nine

           “I hate rain,” Charlie declared suddenly, watching as the water dripped down the windowpane.

           “Charles, hate is a rather strong word, don’t you think?” my mom backhandedly criticized his word choice.

           Charlie flipped to the next page of his book, even though he hadn’t actually read anything for an hour. “Yeah, I guess,” he shrugged, “but it’s rain, Hillary. How you can you not hate it?”

           “I don’t hate rain,” I said, glancing up from my own book to view Charlie’s reaction. Sometimes I did that—said stuff just for the heck of disagreeing with Charlie. I came from a family of lawyers. It was in my blood to argue.

           “Well, that’s because you’re weird, Will,” Charlie told me resolutely.

           “Charles,” warned my dad in a stern tone.

           It was Charlie’s turn to defend himself: “What, Rob? I could’ve used a much more severe adjective! You should be happy that I didn’t call him queer—I almost did, but I didn’t!”

           “Your brother is not queer, Charles,” my mom informed him. I smiled at Charlie smugly, glad that my parents were taking my side for once. But then my mother decided to tack on a modifier that was even worse than queer: “He’s just sensitive.”

           Ah, yes. The Big S. Sensitive. Charlie was athletic and the perfectly blunt and direct son who my dad occasionally took hunting, and I was the sensitive one who stayed back at the house with my mom and read books. Except sometimes I got to go golfing, because that was a thing that “sensitive” boys did. My parents had this perception of Charlie as the strong one who was always goofing around. And then when it came to me, I was the serious one who cried when a girl didn’t like me back instead of going to hook up with her best friend as retaliation (as Charlie sporadically did). I didn’t, actually, cry, but because I was the “sensitive” one, my parents thought that I was really in touch with my emotions. I wasn’t. I just liked to think a lot. Charlie didn’t think. He just did. I was the thinker; he was the doer. And unfortunately, I was also branded the “sensitive” one. Shit, even the word made me want to puke.

           “You’re totally right, Mom,” Charlie said agreeably with a nod of his head, “Will’s just sensitive.”

           “I’m being victimized, so I’m going to leave,” I declared, taking my book and plodding over to the door.

           “Will, you’re being melodramatic,” my mom sighed. “Sit back down.”

           I didn’t say another word and just left the room. In all fairness, I had spent the past two hours in there with them, so it wasn’t like I was ditching Family Time after ten minutes. I paid my dues, and now I could leave. So when I came to the main corridor of the house (we were all bonding it up in the reading room), I headed for the stairs, but then stopped when I heard the ringing of the doorbell. And because I was right there, I went up to the front door and opened it.

           Standing beneath the awning with an umbrella in her hand and rain boots on her feet was a very soaked girl who went by the name of Lilah Tov. She wore a sheepish smile and greeted me with a, “Hiya, Will! Lovely weather we’re having, don’t you agree?”

           “Uh, come on in,” I invited, because I couldn’t stand to see Lilah standing outside with the treacherous rain as a backdrop.

           “Oh, no, no,” she declined, shaking her head, “I actually came over to ask if you wanted to come…out, I guess.”

           I gulped. “Err…What?”

           “Okay, so basically, Eden and Asher ditched me with their kids for the day, because they’re going to some benefit or whatever, and now it’s raining, and I don’t really feel like being in an old house alone with two kids.” I couldn’t blame her. It was nothing personal, but the prospect of being alone in the Greens’ aging house with rain pouring down and two kids to watch didn’t sound too appealing. “So, what I guess I’m asking, Will, is if you want to come over and help?”

           I was about to say that I would, but then something occurred to me: “Lilah, if you’re over here, then who’s watching the kids?”

           “Oh, they practically watch themselves. Right now they’re eating. I said I’d be right back. I can’t imagine that Jake will find a set of matches and a hankering for pyromania in the time that I’m gone,” she joked, but I didn’t really find the situation to be joking matter. I had babysat cousins in the past. It wasn’t my calling in life by any means, but I at least knew that Babysitting 101 was to not leave the kids alone, as Lilah had so expertly done.

           In a bit of a panic, I then rushed over to the nearest coat closet and grabbed a raincoat. I was pretty sure that it was one of Charlie’s old ones, but right now I didn’t care. After throwing it on and utilizing the hood, I exited my house and gave Lilah her answer: yes, I would help. So under the armor of Lilah’s purple umbrella, we made the trip over to the Greens’ house, all the while stepping on muddied ground. By the time we actually reached my neighbors’ home, my flip-flops and feet were drenched in water and dirt. Lilah didn’t have a hood on, so despite the overhead protection, her hair still managed to get wet.

