The four of us haven’t had another meeting since.
Anyway, what I really want to talk about is the other reason I think they had me wait to start kindergarten: they wanted to give us more room to find our own way. I’m sure their shelves full of child-rearing books urged them to foster our individuality, put some space between siblings. And I’m sure they thought they were doing the right thing, because Mom and Dad are genuinely decent people. But they screwed that one up royally.
See, we aren’t your average siblings. Those books don’t know that I am me and you are you, and yet, we should be near each other.
And maybe, just maybe, if Mom and Dad hadn’t listened to those books and held me back, if I’d started at City Day the year before, a freshman to your sophomore, if I’d been nearer, then none of this ever would have happened.
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT you never mentioned Sam Fitzpayne? In all of our conversations about City Day, when I’d sit on your bed until you yawned and told me to get lost so you could get your beauty sleep, and I’d shuffle back to the room I never wanted, how did you never mention him?
He’s like Parker and Duncan Creed—the perfect boy I imagined I’d see everywhere, but there were none until the Thursday I saw Sam.
I spotted him in the hall. I noticed the way he circled you.
He’s so beautiful. How can you not love that shy smile, the dimple on his left cheek, the shaggy hair, his green-gold eyes? How could you have failed to mention him? How could you not stand still and let him stop circling?
That Thursday after school, as we walked from practice to the bus stop, I said, “Tell me about Sam Fitzpayne.”
You stopped and looked at me. “Sam? Really?”
You made a show of thinking it over, as if contemplating him for the first time.
“He’s just a boy.” You continued walking. “He’s a little boy.”
Every now and then you exhibit a blind spot. For the most part, you have perfect taste. You look great without seeming to put in any effort. Your room is DIY mixed with classic teen and vintage hip. As for music—everything I listen to I chose because you liked it first.
Anyway, about Sam. It was really hot on the bus ride home. That’s September in San Francisco. Summer finally arrives when there are no free days to enjoy it. I was sweaty and sore and irritated at you. Why? Because sometimes you fail to see gifts dropped right at your feet. You step over them and walk on.
We hopped off the bus a few stops early so we could pick up dinner on Chestnut Street. I like to cook; you don’t. You wanted sushi, but I convinced you we should go to Lucca Delicatessen and get ingredients for a spaghetti puttanesca, one of my best dishes. We paid with Mom’s credit card.
She was out that night. A date with Barry, probably. She really liked Barry, and we did too, though we teased her that she couldn’t possibly marry someone named Barry.
Barry, will you pass the salt?
Barry, what time will you be home?
Barry, don’t forget to pick up the dry cleaning.
Who could go through life like that?
This was endlessly funny to all three of us. Poor Barry. He didn’t stand a chance.
I feel bad that Mom hasn’t remarried. She wants to, and I know that the reason she hasn’t has something to do with us. It’s not like we’ve tried to sabotage any of her relationships; it’s just that even though we spend three out of every seven days with Dad, we take up a lot of space. Mom is tirelessly devoted to us. We are her north, her south, her east, her west, to quote that W. H. Auden poem. I know it’s about a death, but to Mom we’re her compass, even if sometimes that’s not how it feels.
I think you can be too hard on her. I’ve never said that because I’m genetically programmed to take your side, but honestly, you could cut her some slack.
We ate our dinner—one of my better efforts. I started clearing the dishes even though I think it should be the job of the one who didn’t cook to clean up. I was at the sink, wrist deep in lukewarm water, when you said: “So … there’s going to be this party Saturday night.”
I remember where I was standing because that’s what happens when big moments strike: people remember exactly where they were, like they remember exactly what they wore, which in my case was still my sweaty practice gear.
I’m not trying to compare the moment I knew I’d be going to my first high school party to landing a man on the moon or anything, I’m just saying that this was a monumental moment for me and I couldn’t understand why you didn’t seem to share my excitement.
I looked at you. “Great! I’m in!”
“It’s probably going to be lame.”
“So? I can do lame,” I said. “I can totally do lame.”
“Didn’t Dad say something about taking us to the movies?”
“Screw Dad.”
“Nell. Gross.”
“Geez. You know what I meant. He can find someone else to go to the movies with. Like his wife.”
“I don’t know.…”
“Well, I do. We’re going to the party.”
Dad took the news pretty well. He and Sonia opted for Citizen Kane at the Castro since we have a thing against old black-and-white movies. This makes Dad nuts. He sees it as a major failure as a parent that he hasn’t nurtured in us a love for ancient cinema. But we just don’t like stories that don’t relate in any way to the lives we live now.
“Who is hosting this party?” Dad put air quotes around the word party.
“A senior,” you said, putting air quotes around the word senior.
“A senior?” Dad looked over at me. “Does this nameless senior know that there’s a freshman crashing the party?”
“Nice one, Dad,” I said. “Way to make me feel secure.”
You stated the obvious: “Nell’s not just any freshman.”
“No,” he said. “She’s not. But she’s still three years younger than the seniors who’ll be there.”
