Just Remember to Breathe (26 page)

I shook my head. “Not possible.”

“Anything is possible, Alex.”

I shrugged. “Let’s hope so. I… I just wish I knew what Dylan is thinking.”

She said, “He’s going to have to figure it out on his own, I think.”

“I know. I’m just afraid… I’m afraid that he’ll pull back. That this is really the end.”

She put her hand on top of mine, and squeezed gently. “What will you do if it is?”

A wave of sadness swept over me.
 

“I’ll grieve,” I said. “And then I’ll move on with my life. I’m not going to let him tear me up again like that. If he wants me… he’s going to have to go the distance this time.”

Go get her (Dylan)

“Come on, Sherman, answer the damn phone,” I grumbled. On the fifth ring, he picked up.

“The fuck?” he said as greeting, his voice thick with sleep. “It’s not even noon yet. This better be good, Paris.”

“Sherman, I need your help.”

He sighed. I could hear it on the other end of the line.
Paris needs help
again.
 

“What is it, man?”

“Is Carrie in San Francisco? Do you know how to get in touch with her?”

“Yeah, she’s there, hanging with the family. Why?”

“Okay,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I need you to do me a favor. Talk to her. Ask her to make sure Alex doesn’t go out anywhere tonight.”

There was silence at the other end of the line for a moment as he processed that, then he said, “Dude, where are you?”

“I’m at JFK airport.”

“Gotcha. You’re gonna make a run for it?”

“Yeah.”

“Good luck.”

“I’m going to need it.”

“Yeah, you aren’t kidding. Go get her. I’ll call Carrie, and we’ll make sure Alex is home. What time’s your flight get in?”

“Seven p.m. And then I gotta catch a cab across the city… it’ll be eight or nine before I get to her place, probably.”

“You know where you’re going?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’ve been there.”

“Dylan. That was two years ago.”

I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “Some things you never forget, Sherman.”

“Jesus, you are such a girl, Paris. Whipped.”

“I am,” I said.

“Seriously, man. Good luck. Maybe Carrie can help lay some groundwork. I know she’s hoping for you, too.”

“Thanks, man.”

“What are friends for? Go get your flight.”

We hung up, and I looked up impatiently at the information board. Twenty minutes before my flight would begin boarding.
 

I’d been to her parents’ house before, of course. The summer after senior year of high school. That time, I’d taken Greyhound, a three-and-a-half-day bus trip all the way across the continent. It was a strange, strange, trip. Seven days on a bus, to spend only four days with her.
 

The thing was, even after taking that trip across the country to see her? Even then, I’d still not gone the final distance. I’d not said what I really wanted to say, which was, “Why don’t we go to the same college? Why don’t we think about maybe getting married some day?”

Of course we were too young. And I was too scared. And I never imagined the twists and turns that my life would take.

When the flight started boarding, I was nearly first in line.
 

A nice young man (Alex)

This was going to be the dinner from hell
, I thought.

I was sitting on the couch, reading the New York Times on my phone. I should have known better. The headline in the metro section told it all:
Columbia University Student arrested for rape.
The picture beneath the headline showed Randy Brewer, in a mug shot. His eyes were wide, startled almost, in the photo. Somehow the combination of the circumstances of the photo, his unshaved face and unkempt hair, and the wide eyes made him look crazy.
 

Julia and her husband Crank (yes, that’s really his name) were running late, eliciting a spate of critical comments from both of my parents while we waited.
 

Carrie and I sat together in the living room while she was busy texting Ray Sherman. Carrie wore a stark and attractive pair of black pants and a rose-red blouse with ruffles. I wore a sleeveless white dress with a light sweater embroidered with roses, and Jessica sat with us, also reading messages on her phone, wearing a nice print dress. We made the very picture of a happy family, all absorbed in our separate electronic devices.

Sarah, on the other hand, was wearing torn black jeans, a ripped T-shirt sporting the album cover Beyond Redemption by what I think was a death metal band,
The Forsaken
. Or maybe it was the other way around? Not my normal choice of music, so I wasn’t sure. The picture on the shirt was guaranteed to spark a reaction from my parents: what appeared to be a screaming, bloody skull. She glared at anyone who came close.

