Where You End

by Anna Pellicioli

  I don’t know, Miriam. I don’t know if I’m in love with you.

  As I dive onto the bed, I hope Dad is lighting the candles after all, that Mom is lifting the towel off the bread, and that he is devouring her delicious feast. To hell with me. It’s not her fault I’m not as strong as she is, is it?

  It’s not her fault, it’s not her fault, it’s not her fault.

  five

  The mal de mer wakes me up. Mr. Wallace’s ghost is silent and limp across the street. Next to my bed, there’s a tray with some bread and a plate of leftovers, but I’m too nauseated to reach for it. I check my underwear. Clean. I tiptoe to the bathroom and try with the toilet paper. Nothing. I know I won’t fall back asleep, so I do what I’ve done almost every night since the thought first occurred. I button my jeans, pull my hair into a messy bun, and I scan my room for his socks. Dark gray, slightly worn on the big toe, they smell like a basketball game. I’ve learned to roll them up so they don’t bunch in my shoes. I’m a women’s eight, Elliot a man’s eleven. He forgot them here the last time we slept together, at the end of the summer, just before school started. That time.

  When I bend down to tie my shoelaces, it feels like I’m on a hellish plane ride. The challah beckons, so I take a bite, hoping it will ease the sudden motion sickness. I brush my teeth twice, swishing and spitting furiously. My face is pale, and the freckles across my nose are graying. I have a crooked mouth.

  I have two cameras to choose from: Lauren, the film camera (named after Lauren Bacall) and Bogart, the digital one, after her true love. They (the actors) met on the set of one of Dad’s favorite movies, To Have or Have Not, second only to the legendary To Kill a Mockingbird, and that is only because Dad wants to be Atticus Finch. We used to watch these old movies together, when Mom was out late or in New York for a show. I liked to practice looking over my shoulder, lighting someone’s imaginary cigarette, talking out the side of my mouth with that sultry voice. They barely even kiss in that movie, but Lauren Bacall taught me more about sex than sex itself. After watching the movie together, Elliot once told me I looked like her. Of course he did. I think that’s when I gave in.

  I walk past my parents’ bedroom. Their door is open. His snores and her breath are warming up the hallway. I feel guilty, but I don’t know what else to do. They’re good parents. I’m just so tired. And, for better or worse, I can’t sleep until I go out there.

  While checking Bogart for juice, I think about the Picasso. The questions keep coming. Is the sculpture back up? Is it in the basement of the museum, where they keep the broken or ugly pieces? Do they have clinics for wounded art? I imagine a forensic scientist wearing goggles, brushing her hand across the sculpture’s swollen belly, trying to determine how it happened. Who did this? Why? I check my recent calls: 240-667-8900. Is your light on tonight?

  The bike rests against the back wall, and despite my general unease when I push the pedal, it does not disappoint. The tires are full and the breeze washes over the nausea. The first stop is Adam’s house, but it doesn’t count because I never really stop. I just have to go around the cul-de-sac and touch the mailbox with my right hand, like a trigger. It’s a sad compulsion. The first time I went out at night, I came here but the lights were off. Adam’s room faces the backyard. I didn’t really want to see him. I just didn’t want to betray him. Going out to take pictures is the sort of thing we used to do together. So, every time I go now, I pass by and touch the box, and sometimes I imagine it’s a switch and that’s how the lights come on. That’s when I light up a house somewhere in Northwest DC, and all I have to do is find it.

  Wisconsin and Connecticut, the main street arteries, are forbidden. It’s too easy to find something there. It has to be a house. People have to live there. People who are sleeping, people who forgot to turn off all the lights, people who are too scared to turn off all the lights.

  My tires cut the dry leaf piles on the back roads toward Chevy Chase. It hasn’t rained in three weeks, and my feet itch like mad in these nasty socks. The oaks out here are enormous. I see nothing but street lamps so far. It must be past one. I’ve noticed the darkest hours are between one and four.

