The Other Half of Me (3 page)

FOUR

I can paint in my mind reasons why Tate Brodeur would grace my backyard with his presence:

(1) He’s lost.

(2) He has an urgent message from Camp Cedar for Sierra and Sage.

(3) Now that summer is ending, he’s looking for yard work to make extra money and sees the gravel pile and dirt-encrusted rocks at the back of our yard as his chance to score big.

Of course none of the reasons listed is the one I’m hoping is true. I make my way down the staircase, my hair wet on my neck, my pulse racing, to the backyard. From the sliding glass door at the far end of the kitchen I watch how relaxed Tate looks with Russ. They’re tossing a Nerf football back and forth as they talk. Sierra and Sage sneak a few glances at Tate and giggle.

“Jenny!” My mom’s voice is muffled behind the sliding door until I open it and her true volume registers.
“Jennnn-y!”

“I’m right here.” My flip-flops make funny noises as I walk onto the patio. It’s one of those entrances that make me cringe: too much attention on my arrival. I prefer to slip into a scene without much fanfare.

“So glad you can join us!” my dad booms, gesturing at me with the tongs he uses to flip steaks or barbecued chicken, or whatever it is we’re having tonight.

“I like your shirt,” Sierra says, and points to my tank top.

“Dry looks good on you.” Sage laughs.

Nice. Why is it that their snide remarks make me so annoyed? On a normal evening I might spit out a nasty retort that my parents would send me back to my room for (and without dinner, I might add). But this is not a normal evening. Tate Brodeur is a few feet away, catching passes from Russ and looking over at me.

Maybe the reason he’s here in my backyard, decked out in his beach-worn green shorts and trashed sneakers, is the reason I didn’t have the heart to add to the list before: maybe Tate is here to see me.

“Hey, Fitz,” Tate says.

“Hey,” I say to him, but Russ jogs over and elbows me.

“He means me, Jenny.” Russ’s forehead glows with sweat, and he knocks the football from Tate’s hands. “You two know each other?”

I look at Tate directly for probably the first time ever, and he stares back. A grin spreads over his face, and I return the expression. Life is good. Tate steps forward and offers his hand. “I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced,” he says.

Ever the host, Russ pulls me by the hand so I can shake Tate’s. “Tate Brodeur, Jenny Fitzgerald. There ya go.”

If only Russ knew that the introduction was hardly necessary. For two years all I’ve done is fantasize about this moment.

“Hey.” I feel my pulse speed up as our hands are about to make contact. He grips my hand, but he doesn’t turn his gaze away from me for a full five seconds. Maybe it’s less. I can’t count when I’m near him, because most of my brainpower is spent trying to resist him.

And why must I resist him? There are several reasons. First, he’s not my type—i.e., he doesn’t wear ripped T-shirts and flaunt a knowledge of art house films, etc. Second, most people call him Bro, which is just ridiculous, and I have no idea why he allows this. Third, Tate and I could never survive as a couple at our high school, because I circulate on the periphery of the cliques. I’m what you would call a floater—not preppy enough to be a cheerleader, not bookish enough to be a wonk, not sporty enough to be a jock (not sporty in the slightest), and not bland enough to be anonymous. This last reason makes liking him pretty damn near futile.

Still, I want to know Tate’s reason for being here more than anything. And then it’s clear.

“I came by to inform your brother that he’s got a good chance of making varsity this year.”

“Oh yeah?” Reality has a nasty way of making me feel like an idiot for dreaming. “Well, Russ is a football superstar, that’s for sure.” I pat my brother on the back. He’s impossible not to like with his easygoing manner and was born to be a professional athlete, unlike me.

“Varsity would rock big-time.” Russ chucks the football up into the air, where mosquitoes swirl. Russ looks at me. “Then you could come and watch!”

Russ’s excitement about the possibility of becoming one of the youngest players, if not
the
youngest player ever on our high school varsity team makes me sad for a brief moment. He seems so much closer to achieving what he wants than I am, so much closer to being the person he was meant to be. Plus, lucky him, he’ll be near Tate, the star quarterback.

