Together at Midnight

by Jennifer Castle

  “Let’s go that way,” I say, pointing left.

  “I thought we were going to Emerson’s,” says Max.

  “We need to go there first,” I point again, jabbing at the air with my finger, hoping Max will get the hint so I don’t have to say it.

  “The park?” he asks.

  “I’ve never seen it buried in fresh snow.”

  He considers that. “Me neither. Okay, let’s do it.”

  We cross and start walking toward Madison, right down the middle of the street. More people are coming out now. Mostly building personnel, shoveling and snowblowing, and folks with dogs. There are a few families, carrying sleds or dragging them behind, and even the kids’ snow gear looks less dorky than ours. We follow the trickle of people to the nearest park entrance.

  And wow. The paths aren’t even plowed yet, so everyone’s just diving into the vast ocean of white, and they really do look like they’re swimming in something. One kid runs up the nearest hill, then rolls down, squealing in a way you can’t squeal in normal life.

  We’re laughing and pointing, and I feel good about the world, and I think maybe Max does too. This is when out of nowhere, for no obvious reason, he takes my hand.

  A second passes. I don’t breathe.

  “Oh my God!” he bursts out, letting go and backing up. “Sorry! For a second I thought . . .”

  “I was Eliza?”

  “A reflex, I guess. What the hell is wrong with me?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, although actually I think he should worry about it.

  “Sometimes my brain hates me.”

  “Oh, well then, you know what I feel like pretty much all the time.”

  Max simply frowns. I get it. He’s embarrassed, I’m weirded out, and it’s not an easy-fix situation. Usually this is where anxiety turns me into one giant, redheaded impulse. Which might explain why this comes out of my mouth next:

  “We’re not going to deal with what happened last summer, are we?”

  Max looks at me for a few long seconds, like maybe he’s trying to find a way to avoid answering. Finally, he goes over to a nearby bench, bends down and sweeps an armful of snow away from it, and sits in the space he made. I walk over and stand in front of him.

  “What do you mean, deal with it?” he asks, raising his eyes to me.

  “Bring it up. Get it out in the open.”

  Max sighs. “Open is good, I guess.” He pauses, scoops up some snow in his mittened hand and forms it into a ball. “So what would you like me to do?”

  “Can we just acknowledge that it happened?”

  “Okay. It happened.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and it’s really just a reflex, like blurting out Excuse me when you bump someone.

  “I’m not,” says Max.

  I clear my own bench space, sit down, and turn to face him. He turns to face me and the air between us takes a different shape and maybe even a different color. Like before it was blue, and now it’s turning turquoise. We can have this conversation because the world is not real right now. It’s a temporary, snow-covered one that’s disappearing by the minute.

  Max says, “See, Eliza and I worked things out after that night, but only for a little while. It was the beginning of the end for us, really. An end that was a hundred percent going to happen anyway. Without that stuff between you and me, it would have dragged on longer.”

  “So, there was a silver lining.”

  He smiles at me. “I guess so. Was there a silver lining for you, too?”

  I have to think about this. He doesn’t know that he was my first kiss. He doesn’t know that in those minutes when we were sitting there and I was crying and he was listening, I felt something unexpected: excitement that finally finally something interesting was happening to me. I had the same kind of drama in my life that everyone else seemed to have.

  When he leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, I was the one who turned my head.

  “There was,” I say, simply.

  Now I look at Max’s face, which is no longer the same face it was back then because of everything we’ve shared in the last few days. I’m so grateful for all of it, and for him.

  “Feel better now?” he asks. “Have we dealt with it?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He smiles. “No problem.”

  Then he spreads his arms and leans down, offering a hug. I take it, and give him one back. We still don’t line up. My cheek is against his neck and his nose is in my hair. Still, we stay that way for a moment and I can’t imagine what we look like, in our matching snowsuits. Someone’s probably walking by thinking, That’s so cute I want to vomit.

