Chapter 4: Valentina vs Jessénia
Growing up as a sororal twin meant several things. One, people always assume that means we’re supposed to be identical. Two, people will always ask if your family can tell you apart. Three, even after meeting our non-identical asses, people will still struggle to tell us apart.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s just laziness. We’re not really that hard to tell apart, once you meet us both, and especially once you see us together. My eyes are bigger and wider than hers. Her face is much softer and ‘feminine’ than mine. Our noses are similar, and damn do we show a lot of teeth when we smile, but we're not carbon copies of each other. I truly think some people are just stupid and can't be bothered to remember which one of us is which.
Several times when we were younger, boys would hit on one of us, thinking we were the other. Most of the time, they were just clueless, innocent mistakes, like when they hadn't actually met both of us, but every so often there were ulterior motives. Some of them just wanted bragging rights; to be able to say they dated both of us. We could spot these jackasses a mile away. They usually couldn't stop a cocky grin from coming to their face. Val and I would laugh it off between us, laughing at how the guy couldn't say he dated us both, but at least got turned down by both. For the most part, we never let it bother us, because we knew we weren't the problem.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s just laziness. We’re not really that hard to tell apart, once you meet us both, and especially once you see us together. My eyes are bigger and wider than hers. Her face is much softer and ‘feminine’ than mine. Our noses are similar, and damn do we show a lot of teeth when we smile, but we're not carbon copies of each other. I truly think some people are just stupid and can't be bothered to remember which one of us is which.
Several times when we were younger, boys would hit on one of us, thinking we were the other. Most of the time, they were just clueless, innocent mistakes, like when they hadn't actually met both of us, but every so often there were ulterior motives. Some of them just wanted bragging rights; to be able to say they dated both of us. We could spot these jackasses a mile away. They usually couldn't stop a cocky grin from coming to their face. Val and I would laugh it off between us, laughing at how the guy couldn't say he dated us both, but at least got turned down by both. For the most part, we never let it bother us, because we knew we weren't the problem.
We didn't even stay upset when one of us liked a guy, but then that guy hit on the other. Sadly, this happened a lot, especially to me. Taryn always said my no-nonsense independence scared a lot of guys away, so they'd run to Val instead. They were never her type though so she turned them down. Val and I had very different taste in guys, so there was never any worry that we'd end up liking the same guy. It only happened once, and it was a celebrity anyway so it doesn't really count. It wasn't like either one of us ever had a chance, but that didn't stop us from coming up with a million hypotheticals about running into him, and we argued about which one of us would get to date him. It was silly.
But later, in college, it wasn't so silly. Val went to Bay State, up in Boston, while I stayed local at NYU. When were about nineteen I think, I went up to crash with her for a long weekend. She'd been telling me all about this guy she'd been hanging out with, and of course I had to go evaluate him. She told me that she wanted me to form an honest opinion without knowing who he was. So she introduced me to tons of people, and every time she introduced me to a guy, I'd watch her for a sign to see if it was the guy, but she never gave anything away. She asked me randomly what I thought of different people - guys and girls - and I'd try to gauge her reaction to my opinions, but still nothing. I asked her a million times to just tell me his name but she refused, so even after two days I had no idea whether I'd already met this guy or not.
There was one guy - let's call him Dick - whose mind seemed blown by our twin-ness. Not so much by the fact that we were twins, but that people could possibly mix us up. He just kept stressing how different we were, how there was absolutely no way to confuse us, and that anyone who couldn't tell us apart was clearly an idiot. I was like, finally, someone gets it! He was completely fascinated by us, and spent the rest of that day pretty much glued to us. Everywhere we went, he wanted to join. And he was cute, and flirty, and I certainly didn't mind hanging out with him a little more.