  There. On the next block, left side, three houses up—a light is on. My guess is it’s a living room, maybe dining. I stop the bike across the street. Before setting up, I check the houses around me. The rest of the block is lights out. Nobody is making secret phone calls in their parked cars. All the retrievers are snoozing in their monogrammed beds.

  I forgot my tripod, which has never happened, but then again I’ve never knocked over a sculpture or deliberately messed with Shabbat, so this could be the new me, going bad like a child star on house arrest. I look for something flat to set the camera on, but the front garden has pretty stone walls that are too uneven to work with. I could try the roof of a station wagon, but I’m afraid the little red light flashing inside may be an alarm. The ground will have to do.

  I take a composition book out of my trusted tote to even out the grass. The camera lens is wide open, like on a dentist’s recliner. I check again. It’s definitely a living room.

  I make like a Navy Seal and lie perfectly still. My heart is finally beating, the way it does right when I’m about to take a picture. I Zen up and ignore the bed of acorns poking me everywhere.

  It’s perfect. There are bookshelves in the back, a coffee mug, a sweater draped on the arm of a green sofa. It takes forever for the lens to shut; my favorite kind of wait, when you can hear the light churning in there.

  When I get back on the bike, I’m something close to happy. But happy is a ripple that hits land pretty fast these days and, after the first hill, I’m already thinking about him. I’m remembering my hair on his chin and him blowing it away. He just stared afterwards, right into my face. Neither one of us could bear to move. He was wearing a gray shirt that smelled like us. I was wearing a red button-down I stole from my dad’s closet. At least three buttons were undone.

  You could see whatever you wanted, if you were looking, and he was definitely looking. I felt brave. His arm was sprawled across my waist. I looked down at his toes, then the creases of the sheets, then a strand of my dark hair again—a little mischief, a little pride. The whole thing felt so big and so little at the same time, like it could never really leave the room, like it would always be between the two of us. I was awake and asleep; contained and in pieces. Whoever says sex is nothing hasn’t had sex with somebody who stared at their face.

  A drop of something warm dribbles down my chin. I take one hand off the handlebar to touch it. It’s blood. My lips are cut. I’ve been biting down on the memory.

  I wonder what I could offer this ghost, what I could do to make it go away. I already painted over my walls. I throw up. I don’t sleep. I lie. I yell at my mother. I ignore my best friend. I push innocent sculptures. I used to make things. Now I just destroy them. Maybe I could bike to 18th Street and pay twenty bucks for fake sorcery, some kind of exorcism, somebody who will tell me to put garlic in my pillow and a pound of sugar under my bed. What do you want, Elliot? You happened. You left. Now stop happening.

  A block or so before my own home, I take out my phone to try Paloma’s number again, but it looks like she beat me to it.

  IS THIS MAGGIE? her text reads.

  I type No and ride back to bed.

  six

  I’m going to look for her black hair. My bike is parked against the wall of the Bishop’s Garden, where I hope nobody will steal it. These are church grounds, after all, and I’m supposed to have a little faith. The gardeners have left the hydrangea heads on, like skeletons of summer. In the sun it’s still warm, so I take my jacket off, wrap it around my waist, and walk inside the garden. We used to come here all the time when I was little, and I wish I was here to count carp in the koi pond. Boxwoods line the path right and left, smelling like dust and new earth.

  A woman with huge shears trims the
hedges. She’s not wearing gloves, and the skin on her hands is a thin map of freckles and veins. The roses look embarrassed behind her; they’re all chopped stubs with the occasional thorn.

  I used to know this place pretty well, but I haven’t been here in years. I walk past the empty gazebo onto a wide lawn. This is where we’d have the occasional picnic, or toss a ball with my dad. I try to remember when exactly we stopped doing all that. I haven’t caught a ball in years, I think, just for the sake of it, to see if I can, to feel that kind of surprise.

  My watch says it’s almost time, so I head for the side doors of the cathedral. Walking up the steps reminds me of running from the sculpture, and I consider how maybe you can get away with something but how stupid to think you can get away from it. It’s Sunday, two full days after I pushed the sculpture, and my hands still tremble when I think of it.

