The Careful Undressing of Love Page 7

  “This isn’t your kind of affair,” he says, breaking into our tight circle. “We aren’t looking for attention. Don’t make a mockery of our Jack.”

  We’re all a little stunned into silence, so no one replies.

  “We don’t want Jack’s death to turn into one of your little urban myths. We aren’t interested in being involved in all that.” I wonder whether Michael has cried. I want to know what he did when he heard the news. I want to know what everyone in Chicago did, too.

  I want to know if we are the same, in the moments when we’re stripped bare.

  It’s hard to imagine Michael doing anything sloppy and unhinged.

  It’s hard to see Jack through Michael, and that makes me miss Jack even more.

  “That’s not why we’re here,” I say, finding my voice at last. “We don’t believe in the whole Curse—”

  “No, see? That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You come to a serious event and start talking about magic and it’s inappropriate. Go back to your neighborhood and do—whatever it is you do. We don’t want you here. Today is about Jack and the people who loved him.”

  I don’t think Michael has cried.

  “We loved him,” I say, surprising myself. “Delilah loved him.” I put a hand on her back, and she shrinks away from my touch again. I look at her and see that she wants to disappear, not make a fuss. It’s not like her.

  “We’ll go,” a small voice from a sad part of her says. She does not look up. She doesn’t meet Michael’s gaze. Strong, vital, funny, brave Delilah has been replaced with someone nervous and fading, someone who believes it matters what Michael Abbound thinks. She takes a few steps outside our circle and runs right into Jack’s mom. I assume it’s Jack’s mom. She has the same perfect wave in her dirty-blond hair, the same slouch in her shoulders, the same gentle voice.

  “Delilah,” she says. Her nose turns up the perfect amount. The world stops around her and her grief. This, this is a person who has cried. I think she’ll see those same things in Delilah—their shared love, their shared horror at what’s happened.

  “Ms. Abbound,” Delilah says, her voice strained and new. “I’m so sorry—” Then there’s the silence again. The skin on Delilah’s face is dry and her eyeliner looks all wrong, ringed around her sad eyes. I’ve never seen her look bad, but she looks bad. I watch Ms. Abbound’s face and wait for it to fold into sympathy.

  It doesn’t.

  “You’re a nice girl, Delilah. We’ve welcomed you into our family even though we were surprised at you and Jack having anything, um, in common.” Ms. Abbound clears her throat and Delilah finally raises her face. Nothing was said about the color of Delilah’s skin or the pure white prestige of Jack’s last name. But I think we all heard it anyway.

  I’m shocked but Delilah doesn’t look shocked.

  “Jack would want me here,” Delilah says. Her voice isn’t much stronger, but her shoulders move back and she takes up a little more space.

  “It has nothing to do with—” Ms. Abbound stops and clears her throat. Her eyes fill with tears. “You’re a lovely girl, Delilah. But the hoopla around your street and all this silliness—we can’t have that. We don’t want a carnival. This is our loss. Ours. I’m sure you understand why we’re going to ask you and your friends to leave.”

  The tears stay in Ms. Abbound’s eyes, not falling. Maybe she never lets them fall in public.

  I understand something new about Jack, which feels good for about a second before it feels awful—to know there is a finite amount of things I can learn about him now.

  It’s time to go into the church—the minister stands on the steps and gestures at people to head inside. Mostly they do, but a dozen head in our direction instead. They stand in between us and the church, forming a thick wall that tells us, again, that we are outsiders, that we are unwanted, that we are Devonairre Street Girls and they are something else.

  I look to my friends—the ones who have been silent, who haven’t been speaking up for Delilah or our right to be here. They don’t say anything now, either. Maybe we believe the things they say—we’re silly, sexed-up girls from a strange street who draw attention from the serious, real things in the world.

  It is somehow extra-terrible that Cruz and Owen could stay if they wanted to. Cruz is a Devonairre Street Kid, but that is entirely different from being a Devonairre Street Girl. They don’t even notice him. And it hits me hard, something I knew but didn’t know. I’m jealous of Cruz and who he gets to be. On the street. In the world.

