by Katrina Leno
Those nights and those summers felt as if they lasted forever, but in reality Magpie knew that Eryn would have been quickly growing up and out of the novelty of playing with her much younger sister. Soon she brought friends over. Soon Magpie was not invited into the pool anymore. But Magpie could not blame her sister, who was so grown-up even at twelve, thirteen, her hair cut into a bob that hugged her chin, her legs so long that they came up to her eyes, her laugh so contagious that random people would stop to look. Her sister had been magical.
You’re going to drown if you stay down there.
Magpie opened her eyes underwater. She was still sitting on the bottom of the pool, and her lungs were burning. She released her grip on the ladder and propelled herself upward. When her head broke the surface, she took a breath that physically hurt.
“Who said that?” she asked, and turned a wild circle in the pool, expecting to see her father again, uninvited and looking down at her.
But there was no one in the backyard.
She spun around again, but there was no one in the pool, then she dragged herself onto the swim platform for a better view, and still she couldn’t see anything.
Nothing was different at all. Except…
There was a folded towel on the swim platform.
Magpie hadn’t brought a towel outside with her; she’d forgotten. She knelt down and picked it up, unfolding it and holding her arms open to spread it out.
It was her sister’s old beach towel. The one she had dropped in Near. The one she hadn’t remembered dropping because she hadn’t remembered anything from her first visit until last night with Clare. The embroidered initials: ERL.
Magpie spun around a final time, slower.
The shed light was off.
The backyard was empty.
And a voice had spoken into her ear as clearly as…
But there hadn’t been anyone, of course. If someone really was in the backyard, she wouldn’t have been able to hear them underwater.
She let her arms fall. She considered the towel—how had it gotten here? Or maybe she hadn’t dropped it in Near at all? Maybe it had always been on the pool platform, folded neatly, waiting for her. Was she losing her mind?
“Get a grip,” she whispered to herself.
She looked at the shed. The light was off. In the late afternoon sun, it seemed ordinary, commonplace. But Magpie knew its secret. Magpie could open the door again. She could go back inside.
But not now. No, she couldn’t put it off any longer—because the phone had been ringing every twenty or thirty minutes since eight that morning, and she knew it was her mother; she knew without even looking at the caller ID. So she wrapped the towel around herself and went inside and took a shower and braided her hair and then rode her bicycle to the hospital.
Ann Marie was sitting up in bed, eating a colorless lump of something that might have been meatloaf, might have been lasagna. Magpie stood in the doorway and tried to be invisible. And it worked for a minute, then, of course, it didn’t.
“Magpie? Is that you?” her mother said. Her coloring had returned, her skin no longer the grayish-blue it had been when Magpie had last seen her. Her fingers shook as she lowered the fork to her tray and picked up a napkin to dab at the edges of her mouth. “Sweetheart?”
When was the last time her mother had called her sweetheart? When was the last time anyone had called her sweetheart?
Her sister, before she grew up and found yoga and stopped eating sugar, had called Magpie Little sometimes because she was so many years younger, because when she tried on her sister’s dresses they dragged on the floor and covered up her hands.
Little.
Sweetheart.
Magpie.
How many names could one girl possibly carry?
“I’m sorry I didn’t come yesterday,” Magpie said, stepping into the room, letting the full, sick glow of the overhead lights wash over her.
“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Ann Marie said. “You certainly don’t have to apologize for not coming to this terrible place.”
“It isn’t so bad. Look. No Jell-O.” Magpie pointed at her mother’s tray where, in lieu of Jell-O for dessert, there was an unopened package of rice pudding.
“I made a formal complaint,” Ann Marie said, and she tried to smile, but her smile turned quickly into a sort of grimace, and that turned quickly into a series of racking sobs that sent tremors through her thin body.
And Magpie made a decision to be the dutiful daughter, to do what she was supposed to (in case anybody was looking), so she rushed to her mother’s side and put her arms around her while she cried, stroking her hair and whispering things she hoped would calm her down.
Eventually, Ann Marie stopped crying, but she still clung to Magpie with a death grip, as if she knew Magpie was even then fighting everything in her body that was screaming at her to run, get out of there, crawl straight back to Near and never come back again.
(But could she? Could she go into another world and disappear forever?)
Magpie gently wiggled out of her mother’s arms and looked at her. Ann Marie’s face had gone all red and blotchy, and there were still stubborn tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.
Magpie almost felt bad for her, and then she didn’t, and then she tried to, because this was her mother and she ought to want her to feel happy and safe and well. But she only wanted her to stop sniffling. Which it didn’t seem like Ann Marie was going to manage in the foreseeable future.
“Here, finish your dinner,” Magpie said, and helpfully speared whatever wiggling gunk was on her mother’s plate with the fork. “You need to get your strength up.”
This was something she had heard before, in movies and TV shows—you need to get your strength up—and it seemed like good advice, all things considered.
Ann Marie opened her mouth, and Magpie airplaned the food in and thought about the reversal of roles, of the caregiver becoming the cared-for, of her mother getting older and older until she was back in diapers or else dead from drink before she got the chance to age.