  Paloma picked the right place for her mystery. There are only a handful of people wandering around inside the cathedral, and a dozen more whispering prayers in the pews. Most of the morning worshippers have made their way back to their corners of the city. Senators find the time to cut their grandkids’ pancakes while polite ladies wipe the bacon grease off their lips and the choir debates over next week’s hymns. Christian or not, we all succumb to Sunday’s tune: the promise of the morning, the sad afternoon.

  The church itself is as impressive as I remembered it. Once in a while, when we used to come to the gardens to play, I got to go inside, but I had to be really quiet. I remember holding my breath, because I thought that was the only way to be totally silent. I was not allowed to touch the water—it’s holy—and we could not be blessed in this place. We were only here to look and, maybe, think. This is a place people come to reflect. This is a place for repentance. Like I said, Paloma chose well.

  The afternoons are getting shorter, so the sun has already lit the stained glass on fire. Men, sheep, crosses, constellations—all the stories and symbols come out at once, and the cautionary tales share the light with the miracles. It’s hard to look away. I settle into a pew near a stone column and wait. I reach out my hand to touch it, and it feels cold and smooth.

  “Can’t keep your hands to yourself, huh?” Her voice startles me.

  Paloma, or whatever her real name is, slides next to me and smiles. She’s wearing the same clothes she was wearing at the Air and Space, white T-shirt and jeans. She must be cold. Her hair is up today, so her cheekbones stand out more. There’s something ancient about her face. I don’t mean that she looks old, more like the lines and bones haven’t softened over generations as they have with most of us. She looks like she belongs in an old photograph, like she comes from some unmistakable place. Her face is too strong to just be pretty.

  “Hi,” I say, worried I’ve been staring too long.

  “Hang on a second,” she says, as she lifts a huge bag onto her lap and loses half her arm in it, pulling out every item and setting it on the bench. A pack of baby wipes, a pair of sunglasses, a bunched-up scarf, a bursting wallet, broken crayons, a thousand paper napkins, keys, a rubber tiger, and a book. Maybe she babysits. The book is a poetry paperback, lots of cracks in the cover. It’s obviously been used plenty. It’s called Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda, translated by W. S. Merwin. She puts everything back in except for her phone and the book, which she keeps on her lap. I try to forget about last night’s text.

  “Have you read him?” she says.

  I shake my head.

  “Really? They don’t make you read this at Sterling?”

  “No.”

  The fact she knows my school still bothers me. It reminds me of her power.

  “What do you read over there? Shakespeare, Yeats, Donne, Frost, Poe, Blake, Eliot, maybe a few of the Beats if you get a teacher who’s a real rebel? No girls, I bet. Maybe Emily Dickinson.”

  I try not to let on that she’s sort of right. I remember at least three of those guys from last year, and the only poetry book I actually own is an Emily Dickinson anthology.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she says. “I do like some of those guys. The realistic Yeats is heartbreaking, and no one can do sadness and space like Emily. I’m just surprised they didn’t give you at least one Neruda. He’s the easiest brown guy to include.” She says “Neruda” like she speaks Spanish.

  Paloma fiddles with her hair and ends up locking it in the same clip she started with. I notice a tattoo on the nape of her neck. It looks like a date: 6/10/11. She catches me looking and turns her head.

  “Anyway, he’s great,” she says. “Not my all time favorite, but he’s up there. Do you read any poetry?”

  I shrug. “Not much.”

  “You can borrow it.” She hands me the book. “Give it back to me the next time.”

  What next time? I think. What exactly does she have in mind?

  “Thanks for coming,” Paloma says.

  “Right,” I say. “I wasn’t going to come. At first.”

  She nods and looks up at the flags draped over our heads, one for each state.

  “That makes sense,” she says. “I know this is a little strange. I didn’t mean to scare you the other day.”

