27
DORI
‘Hey, Deb.’ I lean to kiss her temple and she blinks, but her fixed expression otherwise remains like the face of an impassive wax figure. ‘I thought you might be getting tired of tulips, and also, one of Dad’s rosebushes bloomed. They’re pink – which I know you think is such a cliché flower colour. But they smell so good that I didn’t think you’d mind.’
Depositing last week’s purple tulips in the trash can, I rinse and fill the vase in her bathroom sink. It’s been five weeks since I’ve seen my sister.
Five weeks since we buried Esther. Four weeks since Reid and I were in San Francisco. Three weeks since I’ve spoken to him. Two weeks since he stopped texting and leaving voicemails.
‘I like Cal. My roommate, Shayma, is from Louisiana. You’d love her. She’s a business major, but she does community outreach projects with me.’
Shayma hadn’t asked about Reid – or the fact that I hadn’t mentioned him in a while – until a couple of days ago. When I told her I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him in a few days, she pursed her lips and said um-hmm, but nothing more.
‘I’m taking all intro classes this semester, but most of my professors are pretty cool. And you were right – the campus is one funky place. There’s a full-scale T-rex model in the Life Science building. The grounds are beautiful, but the architecture is all over the place. And there’s tons of activist history intact – like the building that’s missing an outside handle because during protests fifty years ago, students chained the doors shut, and the administration took one handle off so they couldn’t do it again. In the upper plaza, student groups hand out flyers and sell things to raise money for charity. Sometimes, opposing groups have tables feet apart, but everybody stays remarkably civil.’
Running a brush through Deb’s short hair, I recall what it looked like before her accident. She had beautiful shoulder-length hair, chestnut with auburn highlights she did herself. Now it’s short, dull and frizzy; I make a mental note to bring conditioner with me next time. The bare spots from her surgeries have finally grown back in, though the surgical scar will remain a sort of odd, random part at the back of her head.
‘Berkeley feels like a small town, even though it’s not. It’s definitely not like LA or San Francisco – which you can see from certain spots on campus, if the fog hasn’t rolled in.’
Deb’s chair is positioned so she can ‘see’ the view from her window, which is no more or less ridiculous than me taking her for a stroll in the grounds. My parents insist there is no proof that she’s totally oblivious to what goes on around her, because her brain registers some activity. In some ways, this is more horrifying than if she’d remained medically unresponsive, because no one can assure us that she isn’t aware to some degree and simply unable to respond, though her doctors continue to reiterate that her brain activity is too inconsequential to represent comprehension.
My parents continue to hear what they want to hear.
I continue to speak to my sister because I have to talk to someone.
‘I haven’t spoken to Reid in a while. I miss him. Sometimes it feels like my heart is going to burst, and I almost want it to.’
When I was very young, I had chronic ear infections and a grandma with unconventional ideas about what constituted a helpful story. ‘Back in my day, there were no antibiotics for such things,’ she told me during one particularly excruciating episode. ‘Your eardrum just swelled up till it popped.’
‘Oh, Mother! Don’t tell her your horror stories!’ Mom said, aghast.
‘Well, after it popped, it stopped hurting!’ Grandma huffed. ‘Problem solved.’
I keep waiting for my heart to pop.
‘He has a son. River. He thinks that’s why I stopped talking to him – he thinks I’m angry he kept it from me. He doesn’t understand how easily I could forgive and understand that choice. It’s true that when he told me, and I looked at his picture on Reid’s phone, that was when I felt myself detaching. But anger wasn’t the reason for that.’
I place a blanket over Deb’s lap and take a light sweater from her closet. Clothing her is very much like dressing an infant on the cusp of being a toddler – she doesn’t help, but she doesn’t fight against me as I bend her elbow gently and pull her arm through the sweater.
Once outside, I resume our one-way conversation.
‘I’m such a coward – I’m terrified that if I meet River, he’ll become important to me. And when everything ends with Reid, I’ll lose him too.’
I find our spot – a secluded bench surrounded by waist-high camellia shrubs covered in white blossoms. Taking a seat, I face Deb’s chair to me and stare at her beautiful hazel eyes. She blinks slowly, seemingly focused on something in the distance over my shoulder. Positioned as I placed them before we left her room, her hands rest in her lap, fingers twitching as they sometimes do – just another involuntary movement, doctors insist.