We all went to a frat party the following night - Val, me, that guy, and a few other people. Our little group split up over the course of the night, and at one point I was talking with a group of guys when Dick approached me, pulling me away from them. He took me to one of the rooms upstairs, and we talked for a little bit, then he made his move. I pretended to resist for a few moments, knowing damn well I was gonna give him some. I knew I was going to from the second he suggested going somewhere quiet. When it was over, we went back down to the party, shared a smirk, and went on about our business. I wasn't trying to date him, just wanted the quick hook up, and the typical college guy, that's all he wanted too. Worked out for everyone.
The next day, Val pestered me for my opinions on people again. One of them was Dick. I wanted to keep our little tryst to myself, didn't really want let on that I'd gone swimming in her pool of friends, so I just told her he seemed like a really cool guy to chill with. That's when she dropped it on me: He was the guy she was into. Not only that, but they'd left the party together and spent most of the night back at his dorm room.
Uh oh.
I still decided to keep it to myself. I'm not really sure why. Part of me was just stunned that we were actually into the same guy, however shallow my feelings were. Another part was ashamed that I hadn't been able to pick up on that vibe. Whatever the reason, it just seemed right to stay quiet. It's not like he and I had formed some bond. It never had to come up again. And realistically, I didn't foresee them having some deep personal connection, so it's not like this was Val's future husband. She didn't need to know.
And she probably never would have. Except for several weeks later when she overheard him bragging to one of his friends about "nailing twins in the same weekend." Really dude? The way she overheard it... Oh. My. Kobe. She called him, invited him out, and as he put the phone down, apparently thinking he'd hung up, she heard his roommate ask who it was and Dick said her name. Val was prepared to hang up until the roommate asked "Is that the blonde?" Apparently this was only the first indication that he was a player - to this day I have no idea how she missed the signs - and she listened as Dick explained how he knew her and tried to describe her. As he finished, he went on to add that Val had a twin sister and that he "hit that" a few weeks ago, and named the fraternity that had thrown the party where we hooked up.
Like I said, I never intended for Val to ever find out about our little one night stand, if you could ever call it that. One half-hour stand? So for her to find out like that? I couldn't even be mad that she was mad I'd kept it from her, but for the rest of it? No. The wrath she unleashed on me was like something out of a Greek tragedy. I'd be a fool if I didn't admit that girls in lust and infatuation are beyond irrational. Val accused me of intentionally going after him because I knew she liked him. There were several problems with this, of course, number one being the fact that I had no idea he was the guy she'd been seeing until afterwards, and then the big one, perhaps the most important: I would never, ever do something like that, and there was absolutely nothing in our history to suggest otherwise. It didn't stop her from screaming at me for hours at a time, and it went on for days. We barely spoke for the rest of that semester, and then she took her sweet time coming home for summer break.
When she did, she took her revenge.
I'd been seeing this guy, who we call Oblivious, and because I did actually like him, was into him, I wasn't in a rush for the physical stuff. It was tough, because he was a couple years older, had his own place, and I spent at least two nights a week there. We engaged in other activities, but I always slowed things down before we got to sex. He was cool about it, he didn't push for anything further, which only made me like him more. I mean, at least he was getting something, so I imagine that helped. One night, after Val had been home for about a month, during which she had not spoken to me at all even though I consistently tried to talk to her, Oblivious and I had a very nice date. I was pleasantly surprised when he took me to a much nicer place than normal - not that he didn't take me to nice places before, but this was way above what I knew he could afford - but I didn't question it. I just figured he wanted to spoil me a bit. This guy was definitely a keeper.
Then we went back to his place. Things got hot pretty quickly, and for the first time, he wasn't letting me set the pace. At first, I didn't mind. Sometimes a girl likes to give up a little bit of control. Clothes were gone much faster than normal, and I started in on our usual play. Well, he tried to bypass that completely, making a beeline for home plate. I stopped him gently, trying to steer things back, but he tried again. And again. Finally I stopped him completely, demanding to know what he was doing. "You know damn well I want to wait on that."
