“I thought you said your parents knew each other?”
“They do, but we didn’t know that. Not at first. She was part of the rally some people organized when Braden died, and she came up and introduced herself. Everyone knew my mom and me from the news.” He pauses. “She started hanging around. Showing up after school, offering to take me to the library or White Sox games on the weekends. People talked about how sad it was, what happened to our family, but Gilly was the only one who stepped up and really made sure I was okay.”
Maybe Gillian is more like Audrey than I realized. Everyone was concerned about the kid left behind after my mother swallowed a bottle of pills, but their concern tapered off in the weeks after the funeral. Besides my father, Audrey was the only one who checked in every day, who made sure I ate and did my schoolwork, who took me to the lake and museums to keep me busy and get me out of the house.
“I’m sorry about Braden.” I touch Pierre’s arm without thinking, then quickly pull my hand away, even though it felt good, my fingers against his skin.
He looks at me now, his eyes serious but kind behind his glasses. Then he nods, his head dipping down in one quick movement, as if he’s putting a period onto the end of a sentence. “Thanks. It’ll be three years next month.”
“Sometimes I get mad when people don’t remember the day my mom died,” I offer. “My dad and I used to spend the whole day together, but then last year I woke up and he was gone and I just … I felt so…”
“Abandoned?”
“Yeah.” I squeeze a hand around my curls. “Exactly that.”
We used to get up early and eat her favorite breakfast, mushroom and spinach frittatas, then we’d visit the most expensive florist in the neighborhood and leave tulips on her grave.
She loved flowers, especially the tulips that overtake downtown Chicago in the spring. But her love for them became a family joke, because she had the greenest thumb of anyone we knew but always forgot to plant tulip bulbs in the fall. So we harvested delicate asparagus stalks, and plots of Swiss chard and arugula, and bulbous, blood-red beets that stained our fingers when we chopped them. And after we’d spent whole days in the backyard digging and pulling and planting and watering, we’d ride the train down to the Magnificent Mile just so she could see the tulips, the brightly colored blooms and pointed leaves lining the tourist-filled sidewalks with simple beauty. She’d lean into me as we walked among the crowds and say, “Just wait until we have our own next year—we’ll make this look like amateur hour.” And every year she’d forget about them until the soil was too hard to dig into, refusing new life.
Pierre and I sit there not saying anything, and I wonder if I’ve ruined our evening. Even friends and family members get uncomfortable when I bring up my mother. They try not to be, and yet their body language gives them away every time. But Pierre doesn’t look like that, so I keep talking.
“My mom was a painter,” I say. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and honestly, she and my dad spoiled me a lot. Everything was pretty perfect until … I didn’t know she was dealing with depression. My dad knew, of course, and I can remember some days when she wouldn’t get out of bed, but I didn’t understand. No one talked to me about it. And then she was gone, and I was only thirteen. Now I’m obsessed with looking in my aunt’s medicine cabinet…” I glance at him to see if my confession registers, but his expression doesn’t change. “I want to know exactly when she starts feeling anxious or depressed, because what if it runs in the family?”
“Do you think it does?” Pierre sits up taller as he looks at me.
I focus on the dimple in his chin and wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to touch it. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. But I was too stupid to see it in my mom, and what if I’m too dumb to see it in my aunt … or me?”
Pierre lets out a breath and I know instantly that what I said was too heavy for this room, for this night. Even for someone else in the secret club, even when we are sharing our life stories.
“You know, I feel like black people think we’re not supposed to take medication for mental illness. Like we’re supposed to be stronger than that. And that’s fucking bullshit,” he says, without an ounce of hesitation. “We’re not superhuman. I was on antidepressants for a while after my brother died. And I never thought I would be on them … but it helped.”
“I think that’s the worst part.” My eyes are dry but my voice is faint. “She was trying to get better. She knew she needed help, but it wasn’t enough.”
“But you’ll always know she tried, right? I knew I had to stick around for my mom. The meds helped with that … And you were close with your mom, right?”
I nod, staring at my feet.
“She was trying for you. I’m sure of it.”
I’ve always known that, deep down, but to hear it said out loud, directly to me … It means more than any sympathy card or phone call or “I’m sorry about your mother” that I’ve received in the past four years. It means the world to me.
“It sucks to lose people,” Pierre says, and I feel him watching me, so I meet his gaze with a newfound respect. Because he’s looking straight at me. Not away, where it would be comfortable for everyone else. “But I have to keep telling myself I’m not losing Gillian. She’s leaving, but she’ll still be around.”
“Yeah.” But then I break eye contact, because it’s too much. He’s too … him. Knowing what to say and when to say it. I don’t know how he’s so good at that when he’s just met me.
“And I bet … well, I know it’s the same with Audrey. I heard about you so much before I even met you. She’s not going to forget you, Rashida.”
“What did you hear about me?” I blurt.
It lightens the moment. It makes him smile.
“Well,” he says, “all good things. That you’re smart. And sweet, even if you try to hide it. And that Audrey loves you more than anyone.”
I don’t say anything to that. I concentrate on breathing and I blink hard and I try to ignore the tightness in my chest, the strange pressure that makes me feel as if my sternum might break like a faulty dam. I stare at his sneakers to distract myself, at the blue ink running along the cracked, off-white sides. At first I think it’s doodles, words and sentences strung together nonsensically. But I make out a thou and a hast. “Are those Bible verses?”
“No.” His smile is sheepish. “They’re lines from Hamlet. I’m … kind of a Shakespeare nerd. I’m going to DePaul in the fall, and sometimes I think I need to go the practical route and study biology, but I really want to get into the playwriting program.”
“What does the quote say?”
“It’s…” He pauses, deciding how to respond. “It’s that quote that says, ‘This above alclass="underline" to thine own self be true.’ It saved me after Braden died. I wanted to find out who shot him, do whatever I had to do to get revenge. But I’m not … I couldn’t have lived with myself if anything happened. And it could have. I knew people who would’ve…” He shrugs. Trying to shake off the memory. “But that’s not who I am. So I looked at that quote every day to remind myself that revenge wouldn’t get me anywhere except in jail, or maybe even dead, too.”
I know nothing about Shakespeare besides Romeo and Juliet, but I could listen to Pierre talk about Hamlet and what Shakespeare means to him all night.
We stare at each other. Our eyes drop away—his back down to his Converse, mine to the grease-stained pizza box—but when I glance at him again he’s already looking at me. I think … no, I’m sure I want to kiss him. And the way he considers every part of my face with his gentle brown eyes, from my cheekbones to my eyelashes to my lips—especially my lips—I think he might feel the same way.