Ben's taking him. Mrs. Greene, who mostly thinks I'm a bad influence on her sainted son, was great about allowing it. Ben says his mother is totally spooked about Rebecca's death and keeps saying, Oh, that poor man. That poor family. She's taking my cat, so it's kind of hard to resent her pity.
I leave My Scott at Ben's along with the carrier, toys, a stash of catnip, and a long list of instructions.
"Oh, my God," Ben says. "Are you kidding me?"
"He was Rebecca's," I say in what I hope will be a voice stern enough to keep my real thoughts—I'm going to miss my parents—hidden and quiet.
"He's not going to die on my watch," Ben says. "I promise."
This is all very nice of Ben, as he and I have just broken up. The idea of telling Ben that I wasn't sure I wanted to keep on sleeping with him seemed both horrible and impossible. Not to mention unkind. It felt easier to say I was too focused on family stuff to be a good girlfriend. Ben asked if I meant Rebecca and I nodded. After all, in a way this was her fault. If she weren't dead, I'd have been able to ask her what to do. Ben took a few days to think about it and then told me that only a jerk would expect me not to feel differently about a lot.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "As long as we're still friends. The other stuff doesn't matter."
Maybe he's been as uncertain as I have about wanting to have sex. This is upsetting for reasons that I can't quite sort out.
"Here's the only thing," Ben said. "If you start dating someone else, you tell me. Even if it's not someone at school. I get to know first."
It sounded like an order, but okay. While I like almost everyone at school, only Ben, who is heading to M.I.T. and yet never makes me feel stupid, is what I would call my friend. There are other people I like, but only Ben is important. I'd do a lot for us to stay that way. Almost anything except sleep with him again. So I told him I would tell him first. And that my dating anyone else seemed highly unlikely.
I scratch My Scott's head while taking a look around Ben's room. In spite of its plaid wallpaper and the toy car collection, I like it here. It is, after all, the place where I've done math homework, had sex, and drawn up blueprints. It's the only place that makes me glad I have to be in school. Without school, I wouldn't know Ben.
"Thank you," I say. "It's nice to think of My Scott being here."
"You can come see him whenever you want," Ben says.
The cat will be gone, but available. Unlike my parents, who will be really and truly gone. I hug Ben, press my nose into My Scott's fur, and wave goodbye to Mrs. Greene. Rebecca seems to be the only person I can miss right now. I can't—or won't—let myself wish I still had my cat, my parents, or my boyfriend exactly as I once did.
In fact, it's only the cat's goodbye which I allow to stay with me. Not the one with my parents, the details of which I cannot recall other than the obligatory whispered I love you, be good, be safe, don't worry, bye. Goodbye.
Clare does her crying at night and in the bathroom. I find this out immediately. She runs all the faucets and flushes over and over. But even with that, I can hear the distinct sound of sobbing. It's not that I'm listening for it so much as why else would anyone hole up in the bathroom in the middle of the night?
The bathroom, which has an enormous tub, wicker shelves, and an ugly tiled floor, is between the bedrooms. Clare has cleared out the front hall closet so I can use the one in her room and she has bought Japanese screens and a dresser for the living room. She takes cushions off the sofa and makes it up every night with a fitted sheet.
"There's no greater luxury than clean sheets," she tells me. "And now I have them all the time."
"Like at a hotel," I say.
"There's nothing like a hotel here," she says. "When Gyula comes back to town, we'll have dinner at his place. Now, that's like a hotel."
Gyula doesn't especially like it here and since Rebecca couldn't stand him, he never used to stay with Clare, preferring an apartment he rents in a hotel on Central Park South. New Year's was a one-time-only exception. I have the distinct impression that he's not anxious to sleep in the living room on an old couch. I try to tell Clare that I would happily give her the bedroom when Gyula's visiting.
"Don't give it a thought," she says. "He'll never sleep with me while there's a minor in the house."
Sleep with me. I mean, of course I know. I've just never had to know and hear it specifically said all at once. Although, she's not even talking about sex, but about her boyfriend's scruples. Which is funny since both Da and Rebecca would go on and on about how unlikely it was for an ex—Communist Party official to build his fortune honestly. They thought he was a liar and probably a thief. Someone with no scruples.
And yet Clare loves him. Sleeps with him. Probably knew right away that she wanted to sleep with him.
"I could, you know, go to Raphael's," I say. "You know, when Gyula, well, is, um, here."
God, could I stammer around the topic any more? Sometimes I am the most immature person I know.
"Maybe," Clare says. "If I spend the night at the hotel, you'll have to go to Brooklyn. I'm not leaving you here alone."
"You could," I say, pretty confident I won't start a fire if unsupervised.
"Not going to happen," she says with a laugh. "You too have a boyfriend."
"Had," I remind her.
Clare had been really sweet when I told her Ben and I weren't dating anymore. She didn't ask any questions other than was I okay. She said going back to being friends was often a good idea and that she'd had more than one boyfriend she wished she'd done that with.
"Even so," she says now, "these things have a way of changing and I'm under strict instructions not to make anything too easy for him."
