A Flicker in the Clarity

by Amy McNamara

  “Oh!” I say as it starts to sink in. “I have to get a passport!”

  Emma squeals and hugs me.

  If I’d thought to pocket some chalk on my way out this morning I’d have marked that corner with a pair of suitcases. Or a mouth to an ear. Tools of resistance. Place where the world opened up.

  Something New

  MY MOM AND I INTERSECT NEAR the door when I rush in to get ready for school. She looks worried when she sees me. I’m usually heading out right around the time she’s staggering down the hall for a cup of coffee. Morning in the candy office starts later than it does at Bly.

  I give her the rundown of the whispering gallery but omit the Spain trip. For now. Her brows are already knit together. She’ll object to the impossible generosity, just like I did, but she won’t have Emma dancing around all bright and happy to convince her it’s okay. Besides, this kind of thing isn’t unprecedented. The Sullivans sent me to camp for two weeks with Em one summer, even if it didn’t go well. Everyone already knew each other and I didn’t fit in. I was miserable and never went back.

  “I’m glad you and Em are happy with each other again,” she says, looking around for something. “But honey, hurry up. You’re going to be late! Have you seen my other boot?” She hobbles down the hall to her bedroom, lopsided, to look for it.

  “Em went in ahead of me,” I call after her, scanning the living room for the missing boot. “She’ll tell Dr. H I forgot something. It’s cool. Found it!”

  I bend and pull my mom’s other boot from under the corner of the ratty velvet armchair by the radiator.

  She grabs it from me, zips into it, and clop-clops in her heels to the door, kissing me on the top of the head as she goes.

  “Mom, you look cute today,” I say before she steps out. “You should try to meet somebody.”

  My mom hesitates by the door, and for a second I think I’ve hit a nerve. But then she smiles. I expect her to say what she always does, which is I’ve already lived my great love, but instead she says, “I don’t have time to talk to you about this now, but have a great day, okay?”

  She digs in her bag for her MetroCard, then blows me a kiss.

  “I might be late again this afternoon, implementing something new.”

  “Woo-hoo.” I wave a weak fist in the air. “Innovation at the candy company!”

  “Don’t knock it,” she says, smiling back at me. “I’ll take what I can get.”

  Could be our family motto.

  House Arrest

  “NICE ONE!” EMMA SAYS. “Do it again.”

  She opens her mouth and I pluck another grape off the cluster her mom left us. We’re cross-legged at opposite ends of the long marble island in the center of her kitchen. Em’s on “house arrest” after coming home late for dinner again last night. She said we were together, but it didn’t matter. She was already in trouble. Sneaking out early this morning didn’t help either. Rules are rules. No more wiggle room.

  I inspect the grape. “This one’s a little squishy.”

  “Come on,” she groans without closing her mouth.

  “Hey, it’s all about the aerodynamics.”

  I aim. Toss. The grape arcs high and lands right in her mouth. It’s a useless talent, but I’m pretty good at it.

  “Fourteen!” I shout, arms in the air. “A new record!”

  Emma throws one my way. It hits me in the forehead.

  “Pride cometh before the fall,” she laughs. “Shut up or you’ll jinx it.”

  “Think he’ll ever call?” I moan, plucking another one, ready for lucky fifteen.

  “Well, he has your clothes, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That no-phone thing is seriously inconvenient, but in your case it’s for the best.”

  “Meaning what?” I demand.

  “Meaning it’s harder for you to blow it by doing something stupid.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious, Evie. You can’t be eager.”

  “I’m not eager.”

  She raises one brow. “Repeat after me: I do not care whether Theo Gray ever crosses my path again.”

  “What? No way. I’m not going to say that.”

  I hop down off my end of the island and go to the sink for a glass of water. It’s like she wants me to end up alone. I can’t be like my mom. Love scares the hell out of me, but I still want it, the kind where you don’t feel lonely, where you have someone to talk to, even if neither of you knows what to say. Where that would be okay. But I can’t say that to Em. She’d mock me. Tell me to play it cool. She doesn’t need that. She acts like she’s complete or contained or something. Guys to Em are like extras in a movie—they walk on, deliver a few lines, then she forgets them. She’s the star, the hero of her story.

