Relative Strangers

by Paula Garner

  “Of course,” he said softly, his expression pained. “You know, even when you were little, you had this huge heart. You were always so concerned about everyone. I wiped out on my bike once and came inside crying, and you looked so scared. You gave me your stuffed lamb to hold, which . . .” He smiled. “That was not a thing you parted with easily. And when Mom was finished bandaging my knee, you kissed it.”

  I hung on his every word. I wanted to know about myself, about those critical first months. And I wanted to know about them — the family that loved me and helped me when I was most vulnerable.

  But my phone dinged, and my heart dropped. “That’s probably Gab,” I said sadly, taking my phone out of my purse.

  It was. But her message said she was happily partying with Byron and company, and that I should take my sweet time and please plan to be the designated driver.

  “Do you have to go?” Luke asked.

  I shook my head. “She’s having fun. She wants me to drive home later.” Suddenly I felt awkward, intrusive. I had shown up unannounced on a Saturday — I should expect him to have no plans?

  But then he said, “Good. More time for me.”

  His smile . . . God, what it did to my belly. I knew it must be the newness of this whole thing, these feelings he gave me. Surely it would wear off at some point.

  “We could order takeout,” he said. “You hungry?”

  I relaxed back into the couch, smiling. “Do you really have to ask?”

  We sat on the living room floor in the warm yellow glow of the old lamps, eating Thai food, as Luke filled me in on a past I couldn’t remember.

  I learned that I had loved food more than just about anything — surprise, surprise. He said no matter what was going on or what I might be upset about, food could always make me happy.

  I learned that I called his mother Mima because they tried to pick something close to Mama that wasn’t Mama.

  I learned we had a black-and-white cat named Cupcake who used to jump into my crib to curl up and sleep. Luke’s mom had worried Cupcake would suffocate me, but no matter what they tried, the cat found a way to sneak back into my crib.

  I learned I cut my heel on a piece of glass at Lake Michigan, and it had required stitches. This surprised me — I thought I’d never had stitches. I looked at my foot — “Other foot, Einstein.” Luke laughed. And lo and behold, there was a scar on the edge of my heel I never even knew I had.

  For the millionth time, I wondered what life would have been like if I’d stayed with the Margolises. Luke would be my brother — my real, forever brother. But: Mima, the only mom I would ever have known, would be dying before I even finished high school. Or maybe she wouldn’t be. Some butterfly effect, some possibility that without certain turns of events, others also wouldn’t have come to pass? Maybe she wouldn’t have cancer. Who the fuck knows for sure?

  Luke pushed his plate away and leaned back on his hands, crossing his legs at the ankles. He gave me a pointed look. “You know, don’t you . . . now that I’ve found you? You’ll never get rid of me.”

  I smiled, shy at the way his words thrilled me.

  My phone dinged, and I knew it was probably Gab. It was nearly ten, and we were three hours from home. I had messaged my mom, saying, Still out with Gab. I’d ignored her return messages, her questions about where I was and when I’d be home. She had a royal lot of nerve, I thought. For starters, it wasn’t like she answered me whenever I asked her when she’d be home. And what would she say when I confronted her about my other life? The life I nearly had?

  Nothing would ever be the same.

  Sadly, Luke and I gathered ourselves up to head out. As he drove me to meet Gab, I alternated between looking out my window at the hazy glow of the moon and gazing at Luke’s long legs, his comfortable slung-back posture. Once, during a lull in the conversation, he reached over without looking my way, found my hair, and gave it a soft tug. It was the kind of easy, familiar thing Daniel did with Gab, and I loved that Luke felt comfortable enough to do that with me. But it only made me more worried about the confused and vast spectrum of my thoughts and feelings about him. He seemed to fall into a sibling dynamic so easily, but I struggled to understand the rules, to know if the way I felt was normal. The lost years confounded everything — for me, anyway.

  When we arrived at Gab’s car, Luke shifted into Park and turned to me. “I want to tell Mom I found you,” he said. “I’m going to talk to my dad tomorrow. I know she’ll want to see you. Would you be able to come to Milwaukee next weekend?”

