She chops and stirs and dices and sautés, and she does it all while talking, without missing a beat. She tells me about Castillo Flowers, how it was started by her grandmother, Ora’s mom. How it’s barely changed inside since it opened forty years ago, and how Ora threw herself so fully into her work after her mother died because the best way for her to grieve was to make sure she kept the family business alive.
Rafaela warms a loaf of bread in the oven while she takes down dishes and a pair of water glasses from cabinets with no doors on them. She’s so confident in the kitchen, moving around as if she does this every day. She’s good at a lot of things: singing, cooking, working with flowers. And there’s still so much I don’t know about her.
A couple of minutes later, she’s placed a bowl of steaming pasta in front of me, bow ties surrounded by broccoli and bell peppers and zucchini and carrots and squash in a light sauce. It’s delicious, as good as if it came from a restaurant.
When I tell her so, Rafaela doesn’t look at me, but she smiles as she tears a piece of bread off the loaf. “Thanks, but if you think this is good, you should taste my mom’s. Her pasta primavera is the best.”
I sense an opening, and I don’t know if I should go for it, but I do. “Did she teach you how to cook?”
“She taught me a lot of things. My dad took off when my sister was a baby, so she was obsessed with making sure we knew how to do everything for ourselves. I know how to cook, change a tire, drive a stick shift, and change a baby’s diaper.” She pauses. “I used to help out with my little sister.”
She follows that up with a laugh, but it’s strained and it makes me hold my forkful of pasta too long. I feel like she’s talking in riddles. Part of me thinks she wouldn’t have invited me over if she didn’t trust me in some way, but the other part wonders if I’m going to have to dig for every piece of information about her life.
“How’d you end up here? At Ora’s, I mean.” I spread a generous amount of creamy butter onto my bread and take a bite.
Rafaela doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if she was too lost in her own thoughts to hear the question, but no. She stares at the wood grain of the table for a few seconds, then sets down her fork and looks at me.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but you seem like one of the good ones, Suzette.” She doesn’t break my gaze. “You are, right?”
I nod right away, even though sometimes I wonder about that myself.
“The town I’m from, in Texas… it’s really small. Like, one of those places you hear about or see on TV but you don’t think actually exists. Barely any stoplights, everything shuts down by nine, and everyone knows everyone else. L.A. is like another world. I’ve been here for a year now and I still can’t believe I can walk down the busiest street in the city and not run into someone I know.”
She picks up her fork again, but only to push food around her bowl. I could eat the rest of my serving and another one right now, but it seems insensitive to be chewing when she’s clearly about to tell me something important, so I abandon my fork and put my hands in my lap.
Rafaela looks at her pasta as she continues. “To be honest, the only things to do there were drink and get high and get in trouble, so that’s what my friends and I did. There was this guy and he was a real piece of shit, but I only found that out after I slept with him. No… I found out he was an actual piece of shit after I got pregnant.”
“Oh.” I don’t know anyone my age who’s been pregnant… or at least no one who’s told me.
“My mom refused to even discuss any option other than having it, and as far as I was concerned, that wasn’t an option.” She takes a long drink of wine and I follow suit, draining my glass. “My sister was my only other family there, and she’s twelve. So I called Ora and she said she’d help me, and here I am.”
I definitely don’t know anyone who’s had an abortion, but I don’t tell her that. I don’t want her to think I’m judging her, because I’m not. It’s easy to think you know what you’d do if you were in a certain position until you find yourself there, feeling completely lost.
“Ora paid for it,” she says slowly. “And we don’t talk about it. And I was going to go home after that—just spend the summer here and go back to start the school year with my friends. But my mom told me I was a sinner, and that willful sinners aren’t welcome under her roof.”
“Your own mother?” When I was told I had to go away, to Dinsmore, I felt like I was being kicked out. But that’s nothing compared with this, and I can’t think of one reason my mother would kick me out of our house for good.
“Oh, it gets worse. She sent my Bible, with this passage in Hebrews highlighted: For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” She looks at my surprised face and gives me a small smile. “I just kept looking at it, for hours, until Ora figured out what had happened and took it away from me. She dumped it in the trash bin outside.”
“Ora kicks ass.”
“Well, that part gets better,” Rafaela says, and her smile widens. “She called my mom the next morning and told her she’d sic the devil himself on her if she sent any more of that religious propaganda to her house. Her own sister!”
I smile back at her, because Ora is one of the good ones, too.
“I don’t regret it,” Rafaela says, softly. “I still think about it a lot, and the only thing I wish is that I hadn’t ever let that loser get anywhere near my naked body. I might want kids someday, but not now.”
“I think you’re brave.” I don’t mean it to sound trite or patronizing, and I hope she doesn’t take it that way.
“Thanks,” she says, and the openness of her face, of her voice, of those golden-green eyes, tells me that what I said was exactly right.
I hesitate before I ask my next question. “Do you think you’ll ever go back?”
“I’ll have to at some point, if only to see my sister. I miss the hell out of her.” She picks up her fork and stabs another bite of pasta. “But I don’t know if I’ll ever talk to my mom again. Even if she got over the abortion, she wouldn’t exactly agree with my lifestyle.”
