All Of Me

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 9

In The 216.

Cleveland is the first city I’ve visited since we left New York. Actually, it’s the first real city I’ve ever been to outside of the one that raised me. Sure, Mom and I have been to Poughkeepsie a couple times and once Dad took me to Middletown for a weekend away, but they didn’t even come close to comparing.

Nowhere else I’ve been in my life has had even a fraction of the buzz of New York City, the constant thrum of life and the busy streets and the people. It’s only since leaving that I’ve come to realize I’m not the city girl I always thought I was. It’s all I’ve ever known, but it’s not who I am.

I love the quiet. I love the stretches of green and the clear water and the friendly neighbors. All I miss about my old city is its familiarity. I didn’t leave behind any friends and my memories are locked away inside my mind, and out here I can sleep in a way I never really did in Queens. There was always something to disturb me.

The tourists have the right idea, condensing the best of the city into a few days. There are a million things they miss out on, but they’re the same things everyone loves about wherever they’re from: the insider knowledge, from hidden alleyways and underrated restaurants to the quickest route across town. Wherever the tourists go, they see the best of each city because that’s what they want to see. 6

Kris knows Cleveland inside-out. He’s lived here for eight years: he’s a local by now, his head filled with the kind of facts I still know about Queens, facts that it didn’t take long to learn about Five Oaks. Once Mom has calmed down with a cup of tea and a moment with the only person who knew Dad for as long as her, we head out to enjoy the day.

Cleveland may not be big – the city feels walkable and Kris insists that a lot of it is – but it has soul. As we wander down Euclid Avenue, stopping every now and then so I can snap a touristic photo, I can feel the city’s heart. It’s nothing like what I’ve come to expect of a city.

No-one is rushing past me, pounding down the sidewalk like there’s always somewhere better to be. Here, people are strolling, slow and casual, enjoying the journey rather than wasting the way in pursuit of the destination. Maybe it’s just because it’s Saturday, but I can’t feel the pressure I’ve come to associate with city life. 4

Kris laughs when I stop again to take a picture of the sign that welcomes us to Playhouse Square, and he launches into the history as though he’s an actor reciting lines. He’d make an amazing tour guide: his brain’s like a sponge, soaking everything up and holding onto it until he needs to use it.

“You know, after Broadway, this is the biggest theater district in the whole country and we get some amazing theater here,” he says as we walk through the square. “I saw Hamilton here a couple months ago, and I caught Leslie Odom Jr’s jazz.” 41

A flicker of jealousy courses through me, immediately followed by the churn of my stomach that comes with guilt. I want to live here. I want to see those shows. I want this city. Kris tried to persuade Mom to move here when we started talking about leaving Queens, but we couldn’t afford it and she refused his help. At the time I didn’t care. I didn’t want to leave. 3

But if I called Cleveland home, I never would have met Gray and it takes a special kind of person to be a soulmate: he’s one in seven billion. I already can’t imagine life without him and something tells me that even if I was happy in the city, there’d be something missing. A best-friend-sized hole. 7

And, I tell myself as I reason with the envy in my mind, I’m only ninety minutes away. I can hop in my car any day I have free and I can be here before lunch. As we circle back down Prospect Avenue towards Tower City Center, the sun shines on my cheeks and under its warm glow, I shed the negativity that plagues my mind.

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I love Five Oaks. I never thought that would happen but the town has snuck up on me and stolen my heart. 15

• • •

It’s a novelty not to drive. Aside from the handful of times Tad has driven us to the beach or to the Walmart five miles away, I’ve been the one behind the wheel almost every day for two years, but Kris has a car and an annoyingly good picture on his license. It’s actually nice to get into the backseat and rest my head against the window, watching the world go by as he drives us to University Circle. 17

“It’s, like, a culture hub,” he says, one hand gesticulating as he drives. “I love coming up here on the weekend. It’s only a few miles away but it feels like a different place.”

I don’t know where we’re going when we get there. All Kris said was that he wanted to give us a taste of his favourite parts of the city, showing off the best it has to offer so it’ll be easier to persuade us to come back. I hate myself for not thinking of Kris more. It’s easy to forget when he’s always been so far away, but he knew Dad for twenty-five years; he lived with him for seventeen. 2

Kris was in Seattle when Mom called that night. He went straight to the airport and got the first flight out, though not without being quizzed for his name and his urgency, his last-minute ticket. If the TSA hadn’t held him up then he could have been with us two hours earlier, but Krisztián Császár had a couple too many Zs, a couple too many accents; he was a little too upset. 33

He stayed for as long as he could, but it could never have been long enough.

