Stay With Me (13 page)

He's still fussy because I can lift cases of water that make his back hurt to look at.

"Go away," I tell him, and he gives my shoulder a pat before returning to work.

"We can sit here for as long as you need," Eamon says.

"There's no way I'm taking a cab," I say, looking at my watch.

It's not even six, so the traffic will be ridiculous.

"You are," he says.

"The subway's much faster," I say.

"It's only faster when you haven't fainted," he says.

"What about your father?" I ask. "You can't make him wait."

"While you get your stuff, I'll call him," Eamon says. "Today, he can make other arrangements."

I stand up and the walls stay still. It's all done. I'm myself again. What's important here is that I have T.'s name. A name can lead me to a person. And I'll find a way to stay conscious next time.

I
WALK WITH
E
AMON OVER TO
S
IXTH
A
VENUE,
where he thinks we can get a taxi. It would have made more sense to head to Eighth, but I'm not up to thinking about directions. Instead, I ask if we can walk a little bit, saying,

"I'll probably get carsick in a cab."

At some point during the next couple of blocks, his hand slips into mine and I'm glad to discover that while the zing-zang-zoom still happens, it's a lot calmer. As if something unusual has become suddenly familiar.

We are waiting for a light when Eamon looks at me and asks if it's okay to ask me something.

"Sure," I say.

"Are you in trouble?"

With whom, exactly, and about what?

"I mean, ah, you know, guy trouble?"

It takes me a half a block to put everything in order and then understand. I fainted, he's really reluctant to ask me about the reason, and this can only mean:

"I'm not pregnant," I say, thinking how it's been almost six months since that was a danger.

"You're sure?"

"Oh, yeah," I say. "Positive."

I remember Rebecca once telling either Da or William,
I have my period even as we speak,
but decide that Eamon doesn't necessarily want to know that. Weird how you can tell anyone that you're pregnant, but the whole bleeding thing is top secret. The blood simply means your body works. Pregnancy, however, means that not only have you had sex but that you will shortly become a mother. Which is more life altering, and therefore more deserving of secrecy.

"I'm sorry," Eamon says. "I didn't mean to be so nosy. Really."

He looks and sounds as if some terrible mistake has been made. I wonder if I am like Rebecca in that I make people afraid of me. Afraid of intruding on a vast privacy that will turn out to be lethal. I stop walking and literally pull Eamon to a stop. People walking by are in the usual hurry, but we do not appear to be in anyone's way.

"I have a sister," I say. "I did. I mean, I still do have one, but the other one, the one I
bad,
she's gone."

I have his attention, and you know, maybe this is the thing I like about him. The way his whole body listens to me. The way anything and everything can and should be said.

"Rebecca killed herself," I say. "No one knows why. It's a mess. Like we all lost the end of a really important story."

"I could be wrong," he says. "But I think no one ever knows why in these cases. That's what makes them so hard."

I consider this. I don't like Rebecca being part of
in these cases.
Rebecca is special and different and unique. But I do like how he doesn't assume he's right. That he knows it's hard. It's hard like math, reading, and directions all rolled into one.

"There was someone at Acca," I say. "Someone who knew her, and I was—I was too afraid to talk to him."

And I almost cry but somehow don't. The idea of Clare and the bathroom and the running water makes a new kind of sense.

"Oh, Leila," Eamon says. "I'm so sorry."

The
sorry
seems to slide into us as he puts his arms around me, and it's nice (the perfect, perfect word for this) to lean against someone and let every bit of misery go into a solid weight that promises to protect you. One of us pulls slowly away and the other one moves forward and until now I had not given enough thought to how kissing is not always a sex thing. More a words don't work thing and a transfer of affection to make up for how very often
words don't work.

I'm pretty sure I've never kissed anyone like this right out on the sidewalk and done it because it would be sad not to. Until now, kissing has never made it both harder and easier to breathe.