  “Say it, Eves. You don’t have to believe it, you just have to put it out there. Come on . . . I do not care—”

  I turn to face her. “And this incantation is going to somehow travel to Brooklyn and work its way into his mind?”

  “I don’t know how it works, but it does. Trust me. Guys are simple. If they think they can’t have you, they want you more.”

  “A gross generalization! Besides, what about love?”

  “Love shmove,” she scoffs, then flashes the tiniest look of pity my way. “This is a game you’re playing—and I’m speaking from experience—if you put out even the tiniest whiff of desperation, members of their species—”

  “Species?”

  She adjusts the poppy-colored strap of her bra and lowers her voice knowingly. “Species, trust me, one whiff and they’re like animals before a storm. They go all quiet and start plotting their escape.”

  I turn and look out the sliding glass doors onto their back garden. I hate it when she takes this tone, like she’s in possession of womanly wisdom and I’m some child she has to guide. As soon as Emma had sex, she started acting like we weren’t equal anymore, like she went up a step.

  “I’ve been there, that’s all.” Emma grabs the rest of the grapes and crosses by me to flop on the L-shaped sofa they have facing the yard. “Trust me. Every time I’m impatient or go after a guy before he comes to me, it’s ended badly.”

  I grab my bag and park it on the other end of the couch. I open my laptop on a pillow in my lap.

  “No homework, please,” she moans, throwing a grape at me, giggling when it lands in the V of my sweater. I dig it out and eat it.

  “My mom’s volunteering until four thirty. Can’t we just hang out?” She scoots down so she’s stretched out most of the length of the couch and reaches with her toes for my pillow, closing my laptop.

  I slip it out from under her feet and tuck it back in my bag.

  Emma wraps a throw around her shoulders and gives a huge sigh. With her long, dark braids, and wide, sad eyes, she looks like a peasant girl from another century or one of those sad seventies paintings.

  “It’s like a freakin’ gulag around here,” she says, cementing the impression. “I can only see you and Alice, and on top of having to come straight home every day after school, they’ve reinstated meetings with Father George.”

  Meetings with Father George is the closest Em’s family comes to psychology. He’s a priest but also some kind of counselor. Em had weekly sessions with him in middle school, when teachers at Bly started grumbling about her inability to sit still. He defended her, said her classroom antics weren’t the character flaw her father thought. More likely something closer to ADD. Mrs. Sullivan took her to some doctor who put her on Ritalin, then Adderall. When Patrick died, they sent her to see him again. I think he met with all three of them for a while.

  “They’re trying to act all chill about it, as if my”—she deepens her voice to sound like her dad—“recent outburst of defiant behavior is something we can pray away.”

  She laughs, but it’s a hard sound, like cracking glass.

  “You don’t get how lucky you are, Evie. You’re normal.”

  I shift on the couch. S
he’s weighted the word to make it sound like I’m dull or something. Like I don’t have feelings the way she does. Or they don’t matter as much. I cross my legs and face the garden. Maybe I’m reading into it. Feeling defensive because Emma has to see Father George again, and it’s kind of my fault. If I’d run interference for her that night, her parents wouldn’t be all over her case like this.

  “Em, I’m so sorry.”

  “Whatever.” She shrugs and blows a wisp of hair off her forehead. “I don’t care if he’s a counselor, he’s a priest first, and let me tell you, until you’ve been given a talking to on your inappropriate sexual behavior by a priest, you’ve had it easy.”

  I don’t know what to say. She mistakes my silence as reason to continue.

  “Alice gets it.”

  Alice’s name thuds into me, dull as a cannonball.

  “She sees someone too?”

  Em nods. “Not a priest, but, you know, her mom’s nuts, and her dad’s gone—Alice knows what it’s like not to feel so freaking perfect all the time.”

