The Beautiful Between

by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

  I open the front door quietly, leave it unlocked for myself, press for the elevator. I think about the kind of guy who goes out, jets uptown just for a cigarette with some girl. It’s not because he’s scared of getting caught smoking in his neighborhood; just as many people know him around here—maybe even more, since I live closer to school. For the Coles, a cab ride uptown just for the hell of it isn’t a waste of money. They’re old New York money. I heard that there’s a centuries-old mansion from his mother’s side of the family somewhere in New England. But maybe that’s just a rumor; that’s the Jewish side of the family, and I also heard that they’d immigrated here in the 1900s and made their fortune in New York real estate. The Coles know everyone and everything. I’m certain Jeremy knows how my father died. And of all the things that Jeremy has and all the things he gets to do, that’s the thing I envy most.

  He’s in my lobby when the elevator door opens, which surprises me—cool people aren’t usually so prompt.

  He doesn’t look like he usually does. He’s wearing flannel pajama pants and they don’t fit at all, unlike the rest of his perfect wardrobe. He looks scared.

  “Sternin!” he calls out as I exit the elevator, though I can tell his heart’s not in it. He doesn’t sound happy. He turns and I follow him out the door, and he lights a cigarette expertly. I’ve never had a cigarette, but I don’t want to admit that to him.

  “Want one?” he offers.

  “Sure.”

  He hands a cigarette to me and I put it in my mouth. He holds his lighter to the tip and I wait for the cigarette to light up. Nothing happens and I stick the tip farther into the flame.

  “You gotta suck in, Sternin.”

  My cheeks get hot and I suck hard, but manage not to cough as I inhale. The cigarette lights and I’m relieved. Jeremy doesn’t notice, or at least doesn’t care, that when I inhale I blow the smoke right back out instead of breathing it all the way into my lungs.

  He doesn’t say anything. I’m scared that if I ask him what he’s doing here, he won’t come back.

  He lights a second cigarette with the smoldering tip of the first before tossing the butt on the ground, something I’ve never seen anyone do before.

  “It’s nice out, huh, Sternin?”

  I nod, even though I’m freezing. My cigarette’s gone, so I bury my hands in my pockets. Maybe if I just wait, maybe if I’m just quiet, he’ll explain why he’s here.

  “Sometimes I can’t believe we’re juniors. I still feel like I’m younger, you know?” I nod, but Jeremy’s not even looking at me. “I mean, I’m sixteen. That makes Kate twelve. Twelve! I remember when she was born.”

  I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t have any siblings. I can’t think of anyone I’ve known since she was born.

  Jeremy drops his cigarette and expertly crushes it under his heel.

  “Hey, Sternin, thanks for coming out tonight,” he says with finality, and I think, That’s it? Wait, please wait, and tell me why you asked me to come have a cigarette with you. I should say something.

  “Jeremy?”

  “Yeah, Connie?”

  I’m kind of startled when he calls me Connie. Normally I hate being called that, and now I’m surprised to discover that I like the way it sounds when Jeremy says it. So I just say, “Have a good night.”

  He kisses me goodbye on the cheek, like I’m a friend of the family. He smells like smoke, and I’m kind of relieved when he disappears into a cab. This was a strange seven minutes. I felt like he was waiting for me to do something. Maybe he was waiting for me to kiss him. I’ve never had a guy wait for me to do that, and maybe that’s how they wait. Or maybe he was waiting for me to ask him something; maybe he knows I don’t know how my father died. Maybe he wants to tell me. But how would he know that I don’t? And even though asking him might soothe my skin—I’ve even tried using extra moisturizer since this itching started—it would be beyond embarrassing. For the Coles and everyone else to know that I don’t know, that I never found out, that I’ve been lying.

