by Lauren Karcz
Lilia pushes her hair out of her face and actually sits on the floor. I think I wear her out sometimes. “It needs to fill the room.”
As soon as she’s said it, I realize I know that. Fill the room.
“If it helps, I know you can do it,” Lilia says.
“Thanks.”
The white walls here are uneven and smudged, brushed with nail holes and dust and the impact of hands and furniture. The door is even worse, with a jagged hole going all the way through. “It looks like someone got angry,” was all Lilia said when we came in, and I was glad that my mind hadn’t made that connection immediately.
“So I can use any of the materials in the kitchen?” I ask, though now Lilia is the one who seems to be daydreaming, staring at the maze of concrete bumps and swirls across the floor.
“And is there any hope of getting a rug or something, or can I bring one?”
Lilia says, “I’ll find something for you.” She picks herself up off the floor, gathers her dress around her, and takes stock of the walls the same way I’ve been doing. This is hardly an ideal canvas for someone who often sucks at painting on canvas.
I ask her, “Where are you working now?” Because I know she’s not working here, and it’s starting to sink in that I practically have my own house. Someone else’s rules, but my walls to draw on.
“Down the hall. Eight oh five.”
“Can I come see what you’re working on?”
“Not yet.”
“I saw the sketchbook. I mean, I know you intended for me to see it. But you got that picture out. You changed the rules somehow.”
She gives me a slow nod, but says nothing.
“Did you know my mother is coming home?” I haven’t told her this and neither has Angela, but it seems like Rex might have told her, or that it might be the sort of thing she picks up on without explanation. Like I’m standing in a certain my-mom’s-making-travel-plans-right-now way.
“I hadn’t heard,” she says, and I think we both look surprised.
“So, ah, I might not have as much time to come here as I do now.” I mean, there are methods for escaping the house when Mom’s there, but I haven’t tested them in a while. She could have figured them out. “I just wanted to warn you.”
“When is she coming back?” Lilia asks.
“She thinks maybe Monday.”
“Why don’t you stay here for the weekend?”
“Here?” I thump the heel of my shoe against the concrete floor.
“In the other place,” Lilia says. “Your white room. I can make some arrangements for you. Artists shouldn’t have to sleep uncomfortably.”
“What about my sister?”
“Are you saying you want to bring her?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Do you think that’s going to work?”
I look her straight in the face. Well, at her nose. “You know what? I think it will.”
It’s echoey in here. My voice, not hers. I suppose I should get used to it. This is where I’m going to be spending lots of time alone. I hope I’m able to hear the music from here, at least.
“Hey, is Firing Squad still here?”
Lilia brightens. “They’re on about the same schedule as you are right now.”
“Okay, cool.” I take a walk to discover the walls, the same way Lilia did. “That’s great news.”
It’s an odd thing to picture—Angela and me waking up in the weird white room with Victoria’s picture on the wall, grabbing breakfast from the little kitchen, and then sitting and eating it beneath Lilia’s artistic jumble of household objects. But Victoria is packing her bags to leave, and somewhere in San Juan, so is Mom. Why not the Moreno sisters, too?
The last time we went to visit Abuela Dolores, she surprised us before we had even set down our luggage. Her hair, once salt-and-pepper and then silvery all over, was back to being black. One hundred percent opaque black. “I missed this,” she explained, puffing it up with her fingertips. “Black matches better with my clothes than silver.”
Abuela was bouncy and bright for those whole two weeks. Waking too early, singing in the shower, teasing the dogs with a laser pointer, and going out in the early evening to play dominoes with her friends. Angela and I went for long walks to the beach—it was summer, but summer always felt better in Puerto Rico than in Florida. Gentler, more settled. People complained less about the heat, and so the heat didn’t have a reason to gripe back.
Once I sat on Abuela’s bed as she got ready for the nightly game. She added makeup on top of the makeup she was already wearing: more pink on her cheeks, more brown on her eyelids, as though she were brushing the final details into a painting. I asked her how she had so many friends, and wondered if that sounded like I was insulting her. I wasn’t meaning to.
“I stick around,” was her reply.
“Can I help you tie your scarf?” I asked.
“Of course!”
I took the scarf by both ends, and folded it once, and then sort of rolled it up. I really had no idea how to tie a scarf, but I figured if she wore it messily this time, she could fool her friends into thinking she’d done that on purpose. Abuela was deliberate that way, and I liked being near her. I ran a hand along the bottom of her thick black hair.
“My hair is terrible compared to yours,” I told her. “There was a girl in middle school who told me it looked like a rats’ nest.”
“That’s silly,” Abuela said.
“I know. When she said that, I told her she must know that because she spent a lot of time around rats.”
Abuela laughed. “That’s perfect. You always look great, you know that. I’m sure that old boyfriend of yours spends every second of the day being sorry he dumped you.”
“Oh my God, I’ve told you that story ten times. I dumped him.”
“Well, then,” she said, surprised at having her version of the story thrown off. “I’m sure you’ve already found someone better.”
I leaned in and whispered, not to her ear, but more to the folds of her scarf. “I’m in love with someone. But I can’t tell you who.”
