Stay With Me Read online

  My sister's departure should be where to start. A more clever girl would open with it. But I, of course, go hopelessly backwards to Janie, dead a year by the time it happens. And then ahead until I can clearly see the decisions my father and Clare are making about their portion of ruin. I arrived when Rebecca's life was more than half over, and my share of what she leaves behind is therefore small. Just big enough to carry.

  Two

  IT'S A FEW DAYS AFTER THANKSGIVING IN THAT YEAR WHICH IS ALREADY FULL TO BURSTING WITH BAD NEWS. PARTICULARLY IF, AS WE DO, YOU LIVE IN THE CITY.

  Da stays home from his hospital office every other Tuesday to do paperwork. On those days, I let him know I'm back from school and then leave him alone. It's understood that nothing is to disturb him.

  When the doorbell rings, I run for it, ready to sign for a package. We don't do Christmas or Chanukah (Secular means secular, Da says), and Mom tries to make up for it by giving me things I "need" during the last month of every year. Of course, she has no time to shop, so I get a lot of my not-presents from catalogues.

  Only it's not a package. It's Raphael. Raphael Barclay, who's sort of our cousin but not really. Raphael's mother is my Aunt Ingrid, who's not really my aunt. She was once married to my father's brother, but he died—he drowned in the ocean—back when Da was still in Alexandria. A few years later, Aunt Ingrid married Raphael's father when the Abranel family was in Paris. That's where they first lived after leaving Egypt.

  Keeping as little as that straight is almost impossible. And there's more.

  While everyone was still in Paris, Raphael's father, who was American, introduced Janie, who was British, to Julian, who eventually became my father. The cocktail party where Janie and Julian met was in Paris. Raphael's father wasn't just an American who married Aunt Ingrid. Uncle Harold was, as Janie had described him to me, the man whom everyone knew.

  Even if I often can't follow how, I know the Barclay family is a part of my family. That it's confusing is part of the proof that we all fit. Apparently, visual aids do help.

  Rebecca told me that when Raphael dated Clare, he had to draw her a chart to prove they weren't related. Raphael is a lot like the hotels, in that he totally belongs to Clare. Even though they went out for less than three months and broke up when I was four. Janie told me that she thought Raphael was completely unsuited to Clare, but she said that about everyone Clare dated.

  I like Raphael. Everyone likes him. Janie had said if he would stop being in love with Clare, she would like him too. Mom felt that he'd be perfect for Clare. Something which amazed me, as she normally goes out of her way to avoid contradicting Janie's thoughts about my sisters. Raphael's a lab science person like my mother (she's a pathologist and he studies genetics), but he's a much better dresser than she is.

  "Leila," he says.

  "Hi," I say, and then, because I have only ever seen him here when it's Clare's birthday, "Clare's in Hungary."

  She's either working there or visiting the superstar of her unsuitable boyfriends, whom no one likes. I do, though, because he's unbelievably beautiful and speaks with a great accent. More to the point, he lives in Budapest, which is where Clare's boss owns two apartment buildings. They're being renovated and she goes to Hungary a lot for work as well as unsuitable-boyfriend stuff, and as I am trying to remember what this particular trip is for, Raphael says,

  "It's Rebecca. She's—"

  At which point he covers his face with his hands and starts to cry, so I know nothing good is to follow and yet all I can think is that the only other man I've seen cry is my father when Janie died. It doesn't look that different on Raphael.

  "Rebecca's killed herself" he says, and his voice breaks up, but the crying stops. "I'm sorry. Julian's office said he was here."

  "He's working," I say, wondering if killed herself means something different from what I think.

  Because, of course, Rebecca cannot have done this. There is simply no way on earth she did this. Even I know Janie will kill her. And then I remember.

  "You'd better come in," I say, when what I mean is Go away.

  Janie died last year, and until then no one ever noticed how old my father is. Now people ask all the time if he's my grandfather. This will more than finish his accelerated aging process.

  "Oh, God," Raphael says, sliding his hands up under his glasses. "The cleaning lady called me. I'm the emergency contact when they're out of town."

  After Janie died, Clare and Rebecca moved into their mother's rent-controlled apartment, and one of the many decisions that move involved was hiring a cleaning lady. My sisters are each messy, but in different ways (Clare with paperwork, Rebecca with clothes), and neither wanted to straighten up after the other. The cleaning lady is from Chile and incredibly cheerful. What English she has, she tends to sing; to me, for example, Good morning, little one.

  For a split second I think that the truly unforgivable thing is that Rebecca let this woman, whose name I knew just two minutes ago, find her. And then I think entirely too much about what I do know of Rebecca's scars. Of the incident. Clare found her. Up at Janie's weekend house in Connecticut. In the tub and half dead. Blood everywhere.

  Clare's in Hungary. Safe with her boyfriend. Good for Rebecca.

  "I'll get my father," I say.

  "Let me," Raphael says, handing me his coat, scarf, and briefcase.

  Later, I will be grateful he gave me something to do. But right then, I am furious. Thank you, I am not the coat check girl. I think how stupid Raphael is, how useless, how a better person would have called my mother first and made sure she was here when Da got the news.

  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.

  Three

  AFTER DA AND RAPHAEL 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."