Stay With Me (18 page)

"Money is tricky," Raphael says. "You'd be surprised."

Here are some things I know about Clare and money that I didn't know before moving in with her. She almost didn't leave the law firm to work for Edward because of the pay cut. Clare was terrified of winding up as broke as her mother had been before her lighting career took off. I've also found out why Clare and Gyula fought about money.

"The money I earn is to keep me safe," my sister said. "The money he earns gives him power over others."

I would guess that Raphael's money, largely inherited, makes my cousin nervous. He clearly spends it to keep himself and others safe, but I'm sure he's chronically aware that he has more than most people. I don't think Clare would ever suspect Raphael of trying to buy her, but she'd probably prefer he didn't try.

"I guess I could use a present," I tell him, hoping that when I earn money it'll keep me safe without making me nervous, suspicious, or afraid.

All this happens days before the July Fourth weekend. Raphael wants us to spend it at his house in the mountains. He bought it when his father died and has been plotting for years to take my sister there. But Clare thinks we should stay in the city. She says as long as there are alerts for another possible hit, she wants to be here.

"This is my town," she says. "No one's running me out of it."

As if by staying she has some kind of say-so in what will or will not happen. She still gets upset every time she sees flags hanging where they didn't used to be. I like seeing them even though they remind you of nothing but change. I personally don't have anything against running away, but Clare's wish rules.

Everyone but us appears to be leaving for the holiday. Charlotte is going to the Hamptons and so is Eamon.

"Dad loves it there," Eamon says. "He almost had to give it to my mother in the divorce, but she decided it would kill him to lose it."

I've gathered that if the situation had been reversed, Mr. Greyhalle wouldn't have been as generous.

"You'd like it," Eamon says about his father's house. "There's a terrace and a view of the ocean, like your hotel."

"It's Clare's hotel," I say.

Da and Aunt Ingrid's really, but the idea of it belongs to Clare.

"It's a perfect place to work," Eamon says, which I know is important.

The cable network that hired him to turn the Japanese show into an American one has approved his premise and character sketches and now wants a pilot script. The show sounds odd, but not as odd as Eamon's last show, which was about aliens, monsters, and a crusade against evil.

"I might call from there, is that okay?"

"Of course," I say. "Why?"

"Why? I don't know, maybe I'll miss you."

I hadn't meant why would he call, but why wouldn't it be okay. I'd love if he called. Eamon's phoned at the office three times and taken me to lunch twice. I like when he calls. I know there's no dinner date or
going from there
waiting for us the way there was when I worked at Acca. But being with Eamon still makes me feel as if something is about to happen.

Maybe this is what Christmas and Chanukah feel like.

So, of course I want him to call, but I also know he can't miss me.
I miss you
is how Ben ends all his e-mails. Including the last one giving me a list of all the computer gadgets I might ask Raphael to buy. Since I don't want a scanner or a CD burner, I ask Eamon.

I tell him that my cousin—well, my sister's boyfriend who is my cousin except he's not and someday I'll draw the chart—but the point is he wants to give me something. A big and happy thing that I don't need. Any thoughts?

"I take it he'd like to give your sister something but can't yet," Eamon says.

"I think so," I say. "Yes."

"Time is a nice thing," he says. "Clothes get old and computers break. You could ask for his time."

I could ask for more of yours, I think, but no. That would just make everything weird and odd. Even if I can't always figure things out, I'm aware that for him being friends is taking more thought and care than dating would. He's mostly the same, but I don't think it's easy. My job is to keep buried whatever part of me likes him as more than a friend.

"Have a fun trip," I say, after approving his gift suggestion. "Enjoy the ocean."

R
APHAEL'S TIME TURNS OUT
to be exactly what I want
and
need. Now, how often does that happen? Since returning from Poland, I have been on an antidyslexic schedule. Each night, after thirty minutes of knitting and math review, I read ten pages of
Monte Crista.
I will be done with the book in forty-three days. I rarely need the dictionary but I'm not enjoying anything yet.

