The Smart One (22 page)

As the plane circled LaGuardia Airport waiting for clearance to land, I thought about the holding pattern of my life. With no job, no boyfriend, no gravitational pull from my family, there was simply no place for me to alight.

When the plane finally touched down, I still felt so afloat I couldn’t manage to get out of my seat. Why should I? What was waiting for me? Two sisters who thought everything I did was a mistake? A cute carpenter who was sleeping with me to get his mind off someone else, someone I just happened to share a fair amount of DNA with? The only thing I had to look forward to was a letter from a school in Las Vegas. And what if I didn’t get the job? What if they were only interested in the younger, fresher, more moldable candidates? It would mean staying in New York and finding another apartment just like the one I’d left. Soon enough, I’d be dating guys like Bart Flaum again, attending family events where everyone tsked as I walked by, whispering how I’d once had so much promise.

“Buh-bye,” I heard the flight attendants say over and over again. “Thank you for flying Delta. Enjoy your stay in New York.”

When the last of the passengers had gone, I saw the flight
crew staring at me as if the woman in 12A with a bandage on her head was someone to be wary of. Fearing they thought I had some kind of agenda, I rose, plastered a smile on my face walked toward the front of the aircraft.

“Good-bye,” I said in my most charming voice. “Great flight—very smooth. My flight down had so much terrorism.”

The two flight attendants looked at each other and I immediately realized my mistake.

“Turbulence, I mean! Not terrorism. Well, buh-bye!”

Mortified, I hurried away. The neurologist at the hospital had warned me that the dysphasia could come and go for weeks, explaining that anxiety would exacerbate it. He hadn’t warned me, though, that the stress-induced malapropisms might be bad enough to get me arrested.

When I got back home, there was no letter from the school district in Las Vegas. There were, however, three messages from Leo. My first inclination was to brush him off. After all, the seeds for derailing Clare’s plans for an affair had been planted. All I had to do to reap the fruit was find the right time to let her know Leo and I had slept together.

But after moping around the house for a few hours with thoughts of Kenny insinuating their way into my subconscious as regularly as an insipid love ballad in rotation on a lite-music radio station, I changed my mind. I needed a distraction from Kenny Waxman.

So I agreed to go out with Leo the next night, and settled in to relax and regroup. A few minutes later Clare called, saying she and Joey wanted me to meet them for dinner. I begged off, and Clare tried getting me to change my mind. But I was resolute. Alas, she deployed her secret weapon, the thing that would harass, harangue, badger, cajole, and annoy until it wore me down. She had Joey call. I knew better than to put
up a fight, and an hour later pulled up at the address she had given me.

The restaurant Joey had chosen was nestled deep inside a huge place called Veronica’s, which billed itself as an “entertainment universe.” The main attraction, which you had to walk through to get to the restaurant, was a casino-sized video arcade, which assaulted my already frazzled nerves with electronic whirrs, dings, clangs, bangs, pops, blasts, and buzzers, combined with flashes of light and glints of chrome. It was overload for my neural pathways, and they shut down like a tripped circuit. I made my way to the restaurant Joey had described and was happy to discover that it felt like a quiet oasis.

“Ew,”
Clare said when she saw me. “You’re wearing that shirt!”

It was true. I had on the ugly beige shirt I had rescued from the trash when Clare decided it was an aesthetic offense.

“I didn’t have a chance to unpack yet,” I said, “and this was one of the only clean things I didn’t bring down to Florida. Is it that bad?”

“Only if you don’t like the color of rotting flesh.”

Joey snickered. I rolled my eyes. Fine for Clare to say something like that to me, but God forbid I made a comment like that to her. It was as if Clare had permission to be touchy about her appearance, while I was expected to be above it. Truth was, I thought I looked kind of cute in the baby doll sleeves, and maybe even tan against the pale color of the shirt. It hurt to think I looked gross, and I considered pulling out my mirror and reapplying my lipstick, but didn’t want to deal with the conversation that might spark.

The waitress came over and took our drink order—soft drinks for Joey and me, a white wine for Clare. She also handed each of us a game card for the arcade, which was
apparently included with dinner in the restaurant. When she walked away, my sisters proceeded to ask me about the car accident, of which I remembered very little.