“Not technically,” I said. “Remember? You made me wait to start kindergarten until I was six?”
“Right,” he said, as if I hadn’t brought that up one zillion times. “Okay. Here’s how it’s going to be. You may go to this party, but you will be home no later than eleven-thirty, and you will call me if you need a ride, and, Layla, you will keep both eyes on your sister at all times.” He pointed to his eyes and then at me.
“Aye-aye, Captain.” You saluted him.
Funny. He thought I was the one who needed looking after. You were the one he trusted.
We walked to the party. Hazel Porter lived on one of those OH MY GOD hills a half mile from Dad and Sonia’s place in Noe Valley. Half a mile is nothing for athletes like us, unless the last few blocks of that half mile are straight up an OH MY GOD hill.
“Feel the burn,” you said, huffing and puffing.
“This better reap rewards in my butt, like, immediately.”
“Your butt is perfect! It’s a work of art!”
“Whatever.”
You stopped and turned to face me, and it gave me a sudden feeling of vertigo, like you might tip forward and I’d tip back and we’d both go tumbling down the hill.
“Nell. Don’t you know how great your body is? You have a fantastic body. And you’re beautiful. You need to know that.”
How’d everything turn so serious? I thought we were joking.
“Look,” you said, starting up the hill again more slowly. “I don’t want you getting insecure or filled with doubt about yourself. Boys have a way of doing that to girls. Of making them feel like they’re not good enough. Maybe it’s not even the boys, maybe it’s the other girls, I don’t know. It’s just that … all this messed-up stuff happens in high school and you have to stay out of it, or rise above it somehow.”
“I’m fine with myself,” I lied.
“Good, because you should be.”
I didn’t even know who Hazel Porter was until I saw her in the kitchen by the keg, and then I recognized her as the girl we’d seen
walking down the front steps while Felix and I were sitting on the wall outside school, and he looked up and said, in a moment of rare inarticulateness: “Whoa.”
I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of her on the sly. I texted it to him with: guess where I am
He texted back: brag much?
I was the only freshman at the party, but I didn’t feel like Cinderella at the ball; I felt more like the mouse in those books Mom used to read to us when we were kids. Remember? He lived in this grand house where there were lots of fancy parties and he’d dress up and come out of his little mouse hole and he’d mill around and sip champagne and nibble on cheese scraps, completely unobserved by the humans around him.
I felt completely unobserved. Except by you. True to your word, you kept your eyes on me.
It was awesome. There I was, a fly on the wall. I had a Golden ticket—ha, ha. Any freshman at City Day would have traded places with me in a heartbeat.
I hung out on the fringes of your conversations. You seemed bored, like you’d rather be sitting in the Castro with Dad and Sonia watching some movie about an old guy and his sled. It was the first party of the year. How could you have already been so weary?
Did you even notice him? He started out on the other side of the living room, circled the couch, and pretended to be interested in the bookshelf. He wandered over to the stereo and made an imperceptible adjustment to the volume. Circled back to where we stood.
Sam Fitzpayne.
He waited it out for a song and a half. You didn’t even glance in his direction. Then, finally, he turned to me. “Hi. I’m Sam.”
The mouse in that story would have dropped his champagne glass and his scrap of cheese and hightailed it for his mouse hole. I get that mouse, I do, because every impulse inside me screamed: RUN!
“Nell,” I said. “Nell Golden.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “The younger sister.”
I willed myself not to, but I blushed, as if he’d just paid me a compliment.
We talked, leaning in close so the music didn’t drown us out. I told him I’d made varsity soccer because it was the only thing I could think of that might impress him.
I only had half his attention, or less, but still, it was exhilarating. I forgave him the furtive glances in your direction. How he waited to jump ship from me to you.
Finally, you turned to us. “Hey, Sam. I see you’ve met Nell.”
“I have.” He looked at me and smiled that gorgeous smile.
“Good, but I’m afraid I have to take her home right this minute or else my father is going to murder me.”
You grabbed me by the hand. “Say good night to Sam.”
“Good night, Sam,” I said.
“Good night, Nell.”
Walking back down the hill I had that vertigo feeling again, but more perilous this time, like my balance was delicate: at any moment I’d topple forward into oblivion. I wasn’t drunk. I hadn’t touched a drop. I didn’t want to give Dad any reason to prohibit me from tagging along to the next party.
Dad has a nose on him. You know that.
I was just mad. Really, really mad. So mad at you that I couldn’t even find the words to explain how I was feeling and I knew if I tried I’d start crying.
It was chilly. I hadn’t brought a jacket. The moon was huge and we walked home in silence.
Maybe you thought it was a comfortable silence. Or you were just happy to not have to say anything at all, because you looked bored at the party, like talking was a major effort.
Why did you have to speak to me like that? You knew what I thought of Sam Fitzpayne. You dismissed him as a little boy, but guess what? I like boys. I liked him. You knew that. So why did you have to sound like my babysitter? Like I was a pesky child left in your care?
I have to take her home or else my father is going to murder me.
Say good night to Sam.