“A couple minutes and we’ll be all set for dinner.” My mom wipes her hands on a green-and-yellow dish towel, playfully swatting me on her way to the kitchen. “Russ, is your friend going to stay?”

Mom’s words seem so sharp just then. Tate is my brother’s friend, and not connected to me in the least. Isn’t that priceless?

“What about it, Bro?” Russ asks Tate.

Tate shrugs with one shoulder and then quickly looks up at the sky à la his thinking mode. I notice how his eyebrows are raised, and it immediately makes him a zillion times cuter. “I actually have to get going. I’m in charge of trivia night at camp.” He sighs and then puts on a game show host voice. “Welcome to Camp Cedar’s annual Sports Quiz.” Then he stops. “That’s about as far as I’ve gotten.”

“Dude, that’s lame,” Russ laughs. From the grill, a puff of smoke sends my mom running over from the kitchen with her dish towel flailing. Always affable, Russ goes over to see how he can help, while Sierra and Sage do simultaneous cartwheels across the lawn, leaving me alone with Tate. Then I realize that one part of me is able to do a backflip—my heart.

“So, are you a master of sports trivia?” I twist my still-damp hair up off my neck so it stays in a loose bun.

Tate palms the Nerf ball, then holds it between both hands, and for once I wish I were good at sports. “Not a master per se. More like a blue belt.”

“Not bad.” I cross my arms as a line of defense, as if he could see right inside to where my crush is hiding.

Tate throws a mini spiral and catches the ball. “What about you?” He puts on the game show host voice again. “Can you tell me what the sport is with the fastest moving object?”

“Jai alai,” I say automatically. Tate looks shocked, his mouth agape. “I’ve been schooled for sixteen years at the Fitzgerald Academy.” I tap the side of my head with my finger as if to indicate my brain is filled with a lot more useless information.

“Impressive.” Tate kicks his sneakers into the grass, making them squeak. I can see my mom plating food while Russ takes over the grill so my dad can chase the twins with the garden hose. They squeal and laugh, falling on each other on the thick dark grass.

“Yeah, well, you never know when that stuff will come in handy.” And it already has.

I always know when I’m happy, because my eyes start to play tricks on me, letting whatever it is that’s bringing me joy start to looked painted. Tate’s mouth becomes a swirl of dark red; in his hair I see brushstrokes of bark-colored brown, a few streaks of summer copper. It’s like a van Gogh, all eddies of color. Suddenly I want nothing more than to be in my room, translating the picture in my head onto canvas.

“Here.” Tate suddenly throws the ball my way, breaking the painty happiness collage.

“Huh?” I try to grasp the squish of it. Even with my lack of coordination, the catch should be possible, but I’m caught off guard, so it thwacks against my stomach and lands on the ground.

“Sorry.” Tate squats to pick up the ball and then points to my ankle. “Interesting tattoo.”

I check out the dollop of orange smeared on my skin. Now I have something else to be embarrassed about. “Oh, it’s just oil paint. It didn’t come off in the shower.” All of a sudden my urge to retreat becomes too much for me to handle. “I should go eat dinner,” I say, gesturing to the picnic table, where Russ is scooping a mound of potato salad onto his plate.

“Oh.” Tate looks at the rest of my family and then back at me. He pauses, his lips partway open so it looks like he’s about to say something important. Then he shakes his head. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around?”

I nod, even though we probably won’t see each other around. I’m not likely to be one of those girls who watches preseason practice, pointing to the hot quarterback and bringing the team ice water. Tate’s not likely to show up randomly at Downtown Studios. “Sure.”

“Hey, Fitz! See you later!” Tate yells to my brother, who is too busy snarfing food to do anything other than give a lax wave. Tate nods at me and then saunters off to his beat-up Hershey-bar-colored Volvo in the driveway.

“Jenny, come and get it!” My mom flags me over to the table. When she notices I’m not taking strides toward the group, she cups her hands megaphone-style and adds, “Now, Jenny!”

