A Map of the Known World

by Lisa Ann Sandell

  “I—I don’t know what to say,” I whisper lamely. I feel like someone has picked up the whole restaurant and shaken it like dice in a cup. I’m also shaking. Could Damian be right? Could he possibly be right? I do want the same things as Nate did—to get out, to make art, to do so much. I don’t think I feel like I have to destroy anything to do it.

  Could I be stronger than I thought?

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything,” Damian replies bitterly.

  “No, it’s not okay. I mean, Damian, there’s so much you can do. So much. You’re so talented; those paintings in the barn—why are you hiding them? And the drawings in art class—they’re amazing. You should show them to somebody. To everybody.”

  “Thanks,” he says, his voice laced with cynicism, “but everybody—my mom, my teachers, even my friends, well, ex-friends—have pretty much given up on me. I don’t think there’s any room for me to change. Nobody wants me to…I’m just a misfit, a loser. And that’s it. They don’t think I’ll ever change. I don’t think I’ll ever change. Nobody wants to see the stuff in the barn, Cora, because it’s garbage. And nobody gives a crap about garbage that comes from human garbage.”

  “Damian, stop! Please. Listen to me. You’re not garbage. Your art is not garbage. And I’m your friend, and I care. I care a lot. Your work is beautiful and you have changed. Or, you’ve grown up or something. There is so much you can do,” I cry. I can feel my heart breaking.

  He smiles ruefully. “I want to do something with my life. All Nate and I ever wanted was to do something that would matter. But we screwed up bad. So bad. Nate is dead, and it’s my fault. It’s over. I’m over. I’ll never go to art school. I’ll never do anything. Probably work in a garage or something.” His eyes glisten and he looks into his coffee cup again. He takes a sip, cupping his hands around the mug as though offering it in prayer. “Cold,” he murmurs.

  My eyes are filling with tears, too. It’s gotten to be a habit, it seems. But Damian looks so small, so lost and scared and weak. Scared. “It’s not over. It can’t be too late. You’re only seventeen.” I am desperate. “What about Ms. Calico? She is new…She doesn’t know about Nate or—or any of it. You could show her your paintings.” When he just shakes his head, defeated, a wave of panic and sorrow engulfs me. “Damian, it’s not too late!”

  “Anyway,” he says, the wry half smile returning, turning the attention away from himself. “What will you do? We have to get you to London.”

  “I don’t know…but I know I have to go.”

  We pay the check and stand up to go. I look at Damian, really look at him. His long black coat hangs like the wings of a raven around him, and his eyes are downcast. But his hands and shoulders are strong, and his eyes are clear, sharp. If only he could see.

  Damian drops me off half a block from my house, and, praying I don’t meet either of my parents, I silently let myself in the front door and head up the stairs. As I get ready for bed, my mind is racing. I throw myself back against the pillows and try to find sleep, but my eyes do not want to stay closed. Each thought pries them wider apart. What is happening now, here? What is happening to me? Maybe there’s a part of me that will never feel at peace again, but there has to be a way to make things better. For me, for Damian. Maybe for my parents. For Rachel, even. I just have to find the right path.

  I get out of bed, cross my room, and pull the application papers out of my book bag. I smooth out the wrinkles and creases, and begin filling in the blanks on the page. Like a scientist on the brink of discovery, or a mountain climber nearing the summit, I feel ready to plunge ahead. I pore through my sketch pads and books and begin to plan my portfolio. I wonder if I can use anything I’ve already done. Since the cartography class they offer is a big part of why I want to go, why Ms. Calico recommended me, I decide to include my maps. Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Bhutan, France…there are many to choose from. It’s so strange to think how these maps used to be all my own. They didn’t serve a purpose. Except, maybe to keep me sane. But they certainly weren’t for anyone else to see, to use. Now, though, I am going to release them into the world, use them for something—something concrete. Is this growing up? I wonder.