My father and my tutor claim that people read for the company. That a book is like a friend. The characters seem real, they say, and their story important.

Not so much for me.

If reading is a struggle, it's lonely. It's just you, the dark cloud of
Huh?,
and the few glimmers of
Oh, yes. I see.
I tell Raphael that his present should be to read with me. That way I'll have company even if this guy in
Monte Cristo
stays in prison forever.

Clare picks up the book, scanning the cover.

"Da told you this was her first favorite book?"

I nod.

"It was, but he'd given her the unabridged version," Clare says. "Mama had to put up a huge fight to get him to give her this one."

My sister should be the one to meet with Adrien Tilden and try to shake Rebecca's secrets free. Clare was the one who knew her, all the details belong to her. My Rebecca is like Clare's hotel, an idea more than a reality.

And yet Da was the one who knew that hotel inside out. Only he's a doctor now and it's Clare whose entire work life is defined by her idea of that hotel. That's worth considering. Because who is to say that my idea of Rebecca is less powerful than Clare's vivid and factual reality?

During most of July, I see that I had been wrong when I thought Gyula suited Clare. They had certainly gleamed and glittered, but they didn't quite fit the way my sister and Raphael do. They're almost the exact same height and, when not working, can each be found either reading or staring intently through their glasses at nothing.

Janie was right when she said that Raphael was anxious to please Clare. But this judgment, while clever, missed two things. One, Raphael is anxious to please everyone. It's who he is in the same way that Clare is someone who is blonde. Two, Clare accepts Raphael's efforts to make her life nice. Unlike with Gyula or at work, my sister doesn't need to prove how well she can do on her own.

At first, I worried that things would be different now that Clare and Raphael were together instead of just unrelated cousins. Instead, everything is easier. Except for Thursdays, Raphael stays at the apartment on weekdays. They sleep in the living room and I make a point of not going in there after saying good night. On the weekends we either go to the house in Brooklyn or the mountains. The drive there takes forever, but Raphael lets me fix the back porch stairs and finish some pantry shelves. We're going to build Clare a window seat and walk-in closet for their bedroom.

I have a plan to make the side porch, which is screened in, bigger than it currently is. I unroll my sketches and measurements and show Raphael with a
voilá.
He is suitably impressed and asks if I would be interested in helping him put in a half bath right by the kitchen. He'd have to teach me some plumbing, but we'd have fun.

"Yes," I say, and then add, "Yes, yes!"

At dinner, Clare listens to us talk about framing, wiring, and floor installation.

"I think Leila loves this house more than I love you," she says to Raphael while passing me the bread.

His face gives away that it's the first time she's said it. He must have thought, during those years when she wouldn't talk to him, that he would never find a way back to her. It makes the whole falling in love thing a little less scary to see that mistakes can be reversed.

"What is it about Thursdays?" Eamon asks me. "Where's Raphael then?"

I've been keeping him partially updated about the changes going on at my house. We've taken to meeting on Wednesdays at Acca. His father still has physical therapy and I get off work in time to go downtown and meet Eamon. I am, he likes to say, the highlight of his week.

I think that's only because outside of work his days are pretty much devoted to making a sick man feel healthy. Not so thrilling. And even though I am his highlight, he always tells me—every Wednesday—that I should find someone better to hang out with.

"Raphael's at home Thursday nights," I say. "Clare needs time to herself."

"Is he that annoying?"

"No," I say. "Of course not. But you know, her last boyfriend was hardly ever around. She's more used to being alone."

Clare calls Thursday nights having a date with herself. We usually wind up with my making dinner and then eating it while seated on the floor. She likes to play gin rummy and drink enough water to drown a fish. I'm learning to hoard low cards and have beaten her a few times. She says I'm a better player than Rebecca. Maybe so, but probably not as good a cook.

"What happened to your hand?" Eamon asks, putting his coffee cup down and pointing toward my right thumb.

