I came out and rolled my eyes at you. Your turn. As I mentioned, I put my ear to the door.
Nothing.
You came out minutes later with a smile stretched across your face. She held a motherly hand to your shoulder.
“Thank you so much,” you said.
“My pleasure.”
Out on the sidewalk you spun around like the actresses do in Dad’s lame black-and-white movies.
“I’m going to fall in love,” you said. “Real love. Very soon.”
Okay, I’ll admit it: I was jealous. Who doesn’t want to fall in real love? In fact, the idea was so appealing to me that for a minute I forgot Madam Mai was a con artist who didn’t even bother to dress the part.
“She’s full of it,” I said.
You raised one eyebrow at me. “Time will tell.”
If only I could have looked at your palm and seen your future and then done something to change it.
You worked so hard on that portrait. And it was really good, despite the fact that we have no talent. Mom and Dad stocked their houses with art supplies—reams of white paper, pointy pencils, an array of colored Sharpies. We spent hours at the art table drawing, painting, cutting, gluing, never making anything worth keeping, but enjoying each other’s company. Remember?
City Day takes its arts pretty seriously. What other school would stage a production of Les Misérables? Why not Oklahoma! or Annie? At City Day you can learn any instrument known to man, and once you learn it you can join the orchestra or the jazz ensemble or the school rock band. You can take electives in photography, graphic design, pottery, even the basics of architecture.
But every freshman must begin with Intro to Visual Arts, a survey course taught by Mr. Barr.
I made my own charcoal portrait this fall. Every freshman makes one, and I hated doing it. I hated the way the charcoal smelled, like poverty and illness, and I missed sitting at a table with you and our Sharpies. The result was a girl who looked wan and ugly.
Anyway, everyone loves Mr. Barr. He’s fun and funny and he’s young and he dresses cooler than any boy in school and he talks to us like we’re his equals. He knows about the music we listen to. He’s seen the movies we see, not the kind favored by Dad and Sonia. Going to his class feels like a break in the everyday.
You’d mentioned him to me. Lots of times. You’d never thought to mention Sam Fitzpayne, but you’d mentioned Mr. B.
I was looking forward to Intro to Visual Arts because I’d heard it was one of the best classes taught by one of the best teachers. Felix, who’s genuinely talented, adored Intro to Visual Arts, and Mr. B., from day one.
That Sunday after the first week of school he’d called to ask about our Spanish homework, but I knew he was really calling to hear about the party at Hazel Porter’s house, and to find out if I thought there was some sort of wormhole through the City Day space-time continuum that might allow him to make her his girlfriend.
“She’s a senior, Felix,” I said. “She could be your babysitter.”
“If that’s my only way in, I’ll take it.”
“I love you”—I really did, though I couldn’t ever just come out and tell him that without turning it into a joke—“but she’s so totally out of your league she’s playing in a different time zone.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry. Truth hurts. Want an ice pack?”
“Was she with anyone? Like, did you see her talking to anyone who’s objectively better looking than I am?”
“Objectively?”
“Yes.”
“No, I did not.”
“Didn’t think so.”
I told him what I could about the party, who was talking to whom, who drank too much, who went out onto the balcony to smoke a joint, all of this reporting somewhat unreliable considering I hardly knew anyone by name.
I didn’t tell him about Sam Fitzpayne. I wasn’t ready to turn Sam into the official Object of My Affection.
He asked, “What do you think of Intro to Visual Arts?”
“It’s fun.”
“Isn’t Mr. B. the coolest?”
“Yeah, he’s really cool.”
“Does your class have the swearing jar?”
“The huh?”
“The swearing jar. He has this jar on his desk and he says whenever someone uses a bad word in class they have to put a dollar in the swearing jar and at the end of the semester we’ll have a pizza party with all the earnings. So I raised my hand and said, Doesn’t that kinda encourage swearing? Like, the more money we have the better the party is gonna be? And he said, Mr. De La Cruz, right? And I said, Felix. And he said, Mr. De La Cruz, you’re goddamn right! And then he took a dollar out of his wallet and put it in the jar!”
