"Paul Celan?" Pete asked. "That's kind of dark for teenagers, no?"
"You think grownups have a monopoly on dark?" Maia asked.
"I think teenagers think they do," Lillian said, before asking Maia who her favorite poet was, and off they went talking about Polish poets, a dead Polish filmmaker, and whether or not John Donne could be taught.
"I think he has to be experienced instead of studied," Maia said. "You step inside it."
"You know, that is why some poets translate other poems," Lillian said. "So that they can step inside their own language, but from the outside."
"That makes so much sense," Maia said. "Like, I should totally learn Italian so I can read the Inferno, you know?"
Leigh and Pete did the dishes and tried not to display obvious signs of boredom. Maia had been great about tromping around Pete's land, and helping Leigh look for the best type of plants to photograph. Without her thinking that his video was going to be "great" and "interesting," Leigh knew he would have abandoned the project. Of course, it was the footage he had of her from the summer that made him at all willing to do it. Her hair, her hands, her back, and her plants. All things he'd filmed before knowing he was making a record of the girl he loved.
~~~
Pete's house had three guest rooms. One had become Lillian's study and one was full of Leigh's boxes. Maia slept in the available guest room and Leigh bunked down on the couch in his mother's study. Lillian came in on the second night of his visit under the guise of looking for some papers, but Leigh was not very surprised when she sat on an arm of the couch and said she needed to talk to him about colleges.
Janet had told her that Leigh had had a meeting with the advisor at Calvert Park Prep but that she and Clayton had no idea how it had gone or what had been discussed.
"They have no idea because they didn't ask me."
"Janet is being very careful not to act like your mother for fear of offending me," Lillian said, which Leigh already knew and appreciated.
"Well, I didn't think Dad cared," Leigh said. "He just wants to know that I'll wind up somewhere not too expensive."
This was unfair of Leigh and he knew it. Clayton had, against his lawyer's advice, put into the divorce agreement a condition that he and Lillian would split high school tuition but that Clayton would assume the entire cost of college.
"Your father doesn't like to pry," Lillian said, "but I don't mind doing so at all. Where are you thinking of going?"
Leigh did have a list: three small places in Pennsylvania, a small one in Ohio, and two huge ones in California and Michigan. He'd picked them based on general academic excellence, soccer teams, and good military history programs. He thought maybe the reason the war in Iraq was so hard to understand was that he knew next to nothing about any wars.
Leigh had done a draft of his college essay and gotten copies of all six applications. He knew what he needed to do and thought that he liked the way the one in Ohio sounded the best. But he felt paralyzed about finishing anything. He had this idea that he should ask Maia where she was hoping to wind up in another year. He remembered Astra saying that falling in love was only for people who weren't serious about the future. He wanted to find a way to discover his own serious plans but to have room for Maia in them.
So he had this list, this desire to run it by her, and no hope of knowing how to do that.
"I like Maia," his mother said.
"Uhh-hmm," Leigh said, meaning, perhaps, Me too or Thanks or Good.
"But listen: You have got to break up with Astra," Lillian said.
"I know, God, I know," he said.
Their e-mailing had become less frequent since school started. The last time he'd spoken to her on the phone, Astra had said she was so busy with swimming and her AP courses that she barely had time to breathe, let alone talk a lot. She wanted to keep on e-mailing. So he sent her partially accurate accounts of how he was spending his time. Leigh missed the part of him that had been Astra's friend. If you took away the sex, hanging out with Astra was one of the easiest things he'd ever done.
"It's just, if I call her to say I want to come to the city because we have to talk, she'll guess," Leigh said. "And then we'll wind up breaking up over the phone, which is totally wrong."
"Well, call and tell her you're coming because you miss her."
Leigh wondered if his mother had become deranged or cruel.
"And then show up and break up with her?" he asked, really not wanting to have this conversation with anyone, least of all his mother.
"No, of course not, good point," Lillian said.
Leigh felt he was failing to do something—something important. Maia never mentioned Astra but knew he hadn't done anything about his old girlfriend. Like, actually tell her she was no longer his girlfriend. His continued inability to figure out how to do this showed him that while he might have a list of colleges where he wanted to apply, he wasn't yet well enough equipped to sail unsupervised into the world.
"Take the train to New York next weekend. I'll call Pete's sister. You can stay with her," Lillian said. "Then just find Astra and do the right thing."
Leigh nodded. Jesus, here he was, seventeen years old—seventeen, a year away from being able to both vote and enlist in the army—and his mother had to help him with girls. It was a good thing there wasn't a draft. Leigh didn't think he'd be a huge asset in the war, and not only because he was afraid of dying. If it weren't for the way Maia thought of him—the way he existed in her mind as someone of value—he'd want to stay in bed for the rest of his life.
~~~
On their last morning in Maine, early, when the mist was rolling off the river, Leigh found Maia outside on the same porch where he and Pete had talked about girl trouble. Maia was now standing exactly where she had been discussed. It was colder than it had been on Labor Day, and Leigh took off his sweater to give her.
"I'm okay," she said. "Really, you're sweet."
