Catch the Light, page 18
My phone buzzes against my desk.
Nora: SUBMITTED!!
I pause for a moment, fingers hovering over the screen, trying to think of what to say. I miss Nora like crazy. I am so sick of lying. I hate that all we ever do is live-text through our old favorite shows.
I bring up the FaceTime app and find Nora’s name. I almost press it. But then I remember all of the lies that I’ve already told and I feel suddenly exhausted.
I open up the text window again.
Me: AMAZING! I’m almost done. These short answer questions are killer.
Nora: Need any help?
Me: I’ll figure it out.
Nora: Real talk: I miss you.
Me: I really miss you too.
I fall asleep with the computer open, the cursor still blinking in the empty answer field of question number one.
20
The next weekend, in the absence of Jesse’s glow, I try new things like sleeping all day. The more I slip in and out of sleep, the harder it is to get out of bed. Katharine and RBG curl up on the floor beside me, thumping their tails on the rug. A box of chemicals and paper arrives from my old photo store in LA, just in time to remind me that I’ll probably never set foot in Jesse’s darkroom again. I shove it into the corner of my closet and climb back into bed.
Saturday passes, then Sunday. My application to UCSB, due in eight days, stays untouched, a perfectly empty canvas. My phone periodically chirps with texts from Nora, subtle attempts to check on the progress of my application. I’m running out of vague responses, so after a while I stop texting back.
I finally get the nerve to call Bennett, but he doesn’t answer and I’m relieved because I don’t know what I would say if he did. I listen to his voicemail recording: Hey, this is Bennett, leave a message, and it’s over so fast. I want to listen again, like maybe it will give me some kind of clue as to what happened last weekend. But then I realize that the beep has gone by and it’s my turn to say something and I can’t so I just hang up the phone.
All week long there’s been nothing but silence between us. It’s a little disappointing how, after one disastrous moment of honesty, we’ve gone back to not talking at all. Part of me just wants to let it go because even if I’ve blown it with Jesse forever, I know now that things are never going back to the way they were in California. But suddenly I miss it more than ever, the neon pink bougainvillea and the hot, crowded sidewalks and the easy quiet of Bennett, Nora, and me.
On Sunday afternoon, Sam texts: Want to go for a drive?
The sun is sinking low, even though it’s only four o’clock, and something about it makes me feel so blue I can’t even think. I imagine riding through the twilight in Sam’s car, the way the world would glow in the headlights. I almost consider getting up, putting on real clothing. But then I would have to talk about this hollowed-out feeling.
I text Sam: Maybe tomorrow, but I don’t really mean it.
* * *
• • •
Hannah comes home on Monday night and lugs a suitcase and a giant mesh bag of laundry up to my room. She flops onto my bed like it belongs to her, picking up a dirty sock from the bedspread and wrinkling her nose.
“Ew,” she says.
“I’ve missed you too,” I say.
“What, are you moping?” she asks, looking over my pathetic ensemble of baggy black sweatpants, oversize black T-shirt, and navy cardigan with a giant hole in the elbow. She frowns in utter disapproval, as if she herself is not the queen of moping, and then continues on without waiting for me to answer. “And where is Bea? This isn’t going to work. We need movies.”
She gets up, tugging me with her, and pushes me out of my room. “You go make the popcorn,” she says. Then she turns and pounds on Bea’s door. “BEA!” she screams. “You’ve got ten minutes to get your pathetic little ass downstairs!”
She parks all of us—including Mom and El—on the couches and makes us watch Heathers and then Home Alone, talking ceaselessly through both movies.
“That outfit is fucking amazing.”
“Bea, stop hogging the popcorn.”
“Is it weird that being left at home to build elaborate booby traps to ward off robbers is kind of my dream scenario?”
I’m annoyed, but something about it is also comforting, and after a while I realize that her constant babbling is filling the awkward, empty spaces and easing the tension, word by word. Nobody is fighting. Jesse and Bennett become a little numb spot in my mind.
Everyone else falls asleep, and eventually it’s just the two of us.
“I can’t believe Macaulay Culkin is forty-one,” she says, looking at her phone.
“Did you just google that?” I ask.
She shrugs. “What? I wanted to see if he was hot as an adult.”
“Jesus,” I say, shaking my head.
“You know you missed me,” she says, turning off the TV and gathering the cups and bowls on the coffee table.
I stand up and stretch out my arms.
“You have no idea,” I say.
* * *
• • •
The next night it snows for the very first time. The flakes are big and fluffy and they cover the hard ground within a matter of minutes. Ice crystals splinter up the windowpanes. Thin piles of white line the twigs and branches, glowing periwinkle in the twilight. From my room at the top of the house I watch the whole world transform.
In the morning, I’m awakened by someone poking me in the back.
“God, it’s like she’s dead,” I hear Hannah whisper.
“It’s six in the fucking morning,” Bea whines. “Who the fuck cares?”
I feel Hannah lean down to my ear. “Wake up, Maryyyyyy,” she whispers.
