I’ve known Parker since he was in the same karate class with me and Sam when we were all eight years old. The moment I realized I liked him, when I was sixteen, was also the night we went all the way. I loved it. I loved him. But I wanted too much, too soon. I wasn’t ready.
Next time, I want to be ready.
Li says, “I’ve never gone that far with anyone.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not judging me about that. The few people I’ve told that to in the past made me feel like there was something wrong with me for being inexperienced in that way.”
“There’s nothing wrong with waiting.”
I wish I’d waited.
Li says, “I agree! Whenever it happens, whoever it happens with, I want it to feel right.”
“Kiss me?” I ask her. “As if it were the last time.”
“I hope it won’t be the last time!”
“The last time…tonight.”
She complies.
It definitely won’t be the last time.
I’m singing a tune as I find Sam in the kitchen cleaning up, after I return from downstairs and seeing Li get into her service car. I don’t want to leave her now / You know I believe and how.
Sam, washing dishes in the sink, hands me a drying towel. I sit up on the counter next to him and start drying the pots in the rack. We always end parties here.
Sam says, “When you said you wanted a recess from the humdrum, I never imagined you meant Li Zhang!”
“I didn’t, either. You know what, Sam?”
“What?”
“I want to be humdrum. Not boring, I guess—but consistent. You know?”
“A little bit of reckless is healthy. Please don’t trade it all in for complete humdrum.”
“Doubt that’s possible.” To prove it, I get off the counter and reach up to the cabinet with the last of Czarina’s precious champagne flutes, retrieve one, and then take aim for the wall behind Sam. “Duck!” I warn him.
He begs, “No, Ilsa! Please don’t do it! Czarina’ll kill me if we lose one more of her glasses.”
I put my hand down and return the flute safely to the cabinet. “Kidding.”
“Not funny.”
“Totally funny. What were you so worried about, anyway? You know she’ll blame me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That she’ll blame me?”
“Yes. And for being the favorite.”
It’s taken eighteen years for him to specifically acknowledge this truth rather than deny it or pretend it’s a joke.
The acknowledgment helps.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You’d be my favorite, too, if I was the grandma.”
Sam waits, like I have more to say. I don’t. Finally, he says, “Now’s the time you’re supposed to apologize for being Dad’s favorite.”
“I’m Dad’s favorite?” It honestly never occurred to me. Parents of twins notoriously prioritize equality between siblings, so I never noticed a preference. “But you’re the one who loves to cook and learned it from him.”
“Dad loved cooking until he became a professional chef. Now it’s a chore to him. You’re the one who likes the stuff Dad likes. College basketball. Sudoku. Seinfeld reruns. Foot-long subs.” Sam shudders. “He appreciates you more because he gets you. I’m a mystery to him.”
The only mystery to Dad about Sam, I think, is why Dad’s own mother preferred her grandson to her son. Czarina appreciates Dad, most of the time. But she adores Sam, all of the time. Families are just like that, I guess. Maybe it doesn’t have to mean they love each member any less.
“Do you really think Czarina has a secret lover?” I ask Sam.
“I honestly do. She wouldn’t give up this apartment just for retirement.”
“Maybe it’s our grandfather she never acknowledges!” In Czarina’s trail of broken hearts, the man who fathered our dad has always been the biggest mystery of all. She raised Dad on her own, and whatever happened between her and his father, no one knows, other than she went to work in Paris for a summer, had a mad love affair, and returned home pregnant—and single.
“I know you want to be like Czarina,” Sam says, sounding serious. “But in that way, please don’t.”
“I’ll try. But you know I’m mean like her. How can I avoid it?”
“You’re actually much nicer than her, when you’re not trying to prove what a badass you think you have to be.”
“You think I’m a badass?”
“Not at all. At heart, you’re the biggest square of all of us.”
I should be offended, but instead I laugh. “Does that make you the reckless one? Mister Going Off to California on a Whim?”
“Maybe.”
“Good. It’s the best thing that could ever happen to you.”
“I thought you said you didn’t believe I was capable of going.”
“I was wrong.” I was right that Sam needed a shock to his system to help him find his way. I was wrong that anybody but him could, or should, provide it. Is now the time to bring it up? Have Sam and I ever actually talked like this? For real, and not just for fun or show? “Wherever you go, I hope you find a place where you don’t feel anxious and can just work on whatever you feel passionately about. Music. Cooking. Sock puppetry.”
“Wherever you go, I hope it’s not the Stanwyck. I think we all need to let go finally.”
“I’m not going to live at the Stanwyck.”
I don’t know where I’m going to go. But I know I’m not going to stay here. Maybe that college thing my parents are so into is not a terrible idea. If I’m Dad’s favorite, maybe he’ll give me frequent-flyer miles to go to Taiwan this summer if I promise to go to Quinnipiac in the fall. And if I act like I really want to go to college. Maybe not even act. Maybe I’ll legitimately be looking forward to it. The change of scenery. The new experience. The humdrum of Connecticut, within easy commute of Li Zhang, who starts at Queens College in the fall.
Sam says, “Czarina once told me she felt trapped by the Stanwyck.