  “You see how embarrassing this is?” Ms. Abbound says from behind the wall of men. “We’re grieving.” She says the word like it’s one we don’t know. The rest of LornaCruzCharlotteDelilahIsla might be able to accept this, but I can’t. I won’t stand here and let this woman tell us we don’t understand grief.

  Next to me, Delilah stiffens. Something’s hitting her, too.

  “The Curse isn’t a carnival,” Delilah says. She wipes her eyes—I’d missed that she started crying. “I’m sorry. We’ll go. We’ll—I’m so sorry, Ms. Abbound.”

  I don’t want to leave like this. I don’t want Delilah to leave like this—thinking she’s not good enough to say good-bye to the person she loved. We aren’t who they think we are. We aren’t who Angelika says we are. We’re kids who live on a street. That’s it.

  Ms. Abbound turns away and Delilah does, too. Isla crosses her arms. Charlotte and Cruz go to Delilah. And Owen, of course, watches me.

  “He was ours, too,” I say, meaning he was ours and Delilah’s, but also Future Lorna’s. Everyone turns to face me. Sometimes words that I think are small come out big. Ms. Abbound, a woman with a beautiful last name and slight shoulders, cringes, inhales, and considers a scream.

  The moment lasts forever.

  When it’s over, she heads to the church and almost everyone follows her.

  “We can still go in,” I say to Delilah, who looks angrier with me than she was with Michael or Ms. Abbound.

  “We can’t go in, Lorna.” She gives my shoulder a little shove. It’s not so gentle. “They don’t want us there. And whatever—they’re right. We shouldn’t be in there.”

  “We’re not jokes. We’re not who they think we are.”

  “You’re right,” Delilah says. She pulls at a strand of her hair like she wishes it were longer. She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “We’re so much worse.”

  • • •

  The legend of Devonairre Street is something hipsters who’ve only recently discovered the brownstones of Brooklyn don’t know about—they’re concerned with fancy pickles, as if regular pickles weren’t already perfection. New Brooklynites have beards and fluffy dogs and a way of walking past us on our stoops as if they don’t see us at all.

  But the rest of Brooklyn knows about us. Mostly it’s a joke. A funny urban myth that gets dismissed or used as a punch line or referenced as part of the charm of the borough. People roll their eyes and ask why we would let some kook like Angelika have so much power. Then they ask if we’ve ever measured our hair. They reach for the keys around our necks and hold them in their hands, forgetting they are attached to actual people.

  They talk about us when we’re gone and call us quirky or charming or fame-whores or cult members or dangerous.

  I don’t tell them about the way Angelika sat next to me at my father’s funeral or how she shielded me and Cruz and Isla from reporters trying to talk to the Families of the Victims. “Don’t be a symbol for them,” she said in a ferocious whisper. Cruz and Isla and I nodded seriously and held on to the words. “I’ll say it again if you weren’t listening.”

  But we were listening. Of course we were. We still are.

  Then those same people called us Affected and put us in textbooks, so I’m not so sure who won.

  Outsiders see the special way we say good-bye—grabbing each other
’s hands, weaving our fingers together, giving one squeeze, then releasing. They know old ladies talk about magic and that a few too many of us lost family in the Times Square Bombing and World War II. They know Angelika’s name and something about lemons and they had a friend of a friend of a friend who died after marrying one of us, but it was all a big coincidence. They’re pretty sure.

  They don’t know every widow has a closet full of her dead husband’s clothes. They don’t know about the way Angelika drops in to make sure photographs of the men we’ve lost are on our mantels, in our bedrooms, tucked into our wallets.

  I don’t tell them about the List of dead men we receive when we’ve let Angelika down, when we’re not being good enough.

  Days like today I am brimming with the desire to tell them all of it.

  There’s one man in a plain suit with big glasses left behind. He’s not one of Jack’s people, so he must work for the church. He has a pile of programs in one of his hands, as if he might pass them out to us, but he doesn’t.