When we're done, his nose brushes against mine and he says,
Hey\ bunny.
And, then, most unexpectedly, "I'm such a jerk." His hands fall away from my shoulders. "I was waiting until June."

And we're back to June again.

"What? Waiting for what?" I ask him, wondering how two people can have the exact same experience but still two entirely different things have happened.

"I don't date teenagers," Eamon says. "I leave that to my father."

His father? Okay, ignore that as being too bizarre. But I've let him believe I'll be twenty soon. That would make me nineteen, which I've always thought of as being beyond a teenager. More to the point, does
I don't date teenagers
mean he wants to date me?

That's what this is about? What happened to flirting not meaning anything? Dating means something, even if people at school almost never do it. I see my sister in all her dark, small glory slipping on high heels, perfume, and powder. She dated William. In secret for a while because she thought, correctly, that Janie would have a fit about William's age and that Da would be silently uncomfortable. Rebecca and William never lived together until they got married. So all that time before counts as dating.

Clare dated Gyula before they turned into a great big love that blew up over a hotel. I remember Clare in my parents' kitchen five years ago. It's my first detailed memory of her. She was looking at Da and saying, with more sarcasm than the world could possibly hold, "Yes, I am. I'm dating what you call a corrupt, ex-communist business tycoon. Dating, dating, dating. Happy?"

I've been certain I wouldn't want to date anyone again until I got less confused about sex. But the idea of turning my body over to Eamon in return for access to his doesn't seem very confusing. Except, of course, for the lie I have told him. If he thinks nineteen is still a teenager, what does he think of sixteen? Or even seventeen, which will be here much sooner than twenty.

"You want to date me?" I ask, trying not to sound the way I do when asking Raphael about math problems.

"Well, I thought I'd take you to dinner and we'd go from there," Eamon says. "You know, if you wanted to, that is."

He laughs, but it's not his real, happy laugh which I've heard while safely inside Caffe Acca.

"Of course, I also thought I'd handle it a little better," he adds.

I handled it badly.
One of Clare's chronic comments about herself. As if everything in the world would be different if only she, Clare, had handled it all better. Janie, Rebecca, Da, Gyula, work, and her
inadequate
German. Approaching what she wishes she'd done better, Clare has a fierceness that is alluring as well as alarming.

I can't tell if Eamon is also fierce, but it's something I'd like to know. There's something big and dark behind his silence on topics like his father, his mother, and the last job he had while still in Los Angeles.

We've started walking again, and I am beginning to long for a taxi.

"Handle it how?" I ask.

"With a tad more grace," he says. "And not on a day that you fainted. Or told me about your sister."

"I see," I say, not seeing at all.

"If you like me at all, you'll forget this," he says. "When you come back from Poland, you'll have mercy on me and let me take you to dinner."

And there is the snag. The thing that can't find a place, that throws it all out of order. My birthday will not, as he thinks, stop my being a teenager.

No one ever thought Rebecca was a liar, and opinion was divided on the "rightness" of what she chose to keep secret. But in the end, what she chose not to say, what she kept private, what she let everyone believe—
I'm fine and in no way planning a suicide
—was a lie. Until her death, I'd have been happy to know that anything about me was like my sister, but now...

Without my having to ask him, Eamon has stepped into the street to flag down a cab.

"Wait," I say. "Wait."

"I don't think we should walk anymore," he says. "You look pretty worn out."

"Listen," I say. "I do like you. I would have mercy ... I—Eamon, stop hailing taxis."

He stays off the curb but turns to me.

"I won't be twenty in June," I say. "I'll come back from Poland seventeen."

He looks at me, kind of staring really, and then starts to smile. And then laugh—the real one, but directed at himself. He steps back onto the sidewalk.

"You are," he says. "Of course you are. You are. You're sixteen."

"You thought I wasn't and I don't ... I almost never lie," I say, unhappy to discover the start of another talking jag when all I want to do is lie down and sleep. "It's not that I'm such a good person, but that I can't keep a lie straight. And it seemed that at twenty I was already too young. And, I, I don't know. Anyway."