“Dad said Sam caused it,” Clare said. “Do you think he was trying to kill all of you?” Her eyes were wide.

“Just Kenny,” I said.

“He really wanted to kill him?”

I shrugged.

“Twisted,” Joey said.

Clare reached across the table and took my hand. “You’re feeling okay?”

If she was so concerned, why was she compelled to drag me out when I was tired. “Fine,” I said, and pulled away.

The waitress brought our drinks and took our dinner order, and then Joey asked me what I thought of Veronica’s.

I looked around the room. Giant posters of fifties-era movie stars, including James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Sal Mineo, Rita Hayworth, Sandra Dee, Tab Hunter, and Elizabeth Taylor, adorned the walls, and the servers dressed in costumes that included Capri pants for the girls and rolled-up jeans for the boys.

“The restaurant’s okay,” I said. “But that arcade! Did you see who hangs out there?”

Clare nodded. “It seems like we’re the only women here.”

Joey sipped her club soda. “That’s not so bad, is it? Maybe Bev will find someone to get her mind off Kenny.”

“Please, there’s not a guy here over twenty-two. In fact, there’s not a guy here who looks like he doesn’t live in his parents’ basement and read comic books.”

“Why does Bev want to get her mind off Kenny?” Clare asked.

Joey looked at me. “You didn’t tell her?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to
talk about. The only reason I had told Joey was because I wanted her to know I was done with him. It was my way of giving her permission to hook up with him if she wanted to.

“What happened?” Clare asked.

I picked up a foil packet of butter and tested it for softness, just to have something to do. They both waited for me to say something.

“Kenny had angry sex with Bev,” Joey finally said.

Clare looked from Joey to me. “Angry sex? What does that mean?”

I opened the packet and buttered a raisin roll I pulled from the bread basket. “It means I’m never sleeping with him again.” I bit into the roll and made a face.

“Why are you eating that?” Joey said. “You
hate
raisins.”

She was right. I put the roll onto my bread plate and passed it to her. Just then, our waitress came with another round of drinks, which we hadn’t ordered.

“From the gentleman over there,” the waitress said, pointing to a table behind me.

“Those guys have been staring at Clare since we got here,” Joey said.

I turned around and saw three young men who couldn’t have been more than twenty. They all had that messy hair that started in IT departments among goofy-looking nerds and eventually became geek chic. They waved at us. I ignored them and turned back around. Joey arched out her chest and waved back.

“Don’t encourage them,” I said.

But it was too late. They got up and quickly approached our table.

“Thanks for the drinks, guys,” I said. “But this party is girls only.”

The tallest one, whose self-esteem seemed unaffected by
the angry red pimples on both his cheeks, put his arm around one of the other boys and said, “Too bad. Corey here is in mourning and could use some comforting.”

“Shut up, Jackman,” Corey said, pushing his friend’s arm off his shoulder. He had big dark eyes and seemed genuinely angry.

“What are you ladies doing after dinner?” Jackman asked.

“Not sure,” Clare said. “But maybe we’ll catch up with you later, okay?”

He leaned forward “What’s your name?”

“Clare.”

“Okay, Clare,” said Jackman. “We’ll be in the karaoke bar.”

“There’s a karaoke bar?” Joey said. She looked excited.

“It’s new,” he said, looking right down Joey’s low-cut top. “I hope you’ll meet us there.”

“Maybe,” she said.

He picked up Joey’s hand and kissed it.

“Bye guys,” Clare said. She smiled, and all three looked like their knees would buckle.

“Bye, Clare!” said the tall one. Then he winked at Joey. “See you later.”

“Bye, Clare!” said the other two.

I watched them walk away and turned to my older sister. “You still think you’ve lost your looks, Clare?”

She shrugged. “We’re the only women in this place. Of course we’re going to get hit on.”

“Not
we
,” I said. “You. Well, you and Joey. I’m chopped liver, apparently.”

“It’s that shirt,” Clare said.

“It’s her attitude,” Joey corrected. “She doesn’t put her shit out there.” She wagged a finger in my face. “You really should put your shit out there.”

“For three underage geeks?” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“In general,” Joey said. “You should put your shit out there
in general
.”

