We Are the Goldens (12 page)

“It’s ephemeral,” Sam said.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to ruin what had become the most perfect moment of my life.

“This whole thing. It’s going to disappear. It’s art for only so long as it survives. Eventually the weather, erosion, rot, inconsiderate hooligans … something will ruin this and it’ll all be gone.”

Heel to toe. Heel to toe.

“That’s … sad,” I said.

“It’s okay. It’s not made to last.”

I stopped in my tracks and Sam bumped into me from behind. He grabbed my waist to steady himself. I turned off my flashlight app, plunging us into darkness.

“What are you doing?”

“Preserving art.” I switched on my camera. “Now it’ll live forever. Smile.”

I held the phone out in front of us and leaned back into Sam. He put his chin on my shoulder. I angled the viewfinder down so it would capture Sam and me and the winding sculpture behind us.

The flash blinded me. I leaned against him until I could see again. And then I continued to lean. He kept his head
on my shoulder and I felt his breath on my neck while he clutched my waist, the thumb of his left hand gently rubbing my hip bone. It was like we were totally making out except I was facing the wrong way.

“Onward?” he whispered.

I turned the flashlight app on again and lit up what remained, another twenty yards. I took a step away.

When we reached the end of
Wood Line
, we hopped off and turned around. I was ready to navigate it back downhill, hoping for something else to draw our bodies together, but he started out of the grove of trees toward the path.

Once on the fabled Lovers’ Lane he picked up his pace; a few times we separated to allow a jogger or a dog walker between us.

We were back at his car in two minutes.

“It’s late,” he said. “I’d better get you home.”

We rode home in silence. I could still feel where his thumb had caressed my hip bone. There was a passenger with us, a new presence squeezed in between our seats. Something was happening with Sam and me.

Mom was already in the kitchen. You were in your room with your door closed.

“Thank God you’re here.” Mom handed me a cucumber and a knife. “I can never get these as perfectly thin as you do.”

No questions about why I was late. How I got home. If I’d broken any rules.

I put my backpack down, reached into the cabinet above
the stove, and grabbed the mandoline. I started running the cucumber over the blade, and as the paper-thin strips piled up, Mom looked at me with wonder.

“What is that? Who are you? How did you learn all this? When did you grow up?” She reached over and smoothed my hair. “Last time I checked you were wearing a princess costume and talking with a lisp.”

I shrugged. “Shit happens.”

Mom sighed and rolled her eyes. “Language, Nell.”

She picked up my backpack and hung it on the hook she’d put in the closet door for that very purpose.

Here’s what it took for me to surprise and astonish our mother: slicing cucumbers with a mandoline I’d bought with money she’d left for takeout. What if she knew what you were doing?

“Go get your sister. Tell her it’s time to climb out of her cave and come to dinner. Honestly. Why do they have to give you girls so much homework?”

“They don’t.”

“You’re right. They don’t. I never got that much homework and look at me.” She gestured around the chef’s kitchen she barely knows how to use.

What I meant:
They don’t give us that much homework; Layla pretends she’s overworked to hide her secrets
.

I knocked. I’d learned.

“Come in.”

I cracked the door open only enough for you to hear me.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“Come on in.”

You had your easel out and your acrylics. Half a psychedelic landscape made its way across your canvas.

“Mom thinks you’re doing homework.”

“I am, silly. This
is
my homework.”

“Oh.”

“How was rehearsal?”

“Sam drove me home.”

“Sam Fitzpayne?”

I nodded.

“You’re not supposed to get into cars with boys.”

“Yeah, and there are things you’re not supposed to do either, so …”

You didn’t look up from your painting.

“I just want you to be careful. There’s something about that Sam I don’t trust. There’s just a … subtle cruelness about him, or something.”

I walked out of your room and slammed the door. I’d just had this magical moment, and all I wanted was for you to read this on my face and know that inside me bloomed my own psychedelic landscape.

Dinner was awkward. I’m sure Mom looked at me thinking:
Moody teenager
. I sulked and pushed my food around my plate while you talked a mile a minute. You’d just read the most AMAZING poem for English Lit. You were studying Willem de Kooning; his art is INCREDIBLE. It’s so AWESOME that we made it to the soccer finals, who cares if we win? Did either of us notice the sunset? It was GORGEOUS.

Your exuberance exhausted me.

Later, when I was lying in bed, you pushed open my door. You didn’t knock.

Parker had just been telling me how guys don’t rub girls’ hip bones with their thumbs like that unless they totally like the girl. Duncan was a little more skeptical. Parker told him he didn’t know anything because he was only fourteen and hadn’t had enough experience. You interrupted us.

“Are you okay?”

I’d asked you that very question a hundred times over the last few months.

“Yeah.”

“You seemed kind of … upset. Like, you didn’t say a word at dinner.”

“You didn’t exactly give me an opportunity.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you were rambling on and on about how totally
amazing
everything is and how the sky is
beautiful
and whatever.”

“So? I’m happy. Do you have a problem with that?”

I sighed. No. Of course I don’t have a problem with that. I want you to be happy. There’s little more I wish for in the world. But …

You came in and closed the door. You kicked off your slippers and climbed into my bed. You pulled the covers up over both of us.

“Layla.”

“What?”

I wanted to say:
What about the other girls? Yelli Rothman? Hazel Porter? How do you know you aren’t just the flavor of the month?

“Nothing.”

You squeezed me and whispered, “You’re my sister.”

“I know.”

“I love you more than anything.”

“I know.”

