We Are the Goldens (18 page)

But in sleep I’d moved to his side and I woke in the morning with my head on his shoulder, because that’s the way it is.

We always find each other.

WHEN I GOT BACK TO
Dad’s in the morning, he cornered me in the kitchen.

“What’s up with her?” He gestured toward your closed door. “She’s been holed up in there since yesterday. She won’t come out. Not even with the promise of pancakes.”

“Dad, your pancakes taste like butt sweat.”

He smiled briefly, then turned serious. “What’s wrong? You must know.”

My blood pounded a frantic rhythm in my ears:

This. Is. It
.

Tell. Him. Now
.

This. Is. It
.

Tell. Him. Now
.

Remember how much you hated Sonia at the beginning? Scowling and sulking whenever she came around? And
remember how I’d always go and sit near her and show her my drawings or ask her about her cat or whatever? I didn’t like her back then either, but I didn’t want to make Dad feel bad. Layla: in addition to being the keeper of your secrets, I am the keeper of the peace in our family. I don’t cause the ripples, I’m the one who smooths them over. I don’t know how to do things any other way.

“Just girl stuff, Dad. She’ll be okay.”

Later, at Mom’s, you told me he wanted to end things. He said the risk was too great. He thought you understood that nobody could ever know, but then you’d gone and told me.

“Oh God, why did I tell you?” you wailed.

Because our lives are intertwined
.

“Layla, how could you expect to be in a relationship ‘forever’ and never tell anyone about it? That’s insanity.”

You buried your face in your pillow. “I should never have told you. Never. I should never have told you. And now … it’s over.”

I hope you believe that I hated seeing you hurt like that. I hated the desperate you. The way you wore your heartache.

But.

I could feel things getting right again.

I kept thinking of that Emily Dickinson poem, as weird as that may sound, but as you finally cried yourself to sleep in my bed too small for the two of us, the title came to me: “After a great pain, a formal feeling comes.”

I lay there, listening to you breathe, and I felt a calmness.
A settling of pieces back into their natural places. Just you. Just me.

The way it’s meant to be.

Relationships are a mystery to me. I’m sure you’d say it’s because I’ve never been in one. But anyway, I didn’t know that you can fight bitterly, swear that it’s over, cry yourself to sleep in your sister’s bed on Sunday, and then return to each other Monday morning.

You weren’t in school. Neither was he.

I should have known that an ending wouldn’t come so simply.

Felix wasn’t in school either because he was at the hospital waiting for his father to come out of surgery.

Around fourth period it finally occurred to me that if there was a wrong place to be, I was sitting in its epicenter. What was I doing in Spanish without Felix? What was I doing in school without you? Why was I expected to live my life by the rules when nobody else seemed to?

“Perdon,”
I said as I stood. I didn’t wait for permission; I gathered my things, shoved them into my backpack, and left school.

I hailed a taxi. I’d never taken a cab alone. I felt pulled in two directions but said, “California Pacific Medical Center, please.”

Felix and Julia sat in the waiting room on the fifth floor. Though it was noon, in the middle of a school day, neither seemed surprised to see me rush in. Julia hugged me and
quickly sat back down. Hands folded in her lap, eyes straight ahead, as if only her stillness would ensure the desired outcome.

Felix took me by the hand. “Thank you for coming here and bailing on school. I know how that goes against your inner nerd.”

I kissed him. On the lips. Just a little. Like a friend. Like I’d done many times before.

But his lips. They were soft. Like silk. Like silk that tastes like candy. Like candy that tastes of rosewater and sugar. Like … Turkish Delight.

Weird, right?

How could I have been thinking all this in the midst of everything else?

Maybe this moment, me standing in a Pepto-Bismol-pink hospital waiting room thinking about Felix’s lips while you’d ditched school to be with your teacher—maybe this was the true epicenter of all that was wrong.

All I could glean from Julia’s conversation with the young doctor in blue scrubs is that the surgery went well and Angel had a decent chance, a solid mathematical chance. She held Felix and wept.

I drank burned coffee with them in the hospital cafeteria before heading home. By the time I arrived it was six o’clock, Mom was waiting for me, and she was pissed.

The school called her at work to inform her that Layla had disappeared after first period and that I’d just stood up and walked out in the middle of Spanish. What was going on? I could almost hear Ms. Bellweather’s slight Southern
drawl. Something wrong at home? Were we both felled by the same illness? Was this some sort of protest by the Golden sisters?

Mom does not like getting caught off guard. She’s way too much of a control freak.

“I’ve texted you both,” she said to me, a vodka tonic in her hand. “Since neither of you bothered to respond, you can say good-bye to your precious cell phones for at least a week.”

“Mom.”

“Where is your sister?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I couldn’t help it; my face flushed immediately. I’m a lousy liar. I pulled off my jacket. I was sweating despite the chill in the kitchen.

“I can tell you where I went if you have any interest in that.” I dropped my stuff on the floor. She was already so mad I figured it made little difference.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she said as she picked up my things and threw them into the front hallway closet.

“I was at the hospital.”

