Rules for 50/50 Chances (16 page)

“Rose? Are you there?”

“Uh-huh,” I say after a moment.

“Hey, what's going on? Are you okay?”

I can feel myself snap and know my voice will come out sharp, maybe too sharp, but I don't care. “Um, you were supposed to be at the
Nutcracker
this afternoon. With your sisters. I left you tickets. Remember?”

There's a pause, and then I hear him exhale long and hard. “Crap. Crap, crap, crap. I'm so, so sorry, Rose—I just…” He trails off.

“We did say you guys were going to come to the Saturday matinee, right? I told you I'd leave your tickets at the theater,” I say. I'm pretty sure that's what we agreed to, but now I'm starting to question my own sanity.

“Yeah, but…” he stammers. “I didn't even know what theater. Or what time, or anything.”

All the racing in my mind stops for a minute. He didn't
know
? Does he seriously think that's a legit excuse? “But you didn't
ask
.”

“Well, yeah, I guess I…” He trails off. “We said I'd see it over the weekend. But then the whole thing happened with your parents, at dinner, and then—”

And then we kissed. So that is what this is about. We kissed, and then he didn't want to see me again. I thought I was supposed to be the freaker-outer, but it turns out he is.

“Did you … Is it because of what happened? The thing with my mom? And then the—” The thing after that, but I can't bring myself to say it. My voice catches in my throat.

“No, no,” he says. “It absolutely wasn't because of what happened. I just—honestly? We never talked about it again—and I didn't—I just thought it wasn't happening. Or I didn't really—I didn't really think about it, to be honest. I'm so sorry.”

I don't respond.

“Rose? I'm sorry. Seriously. Can I make it up to you? Can I come see the show
next
weekend?”

I let out a long breath. People forget things, I know. But it hurts that he wasn't thinking as much about me as I was thinking about him. If he had been, he would have remembered.

“Let's just call it a day with the
Nutcracker
, okay?”

“Can I make it up to you with ice cream? It's never too cold for ice cream, right?”

I want to say no, I really do—I know I should take this as a sign that I should let this go. It would just be safer, easier, not to care. But the fact that he remembers my dad's rule—the one I told him about the first time we hung out—tugs at my resolve.

“I don't really have a lot of free time until after the
Nutcracker
.”

“When is that?”

“Next year.”

He laughs hard at that, and it loosens me up. I wish I could hold on to my anger at him, but already I can feel it dissipating.

“The very beginning of next year?” he asks hopefully.

“Yeah. Like January second.” I sigh. I guess there's not really anything wrong with having some ice cream.

Thirteen

Chanukah and Christmas—Chrismukah, we used to call them when I was little, which we celebrate in equally half-assed ways in my house—pass by in their usual blur, marred as always by my
Nutcracker
schedule and this year by something more insidious, too. Mom can't seem to hold on to the significance of the train set, for one thing. She likes it, but I don't think she even remembers where it came from. I almost wish Dad had left it in its box in the basement this year, gathering dust.

When Caleb pulls up in front of my house to pick me up for ice cream on January second, I put on my best slightly skeptical, slightly mad face as I walk out to the car.

“Forgive me yet?”

I shrug. “Undecided. I'll let you know. You're just lucky I've shown up for this event. I almost forgot.” I slip into the front seat next to him and finally let myself smile at him like I really want to.

“Phew,” he says. “I thought you were going to give me your serious face all day. So, long time no see. Happy New Year. What's new?”

It's been more than a month since the fateful dinner with my parents. It seems like a lot has happened between the moment Caleb and I kissed and now, even though we've barely spoken.

“Well, I survived another
Nutcracker
season without sustaining any injuries,” I say. “And I rang in the new year watching a Hitchcock marathon with my parents, so that was super cool of me.” The truth is, Lena tried to drag me to a party at Anders' house, but I prefer Hitchcock movies to high school parties.

“It's good to see you, HD.”

“You too, Sickle Cell.” And it is.

