by Amber Smith
“I always thought I’d like to live out in the burbs. But this place is weird, isn’t it?” I try to laugh again, but it sounds too fake, too much like Mom, and certainly not a comment worthy of a response.
She shrugs, focusing her attention on the kids. A warm breeze blows a mist off the sprinkler and carries it across the street to where we sit. It hangs in the air just beyond the arc of the sprinkler’s reach, catching a rainbow in its invisible net. I watch her watching it, and I can almost see her eyes light up as they take in the spectrum of colors.
“Pretty, huh?” I offer.
She nods.
“It’s the water.”
Finally she turns her head to look at me, meeting my eyes for what feels like the first time in years.
“It’s like a prism,” I continue. “The ordinary light that we see all the time is white, but when the light passes through the water, it bends it, so all the colors that make up the white light get refracted and reflected out—that’s the rainbow. It’s the only way our eyes can see all the colors. But the really cool part is that it’s not actually there at all. It’s only an illusion created by our eyes and our brains. So even though we both see it, what I’m seeing doesn’t look the same as what you’re seeing because it’s not really, physically there.”
She looks back at the rainbow, thoughtfully, and smiles ever so slightly. Sometimes she appreciates my little anecdotes, sometimes not.
“Cool, huh?”
She nods again and lowers her eyes, studying her hands.
I try to wait, I hold out as long as I can, but—“Callie?” I begin, my voice trembling. She turns her head to look at me, a faint smile still lingering on her lips. “I want you to talk to me. Please. Tell me what I need to do to help you and I’ll do it.” I take her hand. She lets me. Maybe it’s the blue sky, or the rainbow, or the sun—that bright white light washing out all the shadows and the hiding places—that fills me with this desperate need for truth, this need to be honest, to speak, myself.
“I just—I can’t take this. This silence.” I hear my voice fracturing into individual syllables, the words breaking down like the sunlight passing through mist. Her hand suddenly goes slack in mine, her attention back to the rainbow still hovering in space.
“I mean, we need to stick together,” I continue. “We need to be there for each other right now. I know it’s scary—I’m scared too. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I tell her, no idea if she’s even listening. “Look,” I say more firmly, shaking her hand, trying to get her back. “I wish it had been me there that day and not you. I wish I could trade places with you, okay? But I can’t. And I need you. I need you to get better and . . .” I have to stop to catch my breath.
Her gaze seems to find some breach in the physical world, a resting place somewhere beyond the street and the kids and the house, the dog and the rainbow. I can see her only in profile, but I can tell she’s squinting like she’s trying not to cry, like maybe something I’m saying really is reaching her. This is the time. Now, I tell myself. I take a deep breath and ask what feels like the most important question in the world. “I need to know what happened, Callie. What did he do—what did he do to make her do it?”
It’s as if by knowing the actual chain of events that led up to it, maybe I can unravel this jumbled mess, untie all these knots, rewind it, start it over. Have it make sense. Even if I can’t make it end differently, if I can at least understand, then maybe other people will understand and then Mom will be able to come home.
“What really happened?” I continue, spurred on by this need that’s been harassing me for weeks. “I have to know, Callie. And you’re the only one—”
But before I can finish, she snatches her hand back. She stands. She’s walking away—seemingly all in one movement. The air goes still as I watch the shape of her receding down the street, that breeze falls dead and flat, the air sinks back into its own density. Across the street the rainbow vanishes as if it never even existed—and I suppose it didn’t really.
The dog barks once more, having sensed this shift taking place in the atmosphere.
I sit there by myself for a long time, feeling like something has disintegrated inside of me as well. I’m jostled by a sudden crack of thunder in the distance. The kids across the street scream and scatter. The dog jumps up and yelps, begging to be let inside. An enormous black cloud rolls in fast, like a tidal wave in the sky, blocking out the sun. I stand, and for a moment I can’t remember which way we came from. I pick a direction and start walking, the air around me taking form, like hands pushing me from behind, urging me to run. But before I can, the rain comes crashing down over me in heavy, sharp sheets.
