by Nina LaCour
“Can we return to the reason I came here?” Mabel asks.
My body tenses. I wonder if she can see it.
I don’t want her to list all the reasons I should go back to San Francisco, back to her parents’ house, because I know that they’ll all be right. I won’t be able to fight against them with any kind of logic. I’ll only look foolish or ungrateful.
“I want to say yes,” I tell her.
“But you can. You just have to let yourself. You used to spend half your time over there anyway.”
She’s right.
“We’ll be able to see each other on all our breaks, and you’ll have a place you can always go home to. My parents want to help you with things when you need it. Like money or just advice or whatever. We can be like sisters,” she says. And then she freezes.
A drop of my heart, a ringing in my head.
I smooth my hair behind my ear. I look at the snow.
“I didn’t . . .” She leans forward, cradles her head in her hands.
And I think of how time passes so differently for different people. Mabel and Jacob, their months in Los Angeles, months full of doing and seeing and going. Road trips, the ocean. So much living crammed into every day. And then me in my room. Watering my plant. Making ramen. Cleaning my yellow bowls night after night after night.
“It’s okay,” I say. But it isn’t.
Too much time passes and she still hasn’t moved.
“I know what you meant,” I say.
Our plates of food appear on the table. A bottle of maple syrup. Ketchup for my home fries. We busy ourselves with eating, but neither of us seems hungry. Right as the check comes, Mabel’s phone rings. She drops her credit card onto the bill.
“I got this, okay?” she says. “I’ll be right back.”
She takes her phone to the back of the restaurant and slides into an empty booth, her back to me.
I abandon our table.
The snow is falling harder now. The pet store clerk hangs a CLOSED sign in its window, but I’m relieved to find the pottery studio’s door opens when I push it.
“Again!” she says.
I smile. I’m a little embarrassed to be back, but I can tell she’s pleased when I set the bell on the counter.
“I didn’t want my friend to see it,” I explain.
“I could wrap it in tissue and you could stick it in your coat?” she says.
“Perfect.”
She moves quickly, knowing I’m in a hurry, but then pauses.
“How many hours a week would you be looking for?” she asks. “For the job.”
“I’m open to pretty much anything.”
“After you left I was thinking . . . I really could use a hand. But I could only pay minimum wage, and only a couple shifts per week.”
“That would be great,” I say. “I have classes, so I need time to study. A couple shifts would be great.”
“Are you interested in making pottery? Maybe we could work something out where you get to use the kiln. To make up for the fact I can’t pay very much.”
A warmth passes through me.
“Really?”
She smiles.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m Claudia.”
“I’m Marin.”
“Marin. Are you from California?”
I nod.
“I spent a few months in Fairfax. I walked in the redwoods every day.”
I force a smile. She’s waiting for me to say more, but I don’t know what to tell her.
“You must be in the middle of your school break . . . but you’re still here.”
Worry darts behind her eyes. I wonder what she sees behind mine. Please don’t fuck this up, I tell myself.
“Fairfax is beautiful,” I tell her. “I’m actually from San Francisco, but my family doesn’t live there anymore. Can I give you my contact info? And then you can let me know if you do end up wanting help?”
“Yes,” Claudia says, handing me a notepad and a pen. When I give it back to her, she says, “You’ll hear from me in early January. Right after the New Year.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Bye, Marin.” She holds out the bell, wrapped in tissue. Before she lets go, she locks eyes with me and says, “Have a beautiful holiday.”
“You, too.” My eyes sting as I walk outside.
Back in the café, Mabel isn’t in the booth but she’s not at our table either, so I slip her bell inside the bag with the other gifts and wait. I imagine myself in the pottery studio. I’m taking money from a customer and counting change. I’m wrapping yellow bowls in tissue paper and saying, I have these, too. I’m saying, Welcome. I’m saying, Happy New Year. I’m dusting shelves and mopping the tiled floor. Learning to build a fire in the stove.
“Sorry,” Mabel says, sliding in across from me.
The waitress appears a moment later.
“You’re back! I thought you two left in a panic and forgot your credit card.”
“Where were you?” Mabel asks me.
I shrug. “I guess I disappeared for a minute.”
“Well,” she says. “You’ve gotten good at that.”
chapter seven
JUNE
ANA WAS OUTSIDE when we opened the gate to Mabel’s front garden. She was dressed in her painting smock, her hair pinned messily in gold barrettes, staring at her latest collage with a paintbrush and a piece of yarn in her hand.
“Girls!” she said. “I need you.”
I’d caught glimpses of her works in progress for the three and a half years I’d been friends with Mabel. Each time I’d felt a rush, and now there was a new reverence to the moment. Ana’s collages had been shown by famous galleries in San Francisco and New York and Mexico City for years, but in the last few months she’d sold work to three different museums. Her photograph had begun appearing in magazines. Javier would open them to the articles on Ana and then leave them in prominent places throughout the house. Ana threw up her hands each time she saw one before snatching it up and stuffing it away. “I’ll get a big head,” she told us. “Hide that away from me.”
