A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life (17 page)

“Really?”

“Yeah. There’s nothing hotter than a chick who gets up early in the morning to fight for the underdog.”

I’m blushing. He takes my hand. Now I’m really blushing.

“And,” he says, “you look so cute first thing in the morning.”

“You didn’t look half bad yourself. I like you in an apron.”

He laughs. “This is really nice.”

“Yeah. It is.”

The waiter brings the tiramisu. Neither of us even looks at it.

“Do you know what Il Bacio means in Italian?” he asks.

“No. I’m helpless with foreign languages. I’m barely passing remedial French.”

“It means ‘the kiss.’”

I sit there speechless.

“Now I bet you’re thinking that I’m going to use this as a segue into how amazing you look tonight and how all I can think about is how much I want to kiss you and since the name of this restaurant actually means ‘the kiss,’ there really is no reasonable alternative.”

Still can’t get my brain to construct anything approaching an intelligent sentence.

“So, what do you think? I mean, I hate to be so predictable, but this is exactly why I brought up the whole Il Bacio thing.” I smile and nod. Yes. I think yes.

He gets up and leans over the table, over the tiramisu, and he takes my face in his hands and he gives me the sweetest, most gentle, most delicious, most wonderful, most perfect kiss.

TWENTY

Before I wake up, before I get the chance to let last night come back to me, before I can lie here in my bed remembering every detail of my date with Zack, I hear his voice.

“Hi.”

I check my clock. Five minutes past ten.

“Hi,” I say.

“Did I call too early? You sound sleepy.”

“No, no. I’m up.”

“Liar.”

“Okay. So I lied. I promise I won’t lie to you ever again.”

“What are you doing?”

“Didn’t I just admit that I was sleeping?”

“Want to take a walk?”

“Sure. Is there coffee somewhere on this walk?”

“I think we can make that happen. I’ll see you in half an hour?”

“Great.”

This must be it. This must be when he comes over and tells me that I’m really great and I’m a good friend but that he’s made some kind of terrible mistake and he’s sorry but he doesn’t have
those
kinds of feelings for me and can we just be friends? And by the way, he’s in love with Amy Flannigan.

This time, because I don’t have a choice in the matter, I invite him in and introduce him to my parents. They stand there, Dad’s arm around Mom’s waist, beaming at him. “It’s so nice to meet you and we’ve heard so much about you,” they say. It isn’t even eleven o’clock and this is the second lie of the day. Mom and Dad haven’t heard so much about Zack. All I told them was that bit about him not being a pervert or a cocaine addict. They don’t know about my long-simmering crush on him. They don’t know that I asked him to James’s party or that we sat in his car kissing for almost an hour last night. They don’t know that he’s about to dump me. But they stand there smiling at him like they’ve been waiting for this moment all their lives.

It’s cold out. There’s snow on the ground, but the sky is bright blue. The sunlight bouncing off the white of the snow is blinding. My fingers are numb even though I’m wearing fleece gloves. I want to reach for his hand, to warm my fingers in his, but I know that I can’t. We walk in silence for what feels like an eternity. I can’t stand it anymore. Why is he so quiet? We had so much to say to each other in the candlelight of Il Bacio last night, but this morning the startlingly bright sunlight is somehow creating a void between us. And what do I do? I fill it. I start to ramble. I’m talking a mile a minute. I’m telling him all about Rivka. I’m telling him all about me and my life and how I knew about her but I didn’t really want to know about her so I worked hard never to think about her and then one day I called her and now she’s a part of my life and now I’m losing her. I’m losing her again.

I tell him about Mordechai, but he stops me and tells me that he already knows the story of Mordechai. That’s right. I forgot about the article I wrote about Mom for the
Gazette
. About her first case. About the Hasidic family in the little community south of Boston. He took the pictures of Mom for that story.

“That is where you come from? Rivka is Mordechai’s daughter?”

I nod.

“Wow. That’s amazing.”

He takes my hand and smiles at me. My fingers begin to regain their feeling.

We stop at a café in town that I’ve never been to. Zack says, “The coffee here is much better than at the Organic Oasis. Our coffee may be fair trade, but that doesn’t keep it from tasting like metal.”

