Rules for 50/50 Chances (14 page)

“So, Caleb,” Dad starts, a little awkwardly, “What, ah … so, you're involved in the Rare Genes Project?”

“Dad.”
I shoot him a dirty look. He may as well just bust out with, “So, what's wrong with you and your relatives?”

“No, no, it's fine, Mr. Levenson,” Caleb interjects.

“God, that makes me feel like an old man. Call me Dave, I beg you,” Dad says. “This is Cambridge, anyway. Come on.”

Caleb smiles. He has dimples in places I haven't noticed before. “Fair enough … Dave. Sickle cell runs in my family. I don't have the disease, but my mom and sisters do.”

“I see. That's difficult. I'm sorry.”

“It's all right. There are a lot better treatments now than there were when my mother was a kid, so that's good.”

Dad nods, chewing on a spring roll. “Good, good. I thought they'd made quite a bit of progress with that.”

“Caleb's dad works at Mass General. He's a neonatologist,” I say, desperate to get off the subject of Caleb's sick family.

“That's something, isn't it? Ellen—Rose's mom, I mean—sees a specialist at Mass General.”

“You didn't tell me that,” Caleb says, turning to me. “What doctor does your mom see there?”

Mom pipes up across the table. “Talking about me l-l-l-like I'm not here is r-r-rude.”

“Ellen—” Gram cuts in, sensing, like I am, that Mom's about to lose it.

“You're all t-t-talking about me like I'm n-n-not here.”

“No one's talking about you like you're not here, El,” says Dad. “We all know you're here.”

“Who's the b-b-black kid?” Mom asks, staring at Caleb. “You're black.”

“Mom,” I interject, “don't be…”

“He's black.”

Dad stammers something that sounds like an attempt at an apology to Caleb, but it comes out like he has a wad of Kleenex shoved in his mouth.

“It's okay,” Caleb says. “It's just an observation.” Then he looks right at Mom and smiles like he's having a casual conversation with a normal person. “You are correct. I am black.”

“Black!” Mom goes on. “Black, b-b-black, black. Rose's boyfriend is black. Rose has j-j-j-jungle fever!”

“Mom!” I stand up, throwing my napkin down on the table. “Stop it! Stop!”

She laughs, this eerie, empty laugh that comes out sometimes now when she's worked up. It doesn't even sound like her. I'm frankly surprised she can conjure the phrase “jungle fever” at all these days. I wonder where that one was locked away. I glance over at Caleb, who's twirling his fork in a strand of lo mein.

“Rose, it's all right,” Gram says quietly, looking to my father as if he's somehow going to rein the situation in.

“It's not all right. She sounds like a lunatic!” I stare at Mom, who's still laughing, in her own world. “You're humiliating me.”

Mom stops laughing suddenly and looks right back at me. “Ungrateful b-b-bitch,” she spits out.

It's the disease talking. She's not my mother when she's in this kind of place. I know that. She's having a bad day, a bad afternoon. But it still hits me in my gut. Grabbing Caleb's arm, I turn from the table and drag him with me out of the room so I won't say something horrible. I storm up the stairs two at a time.

Caleb shuts the door behind us. “Hey.”

I don't even feel like crying. I sit down on the bed, frozen, staring into space. He sits next to me.

“It's okay, you know. I mean, she didn't offend me.”

“Well, she offended
me
,” I say.

“It's the disease—”

“I know. I know that.”

He reaches out and tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear.

“She's getting worse,” I say. He doesn't say anything, just looks at me, like he's actually hearing me. “Sometimes it's like, she's more or less fine, or you don't notice it, anyway. And then suddenly, she's this totally different person.” I shrug. “I guess that's what they mean by degenerative, huh?” I give him a fake smile, but he doesn't smile back.

“I'm sorry.”

“It's okay.”

“Okay. But it's not, really,” he says.

I look away from him and toward the window. It's dark already, the days suddenly shorter as October turned into November. We stare outside for what feels like it might be five or ten minutes, although I know in reality it's probably more like two, before Caleb breaks the silence.

