“What was what?”
“That.” I gestured back and forth between us.
“Nell.”
“What?”
“Nell …” He looked down at his shoes. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“No, I mean, I think I love you, love you.”
“Felix, you’re drunk.”
“Yes, I am.”
“So c’mon. Don’t do this.”
He went and sat back down at the counter and cradled his beer in his hands. He took a long pull. I stared at him.
“Felix, I—”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry. This doesn’t have to become one of those horrible, painfully awkward moments that we pretend never happened but think about every time we look at each other. It doesn’t have to change anything between us. Deal?”
I nodded.
“It’s just … I don’t know. Like, I look at my dad and my mom, you know? What they have. They’re best friends. Who doesn’t want that? And yeah, I’m young, and yeah, I think about sex, like, all the time, and I look around me and there are all these cute girls. And it’s not like I think that right now I need what my dad and mom have or anything. I’m just in high school.”
He finished his beer.
“But the thing is: What if I don’t have a lot of time left? I’m … my father’s son. I have an adrenal cortex just like him. What if mine gets tumors on it too? What if I only have one chance? Wouldn’t I want to make the most of that? And if I only have one chance”—he locked his eyes on mine—“I really want that chance to be with you.”
“Felix.” I took a tentative step toward him. “You aren’t sick. Except maybe in the head. You’re young and healthy.” I wanted to add—and beautiful.
He is. He’s a beautiful boy.
He put his head down on the counter and groaned. I went over and rubbed his back. I thought I knew every inch of Felix, but there was so much I’d never bothered to notice.
“I’m scared,” he said. “I’m really, really scared.”
“I am too.”
That night we slept in his parents’ room, in their enormous bed. We drifted off at distant ends of the mattress, watching some loud, violent movie.
But in sleep I’d moved to his side and I woke in the morning with my head on his shoulder, because that’s the way it is.
We always find each other.
WHEN I GOT BACK TO Dad’s in the morning, he cornered me in the kitchen.
“What’s up with her?” He gestured toward your closed door. “She’s been holed up in there since yesterday. She won’t come out. Not even with the promise of pancakes.”
“Dad, your pancakes taste like butt sweat.”
He smiled briefly, then turned serious. “What’s wrong? You must know.”
My blood pounded a frantic rhythm in my ears:
This. Is. It.
Tell. Him. Now.
This. Is. It.
Tell. Him. Now.
Remember how much you hated Sonia at the beginning? Scowling and sulking whenever she came around? And remember how I’d always go and sit near her and show her my drawings or ask her about her cat or whatever? I didn’t like her back then either, but I didn’t want to make Dad feel bad. Layla: in addition to being the keeper of your secrets, I am the keeper of the peace in our family. I don’t cause the ripples, I’m the one who smooths them over. I don’t know how to do things any other way.
“Just girl stuff, Dad. She’ll be okay.”
Later, at Mom’s, you told me he wanted to end things. He said the risk was too great. He thought you understood that nobody could ever know, but then you’d gone and told me.
“Oh God, why did I tell you?” you wailed.
Because our lives are intertwined.
“Layla, how could you expect to be in a relationship ‘forever’ and never tell anyone about it? That’s insanity.”
You buried your face in your pillow. “I should never have told you. Never. I should never have told you. And now … it’s over.”
I hope you believe that I hated seeing you hurt like that. I hated the desperate you. The way you wore your heartache.
But.
I could feel things getting right again.
I kept thinking of that Emily Dickinson poem, as weird as that may sound, but as you finally cried yourself to sleep in my bed too small for the two of us, the title came to me: “After a great pain, a formal feeling comes.”
I lay there, listening to you breathe, and I felt a calmness. A settling of pieces back into their natural places. Just you. Just me.
The way it’s meant to be.
Relationships are a mystery to me. I’m sure you’d say it’s because I’ve never been in one. But anyway, I didn’t know that you can fight bitterly, swear that it’s over, cry yourself to sleep in your sister’s bed on Sunday, and then return to each other Monday morning.
You weren’t in school. Neither was he.
I should have known that an ending wouldn’t come so simply.
Felix wasn’t in school either because he was at the hospital waiting for his father to come out of surgery.
Around fourth period it finally occurred to me that if there was a wrong place to be, I was sitting in its epicenter. What was I doing in Spanish without Felix? What was I doing in school without you? Why was I expected to live my life by the rules when nobody else seemed to?
“Perdon,” I said as I stood. I didn’t wait for permission; I gathered my things, shoved them into my backpack, and left school.
I hailed a taxi. I’d never taken a cab alone. I felt pulled in two directions but said, “California Pacific Medical Center, please.”
Felix and Julia sat in the waiting room on the fifth floor. Though it was noon, in the middle of a school day, neither seemed surprised to see me rush in. Julia hugged me and quickly sat back down. Hands folded in her lap, eyes straight ahead, as if only her stillness would ensure the desired outcome.
Felix took me by the hand. “Thank you for coming here and bailing on school. I know how that goes against your inner nerd.”