  My heart leapt. “Oh my God — yes! Of course.” Next weekend! That wasn’t long to wait even by my impatient standards.

  “Jules!”

  I turned in my seat. Gab was ambling toward us, hand in hand with Byron.

  I waved at her halfheartedly. “That’s Gab,” I told Luke.

  Luke leaned around me to wave, too, which struck me as sweet. “Looks like she had an okay time without you.” He turned serious. “You drive safely, okay? Let me know when you get home?”

  “Okay.”

  We hesitated, smiling at each other. Then he reached for me and hugged me tight.

  I breathed him in one last time before pulling away. “I’ll see you soon,” I said bravely.

  “Bye, Jules,” he said, his eyes holding mine.

  “Bye. Duke.”

  The enormous grin that bloomed on his face filled me up.

  As he pulled away, Byron stood by while Gab and I got into the car, then he gave us both a wave and a grin. He sauntered away, whistling, a bounce in his step.

  I settled into the driver’s seat and scooted it forward — Gab’s legs were miles longer than mine — and then pulled the seat back upright. “How does this work?” I asked Gab, pointing at the gearshift.

  She reached over and flicked the little gear knob into Drive.

  I plugged my phone in and set it to navigate home.

  Gab tipped her head back against the seat, her lids drooping.

  I shook my head. “Drunk, high, or both?”

  “Medium drunk and very high.”

  “You smoked pot?”

  She nodded. “It was, like, extreme weed. Sour Diesel, they called it. I was so high for a while that the walls were moving.”

  I turned up the volume on my phone so I could hear the navigation instructions, then signaled and pulled out onto the street.

  Gab tilted her seat back and put her feet up on the glove compartment, closing her eyes. “So? What happened with Luke?”

  “You first,” I said. “Tell me about your night. Are college parties everything we’ve hoped for?”

  She turned her head toward me and grinned. “I cashed in my V-card.”

  My jaw dropped. “You had sex with him?”

  Keeping my eyes on the road was a tall order as Gab spilled all the details. I glanced over at her briefly. “Did you use —”

  “Of course we did. You think I’m an idiot? I wouldn’t even go down on him. I’m guessing he’s pretty promiscuous.”

  “Really?” I winced. “Why did you pick him, if, you know . . .”

  A look of annoyance crossed her face, and she leaned her head back again. “I wasn’t looking for a life partner, Jules. I was looking for an experience.”

  Gab and I were about as different as two females of the species could be. “Will you see him again?”

  She shrugged. “It was casual.”

  I wouldn’t have one use in all the world for casual sex. The intimacy, the many ways my body seemed so imperfect, all the potential embarrassments . . . I’d never had the kind of feelings for a guy, the kind of trust, that I would need to get that close. And the risks! The countless ways it could change your life: disease, pregnancy . . . to me, having sex seemed about as safe as jumping off a cliff.

  I came up behind someone who was driving twenty miles below the speed limit, but I signaled and checked over my shoulder twice and then passed, moving back into the right lane after. Lane changing mad
e me nervous. “Are you going to tell your parents?” I asked Gab.

  Gab pulled a pack of gum out of the console. “I’ll tell my mom. My dad — no way. He’d flip.” She put a piece of gum in her mouth and offered me one. I took it. My mouth still tasted like curry and fish sauce.

  “Your mom won’t tell your dad?” I asked, chewing the gum. It was cinnamon. My favorite.

  She shook her head.

  Her confidence in this, her clarity about their dynamics . . . I yearned to understand it, yearned to know what I’d missed, what it would have been like. My relationship with my mother was not much of an education in the workings of marriages and families. I wanted to know what it was to feel comfortable in all the messiness and complexity of a family — not like an alien dropped in as part of some sort of sociological study.

  “What will she say when you tell her?” I asked. Gab’s mom was pretty damn open-minded, but still . . . a teenage girl tells her mom she went out and screwed a stranger just for shits and giggles? Just for experience?

