As Close as Sisters (19 page)

23

Aurora

W
e were all sitting on the front deck. Janine had just come downstairs from taking a shower after her run. She was wearing one of her dumbass wifebeaters with a white, cotton sports bra underneath. Her long, baggy shorts had enough room in the cargo pockets to carry a six-pack of beer. I’d taken more care to dress to meet her girlfriend than she had. I’d actually put on a skirt and shaved my legs.

“You going to wear that?” I asked, looking at her dubiously.

“Yes, Mom, this is what I’m wearing.” Her hair was wet, but at least she’d combed it.

I glared and sipped my first gin and tonic of the afternoon. If I was going to put up with Lilly oohing and aahing over Janine’s new squeeze, I wasn’t going to do it sober if I didn’t have to.

Janine looked at me. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

She sighed and glanced away like I could read her damned mind. “It’s not even five o’clock, Aurora.”

“I don’t know what we’re talking about,” I argued.

“You know.”

“I don’t know!” I practically shouted. I did know, of course. Janine thinks I’m an alcoholic (the beer and gin) and a drug addict (the occasional bowl). The fact that she drinks Jack Daniel’s like the distillery is about to close? That she doesn’t want to talk about.

“You okay?” McKenzie asked Janine.

McKenzie had tied on a pretty paisley head scarf and put on some makeup. She looked pretty good. At least, pretty good to someone who didn’t know her. I hadn’t seen her bald head since the day she arrived. I’d caught glimpses of red peach fuzz at the edges of her ball caps and scarves. I was pretty sure her hair was growing, which worried me. If the new drug was working, wouldn’t she still be bald? She was still puking her guts out pretty regularly, though. So maybe that was a good sign.

“You don’t have to be nervous,” McKenzie was telling Janine.

“I’m not nervous,” Janine argued. Then, “Well, I am, but it’s not why—” She stopped and started again like she was all tongue-tied. She looked like she was sweating even though it wasn’t that hot. “I just want to say . . . up front,” she stuttered and stammered, “that this isn’t the way I would have done this. I only agreed to it because he . . .” She tucked a wet strand of hair behind her ear, something Janine did when she was really nervous.

“Now you’re making me nervous.” I took another sip of the cool, crisp equalizer. It was an equalizer because once I’d had a couple I didn’t care any more about one thing than another.

I wasn’t excited about meeting Janine’s girlfriend. Not like Lilly, who wants everyone to be happy and in love with red paper hearts hanging over their heads everywhere they go. And not like McKenzie, who was eager to interview the girlfriend before she met the grim reaper and make sure that she was good enough for Janine.

“Wait a minute,” Lilly said. She pointed at Janine. “You said he.”

“What?” Janine asked.

“You just said
he
. You said you wouldn’t have done it this way, that you only agreed to it because
he
. . . Who’s coming? I thought Chris was coming.”

“I didn’t say
he
.”

Lilly and McKenzie were looking at each other. Then at Janine. Now I was looking at Janine. She looked guilty as hell. Janine isn’t a good liar. Or at least I can tell when she’s lying. When I’m paying attention. I wasn’t totally sure I had been paying attention through this whole “Chris is coming over” thing.

“Janine,” I said slowly. “Is Chris—”

There was a crunch on the driveway stones in the back of the house, and Janine bolted for the door. Lilly pushed out of her chair and beat Fritz to the door and into the living room.

McKenzie glanced up at me. She was sitting in her green Adirondack chair. I was at my usual spot on the rail. “You sure you’re okay?” I asked McKenzie.

She smiled. She’d spent a little time in the sun earlier in the day, and freckles stood out on her nose and across her cheeks. She really did look okay today. “I’m fine.”

Fritz started to bark, and I looked through the windows into the living room. Why the hell was Fritz barking at Chris? If they weren’t all three living together, they were sure as hell seeing a lot of each other. He should not have been barking like that. Even I knew that.

McKenzie turned to look over her shoulder, thinking the same thing, I suspect.

I raised my hand to take another sip. My lower lip touched the cool glass, and then I froze, staring through the window. I was sure I was mistaken. But I wasn’t. No mother, not even me, doesn’t recognize her own son.

24

Janine

I
saw the look on Aurora’s face, through the window, when we walked into the living room. It was a mixture of shock, fear, and . . . longing. I felt like such a shit. I had assumed she was going to be angry that I hadn’t told her that Jude was coming. But he’d made me promise. I know he’d made me promise not to tell her because he was afraid that if she had any warning, she would have taken off. And even though I wanted to tell Jude she wasn’t that person anymore, I was pretty sure she was.

