In the Age of Love and Chocolate (8 page)

“No, tonight I get beauty sleep.” Theo handed me my phone.

“Lucky you.”

In my bedroom, I didn’t even try to sleep. I stared at the ceiling, hoping the cracks in the plaster might offer some insight regarding what I should do. I thought of myself, lying in this same bed at age sixteen, the year everything had begun to go so horribly wrong. What would sixteen-year-old Anya have wanted someone to do for her?

I waited until five a.m. to call Mr. Kipling. “I need to find a new school for Natty. Something strict, but with good academics. Something far away from here.”

Mr. Kipling was quick. Several hours later, he reported that he had found a convent school in Boston that was willing to take her in the middle of the semester.

“Are you sure about this, Anya?” Mr. Kipling asked. “It’s a big decision, and you don’t want to be hasty.”

*   *   *

I went into Natty’s bedroom and packed a suitcase. I was closing the suitcase when she came through the door. She looked from me to the packed suitcase. “What’s this?”

“Look,” I said, “we both know that I’m not being a good guardian to you right now. I’m too busy with the club to watch you—”

“I don’t need to be watched!”

“You do, Natty. You’re a kid, and I’m worried that if I don’t act now, your whole life is going to be ruined. Look what happened to Scarlet.”

“Pierce is nothing like Gable Arsley!”

“I see you making mistakes now that you’re with him. I see you heading down a bad road.” I took a deep breath. “I said before that I didn’t want you to end up like Scarlet, but the person I don’t want you to end up like is”—it was so hard to admit—“me.”

My sister looked at me with the saddest expression. “Annie! Annie, don’t say that! Look at the club you made.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I got myself kicked out of school. Maybe it seems like my life is working out right now, but I want you to have more options than I had. I don’t want you to end up working in a nightclub. I don’t want you to have anything to do with chocolate or our rotten Family. I truly believe that you’re destined for better.”

Natty wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “You’re making me cry.”

“I’m sorry. This school Mr. Kipling found for you has a great science program, much better than HT’s.” I tried to make my voice upbeat. “And wouldn’t it be great to be somewhere no one knew anything about you? A place where no one had any preconceptions.”

“Stop trying to sell me, Anya. Maybe you want me out of your hair. Maybe you want me to be someone else’s problem for a while.”

“That isn’t true! Do you have any idea how horribly lonely I’m going to be without you? You are my sister and there is no one in this whole lousy dystopia I love more than you. But I’m scared, Natty. I’m scared I’m messing everything up. I don’t know the right things to do for you right now. I barely know the right things to do for myself most of the time. I wish Daddy were alive. Or Mom or Nana. Because I’m only eighteen and I have no idea what to say, what you need. What I know is I wish someone had gotten me out of New York City when I was having such a rough time at Holy Trinity. I wish someone had gotten me away from Mr. Beery and people like him, and our relatives, too.”

*   *   *

She fought me on the cab ride to Penn Station and at the ticket counter (to the amusement of a youth athletic team—I saw the bag of balls, but could not identify the sport), and now she was still fighting me in the waiting area under the departures sign. A panhandler nudged my sister and said, “Give her a break.”
Her
was me, by the way, and even the homeless thought I needed defending from the fourteen-year-old haranguer.

“I’m not going,” Natty said. “No matter what you say, I’m not getting on that train.” She had her arms crossed and her lower lip jutted out. She looked exactly like what she was—a teenager who hated the world and everyone in it. For my part, I suspected that I looked and sounded like a kid pretending to be an adult for a school play.

“You’re going,” I said. “You agreed back at the apartment that you would. Why are you changing your mind now?”

The loudspeaker announced that Natty’s train to Boston was boarding. She was crying and sniffling, so I offered her my handkerchief. She blew her nose and then she stood up straight.

“How would you make me get on the train?” she asked in a calm voice. “You can’t physically force me. I’m taller than you and I’m probably stronger than you, too.”

The jig was up. The lion had realized the impotence of the zookeeper. “I can’t, Natty. All I can tell you is I love you, and I think this is for the best.”