  “I don’t know,” Gab said. “She’ll want to know if we used a condom, of course, and how I’m feeling about it all . . .”

  “She won’t judge you?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s pretty cool in some ways.”

  “In some ways?”

  My phone dinged. “It’s probably my mom,” I said.

  Gab picked up my phone and entered my code. “It’s Leila,” she said, tossing the phone back down.

  “Oh, boy,” I said. I glanced up over Gab. “We haven’t talked to her.”

  Gab made a face. “You can talk to her all you want. I have nothing to say to her.”

  “Are you mad at her?”

  “Not mad. I’m just not going to subject myself to her judgment. She’d shit kittens if I told her what I did tonight.”

  “Well,” I said, “only because she cares.”

  “That’s not why.” She snapped her gum.

  An uneasy feeling filled my gut. “You have to tell her,” I said.

  “Why do I?” She gave me a challenging look.

  “Because! It’s Leila. If you don’t, it’s like lying. I mean, there’s the assumption that we’d tell each other.”

  “Jules?” She turned toward me. “I’m eighteen years old. I don’t have to tell anyone anything.”

  I chewed on her words. “I can’t believe you’d tell your mother but you wouldn’t tell your best friend!”

  “You’re my best friend,” she said, surprising me. And then she added, “As much as Leila is.”

  I wanted it to be true. Really true, and not just that she was irked with Leila. “Well, what am I supposed to do?” I asked her. “Pretend you just sat in the car waiting for me for seven hours?”

  “God,” Gab said, irritated. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to lie.”

  “Then don’t. Tell her whatever you want. I don’t care.”

  “I can’t do that, Gab.” I looked at her pleadingly. “I can’t tell her your — business.”

  “Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll tell her. But it’ll just make things worse.”

  I could see Leila not responding well to what Gab did, but to me nothing seemed worse than Gab keeping something so important from Leila — especially something that I knew about. I could only handle so many parts of my life falling apart at once.

  “Oh my God, the custard place is open!” Gab pointed. “Pull over. I need a sundae. And a burger.”

  I signaled to turn. I was the last person who would argue about getting something to eat.

  As I pulled into the lot, Gab was already unbuckling. “Let’s get our food and then you can tell me about Luke.”

  By the time we got back to her house, my head was spinning even more than it was when we left. I hadn’t considered what it would mean, sharing all this with Dr. Shrink Jr. I hadn’t had time to work through what this would mean for my relationship with my mother, but Gab seemed more hung up on that than on Luke.

  We sat parked in Gab’s driveway. “It’s a massive betrayal,” Gab said slowly. “She lied to you. She stole part of your childhood from you.”

  “And my Jewishness,” I joked, whipping off a quick home safe! text to Luke.

  She turned to me, her eyes wide. “That is not small, Jules! You were nearly an M.O.T.!”

  “M.O.T.?”

  “Member of the tribe.”

  I laughed. “Oh, right. But,” I pointed out to her, “I wouldn’t have met you. And you’re half the fun of almost being a Jew.”

  She grinned. “My parents will probably insist on making you an honorary Jew.” She glanced up at her house, which was dark. Then she shook her head. “Man, what this must have done to Luke’s family.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not saying your mom didn’t have a right to get you back if she was sober and stable, but . . . shit.” She turned to me. “It’s amazing the way our choices change history.” A troubled expression flashed across her face, half lit in the light of the lamppost by her walkway.

  “You okay?” I reached out and touched her knee.

  She looked at my hand, then laid hers over it. “Yeah.”

  “Gab. I have to go home.” According to the clock on the car, it was nearly two in the morning. “How are we going to do that? You can’t drive.”

  “Fuck that. Just text your mom and tell her we got home late and you’re spending the night.”

  “I can’t.”

  She was adamant. “Yeah you can. Just stay tonight and talk to my mom in the morning. Then decide what you’re going to do.”

  It probably wasn’t a bad idea. “Okay.”