“It’s more simple than usual,” Mabel said now, and at first that seemed true.
It was a night sky, smooth layers of black on black, with stars shining so bright they almost glittered. I stepped closer. The stars did glitter.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
Ana pointed to a bowl of shining rocks.
“It’s fool’s gold,” she said. “I turned it into a powder.”
There was so much going on under the top layer. It was quiet, maybe, but it wasn’t simple.
“I can’t decide what to add. It needs something, but I don’t know what. I’ve tried these feathers. I’ve tried rope. I want something nautical. I think.”
I understood how she’d feel stuck. What she had was so beautiful. How could she add something to it without taking something away?
“Anyway,” she said, setting down her paintbrushes. “How are my girls this evening? Been shopping, I see.”
We’d spent an hour in Forever 21 trying on dresses for Ben’s party and now we had matching bags, each containing a dress identical but for the color. Mabel’s was red and mine was black.
“Have you eaten? Javier made pozole.”
“The party already started so we have to be quick . . . ,” Mabel said.
“Take it up to your room.”
“I can’t wait to see what you decide to do.”
Ana turned back to her canvas and sighed.
“Me, too, Marin. Me, too.”
We started with our makeup, applying eye shadow between bites of soup and tostadas. Mabel emptied her jewelry box onto her bed, and we combed through it for accessories. I chose gold bangles and sparkly green earrings. Mabel chose a braided leather bra
celet. She thought about switching her gold studs for another pair, but decided to keep them in. We crunched tostadas, finished all the soup in our bowls. We pulled off our shirts and slipped on the dresses, stepped out of our jeans and looked at each other.
“Just different enough,” I said.
“As usual.”
Since we’d met, we had a thing for our names’ symmetry. An M followed by a vowel, then a consonant, then a vowel, then a consonant. We thought it was important. We thought it must have meant something. Like a similar feeling must have passed through our mothers as they named us. Like destiny was at work already. We may have been in different countries, but it was only a matter of time before we would collide into each other.
We were getting ready for the party, but the time was getting later and we weren’t hurrying. The real event was us, in her room. We kept reassessing our makeup even though we barely wore any. We showed each other our empty soup bowls and went back into the kitchen for more.
We were on our way back up to Mabel’s room when I heard Ana and Javier talking in their living room.
“Such good soup!” I called to Javier, and Ana called back, “Let us see our beautiful girls!”
They were sprawled on a sofa together, Javier with a book, Ana sifting through a box of scraps and small objects, her mind still on her collage, trying to solve the mystery of what should come next.
“Oh!” Ana said when she saw us, dismay on her face.
“No, no-no-no-no,” Javier said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mabel asked.
“It means you aren’t leaving the house in that dress,” Javier said.
“You guys,” Mabel said. “Seriously?”
Javier said something stern in Spanish, and Mabel’s face flushed with indignation.
“Mom,” she said.
Ana looked back and forth between Mabel and me. Her gaze landed on Mabel and she said, “It looks like lingerie. I’m sorry, mi amor, but you can’t go out like this.”
“Mom,” Mabel said. “Now we don’t have any time!”
“You have plenty of clothes,” Javier said.
“What about that yellow dress?” Ana asked.
Mabel sighed and stormed up the stairs, and I found myself still standing before them, wearing the same dress as their daughter and waiting for them to tell me something. I felt the heat rise in my face, too, but from embarrassment, not indignation. I wanted to know what it felt like. I wanted them to tell me no.
Javier was already back to his book, but Ana was looking at me. I could tell she was deciding something. I still don’t know what she would have said if I had waited a little bit longer. If she would have said anything. But the possibility that she might not tell me to change was crushing. Gramps never looked at my clothes.
I didn’t wait around to see if her eyes would find their way back and if the right words would follow. I heard Mabel’s door slam and I ran up after her. She was digging through her drawers and saying how stupid all her clothes were, even the good things, but I didn’t listen because I was trying to figure out what to do. I had the pair of jeans that I’d worn over but my shirt was too plain. So I took off the dress and picked up the scissors Mabel kept on her desk and I cut the dress right below the waist.
“What are you doing?” Mabel said. “You don’t have to change.”
“It’ll look better like this anyway,” I said.
I pulled the jeans up and tucked in the fraying seam of what used to be a dress. I looked in the mirror and it was true—it looked better. And when we went back downstairs Javier complimented Mabel’s new outfit and kissed her on the forehead while she muttered “whatever” and rolled her eyes. And Ana jumped up from her place on the sofa and took my hands.
“You look beautiful,” she said. “Good choice.”
I was buoyant with gratitude as we left the house. Mabel’s parents called their reminders that we take a car home, not ride with our friends if they’d been drinking, not walk if it was after eleven. We called back our okays. I drifted down Guerrero Street, a girl with her best friend, a maker of good choices.
