Chapter Fifty-One Maya

Chapter Fifty-One

Maya

May 2012

As the months passed, I became better able to tuck away our secret in a dark confine of my mind. The air warmed, the trees outside Nassau Hall filled with leaves, and classes went on as usual.

—

Eventually, I told Nate about that weekend. Well, brushing around the edges of what I’d done, of course. It felt wrong, not telling him the full truth, but if I told him about the drugs and my role in what happened to Lila, what would he think of me then?

On those warm weekends in May, Nate and I escaped to New York City, wandering around the Met, talking for hours in Central Park, and walking through the city until our feet hurt. He took me to a jazz bar in Harlem, an Italian restaurant in the Bronx. We drank beer on the Lower East Side, leafed through paperbacks in the West Village, and browsed flea markets in Chelsea. I felt safe with him there.

Of course, when we came back to campus, the protective cloud would dissipate, and my memories would crowd in—the cabin, the snowstorm, the sheet pulled over Lila’s body—and I’d be sick with guilt once again. What had we done? What had I done? Had I killed her by dispensing the drugs, or was my fear, my silence, allowing a guilty man to walk free?

Over the following months I grew obsessed with Professor DuPont. Knowing everything about him. Where he was, who he was with… maybe as a way to offload some of the shame. Though he’d stepped back from his involvement with Sterling after the Marsden scandal, he was still on campus—and being anywhere near him put me on edge, now that I knew his true nature.

My memory of Lila ran through everything: dewy spring mornings as I walked to class, afternoons curled by Nate’s side as he plucked out a few familiar chords on his guitar. Late at night, I’d whip around, convinced someone was standing there in the shadows. I’d see a flash of red hair disappear under an archway, hear the sound of her laugh floating through the halls, feel her watching me. For the rest of my time at Princeton and whenever I returned, she would be there. And so, too, would the guilt.

—

One day in May, when junior year was coming to a close, I was reading on my bed when I was startled by an urgent knock on the door. Cecily sprang into my room. She had to step over boxes and open suitcases spread out over the small floor to make her way to the bed. I was still finishing packing for the summer break.

“I have a brilliant idea,” she said, a grin spread over her face.

I looked up from my book. “Oh god, what is it?”

“Let’s fly your sister out for the summer, instead of you going back to her. She can stay at my brother’s place. I just talked to his wife, Margaret. They have more than enough rooms.”

Last week, I’d told Cecily how Naomi’s situation had gotten worse. The neighbor had gotten more involved. Twice, when my aunt Ella was at work late, social services had come to the house, asking questions.

I had to do something. I couldn’t lose Naomi to the state. If they took her, she’d end up with a foster family with a bunch of kids she didn’t know. Odds were that she’d be bullied and neglected, and I couldn’t let that happen.

I even considered turning down Fuller’s internship offer at Goldman Sachs to live with Naomi in California instead, to try and get the social worker off Aunt Ella’s back.

But when I told Cecily, she’d said, But you worked so hard to get that internship. You can’t turn it down. She offered to lend me enough money to help Naomi. It’s not a big deal, she’d insisted, but I’d been so flustered, I’d immediately said no.

“Wait,” I said to her now, “you want Naomi to live at your brother’s place? Just her and them? For the entire summer?” The idea was so unfathomable it hadn’t crossed my mind. Greenwich also didn’t seem like somewhere Naomi would feel comfortable.

“No, silly,” she said, hopping onto the bed, tucking one leg under her. “You and I would go too! You wouldn’t have to pay city rent while you work for Goldman, and you could be with your sister too.”

“I can’t—”

“I’ll pay for it. Her flight, her food. All of it,” she said, placing a hand on my knee. “Look, it’s just for the summer. My brother and his wife host me every year. They don’t have kids, and they like to have people in the house. The three of us would be a welcome addition and give them something to do other than play tennis and golf. Trust me. It’s perfect.”

—

I didn’t think too deeply about it. Naomi desperately needed a better situation, and this made sense. So Naomi, who was eleven at the time, flew by herself cross-country.

I was asking a flight attendant when the flight was expected to arrive when Naomi walked out with a backpack almost as big as she was. When she saw me, a huge grin spread over her face. I ran to her and threw my arms around her. “You made it!” I said, squeezing her tight, wondering how I’d left her with Aunt Ella for so long, and promising never to leave her again.

—

That summer in Greenwich was the best summer of my life. Cecily stayed there too, and Daisy and Kai visited often.

