CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
May 2004
Layla
The phone buzzes violently on my desk, waking me up from a peaceful sleep, sprawled across the desktop. It’s almost 6:00 p.m. on a Friday, and I’ve fallen asleep on my books. Again.
It’s not a surprise. I haven’t been sleeping well, not since February. Everything these days seems to make me feel uneasy. Every cab that passes seems like it’s about to hit me. Every sidewalk grate feels like it’s about to open up. I often wake in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, but I never know why.
This is the first time I’ve been home all week, since Giancarlo always wants me to stay with him. He refuses to sleep in my twin bed with me, and I don’t blame him––it’s a tiny mattress for such a tall guy. After the incident with the pawnshop, guilt has eaten me alive. And it’s like he knows it, sometimes pushing my boundaries, pushing my limits until we’re yelling at each other or I’m kowtowed in front of him, a pathetic mess.
And every time I think I’m ready to leave him for good, he falls to the old gray carpet, blocking my exit.
“Amor,” Giancarlo moans as he wrapped his arms around my knees. I close my eyes at the pain of the word, hearing the echoes of someone else’s voice around it. “My love, I need you. Forgive me. You make me so crazy. Love makes me crazy.”
He tips his face up and lays his head on my thigh. Reflexively, my hands will slip into his hair, and he’ll close his eyes, content now that the storm is over.
Maybe I shouldn’t stay. The hand prints on my wrist still sting, even if I can’t see the red marks anymore. His other words rankle through my head: whore, bitch, puta, not quite tempered yet by time. But he inhales my skin like I’m life itself. Like I’m a drug he can’t quit. And that feeling is a drug to me too.
I need you. His words float through the air, and so do someone else’s. October. I think about it all the time––the month when Nico received the newspaper clipping. He knew he might come back, yet never chose to tell me. So my heart falls every time the realization hits that I never factored into Nico’s decision, though I offered time and time again to adjust my life around his. My heart falls, right into Giancarlo’s waiting hands.
Sometimes I still want to call Nico. And at first, after he left in February, he would call a lot. Every day. Every other day. He’d ask if I’d told Giancarlo what had happened. Asked if I had confronted him about the pawnshop.
I didn’t tell him I’d been too afraid to do it. That I didn’t want to see what Giancarlo would do if he knew I’d called Nico. If, by some trick, he discovered I’d spent the night with another man. Had let him kiss me. Had kissed him back. Had very nearly done so much more.
So instead, I told him that Giancarlo was clean and it was all a big misunderstanding. I told him that I had gotten my watch back, though I’m pretty sure it’s on some other girl’s wrist in the Bronx somewhere.
I don’t think Nico believed me, because he asked me again to cut Giancarlo loose. Told me in a frenzy he wanted me no matter what. That even if the FDNY didn’t hire him in the end, that he wanted me to come out there, just like I’d offered last year.
And that, really, was what did it.
“Is that what you think?” I demanded, anger simmering inside me, turning me into a keg of gunpowder that had just been lit. “After all this time, you think you can just snap your fucking fingers and I’ll jump to your side! Nico, you had your chance! Again and fucking again! What can’t you understand about that?”
The words burst out of me like fireworks, and when I finished, I slumped against the wall while Quinn watched from her bed knowingly. I knew better than to expect her sympathy by that point. We were basically strangers most of the time.
“Layla,” Nico started again, his voice full of mourning. “Please, baby––”
“I am not your baby!” I shouted directly into the phone. “Stop tormenting me! I am with someone else! Just...” My voice trailed off, losing its fire the more I spoke. Before long, I choked back a great sob. “Just leave me alone,” I whimpered, and then hung up the phone.
He called again. And again. But by the end of the week, the phone calls stopped. And by the end of the month, the texts did too.
That was in March. Two months later, my chest feels hollower than ever.
I rub my face and pick up my phone, then sit up straight as I see the number. It’s not one I recognize, but the area code is familiar––Brazil.
“Dad?” I perk up as I answer.
It’s maybe the third time all year I’ve heard from my father. Once after he arrived in Brazil, a brief conversation at New Year’s, and now this. He says it’s because of the cost of international phone charges, but I doubt that’s the reason. He’s been busy. Busy joining a new practice in Vitória, his hometown. Busy setting up a house with his new girlfriend. Too busy for me.
But last month, my mother informed me that I was going to Brazil for the summer instead of to Pasadena. Considering at that point I had no job lined up for the summer, it was ideal timing. All the anger and pain I’d been harboring toward my dad all year melted away as I realized that he was ready to see me again. That he still wanted me in his life. I’m leaving in a week once the semester is over, with plans to meet Giancarlo in Buenos Aires about halfway through. I can’t wait.