She studied both of us in her mirror: Abuela standing at attention, me all bent and wrapped around her. I was afraid she was going to press me for more details, to ask me how I knew this person, and if I happened to slip a “Vic” or a “she” in there, I wondered if Abuela would ever let me back into her house. I was so close to saying it, to testing her. The flowers of her scarf blurred into a watery garden, and my stomach dropped as though I was falling into the swamp of pink and purple.
And then Abuela said, “That’s beautiful, Mercedes. Love is always perfect when it’s a secret, isn’t it?”
“I guess so,” I said.
Abuela unwrapped me gently from around her neck and gave me a hug. “But how long do you keep it that way? That’s the question. What’s the cost for trying to keep it perfect?”
“I’ll let you know if I find out,” I told her.
Angela says, “Are you sure?”
It’s my car and the Alabama minivan keeping each other company again.
“Well, not completely sure. But I have a sense that I can throw things off just enough for this to work.”
She drags her overnight bag behind her across the parking lot instead of hoisting it over her shoulder. I walk ahead of her with a backpack. Well, not too far ahead of her. Okay, maybe not ahead of her at all.
“Mercy?” Angela stops next to me.
“I’m just nervous,” I tell her, “but I’m going. It’s probably best if you wait right by the doors.”
We talked about this. We agreed it was a good idea. We did. And yet, the reality of it is hitting me like a glass wall. We could go home and go to sleep in our own beds and then wake up and have some orange juice and waffles and clean the house and be ready for Mom to get home, but no. Here we are, attempting to spend Friday and Saturday night in Lilia’s studio, and for what? For what?
For these things that we like to do.
For the sake of burying ourselves in art and music.
Surely, that’s all that is going to happen.
The lights in the lobby flicker on as I head inside and upstairs. In the white room, on the second floor, a summer-camp-style metal bed has been set up for me.
But I have to push it aside in order to paint.
I choose purple—a deep, dark purple like Abuela’s New Year’s Eve grapes—and start rolling it on. How much will be enough to throw off the needs of the Estate? There’s a shade of arrogance to all of this—why do I think I have the power to shift the Estate’s needs? Why do I think I have the power to get Angela invited? But, no. I can’t talk myself out of this. I’ve come so far already. I can take this next step.
Paint splatters on my arms and my gray T-shirt, drops that will be gone the moment I step back outside to see Angela.
One wall. No rumblings.
Ah. But there’s a wall that’s different. A wall with a secret.
The Victoria wall.
This painting of her is my best work ever, no doubt. If I were trying to critique it in studio art, I’d probably sit in front of it for a while, trying to find a single detail that wasn’t filled in quite right. But there’s nothing like that—it’s got all the right lines and layers. All of which I have to slather in purple.
And so I do it. Piece by piece, Vic disappears under a blanket of purple paint. I’d like to tell myself that I can re-create this picture someday, in a place outside these strange walls, but I don’t think that’s true. What’s within the walls is becoming my truth: I understand how to be in this place now, and how to throw it off just enough.
The lights in the half-purple room dim, then go out completely. I think I have done it. I lay the paintbrush across the top of the paint can, softly, so as to disturb nothing. And just as quietly, I walk backward out of the room, the lights still out, the Estate still holding its breath, and I head downstairs to get my sister.
nineteen
A LIVING ROOM again, but this time with a piano in one corner and a keyboard in another. There’s a handful of us in the audience—me, Lilia, two older women, and a couple of people I remember from the party. Mae dims the lights and then takes to the keyboard. Angela appears, still wearing the Wonder Woman T-shirt and gray shorts she came here in, and sits at the piano. The guys wander in from the hallway and grab their instruments. Brad nods to Nelson, and then all five of them share a look. And the music starts.
Angela is playing with Firing Squad.
It’s not a song I know—I guess it’s not a song at all. Brad thumbs the bass but doesn’t sing. If anything, it’s Angela on piano who seems to be leading the group, pulling a melody out of the sound and letting the other instruments press themselves against it, one by one. Her cheeks are pink with energy, and her hands dance up and down the keyboard. She’s fantastic. Who the hell needs sheet music when you can improvise like that? I sort of wish I could jump in front of the band and let everyone here know that she’s my sister—but no. This is her moment. I’m in the audience of yet another Firing Squad concert, and that’s perfectly fine with me.
Someone taps me on the shoulder from behind. I turn around. Edie.
“I heard you were here for a while,” she says.
“Just for the weekend,” I tell her. “I have something to finish.”
“I knew it. Well, if you want to grab a drink after the show, let me know.”
“You should stay and watch. That’s my sister up there on piano.”
“Oh yeah?” She nods her head to the music—well, a little out of rhythm.
They play for a long time. Maybe an hour, maybe less or more. Who knows? No one seems to have much use for time around here, and I’m slipping into the habit of only glancing at clocks when I’m confronted with them. Who cares if it’s two in the morning if I feel like I could stay awake and paint all night?