No use running now. I’m caught.
STANDING STILL
I’M WEARING AN APRON and a baseball cap that says JACKIE’S on it, in case people stumble in and suddenly forget where they are. My ponytail sticks out through the hole in the back of my hat, making me look like some tragic softball team reject.
Jackie had the brilliant idea that I should work part-time at the shop, but I know it’s only a way to keep tabs on me, to make sure I’m not sleeping until noon every day.
I’ve been assembling pink cardboard pastry boxes for the last forty-three minutes.
Fold, bend, tuck, close. Repeat. Fold, bend, tuck, close. Repeat.
We haven’t had a customer in one hour and fifty-eight minutes.
Time is not warping, not jumping back and forth, not stalling, then speeding up. It’s standing still, like every clock in the world has broken simultaneously. Maybe standing still is simply what happens to time in a coffee shop/bakery in the middle of a weeklong streak of summer thunderstorms.
I don’t think we’ve spoken a word to each other in hours.
“Jackie,” I hear myself say, “can I ask you something?”
“Yes, of course,” she answers, holding her finger at a spot on the inventory sheet, pushing her glasses to the top of her head as she raises her eyes to look at me.
I try to frame the question in my mind first. “Where were you? I mean, why did you disappear? If you and Mom were really so close, why weren’t you around? We’ve lived, like, five minutes away this whole time.”
She lets her finger slide from its spot, tears suddenly flooding her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I admit, looking down at my hands in my lap. “I’m just trying to understand. I keep thinking, what if—”
“I know,” she interrupts. “I keep thinking What if too. What if we hadn’t lost touch? Could I have helped her get away from him sooner? I ask myself that every day.” She leans forward, propping herself up with her elbows on the counter. “You know, we were all best friends in high school. We grew up together—your mother, your father, me, my high school boyfriend—we were inseparable. Ally practically lived at my house when we were your age.”
“What happened, then?” I ask.
“They both had it rough, Brooke. I remember Paul would come to school with black eyes, cuts, scrapes, bruises, a broken nose once. Really bad stuff.” She inhales deeply and shakes her head.
“I never knew that,” I tell her.
“I guess I’m not surprised.” She comes out from behind the counter and sits on one of the stools opposite me. “Well, your mother could relate. Her father used to beat up on her mother right in front of her. And her mother, Caroline”—she says her name like it’s a bad word, and I wonder if she realizes that she’s also just described my mother—“she was a nightmare. Really. Pills, alcohol, basically criminally negligent, in my opinion.” Jackie looks up at me then and exhales before she continues. “I probably shouldn’t have been so hard on her at the funeral. She is still your grandmother, after all. I’m guessing you never heard any of this, either?”
I shake my head, wanting her to tell me more, but also afraid of knowing the real story of where I come from, for once not sure I want the whole truth, if there even is such a thing.
“Well, it can’t hurt to tell you
now, I suppose. Now that it seems everything’s out in the open.” She chokes out a small, nervous laugh. “They both had a lot of pain in their lives. I think they thought they’d be different from their parents—they were madly in love at one time, believe it or not. It’s almost like their pain took on a life of its own after so long. Until it was all they had left.”
She pulls a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall and dabs her eyes with it. I try to think of something to say but come up with nothing.
“Don’t think I didn’t try, Brooke. I promise you, I did. I told her to move in with me when Aaron was a baby. She told me I couldn’t understand. She forgave him somehow, made every excuse for him. It only started happening more and more, getting worse and worse. The more I tried to help, the more she pushed me away.”
“So you just gave up?” I ask, feeling the words beginning to collapse in my throat.
