Come Back to Me (21 page)

My hands shook,
and when a car honked at the curb, I jumped, my nerves dancing along my edges.

“That’s Josh,”
Annie yelled.

From the
corner of my eye, I saw her and Dina move toward the car at the curb.

Kiki’s gaze
was still on me. “It’s some notes she jotted down one night she slept over at my
house.  I’m not sure, but maybe it will mean something to you.  She talked about
D.C., and I remember her saying something about you, something you both planned
on doing.  So…”

I unfolded
the paper, noting Katie’s handwriting.  It was a receipt, and on the back,
scribbled in Katie’s handwriting, were some book titles.

Eat Like
a Parisian

Top 10
Washington D.C.

Top 10
Paris

On our
mutual bucket list was Paris.  I wanted to see Versailles and the Louvre, and
Katie wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but we both agreed it wasn’t
going to happen that summer.  Still, we put it on the list, thinking we could
do Paris type things in D.C.

After all,
a Frenchman named Pierre L’Enfant designed the capitol or the layout of its
streets anyway
,
Katie had reasoned.

“I don’t
understand.”  I shook my head, tears stinging the back of my eyes.  “Why did
she write, I mean, this has to do with the eighteen things…”

Kiki bobbed
her head.  “The eighteen things you wanted to do when you turned eighteen,
right?”

I blinked,
then nodded, stunned that Kiki knew, that Katie had even taken the time to talk
to her about it.

“Why?” I asked
staring at the receipt.  “She…  She
hated
me.”

A passerby
knocked Kiki’s shoulder, but she stood her ground.  “No, I don’t believe that. 
In fact, I think that sometimes she hated herself for how she handled
everything, but she just didn’t know how to fix it.”

I listened
to Kiki, but it was weird hearing her talk about Katie—a Katie I didn’t really
know all that well.  Then I remembered what Irina told me.  “Did she tell you
about her mom’s letter?”

Kiki looked
confused and shook her head.

“Oh…”

Kiki’s
shoulders moved in a slow shrug.  “I don’t know for sure what that list meant,
but I think Katie was so used to planning everything, that she didn’t know how
to repair the rift between you two.  I don’t know.  But, I do know, and don’t
mistake this—she didn’t hate you.  I truly think she wanted to fix things.  She
just didn’t figure it out in time.  I wanted to help, but-”

A laugh
hiccupped out of me at the idea of Katie accepting help.  Kiki smiled.  I
realized for once that it felt okay talking about Katie.  Maybe it was because
Kiki seemed to understand the Katie I knew.

“Thank you,
Kiki,” I said.

“Sure,” she
said, tapping my arm.  Then she slipped another piece of paper out of her purse
and wrote something down before handing it to me.  “I’m a phone call away if
you need me.”

Kiki waved
and hopped into the car waiting at the curb.  I folded the two papers she gave
me and tucked them into my purse.

When I got
home, my mom was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, reading a book. 
At first glance, I thought it was a cookbook until I got closer.

100
Things to Do Before You Die.

Oh, my God. 
Why was the book here—in my mom’s hands?

Again, I
thought of the movie Katie made me watch back in freshman year—the horror movie
with the scary ass, possessed puppet that no one could get rid of.  Every time
they thought they obliterated the creepy wooden freak, they would come home to
find it sitting on their sofa.  With that eerie, evil grin.

I shivered.

“Um, Mom? 
Where did you get that book?” 
Please don’t say you found it propped on the
couch.  I need my life to be safe from possessed paperbacks.

My mom
looked up and slid her reading glasses down the tip of her nose.  “Irina
dropped it off.  She said you should keep it.”

I opened my
mouth to refute her statement, but before I got any words out, my mom added,
“Are you blue or yellow?”

“Huh?”

She pushed
the glasses back up her nose and placed the book flat on the counter as she
straightened up.  “The highlighter.  Are you blue or yellow?”

“Oh, yellow.”

My mom nodded
as she ran a pale pink fingernail down the page with the list of one hundred
things.  “So England and Ireland, huh?”

I narrowed
my eyes.  What was my mom doing?

“Uh, the
blue
was
Katie’s,” I said just in case she didn’t realize the
highlighted list she was happily poring over was made with my now dead
ex-friend.

But my mom looked
me straight in the eye and nodded.  “The green is your overlapping interests. 
Clever.”

Okay.  So it
wasn’t the book that was possessed, it was my mom.

She smiled.  I
studied her face, but I detected nothing eerie or evil, yet.  I was at a loss
for what was going on.

My mom
closed the book and slid it to the middle of the counter.  “So, what interests
you about England and Ireland?”

“The
castles,” I said, without thinking or missing a beat.  Castles fascinated
me—the history, the architecture, and the fact that they could still be
standing centuries later.  Plus there was a mysterious romance about them.  “I
also want to go to Versailles in France.”

“That sounds
exciting, Whit.  You’ll go. You know, I stayed in a castle once.  In Italy.  It
was beautiful, renovated a little on the modern side, but some rooms still had
that medieval feel.  But the grounds, and the castle architecture?  I felt like
I arrived in a time machine.”

I watched
and listened as she described the rooms, the “dungeon” on the bottom floor that
had been turned into a bar, and the landscaping and drawbridge.  I’d never
heard the story, and I’d never seen my mom so animated.  Oh sure, she got
animated on TV, but that was highly orchestrated.  She basically had to fake
it.  It never looked like this.  This was pure joy and nostalgia.

“When did
you go?”

“Oh gosh.  It
was Lauren’s sophomore year…”

I froze.  Here
she was relaxed, sentimental—all natural and dropping my sister’s name as if
the subject of Lauren had never taken on a mythical Voldemort taboo status.

