Stay With Me (11 page)

When Da called, he told her she was now old enough to start lying about her age. A bit of information she could probably have done without. I know he was trying to make conversation, as Da usually says the worst things when he has no idea what to say.

"Certainly not," Raphael says.

The coat, while not matching, looks elegant. Have a good time, we say. See you tomorrow. Happy birthday.

In the kitchen, Raphael puts on water for pasta and I grate cheese.

"Did you see the earrings?" I ask, wanting to warn him in case the jewelry gift means what Clare says it does not.

"I did," he says. "My mother has a pair like them."

I try to picture Aunt Ingrid in Clare's earrings but can't. These earrings are their own unique pair. I can so easily see Gyula picking them out, his hand hovering over different pairs. I had even imagined the small, quiet store where jewelry is brought out from locked cases and displayed on velvet for selection.

"Just like them?" I ask.

"Maybe not exactly," Raphael says. "Pearls, gold, you know."

"These have diamonds," I say. If he doesn't want to be warned, fine.

"I hope it goes well tonight," Raphael says.

"Why won't it?" I ask.

What did I fail to notice? She looks good and is with Gyula. Can it go badly?

"It's only that this is the first time he's been with her on her birthday," Raphael says.

They've been going out for five years, so this does not reflect well on Gyula. What can he have been thinking? Even after the divorce, William would call Rebecca on her birthday.

"How come?" I ask.

"I suspect she always told him it wasn't important and he finally doesn't believe her," Raphael says. "It's also her first birthday without Rebecca."

So this is what's worrying him. Not Gyula or earrings, but Rebecca's absence. It's likely to make Clare miserable when Raphael wants her to be happy. My brain immediately jumps to August 30, which will be Rebecca's first birthday without Rebecca. That's going to be horrible. I remember that on Janie's birthday last year Da called both girls and was very quiet in a loud sort of way. Mom came home early and took him out to dinner even though it was her night to work late. It was smart of her, because when they came back he was more himself.

"Clare's doing better," I say to Raphael. "She's not crying as much in the bathroom."

"She still goes in there to cry?"

Well, how would I know from "still"? His old news is my fresh information.

"I think so," I say. "Yes."

"God, those girls," he says. "Abranel masterpieces."

In this instant, for the very first time, I see that I am not the only one who looks at my two sisters as one. A thing apart from who they are or were. That my sisters are also people makes them, to me, that much more interesting. That much more deserving of my attention and the stories I've given them.

"Gyula might help her forget," I say. "You know, that it's another day Rebecca has missed."

"He might," Raphael says. "He will. Let's get dinner on the table."

After we're done eating, I do the dishes and, in return, Raphael says we can skip math. Do I want to learn gin rummy? He and his father taught my sisters years ago.

"I know you and Ben play crazy eights," Raphael says. "Or is it 'played'? I'm not sure how much time you spend with him now."

"We still play," I say.

But only during lunch instead of for hours after school. On weekends, we sometimes used to deal my parents in even though we were pretty sure my mother cheated. I like the idea of playing cards with someone from here in
the new now.

"Gin is a little different," Raphael says.

We sit at the table, playing with all the cards face-up, waiting until I get the hang of it enough to play for real. What we are really waiting for, of course, is sleep. Each evening of the past five months has ended with the hope that the next day will be easier. That it will finally be a day less heavily shaded by Rebecca.

C
LARE COMES HOME A LITTLE AFTER TEN
. And, as she's putting away coat and shoes, says she and Gyula have broken up. That she'd thought of checking herself into a hotel until she could pull herself together, but that that's the kind of thing Rebecca would do. So, instead, she's going to take a very long bath and go to bed. She's fine. Really.

"Can you tell us what happened?" Raphael asks, and I know he's trying to keep her out of the bathroom.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says. "I want to kill him."

"We don't have to talk," Raphael says. "We can sit and plan a murder. Leila, get your sister some tea."

"Water," Clare says. "Can I have some water?"

I bring her a bottle of water and a glass.

