The Looking Glass

by Janet McNally

  We did. We bought a velvet bag of sparkling, split-open geodes and a stuffed triceratops, even though I was probably too old for stuffed animals. The only gift I wanted was to spend time with my sister, who was a member of the studio company then and barely ever around. We looked at dioramas of wolves under a painted-on aurora borealis and bison on a fake-grass plain. We stood underneath the life-sized blue whale in Hall of Ocean Life, and I wondered, as I always did, why the whale was positioned to seem like it was flying. Later, we waited for a train home in the 81st Street station.

  We were standing together on the platform, I remember, and Julia was humming. Prokofiev, I think, something from Cinderella. I wasn’t surprised at first when she started to dance.

  She’d done it before, danced ballet in strange places, out in public. She’d go arabesque in Washington Square Park, leaning on the fountain, or plié low and then lower while hanging on to a wrought iron gate on the street. It was a little weird. It was Julia. I think she was sending a signal: she was a dancer before she was a human being.

  In the subway that day, she swept her arms toward the ground as she lowered herself into a fifth-position grand plié. She leapt across the platform, spending more time in the air than should have been possible, then landed gently. Jules rose up on the balls of her feet, not on pointe because she was wearing sandals, but close. By then she was on the absolute edge of the platform, balancing. It seemed like a breeze could push her over, make her fall on the tracks, but if there was anything my sister understood, it was gravity and her own power over it. I stood there frozen by the white-tiled wall, holding my stuffed dinosaur. I felt like a kid.

  People clapped. Over the sound of applause, I could hear the train approaching, half a station away. It sounded like the sea, like a tsunami approaching. When the glow of its headlight appeared, my sister gave a little bow and stepped toward me, away from the edge, away from the tracks and the place where the train would be in moments.

  The people on the platform smiled at her and then watched the train pull in with its great rush of air. They didn’t look afraid. I couldn’t blame these strangers for not understanding what was going on, because I was her sister and I didn’t understand it either. Not until much later.

  Today, I walk three blocks to the A train in the gold light of evening, still feeling a little shell-shocked. I’m about to go down the stairs to the station when something holds me at the top for a moment, like I’m suspended in a spiderweb. This is when I see her.

  Not Julia, of course, but a girl near the bottom with the longest hair I’ve ever seen, flowing past the backs of her knees, shining like spun gold in the lamplight. It nearly touches the stairs behind her as she walks.

  Like Rapunzel’s.

  “Hey!” I say, my voice sharp in the white-noise rush of the train leaving the station below. I don’t mean to yell—the tone of my voice is a surprise to me too—and as soon as I do I clap my hand over my own mouth. She reaches the bottom and turns around, looking up the staircase at me. I can’t explain it, the expression on her face. It’s something between curiosity and fear.

  She turns away then, around the corner and out of sight. But before I can stop myself, I’m running down the stairs, my right hand skimming the guardrail. I do this before I can decide if she’s something I even want to chase.

  When I get down there she’s already gone in. I have to swipe my MetroCard three times to get it to work, and then I push through the turnstile. I can hear the train pulling into the station below, brakes squealing. I run down the next set of stairs to the uptown tracks, my sandals pounding on the concrete, and jump the last three. I land hard on the pavement, my bones rattling as the earth pulls me down. Then I take off again.

  By the time I make it to the platform, the girl is gone.

  Foxy Lady

  I TEXT SADIE WHEN I come up from the train station, and to my surprise she greets me at the corner of Cabrini and 181st Street. Her honey-colored hair is wound into a knot at the top of her head and she’s wearing a pale blue sundress. There’s no sign of any cake flour on her body or her clothes, though I don’t have much time to check because she throws her arms around me and squeezes so hard my ribs creak.

  “Happy birthday, my favorite!” she says.

  “Thanks,” I say. I try to make my voice sound normal, but I still feel jittery and strange. Sadie lets me go—holds me at arm’s length, really—and looks at me.

  “What’s wrong with your face?” she asks.

  I blink. She smiles.