 

 

Caleb and I get our ice cream to go in Harvard Square, but even though I really do believe my father that it's never too cold for ice cream, as soon as we step outside into the tundra that is January in Boston, I realize we've made a mistake. I jump up and down a few times, while the cold of my frappe seeps through my mittens.

“Did you know that they do not have frappes in the rest of the country?” I say, trying to distract myself from the impending frostbite.

“Of course they do.”

I shake my head. “Nope. In the rest of the country milkshakes have ice cream in them. They have no need for frappes.”

“Milkshakes have ice cream in them here too,” he says. “Milkshakes and frappes are the same thing.”

“Incorrect. Proper New England milkshakes are just milk and syrup.”

“Milk and syrup … shaken?” He grins at me.

“Precisely.”

“Well,” he says, snaking an arm behind my waist and drawing me in closer to him, “I've learned something new today. Thanks for that.”

It's warmer tucked in against Caleb's chest. “Can we go inside now?”

He nods. “I know a good spot.”

 

 

I know I've been to the Gunn before, maybe when I was five or six, dragged around the museum on a Sunday afternoon with my parents, or maybe when Gram was in town for a visit; I can't remember exactly. It's on a quiet side street right behind Harvard Yard, a few blocks from my school—I've walked past it probably a thousand times and not given it a second glance in years. I'm not a big museum person, but I don't mention this to Caleb as he leads me quickly across the Yard—the grass is frozen solid, dotted with patches of gray snow—and up the marble steps of the old red brick building.

“You can't bring that in here, guys,” the security guard tells us as soon as we push through the heavy door and into the warmth of the museum. The ice cream, of course.

“We'll finish it here,” Caleb tells the guard with a smile. I get the feeling Caleb always gets what he wants when he deploys that grin.

Ice cream quickly consumed, we show the guard our school IDs to confirm that we can get in for free, and head inside. It doesn't bring back any particular memories—I think it's been renovated since I was here the last time—but Caleb seems to know it well.

“Come on,” he says, leading me down a hallway. “I want to show you something.”

We climb up two flights to a gallery called Modern American Art, 1950 to the Present. As we step into the first room, Caleb nods at the security guard standing watch. “Hey, Randall.” The guard greets him back with a nod and smile.

“You know him?” I ask as we pass into the next room.

“I come here semi-regularly.”

The gallery is a bright, high-ceilinged room with crisp white walls and glossy hardwood floors. The rooms have the kind of solemn, silent feeling that always makes me a little uncomfortable in museums: I'm more used to the bustle of theaters, the backstage white noise of pianos being tuned and pointe shoes clacking on concrete floors. In the gallery, I trail Caleb through rooms only sparsely populated with artwork and museumgoers. Huge abstract paintings take up whole walls.

“See, I don't get that,” I whisper to Caleb, nodding toward one of them. “It's just a big black canvas. I could do that.”

“But have you?” he whispers back. Point taken. Nonetheless, it doesn't look like much to the untrained eye. “It's about texture, HD. And tone, and the way the paint interacts with the canvas, and the light, and—”

“So what you're saying is,” I interrupt, “it's not just a big black canvas. It's a
fancy
big black canvas.”

“Here,” he says as we step into a room with, finally, some paintings that look recognizable as actual art. Along one wall is a series of three long, wide panels, hung side by side and running almost from floor to ceiling. They're painted in rich colors: at first glance, all I see is a blur of bright reds, deep browns, and shimmering golds, swirling together in a busy, vibrant mix. Looking more closely, I register that the first panel captures a scene from the famous slave uprising on the
Amistad
. Black men and white men are entangled on the deck of a ship while blue-green water sparkles around them. The painting feels familiar, and I've stared at it for a full minute or two before I read the name plate next to it—“Giles Henry Franklin,
Still Rising
, 1989.”

“Wait, I know this painting,” I say, it suddenly dawning on me that Mr. Sullivan, my tenth-grade U.S. History teacher, showed us a slide of it during the unit on slavery and the Civil War. It's sort of famous.