‘I know you’d tell me I’m being spineless,’ I say to Deb now. ‘Only you’d say it more gently, like: Dori, you’re braver than this. It’s true, though – I’m gutless where Reid is concerned. If I talk to him, I’ll want to believe in everything he says.’
My eyes fill, my heart compressing as I wait for the pop that never comes. ‘I know I’m hurting him, and I hate that.’ After his last text: Please, goddammit it, not again – I almost caved. It took every ounce of willpower not to answer him. ‘But it wouldn’t be fair to try to keep him when I have nothing to offer him in return.’
I swipe the tears away before they have a chance to track down my face.
‘There’s something I never told you about that decision I made four years ago.’ I take a shuddering breath. ‘I’ve never felt a middle ground between acceptance and remorse. Every day for the last four years, it’s been one or the other. Black or white. There was no grey, but I could bear it, because I had you. When I lost you, I began slipping into perpetual guilt. Carrying that secret, alone, for the first time, while trying to balance the idea of a benevolent God with a God who could let this happen to you – it was like falling into quicksand.’
Reid saved me from going under. He’d needed me to help him see who he could be, and in return, he allowed me to be myself in a way I never have. I was content to accept that happiness as long as it lasted. To try to make him happy while he was mine.
‘Deb,’ I whisper, leaning closer. ‘I feel hollow. I feel separate from everything and everyone. Nothing is touching me except the things that hurt. You always told me that if I helped other people, even if I was just going through the motions, it would keep me grounded. It would eventually help me define and know myself again. But it’s not working this time. I don’t know who I am, in relation to anyone else. I’ve lost me.’
When I get home, Dad is brewing his Saturday afternoon ‘sermon-busting coffee’.
‘Hey, sweetheart. How was Deb?’
I almost say the same, but that’s not what he means. ‘The roses looked beautiful in her room, and when we got back in from a circuit in the garden, the whole room smelled rosy.’
He smiles. ‘You don’t think she minds that they’re pink?’
I don’t think she notices that they’re pink.
‘No, Dad.’ I smile, handing him the keys to the Civic.
‘If you might need the car later, just keep those,’ he says.
I shake my head. ‘Nick is coming over. We’re going to get an early dinner and catch up before he goes back to Wisconsin tomorrow. Our breaks are on consecutive weeks instead of the same one.’
‘Oh? That’s a pity.’ He looks hopeful, and I bite back the desire to tell him that ship has long since sailed.
‘It’s okay.’ I shrug. ‘At least I get to see him once.’
He clears his throat, and I know before he speaks what he’s about to say. He and Mom are so transparent. ‘Seeing Reid this week?’ he asks as I’m walking towards the stairs, my face turned away so he won’t notice the way I close my eyes and breathe through my nose, schooling my voice not to betray me.
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Oh. Have you two –’
‘Dad, I’m not ready to talk about it,’ I say, and thankfully he drops it.
I’ll never be ready to talk about it.
Nick arrives an hour later. The doorbell echoes through the house, and then I hear his voice in the foyer, comparing notes with Dad on the Badger basketball season. My father never took that relaxed tone with Reid … but I have to quash my irritation over that. There’s no purpose to it, after all.
‘Hi, Nick,’ I say, arriving downstairs. He beams and hugs me, and as he releases my shoulders, I ask, ‘Have you grown?’
His brows elevate hopefully. ‘I dunno. Have I?’
I laugh. ‘I think you have! Boys gain weight in a whole different way than girls! Seriously unfair.’
He smiles down at me. ‘You do seem shorter.’
‘Shut up.’ I punch him half-heartedly and we turn to go. ‘I’ll be back in a bit, Dad. Don’t get into any trouble while Mom’s at work.’
‘Aw, pumpkin – you’re no fun!’ he says in pretend objection, chuckling and shutting the front door behind us.
We turn to cross the porch and stop on the top step.
Reid is halfway up the walk. When he sees me with Nick, he stops abruptly too. In the span of those two seconds, a smile blooms and dies on my face. Whipping his sunglasses off, Reid glares at Nick and then at me. His jaw locks, fists clenched at his sides, as we all stand immobile and dumbstruck. He’s clearly angry, but so beautiful I can hardly stand to look at him.
‘Dori?’ Nick finally says, breaking the tense silence.
‘Would you mind waiting in the car, Nick?’
He glances towards Reid. ‘Are you sure –’
‘Yes. I’ll be fine.’