I kissed him. On the lips. Just a little. Like a friend. Like I’d done many times before.
But his lips. They were soft. Like silk. Like silk that tastes like candy. Like candy that tastes of rosewater and sugar. Like … Turkish Delight.
Weird, right?
How could I have been thinking all this in the midst of everything else?
Maybe this moment, me standing in a Pepto-Bismol-pink hospital waiting room thinking about Felix’s lips while you’d ditched school to be with your teacher—maybe this was the true epicenter of all that was wrong.
All I could glean from Julia’s conversation with the young doctor in blue scrubs is that the surgery went well and Angel had a decent chance, a solid mathematical chance. She held Felix and wept.
I drank burned coffee with them in the hospital cafeteria before heading home. By the time I arrived it was six o’clock, Mom was waiting for me, and she was pissed.
The school called her at work to inform her that Layla had disappeared after first period and that I’d just stood up and walked out in the middle of Spanish. What was going on? I could almost hear Ms. Bellweather’s slight Southern drawl. Something wrong at home? Were we both felled by the same illness? Was this some sort of protest by the Golden sisters?
Mom does not like getting caught off guard. She’s way too much of a control freak.
“I’ve texted you both,” she said to me, a vodka tonic in her hand. “Since neither of you bothered to respond, you can say good-bye to your precious cell phones for at least a week.”
“Mom.”
“Where is your sister?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I couldn’t help it; my face flushed immediately. I’m a lousy liar. I pulled off my jacket. I was sweating despite the chill in the kitchen.
“I can tell you where I went if you have any
interest in that.” I dropped my stuff on the floor. She was already so mad I figured it made little difference.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she said as she picked up my things and threw them into the front hallway closet.
“I was at the hospital.”
I let that sit there, enjoying my moment of superiority. Mom gestured for me to go on.
“I was with Felix and Julia while Angel was having his adrenal glands removed.”
“You can’t just leave school without permission.”
“I thought the circumstances were extenuating.”
“And Layla?”
“I already told you I have no idea where she is.”
“So it’s pure coincidence? You and your sister ditching school on the same day?”
The sound of your key rattling the front lock followed. You called out, “Hellloooooooo?” in a way only someone who had no idea she’d been busted could. I guess it made sense that you hadn’t checked your phone. The only time you cared who was calling or texting you was when you weren’t with him.
“What?” you said when you saw Mom’s face.
“Where were you?” she asked.
You looked over at me with a startling fierceness. “What did she tell you?” The she dripping with venom.
“She didn’t tell me anything,” Mom said. “She told me she had no idea where you were, which is something I find very hard to believe.”
She keeps your secrets! She protects you! She doesn’t want you looking at her that way. But … she wishes she could tell Mom or Dad or somebody.
“Well,” you said, hanging up your jacket and putting away your backpack. “I wasn’t feeling good. You know, cramps and stuff. And I went by the nurse’s office but nobody was there, so I decided to go to Walgreens to get some Advil, but it was like, really bad, so I took the Advil and I was walking back to school, but like, my lower back was totally killing me and I just couldn’t imagine sitting in class without wanting to die, and I passed one of those foot massage places? You know, the ones that are like twenty bucks for an hour? And I know I shouldn’t have, but I was feeling so crappy, and I went in and they have these crazy comfortable chairs and I sat down and paid for ninety minutes, and the Advil finally kicked in and I felt, like, so much better. So then I went back to school, but my last class was PE, and even though I felt better I wasn’t up for PE, so I just went to the library and spent the rest of the afternoon there. I finished my history paper. That’s the good news. It isn’t even due for another week but I think it’s, like, in really good shape.”
“What about my texts?” Mom said.
“Oh.” You shrugged. “I left my phone at home.”
Mom let out a sigh. She looked at me, searching for a nod, something to let her know she wasn’t crazy to believe your long, rambling explanation. I gave her that nod.
You kissed her cheek. “What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”
Over bowls of spaghetti with garlic and butter Mom delivered a lecture about how we still need to do things by the book even if what we’re doing isn’t wrong, because rules give order to society and it’s our tacit obligation as members of society to live by those rules.
In other words: don’t leave school without permission.
She didn’t take away our phones.
After dinner you suggested we go for ice cream. Mom took a pass. You knew she’d take a pass because she’s forever dieting despite having a pretty impressive figure for a woman pushing sixty. We grabbed our jackets and headed over to Chestnut Street.
“I can’t believe we both ditched on the same day.” You said this like it was funny. High five. Aren’t we awesome?
“Yeah.”
“So how’s Felix?”
I wanted to say something about the realignment that had started to happen. About how he almost kissed me and it hadn’t become one of those horrible, painfully awkward moments we pretend never happened. It became something I couldn’t forget, a moment I relived again and again.
“He’s okay. His dad’s surgery went well. Everyone seems optimistic.”
“That’s great. Just great.”
Uh-oh.
“I was with George today,” you continued.
“And?”
“And we’re working things out.”
“Layla.”