“Well, I think you’re wrong,” she said. We stared at each other. I didn’t blink and neither did she. A second later, she turned on her heel and stalked off toward the stairway that led to the train.

“Goodbye, Natty!” I called after her. “I love you! Call me if you need anything.”

She did not reply or even turn her head.

*   *   *

A week later, she called me, sobbing. “Please, Anya. Please let me come home.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do anything here. There are tons of rules and even more because I’m new. If you let me come home, I’ll be good, I swear. I know I was wrong before. I shouldn’t have stayed out with Pierce. I shouldn’t have been disrespectful to you or Mr. Beery.”

I steeled myself. “Give it a couple of weeks.”

“I can’t, Anya! I’ll die. I will seriously die.”

“Are they doing anything bad to you? Because if they are, you need to tell me what it is.”

She didn’t answer.

“Is this about Pierce?” I asked. “Do you miss him?”

“No! That’s … you don’t know everything. You don’t know anything!”

“Give it until Thanksgiving. You can come home for Thanksgiving and then you’ll see Leo.”

She hung up on me.

I wished I could see her. I wished the school wasn’t so far away or that I hadn’t been so busy with the club. If only I knew someone in Boston, I thought.

I did, of course, though I didn’t want to have to talk to
him
. I didn’t want to have to ask him for anything either.

In point of fact, I didn’t even have his cell phone number.

I got my slate from the drawer. Only people in school used slates, but unlike me, Win was still in school. Although we had never slate-messaged much (no one my age did; SM-ing was something your grandparents or even your great-grandparents did), at that moment, the ancient technology appealed to me. It seemed more respectful, and easier than having to actually speak.

anyaschka66:
Are you there? Do you ever use this?

He did not reply for nearly an hour.

win-win:
Not often. What do you want?

anyaschka66:
Are you at college?

win-win:
Yes.

anyaschka66:
Boston, right? Do you like it?

win-win:
Yes and yes. Actually, I have to get to class soon.

anyaschka66:
You don’t owe me anything, but I need a favor. Natty’s at a new school in Boston, and I wondered if you could go visit her for me. She sounded upset the last time we talked. I know it’s a lot to ask …

win-win:
OK,
for Natty,* OK. Where is it?

anyaschka66:
Sacred Heart, on Commonwealth.

(*“For Natty”—read: not
for me
.)

The next day, he messaged me again.

win-win:
Saw N. this afternoon. She’s definitely okay. Likes her classes and the other girls. Maybe she’s a little homesick, but she’ll live. I let her steal my hat.

anyaschka66:
Thank you. Thank you so much.

win-win:
Not a problem. I should go.

anyaschka66:
Maybe if you’re home for Thanksgiving, you could stop by my club. We could catch up. Drinks on me.

win-win:
I’m not coming home for Thanksgiving. I’m going to visit my girlfriend’s family in Vermont.*

anyaschka66:
Sounds fun. I’ve never been to Vermont. That’s so great. I’m really, really happy to hear that.**

win-win:
Dad says you’re a success. Congrats, Annie. Sounds like you’ve gotten everything you wanted.***

anyaschka66:
Yeah. Well, thanks. Thank you again for going to see Natty. Have a good Thanksgiving if I don’t see you. I guess I probably won’t.

win-win:
Take care.

(*Vermont? That was
fast
. Though maybe it wasn’t. It had been about five and a half months since we’d bid
adieu
. Had I expected him to become a monk?)

(**Maybe there was a point to this slate-messaging after all. I was glad he couldn’t hear my voice or see my face as I expressed how
really, really happy
I was for him.)

(***Suffice it to say, not quite everything.)

VI

I DELIVER THE WORLD’S SHORTEST EULOGY; THROW A PARTY; AM KISSED PROPERLY

T
WO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS,
I received a phone call from Keisha, Mr. Kipling’s wife. “Anya,” she said tearfully, “Mr. K. is dead.” Mr. Kipling had been fifty-four years old. He’d had a major heart attack my junior year of high school. A little over two years later, a second heart attack had finished him off. Mortality rates in my circle were always high, but that year, they had been particularly so. I’d lost Imogen in January, my cousin Mickey in September, and now, Mr. Kipling. A loss for nearly every season of the year.