  “I mean, you’re beautiful, obviously, always, of course, but you’re making a Face of Pain.”

  This is a Sadie-ism that I’m used to. I know exactly what she means, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to tell her about today. I don’t even have words yet.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Long day. Long dinner.”

  “I get it,” Sadie says. “Parental drama.” She rolls her eyes.

  Sadie has been my best friend since we were eight years old and her mom started working for my family a few times a week as a personal chef. Renata used to bring Sadie with her and we’d sit on the counter stools in our kitchen and watch Renata cook. She’d feed us raw red peppers and green beans, strawberries with their tops cut off. She’d whirl around the kitchen, her method for making dinner like another kind of dance.

  In the weeks before Julia left, when she was sick because she’d given up the pills, Renata made lemongrass broth and tortilla soup and baked macaroni and cheese. Every comforting recipe from every cuisine she’d ever studied. Julia ate it, sometimes. Or she didn’t. But Renata still tried, and I’m grateful for that. And also for the fact that since I met Renata’s daughter, we’ve always been Sylvie-and-Sadie.

  Now Sadie links her arm with mine like we’re gal pals in some 1950s movie (Damsels in Dismay, now in glorious TECHNICOLOR!). We walk in silence for a few moments. The air is cooler now that the sun has slipped behind the buildings, and I feel like I can breathe again, finally. Half a block from Sadie’s building, a cat runs out from beneath a bush, a blur of orange fur. I stop walking, but I lean toward it a little. It’s rare to see a cat loose around here.

  Except it’s not a cat.

  It’s a fox.

  It walks toward me tentatively, sniffing the air. I can see the white fur on its muzzle, the black fur of its paws. When it’s almost to my feet it looks up at me, and then it sits down, curling its fluffy tail around itself. For some reason, I’m not afraid.

  “That is a fox,” says Sadie. She’s inching away from me, backing up toward the giant maple tree behind her.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I’ve never seen a fox in Washington Heights.”

  “Well,” I say, “I think there’s at least one.”

  “Do you think it’s rabid?”

  I look a tiny bit closer. Mostly, this means I lean forward slightly and squint hard at the fox. It’s not foaming at the mouth, and I don’t know any other signs of rabies.

  “Um,” I say. “No?”

  “So what is it doing here?” Sadie flaps her hands at it as if to shoo it away. It tilts its head to the side, listening, maybe, or just watching Sadie act like a weirdo.

  “I have no idea.” Which is true, but it’s getting to the point where the strange things that are happening can’t be explained away. They can’t be explained at all, at least to another person.

  “Well, get rid of it!” Sadie is backing away as she says this.

  “I’m not a fox expert, Sades.”

  But I am, maybe, at least in comparison to Sadie. I look over my shoulder and see that she’s practically behind a maple tree now, peeking out from behind the slate-gray bark. So I turn back to the fox and try to channel the narrator of every nature program I’ve ever watched. (Though they seem disproportionately to have Australian accents. Is this necessary? Preferred? I’m not sure.)

  “Go home.” My voice is calm. It’s all I can think of to say.

  The fox looks at me, i
ts eyes like amber beads in its pointy face, its ears small satellites angled toward me. It listens. Then it turns and goes, streaking off into the underbrush, its white-tipped tail the last thing I see.

  Static on the Line

  “HAVE YOU HEARD FROM EVERETT yet?”

  We’re up on the roof of Sadie’s apartment building, side by side in matching Adirondack chairs. Headlights sparkle ahead of us on the George Washington Bridge. The sun has already set, and the leftover light at the horizon is silver and pink. Streaks of red cross the sky like spent flares. It’s quiet up here, except for the shush-shush sound of traffic and musical-note soup of birds singing over the river. My heart is still thumping harder than normal, but I feel safer, somehow, up here. It feels like nothing can get me here, closer to the sky and away from all the weirdness. Or at least away from all except the particular weirdness of my best friend.

  “I mean, I’m just wondering,” Sadie says. Her voice is purposely nonchalant. She’s the fiercest person I know, but whenever she talks about my brother she gets a little moony.

