Afterparty (16 page)

I like pita.

The moral compass intones,
Screw pita! Do you seriously want to drown in muck? Say no and walk away. Running would work, too.

I spend so much time trying to formulate an answer that will satisfy both the (completely rational) compass and my (hot mess) desire to sit next to Dylan at a dinner on a date, even if it isn’t, strictly speaking,
my
date, that soon it’s too late to answer.

To make things even more excruciating, Dylan starts cornering me at school in his quest for inside info I don’t have. He arches forward, his hand above my head, pressing against the locker above mine.

“Do you know what your friend has against Mara’s band?”

“Not ever having heard them play, how would I know?” This conversation is at once innocuous and surreal. “Are they bad?”

“They’re an acquired taste.”

“Like olives?”

“Like tone-deaf Dixie Chicks risen from the grave.”

“That could explain it.”

And I’m thinking, Dylan Kahane, do you have no idea I like you? Is this some form of torture being meted out by the Universe?

And it goes on. There’s no end to how useful I could be in deciphering the mysterious and ever-fascinating ways of Siobhan. He wants to know if she ever tried to give up smoking and why, given her professed love of Gershwin, she can’t recognize
Rhapsody in Blue
.

I say, “Was it a culture quiz?” I feel so loyal, yet so sick to my stomach.

He says, “Oh. That’s not how I meant it. Do I strike you as someone who gives culture quizzes?”

He stalks off without waiting for the answer, and I think, Yeah, Kahane, you do.

Then he finds me taking a book up on the hill. He’s with Arif, but he peels off, and Arif keeps going.

“
Here’s
a quiz,” he says, following me up the path into the trees. All right, Dylan Kahane is following me into the trees. He probably wants to know Siobhan’s favorite restaurant now that he’s discerned she hates falafel. All I have to do is stay calm and not trip on a pinecone.

Before I can more fully develop the fantasy of me twisting my ankle on a pinecone and Dylan carrying me away (a scenario in which twisted ankles require a tourniquet, so Dylan has to tear off his white shirt and rip it into strips), he brushes against my arm. I am riveted to the absolute present, preoccupied with the issue of getting a grip.

I say, “Okay, are we moving on to Aaron Copland? I can do quizzes on anybody who ever composed a ballet. Hit me with Tchaikovsky.”

Dylan says,“What does your Canadian boyfriend think of your dynamic duo?”

I say, “What?” Then I say, “Why?” Then I say, “He’s French.”

Dylan says, “That’s not on the quiz.”

I want to reach up and touch his face, he’s standing so close to me, and I’m thinking,
What are you doing?
This is your so-called best friend’s boyfriend and you should probably take a pass on this quiz and stop considering creative uses for his shirt involving shirt removal.

I am so not the moral-high-ground, compass-compliant person of this situation.

I say, “He’s never met her.”

There are very few true things to say about Jean-Luc, whose impending death is becoming more urgent by the second, but I’ve managed to find one.

Dylan nods. “Probably a wise move.”

Then he pats me on the shoulder. He. Pats. Me. On. The. Shoulder. Perhaps I could audition to be mascot of his True
Romance with Siobhan, whom I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been patting on the shoulder all that much.

What is this, anyway?

Is he just shooting the breeze, only after years of total indifference to people at school, he’s really bad at it? Is he, even slightly conceivably, looking out for me, and if so, is this some weird paternalistic thing where he and Jean-Luc protect me from his bad, bad girlfriend, who happens to be my best friend, and if so, am I just a magnet for paternalistic weirdness?

My thoughts are in chaotic disarray.

I check my heart.

Still broken.

BY THE MIDDLE OF DECEMBER,
I am actually looking forward to break. Which is saying a lot, in light of the dystopian bloodbath otherwise known as vacation in the Lazar family cabin at Lac des Sables, in a foresty part of Quebec, north of Montreal.