"Sleep all right?" he asked, wanting to bat the word sweet out of the known universe.
"Yeah," she said, her face being overtaken by a shy, sly smile. "It's hard with you down the hall. It's weird to have you so close but so off-limits."
Leigh looked away from her, down at the ground. It's true they were keeping to the contract by not having sex. And though he had, many times, held her naked body, she always hid her feet. So there were certain barriers they could not cross. But what they did with their mouths and hands gave him more power and pleasure than he had known to want.
He wanted to tell her that it was out here, almost at this very spot, that he had discovered he loved her. That he would always love her, that even though it was very likely they would break up as soon as college became a reality, he would go on loving her. That while he knew he had no idea how to live up to what it meant to love someone, she lived inside the very word.
But, instead, he slipped his hand through hers and stood there until she pulled away, saying that she was, after all, a little cold.
~~~
After, when he found her at the party in New York, he wanted to take her back to that moment on Pete's porch. It wasn't that he needed a chance to say what he hadn't, for his gush of love forever was probably best not shared. It was that if he could only grab her back through time, away from the apartment and his uncomfortable suit, he would stand there again with her on Pete's porch, and this time he would pay better attention. This time, she would never leave his sight, no harm would befall her, and no blood would touch them. Leigh would have the chance to memorize what it was like to love her.
chapter eighteen
a silent space
The Friday night after they had been in Maine, he took a train up to New York.
"What do you think she'll say?" Maia asked him.
"I don't know," Leigh said. "She might be relieved. It's not like we were ever in love, you know."
"But you wouldn't have slept with her if you didn't love her," Maia said, and for an instant it sounded like a com
pliment instead of a statement that he needed to explain. Or contradict.
And, in an instant, he answered, saying, to his everlasting regret, "Well, right."
~~~
Kathleen Tahoe let Leigh have his choice between a wide pullout sofa in the living room and a narrow bed in a tiny room behind the kitchen, saying he could have comfort or privacy. He picked the tiny room, figuring he wouldn't sleep well no matter what.
On Saturday, Leigh stood outside Astra's apartment building, hoping that when she came out she wouldn't be rushing off to a swim meet or the library. And, indeed, she had both swim and book bags, and seemed in full rush mode, but stopped when she saw him.
"Leigh," she said. "My God, hi. Hi."
"Hi," he said, hating himself, and wishing he had loved her.
Or simply liked her enough to leave her alone. Neither of them seemed able to figure out if they should hug.
"Can we go somewhere?" he asked her, and she nodded.
~~~
Leigh could never remember what he said, or how he said it. Although she said Oh and This was not what I was expecting before bursting into tears, he had the feeling that she had been expecting it.
"Astra, don't cry, please," he said, not caring that people could hear and see, only desperate not to have done this. "I'm not worth it."
"No, I know, of course you're not," she said, wiping her eyes with napkins they had each pried from a box on the table. "Oh, God, I didn't mean that, because you are, and you'll spend your whole life with girls bursting into tears at the end."
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and Leigh thought how Maia would never be able to do that—the germs involved would horrify her. Then he yelled at himself for thinking of Maia. Then he prayed that it would never end with Maia. Then he yelled at himself again.
"I just ... I've been a mess," Astra said. "I don't want us to go out anymore if you don't, of course not."
She looked at him, her eyes bleary, but her face full of its usual perfection.
"The crying is something I've been doing."
"You could never be a mess," he said, wondering if she really didn't know what she looked like while moving down the halls of school.
Behind her back, boys called her Xena for the TV show about a warrior princess that they had all watched fanatically in the sixth and seventh grades.
"Yeah, right," she said. "Perfect Astra Grein. Never met a problem she couldn't solve."
There was a force of sarcasm and bitterness in her voice that alarmed him.
"Astra, what happened in Vermont?" he asked.
"Oh, God," she said, tears starting again. "How did you know?"
"You didn't sound happy," he said. "Were the French daughters mean to you?"
"No, it wasn't them," she said. "It wasn't even my poor father, who thought he was doing such a good thing by including me in the family and all."
"Is he getting married?" Leigh asked.
"I don't know," Astra said. "I didn't ask. He just—he was so great with those girls, you know, and ... he tried—he really tried with me, but every time I looked at him, I got mad."
"At him?"
"Well, I'm not sure if it was at him or at the idea that he was doing all these things for them that he never did with me," she said, wiping her nose again. "And these aren't even his kids."
"Being mad about that is normal," Leigh said, trying to imagine how Maia would feel if she had to spend a summer watching Ned Morland lavish attention on another man's children.
"I'm almost eighteen," Astra said. "We go to college next year."
Leigh knew this, but he hadn't a clue what these inescapable facts had to do with Mr. Grein.
"I can't blame him forever, you know," she said. "I'm angry and crying all the time, and ... it's ridiculous."
"No, it's not," Leigh said, wanting to cover her clenched hand with his but not able to trust such an instinct. "It won't be forever."
"It's already too long," Astra said. "My father sucked as my father. I just want to get over it."