“Layla, what is this?”
My dad is always like this––he starts conversations like we’re already in the middle of them, continuing a thought process that started well before we began speaking. No hello, no “how are you doing?” Usually I can keep up with him, but right now I’m silent because I’m trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about.
“Layla?” he repeats.
“What?” I ask. “What’s what?”
“This grade I see on your transcript. Three point five last term. Layla, this is not acceptable.”
“Dad, that’s from last semester,” I protest weakly. I’m honestly shocked it took this long for him to say anything about it, but since I’ve barely heard from him all year, I thought it might fly. “It was one B minus. I know it’s not my best, but it was just one B!”
“And this term? What will your grades be? Cs? Ds?”
“I don’t know,” I reply lamely. “I really don’t. Finals are next week.”
It’s a lie. My grades have been falling. I’m not flunking or anything, but I’ve been pulling late night after late night doing whatever extra credit I can to pull up some of my absences. My language classes are good, but the others, my South American history class and Latin American literature, are lagging. I’ll be lucky if I pull a B in either one.
“Layla, I’m not paying a fortune for you to go to that school so you can screw up. We had a deal. You go to school in this dangerous city, now do this ridiculous major instead of business like we talked about, you have to keep your grades.”
Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t slept in my bed in five days, using my dorm like a locker room. But suddenly, I’ve had it. I’m sick of being talked down to, like everyone in my life seems to do. He left. He doesn’t want to finance my education anymore, fine, but this is bullshit.
“We also had a deal that you’d stick around and be my father instead of calling once every six months,” I retort.
My father’s silence echoes through the receiver. He’s thousands of miles away, but his disappointment is palpable. The hairs on my arms rise.
“Is that correct?” he says finally, in that low voice I recognize all too well. My father is calmest when he’s beyond angry. He sounds like that when he’s about to pull the trigger on something truly nasty.
“Y-yes,” I venture, forcing myself to hold my ground. I’m in the right here. I am. I am a grown fucking woman, and I don’t deserve to be spoken to like a little kid. “That’s correct.”
I study the smudged notes on the desk. Damn, I probably have pencil smears on my cheek. While I wait, I doodle a flower in one corner, then a clock that looks strangely like a compass. Once I realize what I’ve drawn, I scowl and cross it out.
“Well,” he says. “Since you know so much...you can forget about coming to Brazil this summer.”
My heads snaps up, and my hand flops to the desk. “What?”
This is the one thing I’ve been looking forward to––knowing that at the end of this tortuous year, I’ll be studying for the LSATs at the beach, getting to know the side of the family I mostly know through history books. The side of me I want so badly to understand. Portuguese and Spanish are the only classes I’m still getting As in. I was excited to show my father what I’ve learned.
“Dad.” I try to stop him, all pretense of dignity gone. “Daddy. I haven’t seen you since September. It’s been almost a year! Please, don’t do this!”
“You should have thought of that before you threw your education away,” he barks.
I sink back into my chair, feeling like a balloon that’s just been popped. “It’s been almost a year,” I repeat softly.
It’s hard to believe. So much has happened this year. I didn’t realize until this moment how much I needed to see my dad. How much I need his rough grounding. But this, this indifference, like he doesn’t actually care whether or not I’m there...it hurts more than the yelling. It stabs even harder than any punishment he could conjure.
There’s a voice in the background––female. Her.
“Momento, amor,” Dad says to her.
Again, that stabbing feeling. It’s a pet name I’ve never heard him use for me or my mother because of his strict adherence to English. The only time I’ve ever heard him use Portuguese at all is when we visited his family. Never to us. We were always separate from that life.
“I have to go,” Dad says, now to me. The anger is gone from his voice, but it’s still firm. Immovable. “You will study in Pasadena, at your grandparents’ house. Find an LSAT class, and tell your mother to send me the bill. My daughter will not fail, Layla. This is your future.”
The word echoes across miles. There’s no arguing with him, not unless I’d like a worse punishment, like withholding tuition for next year. Poke the bear, and I’m finishing college at whatever Cal State school I can get into. I shut my eyes and murmur my assent. But even after he hangs up with barely a kind word of goodbye, I can’t help but wonder: how can a man claim to know my future when he barely knows me anymore?
~
A few hours later, after I’ve finished an extra-credit paper for my literature class, I hear the arrival of my roommates as they return from the gym. Quinn’s busy jabbering about the summer classes she’s taking so she can double-major in biology and chemistry. All of my roommates are actually staying here through the summer––Quinn to take classes while Jamie and Shama start their summer internships. Two hours ago, I had a plan for the summer. Now I’m just wallowing.