His response? I swear, if you've ever seen me laugh - really laugh - you know my mouth is huge. But that has nothing on how far my jaw dropped when he said what he did. To his credit, he seemed genuinely confused, not accusatory: "After the other night, I don't think you can say you're still waiting."
Apparently, several nights before this, 'I' called him out of the blue, telling him that my plans that night had fallen through and I wanted to see him. I asked him to meet me at a bar near my place, and then once he showed up, I immediately suggested that we go to his place instead. He commented that I seemed a bit different, and I told him I'd already been out drinking with my friends. 'We' went back to his place, and as soon as he opened the door, I demanded that he take me to the bedroom. He asked if I was sure, I told him absolutely and jumped into his arms. He carried me to the bed, where I took over, wildly undressed both of 'us' and got on top of him, going at it twice, after which he feel asleep, and I was gone in the morning.
I let out just about every curse I knew, both in English and Spanish, and I'm pretty sure some Gaelic came out, courtesy of Grandma Mary (my father's mother).
Of course I knew it wasn't me, but Val in my place. I did have plans that night, that's the reason I hadn't gone out with him, and I specifically remembered my mom telling me Val asked if I was free that night. Mom told me that when she told Val I had band practice, she looked disappointed. Mom knew that we weren't speaking, and told me she thought Val was looking to make plans with me. That made me even angrier, knowing that she'd dragged Mom into this, and played her too.
And in all of this, poor Oblivious was so, well, oblivious. How could he not tell that it wasn't me? He was apologetic and horrified that he'd slept with someone else, and he admitted he was surprised at how it all went down. He said he'd always figured that I'd want our first time to be more romantic, classic missionary and a little cuddling (he wasn't wrong), so when I jumped on top and started riding, he wondered just how drunk I was, but he liked it, and in the moment there was no way he was going to stop and question it. I couldn't blame him for it completely, I mean, we do resemble one another and our voices are mostly identical. In the dark we are easily mistaken for each other, and when he was presented the opportunity to get laid right now by the woman he'd been seeing for several months, he really had no reason to think it wasn't me. We continued to see each other for a little while, and I did end up sleeping with him, mostly because I felt like I had to now, but the first time I got on top, all I could think about was how Val had already been there, and I wondered if he liked it better the way she did it, and I couldn't finish, and eventually I thought about it every time we were intimate. Ultimately, I had to end things. It wasn't his fault, and I told him so, but I just couldn't date him knowing that he'd slept with my sister, it didn't matter that he didn't know it at the time.
Val's role in this wasn't quite so innocent as Mr. Oblivious. Like I said, I accepted her anger at me for keeping my hookup with Dick a secret, but I legitimately had no idea she was into that guy. Furthermore, he was clearly sleeping with a bunch of other girls too, so it's not like he was Val's boyfriend. But this? She deliberately tricked not only him, but Mom, and did exactly what she accused me of doing.
And I'm not proud of what I did next, but I did it, and it wouldn't be fair to tell you what she did to me without telling you how I retaliated.
Val was the kind of girl who always had guys at her every beck and call. At any given time there were five or six guys squiring her around town, buying her gifts, vying for her attention. She'd have a favorite, one that she would refer to as boyfriend to other people, but never to his face. These guys all knew that they were not her one and only, and although some fought for the spot, usually by trying to monopolize her time, most of them had revolving doors of their own. They were pretty symbiotic, as far as relationships go.
I wasn't willing to be as underhanded as she was and involve Mom in any of this, so I couldn't ask her who Val's guys were that summer. Instead, I raided her cell phone, looking at who called her and at what times of the day, reading the few text messages that she had before she could delete them, and just eavesdropping when she was on the phone. I figured out the favorite by looking at the number she called the most. Then I waited until Sunday dinner.
