This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,18
sound harsher than it should.
“So how’d the first day go?” Grace asks after my mom leaves. Her voice is sympathetic. I can’t help feeling sad when I think about her going to Yale in the fall.
“It went okay,” I say. “The people are nice, and it’s cool seeing how a restaurant works. I’m thinking about maybe writing a piece on restaurant turnover and how it can affect the microeconomy of strip malls. Kind of like that feature Julia Brown wrote on the new construction downtown? The one that got published in the O-D?”
“Really?” Grace asks. “Are you going to write a Chinese food version of Kitchen Confidential? Adventures in the lo mein underbelly?” She fakes a movie trailer voice-over: “What’s really in that pork fried rice, and what day of the week should you avoid the moo shu?”
“Ha ha,” I say, not impressed. “Hey, have you ever had real pot stickers here in Utica before? You know, the kind of dumplings that are crispy on the bottom but steamed on top?”
“I don’t think so. Mom and I had some that time we went to New York Chinatown. On my college trip. Why, do they make them at A-Plus?”
“Not yet,” I say. “Quick question: Last year when you ran in the Boilermaker, there was a food court, right? I’m wondering if maybe A-Plus could be a vendor. There’s a ton of foot traffic.”
“It’s kind of late to be planning this. The race is in, like, two weeks.”
“Isn’t Maria Bertozzi’s dad one of the big organizers behind it all, though?” I ask.
“Sure, I guess I can try to get his number for you.”
There’s a meaningful pause during which my sister looks right at me, her eyebrows raised as if daring me to say something else.
I know what Grace expects to hear. She’s waiting for me to ask if she can call for me. She probably even knows all the arguments I’d make: The Bertozzis know her well, so won’t it mean more coming from her? She is the one who ran the race, wouldn’t she know more about what kind of opportunities there might be?
She knows that I know she would never make the call.
You would think I would prefer talking on the phone to conversations in real life. It’s safer, right? The person on the other end doesn’t see you and can’t make a snarky judgment of you based on your appearance. You never have to make an effort to look the person in the eye or stress out about their microexpressions and what they mean.
With my anxiety, I should be the type of person who would thrive as a telemarketer, but no. Phone calls are my Achilles’ heel. I particularly hate the silent moments, when there’s no body language or facial expression to tell me whether someone’s bored to death or just thinking about their response. On phone calls, I can second-guess myself to the point of hysteria. This is not an ideal match for journalism, I admit. But luckily, these days most sources are more readily available by e-mail or a text. I’ve also been known to bike two miles across town to speak with someone in person and have cultivated a lot of friends who are willing to be middlemen and middlewomen when I need to make requests of others.
Grace is not one of those middlewomen. In fact, she is the anti-middlewoman. She is an endwoman. She’s my mother’s daughter, too, so she’s done her homework and decided that the way to fix me is exposure therapy—forcing me to do the things that make me the most anxious to help make them less anxiety-inducing. In the hierarchy of fears that Dr. Rifkin made me chart out, phone calls ranked even higher than public speaking and my anxiety about the mobile roller coasters at the Booneville-Oneida County Fair.
As I dish out some Greek yogurt, blueberries, and granola, Grace sends a series of texts. She’s rewarded with a response within a minute, because of course she is.
“I’m forwarding you Mr. Bertozzi’s number. Maria says he should be in his office.”
“Grace, at least let me finish breakfast first.”
I eat my breakfast super slowly just to mess with my sister, but the joke’s on me. As I get up to wash my dishes by hand, instead of putting them into the dishwasher like I usually do, she finally loses patience. “Okay, Captain Avoidance, time’s up. I’ve gotta get to work.” She grabs my phone, dials a number, and puts it on speakerphone.