Visible (Ripple)

by Cidney Swanson

  “For free?” I ask my mom.

  “Don’t be rude, Gwyn,” says Ma.

  “For free?” I ask Sir Walter.

  He smiles. “She would have it no other way.”

  I ready myself for another tongue-lashing, but it never comes.

  I turn to Sam and mouth the words, That’s not my mom. Who is she?

  Sam rolls her eyes and ignores me.

  Sir Walter and Ma have moved on to a discussion of where to buy clothes and a trustworthy frying pan.

  “Regrettably,” says Sir Walter, “I do not foresee the opportunity to return to retrieve my simple belongings in Carcassonne any time soon.”

  He’s got a point: you don’t go back to the Bat Cave once the Joker knows how to get in.

  Chrétien, sitting across from me, looks like he’s trying to read a secret message in the potsticker sauce. He frowns and his eyes pinch shut for a brief moment. Then he sets his napkin on the table, rises, bows to my mother, and begs leave to be excused. Ma, overwhelmed by the abundance of polite language, nods.

  Chrétien crosses out of the room without speaking to anyone else. Sir Walter looks grave as he watches his son depart.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with Chrétien?” I whisper to Sam.

  She shrugs like she’s not sure.

  I frown. Chrétien’s been off all day. He’s barely made eye contact with me, which last week wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I thought things were changing between us, lately. I mean, not in the direction I once hoped, but since he told me all those stories, it seemed like maybe we’d connected in a new way.

  Sir Walter scratches away at his goatee like he can make it purr. Then he breathes out heavily and asks to be excused as well. Maybe to keep Chrétien company.

  And now it’s just the three of us: me, Sam, and Ma.

  “Well,” says Ma, with a big sigh, “I’m all for them sticking around to keep an eye on Las Abuelitas, but I have to admit, I always feel like I don’t know which fork to use around those two.”

  Sam laughs. “It gets easier.”

  I let Sam and my mom carry the conversation without me. Finally, Ma announces she’s going to sleep some more and tells me to do the dishes.

  “Sure thing,” I say.

  I take the first load of dishes to the sink and start rinsing.

  Sam brings me the rest of the dishes, and I spray away. I’m still worried about Chrétien. I scan back through the dinner conversation, in case I made some atrocious Gwyn-comment that might account for his getting up and leaving. But for once, I don’t think I said anything offensive.

  “I think those dishes are good,” Sam says.

  I look down at the plates in the sink. Not a spot of food to be seen. I sigh and start loading our industrial dishwasher.

  “What is it?” she asks me.

  “Chrétien. He hasn’t said a word to me all day. I’m worried about him.”

  Sam’s mouth pulls to one side. It’s her anxious face.

  “And you are, too,” I say. “What’s going on with him?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I overheard him and Sir Walter earlier, talking about leaving things or leaving the past or something like that, but they stopped talking when I walked in the room.”

  Leaving things.

  Things like … his wife’s golden slipper? I feel a flush of heat. It begins at my chest and works up my neck and onto my face. I swing around to the dishwasher, locking it down, my hair a curtain hiding my face from Sam.

  What have I done? What was I thinking?

  “I think it was hard on him, watching your mom getting sick,” says Sam. “You know, because of how he lost his wife and his daughter to sickness.”

  I nod.

  “I’m sure he’ll be back to normal soon,” says Sam. “Happy as ever.”

  I punch the button and the dishwasher groans into action.

  What have I done? And why did I think the decision was mine to make in the first place? It would have been so easy to grab that slipper—the last thing he had to remember her by. I grip the edge of the sink. What was I thinking?

  “Hey,” says Sam. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, Sam …” I shake my head. The fact that I’m embarrassed to tell her confirms for me I did a very, very wrong thing. But I have to tell someone. I take a short breath and let it spill out. “I left the shoe in France,” I say, watching the water swirl down the drain and wishing I could swirl down after it myself.

  “Your new red shoes?” She gives me a little side hug. “What do you want to bet you can get another pair when you go back to collect your passport and legally exit France?”

  “Not my shoes,” I say. “The shoe. Cinderella’s slipper of gold.”

  “Oh,” says Sam. “That shoe.”

  “Yes,” I say. “That shoe. And Chrétien will never forgive me when he finds out.”

  “Gwyn.” Sam wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Can you say, ‘over-reacting’?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not over-reacting. You said he was talking to Sir Walter about leaving stuff behind.”

  “Hmm,” says Sam. “Yeah. I guess he must have been talking about the slipper. I mean, the diary was already pretty much off the table. Oh, poor Chrétien.”

  I feel tears burning behind my eyes and blink them back. “It’s my fault for not grabbing it when I had the chance.”

  “Your fault? How can you say that? Of course it’s not your fault. It’s not like you did it on purpose.”

  I don’t say anything. I just concentrate on not crying.

  “Are you worried he’ll think you did it on purpose? You shouldn’t. I don’t think his mind operates that way.”

  “Oh, Sam—” I can’t talk. I want to disappear. My face heats up again until I’m sure I’m beet red.

  “Gwyn? What are you not telling me?” Her eyes narrow as she figures it out. “Oh, no. You thought about going back for it, didn’t you? But you didn’t say anything. Um, Gwyn? You want to tell me I’m wrong here?”