I don't have anything to say to that and so we mercifully drop the whole subject of who is and isn't sleeping with whom. I wish I knew her well enough to tell her what I never got the chance to tell Rebecca. That everyone in the world could make it too easy for Ben and me (as his parents did many times by leaving us alone in their apartment), but that I still wouldn't know if I wanted to do that easy thing. Sex with Ben made my body briefly peaceful, but my thoughts a constant mess. If I could tell her that, would Clare be able to help?
On the fifth night of listening to my sister's water show, I make a cup of tea and leave it in front of the bathroom door. I hear the spoon clink against the cup when Clare comes out and then she knocks on my door.
"Thanks," she says. "Did I scare you?"
"No," I say. "But I thought maybe it would help you sleep."
"Maybe," Clare says.
"You don't have to go in there," I say. "I mean, I'm not going to get upset ... you know, it's your house. You can do it in the living room."
"I'm not hiding from you, Leila," she says. "It's—I can't stand the sound. It's like snot pouring out of your eyes. It's gross."
Da doesn't cry like that. He sounds like someone with an empty stomach being forced to throw up and breathe all at the same time.
"I remember this from when Mama died," Clare says, leaning against my—her—desk. "This crying like it'll never stop. But it's better than the surprise kind that shows up whenever. Like at the office."
Yes, I can see that. I wouldn't want to go to school worried about breaking down in front of everyone. Even though they've all been careful to let me know how sorry they are. And no one would mind or be surprised if I suddenly had hysterics in the middle of math class. No one at Clare's office would mind either, but I think it's more that the kind of crying she's doing—the kind Da did—is private.
I'm not doing it, which is nice in a way, but I wonder if it means I loved Rebecca less than Clare and our father did. A thought to push away. This is what Mom meant about people judging Da for going to Poland. We all think there's just one right way to fall apart. Da and Clare have their way and I'll find mine.
"It's nice tea," Clare says. "What is it?"
"There were some dried chamomile flowers in the cabinet above the stove," I say. "
I put them in that mesh thing, poured hot water and added a whole lot of honey."
"God," Clare says, laughing. "I can't remember the last time anyone went to that kind of trouble for me."
"Rebecca used to make me flower tea," I say and then want to bite down on the insides of my mouth until a river of blood pours out.
"Right, right," Clare says. "All the tea stuff is hers. The pot, though, that's mine. I had it in law school, although I didn't use it. My mother drank a lot of tea. I mean, you know, being English, of course she did. But I like coffee, except when it's late. This is perfect."
"I'm glad," I say as my heart beats out, I am so sorry.
It's a measure of comfort that Clare doesn't go back into the bathroom when she backs out of the room. And while I wish I hadn't dragged Rebecca's name into the night, I feel a little less lonely on the next night and on each one after. I know Clare's in there so snot can run out of her eyes and she knows I know. It's not the greatest of bonds, but it's a start.
Eight
MY SISTERS DID A GREAT JOB of making this apartment theirs after Janie died, but Clare has yet to make it hers alone. For a while, I keep feeling as if I'm only visiting and that any minute Rebecca will walk in, apologize for being late, and ask how my day is going. I sometimes go into Rebecca's room to check that she's not just napping.
I know she's not, of course, but the checking makes me feel better. Also worse. And freakishly crazy until Clare mentions that she sometimes dials Rebecca's work number.
"It's partly habit," Clare says. "And partly I want her to be there enough to settle for remembering the number."
Even at school, I find myself thinking of and looking for Rebecca. I hadn't realized how much of a lie I told Da. Yes, Rebecca was like a special treat to me, but I'm used to having special treats fairly often. Although I didn't see her as regularly as I might have a "real" sister, thinking of her was, it turns out, a daily occurrence. Just never before in a classroom or locker-lined hallway.
Other than seeing Ben or occasionally beating my dyslexia enough to understand homework, school's not a place where interesting things happen. By surfacing here, Rebecca is demanding both my attention and my interest. Well, not Rebecca, obviously, but the story she's left for us. Left for me.
I can't decide what to think about not being one of the people Rebecca saw for a last time as she was making her goodbyes. The people on that list must have received the news of her death with anxious thoughts about their last meeting with her. Was there something they should have said or done differently? Would she have changed her mind if they had known to try?
I wouldn't want to have to ask those questions. After all, what would I have said to Rebecca if I'd known about her plan? Please don't? I hope someday I'll arrive at a better answer than that.
I'm probably glad I didn't have the chance to regret everything I did or didn't say. But not being picked for a final farewell brings its own doubts. Who were these people she selected and what made them valuable? My being passed over could be proof of my unimportance or could be, instead, one more thing I'll never know.
In the hopes of finding clues or answers, I endlessly review the last two times I saw her.
In September, probably near Labor Day, she closed the store early and came uptown for dinner. There was no discussion that night of Islam, Taliban, or Pashtuns, whose definitions I have since hunted down. So I'm thinking early September, but I wasn't paying enough attention at the time to say for sure.
