Stay With Me

by Garret Freymann-Weyr

  "This is thé right choice," I tell her, wanting to say that she of all people is beyond being judged. "It really is."

  Da needs a new way to keep busy while he gets used to this sudden gaping hole.

  "Yes," Mom says. "Okay. Well."

  It's still preying on her, I can tell. The idea that whatever she does will be the wrong thing. Mom was almost forty-one when she had me. She didn't grow up wanting to become a mother so much as an interesting person. As a result, she's never tried to treat me the way she thinks a mother should. She treats me, instead, like one of the most important people in her life.

  I think it's one of the reasons we get along so well. It's always been my plan to someday repay her for letting me know how much I matter. If I could convince her that I understand why she and Da are leaving, I could get a start on that repayment.

  I've imagined a variety of ways of how I'm going to wind up. How things conclude. The end of my particular story. They involve at least one great love—some perfect blend of William and Gyula Racz. A career in the theater, the details of which are still murky except for my neither acting in plays or writing them. But however things settle, one thing is completely clear to me.

  I'm not going to blame my parents for doing what was necessary.

  My mother's still here, so while I am making a French braid, I tell her a little about my plans. I leave out the perfect love stuff and don't make the theater sound like a done deal because that's not what they want for me. But I spell out the not blaming them part and I guess I do it well, because by the time I'm ready to put on earrings, she kisses the top of my head, says, Thank you, Leila, and goes out, shutting the door softly behind her.

  I'm late to meet Ben and we barely make it to the theater. Da got the tickets for this ages ago, when it opened. It's about a man and a woman trying to find their drug-addict father. Even though I don't like the play as much as the acting, it's nice to be doing something normal with Ben. I just wish I knew how to tell him that we're not having sex again anytime soon. Maybe I'll figure it out by the time my parents go to Poland. When I know where I'll be living.

  In the end, my parents don't ask Clare anything and I get another lesson in how information flies around Julian Abranel's first family.

  William, who knows Clare can't stand him, calls Raphael to get help in brokering a truce. William tells Raphael he wants it to be easy for Clare to be in touch with him during the year my parents are in Poland. Raphael, who has always loved Clare in one way or another, calls her to see what he can do to help.

  "Help with what?" she asked, hoping he wasn't going to offer, once again, to close and sell Rebecca's store.

  "Well, you know," he said. "When Julian and Elsa leave Leila with you and William."

  I try to picture Clare, on the phone, absorbing the news. The phone has not been good to her recently. After Da called her in Budapest, I'm surprised she still picks up anything that rings.

  Clare and Raphael have dinner at his house. They do not discuss the store, although Clare does, I will learn later, tell him that she can't stop wishing Rebecca had left instructions for it instead of that stupid, useless note. For the most part, my sister and her cousin avoid the recent death in the family and work out a plan where I will live with Clare, but stay with Raphael when Clare is traveling.

  Raphael calls William. Who calls Da. Who tells me.

  "Raphael is devoted to your sisters," Da says. "He's turned out quite well when you consider how God-awful his father was."

  "I like Raphael," I say.

  I know William better, but whatever. The year ahead of me will be Rebecca's doing, and she would pick Raphael over William. So.

  "Clare can be very hard," Da says. "She'll never forgive William, and this does make everything easier."

  "Forgive him for what?" I ask. "What did William do?"

  Normally, when asked, Da isn't a good source of information about the girls. He doesn't know, can't recall, or won't say. Caught off-guard, however, he'll cough up a lot.

  "He wanted Rebecca to have a baby," my father says, and something in his eyes makes me vow never again to point him in the direction of this memory.

  This can't possibly be why Clare can't stand William. Everyone knew Rebecca didn't want children. From way before marrying William. There's got to be more than one missing detail in the he-wanted-a-baby account.

  "I was at Raphael's a couple of years ago," I say. "He had a housewarming party when he moved to Brooklyn."