I stop eating chocolate raspberry cake and look at my rather impressive bruise. It's of the blackish-blue and orange variety.

"Hammer," I say. "Bang, oops, missed, hit the wrong nail."

I screamed so loudly I almost gave Raphael a heart attack. I definitely woke Clare up from her nap.

"Let me see," Eamon says, taking hold of my fingers.

It is the first time this summer that he's touched me on purpose. It's still there, though, the zing-zang-zoom. Being desperate to hide it makes it a little worse than before.

"It's nothing," I say. "Building stuff, you know."

I pull my hand away, he signals Drew for the check. Everything goes safely back into place.

I had always thought that being in love made people create a world of their own with space for only two, but my sister and Raphael bring everyone into their new, sharp attention. It's as if finding each other at long last has made them even more capable than usual. There's nothing they touch that doesn't seem easier as a result.

The letter to Adrien Tilden? Done. Raphael listens to my description, looks at the address book, the book of translated Akhmatova poetry, and considers the fact that Clare has never heard of him.

"We want to treat him as if he were an old friend," Raphael says. "Without assuming anything. Polite, warm, no pressure."

"What if he's an old boyfriend?" Clare asks. "Or worse, what if he doesn't even know she's dead?"

"What if he could tell Leila why he was with Rebecca that day?" Raphael asks. "It's clearly important to her."

"I just don't want you to be disappointed," Clare says to me.

"Little late for that," Raphael says, meaning, I think, that when Rebecca killed herself we were all, among other things, disappointed.

The three of us sit down with paper and come up with the following:

Dear Adrien Tilden, Allow me to introduce myself as Rebecca Abranel's sister Leila. I have reason to believe you were a friend of hers and at the risk of being intrusive I wonder if I might, at a time that is convenient for you, ask you about her. As I am significantly younger than Rebecca, my knowledge of her is limited and I would gratefully welcome the opportunity to increase it. Thank you in advance, Leila Abranel.

It doesn't sound like me, but it does sound like us, and it will never get in the mail if I wait until I write it entirely myself.

With that done, they even find a way (without trying) to help me clear up how I feel about Eamon. His invitation for dinner to meet his father and
some other people
finally materializes and while Clare says something like
Oh, fun, let's buy you a dress,
Raphael has other ideas.

"This is that guy who called here about sending flowers to Poland?" he asks.

"Yes," Clare says. "I've met him. He's very nice."

"I haven't met him," Raphael says.

"Oh, my God," Clare says, laughing. "If you were her father that might actually matter."

"Clare, are you really going to let Leila go to some man's house?"

"She has
coffee
with him," my sister says.

"Cake," I say. "He has coffee."

"It's a place where everyone knows her," Clare says. "It's not like they're up to anything."

"I'm sure she's not," Raphael says.

"It's not 'some man's house,'" I say, not loving the implication here. "It's his father's. His father knows Charlotte and she knew Janie so it's practically like we know him."

"Practically isn't good enough," Raphael says.

"It is for me," Clare says.

"Well it probably isn't for Eamon," I say. "I think he's been dying for someone to tell me how wrong it is for us to be friends. If you tell me, maybe he'll shut up about it."

This seems to soothe Raphael a little bit, but he still insists that Eamon come over one night.

"He's taking care of his sick father," I say. "How is he supposed to do that and be here?"

"He'll figure it out."

"You're acting like there's only one reason he'd want to be around her," Clare says.

"I'm acting like I don't trust men," Raphael says, which makes her laugh so hard, I know I'm going to have to tell Eamon my guardians are demanding a meeting.

"About time," he says. "I was beginning to think your parents had left you with the most irresponsible people on earth."

What I would like to know is why, if we're just friends, it's irresponsible for Clare
not
to think the worst. And then, perhaps later than another girl would, I see why this is hard for him. If I were that mythical twenty, he'd ask me out. Which probably means he likes me more than he wants to. Not exactly as I like him, but also in a hidden way.