Reid’s eyes flick to him as he passes. Nick is taller than average, but shorter and leaner than Reid, whose in-production body looks big and defined in comparison. Nick keeps a wide berth and avoids eye contact as he walks to the sedan he borrowed from his mom for the night. Reid’s spotless Ferrari is parked right behind it.
I start down the steps. ‘Reid. What are you …’ I swallow the uncomfortable lump in my throat and start over. ‘What are you doing here?’
He watches me approach, but makes no move towards me.
‘You stopped talking to me, Dori. I came to find out why.’ He glances over his shoulder at Nick, who waits by the driver’s side door, resting his arms on the roof of the car and watching us. ‘Or should I take this as an answer?’ When he looks back at me, the pain is evident in his eyes.
I shake my head, coming to stand in front of him. ‘No. Nick has nothing to do with … us.’
‘Is there an us, Dori?’ I flinch at the raw torment in his voice, and his hand moves as if to touch me, but he drops it back to his side. ‘I made promises to you, and I intended to keep them. I know I was wrong to hide River from you, and I’m willing to do whatever I need to do to make up for that. But you have to talk to me. If you’re going to end it, you have to tell me why. You can’t just disappear like you did before.’
Mom told me he’d called, though her memory was suspiciously vague as to the content of their conversation. From his perspective, my withdrawal is exactly like last time. But last fall was about submitting to pressure from my parents. This time is all me and my personal demons.
‘This isn’t like last time.’
‘Isn’t it?’ he says softly.
My heart clenches rhythmically instead of beating. ‘We can’t talk about this now –’
‘Because going out with some other guy is more important to you?’
I wince at the indignation in his voice, and the way he pivots from hurt to anger.
‘Nick is leaving town tomorrow. We made plans …’
He stares at me, hard, silent.
Laying my hand on his forearm, I note the immediate tautness of the muscle under my fingers. Like he can steel himself against my touch. Like he wants to.
‘Can we talk tomorrow, Reid? Please?’
The tension melts from his shoulders with a sigh. Carefully – as if he’s afraid to startle me, he lifts his hand to curl one finger under my chin and gazes down into my eyes. ‘Will you talk to me, Dori?’
His thumb grazes over the indentation in my chin as though it’s meant to rest there before it slides up to outline my lower lip. When he leans to kiss me, my body responds without regard to how this connection tears at my heart. My mouth opens to him, yielding against all the rapidly disregarded rationales for why I can’t surrender to what he thinks he wants right now. My hand slides up his arm and under the sleeve of his T-shirt, tightening on his bicep as he slips that arm around my waist and pulls me closer, urgently.
I want this. I need this. And when he kisses me, he knows it.
Stroking my tongue with his, he’s both fiercely possessive and gentle, and I want nothing more than to wrap myself around him and be carried away to a place where I don’t have to think. A place where there’s no guilt or fear, no right or wrong, no divine punishments or senseless accidents or indeterminate states.
When he draws back, his chest rises and falls with mine. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,’ he says, turning to go without looking back, pulling his keys from his pocket. He ignores Nick completely as he gets into his car and drives away.
I walk unsteadily to Nick’s car, belatedly aware that at least three neighbours came outside in the last few minutes to sweep clean sidewalks or check empty mailboxes and watch Reid Alexander kiss me.
REID
As soon as Immaculada leaves the kitchen, Mom walks in with her coffee cup and heads for the impressive-looking coffee maker, which supposedly makes all sorts of coffee drinks. If it’s in operation, though, there’s a good chance it’s just making coffee.
‘Reid?’ She pulls out the adjacent seat and glances back at the digital clock over the stove. ‘Goodness, you’re up early,’ she observes, sitting next to me.
I shrug. ‘I’m still on production schedule, I guess. Just as well – we start up at Universal on Monday.’
‘So soon?’
I arch a brow at her. ‘Time is money, Lucy.’
She laughs at my overdone impersonation of my father … and every producer in Hollywood.
Truth: I couldn’t sleep most of the night, thinking about how Dori responded to that kiss. She wants me still. I don’t care what she says – or refuses to say, since she hasn’t been speaking to me. Come to think of it, her avoidance feels even more suspect, because I’ve seen Dori angry, and nothing about her reactions yesterday denoted anger, even in the face of my obvious jealousy towards her friend.
