Then, the week before Christmas, Sheila’s birthday. Los Angles had already had twenty-two inches of rain since school started. There was a rumor Death Valley would have a once-in-a-lifetime bloom, come spring. My friends and I were planning a road trip in Charles’s Hummer just to mow our path over fields of poppies.
I was drunk already, bullshitting with my cousin Arthur over which Ivy League schools we were going to stroll into. Which had the best clubs, where the legacies were. Arthur was a douchebag. The last time I’d driven down Sunset with him, he leaned out of his BMW to make some noise at a girl, which was bad enough. But when she flipped him the bird he shouted, “Man, I bet there’s some guy out there so tired of f**king you.”
“Arthur, really?” I felt like getting out and apologizing to her, but the light turned green and we were gone.
“What, Jon? Look at her. All legs and shit. Fuck her.”
That was the last time I went out with Arthur. But at a family party, as long as we kept to schools and baseball, I could hold a conversation with him.
Sheila’s party graduated from family thing to some kind of pre-Christmas f**kall event, and the kitchen got crowded. I was less and less inclined to move. People I knew came in and out, most not related to me at that point, and aunts and uncles kissed me goodbye and left.
I don’t even know what I was drinking. A bong went around. It was lead crystal and totally illegal, even if the bud wasn’t, and the liquid inside was chartreuse absinthe.
Just because.
The movement of the party shifted down the hall, through the library and into the living room, where I saw my father was still there.
And Rachel had shown up.
***
Was there ever something you wanted, but could only wish for, Jonathan?
I wish I wasn’t raised by crazy people.
Something for the future. That you want, but don’t think you’ll get.
Yes, I—
Don’t tell me. That’ll ruin it.
***
Jessica was nowhere to be found. She didn’t answer my texts or calls. Margie, who had taken her out for the “girl thing” with three other sisters, said my fiancé had left the spa in her Mercedes the hour before.
“Did she have an accident?”
“I don’t know little brother,” Margie said, grabbing a glass of wine before the first guest arrived. “She seemed fine. The usual.”
“What does that mean?” I felt a stab of anger. Seven sisters. A couple were bound to dislike my wife.
“Charming and polite. Warm, even. But not.”
“Howdy!” Leanne came across the empty backyard, grabbing a glass as soon as the bartender poured it. The emerald of her dress brought out the fire engine in her hair. “You should see Jess’s nails. She got a French with an airbrush. So cute.”
“Did you see her out front?” I asked.
“Nope. Are those the cufflinks you’re wearing?” Leanne fixed the flowers in her hair by the reflection in the window. She wanted to make clothes, so Dad had bought her a factory. Another money-losing proposition. Next to Deirdre, the still devout, chronically depressed Irish poet, she was the most creative in the family.
“No,” I said. “I just wore these to offend you.”
“He wants to know how Jessica looked.” Margie said.
“Cool and collected. She’s a rock, you know.” Leanne squeezed my cheeks. “You did good.”
Leanne, who was habitually single at twenty-six because she was a workaholic, had no business judging, even when I agreed with her.
***
I was fifteen, and Rachel was a year and a half older when we began seeing each other, if that’s what you could call it. Discretion was absolutely necessary, so she didn’t come to any family parties. I didn’t want her near my father, period. End of. She knew why. I knew why. No one else did. Her old affair with my father when she was too young and impressionable to know better was a secret bought and paid for with jewelry and electronics. I kept it for her because she wanted it that way, and though I would have loved to tell the world about what kind of animal my father was, the understanding between myself and a few of my sisters, was that Mom would break into a hundred pieces if what she knew in her heart was confirmed. My father was, so far, the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.
Rachel and I were rarely seen in public together unless she went to a Loyola ballgame I pitched, or if I happened to show up at a play she was in. It was hard to stay away from her, but necessary. We didn’t talk about a future past the possibility that we could attend the same college, provided she got a scholarship.
We met in my car, late at night after Mom was passed out. Dad was gone often and he would have let me out the front door anyway. The staff didn’t care, or expected no less: another irresponsible rich brat, in a society full of them, slipping out to debauch himself on school nights.
Rachel had a harder time of it. She had a tough home life. Her stepfather went into a controlling fits, locking her and her mother in the house at night. The windows were barred and the deadbolts had inside keys he slept with. In her closet, Rachel found a trapdoor to the crawlspace under the house. I met her on the corner. Seeing her walk even a block in the dark in that neighborhood twisted my stomach in knots, every time. I never got used to it. Usually, when she got into the car, I laughed from released tension and the sight of cobwebs in her hair.
She attended Marlborough on a hefty financial aid package which was still a stretch for her parents, and was required to maintain a GPA of 3.75 or face the budget cuts and substandard educational opportunities of the LAUSD. She was in the home stretch. Smart, diligent, studious, and yes, beautiful; she would be the first in her family to attend a top school and get a medical degree. I’d have followed her anywhere. Business schools were a dime a dozen, and Dad would buy me entry to the university of my choice, even if I never told him why the choice was made. In this case, Rachel and I chose University of Pennsylvania and crossed our fingers, she for Perelman School of Medicine, and I for Wharton a year later. It was Ivy League, which was easy for me, and hard for her.
All this meant she didn’t have the time or permission to drive around in my Mercedes, or run into hotel rooms with me. But we were young, and infatuated, and on the cusp of freedom, or in her case, death.
***
What do you mean by “wish” then, Rachel?
Like, hope you get something you know is impossible, but hope anyway.
I wish I could be with you like a normal person.