Stay With Me

by Garret Freymann-Weyr

  "I don't understand," I say. "What did Gyula do?"

  "I think it's more what he hasn't done," Raphael says.

  I wait because that's not a good enough answer.

  "I suppose Clare has always suspected him of trying to buy her," Raphael says. "When what she wants is for him to love her."

  "He does love her," I say. "Of course he loves her."

  "Maybe it's not enough."

  I feel that familiar dark cloud descending as I struggle to make sense of what has happened. Who buys a hotel—who invests in one—for someone he doesn't love enough? And what does it mean to buy someone? I'm pretty certain that Gyula's being rich is not something Clare dislikes.

  But what if Janie's rule about accepting jewelry is really about money. Accepting money (even the kind disguised as jewelry) obligates you. It's not so different from my mother's notion that I should always split the check. Clare could like Gyula's money without ever wanting to owe him anything.

  Perhaps Gyula needs for her to be in his debt. Even if I don't know where he's failed Clare, he must know. Thus the necklace, the earrings, the hotel. To cancel out the bad stuff.

  "What matters is not what Gyula did," Raphael says. "But how Clare feels about it. This makes two people who haven't been there for her."

  Who've left her.

  "We're two people," I say. "We can fix her."

  "We can try," he says.

  Fifteen

  TRYING TURNS OUT TO BE HARDER than we had anticipated. Gyula's not ready to let Clare make this last decision. He calls and calls and calls again before he flies back from Canada to see her. A gesture he ruins by pointing out how much work he's had to rearrange in order to do this. Clare, who left her own office early to meet him, was, she tells me, underwhelmed.

  He thinks she's making a mistake. She thinks he doesn't know why she's upset.

  "He'll die believing that investing in the Vivfilli was a brilliant idea," she says. "He says I've entirely missed the point."

  Because I don't know what Gyula hoped the hotel would make up for, I don't say anything.

  "And to make it worse," Clare says, "I miss him."

  That I already knew. She cries when he calls and when he doesn't. She's terrified of winding up alone forever. More terrified of settling for someone not right for her. She does the crying over Gyula out in the living room. She even lets me sit on the end of her sofa bed and make her tea.

  "Half the time, I think he's right," Clare says. "I've left him because of Rebecca."

  "I thought it was because of the hotel," I say.

  "He always thinks he knows everything," she says. "That he can fix it all."

  So that was it. He tried to fix what had happened when Rebecca died and he did it in the wrong way. And Clare can't or won't forgive him. She can only cry and be mad. Or sad. Or whatever it is that has made being with Gyula worse than not being with him is.

  "You could try being friends with him," I say, remembering her reaction when I'd told her that Ben and I weren't dating anymore.

  "No," Clare says. "Gyula and I aren't friends who fell in love."

  I think of how Clare worked to fit him into her schedule, how pleased she was when he sent flowers or phoned. I know she called him whenever she had trouble at work.

  "But you are friends," I say. "Right?"

  "Yes, but not ... He likes to call me his most beloved problem," Clare says. "We're not friends so much as two people who have this love that doesn't work."

  "How did you know that you loved him?" I ask. "If you weren't friends first?"

  "It's like when you want to sleep with someone," Clare says. "You just know. So even if you're scared or think it's unwise, you know. Here he is. I love him."

  She starts to cry again, but she is also swearing a little bit. And soon, she is laughing. As well as crying. I give her tissues and more tea.

  In the days that follow, I listen when she wants to talk and sit when she wants company but no conversation. I imagine that my mother, far away in Poland, is doing much the same for Da. The difference would be that Mom already knows him and I am learning things about Clare and Gyula that I never thought to ask.

  That they met on a construction site. That whenever he puts her on a plane home, he kisses both sides of her face and each of her fingers. That their favorite hotel is in Munich, but that the best trip they ever took was to Salzburg for five days of doing nothing. That she wishes he had liked Rebecca more. That he called Janie formidable, is slightly afraid of Da, and thinks I will grow up to be a beauty.