  “It’s time to go,” he says. “You’ve had your fun.”

  Aside from funerals, I’ve never been to church. And it is not the first time someone religious has looked at me with disdain, but it’s the first time someone’s said something directly to me. I wonder whether a religious person is more or less likely to believe in Curses. I want to know whether he hates us because we are jokes or liars or Cursed girls.

  “You think this is fun?” Isla says. I’m glad someone else has sparked to life, but I’m nervous that it’s Isla. “Nothing about this is fun. Nothing about who we are has anything at all to do with fun.”

  “You’re not cursed,” the man says, smoothing out non-creases in his jacket. “You’re reckless. You think you have an excuse for all your bad behavior. We don’t put up with that here.” I don’t know if here means in church or in this fancier part of Brooklyn or just on the sidewalk, in the daylight. “You’re dangerous girls. Just not for the reason you think you are.”

  “We don’t think we’re anything!” Isla says. It comes out as a whine—loud and high and a reminder of how Isla is closer to the age of tantrums.

  The man sighs and rubs his hands together like he’s heard it all before and maybe he has, but not from us. This is the most we’ve ever talked to a stranger about what it’s like to be from Devonairre Street.

  He thinks we’re at fault, even if he doesn’t think we’re Cursed.

  “She just wanted to say good-bye,” Cruz says. “We all did.”

  “Please,” Charlotte says, always softening Cruz’s words with her sweeter ones.

  “Can we go now?” Delilah asks. We’re all somehow simultaneously focusing on her and forgetting she’s here with us.

  For the first time in our friendship, I can’t tell how she feels or what she’s thinking. Is her heart whirling or still? Is she sad or numb? Why is she carrying around lemons if she doesn’t believe?

  The man looks at Delilah and I think his heart breaks for her a little. He was in love at seventeen, I bet. But he looks for a moment too long and sees the key around her neck—Delilah’s is shiny gold and hanging from a silver chain, like a cross might if we were different people entirely. The key reminds him, I think, of everything he hates about us.

  Fine. It’s strange that we wear the keys, that we grow our hair, that we drink the tea and eat the cake and switch the outside lights on when the sun goes down and armor ourselves in wool.

  But Santa Claus is strange, too. And lucky pennies. And horoscopes in newspapers. And unbreakable mirrors.

  These things are just as odd and useless; but they don’t happen to be ours.

  I bet this man in his shiny black shoes and perfectly parted hair blows out his birthday candles, knowing his wishes won’t come true, but doing it anyway.

  “If you didn’t want to cause a commotion, you’d try to fit in,” he says, but the good, remembering-young-love part of him hands over his pile of programs. “I can’t let you in. But you can have these.” I open one up. There’s Jack’s name. And the dates of his life.

  It’s awful. Final. I don’t want Delilah to see.

  “We’re going,” Delilah says, and this time her words are strong and sure and it’s decided. We won’t be saying good-bye to Jack. We’re going to slink away and return to the only place we belong—our street.

  The man, satisfied at last, joins the rest of Jack’s family and friends inside.

  Delilah watches the church and we don’t make her move. Behind us cars honk and men wave sleazy hellos, a construction worker calls out to Isla, asking how she got that ass.

  Cruz texts me, even though he’s next to me. We do this. It’s a secret thing between us that we never talk about. A conversation underneath the conversation.

  You tried. And then: I can’t wait to change out of this suit.

  Wool’s the worst, I text back. You remember when I took off my tights at last year’s memorial?

  Cruz pats the pocket where he held them for me.

  I look up and we make eye contact, Cruz and I. We don’t smile, but we something. We Something. It hurts, the way a deep connection to someone who isn’t yours sometimes does.

  We’re all a little broken, on the sidewalk. On the street. In the city.

  I reach for Delilah’s hand. Again she pulls it away, shaking her head. She squints at the church and touches the key around her neck.