  I am just putting the finishing touches on a drawing of Sevilla, Spain. A flamenco dancer whirls around in the middle of a plaza. Her layered dress fanning out behind her, flashing eyes and flashing castanets. There, the portfolio is ready. I am ready to submit my application. Oh my gosh.

  On Monday, I can hardly concentrate during any of my classes, I’m so nervous about turning my application over to Ms. Calico. The package feels like it is burning a hole through my bag, scorching my shoulder. Before Ms. Calico can begin making her rounds to all of the students, I tiptoe up to the front of the classroom and whisper that I have my application and portfolio ready to send out.

  “May I see it?” she asks. I hand my portfolio to her, and she turns the pages, studying each of the drawings critically. “These are lovely,” she tells me. “I think you stand an excellent chance of being accepted.” My eyes widen. “I have a letter of recommendation ready—if you’d like to leave this packet with me, I will send out the whole thing after school.”

  “Oh, that would be amazing,” I reply, my heart pounding with excitement. “Thank you.”

  “I’m really glad your parents agreed to let you do this. I think it will be a wonderful opportunity for you.”

  I step back uncomfortably. Under no circumstances can Ms. Calico know how messed up my family is, how crazy the whole situation is, how my mom actually said no. “Uh-huh,” I mutter stupidly.

  Well, it’s a start.

  Chapter Ten

  The holiday season is here. It feels as though the whole house is holding its breath. Today is Thanksgiving, and each of us is locked in his or her own room—my dad in his den, gin and tonic in hand; my mom in her sewing room, doing who knows what; and me—well, I’m in Nate’s room, lying flat on his bed. I’ve been dreading the start of the holidays since September. I knew it would be awful, but I wasn’t ready for how lonely I am. How dead this house feels.

  Last year, I remember my parents argued with Nate all morning about coming downstairs for dinner. My grandparents were supposed to arrive, but Nate said that he thought holidays were stupid excuses for consumerism and that family time was a fake front.

  “A fake front for what?” my dad had asked less than calmly.

  “For the fact that we have nothing in common!” Nate had screamed back.

  My mother was twisting the beads of her pearl necklace around her fingers, pulling the string taut against her throat; she’d looked so hurt.

  We sat around the table, five of us, my grandparents, parents, and me, caught in a silence as thick as an oil spill and twice as deadly. We waited and waited, the room mute and heavy. We waited for sixty-five minutes. Nate eventually came down for dinner, and ate as much turkey as anyone. He’d refused the pumpkin pie, though, and charged back up to his room after a terse good-bye to my grandparents, completely ignoring me.

  Back then, I could tell myself, He’s just a jerk, but someday he’ll snap out of it. That day never came.

  Today it’s rainy and the rain is a little bit frozen. The whole world looks like a ceaseless wash of gray. As it happens on weekends, I made my own breakfast, got my own lunch. I haven’t heard my mom in the kitchen, so I expect dinner will be another microwaved wonder. I can’t wait.

  Nate, where did you go? I wonder. Where is he now? Is his soul floating around the house? Is he haunting Julie? Did he go to heaven? Does someone who puts the principal’s office placard on a stall in the boys’ bathroom have a place in heaven?

  Are you sorry you won’t get to taste Mom’s turkey or her pumpkin pie again? Will I get to taste them again? Will we ever snap out of it, heal, come back together as a family? Is this the end of the Bradley family?

  It’s strange to think about, makes a strange pressure in my chest that feels like it’s pushing all the air from my lu
ngs.

  When I get back to school on Monday, Helena asks me how my holiday was. I try very hard to keep my face normal, to keep it from crumpling, and myself from collapsing into tears. “It was fine,” I tell her.

  She and I are sitting at a lunch table with Cam and a few of his friends. Cam is serious and quiet, seemingly the opposite of Helena’s effervescence.

  Shyly, I ask him how his holiday was, eager to steer the conversation away from me. “It was nice,” he replies. “My sister and her husband just had a baby, so everyone was focused on them. Which was fine with me,” he adds with a mischievous smile. “The less attention my parents pay me, the better.”

