Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

Isabelle and Aaron exchange a look: Here they go. The twins melt into the crowd. They don’t want to witness what they’ve seen countless times before: their parents, with over twenty years of resentment built up, going at each other until her mother starts to cry and her father apologizes.

“Of course that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that today is Isabelle’s day and you should have—”

“What? Died? Because it’s her day?”

“Mommy, nobody said that.”

“Your father did — I just heard him.”

“Ruth, that is not at all what I said.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my ears!”

“Why do you persist in attributing to me things I never said, things I never in a million years would say?”

And they’re off. Only today Isabelle can’t take it. Isn’t it possible to put all this aside for one day? Her day. The day she’s so happy. Do they have to ruin it? Well, she won’t let them. She’ll flee the train wreck piling up in front of her. It feels very daring.

“When they stop fighting,” she says to Aaron, “tell them I’ll see you all later at the hotel.”

“You can’t leave.” Aaron is panicked. “It’ll only get worse if you leave.”

“See those steps over there, the ones in the shade? Go sit there and wait it out.”

Aaron doesn’t move. He looks wretched.

“I have a paper to turn in, A.”

“Can I come with you?”

“Not this time. I’ll see you later, okay?”

There’s no way out for him. Not now, not for another year, until he goes away to college and never comes back. “Okay,” he says finally, and Isabelle is gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

She pushes the guilt down, away, away from her just for today as she weaves through the milling families, recognizing somewhere inside her that she made the decision to leave without any of her habitual agonizing. Should she have stayed and mediated her parents’ argument? Should she have tried harder to head it off? Should she have stayed to protect Aaron, as she has countless times before? Should she have been a better daughter? Those questions would have trapped her into indecision if not for Daniel, who is waiting for her.

And then her eye is caught by a swirl of primary colors shimmering in the heat: Deepti’s extended family — her mother in a rose-colored sari shot through with gold thread, her older sister in shades of green and blue, Aunt Priya, the doctor, dressed in bright yellow silk. And in the middle, startling in contrast, is Deepti in her long black gown and tasseled cap. Her father, Ajay, stands proudly on the periphery of all these colorful women in his woven sandals and starched ocher shirt, content to watch them flutter around his beaming daughter.

“Isabelle!” Deepti calls to her, and the two roommates embrace. “We did it!”

“We did!” And suddenly, in that split second, Isabelle is overcome with a sense of loss. “I’m going to miss you so much!”

“I know. I know!”

“I won’t see you every day. How can that be?”

“You’ll visit me in the Bay Area. Promise me?”

“Of course I promise,” Isabelle says, because she wants it to be true — that she will take a trip to San Francisco sometime soon, even though the days and weeks past graduation are a fuzzy blur to her now.

And then she spots Nate and his parents and grandparents, Rose and Bernie, and a couple of aunts and uncles and their children, all of whom Isabelle knows. So many Litvaks have come out from Long Island for this. Isabelle waves to them over the heads of the people.

“I’ve got to go.” Isabelle gives Deepti one last hug, her eyes on the fast-approaching Nate as she takes off in the opposite direction. “I will come!” are the last words Deepti hears.

“Isabelle, wait!” Nate calls out.

“See you at dinner,” she shouts to him as she slips through the crowd and is lost from view. The last thing she wants to do now is acknowledge her connection to the whole Litvak clan.

—

THE WALK FROM THE AMPHITHEATER to Daniel’s house is quick and smooth. As soon as Isabelle is down the hill, the campus empties out, the way it does on any Saturday. And walking through the shaded groves of ancient oaks and eucalyptus feels good after all the hours of sitting in the sun. It’s only when the buzz of voices recedes and the quiet beauty of the Chandler campus reinstates itself that Isabelle can allow herself to realize that this is the last day she will walk these paths, see these buildings, live here…see Daniel.

She stops in front of Lathrop Hall and fixes it in her mind’s eye. Remember the twenty-seven steps you took every Tuesday. Remember the red tile roof and the elegant arch over the front door. Here is where your life changed, on the second floor, in that derelict office Daniel keeps for himself.

Something extraordinary happened, she knows it. Somehow Daniel guided her toward a vision of herself that is singular, unique, divorced from everyone else’s expectations — a writer. She has to let him know how grateful she is.

—

DANIEL HAS BEEN WAITING ALL WEEK. He really didn’t expect her on Wednesday, or even Thursday. He knew it would take longer than a day or two to rewrite the pages. But Friday he was at the living room window every few hours, and when she didn’t show up, he knew it had to be Saturday, even though Saturday was graduation. Sunday she was leaving with her parents, back to Long Island for a summer job in her father’s law firm, she’d told him. And then? She doesn’t know.

All morning he waited for her. Maybe she’d come with her pages before the ceremony. But she didn’t. So he knew that somehow she’d come after. And it is late afternoon and he is pacing in his living room and then he sees her, flying down his front path. She’s still wearing her long black robe, and it’s flapping open to reveal bare legs and sandals. She isn’t just coming to him, she is rushing toward him.

He opens the door and she sails through. “Daniel…Oh, Daniel…How can I go back to Long Island with them ? They’re already driving me crazy! My mother’s sure she has heatstroke and my father is yelling at her and the twins are mortified and Aaron, poor sweet Aaron, is beside himself and I left! Can you believe that? I ran off and left them all there to sort it out!”

“Good.” Daniel says this unequivocally, and it immediately calms her down.

She tosses her body into a living room chair and a small smile starts. “It is good, isn’t it?”

He nods. He knows something about dealing with selfish parents.

“If it had been any other day, I would have pleaded with them to stop arguing, begged my mother not to misunderstand, pushed my father to apologize…”

“Sounds exhausting,” Daniel says, his tone mild, neutral. He doesn’t want to encourage a conversation about her parents.

“Don’t you think they could have held it together for one day?”

“Apparently they didn’t want to.”

Apparently not. A sobering thought. She reaches into the pocket of her gown and takes out the much-folded eight rewritten pages and hands them to him.

“Come into the kitchen,” he says. “I have lemonade.”

“You do? You bought lemonade for me?”

“Yes. Well, Stefan did. I don’t go to the market.”

“Oh, right,” she says, and now she’s openly grinning, simply entirely happy to be here. “Did he get a job?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Wasn’t that part of the bargain?”

“It was.”

“Are you going to send him back?”

Daniel looks stunned. “No, of course not. He’s my son.”

In the kitchen he pours her a glass of cold lemonade and sits down at the kitchen table to read the pages. All the windows in the room are open to catch whatever breeze might be brave enough to come, and the door to the backyard stands open, as well. Isabelle walks to it as Daniel reads.