Perhaps this is why I did not cry when Keisha gave me the news. “I’m truly sorry,” I said.

“I’m calling because I wondered if you might say a few words at his funeral?”

“It’s not really my strong suit.” I was not comfortable with public displays of emotion.

“But it would mean so much to him. He was incredibly proud of you and the club. Every single article about you, he saved.”

I was surprised to hear that. For the last nine months of his life, Mr. Kipling and I had fought, mainly over my decision to open the club that apparently he’d been “incredibly proud of.” (There had been other reasons.) However, from my father’s death in 2075 until I’d become an adult last summer, Mr. Kipling had overseen every financial decision I had made and quite a few of the personal ones. I’m not sure how good his advice was at times, but he had always done his best and had never given up on me even when it seemed that the world was against me. I knew he had loved me. I had loved him, too.

*   *   *

Noriko; Leo, who was finally home from prison; and Natty, who was back from Sacred Heart, accompanied me to St. Patrick’s. I was the third to speak—after Simon Green and a man named Joe Burns, who apparently had been Mr. Kipling’s squash partner, but before his daughter, Grace, and his brother, Peter. By the time it was my turn, my palms and armpits were moist. Though it was winter, I was seriously regretting my decision to wear a black sweaterdress.

I brought my slate with me to the podium. “Hello,” I began. “I wrote some notes.” I turned on my slate, which seemed to take forever, and glanced over what I had written:

1. Mr. K.
=
Dad’s best friend. Joke about how it’s hard to be a crime boss’s best friend?

2. Mr. K., funny story about his being bald?

3. Mr. K., maybe not the best lawyer, but loyal. Story about that?

4. Mr. K. honored commitments.

And that was what I had. I had written the notes after coming home from a late night at work. They had made sense at the time, but as I stood in St. Patrick’s, they looked pretty inadequate. I turned off my slate. I would have to speak from the heart, which was an act I tried to avoid.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said stupidly. “He was”—my inane notes ran through my head:
bald? my dad’s best friend? a mediocre lawyer?
—“a good man.” My foot was shaking and I could hear myself breathing. “Thank you.”

As I walked back down the aisle, I could not look Keisha Kipling in the eye. I sat down in my pew, and Natty squeezed my hand.

*   *   *

After the funeral, Simon Green, who I usually tried to avoid, approached my siblings and me. Natty hugged him. “He was like a father to you,” she said generously. “You must be heartbroken.”

“Yes. Thank you, Natty.” Simon took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. He nodded toward me. “Anya,” he said, “I wondered if I might speak to you a moment.”

I would have preferred not to, but what choice did I have? “This is hard to say,” Simon said once we were outside.

I crossed my arms. I already didn’t like the tone of his voice.

“Mr. Kipling left his firm to me, but unfortunately, his client list is vastly diminished. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it afloat. Of course you can say no, but I wondered if you might have a job for me at the Dark Room.”

“The Dark Room has a lawyer already,” I said. Furthermore, I didn’t want Simon around.

“I know. I only meant because your business is so big now. Maybe if it gets any bigger you’ll need another lawyer. And a man like Charles Delacroix can’t be thinking he’ll be legal counsel to a nightclub forever.”

“I’ve learned it’s fruitless to try to speculate about what Charles Delacroix is thinking.”

“Okay, Annie. I can see I’ve made you upset. You can’t blame a person for asking.”

I knew I was being unkind. “Listen, Simon, it’s not personal, it’s business.”

“Sure, Annie. I get that.” He paused. “Leo’s back from prison, I see.”

This was not said casually, but as a reminder of an obligation I may or may not have had to Simon regarding the circumstances of my brother’s return from Japan last Easter. Had Simon spoken bluntly, I would have respected him more. “If my situation changes, I’ll let you know.”