We Are the Goldens (15 page)

Can you imagine it? Christmas in their condo with nothing to do but play Chinese checkers, look at old pictures, and watch the nightly news? With nothing to eat but stale hard candies, Wasa crackers, and those triangle cheeses? Sure, there would be museum trips and visits to the beauty parlor so Gramma can have someone else blow-dry her hair, and maybe a meal or two in a nice restaurant. But when we’re around Gramma and Gramps we’re
the grandchildren
or
the grandkids
or
the girls
, and I guess what I’m saying is I wouldn’t have minded being treated like a
child for a little while, even if it wasn’t skiing in Tahoe or surfing in Hawaii.

After watching TV all day Monday, I woke up Tuesday and went for a run. I’d barely moved my body since the soccer finals. You were still in bed.

Don’t you wish you’d gone skiing?
Duncan asked.

Don’t you wish you’d gone to Hawaii?
Parker echoed.

They were suffering a bit of the stuck-at-home-with-nothing-to-do blues too.

Where did he go for break?
Duncan asked.

I didn’t know. Maybe nowhere.

Why don’t you just give him a call? You know you want to
.

I didn’t have his number.

Duh. It’s in the student handbook. So is his email. You can text him. There’s a whole world of communication opportunities open to you
.

As we ran through Twin Peaks, even on the climb up, they never got short of breath. Running, like everything else they ever did, seemed effortless.

Parker turned around and started jogging backward.
You know, you should probably talk to her. Find out what’s going on. You can’t keep acting like nothing is happening
.

I grunted. The upward climb was doing a number on my lungs.

What are you afraid of?

I was afraid of everything.

Take control
, Duncan said.
Don’t be passive. Call Sam—you deserve to know what’s going to happen next. And talk to Layla about Mr. B. Start being a better sister
.

In the end, I took 50 percent of the Creed brothers’ advice. I didn’t call Sam, but I did talk to you. Well, I took maybe 70 percent of their advice, because though I didn’t call Sam, I did send him a text.

An innocuous, safe text. Totally un-creeper-like.

How’s UR break? Hope UR somewhere fun
.

I worked it over and over in my head on the last stretch of my run. With all that planning, I could have come up with something more clever. But I didn’t want clever. I wanted natural. I wanted off-the-cuff. I wanted
you’re barely on my mind
.

He didn’t text back.

Later, you suggested that maybe he’d gone to Europe. The Caribbean. Someplace where the roaming charges were so high he’d left his cell at home. That was kind of you, Layla, since you didn’t believe it. You were just trying to make me feel better. And for those two weeks it worked.

But first, we needed to warm up to each other. We needed to reach the place where I could admit I’d texted Sam and heard nothing back, and you could tell me about the perfect version of love you’d stumbled into, all of which meant I’d have to meet you where you were. Put aside my better judgment and just listen.

That first Wednesday of break I convinced you to leave the house and your laptop—the holy temple of messaging and video-chatting—so that I could introduce you to my favorite café.

We took the same bus we took to school, but it felt different, changed, like going back to visit a place you went when
you were younger, or a theater when all the lights come back on. We walked by City Day. The gates were locked. A poster advertising
Hamlet
still hung in the glass case. I brushed off the memory of searching in vain for your face in the audience on closing night. The memory of Sam kissing me on the lips backstage, quickly, like an accident. There was something more exciting about that kiss than the kissing that happened later in his bedroom.

I turned, leading us up a different block from the one Felix and I usually take to the café. I wanted a fresh start. A vacation.

I ordered for us.
Two mocha lattes, please
. I smiled at the waiter who’d served me countless times and he smiled back, but I could see that he had absolutely no idea who I was.

“So,” I said to you.

“So.”

“What’s up?”

You laughed. Inane question, I know. But I was trying to show that I could be receptive to whatever you threw my way. I stared at you. Wanting you to know I meant it.

“I’m lonely,” you said.

That stung. Just a little. You were sitting with me. We were close enough so that my hand grazed yours when I reached for the sugar.

You sighed. “I just miss him so much. I didn’t know I could miss someone this way. I’m just … It’s just … I have this vast emptiness inside me. And I know that might sound crazy, because we haven’t even been together all that long,
but now we are, and my life has changed, and I can’t even remember what anything was like before, and it’s as if I need him to breathe. He’s
everything
to me. And I’m everything to him. And don’t look at me that way, Nell. Seriously, don’t.”

I tried to neutralize my face. Slacken every muscle. “Like what?”

“Like that.” You pointed at me and squinted. “Like Mom morphed with an abused puppy.”

“Layla.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t judge me. And don’t make this about you. This is not about you. It’s about me.”

“Layla.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Just … give me a minute here. Okay?” I didn’t like hearing you sound desperate. Needy. Irrational. Was this what it meant to be in
real love
?

“You’ve got thirty seconds.”

I stirred my latte with my pinky. “Wow.”

“I know. It’s crazy. But it’s also a
-mazing
.”

“I’m happy for you, I guess.”

“Thanks, Nell.”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

You reached across the table and took me by the hand. “You don’t need to say anything else. It means a lot that you can be happy for me.”