  Rebecca took me because Clare wouldn't go. Raphael lives in a brownstone he's renovated that's about a block from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. The Promenade, with its black iron fence, pretty buildings on one side, huge view on the other, and cobbled walkway in between, used to be one of my favorite places to visit. But now it's just a place from which it's possible to see (with a sick clarity) exactly how the city was attacked. I won't be going to the Promenade when at Raphael's.

  At school, there are two types of people. People like Ben, who know everything about the attacks, down to the names of all nineteen hijackers. And people like me, who simply can't think about it. I went down there, of course. You had to look and whisper that you were sorry even if only your heart heard it. And I made myself stand on Fifth Avenue by Washington Square Park and stare at how nothing rose through the park's archway.

  Everything about that day is bigger than I can hold on to. People say that knowledge is power. (This is actually something teachers say. And certain posters at the library.) Normally, I agree, but not about that day. I'm almost grateful to the dyslexia because I don't think I could get on a plane to Poland. Even to help Da.

  I look at my father and think about Raphael and his house. I can learn to like him as much as I do William.

  "Clare's invited us over," Da says. "For New Year's. Raphael, too. She thinks you should have the chance to spend time with them. Before you have to."

  Da always makes a big fuss over New Year's Day because of our having no other end-of-the-year holiday. Clare would often come over with presents and a good mood (and sometimes with a boyfriend, but mostly not). Rebecca never came, saying she couldn't possibly make plans so far in advance.

  "Decide at the last minute," Da might say.

  It's not like we did much—just wore nice clothes and had a fancy meal with cheese and sorbet courses. Lots of different forks and linen napkins.

  "I can't," she said. "If I came even once, it would feel like I was obliged for every year."

  At the time, I thought this made Rebecca extra dazzling. Now that she will never come to anything again, I guess I think she should have erred on the side of obligation.

  Six

  ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, Da and I arrive at Clare's just as Raphael does. Early, as it turns out, since my sister is still in her pajamas. They're like men's pajamas, except the pants taper at the ankle and the buttons on her shirt are made of shells. The pattern, which I can't help staring at, is of different pieces of sushi. Like the place mats at a Japanese restaurant.

  "You look like a menu," Da says.

  "Thank you," Clare says, her voice at once amused and irritated. "Such charm before I've even had my coffee."

  "You look beautiful," Raphael says. "I'll make the coffee—I brought a lot to cook and I can get it started."

  He does have a bag of groceries, which he carries into the small kitchen I first saw when Janie lived here.

  "I forgot you don't cook," Da says.

  "I'm such a disappointment," Clare says, although I know Da didn't mean it like that.

  It's more that Rebecca was a great cook and I can manage well enough. My father just forgot that Clare doesn't go on the copes well in kitchen list.

  "Well, I'm sure I don't think that, and besides, Raphael's right, you do look beautiful," Da says, holding his coat and standing in the middle of the living room.

  And she does, actually, although I never think of her that way. In addition to being thin, Clare is tall with wide shoulders and very lon
g blonde hair just like Janie's. Like Mom's, actually. Like mine. It's always been interesting to me that while Clare and I are related because of Da, we look a lot alike because of our mothers. Janie, while mostly different from Mom, looked like her. Rebecca used to say that Da clearly had a type.

  "How boring is blonde?" she'd ask and then shrug if Clare said, Hey, watch it.

  "Being blonde is not all it's cracked up to be," Janie once told me. "People think you're dumb and your skin goes to hell faster."

  That and people always ask if it's real and then want to see your scalp before they'll believe you. That bothers me.

  I don't mind the dumb part (people think what they think), but I'm still a little worried about my skin going to hell. My mother, when asked, shrugged, saying, I guess. Her looks are not a top concern—she gets her soap from the grocery store. Rebecca used to give me bottles of a French face cleanser she used. In a few years, I'll turn you over to Clare, she said. I don't know what to do with all that pale skin.

  Rebecca was the dark one, with a small, curvy body and black, black hair. She looked like one of the Abranel girl cousins in old photographs taken before the lost hotels were lost. Rebecca looked beautiful. Clare, except for this morning with her tired eyes and tangled hair, always looks prepared and deeply occupied with the task at hand.