  “Really?” I ask. Sounds a little bit like how Nate used to talk. Is that a boy thing?

  “Yeah, well, with my sister out of the house, all their attention is saved up for me. Every little move I make is fodder for their microscopes.”

  “I know what you mean,” Helena says. “Sometimes, when my parents fight, I’m just relieved they aren’t thinking about me.”

  I sit back, glad to have removed myself from the focus of the conversation, and refreshed by the normalcy of this lunch. Still, I can’t help but glance around the cafeteria, until I find Rachel in her now usual spot beside Elizabeth Tillson at the Nasties’ table.

  “I wonder why parents get like this—so focused, so worried all the time?” Cam wonders aloud, breaking into my thoughts.

  “I guess it’s because they don’t feel like they can keep us safe anymore,” I answer, taken aback by my directness.

  Helena stares at me closely. “Yeah, I think you’re right,” she murmurs.

  After lunch, she grabs my elbow and asks, “Was that okay? What we were talking about, I mean? I didn’t even think—”

  “Everything is fine,” I reassure her. “It was really nice to sit with you guys. Cam is a good guy.”

  Helena nods, her eyes glittering. “He is, isn’t he?” she says happily.

  Winter break. Sixteen whole days stuck in the house with my parents, and no escape. Damian and his mom are traveling to Missouri to visit his cousins; Helena and her family are going to Indiana to visit her grandparents. And, Rachel…well, Rachel and I still aren’t speaking. It’s the longest fight we’ve ever had.

  Thanksgiving was bad enough, and that was only four days. But now I have more than two weeks of isolation. The snow comes down hard outside, the white flakes dancing on the wind before driving into the ground with an aimless fury, coloring the whole world a dull gray. It’s numbing. Too cold to ride my bike, I’m stuck inside, and there’s no Christmas tree, no decorations, no hint of holiday cheer. It’s the first year we haven’t had a Christmas tree or lights strung up along the gables of our upstairs windows. There’s a gloomy absence, like a big black hole, swallowing up this house.

  On Christmas day, the snow abates for a bit. So, I pull on my puffy ski pants and strap on my clumsy snow boots, and clomp my way over to the Wyatt cornfields. Last time I came by here was in the fall, when everything was tinged a warm golden yellow. In the snow, though, the dried out stalks are bent, leaning wearily like broken old men. In other places, the husks stick up from the snow, like the remnants of a deserted, destroyed city. I set off, trudging between the rows, letting my mittens brush against the dead leaves that rattle at my touch.

  When I reach the end of one row, I continue straight on, away from the barn and the farm and the road. I walk until I come to a pile of hay bales and plop myself down. The sun is bright and the air is sharp. In the distance I hear the lowing of cows. It’s so peaceful here.

  “Merry Christmas,” I whisper to myself. “Merry Christmas, Nate.”

  I think he would have liked sitting here with me in the crisp silence. You can think here. The shutters of this tiny town seem wide open in this field.

  When we were little, Nate and I would wake up at dawn on Christmas morning, run downstairs, and peer at the array of presents that had been placed beneath the tree during the night. We’d sit on the living room floor, shake each one of the boxes with our names printed on them, and make lists of what we hoped our presents would be. Nate, his brow wrinkled, would really think about it, then cross his fingers and squeeze his eyes shut like he was praying. When he was nine, Nate asked my mom if every child got Christmas presents. My mother had responded truthfully, saying, “No, not every child celebrates Christmas, and even some of the ones who do aren’t as fortunate as we are.” Nate had been very distressed by this revelation. He asked if he could give one of his presents to a child who wouldn’t get a gift. My mother had chuckled, but she’d looked proud. “That is very generous,” she’d told him. “How about you keep all of your presents, and we can go to the store and pick out something to send to a charity?” Nate liked that idea. And the wrinkles in his forehead had smoothed out.