Tate’s a few yards away when he stops, turns back to me, and asks, “So, how fast is fast, anyway?”

Without having to ask for clarification, I know what he means. “The jai alai pelota’s been clocked at one hundred eighty-eight miles per hour.”

“Amazing. Even I didn’t know that,” he yells back, and I get chills.

“There’s more where that came from,” I shout, and take a step toward my parents. I can tell they’re annoyed that I’m delaying the family dinner, because my mother has her hands on her hips, waiting to start her food until I’m there.

“I bet,” Tate says, his car keys swinging from his fingers. “I’ll be at Callahan’s later if you feel like intimidating everyone with your superior knowledge.”

Callahan’s is the local hangout at the mall. Everyone goes there to talk the night away trying to figure out where else to go. It’s not a place I frequent. In fact, it’s not a place I’ve been to much at all. Faye and I usually spend time at the Shoreline Diner instead, where ancient waitresses serve coffee and doughnuts and there’s no crowd of jocks trying to make a basket by chucking napkins into the trash cans.

Tate gives one quick wave and shuts the car door. He drives off, leaving a spray of gravel from the back tires and me with my mind racing. Did he tell me that he’d be at Callahan’s so I should go there to meet him? Or was it more like, if I happened to be there, and he happened to also, we could hang out?

“Jenny! We’re waiting.” Dad stands up from the table and speaks in his business phone call voice, which means I better listen.

So I do.

FIVE

The night air moves in, and with the rolling dark, the automatic patio lights flick on. I manage to eat dinner, pass the ketchup, nod at Sierra’s gymnastics story, ask my mother about her day, and listen as my father talks about his job as a divorce mediator.

“It’s just so much more civil, don’t you think?” Dad asks. “They never even raised their voices.”

“Definitely.” Russ nods and chews.

“Without a doubt,” my mother adds. Then, to all of us, she keeps going. “You’re lucky to have parents who have admirable jobs. Dad could be one of those cutthroat divorce lawyers with no scruples. But instead, he took the higher ground and really helps people achieve their goals without cruelty.”

My mom worked in Hollywood as a script doctor before meeting my dad, and sometimes she gives mini speeches that sound like she’s still employed by a film company. She worked crazy hours and had (in her words) absolutely no social life that didn’t revolve around the office, which is what led to her “decision.” No one in my family considers this subject a big enough deal to talk much about, though, including me. Even if I think about it sometimes, I don’t vocalize it. Maybe there’s a difference between being honest about the details of my conception, which my parents have been with me from the start, and being open to the possibility that there are larger ramifications at work here, which maybe hasn’t been the case.

Big info is like that, though. You try to convince yourself that it’s just the knowing or not knowing that matters. But really it’s more than just finding out you’re adopted or from a donor or whatever. You have to build that into your life. And that’s what my parents don’t want to do; they’d rather say it once, then tuck it back into hiding.

Family is family, and I love mine. However, I always seem to carry this sense of otherness with me. I feel a difference even though there’s not supposed to be one. It’s nothing solid, nothing tangible I can point to. I can’t compare this to what it’s like when someone is adopted. All I know is with this, it’s like being half in and half out.

“Aren’t we proud of Dad and his mediation skills? His ability to aid people in their struggles to connect?” My mom beams at my dad. She left Hollywood with my dad, and they settled back east. Now my mom writes pamphlets for businesses, talking up hardware stores or local graphic design firms, trying to make each store or person as compelling as the latest blockbuster movie.

“That’s great, Dad,” I say, just so they know I’m paying attention.

The twins pick at each other’s plates, each one knowing that the other likes hummus but not mustard on her chicken, allowing each other to sample the dill pickles or chips without complaining. I reach for one of Sage’s sour cream and onion chips. She swats me away with a slap on the hand.

“Back off,” she says, and snatches the chip for herself.

“Give me a break.” I shake my head.

“You could share, Sierra,” my mother says, and then corrects herself. “I mean, Sage.”

They don’t mind being confused. It’s as though they exist on Earth as one combined force.

