There’s that smile again. “Well, that’s easy,” he says. “Come to California with me.”
“Yeah, I’m sure Stanford allows people to apply in June.”
“CHAM-PAGNE! CHAM-PAGNE!” (I think Ilsa’s voice is loudest of all. Or maybe that’s KK’s.)
“COMING!” Parker hollers.
I go to the refrigerator and take out two bottles of champagne—Czarina always has four waiting for impromptu celebrations and/or consolations. I know she’ll notice them missing. I’ll just have to explain. I think she’ll understand.
“I’m serious about California,” Parker says, grabbing the bottles so I can push the coffee cart.
“I know you are,” I say. That’s all I’ll commit to.
We head into the dining room. Parker lets me go first, so he can have my back. As soon as we get there, KK yells, “Finally!”
I disregard her—something I’ve trained myself to do over years of practice. Instead, I look at Ilsa. She seems a little bit curious and a little bit confused—she knows champagne was never part of this party’s plan.
“Coffee, anyone?” I ask.
“Do you have decaf?” Caspian inquires.
“Decaf makes no sense!” Ilsa and I answer at the same time.
“They never have decaf,” Parker adds.
“Champagne first,” KK decrees.
“It’s not your party,” I tell her.
“Come on, brother,” Ilsa chimes in. “First, toast. Then, caffeine and sweets.”
“CHAM-PAGNE! CHAM-PAGNE!” Caspian starts to chant again. No one else joins him, and the sock looks down, dejected.
I check out the faces at the table. I think they all want champagne.
I decide to be a gracious host.
“Champagne it is, then,” I say. “Who wants to do the honors?”
It can’t be me, because I am always startled by the pop. It can’t be Ilsa, because she sucks at opening anything involving a cork.
“I can,” Johan volunteers.
I watch as he effortlessly opens the first bottle and pours champagne into each of our glasses. I like him even more when he spills a little when he gets to KK, and looks momentarily horrified.
Watching him, part of me thinks, Aw, c’mon, Sam. Stay.
But then I hear Czarina, of all people, counter this, and tell me it’s not worth staying in place for someone else. I’ve seen it with her—I think she would have been off in Paris years ago, if it weren’t for me—for us. When she told me she was going to move there—“a secret, just between us,” she said—she didn’t have to point out that she’d been waiting for me and Ilsa to head off to college. I knew. In the same way she must have known that I appreciated it, even if I didn’t say anything, and even if I wasn’t planning on leaving the city for college.
She wouldn’t push me out of the nest. But she would take the nest away. And if I ended up building another nest nearby, so be it.
But—
Well, I’m not sure I want to build that nest anymore.
Because I’m not sure I should anymore.
“Are you going to make a toast?” Ilsa asks. She gestures to everyone’s glasses, ready to be raised.
“Yes,” I say, taking a deep breath. Not avoiding the nervous—plunging right into it. I lift my glass, and everyone else echoes the movement.
“Here’s to leaving!” I say.
“To leaving!” most everyone else calls out.
But not Ilsa.
What are you doing? the look in her eyes asks me.
She doesn’t understand.
Even though most everyone is already drinking, I raise my glass again to clarify.
“And not just to leaving this apartment—to leaving New York. To leaving the fortress. To exiting the comfort zone and finding the world.”
I drink up. Parker moves to clap at that, forgetting he has a champagne flute in his hand. Johan looks curious. KK looks doubtful. Frederyk looks blank, but Caspian looks encouraging, as does Li.
Ilsa still hasn’t taken a sip.
“What are you talking about?” she asks, putting her glass down.
“Maybe I’ll go to California,” I say.
KK pipes up. “What do you mean, California? Like it’s all the same. Northern California and Southern California are two different things. If you’re not going to L.A., that’s like saying you’re moving to New York when you’re really moving to Rochester.”
“When did you decide this?” Ilsa asks.
“Two minutes ago?” I answer.
Be happy for me, I want to tell her. Just let me do this.
“So this is, like, an impulse. It’s not actually a plan,” she says.
“I think it sounds like a great idea!” Johan proclaims. And I’m ridiculous, because while I appreciate his support, I also don’t want him to be quite so enthusiastic about me moving away from the city in which he lives.
“I like Northern California more than Southern California,” Caspian volunteers.
“Me too,” Li says.
“Well, of course you do—you’re New Yorkers,” KK groans, with no shortage of exasperation.
“And you’re not?” Parker asks her.
“I’m just biding my time here,” KK replies.
“Nobody’s going to California,” Ilsa insists.
“Actually, I definitely am,” Parker points out.
“You don’t count.”
Parker raises his hands in surrender. “Noted. But, hey, this isn’t about me.”
Ilsa decides to shoot even though his hands are up. “You sure you didn’t have anything to do with this? You sure you’re not the cause of this delusion?”
“Whoa!” Parker says. “Way to be supportive of your brother.”
“My brother isn’t going anywhere! We all know that.”
“I don’t know that,” Johan says.
“Me neither,” Caspian adds.
“You two don’t know anything,” Ilsa says.
“Way to tell them, bitch.” KK applauds.
“Ilsa—” Li starts.
“How about me?” I interrupt. “Don’t I know?”
“Fine,” Ilsa says. Then she raises her glass. “But first I think it’s my turn to make a toast.”
fifteen
ILSA
I want to give a toast, but I’m afraid.
Sam took out Czarina’s collection of nineteenth-century Baccarat champagne flutes. The ones she keeps on the highest shelf so they may be seen through the cabinet window but never touched (except on Czarina’s birthday and the leap days), the gold-rimmed crystal goblets of great historical family importance. They were brought to America by Czarina’s great-grandmother and her sister, who hid them under their skirts while escaping some early twentieth-century Eastern European pogrom. The glasses are Czarina’s most prized possession.
The legend of the libation chalices is a lie, of