He pulls off my gloves and rubs my cold hands in his.

“That’s how I knew you liked me. Why else would anyone drink that coffee?”

My hands are warming up, and so is the rest of me. I didn’t imagine last night. It was real. Zack is real. What is happening between us is really happening.

He goes to the counter to order while I find a table. He returns with two plain no-frills coffees and a chocolate croissant.

I smile weakly at him.

“You look sad,” he says.

“I’m not. I mean I am. I mean, I’m really happy right now. I love this café, and that croissant looks great, and I don’t understand why you didn’t get one for yourself. But I also can’t stop thinking about Rivka sitting all alone in Beth Israel Hospital.”

“Let’s go see her.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

We transfer our coffees into to-go cups and walk back to my house and tell my parents where we’re going. We say a quick hi to Jake, who has finally emerged from his room, and we get in Zack’s car and head for the city.

When we arrive Rivka has three visitors: two women and a man with long hair, who I mistake for a third woman when we first enter. Rivka seems delighted that I’ve stopped by, even though I feel like I just crashed a party. The hellos are a little strange because these friends obviously know who I am even though we’ve never met, and Rivka obviously knows who Zack is, so there are a lot of hands being shaken and pretending not to know the person whose hand is being shaken. Rivka’s friends stay for a few more minutes and then start talking about how they have to make the drive back to the Cape, and wow, look at the time. One of the women makes arrangements to pick up Rivka tomorrow, and this makes me feel a little bit better. They leave, and it’s just Rivka and Zack and me and the calm beeping of the hospital machinery.

“So,” Rivka says, “I guess the date went well last night.”

You’d think this would embarrass me, but now that I’m pretty sure Zack isn’t planning on telling me that last night was a big mistake, it doesn’t embarrass me at all.

“Exceptionally well,” he says, and shoots me a grin.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Tired of this place. Tired of lying in bed. Tired of cable TV.”

“They liberate you tomorrow?”

“Amen. Lila is picking me up.” Rivka readjusts her pillows and props herself up. “And on our way back home I’m stopping off to see my family because someone I know who is very wise advised me to give them one last chance.”

We stay for about an hour. Zack talks to Rivka about the Red Sox (I had no idea she was a baseball fan), about Cape Cod, and about photography. He says that he’s never had enough faith in himself to shoot landscapes. He’s always searching for a definable subject. Rivka says she knows exactly what he means (that makes one of us) but that she always had the opposite problem. She never had enough faith that the meaning of her subjects was comprehensible to anyone but her, and that’s why she works in the more neutral and ambiguous realm of landscape. I just sit in my uncomfortable plastic chair and watch them go back and forth. I remember thinking that maybe I could be a photographer. Clearly I was wrong.

When we get up to leave, Zack says goodbye and waits for me in the hall. I give Rivka a hug, and she whispers in my ear, “He’s perfect,” and I feel my eyes welling up with tears.

“What happened to rule number one: beware a Prince Charming?”

“I guess rules are made to be broken.”

I pull the sheet up and tuck her in. I kiss her forehead.

When we step into the elevator Zack puts his arms around me and takes his thumb and wipes a tear from my cheek.

Going back to school is strange because it feels as if my whole life has changed in this one weekend. But in other ways, everything is just the same. I’m running through my SAT vocabulary words, struggling in French class, sailing through calculus, and gossiping with my friends at lunch.

“So tell me,” says James, “how was your date with Flash Gordon?”

“We’ve been through this, James. If you insist on making fun of him, at the very least let him be Harry Potter, boy wizard, rather than some second-rate, steroid-using superhero with totally forgettable powers.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry. So?”

“It was awesome. It was perfect. We saw each other on Sunday too.”

“Wow. Things seem to be moving right along.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure what to do next. I don’t think I’m very good at this.”

“Don’t think too much about it. Just let it happen.”

James’s advice would be much easier to take if I’d seen or talked to Zack on Monday. Or Tuesday. Then Wednesday came, and at the
Gazette
meeting he sat next to Amy instead of me. We talked for a while afterward, but I couldn’t help feeling hurt that he chose to sit with her when the empty seat by my side was just as available, and it even had armrests!

