Stay With Me (15 page)

"It's as if I'm two people," I say. "When we were together, it's like I was different."

"In a bad way?" he asks. "Because I felt different too, but good."

"No, no, not at all," I say, desperate to end this conversation. "Not in a bad way."

"Do you think you'll ever want to again?" Ben asks. "With me, that is."

I can almost hear Rebecca telling me the solution here. She would surely say that I should sleep with him again. That that would be the best way to find out if I can feel with Ben what I did with Eamon. My dead sister, the big believer in acting first and then sorting it out, is perhaps not the person to go to for advice. I try applying Clare's more cautious nature to Ben's question.

"I might want to," I say. "If we thought about it slowly."

"I can think slowly," he says.

When he leans forward to kiss me, I let him. There's no zing-zang-zoom here, but there might be. Maybe. If we think slowly and wait until the summer has ended before we act.

The big-fuss dinner is lovely, with flowers on the table and candles in silver holders. Raphael opens champagne and we drink it from glasses which Clare recognizes as being from her grandmother's set. Our grandmother, who died before Da's divorce.

"She left them to my mother," Raphael says.

That's interesting, as I'd always heard that Da's mother never forgave Aunt Ingrid for remarrying.

"They were the ones used at Uncle Jacques's wedding," Clare says. "Grand-mere always marked that day.
We'd have dinner at her apartment and drink from these."

"October third," Raphael says.

"The seventh," Clare says.

"Well, it was my mother's first wedding," Raphael says.

"Let's trust your memory, then," Clare says.

"Except I don't remember ever getting together with you guys on that anniversary," Raphael says.

"Believe me," Clare says. "The Barclays were not invited."

"Got it," Raphael says. "Hard to picture my father there."

Ben, who knows I love all the rumors, stories, and details that the Abranels brought with them (along with champagne glasses) from Alexandria, looks at me and smiles. I have drawn him my version of the family chart. Here's my uncle who is dead, here's my uncle who is not my uncle, here are my two sisters, both old enough to be my mother, etc.

As a present, Clare and Raphael give me six chisels, exactly like the ones he has. They are by Robert Sorby and have such beautiful handles they almost look like art instead of tools. Three of them are bevel-edged because everyone needs those, and three are for paring, which will come in handy when we make cabinets for the third-floor guest room.

"Oh, my God," Ben says. "These are perfect."

"It was this or a skirt from Prada," Clare says. "I was overruled."

I've never owned clothes from a "label" before, but these are better. Ben gives me a copy of
Ah, Wilderness,
which the drama club is putting on in the fall. I will, in spite of my hiatus, run the tech crew, so this play is about to become my bible. It's a comedy, which means I won't need to worry about any dark events taking place offstage.

On the card, Ben has written,
Looking forward to building these sets and more of our slow thinking.
I wish that didn't feel like pressure for me to know—quickly—what will happen with us. Even so, I'm very glad he's here. He's like proof that a part of my old life can be in
the new now,
which is no longer new, but simply now.

It's been the first really hot day of the year, and Clare keeps holding her hair off her neck until Raphael brings her a large barrette that looks familiar.

"Oh, bless you," Clare says, her hands winding through her hair as she unsnarls it. "What are you doing with such a thing? Girlfriend leave it behind?"

What's wrong with her? The last girlfriend he had, he broke up with in February. And she was nothing more than an advertisement for how Raphael likes tall blonde women.

"It's your sister's," he says quietly, and when she looks at me I shake my head no, not me.

This, I would like to tell Rebecca, is what happens when you are not here. Because you no longer occupy it, I now share the space you alone used to own.

"She must have left it the last time she was here," Raphael says. "Ben, can you help me with the cake?"

"Sure."

As soon as they leave, I lean across the table and tell Clare that Raphael and his girlfriend broke up. Months ago.

"Really," Clare says, surprise and pleasure crowding into that one word. "Why wouldn't he have told me?"

I think of Ben's note and know immediately why Raphael has never mentioned being single to my sister.

