“No,” Audrey replies. She was leaning back on her elbows, with her legs stretched in front of her, but she sits up when she says this.
I hold out the bag; she still has a mini loaf of banana bread sitting in the bottom. She shakes her head, and it’s only then that I notice her hands are clenched in her lap. That her lips, usually painted a berry red that stands out against her brown skin, are colorless and drawn in a tight line. I pause, too. I don’t dare lick the dollop of preserves from the tip of my pinkie, because I can feel it, the bad news in the warm summer air.
“I’m moving there … with Gillian.”
The pastry drops from my fingers and lands on the sand, cherry side down. Of course.
“She found a job,” Audrey says slowly, watching to see what I’ll do next. “A good job.”
What I do next is grab the sand-covered pastry. I don’t bother holding it around the edges. She’s leaving. The only person, besides my mother, who has ever understood me—really got me—is moving over two thousand miles away. California seems like another planet compared to Chicago. We won’t even be in the same time zone.
I squeeze my hand, let the preserves ooze onto my skin, staining my palm.
“Rashida—” Audrey begins, but I cut her off.
My throat aches from the lump that just took up residence, but I manage to get out, “I’m happy for you.” Because it is the thing to say to the cousin who has always been there for me. It is the mature thing to say, which is something I think about too often at the age of seventeen. I guess that’s what happens when you’re forced to grow up too early.
“You are?” Audrey relaxes, relieved by my lie, even as she looks down at the mangled pastry. “I was afraid you’d be mad at me.”
Mad isn’t the word. Disappointed? Possibly. But anything I express besides happiness right now won’t do anyone any good. She’s leaving because Gillian wants to leave, and she wants to be with Gillian. And Audrey’s not my actual mom, even if she took on the unofficial role of surrogate four years ago.
“It’s really only one year here without you, right?” I reply. “I mean, I’ll be going off to school at the end of next summer, anyway. Maybe I’ll end up out West.”
I’ve never considered living in California; the thought has never even crossed my mind, let alone my lips. But it’s what I needed to say to convince Audrey that I won’t break down when she leaves, and that’s more important than a few small lies.
“I need to toss this,” I say, standing up with the sad little cherry boat. The trash can is at the edge of the beach, where the sand meets the grass. I brush off the butt of my cutoffs, slip away from Audrey on bare feet, and throw the pastry into the can.
I hold my arm out in front of me as I walk. The jam has somehow worked its way up my skin, leaving a sticky spot near my elbow. Shrieking children and snoozing sunbathers line my path to the water, along with a few people dressed in jeans and long-sleeved shirts, as if they accidentally wandered onto the beach and decided to stay and sweat it out.
The lake water is cool at my feet, lapping over my toes and then frothing at my ankles as it rises. I walk in a bit farther before plunging my hands in. As I wash away the stickiness, I look across the water, at the small waves rolling so slowly it’s like they’re barely moving at all. Maybe I should keep walking—tread out into Lake Michigan and float away. Not like my mother floated away on an entire bottle of antidepressants, but just … to a life where I don’t have to keep watching people leave.
When I get back to our spot, Gillian is standing there, helping Audrey shake the sand out of our blanket. What is she doing here? And how did she get here so quickly? I wasn’t gone even five minutes. She’s good at sweeping in—she and Audrey have been together for barely a year, after all. I take a deep breath, pretend like I don’t notice the fake smiles plastered on both their faces.
“Hey, Rashida,” Gillian says, the smile increasing in breadth. “How are you?”
“Fine. Good,” I say.
Audrey tucks the thick square of blanket underneath her arm. She’s watching me again, and I know I should say something to make her and Gillian more comfortable, but I can’t.
“I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d give you guys a ride back,” Gillian says.
“Cool,” I say. Then, “Thanks.”
She doesn’t try to talk to me anymore. I trudge behind them to the car, watching her as I chew on my thumbnail. She has an athletic build—Audrey told me she ran track through college—and thick, dark box braids that touch the small of her back. Her skin is a light, light brown, the sort of ambiguous shade that makes people she’s never met wonder aloud if she’s biracial. She pronounces her name with a hard G that always makes me think of fish gills.
Gillian gets into the driver’s side of her old Toyota and unlocks the passenger door, which apparently doesn’t open from the outside. I wonder if they’re driving this car to San Francisco, if it will break down in every state they pass through, and if Audrey will regret saying yes to the move—to what would surely be a foreshadowing of their new life together.
“Hey,” Audrey says in a quiet voice before she opens the door. She touches my shoulder so I’ll look at her instead of staring down at the pavement. “I love her. I need you to know that I wouldn’t leave if I weren’t sure. But I am. I love her too much to not go.”
Love.
It’s such a bullshit word. She loves me, but that’s a different kind of love, and it’s not enough to make her stay.
* * *
Three weeks later, when Audrey’s apartment is stacked with boxes and her refrigerator holds a lone egg and jar of sweet pickles, I find myself at her parents’ house, nibbling on cubed cheese beside the dining room table.
Audrey didn’t want us to fuss over her leaving. It’s not her style. She hates drawing attention to herself, probably because of her work as an activist. She’s used to doing so much for others—organizing rallies, contacting politicians, raising funds for nonprofits that fight injustice. But her mother insisted on sending her off with a proper good-bye, so soon all of Audrey’s and Gillian’s friends and family and now-former coworkers will be gathered in my aunt Farrah and uncle Howard’s Rogers Park home.
It’s still early, and I’m still eating cheese, when I spot Audrey across the room, huddled in front of the record player with Gillian, sifting through a pile of vinyl. Gillian squeals and holds up an album, and I watch Audrey lean in toward her girlfriend’s head to check it out. I pop a bite of sharp cheddar into my mouth and wish it weren’t so hard to be nice to the person my cousin loves. And it wouldn’t be so hard, if Audrey loving Gillian didn’t mean Audrey leaving us.
Music suddenly emerges from the speakers, and my uncle Howard walks over to the food table, bopping his head in time to the beat. “And they say you kids don’t have good taste in music. Not my daughter. My girl”—he snaps his fingers for emphasis—“knows the greats.”
“I’ve never heard this,” I say, shrugging and not smiling, because I don’t have to pretend I’m in a good mood for Uncle Howard.
He is unyieldingly cheerful, but not the sort of person who constantly reminds you to be grateful for what you have. He genuinely looks on the bright side of things, even after all the shitty stuff he’s seen, living in Chicago for nearly sixty years.
“Well, then you are getting a free lesson in classic Motown.” He pulls on the brim of the tweed Kangol hat perched on his shaved brown head. “The Marvelettes—one of the greatest girl groups of all time.”