  Mostly I find out that it's over. This is the one thing Clare says again and again. I don't ask how she knows. You just know, she said about loving someone. And then one day at dinner, he mentions a hotel and you no longer love him.

  Until now, I hadn't realized that the whole boyfriend thing becomes harder as we get older. Not easier, as I had expected. After all, everything else has improved with practice.

  It gets harder for the men, too, I think. Gyula must have his own version of Clare's fear and anger. Eventually, they both agree that a mental and physical distance is needed. Gyula asks her to agree to meet, him after six months have passed. Some neutral place. She can pick the city. There shouldn't be any need for contact until then.

  Just as all of this is unfolding and settling and blowing up, school is hurtling toward its end. I somehow muddle through English by working with my tutor on an essay about Fitzgerald and his descriptions of women. Though I don't go and see the production of The Children's Hour, I spend an hour with Ben admiring the sets. There's no bay window, which I would've built, but it all looks good.

  I ask a million questions, as if I can't figure out for myself how the tech crew did this or that. Watching Clare and Gyula struggle to reach a civilized breakup has made me incredibly grateful to Ben and the way he has allowed us to move backwards. It's so weird. I should love him. Love him enough to know I want to sleep with him.

  Maybe I'll know after the summer, when we've had our own mental and physical break. Which will start in a few weeks, after the yearbook is distributed, grades are posted, and I leave for Poland.

  But only for ten days and not, as I had feared, for the whole summer. Mom is worried I'll mope around with nothing to do and then she'll have two moping people on her hands. She didn't put it that way, of course, but I could tell she was relieved when I said Clare had offered to find me an internship with one of Janie's friends.

  "That's a wonderful idea," my mother said. "You loved Janie's work. And you read all those plays."

  I know that Mom would partly like to have me there. To keep her company and to help with whatever it is Da might be needing. But I also know that most of her time and attention is taken up with helping my father get used to having only two daughters. As one of those remaining two, I'd be less than useful.

  The job Clare finds for me is with Charlotte Strom, a theatrical producer who was a friend of Janie's.

  "Does she light things?" Ben asks when I tell him of the job.

  "No, I think she hires lighting designers," I say. "I'm not sure what she does exactly."

  "It'll be cool," he says. "Now you can see what theater jobs are like."

  Ben is going to spend the summer in Montana with his brother, who has gotten them both jobs at a summer camp for autistic children. Ben will be working in the computer lab. His brother is studying to be a social worker so it's a perfect place for him. They both know exactly what they'll be doing.

  At some point during the summer, I hope I'll learn what theatrical producer means. During the brief interview which she called a formality, Charlotte told me that she'd have taken a bullet for Janie.

  "Giving gainful employment to her ex-husband's daughter is my great pleasure."

  There's no end of names for me. Julian's back-up plan. Her ex-husband's daughter. My sisters can't say they have as many labels. I'm supposed to call Mrs. Strom Charlotte, although she is mostly referred to as Mrs. Strom. In spite of never having
been married.

  "In the world of money, Mrs. has an authority Ms. never will," she said. "It's less threatening for people to think I started my career by using my husband's money."

  I can't imagine either Janie or my mother ever approving of that, but maybe Charlotte has her reasons.

  "We'll be busy," she said, putting out a cigarette she'd lit, but not smoked. "You'll see."

  She told me there would be rehearsals for the new Isaac Rebinsehn play. And a miserable wreck of a revival to rethink, since she's already losing money on it.

  "It'll be grand," she said. "Or a disaster."

  I report all of this to Clare and Raphael. My sister says that of all of Janie's friends, Charlotte is the most overbearing, but that Da's probably trained me to handle that.

  "I'd hardly call Julian overbearing in any real sense of the word," Raphael says.

  From certain things Clare has mentioned about Uncle Harold, I'm guessing that the Abranels seem easygoing compared to the Barclays. The vague picture I had of Raphael's parents (a man who printed money married to a woman whose first husband was Da's brother) has come into sharper focus.