“Please. My shit is right where it belongs.” I looked at Clare for support, but her expression was unyielding.

“I agree with Joey,” she said. “You think it’s beneath you.”

“What? That’s ridiculous.”

“You think showing some cleavage will lower your IQ or something,” Joey said.

“And that wearing pretty colors means you’re shallow.”

Why didn’t they understand? It wasn’t that I thought I was better than them. It was that I couldn’t compete on their playing field. I was doing the best I could.

I stood. “I need some gas,” I said.

My sisters looked at me strangely and I realized my mistake. “Air. I need some air,” I said, and walked off.

“Bev,” Clare called after me but I didn’t stop. I exited the restaurant for the chaotic assault of the center hall arcade. I wandered up and down the aisles, lost in the noise and lights of the games until my stomach vibrated from the tumult. After a while, I became disoriented in the space and couldn’t tell which direction the restaurant was in or where the front door was. Not that I really cared. I needed a diversion.

At last I noticed an arcade game that called out to me. It was called Megasaurs and was set up like an open booth. Inside was a bench facing a huge screen with realistic-looking prehistoric monsters. Instead of joysticks or buttons, players got to hold large automatic weapons designed specifically for dinosaur extinction. I sat down, slipped in my game card and started shooting. I was terrible at first, getting outsmarted by the giant lizards at every turn. But after a while I got the hang of the gun and started wiping out entire eras of the gargantuan creatures.
Pow pow pow.
Ankylosaurus, plateosaurus,
brachiosaurus, stegosaurus, diplodocus: dead. I was up to the Cretaceous period, wiping out the dreaded Tyrannosaurus rex when I sensed another person slide in next to me. I didn’t glance up. I couldn’t. A pack of velociraptors was moving in from behind, and they had speed. The buggers dispersed as I fired shots into the group. I had to be fast, fast, fast. But they were too much for me, and a slippery one quicker than a lightning bolt sneaked up and ate me.

“Shit,” I said.

“Having fun?” It was Joey.

I let go of the gun and sat back. “I needed to work out my hostilities.”

Clare entered on the other side of the booth and sat down. “Can we play?”

“What about dinner?” I asked.

“We told them to keep it warm,” Joey said.

“I’m really sorry,” Clare said. “I guess we were kind of obnoxious.”

I nodded.

Joey pushed her game card into the slot and set up the game for three players. “Thing is,” she said, “we’re probably a little jealous of you.”

“Of
me
? I don’t even get noticed half the time.”

“You don’t need to,” Clare said.

The game sprang to life and a dinosaur came charging at us. I shot it quickly for a hundred points.

“You’re the lucky one,” Joey said.

“Nonsense.” A brachiosaur appeared from behind a hill. “Shoot, Clare!”

She squeezed the trigger and the dinosaur blew up. Did they really think being the smart one made me lucky? It only meant that my family had unrealistic expectations for me. I would always be a disappointment. Always.

“You guys are the lucky ones. No matter what you do, Mom and Dad think you walk on water.” I shot a stegosaur.

“You think I have no pressure,” Clare said. “You think all I have to do is look pretty and keep a neat house and I’ve met everyone’s expectations for me.”

I glanced away from the screen to look at her. That was exactly what I thought. Another stegosaurus appeared and charged right for me. Joey blew its head off.

Clare let go of her gun and looked back at me. “The problem,” she said, “is that when I get wrinkles or gain ten pounds I feel like a colossal failure. And then I hate myself for being so shallow. Of course, I can’t talk to anyone about it without getting that eye-roll thing—
oh, poor Clare can’t fit into her jeans and thinks the world is coming to an end.
So I try to make myself feel better by buying a new pair of pants or redecorating the house. It works for a little while and then…I don’t know.” She paused and it seemed like she was fighting the urge to cry. Finally, she cleared her throat. “Then a guy comes along who makes me feel appreciated for being exactly who I am, and it sends me into a spin.” She looked back at the screen. “A brontosaurus!”

“Diplodocus,” I corrected. She couldn’t grab her gun fast enough so I shot it. I looked back at her soft, sad eyes. “I’m sorry if I seem unsympathetic sometimes,” I said.