Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah

by David Levithan

  The doorbell rings. I cross my fingers and softly sing a little prayer invoking Wilson Salazar’s presence. “Tonight, tonight / It all began tonight.”

  I open the door.

  DAMMIT!

  “You’re looking very fetching, Ilsa,” Parker Jordan manages to say, seemingly effortlessly, while holding a rose stem between his teeth. He’s wearing the sequined, Michael Jackson–style black-and-white tuxedo he always wore when we used to compete as ballroom dance partners. He’s let his hair grow to high-top, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air height, the style Parker always used to tease me that he’d finally get when I wasn’t telling the barber how to shave his head anymore. Wish = fulfilled.

  I grab the red rose from his mouth and throw it down the hallway. “Fetch this, Parker!” I say.

  Parker laughs. “Oh, Ilsa. Bygones already.”

  “You’re early,” I tell Parker.

  “What time was I supposed to arrive?”

  “Never.”

  “Right on time!” Parker says.

  He doesn’t wait for me to usher him, but boldly steps past me, walks through the foyer and into the living room with the ease of someone who’s been here a million times. I close the front door and follow him. He hands me a brown paper shopping bag. “Here. These are from Mom and Dad.” His ears take notice of the sound of the piano-playing coming from the study. “Ellington. Nice start, Sam.”

  I snatch the bag from Parker’s hand and don’t bother with “Thanks.” I’ll save that for an email, later, directly to his parents. The bag has two stacked boxes inside it, and I know exactly what’s in them: a sweet potato pie and a lemon chess pie, my favorites from Parker’s parents’ vegan soul food café in Hell’s Kitchen.

  I guess if they’ve sent my favorite pies, they’ve forgiven me for the video I posted of Parker breaking up with me, which went viral (at least among everyone we know, and a good deal of Manhattan). According to Sam’s report, that video has caused Parker to be besieged by hordes of angry girls recognizing him on the street and repeating his line back to him: “It’s not you, it’s me.…” Then the girls swat at him and shrill, “JERK!” (I’m pleased every time I get this report. Sisters who’ve been dumped, unite!)

  I guess if Parker’s here tonight, he’s forgiven me, too.

  I don’t know how long it will take me to forgive Sam, though. He knows I have a moratorium on seeing Parker again until the school year is officially over. I don’t want to be so blatantly reminded of Parker until after prom night, until after senior week, until after graduation and all the things Parker and I were supposed to share together.

  “No gifts to me from your parents?” Parker teases. I resist a laugh. No one was more relieved when we broke up than my parents. Relieved for Parker, not me.

  “They’re at Home Depot right now looking for just the right ax to bash your high-top down to baldy height.”

  “Tell them no interest on purchases over $250 if they use their HD credit card. They oughta splurge on that plasma welder your dad’s always dreamed of owning to finally shut your damn mouth.”

  My parents don’t even know where Home Depot is.

  Sam and Johan return from the study and Sam introduces Johan to Parker.

  “You look familiar,” Johan tells Parker. “Do I know you from somewhere? Like a commercial?”

  I try to telepathically message Johan the punch line of his recognition. It’s not you, it’s me.…JERK! But Johan doesn’t receive it, and Sam quickly changes the subject. “Ilsa. Where have we decided to check the phones tonight?”

  After four dinner parties ago, when #Stantastic #live tweeted #Stanstunnedbyboredom all night, we banned cell phones from our parties, which improved our parties to an infinite degree. Now our guests savor their food instead of just Instagramming it. They enjoy the city view instead of getting lost on their phones trying to add “@theStanwyck” location to their Facebook posts. They talk to each other.

  Now I have a change of heart. “Let’s not put away the phones tonight.” I maybe can’t handle a whole evening of witty conversation with guests when suddenly I’d rather spend the night crying in my room because Parker is here, and he’s probably going to talk all night about what amazing (not reckless) girl he’s taking to prom, or about all the first- and second-tier colleges he got into because what Ivy League school wouldn’t want a half-Dominican, half–African American male valedictorian who’s also a star lacrosse player, a champion ballroom dancer (in his previous, Ilsa life), and the son of vegan baking royalty.

  I’m going to be a hostess like Czarina tonight. I’m going to act like everything’s just grand even though I can’t believe Sam invited Parker. I feel so betrayed. Much as I think it would be healthy for Sam to have his heart broken, I would never then invite the cause of his pain to his own party after the breakup! This hurts.

  “Please, let’s put away the phones!” says Johan. “I’ve always been curious to go to a party without them. I know, we could lock the phones in my violin case.” He walks over to where his violin case rests on the floor by the foyer. As he’s about to open the case, Johan looks up at us and says, “I didn’t know what to bring as a host gift. So I brought the ‘garish’ inside here.”

  four

  SAM

  Once upon a time, there was a marketing genius. And this marketing genius noticed that boys wouldn’t play with dolls, so dolls for boys needed a new name. He decided to call them action figures, and because of this, boys began to play with dolls. The marketing genius must have been proud.

  I wonder what this marketing genius would think of what’s inside Johan’s violin case. Because these are definitely action figures. Same height. Same plastic.