"You didn't really lie," he says. "And if you did, I wanted to believe you. Come on, I've got to get you home."

In the cab, I lean against the door. Eamon takes off his jacket, folds it, and leans across to put it between my head and the door. It smells like him and I am reminded of right before the kiss. Of feeling safe beyond measure.

"I guess dinner is out of the question," I say while looking at his profile.

I remember how when we first met, I didn't think he was so good-looking. And he's not when compared to Gyula or Adrien Tilden. Instead, Eamon's features and expressions make you (make me) want to look at him for a long time. He's a little taller than I am, but in the barely way that Raphael is taller.

"Let's just say it's delayed," Eamon says, looking out the window before turning to me. "I'll turn thirty-one while you're in Poland, Leila. That's still too young for a midlife crisis."

Janie had said that Rebecca was William's delayed midlife crisis. That men were supposed to fall for younger women when they were pushing forty, not when they were facing fifty. I notice how much easier it is to think of Janie than of my sister.

"It is too young," I say to Eamon. "I know. You're right."

"But I do wish," he says, "that you weren't quite so amazing."

I do some quick math, counting on my fingers without looking at them. Eamon's fourteen years older than I am. William was twenty-one years older than Rebecca, a number my sister said she was sick of hearing. Gyula's nine years older than Clare. Which is exactly how much older Da is than my mother.

It's hard for me to believe that any of this is important. William and Rebecca didn't break up because he was older. And fourteen years, after all, is only five more than nine. Of course, my father does not date teenagers, so I'm less likely to be all weird about it. And perhaps Eamon doesn't want to date me with the kind of sharp, pure longing I suddenly feel to slip my hand into his. To ask if he has a middle name or a favorite food. To feel his hand in mine and learn the whole story of his life. It will pass, hopefully it will pass.

"I guess we'll have to be friends," I say.

"We can try," he says, which strikes me as oddly familiar, but I am too tired to guess why.

At the apartment, which he insists on walking me to, Eamon is good with Clare. I listen as he explains what happened at work without making it sound either important or trivial. He writes down his cell phone number on the back of a business card that still has his Los Angeles information on it. And he hands it to Clare, which even I can admire as a bit of brilliance.

No designs on your sixteen-year-old sister
; he seems to be saying with every word and gesture.
I'm a guy who was in the right place to do the right thing.
Later, when I think about it, I'll realize that what he seemed to be saying reflected nothing more than the truth.

"Please," he says to Clare. "Call me if I can do anything to help."

Eamon looms over the chair into which Clare has propelled me.

"Be good," he says. "Okay," I say.

"Call Hal," he says. "He'll worry."

And then he's gone.

"Well, he seems nice enough," Clare says. "Interesting how you like them so low-key."

"It's not like that," I say, wondering if I'm going to throw up as the perfect end to my fainting day.

"I know, I'm teasing," Clare says, smiling and holding her hand out. "Come on, you're going to bed."

And I pitch into sleep without writing down either
Adrien Tilden
or
fourteen years.

T
HEY'RE BOTH THE FIRST THINGS
I think of, however, when I wake up. Clare took my shoes off but must have decided to leave well enough alone with my clothes. Yesterday seems like something too big for me to think about all at once. The trick to not getting confused by new information is to deal wi th it one detail at a time.

For example, I'm amazing? I am a lot of things, but
amazing
was a word for Janie. Who was also brave. Which I need to at least pretend to be. After school, which I wish would end already, I march myself into Rebecca's room.

Adrien Tilden's name is waiting for me under
A
in her address book. There are four addresses for him, two different ones here in the city, one in London, and one in Baltimore. They're all crossed out except for the one in Baltimore, which has two phone numbers. One of the crossed-out addresses is a building two doors down from where my tutor lives.

What to do? What to do? His lengthy stay in Rebecca's address book could mean he was important. Even if he can't tell me why she did it, he could probably add to the little I know about her.