Aurora’s anger I could deal with, but her pain? Totally out of my comfort zone.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Lilly gushed, genuinely thrilled to see him. “Do you want to stay the night? We’d really like you to stay.”

“I can’t stay.” He was talking to Lilly, but he was looking at his mother out on the deck.

Mother and son were sizing each other up. For a second, I thought Aurora was going to cry. Then she tensed, setting her glass on the rail, and I was afraid she might make a run for the steps.

Instead, she just stood there on the deck, her hands limp at her sides.

“You want a beer?” I asked Jude as we made our way outside.

“No, thank you. I can’t stay long.”

“What on earth are you doing on the East Coast?” Lilly waddled two steps behind us. “I’m so glad you stopped, even if you can’t stay. I know your mom’s going to be—” There was an awkward hesitation. “Thrilled.”

“Right. She certainly looks thrilled,” he said, sounding far more like Aurora than I bet he realized.

Jude was a startlingly handsome young man with his father’s dark hair and skin that was a shade left of his Arab father’s and right of his Norwegian mother’s. He had soulful, hooded black eyes that reflected a maturity far beyond his years.

I stepped aside at the door and let Jude walk out first onto the deck.

“Jude?” Aurora’s gaze immediately went to mine. She didn’t seem angry so much as hurt.

“Surprise?” he said with an awkward laugh.

She ran the last two steps to him and threw her arms around him, surprising me, and Jude, too, I think.

Her hug was genuine. His was ill at ease and only halfhearted.

She hugged him long enough to make me feel self-conscious. Then she let go of him.

“Jude, oh my God, I can’t believe you’re here.” McKenzie was out of her chair, hugging him. “Why didn’t you tell us you were—” She cut herself short, probably realizing that Jude hadn’t warned them because he hadn’t wanted them—meaning, his mother—to know he was coming.

Lilly bounced up and down in her pretty sandals, then took off for the kitchen. “I’ll grab drinks. Some chips. I think we’ve still got some guac and salsa left.”

I moved to the open doorway, my hands stuffed in my pockets. Aurora gazed past McKenzie and Jude in their embrace to look at me.
Sorry,
I mouthed.

She pressed her lips together, nodded, and returned her attention to her handsome son who wasn’t really a son to her at all.

“You’ve gotten so tall,” McKenzie was saying.

I never got it when people said that to kids. Of course he had grown. Boys grow until they’re in their early twenties. McKenzie, being a mom, had to know that. I guess it was something people said when they didn’t know what else to say.

Jude studied McKenzie’s face as she backed up and sat down in her chair again. In his eyes, I could see the inventory he was taking: no hair, no eyelashes, thin and pale, even with a little color from the sun. “How are you doing?” he asked her.

I had told him how she was doing, of course.

Jude and I talked once a month or so. We had since he was in high school. Out of the blue he had tracked me down the end of his freshman year after having dinner with all of us while in DC with Hannad. He wasn’t getting along with his dad at the time, typical teenage bullshit. The weird thing was, he didn’t get my number from Aurora. He found me online, e-mailed me, and when I gave him my phone number, he called. I think he just needed an adult to talk to, someone who would listen. It was a part of my life that I had never shared with Aurora. I told myself I never told her because I didn’t want her to be hurt that he wanted to talk to me and not her or guilty if she didn’t want to talk to him. I think that, secretly, I liked the fact that he and I had this clandestine relationship. It made me feel, as stupid as it sounds,
special
. Why I never told McKenzie or Lilly, I don’t know. They knew I talked to him, just not how often.

“So, you doing okay?” he asked McKenzie, sounding genuinely concerned. Our Jude had a big heart. He was what some might call a “tender soul.”

“I’m . . . okay.” McKenzie touched her head scarf, feeling self-conscious, I’m sure. “Hanging in there.” She offered a brave smile.

His gaze shifted to his mother. McKenzie and I watched the two of them.

“I . . . I just stopped by for a few minutes,” he told Aurora, adjusting the Ray-Bans he’d pushed onto his head. “We’re flying out of Baltimore tonight.”

“You and your dad?”

He shook his head. “Gabrielle and I.”

A look crossed Aurora’s face. She didn’t know about Gabrielle.
Anything
about Gabrielle.

“We’ll take a hike,” I said. “Give you guys a few minutes alone.”

McKenzie started to get out of her chair.