“Never mind,” I say, and wipe my mouth on a napkin. “I’m heading in.”

“To the Batcave,” Russ says. He means it as a joke, but it’s all my dad needs to start in on me.

“Just like that?” Dad gestures at me with a baby carrot but doesn’t say anything else.

“I had dinner,” I say as though that’s justification. I untwist my hair so it falls down on my shoulders, catching the last of the sunlight and warming my neck.

“I thought we could move the sand from the garage tonight,” Dad says, referring to the backyard landscaping mission.

I stand up. “I can’t tonight, Dad.”

“C’mon, Jenny,” my father urges.

Mom starts stacking the plates, and I help her gather cutlery, sticking forks, spoons, and knives into an empty cup so they stick up like a flower arrangement.

“Sorry. My artwork calls.”

“Have fun in your closet,” Russ says in his good-natured voice.

Last year I turned my closet into the smallest studio ever. There’s no light, hardly any room, and no way in hell it could ever really be deemed a studio, but it gives me a little bit of room to call my own. The shelves are stocked with canvas, wooden frames, and containers I recycled that once held my parents’ gourmet sauces and are now filled with paint.

“We want to go to the mall.” Sierra’s and Sage’s voices overlap. “Please? Missy Walters invited us.” Sage elbows Sierra.

Missy Walters is a girl in their class who skipped over princess-in-training and went straight to queen bee. I fight the urge to roll my eyes at the twins and their wannabe-cool outings, but I do know what it’s like to want to be included.

“Richard, can you take them?” my mother asks my father.

“I’m done driving. I went to Ridgefield and back today already for a client proposal,” Dad says, passing the buck.

I can feel it coming. I know Mom is going to ask me, so I try and beat her to the punch. “I can’t drive them, either. There’s an art show. At Downtown Studios. And it’s the biggest—”

I flounder for words, which just proves how important the show is to me. At the same time, I highly doubt my parents are going to squeal with delight over my news. Although, if there were a contest or competition involved, their ears might perk up.

I swallow hard and continue. “It’s in about two weeks, after the county carnival, and the director said if he likes my work, he’ll put it in the exhibit.” I watch my mother as she flaps open a garbage bag, shoving the lemonade-sticky cups and empty bag of chips inside. Is she even listening? “Anyway, it’s a pretty big deal, so I have to work extremely hard.”

“Sounds cool,” Russ says, staring at me blankly. I see my parents give each other
the look
, the look that my mom gave me today when she hinted that maybe painting isn’t
my thing.
All I want is for my dad to slam his hand on the table and demand I go paint, the way he does on the few occasions Russ slacks off on his training.

Sierra ignores me and taps my dad on the shoulder. “Daddy, please? Missy’s never invited us to the mall before.” Dad doesn’t respond. I notice Sage nudge Sierra in the ribs, another twin moment.

Sierra clicks into action. “Besides, if we go to the mall tonight, we could get our cleats for fall soccer.”

I know exactly what Sierra is doing and that it’s going to work like all her plans do. Still, my mind is obsessing over the fact that I only have fourteen days to produce some art that’s worthy of being shown.

My dad puts his hand on Sierra’s shoulder. “If you don’t have adequate gear, you better get it soon. Nothing worse than stiff new shoes at a real game.” Russ nods as though my father has passed on some sage advice.

My mom touches my arm. Here we go. “Jenny, I know you have some work you’d like to do, but—”

Dad steps in so that he can complete the parental unit powerhouse. “Be a team player, Jen.” He makes a sweeping motion encompassing all of us clustered around the table. The light is fading, and so is my hope of painting tonight. “Give them a ride, will you?”

My sisters nod and look earnest, but their eyes suggest a smugness I can’t call them on right now. He doesn’t say it, but I can see in his eyes the phrase
Your “hobby” can wait.

I breathe in to steady my nerves. I don’t want to pitch a fit about this, because in the end I’ll end up feeling guilty about it. Then all of a sudden goose bumps prickle up my arms as I think about who else might be at the mall.

Maybe my hobby can wait for just a little while.