* * *
The house has filled with a good-size crowd that’s eating, dancing, laughing, and talking at volumes that confirm it is a full-fledged party. I recognize Audrey and Gillian’s friends from protests and some people from Aunt Farrah and Uncle Howard’s Baptist church, where I’ve been to a few services over the years. But there are plenty of people I don’t know. I remember Pierre’s comment, that this isn’t just a party for my family, and it makes me cringe.
My father has arrived which should put me at ease but doesn’t. He’s accompanied by his new girlfriend, Bev, a secretary at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he works as an art history professor. Bev is whatever. Nice enough, I guess, but I have to wonder what my father likes about her. That she’s stable? Predictable? Reserved? My mother was none of those things, and it never occurred to me that she should be.
Dad waves me over, so I join them by the record player, weaving through guests holding glasses of wine and beer bottles still dripping with icy water, freshly plucked from the cooler. I pass Gillian, who’s standing by the big window behind the sofa, talking to someone I don’t know. Gillian is always energetic, but I’ve never seen her like this—gesticulating grandly to punctuate each word of her sentence, twisting her face into expressions that I don’t think are supposed to be as comical as they appear. I glance at her hands, and sure enough, the blue cup is sitting firmly in one of them.
“How was dinner?” I’m asking only to be polite.
They invited me but I declined, saying I’d agreed to come over early and help my aunt and uncle with the setup. Which was true, but by the time I got here they’d already finished cleaning and had hung the banner (GOOD LUCK AND FAREWELL!) and set out the food, so I mostly gnawed on pretzels and weighed in on my aunt’s prospective party outfits. But my father doesn’t need to know that, because standing around idly before a party celebrating the departure of my favorite person on the planet was still preferable to sitting in a restaurant with him and his girlfriend.
“Oh, we went to this fantastic new seafood place in River North,” Bev says a little breathlessly, the most excited I’ve heard her sound about anything. “The mussels were outstanding!”
“You missed out, Rashida.” Dad leans down to kiss the top of my head. “Some of the best oysters I’ve ever had.”
“I’m allergic to shellfish,” I remind him. “So it’s probably good that I missed out.”
“Well, I knew that,” he says quickly, stroking his beard. His professor’s beard, my mother used to call it. Silver hairs started growing in among the black ones after she died. “We only decided to go there when you said you couldn’t come.”
I don’t believe that. At his best my father is absentminded, but lately it seems like he’s even more forgetful when it comes to me. I’ll be heading off to college in a year, and sometimes I wonder if he’ll be happier once I’m gone.
“So, how have you been, Rashida?” Bev tucks a piece of her light-brown bob behind her ear. “Have you started thinking about college yet?”
She looks more nervous than usual. I’ve watched her glance around the room at least three times, and I realize—only after she visibly relaxes when she catches sight of a blond guy—that she’s anxious about being one of the few white people at the party. I wonder if she notices when she’s out with my father and he’s one of the only black people in the room. Does his potential discomfort ever cross her mind?
“I’ve thought about it,” I say, and stop just short of shrugging. I can’t not think about it, with a college professor as a father. He’s not pushing me to study a particular subject, but he brings up the topic often, asking if I’ve narrowed down my first-choice and safety schools yet. He’ll be okay with whatever I study, so long as the program isn’t based in Chicago. I think having me around reminds him too much of my mother.
“Any idea what you want to major in?” Bev presses on. Clearly not reading me, not seeing that I don’t want to talk about this with her right now. Or ever, really.
“I’m not sure,” I respond. “Maybe linguistics. Or sociology.”
Or horticulture, if I’m being honest. There wasn’t a week that went by in the spring and summer that my mother and I weren’t in the backyard before the sun got too hot, working our fingers through the soil of our vegetable garden. Tending the garden was relaxing, and it made me feel accomplished. I let everything die after she did.
I tilt my head to the side. “What did you study in school, Bev?”
My father’s head swivels toward me, but I don’t look at him because I don’t want to see his face. He knows I’m being mean, that I’m aware there’s a good chance Bev isn’t using whatever degree she has to work in reception.
