Stay With Me (3 page)

But Raphael didn't call her, which is how I know the news is true; Rebecca has killed herself. She always referred to Raphael as
our favorite cousin,
and I doubt he'll be thinking clearly for weeks. We're incredibly lucky he didn't tell Da over the phone.

So this is what being lucky means now.

When my mother comes home, summoned by a belated phone call, she finds me in the hall, sitting in front of the coat closet. I'm not crying—that won't come for months—but my body's too heavy for standing. Mother dumps her coat and bag on the floor.

"Oh, God, Leila," she says, crouching down to hug me.

Her arms hold harder than is comfortable, but I let myself match it until I can feel her relax.

"He'll never get over this," she says, standing up and sliding off her shoes.

And because my mother is capable and clever and more than equipped to handle crisis, I hear everything else she means.

Oh, God, Leila, I am so sorry.

Oh, God, Leila, how could she have done this.

Oh, God, Leila, we will do everything wrong.

Forgive me.

That we will do everything wrong seems unavoidable, no matter how competent my mother is. What could be more wrong than killing yourself?
How could she?
is the right question. And yet, poor Rebecca.

"I know," I say, thinking how Da will now be forever different. "But he might."

Mom disappears into the small room in which the girls slept on the rare occasions when they stayed over. The room where my father's real life is kept. Medical journals, mail, file folders, old records, and an entire shelf of photographs devoted to documenting a life that has now ended more than once.

Da wants Clare. It's all he wants.

"Where's Clare?" he keeps saying. He has to go with Raphael to the girls' apartment to meet the police and the medical examiner. I'd like to go with them, but explaining this, asking for it, seems so beside the point.

Raphael has offered to fly over to tell Clare in person. He doesn't think she should get the news on the phone. Raphael's father was really rich and he left a lot of money, so flying to Europe at the last minute is the kind of thing Raphael can afford to do. No one has ever told me what Uncle Harold did. I asked Janie once and she said, "Harold? The man printed money." I've never had the chance to find out
what printed money
really means.

"Clare's coming home in two days," my mother says. "I think we can give her a day of peace."

"No," Raphael says. "She'll never forgive us. A day is too long not to know."

"If you fly, it will be tomorrow before you reach her," Da says. "I've got to call her."

I remember how it was Clare who called Da when Janie died. His nose started to bleed before he even got off the phone. As I went to wrap ice in a towel, I felt so badly for my sister. I knew that if I were Clare right then, I'd want someone to take care of me. If you have a fever or just a case of the blahs, my father is great. He's the first one there with aspirin, clear liquids, or tickets to an extra-fun musical.

But if your news is bad enough to upset him too (I
got another C in English, Da
), forget it. I remember giving Da his ice pack as I made a quick list of where the blood needed to be cleaned from—his wrist, his tie, and the cover of his checkbook. I hoped that Janie had died peacefully in her sleep. And that my sisters would know how to do whatever Da could not.

I don't hear the call when my father reaches Clare. I assume he tells her she can come stay with us for a while and that she says no. I hope her boyfriend does for Clare whatever Rebecca did for her when Janie died. Although it seems more likely that there's nothing one can do this time. While it's easy to tell that my sisters weren't close in a
let's stay up and talk
kind of way, they were each what the other one had. Or so it seems to me. Seemed to me.

We will not just do everything wrong. We will need entirely new verbs.

A
FTER
D
A AND
R
APHAEL HAVE LEFT,
I call Ben. All I say is my sister's name and the words
Please, come.
When he shows up, he proves yet again why he was once my favorite person in the world. I guess he gets the details from my mom because when he comes into my room, he gives me a hug without even trying to kiss me. Quietly, he deals out some cards for crazy eights, which we play according to an elaborate set of rules and exceptions. When I say I don't feel like it he reshuffles and plays solitaire while I lie on the bed, not thinking.