Dr Shaw will be happy to know I didn’t lay a verbal insult (or a fist) on Nick – the guy I mistook for her boyfriend last summer at Habitat, because he clearly wanted to be her boyfriend. Considering the fact that for about two minutes yesterday afternoon I thought that guy was the reason she wasn’t calling me back – I think I showed extraordinary restraint.
‘River’s room is completely ready,’ Mom says, breaking into my mental recap.
‘Mom, are you sure you’re good with River living here? I know you and Dad thought you were almost rid of me. And it’s not like I can’t afford my own place.’
She smiles and lays her hand on top of mine. ‘Reid – this house is ten thousand square feet, give or take a few closets. We have staff who’ve been with us for years and are utterly trustworthy. It’s private. It’s safe. This is the perfect place for him. And for you, for now. Not forever – for now.’
I nod. I’m still stunned at how my parents have reacted to this.
Mom sips her coffee and I sip mine, both of us lost in our thoughts.
And then: ‘You haven’t said very much about Dori the last few times we’ve spoken,’ she says. ‘How are things with her sister? And her first semester at Berkeley?’
I shake my head. ‘I’m not completely sure on either count.’
‘Hmm.’ Her hmm doesn’t sound surprised.
‘When I met her, I saw her altruistic side and thought do-gooder. I saw the girl with no make-up, wearing the least flattering outfits a girl could wear – especially knowing I was going to be around –’ Mom rolls her eyes and shakes her head – ‘and I expected boring. And she wore these T-shirts every day, supporting all kinds of causes, and I decided she was judgemental and sanctimonious.’
During our very first dinner out, Dori admitted that she was a bit sanctimonious. Her admission was coupled with that mischievous smile of hers that I’d begun making deliberate efforts to trigger. That may have been the moment I fell in love with her.
‘But I was so wrong about her. Even when she questioned her own goodness, she managed to see something good about me. And then her sister had that accident. It destroyed her. It obliterated her faith in everything.’ I bite the inside of my lip. ‘Everything except me. I somehow got her to trust me. And then I lied to her. And I can tell myself it was a lie of omission like that’s something other. Like that’s something lesser. But it was still a lie, and I knew it every goddamned day that I didn’t tell her.’
‘Reid, if she’s lost her faith in God, that isn’t yours to resolve –’
‘Yes, it is. She was trying, Mom – she was trying so hard to rebuild it. And then her dog died, and I didn’t tell her about River. And now I have a son, who I can’t turn my back on –’
‘Of course you can’t. Dori wouldn’t expect that. She wouldn’t want that. I know she wouldn’t.’
‘That’s what’s tearing me apart. I don’t know how to fix this. How do I fix this?’ I stare into her eyes – my eyes, mirrored back at me. ‘I can’t lose her. I love her.’
‘I see that, Reid. But if I’ve learned anything in the past few months – and I think you have, as well – it’s that people must fix themselves. That’s the only way change has any hope of becoming permanent.’ She squeezes my hand.
Winking at me from her ring finger is the huge, flawless, round-cut diamond my father presented on bended knee when they were young.
Not as young as I am.
My dad was twenty-nine or thirty when he proposed to my mother. He was thirty-five when I was born, very legitimately. Thirty-five. Not fifteen, and too much of a dickwad to even consider the fact that a girl he’d had sex with – a girl he’d made love to – could possibly be pregnant with his child, no matter what else he thought she’d done, or with whom.
Mom follows my eyes to her hand and back to my face. She angles her head. ‘Reid?’
‘Mom. I need to ask you something.’
I hear the melodic chirrup of the Cantrells’ doorbell when I press the button, because all the windows and the front door are wide open. It’s a beautiful spring day in LA.
‘I’ve got it!’ Dori calls as she descends the staircase, alerting me that one or both of her parents are home. Just like the first time I ever heard her speak, I’m struck by the musical sound of her voice.
I watch her appear a bit at a time – bare feet on the steps and then her perfect legs in a pair of khaki shorts, followed by one of her more hideous T-shirts – a tie-dye done with too many colours, rendering it a sort of repulsive brown, for the most part. It sports the name of a chorale outreach programme for teens, sponsored by her high-school choir. Finally, her beautiful face dips into view.
How could I have ever thought her plain? I must have been blind.
As she reaches the screen door, I say, ‘You can’t scare me off with that butt-ugly T-shirt, you know.’
