Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List (26 page)

It must be expectation that Mom can’t let go of, either. I mean, I don’t think she expects Dad to waltz back into our apartment and everything to be all right again. We wouldn’t have him back even if he wanted to come back. Yet we still live in this apartment, where all the hurtful memories exist not as ghosts but as neighbors. It’s not fantasy or mirage:
They’re there.
The photos of Dad with us as a family still linger on our tables and walls, his clothes still hang in a closet we don’t dare open, his mail even still comes here. It’s like he left and time just stopped. We continued on, but only because we had to. The apartment’s shell remained the same (less that small section of the living room wall Mom destroyed back when she was feeling the pain rather than numbing it), but the inside we can’t see, the emptiness we don’t acknowledge—because how could we; the physical props of Dad’s presence still exist,
right in front of us
—have eaten us alive.

It’s as if Mom somehow expects a magic potion will come along and fix this lie we’re living in; ’til then, she’ll sleep.

I wake her by spraying Evian spritz onto her face. This method is not only gentle, but good for our shared milky-smooth complexion. Every magazine says so.

Her eyes pop open and the hazel-eyed look of simultaneous anger and love she flashes me reminds me how much Mom and I look alike. Ely always envied me that I could look at my mom and know exactly where I came from. He doesn’t look like anyone in his known family. I always liked that this face I share with Mom was worthy of Ely’s envy. Yet, as with all things, he bested me in the envy contest, too. Maybe he got the mystery face, but he also got the functional family, the one that survived and worked things out instead of just falling apart. The family that can survive and then thrive is so much more worthy of envy, in my opinion. That’s
work.
A beautiful face passed down from a mother? That’s just a gift.

“What are you doing, Naomi?” Mom murmurs. She closes her eyes again and turns over, away from me. “If you’re not here to watch
Oprah,
then go away.”

I jump over to the other side of the bed. And spray again, a direct shot onto her face, then her hair, her arms, her . . .

“NAOMI! What are you DOING?”

She’s furious, but I smile at her, cuddle into her. There’s no need for shouting. “Wake up, Mom,” I murmur back.

She pulls me to her, tight. “I’m up,” she whispers into my ear. Then she grabs the Evian bottle and takes a turn to spray my face.

“That feels nice,” I say. “Refreshing.”

“Naomi.”

“Right.”

“Naomi, what are you doing?” Mom doesn’t wait for my answer. She reaches for the TV remote. I grab it from her hands before Oprah can overtake my efforts to get Mom out of bed to deal with her own problems rather than tune in for Oprah to fix everybody else’s.

I stand up on the bed and jump up and down, up and down. “GET UP GET UP GET UP!” I sing these words, but it’s not until the chant is over that I make the connection of what I just did, the Sunday-morning make-us-breakfast routine I just replayed.

“Ely,” Mom says. “Isn’t he supposed to be here double-teaming if you’re going to pull this act?”

She’s got me there. He should be here.

“We have to move,” I tell her.

“What? You’re crazy. Don’t you have homework to do, or something?”

“He’s not coming back.”

Silence.

She knows I’m not talking about Ely.

Then:

“I know,” she acknowledges.

“You wouldn’t want him to come back even if he did.”

“I know that, too.”

“So why are you still in bed?”
His
bed.
Their
bed.

Mom doesn’t stand up, but she at least sits up. But it’s like the view from Awake is too bright. She places her head down into her hands. “I don’t know, honey. I just don’t know. I don’t know what else to do. I hate my job. I can’t afford for us to move. I feel trapped.”

“Then let’s change the mental expectation. Let’s not think of being trapped. Let’s think of our situation as . . . a maze we have to find our way out of. The thing about a trap is you get caught and can’t get out. A maze has an exit. You just have to find it.”

“And how do we do that, O abruptly wizened daughter?”

“We can start by selling this apartment and moving, Mommy.”

Her head pops up to throw a Naomi brand of stare-glare face at me. “It needs to be fixed up in order to get it on the market. There’s the damage in the living room. The kitchen and bathroom need to be retiled. The blinds are falling apart. The list called Impossible goes on and on.”

“We can get help.”

“Are you listening, Naomi? I HAVE NO MONEY.”

“But you have options. We could ask Grandma to help. She has lots of money.”

“She’s too controlling. There’s always a price to be paid for her quote-unquote ‘help.’ ”

“So what? Pay that price. Visit her every couple of months. Let her tell you to get a divorce and get back into circulation. Say thank you when she offers up completely bad career advice.”

Mom laughs. It’s a start.

I watch her my-face churning in thought. Then she sparks. “Maybe we could ask Gabriel if he’s interested in taking on a side job—help out with some of the work that needs to be done on the apartment? He’s a nice guy, huh? Maybe he’d help out, and we’d get a chance to get to know him at the same time?” She appears serious, but her voice teases. “You
liiiiiike
him.”

I love my mom.

“Maybe,” I allow.

My real challenge is to figure out how the hell we find a Realtor willing not only to take on this falling-apart apartment but its falling-apart mother-daughter sellers. “Guess what?” I say.

“That’s what!” Mom answers.

“I’m kind of failing out of school and should probably just drop out.”