My father hadn’t come out of his office yet, but my mother had passed back and forth between the kitchen and the office several times, each time stopping to tell Sarah to change her clothes before dinner. The response was sullen silence, and no action.
 

I’d have been happy to go into the kitchen to help out: my mom looked stressed, and I knew she was crazy busy putting together a dinner for eight. But if one of us were to go into her private reserve, she would completely blow her lid. That’s my mom: a complete martyr, angry at the lack of help, but refusing it when offered.
 

The doorbell rang, and the tension snapped. I put away my phone, feeling reprieved.

“I’ll get it!” shouted both Jessica and Sarah.
 

They glared at each other for just a second, then Jessica sat down again, crossing her arms across her chest in a mirror of the look Sarah had worn only moments before. Sarah thumped loudly down the stairs in her combat boots.
 

Two minutes later, she trailed my sister Julia and her husband Crank back up the stairs.

Before you think that Julia was adopted, or kidnapped by aliens as a child, I should tell you that she graduated as Valedictorian of her class at Harvard. Up until the age of twenty-two, she followed the same script the rest of us: the script written by my father and directed by my mother, the script that we rarely deviated from. Carrie was following it by going for her PhD. I was following it by majoring in pre-law at Columbia. Undoubtedly the twins would follow, though time would tell if Sarah’s sudden rebellion was a permanent fixture. If it was, the Thompson household was not going to be a happy place for the next couple of years.

The day after Julia graduated from Harvard, she announced that she wasn’t going to graduate school, and had decided to go to work as manager for her boyfriend’s band, Morbid Obesity. True to form, she’d been quite successful in her chosen career. Between Crank’s guitar licks and over-the-top lyrics, and her business acumen, the band had become a phenomenon in the alt-rock scene. They weren’t particularly hurting financially, but I know for a fact that my parents absolutely hated the direction Julia had taken with her life. And I admired her, very much, for her independent spirit.

Julia came in wearing what was, for her, formal dress: a pair of tight black jeans, heels and a sweater. Crank was… well, Crank. His jeans were faded and torn, his T-shirt looked like it was old before I was born, and his hair was spiked and multi-colored. Crank was a perfect example of why admiration and desire are two very different emotions. How my sister managed sex with her husband without injuring herself was a complete mystery.

That said, I loved them both and was delighted to see them.

As they came up the stairs, my sisters and I crowded around them, exchanging hugs.

Julia, who is ten years older than me, smiled when she saw me, then engulfed me in a lingering hug. “Oh, Alex, it’s great to see you.”

“You too, Julia. I’ve missed you so much!”

Crank came over and gave me a hug, and I was careful to avoid puncturing myself. He turned to Sarah and said, “The Forsaken? Awesome. How you been, punk?”

I was fascinated to see Sarah blush a bright red. “Oh, I’ve been great, Crank, you?”

He shrugged. “Ehh, you know, just playing my guitar and hanging. Your big sister keeps me in line.”

Sarah stumbled over her response as Julia looked on, amused. She was fourteen when the twins were born, so had missed much of their growing up. It was painfully obvious that Sarah had a huge crush on her husband.

At that point my father came out of the office.
 

“Julia, it’s delightful to see you,” he said, and hugged her. Then he turned, as always a little disconcerted, and held his hand out.
 

“Crank,” he said, his tone reserved.

“Hey, Dad,” Crank said, grinning, and engulfed my father in a huge bear hug. Carrie and I exchanged wide-eyed glances as Julia snickered a little.

As they parted, my father’s eyes landed on Sarah. I waited for the explosion.

“Sarah,” he said, “Please go upstairs and change before dinner.”

Defiance immediately flared in her eyes. “But Crank isn’t wearing anything formal! I don’t want to wear a dress,” she said.