  Last Christmas was a different story, though. Nate didn’t wake up early and examine the gifts with me. He didn’t wake up until afternoon, by which time my parents and I had already exchanged presents without him. His gifts were left under the tree. The three of us were in the kitchen, drinking fresh orange juice, while my dad made waffles. We were laughing and trying our best to ignore the fact that Nate had decided to skip Christmas that year, when he wandered in, groggy and grumpy.

  “Nice of you to join us,” I’d smirked.

  “Whatever, dork,” he’d mumbled.

  “Nathaniel, you come with me,” my father had said menacingly. I could overhear him, when he took Nate into the living room. “You are hurting all of us, especially your mother with this behavior.”

  “What behavior?” Nate had asked sarcastically.

  “You know very well what I’m talking about, and I’m tired of it.” My dad’s voice was low and harsh.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nate replied. “I was tired; I overslept.”

  “Nate, you’d better think about whether you want to be a part of this family. And you’d better think about how your behavior is making everyone else feel. I will not stand for it, and I won’t see you hurting your mother this way.” Then Dad stalked back into the kitchen. Nate followed sulkily, sat at the table, and ate waffles with us. He didn’t join in the laughter, but the atmosphere in the kitchen had changed, and the laughter felt forced anyway. Our last Christmas together. What a sorry memory.

  When my fingers and my nose are frozen and I can’t feel my toes anymore, I rise from the hay and slowly make my way back toward the farmhouse. The sun is high in the robin’s egg sky. I can’t wait for spring, I think wistfully. For the return of flowers and leaves and birds. I miss hearing the call of cardinals and the humming of jays. I miss Nate. Oh lord, how I miss him. Too cold to cry, the force of my loneliness carves out a hollow space in my belly, like a worm gnawing its way through my gut.

  I can’t go home yet. I walk back through the fields and head east toward the creek. When I come to the willow tree, I slide down into a pillow of snow at its base. I long for the white bird to come back, to fill my emptiness again with the same sense of magic and hope. Because I have to get that feeling of purpose back. I look into the creek; the surface is frozen, but I can see the hint of life beneath it. From where I sit, it almost looks like a painting, muddy browns and whites sliding into each other, from bank to creek bed.

  That’s it, I tell myself. It’s about the art. I have to remember that.

  The crooked angles of dead branches and the humpbacks of rocks lining the creek remind me of the towering mounds of metal in the Wright barn. Nate’s art. I still have that piece of him. Maybe he isn’t wholly lost to me. Maybe I can touch him, hold on to him through his art, and through my map.

  Once again, I start off, trudging toward my house. I can do this; I just have to focus on the art.

  As I creep back into the house, I see that the light underneath the door to my dad’s den is still on, but I can’t hear the television. Instead, I hear a low keening sound. I move closer to the door, and press my ear to it. A shuddering
moan. My father is crying.

  I leap back as though I’ve been stung. What is he doing? He’s turned to ice. He doesn’t cry. He can’t cry. The sounds are guttural, almost animal-like. There is so much sadness in that room. It’s overwhelming, and I think I could drown in it.

  I wander back to my bedroom. My mother has left a tray containing a TV turkey dinner with the plastic cover still on it, and a feeble Christmas present for me on my bed. Crumpled blue wrapping paper, no box, no ribbon. I tear off the paper, and uncover a sweater, green with little white flowers. I will never wear it, because it will always remind me of this awful Christmas day. I crumple it into a ball and throw it into the back of my closet. This day has been too potent, too heavy with grief, and I feel it heaping all around me, over me. If the dullness of the walls of my room stifled me before, now it seems that the weight of so much sorrow might, instead.

  At least I have a project to keep me occupied. It’s time to get to work, time to make something of this map.

  Tonight is New Year’s Eve. For the past week, I’ve been working feverishly on the map, sketching and re-sketching the scenes I want to include on the boards in the barn, figuring out how to piece it all together. But now I am going to take a break and watch the countdown to midnight on television.

  As I watch the carousers taking part in the festivities in Times Square, a hunger starts to grow in my belly. And I’m plenty full from dinner. I watch couples standing hand in hand, kissing and hugging as they count down the seconds to the New Year.