Who wouldn’t love a teacher like that? Our class didn’t have one, because among his many attributes, Mr. Barr is uneven and unpredictable. Sure, a swearing jar is a pretty egregious example of buying off student affection, but considering most teachers don’t seem to care what you think of them, it’s nice to know, I suppose, that Mr. B. actually gives a crap.
The kinds of rumors that follow Mr. Barr are textbook. Simple math.
Take one good-looking male in his mid to late twenties with a Salvador Dalí tattoo on his bicep. Add a student body that’s 50 percent female and unusually mature and worldly. Put all that into a progressive environment. And BAM: rumors that the teacher sleeps with his students.
You told me they start up again every year before they go wherever it is rumors go to die. If they were true, you said, Mr. B. wouldn’t be working at City Day anymore.
Of course I believed you; you don’t lie to me. And also because it was unthinkable that any teenage girl could be lucky enough to have Mr. B. all to herself.
Your freshman year, the rumors were about Mr. B. and Yelli Rothman, who’d since gone on to study art history at Yale. Last year’s star of the show was Hazel Porter, but she’s a senior now, and isn’t taking any art classes, so she’s off the hook. In the end, everyone admits this is only gossip. But still, the rumors come back every year like the swallows at Capistrano.
This year they were slow to start. Meanwhile, you seemed less than thrilled with the everyday goings-on at school, with the talk in the halls, the parties, the boys, and even the soccer team. You seemed distant. Not like you.
I chalked it up to the stress that comes with being a junior and having to think about the future, leaving home, and knowing that your grades actually matter.
From where I was standing with my brand-new City Day student ID card, the everyday that bored you was bursting with life and electric possibility and the question of who I would become in the months that stretched out ahead.
It made me think of a fortune I’d gotten on one of our Chinatown outings with Dad. Remember? He took us to the fortune cookie factory, hidden away down a narrow little alley. Dad told us this was our secret, we should never reveal its location to anyone, or else it would lose what made it so special. I watched the old man work the machine, pressing the square of dough around the white slip of paper and into the signature crescent shape.
I opened mine as we wandered along the main drag with throngs of Chinese families doing their Sunday shopping. Such stock we put in fortune-telling. I read my words of wisdom and then crumpled up the paper and shoved it deep in my pocket because it made no sense to me and I just wanted to eat the cookie.
But I kept it, because you know me, I’m sentimental and superstitious and also I’m a strong candidate for that reality show about hoarding. But I like to think I kept that fortune because I knew that someday it might make sense to me.
With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes the silk gown.
When school started this year, I was the mulberry leaf, but I was waiting. I had patience. You, Layla, were the beautiful silk gown, and I had every intention of becoming one too.
ON THE MORNING OF OUR first soccer game I woke up feeling like I had to hurl. A stomach virus? I stayed in bed, clutching my middle, and
buried my face in my pillow.
It’s just nerves.
I opened one eye. Parker was sitting on my desk with his feet on my chair.
Get up and put on your uniform. Grab something to eat. You’ll feel better.
My stuffed animals were never this bossy.
Why are you even nervous? You know you’re just gonna sit on the bench the whole time.
This is what I liked about Duncan. He never sugarcoated anything.
He sat at the foot of my bed, eying the last stuffed animal I kept in view. The rest lived high up in my closet.
I mean, no offense, he said. But you’re just a freshman.
I checked myself. Sick or nervous?
Parker was probably right. I had game-day jitters. I needed to go downstairs and eat something. I needed to remind myself that playing soccer was one of the only things I could do well. But Duncan was probably right too; it was unlikely I’d leave the bench.
I climbed out of bed.
Atta girl, Parker said.
I rubbed my temples.
Duncan walked over to my window and peeked outside. Fog in September, he said, shaking his head. What field are you playing on?
The Polo Fields.
We used to play there.
I knew that because Dad took us to one of their games. He thought it would be good for us to see some soccer at the high school level. I doubted they remembered.
