She discovers my parents’ old board games in our hallway closet, and soon we are playing them all, sometimes two at once. Risk and Monopoly and Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. It’s been a long time since I’ve played them, and it makes me a little maudlin at first.
Elizabeth senses this and asks, “Do you miss your parents?”
I stop, game piece in hand. How does she know? And then I realize she believes my story, that my parents are off on some research trip for the summer. She believes I miss them in the way you miss something you know will someday return.
“A little,” I say. Then, “It’s your turn.”
Over the board games, she tells me a lot about Minnesota, and Robbie, and Laurie, and her parents. I tell her about people in the park, residents in the building, other things I’ve overheard or witnessed over the past few years. It’s the difference between autobiography and biography, and if she notices, she doesn’t mention it. A few times, she asks me about my school, and I make things up. Or she asks me about my parents, and I give her an altered version. The mother I tell her about is still a recognizable version of my mother—the same quirks, the same laughs, the same missing family history. Only she isn’t dead. And she doesn’t have an invisible son.
My version of my father is a farther stretch. Or maybe it isn’t. Since I don’t really know him at all, there’s always a possibility that the things I’m saying are true.
Meanwhile, it’s not all conversation and unpacking and board games. There are sublime moments of curling together, breathing together, kissing together, feeling together. Every now and then, I manage to get lost in my own private happiness, and I realize that I’ve lost my focus. But then I see her eyes are closed, and she hasn’t noticed. My lips, for that moment, simply seemed light to her. Or my hold on her was gentle, my caress breeze-like.
Somehow, it works.
* * *
The only source of tension is the fact that I haven’t met her brother or her mother.
“They’re starting to think I’ve made you up,” she says.
I can’t tell her that I saw Laurie just yesterday, mooning by the mail room, pretending to read a book while his eye was constantly drawn to the door. When I first saw him, on that first day, all I could really see was his shirtless bravado. But now, looking closer, knowing what I know about what he’s been through, I manage to see the vulnerability, the eagerness, the mix of in-your-face defiance and in-my-mind loneliness. For fifteen minutes, he waited by the mail room, and for fifteen minutes, I waited with him. If he sensed my presence, he didn’t let on. I saw his scars—the visible ones—and saw how breaking him had not made him any less beautiful. If anything, he stood stronger, because he’d survived. I was envious, really, of how comfortably he inhabited his body. How he wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from him.
Then Sean arrived. Also reading a book. And in Laurie’s face there was that flash of extraordinary nervousness, followed by the click of determination and the illusion of total calm.
“Hey, you,” he said, and Sean seemed delighted to see him.
I left then. They would have thought it was just the two of them in that mail room, but I would’ve known I was there. And I had no right to whatever it was they’d decide to share.
Again, I can’t tell Elizabeth any of this. I can’t tell her that her brother has come to mean something to me, even if, as far as she knows, I only saw him for a brief conversation the day they moved in. She wants us all to hang out, for me to get to know him, and I don’t really know how to address this. Then one day, it’s right there in front of me. Laurie calls for his usual after-school check-in, and I tell Elizabeth to pass the phone.
“Really?” she says.
I nod, and she gives it to me.
“Laurie?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“This is Stephen.”
“No way!”
“Way.”
“This isn’t some actor my sister’s hired to impersonate her imaginary boyfriend?”
“If it is, I’m really enjoying the research.”
“Gross!”
“Anyway, do you know what day today is?”
“Free cone day?”
“Close. Let’s start with a day of the week.”
“If I’m not mistaken, it’s Wednesday.”
“Correct! And what’s Wednesday?”
“Um . . . the day after Tuesday?”
“No. It’s the day new comics come out.”
“I’m fascinated to see where you’re going with this.”
“It’s not me that’s going somewhere. It’s you. You’re going to Midtown Comics and picking up a copy of the special edition of Runaways that came out today. Your sister wants one.”
“And what’s in it for me, exactly?”
“Sean, Laurie. Sean is in it for you. He goes there every Wednesday afternoon at four.”
There’s a pause. “What has my sister told you?”
“I’m guessing that she’s not the only one with an imaginary boyfriend, Laurie. Make it real. If you want to, of course.”
“Thank you, my new spiritual advisor. I shall take that under consideration.”
“Just do it before four o’clock, okay? And I was serious about bringing back that Runaways comic for your sister.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
Elizabeth and Laurie talk for a little bit more. Even before she’s off, though, Elizabeth is looking at me like I’ve done something very, very good.
“You’re sure Sean’s going to, um, return the affections?” she asks once the call has ended.
I shrug. “Not sure. But it’s only going to hurt until he tries. And if Sean isn’t into him, I’m sure he’ll be kind about it.”
(I do not tell her about the time I spotted Sean in his hallway trying desperately to get a wi-fi connection so he could continue chatting with a boy from Dallas.)
“Well, I think you’ve won my brother over,” Elizabeth says.
“And you? Have I won you over?”
She laughs. “Oh, I’m not as easy as my brother.”
* * *
I know it can’t go on like this. I know that this bliss is built on a razor-thin foundation, and at any moment the wind could come along.