Too many people were at Ben’s house. They crowded the foyer and the kitchen, made it difficult to hear anything anyone said to us. Mabel gestured to the kitchen, and I shook my head. It wasn’t worth it. I caught a glimpse of Ben in the living room and grabbed Mabel’s hand.
“Where’s Laney?” I asked him when we were settled there on the soft green rug, the city lights through the windows, the nostalgia of everything taking me over. In seventh grade, Ben and I had spent a few months kissing each other until we realized we had more fun talking. I hadn’t been in that room with him for a long time, but even with everyone else there, and the loudness of it, the way people were showing off for one another and getting wilder, I remembered our mellow afternoons, just him and me and the dog, once we discovered that we were meant to be just friends.
“I shut her in my parents’ room,” he said. “She gets nervous around too many people. You could go say hi to her, though, if you want. You remember where the treats are?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
It had been years, but I could picture the tin of dog treats on a shelf next to a stack of cookbooks. I wove my way past the groups of people and into the hall by the kitchen, and there was the tin, just as I’d remembered. Ben’s parents’ room was quiet, and Laney whimpered when I walked in. I closed the door behind me and sat on the carpet, fed her five treats, one after the next, the way we used to do when Ben and I were thirteen. I stayed in there, petting her head for a little bit longer, because it felt special to be somewhere other people weren’t allowed to go.
When I got back to the living room and sat between Mabel and Ben, they were in the midst of a conversation with Courtney and a few other people. “We’re basically the only teenagers in the city,” a boy said. “All the private schools are worried because they’re losing students every year.”
Courtney said, “We might move.”
“Whaaat?” Ben shook his head. “You’ve been my neighbor for, like, ever.”
“I know. It’s crazy. But I share a room with my brother, and it’s not that cool anymore. When he was a little kid, fine. But now that he’s hitting puberty? Not so much.”
“Where would you go?” I asked her.
San Francisco always felt like an island to me, surrounded by the mythical East Bay with its restaurants and parks and North Bay with its wealth and its redwoods. South of the city was where our dead were buried—but not my mother, whose ashes returned to the ocean that killed her, which was also the ocean she loved. South of that were little beach towns, and then Silicon Valley and Stanford. But the people, everyone I knew, everyone I’d ever known, all lived in the city.
“Contra Costa,” Courtney said.
“Gross,” Ben said.
“You’ve probably never even been there.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Snob!” Courtney punched his leg. “It’s fine there. A lot of trees. I’m just so ready to have three bedrooms.”
“We have three bedrooms. It can’t be that hard to find. Maybe go out to the Sunset. That’s where Marin lives.”
“How big is your place?” Courtney asked me.
“It’s a house,” I said. “It’s pretty big. I think three bedrooms.”
“What do you mean, you think?”
“My grandpa lives in the back and I live in the front. I think there are two rooms back there. Maybe three.”
Courtney’s eyes narrowed.
“You haven’t been in the back of your house?”
“It’s not that weird,” I said. “He has a study and a bedroom, but the bedroom opens up to something, either a big closet or a small room. I’m just not sure if it’s technically a bedroom or not.”
“Bedrooms have to hav
e closets or else they aren’t considered bedrooms,” Eleanor, daughter of real-estate-agent parents, informed us.
“Oh,” I said. “Then it’s a three bedroom. It doesn’t have a closet.”
“It’s probably a sitting room,” Eleanor offered. “Lots of the old houses have them off the master bedrooms.”
I nodded, but the truth is that I wasn’t sure at all. I’d only caught glimpses through his study a couple times, but that’s just how it was with us. I gave him his privacy and he gave me mine. Mabel would have loved that arrangement. Ana was always digging through her drawers.
But as the night got later, as people showed up and left, and the music got turned down because of the neighbors, and the alcohol flowed and then ran out, I kept seeing Courtney’s look. Her narrowed eyes. The tone of her voice. You haven’t been in the back of your house?
She was right. I hadn’t been there.
I’d only paused in the doorway some nights when he was in his study, sitting at his desk, smoking his cigarettes, tapping the ash in his crystal ashtray and writing his letters by the light of an old-fashioned desk lamp, green with a bronze chain. Most of the time the door was shut but once in a while it was left open a crack, by mistake, probably.
Sometimes I’d call, “Good night,” and he would say it back. But most of the time I walked quietly by, trying not to disturb him, until I got to our shared territory and then to my room, where nobody ever went besides Mabel and me.
“What’s wrong?” Mabel asked me when we were back on the sidewalk, waiting for the car under a streetlamp. I shook my head. “Courtney was being kind of aggressive.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
I was still thinking about Gramps at his desk. I was still wondering why I tried to be quiet when I walked past his rooms.
I was only giving him privacy. He was old, and the whites of his eyes seemed to grow more yellow every week, and he coughed like something was ready to rattle loose inside of him. A week ago I saw a red spot on his handkerchief when he lowered it from his mouth. He needed rest and quiet. He needed to save his strength. I was only being considerate. It’s what anyone would do.