Eventually, when it's really too dark and cold, he gets our coats and I follow him up Seventy-fourth Street to Lexington. We go to one of the coffee store chains that he hates and he buys me some kind of triple chocolate mocha that even I, with my endless sweet tooth, can't finish. We play tic-tac-toe, which stops being challenging after the age of seven, but is, weirdly, always fun. After we have covered four sheets of paper in his notebook, Ben pushes it away and says,

"I really loved Rebecca."

I smile because I know exactly why he did. I didn't start Tyler Prep until eighth grade, and Ben was my first friend there. He was taking math and science classes with the eleventh-graders but also helping the sixth grade boys do things like rig the headmaster's office with water balloons. I liked how Ben fit in everywhere and nowhere. After he told our English teacher to stop calling on me to read aloud ("No sane person wants to do that," he said), we spent two years being best friends.

The summer before tenth grade, I went to stay with my grandparents in California and Ben went on a biking tour of Spain with his older brother. When we got back to school, Ben was a complete psycho to me. I could not do or say anything right. We both almost got thrown off the tech crew for arguing so much.

I reported all of this to Rebecca, who gave me what I came to think of as
the look.
Sly, sweet, and amused.

"Ben wants to date you," she said. "He always has, but it took spending the summer with his hotshot brother to make him see it."

"What's his brother got to do with anything?"

"Ben has probably spent all summer explaining that yes, his best friend's a girl. No, he's not dating her. Yes, she's very pretty. No, there's nothing wrong with him."

I loved how Rebecca's voice slid over these imagined, ridiculous answers to stupid questions.

Hardly anyone at school ever dated. If you liked someone, you were supposed to hang out together with other people. But I had distinct memories of watching Rebecca get ready to go. out with her husband when they were dating. It seemed like a good idea to have someone for whom it was worth taking the trouble to look nice.

"Well, why doesn't he just ask me, then?"

"Because Ben, while a really nice guy, is also a world-class geek," Rebecca said. "He doesn't know how."

I had already heard from her that most interesting men were geeks in high school. The more interesting the man, she said, the longer he had been a geek. And Ben, who collected maps, could take apart his father's computer, and wanted to be an architect, was the most interesting boy I knew. And the nicest. And, at the time, the most psycho.

"You have to ask him, nicely, if he wants to ask you out," my sister said. "Make it very clear you will say yes."

So I dutifully went off to tell Ben exactly what Rebecca had said, to which he replied,
Maybe I should ask
her
out.
But he settled for me and now everyone calls him my boyfriend and I suppose that fits; although I know he's something both more and less than that.

"I know you loved her," I tell him now.

"I kind of wish she'd been in a car wreck."

"I guess," I say, vaguely aware he has said something no one else will, but not sure that a car wreck would make anything easier.

Normally, Ben and I try to solve anything we think of as a problem together—that C in English, for example. Or when his mother got fired and didn't know how to tell his father. However, I'm not sure this qualifies as a problem. More to the point, I no longer want to solve problems with Ben.

Exactly five days ago, Ben and I decided, after months of my not being sure, that we should, no, make that we wanted to, have sex. For obvious reasons, this was not a decision I made only with him. I'm sure I love Ben enough and I know how my body feels with him. It feels the way I do with cake: I want more. But in this, as with cake, I didn't think more was exactly right.

And, so.

I asked my mother. I trust her more than almost anyone else, and she has never lied to me. This time her answer was suspect.

"When you definitely want to, you'll know," she said.

"Doubt is your body's way of saying he's not the right one," she added. "Or that the time isn't right."

If it was up to my body, I'd have done it by now. Something I did
not
tell her but that she must have guessed.

"Honey, I'm not saying you're not ready," she said. "I just want you to honor your uncertainty."

She then went on to remind me of all the precautions I should take when and if Ben and I (or as she put it,
you and whoever
) went ahead. I didn't think she was lying, exactly, or that she was against it. But how would anyone ever face the first time of
anything
without being unsure?

A question I then took to Rebecca. This was back in August when Ben and I first started the
will we or not
talk. She laughed when I told her my mother's theory.

