Stay With Me (6 page)

"It's not much," Da told me. "But they're now yours."

If she took the trouble to leave me things, why wasn't I one of the people she saw in the few weeks before she did it? In the past month, I've had these bouts of ... well, of wanting to smack Rebecca right across the face. And then the stupidity of this thought or desire or whatever it is makes my head want to explode.

I'm not mad she did it. It's more that by doing it, she became more of the person Da and Clare know. Less of the one I thought I did. I have to figure this out. If only I knew why she did this. Why would anyone do this? I mean, really.

"In the bedroom?" Da asks. "Have you been in there?"

"Yeah, yes, sure, of course," Clare says. "Door's open, bed's made. Go on, I'll keep Leila company."

There's no mistaking my sister's grim satisfaction in sending Da into Rebecca's room. Da looks reluctant but walks off in that direction. I think that while Clare understands why Da is going away, she's not that happy with his decision. But I could be wrong, as she smiles at me in a real enough way.

"The photographs are over there," she says, motioning to the windows. "I'm pretty sure those are the ones she meant for you to have."

Three frames hang between the windows. Here they are: the lost hotels.

"The two on the left are of the Barcelona one and the other is Alexandria."

Hearing Clare say the city's name is like magic. She obviously knows far more about it than I do. Da always says that if his city had once belonged to the world, now it's just another part of Egypt. When he lived there, Alexandria was almost a part of Europe.

Or, as Da would put it,
We made the mistake of believing it was.
In the years before he left, street and store names were changed from French, Italian, or Greek into Arabic. No one knew where anything was. They'd lost the city while still living in it. By now it has slipped away so thoroughly that even if I managed to go there, I wouldn't be at the place where he grew up.

But Clare says its name as if it's still a tangible place. As if she knows it.

"I thought these were yours," I say, looking away from the windows to the couch.

"My copies are at my office," she says. "Rebecca always said you loved them."

"Yes," I say, and then, testing what is possible, what is allowed, add, "It's more that I'm curious. About them."

"Sure," Clare says. "Of course."

"Do you know a lot?" I ask. "About when Da lived there."

"Some," she says.

"Do you know why they stayed so long?" I ask.

That's the bit I always return to. Da's family left more than a year after almost every other Jewish family had cleared out. By the time Da got to Paris, his memories of Alexandria weren't all good.

"I can guess," Clare says, smiling at Raphael, who has come back in to give me hot chocolate. "Uncle Jacques was buried there."

"In the Jewish cemetery," I say to show that there are some things I know.

"I think it must have been hard to leave him behind," Clare says.

Jacques was my father's brother. The one who drowned. The one married to Aunt Ingrid. I look at Raphael, realizing that without the drowning he wouldn't be here. He's the result of a ruined love, just as I am. I wonder what else I'll figure out this year without even trying.

"It's nice," I say, wincing at how lame the word is. "That you can both do this. Have me, you know."

"It is," Raphael says. "It will be."

"You'll have my room," Clare says. "I'm going to set something up in here. Don't worry."

Which is not exactly saying that she thinks it'll be nice, but ... I definitely don't want to sleep in Rebecca's room. Clare's looking toward the narrow hallway where the bedrooms are, and we can hear the sound of voices. Gyula's up and talking to Da. They come in to the living room together.

Gyula kisses both sides of my face and shakes Raphael's hand. Da hands me the bracelet and tells Clare he can't find the shawl.

"We think it's being, how-do-you-say-it, dry-cleaned," Gyula says. "But there's no ticket. She's looked."

Rebecca used to say that Gyula spoke better English than any American and that the whole search for the right word was an act. Maybe. But it's one I've always liked.

"I'll pick it up," Clare says. "But they'll ask after her, I know it."

"Clare's plan is to change all her places," Gyula says. "Cleaners, stores, restaurants."

He says it kindly and he clearly admires her for this ability to protect herself, but it's equally clear my sister wishes he had not chosen to share her plan with all of us.

"I'll go," Raphael says. "Dry cleaners don't need a slip, just the phone number."

"You will?" Clare asks. "Really?"

"I know where it is."

I'm watching Gyula, as he's endlessly handsome and I've spent five years staring at him while wishing I could stop. Right now, as I watch him look at the other two, I think that if this were a play and I were building the set, I would start with Gyula. I would take his silence here and move out from it, as Janie recommended.

This is a really bad habit of mine. When I am nervous or not quite sure of what I'm doing, I turn life into a play. I try to imagine the people around me with stage directions and the set they might need. It does calm me down and help me think. But it also makes me feel a little freakish.

I put on the bracelet, which is a wide and heavy gold band with emeralds on either side. I've never seen it before.

"It's more valuable than attractive," Da says to me before turning to Clare, something else in his hand. "I want to give this to Leila. She's sixteen, just like Rebecca was."

It's the ring his mother gave him before he got married. I know the story behind this, at least. It was for Julian to give to Janie, but she never wore it and so he decided, when Rebecca was born, that she should get it for her sixteenth birthday.

"Yes," Clare says. "Of course."

"I think you should have it," I say. "You were sixteen before me."

The ring is slender and gold. It holds three small diamonds in separate settings and looks, for all the world, like an engagement ring.

"No," Clare says. "I'm pretty sure she'd want you to have it."

Which is how my father comes to give this ring, for the second time, to his sixteen-year-old daughter. I know I will wind up keeping it on a ribbon hanging in my closet. I'd wear it if it had come from Rebecca. But almost better than that, better than even wearing it, is Clare's belief that it should be mine. I now own something that has traveled from the Alexandrian Abranels through the Julian and Janie Abranels. To me. The Leila kind.

M
Y PARENTS LEAVE A WEEK LATER
but I manage to get homesick
before
they go. I haven't even moved to Clare's yet, but the cold, hollow place in my chest that I remember from summer camp roars into place. It's the cat's fault.

The cat—skinny, with gray stripes and named My Scott—was a gift last year from Rebecca. My Scott had been hers—he was a gift from a friend when she and William divorced. She had him for three years, but Clare's allergic and Janie's rent-controlled apartment is in a building that doesn't allow them. So I kind of inherited him when the girls moved in together. I'm not really a cat person so much, but I respect the way he ignores me unless I'm busy. I also like how he falls asleep on places most likely to resent having cat hair all over them.

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?"