Sunday dinners with Grandma and Abuelo were a huge affair. It would be my grandparents, Mom, Val, Nordin, Aunt Carmella and Uncle Charles, my cousin Victoria, my cousin Tatum, and then as the years went on, this included Richard, Tatum's husband Simon, and then more spouses and children once Grandma passed on and Mom and Aunt Carmella took over. 'Dinner' was misnomer, because we'd get to their house shortly after noon, and all the women would gather in the kitchen and start cooking. The men did whatever it was they did. We closed the kitchen door and didn't even acknowledge them until it was time to eat. After we ate, we would talk. And talk. And talk. The point is, Sunday dinners were a time for family, and we had no time for hanging out with anyone else or even time to use our cell phone. Which is why Val never realized that I had her phone the whole time on this particular afternoon.
While we were cooking, I excused myself several times to go to the bathroom. From there, I called each one of Val's second-rate paramours from her phone, pretending to be her, and told them all that I no longer wanted to see them, that I'd decided to be exclusive to only one. Then I changed all their numbers in her contact list by one digit. I had something special saved for The Favorite. I told him, again, posing as Val, that wanted to be with only him, and that I wanted to bring him to the next family dinner and formally introduce him to everyone. I had no idea which way this was going to go, but either one was going to be awesome and I couldn't wait to watch it play out: Either he would freak out and think that it was too much and pull away, or he would be thrilled to be her boyfriend and start to smother Val.
It was the latter. Which was pretty awesome. When the other guys stopped calling she started to get frustrated. When The Favorite was calling her more than normal she got uncomfortable. She started breaking plans with him left and right. She tried texting her other guys, but since she was now texting the wrong number, she'd get 'who is this?' responses. During this, I was still seeing Mr. Oblivious, having never let on to Val that I knew what she'd done, and even though she was still barely talking to me, one evening when The Favorite came over, I suggested that they go on a double date with us. The Favorite smiled and agreed, but the look of abomination that crossed her face, however, was priceless.
Shortly before going back to school, Val broke it off. He came over to help her pack - so sweet of him - and she was like, "You've gotta stop this, you are not my boyfriend. Stop asking when family dinners are, stop just showing up, stop all of this." This poor guy. He's the one I feel the worst for, in all of this, because he bent over backwards for her and he really did want the chance to be Val's boyfriend. In the long run, though, I guess Val would have broken his heart anyway, whether it was then or whether it would have been down the road, after stringing him along, so I take a little comfort in knowing that I didn't do anything she wasn't already going to do. He was completely taken aback. My eavesdropping ass heard him get all flustered with her, wanting an explanation. He said that she told him she only wanted to be with him. She scoffed. "I told you no such thing." She then accused him of scaring off the other guys, and I laughed, nearly giving away my location, so I had to duck into my room and pretend I was reading a message on my phone. He explained to her how she called him and told him she wanted to be in a relationship with him, and she told him he must have taken whatever she said the wrong way. Then she said it was over. It was either over, or he had to chill out and accept that they were not exclusive and she was going to continue seeing other people. He said, "I guess it's over then," and left.
I could hear her slamming stuff around her room for the next hour as she packed, grumbling about guys being clingy and ridiculous, typing on her phone, and muttering "What the fuck?" every few minutes. Finally she appeared in my bedroom doorway, just glaring at me. I looked up from my notebook - I was working on a song - and said innocently, "Hey. So, I overheard, sorry to hear about you guys. You okay?" For half a second she calmed down. I'm not sure what she was about to accuse me of, specifically, but in that moment she seemed to change her mind, and actually confided in me, really the first time she'd spoken to me that entire summer, "I don't know what go into him. He knows the deal."
I closed my notebook, stood up from the bed, gave her a quick hug, and said as I walked past: "It's a shame, he has such a lovely phone voice." She followed me, screeching that she knew I had something to do with it, and I just shrugged and told her: "[Mr. Oblivious] is available, why don't you call him? You do it just the way he likes it."