“That’s not necessary, Aunt Janine.” Jude was looking at his mother. “This won’t take long.”

McKenzie cut her eyes at me as if to say,
What’s going on?

“You don’t have to go,” Aurora agreed, not quite in her own voice. This Aurora sounded so . . . passive. “Whatever Jude has to say to me—”

“No, we should definitely go.” McKenzie got out of her chair again.

I turned in the doorway to see Lilly carrying a tray of drinks and corn chips. “Back in the kitchen,” I told her, pointing.

For once, Lilly didn’t argue. She turned and went back inside. I followed McKenzie off the deck, torn between feeling like Jude had the right to have his mother to himself for a few minutes and wanting to stay with Aurora to . . . I don’t know . . . protect her?

The last thing I heard was Jude saying to Aurora, “I came to tell you something.”

25

Aurora

I
looked over Jude’s shoulder at Janine as she walked away. Wishing she wouldn’t leave me here alone with him. It was a man’s shoulder, broad and muscular. He looked like his father, but he was taller than Hannad. Built like me; tall and slender.

I shifted my gaze to meet my son’s.

I felt a little nauseated. Dizzy. Not dizzy like too many gin and tonics. Dizzy like my world was tilting a little farther than I liked it to. It was the same feeling I got when I thought about McKenzie and her fucking cancer.

I stared into Jude’s dark eyes—his father’s eyes—for what seemed like a long time before I realized he was waiting for me to acknowledge what he had said. That he had something he wanted to tell me. I couldn’t fathom what that was. I wasn’t going to try. “O-kay . . .” I drew out the word.

He looked at his feet in leather flip-flops. He had my feet, not Hannad’s: long and slender. He had a swimmer’s feet. He wasn’t a swimmer, but he could have been.

“I only came because Gabrielle thinks it’s important. I want to make that clear. I came for her, not you.” Hostility.

“Who’s Gabrielle?” I asked. I assumed a friend. A college friend. I don’t know any of my son’s friends’ names, of course. I know almost nothing about his life, other than that he’s a senior at Stanford and would be graduating with a degree in something like computer engineering. I don’t even know what kind of job he’d be looking for or if he would be looking for a job. Maybe grad school was in his future. I didn’t know.

“That’s why I came. To t-tell you.”

He stumbled over the word, just the one, and I felt a sudden rush of emotion. Emotion I couldn’t identify. I swallowed against the huge lump in my throat and blinked. Waited.

“I’m getting married.” He found his voice again, steady and clear. “Gabrielle and I.”

Married? My son is getting married? It seems like only a short time ago that I was walking out of that hospital and leaving a newborn with his father.

“We’re engaged, and we’re going to be married next June. In Paris. That’s where she’s from. We’re going to
Jad dee
’s and
Jad datee
’s,” he said in perfect Arabic. “Tonight. We’re meeting
Baba
in Manama.”

Haddad’s mother and father. I had never met them. And yet, clearly they were close to my son. Close enough for Jude to fly to Bahrain so they could meet his fiancée.

“Gabrielle said you had the right to know.” He glanced away, the beach catching his attention for the first time. “It’s the only reason I came. Because she asked me to. I’m doing it for her. Not you.”

The first words on the tip of my tongue were “No need to put yourself out on my account.” But for once, I didn’t let loose the first stinging words that came to mind. I didn’t want to hurt him. My son. Because I knew this was my doing. All of it. I knew this wasn’t his fault. None of it. It was all on me. It always had been and always would be.

I managed a smile. Even though my heart was breaking. Breaking because I knew this was the last time I would ever see Jude. Breaking because I would never know his wife. Or his children. Breaking because I think I
wanted
to see him again. After all these years, I wanted to know Jude now. And not out of a sense of guilt.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Thank you.” He didn’t smile. He didn’t look at me. He just stared out at the sand that stretched to the ocean’s edge.

I knew I should say something else, but I didn’t know what. I desperately wished that Janine, Aurora, and Lilly hadn’t abandoned me. I wasn’t equipped to talk alone with my adult son, and they damned well knew it.

“What’s she like?” I heard myself say in a voice I didn’t recognize. “Your Parisian Gabrielle?”

“She’s pretty. Not gorgeous pretty. Not like you. But pretty. Brown hair. Brown eyes.”

My gaze strayed to my drink, and I was so tempted to pick it up that I seriously considered, for the first time ever, the possibility that I might really be an alcoholic. “I meant, what’s she
like
? What kind of person is she?”