  That hurts. I don’t feel perfect, ever. I would love to be able to go talk with a counselor sometime, ask if it’s normal to have a mom who sleeps in weird places and cries in the night, or if I’m supposed to feel scared like this, so afraid of the future. I can’t imagine talking about how worried I am we’ll lose our apartment or that the only way to dig my mom and me out of the hole we’re in now will be to dig an even bigger hole with student loans, and where will that leave us? No matter how wild she is, Emma’s parents look out for her. I feel like I’m barely holding my mom up. Who catches me if I fall?

  I glance around this perfect bright room until I can control my expression, then I look back at Em. This is an old struggle. I straighten up and pull the pillow close, a huge wave of sadness washing over me. No matter what’s going on in my life, Emma thinks she has it worse, always has, long before Patrick died.

  “I don’t feel perfect,” I manage.

  She eyes me closely, then shakes her head, exasperated. “Whatever. Semantics. You know what I mean. Alice’s dad left her. He’s not gone like yours. He just doesn’t care. And you’re, like . . . this rock, Evie. You’re not all over the place all the time like I am.”

  I freeze my expression while another riot of feeling guts me. What am I supposed to say? I’ll never be over my dad being gone? Invent words for the indescribable lack? Is there some kind of rule regulating appropriate sadness levels about missing fathers and broken-down mothers that I’m violating? I can hardly look at it myself, much less explain it to anyone else.

  Emma eyes my frozen face, then shakes her head. “Sorry, dude, don’t get all worked up. I’m stressed out. First session with the padre in an hour, and my parents are coming along. Should be fun.” She checks her phone, keeps her eyes down. “Family therapy with Patricia and Frank.” She rolls their names out, sarcastic. “Jesus, sometimes I’m so pissed at Patrick for not being here.”

  When she says his name, some of the noise inside me dies down. Problems can’t be compared. No one really knows how anyone else feels, and it’s how we feel that matters.

  I clear my throat. “Maybe you can bring up Mamie’s project? With Father G? How hard it is for you?”

  Emma stands and goes back to the kitchen. She looks narrow in the echoing space. BPD, this room was alive, all of us in here after school—Patrick and Mamie; Patrick’s friends, Luca, Malcolm, Meredith, and Henry; Emma, Jack, and me. Now it’s like one of those huge clamshells on the beach. White, wide, and empty.

  “Cookies?” she asks, at the cupboard, her back to me.

  “No thanks.”

  She climbs over the back of the couch and sits down again. For a second I think she might cry, but she tears into a box of Vanilla Newman-O’s and pops one in her mouth.

  “I’m not telling them how I feel,” she says finally. “My dad’s all my way or the highway. Why bother?” She sighs dramatically and sends out a little cloud of crumbs, which makes us both laugh.

  “Seriously,” she says, brushing them off her shirt and onto the floor, “I almost don’t care anymore. I’ve been trying too hard not to be a total fuckup since Patrick died, but you know what?” She pulls out another cookie. “Their perfect kid died. He just did.”

  She pulls the cookie apart and tosses me the dry side. We have our favorites.

  “I mean, there’s no undoing that one! Right?” she laughs. “They’re stuck with me! And if they want to let this terrible person use us for art and then act like it’s some sacramental forgiveness—whatever. I mean it. WHATEVER. I don’t really care. I will never understand them, and really, it doesn’t matter either way. It’s not like it’s bringing Patrick back.”

  Her voice has gone thin and high, like she’s trying to convince herself.

  The urge to protect her is overwhelming. Even if I looked up to Mamie, no matter how much I thought she was cool, Emma’s right here, a half-eaten cookie on her leg, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing on her temples.

  “Your idea got me thinking . . . ,” she says, her voice low.

  “My idea?”

  “Yeah.” She opens her eyes. “The other night. You said we’d get her to stop. But what if we don’t? What if it . . . somehow got wrecked instead?” She has her eyes wide on me now, something flickering in them.

  “Wrecked?” I’m not hearing her right.

  “Yeah, I mean . . . what if something happened? Somehow we take it down?” She sits straighter. The idea’s giving her strength.

  A million nos are smashing around inside me like particles in a collider, but I don’t let a single one out, because . . . her face. She’s bright with purpose.