  Uncle Harold owned a chain of drugstores. The reason everyone knew him in Paris was that he had sued a French bank over a bad loan. It was in all the papers. Aunt Ingrid was, even before Da's brother died, a nervous woman who let people do everything for her.

  "I don't think my mother ever opened her own mail" was how Raphael put it.

  Clare added that Aunt Ingrid was also heartbreakingly beautiful.

  "She's still good-looking," Clare said. "But when we were little, you could watch her for hours. Rebecca and I thought anyone that perfect-looking must be a special effect."

  I had the sense that if Aunt Ingrid never opened her own mail, it was because she never had to. Uncle Harold clearly ran her life, but it didn't sound like she minded. Raphael said his father treated Aunt Ingrid like he owned her and that, in a way, he did.

  I'm happy to realize that if the Barclays, along with most of the Abranels, once seemed as distant as the lost hotels, that is no longer true.

  Sixteen

  THIS IS THE FIRST YEAR I'm not dreading exams. I'm not looking forward to them, of course, but I know where I'm weak and, for the most part, why. As much as someone like me can be, I'm prepared to write down what I know in return for a grade.

  At work, I've improved enough at flirting so that talking to Eamon seems less a disturbing thrill and more something I enjoy and look forward to. During the final weeks of May, therefore, I'm fairly convinced that my biggest task ahead is finding a way to spend ten days in Poland without disrupting my parents' new, necessary life.

  Eamon spent time in Warsaw (but not Krakow) a few years ago when he was between jobs. He normally lives in Los Angeles and writes for television shows. His father's sick and Eamon has moved back to the city to look alter him. It's what Eamon is doing here twice a week; Mr. Greyhalle has physical therapy nearby and Caffe Acca has better coffee than the office waiting room.

  Eamon's not between jobs now, though. He's been hired to turn an animated Japanese television show into a live-action American TV series. The black binder has all of the translated scripts and storyboards from the Japanese show. I know a lot more about the television stuff than I do about Mr. Greyhalle. Eamon doesn't like to talk about his father and I don't think his mother is a great conversation starter either.

  But Poland is a safe topic. He says he's heard Krakow is a beautiful city, not destroyed by the war (which makes my head hurt until I work out which one: the Second World War). Although, he says, I'd like Budapest better. I should absolutely go to Budapest. A perfect way to spend my twentieth birthday. Kidnap my father for a weekend in Hungary.

  I haven't mentioned Rebecca to Eamon, so he doesn't know what my parents are really doing. Helping train medical staff sounds a lot better than fleeing suicide. I have, for the most part, managed to keep Rebecca separate from my upcoming trip, my exams, and Clare's ongoing saga with Gyula.

  The idea that Rebecca is involved in their breakup has made me frightened of looking at just how much my sister is still alive. I've been almost too successful at keeping Rebecca at a distance. Something I realize when, at long last, T. enters Caffe Acca.

  I remember with blazing clarity why I took this job in the first place. How on earth had I forgotten? My time is not to be wasted on exams or jobs or talking to Eamon. My time's not even for deciphering Clare's misery. It's for following Rebecca's road up until the impossible end.

  At first I don't recognize him. It's unusually busy, as if everyone is getting a jump on the upcoming holiday weekend by going out for cake and coffee. I've barely had time to smile at Eamon and hardly register that two men are sitting down at a table I haven't cleared yet. It's when I approach the table, seeing him in profile (the mirror image of my last look at him), that I realize who he is. It's worked. My plan has been a success.

  Except.

  There's no plan for after this moment. My entire plan has been to work here, see him when he comes in, and ask about Rebecca. Reasonable enough, but fairly vague on that last point. How to ask such a thing. My plan has failed to take into account the fact that I can't.

  I mean, I can barely breathe. I wipe off the table. Ask what they'd like. T. wants an iced espresso and the other man orders a white wine spritzer, a salad, and the cheese plate.

  I make the espresso drink while asking Hal to deal with the spritzer.