WE LOST
.

You were right. It didn’t much matter. We’d made the finals and that was enough. We played hard, or you and the team played hard and I kept the bench warm. At the final whistle the score was three to one.

Our opponents came from an all-girls’ school. As I sat and watched, I did the math. They had three times the pool to choose from when putting together their team, so of course they were better than us. Plus it was a Jesuit school, so they probably had God on their side to boot.

I wondered what life would be like at St. Mary’s. Wearing a uniform every day. No makeup. No boys who’d inspire you to try out for the play just to get closer to them. No boys to give you a ride home when it’s dark outside. No Felix …

I bet their art teacher doesn’t have tattoos. I bet he doesn’t wear black jeans and tight T-shirts.

Maybe life would have been better at that school for us, but it was never an option. We weren’t like those boys and girls in plaids and ties who clogged the streets at the top of Pacific Heights, navigating the entryways into their separate institutions. Our parents had different values. Different plans for us.

Why were we born to a couple of atheists? Why are Mom and Dad so aggressively progressive? Why do they always seek out bastions of liberalism?

Why do they always say things to us like:
We want you to be strong, independent women. We want you to speak your minds and demand that others listen. We want to give you the freedom to make the right decisions
.

Look at what can happen when you allow your daughters too much freedom. Would it have been so terrible if we’d been sent to a stricter school?

It’s a stupid fantasy, I know. I don’t really believe St. Mary’s is the answer. We would have hated it. Probably would have gotten expelled. But from the bench, those girls looked happy. Strong. They played some kick-ass soccer, and I can’t say for sure, but I doubt they had a teacher in the stands who’d showed up to cheer on his girlfriend.

There was a party that night. For juniors. A party with beer and boys and flirting, and Sam asked me if I was going and I said yes because you’re a junior and I knew you’d take me with you. I knew you’d understand how important it was to me.

“I’d take you,” you said, “if I had any intention of going, which I totally don’t.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“If Sam asked you, why don’t you just go with him?”

“Because he didn’t ask me to
go with him
. He just asked if I was going.”

I was wasting my breath; you understood. You’d been in high school two years longer than I had. Sam and I might have been beginning something, but we still stood outside the starting gates. He couldn’t just offer to bring me. That’s not how it’s done.

“Well, you should go. Obviously he wants you there.”

“You think?”

“Of course he does. He wouldn’t have asked you if he didn’t care.”

“Really?”

You smiled. “Really.”

“Cool.”

“So you should go.”

“Maybe I will.”

“And we should pretend we’re going together. That way Dad won’t freak out.”

Oh. So that’s what the ego stroking was about. You just wanted me to cover for you so you could go off with Mr. B.

Dad did his standard
don’t let her out of your sight
routine, and you promised you wouldn’t, and we agreed we’d be home not a minute past 11:45—a fifteen-minute extension on our curfew.

Felix agreed to come with me. It didn’t take much convincing. He was hoping for a shot at Hazel Porter.

“Do you think those rumors about her and Mr. B. were true?”

“Not a chance,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Because Hazel was going out with Gideon Banks last year. Sure, she spent lots of time with Mr. B., but that’s because he was her adviser, and they became friends, and he’s cool and she’s the coolest. But it was never anything more than that.”

“How did you become such an expert?”

“I do my research.”

“Creeper.”

“Guilty as charged.”

The party was awful, and not because all parties are
stupid
and
boring
and
lame
like you’d become fond of saying, but because (1) Sam didn’t show; (2) without you, I’m just a freshman, that’s the sad truth. And, like the fortune cookie wisdom goes, bad things come in threes: (3) no fewer than five separate people came up to me and asked,
Where’s your sister?

They said it in that way that meant they had a pretty decent idea where you were. Eyebrows raised knowingly.
Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge
.

You get the picture.

Felix and I left after an hour. He’d had two beers; I’d had none. He didn’t speak a word to Hazel. It felt like a Happy Donuts kind of night to me, but Felix lobbied for a
Simpsons
marathon at his house.
The Simpsons
always pulls me out of a
funk, especially when viewed with Felix, who does dead-on impressions of the characters.

Felix reeked of beer.

“We need to buy you some gum.”

“Por que?”

“Because you smell like a distillery.”

“You mean I smell like baby food?”

True, there was a park we went to sometimes near the Anchor Brewing factory, and the dominant odor it gave off: Eau de Baby.

“I mean your parents will know you’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk. And anyway, they have bigger fish to fry.”

I grabbed his arm and we took turns pulling each other up the hill. It wasn’t an Oh My God hill, but still, we needed the extra help.

“So. Where
is
she tonight? What’s she up to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You always know. Your life’s work is knowing what Layla is up to.”

“Well, she isn’t up to what everyone at that party thinks she’s up to.” I hated lying to Felix—it upset the natural order of the universe.

“That’s because everyone at that party is a Cretan.”

“An evil brute.”

“A lazy glutton.”

We’d learned The Cretan Paradox in our eighth-grade humanities class with Mr. Garcia. The Cretan poet Epimenides says, “All Cretans are liars.” Because spoken by a Cretan, the statement is true if and only if it is false.

Discuss
.

How I missed Mr. Garcia. Sixty-something Mr. Garcia with his ill-fitting Dockers and neck beard. Safe, unknowable Mr. Garcia.

Angel looked every bit the same to me. His hug was still all-consuming. He offered me a sandwich, like he always does, or a dish of ice cream, and like I always do, I agreed to let him fix me something I didn’t really want.