“If Crank were wearing a dress, I might ask him to change. But what Crank does is immaterial, young lady: Crank is a professional, who supports himself, and can choose to dress as inappropriately as he chooses. You, on the other hand, are still a junior in high school. And I’m paying for your food and housing for at least the next few years. Therefore, if I tell you to go change, you will go change. I will say nothing more on the matter.”

She threw a glare at my father, muttered, “
God!”
then stomped upstairs, her combat boots shaking the entire house.

“Well, then,” my father said, in the same oddly formal tone and language he always used. “Let’s move ourselves into the dining room, and perhaps Sarah might join us later.”

He led the way into the dining room, with Julia and Crank behind them, and me and Jessica trailing. The dining room was set with my mother’s best china, which my father purchased for her during the two years we lived in Beijing, just before I started high school.

My mother entered from the other direction. She’d set the table, brought the food in, then stepped out to “freshen up” as she liked to say. Now she hovered over us, providing unfortunate stage directions.

Normally, my father would be at the head of the table and my mom at the foot. Crank and Julia would be closest to Dad, facing each other. Carrie and I would take the center two seats, and the twins would be relegated to the foot of the table with our mother.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the war raging between the twins was throwing a twist in things. To minimize conflict, Sarah sat to my left next to Dad, and Carrie to my right. Across from us, Jessica was next to Mom at the far end of the table from her twin, and Crank and Julia were next to each other.

Julia met my eyes as we sat and gave me a warm smile. Crank, sitting across from the blank seat where Sarah would be, grinned and launched into a conversation with my dad about
foreign policy
of all things. If he’d opened up a conversation with a brain surgeon by talking about the complex anatomy of the brain, I wouldn’t have been more surprised.

What happened next surprised me more. My dad answered, not only in a calm and reasonable tone, but actually seemed to warm to the gesture. Within minutes, the two were buried in a discussion of Chinese economic policy, which was my father’s specialization.

“Well,” my mother said to Carrie. “Isn’t this nice? We’ll give Sarah another minute or so, then go ahead and serve.”

Rather than add a third conversation to the table, Julia and I both stayed relatively quiet.

Then Sarah walked in.
 

She’d changed into a dress, as my father had asked. But I didn’t think this was what he had in mind. First of all, she’d also put on makeup. Thick black eyeliner, black eyeshadow, and black lipstick. She was wearing the black lace dress she’d worn to Uncle Rafael’s funeral two years ago, and which decidedly didn’t fit her now. Her breasts were practically spilling out of the dress, and it was quite obvious she was wearing a black lace bra underneath. She still wore her scuffed combat boots.

I caught my breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion. My father gave her a cutting glance, but said nothing, instead choosing to return to his conversation with Crank, who brought up the problem the band was having: massive quantities of counterfeit memorabilia being manufactured in China and sold worldwide. The problem had really taken off after the band’s second album went gold.

“I understand a little piracy, you know?” Crank was saying. “I’ve been dirt poor. But this isn’t like a couple of bootleg albums—it’s whole factories turning out stuff that looks just like ours. And that’s a big part of how we make our living.”

My dad nodded. “Really, this was one of the biggest issues I worked on during my last few years with the Foreign Service. It’s part of the reason I was appointed to the ambassador slot. But I have to tell you, the Chinese government really isn’t interested in cooperating.”

Sarah was crushed. It was clear enough that she’d expected—even wanted—the explosion. Instead, both my father and mother ignored her. As she walked into the room and made her way to her seat, Jessica sneered at her.

Sarah shot Jessica a dirty look and took her seat to my left. But Crank fixed it with one simple and easy motion. He gave Sarah a big, obvious wink, and a smile. She instantly brightened, much to my parents’ displeasure.

“Well then,” my father said. “Let’s eat. Adelina, will you say grace?”

We took each other’s hands, and my mother said a short prayer. All of us said, or mouthed “Amen” at the end.

My father began to serve the meal. I leaned toward Carrie and whispered, “Dad and Crank seem to be almost… chummy?”

She whispered back, “I think Julia gave Dad a look at Crank’s bank account since the latest album.”

I snickered, and my mother said, “Girls, I realize you’ve been away in college, but you must remember your manners.”