It was cold, and she at least looked ashamed for about three seconds. Then she called me a bitch and went to her room to pack for school. It was the last word she ever spoke directly to me until about thirty years later. She came to my wedding but ducked out early and never said anything to me. When Nordin was sick, she only talked to me through Mom, if she had to talk to me at all. I went to her wedding but she steered clear of me. She stayed far away from me at Abuelo's funeral, then I avoided her at Grandma Claire's. I missed our cousin Victoria's wedding because I was in labor. She wasn't at Tatum's subsequent weddngs. I have no idea if she was at the service we had for Richard and Oliver (I'll explain later), but then again, those few weeks are a total blur and I have no idea who was there at all.
We were nearly fifty years old the next time we spoke, and sometimes I wonder if it would have gone on longer. Her daughter, who she named Madeline and almost looks like a twin to my Madalynne - scary, right? - got a job at Siren Call Records, and once I realized she was my niece, it became harder and harder to avoid the situation. And then Mom called me to tell me that Val needed to get in touch with me, but she wouldn't explain why. It took several weeks before I actually did hear from her after that (yes, I suppose I could just as easily have called her) and that's when she dropped the bomb on me: her doctor had found a lump, and she was coming home to New York to see a specialist. It turned out to be nothing, thank Kobe, but it was frightening enough for me to force my two oldest daughters to get an exam the day I had mine, and Val and I began repairing our friendship.
But later, in college, it wasn't so silly. Val went to Bay State, up in Boston, while I stayed local at NYU. When were about nineteen I think, I went up to crash with her for a long weekend. She'd been telling me all about this guy she'd been hanging out with, and of course I had to go evaluate him. She told me that she wanted me to form an honest opinion without knowing who he was. So she introduced me to tons of people, and every time she introduced me to a guy, I'd watch her for a sign to see if it was the guy, but she never gave anything away. She asked me randomly what I thought of different people - guys and girls - and I'd try to gauge her reaction to my opinions, but still nothing. I asked her a million times to just tell me his name but she refused, so even after two days I had no idea whether I'd already met this guy or not.
There was one guy - let's call him Dick - whose mind seemed blown by our twin-ness. Not so much by the fact that we were twins, but that people could possibly mix us up. He just kept stressing how different we were, how there was absolutely no way to confuse us, and that anyone who couldn't tell us apart was clearly an idiot. I was like, finally, someone gets it! He was completely fascinated by us, and spent the rest of that day pretty much glued to us. Everywhere we went, he wanted to join. And he was cute, and flirty, and I certainly didn't mind hanging out with him a little more.
We all went to a frat party the following night - Val, me, that guy, and a few other people. Our little group split up over the course of the night, and at one point I was talking with a group of guys when Dick approached me, pulling me away from them. He took me to one of the rooms upstairs, and we talked for a little bit, then he made his move. I pretended to resist for a few moments, knowing damn well I was gonna give him some. I knew I was going to from the second he suggested going somewhere quiet. When it was over, we went back down to the party, shared a smirk, and went on about our business. I wasn't trying to date him, just wanted the quick hook up, and the typical college guy, that's all he wanted too. Worked out for everyone.
The next day, Val pestered me for my opinions on people again. One of them was Dick. I wanted to keep our little tryst to myself, didn't really want let on that I'd gone swimming in her pool of friends, so I just told her he seemed like a really cool guy to chill with. That's when she dropped it on me: He was the guy she was into. Not only that, but they'd left the party together and spent most of the night back at his dorm room.
Uh oh.
I still decided to keep it to myself. I'm not really sure why. Part of me was just stunned that we were actually into the same guy, however shallow my feelings were. Another part was ashamed that I hadn't been able to pick up on that vibe. Whatever the reason, it just seemed right to stay quiet. It's not like he and I had formed some bond. It never had to come up again. And realistically, I didn't foresee them having some deep personal connection, so it's not like this was Val's future husband. She didn't need to know.