Usually, by Thanksgiving, I’m imagining scenarios in which Canada seals its borders, possibly as a result of a twenty-first-century plague. Which is what it would take to get me out of spending two weeks being reminded that I’m daughter of the messed-up, out-of-control, wrong-religion, wrong-French-accent woman who catapulted my father out of Quebec and into the wilds of the States. No wonder I can’t do anything right—including speak French. Not that they speak French anymore; my aunt married a guy from Toronto. By the time I (not politely) tell my aunt Geneviève to put a sock in it, precipitating the annual name-calling jamboree, the damage is already done. My dad gets us out of there, roaring off to
a dingy lodge on the other side of the lake. We always come home early. I always feel entirely beaten up. And we never talk about it.

• • •

This year is no different. By the time the red-eye we take to get out of Quebec begins its descent into L.A.—after I’ve spent six hours in near-silence sitting next to my dad, who feels the need to protect me from the plane’s R-rated movie but not his sister’s mastery of insults—my need to talk with someone who’ll get it more than outweighs how upset with Siobhan I am.

“No way,” she says when we’re sitting in her Jacuzzi comparing vacations, and hers wins. Even though all Burton did in Barbados was sit in a chair and sleep, which made life in the villa less than amusing.

“Explain to me why you go back to that lake,” she says, plying me with screwdrivers.

“Because my dad is a glutton for punishment?”

“You have to stop going there,” she says. “They call you
names
. Is
shiksa
like the n-word?”

“Not really, not
that
bad, but from them, it isn’t good. It’s like, ‘We’re
us
and you’re
you
, and you could run the food bank at Beth Torah and be Good Emma forever, but you’ll
never
be good enough to be one of us, because your mother sucks and your dad doesn’t even think you’re good enough to take to temple.’& ”

“So it’s like a religion thing?”

“It’s like a my-dad-isn’t-in-Montreal-anymore-and-it’s-all-my-fault-for-existing-and-my-mom-was-Satan thing.”

“You can tell they’re stupid bitches, right?” she says, peering at me. “And you’re trapped in a cabin with them
why
?”

“Because my dad is a glutton for punishment! All right?”

“He’s the one
sleeping
through the punishment. You’re the one he’s
subjecting to
the punishment. Just say no.”

I point out that we cut those assemblies.

“Not
all
of them.” Siobhan shrugs. “We
could
do a pact where you yell at him. You know you want to.”

I
do
want to yell at him. I’ve wanted to yell at him from the moment he chucked my duffel bag through the door of that cabin right up to now. I have to force myself not to slam around the house and yell at him when I get home from Siobhan’s, and I don’t do that well with the not-slamming.

“Ems,” he says. “That’s bordering on rude. Do you have something to say?”

I say, “Sorry,” in a tone of voice that’s bordering on even ruder. And then I can’t stand it. I follow him into the kitchen.

“All right. I have something to say.” He looks up, perfectly attentive. I wish he’d just keep glazing the chicken and not see my face, which is pretty far past just bordering on anything he generally tolerates. “I don’t want to go to Lac des Sables again. Ever.”

I stand there during the second of silence, waiting for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

He says, “Are you sure?” He looks pained. If he says a word, one single word, about disappointment, I’m going to burst into flame and explode in a fiery ball.

“Completely sure. I’ve been completely sure for
years
.”

“For years?”

“Please don’t repeat what I say back to me, and don’t ask me
if I’m exaggerating, and don’t ask me how I feel. I feel like, if you want to go, I’ll stay with Megan. Because I’m not going.”

He does not look back down at the chicken. “What I was going to say is, I wish you’d told me. I know Geneviève is difficult.”

“She’s a freaking
witch
! She
hates
me! Have you never heard what she
says
to me?”

He says, “That’s enough. I’ve heard. It’s done. We’ll go to Saint Barts instead.”

That’s it?

I am having a surreal, my God, why-didn’t-I-ask-for-a-pet-monkey-and-a-solid-gold-tiara moment.

He rests his head in his hands. He says, “I’m so sorry, Ems. I wish you could tell me these things before years go by.”

I say, “But you
heard
her. You know what she calls me. You were
there
.”

But apparently I have stumbled into no-talk territory. He goes back to glazing the chicken.

Me:
I did it!!!!! I yelled at him.

Siobhan:
Shit. R u walled in your room? Shd I call 911?

Me:
Stop it. He was nice. Never going again. Going to St Barts next time!!!!!