“Hey,” Quinn says, visibly cool as she tosses her gym bag on her bed. Shama follows her in and flops onto mine.
“Did you get your paper done?” Shama asks.
Out of my three roommates, she’s the only one still reliably friendly these days. Quinn hasn’t forgiven me for staying with Giancarlo after the pawnshop incident, and Jamie pretty much goes along with however Quinn feels.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m just working on some other stuff now.”
Quinn grabs her towel off a hook and looks over my shoulder on her way to the shower. “Since when are you taking economics?”
I scowl and shove the papers aside. “I’m not. Giancarlo is struggling in it, so I told him I’d help him a little.”
At the mention of his name, Quinn’s face grows dark. “I see. So now you’re doing his homework for him too?”
“No,” I say. “He has a hard time because of the language differences. I’m just helping.”
Quinn peers at the notes sitting in front of me––an outline for a response paper. I turn them over.
“Let it go, Quinn,” Shama says. “It’s her choice if she wants to help him.”
Quinn just wrinkles her button nose and shakes her head. “Pathetic,” she mutters as she leaves the room.
“It’s...nice of you to help,” Shama offers, even though she’s having a hard time masking her skepticism too.
I sigh and push my hands over my face. I feel tired. Really tired. “It’s what you do, right? When you lo––care about someone?”
Almost five months I’ve been dating this guy, and still I can’t bring myself to say that L-word. He says it all the time. Calls me his “love.” His “amor.” Usually after a fight, but still. At least he says it.
I just...can’t. I take it, like the drug that it is. But I just can’t give it back.
I really am a terrible person.
“So, are you ready for Brazil yet? Puh-lease tell me I get to come too.”
It’s a joke, of course. Shama is trying to be nice, trying to elevate the mood after Quinn’s and my icy exchange. But I just sit there, staring at the mess of papers on my desk.
“Lay?” she asks. She gets up from the bed and comes to sit on the edge of the desk. “What’s wrong?”
I huff. “It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.” I look up at her. “My dad, um, canceled the trip.”
Shama covers her mouth in surprise. “What? Oh no!”
I nod, then get up and go to the bed. Shama follows, and I curl into a corner, hugging a pillow into my chest.
“He’s mad about my grades. He thinks I need to stay in Pasadena and take an LSAT class.”
Saying the words deflates me even further. I badly need a change of pace this summer. LA just spells out pain for me, and I have absolutely no desire to spend my summer being picked at by my mother and grandmother over white wine. The energy of New York, which used to be so invigorating and addictive, just feels oppressive.
“He’s right.”
Quinn enters the room, dressed in yoga pants and a t-shirt, a towel wrapped around her wet hair.
I look up. “Right about what?”
“You need to get out of here. Get your head right.”
I roll my eyes. Here we go again.
“Quinn, I don’t really think she needs to hear this right now...” Shama starts as she pats my shoulder.
“You haven’t even been here for most of this conversation,” I cut in. “And here’s the truth: if I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.”
Quinn rolls her eyes as she pulls off her towel and hangs it on the closet door rack. “Surprise, surprise. Little Miss Angst is pushing everyone away. How’re those grades, kid? Still failing your history class?”
“It’s a B minus, not an F, for Christ’s sake. Why is everyone freaking out about this?”
“Because we know you’re better than this.” Quinn pauses, one hand still in her hair, then marches over to where I’m sitting.
“I don’t need a fucking lecture, right now, Quinn.” I turn into my pillow.
“I beg to differ.” She opens her mouth, like she’s about to go on yet another tirade about my life choices. But then she rubs a hand across her face. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I honestly think you need to go home to your mommy. You need a break, Lay. And I really think that if you just put some space between you and South American Snape, you’ll figure out that he’s no good for you.”
Beside me, Shama groans to herself.
“Honestly,” I say, a lot more evenly than I feel, “what the fuck do you know about it?”
Quinn frowns slightly, clearly taken aback by my directness. “What-what do you mean?”
“I mean...what the fuck would you know about being in a relationship? You talk to me like I’m a little kid, but who’s the twenty-one-year-old virgin in this apartment, huh? Who’s the one who, in three years of college, has been on maybe two or three dates max with anyone?”
“Lay...” Shama tries to calm me, but I fling her hand aside.
“Oh, I see,” Quinn says, stomping back to her desk. She picks up a hairbrush and starts yanking it through her wet hair. “Because I care more about my grades than screwing abusive randos all over Manhattan, I’m an idiot. I make smart choices, so I’m the bad guy. Sure, that makes total sense.”
