Catch the Light, page 13
Mom pulls one more file out of her bag, sending a shower of yellow Post-its to the floor.
Sam looks at me and mouths, Sorry. Her face is red all the way down to her neck.
“Will there be parents there?” Mom asks.
“Yes,” Bea says, just as I say, “I think so.”
“Girls,” Mom says. “Sit down.”
We do, and Mom looks from Bea, to me, to Sam and back again. Then she sighs, deep.
“Bea, honey, you’re only fourteen years old. That’s a little young to be going to a party with seniors.”
Bea groans. “It’s not just seniors. Everybody is going to be there.”
Mom bends down and starts picking up sticky notes off the floor, doing her yoga breaths.
My brain is going to fall out of my head if this meeting doesn’t end soon, one of the notes says.
Tacos for lunch? says another, under a drawing of a taco with skinny little arms and legs.
It’s weirdly thrilling to see these mundane details of my mom’s mysterious other life spread out on the floor. I forget that she gets bored, has friends, eats lunch. But somewhere inside the thrill is a little bit of envy. Maybe even anger.
She shoves the stickies back into her briefcase and gestures to a tote bag that’s filled with fun-size Snickers. “Why don’t you stay home with me and El? We’re gonna watch movies and eat all this candy.”
Bea rolls her eyes. “Right, because you’re all about quality time these days.”
I can feel waves of embarrassment coming off of Sam, who is sitting beside me, right at the edge of her stool. I want to say, Yes. A train wreck is coming. Run for your life.
“Bea—” Mom says, already resigned to the impending explosion.
Desperation and anger battle it out on Bea’s face. I can see it expanding inside of her, looking for somewhere to go. I wish I could reach over and calm it down, or open my mouth and fix this somehow. But as usual, I feel frozen to the spot.
“Come on, Mom,” Bea says, deflating a little. “Please.”
“I’m sorry, Bea,” Mom says, firm. “The answer is no.”
Bea looks down at the counter like she’s either holding back tears or trying to burn holes in it with her eyes. Her neck is red under the perfect, delicate lace of her carefully sewn costume. If I squinted I could probably see smoke seeping out of her ears.
“Fuck. You,” Bea breathes. Then she scoots off her stool and stomps upstairs.
Mom turns away from us, hands on her head, breathing deep. Sam looks like she is trying to disappear into the floor. “Wait for me in the car?” I say to her, sliding out of my seat. But by the time I get to Bea’s bedroom door she’s already locked it.
“Bea,” I plead. “Let me in. I’ll stay home too.”
“No,” she yells. She sounds like she might be crying. “Don’t. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. Especially not you.”
“Me?” I step back. “What did I do?”
“Forget it,” she says. “Just go.”
I pound on her door a few more times, but there’s nothing but silence.
* * *
• • •
At the party, I mope around, feeling like a traitor. Sam keeps trying to pull me out of my funk, but I can’t stop picturing Bea in her couture spider dress, skinny arms dangling down in disappointment. I should be home with her, under the covers, plotting our way out of there.
I leave Sam dancing in a tangle of bodies in the living room and make my way out to the front porch. The air is freezing, colder than it ever gets in California. I zip up my jacket and pull my hands inside the sleeves, but when I sit down on the top step, my bare legs are like popsicles and my whole body starts to shake.
I just keep thinking, How did I get here? I’m at a person named Garrett’s house somewhere in the middle of upstate New York and everyone is drinking PBR and dancing to satellite radio and I’m out on the porch taking deep breaths to combat the waves of homesickness that are slamming into me, one after the next.
I feel ridiculous, crying in this costume, and I’m cold and I can’t fill back up after yesterday emptied me out. I feel like I’m letting everyone down, Bea, Nora, even myself. I feel like I’m turning into someone I’m not.
Even worse, all of my memories are starting to warp. And I can’t seem to shake the feeling of sitting in front of that Ouija board in the vast, humiliating silence.
A car streaks by, much too fast for this quiet road in the middle of town. For a second the world is illuminated and then it goes dark again.
Here’s the worst truth: Dad isn’t the birds. He isn’t the ocean. He isn’t a salt or a water. My dad is dead.
The screen door slams and I look up to see Jesse ambling toward me in his best zombie impression, until he finally sees my face and lurches to a stop. He stands there, mouth open, stuck at the beginning of a sentence, looking almost as perfect undead as he does when his heart is pumping.
“Are you okay?” he finally says, sitting down on the step beside me. The wooden boards groan beneath the weight of him.
I open my mouth, but any possible words are washed away because suddenly the trickle of tears has picked up momentum and now they are absolutely waterfalling down my face.
So he wraps his arms around me, scoots my whole body across the top step to fit right under his long arm. I blink my eyes again and again, trying to stop crying.
“It’s almost been a year since he died,” I say when I remember how to talk again. It’s so weird how, more than three hundred days later, grief is still waiting with its land mines.
Jesse doesn’t say anything; he just twists my hair around his palm, his chest expanding and contracting against me in long, even intervals.