“On the bright side,” he says, breaking into a sly grin, “I like that she called me your boyfriend.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

I know what's going to happen next, of course. I've seen enough movies. He leans toward me until our faces are so close that I can almost feel a tiny breeze every time he blinks. And then I lean in a little closer, and then we meet in the middle.

His lips are softer than I'd expect for a guy's. We part for a minute, leaning back to look at each other. I feel shy, all of a sudden, like I don't want to make eye contact, and then we kiss again, longer this time.

I've seen a lot of movies, but I've never seen our movie: sickle cell kid meets HD kid and they fall in love. If that's what's about to happen.

Suddenly, the thought of it makes me feel sick to my stomach. Falling in love seems like one risk too many in a life that already has the odds stacked against it—or at least precariously balanced.

“It's late,” I say, waking up my phone to see the time.

“You kicking me out?” he asks, smiling.

“I guess, yeah.” I smile back, but I'm ready for him to leave.

Caleb looks a little skeptical as he traces my jaw line with the back of his hand gently. “Are you sure you're okay?”

I'm okay and I'm not okay—that seems to be my constant state of being these days. For an instant I feel kind of annoyed by the question. So, we kiss and it's supposed to make everything better? Caleb of all people should know that's not how this works.

“I'll let myself out.” He kisses me on the cheek quickly, then slips out the door. I hear him saying a muffled thank you and goodbye to my family downstairs, and I wonder if Mom even remembers the interaction she just had with him. Then the front door closes. From the window, I catch sight of him as he crosses the street and unlocks his car. Before he gets in, he looks up at my window and grins. I can't see the gap between his teeth from here, but I know it's there.

When his taillights are completely out of view, I flop down on my bed again and send Lena a quick text. “Mom's losing it. C and I kissed.” Within seconds, my phone's buzzing. I barely even need to say anything when I answer.

“Mmm-hmm,” I sigh into the phone.

“Do we need to divide and conquer here? I don't know what to ask about first.”

“Caleb had dinner here and my mom lost it over leftover Chinese.”

“Define ‘lost it,'” Lena says.

“Oh, yelled at all of us, fixated on Caleb, made inappropriate racial comments, and called me an ungrateful bitch. You know.”

“And then you kissed? So it ended well.”

“I don't know. We kissed. It was—nice, I guess. But what am I doing?”

Lena doesn't answer for a minute.

“Hello?” I prompt her. “You're supposed to tell me what I'm doing.”

“Rose,” she says, “you're not required to sacrifice every kind of fun because you have a sick parent.”

She's right, I know. But something tells me that this uneasiness isn't just guilt that I'm busy kissing a boy while my mother is getting worse. It's that whatever I'm feeling for Caleb—this thing that's like a tumor of good stuff, growing bigger every time I see him—is too scary, too risky. Maybe I need to just cut it out.

“Yeah. Whatever. We'll see.” Suddenly I get an overwhelming desire to stop talking about this. “I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

“Um, okay. Fine. Wait, though—how was the kissing? He didn't, like, lick all around your chin, did he? Because that can be a turnoff but it can be resolved with clear communication.”

That makes me laugh. “Ew, no—there was no chin licking, thank you. It was … I don't know. It was nice?”

“You said that already. I need more information.”

“I don't know—look, I told you, I'll call you tomorrow.”

She growls a little. “Okay, fine. Later.”

I hang up. I'm not sure I want to tell her how nice it was—that it was like the feeling of getting into a soft bed when your body is completely exhausted and all you want to do is relax. Because it's a slippery slope from kissing to boyfriend-ing to falling in love. And falling in love is like getting a dog: You're pretty much guaranteed to end up with a big loss. Loss. It stops sounding like a word if say it enough times.

Eleven

Caleb and I don't talk the day after we kiss, or the day after that. It feels like something has shifted, like we've entered a period that can never be the same as before. I'm not sure if it's the kissing that makes it feel that way, or Mom's outburst, or Caleb's comment about being referred to as my boyfriend, but everything just feels different—in my head, at least. In reality, of course, I have no idea if anything has shifted at all because we haven't even exchanged so much as a text.