And she probably never would have. Except for several weeks later when she overheard him bragging to one of his friends about "nailing twins in the same weekend." Really dude? The way she overheard it... Oh. My. Kobe. She called him, invited him out, and as he put the phone down, apparently thinking he'd hung up, she heard his roommate ask who it was and Dick said her name. Val was prepared to hang up until the roommate asked "Is that the blonde?" Apparently this was only the first indication that he was a player - to this day I have no idea how she missed the signs - and she listened as Dick explained how he knew her and tried to describe her. As he finished, he went on to add that Val had a twin sister and that he "hit that" a few weeks ago, and named the fraternity that had thrown the party where we hooked up.
Like I said, I never intended for Val to ever find out about our little one night stand, if you could ever call it that. One half-hour stand? So for her to find out like that? I couldn't even be mad that she was mad I'd kept it from her, but for the rest of it? No. The wrath she unleashed on me was like something out of a Greek tragedy. I'd be a fool if I didn't admit that girls in lust and infatuation are beyond irrational. Val accused me of intentionally going after him because I knew she liked him. There were several problems with this, of course, number one being the fact that I had no idea he was the guy she'd been seeing until afterwards, and then the big one, perhaps the most important: I would never, ever do something like that, and there was absolutely nothing in our history to suggest otherwise. It didn't stop her from screaming at me for hours at a time, and it went on for days. We barely spoke for the rest of that semester, and then she took her sweet time coming home for summer break.
When she did, she took her revenge.
I'd been seeing this guy, who we call Oblivious, and because I did actually like him, was into him, I wasn't in a rush for the physical stuff. It was tough, because he was a couple years older, had his own place, and I spent at least two nights a week there. We engaged in other activities, but I always slowed things down before we got to sex. He was cool about it, he didn't push for anything further, which only made me like him more. I mean, at least he was getting something, so I imagine that helped. One night, after Val had been home for about a month, during which she had not spoken to me at all even though I consistently tried to talk to her, Oblivious and I had a very nice date. I was pleasantly surprised when he took me to a much nicer place than normal - not that he didn't take me to nice places before, but this was way above what I knew he could afford - but I didn't question it. I just figured he wanted to spoil me a bit. This guy was definitely a keeper.
Then we went back to his place. Things got hot pretty quickly, and for the first time, he wasn't letting me set the pace. At first, I didn't mind. Sometimes a girl likes to give up a little bit of control. Clothes were gone much faster than normal, and I started in on our usual play. Well, he tried to bypass that completely, making a beeline for home plate. I stopped him gently, trying to steer things back, but he tried again. And again. Finally I stopped him completely, demanding to know what he was doing. "You know damn well I want to wait on that."
His response? I swear, if you've ever seen me laugh - really laugh - you know my mouth is huge. But that has nothing on how far my jaw dropped when he said what he did. To his credit, he seemed genuinely confused, not accusatory: "After the other night, I don't think you can say you're still waiting."
Apparently, several nights before this, 'I' called him out of the blue, telling him that my plans that night had fallen through and I wanted to see him. I asked him to meet me at a bar near my place, and then once he showed up, I immediately suggested that we go to his place instead. He commented that I seemed a bit different, and I told him I'd already been out drinking with my friends. 'We' went back to his place, and as soon as he opened the door, I demanded that he take me to the bedroom. He asked if I was sure, I told him absolutely and jumped into his arms. He carried me to the bed, where I took over, wildly undressed both of 'us' and got on top of him, going at it twice, after which he feel asleep, and I was gone in the morning.
I let out just about every curse I knew, both in English and Spanish, and I'm pretty sure some Gaelic came out, courtesy of Grandma Mary (my father's mother).
Of course I knew it wasn't me, but Val in my place. I did have plans that night, that's the reason I hadn't gone out with him, and I specifically remembered my mom telling me Val asked if I was free that night. Mom told me that when she told Val I had band practice, she looked disappointed. Mom knew that we weren't speaking, and told me she thought Val was looking to make plans with me. That made me even angrier, knowing that she'd dragged Mom into this, and played her too.
