Old Girls, or, The Ordinary Adventure

Abstract

Old Girls, or, The Ordinary Adventure Lauren Barbato (bio) I Babcia called them the old girls, a nickname she debuted when Viv and Tess were in elementary school. Neither of them had fathers; who needed fathers? Tess's mother, a nurse, often worked evening shifts in the ER, leaving Tess with Babcia, who'd retired from her desk job at the post office and had cared for Viv since her mother passed. Viv and Tess would ride the bus along Bloomfield Avenue with Babcia for her weekly errands. Babcia often found the old girls perched on the red metal bench outside ShopRite, sharing peppermint patties with residents from the local senior-citizen complex. At night, Babcia would pull back the woolly throw obscuring the entrance to their blanket fort, where the old girls lay on their bellies, chins resting on velvet pillow shams, cutting and pasting images from beauty and travel magazines to create their own reality in purple composition notebooks. The old girls liked to discuss their futures of living alone in foreign cities, marrying out of love, not obligation. They idolized artists over pop stars, preferred foreign films to teen movies. Tess, they always said, had the good sense; Viv had the gift. The old girls spent the first three weeks of their summer before college in short shorts and crop tops at the diner counter on Bloomfield Avenue, eyeing Irish fries and rocky road milkshakes while the men eyed them. They didn't mind; really, the old girls liked it. It'd become their new game, timing how long it took the men to slither over and make small talk about the milkshakes, the heat, the '80s movies playing on the little TV in the corner. It beat lying out on the Bloomfield Green and seeing how much Sun In and lemon juice Viv needed to [End Page 206] pour onto Tess's black hair before it rusted. Sometimes, they got free chicken fingers and fries out of these men or, if they waited long enough, a six-pack of Yuengling. Consider the man today: His dark brown hair, swept coolly over the growing lines of his forehead, still held its youthful wave. His biceps, on full display in his black tank top, were strong and freckled. Tess's good sense pegged him as 30, at least. Viv asked the man his name (Matt, short for Matthew Joseph, reluctantly Catholic); she giggled when he flexed his left arm, stretching the ink of his block-lettered USMC tattoo; she pressed the side of her bare thigh against his green cargo shorts. When he flashed his driver's license, Viv saw he was twenty-nine, born in 1974, September, a Virgo. Tess whispered, "I told you so," from behind her sheet of silky straight black hair. Once he excused himself to the bathroom, the waitress behind the counter fluttered her blue eyelashes and said what she always said when someone else paid their check: You girls, don't enjoy yourselves too much. They rolled up to the local bodega for loosies, which they smoked in the parking lot below Bloomfield station. Matt was outspoken and energetic and somewhat charming in his unapologetic curiosity. He asked Viv about her grandmother, and wondered how Tess could possess a Spanish last name if she was Filipina. He teased Tess about her Stanford ambitions but wanted to know more about her upcoming California makeover. ("Viv's gonna bleach it blonde before I go," Tess told him. "I'm good at that," Viv added.) When Matt said he'd always wanted to write a book, Tess began lecturing him on the gender politics of 19th-century literature and Viv groaned, No one wants to hear that shit. In Watsessing Park, they sipped PBRs masked by paper bags and Viv performed a childhood tap routine on a picnic table. Matt hurdled onto the table and spun her around by the waist. They slipped into an endearing offbeat two-step, Viv's blonde hair, even paler now in the summer, rippling to her waist. Tess clapped along and finished his PBR. [End Page 207] Later, when curfew neared, Tess waited outside his gold Jeep Cherokee...