  Emma stares at me, watches me think about it, then shakes her head, her eyes dark again. “You hate the idea.”

  “No,” I say slowly, “but what is it going up that, um, gets wrecked, exactly? Is it photos?”

  Emma shakes her head, weary again. The liveliness was like a struck match. Brilliant, then out.

  “Don’t look like that,” I say. “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re talking about.”

  “Not photos,” she sighs. “A bunch of shitty paintings. My mom’s been sending images of them to me via email, but I refuse to look.”

  “Paintings.”

  Mamie wasn’t a painter.

  Em nods. “She’s going to show them. In public. Some gallery connection through her dad. Like Patrick’s life’s hers, he’s her story to tell.”

  “Paintings of Patrick?” I picture some of the super-sappy, hyperrealistic portraits up right now in the art room, and the thought makes me kind of sick. Em’s right. Mamie needs to stop. I feel stupid for looking up to her.

  Emma shrugs. Takes the half-eaten cookie off her leg and sets it on the coffee table, flicking crumbs from her fingers.

  “She gets to take my family’s disaster and turn it into something else, and we can’t stop her. She always did exactly what she wanted. Mamie gets her way.” She sighs, then straightens up again. Starts wiggling her foot. “What if we went in there right before it opened and pulled the fire alarm? They couldn’t open. They’d have to evacuate!”

  I shake my head and sit up straighter. “You’re kidding, right? We can’t do that.”

  Emma sags again.

  “I’ve been looking for her online.”

  Emma’s silent.

  “And you’ll do what when you find her?” Em smiles at me, but it’s obvious that she has no faith in my ability.

  “I’ll tell her to stop.” I hate how stupid it sounds. I try to be more forceful. “I’ll tell her to leave you alone.” An idea takes shape. “Or . . .”

  “Or . . . ?”

  “We go. When she shows her paintings. We’ll be there. Make her face us. We’ll challenge her. Show people who she really is. What she’s doing to you.”

  Tears fill Emma’s eyes.

  “You’re the best,” she says. “I love you so, so much.”

  Mrs. Sullivan
’s key squeaks in the door. Emma pulls the throw over her face a second and reemerges, eyes dry.

  I stand and hug her fast before her mom comes in.

  Anywhereelsebuthere

  I’M SPRINTING DOWN EM’S STOOP RIGHT as Jack and Alice round the corner.

  “What gives?” Jack calls out, spotting me. “You stood me up!”

  “What?” I try to breeze past them, twisting my scarf around my neck.

  He grabs me by the elbow, swiveling so he’s following me. “I was going to come by today, remember? Work on our Investigations?”

  “Oh.” I shake my arm free and keep walking. “I forgot. I’m sorry.”

  I’m still pissed at him, but Alice doesn’t need to know.

  “I looked up TeenART. Did you apply yet? That thing looks perfect for you.”

  “What? Shut up. Mind your own business.”

  “Where you goin’ now?” Jack sticks obnoxiously close.

  “Home.”

  Jeez. Emma’s right about ignoring boys. I’ve been sidestepping Jack since lunch at Sumo, and it’s clearly driving him crazy.

  “We’re going for bubble tea in Chinatown. Wanna come? My treat.”

  I glance back at Alice. She hesitates a sec, looking pained, like going for bubble tea is news to her. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and avoids my eyes.

  “No thanks.”

  Jack positions himself between us, flinging one arm around my shoulders, the other around Alice’s. He hugs us in so close I swear I can smell Alice’s citrus perfume. Poor cabbage. Her boyfriend is not treating her well.

  As if he heard my thought and wants to cover it up, Jack starts whistling like some old guy, a happy geezer. He’s a freakishly good whistler. Another one of the nerd skillz that doomed him before he was cute, along with memorizing a good chunk of pi and winning robotics awards three years in a row. I lean away, annoyed, but that only makes him squeeze me tighter. He tugs my ponytail.

  “Ouch.” I smack his hand out of my hair.

  I don’t look at Alice for her reaction, but if I were her I would be seriously annoyed with all the extrarelational flirtation.