Inside the house, “Monster Mash” comes on and everyone starts singing. And the ridiculousness of this moment hits me like a sledgehammer.
I crumple forward then, truly falling apart, my chest heaving against my knees. It’s like I’m on a roller coaster and I just crested the tallest drop and before I can even whisper, oh shit, I’m plummeting down, down, down. No end in sight.
Dad is dead is dead is dead, I keep thinking to myself, thinking of all the ways that the word dead careens outward, crushing everything in its path.
The river of tears hops its banks; snot and mascara soak my tights.
Jesse just sits there, his hand flat against my back, rubbing these big circles.
And then I hit the bottom and the cart slows, my breath slows, everything slows. Jesse’s circles slow too, and then his hand is just resting on my back, warm and heavy. I feel empty. There’s a faint humming in my hollow chest, like the sound of Aunt El’s refrigerator.
“I’ll drive you home,” Jesse says.
“Okay,” I say into my knees. I’m embarrassed to look up and show him my sad, melted makeup when he’s being so dashing and kind. He tosses me the keys and goes inside to let Sam know we’re leaving. I find his car parked along the side of the muddy road and sink into the passenger seat.
* * *
• • •
When we get to El’s house all of the lights are off except for a faint blue glow coming from Bea’s window. Jesse parks the car and turns off the headlights, and then it’s just us under the moon. It’s a waxing gibbous, the kind that could trick you into thinking it’s full.
“I wish it were easier to photograph the moon,” Jesse says, his voice slow and sleepy.
It feels easier to talk now that I’m invisible in the dark of Jesse’s car. “There’s a lot you can’t photograph,” I say.
“Dreams,” he agrees.
“Ghosts.”
“God.”
“Memory.”
“Still,” Jesse says. “Sometimes it feels like it’s worth a try.”
“When did you start taking photographs?” I ask, wanting to know how he found the thing he’s perfect for.
Jesse leans his seat back and folds his hands behind his head. “When I was little,” he says, “I was scared of the dark.”
“Really?” I smile, leaning my seat back too, and I think of little-kid Jesse hiding under the covers.
“Yep,” he says from his side of the darkness. “My grandpa was a machinist, and he was obsessed with photography. He used to build his own cameras in the garage.
“He made me one, and he told me that I could trap light inside of it during the day and then I could keep it in my bed. And then, even in the darkest of darknesses, I’d have a little light with me.”
“Wow,” I say, wishing it were really that easy.
“He was an incredible photographer. His pictures felt like living things.”
Even in the dark, I can sense Jesse’s constant movement, the bouncing of his knee, his fingers playing the piano on the edge of the car door, right under the window.
“He took me to my first Garry Winogrand show when I was ten. I was a goner.”
“Never to recover,” I say.
“Yep,” Jesse says. For a second the motion stops as he gets lost in the memory. “We went out for pizza afterward, and I made him take his camera out and explain how every part worked.” He pauses. “Anyway. He had a heart attack and died a year after that.”
“Shit,” I say. I lift my hand, reaching across the console for his arm. The fabric of his jacket is thick and cold, and I’m not sure where to hold on. He turns his head to look at me, but the shadows make it hard to see the expression on his face.
“I should get home,” he says. “I have to work at seven thirty.”
I take my hand back and raise my seat, folding back in on myself. “Sure,” I say. I feel like I’m waking up from a dream.
“Night, Marigold,” Jesse says. And then I walk back to the house through the sea of moonlight.
13
The next morning I wake up to an all-caps text from Nora—her first contact since I bailed on Saturday night.
THE UC APPLICATION WINDOW IS OPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At first I’m relieved because it seems like I’ve been forgiven. But I think about UCSB and all of the things I haven’t done yet. Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I text back: YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!
I hope five exclamation marks is enough to sell it.
We suffer through a silent breakfast, and then Bea, El, Mom, and I go looking for houses. After working all weekend, Mom takes the day off. It’s the first time I’ve seen her in daylight hours in so long, and I study her, looking for clues. She’s humming. She looks whole. El blasts Fleetwood Mac, and Mom plays drums on the dashboard with a couple of pencils she’s dug out of the center console.
In the back seat, the vibe is much gloomier. Bea sulks, still refusing to speak to anyone. Nora’s text gnaws at my stomach.
I stare off into the trees, trying to imagine the future. I can’t even make out the lines anymore.
We pull onto a long dirt driveway and wind around until we see a big, old farmhouse with peeling paint.
“Looks nice,” Mom says.
Bea scowls.
Our real estate agent is waiting out front, looking overly eager in a bubble-gum-pink fleece jacket. She and mom have spoken a few times since we got here, but this is the first time that Mom has found room in her schedule to look at anything in person.
She leads us inside and we wander through the echoey rooms as she goes on about closet space and hardwood floors. Bea breaks off and climbs the stairs, and I follow her up and into one of the bedrooms.
“This house smells like mice,” I say.
“Dead mice,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I know,” she says.