           When we reached the front porch, Lilah tossed down the umbrella and then took off her boots. She instructed me to do the same (take off my shoes, that was), and then I did so, also peeling off my jacket, because it was sodden with rainwater. And then we entered the house.

           The first thing I noticed wasn’t how homey the place felt in comparison to my house, nor was it the freshly baked sugary smell, or even how timeworn everything seemed. No, what I noted first was the distinct screams coming from a room beyond. It was Sara. Sara was shrieking her head off like a banshee, and Lilah didn’t appear too concerned about the noise. Though I was totally into her, I wasn’t exactly ready to hand off my future kids to Lilah Tov.

           “Shouldn’t you go see if she’s hurt?” I wondered, nervously peering around the kitchen—it was the first room you entered when you came into the Greens’ house.

           “She’s fine,” Lilah assured me, casually meandering over to the threshold of the next room. “Jake is probably just being a butthead.”

           I followed her into the next room over—the family/TV room—and sure enough, there was Jake, being a butthead. He was holding one of Sara’s dolls in one hand and in the other there were a pair of scissors. The scissors loomed right over the dolls’ long, synthetic hair, and with every millimeter that Jake moved the sheers, Sara’s shrieks intensified.

           Lilah went right into action and snatched both the cutting tool and doll from Jake’s grasp. She gave the doll to Sara (who hugged it tightly and stopped screaming) and put the scissors on a high shelf of a bookcase, where Jake was unable to retrieve them. “What the heck was that, Jake?” demanded Lilah. “I left you alone for literally five minutes, and instead of eating your instant mac & cheese—which I worked very hard on, by the way—you decide to torment your sister?”

           “She said that she didn’t want to watch Power Rangers later,” was Jake’s best defense. But it wasn’t enough to hold up in a courtroom, meaning that it certainly didn’t slide with Judge Lilah, either.

           Lilah kept her voice restrained, but it still went up a wavering octave: “So you almost gave her doll a haircut?”

           Jake recognized that he was being reprimanded and that this could only end poorly for him, so he didn’t say anything. It was a risky move, as pleading the fifth often was, but this somehow seemed to work in his favor.

           She could’ve sent him to his room or taken away his Nintendo. But instead, Lilah took Jake’s silence as sign of remorse, so appropriately punished him with, “Say sorry to your sister, promise to never do it again, and then we’re watching whatever movie Sara wants. Understood?”

           “Yes,” sighed Jake. “I’m sorry, Sara. I won’t try to cut your doll’s hair again.”

           “Her name is Booba,” Sara said firmly.

           I couldn’t help but let out an immature laugh at the doll’s name.

           Lilah elbowed me in the side, and then said, “It means ‘doll,’ moron.”

           “Oh,” I grumbled.

           Jake then amended his apology: “I won’t try to cut Booba’s hair again…unless she asks me to.”

           “Jacob Green!” Lilah threatened his name without tacking on an actual threat.

           “Fine! I won’t try to cut it! Okay!” Jake said, exasperated. “Gosh!” He stomped over to an armchair and sat down, overlapping his arms across his chest as he mutely sulked.

           Lilah then asked Sara what movie she wanted to watch. Without missing a beat, Sara said Sleeping Beauty. So Lilah went over to the TV in the corner of the room and then pressed some buttons. After a few unfastforwardable commercials, the main menu appeared. Lilah hit play, and then the movie began. Everyone seemed happy. Except for Jake. And Lilah, who seemed to not really be too into Sleeping Beauty. But otherwise, Sara and I were just dandy. Sara was enrapt by the storybook telling of the tale, and I was just happy to be in the same room as Lilah Tov.

           Sara was sitting on the floor, amidst a clump of her dolls and their little clothes and their little shoes and their little cars and these dolls seriously had everything. Like, I was pretty sure that one of them even had a plastic cellphone in her hand. I never played with dolls when I was younger—like, not even action figures—because my parents loved gender norms and wanted their little boy to grow up “normally,” so I played with whiffle balls and model cars. Despite my heteronormative upbringing, though, I still somehow ended up being the “sensitive” one in the family. Whatever. Sara’s dolls had a ton of shit that dolls probably shouldn’t have had, but she was having a blast with her dolls and their cellphones and Sleeping Beauty.