“But you’re dating my brother.”
“Okay, calm down—we haven’t even been out yet. I think dating is a little too much right now. But even if I do date him, that doesn’t mean I’ll never kiss another girl.”
My face flushes hot and I pick up my glass of water to distract myself from it, but I end up knocking over the glass. It sends a flood of liquid across the table, soaking our napkins and leaving wet rings under the bottoms of our dishes.
“Shit, sorry.” I jump up to get a towel, but Rafaela waves me back into my chair.
“It’s just water.” She grabs two dish towels she was using while she cooked and swiftly mops up the mess, then wrings them out in the sink and hangs them over the edge to dry. She gives me a funny look when she gets back to the table. “How do you ever talk to DeeDee about anything?”
“What?” My face still feels warm and now there’s nothing to hide behind.
“I mentioned kissing a girl and you almost lost your shit.… Are you weirded out by that?”
I see Iris’s face as she hovers over me, her breasts bare and her blond curls messy and damp from our sweat. If this weirds you out too much, we can stop. Anytime you want.
“I’ve kissed a girl,” I say. What I don’t say is that if I had my way, I’d have kissed her by now, too. At least I know Dee was right: Alicia hasn’t told anyone about me.
“You’ve kissed a girl? Brava!” Rafaela cheers, and it feels a bit like she’s mocking me, but at least she doesn’t think I’m a bigot. “Did you like it?”
I nod. “So… are you bi?”
“Pan,” she says, and when I don’t say anything right away, she clarifies, “Pansexual?”
“I know what it is.” At least I think I do.
“I just don’t really believe in restricting love to one or two ge
nders.” She shrugs and finally takes that bite of pasta, though now our food is cold and the table is still wet in some places. “What about you?”
“I don’t know.” I sit back in my chair. “There’s only been one girl, and she… she meant a lot to me. But now there’s a guy I like…” I think of Emil, how he texted the day after I brought him the soup to say it was good, and that he was feeling better and wants to see me soon. I wonder, for a long moment, if he thinks of me as often as I’ve been thinking of him.
“Maybe you’re bi,” Rafaela says. “Maybe not. Maybe you’re somewhere else on the spectrum.”
“But I feel like I should know what to call myself.”
“Why? Bi, queer… it doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re happy. Just make sure you don’t let anyone tell you what you are. People can be real assholes about labels.”
Later, when we’ve cleaned the kitchen and I’m grabbing my bag before she takes me home, I pull out my phone and see two new texts. Both from Lionel.
Feelin kinda off. Can you tell me where you put my meds?
Then, the next one, sent forty-five minutes later:
Never mind, false alarm.
I’m good
Fuck.
then.
Lionel has been quiet lately. Too quiet.
He hasn’t talked much the past few weeks—to anyone, really. Not since his doctor appointments started. We used to hang out after dinner sometimes, even if we were just doing our homework in the tree house. But now he disappears immediately after we finish washing the dishes, straight up to his room with the door closed.
Tonight, I follow him. He doesn’t invite me into his room but he doesn’t close the door, either, so I step in, wordlessly. He sits on the edge of his bed, next to his newest issue of the New Yorker, but he doesn’t look at it or me as he speaks.
“What’s up?”
“I… I don’t know. I wanted to make sure you’re okay, I guess.”
“That I’m okay?” He shrugs. “I’m fine.”
I close his door and sit on the floor in front of him, leaning against his bookcase of nonfiction. “No, you’re not. You can… You know you can still talk to me?”
He looks at me with blank eyes. Nods as he fingers the edge of the magazine cover. “I know. There’s not much to talk about, I guess. I feel like shit all the time and everything sucks.”
“Is it because of Grayson?” I’ve never dated anyone, so I don’t know what it’s like when that person moves all the way across the country. But I know how much he liked her. And I know how much he tried to hide the fact that he’d been crying about her after she left.
He shrugs. “Not really. I don’t know. I wonder… Sometimes I think it might be the meds they have me on.”
After the incident with the Dodgers game, Mom and Saul took him to our pediatrician, Dr. Carver, who referred him to another doctor. That doctor prescribed him meds for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Lionel takes them every day but I know he hates them.
“Have you talked to Saul about it?” I ask, because I don’t know any other solution. I’ve never been on meds. And I don’t know how they’re supposed to make you react, but I don’t think his listlessness is one of the desired results.
He shrugs. “Kind of. He says I need time to adjust to them.”
“I’m sorry.” And when he doesn’t say anything, I ask, “Do you want to take a walk?”
And for the first time ever, he says no. I think he’ll give me an excuse, like there’s a New Yorker story he’s dying to start, but he just sits here. And the longer I sit here with him, the more I’m sure he’s right. Whatever that doctor prescribed isn’t working for him. This isn’t Lionel. But neither was the one who trashed his room.
“Do you ever think…” He looks toward the door, as if double-checking to make sure I closed it. “Do you ever think about what will happen to your stuff when you’re dead?”