And in all of this, poor Oblivious was so, well, oblivious. How could he not tell that it wasn't me? He was apologetic and horrified that he'd slept with someone else, and he admitted he was surprised at how it all went down. He said he'd always figured that I'd want our first time to be more romantic, classic missionary and a little cuddling (he wasn't wrong), so when I jumped on top and started riding, he wondered just how drunk I was, but he liked it, and in the moment there was no way he was going to stop and question it. I couldn't blame him for it completely, I mean, we do resemble one another and our voices are mostly identical. In the dark we are easily mistaken for each other, and when he was presented the opportunity to get laid right now by the woman he'd been seeing for several months, he really had no reason to think it wasn't me. We continued to see each other for a little while, and I did end up sleeping with him, mostly because I felt like I had to now, but the first time I got on top, all I could think about was how Val had already been there, and I wondered if he liked it better the way she did it, and I couldn't finish, and eventually I thought about it every time we were intimate. Ultimately, I had to end things. It wasn't his fault, and I told him so, but I just couldn't date him knowing that he'd slept with my sister, it didn't matter that he didn't know it at the time.
Val's role in this wasn't quite so innocent as Mr. Oblivious. Like I said, I accepted her anger at me for keeping my hookup with Dick a secret, but I legitimately had no idea she was into that guy. Furthermore, he was clearly sleeping with a bunch of other girls too, so it's not like he was Val's boyfriend. But this? She deliberately tricked not only him, but Mom, and did exactly what she accused me of doing.
And I'm not proud of what I did next, but I did it, and it wouldn't be fair to tell you what she did to me without telling you how I retaliated.
Val was the kind of girl who always had guys at her every beck and call. At any given time there were five or six guys squiring her around town, buying her gifts, vying for her attention. She'd have a favorite, one that she would refer to as boyfriend to other people, but never to his face. These guys all knew that they were not her one and only, and although some fought for the spot, usually by trying to monopolize her time, most of them had revolving doors of their own. They were pretty symbiotic, as far as relationships go.
I wasn't willing to be as underhanded as she was and involve Mom in any of this, so I couldn't ask her who Val's guys were that summer. Instead, I raided her cell phone, looking at who called her and at what times of the day, reading the few text messages that she had before she could delete them, and just eavesdropping when she was on the phone. I figured out the favorite by looking at the number she called the most. Then I waited until Sunday dinner.
Sunday dinners with Grandma and Abuelo were a huge affair. It would be my grandparents, Mom, Val, Nordin, Aunt Carmella and Uncle Charles, my cousin Victoria, my cousin Tatum, and then as the years went on, this included Richard, Tatum's husband Simon, and then more spouses and children once Grandma passed on and Mom and Aunt Carmella took over. 'Dinner' was misnomer, because we'd get to their house shortly after noon, and all the women would gather in the kitchen and start cooking. The men did whatever it was they did. We closed the kitchen door and didn't even acknowledge them until it was time to eat. After we ate, we would talk. And talk. And talk. The point is, Sunday dinners were a time for family, and we had no time for hanging out with anyone else or even time to use our cell phone. Which is why Val never realized that I had her phone the whole time on this particular afternoon.
While we were cooking, I excused myself several times to go to the bathroom. From there, I called each one of Val's second-rate paramours from her phone, pretending to be her, and told them all that I no longer wanted to see them, that I'd decided to be exclusive to only one. Then I changed all their numbers in her contact list by one digit. I had something special saved for The Favorite. I told him, again, posing as Val, that wanted to be with only him, and that I wanted to bring him to the next family dinner and formally introduce him to everyone. I had no idea which way this was going to go, but either one was going to be awesome and I couldn't wait to watch it play out: Either he would freak out and think that it was too much and pull away, or he would be thrilled to be her boyfriend and start to smother Val.