I went to my closet and took out my new City Day uniform. N. Golden. Number 13. I grabbed the purple shorts with the gray stripes down the sides. The socks, my sports bra. I laid it all out on my bed.
These are the kinds of moments that can be awkward. Duncan and Parker may not be real, but that doesn’t mean I want to get naked in front of them.
I closed my eyes tight. Opened them again.
The Creeds were gone.
* * *
The crowd was larger than I’d anticipated. Maybe because it was the first game of the year. Or because the fog had lifted and it was a glorious San Francisco day, warm, blue, and sharp, and where better to spend such a day than deep in the heart of Golden Gate Park?
The most likely explanation, however, was that we were playing back-to-back with the boys’ varsity, so the turnout wasn’t for us.
Duncan was right. I didn’t leave the bench except for huddling around Coach Jarvis as she scribbled on her whiteboard. I made a show of paying attention when those x’s and o’s and arrows had as much relevance to my life as the NASDAQ charts in Dad’s Wall Street Journal.
We won 2–0. You played beautifully in midfield, anchoring and supporting the team. Chiara Vittorio made both goals and reaped all the glory, but neither goal would have occurred if it hadn’t been for you.
Mom and Dad were there. You’d think I’d be used to seeing them together by now, since they don’t let the fact that they can’t live with each other, or that he’s gone on to marry someone younger and, I hate to say it, more beautiful, interfere with raising us. They stood side by side and cheered together and they gave each other a high five after each of Chiara’s goals.
Felix was there, of course. And a pretty decent chunk of the freshman class.
I scanned the crowd for Sam Fitzpayne while trying not to look like I was scanning the crowd. I wanted it to seem like my head was in the game on the off chance that Coach Jarvis might soon see her way clear to making me one of those x’s on her whiteboard.
No Sam. I saw your best friend, Schuyler, who didn’t go to City Day but still came out to cheer you on, and I saw Liv, your City Day best friend—their rivalry put them on opposite ends of the crowd. Mr. Frank, dean of students. Ms. Palladino, head of school. I saw Mr. B.
It didn’t strike me as strange that Mr. B. came out on a Saturday morning to watch a soccer game, but now, looking back, he was the only teacher there who wasn’t a dean or the head of school. Attendance wasn’t part of his job description. He was there because he wanted to be there.
Afterward, you said you had plans with a friend. Mom bailed because it was a Saturday and Dad takes the weekend parenting shift.
Dad asked, “How ’bout we hit up the Dumpling King and then go sit on the beach and watch the surf?”
It sounded nice. But you had your thing, Mom had hers, and Felix stood waiting for me. I felt like being with someone my own age.
“Rain check?” I asked.
“Why would we want to sit on the beach in the rain?”
Dad’s sense of humor is seriously in need of an upgrade.
Felix and I walked over to the Bison Paddock. No, I do not know the difference between bison and buffalo. And I don’t know why we find them so fascinating when they don’t do much other than stand around and sometimes sit and occasionally graze in the grass. It’s cool to have animals that look like they belong back in the Ice Age living right in the middle of San Francisco. Especially since, as Dad likes to remind us, real estate doesn’t come cheap here. But if you’re looking to go where the action is, you’re not going to find it with the buffalo.
Felix and I like to imagine what they’re thinking. We manufacture drama. Love triangles and hidden secrets and terrible betrayals.
He pointed to the one nearest to us. “He’s decided that he’s a woman trapped in a man’s body and hasn’t worked up the courage to tell his family he’s about to start hormone therapy.”
“She’s got a spending problem.” I pointed to the one sleeping under the tree. “She stays up all night buying things she doesn’t need on the Home Shopping Network and then crashes hard most of the day.”
Maybe what we like so much about the buffalo is the simple fact of them. They never change. They aren’t going to surprise you by doing something unexpected. They’re going to stand, or sleep under a tree, or graze a bit.
That’s all.