“No, of course not. I never gave up. She did. It got to the point where I would call, she wouldn’t answer. I would stop by, she’d pretend not to be there. Finally I told her I would back off, only because I thought maybe it was making it worse for her, but I let her know that I would always be here, that I would always be her best friend, and I would help her whenever she was ready. Except it was ten years before she ever called. And, well, here we are.”
“Here we are,” I repeat, looking around at the empty tables, so far away from everything I’ve ever known, far from all the things about my life I always hated, the things I only ever wanted to escape. I have the strongest urge to stand up and race for the door, to run through the rain, across the park, and down the block and up the stairs to home.
“Brooke,” she says more firmly, regaining her composure. “We can ask ourselves What if all day long, every day, for the rest of our lives, but I couldn’t help her because she couldn’t deal with the fact that she needed help. I’ve managed to stop blaming myself over the years. I hope someday you can too.”
I want to ask if she means that she hopes I can stop blaming her someday or stop blaming myself. But the tiny cowbell tied to the door with Christmas ribbon dings, interrupting us. A man walks in, shaking his umbrella off in the doorway.
“Hi there, I’ll be right with you,” Jackie calls out to him as she blots her eyes one last time.
I clear my throat and swallow hard, pushing those goddamn tears back down into the pit of my stomach—I imagine them being boiled away by acids and enzymes and chemicals. I refocus, with all my might, on the ever-important box assembly project.
I can’t sleep at all that night. The silver moonlight shining in through the window is keeping me up. “Callie?” I whisper. “Are you awake?”
I climb out of bed and tiptoe across the room to where Callie is lying on her side with her back facing me. I crawl in next to her and tap three times on her shoulder. She turns her head to squint at me for a second, then rolls back over. With my index finger I draw a big heart on her back, like she did to me that day at the pool. I wait for her to say something. But she doesn’t. She squirms and inches away from me, pulling the covers around her tighter.
As I lie here, staring at the ceiling, too tired to sleep, an old memory creeps in. It was sixth grade. I was at a sleepover. Cindy Irving’s birthday party. I was only invited because her mother invited all the girls in our class; everyone knew that. But somehow I managed to have a little bit of fun anyway. We made our own personal pizzas and watched movies and ate lots of junk food, and I got to play with her dog, which I liked.
When it got late, we scattered throughout Cindy’s living room. They had one of those foldout couch-beds, and so Cindy and three of her real friends slept there. There was a cluster of three more girls on an air mattress Cindy’s father had inflated earlier. They were all involved in their own conversations, so I rolled out my sleeping bag on the other side of the room, where I could get some sleep, away from their voices and the light emanating from their phones as they compared the selfies they’d been taking all night long. To my surprise, Monica B.—there were two Monicas in our class that year—came and laid her sleeping bag on the floor next to mine. She was kind of quiet like me, did well in school like me, and, I thought, maybe like me, wasn’t really invited. We hadn’t ever talked much in school, but I’d always liked her, always noticed her.
As an icebreaker, I told her that I liked her hair—she had it in one of those fishtail braids that I could never seem to figure out. She had me turn around and she explained the steps as her fingers worked through my hair. Back then, whenever I found myself with those crushing feelings I sometimes got, I figured it was because I wanted to be like those other girls, not be with them. At least, that’s what I always told myself. Until that moment—that small, innocent, sweet moment with Monica B.—that’s when I first knew it had to be something more. Maybe it was the way her fingers felt in my hair, or the way her smile seemed a little too tender, the way it lasted a little too long.
When we lay down, I showed her how Callie and I would write out messages to each other on our backs. I spelled out HI, then a smiley face, then THANKS.
But then she giggled. I’m not sure why, I guess it must’ve tickled her. The light flipped on and suddenly Cindy was standing over us, hands on her hips, this evil grin on her face. “What are you doing? Oh my God,” she snorted, “are you guys lesbos together?”
