Lucid (11 page)

Andrew touches me to get my attention, to punctuate a sentence or a joke, or to express his delight, like when I stop him from clicking on “Why I became a call girl” (I explain that this is the shortest clip on the Internet—just a skank saying the word
Duh
). Once, he actually slips his arm around my waist, and I honestly don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it. It’s sort of like the way Gordy treats Sloane, and as a girl who never really had a close guy friend, I find it all really comfortable and even a little exciting.

Out of the blue, Jerome calls breathlessly telling me that Nicole has been “actually pulled into a meeting” (poor dear thing) and can
no longer pick up my kid sister ten minutes ago, which is how long Jade has already been sitting on the curb feeling like the loser kid who was forgotten. Which she’s absolutely not, although she absolutely has been.

It’s four thirty, right when the cabs are switching shifts and Wall Street is getting out, so there are none to be found. Amazingly, Andrew says he can drop me because he happens to have one of those nerdy, adorable GEM cars (which are like the Jetsons’ cars, but they don’t fly—imagine a fancy golf cart for six), and his place is only four blocks away.

I’m super-curious to see his place but don’t want Jade parked on the curb for longer than necessary. His GEM is on the street (parked nose in like a Smart car) and we unplug it and we’re off. It might move faster if we were running on the ground like a Flintstone-mobile.

Andrew makes up for the lack of horsepower by weaving his way through horrific traffic like a Formula One champ. This is the most masculine thing I’ve seen from him so far, which is saying something considering he is driving a toy.

Jade is on the curb, knock-kneed with her cute little backpack, and flashes the smile of instant all right at seeing us. To further cheer her up, he lets her drive. It is only for a block, but she is ready for an arranged marriage.

We hit our place and he just comes up with us like he lives there. His invitation is assumed. I am completely and charmingly ignored. They start with her vintage Guitar Hero, at which he ruthlessly kicks her ass.

“You know,” she points out, “a proper boyfriend may not let
me win, but he probably doesn’t snort like a donkey as he does his stupid victory dance.”

“That was my best Braylon Edwards,” he tells her, busting out his Dougie again in case we missed it the first time.

“Your best what?” I ask, thoroughly lost.

“Wide receiver. The 49ers. Deliverer of enthusiastic end zone recitals.” He offers these clues as if something will click for me. It doesn’t.

“He was more like this,” Jade says, standing up, rocking her hips as she alternates wiping the sides of her head with her left and right hands. Girl’s got rhythm. But more importantly, how the heck does she know who Braylon Edwards is?

Andrew claps respectfully and tries to mimic Jade’s moves. They look ridiculous and adorable as they stare at each other with huge smiles, popping their hips and raising their shoulders just alike.

Andrew restarts the game and Jade winks at me. I realize she has no idea who Braylon Edwards is and probably no idea what an end zone recital could mean. She was just pretending to impress him. Go, Jade!

Jade offers to give him a tour. I’m not invited. I’m unsure how the tour of a three-bedroom apartment can take an hour and fifteen minutes, which feels like seventy-two hours when you are trying to busy yourself waiting for it to be over. I could have written a master’s thesis on annoying siblings, complete with copious revisions. At last, after polishing twenty nails and reading
Vogue
cover to cover, I sneak down to her bedroom door and eavesdrop. I hear my obnoxious sibling asking, “So you like her, right? Like, you
like
her like her?”

“I have a girlfriend.”

“But she’s cuter, right?”

“You’re cuter.”

“I’m too young for you.”

“Would you move to Arkansas?” I think he’s joking.

“Would that help?”

“No, it was just a dumb joke. And your sister has more wonderful things about her than I can count, the best of which is that she is completely crazy about you.”

“Okay, but do you
like
her like her?”

I barge into her bedroom like a house detective only to discover them playing cards in the fort that they built from stuff that Nicole has forbidden be used for such purpose. Far from apologizing, Andrew deals me in, then kicks my ass at Hearts.

Eventually, Jade asks (well, actually orders) me to make them some dinner. The angel hair arrabiata, and don’t screw up on the al dente. Andrew says he’s insulted, meaning he is offended that Jade hasn’t realized he can cook rings around me. Which he proceeds to do.