  We’re not a couple, I mentally say to the theoretical person thinking bad things about us.

  But you like him, says a Thought Worm, flailing on the ground in my mind. You LIKE him like him!

  Screw that, Thought Worm. You’re wrong. Okay, sure, I want to kiss him. I want to turn my head and start making out with him right on this freezing bench even though I can’t feel my butt anymore. Besides, Jamie Jamie Jamie. I still like Jamie, too.

  I wait for Max to break the hug but he doesn’t break the hug.

  Is this going to become complicated?

  God, I hope so, says the Thought Worm.

  Suddenly, something’s buzzing. Max drops away from me, pulls out his phone, and frowns at the number.

  “Hello?” he answers tentatively. “Oh! Hey, Tony. What’s up?”

  Silence. Max’s frown returns and deepens. I can see where he’s going to get a really prominent wrinkle when he’s older, and also how that wrinkle will just make him even hotter.

  “What?” he barks. “How did that happen? Okay, yes. I’m over in the park. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

  He hangs up and stares at his phone.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “The generator stopped working. Big E was coming downstairs to get help when it happened, so he got stuck in the elevator.”

  “Oh my God. Is he okay?”

  “Yes, but he’s still in there. They’re working on it now.”

  Max puts the phone in his pocket and drops his head into his hands. “Holy shit, I feel awful.”

  “He told us to go out! The power was on. He said he’d call if he needed anything.”

  Max shakes his head. “My dad and my aunt are going to kill me. If Big E doesn’t do it first.”

  “Please don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve been doing everything you were supposed to. Sometimes the unexpected happens.”

  He stands up, starts sloshing back toward Fifth Avenue as fast as he can. I follow.

  “Max!” I call after him. “You had no way of knowing, and also guess what? He’s fine! He’s in a fancy apartment building full of people. You don’t even have the skills to get him out of an elevator.”

  “But if I’d been there, he wouldn’t have been in the elevator to begin with.”

  I can’t argue with that.

  Max mutters again. “He must have needed something and it must have been urgent.”

  He’s taking huge strides with his long legs and I’m practically running to keep up.

  “Max!” I call again, breathless.

  He pauses to wait for me.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve got to rush over there. Are you okay to get home by yourself?”

  I pant for a moment, then realize what’s happening. I’m being ditched.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay . . .” He starts to walk, then stops again, turns back to me. “I’ll call you later!”

  Then he breaks into a run.

  I slowly make my way toward Emerson’s, watching the city writhe back to life. The power must be on again, because the traffic lights work and things glow—electric signs and windows and holiday decorations. Everything looks and feels disoriented, or maybe that’s me.

  I tell myself, I’m glad Max took off. (We’ll ignore the fact that he literally ran aw
ay from me, possibly using the situation with his grandfather to exit a mistake situation.) Forget about the game. We did what we could and maybe that was enough to restore balance to the universe. I can’t see him anymore. I say it over and over again as I walk, the rhythm of it driving my footsteps in Nanny’s boots. Then I switch to a new rhythm: Jamie Jamie Jamie.

  When I reach Emerson’s place, he and Andrew cruelly make me pose for a photo in my snowsuit before I can peel it off and take a hot shower.

  I emerge from the Groset in my pajamas. Emerson and Andrew exchange a look, then Andrew disappears into the bedroom.

  “Come sit with me in the kitchen,” says Emerson. “I’ll make you a mocha.”

  Uh-oh. That can’t be good. But I do what I’m told.

  After I sit down at their tiny table, my brother sighs. “This is hard for me. I love you, Ken. You’re my favorite sister.”

  “L-O-L.”

  “And sibling. And nuclear family member.”

  “Emerson, you know it was an accident, telling Andrew about the text.”

  Emerson shrugs. “Accidents still cause damage.”

  “So what happens now?” I ask.

  Emerson glances at the open bedroom door. Takes a sip of his mocha. “I’m going to move out after New Year’s.”