They worked together to clear the plate of food, then Magpie swiveled the tray away from the bed, and Ann Marie looked as if she might cry again. She reached her hand out to the bouquet of flowers Magpie had bought for her with Ann Marie’s own money. Someone had put it into a vase. Ann Marie pressed a petal between her thumb and forefinger and hiccupped twice loudly.
“I’m so sorry for everything I’ve put you through,” she said.
Magpie wanted to say something along the lines of Hey, at least I didn’t walk in on you boning my uncle, but she didn’t think it was the right time for that. So she sat on the edge of Ann Marie’s hospital bed instead and tried to fix her face into something that resembled compassion.
“You don’t have to apologize to me.”
“Of course I do. I have so much to apologize for. I know that. I drove your father away and I drove your sister away and it’s a miracle I haven’t driven you away, too.”
And this interested Magpie, because it was the first time Ann Marie had hinted that her husband’s transgressions might be, in part, her fault.
“What do you mean, you drove Dad away?”
“Oh, there’s no excuse for what he did, so don’t think I’m giving him one,” Ann Marie clarified. “I just mean, I know I’m not blameless for the dissolution of my marriage.”
Magpie found herself wondering if this was the first time in six-plus months that she’d had a sober conversation with her mother. She remembered that Ann Marie, when not four or five drinks deep, was smart and thoughtful, and took the time to examine things from multiple angles. It was just like her to explore her own part in her husband’s adultery and ultimate betrayal.
But that word. “What do you mean dissolution?” Magpie asked.
Ann Marie withdrew her hand from the bouquet and tapped a manila folder of paperwork on her bedside table. “Apparently, six months of asking for forgiveness is about
as much as your father can take. And I don’t blame him, Magpie. I should have taken his call. I should have taken it if only to tell him I wasn’t going to take it, if you know what I mean.”
“What is that?”
“He came to see me. On Friday, then again this morning. We’ve had a long talk, and we both agree that it’s time to make it official.”
“To make what official?” Magpie asked, but she already knew, of course, and the icy feeling in the pit of her stomach confused her, because wasn’t this was she wanted? For her father to go away, to disappear?
“Your father and I are getting a divorce,” Ann Marie said.
There was silence for a number of heartbeats—at first Magpie counted, then she lost count, then she started counting again, then her mother had taken her hand and was squeezing it gently. “Magpie… do you know how to get in touch with your sister? There are things I need to say to her. To both of you.”
At the mention of her sister, Magpie looked up sharply, then shook her head. “Eryn changed her number. I’ve told you that.”
“I know, but I also know that she isn’t all that far away. I thought maybe you might have gone to the campus. I thought you might have tried to track her down. Your father—he says we need to give Eryn her space. And I agree with him, but… she’s my daughter. I should have tried to find her before now. I should have driven to the campus and looked in every open classroom until I found her.”
Magpie had never gone to Fairview College, not even before Eryn had left, not even though it was so close, not even though there was a bus that went right from Farther to the center of the campus. Eryn had always been too busy. Even before she had left, there had always been a million reasons why that weekend wouldn’t work, why that month was out of the question.
After Eryn had left, Magpie hadn’t even considered it. It would have felt so humiliating to beg her to come back.
Or because Magpie knew—she knew—that it would make no difference.
Eryn wouldn’t come back.
“It’s all right,” Ann Marie said after Magpie didn’t reply. “I just figured I’d check. She’s your sister, I never would have thought…”
That she’d leave me here to drown?
That was what Magpie wanted to say, but she didn’t get a chance to say it, but it was said anyway, in a breathless little voice that seemed to come from just behind her shoulder and from all around her at the same time. Magpie turned her head quickly—expecting Dr. Cho, maybe, or one of the nurses playing a practical joke—but there was no one there. Just like there had been no one there in the pool.
“Sweetheart?” Ann Marie asked, retightening her grip on Magpie’s hand.
“I didn’t—sorry—did you hear something?”
Ann Marie’s mouth settled into a thin line of annoyance. She looked past her daughter at the open door of the hallway. “The man across from me turns his TV up so loud. I’ve made several complaints.”
The relief of the easy explanation spread over Magpie, and she felt herself relax. “Yeah. It must have been the TV. Anyway, no—I haven’t heard from Eryn since she left. I don’t have any way of reaching her.”
Ann Marie nodded, as if that’s what she’d been expecting. “I’ll call the college. They must be able to get her a message. I’m her mother.”
But as Magpie stayed sitting on her mother’s hospital bed, she couldn’t help but wonder what Ann Marie thought should be afforded just because she happened to be someone’s mother. The selection of egg and sperm and soul and heart and brain were so random that it was a mystery why Magpie hadn’t been born to a family living on the damp coast of Scotland, spending her days spray-painting sheep so they’d know which furry bundles belonged to whom. It was an unknowable, inexplicable wrinkle in fate that had landed her here in Farther, to Ann Marie and Gabriel Lewis, younger sister of Eryn Rachel, niece to a woman who, some sixteen years later, would ruin everything by crawling into her own sister’s bed.