I zone out for the fifteen-minute drive. My head bumps against the window, uncomfortable but strangely reassuring, a sensation I never get to feel any more. I don’t hear a word Mom and Kris say but I notice when they slip into Hungarian.

It’s the only language Mom knew until she came here, the only one Kris knew until he was almost five, and it wasn’t until they met Dad when Mom was twenty that she learnt more than the bare bones of English. Kris may not remember growing up in Hungary but he holds onto his mother tongue; he and Mom have a special connection that way.

She may be fluent, undetectably foreign, but every now and then she’ll stumble across a word that doesn’t translate so neatly. After we began talking about moving, she mentioned elvágyódás, a word I had heard Kris mention before he left home. I assumed it was some kind of wanderlust, but it wasn’t so romantic. She didn’t have the desire to travel. She just had the urge to get away from where we were. 3

Only now, as my mind wanders, do I realize she once taught me the word for the feeling I know I’d have if I had never met Gray. Hiányérzet. She used it to describe a book she had just finished: something was missing, she just knew it, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

As I’m toying with the syllables, spelling out the word in my head and silently wrapping my lips around the letters that have stamped themselves across the forefront of my thoughts, the car comes to a stop. My head stops rattling. Like a dryer at the end of a cycle, the letters are clothes, and they drop when the drum stops spinning. 12

We’re at the botanical gardens. I know that before I see the sign. There’s no mistaking the glass panels, the tropical plants that stretch towards the light, the acres that lie beyond the building we’re parked outside.

“My favourite place in the whole city,” Kris says.

A bud begins to blossom in my chest, the slow spread of a strange sense of serenity. I feel like I understand before we even step through the doors and once we do, I tune out Mom’s protests that Kris already bought the tickets, and I bask in the heat of the glasshouse. 1

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I’m whisked away to the spiky desert of Madagascar and Costa Rica’s lush rainforest sits just beyond. A bright butterfly floats right before my eyes and takes my breath away. My eyes are overwhelmed by how much there is to see. I’ve never been anywhere like this before. I don’t want to miss a thing. 3

Mom and Kris are walking a couple paces ahead. They turn around when I laugh, two pairs of eyebrows furrowing their confusion at me. I feel like I’m in a storybook, zapped back to being a child again when a chameleon catches me by surprise and a laugh spills out of me. It stares right at me as I take a photo, before it darts behind a spiny tree, the trunk spiked all the way up.

I catch up with the two of them as we head through the Costa Rican forestry and when I slip my hand into Mom’s, she squeezes my fingers and rests her cheek against my temple for just a second without interrupting the flow of her speech. The bud in my heart is blooming now, a bright flower erupting where there used to be thorns.

I’m not that big on close contact but Mom has always been an exception to that. She never lets go of my hand as we revel in Kris’s narration and I don’t care if I’m too old to hold my mom’s hand. I don’t think such an age exists. Mom says that all the time. 30

Each year on my grandmother’s birthday, Mom says she wishes she could hold her mother’s hand one more time. She’s been gone thirty years, since the day Kris was born. 16

• • •

The sun’s out in full force and the glasshouse only exacerbated that, so it’s a relief to step outside into the breeze and then the shade, when Kris leads us to the woodland gardens with a brilliant beam. He’s happy to see us, that much is clear. He’s excited to show off his city, and even in the midst of his direction, I can’t wait for it.

“I’ve lived here for eight years,” he says as we reach the cover of trees that stretch over our heads, “and every single time I come here – and that’s quite a lot – I find something I never saw before.” He nods at a statue hidden amongst the shrubbery, just the hint of stone poking out from the leaves.

“You’re so lucky to have this nearby,” I say as I fill my camera roll with what feels like a thousand photos of every color, every plant. “This is amazing.”

“I’ve been telling you for years!” He chuckles and bumps against me before he puts his arm around my shoulders and lets out a sigh. “I can’t believe it’s taken you guys eight years to come see the city.”

Not to see him. To see the city, he says. We never went to see him; he always came to see us. I know he and Mom fought about it once. He was trying to persuade us to come out and she said we couldn’t: we had the store, and we couldn’t afford to shut it up and buy three plane tickets.

It was true. Kris tried to pay but she refused. Mom’s crazy stubborn. She used to be, anyway. But back then, she had never left New York either. She played it off as a moral issue but really, she was just scared. I see that side a lot more now, but I’m starting to see it’s always been there.