"He knows you know he loves you," I say. "He doesn't want to pressure you."

"No, that's not it, no," Clare says. "No, it's that he used to rely on Rebecca to tell me about him. It's been years since he's told me anything directly."

"He's relying on me now," I say. "And I'm late with the update."

"You think he still loves me like that?" she asks.

"Yes, Clare, I do," I say, so slowly and deliberately that she laughs.

"Rebecca always thought he and I were too clueless to make a go of it," she says.

"You're not clueless," I say. "You're very smart."

"Not about important things," Clare says, looking at Rebecca's enamel barrette before snapping it into her hair. "You know, she'd bought a new space for the store."

"I thought she was just thinking about it," I say. "Making plans to buy."

"Raphael loaned her the money," Clare says. "She closed on the place in October."

October? She got her drugs in August. In October she was seeing people she wanted to say goodbye to.

"How can she have been making two sets of plans?" I ask.

"Two?" Clare asks, getting up to take glass plates from Ben, who whispers,
It's chocolate
to me.

"One to go, one to stay," I say.

Clare sits down next to me, putting her hands on mine.

"I don't know, it'll never make any sense," she says. "But, look, let's keep this night about you. She can't have them all, it's not fair."

But of course she can and it's likely she always will. The trick to Rebecca's shadowing us is to pretend that someday she won't. I can do that and say to Clare,

"I like when your hair is up."

"You and Gyula," she says with a laugh, returning to her side of the table. "But not Raphael or Da. They like it down."

The four of us eat the entire cake (chocolate raspberry, a detail I refuse to see as a sign), which is big enough for eight, maybe ten people. Raphael says that as a scientist, he can confidently tell us that a serving size is strictly in the eyes of the beholder. He somehow cajoles Clare to eat past her two-bites-I'm-done policy.

"It's all in the frosting," he says to me. "It has power over her."

"I think it's a family thing," Ben says. "Leila will eat anything if you add butter and sugar."

"Leila is exceedingly clever," Clare tells him, and Raphael makes us all drink a toast to me and my cleverness.

We use lemon water because no one wants any more champagne and Clare says water toasts are the only kind you can trust. The candles have dripped onto the silver and the napkins look like destroyed party dresses, but I wish I could keep us all here at the table. I'd add Rebecca, of course, and William because he likes parties. A chair for Gyula, but only if he behaves exactly as Clare wishes. And Janie. Definitely Janie, with my sisters wearing the best of the dresses she bought for them.

It's not until three days later, when I'm on my way to the airport, that I realize I will soon be with the two people I forgot to put on that list.

I
THROW UP ON THE PLANE.
Three times. I tell the incredibly nice flight attendant who keeps bringing me airsick bags and wet towels that I've lost my airsickness medicine.
Airsick
doesn't sound nearly as bad as
consumed with terror.
Especially spoken aloud on a plane these days.

But my terror is the old-fashioned kind, the kind I've always had. The kind that involves crashing or exploding in midair not because of something anyone does but because flying is not
natural.
For years Da has said I would outgrow this theory of mine, but it appears to have, instead, gotten worse.

The apartment in Krakow is nice, with high ceilings and little balconies outside all the windows that face the street. The kitchen is tiny, with a stove that needs a match in order to light, and the huge dining room has the clunkiest-looking table I've ever seen. I guess one person is supposed to cook for a whole lot of people, although I suspect my parents don't use either room very much.

The only food in the kitchen is bread so stale you have to hold it over the stove's flame (no toaster) to make it edible. It's just as well, as I appear to have lost my appetite somewhere over the Atlantic. In my room, my mother has put small plants on the desk, and Da apparently went out and bought me new pillows, saying,
She's very fond of pillows, right?

He looks better than he did in January. His eyes have regained some of their sharpness, and when he takes off his jacket, he's careful to fold it instead of just tossing it into the closet the way he did the day of Rebecca's service. His ties are all as neatly organized as they were at home, and my mother's briefcase weighs the same thousand pounds it always does.