“If you call living like a nun a smart choice, sure,” I retort. “At least my life isn’t fucking G-rated. At least I’m trying to have real fucking experiences in New York instead of living my life wearing a virtual chastity belt.”
The hairbrush sails across the room and smacks the wall above my head, landing innocuously on the bed between Shama and me.
“Whoa,” Shama mutters.
I glare at Quinn. “What the fuck?”
“What the fuck yourself!” Quinn’s face is red, and her voice is shaking with anger. “That was a low blow, even for you!”
I open my mouth with another retort ready, but Quinn just keeps going.
“I don’t care what you’re doing with your sorry fucking summer!” she shouts. “Knowing you, you’re just going to be miserable and pathetic anyway. I’m actually glad you’ll be gone. All year, all we’ve listened to is you moaning and groaning about your parents, about Nico!”
“Quinn, that’s unfair,” Shama puts in. “Layla barely talks about any of that stuff.”
“Well, she’s been moping around since September––same fucking thing!” Quinn crosses her arms and glares at me. “I’m sick of it. I didn’t come to college to be your therapist. You’re pissed because I refuse to enable your shitty life choices; well, tough. Maybe we don’t need to be friends, then.”
My mouth drops. I’m not sure I just heard that correctly. This is Quinn. We fight, we make up. There’s always been a certain degree of push and pull in our friendship, but it’s mostly been productive. We challenge each other, I thought. Like all good relationships do...right? We’ve just been in a rough patch...
Beside me, Shama’s shaking her head, but she says nothing more. Quinn doesn’t say anything either, just pops her hip out and waits for my response.
She means it. She really means that we shouldn’t be friends. I didn’t know people even did that––actually cut people off cold turkey. Slowly, I uncurl myself from my pillow and shuffle off the bed.
“All right,” I say more to myself than anyone else. “Fine. You want me gone, I’m gone.”
Like a zombie, I get up and start packing the things I need for class next week. My roommates are in for the night, studying through the weekend for finals. But Quinn is basically telling me to leave. She hasn’t spoken the words, but everything in her posture, her words, says just that.
When I’m done shoving everything into my messenger bag, I find my coat and shoes, all under Quinn’s nasty gaze. I have enough clothes at Giancarlo’s to last me through the week. Toothbrush, hairbrush, and I can get out of here.
Jamie pops in with her phone to her ear. “Hey, I’m thinking of ordering pizza. You guys wanna split––oh. Hey, what’s going on?”
I finish tying my shoes and stand up with my bag. “I’m leaving.” I give Jamie a weak smile, but I can’t even look at the other two. I have never in my life felt more like a pariah.
“Later,” Jamie says as I pass, and on my way out the door, I can hear her asking, “What was that about?”
“Drama,” Quinn answers as the door shuts behind me. “Her usual fucking drama.”
I take the stairs all the way down to the main floor and walk out into the late spring sunshine. It’s May in New York, which is usually my favorite time of year. A bunch of vendors are setting up booths for a craft bazaar in Union Square, where they’ll have local artists showing off their work before Memorial Day. It’s the kind of thing I usually love about New York, but right now I hate it. The sunniness of all of it makes me want to kick down all the stands.
I pull out my phone and call the only person I can think of. The only person who ever seems to care about me these days.
He answers on the first ring. “Layla?”
“Giancarlo. I––” I can’t even get the words out before I start to cry. Of course, it’s here on the street where I start to blubber. Not in the privacy of the apartment upstairs. Not even in the vacant stairwell where no one would see me. It’s here, on one of the busiest streets in the city, with my classmates and other strangers looking at me, the strange girl breaking down on the sidewalk.
I wipe my eyes and turn toward the windows. Inside, the security guard looks up, but does nothing.
“It’s Quinn, she...” I hiccup back my tears, and my throat hurts with the effort.
“Come here,” Giancarlo orders. “Come now.”
I wait a few seconds, for what, I don’t know. A few words of kindness? Some comfort? I know that’s what he’s offering, but I don’t feel it.
“You don’t need them. They’re bitches, all of them. You don’t need to be around girls who treat you like this. I told you this for weeks, months. Why don’t you listen to me?”
The ground under my feet rumbles with a train’s passing through the massive Union Square station below. It’s a slow vibration that seeps into my bones, and for a second, I think of another voice that makes my insides shake in the same way. I close my eyes and will the feeling away. He’s not going to help me now.
“Amor?”
Love. He only says it after he’s snapped at me. But he still says it.
“You don’t need them,” he says again. “Only we matter. Just you and me.”
I exhale. “I’m coming. See you soon.”
~