Mom’s head falls back into her hands. “Oh Lord,” she sighs. Her head’s bounce back upward to look at me is surprisingly quick in response—and no glare this time, either. “I knew it was coming. Not this, exactly—but something like this. Your teenage years were too easy. Just tell me now, get it over with. You’re not pregnant or doing drugs, are you?”

She’s right. I did go easy on her in my high school years. Yes, I had my moods. Every teenager does. Especially me. I could earn a degree in moodiness. I’d pass that course of study with all honors. But I wasn’t raging teen rebellion, either. Mom was such a wronged party then. Just not by me. I didn’t want to add to her pain.

Ely bested me in the teen rebellion contest, too. He totally acted out with Ginny when all that horrific shit was going down with our parents. He was
awful
to her, but protective and kind with Susan—a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality with his own parents. And now, if he’s allowed to have boys spend the night, or if he stays out all night with no recrimination from them, it’s not because he’s reached college age or they’re too passed out to notice. It’s because of the precedent he set—no, that he
demanded
—when he was still in high school. That freedom he won too soon was the price his parents paid for the mess the collective parents made. Grew him up too soon. Grew both of us up too soon, I guess; we just acted it out in different ways. Ely turned promiscuous. I chose fantasy.

His promiscuity that I can no longer choose to tune out probably has a lot to do with why Ely plays with so many boys . . . yet none have turned out to be keepers. That is, until he stole my boyfriend. Woke me up.

“I’m not pregnant,” I acknowledge to Mom.

“Shit,” she mutters. But at last she stands up. She’s out of bed.

“What are you doing?” I ask her.

She reaches for the phone. “We
both
need help.”

Here’s the
?
I would ask a potential therapist: Can we live without the fantasy and still expect a fair and happy path? There’s no pill for that, is there. (Not a question.)

Mom wouldn’t take Dad back. But it’s true. I would—
should
—take Ely back.

He didn’t do anything wrong other than be who he is.

I love who Ely is.

I hate that I probably owe Ely asking him back rather than waiting for him to make the first move, for him to fix it for me, like he always has in the past. But I haven’t reached that part of the maze yet. One step at a time.

I may have gotten Mom out of bed and into action, but as for:

I still don’t see the way out.

But I don’t feel like we’re trapped, either.

ELY

CORNER

I wait for her in the stairwell off of floor six. Our hallowed ground. Suburban kids had the deluxe tree houses; we lived in Manhattan, so we had to create our own spaces. The corner of the floor six stairwell was ours. We liked the overhead strobe lighting, all flickery and buzzing. We played endless games of Sorry!, Rummikub, Apples to Apples, and our own version of Trivial Pursuit, where we’d use the board but make up our own categories and questions, usually about the other building residents. We even hung our school artwork up on the stairwell walls. When we were in middle school, the stairwell served as a stage when we played disco musical. I built the sets and she named our characters—she was Lavender and I was Butterscotch. (That memory can definitely be stuffed into the Repression Closet. I mean, the disco part was awesome, but
Butterscotch
? I let that bossy bitch call me
Butterscotch
?) Later, we took sanctuary here when our parents fought. And we wrote our first No Kiss Lists here, memorizing them before they were destroyed.

I officially came out to her at the very spot where I’m standing now. We were fifteen, and I told her even though we both already knew. I deliberately chose the very place where we’d once carved our names into the wall.

I’m looking at it now. The imprint we scratched when we were twelve still remains:

There’s no way for me to know she’ll find me here. I didn’t call. I didn’t text. I left it up to that old connection, that old friendship sense.

It’s like Naomi always used to say:
Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs.

I’m counting on that. And I’ve been counting on it for almost an hour now.

I’m about to give up, but I stop. I always try to last at least three minutes longer than giving up.

I’m here, Naomi. I’m here.

The door opens, and I hear the clomp of her Docs. Even harder than resisting the impulse to give up is resisting the impulse to run.

The fact that you think of yourself as a runner is what makes you run. Stop that.

Now: moment of truth. She sounds like she’s reached about floor eight, coming down . . . DOWN . . . and . . .

The Docs stop. She notices me.

And I notice her. I notice something’s happened. I notice she’s as beautiful as ever, but that she hasn’t put any thought into it. I notice she needs sleep and conversation and a kiss from someone who isn’t me. I notice she’s still angry at me but that there are other emotions there as well. I notice her the way you notice the differences in someone who’s been away a long time. And it hasn’t been a long time. It’s only been long for us.

It’s not easy,
I remind myself.
It’s not easy for any of us.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” she says.

This, especially, isn’t easy.

I look at the Naomi + Ely equation on the wall. I want to think we still add up.

I will not be intimidated by the differences between now and then. I know the blue comfort sweater she’s wearing, and I know who she broke up with the day she bought those jeans, and I was the one who convinced her to buy those Docs, which look even better now that they’re scratched and worn. Now all I need to do is take all of this history, all these associations, and turn them from a tense present into a present tense.

This is our corner. We’re inside the force field. Nothing can hurt us.

“I think we should get married
here,
” I say. It’s so obvious.

Naomi sits down on the top stair, the edge of our corner, and rests her head against the wall. “Ely,” she says, “we’re never getting married.
Never.
”