“Smart.” At last, he looked at me again. “Geophysics major at Stanford. Funny and artistic and . . . and a really good person. She makes me a better person, you know, when we’re together.”

“Artistic?” I mused.

“It’s just a hobby, but she makes mugs and plates and things. She has her own potter’s wheel.”

I tried to imagine my Jude and his Gabrielle in a studio, her spinning a potter’s wheel, forming the clay, wet between her hands. Him watching. Encouraging her. I could see Jude in that role.

“Has your father met her?”

When I thought about Hannad, I could barely remember him. I didn’t like or dislike him. Our relationship had been so long ago; I had been young, emotionally at least. And profoundly stupid. We used only two condoms on a three-condom night. That was how my son had been conceived. “Does he approve?”

“Baba adores her. At Christmas, we all went to Greece. Gabrielle’s family and Baba and Mum and my sisters and I. We stayed at a villa on Mykonos.”

I knew that Hannad had married when Jude was three. A girl from Atlanta, my age. Hannad is older. I hadn’t known they were still together, though. Or that Jude had sisters. How did I not know he had sisters?

“And he doesn’t think you’re too young?” I was only a little older than him when I got pregnant, certainly too young to be married. “That you should wait?”

“Baba supports me in my decisions. Gabrielle and I love each other.” His dark eyes found mine. “He understands that.”

We both stood there in silence. The sun suddenly felt hot on my face, and sunlight glared off the ocean. I couldn’t remember where I’d left my sunglasses.

“I should get going,” Jude finally said. “I borrowed a car. A friend of Gabrielle’s is from around here. Her parents’ car.” He lowered his classic Ray-Ban sunglasses over his eyes.

“I’m . . . glad you came, Jude. I wish you’d brought Gabrielle.” I thought about the fact that she had to be nearby. “I would have liked to have met her.”

He stood there for a moment, maybe contemplating a response. I wondered if he had refused her request to come or if she had refused to come when he’d asked her.

Who was I kidding? It was, more than likely, a mutual agreement.

“Good-bye,” he said. He didn’t call me Mom, of course, but he didn’t call me Aurora, either. We didn’t have enough of a relationship for me to have a name.

He started to turn away, but I stepped toward him and gave him a quick hug. He didn’t hug me back, but he didn’t push me away, either.

“Good-bye,” I said. “Have a safe flight.”

And then he was gone.

I heard the rumble of his voice in the kitchen. Saying good-bye to McKenzie and Lilly and Janine. Then the back door closed. An engine started, and there was the sound of gravel under the wheels of the borrowed car as Jude backed out.

Janine was the first one out on the deck. She found me sitting on the edge of my white Adirondack chair, my glass in my hand. I hadn’t taken a drink. I was just holding it.

“You okay?” Janine asked. She stood right in front of me.

“Fine,” I managed, “except that you’re blocking my view of the ocean. You know what people pay for this view?”

She didn’t budge. “I’m sorry, Aurora. When he called, he specifically asked me not to tell you he was coming.”

“He told you why he was coming?”

“Yes.” It was a sigh more than anything else.

I thought about that for a minute, wondering if I should be angry about that, too. That Janine knew before I did that Jude was going to be a married man. But I suspected Janine knew a lot more about my son than I did. Obviously they had some sort of relationship, otherwise how would he have had her number to call her?

“It’s fine.” I swirled what was left of the ice in my glass. “I get it. We all know I probably wouldn’t have been here when he showed up if I’d known.”

“I wanted to tell you. I thought about telling you, even after I told Jude I wouldn’t.”

“I said, I
get
it.” I slid back in the chair and sipped the gin and tonic that was too watery now for my liking. “I wouldn’t have told me either, okay?”

McKenzie walked out onto the deck, followed by Lilly. We all took our own chairs: me in the white, McKenzie in the green, Lilly in the pink, and Janine in the blue.

No one said anything. We just sat there, lined up across the deck, and stared at the dunes below us and the mesmerizing water that stretched to the horizon. There was a green and yellow kite with a long white tail fluttering high in the sky.

I couldn’t be sure if three minutes or three hours had passed. Except that the shadows on the deck had barely moved. “I think I’ll go for a swim,” I said.

“I wish you wouldn’t. Not right now.” It was Lilly. Not the pain-in-the-ass hyper Lilly, though. This was the Lilly who had taken the pistol from my hand that night, set it on the nightstand, and walked me out of the room as easy as you please. As if she were walking me to the water fountain at school. The Lilly who believed I killed Buddy to save Janine.