She reaches over and grabs my hand and we stare out the window, into a yard full of dead grass. I focus my eyes on the window dust, then on the scene outside.
“Where do you want to live?” I ask.
“California,” says Bea.
She tries to drop my hand, but I don’t let her.
“The sooner we pick a place here,” I say carefully, “the sooner we get our stuff back.”
Bea sulks. “I don’t want our stuff back.”
“Yes you do,” I say. “What about all your wigs?”
Bea turns around and walks over to the closet. She opens the drawers of the built-in dresser one by one. She’s wearing her hair in a braided crown, and I think she’s gotten taller lately. She is growing like a weed, a climbing rose. Wildly, right under our noses. She’s almost a real person now. Already more complicated than I could ever hope to understand.
She turns back around and crosses her arms.
“I guess it would be nice to have my wigs,” she says. Then she walks back down the stairs and out to the car.
On the way to the next house, El says, “I think that last one probably has a rodent problem. But wow, that kitchen was beautiful.”
“What did you girls think?” says Mom.
I look at Bea and she looks at me. Something shifts.
“It might be nice to live closer to town,” she says.
“Then we wouldn’t have to ride the bus,” I agree.
“Okay,” says Mom, trying not to smile too hard. “I’ll tell the Realtor.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a FaceTime request from Bennett. I reach in, and the way it vibrates against my fingers makes me remember the feeling of Jesse’s cold jacket. I wince.
“Everything okay?” says El, eyeing me through the rearview mirror.
“Fine,” I say, trying to breathe the panic out of my body without anyone noticing.
My questions for Bennett are multiplying, evolving, growing ever more vague. I’m wondering, What do I want us to be? I want to know, What do I want you to want? I don’t have any answers, so I bury them all. I wait for my phone to stop ringing and then I turn it off.
* * *
• • •
In the first days of November, every leaf falls to the ground. We look at more houses, but none of them stick. Mom works late almost every night, but when she’s home she and Bea bicker, right to the edge of explosion. I watch, feeling helpless. It’s like I’m in limbo, suspended out in the middle of so many things, and I can’t do anything.
Jesse works at the hardware store all week long, then goes on a trip with his parents to look at schools in New York City. I walk through the woods and try to figure out the best way to photograph the naked trees.
Sam comes over on Saturday to paint in the dining room while I pretend to work on college applications. She covers her palette in blues and greens, but most of the time she just stares out the window at the dead grass and the gray sky.
“Are you all right?” I say, the third time her paintbrush clatters to the ground.
“Are you?” she retorts, looking pointedly at my computer screen, where the cursor has been blinking in my empty essay doc for the past half hour.
I cross my arms. “I asked you first.”
“Fine,” she huffs, setting her brush down.
I close my computer, relieved to focus on someone else’s life for once.
“Well,” she says as she pulls her hair back into a tiny, smooth bun at the nape of her neck. “I’ve been looking into art assistant jobs and internships for next year and I feel like I’ll never get one. I don’t have any experience.” She stops, frowning. Then she picks up her red sweater from the back of El’s dining room chair, folding it neatly and setting it on the table. She turns to the window again. “And I live in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“But you’re talented. And prolific,” I say, gesturing to her backpack, which is bursting with notebooks and pens and crunched-up papers. “And you’re fun to be around. Someone will hire you.”
“I hope so,” Sam says. She slouches down in her chair. “I just really need to get out of here. Sometimes I get scared that it’s never going to happen.”
It feels like there’s so much she isn’t saying, but I also know that we both have our secrets. That’s just how it is with us.
“It’s going to happen,” I tell her, but she just nods and picks up her brush again, plunging it into the paint.
* * *
• • •
That night, Nora finally calls me back and we watch three episodes of Top Chef together. It’s a relief to hear her snarky comments, to laugh like there isn’t a growing cavern of distance and time between us. When she brings up college, I play my part. I pretend I’m sticking to the plan. It could still be true. The future is wide open.
14
“You said it’s almost been a year,” Jesse says on Monday, as we’re walking toward the cafeteria.
His words startle me out of my thoughts, a continuous loop of the blank look on Mom’s face last night as she stared into the lamplight like a luna moth.
“When did it happen?” He turns his head to look at me, and it feels like he’s peering through the clouds on my face.
“November tenth.”
“That’s tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
The bodies ahead of us seem to slow down, like cars on the freeway, merging in and out.
I shrug. “I don’t know.” Even though we all know it’s coming, nobody in my family has even mentioned it.
My hands search for my pockets and, finding none, swing aimlessly around my sides looking for a place to stop.
“Well, I’m here if you don’t want to be alone,” he says. His eyes are dark and serious.
“Okay,” I say, looking down at the tan linoleum floor.
In the center of my chest, a pinprick of light starts to make its way in.
* * *
• • •
Jesse sits with us at lunch now. We are a constellation of three, just like Nora, Bennett, and me, and it makes me feel like I’ve fallen through a tear in the universe, into a parallel timeline.