  • • •

  We go to the garden and Delilah sits in a patch of dandelions while the rest of us try to fill up the Jack-less space.

  “Would Jack like violets in his honor?” I ask. “Or chives? Did he like chives?”

  Everything I plant grows, and right now it feels like all I have to offer. I want to plant something that will have a smell, so when we smell it we will think of him. Delilah doesn’t reply, and I don’t ask again.

  “Jack would have brought his flask,” she says eventually.

  “I can get you some beer or something,” Owen says too quickly. He and Cruz are especially uncomfortable. I think they know that today was about us and not them. I think they know they could have stayed without us and said good-bye to our friend. They keep rearranging their bodies, moving their hands and feet into different positions. Charlotte and Isla sit on the picnic tables. I sit on the bench.

  “Or vodka?” Cruz asks, looking to the rest of us for help. “What’d he have in there anyway? Whiskey?”

  We’ve all drunk from Jack’s flask a thousand times, but we never thought to ask what it was. Jack knew things we didn’t know. And now we can’t know those things. Delilah tears up.

  “Oh my God, I’m not sure what was in there exactly,” she says. “I hated it, whatever it was. It was gross. Like fire.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I say. It’s incredible how small the English language gets when you’re trying to make it fix something. “Do you want to, like, say a few words?” I’m picturing some kind of makeshift funeral, which of course sounds terrible.

  I miss him, too, I text Cruz. I watch him read it. He nods. But there’s no room for my missing him.

  I can make room for that, he texts back. Owen looks to see who I’m texting.

  “My mom,” I say, and hide my phone in my pocket.

  Delilah fidgets in the dandelion patch. She’ll never be able to wear that dress again—it will be covered in stains. I can see them even on the dark fabric, almost-invisible but still-yellow streaks.

  Although I guess that will be the least ugly thing clinging to the fabric. Funeral dresses usually go in trash cans, too haunted by the things that hurt.

  “Do you want me to toast Jack?” Cruz says. We don’t have anything to toast with but it’s clear that won’t matter.

  I think Delilah’s going to tell him to go ahead, but she holds up a finger to quiet us.

  “I want to say that I think
we’re all making huge mistakes.” She’s speaking slow, Owen-slow, and her essential Delilah-ness is missing. “I want to say that Angelika’s right. I want to say that seeing you guys together—Cruz and Charlotte; Owen and Lorna—terrifies me. I’m seasick. I’m seasick from the things we’ve done. The things you’re still doing.”

  She lies back so she’s staring right up at the sky. The balloons from the other day are all gone except for one deflated blue one that hangs from a silver ribbon off the gate. I think we’re all looking at that one balloon.

  She’ll feel differently tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then in a week or a month. She’ll remember Saad and Hiba. I’ll remind her to think about how very, very long Cruz and Charlotte have been in love. My mom will tell her about Esther and Aaron and alleged Anna in Bed-Stuy.

  “Delilah,” I say. “You know better than—”

  “We didn’t sacrifice.” She interrupts me, all angry and unfamiliar. Isla shakes her head and bites her tongue. I do, too, but barely. “Hubris,” Delilah spits, and I can hear Angelika’s voice shoving in I’ll say it again if you weren’t listening.

  Delilah makes fists with her hands and tells us without telling us that we need to shut up, that we can’t touch her, that things are different now.

  That she believes.

  I feel stupid for thinking the future was going to be easy and simple and ours. I feel stupid for thinking nothing would ever have to change, even after knowing how quickly things can. I feel stupid for believing in Future Lorna and Future Delilah and Future Jack all living on Devonairre Street but no longer being Devonairre Street Kids.

  I had this idea of the ways we could fall apart, of the ways LornaCruzCharlotteDelilahIsla might become Lorna, Cruz and Charlotte, Delilah and Jack, Isla.

  This was not part of my list of fears and worries and imaginings.

  This is the unimaginable.

  “I have to go,” Delilah says. She doesn’t give us a reason or tell us what she has to do, but I can guess.