"Gyula's become an investor in the Vivfilli," she says. "He heard I was researching it, thought I might like it, and bought into it. Oh, joy."

The Vivfilli is the name of the lost hotel in Barcelona.

"Researching it?" Raphael asks, somehow managing to get her to sit down by pushing a chair close to where she's standing.

"I have contacts in Spain," Clare says. "A law firm. They got me the Vivfilli's bank records. The renovation contracts."

"Yes, of course," Raphael says, indicating he knows what research means but his question is "Why?"

"I don't know," Clare says quietly. "When we were little, Rebecca and I used to play hotel owner the way normal girls played house."

She peels the blue and white label from the bottle and starts to shred it, saying,

"I must have wanted to be in touch with whatever's left of her. It's stupid, I know."

"It's not," I say. "Not at all."

I'm thinking of my job at Caffe Acca and of bringing Eamon cake because his table was close to where Rebecca once sat. Of all the fear and longing that goes into touching her things.

"He says"—here Clare's voice breaks, but she puts her hands up like stay away signs—"he says I can have a job there now. That he can put me in charge of the renovations. Let me run the deal."

"You know he meant to show you he understands," Raphael says. "That's the only reason he bought the Vivfilli."

"Invested in it. He can't afford to buy it," Clare says. "If he could afford to buy it, it would make him happier than my moving to Budapest ever would."

"You're moving to Budapest?" I ask.

She's speaking so fast and there's too much to follow. Raphael defending Gyula, Clare almost crying somewhere other than the bathroom, a lost hotel becoming found, and ... I can't keep track.

"I guess he thinks Barcelona is a compromise between Budapest and here," Clare says. "We've been talking for years about how one of us has to move."

"Years," Raphael says.

His voice is quiet, but he looks almost entertained at the idea of this endless talk that has obviously gone nowhere.

"Well, Gyula should be the one to move," I say. "You have a job here."

I'm not anxious for my remaining sister to pack up for Budapest. Although, that seems unlikely if they've really broken up.

"I was never going to go," Clare says. "We knew he could never leave his business and I could never leave, oh, God, I could never leave while Mama and Rebecca were here."

And she's crying for real now. Enough to be unable to keep us away. I somewhat ineffectually pat her knees while she almost crawls up against Raphael, crying and crying and crying.
Shhhh,
he keeps saying.
Shhhh.
I like that he's not telling her it will be okay and that everything will look different in the morning—all things I've been told while crying.

Shhh. Shh. Until she quiets down and pulls away from him to snatch as much Kleenex from the box as she can.

"I'm so sorry," she says. "I should clearly have hit a hotel."

"And let us miss this?" Raphael asks lightly. "Leila and I were just sitting here saying, I hope Clare comes home and falls apart because it's been such a long time since we've had anything to do."

It gets her laughing, and she wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands, saying,

"I probably cried mascara into my contacts."

"At least it didn't run down your face," Raphael says.

"I don't even want to think about all the creepy ways he could have found out I was researching the Vivfilli," Clare says.

"Maybe he knows your lawyer in Spain," Raphael says.

It sounds better than the idea of Gyula checking up on her. Or spying or whatever other creepy ways Clare has in mind.

"On top of everything else, he told me I shouldn't make a major decision like this until Rebecca had been dead a year."

We're all quiet. I'd have thought Gyula would know better than to try to prevent Clare from breaking up with him by reminding her of Rebecca's death.

"As if it's because of her that I've had it," my sister says. "He thinks a hotel will fix everything? Or a job?"

Fix what? What was broken
before
they broke up?

Clare stands up and laughs in a high, nervy way, saying, "I thought I was going to throw something at him."

She stalks off and I guess Raphael thinks it's safe to let her have her long bath. He looks kind of wrecked. I pick up Clare's discarded tissues and ask if he wants some tea.

"I think I need a drink," he says.

"They don't have anything," I tell him.

I still think of the kitchen as belonging to both of my sisters. They have flour, two kinds of salt, tea, coffee, and bottled water. They don't have alcohol.

"Rebecca kept Scotch behind the good plates," he says, following me to the kitchen and locating the bottle.

