Saul takes the challah that Lionel offers and breaks off a piece of the bread we made together. “Well, it seems like you managed to avoid picking up that hideous New England accent. My brother went away to Boston College when I was a kid and came back sounding like a Kennedy.”
“Yeah, but they said I have a California accent. I didn’t even think we had accents out here.” I carefully scoop a hasselback potato onto my plate. The food was actually pretty good at Dinsmore, but we didn’t have dinners like this. You can tell the difference when someone is cooking simply because it’s a job and when the meal is lovingly prepared by people who missed having you around. “They think everything about L.A. is vapid.”
“That’s so lazy.” Lionel finally speaks. “People who say that are the same ones who come out here and go to those shithead tourist spots and then complain that the city has no culture.”
“Don’t say shithead,” Mom admonishes, but she smiles when she says it. “And I heard the same things from the girls at Wellesley, ages ago. They made L.A. sound soulless.”
“Thank God you didn’t listen to them,” Saul says, winking when my mother looks over. She hides shyly behind her wineglass. They still have little moments like this, and it’s embarrassing and kind of cute and gross all at once. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever find anybody I like as much as my mother likes Saul. Not just love, but like. “And thank God you’re back,” he continues, looking at me. “I missed my museum buddy. Want to hit up LACMA next week?”
“Absolutely.” I look over at Lionel, who’s shoving roast chicken into his mouth. “Hey, what are you doing tomorrow night?”
“What I’m doing for the next three months of my life—hot date with David Foster Wallace,” he says between mouthfuls. “Why?”
“DeeDee’s having a party for me. A welcome-back thing. What do you think?”
He finishes chewing. Shrugs. “Maybe. Kind of feel like laying low this weekend.”
“But I just got back,” I say. Perhaps knowing I should let it go but not wanting to. “It’s going to be everyone you already know: Dee, Emil, Tommy, Catie—well, I guess Catie isn’t exactly a selling point, but still. It won’t be the same without you.”
“I’ll think about it, Little,” he says, but his eyes tell me to drop it.
My mother starts talking then, and we spend the rest of dinner discussing what they’ve all been up to. She brings up the screenplay she’s working on and, like she does every so often, says she still can’t believe people pay her to make up stories, even though screenwriting has been her full-time job for a couple of years now. Saul tells us about the recent string of overbearing, eccentric clients at his woodshop. I glance at Lionel a couple of times, but he’s zoned out. At the end of the meal, Saul says my return has granted Lionel and me a get-out-of-kitchen-duty pass for the evening.
“Hey,” I say to my brother as we take our dishes to the sink. “I haven’t been out to the tree house yet. Want to go up and hang for a while?”
It’s our spot, a parent-free escape where we used to do homework and listen to music and talk about things we didn’t want Mom and Saul to overhear. We’re too old for it now, probably, but if Lionel doesn’t want to hang out with our friends, the least I can do is get him to hang out with me.
Except I can’t.
He scrapes and rinses his plate, shaking his head. “I’m pretty tired, but I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Maybe we can bike over to the reservoir.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say, working hard to make sure he can’t hear the hurt in my voice. Because before, it would’ve been We’ll bike over to the reservoir without the preface of maybe. I start to ask him what’s wrong, if he’s feeling okay or if I’ve done something to piss him off. Our parents are still in the dining room, out of earshot and pouring the last of the sweet wine. But he brushes past me before I can get the words out and I wonder if anyone else has noticed.
That my brother looks like the old Lionel and sounds like him, too, but some part of him is missing.
four.
Emil is early the next evening and I’m late getting ready, so he’s sitting with my parents when I get down to the living room.
“Sorry,” I say, walking over quickly to rescue him.
But that’s when I notice nobody looks at all put out that I’m running ten minutes behind. Of course Emil’s been a friend of the family since forever, but the scene before me displays a level of comfort I wasn’t expecting. He’s sitting in the leather armchair across from Mom and Saul, chatting away like they’re old friends. Emil is leaning forward, his hands animated as he tells them a story. Mom and Saul are totally engrossed, expectant smiles on their faces as they wait for him to get to the punch line.
He turns around, and I don’t miss the way his eyes widen as they land on me. He stands. “Hey, no problem. I was just telling your parents about this guy down by the lake today.”
“Yeah?” I say, waiting for him to go on because everyone in the room looks so amused and I want to be amused, too.
“So, he was—” He stops. “Honestly, it’s kind of a long story if you don’t already know about him.”
“Oh.” I look at Mom and Saul, who obviously know all about this random man who appeared at Echo Park Lake within the past nine months.
“But I can tell you on the way to DeeDee’s,” Emil says with an easy smile.
Mom and Saul walk us to the door, and I wonder if they think this is a date. It’s more of a date than Iris and I ever had, but I don’t know what Emil is thinking. Or what I want it to be.
“Curfew?” I say to Mom before I walk through the doorway.
She looks over at Saul and it’s clear they haven’t had to worry about this since I left. From what I can tell, Lionel doesn’t seem to get out much anymore, if at all. I checked in with him tonight after dinner, just to make sure he hadn’t changed his mind about DeeDee’s. He hadn’t.
“Well, you’re almost seventeen,” my mother says. “I think twelve thirty seems reasonable for the summer, doesn’t it?”
“Totally reasonable.” I begin inching out the door before they can change their minds. My underclassman dorm curfew at Dinsmore was loads more conservative. “We’ll just be at Dee’s.”
Out on the street, Emil unlocks the passenger door of his Jeep and holds it open for me. I hesitate, then look at him and say thank you. His attentiveness surprises me, but I like it. Lionel says holding the door open is more about not being an asshole than being chivalrous.
Emil gets in and starts the Jeep, and without looking at me, he says, “You look nice, Suzette.”
I glance down at my outfit, a sapphire-blue romper with thin straps and tiny red roses dotting the fabric. I was wearing my pajamas the last time I saw him, so I guess I cleaned up well. “Thanks,” I say again, feeling my face warm.
He looks nice, too, in a pair of army-green shorts, an oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and navy boat shoes. I study his profile.
“So, when did you get your, um…?” I gesture to my ears even though he’s not looking over, which seems really stupid when I think about it.