  Normally, you don't think beautiful when you look at Clare. Instead you wonder what she's thinking.

  She takes our coats and says she's sorry she's not dressed.

  "Gyula's here," she says, accepting a cup of coffee from Raphael, who also gives one to Da. "He took me out to dinner last night, late. I don't even want to think what he tipped to get us in with no reservation."

  "You went out to dinner?" Da asks. "You and Gyula?"

  "It was after this enormous party with every Hungarian in the city," Clare says. "Like going to Budapest without flying."

  "You don't like to eat out," Da says.

  This is a chronic complaint of his about Clare: that she won't sit over a meal. That she's thinking of the check as soon as she arrives. I've eaten out with Da a lot and I totally see Clare's point. He can take hours.

  "I don't," Clare says. "But Gyula thought it was important to be here for me. And this is how he does things. Big and his way."

  "Leila, what if I make you some hot chocolate?" Raphael asks.

  "Yes," I say. "Thank you."

  I should offer to help him, I know, but looking at Clare like this, all curled up in the sofa, holding her coffee cup and freely offering details of her private life, is like meeting someone again for the first time. It's impossible, but it's happening.

  "I'd like to give Leila her things," Da says, and I freeze, looking to my sister to see if this moment has been ruined, but she nods.

  "Okay, sure," she says. "I think they're probably in her bedroom. Feel free to look."

  Rebecca left me some things in her will. In an addendum or codicil or something she had drawn up in August right around the time she got her drugs. A bracelet that had been given to her by one of Da's aunts, a cashmere shawl, and some photographs.

  "It's not much," Da told me. "But they're now yours."

  If she took the trouble to leave me things, why wasn't I one of the people she saw in the few weeks before she did it? In the past month, I've had these bouts of ... well, of wanting to smack Rebecca right across the face. And then the stupidity of this thought or desire or whatever it is makes my head want to explode.

  I'm not mad she did it. It's more that by doing it, she became more of the person Da and Clare know. Less of the one I thought I did. I have to figure this out. If only I knew why she did this. Why would anyone do this? I mean, really.

  "In the bedroom?" Da asks. "Have you been in there?"

  "Yeah, yes, sure, of course," Clare says. "Door's open, bed's made. Go on, I'll keep Leila company."

  There's no mistaking my sister's grim satisfaction in sending Da into Rebecca's room. Da looks reluctant but walks off in that direction. I think that while Clare understands why Da is going away, she's not that happy with his decision. But I could be wrong, as she smiles at me in a real enough way.

  "The photographs are over there," she says, motioning to the windows. "I'm pretty sure those are the ones she meant for you to have."

  Three frames hang between the windows. Here they are: the lost hotels.

  "The two on the left are of the Barcelona one and the other is Alexandria."

  Hearing Clare say the city's name is like magic. She obviously knows far more about it than I do. Da always says that if his city had once belonged to the world, now it's just another part of Egypt. When he lived there, Alexandria was almost a part of Europe.

  Or, as Da would put it, We made the mistake of believing it was. In the years before he left, street and store names were changed from French, Italian, or Greek into Arabic. No one knew where anything was. They'd lost the city while still living in it. By now it has slipped away so thoroughly that even if I managed to go there, I wouldn't be at the place where he grew up.

  But Clare says its name as if it's still a tangible place. As if she knows it.

  "I thought these were yours," I say, looking away from the windows to the couch.

  "My copies are at my office," she says. "Rebecca always said you loved them."

  "Yes," I say, and then, testing what is possible, what is allowed, add, "It's more that I'm curious. About them."

  "Sure," Clare says. "Of course."

  "Do you know a lot?" I ask. "About when Da lived there."

  "Some," she says.

  "Do you know why they stayed so long?" I ask.

  That's the bit I always return to. Da's family left more than a year after almost every other Jewish family had cleared out. By the time Da got to Paris, his memories of Alexandria weren't all good.

  "I can guess," Clare says, smiling at Raphael, who has come back in to give me hot chocolate. "Uncle Jacques was buried there."