I watch him pour it, take a sip, put ice in it, and take another sip before pouring the whole thing down the drain.

"That never does what it's supposed to," he says.

My mother sometimes has wine at dinner. Rebecca always did. I knew Janie drank brandy at the end of the workday and, on occasion, to sleep. Da likes vodka on ice, but only every now and then. Does Gyula drink? I can't remember. He probably is tonight. Before she started crying, I kept waiting for Clare to reveal his true crime. He invested in a hotel she loves to distraction. Is that so awful?

"I don't understand," I say. "What did Gyula do?"

"I think it's more what he hasn't done," Raphael says.

I wait because that's not a good enough answer.

"I suppose Clare has always suspected him of trying to buy her," Raphael says. "When what she wants is for him to love her."

"He does love her," I say. "Of course he loves her."

"Maybe it's not enough."

I feel that familiar dark cloud descending as I struggle to make sense of what has happened. Who buys a hotel—who invests in one—for someone he doesn't love enough? And what does it mean to buy someone? I'm pretty certain that Gyula's being rich is not something Clare dislikes.

But what if Janie's rule about accepting jewelry is really about money. Accepting money (even the kind disguised as jewelry) obligates you. It's not so different from my mother's notion that I should always split the check. Clare could like Gyula's money without ever wanting to owe him anything.

Perhaps Gyula needs for her to be in his debt. Even if I don't know where he's failed Clare, he must know. Thus the necklace, the earrings, the hotel. To cancel out the bad stuff.

"What matters is not what Gyula did," Raphael says. "But how Clare feels about it. This makes two people who haven't been there for her."

Who've left her.

"We're two people," I say. "We can fix her."

"We can try," he says.

T
RYING TURNS OUT TO BE HARDER
than we had anticipated. Gyula's not ready to let Clare make this last decision. He calls and calls and calls again before he flies back from Canada to see her. A gesture he ruins by pointing out how much work he's had to rearrange in order to do this. Clare, who left her own office early to meet him, was, she tells me, underwhelmed.

He thinks she's making a mistake. She thinks he doesn't know why she's upset.

"He'll die believing that investing in the Vivfilli was a brilliant idea," she says. "He says I've entirely missed the point."

Because I don't know what Gyula hoped the hotel would make up for, I don't say anything.

"And to make it worse," Clare says, "I miss him."

That I already knew. She cries when he calls and when he doesn't. She's terrified of winding up alone forever. More terrified of settling for someone not right for her. She does the crying over Gyula out in the living room. She even lets me sit on the end of her sofa bed and make her tea.

"Half the time, I think he's right," Clare says. "I've left him because of Rebecca."

"I thought it was because of the hotel," I say.

"He always thinks he knows everything," she says. "That he can fix it all."

So that was it. He tried to fix what had happened when Rebecca died and he did it in the wrong way. And Clare can't or won't forgive him. She can only cry and be mad. Or sad. Or whatever it is that has made being with Gyula worse than not being with him is.

"You could try being friends with him," I say, remembering her reaction when I'd told her that Ben and I weren't dating anymore.

"No," Clare says. "Gyula and I aren't friends who fell in love."

I think of how Clare worked to fit him into her schedule, how pleased she was when he sent flowers or phoned. I know she called him whenever she had trouble at work.

"But you are friends," I say. "Right?"

"Yes, but not ... He likes to call me his most beloved problem," Clare says. "We're not friends so much as two people who have this love that doesn't work."

"How did you know that you loved him?" I ask. "If you weren't friends first?"

"It's like when you want to sleep with someone," Clare says. "You just know. So even if you're scared or think it's unwise, you know. Here he is. I love him."

She starts to cry again, but she is also swearing a little bit. And soon, she is laughing. As well as crying. I give her tissues and more tea.

In the days that follow, I listen when she wants to talk and sit when she wants company but no conversation. I imagine that my mother, far away in Poland, is doing much the same for Da. The difference would be that Mom already knows him and I am learning things about Clare and Gyula that I never thought to ask.