           As for Lilah and me, well, we sat on a sofa. In front of us was the television screen and behind that were some windows. I was focused on the glass barriers, rather than the Disney creation, for I found the oncoming rain to be more intriguing. There was something about the rain that I liked. Maybe it was seeing the droplets drip and knowing that while inside, I was impervious. Or perhaps it had something to do with the simple element of water itself. Regardless of the reason, I liked watching the rain.

           “Geshem,” Lilah said, shifting on the couch so that she was closer to me.

           I sat up straighter and stiffer and tried not to move a muscle. “What?”

           “Geshem,” she reiterated. “‘Rain,’ Will.” Geshem. I liked the sound of it. It was a little too happy to epitomize rain, but maybe wherever the heck that language was used, rain was a positive thing—not a damper. Here, in the US, rain wasn’t always a good thing. It just kind of sucked and was one of those things that one occasionally had to deal with. The word itself (“rain”) was the kind of word that wasn’t meant to be said with a smile. But “geshem,” hell, that was the type of thing that exclamation points were made for. It was a happy word, even though rain wasn’t supposed to be happy.

           “It sounds happy,” I commented my thoughts.

           “That’s because it is,” Lilah said. “In, like, Israel they barely get any rain, but they need it for the crops and all that, so when they do get geshem, it’s, like, almost equivalent to winning the Super Bowl. Everyone’s happy.”

           “And that’s in, uh, Hebrew?” I questioned.

           “Yeah.”

           “What’s the deal with that?”

           Lilah inched nearer to me. “With what, Will?”

           “Uh, Hebrew. Are you, like, fluent?”

           “I guess,” she said slowly.

           “Oh, uh, that’s pretty cool.”

           Lilah was about to respond but was then interrupted by a boom of thunder and it’s partner in crime, Lighting. She jumped up and closed the entire gap of inches that previously separated us. Now, Lilah Tov’s body was molded to mine. She was practically sitting in my lap, except for, like, the fact that she wasn’t. Her back was pressed to my chest and her head lay on my shoulder. I didn’t move a muscle, wondering if she had intentionally moved over to me under the guise of thunder or if she was actually scared. Lilah didn’t seem like the type to be scared. But then again, she also didn’t seem like the type to do a lot of things—like intentionally move over to me.

           Another round of thunder and lightning’s tag teaming occurred, and this time it both disturbed Sara’s movie watching and Lilah’s position. Sara squealed, hugging her dolls close, and then she went on continuing to watch the animated love story. As for Lilah, well, Lilah jolted at the spurt of electricity paired with the roaring sky, and she ended up grabbing my hand and squeezing it with hers. I let her take my hand, inhaled deeply as she somehow managed to press us even closer together, and just tried to focus on the rain. It was steady and unforgiving and constant and unrelenting. But it was also just water.

           “Jesus, Will,” Lilah mumbled after a while of me awkwardly trying to forget that we were touching. But, like, she was right on me, so that was essentially a lost cause. I couldn’t forget about Lilah Tov, even if I tried. “You really can’t take a hint, can you?”

           “Uh, err, what?” I sputtered.

           Lilah didn’t respond, but instead wrapped my arm that was attached to my hand that she was currently holding over her shoulder. So now I had my arm draped over and we were holding hands. Solid. So she said, “You’re really bad at making moves on your own, aren’t you, Will?”

           “Actually, I’m totally capable of making moves on my own, just not with you,” I almost said, but instead I settled on a halfhearted, “Depends on the day.”

           “Because most guys would’ve totally down the classic yawn and stretch thing,” she informed me. “And I know that I should be okay with having to force you into it because of feminism and how stupid chivalry is, but, like, c’mon, Will! You’ve gotta give a little!”

           “Shhhh!” Sara said, turning back to us and then pointing at the TV. Evidently, we were being too loud, so now Sara wasn’t able to adequately enjoy Sleeping Beauty.

           “I’m not big on making moves, Lilah,” I told her in an assuaged tone.

           “So I’ve noticed,” she muttered. “It really drives me crazy, Will.” To that, I had two responses. No.1: good. It should have driven her crazy. That was the point. By my passiveness and lack of movement, that was grounds for Lilah to step in and make the moves when she wanted to and felt it appropriate. And No.2: false. This was all technical and shit, but nothing could drive a person crazy. Well, maybe that wasn’t necessarily true, but “crazy” certainly wasn’t a medical term, and just Lilah claiming that me not making moves had driven her to a state of craziness was absolutely absurd. Lilah may or may not have had issues, but she wasn’t crazy. Like, I wasn’t a professional, so I didn’t know, but I had a pretty good gage on these types of things (being “sensitive” and all), and Lilah wasn’t crazy. At least, I thought she wasn’t.