Actually, the part about them never changing isn’t entirely true. Buffalo have lived in Golden Gate Park since the 1890s, at least that’s what the sign on the fence says, so unless they have some crazy life expectancy, they die and then get replaced by other buffalo that look just like them.
That’s why we create drama for them. Lives that stay the same day in and day out don’t make any sense to us.
We walked out of the park to find a café where we could get a coffee and Felix could show me some of his drawings. He clutched his sketchbook proudly to his chest.
I’ve never been particularly skilled at living in the moment or being here now or whatever it is yoga and meditation are supposed to teach you. So maybe it was the perfect weather, or the fact that we’d won 2–0, or the steadfastness of the buffalo, but at that moment I was able to appreciate how lucky I was to have a friend like Felix De La Cruz.
I’m not telling you this to impart some sort of touchy-feely wisdom about gratitude or whatever, but as I walked out of the park with Felix, I thought about how you had not one best friend, but two. Schuyler and Liv.
They were both at the soccer game.
You said you had plans with a friend, and I wondered: Liv or Schuyler?
I didn’t consider the possibility that your plans were with neither of them.
REMEMBER HOW WE USED TO tell Mom everything?
It’s different with Dad. He’s easygoing and fun to be around, but still, even with Mom’s short temper and intolerance for a dropped jacket in the front hall, she’s always been the one we’ve turned to when we needed someone to put things in perspective.
Sometimes I think about how after they broke up Mom and Dad settled in the most ironic of places: Dad on bedrock, Mom on landfill.
Dad lives in Noe Valley on solid, unmovable ground, while Mom bought a place in the Marina, which is sort of like purchasing a high-priced sand castle. The ’89 earthquake practically leveled her entire neighborhood. That was before we were born, obviously, but we know the stories, and we’ve seen the pictures: it’s only a matter of time before the next shifting of the plates mixes us up like a bunch of Boggle cubes.
So it’s funny that Dad
, the risk taker, and Mom, the cautious one, live in converse seismic zones.
Because Mom is our bedrock. She’s the one who’ll be there no matter what the tectonic plates decide. I don’t want to say anything bad about Dad, because I adore him and he’s a great father, but he’s maybe a little bit like the castle made of sand. Fun, whimsical, not entirely reliable.
Anyway, back to telling Mom everything. I know growing up is about figuring out how to carve out private space and what to keep to yourself. That can be tricky, but I think we found it easier than most to cut Mom out because we had each other.
If I’d been in third grade instead of ninth, I’d have come home from school in those first weeks and said “Mom, there’s this boy. His name is Sam. I think I kinda love him.” But instead I came home and said “Fine” when she asked how it was going and “Nope” when she asked if anything interesting had happened.
You weren’t more forthcoming with Mom, which wasn’t anything new. But when you started to be vague with me, I wasn’t about to put up with it.
Even so, it took a few weeks or so to work up the courage to ask, in a roundabout way: What gives?
I knew I couldn’t just look at you meaningfully and say What’s wrong with you lately? or Is there something you want to tell me?
Instead I waited until we were on the bus from Mom’s to Dad’s. Usually Mom drives us or Dad picks us up, but they both had other things on their calendars, and anyway, we’ve always enjoyed navigating San Francisco on our own.
“Life would be so much simpler if they’d just buy me a car,” you said. “It’s not like they can’t afford it.”
“I don’t think that’s the point.”
“What is the point, then? Some sort of lesson? What, exactly, do they think I’m learning by riding the bus?” You pointed to an advertisement above my head. “Oh, I guess it’s critical I learn Dr. Laslow can brighten my smile and laser away my unwanted, unseemly hairs for only $999.”
I looked up at Dr. Laslow and his creepy white teeth.
“Yeah, Mom and Dad can be so unreasonable,” I said, even though I could see why they’d refuse to buy a barely seventeen-year-old a car. Especially in a city where no one can go more than seven miles in any direction without reaching its limits. Where did you need to get on your own? Why couldn’t you just be content with riding the bus with me, or catching a lift from Mom and Dad?
We Are the Goldens Page 3