Audrey saves me. She swoops in from out of nowhere to greet my father with a hearty “So good to see you, Uncle!” and a kiss on the cheek. She tells Bev it’s nice to see her, too, then turns to me. “We’re going to play bocce out back and we need another person. You in?”
I can’t say yes fast enough. And as I take her hand and head out to the backyard, I wonder how I’ll survive when she’s no longer around to rescue me.
* * *
My heart only sinks further as we step outside. Audrey didn’t tell me Pierre would be here.
He’s standing at the edge of the lawn, a tall shadow beyond the light that spills off the porch and onto the bocce balls lined up on the freshly mown grass. His gaze shifts to me, and neither of us smiles before he looks away. Gillian is swaying to imaginary music by the deck railing, cup in hand. Her eyes are unfocused—a little wild, even, as they flit about the yard.
The air is humid and warm, scented with the sweet perfume of Aunt Farrah’s rosebushes, the fat pastel blooms dotting the trellis at the end of the deck. Earlier, Uncle Howard strung white Christmas lights along the porch, and they glow softly around us, working months ahead of their usual gig. Tonight is beautiful. It could even be romantic, if I were with someone besides my cousin, her tipsy girlfriend, and a guy who hates me.
Even Audrey and Gillian can’t enjoy it. Audrey is holding her girlfriend by the elbow, and I can’t tell if it’s to show affection or to keep her steady. Gillian slams her cup on the railing and takes Audrey’s face in her hands, smashing their mouths together. It doesn’t look pleasant, and my cousin pulls away quickly, shaking her head. She says something so quietly I can’t hear it. Pierre stares at the detached garage at the back of the yard, mortified.
A few moments later, we’re spread out across the lawn, standing in teams. Audrey started to pair off with Gillian, but the look I shot her made it clear that wasn’t an option. Pierre must have been relieved, too, though he doesn’t look so happy next to Gillian, either. She’s wrapped her braids around her chin in a makeshift beard, prattling on about the Gettysburg Address.
I turn to my cousin. “Is she—”
I don’t get out another word before Audrey snaps, “She’s fine. It’s fine. Let’s play.”
Oh. Audrey doesn’t snap at me. She’s even-keeled in general, always with a soft spot where I’m concerned. But a deep groove rests between her eyebrows, and her lips are pursed tight enough to crack, and she doesn’t even give me an apologetic smile.
Audrey and I win the quarter toss; I motion for her to go first. Gillian screams, “Go, babe, go!,” loudly enough to be heard down the block, and I think maybe her unbridled enthusiasm will make Audrey smile, but Audrey ignores her as she rolls the small white ball across the grass.
We get through the first round without incident, if you don’t count Pierre shushing his sister every two seconds. Gillian talks loudly, incessantly. I glance at Audrey. She’s not even trying to hide her annoyance, crossing her arms and pointedly looking straight ahead. I toss a red ball too hard and it rolls to the back of the yard, bouncing off the fence.
“Dead ball,” Pierre says in a smug voice.
I glare at him. He’s probably just glad the attention is off his sister, for once.
It
’s her turn, but she’s wandered away. Gillian stumbles through the cluster of green and red bocce balls, displacing a few in the process and cackling as she effectively ruins our game. She’s a firecracker let loose too many days after the Fourth of July, a jack-in-the-box that’s broken free from its prison, a toddler who has discovered her legs. Gillian is officially wasted.
Audrey sighs. “Well, I guess we’re done here.”
“She’s done for the night,” Pierre concludes.
Gillian leaps toward the back of the lawn and spins underneath the empty clothesline, singing a song that’s so off-key and slurred it’s unintelligible. Her braids fly wild around her face, swinging across her sweaty forehead as she moves to the chorus of crickets in the air. Is this what Audrey will have to put up with when they get to San Francisco? Is this new? Or maybe Gillian has never been able to hold her liquor and I’m only finding out now.