I open one eye.
“You are so creepy,” I rasp. I sit up, squinting around for something that will help me understand why my sisters are doing this. “What is this? It’s still dark outside.”
Hannah sighs. “You guys are way too grumpy.” She makes a swoony pose with her arms. “It snowed! It’s beautiful. We have to go out and play in it.”
I groan and lie back down, hiding my head under the blankets.
“Nope.” Hannah is using her Mom voice now, and I know we are in trouble. “I don’t know what has been going on around here but you two need some fresh fucking air. I can’t handle another day in mope town. You have ten minutes to get up or I’m coming up here and pouring a glass of water on your greasy little heads.”
I don’t have the right clothes for this, but I pull on leggings under some heavy jeans, two pairs of socks, a wool sweater, and a giant down parka I find in El’s coat closet. Hannah meets me at the back door with a hat and a mismatched pair of fuzzy mittens.
As soon as I step out the back door, snow makes its way under my cuffs and stings my ankles. But after a while it’s like we’re little kids again, making love potions out of the lemons that grew in our yard, but instead we’re making an anatomically correct snowman. I’m breathless with laughter and the cold.
I run inside to get my camera and try to photograph the slice of lavender hair tumbling out of Bea’s polka-dot beanie, yanking my mitten off with my teeth. My finger is about to press down the shutter release when Hannah comes up behind me and shoves a handful of snow down my back. It burns hot and cold against my skin, which is sweaty from laboring in the snow.
“Asshole!” I scream.
Hannah and Bea high-five and double over in laughter, but I’m fast and I catch both of them before they can stand up again, scooping armfuls of powder into their hair.
Hannah shrieks and Bea emits a long, loud stream of FUCKs.
“Justice!” I shout, and run for the house.
When we’re back in pajamas and our wet clothes are in the dryer, El makes us waffles and hot chocolate with mini marshmallows, and we watch the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice. By the time Mom comes home we are half asleep on the couch like cats.
“I brought Chinese food!” Mom announces, and suddenly, despite the snow piled up outside El’s expansive living room windows, it feels like a Sunday night in California—a Sunday night before everything—Mom chiding us to get our butts off the couch, Bea complaining about setting the table, Hannah organizing the takeout containers in the exact right order. I ache for my dad. Any version of him. Even the one with faraway eyes.
We sit down at the table and everyone is talking at once, even Bea. She’s smiling and stuffing her face with shrimp dumplings.
“Jeez, Bea,” Mom says. “It’s like you haven’t been fed in weeks.”
And instead of making some snarky comment, Bea just says, “You are so weird,” and she’s actually kind of laughing as she says it.
And then I see it: Hannah has magically restored the balance. It’s like she was the Jenga piece whose absence made the whole tower tumble. And now she’s fixed it again. She doesn’t even have to try.
* * *
• • •
Dad was a Thanksgiving purist. He always made a feast, Midwestern style, with white-bread stuffing and canned cranberry sauce. He’d spend the whole day in the kitchen, sweating and cursing, while the rest of us watched the parade. Then we’d go around and say what we were thankful for, and Mom’s would be cheesy and Dad’s would be funny and we’d groan and laugh and finish the whole thing off with a canned-pumpkin pie in a foil pie tin.
These memories—the facts—hold together like they’re frozen in ice. I can see them from the outside but can’t get anywhere near the people. What I want is to burrow right into Dad’s brain, to hear what he’s thinking. Or even just to sit next to him and feel the heat of his skin.
* * *
• • •
On Thursday I wake up early and join El in the kitchen. The room is half dark, the sun still hovering at the horizon, just behind the tree line. I lean against the dishwasher while El makes me a cup of tea from a jar of dried herbs on the counter. Then she hands me a peeler and a brown paper bag full of apples.
“Any progress?” she asks, dumping cream into her coffee.
“On what?” I say, still feeling only half awake.
“Anything,” she says.
Sometimes conversations with El feel like some kind of word game, like I’m just blindly following along, waiting for something to be revealed.
“Well,” I say, pulling an apple out of the bag. It’s dusty and lopsided and still clinging to a little piece of branch. “My portfolio is getting more and more abstract.”
El raises her eyebrows. “Art imitating life.”
“Or life imitating art.”
“Either way.”
She rifles around the cabinet and pulls out the flour. “What else?”
“I’ve been trying to photograph the trees,” I say, looking out the window. “But it’s not really working. The light feels so flat. Even when it’s not.”
El frowns, looking me over. “Maybe it’s something on the inside,” she says.
There’s nothing on the inside, I want to say.
I sip my tea, watching as she sprinkles flour onto the countertop and takes out a disk of pie dough from the fridge.
“What can I do to help?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m so lost I don’t even know where to begin.”
El hands me wooden brush. “Here,” she says. “Wash the apples.”
“That’s it?” I say.
El laughs. “One thing at a time.”