  “He called earlier,” I say. “I have to call him back.”

  “Well, do it!” She leans forward, her hands pressing down flat on the arms of her chair. “Maybe Liam will get on the phone with a special birthday wish for you.”

  I’ve had a crush on Everett’s indie-musician friend Liam since I was in seventh grade. He’s completely oblivious to that fact. He ruffles my hair when he sees me and sometimes recites obscure rock-and-roll facts tailored to my own musical tastes (like a lot of ’80s girl groups), but he’s only ever going to see me as Everett’s little sister. And I’m okay with that. I guess.

  Next to me, Sadie’s making kissy faces.

  “Clearly you’ll be celebrating your own ninth birthday soon,” I say. “Or is it your tenth? I forget.”

  “Come on,” Sadie says. “I’m just teasing. And you know I’m in the same boat. My love for your brother is undying.” She presses the back of her hand to her forehead like a dramatic nineteenth-century lady and flops backward into her chair.

  “My brother, on the other hand,” she says, “is currently being a complete jerk. He doesn’t want me to go visit our dad.”

  “Why not?” I ask this, but I already pretty much know the answer. Sadie and Jack’s dad left when they were small, but three years ago he came back into their lives. He’s a pretty famous chef now, with a Michelin-starred restaurant in Richmond, Virginia. I guess he’d gotten his career to a place where he felt like he had time to have actual contact with his children. He sent birthday cards first, to Sadie and then to Jack, and a few months later he got their cell phone numbers from their grandma and started calling. They both let it go to voice mail at first, but eventually Sadie started answering. Their dad said he’d made a mistake in leaving when he was young. He said he wanted them in his life.

  They’ve seen him a few times since then, mostly for fancy, uncomfortable dinners when he’s in New York for work. The chefs come out of the kitchens to chat, bringing elaborate complimentary dishes to the table. Their dad can talk about food, Sadie says, but not much else. There’s a lot of silent chewing. But Sadie wants to keep trying. For some reason, it’s easier for her to forgive than it is for Jack. Maybe it’s because Jack is the older one, or maybe it’s because he’s generally harder to please. I know this from personal experience. Jack has never been much of a fan of me.

  “Jack says he’s an asshole.” Sadie tilts her head thoughtfully. “I mean, whatever, Jack’s right, Dad used to be, but I really think he’s changed. Not a complete transformation but”—she pauses—“an incremental one.”

  “Nice vocabulary word,” I say. “Ms. Kobayashi would be proud.”

  Sadie smiles, then just as quickly her smile fades. “You know, in the end, I’d still like to have a dad. Even if I only see him one week out of the year.”

  “Yeah,” I say, poking her. “It’s like a Dadfest. Dad-a-palooza.”

  Sadie’s smile comes back. “Burning Dad,” she says.

  Out ahead of us, the lights on the bridge get brighter as the sky darkens. The cars and trucks could be toys sliding across the span, the suspension cables strung with lights and glowing like strands of stars. I tap my foot on the wall’s grating, pointing my toes.

  Last year, Sadie and I were up here just after someone jumped off the bridge. We didn’t know that it had happened, but when we came up we saw the police boats in the water and the blue-and-red flash of officers’ cars on the bridge. We stood there, silent, for a minute, and then Sadie took my hand. Someone had been alive an hour ago and was dead now, and the evidence was right in front of us. We didn’t stay to watch whatever else was going to happen.

  Sadie pokes me in the shoulder now.

  “Start talking to me,” she says.

  “About what?”

  “Whatever’s going on.” She leans farther back and looks at me. “I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Who’s the real Nancy Drew? Sadie, probably.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I say.

  Her gaze is still steady on me, some kind of interrogation tactic, I’m sure. “Try.”

  I take a breath, sigh it out. “It’s Julia. She sent me a book.” I bend down and pull it from my bag. “Fairy tales. We used to own it but I lost it years ago.”

  “Wow,” Sadie says. “She actually made contact.” She says this as if Julia is an extraterrestrial, someone whose existence is only rumored, not confirmed. Which actually isn’t all that inaccurate.

