. “And where would it be?”
“International business,” she says. “And as for where, it would be here — well, not ‘Marcine’ here, but ‘Ohio’ here. In Columbus. At the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State.”
The janitor in my brain pulls a well-isn’t-that-interesting face. She unclips this enormous carabiner ring from her belt loop, and it jangles with dozens of keys. She flips past a key labeled Shitty racist experiences from childhood, then another one that says Two years of utter emotional fucking bankruptcy after things with Jenny ended, fiddles around some more until she finally arrives at one that says Willingness to reconsider living in Ohio again. The janitor walks down a corridor, still humming her pop song, comes to this thick metal door that looks like it belongs to a bank vault, twists the key into place. A rusty lock mechanism grinds inside the door, and the door groans mournfully, opening two or three inches.
Amy’s brow furrows. “What?” she asks.
“What, what?”
“What is that look on your face?”
“Nothing. Hey — are you done with that?” I ask, pointing at her mostly empty plate. When she nods, I pick it up and rise from the table. “I’d better go see what my brother’s up to. He’s trying to get payroll done while it’s still quiet.”
“Okay,” she says, but I detect some disappointment in her voice. She looks at her watch and stands up. “I should probably go — told my friend I’d meet her at the church. But… would you be up for doing something later? If you’re not too busy here?”
My head bobs up and down with a nod that I realize too late is very dumb-oaf-ish. I make my head stop moving and try to look more like the intelligent, sophisticated adult that I am.
“Sure. I don’t have any more statues to show you, though.”
Amy’s answering smirk is the kind that sets my stomach to knotting in on itself and my heart rate to galloping. “I’m sure we can think of something else to do.”
I glance around the dining area to make sure we’re still alone (we are) and step into her personal space, my hands finding their way to Amy’s. I bend down, and my mouth fits perfectly against hers. It’s not a long kiss, but it has way more heat in it than the two from last night, even more than the exaggerated one we performed for the benefit of the rednecks coming out Dillan’s Bar & Grill. When I pull back, I must have a dumb-oaf look on my face again because Amy giggles and touches the tip of her index finger to the tip of my nose.
“See you tonight, Ani,” she says, stepping around me into the aisle.
A piercing alarm blares inside my brain at the sound of my nickname, red and white lights strobe brightly enough to give me a fucking seizure, and somewhere, a door swings shut, closing with a loud BANG.
Fuck. Why’d she have to call me that? Nobody but my family and…
Annie. Ani.
…Jenny calls me that.
#
By four o’clock, no one’s in the dining room, no one’s calling in a late lunch order, and all of us — me, Gerry, Becker, and Emir — are prepping for dinner. Gerry emerges from the back with a stack of white envelopes in his hand. He sets them down and sits heavily in the chair across from me.
“I finished payroll,” he announces.
“Okay,” I say, waiting for what’s coming next.
“It’s worse than we thought.”
I set down the rag and spray bottle on the table next to me. “How much worse?”
“Twenty-three dollars and fifty-seven fucking cents. That’s how much is still in the account, once everyone’s paychecks are cashed.”
I frown. “How can that even be? We’ve been busy every night since I’ve been home.”
He nods. “We’ve been busy every night since before you’ve been home. We’ve been busy every night since I’ve been home, and that’s been more than seven months now.”
“Then how can we…?”
“Dad’s making an enormous payment every month that’s only labeled ‘loan’ in his accounting software. Even though Soul Mountain’s making money hand-over-fist, whatever this loan payment is, it’s draining out the account as fast as it fills. Which means we’re barely scraping by. He’s charging all the groceries — I checked. All it’s going to take is — ”
“A couple bad weeks. A slow week when school lets out and everybody goes on fucking vacation — ”
“Or a bad weekend or two, and we won’t be able to make the loan payment.”
I sit down, lean back in the chair. “Why do they even have a loan out? A loan for what?”
“I don’t know,” Gerry answers, shaking his head. He takes off the Buckeyes baseball hat he’s wearing, runs his hand through his curls. “We should talk to Mom and Dad.”
“It’s not our business.”
“It is our business,” he insists.
“It’s not.”