“Let’s see,
twelve years ago?  It was in conjunction with the Italian and Latin classes, and
I was one of the chaperones.  So much fun.”

“How come I
never heard about this trip?”

“You just
finished kindergarten.  You stayed with your grandmother.”

“Oh.”

My mom
turned toward her pantry, opening the door.  Interesting.  Was she shutting
down now at the mention of her mother?

She switched
on the light and reached for an apron.  “Speaking of your grandmother, I heard
things were a little rough the last time you went.”

My mom
turned back around, tying the apron behind her, her face a mask of sympathy.  “I’m
sorry, honey.  I know how much you love your grandmother, and this disease is
not an easy one.”

I nodded,
speechless.  In the space of five minutes, we’d talked about my sister and my
grandmother.  What was the next topic, my dad?

“You want to
help me make some cookies?  I’m thinking pumpkin walnut.”

I shook my
head, as if I could clear it of all the broken debris of what I once thought
was set in stone.  Then I heard myself say, “Yeah.”

This
conversation with my mom reminded me that just because I had one opinion about
who I thought my mom was (even an opinion based on my own experience), it
didn’t mean that was the only script that she worked with.  Like Katie, there were
layers and layers of things going on under the surface, lots of emotions—some
hidden, some that I simply missed.  It was unfair to define someone based on one
layer of emotion, one script of his or her story.  Like me.  I was more than the
mistakes I’d made.  I wasn’t a complete failure.

We were
human, not one-trick wooden puppets.

* * *

The next
morning, after my parents left for work, I packed up a container of cookies,
printed out a list of French cafés in D.C., then took a cab to the train
station.

Once at
Union Station, I hopped on the metro to Dupont Circle.  Then I walked several
blocks until I found the restaurant, River 21.

I stepped
inside.  The foyer was dark, except for a white tiled floor.

“Can I help
you?” a female voice asked.

I jumped. 
The girl seemed to appear out of nowhere, probably because she wore all black,
except for a short white apron folded at her waist.

“We’re not
open for dinner until five.” She smoothed a hand along her low ponytail, giving
me ponytail envy.

“No, I’m
looking for Lauren.”

“Oh.” She
nodded.  “And you are?”

“Her
sister.”

“Oh, hey.” She
directed me to a stool at the bar while she disappeared behind a dark wood door
with a porthole window.

I waited,
pressing my fingers to the rounded edge of the bar.  It was not just shiny but
smooth, and I found myself thinking of the hallway leading to the Adler’s
library.  There was a wood trim on the wall that was just as smooth… I narrowed
my eyes, trying to capture the bit before the memory fled.

Then it was
gone, but it didn’t really matter.

The door,
presumably to the kitchen, swung open, and Lauren was there.  The last time I’d
seen her was for an uncomfortable family dinner in the city several Christmases
ago, right before she left her husband.  She was different, especially because
the pictures I saw everyday on my mom’s living room table were of Lauren as a
baby, a teenager, and graduating from Brown.  There were no new pictures, not
anymore anyway.  The newest one was of Lauren sandwiched between my parents
eight years ago in her college cap and gown.  I assumed my parents didn’t want
to remember what became of everything after that.  My mom’s nostalgic talk the
day before confused the issue, so I tried to remain open.

Lauren
looked great.  Blonde, wavy hair pulled into a high ponytail, wispy bits
framing what could’ve only been a kitchen flushed face.

My sister
smiled as she moved toward me, and before I could hop off my seat, she grabbed
me in a hug, kissing my cheek.  Then she tucked herself behind the bar to fill
a glass with ice.  She set it on the bar and sprayed soda in it with one of
those hose things.

“What’s
wrong?” She pushed the soda in front of me.

I opened my
mouth to deny her question, or to question or question, but then I remembered I
didn’t travel all the way to the city to be fake.

Then again,
I sat in front of my sister, a virtual stranger.  For the last few years, my
sister had been there but not there.

In my mind
though, she seemed to hold the key to fixing my life.

I was born
the day after my sister’s eleventh birthday.  It was a huge age gap.  By the
time I was in kindergarten, Lauren was in the middle of high school.  Most of
my early memories of Lauren involved me on her bedroom floor listening to
music, back when I called her “La-la”.  Then she went off to Brown and turned
into a holiday visitor.  I was twelve when I got to be one of her bridesmaids. 
Even if later I didn’t enjoy seeing the bridal party photo on my mom’s table—I wanted
to forget the visual of my chunky tween self, stuffed into unforgiving mauve
satin next to Lauren’s model thin friends—I’d been proud.  (Lauren’s wedding
was also memorable as the time when Katie and I swiped a bottle of wine on a
dare, and I ended up with my head in the toilet while Katie held my hair.)  But
by the time I hit my vertical growth spurt, my sister was divorced, and the
picture disappeared from the living room.

For more
than half my life, my parent’s touted my sister as my role model, then one day,
they stopped.  I was supposed to go to college, marry the right guy, and live
happily ever after.  End of story.  Except, of course, my parents left out the
“unpleasant” details.  I didn’t think it was because they tried to protect me. 
It was almost like they didn’t want to give me any ideas.  Like that absurd
argument at school about the condom jar in the nurse’s office:  If they put
condoms out as an option, then we were going to have sex.  I didn’t think the
school was even thinking about teen pregnancy or STDs.  It was almost as if
they were blocking it all out, in denial.  If we pretend that no one was having
sex, then no one was having sex.  My parents’ philosophy was similar.  Lauren’s
choices were not an option for me, so they and she didn’t exist.

My parents
had to be wrong.  Even in stories with a happy ending, there were obstacles,
bad stuff.  Snow White battled the witch, Cinderella escaped her stepsisters
and stepmother and, clearly, Harry Potter could never be the boy who lived
without facing and confronting adversity.