  6

  There are things that even the Coles don’t know. Maybe they know that my dad’s parents live across the country, and even that I see them for one week every August. But they don’t know that when I visit them, I feel like I’ve been transported back to the 1950s. My grandparents still have a black-and-white TV with an antenna, and my grandmother cooks spaghetti and meatballs, and they call dinner “supper.” There’s white bread and margarine in the middle of the table, and Oreos and milk for dessert. And no one knows that when I was little, I would pass the time by pretending I was someplace else, usually someplace exotic; that I was a princess trapped in a mystical tower, waiting for a prince to break through the enchantment to set me free.

  Every corner of my dad’s parents’ house reminds me of a different fantasy I had there when I was small, a different story I made up to keep myself busy. Sometimes I get caught up in the stories all over again. There are childhood pictures of my father on the living room wall, right next to my baby pictures, but they don’t seem connected to my fuzzy idea of a father. I have no memory of my grandparents with him, no memory of them before my father died. They could just be a nice old couple I spend time with.

  You know, if my mother could’ve gotten away with it, I bet I wouldn’t even know that he died—like, if a girl could grow up fatherless without some kind of explanation, she wouldn’t have even told me. But it’s not the kind of thing you can say absolutely nothing about; only nearly nothing.

  My whole body has gone curious, not just my skin. I tap my fingers on my desk while I wonder if my father’s death was sudden, when I should be studying for a history exam. I chew my lip till it cracks in study hall while I wonder if he was ill and had time to put his affairs in order, or if it was sudden and my mom was left scrambling. Curiouser and curiouser: now that the switch has been flipped, it’s all I can think about. I think about it until my head hurts. Sixteen seems far too old to be this clueless. Now, I’m almost ashamed that I haven’t looked for answers before; now, I can’t imagine going much longer without answers, can’t possibly go on living with this curiosity that makes me scratch till my skin is raw and my whole body tense.

  Jeremy comes over on Thursday night too. By Friday night I expect his call; I’m wide awake, and I’ve waited to wash my face and things so that my face isn’t covered in lotion. It’s always the same: he smokes his cigarettes, I fake-smoke one or two, and I wait for him to explain what he’s doing with me, to explain why he needs to leave his house every night. But we barely speak. I’m beginning to suspect that Kate is really sick, since she still isn’t back in school, but I don’t ask him about it. Now that I think it might be something serious, it would be nosy to ask; before, it seemed like just making conversation.

  On Saturday, Gram—my mother’s mother—takes me out to lunch. Gram always says that I don’t eat enough, though she also always says to be careful to hold my stomach in when I stand up because it’s sticking out. When she says things like that, I remind myself that she’s had a hard life: her family died in the Holocaust after she had escaped to America, and her marriage to my grandfather was arranged because his family had a good business. They had a successful, if not happy, life together, I suppose. My grandfather made a good enough living to take care of my grandma, and there was even enough left for my mom and me after he was gone. My grandfather had a heart attack and passed away before I was born.

  It’s strange that I know how my mother’s father died, I have some idea how Gram’s whole family died, but I don’t know how my own father died.

  I sit across from Gram at the restaurant, both of us in flowered chairs with plush seats and hard, straight backs that Gram says are good for your posture. I wonder if Gram is proud of my mother, if the life my mother has is anything close to the life Gram wanted for her.

  Maybe my father’s not really dead. Maybe it’s true that he and my mother had some terrible, awful divorce and she got full custody, and the
n she said he was dead so that I would never go look for him. Maybe he is a really terrible person. Maybe he did something really bad. There’s a girl at school whose father convinced a judge that his ex-wife was insane and had her institutionalized so he could have full custody of his daughter. The truth came out, though, and the mother was released, and the girl never sees her dad anymore. It’s comforting to think that the truth always comes out eventually. It soothes my curious muscles. But then they tense again, because I don’t know how that truth came out; there was probably a lot of work involved: court cases, investigations, questions asked and answers found. I wish the truth would just come out on its own.

  My grandmother clucks as I eat my soup, though she seems somewhat pacified by the fact that I’m also eating bread.

  “Not so much butter, Connelly Jane.”

  Gram likes to call me Connelly Jane; Jane (or some Polish, Jewish version of it) was her sister’s name.