  "In the Jewish cemetery," I say to show that there are some things I know.

  "I think it must have been hard to leave him behind," Clare says.

  Jacques was my father's brother. The one who drowned. The one married to Aunt Ingrid. I look at Raphael, realizing that without the drowning he wouldn't be here. He's the result of a ruined love, just as I am. I wonder what else I'll figure out this year without even trying.

  "It's nice," I say, wincing at how lame the word is. "That you can both do this. Have me, you know."

  "It is," Raphael says. "It will be."

  "You'll have my room," Clare says. "I'm going to set something up in here. Don't worry."

  Which is not exactly saying that she thinks it'll be nice, but ... I definitely don't want to sleep in Rebecca's room. Clare's looking toward the narrow hallway where the bedrooms are, and we can hear the sound of voices. Gyula's up and talking to Da. They come in to the living room together.

  Gyula kisses both sides of my face and shakes Raphael's hand. Da hands me the bracelet and tells Clare he can't find the shawl.

  "We think it's being, how-do-you-say-it, dry-cleaned," Gyula says. "But there's no ticket. She's looked."

  Rebecca used to say that Gyula spoke better English than any American and that the whole search for the right word was an act. Maybe. But it's one I've always liked.

  "I'll pick it up," Clare says. "But they'll ask after her, I know it."

  "Clare's plan is to change all her places," Gyula says. "Cleaners, stores, restaurants."

  He says it kindly and he clearly admires her for this ability to protect herself, but it's equally clear my sister wishes he had not chosen to share her plan with all of us.

  "I'll go," Raphael says. "Dry cleaners don't need a slip, just the phone number."

  "You will?" Clare asks. "Really?"

  "I know where it is."

  I'm watching Gyula, as he's endlessly handsome and I've spent five years staring at him while wishing I could stop. Right now, as I watch him look at the other two,
I think that if this were a play and I were building the set, I would start with Gyula. I would take his silence here and move out from it, as Janie recommended.

  This is a really bad habit of mine. When I am nervous or not quite sure of what I'm doing, I turn life into a play. I try to imagine the people around me with stage directions and the set they might need. It does calm me down and help me think. But it also makes me feel a little freakish.

  I put on the bracelet, which is a wide and heavy gold band with emeralds on either side. I've never seen it before.

  "It's more valuable than attractive," Da says to me before turning to Clare, something else in his hand. "I want to give this to Leila. She's sixteen, just like Rebecca was."

  It's the ring his mother gave him before he got married. I know the story behind this, at least. It was for Julian to give to Janie, but she never wore it and so he decided, when Rebecca was born, that she should get it for her sixteenth birthday.

  "Yes," Clare says. "Of course."

  "I think you should have it," I say. "You were sixteen before me."

  The ring is slender and gold. It holds three small diamonds in separate settings and looks, for all the world, like an engagement ring.

  "No," Clare says. "I'm pretty sure she'd want you to have it."

  Which is how my father comes to give this ring, for the second time, to his sixteen-year-old daughter. I know I will wind up keeping it on a ribbon hanging in my closet. I'd wear it if it had come from Rebecca. But almost better than that, better than even wearing it, is Clare's belief that it should be mine. I now own something that has traveled from the Alexandrian Abranels through the Julian and Janie Abranels. To me. The Leila kind.

  Seven

  MY PARENTS LEAVE A WEEK LATER but I manage to get homesick before they go. I haven't even moved to Clare's yet, but the cold, hollow place in my chest that I remember from summer camp roars into place. It's the cat's fault.

  The cat—skinny, with gray stripes and named My Scott—was a gift last year from Rebecca. My Scott had been hers—he was a gift from a friend when she and William divorced. She had him for three years, but Clare's allergic and Janie's rent-controlled apartment is in a building that doesn't allow them. So I kind of inherited him when the girls moved in together. I'm not really a cat person so much, but I respect the way he ignores me unless I'm busy. I also like how he falls asleep on places most likely to resent having cat hair all over them.