The woodland garden is littered with secret bridges and hidden statues, treehouses nestled away amongst the foliage. I’m struck by a sense of magical awe as Kris leads us into the acoustic canopy, a musical treehouse, and I’m in heaven when he takes us to a hut that branches off the boardwalk, slats in the walls filled with books. 4

I could have stayed there forever. We spend nearly three hours exploring the eleven gardens: Mom gushes over the Japanese garden and gets Kris to take a photo of us standing in the Roman arches in the butterfly garden. An old woman takes a picture of the three of us and when I look at it, it strikes me that Mom and Kris are my only family in the world.

There’s no-one left in Hungary. Mom and Kris’s parents are long dead, with no siblings of their own, and Dad was an only child too. He was devastated when his mother was killed by a drunk driver a few years ago and less than twenty-four hours later, his father dropped dead. Now Dad’s gone too, and the three of us are all that remain. 15

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I’d love to have more family, a sibling or cousins or even a doting grandmother or an aunt, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have to be the one who has kids if the family’s going to grow. I know Kris wants to get married eventually and I know he dreams of having children, but his job comes first: he hasn’t had a boyfriend in four years. 14

My stomach’s rumbling. I had a muffin when we got to Kris’s, warm and soft and fresh out of the oven, but that was hours ago. It’s past two already, and my body knows it. Mom’s too. She’s a grazer: she prefers to nibble throughout the day than to have three set meals. 13

“We should stop and grab something to eat,” she says, speaking my mind.

“We’re going to,” Kris said. He drives past his apartment and through the city, and he keeps going after we cross over the Cuyahoga River. “I’m gonna show you my top two Cleveland specialties, which just happen to be conveniently close.”

“To Cleveland? Because we’re kind of leaving,” I say. He laughs.

“To each other, pihentagyú,” he says, and I catch him roll his eyes at me in the rear-view mirror. Mom taught me that word when I was a kid – she used to use it towards Dad all the time, in the fondest way, to describe his tiresome jokes. Typical Dad humor, I guess. Someone who never gets tired of their own lame jokes.

But when I was older, Dad taught me another meaning. A pihentagyú is also someone whose brain works differently; they see things in a different light. He told me it was our special bond: his bad jokes and my different brain, reunited in a word. 5

Kris pulls up in a parking lot and pays before Mom has time to grab a handful of quarters, and he teases her when she grumbles. He’s very good at deflecting her mood or turning it around. He knows what to do when she’s down, whereas I just fall right after her.

“This,” Kris says as we approach an impressive red-brick building with huge windows and a tall clock tower, “is one of the top ten greatest public spaces in America, and my favourite place to shop.”

We cross the road and head down the side and I have to stop and take a photo of the massive lettering that spells out WEST SIDE MARKET along the roof, before my senses are assaulted by stall after stall of fresh food. Butchers and bakers and grocers fill the huge space and I feel like I’m in another world. 4

This is beyond deli. My mouth waters with each scent that hits me. I’m not much of a meat-eater, purely because of taste and texture, but the smell of spicy chorizo tempts me and I almost give in when Mom and Kris order a couple of bratwurst sandwiches, but I hold out for a pizza bagel from across the hall.

We eat as we go and I can’t resist the falafel from another stand while Mom indulges in a generous rice paper spring roll. As we leave, it’s hard to resist the creperie we pass, but I don’t regret it when we end up two minutes down the road at an ice cream place. 10

“Honest to God, Mitchell’s is the best ice cream I’ve had in my life,” Kris says as we join the line, “and they’re only in Cleveland. You’re not gonna find this magic any further out than Avon. It’s a real treat. Sit down; I’ll surprise you.” 6

I hate surprises. But I trust Kris. He knows my tastes. 1

Mom and I sit down. She has an easy air of happiness about her and it makes me feel a hundred pounds lighter, as though I’m floating weightlessly. Folding her arms on the table, she smiles at me and nudges my foot under the table.

“Hey,” she says.

I smile back. “Hey.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been at college a whole month already.”

“I know, right? It’s crazy.” I can’t believe it either. I thought it was going to be scarier than this, but I was planning for a freshman year without friendship, without any prospect of love.

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“I’m so proud,” Mom says. “I know I sound like a broken record, but I’m so proud of you, Storie. This move could have been hell, but I can’t tell you how much it has helped me to see you thriving.”

My smile grows. “Thanks, Mom.”

“I wish your father could see you now.”

“Me too.”

I wish he was here. We wouldn’t be here if he was here, though. But I wish he was. He’d love it. I glance up at the ceiling, as though I’ll catch a glimpse of him watching over me. I’m brought down to earth when my phone starts buzzing and Gray’s name pops up.