  Sadie opens the book and does the same thing I did, runs her fingers over the words Girls in Trouble, like if she touches the ink on the page, it’ll tell her something more.

  “Well, this book is a message,” she says.

  “Yeah, but what does it mean?”

  Sadie looks at me. “It means she’s sorry, I guess.” She flips through the book. “That’s enough, right?”

  No, I think.

  “I guess,” I say. “But how did she get it? I lost it in Montreal when I was eleven.”

  Sadie shrugs. “Who knows? Weird things happen every day.”

  I nod, probably too emphatically. The girl speaks truth, even if she doesn’t fully know it.

  Sadie’s phone chimes in her lap.

  “Tommy,” she says, looking at the screen. “I’ll go let him in. We may be a minute. I have to make some final touches on the festivities.” She circles her arm through the air. Then she points at me. “Call your brother.”

  I hear the door to the stairs slam shut behind her, and then I pull out my phone and find my brother’s number. I took the photo that comes up with Everett’s name a couple of years ago. He and I had overpriced fruit pops by the river one day after my ballet class, and I snapped his picture while he leaned against the guardrail. Behind him is blue sky spiked with clouds, rays of sun spinning from a hole in one of them. His head is turned to the side, the pop dripping red juice down his hand. He looks happy.

  Now he answers on the second ring.

  “Happy birthday, kiddo,” he says. I can hear the radio-static sound of a crowd behind him, plenty louder than the shushing traffic on the bridge.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the arts college in Nashville,” he says. “If you can believe it, they invited me to be a speaker in their summer program for illustrators.” He pauses. “Which is pretty interesting, since I’m not exactly a poster child for higher education.”

  This is a sore point with my father, that Everett dropped out of college when, with the faculty discount, he could have graduated from Columbia for next to nothing. But he never liked his classes, and when things started to go wrong with Julia he decided he’d had enough. He was just going to draw, he said, and do freelance graphic design work to pay the bills. Everett lives in Nashville now, and draws a comic called The Square. It’s about a bunch of skater kids (three girls and two boys) who live in Washington Square Park. Not by the park but in
it, because Manhattan has been mostly abandoned due to rising sea levels. The East River and the Hudson are moving toward each other, and the whole borough has fallen apart. It’s a cautionary climate tale plus old-fashioned orphan story. Or, come to think of it, fairy tale: all the parents are dead or gone. The Square sounds a little out there, I know, but it’s so good. He drew the early versions and copied them himself on the machine in our father’s office at Columbia. Then he got picked up by a good indie comic publisher, and things have gotten better from there.

  “I’m going to DC next week,” Everett says. “There’s a conference on graphic novels at Georgetown. They asked me.” He says this like he almost doesn’t believe it.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “I mean, they’re making me take the train and stay in the dorms.” I can hear him smiling. “But still.”

  I picture him now just offstage in a college theater or a large lecture hall. Wearing a worn-out band T-shirt (Neko Case or the Weakerthans, maybe), with a bunch of those black-ink pens he likes in the pockets of his ripped jeans. I feel an ache behind my rib cage. If he were here, Everett would help me figure this out.

  I hear a low voice in the background, then my brother again. “Liam says to tell you he’s going to listen to the Bangles later, in your honor,” he says.

  I let myself swoon a little. “Liam’s there?”

  “Yeah, I told him I’ve gone to enough of his shows. He should come to some of mine.”

  “Cool,” I say. “Tell him I’ll listen to the Bangles too.”

  He tells him. I hear Liam laugh.

  “And the Go-Go’s,” Liam says. I hear it through the line.

  “Okay,” I say, a little too loudly. “I wish you were here. Both of you.”

  “I do too,” he says. “Or maybe that you were here. You should see this crowd.”

  I smile. In the past few years, it’s so rare to hear my brother happy. I decide to tell him about the book Julia sent, but just as I’m about to, the crowd noise on his end of the line gets louder. They’re clapping, I think. I say it anyway.