  “Gram, the butter’s the best part.” She smiles, because she agrees with me, and if her stomach wasn’t so sensitive, she’d eat butter too.

  “So, darling, I can’t remember the last time you suggested we have a meal.”

  “Don’t be silly, Gram, I see you almost every week.”

  “With your mother. Honestly, I think she brings you along to distract me while she goes through my china cabinet.”

  “You know all she wants are Grandpa’s candlesticks.”

  “Feh. I’ve never kept them from her.”

  I don’t understand; is she irritated that my mother wants the candlesticks or irritated that she hasn’t taken them yet? My mother takes only the things that my grandmother suggests she take, the things Gram practically forces into our arms when we leave the apartment. Things I know my mother doesn’t want, things that add clutter to our home, clutter that she hates: a china candy dish; a set of linen napkins, some of which are stained; leftover chicken soup. The candlesticks are never offered, and they’re the only thing my mother wants; she’s told me so. They are tall and silver, elaborate, even maybe a little gaudy. Not my mother’s taste, and not mine, but they were important to her father, so now they’re important to her.

  “It must have been hard for her when Grandpa died, and they remind her of him.”

  “Why? He stopped using them a long time ago. They just sat in the cabinet. I’m the one who took them out and polished them.”

  “Maybe just because they were his. Because he used them when she was growing up. Maybe that’s enough to remind her. I mean”—and I pause—“it’s not like I remember seeing my father open a wine bottle, but the wine rack still reminds me of him.”

  I’ve made that up. It’s pathetic that bottles of wine are the best I can do. But my mother never touches them—she doesn’t even drink—so I can guess that the extensive, untouched, dust-covered collection by the kitchen must have belonged to him.

  “Not the same thing.”

  “Why?” My soup has gotten cold and I only had a few spoonfuls of it. It’s not fair; my mother had the chance to build up memories with her father. She doesn’t need to choose the candlesticks just because they happened to be his, like me and the wine bottles.

  Although, no matter what they say about “it’s better to have loved and lost,” maybe it’s harder to lose a father you knew and loved.

  Gram takes a slow sip of tea, like she’s deciding what to say to me. “She only wants them because they’re fancy,” she says finally, trying to make it into nothing, no big deal, a joke. I want her to know I understand she’s trying to lighten the mood, so I grin.

  But I’m not done searching for answers, or at least clues, so I say, “Still, they mean something to her, for whatever reason. A person should have the things that remind her of her father.” Gram shrugs; it’s clear she doesn’t see that this has anything to do with me, with my father. Maybe I lost my father so young that she doesn’t consider me as even ever having had a father.

  “I don’t have anything that reminds me of mine,” I say. Gram looks at me sharply. Under the table, I tap my left foot rapidly against my chair.

  “What do you need to remember him?” she adds, then pauses, seeming startled by what she has just said. She adds quietly, “What do we need to remember anyone?”

  I can hardly play the pity card with someone whose whole family is gone, even if she is my grandmother and is therefore slightly more inclined to feel sorry for me. She never had anything to remember her family by, and moreover, she doesn’t need anything. I’ve played this all wrong. I’ll never get anything out of her that she doesn’t want to give me. My grandmother May love gossip, but gossips only give out information when it’s fun for them.

  I decide to walk home, across Central Park, where the leaves are changing and beginning to fall off the trees. I’m hoping the walk will wear me out a little, calm my body down. It’s surprisingly hot, and I wish I wasn’t dressed in such warm clothes. I’m thinking so hard that I get turned around and end up on Central Park South instead of Fifth Avenue. This adds about twenty minutes to the walk, but I don’t care, even though I’ve begun to sweat. It gives me more time to think. I feel like Gram did give something away that I never saw before. Some look in her eye said something, and my feet have begun to hurt when I understand completely. When she said, “What do you need to remember him?” she didn’t mean, “What do you need to remember him by?” What she meant was, “What do you need to remember him for?”