  “You didn’t scare me,” I say.

  “Good,” she says. “I just wanted you to know right away.”

  I nod, but she doesn’t finish her sentence. “Know what?” I ask, whispering.

  “That I saw what you did.”

  I take a breath and change course. “So why did you want to see me?”

  “You go to Sterling, right?”

  I don’t answer. I go to Sterling. We’ve been over this.

  “That’s a good school, right? Do you like it?”

  “It’s a good school,” I say.

  “Your grades are good?”

  “Pretty good,” I say.

  “You’ve got a nice family?”

  “Yes,” I say, wondering if she already knows something about them, wondering where she’s going with this.

  “So, why would a girl with a nice family, a good school, and decent grades decide to push a Picasso and run away?”

  I don’t know what to say. I have no idea where to start, or whether I want to answer at all. I stay quiet.

  “Did you tell anybody else?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “You just walked away,” she whispers, almost to herself, as if she’s dreaming of something with potential.

  Her Neruda book is still in my hand, so I open it up because I’m tired of sitting still while she thinks of what she can do with me. I read to myself: “So that you will hear me / my words / sometimes grow thin …”

  Feeling Paloma’s eyes on me, I carry on and read every word until the end. It all seems to speed up in the middle and take me along with it: “You occupy everything, you occupy everything.”

  I turn that line over and over in my head, and the words ring so true I realize maybe I’ve been hungry for them, in a way that night pictures, or music, or gray Atlantic Ocean walls cannot satisfy. Paloma smiles.

  “You like it, huh? It’s called ‘So That You Will Hear Me.’ It’s a good one. It’s better in Spanish though.”

  She takes the book from my hand and points to the opposite page, where the original poem is written.

  “Like this part,” she says, pointing to a new line. “In English, it makes no sense. In Spanish, it’s different. It’s more, you know, strong. Every word is stronger. Now. Want. Hear. It sounds so weak in English, but in Spanish it has force. It’s like this. Let me try to translate. It’s like, Now I want these words to say what I really really mean so that you can hear me the way I want you to hear me. Shit. I guess that’s the same,” she says. “Maybe you can’t do it in English.”

  A woman in a purple robe shushes us. Paloma covers her mouth, but I can see her eyes laughing. I want to laugh too. She
raises her eyebrows and gives me back the book.

  “So, they’re going to start playing the organ soon and we should really shut up then,” she says.

  I nod.

  “You want to know the reason I know about the organ?”

  “Sure,” I say, because I want all the clues I can get.

  “My mom used to bring me here on Sundays sometimes, for the rehearsals. She loved all kinds of music, but she always said the organ was the most serious instrument out there, and we should listen to it so we can feel close to God. Plus it’s free. We’d take the bus from home and sit on the side where no one could see us, because she was always afraid. I don’t know what she was scared of. Maybe those guys … ” she says as she points to the purple-robe ladies. “Anyway, we didn’t go to Mass, but we came here. We loved it. We would just sit super-quiet and listen.”

  Rituals. I think of my own mom at home, of how I can’t possibly tell her what I did. Paloma’s mother loved music like my mother loves art. It’s like I smashed an organ. At church. I could smoke a thousand cigarettes, get drunk every Saturday, screw boys right and left, but this will really break my mother’s heart. She’s going to think it’s her fault. She’s going to think I was messing with her, that I pushed the statue just to hurt her.

  “So,” Paloma says, “let’s talk. You know I followed you into the museum … ”

  “Right,” I say.

  “ … and you’ re not going to tell me why you pushed the sculpture. At least not now.”

  “I don’t really know … ”

  “That’s okay. We have time. The thing is, I’m in trouble. I have been for a while, and when I saw you push the Picasso, well, I knew you were in trouble too. After you ran, I went down there to look at the sculpture. Everyone was freaking out, but nobody seemed to know what happened. Nobody was looking for you. I couldn’t believe it. Then I saw you on the stairs, and started thinking maybe I was the only one who saw. That’s why I followed you.”