Not that I’m feeling like that right now. After I give Angela a hug, I let her hang out with the other band members. “I’ll meet you in the purple room later, okay?” I say, waving, leaving her there. She nods, and Mae gives me a salute, and I feel weird about walking away, but we’ve already escaped what we thought was going to be our biggest danger here. In my gut, I know this is a safe place. Still, I’ll be back to check on her after my drink with Edie.
She makes me the amplified orange juice.
“It’s delicious, yet again,” I tell her.
“Pouring is an art, like everything else,” Edie says. “I do it exceptionally well.”
She runs a towel over the bar and watches me have another sip. There’s one other person in the bar tonight—a guy about Tall Jon’s age, wearing a fedora—and he’s getting terrible service, but he’s off in his own world, meditating or something while he drinks a beer. Edie’s holding back questions, I can tell. She wants to ask me where I go to school, what I did for Christmas, do I even celebrate Christmas, how did my sister learn to play like that (never mind, she’s probably figured that out), what do I dream about, and do I ever date girls?
“Have you ever been to New York?” I ask her.
“Like, the city? Yeah, I’ve been once. A school trip, though. Nothing fun. It was cold and the only museum we went to was the natural history one.” She stops cleaning the counter. “Oh, let me guess. You’re thinking of going. You think you can’t be a real artist until you’ve roughed it up there. Lived in an apartment with four roommates and one bathroom. Look, it’s not true. Do you realize you’ve got everything you need right here?”
I stare down into my drink. “Hmm, I guess.”
“Hey. I can take a break in a minute. Let me show you what I’ve done since I’ve been here.”
Maybe Edie’s real art is evolution—her photos are arranged in matching black frames in a line marching around her place. The whole thing is hers, living room and kitchen and two bedrooms, all to herself. One bedroom is to sleep, and the other isn’t quite a studio, but more like a catch-all for everything related to her photography. Despite the fact that there’s no room for me to walk into it, the line of photos marches around all four walls and out again. The early photos are everyday things in everyday places: lonely umbrellas on the beach, a broken-down car on the street in front of the Estate, a cracked window.
The photos in the next room, Edie’s bedroom, are different—stranger, and more arranged, and sometimes involving people. This one wall in her bedroom is a series of portraits of people (some including Edie herself) wearing identical bright pink feathered masks, Lilia among them. I recognize her long hair.
“She agreed to this?” I ask Edie.
“She was really supportive of my project,” Edie says.
The ones on the wall by her closet are the hardest of all to look at. The same people from the mask pictures are now dressed as though dead and lying at a wake: mask off, eyes closed, face muscles relaxed and dark makeup filling in lips and eyelids and wrinkles. Edie looks the creepiest: white-faced and surrounded by flowers.
“So what inspired these?” I ask her, trying to keep my voice steady.
“My grandmother and my dad died,” she says, “like, within two weeks of each other. That’s too much for a girl to take at once. If I could have surgically removed the grief, I would have. This was my way of trying to let it out into the world.”
“To make those feelings beautiful?” I ask.
“Eh, maybe,” she says. “Or just, you know, to disperse them. To split my feelings among a hundred people who might see the photos.”
I take a few steps out of her bedroom and back into the hallway. Edie’s place is so strange—the pictures of death existing in these spaces where she lives her life. There’s a smell of garlicky pasta in the air, and she’s got old books and magazines on shelves in the hallway. It’s settled and unsettled, just like me.
“My abuela’s in the hospital.” The words fall out, but I’m okay with them. “We don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
“Ugh, I’m
sorry,” Edie says. “I shouldn’t have shown you all this. We can head back to the bar.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say.
And Edie smiles. She gets me a glass of water from her tiny kitchen. I wander around her rooms, looking at all her art supplies and the few bits and pieces I can gather of her pre-Estate life: a worn paperback of Fun Home, a T-shirt from some summer camp in Kissimmee, a couple of family photos taped next to the window. Outside, the gulf is all kicked up, steady in its thrashing. I look away, only to find Edie watching me.
“Your place is great,” I tell her.
“Yup.” She stretches out her arms. “I love it here. And, you know, you could have a place like this too, but you’ve gotta go finish your project first.”
“Is that seriously it?”
“That’s all I can tell you.”
She shrugs, and I can’t help it. I run to her and let her put her arms around me in a tentative hug. I like her. I like her. She’s clearly one of those people who can pick through the wasted bits of another and find something they never knew they had.
But I’m scared. And, oh shit—did I just say that? I whispered it into Edie’s shoulder, because this is the Red Mangrove Estate and nothing I feel so strongly is going to stay inside my head for very long. I’m scared because Edie kind of wants me, and because I know I could take away the “kind of” and still be thinking a true thought. I’m scared because I don’t know how many and which of my feelings I could beam onto her without myself becoming dimmed. I put my lips on her cheek for the quickest of seconds, and she leans forward, then pulls back.
“Oh, girl,” she says, breathing on me. “I know, I know. But we don’t want to ruin this.”
“Ruin?” I say. I mean for it to be a question, but it flattens itself into a statement. As though I’m agreeing with her. Am I?
She untangles herself from me and lets me go.