I let that sit there, enjoying my moment of superiority. Mom gestured for me to go on.

“I was with Felix and Julia while Angel was having his adrenal glands removed.”

“You can’t just leave school without permission.”

“I thought the circumstances were extenuating.”

“And Layla?”

“I already told you I have no idea where she is.”

“So it’s pure coincidence? You and your sister ditching school on the same day?”

The sound of your key rattling the front lock followed. You called out,
“Hellloooooooo?”
in a way only someone who had no idea she’d been busted could. I guess it made sense that you hadn’t checked your phone. The only time you cared who was calling or texting you was when you weren’t with
him
.

“What?” you said when you saw Mom’s face.

“Where were you?” she asked.

You looked over at me with a startling fierceness. “What did she tell you?” The
she
dripping with venom.

“She didn’t tell me anything,” Mom said. “She told me she had no idea where you were, which is something I find very hard to believe.”

She
keeps your secrets!
She
protects you!
She
doesn’t want you looking at her that way. But … 
she
wishes
she
could tell Mom or Dad or somebody.

“Well,” you said, hanging up your jacket and putting away your backpack. “I wasn’t feeling good. You know, cramps and stuff. And I went by the nurse’s office but nobody was there, so I decided to go to Walgreens to get some Advil, but it was like,
really
bad, so I took the Advil and I was walking back to school, but like, my lower back was totally killing me and I just couldn’t imagine sitting in class without wanting to die, and I passed one of those foot massage places? You know, the ones that are like twenty bucks for an hour? And I know I shouldn’t have, but I was
feeling so crappy, and I went in and they have these crazy comfortable chairs and I sat down and paid for ninety minutes, and the Advil finally kicked in and I felt, like, so much better. So then I went back to school, but my last class was PE, and even though I felt better I wasn’t up for PE, so I just went to the library and spent the rest of the afternoon there. I finished my history paper. That’s the good news. It isn’t even due for another week but I think it’s, like, in really good shape.”

“What about my texts?” Mom said.

“Oh.” You shrugged. “I left my phone at home.”

Mom let out a sigh. She looked at me, searching for a nod, something to let her know she wasn’t crazy to believe your long, rambling explanation. I gave her that nod.

You kissed her cheek. “What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

Over bowls of spaghetti with garlic and butter Mom delivered a lecture about how we still need to do things by the book even if what we’re doing isn’t wrong, because rules give order to society and it’s our tacit obligation as members of society to live by those rules.

In other words: don’t leave school without permission.

She didn’t take away our phones.

After dinner you suggested we go for ice cream. Mom took a pass. You knew she’d take a pass because she’s forever dieting despite having a pretty impressive figure for a woman pushing sixty. We grabbed our jackets and headed over to Chestnut Street.

“I can’t believe we both ditched on the same day.” You said this like it was funny. High five. Aren’t we awesome?

“Yeah.”

“So how’s Felix?”

I wanted to say something about the realignment that had started to happen. About how he almost kissed me and it hadn’t become one of those horrible, painfully awkward moments we pretend never happened. It became something I couldn’t forget, a moment I relived again and again.

“He’s okay. His dad’s surgery went well. Everyone seems optimistic.”

“That’s great. Just great.”

Uh-oh
.

“I was with George today,” you continued.

“And?”

“And we’re working things out.”

“Layla.”

“Nell. Be happy for me. I love him. I don’t want to be without him. I can’t be without him.”

“What changed?”

“Nothing
changed
, Nell,” you said with the tone of a frustrated preschool teacher. “It’s just that I helped him realize that what we have may be hard, and it may be work, and it may seem wrong to people on the outside, but it’s worth fighting for.”

We walked past what once was a soap store before it became Madam Mai’s palmistry shop. Now it’s a jeweler’s specializing in seriously hideous necklaces. Do you think this is what Madam Mai meant when she predicted your love-filled future before skipping out on her rent?
If she were still here, if we could part her velvet curtains and enter her reading room, I think she’d take you by the collar with her tiny hands and shake you, yelling:
No! This not Madam Mai’s fortune! You make big mistake!

We walked past the ice cream place. You never wanted ice cream. I let you go on for a few blocks about how much better you were feeling, how everyone experiences a rough patch, how grateful you were that I was there for you in your despair, but that I shouldn’t hold that against George, he’d just had cold feet.

You told me I couldn’t tell anyone. Ever. Did I understand?

I understood.

But a piece was missing. I could feel it. I could smell it with my Goldenian nose. I just couldn’t see it.

“He broke up with you,” I said. “He said it was too risky. Too much was at stake … and then he left school with you? In the middle of the morning? What happened?”

You laughed. “Nothing happened. He loves me. That’s all.”

That night the Creeds were all fired up.

What is it?
they asked.
What did she do? How did she get him to leave school with her? She must have said something. She must have done something
.

They wouldn’t give up.
What is it? What could it be? What did she do? You’re her sister. You must know
.

I didn’t.

You always do. That’s what it means to be the younger sister. You know. You know everything
.

I put a pillow over my head. I wanted to go to sleep. No use. I could feel them, waiting. Waiting for me to do something.