The days passed in a blur, too perfect to be real. We spent our days swimming in the saltwater pool, drinking frozen lemonade, and eating desserts, and our evenings reading by the fire or watching old movies and saying the lines out loud. Practical Magic was Naomi’s favorite, and for several days afterward, we pretended to be the witch sisters, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, making margaritas and dancing around the kitchen in our pajamas.

It was a strange and magical time. It felt wrong to be happy again, after what had happened. But, I reminded myself, I had done what I’d set out to do. I’d built a better life for Naomi.

—

As the day of her return flight approached, Naomi drew inward.

“Please don’t make me go back. I want to stay here with you forever,” she said, softly.

Her words brought tears to my eyes. I wanted her to stay here too, at least on the East Coast…There had to be a way.

Margaret and John had already been so generous to let us stay with them all summer. Margaret had taken us on trips into the city, showing us her favorite delis, buying us front-row seats at Broadway plays. She introduced us to the talented dancer Misty Copeland backstage after American Ballet Theatre’s Firebird, bought us clothes at vintage stores, and pointed out her favorite Vermeer painting at the Met. We’d laughed when Naomi had had her first taste of champagne at the “secret” bar, inhaled in surprise, and giggled as it came dripping out of her nose.

“Okay,” I said to Naomi.

She looked up. “Okay?”

I laughed at her shocked expression and took her hand. “You want to stay; we’ll find a way to make it happen.” I didn’t have a plan yet, but I couldn’t let her go back. I knew with Margaret’s help, and Cecily’s, we would make this work.

—

After we discussed the options, Margaret asked if it would be okay with me if she and John were to petition the court to be Naomi’s legal guardians for the year, just until I graduated in May.

“Naomi loves it here,” I told her, after accepting her offer, and she hugged me. “Thank you.”

—

Senior year came and went, and I visited Naomi in Greenwich often. She was happy, really happy. One Saturday in May, Margaret invited me over to the house. Naomi was in the backyard with her friends, practicing a dance they’d learned.

“We’re really looking forward to your graduation,” Margaret said. “Are you excited, love?”

“Very.” I tried to smile. I was excited, but I was also nervous. At the end of my internship last summer, Goldman Sachs had offered me a job in sales, but every day I showed up at the office, sat in my cubicle with the other interns, I felt myself slipping. They cared about investments and building their portfolio and it just wasn’t me. I felt like a fraud.

But if I quit, how would I support Naomi?

Margaret read my apprehension. “Everything all right?”

I sighed, set down my tea. “Yeah…I’m just nervous about being able to support Naomi on my own. And what if she’s not as happy with me as she is here…” My voice trailed off.

“It’s not something you have to decide right away,” Margaret said. “We love Naomi, and are happy to have her here as long as you need.”

She explained how she and John always wanted children but couldn’t have any of their own, how in that short year, Naomi had become like a daughter to them.

—

On the day of my commencement, the three of them stood in the crowd with so many flowers that the people next to them had to move over to give them extra room. While Margaret and Naomi had collected the flowers from Margaret’s garden, John had gone out and printed giant cutout heads of me, Cecily, Daisy, and Kai. When I received my diploma and looked out at the crowd, he and Naomi were holding them, bobbing the faces in the air as they cheered.

That night after graduation, we went back to Greenwich to celebrate.

Margaret had baked us a raspberry cake and let us eat it on paper plates while we swam in the pool.

“Push off with your legs and aim down!” Cecily said. I looked over at Naomi standing at the edge of the diving board, her arms held overhead. Our half-eaten slices of cake were scattered around the edge of the pool along with margaritas and champagne. “You ready?” Cecily shouted.

Naomi’s little face was scrunched in focus. “Ready!”

Cecily counted down. “Three! Two! One—”

Naomi sprang off the diving board, belly flopped onto the water with a loud slap, and surfaced seconds later, gasping for air and then bursting into giggles.

The moonlight was silvery and rippling over the surface of the water, the wet skin on Naomi’s cheeks sparkling with tiny droplets as she laughed, and for the first time in my life, I felt complete: I’d given Naomi the life she deserved. That was when I decided not to take over as Naomi’s guardian. She was happy here. For the time being, the best I could offer her was a couch bed in a studio apartment in an overcrowded city—that was nothing compared to this. She’d been through enough, and she deserved space to run and swim in a pool and be a kid.

As I watched her, I realized I had to accept that what my friends and I had done was in the past and couldn’t be changed. Trying to do anything about it now would ruin this life I’d built.

And for my sister’s happiness, I could do anything. I could live with our secret. I could hold it inside forever.