Monica B. looked at me, and for a moment I thought we were going to stick together, tell those little assholes off, and agree to form our own lunch table at school on Monday. But that’s not what happened. Monica jumped up and, taking on the same exact tone as Cindy, said, “Oh my God! Ew, no—gross.” And everyone started laughing before I could say anything, not that I would’ve known what to say had I been given the chance.
I called home. I told Mom that I didn’t feel good, I begged her to ask Dad to pick me up, risking any argument that conversation might cause between them. I had never wanted to go home so badly in my entire life. I stood outside on the front steps by myself and I ran my fingers through the braid, unraveling it strand by strand while I waited for Dad to pick me up.
When he arrived in the patrol car, having just gotten off duty, all he said was, “Hi.”
I said “Hi” back.
He said, “Buckle up,” and that was the end of it. I was grateful he didn’t make a big deal about it or demand to know what had happened. Maybe he knew somehow that it was too humiliating to discuss, that there was nothing to be done about it anyway.
By Monday I’d gone from invisible geek to the rumor mill, and Monica B. was suddenly one of Cindy’s minions. Needless to say, I was never invited to another slumber party.
I jerk awake, my body half falling out of Callie’s bed. It’s darker now, the moon having shifted its position in the sky. I make my way over to the other side of the room and lie down in my bed again, though I know it will never really be my bed. As I close my eyes, I vow never to think about braids, or Dad, or that night I missed home so bad I would’ve done anything to get back there, again.
CEASE-FIRE
IT’S BEEN NEARLY EIGHT weeks since I walked up these stairs. The third step creaks, as it always has. My hand slides easily along the well-worn molded wooden banister, like it has a million times before. I pass by the doors of the neighbors I’ve lived next to, side by side, for my entire life, trying to be as quiet as possible as I approach the door to our apartment. I put my key into the lock and turn, the familiar metal-on-metal rumble, the sound of the tumblers clicking into place—something inside of me clicking into place.
I push the door open a crack and a thin line of light spills out into the hall. I let the door swing all the way open, the old hinges squealing as it hits the wall with a dull thud and bounces back toward me. I quickly survey the room before stepping inside. After the cops had collected and documented everything, Jackie arranged for a special crime scene cleaning company to come and scrub the place down. As I take one step inside, I’m assaulted by the smells of strong, toxic chemicals
unsuccessfully masked with potpourri-scented air fresheners, all being circulated and recirculated through the stuffy, overheated, oversaturated, used-up air. I walk across the living room and throw open the entire row of windows that line the front wall. The room seems to inhale deeply and exhale, the curtains sucked in, then blown back out.
I walk the perimeter of each room, examining its contents—was that ceramic vase always there on that end table? What about that stack of magazines sitting on the bottom level of the coffee table? Surely the pictures on the shelf above the couch have been rearranged. But no. Everything is as it always was. The same with my bedroom, formerly Aaron’s room. And Callie’s room—formerly my room too—everything looks the same. Our old bookcase in its old spot in the corner, our globe sitting on the top shelf like it used to. I walk over and give it a small spin, but it’s barely enough force for even one revolution.
I move on to my parents’ room. The door is closed as always, off-limits to us. Anytime I was in their bedroom for any reason I felt like I was in a museum—nothing was to be touched or moved or even looked at for too long.
The metal doorknob feels cool and slick in my hand. I hesitate but then turn it slowly. As I push their door open, the air that rushes out is of a different quality than the rest of the apartment, like it was somehow spared from chemical contamination, the air still fresh and many degrees cooler.
I step inside and am immediately engulfed by the scent of my mother—something like citrus and flowers, though not quite—rushing over me and around me and through me. It’s just as comforting as it is agonizing. As I go one step farther, though, it hits me like a wall. Dad. Sandalwood and eucalyptus and spice, the combination of mysterious products he used daily, aftershave and soap and shampoo, obsessive as he always was with the appearance of order and cleanliness in all things. Unmistakably here, dense yet invisible—a ghost stopping me in my tracks.