  I bang my hands hard on the table, and even the mammoth mugs aren’t big enough to keep mocha from sloshing out.

  “You can’t! Not you guys.”

  Emerson clucks his tongue in frustration. “I know you need us to be together as a shining example of a healthy relationship, but Andrew and I need something else. We need to know this is what we want, and we won’t know that until we spend a little time apart. Neither of us has ever been alone since we came out.”

  I can’t shake the absurd feeling that I’m twelve and my parents just told me they’re getting divorced. I push the mocha away, even though it really is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.

  “Where are you going to live?” I ask him.

  “Our friend Taj needs a roommate. His parents are loaded and they set him up in a loft downtown in the Meatpacking District. It’ll be a shorter commute to school for me.”

  My bigger question is, how do I fit into all this? If I want to stay in the city, who has room for me? But I know better than to ask right now.

  “What about the cat?” I ask instead.

  “Louis stays here,” says Andrew from the bedroom doorway. “And Emerson will come over a lot to spend time with him and me.”

  I look carefully at Andrew. He appears much, much sadder about this than my brother. My stupid, restless brother.

  “You can help me start packing tomorrow,” jokes Emerson, but when I give him a dirty look, he adds, “Or not.”

  “And today, we have a Twilight movie marathon,” says Andrew. “I’ll get some Chinese food and candy bars.”

  I really hate these guys. They make the saddest breakup ever look absolutely darling.

  DECEMBER 31

  Max

  AUNT SUZE’S VOICE DOWN THE HALL, LOUD AND forced-energetic.

  I’ve been awake for a while. I just don’t want to get out of bed. Freddie Mercury stares down at me, and his look is disapproving today. He has no tolerance for aimlessness. Frankly, I can’t blame him.

  Yesterday. Everything about yesterday, running on a loop in my head.

  Big E needed help with the remote control. That’s why he was in the elevator when the generator failed.

  Apparently, he sat on one of the seventeen buttons that nobody ever uses. The TV went to static, and he couldn’t figure out how to get back to what he was watching. He tried to call me, but couldn’t get through.

  Under different circumstances, I’d be laughing my ass off at the thought of my grandfather hauling himself out of the La-Z-Boy. Shuffling into the hallway and into the elevator, remote in hand. My father and aunt and at least three different home aides have tried unsuccessfully to get the guy to take a walk downstairs once a day. Now we know: all they ever had to do was screw with the remote.

  But I don’t feel like laughing. I’m not used to letting people down. I’ve never not been there when someone needed me.

  It feels fucking awful.

  You know what else feels awful? Kendall’s voice. It’s the voice I hear in my head when I’m trying to be okay with this. She’d said, You’ve been doing everything you’re supposed to. And intellectually, I know she’s right. The power was on when I left. I wasn’t going far, and I had my cell phone if Big E needed me. I had no way of knowing that post-blizzard phone service would still be messed up. Or that the generator would implode. Or that my grandfather would actually try to leave the apartment by himself for the first time in an eon.

  Something took place, out there in the snow with Kendall. It felt like the first honest day I’ve had in a long time.

  Then I was a douche bag. Ditched her in the middle of a snowbank in Central Park. Plus, her suede boots and wool coat are still by the front door. Oh, and maybe I should have mentioned this right away, but Big E is fine. It takes a lot more than getting stuck in an elevator to dent that guy.

  My phone starts buzzing.

  Several messages from yesterday have finally come through. One from my mom, one from Jamie. One from Eliza.

  Hope you weathered the storm. You never answered me about New Year’s, asshole.

  I hadn’t even thought about New Year’s. Jamie’s coming into the city, but to be with Kendall.

  I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want her to be with him and for me to be with nobody.

  Hey, I type back to Eliza. Just got your message now. Storm was cool.

  I pause, my thumbs hovering. Quivering, even. Eh, what the hell.

  Come to the city tonight.