It was the latter. Which was pretty awesome. When the other guys stopped calling she started to get frustrated. When The Favorite was calling her more than normal she got uncomfortable. She started breaking plans with him left and right. She tried texting her other guys, but since she was now texting the wrong number, she'd get 'who is this?' responses. During this, I was still seeing Mr. Oblivious, having never let on to Val that I knew what she'd done, and even though she was still barely talking to me, one evening when The Favorite came over, I suggested that they go on a double date with us. The Favorite smiled and agreed, but the look of abomination that crossed her face, however, was priceless.
Shortly before going back to school, Val broke it off. He came over to help her pack - so sweet of him - and she was like, "You've gotta stop this, you are not my boyfriend. Stop asking when family dinners are, stop just showing up, stop all of this." This poor guy. He's the one I feel the worst for, in all of this, because he bent over backwards for her and he really did want the chance to be Val's boyfriend. In the long run, though, I guess Val would have broken his heart anyway, whether it was then or whether it would have been down the road, after stringing him along, so I take a little comfort in knowing that I didn't do anything she wasn't already going to do. He was completely taken aback. My eavesdropping ass heard him get all flustered with her, wanting an explanation. He said that she told him she only wanted to be with him. She scoffed. "I told you no such thing." She then accused him of scaring off the other guys, and I laughed, nearly giving away my location, so I had to duck into my room and pretend I was reading a message on my phone. He explained to her how she called him and told him she wanted to be in a relationship with him, and she told him he must have taken whatever she said the wrong way. Then she said it was over. It was either over, or he had to chill out and accept that they were not exclusive and she was going to continue seeing other people. He said, "I guess it's over then," and left.
I could hear her slamming stuff around her room for the next hour as she packed, grumbling about guys being clingy and ridiculous, typing on her phone, and muttering "What the fuck?" every few minutes. Finally she appeared in my bedroom doorway, just glaring at me. I looked up from my notebook - I was working on a song - and said innocently, "Hey. So, I overheard, sorry to hear about you guys. You okay?" For half a second she calmed down. I'm not sure what she was about to accuse me of, specifically, but in that moment she seemed to change her mind, and actually confided in me, really the first time she'd spoken to me that entire summer, "I don't know what go into him. He knows the deal."
I closed my notebook, stood up from the bed, gave her a quick hug, and said as I walked past: "It's a shame, he has such a lovely phone voice." She followed me, screeching that she knew I had something to do with it, and I just shrugged and told her: "[Mr. Oblivious] is available, why don't you call him? You do it just the way he likes it."
It was cold, and she at least looked ashamed for about three seconds. Then she called me a bitch and went to her room to pack for school. It was the last word she ever spoke directly to me until about thirty years later. She came to my wedding but ducked out early and never said anything to me. When Nordin was sick, she only talked to me through Mom, if she had to talk to me at all. I went to her wedding but she steered clear of me. She stayed far away from me at Abuelo's funeral, then I avoided her at Grandma Claire's. I missed our cousin Victoria's wedding because I was in labor. She wasn't at Tatum's subsequent weddngs. I have no idea if she was at the service we had for Richard and Oliver (I'll explain later), but then again, those few weeks are a total blur and I have no idea who was there at all.
We were nearly fifty years old the next time we spoke, and sometimes I wonder if it would have gone on longer. Her daughter, who she named Madeline and almost looks like a twin to my Madalynne - scary, right? - got a job at Siren Call Records, and once I realized she was my niece, it became harder and harder to avoid the situation. And then Mom called me to tell me that Val needed to get in touch with me, but she wouldn't explain why. It took several weeks before I actually did hear from her after that (yes, I suppose I could just as easily have called her) and that's when she dropped the bomb on me: her doctor had found a lump, and she was coming home to New York to see a specialist. It turned out to be nothing, thank Kobe, but it was frightening enough for me to force my two oldest daughters to get an exam the day I had mine, and Val and I began repairing our friendship.