  "You're white as a sheet," Hal says. "Do you need to sit down?"

  "I'm not," I say. "No. No."

  I don't want to miss the split second during which the universe opens up and shows me how to say, Hi, I'm Leila Abranel and I saw you with my sister and I was wondering, hey, do you know why she did it?

  It doesn't sound so bad in my head, but experience tells me that it's bound to come out horribly wrong. I try to imagine him in a play with his every action transformed into a stage direction. It only succeeds in making me realize that T. may not know anything. His being here is a moment I've imagined as starting a discovery. In the story I have told myself, he's important to my sister and knows her better than any of us. However, it's equally likely that T. was a work associate, that my seeing them together meant nothing, that his being here will only end my hopes.

  I am, Oh, joy, paralyzed with terror.

  And yet, I hover by the table, letting everyone in my section wait just a tad too long for fresh water, checks, and attention. My tips are going to tank today. Eamon actually has to remind me that he asked for coffee.

  "You look terrible," he says.

  "Nice to hear," I tell him.

  In truth, T., despite being as good-looking as I remember, is the one who looks terrible. Sort of drawn around the features, like Da with no sleep. I don't catch much of what he and his friend are saying and what I do hear makes no sense. Is it helping? the friend is asking as I put the salad down. Is what helping? And helping what? Who are you? Come on, Leila, come on. When T. hands me his credit card, he becomes a name and, therefore, a person capable of living beyond my questions about Rebecca. He becomes that much more unapproachable.

  I bring Adrien Tilden (aka T.) his receipt and carry the dishes away, pausing by one of my neglected customers to answer a question. Adrien Tilden holds open Acca's front door for his friend. I watch, as if from under water, while he turns toward me. His head tilts a little as he considers me, and it takes every bit of everything I've ever had to look right back at him.

  It all happens slowly and yet is as confusing as when things go very fast. In the space of one breath I think he moves in my direction and then everything fades away. There's a heavily moving curtain of black, a sensation of falling, and the sound of someone calling from far away.

  I faint.

  Only I don't know this, of course, until I stop fainting. Which is pretty much when I open my eyes. Both Hal's and Eamon's faces are hovering way too close to mine. Hal waves his hand in front of my eyes.
<
br />   "Leila, can you hear me?" he asks.

  I nod and he, Eamon, and Drew help me up to a chair. Drew must have caught me because nothing else can explain my head having been in his lap. Did he get the tray? I look around. There's exploded china all over the table I'd been standing near.

  "Oh, God," I say. "Did I hurt anybody?"

  Hal looks at me with a worried expression and holds up his hand.

  "How many fingers do you see?"

  Drew, who shares my dread of flying dishes, answers, "No one got hit. I had hold of the tray too, so that everything slid instead of dropping."

  I smile at him and say to Hal, "Seven? Eleven? Am I on Mars?"

  "I guess you're fine, then," he says. "You scared me."

  "I'm—" I don't finish. I'm not going to apologize for fainting. I'm already mortified. Adrien Tilden looks at me and I pass out? Well, I'm a pathetic excuse for an Abranel girl.

  "You need to go home," Hal says.

  "No, no, I'm fine," I say. Although I'm pretty sure that if I stand up the room will spin around.

  "I'll take her," Eamon says. "We'll get a cab."

  I see Hal start to speak and then change his mind. He gives me twenty dollars, saying that will cover it and that I'm to call him the minute I get home. The exact minute.

  "I'm fine," I say. "Really."

  "I've got to go deal with customers," Hal says. "You sit here until you're ready to get up."

  I ask Drew for some water and then he and Eamon look down at me with wide, concerned eyes while I drink it.

  "Cut it out," I tell them. "I'm fine. Except that now I owe Hal twenty dollars and I am so not calling him."

  "It's to make sure I get you there safely," Eamon says. "My being a paying customer doesn't mean he trusts me."

  "Good luck abducting her," Drew says. "She's strong for a girl."

  He's still fussy because I can lift cases of water that make his back hurt to look at.