  It feels like a low-risk proposition. She probably made other plans five minutes after she texted me.

  Yes, comes her message back.

  A flooding swirl of relief.

  You can stay in a spare bedroom here, I write. Look at me, laying down parameters. Setting boundaries.

  Suddenly, there’s knocking.

  “Max? Max, it’s Suze. Are you up?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are you decent? I’m coming in.”

  She doesn’t wait for my reply and opens the door. It’s fine, I slept in my clothes. My aunt looks more tired than I’ve ever seen her.

  “Let’s say a little prayer, shall we?” says Suze.

  “For what?”

  “This new aide. Katherine. She’ll be here any minute.”

  The aide! Holy freedom, thank God for the aide.

  “So you’re hereby relieved of your duties, Max. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

  Maybe she doesn’t know about yesterday.

  “And don’t worry about yesterday,” she adds.

  “Is it okay if I stay until tomorrow?” I ask. “I have a friend coming in for New Year’s. She’d like to crash in your old bedroom.”

  Suze laughs. “Of course. Man, I wish I could be in the city tonight. New Year’s Eve . . . I could tell you some stories.”

  She gets a faraway look in her eyes. Then the doorman buzzes up.

  “Showtime,” says Suze.

  She disappears and a minute later, I hear her welcoming someone into the apartment.

  When I finally get out of bed, make myself presentable, and emerge from the bedroom, I find Suze and the new aide standing on either side of Big E.

  The aide turns when I walk into the room. “Hi,” she says, her voice rough and gravelly. “I’m Katherine.”

  I shake her hand. She looks like she’s been around. She looks like she could beat me up if necessary.

  “Your grandfather was just telling me how much he enjoyed spending time with you,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t think he enjoys spending time with anyone,” I reply. “You know he’s the biggest curmudgeon on the Upper East Side.”

  “Max!” says Suze, a
larmed. She shoots an apologetic look at Big E.

  But Big E laughs. “He’s right, of course,” he says. “Although I hate it less with him than most people.”

  “Hopefully you’ll feel the same way about me,” says Katherine, but Big E makes a growl-sigh hybrid sound.

  I beckon her and Suze into the kitchen.

  “Listen,” I whisper as we huddle together. “I want you to try something.”

  Then I tell them. That Ezra Levine does not want us to be respectful or considerate or polite. He does not want things to go unsaid. That the uglier the truth, the louder he needs us to shout it. That he wants us to challenge and argue and call things as they are. That it was Nanny’s way, and Nanny’s way is forever.

  Suze looks unconvinced, but Katherine grins. I can tell right away that she gets it. “Honey,” she says, “if all that’s true, I was made for this job.”

  So I figured out this thing about my grandfather. Figured it out for him. For all of us, really. That kindness doesn’t always look or sound like kindness; sometimes it comes in disguise. Actually, it was Kendall who decoded that puzzle.

  Kendall.

  I’m so sure, suddenly, of how much I want to be with her. Not just right now but every day, for a long, long time. As much as humanly possible. In other words, I’m in deep shit.

  “Maxie!” booms Big E. “Come here a second!”

  As always, I go where I’m summoned. In the living room, my grandfather’s shuffling through the drawer in his end table.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “I forgot, I have something to give you. An idea I had.” He finally finds what he’s searching for. Holds up a sealed white business envelope. “Don’t open it now. Just . . . take a look when you get a free moment.”

  He hands off the envelope casually, like he’s asking me to put it in the recycling bin. It’s light. I know what it must be: another magazine article he thinks I should read. I fold the envelope in half and tuck it into a back jeans pocket. Unless it’s a detailed guide on how to tell a girl you might be in love with her even though she’s beginning to date one of your best friends, it’s the last fucking thing I need right now.

  I’m walking up Park Avenue with a shopping bag filled with Kendall’s boots and coat when I realize I don’t have her brother’s address. I start to text her, but find myself calling instead.