“It will be if the fucking restaurant closes, and Mom’s getting fucking chemo, and they can’t pay her fucking medical bills or afford their insurance, and then they lose the fucking house. Are you going to be the one who takes them in?”
“You’re overreacting, Geronimo.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then don’t be an over-reactive pussy. They aren’t going to lose the restaurant. Soul Mountain’s an institution in this town. It’s been around for twenty-five — ”
“Twenty-three dollars and fifty-seven fucking cents!” he shouts, slamming his fist on the table.
I cross my arms against my chest. The dining room is silent except for the faint sound of the muzak playing in the background. Gerry scratches absentmindedly at the crook of his arm. I watch him do it, stomach curdling. It’s a gesture I’ve seen plenty of times before, an ill omen that comes right before tales of needles and purple track marks and opiates.
“Gimme your arm,” I say, holding out my hand.
He looks up, startled. His eyes dart from his arm back to me. “What? No, that’s not, I’m not — ”
“Give me your fucking arm, Gerry!”
“Anika, I’m not — ”
I don’t wait for him to finish. I shoot up from my chair, lean across the table, pin his wrist with one hand while I use my other hand to push up the sleeve. He’s protesting and yelling and his words don’t even register. I’m faster than him, I’m bigger than him, I’m stronger than him, and goddammit, he’s still my baby brother and I’m still his big sister and he shouldn’t try to fight me.
I pull the sleeve up over his forearm, over his elbow, halfway up his bicep.
And the copper-brown skin below is smooth. Unmarred but for a couple small white scars from his using days.
“Everything alright out here?” comes a deep voice from the direction of the kitchen.
I turn to see Becker staring at us, concerned expression on his face.
“Yeah,” I say. I steady the chair teetering behind me, lower myself back down. “Sorry. Just sibling squabbling. It’s nothing.”
Becker gives a crooked smile and disappears back into the kitchen.
My eyes find Gerry’s. His chest is heaving up and down, and he’s rubbing his arm like I hurt him.
“Sorry,” I repeat. “I saw you scratching, and I…”
“I told you. I’m not using. I’m done for good.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I mean it this time, Ani.” His eyes start to glisten. “I’m turning my life around.”
“I know. It’s just…” I trail off again, shrug. My palms turn face-up, my classic I-don’t-know-what-to-say-here gesture.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be back here,” he says. He looks up at the ceiling, seems to struggle with himself for a second, clears his throat. “Everyone’s looking at me like you just did. All the time. Waiting for me to fuck up again. Waiting for me to prove them right, to prove that I’m the asshole loser they always thought I was. Even Mom and Dad. Well, you know what? Screw them. I’m not who they think I am and I never fucking have been.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I’m twenty years old again, chasing my baby brother through the park so I can take him home, sober him up before our parents find out. I reach out to him, put my hand on top of his.
“You’re really done for good?” I ask.
“Yes. I swear it.”
And there’s a little bit of the old Gerry hardening his voice when he says it, the rebel who gave the middle finger to the rest of Marcine before too many drugs dulled the rebellion out of his eyes, the kid I admired for not even trying to fit in while the rest of us fought so desperately for some tiny crumb of acknowledgment and acceptance.
“Then I believe you, Ger.” I pick up the stack of envelopes, finger through them one by one. “But… we need to talk to Mom and Dad about this.”
He adjusts his baseball cap. Nods.
“And then,” I sigh, “we’re figuring out how to save this fucking restaurant.”
Our gazes connect, and it’s almost like looking in the mirror. We share the same dark eyes with the same subtle folds around them, the same high Nepalese cheekbones, the same long, flat nose, the same tawny skin. And when his face breaks into his best cat-who-swallowed-the-canary bad boy grin, I match it with a grin of my own.
“Damn straight we will, sister,” he says.
He holds out a fist. I bump it.
An hour later, just as the first few trickles of the dinner crowd starts coming in, Kiersten — the snooty young waitress I met my first night home — calls in sick. She doesn’t sound sick, though. She sounds like she’s got Thursday night plans she doesn’t want to break. I tell her sarcastically Thanks for the advanced notice, and slam the phone down so hard against the receiver that for a second I’m sure I cracked the plastic casing.
I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.