I didn’t point out that I’d said I’m happy for you,
I guess.
But you looked ecstatic, actually. So how could I not be happy for you?

The waiter who didn’t recognize me circled back. “How are we doing over here, ladies? Got everything you need?”

“We’ve got it all,” you said. “We’re living the dream.”

He laughed. “Sure looks like it.”

That’s maybe the moment, more than any other, when I realized that though we’re close in age, though we share the same DNA, the world sees us differently. Especially the world of men.

You looked out the window and smiled. “Everyone thinks they know him, but they don’t. I know him. Truly. Do you want to know what he wrote in my book?”

“Sure.”

“He wrote:
To YOU. Love ME
. That’s who we are to each other. We are the you and the me. It’s simple. He’s just …” A sigh. “He’s not like anybody else.”

“Nobody is like anybody else.”

“You’re like me.”

I knew what you were doing, but still, I liked hearing it. Yes, you are like me. I am like you.

“Go on.…”

“He’s, like, open and unafraid to articulate his feelings. He treats me better than anybody ever has. Do you know any boys who can tell you how they feel, really tell you how they feel?”

“Felix.”

“That’s different. Felix is your friend. I mean, look around you.” I looked around. You slapped my wrist. “Not literally.
Like, think of the boys at school. Do you notice how they are with their girlfriends, if they even have girlfriends? Love is pretty much dead in high school.”

I thought of Hugh Feldman giving Ava Price the play’s sole standing ovation. I even thought of Sam telling me the view looked better with me in his window. You were being ridiculous.

But I clung to Duncan’s words.
Start being a better sister
.

We ordered a second round of lattes and you talked. And talked and talked and talked. At first you thought you just had a crush. A crush like so many girls before you. But then you felt the connection. The way he looked at you when you spoke. He saw through your art, understood you in ways you didn’t yet understand yourself. Two people are strangers to each other and then, suddenly, they are not. All at once you knew him. And he knew you. And you felt as if your whole life had been leading up to knowing this person.

Did I understand?
Could
I understand?

We took our conversation outside, found ourselves in Golden Gate Park at Children’s Playground. We sat on a bench and you talked. And talked and talked and talked. And as you talked I felt some part of myself recharging. Like the way certain species of animal can regenerate a piece of themselves they’ve lost—a fin, a tail, a skin. I started to feel like me again, and damn, Layla, if it didn’t feel great being your trusted ally. Your confidante. Closer than close, only seventeen months apart.
Nellayla
.

A surprise December sun warmed the tops of our heads.
We watched as a line of kids dragged flattened cardboard boxes up to the top of the rock slide and flew down at dangerous speeds. I was always afraid of that slide.

You nudged me and said, “I think it’s time.”

I reached into the pocket of my jacket to check the clock on my phone (and, yes, to see if Sam had returned my text).

“Mrs. Literal.” You took the phone from my hands. “I mean grab some cardboard. It’s time you go for it.”

“No thanks.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know … maybe the risk of permanent brain damage?”

“Come on. Let’s breathe some life into this vacation. If we can’t go away, let’s go back and do all the things we used to do, that we don’t do anymore because we think we’re too old.”

“But I never went down that slide.”

“True.” You pushed me until I rose from the bench. “Now’s your chance to rewrite history.”

I stood around watching until a boy with strawberry hair took pity on me and offered me his produce box from Andronico’s.

I know all this sounds as if it’s building up to something, some metaphor about facing fears, taking risk, sliding toward the unknown, but honestly, it was just kind of awkward. I hit that sand and laughed like a kid.

This was the first stop on our Tour of the Places We Used to Go.

We chose a destination a day. Ghirardelli’s. The Musée
Méchanique. Alcatraz. The carousel at Yerba Buena. The ice rink in Union Square.

We were kids with nothing to do but revisit a childhood that had receded far less than I’d realized. We didn’t need anybody else. But more than that, we were better without anybody else.

We traversed the city by day. At night you stayed in your room, on your computer, connected to him by satellites and signals that allowed you to talk face to face. To stare into each other’s eyes. To remind yourselves of the risks you were taking to be together. At least, that was what you told me each morning. That he said he missed you. He loved you.
Your eyes
, he’d say.
God, I love your eyes
.

As my text to Sam sat somewhere in technology purgatory, I decided you were right. Love
is
dead in high school. It was dead for me. Forget a face-to-face connection; Sam couldn’t even be bothered to text back a
K
or a
thx
or even a
.

The more you told me about the things Mr. B. said to you (he quoted poetry!), the more the few kind things Sam said to me began to fade, and all I could remember was that lime-in-the-teeth high five. The way he called
later
. Would there be a
later
for Sam and me? It didn’t feel like it.

You tried your best to share your optimistic outlook on love. To rub some of it off onto me and my hopeless situation. There was the comment you made about how Sam probably left his phone home to avoid the roaming charges, but also you told me to be patient.

I remember we were standing out at the tip of the Wave Organ, surrounded by water. I’ve always loved the Wave
Organ, the way that collection of rock and pipe responds to the changing tide in the bay. Sometimes the sounds are subtle, sometimes cacophonous. That day the water lapped gently and the music it created was almost like what you hear in a creepy movie when someone is lurking right around the corner.