“We need to get her out of here,” Audrey says. “I could take her back to my apartment, but everyone will notice if I leave.”
“I’d drive us home, but I don’t have a license.” Pierre sticks his hands into the pockets of his dark blue jeans. “I guess we could take a cab, but—”
Audrey shakes her head. “You’re not taking a cab back to the suburbs. It’ll be, like, a million dollars, and I’m pretty sure none of us have that kind of cash right now.” She pauses for a moment, then nods toward me. “Rashida, what if you drive the three of you back to my place?”
My mouth drops open. “Why do all of us need to go?”
“Because she’s hammered,” Audrey says in a matter-of-fact way that makes me wish I’d kept my mouth shut. “It’ll take more than one person to get her back there and into bed.”
“What are you going to tell our family … and her friends?” Pierre asks, clearly as worried as I am about taking on this challenge together. He gestures to the house, where the sounds of the party have started to float onto the porch. “Should I go in and say something?”
Audrey bites her lip as she glances toward the back door, the outlines of guests in the kitchen visible through the screen. “I’ll tell them she got food poisoning from lunch.”
“But what if she doesn’t want to crash at your place?” I ask. Pierre and I are doing our best to think of every excuse possible to make this not happen, but Gillian doesn’t look ready to leave, anyway. She looks as if she’d be content to frolic around for quite a while.
“Oh, she’s about ten minutes from passing out.” My cousin puts her hands on her slender hips. “You won’t get much of an argument.”
Just like Audrey knew she wouldn’t get much of an argument from us, because Audrey is the sort of person people listen to. I’ve seen her take charge in a crowd of protestors hundreds deep.
The three of us manage to hustle Gillian from the backyard to the side of the house just as the first guests venture out onto the deck. Pierre and Audrey hold Gillian’s arms on either side. She’s distracted by everything in her line of sight—a glittery red, white, and blue party hat smashed against the curb, cream-colored petals floating from the tree that hangs over the sidewalk, a stray cat wandering down the path ahead of us.
“Kitty!” she cries out, lunging after the scrawny tabby.
The cat escapes, wide-eyed and lithe, and we herd Gillian to the car. Audrey was right. Her eyes are closing, her words slurring more as her lips find it harder to move.
Pierre opens the door, and Gillian immediately falls inside, sprawling across both seats. Her legs are completely slack, loose as cooked spaghetti. Pierre lets them dangle over the edge of the car for a moment, then says, “I should probably ride in back with her.”
I shrug, trying to make it clear that I don’t have an opinion about any of this. I’m here only because I have to be.
Audrey watches them get settled in the back, leaning down to peer in the window at Gillian before turning to me. Her shoulders slump with fatigue but her eyes are appreciative. “Good luck. See you soon.” She drops Gillian’s car keys into my palm and briefly closes her hand around mine. “And thanks.”
Once I’m inside the car, I put on my seat belt. Gillian is no longer awake. Pierre has shifted his sister so that her head is resting on the edge of his thigh. I’m reluctant to speak to him, but I have to ask: “Seat belt?”
“Yup,” he replies, just as brusquely. He pauses for a moment. “How far are we going?”
“Andersonville.”
“Is that far?”
Oh, right. Gillian’s family is from the west suburbs, out in Oak Park. I wonder how often he comes into the city—if he’s familiar with other parts and if it’s just this area that he doesn’t know. And then I’m mad at myself for wondering. I know everything about Gillian and her family that I need to know.
“We can probably make it there in ten minutes,” I say, checking my seat belt again.
I see him nod in the rearview mirror as I adjust it. Then I turn on the headlights. And still I don’t touch the ignition.
“What’s up?” Pierre asks.
“I … It’s been a while since I’ve driven. Especially at night.” Dad has a car that I can drive whenever he’s not using it, but we live in Bucktown, right near the Blue Line and buses, and there’s never a shortage of cabs if I’m really desperate. Lately he’s been complaining that the area is too busy, that we’d be happier someplace more quiet. But it’s the house we lived in with my mother, dead garden and all, and I think he recognizes that our fragile relationship will hold up longer if we stay there until I leave for school.