  Only, all of these action figures are Dolly Parton.

  It’s not just the chests, which would make a shrimp out of Barbie’s. It’s the whole package. Petite and big and bold all at the same time.

  There’s Dolly in her coat of many colors, a poor, sweet girl about to make millions.

  There’s Dolly singing “I Will Always Love You”—which you know because an angel-winged Whitney is smiling behind her.

  There’s Dolly standing on a desk in a triumphant 9 to 5 pose. Her boss cowers, hog-tied below.

  And finally, there’s Dolly arm-wrestling…someone.

  “That’s Sylvester Stallone,” Johan explains in his charming woodwind voice. “From Rhinestone.”

  Rhinestone.

  I am nearly at a loss for words. “You’ve built Dollywood. In a violin case.”

  “I like to think of it as a fiddle case. But yes. When you specified garish, I assumed you meant awesome.”

  Parker gives me one of his oh, so this is what white people do in their free time looks, but I can tell he’s glad Subway Boy hasn’t proven to be the instant disappointment that most Subway Boys must be once you have them over for dinner. Ilsa looks annoyed—maybe because Parker’s within ejection range without a trapdoor in sight, or maybe because a stranger has just upped the garish ante, and she’s not sure how many chips she has left to place.

  “Let me get you that beer,” she says, off to the kitchen before Johan can tell her the hair in the Dollys’ wigs was spun from unicorn tears.

  “I’m going to go see if she needs help carrying that beer,” Parker says, following.

  Johan moves to close the violin case, and I cry out, way too loud, “No! Don’t!” Then, as if to compound this manic burst of uncoolness, I walk over to the piano and clear a place for the case…by sweeping off all the sheet music with my arm, as if I’m in some retirement home’s production of Amadeus. As a result, the Goldberg Variations scatter through the air, Debussy ducks for cover under the bench, and Muhly mulishly meanders toward Czarina’s beloved lime green couch.

  If Johan is alarmed, he doesn’t show it. He gives the Dolly clones their pride of place. He casually plays a few notes on the piano in honor of the installation. I hear the words in my head.

  Islands in the stream.

 
That is what we are.

  If Ilsa were here, she’d be on the piano, singing along.

  I—

  I—

  I look away. I know a new person is supposed to mean a new start. But I’m still me, and eventually he will see that.

  “Do you want something to drink?” I ask.

  He looks at me like I’ve made a joke. Then he realizes maybe I haven’t.

  Right. Pretty much the only fact I know about him is that he wants a beer.

  “It’ll be any minute now,” I say, looking down. I am rolling over Beethoven. I want to apologize to him.

  “I loved hearing you play,” Johan says.

  “I loved the feeling of you standing right behind me as I played,” I don’t reply. “There was even a moment when I forgot to worry about impressing you and actually enjoyed myself.”

  It had been so simple. He’d seen the piano. Asked me who played.

  All I had to do was say, “I do.”

  All I had to do was sit there and let the song happen.

  No. Make the song happen.

  “I gave it up,” I find myself saying to him now.

  There are so many things I am saying underneath this. Mostly to myself. But beneath that. Something I am trying to give him. Some indication of who I am, of what this is.

  “When?” he asks.

  “A couple of years ago,” I tell him. Even though it was actually only seven months ago, after I sabotaged myself out of music school and vowed never to perform in public—never to be put on display like that, with all of the pressure—ever again.

  “But clearly you didn’t give it up entirely?” He lifts some fallen notes from the floor.

  “That was the weird thing. I gave up on it, but it didn’t give up on me.”

  “Music is inescapable, isn’t it?”

  The way he says it, I can tell there are things he already knows.

  I nod. Even if I wasn’t playing in public anymore, it was still a part of my most private self.

  He’s looking at me with such curiosity. I was Subway Boy to him, too, and now I am not. I have yet to be determined.

  We have yet to be determined.

  The doorbell marks the arrival of another guest. I pause, trying to sense some movement from the kitchen. When I don’t notice any, I make an excuse to Johan and head for the door.

  I am sorry to leave him. Which seems prematurely foolish, but there it is.

  When I get to the door, I open it and find Ilsa’s friend Li, who is usually a model of sense and sensibility.

  But tonight she’s dressed in what can only be called a slutty French maid outfit. By which I mean: one of those Halloween costumes that’s supposed to look like a French maid, only sluttier.

  She takes one look at my outfit and another at my face. Then she says, “It isn’t a costume party, is it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Why did I think it was a costume party?” she asks.

  I have no answer for this.

  “I live in Jackson Heights.”

  Meaning: There is no turning around and going back home. This is what she’s wearing tonight.

  “And I’ll never fit into your sister’s clothes.”

  Meaning: No, really, this is what she’s wearing tonight.

  “Well, it is garish,” I say. “I’m sure there were at least three guys at each of Liberace’s parties wearing the exact same thing.”

  I can see her compartmentalize her embarrassment. I envy that.

  She holds up a bag. “I brought the chocolate your sister loves.”

  I gesture behind me. “She’s in the kitchen. Just make sure she shares.”

  Li reaches behind her and pulls out a second bag.

  “This is for the rest of us.”

  Such a good guest.