Layla, you have a crazy power over me I can’t even begin to understand. I was so hurt, so wounded, and then, after we got home and passed Dad’s smell test and brushed our teeth side by side in the mirror, you reached over and put your lips to my forehead. “Good night. Love you.”
Everything was forgiven.
Nothing else mattered.
IF DUNCAN AND PARKER CREED were still alive, they’d be eighteen and twenty years old.
Imagine that for a minute. I try, but I can’t, just like I can’t imagine them buried in the cemetery where their matching headstones overlook a little man-made “peace pond” stocked with koi, which is just a fancy name for carp.
To me they will always be fourteen and sixteen, and it’s the strangest thing in the world that I’m older now than Duncan and almost as old as Parker.
There’s the story we’ve been told. That Parker died in a freak accident. He fell down the marble stairs of their massive mansion on Broadway and hit his head in just the wrong spot. An inch or two in either direction and he’d have been okay, Dad said. I pictured a secret on/off switch just below the skull, above the neck, and I’ve been extra careful ever since—wearing a helmet every time I ride my bike, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I avoid headers on the soccer field.
I take these precautions even though you and I are pretty sure this version of his death is a total lie. Just like we’re pretty sure that Duncan didn’t drop dead of an undetected heart condition nine months later.
I have no idea if Dad knows what really happened. All I’m saying is there’s something about these stories that just doesn’t pass the smell test.
Yes, that staircase was a little treacherous, carved out of marble because I guess it’s not enough to live in a house with an unobstructed view of the bay, you’ve got to have a staircase that looks like it belongs in Versailles.
Their father was Dad’s college roommate at Stanford. Boatloads of money. I loved their Christmas party more than Christmas itself. It was my favorite night of the year. From the moment we’d pull up and a valet in a white jacket would take our keys and hand each of us a red rose, until we left sometime around midnight with enormous wrapped gifts, I felt like a character in a cozy picture book.
The boys wore tuxedos. That sounds pompous, but they were so adorable, and they grew up to be drop-dead gorgeous, which I know is a poor choice of words.
Santa Claus was there, and more real to me than any Santa Claus I’d ever seen, even though I didn’t believe in Santa Claus because you kindly disabused me of that myth when I was only five. But in that house, I believed.
We’d see the Creeds a few other times a year. They’d come to Dad and Sonia’s, or we’d meet in a restaurant, but most often we’d go to their place, where a team of servants would cook and serve dinner at their enormous table.
Duncan and Parker were always polite and accommodating, though I’m sure there were plenty of people they’d rather have been spending time with. They’d ask if we wanted to watch a movie or play Ping-Pong in the game room.
I wouldn’t have known how to tell if someone had a drug problem, but rumor has it that Parker’s was cocaine. That’s what you’d heard from someone who knew the Creeds at summer camp. And who knows? Maybe Parker did fall down those stairs and hit himself in the head in just the wrong place because he was high on drugs.
And maybe what we’d heard about Duncan, that he’d swallowed a whole bottle of pills nine months after his older brother’s death because he couldn’t imagine living without him, maybe that wasn’t at odds with what Dad told us: Duncan died of a previously undetected heart condition.
Because that’s what killed him, isn’t it?
A broken heart?
IT’S TIME TO GET TO the heart of our matter. Did you change and then go looking? Or did what you find cause you to change?
Somehow I think the story begins with that self-portrait from school, the one with your faraway eyes. If I could go back to the moment I saw it, and if I had known what I was looking at, I’d have pulled you aside and said: No. Stop. Don’t.
Remember a few years ago when that palmistry shop opened? The woman put a handwritten sign in her window:
Madam Mai can tell your future. Only 10 dollar!
Mom had given us thirty to spend on dinner. We tried talking Madam Mai into a two-for-one, but she said, “Different hands, different futures, different readings,” and folded her arms.
The only palm readers I’d ever seen were in books or movies. They had flowing robes, turbans, and dangly bracelets, and they didn’t look a thing like Madam Mai, who was Vietnamese, and so slight she could blow away in the breeze off the bay. She had on yoga pants, a tank top, and bare feet.
I wanted to argue that our futures were intertwined, that if she was worth her salt, she could look at your palm and tell my future or look at mine and tell yours, but I knew she wouldn’t budge.
We stepped out to the sidewalk and debated. Were we ready to roll the dice with Madam Mai? We decided that if we went to the new burger joint and skipped the fries we could probably still get a decent meal, and so we went back in and forked over two ten-dollar bills.
She took us separately into a back room with red velvet walls. She must have put up that velvet to soundproof the space, because I pressed my ear to the door when it was your turn, and I couldn’t hear a word.
She said I’d marry, have children, I’d find fulfillment. My lifeline was nice and long.
“You are searching,” she said, staring at me meaningfully. “You have voids in your life you wish to fill. But you should know that the answers are not where you might expect to find them.”
Wow.
What a total heap of steaming cow shit.
I mean, find me anyone off the street: man, woman, child. You could say everything Madam Mai said about me, and it would just as easily fit that stranger.
We Are the Goldens Page 2