“You do?” Caleb asks, sounding surprised.

“From U.S. History. Are you related to Giles Franklin?”

“He's my grandfather. My dad's dad. He gave me my first sketchbook. Cool, right?”

“That's not cool—that's kind of amazing.”

“He was commissioned to do this series for the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the
Amistad
uprising.”

I haven't seen the other two paintings before. One depicts a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter; the other shows a series of scenes, each one blending into the next and clearly crossing different time periods. In one scene, there's a black man and a white man in suits, conferring behind a table in a courtroom. In another, a cluster of African-American students are walking into a school, and in a third, a white man and a black woman are exchanging wedding vows.

Caleb notices me surveying the third painting. “Oh, that one's major Supreme Court decisions.” He points to each scene in turn, naming them as he goes. “Um, Powell versus Alabama, Brown versus the Board of Education, Loving versus Virginia.” He falters on that one. “That's, uh, legalizing interracial marriage. Can't remember the year.”

I swallow, hard. “Wow. This is—I mean, I didn't know your grandfather was a famous painter. These are awesome. It's awesome that they're
here
. You can just come see them whenever you want.”

“He's got some other stuff in the collection here, but these are my favorites. When I was like ten, this museum bought them, and Granddad brought me here. Even then, he explained them to me, not like I was a kid, you know? I still remember what he said. ‘Grandson, these are my paintings. They're about freedom. Don't let anyone tell you the struggle is over.'”

I take a step back to get a wider view of all three canvases. “We've come a long way since the
Amistad
, though.”

He chuckles toward the floor. “Sure. But not all the way.”

It's so quiet in the gallery that I can hear him breathing next to me. “I didn't mean … I know there are a lot of problems, still,” I say. “Never mind. Thanks for showing these to me. They're awesome.”

He puts his hand on my waist, sending a now-familiar shock wave through my spine. “We're allowed to talk about this stuff, you know. Race, et cetera. Et al. So on and so forth.”

“I know we're ‘allowed.'” I roll my eyes. “But it's like—I don't know. I don't even think of you as black.”

Caleb's laugh bounces off the high ceilings of the gallery, so loud that I'm sure people all over the museum can hear him.

“Why is that funny?” I say.

He pulls himself together and takes my face in his hands. “Sorry, sorry. I'm not laughing at you—really I'm not.”

“Except you are, clearly.” I pull away from him.

“No—HD—really. It's just, how
do
you see me, then?”

I look around the gallery to make sure we're still alone. “You're just—you. Caleb. Do you look at me all the time and think, ‘Gee, there goes that half-Jewish white girl again'?”

The bemused look on his face is bugging me. Suddenly I feel like the most ignorant person on the planet. “No, but—HD,” he says. “If you don't see me as black, maybe you're not seeing me as me. Because I
am
black.”

“I know that, obviously. I didn't mean … We shouldn't be having this conversation.” I'm officially mortified. But I'm just being honest. I guess I don't think of Caleb as being so connected to those struggles in his grandfather's paintings. It's not the same as the old days, now. His family is way richer than mine—and practically everyone I know. And anyway, we live in a place where people just don't think like that anymore. But now I feel like a total jackass for saying anything.

He takes my hands. “It's okay, HD. I get what you're saying. What I'm saying is, we still don't live in a world where race doesn't matter. This”—he points to the skin on the back of one of his hands—“still affects the way people see me. It just does.”

I force myself to look up into his face, in spite of my complete humiliation. “Sorry. I didn't mean to be … an idiot about it.”

“You're not an idiot, HD. You're just white. Can't be helped.” Then he cracks up laughing all over again. I shove him.

“But listen, HD,” he says, calming down. “Look. At the end of the day, I wouldn't want to live in a world that doesn't see race. I want to live in a world where people aren't
disadvantaged
on account of race, but that's different. I like being a black dude, okay? And I'm proud of where I come from. That's why I brought you to see my grandfather's paintings.”