“Nell. Be happy for me. I love him. I don’t want to be without him. I can’t be without him.”
“What changed?”
“Nothing changed, Nell,” you said with the tone of a frustrated preschool teacher. “It’s just that I helped him realize that what we have may be hard, and it may be work, and it may seem wrong to people on the outside, but it’s worth fighting for.”
We walked past what once was a soap store before it became Madam Mai’s palmistry shop. Now it’s a jeweler’s specializing in seriously hideous necklaces. Do you think this is what Madam Mai meant when she predicted your love-filled future before skipping out on her rent? If she were still here, if we could part her velvet curtains and enter her reading room, I think she’d take you by the collar with her tiny hands and shake you, yelling: No! This not Madam Mai’s fortune! You make big mistake!
We walked past the ice cream place. You never wanted ice cream. I let you go on for a few blocks about how much better you were feeling, how everyone experiences a rough patch, how grateful you were that I was there for you in your despair, but that I shouldn’t hold that against George, he’d just had cold feet.
You told me I couldn’t tell anyone. Ever. Did I understand?
I understood.
But a piece was missing. I could feel it. I could smell it with my Goldenian nose. I just couldn’t see it.
“He broke up with you,” I said. “He said it was too risky. Too much was at stake … and then he left school with you? In the middle of the morning? What happened?”
You laughed. “Nothing happened. He loves me. That’s all.”
That night the Creeds were all fired up.
What is it? they asked. What did she do? How did she get him to leave school with her? She must have said something. She must have done something.
They wouldn’t give up. What is it? What could it be? What did she do? You’re her sister. You must know.
I didn’t.
You always do. That’s what it means to be the younger sister. You know. You know everything.
I put a pillow over my head. I wanted to go to sleep. No use. I could feel them, waiting. Waiting for me to do something.
I WISH I COULD HAVE let it go. Believed that you were happy, that it was right, that it would all turn out okay. But I know you better than anybody else. Better even than Mom and Dad. Why couldn’t they see it?
You weren’t you.
I don’t care what Mr. B. wrote in that stupid Rothko book: To YOU. Love ME. I know the YOU, because I am the ME. And, Layla, the YOU with him is not the real you.
No, you weren’t sobbing in my bed anymore. You were back to Everything Is Awesome and Life Is Amazing Layla. But now I understood the delicate barrier that kept the sobbing you at bay.
I thought of that fortune. The one I keep in my wallet: With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes the silk gown. You are the silk gown. The fragile silk gown.
It’s always suited Mom and Dad best to think of us as smart and mature young women with good sense who make good choices so that they could wrap themselves up in their own lives and fall asleep a little on the job of being our parents. All these years, Layla, we’ve tried to make things easy on them. We go back and forth, back and forth, smart and mature, building a bridge between two lives and crossing it over and over again. You know I’ve always hated being called a baby, but I started to wish it were true. The baby of whom nothing is asked or expected.
I wanted to go to them, to tell them, to put them in charge, but I didn’t know how. I was afraid to cause that earthquake.
I think we all fall back into our patterns. Play our parts when we don’t know what
else to do. So as you went back to Layla, the girl with the world on a string, I went back to playing Nell, adoring sister, keeper of the peace.
The sister who lies for you.
I lied to Mom when you told her you were going to the park after school to kick a soccer ball around with some of the girls from the team. I lied to Dad when you told him you were tagging along with Felix and me to the Animation Festival at the Kabuki Theater.
Felix. We never made it to the Animation Festival. We don’t go anywhere these days but to his house, where I bring stacks of magazines and provisions from Happy Donuts. And while Angel rests upstairs, we sit down in the basement, where Felix doesn’t try to kiss me and sometimes we don’t say anything and that’s okay.
I’ve tiptoed right up to the edge of confiding in him, but I always step back at the last second. When I’m with him, I can almost forget about you, because I’m thinking about me and I’m thinking about him, and I know that this must be a good thing.
One day he asked.
“Is something up with Layla?” He was marking the San Francisco magazine I’d brought with a list of the top one hundred desserts in the city, mapping out a plan of attack. We had to eat three a week if we wanted to meet our goal of trying them all by the end of the year.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she’s kind of MIA lately. And something seems, I don’t know … different with her, or with you and her, or something.”
Felix isn’t Mom, and he isn’t Dad, and he has his own troubles, but still, he’s the only one who knew the right question to ask.
I started making a list, the top reasons it should be obvious to anyone paying attention that you were in a whole heap of trouble. 1. You skipped our girls’ weekend in Big Sur. 2. You ditched school. 3. You locked yourself in your room and cried for a whole weekend. 4. You don’t hang out with your friends anymore. 5. You can’t shut up about a painter who only uses, like, two colors in big boring squares. 6. A new, unbridgeable gap had opened between us.
You were so careful. I always wanted the best for you, but lately I’d been wishing for you to stumble, to screw up. Hoping someone would catch you. Someone would see you together someplace. Someone, other than me, would know.
We Are the Goldens Page 13