I gasp. I don’t mean to. It’s not the strangest or even most morbid thing we’ve ever talked about. But the way he said it, as if he’d been considering this for a while now, is what scares me.
I stand and slide the magazine to the side so I can sit next to him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t look at me, just keeps staring at the floor.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I ask in the calmest voice I can manage. Freaking out about this won’t do either of us any good.
“I’m not going to kill myself or anything,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. “I don’t want to die. But… I hate that I feel like nothing good is ever going to happen to me again. And that sometimes I don’t really feel anything at all. Like I’m just watching some dude who looks like me and it’s really fucking boring to spy on him because all he wants to do is stay in bed.”
I want to believe him when he says he doesn’t want to kill himself, but I’m still scared.
“I think you need to talk to somebody—”
“I’m trying to talk to you.” His eyes are pink and wet but no tears spill over. And they are… not clear, but I feel like he sees me. Like he needs me.
Lion isn’t big on physical affection, so we’re not the sort of siblings who greet each other every day with a hug and kiss on the cheek. Even during Shabbat dinner, when it’s just the four of us, he always seems uncomfortable after the kiddush, when he knows we’re all going to hug. But now, I take his hand and I wrap mine around it and he startles but doesn’t move away.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess all the stuff goes to relatives or Goodwill or something.”
“Would you take care of my books? If something happened to me?”
“Lionel—”
“You wouldn’t have to keep them all. Just the ones you want, and then you can make sure the rest go to good homes or bookstores.”
I’ve never really thought much about dying, outside the context of grandparents—and my father. He died when I was three, from sudden cardiac arrest. He had a heart condition. I don’t like knowing that Lionel has thought about what my life would be like without him around, too.
I squeeze his hand and swallow hard. “I don’t like this. I want you to talk to Mom and Saul. Or we can call one of those hotlines. But I can’t sit here and—”
His hand pulses against mine. Not a squeeze, but a reminder that he’s alive.
“I swear to you, I’m not going to do anything, okay? I’m going to sit here and read the New Yorker and go to bed. Sometimes I just need to say things to you that I can’t say to anyone else.”
I don’t take my eyes off him. “I’m sleeping in here tonight.”
If that was a serious cry for help, I think he’d appear more grateful, more relieved by my response. But all he does is shrug and say whatever.
I change into my pajamas and carry a book and a blanket down to his room. He’s under the covers reading the magazine when I come back, and I lie on the other side, on top of the comforter, my head even with his feet, and pretend to read.
But I don’t sleep once he turns off the light. And even after I hear him snoring lightly, I don’t relax. Every time he rustles, I move. He coughs a couple of times and I sit up straight, staring at him until the snores resume.
And in the morning, I realize why I’m here, why I stayed in his room all night without sleeping. It wasn’t the talk about dying. It was his apathy. Lionel not caring, not having an opinion about everything, isn’t right. In a way, it’s scarier to me than how he acted the day of the Dodgers game, because at least that Lionel cared about something.
The sun is still blurry, still making its way into the sky, but I hear Mom and Saul’s door open across the hall.
I slip out of bed quietly, so Lionel won’t wake, and tiptoe out into the hallway, where I see the back of my mother going down the stairs. I stumble down after her and she smiles when she sees me in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Well, you’re up early,” she says. “I have to finish my draft today. What’s your excuse?”
; “I…” This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to say. Lionel didn’t tell me not to repeat our conversation, but it was implied. That’s always implied with us when we talk about serious things. “I think you guys need to take Lionel back to the doctor.”
“What? Why? Is he okay?” She looks at the ceiling and turns toward the stairs as if she’s going up to his room.
“I think so. I mean, he’s sleeping right now. I just wonder if maybe he should talk to someone or switch his meds or… I don’t know.”
“Suzette, if you know something, you need to tell me. Right now, baby.”
“I don’t know anything.” I feel gross about lying to her like this, on such a large scale, but I’d feel grosser if I told her what he and I talked about. “But Lionel isn’t himself. And I don’t think he should be feeling the way he does, even if he’s still getting used to the meds.”
“If you don’t know anything, then how do you know all this?” My mother doesn’t usually sound so stern, but she obviously knows this is serious, even if I’m not telling her everything.
“Because he’s my brother. I notice when something’s off.”
They take him to a different doctor—two different doctors, who both say they think his current depression, coupled with his episode earlier in the summer, is pointing to signs of bipolar disorder instead of ADHD.
He goes on different meds. He starts seeing a therapist, Dr. Tarrasch. He never says anything to me about why our parents hustled him to the doctor’s office the day after our talk. He doesn’t accuse me of betraying him.
But he doesn’t talk to me about the bipolar, even though he knows I’m aware of the new diagnosis. And he doesn’t seem that upset when I tell him Mom and Saul are sending me to boarding school in Massachusetts at the end of the summer.
I know what I did was right, that not saying anything would have been a mistake. But it isn’t lost on me that Lionel doesn’t share anything private with me for the rest of the summer—that in helping him, I’ve now caused him to alienate himself from the person he trusted most.
Little & Lion Page 14