Just as he is plating our scrumptious feast, including a hand-grated mountain of asiago, his new iPhone goes off. The ringtone sounds suspiciously like “Wind beneath My Wings.” Before I can subtract a masculinity point, he assures me this is Carmen’s special ring. So I subtract twelve points.

I watch his face as he listens to a just-audible rant on the other end of the phone, about as carefully as I’ve ever watched anything. Is he in love with her? Is that what love looks like? For some reason, it doesn’t look like the kind of love I’d want to be in, but what do I know.

My stomach jolts uncomfortably when I hear him offer to be “home” in twenty minutes.

“I thought she was working, but she came home to cook a surprise dinner. Sorry to, well,
not
eat and run, I guess.” He doesn’t look nearly sorry enough for me. He looks like he can’t wait to get “home.”

He kisses Jade and hugs her hard. He thanks her for the hospitality. I walk him down to the street and watch him get into the GEM.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” I ask suddenly, leaning into the window.

“Whatever you want.” He’s smiling at me, like he’s wondering what took so long for me to ask.

And it’s just that simple. I have a new friend.

“Meet me at the corner of Fifth and Fifty-seventh at eight thirty,” I say. “Don’t eat breakfast first.”

He leans out the window and impulsively kisses my cheek. Then he peels out in his oversized roller skate.

Later, when I’m getting into bed, I think of my dad. How he used to tuck me in the night before my birthday and tell me all the places he was going to take me the next day. He always left out the best one as a surprise.

And I cry myself to sleep.

I
wake up in a cold sweat. I’m not ready for this day. I wish I could sleep right through it. Today is the memorial, but it feels just like the day after Bill died. I would’ve preferred to just keep dreaming of Maggie than face a world where something like Bill’s accident could happen.

I’m sure she feels that way about her dad being gone too.

The sky is just beginning to light ahead of the sunrise. I jump out of bed and race downstairs in my pajamas, hoping to catch my dad before he goes for his run. He’s on the front porch in his Cornell sweatshirt, tying his Saucony running shoes.

I sit down next to him and lean my head on his shoulder. He smiles, grateful for the affection, but immediately aware that something is up. One of the things I really love about him is that he’ll let me say things like this in my own time. So he just kisses me on the head, and looks patiently into my eyes, and waits for me to say…

“I had a horrible dream. I’ve had it before. We live in Manhattan. But you’re dead. I mean you don’t die in the dream. You’d been dead for years. And last night in the dream I was lying in bed the night before my birthday, and remembering you and all the things we’d done together and missing you so much. And it just felt so real. And when I woke up, I was still missing you.”

He stares in my eyes, and I can tell that he’s trying hard to look calm and unconcerned. But if my daughter were to ever tell me she has a recurring dream in which I’m dead, I guess I’d be a little worried too.

“I’m sorry, Bug,” he says as he hugs me tight. “How often do you have this dream?”

I don’t say anything, just keep hugging him, draped over his shoulder. I pick at a small hole in the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“Lots of times?” he asks.

“Why? Would that be a bad thing? I mean they’re not always sad.”

“So what are they like?”

I hug him tight and then let go. “I can’t talk about it this morning, I have to go write my thing about Bill. You’re coming, aren’t you?”

“You know I am. And tomorrow is your birthday, and I’ll still be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

But of course, one day he would. As Bill did. As everyone we love does, unless we go first. The one thing that I’m carrying around that nobody else does is Maggie. What’s it going to feel like the day I stop dreaming about her and her sister and that grouchy dog? And then, the thought that is always the caboose on this train: it is
entirely possible that one day, Maggie will go to sleep and I’ll simply be gone, and everything around me will be gone with me, and she’ll have normal dreams, and her own normal life. This is the craziest possible thought that any human has ever had.

And the only comfort is, I know Maggie has it too.

I go back upstairs and shut my door. There is a mountain of crumpled pages strewn around my desk. I glance at a framed photo of me and Bill and Gordy at the beach two summers ago. It isn’t a posed shot. Kelly just happened to snap it when we were going for a swim. Gordy’s strong back is diving under this big wave like he’s a dolphin. And Bill is right in front of me, his back to the wave, breaking its force so it doesn’t pummel me over. You see my profile, my head tilted up toward the sun, and my smile is so big it seems to take up my whole face.