"Look, I know you've got a really busy day," Leigh said, "but—"
"Yeah, I should get going," she said. "It was good of you, you know, to come and tell me. I would have—"
"Maybe I could take you to dinner tonight," Leigh said, getting out his half-formed idea. "We'll go someplace really nice and eat eggs. And get your mind off whatever it is."
"Really?" Astra said, smiling for the first time since she'd seen him outside her building. "Just to hang out?"
"Yeah, of course," he said. "Please. Let me do this."
Astra wrapped her hair into a knot held together with the same butterfly clips both Maia and Millie had.
"So is she nice?" Astra asked, gathering her bags, and he'd have given anything not to answer, because nice wasn't what Maia was, but Astra didn't need to hear She's everything.
He nodded. Yes. She's nice.
Astra nodded back. Okay. Good. She should be nice.
"If you mean it, I would love dinner," Astra said. "I could stand to be distracted."
Leigh would have months and years to wish he had simply gone home that night, although he would always be glad he had taken Astra Grein to dinner when she needed a friend she could trust.
~~~
School was weird when he got back from New York. There was no other word for it. Partly, it was due to Maia's having the flu, full blown with fever, chills, and vomiting, and not being in school for a week. And partly, he was scrambling to finish his art project, to do research on the Industrial Revolution for history, and to rewrite his college essay. People at school, even the ones who had been making a big effort to befriend him, seemed to have vanished into a fog of weirdness, being either overly friendly or ignoring him.
Only Millie and Franklin, who sat with Leigh during lunch, seemed the same.
When she got out of bed and came back to school, Maia was also weird, but that he could put down to her having lost four pounds. She was not happy about having to return to a weight-gaining food plan.
For three Saturdays in a row she said she was too busy with homework to drive to the prison, and that of course Josh would rather she studied. But when Leigh spent time with her, ostensibly for both of them to study, he was the only one doing homework. Maia stared out the window and chewed on her fingers or fidgeted with the ends of her hair.
Whenever he asked her if anything was wrong or if he could do anything to help, she smiled and said, "It's nothing. I'm just on edge." Or, "I think one of my meds needs changing. That's what my shrink said this week."
Leigh could see for himself that she was on edge, and he was in no position to know anything about her meds, but she was lying about her shrink. He knew for a fact that she had missed all of her appointments for at least three weeks. He'd heard Charles Rhoem tell Maia that her psychiatrist had phoned wanting to know where she'd been. Leigh didn't want to call her a liar, or think of her as one, so he told himself she'd just mixed up her dates a little.
The only times she was still or peaceful were when he held her without moving. He didn't even let himself kiss the top of her head where her hair swirled away from its part. It wasn't that she wouldn't or didn't kiss him, but her body was so full of jumps and sharp inhalations that, for now, he preferred how she felt when she was still, his arms wrapped quietly around her.
He tried to make a list of things that might bring her some comfort. Things that would do for Maia what nice sheets and blankets had for Millie. Food and chocolates were out, as were flowers in a vase. Maia said that cut flowers looked like prisoners and reminded her of death. He'd already bought her plants. What did you buy for someone you thought needed comforting?
Leigh wrote down earrings, shoes, handbag, and sweater before deciding he knew nothing about girls. But Millie did, and she happily went with him into D.C. to shop. In Georgetown, Millie selected a brush imported from Germany and a set of barrettes made from a material that looked like ivory but was, the salesgirl said, more
flexible.
Together, he and Millie picked out two wrought-iron rabbits, each weighing nine pounds, for Maia to put in her flower beds.
In one store, Leigh got totally sidetracked by a small boat you could sail from land, using all sorts of controls. Millie laughed and told him that there was a new kind of kite Franklin had read about.
"It has a motor, I think," Millie said. "Maia likes bright colors—you could fly it for her."
"We'll buy Franklin the kite another time," Leigh said, but the colors gave him an idea, and at a flower shop he arranged for a dozen helium balloons to be delivered to Maia's house.
~~~
She pushed against the brush's bristles and ran her hands over the barrettes. They found what she decreed perfect spots for the rabbits. But, as he had suspected, it was the balloons that made her laugh, that made her look happy. Maia watched them settle against her ceiling and then said she wanted to take them outside and release them into the sky.
"Is that okay?"
"They're your balloons," he said. "Of course."
One by one, she let go of them, holding on to the silver one.
"At school last year, on the September eleventh anniversary, we each got a balloon with the names of six people who had died attached to it," Maia told him.
Leigh remembered Millie telling him this, that everyone had sent off their balloons, the victims' names written on paper and tied to the string, as a kind of memorial.
"They told us we could put our own prayer underneath the names, if we wanted," Maia said.
"What kind of prayer?" Leigh asked.
"I wrote, May you be free from suffering and know God."
"I didn't know you believed in God," he said.
"I don't think I do," she said, "but we were honoring the people who had died and they might have, so I did half Buddhist and half Jesus, just in case."
Leigh remembered the moment of silence that his school had observed the year before on the one-year anniversary of the attacks. He had wanted to pray for the people who had died, but felt uneasy about it because of the whole business of souls. Even if they existed, how would praying be a way to reach one?
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