“Hold on a sec.” I excuse myself to answer the call, heading out into the heat with my phone against my ear. “Hello?”

“Hi, Storie,” Gray says, his voice as buoyant as ever. He’d make an amazing kids’ TV host. “Sorry to call but I dropped my phone and now I can’t seem to text you but I can call, so I just wanted to make sure everything’s ok. Is your mom alright?”

His concern feels like a welcome hug. I’ve never met someone who cares so much. “She’s good,” I tell him. “She’s a lot better. I think the weight of the date got to her.” I glance over my shoulder into the store. Mom’s talking to Kris, and she’s beaming. “She’s great. Thanks, Gray.”

“Anytime,” he say. I can hear the grin in his voice; I can picture that dimple in his cheek, the way he rakes his hand through his hair. It always flops right back. “I know how upset you get when that happens, and I know how upset your mom gets. I would’ve called earlier but I literally just woke up, like, twenty minutes ago.” 3

When I laugh, my head tilting back, I feel the sun on my skin. “Oh my God, Gray. It’s three o’clock.” 1

“Hey. In my defence, I drank last night.”

“A lot. And you got high.”

“Trust me, my body isn’t letting me forget that. Those frat guys are very persuasive.”

“Tell me about it.” I sigh. “So you’re ok? Everything’s alright back home?”

“Fine and dandy,” he says. “I think Dad and I are gonna head to the beach, probably just read. He refuses to do work on the weekend. Maybe I’ll persuade him to grab a milkshake on the way.” He hums to himself. “Yes. Decision made. Anyway, I didn’t want to disturb you or anything.”

“It’s fine, really. We’re just getting ice cream. Kris is raving about this place. Apparently, it’s the best he’s ever had.”

“Oh my God, if it isn’t Mitchell’s then your uncle’s a damn liar.” 2

“It’s Mitchell’s,” I say with a laugh. “Speaking of, I can see my ice cream and I want to taste it.” 2

“Storie! Go, oh my God! I never would’ve called if I knew I was getting in the way of ice cream. Go. Now. Enjoy. I’m hanging up.” 28

He sticks to his word. The line goes dead before I can say goodbye. I shake my head at his dramatics and head back inside but the tiniest flicker of a smile tries to creep back to the corners of my lips. Mom raises her eyebrows when she sees me and she swirls her finger in a circle around my face.

“I see that elmosolyodik,” she says. I used to think that just meant a smile, but over time I realized how crazy specific it is: it’s the kind of tiny hint of a smile. The start of a smile, the type that usually follows an eye-roll at Gray. 1

“Just Gray being Gray. He was just checking in after this morning.”

“What happened this morning?” Kris asks. He pushes across the most incredible-looking sundae.

Mom shakes her head. “Nothing. Just an episode,” she says. She never says I fainted. She can’t seem to acknowledge it like that.

“Nővér…”

“I was just stressed about today,” she says.

“You should go to the doctor.”

“I’ve been. A lot.”

“Go to the Cleveland Clinic. They’re one of the best in the country. They might be able to help.” 7

Mom’s about to protest but Kris cuts her off.

“Jen. Go. If there’s something wrong, they’ll find it. And if your insurance won’t cover it, I will.” He digs into his smoothie. “You can fight me all you like, but this is your health we’re talking about. Your life.” 6

He never calls her by her name. Her shoulders drop. She never gives in so easily and it sparks a flicker of fear in my stomach that it must mean she thinks her life’s at risk too. Spotting my expression, she gives me a smile.

“I’m fine. I’ve seen a million doctors. It’s just stress,” she says, and she turns to Kris to add, “but fine. I’ll go.”

“Thank you.” He passes her a sundae. “Now eat your ice cream.” 1

Mom quietly chuckles and tuts at him, rolling her eyes. We dig in at the same time. I can’t help but groan when rich, creamy ice cream hits my tongue and Kris grins: all he wanted was our approval.

“Amazing, right? That’s the Buckeye,” he says. “The ice cream is peanut butter chocolate chunk, with hot fudge and cream, grated chocolate, and a cherry.” 25

I pop the cherry into my mouth and lean against Kris, and Mom beams at both of us. It’s the smile of a proud parent. Kris may be her brother, but it’s impossible for her not to see him as her son. I don’t want this weekend to end. I want to indulge in his life, his city. Going back home tomorrow will be hard.

But I have Gray. And I guess I have Liam. Or, at least, I have his number, and I know he wants me to use it. 11