“There’s no rush,” Pierre says. “And you said it’s not far.”
“Right,” I say. It’s not far.
I turn the key and classical music fills the car as the engine rumbles to life. I’m surprised, because I don’t know anyone who listens to classical besides people my dad’s age. Gillian seems as if she’d be more into pop or hip-hop or electronic—something with a good beat that fits her boundless energy. But I’m grateful for the strains of string instruments floating through the car. It’s soothing.
I keep my hands at ten and two and drive a few miles under the speed limit; some people pass me, but no one looks mad. Just as I’m getting comfortable, Gillian whimpers in her sleep, a noise that becomes increasingly louder by the second. I glance at them in the rearview mirror when I stop at a red light, thinking maybe I should pull over, but Pierre seems to have it under control. In the dim streetlights filtering through the car, I see him rub her shoulder, whispering a barely audible, “It’s okay, Gilly. We’re almost there.”
He continues comforting her until the whimpers stop, soon replaced by soft snoring. The uneven breaths mingle with the classical music coming from her speakers and, once, her snores are timed so perfectly with a particularly dramatic part in the music that Pierre and I can’t help but laugh. We catch each other’s eyes in the mirror as the laughter fades.
“You’re a good driver,” he says quietly, and then looks out his window for the remainder of the ride.
Which is just as well, because it takes much too long for me to stop furiously blushing at a compliment so decidedly innocuous. And I want to know what’s changed since we’ve been in the car. Because five minutes ago I could barely stand to look at him, and now my cheeks are on fire. Audrey always says I should give people the benefit of the doubt, and I don’t always agree with her, but maybe Pierre isn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe.
By some miracle, I find a parking spot a few doors down from Audrey’s apartment building, and it’s even wide enough that I don’t have to parallel park. I sigh in relief—witnessing me try to squeeze a strange car into a tight space would most definitely make Pierre retract his previous statement—but it doesn’t last long. Because Gillian won’t wake up long enough for us to get her out of the car. She swats at Pierre with her eyes closed when he softly pats her face and tells her it’s time to sit up. She doesn’t respond at all when I say her name loudly and tug on the bottom of her pants.
> “Audrey lives on the third floor,” I announce, once it’s obvious we’ll have to carry her upstairs. “And it’s a walk-up.”
“Shit.” But then he sighs and adjusts his glasses. “Help me get her over my shoulder?”
The whole undertaking is a struggle from start to finish. Gillian may still be in great shape from her days as an athlete, but her limbs are deadweight as we try to maneuver her over Pierre’s shoulder. She becomes alert every so often and tries to push us away. She shoves at me so hard that I stamp my foot and step back.
“This is really shitty,” I say, wiping my damp forehead.
“I’m the one who has to carry her up three flights of stairs,” Pierre counters, his arms wrapped tightly around Gillian’s middle.
“We wouldn’t have to do this at all if—” I stop myself, but not fast enough.
Pierre looks up sharply. “If what?”
“Never mind.”
“You’re not the only one who feels this way.” His voice is strained, and I can tell that whatever silent truce we called back in the car has expired. “Can we just stop complaining and get her up there so we can be done with this?”
I’ve never noticed how many entryways you have to pass through to get to Audrey’s front door—the gate, the main entrance, the interior door that leads to the staircase—but by the time I’m inserting my copy of her house key into the lock, fifteen minutes later, I think maybe security measures are overrated.
“How … can such a small person … be … so … heavy … when she’s … passed … out?” Pierre grunts as he carries Gillian to the bedroom at the back of the apartment.
The bed is gone, along with the rest of the furniture. All that remains is the air mattress Audrey will sleep on until they leave for San Francisco. Pierre deposits Gillian on the slightly saggy mattress and I pull the covers up to her chin. She kicks them off and turns on her side, which saves us a step, because movies have taught me that you’re not supposed to let drunk people sleep on their backs.