Siobhan:
No fucking way. You so owe me.

Me:
I know.

The next day, in the parental-guilt-so-deep-that-the kid-gets-the-pet-monkey vein, he gets me a car.

It’s the oldest Volvo still running in Los Angeles County. It belonged to Mrs. Loman-from-the-food-bank’s late husband, and it’s been on blocks in her garage for fourteen years. It’s canary yellow, a very poor color for sneaking around. The mechanic says it appears never to have been driven over forty miles an hour, or further than Ralphs market.

Mrs. Loman hugs me and tells me to drive it in good health.

My dad has me drive him home, to prove I can, and then back to pick up his car. We have a lengthy conversation during which I mostly say “Thank you” and he mostly says, Watch the road; no driving other kids for six months; no tickets or you’re toast; it’s a privilege; it’s 3,000 pounds of surging metal; it’s a canary-yellow instrument of death.

I cannot wait for him to get out of my car.

All I want is to drive all the way down Sunset to the beach, all the way up the coast to Point Dume. I want to drive up and down canyons with the windows open and the radio blasting. I want to lean toward the window so the wind messes up my hair, like a happy hound with windblown ears.

None of which is actually going to happen unless I somehow get a tool for jimmying odometers.

My dad sits in the passenger seat while I demonstrate how well I can drive back and forth to school. Twice.

On the first day of second semester, I get my car a parking pass. I put it on the windshield, and I have a half hour of pure joy.

Until I see Dylan and it starts again.

He nods at me with perfect neutrality, the kind that makes you wonder if you’re supposed to say hello or just walk by.

I say, “Hey. How was Vail?”

I know how Vail was. Okay, it was like sticking pins in the back of my hand, but when I was in Lac des Sables texting Siobhan in Barbados, I sandwiched in asking how Dylan was. And she texted back:
Complain complain complain.

He says, “Not great. Apparently I was so surly to Aiden, the prodigal son went back to college early.”

“Wow. Surliness of biblical proportion. Impressive.”

“Thank you. I aim to impress. Yours?”

“I filled in at the food bank at Beth Torah. I got battered by relatives I’m never going to see again in Canada. Oh! I got a car!”

“Welcome to L.A.” he says “You’ve gotta have a car. Don’t tell me. It’s a fancy French car with bulletproof windows.”

“It’s a fourteen-year-old Volvo.”

Dylan says, “That’s very proletarian of you.”

“I love that car. Don’t dis my car.”

No, no, no. I stop dead in the middle of reaching out to touch his arm. I can’t be reaching out and touching his arm.

I say, “I forgot something in my car, sorry,” and I walk away.

• • •

Siobhan says, “You wouldn’t think so to look at him, but Kahane is clingy.”

I don’t want to know, but I so want to know.

“How clingy is he?”

Second day back.

The compass says,
This is getting creepy and your motives are highly suspect.

Me: Shut up.

We’re sitting in Siobhan’s Jacuzzi, which has the advantage that if I feel my face turning colors and freezing into a fake, horrified smile, I can slide under the hundred-degree water, simmer, and hide.

“I don’t know what shit his mommy did to him in Vail, but he wants to sit around and do homework together. He wants me to come with when he walks his dog. And it
smells
.”

I say, “I think that’s normal boyfriend-girlfriend stuff.”

“You think I’m not
normal 
? How would you know about normal boyfriend-girlfriend stuff, anyway? Let’s think. Oh. From me.”

I regroup quickly. “I think you’re not
average
. Seriously. Do you?”

“Why’s he even with me if he wants a dog-walking kind of girl? I mean, he totally wants me. So why is he all whining that I’m not walking his dog when I’m Skyping William, which is, news bulletin, a lot more interesting than walking a dog? Why is he all whining that I want to go to a party instead of listening to some sucky Bulgarian string quartet or some band that isn’t even signed yet?”

“What string quartet?”

“Why would that possibly matter? Do I care? That’s the point. I went to Disney Hall how many times last semester? It’s a new year! Could we have some reciprocity and go to a decent club or some kind of a party?”

“I thought the whole essence of his being is, he doesn’t do high school.”