  “In fact, just stay with me for a few days. There’s no school Monday anyway — Presidents’ Day. Give yourself some time. You’re not going to be any readier to deal with your mom tomorrow. Get some clothes and your computer and just fucking move in. Yes, you can,” she said, preempting the argument I was about to launch. “And don’t do one of your I don’t want to be a burden things. My parents would piss themselves with delight if you were going to be a permanent fixture for a while.”

  She really knew how to get to me. I nodded, trying not to sniffle. “Okay.”

  Living with the Wassermans . . . I can’t say I hadn’t thought about it a thousand times, about what it would be like. . . . They were so funny and smart and laid-back. They didn’t usually make a big deal about dinner — more than once I’d seen one of them eating cereal while another ate a sandwich, if they didn’t order in, which they often did. And good stuff, too. Spinach-stuffed pizzas with two or three different salads. Sushi from the decent place in Barton. Not Hamburger Helper or peanut butter out of the jar.

  And they did stuff together. Museums. Trips. Hikes. Gab always was happy to do things with her parents. She liked them. And they liked her. And Daniel came home as often as he could. They were what a family should be. They were together by circumstance, but if they had the choice, they’d still pick one another.

  Thinking about it made my chest tighten with a feeling I couldn’t quite name. Would I have had something like that if the Margolises had adopted me? A real family that liked one another? A unit? An unbreakable, permanent unit?

  It overwhelmed me to contemplate. Not least because it meant imagining away my mother, which . . . who does that? It was terrible. But maybe I was terrible. Because I did think about it.

  I messaged my mother that I was going to stay with Gab for a few days, and that I’d pick up some things tomorrow. I crossed my fingers that she was asleep so she wouldn’t respond; I didn’t have the energy to deal with the fallout just now. Fortunately, my phone stayed silent.

  In the extra bed in Gab’s room, I nudged Faustus, her long-haired tuxedo cat, whose bed this clearly actually was. He relocated to the foot of the bed, then draped himself over my feet, which interfered with my tossing and turning. I lay there, replaying moments from the day.

  But also . . . I found myself thinking ab
out Luke in . . . wrong ways. I didn’t remember him as a brother enough to disable the mechanism of attraction. Why did he have to be so darling, so sweet, so perfect? It didn’t seem reasonable that I should not find him attractive.

  And so I found myself imagining . . . things. Imagining kissing him. Imagining him realizing his feelings for me were growing too unwieldy to be contained in the previous construct. Imagining his touching me, my touching him. . . . And God help me, I thought about what it would be like to do all the things with him.

  These kinds of thoughts had to stop. Surely as we reconnected in a more sibling-type way, these odd flashes of misplaced want would rearrange themselves into something correct and appropriate. They had to.

  I couldn’t fall asleep. I was anxious about meeting his mother. Mima, if that’s what I’d still call her. I was afraid I wouldn’t remember anything. I was afraid I would remember. I was afraid of her dying, just as I was getting to know her, getting to love her, even. But even more than for myself, I was afraid of how hard that would be for Luke, and for Buddy, which apparently is what I’d called Luke’s dad — my dad — when I was little. When for a certain period of time, I had a dad.

  When I finally drifted into sleep, I had dreams — lots of dreams. One piggybacked on top of the one before. Dreams about being little, about cats and strange houses and piano music. I woke, struggling to sort out what was made up and what might have been whispers of memory.

  Gab was right. Leila did not approve of Gab’s carefree, carnal adventures. Sitting on the floor in her room the next afternoon, Gab rattled off her actions to Leila as if offering a confession over which she was not the least bit contrite. It occurred to me that Gab rebelled more against Leila than she did her own parents.

  When Gab was finished, Leila looked at me as if to make sure she’d heard correctly. “So basically,” she said to Gab, “you just hooked up with a stranger.”

  Gab twisted her mouth and threw her gaze to the ceiling, as if thinking hard, then said, “Yup. That’s about the size of it.”

  “Speaking of the size of it,” I quipped, hoping to divert focus and lighten the mood. I petted Faustus, who purred in my lap, seeming to have appropriated me.