She turns on the radio and we finish the pies and then Hannah comes downstairs and we watch the parade. In the afternoon, all five of us elbow our way around the kitchen, making all the sides—hot, fluffy mashed potatoes, buttery brussels sprouts, homemade cranberry sauce—and a golden chicken with crispy skin, in the name of new traditions. Then we sit at the table, which Bea has decorated with candles and dried lavender. The food is steaming in El’s ceramic dishes and she sits at the head of the table, still wearing her red apron, with flour on her cheek.
“I’m thankful for you girls,” Mom says.
“I’m thankful for my divorce,” El says.
“I’m thankful for the Beatles,” Bea says.
“I’m thankful for Megan Rapinoe,” Hannah says.
When it’s my turn I’m suddenly overcome with a wave of sentimentality. “I’m thankful for my family,” I say.
“Gross,” Bea says.
“You’re such a suck-up,” Hannah says.
“Fine,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’m thankful for the snow.”
* * *
• • •
Later, when we’re lying in bed, the blue light of the moon on snow coming in through the curtains, Katharine Hepburn asleep between us, I turn to my sister.
“Hannah?”
“Yeah?”
“I wish you could just stay.”
She sighs. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s just that everything is so much better when you’re here.”
Between us, Katharine Hepburn stirs, lifting her head and thumping her tail on the bed, as if to ask us to quiet down. Hannah reaches over to scratch behind her ears. “That’s just because I’m something new. A distraction.”
I shake my head. “Most of the time Mom’s not here, and Bea won’t come out of her room. They fight all the time. I don’t know what to do.”
She’s quiet for a while. Katharine Hepburn jumps off the bed and lumbers out the door, leaving a big space in the middle of the mattress.
“Why do you think it’s gotten so bad?”
“I don’t know,” I say, tugging at the corner of the blanket. “It’s like there’s nothing holding us together anymore. I don’t know how to fix it.”
Hannah pulls me over to her side, squeezing me into a tight hug. I burrow my face into her neck and she rests her chin on the top of my head.
“It’s okay, Mary. None of us do,” she says, combing her fingers through my hair. Then she whispers, extra quiet, “Did you know that for the first two weeks of school I didn’t even go to class?” She pauses, and I wiggle out of her arms to look at her face in the moonlight. The shadow of the windowpane makes it hard to read her expression. “I almost got kicked out. But I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed or get dressed. My roommate thinks I’m a total freak.”
“Wow,” I whisper. I remember that first phone call, how upbeat she sounded, recounting all of the details of college when she’d barely even left her room. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
She rolls away, facing the wall. “I don’t know. I think I was embarrassed.”
I start writing letters on her back, A, B, C, D. I wonder if now I’ll need to worry about Hannah too.
“What changed?” I ask.
She doesn’t say anything for a long time, as if she’s gathering up courage for the rest of the story. This is how you tell the truth, I think to myself.
She finally says, “I’ve been seeing a therapist at school, and I’m actually taking medication now. But it still comes in waves, you know?” I watch her side moving up and down with each breath. “I think it will for a while, for all of us.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me, and then she says, “Don’t tell Mom, okay,” just like she’s said about ten million less serious things.
“I won’t,” I say, kind of relieved that Hannah has secrets too but also feeling like this is a big one.
I think for a while about my sister, living this whole other life. Taking medicine for depression. I think about how, even with all of that help, she still feels the ebb and flow of sadness just like me. I wonder if there’s any pattern to it or if it’s just random. I wonder if it will ever stop.
I wonder if Hannah’s forgetting, like I am. I wonder what she thinks about the in-between. She’s always seemed to know everything before I did, but this feels so mysterious.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
I take a breath. Hold it. “Did Dad like us?”
She laughs. And I can’t tell whether to be relieved or insulted.
“Of course he did.”
“I just remember—” I whisper, rolling away to my side of the bed, staring at the half-open doorway. “It just seems like sometimes he didn’t.”
Out in the hallway, something creaks, loud enough to scare me if I hadn’t heard it happen a thousand times before. Just the house settling, El always says. This house is always settling.
“I think it’s just complicated,” Hannah says eventually, and her voice is sleepy like she might drift off at any moment.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
But she’s already snoring softly on her side of the bed, leaving me all alone with my doubts.
21
On Saturday Hannah goes back to school, and on Sunday we move into our house in town. I pack up the parts of me that have spread all over El’s house, the books and hairbrushes and single socks. I take down the photographs, old and new, New York and California, from the walls of my temporary room. I pack up El’s patchwork quilt.
Bea and I ride with El, and we hardly talk the whole way to town. I wonder if she’s going to miss us or if she’s glad to be alone again.
Our new house is big, way too big for our family of four. All of our California furniture looks strange inside, as if the time in storage has warped it, made it smaller and louder. Who puts a green leather couch into a house from the 1800s? Or a lamp with giant lips painted onto the shade? All of the pieces that Mom and Dad picked out with such gusto, that seemed to fit our kooky Westside bungalow, are totally absurd here.
