Elizabeth had just turned twenty-one. We had her favorite meal that night: lasagna and garlic bread, then chocolate cake from the bakery for dessert. Elizabeth leaned forward and blew out the candles, their light pale and flickering in the spring twilight. She looked up at me a few minutes later, while I pushed a swab of frosting around my plate. “Jules?” she said quietly, but I just shook my head. Evan’s birthday had been last week. It was always twinned, in my mind, with Elizabeth’s. I was melancholy not because I’d been thinking of him. I was melancholy because, despite my fixation on Evan, I’d forgotten about his birthday until that moment. Time was passing. I was forgetting things, the specific things. Evan was becoming an abstract longing. I was losing him all over again.
Elizabeth’s college schedule complemented my insomnia, and we lay awake that night in her bed, the lamp in the corner casting exaggerated shadows across the walls. A cluster of glow-in-the-dark stars floated on the ceiling, a reminder of the lives we had lived in these bedrooms before going away and trying to become grown-ups.
“I wish I could stay longer,” she said. “It’s kind of nice, being home.”
“Me, too. It’s so quiet here without you.”
She picked at the dark polish on her thumbnail. “You could come visit.”
“New York?”
“My roommate is going to be gone most weekends. Her boyfriend lives in DC.”
“I haven’t gone back since I moved out.”
“So? You’re not banned from the city. It’s not like they’re going to turn you away at the border.”
“Very funny.”
“You have to meet Donald. He’s so great.”
I made some noise of equivocation.
“Come on. What else are you doing up here? It could be good for you, you know—a distraction. Get out of the house.”
“You sound just like Mom.”
“Ugh. Shut up. You know what I mean. It’d be fun. We can go out together.”
“I’ll think about it.”
She sighed. “I’m not tired yet.”
“Welcome to my world.”
Elizabeth lifted a finger and delicately scratched the side of her nose. She was so deliberate, so economical in her gestures. The fidgety tendencies I’d noticed among girls our age—twisting their hair, touching their faces, biting their lips—Elizabeth was completely devoid of. When had she become so mature, so self-possessed? I had been so immersed in my own life the last five years that I had completely ignored hers. I wondered what else I’d missed.
“So Mom’s being hard on you?” she said. “I bet she’s going crazy right now, with you hanging around all day. She probably hates it.”
I laughed. “Yeah, you can tell?”
“Maybe it’s good for her. This will teach her a lesson. Not everyone can have perfect children all the perfect time.” She paused. “But she’s always been hard on you. Did you ever notice that? They were both so tough. They set such high standards. I think I had it easier. They didn’t pay as much attention to me.”
I propped myself up on my elbows, staring at her. “Are you kidding me? You? You are one hundred percent the favorite.”
“I’m not saying that. It’s just—I don’t know. With you it’s like they had to check every box. You were the first kid. Once you did everything you were supposed to do, they kind of let go of me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been great for me. But I always felt kind of bad for you. Everything you did had to be a certain way. Like, do you remember the first time you brought Evan home?”
“Jesus,” I groaned. “Poor Evan. That was such a disaster.”
It had been terrible. A weekend toward the end of freshman year, we took the train up to Boston for the first parental meet and greet. My dad spent the whole night on the phone with a client. Elizabeth had a friend over for dinner, and they did their best to distract us by chattering about high school gossip. But my mother’s mood descended on the table like an unpleasant odor. She decided, instantly, that she didn’t like Evan. That he was all wrong for me. That he would never, ever live up to Rob. Evan was sweating through his shirt during dinner.
So your parents own a grocery store, I hear, she said, eyebrow arched as she dragged her knife through her green beans.
That’s right, Evan said. It’s doing really well. They’ve started stocking a lot more organics lately. It’s catching on even in our little town.
Elizabeth laughed at the memory. “That was great, actually. She didn’t have a clue what to say to him. I still remember the look on her face when you told her you were dating a Canadian hockey player. It was worth it just for that.”
Her laughter stopped as soon as the words escaped her. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—sorry.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine, Lizzie. Tell me more about Donald.”
The night crept by, the house silent around us except for the occasional chime of the hall clock downstairs. Around 3:00 a.m., Elizabeth finally started to yawn. She drifted off while telling me about a new photo series she was working on. I tucked the blanket around her and went back to my own room, to wait for sleep.
And it was the truth. It was, surprisingly, fine. It was the first time I had talked about Evan with anyone since the breakup. My parents pretended it had never happened. Elizabeth, I think, had pieced together most of it, but she had some of our mother in her—she didn’t probe when the topic was too delicate. Whenever Abby brought Evan up, I tended to change the subject. She’d snapped at me once. “Julia. Seriously. Enough of this repressive WASP bullshit. We have to talk about this at some point.” There was a long silence, then she sighed. “I’m sorry. That was unfair.” But where could I begin?