Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
NAOMI
Iwent to see my sister on Tuesday at closing time without calling first.
The showroom sat on a corner in Northern Liberties, glass on two sides, with slabs of marble standing in steel racks like enormous playing cards.
Tile samples covered the walls behind them in neat grids of white, white, off-white, warmer white.
At the counter, a young man with a man bun was counting out the drawer, and he looked up when the door chimed.
"We close in ten," he said. "Can I help you find something?"
"I'm here for Lila."
"She's in the back."
He didn't have to get her. She came out through a curtain hugging a stack of sample boards to her chest. When she saw me, she stopped so fast that one of the boards slid off the top and cracked against the concrete floor.
"Naomi."
"Hi."
The young man looked back and forth between us. "I'll just be in the office," he said, and was gone before either of us answered.
Lila bent to pick up the tile. It was a little hand-glazed square, sea green, split cleanly in two, and she held one half in each hand like she wasn't sure what they were.
"You didn't call," she said.
"You don't answer when I call."
"That's not fair."
"I've called you six times in three weeks. You texted me hearts."
She set the two pieces on the counter and put her hands flat on either side of them.
Her cream sweater was pushed up to the elbows, and I could see her wrists.
Her watch had slid all the way down to the knob of bone, and the skin around the band was pink, like she'd been turning it. This close, I could smell her perfume.
"I need you to tell me what's going on," I said.
"Nothing's going on."
"I saw the lease."
Her eyes flew up to mine, wide. For a second she looked the way she used to when our mother came down to the laundry room and switched on the light.
"What lease?"
"Unit 3R. 1411 Pine Street. Graham R. Bennett, guarantor. Two keys."
"You went through his things?"
"I went to write the gutter man a check. It was in the drawer with the checkbook." I kept my voice level; I'd practiced in the car. "Seventy-eight hundred dollars, Lila. Out of our savings."
Shock went across my sister's face, then guilt, then something like anger, then something I couldn't put a name to.
"It's a loan," she said. "I'm going to pay it back. He knows I'm paying it back."
"Why do you need an apartment on Pine Street?"
"I can't tell you that."
"Why not?"
"Because I can't."
"Are you sleeping with my husband?"
I said it very quietly. In the office, the young man had put on music with a slow bass line that came through the wall in low thumps.
Lila stared at me with her mouth open. Then she laughed, one hard, shocked burst, and clapped a hand over her face.
"Oh my God. Naomi. No."
"Then what?"
"No. God. Is that what you think?" She took her hand away, and her eyes were wet. "No. Nothing's happening. Nothing like that. I swear on Grandma Ruth."
I believed the laugh, a little. It had been too surprised to be rehearsed. But believing her didn't close anything. The lease was still there. So were the keys, the fig on his collar, twelve-forty in the morning.
"Then tell me why my husband has a key to your apartment."
"He doesn't. I have both keys." She wiped under her eyes with the side of a finger. "Graham has just been there for me, okay? That's all. He's just been there for me."
It went in like a nail.
Not nothing's going on. Not I'm sorry. Not even it's complicated. He's been there for me.
I held on to the edge of the counter, which was cold and slick under my fingers, while the bass line kept thumping in the back.
"I would've been there for you," I said.
Lila looked at me.
"I'm your sister. If you needed an apartment, if you needed money, if something was happening, I would have been there. You didn't even ask me."
"You would have been right," Lila said.
It came out low and bitter, like she'd been holding it in her mouth a long time.
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing."
"It means something."
"It means you'd have shown up with a list, Naomi. With a spreadsheet. With that face." She picked up half of the broken tile and turned it over. "You'd have been so good about it. You'd have been so good about it for the rest of my life."
"That's not fair."
"You said it yourself, you know. At my engagement party. You said, are you sure."
"I asked you if you were sure. Once. In a bathroom."
"You asked it with your whole face."
I didn't know what to say to that. It had been eight years ago, and I'd had two glasses of champagne.
Daniel had spent the whole party correcting the way she pronounced sommelier in front of his friends, so I followed her into the ladies' room at the country club.
I held her clutch while she fixed her lipstick and asked her if she was sure.
She'd said she had never been more sure of anything. We had never talked about it again.
"What does Daniel have to do with this?" I said.
Her face shut, fast, like she'd heard a car in the driveway.
"I didn't say anything about Daniel."
"Lila."
"Just ask Graham." She shook her head. "No. Don't ask him. Don't put him in the middle of it."
"He's already in the middle of it. He put himself there."
"Because I asked him to."
"Then un-ask him. Tell me."
"I can't." Her voice cracked. "He promised me, Naomi."
We stood on either side of the counter with the broken tile between us.
She said it like it belonged to her, the way you'd say my ring, or the name of a place only two people know about. I thought about the look over the Sancerre, the quarter-inch shake of his head, the almost-smile. The right one, Graham.
"What did he promise you?" I asked.
Lila picked up her keys from beside the register with shaking hands, not looking at me.
"We're closing," she said. "Marco needs to set the alarm."
"Lila. What did he promise?"
"Please go." When she finally looked up, her face was blotched red. "Please, Nay. I can't do this tonight. There's something I have to get through. Please just go."
I didn't want to go. I wanted to grab her by both shoulders and shake her until the truth fell out like change out of a coat pocket. I also wanted to hold her, and I couldn't tell which one was winning.
So I went, because I was the easy one, and the easy one always went.
The door chimed behind me. When I turned around on the sidewalk, I could see her through the glass, standing at the counter with her face in her hands. The young man with the man bun had come out of the office to put a careful hand on her back.
Everybody seemed to know how to comfort my sister.
It was full dark by the time I got to my car, the streetlights on, orange and buzzing. I sat behind the wheel with my keys in my lap.
Graham has just been there for me.
In July, maybe. August. September. Every late night, every text with its two short buzzes, every lie about a signature page. He'd been there.
I tried to remember the last time I'd needed something and he'd dropped everything for it. I sat there a long time trying.
I couldn't think of one.