I spend time looking for and examining their things, as they are not in evidence otherwise. I think they only come here to sleep and shower. There are no books or papers lying around. My mother, who usually leaves her reading glasses everywhere, never once asks me to find them. Normally you can tell where my father has just been because of the half-empty cup of coffee (he only ever likes the first few sips) and uncapped pen sitting nearby.

But not here.

I tag along with them to the hospital for a few days and then buy myself a map and a guidebook and, at a bank, exchange more money. I go out into a city that is not my own and discover two things: I like old buildings, and I have, at long last, figured out my lefts and rights. Clare, who has been teaching me to knit, will be so pleased. Janie taught my sisters to knit, saying that after a thousand stitches, left and right sorted itself out. She knew what she was talking about, and I send her a silent thanks every time I make a turn with confidence.

Most of the buildings I like best are from the 1800s (or were rebuilt then), and some of them are now owned by the church, which I guess means the pope. There are a lot of churches here. A lot as in almost too many, until I remember the pope was born here. He came by it naturally, then.

At first I'm a little afraid to go in any of them (I've never even been to temple), but Da says if you're not praying, it's not like going to church. I'm allowed, he says. He won't get mad. Normally, he thinks that even if older churches and synagogues can teach you a lot about art, the damage religion might do isn't worth what you'd learn. He told my sisters exactly what he's told me: that eventually I'll make my own peace with God, art, and religions. His history being what it is, he himself has no peace. Therefore, he'll leave us to find ours.

Rebecca went into churches all the time, claiming to like the silence. Clare waited outside of them whenever she and Gyula traveled and he went into one.

"I made an exception for the Vatican," she told me. "But I called Da first and got permission. I was twenty-three."

When I wanted to know why she still kept out of churches while Rebecca visited them easily, Clare said,

"Rebecca looked like she belonged to Da's family. I don't, so I guess I'm extra careful before doing anything that makes me less of an Abranel."

I thought I knew what she meant. Because of the way I look, people rarely think I'm Jewish. Or that I'm related to Da, who is the Abranel I know best. The one who was here before my sisters or me. He does not pray, go to synagogue, light candles, or set foot in any of the churches I want to see from the inside.

Which is why I double-check with Da. Not only to ask if I will be allowed into them (that no one will stop me at the door) but also to confirm that he won't mind. With his consent in hand, I break some kind of record by visiting nine churches in one day.

The crucifixes take a little getting used to even though they aren't very different from paintings I've seen. I like the candles and the severely built, dark wooden seats. It's easy to see what draws people here. On the subject of churches, I will probably wind up more like Rebecca than Clare.

My guidebook says there's a Jewish museum in Kazimierz town and I ask Da if he will come with me, but he says those kinds of things are too depressing.

Too dreary.

"They all start with a religious history specific to Jews in that country but end the same way," he says. "With relics from the Holocaust. It's as if being Jewish is only about the belief and the Nazis."

Whenever I've asked him why we're Jewish if we don't believe in God, Da has always said that history trumps religion. And that we have a right to the history even if we aren't observant. I have a few ideas about history, religion, art, and damage. When they're less vague, I'll want to ask him more. But I like that he's so clear about his own ideas.

When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I asked him why people were observant. Half of my class was out of school at Yom Kippur. For a lot of them, it was the first time they were going to observe the fast. This had been widely discussed for days with both dread and excitement. Being observant seemed like a lot of work if you didn't have to do it.

"Religion is for people who need help asking and answering life's questions," Da told me in his most lecturelike voice. "If you need the help, fine, but it's best to figure all that out on your own."

This never sounded like something that was up for discussion, although I wonder if when Rebecca died my father had wished for some of that help. Except I'm pretty sure suicide violates every religious law there is.

"I'll take you to see Auschwitz if you want," Da says, suddenly looking away from his desk. "That at least doesn't pretend to be a history of anything other than death. We can do a day trip."