I pull out Bill’s iPod (Gordy and I pass it back and forth when we miss him) and listen to the very last mix that Bill made for me. It’s on my iPod too, of course, but today I want to hear it on his. It’s called Jabberwocky, after the dragon constellation on my ceiling. It was Bill’s favorite.

I sit down and stare at my laptop, and this wave of self-loathing swamps me. I’m a wretched person. I have this one opportunity to stand up in front of the world and give them some glimpse of what Bill, and loss, and grief, and the loneliness that life can drown you in mean to me. And I find myself procrastinating with thoughts of this dumb “double-date” at the Seahorse tonight. Do I really not have anything to say about the only person who knew all my constellations? Or maybe there’s just too much to say.

How can I possibly even scratch the surface of honoring Bill at
an event like this? The adult world that runs our school considers this a teachable moment (a new phrase for our era) where children will learn to process loss and grief and loneliness by sitting in the football bleachers and being presented with the truth of mortality. There’s nothing to be taught. Only something to be felt. And I swear to God no one needs to sit in football bleachers to feel it.

Just to make my morning complete, I’m two-thirds out the front door when I hear, “Hey, Slime!” Tyler has never called me anything else. He apparently made the drive home from University of Vermont last night.

I don’t think I have it in me this morning to navigate this encounter. I pretend I haven’t heard him and just keep walking. One of the things about being six-four is that your legs are very long and you catch up to diminutive feminine types in about three strides.

“Good to see you too!” he booms with what he considers irony. “No hug?”

I look at him and realize that of course I don’t actually hate my brother. He is decent and good and this is all my problem because I’m jealous of his easy path through life.

So I hug him. And I mean it. And he feels that. And he hugs back.

“Glad I caught you. I really want to talk to you about Bill’s thing today.”

From his pocket, he pulls out a wad of folded-up paper, like four or five pages. He looks at it nervously, shaking his head.

“I wrote up this thing, you know, about sort of being Billy’s mentor and all, you know, at quarterback and just generally about guy stuff.”

“I’m sure it’s eloquent.”

He stares at me for a beat. Smiles a small smile. “Don’t ever change, kid. I wouldn’t recognize you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It’s just a tough day.”

“Well, that’s why we’re talking. I thought maybe it might be better if I didn’t say anything and just left it to you and Gordy.”

He seems awkward making this extremely generous and considerate offer. I can’t remember ever seeing him awkward before.

“Thanks, Ty. It’s really sweet of you. But Bill was your friend, and you deserve to say your piece to honor him.”

“Yeah, he was my friend. And we were real close. But not like you two were.”

I almost choke. I can’t tell how he means that.

“Billy was special to you. I mean, very special. I’m your brother, and I’m not super-bright, but I know that much.”

“Thank you,” I say. And somehow I’m blushing that he knew or had even noticed that Bill and I were special to each other. Which of course we were.

There’s a silence.

“So, uh, how you doing?” He clearly has forgotten our Mafia bit, one of our few inside jokes. So I answer…

“No, how
you
doin’?” in this Jersey mobster voice.

“No, how
you
doin’?” Now he’s smiling, relieved of the burden of his kindness and free to joke around. It takes about ten more “how you doin’s” before the loser cracks a smile and the winner who keeps his (or in this case her) face straight gets to punch the loser on the arm.

A horn sounds. It’s Gordy, picking me up in his old Land Rover,
which is unexpected and extremely welcome. Tyler and I walk out together. He and Gordy do their dumb guy fist bump, do their dumb guy joke, do their dumb guy sports talk stuff, and just before my brain melts into a slushy, I’m alone with Gordy cruising down the street.

“Thanks for picking me up.”

“How are you doing?” This is a serious question. I shrug because he knows I’m not doing well at all. He nods in agreement. Gordy has these beautiful, clear eyes, and today they remind me of when we were six years old for some reason. He looks directly into mine and then turns back to watch the road.