Rebecca brought us a box of small chocolate pastries and told me, no, I would not look good with bangs. That neither my hair nor my personality was suited to them. I think I left before she did so I could meet Ben for a movie. I would have said something along the lines of Hey, thanks for the cake. See you later.
I didn't see her in a planned way after that, which was unusual, but not unheard of. I knew she was hoping to expand her store and was therefore super busy. Also, October was the one-year anniversary of Janie's death and I could count on the remaining three members of Janie and Julian's family to be distant and bummed out.
The second time also involves pastry, but has more to do with chance than with Rebecca.
My tutor lives in a walkup apartment on one of those small streets tucked between Bleecker and West Fourth. Right opposite the apartment there's a café, and whenever I pass it I look through the windows to the pastry case in the back. I promise myself that when I am free (of school, learning disorders, and the chronic fear which comes from both), I will stop there every afternoon. I have been passing this café twice a week for almost four years.
Being able to stop there for no reason has gradually become a part of how I picture the way I'll wind up. The café scenario is almost more important than the career in theater, having a great love, and never blaming my parents for what they've had to do.
The dyslexia's not a problem in this picture, and I have a book with me that's difficult to read but that I understand. I'm not reading, but having the book is important. I'm with someone (I think a man, but that's not as clear as the book) and between us on a round, glass plate is a napoleon: flaky and sweet. There's also, next to the plate, a scallop-edged paper napkin and a small fork. This last bit is important, as it's the details that make or break a fantasy.
And it was here, intruding upon my vision of the future, that I last saw my sister.
I was passing Caffe Acca, looking into it from across the street, when I registered that the woman seated in the window was Rebecca. It was close to five and the light spilled out from the café into the surrounding shadow. It was like looking at a stage with all of the figures thrown into clear relief. I stopped rushing, so as to see what was really there.
My sister was facing a man whose face was obscured by a tall green fern. I could see his body behind the plant's slender stalk. He was thin and wearing dark pants. I stood still on the other side of the street, just looking.
Rebecca was leaning forward, with her hands clasped together and the tips of her index fingers pressed against her lips. Her profile looked fragile and glowing against the surrounding wood panels and lights. If the man's body hadn't been so thin, I might have wondered if she was with William. When the man reached out and ran his fingers along her arm, I decided it definitely wasn't William. She looked down at the hand, up at the man, and then away.
More than away. Out. Out through the window. Out through the window to me.
Her expression didn't really change and for a second I thought perhaps she didn't see me. But she brought her hands up to her face so that it was shielded from the man in front of her.
This is it, I thought. She's going to send me some kind of a message. Was she mad that I had seen her? I waited for what was probably no more than a moment, but seemed forever before she moved a hand in front of her face. The fingers actually. She was waving at me.
I just stood there trying to guess at her meaning. Then her lips moved and she mouthed a word at me. Words? I couldn't tell. I looked from her face to her hand. I lifted my own hand to wave back. Rebecca shrugged and turned back to the man at her table.
Right then he leaned forward and I thought I recognized him. His hair was dark and his face, at least in profile, was taken up by his nose and mouth. I decided he was simply familiar in the way that all good-looking people are. And yet, I really wanted to know him. Wanted to rush in and ask, Who are you?
Because Rebecca had a history of craving privacy as if it were a drug, I mostly kept a studied indifference toward things she chose to hide: boyfriends, vacation plans, and on occasion, her whereabouts. On the street that day, I decided I was more afraid of infuriating her than I was curious about the man. I touched my waving hand to my face and the unexpected cold it held made me wonder where I had stashed my gloves at the end of last winter.
As I turned away and made a left onto Bleecker, I thought that perhaps I had misunderstood what I wished for. Maybe I didn't want a book I could read or a man who might be my great love. Maybe I w
anted to sit and split a pastry with Rebecca. Had there been a pastry on the table? I put the whole thing out of my mind as I went home. Someday, after all, I would sit and split a pastry with her. I had, in fact, already done so. Many times. It was unlikely that such a common occurrence would find its way into my fantasy of the future.
And yet.
As sitting with Rebecca turns itself into a strictly past-tense event, I find myself returning over and over to that moment outside of Caffe Acca. I can't make myself stop, although there are better, longer memories I could dwell on. Memories where I do more than watch her through a window.
It takes me a while to guess. It isn't whether or not she had a pastry that's important; the detail that counts is the possibility she was waving goodbye.
Nine
AFTER I PUT TOGETHER that Rebecca's goodbye happened without my realizing it, I try being extra kind, polite and patient with everyone I see. People on the bus, my math teacher, and even the seventh grade boys who voted me most-fun-to-look-at. I usually go out of my way to ignore them (I mean, gross), but you just never know. It could be the final time I see any of them.
Only this doesn't last long, as it's not possible to get out of bed while remembering that for someone, somewhere, this is it, the end of the story. Eventually, brushing my teeth and finding a sharp pencil become more important. In fact, my brain is so foggy lately that it's amazing I remember half of what I need to in order to navigate my days. If my being so clueless were happening to someone else, I'd find the things I'm failing to see (to know, remember, and understand) kind of hilarious.
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