"That's so very Elsa," she said. "But look, you won't know until you do it. And, listen, I am not advocating reckless, mindless sex here."

I told her I'd already heard enough about preventing both pregnancy and disease.

"Of course you have," Rebecca said. "What I meant is that Ben loves you and I think you're just scared. If after you do it, you still don't know what you want, then we'll have another talk."

I thought that a kind of truth lay somewhere between my mother and Rebecca. I spent a few months hoping to find it, but on the day before Thanksgiving my body decided what my brain was incapable of sorting out. It was more unpleasant than I had hoped. Not because it hurt, which it did, although a lot less than everyone says. What I didn't like was being the sole focus of Ben's attention while also feeling ignored.

This makes no sense, I know, but it's how it was. However, if it wasn't quite what I expected, it did at least shush the
more
feeling I always had when Ben and I pushed up against the limits of not doing it. I do a better job on my own, but that's got to be a practice thing.

Even after three more times with him, I still didn't know if I wanted to. This didn't make me sad or angry or disappointed—all things I suddenly feel now as I look at Ben and then down at the remains of my mocha. Rebecca promised me that we would talk, if after I slept with Ben I was still uncertain. Although maybe she thought he and I already had and that since I didn't say anything I was fine. But shouldn't she have checked with me before...? Unless it was sudden. Could overdosing on pills be a last-minute decision?

This is exactly the kind of confusion I need Rebecca to help me make clear. Not Ben. Even though it's typical of him to know things—important things—before I do. A car wreck, unless you are driving on purpose into a wall, is better than killing yourself. And yet, I've always checked his knowledge with someone I'm certain knows better.

There were many things Rebecca did tell me: why her parents divorced, why her own marriage ended, why I should be happy Janie was not my mother, and why Clare sought out the most unsuitable boyfriends. I thought of Rebecca as a living, breathing resource book for whatever was impossible to decipher on my own.

Everyone always complained that she was secretive. My mother had recently asked Da, after he'd had lunch with Rebecca, how she seemed, and if plans for expanding the store were going well. My father shrugged, saying,

"God forbid she tell me. She seems fine. Who knows? She looks good, though."

To which my mother said, "She always looks good. It's nice she called you."

Rebecca is easy to know,
I remember thinking with a certain amount of
what is their problem.
And now I think how that lunch was only two weeks ago. The week before Thanksgiving. Oh, God. She can't have been fine. Even if she did decide to kill herself at the last minute, that kind of last-minute decision doesn't happen if you've been fine. Does it?

"My father," I say to Ben. "They just had lunch. He's never going to stop thinking he should have known."

"He'll think that anyway," Ben says. "Because of the first time, he's been worrying about this since forever."

Right, of course he has. I once told Janie that maybe Rebecca was so secretive because everyone tried to monitor her. I was going to present myself as living proof that if you didn't press Rebecca too hard for information, she'd part with it.

"Yes, she's given us such good reason not to keep an eye on her," Janie said dryly, and I just shut up. Whatever my sister had done to herself when she made those scars, she'd also done to her parents. And they hadn't gotten better.

"Let's get you home," Ben says. "I'll bring you your homework tomorrow."

"I'll be at school," I say, and then remember. How can I be forgetting the only thing I'm thinking about?

"I'm guessing you won't be," he says, helping me with my coat.

"I just never thought she would—" I say, before pulling the rest of that sentence in, far back in, never to see the light of day.

I'm not the one who gets to say I never thought she would leave me. Even if I am the only one who had that kind of faith in her. Just then I remember the one thing that people who kill themselves often do. It's the very thing that people in car wrecks can never do: write a note. There has to be one. One that explains.

She didn't leave me. Or if she has, she's left me with a story. There'll be a reason for all of this. I have to wait. Out of what seems, as Ben and I walk home, like an immense mess, there's an end. Dyslexia has taught me that clarity comes only through effort, patience, and help from those who know how to give it.