Eloise's mom gives me a ride after our
Nutcracker
dress rehearsal, and it's after ten by the time I get home. The house is quiet except for some scratching coming from the kitchen. It's Gram, who appears to be cleaning the floor harder than it probably needs to be cleaned. The sight of my seventy-something grandmother on her hands and knees, scrubbing at what I think is a longstanding stain in the hardwood, is a little alarming.

“What are you doing?”

She looks up, startled, then looks back down at the floor and at her raw, wrinkled hands, as though she's not actually sure what she's doing, as if I'd just woken her up from sleepwalking.

“I was just tidying the kitchen.” She struggles to her feet. “Fancy a snack?”

I shake my head. “Not hungry, just exhausted.” I drop my bag on the kitchen island and slump onto a stool.

“Where's Dad?”

“His study. Working away, I suppose. Earning his keep. Cuppa?” Gram asks. She means tea, and it sounds good, actually. I nod. She rinses out the sponge she was using on the floor, then fills the kettle and sets it to boil on the stovetop. We talk so little these days, my grandmother and I, I'm not even sure how to make conversation with her anymore. It wasn't always like this: We used to play cards—Oh Hell and War and Rummy, sitting opposite each other at the dining room table—and go to the aquarium and have tea parties whenever she'd come to visit. I used to look forward to those visits. But then at some point, after she moved here, everything shifted. Maybe it isn't her fault. Maybe it isn't anyone's fault, per se.

“All right?” she asks, setting a mug in front of me. She pulls a bunch of boxes of tea from the cabinet over the sink. “Mint Medley? Earl Grey? Peach something-or-other? So many bloody tins, a person can't even tell what's in here.” “Bloody” is as close as she'll come to cursing, and it always makes me smile.

“Mint. Thanks.” Gram drops the tea bag into my mug. The kettle goes, the whistle starting low and building to a high-pitched scream, but she just stands there, staring at me, as it gets louder and louder. After a moment too long, she turns the gas off and pours the boiling water into my mug. The steam rises off it and feels good on my face. I clasp my hands around the mug and wait as the heat sets into the ceramic, subtly at first and then so hot it burns.

“Sorry about the other night,” she says, making herself a mug of decaf English breakfast.

“It wasn't your fault.” I take my tea bag out and get up to dump it in the sink. Gram sits down opposite me, warming her hands on her mug just like I do.

“You know it's—”

“It's the disease talking. Yeah. I've heard.”

Gram blows on her tea, not taking her eyes off of me. “That's not what I was going to say, actually, although that is also true. You want to interrupt me again or can I finish?”

“Sorry.” I burn my tongue on my first sip and curse quietly. Gram ignores me.

“I was going to say, it's okay to fancy somebody. It's okay for you to date.”

Ugh. Do I really have to be having this conversation with my
grandmother
? She's not my mother—not that I'm sure I'd want to talk to Mom about this, either.

“You're allowed to enjoy yourself. I, for one, liked Caleb very much. He seems like a nice boy. He fancies you, clearly.”

“Oh my god. Okay, Gram. Thank you.” Slinging my bag over one shoulder, I take my tea and stand up, ready to go. But then I hesitate, for whatever reason. She's still my grandmother. She's annoying sometimes, but she's trying.

“He's just my friend. We're not dating.”

Gram shrugs. “Well, what do I know? I'm just an old bat who hasn't been with a man in a very long time. You don't have to listen to anything I say on the matter.”

The idea of Gram being “with a man,” so to speak, makes me cringe a little, even though I know she means married, not “with” as in—
with
. And it has been a long time. Gram was younger than my parents are now when my grandfather split. As far as I know, she never really dated anyone after that. It's weird to think about old people dating, but it's also sort of weird to think about someone younger than my parents—like, a lot younger—deciding to throw in the towel on love just because she got burned once.

Of course, Gram might just have been being smart about things. Maybe my grandfather proved to her that love isn't worth the risk.

“I want you to see something.” She gets up and marches past me, then stops short in the door frame and looks at me expectantly. “Well, stop faffing. Get a move on.”