The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [40]
Jeremy grins at me. “And we all know that Connelly has an oh-so-active imagination.”
I blush. I don’t know whether Jeremy is joking or if he realizes how true this is. This is the first time in my life that I’ve had so many real things going on, so many things I can’t fantasize my way away from, or out of.
Jeremy continues, serious now. “Maybe your mom thought you were too young to know about death and then, by the time you were older, it seemed like—I don’t know, like she’d gone this long without telling you, so why bring it up?”
“I think there’s something more to it. Think about it, Jeremy—there are no pictures of him up in my apartment. My mother’s mother won’t even talk about him. His own parents don’t talk about him—like about when he was young, old stories. It’s like they’re mad at him.”
“Maybe they’re angry at him for leaving them. I’ve read about that, the stages of grief and all that stuff.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s been too long. They wouldn’t be angry at him for that anymore. Certainly not all of them.” I pause. “It’s not anger. She’s, they’re—scared to talk about him. It feels like something about his death was humiliating, and something about it was, I don’t know, worse.”
I hope Jeremy doesn’t think I mean that my father’s death was worse than mere cancer. Mere cancer is what’s hurting his sister, and I don’t mean that my father’s death was worse for my family than hers would be for his. But Jeremy doesn’t seem to interpret it that way. He’s still thinking of my family, not his.
“Connie, that doesn’t make sense.”
I don’t say anything, and Jeremy opens his mouth like he’s going to tell me I’m wrong again. Then he shuts it. I wonder if he’s conceding the point because I’ve convinced him, or because he just realized that it’s not his place to argue.
“I’m sorry you had to find out like that,” he says. “About the cancer, I mean.”
“I’m sure it never occurred to you that I didn’t know.”
“No. But it should have.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he stops me. “No, Sternin. I come from a family where everyone talks about everything—talks too much, if you ask me. I didn’t even think that yours might be a different kind of family. One where you don’t talk about things like that. It was selfish of me not to think past myself.”
I shrug. “Don’t worry about it. Really,” I add when he looks like he doesn’t believe me. “Anyway, I’m happy I know. Well, I mean, ‘happy’ isn’t the right word.”
“I know what you mean.”
I smile at him. “Okay. Thanks.”
“It’s funny, though. You’d think she’d—I don’t know.” Jeremy thinks for a minute, stretching his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. “I don’t know, that she’d have made something up or something. So you’d know—something. Or at least, I mean, why not tell you about the cancer? Then you wouldn’t be searching for some other … some bigger thing.”
I consider this, then shake my head. “No, I don’t think she would.”
“Why not?”
I wait to answer, doing with my body the opposite of what Jeremy is doing with his: curling my arms around my legs, making myself small, resting my chin on my knees. I look at my feet. “I haven’t given her any reason to make something up. She’d only have to do that if I insisted on knowing, if I asked questions, and I haven’t. I made up a lie so that I wouldn’t have to ask her, so that the truth wouldn’t even matter.” I look up at Jeremy. “Plus, I don’t think she’d want to lie to me about it. I think she’d prefer this to having told me a lie.”
Jeremy leans forward, considering what I’ve said. “There’s something kind of nice about that—your mom not wanting to lie to you.”
I nod. “I know. But I need to know the truth now.”
“I understand. I’ll help you, if I can.”
I smile. “I know you will.”
Jeremy sits back again. “Thank you for telling me. I’m glad you feel like … I don’t know, that you can trust me.”
And Jeremy and I smile at each other, and finally I’m able to pick up my physics textbook and complete the problem I’d been staring at for so long. We work for the rest of the day, and Jeremy says he’ll take me out to celebrate