Stay With Me by Garret Freymann-Weyr Read Free Book Online

photographs.
    "It's not much," Da told me. "But they're now yours."
    If she took the trouble to leave me things, why wasn't I one of the people she saw in the few weeks before she did it? In the past month, I've had these bouts of ... well, of wanting to smack Rebecca right across the face. And then the stupidity of this thought or desire or whatever it is makes my head want to explode.
    I'm not mad she did it. It's more that by doing it, she became more of the person Da and Clare know. Less of the one I thought I did. I have to figure this out. If only I knew why she did this. Why would anyone do this? I mean, really.
    "In the bedroom?" Da asks. "Have you been in there?"
    "Yeah, yes, sure, of course," Clare says. "Door's open, bed's made. Go on, I'll keep Leila company."
    There's no mistaking my sister's grim satisfaction in sending Da into Rebecca's room. Da looks reluctant but walks off in that direction. I think that while Clare understands why Da is going away, she's not that happy with his decision. But I could be wrong, as she smiles at me in a real enough way.
    "The photographs are over there," she says, motioning to the windows. "I'm pretty sure those are the ones she meant for you to have."
    Three frames hang between the windows. Here they are: the lost hotels.
    "The two on the left are of the Barcelona one and the other is Alexandria."
    Hearing Clare say the city's name is like magic. She obviously knows far more about it than I do. Da always says that if his city had once belonged to the world, now it's just another part of Egypt. When he lived there, Alexandria was almost a part of Europe.
    Or, as Da would put it,
We made the mistake of believing it was.
In the years before he left, street and store names were changed from French, Italian, or Greek into Arabic. No one knew where anything was. They'd lost the city while still living in it. By now it has slipped away so thoroughly that even if I managed to go there, I wouldn't be at the place where he grew up.
    But Clare says its name as if it's still a tangible place. As if she knows it.
    "I thought these were yours," I say, looking away from the windows to the couch.
    "My copies are at my office," she says. "Rebecca always said you loved them."
    "Yes," I say, and then, testing what is possible, what is allowed, add, "It's more that I'm curious. About them."
    "Sure," Clare says. "Of course."
    "Do you know a lot?" I ask. "About when Da lived there."
    "Some," she says.
    "Do you know why they stayed so long?" I ask.
    That's the bit I always return to. Da's family left more than a year after almost every other Jewish family had cleared out. By the time Da got to Paris, his memories of Alexandria weren't all good.
    "I can guess," Clare says, smiling at Raphael, who has come back in to give me hot chocolate. "Uncle Jacques was buried there."
    "In the Jewish cemetery," I say to show that there are some things I know.
    "I think it must have been hard to leave him behind," Clare says.
    Jacques was my father's brother. The one who drowned. The one married to Aunt Ingrid. I look at Raphael, realizing that without the drowning he wouldn't be here. He's the result of a ruined love, just as I am. I wonder what else I'll figure out this year without even trying.
    "It's nice," I say, wincing at how lame the word is. "That you can both do this. Have me, you know."
    "It is," Raphael says. "It will be."
    "You'll have my room," Clare says. "I'm going to set something up in here. Don't worry."
    Which is not exactly saying that she thinks it'll be nice, but ... I definitely don't want to sleep in Rebecca's room. Clare's looking toward the narrow hallway where the bedrooms are, and we can hear the sound of voices. Gyula's up and talking to Da. They come in to the living room together.
    Gyula kisses both sides of my face and shakes Raphael's hand. Da hands me the bracelet and tells Clare he can't find the shawl.
    "We think it's being, how-do-you-say-it, dry-cleaned," Gyula says. "But