  She is wearing heels that I sense are a little higher than her usual elevation. So there’s a certain teeter as she angles toward the kitchen, bags in hand. I close the apartment door behind her.

  “Parker’s here, too,” I tell her. As if to confirm this, there is a crash of breaking glass in the kitchen, and my sister shouting something that sounds demonstrably like ASSHOLE.

  “Maybe I’ll hold off,” Li says. “This chocolate is too good to be thrown at someone’s face.”

  “This way,” I tell her.

  When I get back into the piano room, the sheet music is all stacked in a neat column alongside Johan’s violin case, like an office tower built over the Guggenheim.

  “Johan, Li. Li, Johan,” I say.

  As Li is shaking his hand, she asks, “And how do you two know each other?”

  “Mass transit,” Johan replies, offering no further explanation.

  The noise from the kitchen has reached the decibel level known by musicologists as hollering. The doorbell takes this as its cue to ring again.

  I assume Ilsa will use this as her excuse to leave the kitchen.

  She does not.

  “I’ll get it,” I say. As if either Li or Johan could be viable candidates for the task.

  I figure it’s going to be Jason, but when I open the door, I find someone who is not even remotely Jason. On the hotness scale, Jason may have been a firecracker…but this guy’s the sun. He is wearing clothes, but my body reacts like he isn’t. My gaze rises from his strong shoulders to focus on his face.

  “Hello,” I say. And it sounds like hell, because the oh comes out so low.

  I see he has one of our invitations in his hand. This has to be one of Ilsa’s guests.

  Then his other hand gets my attention.

  Because—

  It has a sock on it.

  A white tube sock with green button eyes.

  And a red-stitched mouth.

  And brown yarn hair.

  “I hope we’re in the right place,” the sock says.

  It has a disturbingly attractive voice. English as a second language…with Sexy Beast being the first.

  “Excuse me?” I say. Because nine out of ten times, when you’re confronted with a sock puppet, that is the only valid response.

  “This is Ilsa’s party, isn’t it?” the sock continues. I look up at the godlike guy, and his lips aren’t moving.

  “It is Ilsa’s party,” I say. I am not talking to the hand. I am talking to the hot guy who is looking at me like his hand isn’t talking to me. “I’m her brother, Sam.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the sock says. It holds out its hand. Which is his pinkie. Under a sock.

  I look at the guy, as if to say, You can’t be serious.

  He looks back at me, as if to say, This is my life choice and you must respect it.

  I shake the sock’s hand-pinkie.

  “I’m Caspian,” it says. “This is Frederyk. He met Ilsa when he was playing basketball. I am not allowed to accompany him on the court, so I missed the chance to meet her. But I am happy to meet you now.”

  “Come in,” I say. “Please.”

  I am fairly certain that Ilsa’s wild card is a bit more wild than she imagined.

  Or she’s fucking with me.

  Which isn’t nice.

  She knows how I get.

  She knows.

  “What a lovely home,” Caspian tells me, looking around with his button eyes.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Can she be fucking with me?

  No. Yes.

  If this is an act, he’s really good at it.

  “I must admit that I knew you were Ilsa’s brother. I have heard such lovely things about you.”

  No. No no no. That’s too much.

  “Did she put you up to this?” I ask Frederyk. “She did, didn’t she? This is going to end up on the Internet, isn’t it? Where’s the camera?”

  Frederyk smiles sweetly at me.

  No. This is my life choice and you must respect it.

  “You’re even cuter than she said you were,” Caspian tells me.

  Wild. Card.

  I don’t know whether to take them—hi
m—straight to the kitchen or back to the piano room.

  “What the hell?” a voice intones.

  Six eyes—two of them buttons—turn to the still-open front door.

  “I’ve only been here six seconds, and already I’m bored,” KK bitches.

  Hard as it is to believe, she’s wearing a French maid outfit, too.

  five

  ILSA

  “ASSHOLE!” I shriek at Parker after he makes the most provocative and completely absurd request I’ve ever heard from him. I take an icy beer glass from the freezer and lob it directly toward his high-top ’fro head. He quickly ducks. The glass hits the kitchen tile behind Parker’s head and shatters, as it always does. It’s been so long since Parker and I have had this kind of fight, all the old broken beer glasses have been replaced, and I don’t remember where to buy these particular ones anymore. Hopefully Czarina won’t notice we’re down to three German beer glasses in the freezer. Hopefully this level of fight no longer heats me so hard I want to jump Parker’s bones immediately after breaking something.

  “Chill. The. Fuck. Out,” Parker tells me, but he’s completely unfazed, which agitates me even more. He walks to the pantry, pulls out the broom and pan, and begins sweeping the broken glass into the broom pan, way too comfortable with this old habit. “Do you want to do it or not?”

  “NOT!” I declare, because my pride is speaking for me.

  But my heart longs to do it. My body literally aches for it.

  “Come on, Ils,” he says, laying on his sweetest voice, which he knows I can never resist. If I was wearing a button-down blouse, the button at my boobs would pop open right now, just from hearing Parker use this particular cajoling tone, which worked so effectively on me in the past. “Once more, for old times’ sake.”