Ann Marie’s declaration—I’m her mother—meant nothing in the grand scheme of things when the grand scheme of things meant that humans were an impossibility of a billion different things happening in just the correct order, leading to a habitable planet, leading to the evolution of (wo)mankind, leading to the final push and the wail of Margaret Lucy Lewis as she was placed for the first time in the red sweaty arms of her mother, who could have been Ann Marie or who could just as easily have been a hundred million other women across the very big planet of Earth.
“Magpie? You do know how sorry I am, right? I’m going to do so much better. I’m going to get some help. Finally, I’m going to get some help.”
And Magpie had heard that before. The daughter or sister or brother or husband or mom or dad or cousin or friend of every alcoholic in the world has heard that before.
And every time you heard it…
You believed it.
To avoid another house visit from her soon-to-be-ex-father (she knew that was not how divorces worked, but she preferred to think of it that way, all things considered), Magpie promised Ann Marie that Clare would be sleeping over again.
“I’ll call her as soon as I get outside,” Magpie had said over her shoulder as she waved a final good-bye at the depleted, stick-thin vodka shell of her mother. “They don’t like you to use phones in here.”
But she hadn’t called her. She’d gotten on her bike and pedaled to Kent’s, and maybe it was the pizza last night or maybe it had been Linda’s stew, the memory of which still caused Magpie’s mouth to fill up with saliva, but at any rate, she decided to try something new for dinner.
She stood in the frozen-meal aisle, taking her time, reading each brightly colored box.
And then she heard it.
A sound she would recognize anywhere. A sound she could pick out of a lineup.
A high squeal of laughter.
Allison.
Despite the goose bumps on Magpie’s skin and the lowered temperature of the aisle, she felt the prickling of sweat in the hollows of her armpits. The grocery store wasn’t busy. They were playing some unidentifiable soft jazz over the speakers. There was one other person in the aisle, a younger mother with bright-red lipstick and a toddler on one hip. She kept asking the toddler what he wanted for dinner, and he kept changing his mind.
Magpie took a few steps closer to the end of the aisle. Another peal of laughter. That was Allison, always laughing, always loud, always announcing her existence to whomever happened to be in the same place she was.
Another step and then Magpie paused because she heard a new voice, a lower voice, a guy’s voice.
“Just pick something. I swear, if we’re late to this movie, I’m going to lose my shit,” he was saying.
And Magpie recognized that voice, too. Magpie heard that voice when she didn’t want to, in the corners of her brain that didn’t take orders, that didn’t shut up when she wanted them to.
“I will not be rushed,” Allison responded.
Magpie took another step, then they were in full view—Allison, of course Allison, and Brandon Phipp. He had his arms crossed, an annoyed expression on his face. Allison was studying the open refrigerated shelf in front of her.
“You’re the only weirdo on the planet who brings chocolate milk into a movie theater,” Brandon said. “Just get some Reese’s Pieces like the rest of the universe.”
“Would you love me if I was just like the rest of the boring universe?” Allison retorted. She found what she was looking for. Magpie knew what she would grab before her hand closed around it. It was the chocolate almond milk sold in liter bottles. Allison would stick the entire thing in her purse and drink it over the course of the movie. By the time the credits rolled, she would be bouncing in her seat in an effort to not pee herself.
“Are you ready now?” Brandon asked.
“Yes, but let’s stop in the candy aisle, because now I want Reese’s Pieces, too,” Allison said. As Magpie watched, Allison pecked Brandon on the cheek. He grabbed
her ass when she pulled away. She swatted at his hand and missed.
Magpie pressed herself against a freezer door.
They walked right past the aisle without looking in her direction.
It used to be her in Brandon’s place.
Allison liked romantic comedies, and she would drag Magpie to see whatever new one was playing that weekend. It would always be Allison’s turn to pay, but somehow Magpie would end up being the one scraping around for enough to cover their tickets. Allison would sit sipping her chocolate milk in the darkness, sighing at all the romantic parts, fidgeting around happily when the two leads finally kissed for the first time.
Afterward, if there was something else playing, they would sneak into another theater. They’d sit in the back for this one because it was usually something they didn’t even want to see. A kid’s movie or an action or horror film.
“Why do you make us sneak in if you don’t even want to watch it?” Magpie had asked her once.
What Allison had said was “What, like you have something better to do?”
But what she meant, Magpie thought, had been something more unpleasant. Because lately she had always been asking to sleep over at Magpie’s. She had always been thinking of activities that would keep them occupied and away from the Leffertses’ house for as long as possible. Allison went to the mall most days after school. She’d spend full weekends at Magpie’s.
Allison’s family lived in the rich part of town in a big house with five bedrooms and four bathrooms and a three-car garage. But one of the last times she’d seen it, there’d been a for-sale sign stuck into the front lawn.
“Oh, that?” Allison had said, laughing. “We’re looking for something even bigger. I want my own walk-in closet. I have nowhere to put my shoes.”
But there’d been a whisper later in the hallways of Farther High: Mr. Lefferts had lost his job. They’d stopped paying their mortgage. The house was in foreclosure. They had to be out by the end of the month.
Magpie had asked her about it one night. Sitting in the back of the theater as a scary movie played on the screen, screechy music in the background as the murderer stalked his next victim.