What’s wrong with me? I’m in perfect health. I have a loving (and sometimes annoying) mother and father who accept me for who I am. I have a brother who worships me even though it is indisputable that he is a hundred times cooler than I am. I wake up every morning and drink my juice without the burden of swallowing dozens of different pills, knowing that I have more mornings like this ahead of me than I can possibly fathom. And I just had a great date with a really cute guy only days ago. Why am I spending all this time brooding over how much attention Zack is or isn’t paying to me when Rivka is dying alone?

Cleo says I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

“Of course you’re worried about whether or not Zack still likes you. You can worry about Zack at the same time as you worry about Rivka, and that’s okay.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Positive. And anyway, Zack is a guy. This is just how guys are. In his mind, things are probably perfect between the two of you. He doesn’t realize that you need to be reminded again and again and again about how much he likes you.”

“But what about Amy? Why did he sit with her instead of me?”

“Come on, Simone. She’s his best friend. You know that. He doesn’t want it to seem like he’s dropping her the minute he falls for a girl. See what a nice guy he is?”

I have to admit that Cleo is giving Zack much more credit than I’ve ever given Darius, and for a minute I feel like a lousy friend. I also have to admit that she knows way more about all of this than I do, so I take her advice: I relax.

Rivka is back at home and has been working on a new series of photographs she hopes to place in the galleries in time for the summer crowds. Her visit with her family was difficult and emotional, but I think she’s glad she did it. Mordechai took the news of Rivka’s illness exactly as she expected he would. He was calm. He was reserved. He nodded. He played with his beard. And then he went into his study and closed the door and either prayed for Rivka or just went on about his day. But the best part of Rivka’s visit was the chance it provided her to patch things up with her sister Devorah. Since that afternoon on the way home from the hospital, she’s talked with Devorah every day, and they’ve made a plan for Devorah to come to Wellfleet for a few nights.

She sounds happy to be home. Happy to be working. Happy to sit in her kitchen and watch for the first signs of spring. I ask her when her next visit to Beth Israel is scheduled for.

“Never.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I just can’t face another night in that hospital. I don’t want to go back.”

“You don’t need to go back?”

“No. I said I don’t want to go back. This is where I want to be. There’s a hospital here. Certainly not as renowned as any of the Boston hospitals, and okay, maybe the doctors got their degrees over the Internet, but I can get the medicine and the monitoring I need on an outpatient basis.”

“Well, then, I’ll have to come down to see you there. Do they have a Pho Pasteur in Wellfleet?”

“No. The Briar Patch is as good as it gets. Listen, I was thinking you could come for Passover. It’s only a few weeks away. I’ll do the first-night seder here. You could come with your parents and Jake, and you could even bring Zack.”

I need help. I need a tutorial. I don’t really understand what Passover is. I don’t really understand what a seder is. I know that Passover happens sometime around Easter, but I don’t think they have anything to do with each other. I don’t think there are any bunnies hopping down the bunny trail at Passover. So I call Zack. I tell him, “I need help.”

He sounds delighted to hear my voice. I try to sound casual, but when I hang up the phone I actually jump up and down.

Then I collapse into my chair with a huge smile on my face, his last words lingering in my head:
Lucky for you, Simone, you have me. I’ll be right over
.

We’re lying on my bed up in the attic. Fully clothed. On top of the covers. My dad is downstairs in the kitchen. It’s late afternoon. Zack’s playing with my hair.

“What’s Passover exactly?” I ask.

“I knew it would come to this. I knew you were only after my wealth of Jewish knowledge.”

“Well, you were bar mitzvahed, weren’t you?”

“Indeed I was.”

“Rivka invited us for Passover. Me and my family. She said she’s going to do the first-night seder. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to explain it to me. She just assumed I knew all about Passover and seders.”

“Passover lasts for eight days, but typically you would have a seder on the first two nights.”

“What is it with the Jews and these eight-day holidays?”

“I don’t know. Good question. Anyway, at a Passover seder you tell the story of the liberation of the Jews. How we were slaves in Egypt, and then Moses said, ‘Let my people go,’ and we wandered for forty years in the desert, and there wasn’t enough time to finish baking the bread, and that’s why you eat matzoh, and also you eat bitter herbs to remember the bitterness of slavery.”