  She doesn’t think he’s worth remembering. Suddenly my theory that his death is a hoax to keep him away from me seems less ridiculous. I mean, I don’t think that’s it—I believe that he’s dead—but there’s something he did that she’s angry about, something she’s ashamed of. Some reason he’s not worth remembering.

  7

  Jeremy doesn’t come over for his nightly cigarette, but that doesn’t surprise me, since it’s Saturday. Surely he has better things to do on a Saturday night: hot parties, hot girls. Princes don’t get carded, so I’m sure he’s at one of those fabulous Manhattan spots, dancing with the latest It Girl, or at least with members of her entourage.

  And the thing is, I’m not jealous, not exactly. I have a lot of work to do—I may have the verbal half of the SATs down, but the math is still kicking my ass. But I do wonder what that sort of life would be like. I don’t want to live that way all the time, but maybe once in a while—be bad, freak my mother out by coming home at four in the morning, try drinking or smoking pot and just seeing what it is about being one of the cool kids that’s so appealing.

  Jeremy would never invite me—I’m the girl he smokes private cigarettes with, sits with for a few minutes during lunch. I’m not a girl he’d invite to go partying. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t, because I’m sure I don’t seem the type who would go. It’d be too embarrassing for him, for me, for everyone.

  On Sunday, my mother and I have brunch. As we walk to the restaurant, I wonder what would happen if I asked her about my father, if I asked her how he died. But after so many years of silence on the topic, I’m not about to just bring it up over bagels and lox. But I wonder what would happen if I did.

  We order, and she waits until the food comes to broach the subject I’m sure she’d been dying to talk about for a while now.

  “So, is Jeremy Cole going to be coming over to study this week?”

  I think it’s funny that she calls him by his full name. I decide to do the same. “I doubt it. Jeremy Cole was helping me with physics, and I think he’s gotten my grade up.”

  “That certainly was nice of him.”

  “Yeah, well, I was helping him with the SATs.”

  My mother laughs. “Oh, honey, I’m sure you were, but you know the Coles can afford a private tutor.” She’s not saying this to be mean—she means it like, See, that was just his excuse to get to spend time with you, because he likes you.

  I try to pretend that I haven’t been thinking the same thing myself. I try to pretend that I’m not every bit as curious as sh
e is about his sudden interest in me.

  “I know they can, but I think he was just trying to make me feel better about needing help in physics.”

  “What a gentleman.” She takes a bite of her food. “Of course, it’s such a shame about the daughter.”

  I look up at her sharply. “The daughter? Do you mean Kate?”

  “Yes. Oh, honey, haven’t you heard?” I shake my head. “Well, I don’t know the details of it, but apparently she’s very sick. Didn’t you know? Hasn’t she been missing school lately?”

  “Yeah.” I chew thoughtfully. “I haven’t seen her, actually, in almost a week. More.”

  “Oh dear. They’re such a lovely family.” I nod, not really paying attention anymore (honestly, what does it matter whether they’re a lovely family or not?), but wondering what’s the matter with Kate, what kind of sickness she has. Kate, the girl who thinks I’m cool. And pretty.

  My mother continues, “You know my friend Marian?” I nod. “Well, she’s friends with Ellie Swift, who’s practically best friends with Joanie Cole, Jeremy’s mom?” I nod again. “Well, apparently Ellie told Marian that Kate Cole is sick—she wouldn’t tell her with what, didn’t want to betray Joanie’s confidence.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” I cut in, realizing as I say it how mean it sounds.

  My mother looks startled. “What? Well anyhow, it’s quite serious. Marian said obviously Joanie’s in denial about it, but she—Marian—can tell it’s really very serious.”

  My mother could be a seventh grader, sharing gossip by the lockers. In my head, I see her in a pleated skirt, textbooks in her arms; I picture her gossiping with Marian and Ellie outside the lunchroom. I try not to wonder about Kate. With my mother’s tendency toward hyperbole, Kate’s illness might be something relatively minor, like a severe case of the flu or something—enough to keep her out of school, but nothing that could do any permanent damage. Jeremy would have told me if there was anything more serious.