She clicks the lock on the door and admits me, glancing down at herself. ‘It works on most people. I could stand on the porch like a scarecrow and no one would come near.’
‘Except me.’ I pull her close and wrap my arms around her. ‘You know, if I keep you close enough, I can’t actually see it. Plus, it’s actually very soft, even if it is the most revolting T-shirt ever made.’
Her mouth quirks. ‘It does sort of look like it was tie-dyed in poop.’
I laugh. ‘Yeah, it does.’
I’d like to sweep her up, take her to her bedroom and strip it off. That’s not an option at the moment. One, her parents are home. And two, we need to talk.
As if she’s reading my mind, she shifts her eyes away from mine. Lucky for me, her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and those exposed, pink-tipped ears tell me she can read my mind. Sucking her bottom lip into her mouth, she reveals her anxious mental state.
Time to be serious, as much as I’d like to help her avoid it.
I take her hand and lead her to the sofa. The ceiling fan whirrs overhead, and Esther’s dog bed is still in the corner, though her collection of toys has been packed away. Rose bushes provide bursts of colour across the tiny back yard, and the aroma wafts through the open windows, as potent as a hothouse. As luxurious as my parents’ house is, I love it here. I love her watery-coloured bedroom and those fish swimming across her ceiling. I think River would love it too.
Her hand lays palm up in mine. Skimming the contours of her fingers, I concentrate on calming her. Her eyes are still downcast, watching my finger trace slowly over her skin. I know from that kiss yesterday that she wants me, but she’s always been capable of pushing those desires aside. If we don’t go deeper than that – if she won’t let me all the way in, apart from her physical response, I won’t be able to keep her.
‘I want to apologize for not trusting you,’ I say, and she frowns as her eyes snap to mine. This is not what she expected me to confess. Good. ‘I was afraid of what you’d think of me if, or when, you found out about River. But you’ve been the one person to continually see anything worthwhile in me, to help me see it – and I should have trusted in that.’
I recall the words she said when she found out about him: You’re doing the right thing, and I’m proud of you for it. Her eyes go glassy, and I cup her face in my hands as the realization hits. F*cking hell, how did I not see this? ‘You have faith in me – but not me with you.’
And that does it. She shuts her eyes and I know I’m right.
‘You love your parents, but you think they don’t know you. You may still believe in God, but not that he cares about you. You’re disconnecting, trying to protect yourself. But, baby, it’s not going to work. I’m here to tell you – it’s not going to work.’
All of a sudden, she’s crying, and I’m praying this conversation isn’t going to push her further from me.
I stand and pull a small, square box from my pocket. Go to my knees in front of her, so we’re eye to eye. ‘Dori, I have faith in us. I don’t know how else to prove to you that I want you forever.’ I open the box and set it in her open palm, and she gasps. ‘My grandmother willed this ring to me, to give to the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. When she died almost six years ago, I had no idea what my future held – or that someone like you would be part of it. That River would be part of it. I don’t know where I’ll be in another six years, but I know I want you there with me. With us.’
She stares down at the enormous sapphire stone, surrounded by slivers of diamonds and set into a platinum band. I don’t tell her that this ring also belonged to my great-grandmother. My maternal great-grandfather was one of those dudes who pulled his money from the stock market months before the crash, keeping his family beyond solvent at a time when many of his peers lost everything. Their son presented this ring to my grandmother, and it skipped a generation and came to me.
I close the box and shut her fingers around it. ‘Take this. When you’re ready, I want to put it on your finger. I want you to meet my son. I want you to let me bring you into my world – because I need you there. The media crap is just PR. Piece of cake for you, trust me. There are a hundred people ready to help us nail it. Let me help you rebuild your faith, because that’s who you are, and I love who you are.
‘Remember last fall, when you needed to be reckless, and I told you to use me? Well, now, it’s time to be fearless. I can’t promise that you won’t be hurt again, because life can suck. And, sometimes, it hurts like hell. I’m asking you to have faith in one thing, for now: the fact that when we’re alone, I’m just Reid, and you’re just Dori, and we’re going to love each other for the rest of our lives.’
She’s staring at me, the velvet-covered box clutched in her hand. I lean forward and kiss her, tasting her tears or my own, I don’t know which. ‘Come to me when you’re ready to be fearless. Unless you can look me in the eye right now and tell me you don’t love me.’
Lower lip trembling, she says nothing, and I kiss her again before I leave.