“Sam?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me more than Czarina?” I’m his twin. He should.
“I love you differently. No more, no less.”
I go to the foyer to find my phone and return to the kitchen with it. I take the white chef’s hat hanging on a hook and place it on Sam’s head, and then I hold up the empty bottle of Czarina’s best champagne. I hold out the phone to take a selfie to always remember our last dinner party at the Stanwyck. “Say, ‘We’ll always have Czarina’s.’ ”
Sam smiles into the camera as I click the picture. “We’ll always have Czarina’s.”
Then he takes the bottle from my hand and pours the last remaining drops over my head, like a most excellent baptism into our unknown future, where anything can happen and hopefully it won’t suck but will involve great food, good times, the occasional sock puppet, and the people we love the most.
“Cheers,” I tell my brother.
Sam picks up a Dolly figurine from the counter. Johan must have left it behind. I wonder why.
Apparently it’s because Dolly has something to say.
twenty
SAM
I’m guessing the message is this:
If diminutive, spirited Dolly can arm-wrestle a big bro like Sylvester Stallone into submission, then I can take control of my own life.
twenty-one
SAM & ILSA
Ten Years Later
They don’t recognize the girl who answers the door, and she doesn’t recognize them, either. Not at first.
It takes Ilsa a second. Then she figures it out: This young woman in front of them has to be—
“Maddy?”
The girl—she must be eighteen now, Ilsa realizes—doesn’t look any less confused.
“Maddy, it’s me, Ilsa. And this is Sam. We were up at KK’s and decided to come down here. To see the apartment again.”
“Ilsa! Wow!” Maddy wraps her in a hug. Then she stands back and takes in what Ilsa and Sam are wearing. “Of course—your grandmother! I was so sorry to hear the news. Did you just come from…?”
“The funeral. Yes,” Sam says. He is trying very hard to reconcile the teenager in front of him with the little girl who used to live next door. Even though they’ve visited KK a few times in the intervening years, this is the first time they’ve been on this floor since Czarina moved out.
“Can we come in?” Ilsa asks. “Just to see it.”
“Of course!” Maddy says. “Mom and Dad aren’t home, just me. They’ll be so sad they missed you. Come in!”
Maddy opens the door, heads back inside, and has no idea how strange it is for them to be beckoned through their own doorway. Ilsa follows, then notices Sam’s hesitation, recognizes his fear and his sadness. They are walking into the past, and it’s not going to be the same as it was.
Without a word, she takes his hand. Without a word, he lets her. Together, they step inside.
Sam doesn’t want to look around, but he can’t help it. It’s like seeing a familiar person in completely different clothes. Or maybe it’s like seeing familiar clothes on a completely different person. Some of Czarina’s furniture remains—there was no point, she said, in carrying a sofa all the way to Paris, and it chilled her to think of anything she loved in a storage unit. Maddy’s family was happy to accept the leftovers, and as a result, Sam feels both at home and completely out of context.
Ilsa isn’t looking at the apartment as much as she’s looking at Maddy. She can’t believe how old Maddy is. And at the same time, she can’t believe how young Maddy is, because isn’t she the same age Ilsa and Sam were when they were throwing dinner parties here? Hadn’t being a senior in high school seemed so old at the time? And wasn’t eighteen, really, when you got into the wider, later world, so much younger than you once thought it was?
“I’m sorry it’s such a mess,” Maddy is saying now. “If I’d known you were coming by, I would have cleaned up a little bit. I mean, it must be weird, right? To see it like this?” She gathers a magazine from the couch, as if that is enough to mark an improvement. “God, I remember coming in here when I was little—you guys were so loud. And my bedroom was right there.” She points to one of the living room walls. “Before we connected everything, my bed was right up against that wall. I remember lying there and listening to you. It was loud, but it always sounded…happy. I tried to find any excuse to come over. Just to see what you were doing.”
“You brought us cookies,” Sam says, a vague memory returning to him.
“I think I did! Wow. And your grandmother—she was something else.”
Sam smiles. “Yeah, she really was.”
She hadn’t wanted to be buried in Paris. She’d loved it there, but this was home.
Ilsa can see the slipping of her brother’s smile, the effort to hold it all together when really some of it had to be let go. It had been her idea to come here, and now she wonders whether it was a good idea. Well, good or bad, it needed to happen. Sam had spent the past few months in Paris, had been with Czarina to the end, just as she’d wanted. He had been so strong for their grandmother, for all of them. But now, Ilsa saw, he had no idea what to do with the rest of that strength. She didn’t want him converting it into sadness. She wanted to remind him of what he had set out to do.
“Would you mind giving us a few minutes?”