           “Why?” I said in place of voicing my theories.

           “Because I keep dropping every hint I can think of, and you still do nothing!” she exclaimed.

           “Lilah, please be quiet!” hissed Sara.

           “I’m not the one making noise!” Lilah protested. “It’s Will.” It was, actually, Lilah, but she wanted to blame me, so I let her.

           I didn’t say or do anything for a long while. All I could think about were Lilah’s words, though I desperately wanted to contemplate something so much simpler—like the rain. Alas, I was left with the echo of her utterances, and I understood where she was coming from. She wanted me to make a move. But I wasn’t going to do that. Well, not yet, at least. When the time came, I would undoubtedly make some grand move that would put all moves to shame. Or maybe I would be a wuss and chicken out. But for now, if Lilah wanted to advance this budding association, it was up to her to steer the ship. I was just along for the ride, acting as merely an active passenger. Shit, that wasn’t a really good metaphor, and metaphors were things that I could handle (unlike Lilah) and I liked boats a lot, too, but even for me, that one sucked. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t a passenger on the metaphysical boat or whatever, but I was definitely there, not doing anything bold like adjusting the sails or something. Yeah. I was on that boat. But Lilah was currently the captain.

           My eyes flicked down to the girl by my side, and then I made a decision. With little effort, I reallocated my body so that I was more comfortable against the sofa, instead of sitting straight up like I had something up my ass. Along with this, Lilah was also forced to reposition. But I guided her so that instead of resting her head on my shoulder, it was my chest. My chin grazed the top of her head, and I almost started stroking her hair, but a piece of me just couldn’t do it. So I stayed like that and whispered, “Sorry,” even though there wasn’t one distinct thing for which I was apologizing.

           Lilah didn’t acknowledge my apology, or if she did, it was in the form of a new topic to converse: “What’s your favorite movie, Will? Actually, no, let me guess.”

           “Okay,” I agreed, “guess.”

           “It’s not a romance,” she decided, “and it’s not from this decade. Right?”

           “Right,” I affirmed.

           “Hmmmm… It’s probably a classic that everyone either has seen or has to see, and I would say Gatsby or something else with Leo in it, but those are too new. Is it action?”

           “Yeah.”

           “And people wear suits and use guns?”

           “Yep.”

           “Oh! I know what it is! Duh!”

           I glanced down at her and our eyes linked. “Okay, what is it?”

           “James Bond,” she declared triumphantly. But that wasn’t a real answer.

           So I said, “Which one?”

           And she said, “One with Daniel Craig?”

           “No.”

           “Rodger Moore?”

           “Nope.”

           “I’m so stupid,” but she wasn’t stupid, “it’s one with Sean Connery. Now, the real question, though, is which one… Give me a hint?” I opened my mouth to give her one, but then Lilah’s free hand (that wasn’t entwined with mine) covered it. “It’s Goldfinger!”

           I grinned, thinking fondly of the film. “Yeah, it is.”

           “Okay, now you have to guess what my favorite movie is.”

           “I don’t really want to.”

           “And I don’t really care. Guess!”

           So I guessed: “Goldfinger?”

           “No.”

           “Sleeping Beauty?”

           “No.”

           “Is it that one that girls like about the book thing?”

           “Mean Girls?”

           “No, the other one.”

           “The Notebook?”

           “Yeah, that.”

           “No.”

           “Is it from the nineties or two-thousands?”

           “No.”

           “Is it from the eighties?”

           “Yes.”

           “Shit. That’s not my era of expertise.”

           “Okay, well, it’s Heathers.”

           “I thought you wanted me to guess!” I disputed, though even if I had been given a fair chance, I would never come to that answer. When it came to movies, I was well versed in the classics and occasionally the Oscar nominees. But aside from The Breakfast Club (I didn’t really understand the hype behind it) and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I hadn’t really delved too deep into the filmography of the 80s. Which was why I had absolutely no clue what “Heathers” was.

           “Yeah, but that was getting boring. Have you seen it?”

           “No,” I shook my head.

           “Well,” Lilah said with a squeeze of my hand, “then I guess we’ll have to watch it.”

           With one more shhhhhhh! from Sara, I laughed, and mumbled, “I guess so.”