  “I thought … I thought maybe if he left all of that behind, it would help,” I say softly.

  “Oh, Gwyn.” Her voice is soft, but I can hear the accusation.

  “I know. It wasn’t my decision to make. I can see that now.”

  “You have to tell him. You have to apologize.”

  “I know.” She’s right. I owe him that apology. “He’ll hate me once he hears what I did.”

  “Hate is a pretty strong word, Gwyn.”

  I don’t think it’s too strong.

  “Maybe he was ready to let it go, anyway,” says Sam. “If the slipper was left behind in the farmhouse, he wasn’t exactly keeping it close, was he?”

  “That was my fault, too,” I say. “He used to keep it safe at the Well of Juno, but after he showed me, we brought it back to the cottage. I was going to show it to you. Only, Hansel and Georg got there before I had a chance.”

  “Hmm….” Sam stares down at the floor.

  “I don’t think I can bear it if he hates me,” I say.

  “He won’t hate you, Gwynnie. He’s not like that.”

  “It was the last thing he had to remind him of Marie-Anne,” I say.

  Sam shrugs. “Things are over-rated.”

  “How can you say that? What was the one thing you wanted from your house when it was on fire?”

  She stares at me. “Sylvia and Chrétien to be okay?”

  “No,” I say. “You had Chrétien go back and grab your mom’s painting of Yosemite. Remember?”

  She frowns and nods. “Yeah. I see what you mean.”

  “The picture is all you have left of your mom,” I say. “And Marie-Anne’s shoe was all Chrétien had left of his wife.”

  “I love my mom’s painting,” Sam says, “and if it was stolen tomorrow, I’m not going to lie, I would be heartbroken.”

  I moan.

  “I would be heartbroken,” Sam repeats, “but I would survive.”

  If she’s trying to make
me feel better, it’s not working. I think about the way Chrétien stared at the coffee mug stain. About the way he avoided looking at me. I think about the stories he told me. How much he loved them, Marie-Anne and Madeleine. I shake my head.

  “I think Chrétien’s different,” I say.

  “Well,” replies Sam, “there’s one way you could find out.”

  “There is?”

  “When you apologize, ask him what the slipper meant to him.”

  “I could no more ask him that than I could fly,” I say.

  “Or turn invisible,” says Sam. “Or hear voices in your head. Or have conversations with the people whose voices you hear.”

  “Shut up,” I say. “That’s not fair.”

  Sam laughs. Soft. Poignant. “Oh, Gwyn. Who ever said life is fair?”

  I sigh heavily. A single tear slides down one side of my face. Sam sees it and wipes it dry.

  “You’ve got it bad for him, don’t you?”

  I nod. More tears join the first one.

  “What if he never forgives me?”

  “I think he’ll forgive you. Someday. He’s really, really into forgiveness. Although, it might take awhile. Give him time, Gwyn.”

  “In case it escaped your notice, I don’t have an infinity of years waiting in my back pocket like you guys.”

  Sam takes my hand, giving it a quick squeeze.

  “Just one more reason ‘we’ can’t ever be an ‘us,’” I say. “Chrétien and I are incompatible on a genetic level.”

  Sam doesn’t argue this point, and I guess it’s because there’s really no getting around the fact that I will never be a rippler, and Chrétien probably ought to date someone who’s going to be around a few centuries.

  Neither of us says anything for several minutes. At last Sam tells me she promised Will she’d stop by after dinner. “You going to be okay?” she asks.

  “I’ll be fine,” I say. “You know me.”

  “Promise me you’ll talk to Chrétien,” she says.

  “I promise I’ll apologize,” I say. I don’t make any promises about asking him what the golden slipper meant to him.

  Chapter Thirty

  LIKE AN ACCUSATION

  After Sam goes, I do something I haven’t done for over a year. When Ma’s center work table was being built, I discovered I could sit on the bottom “shelf” where Ma stores the fifty pound bags of powdered sugar and the twenty-six inch sheet pans. It’s a perfect place to hide out and take stock. I reach underneath and shove one of the heavy sacks over a few inches. Then I grab all six sheet pans and set them on top of the table. When I’m done, there’s just enough room for Gwyn, and I crawl in.

  Using the back of my hand, I knock a dent in the top of the sugar sack for my neck to rest on, and then I sink back against the bag. From under here, I can see samples of my handwriting. Messier on days I came here to blow off steam, tidy and precise on days I came here to think things through.

  I’m not sure which kind of day today is.

  I reach under one of the two by four supports and feel around for my Sharpie. Ma used to wonder where all the Sharpies went when we first moved here. I used to shrug like I had no clue. It’s been so long now I don’t know if this one will write. I pop the top off and draw a curving arc from a list of boys I liked to a letter I wrote my dad last Father’s Day. I guess it hasn’t been quite a year since the last time I felt the need to crawl in here. The pen works just fine. You’ve got to love a pen that can write upside down after eight months.

  I’m not here to blow off steam today. So, why am I here?

  I write the question in big flowy letters covering the letter to my dad.

  Why Is Gwyn Here?

  It’s a good question. Why am I here?

  I’m not sure.

  My hand moves and another question snakes across the previous lists and rants in dark, black Sharpie.

  Who Is Gwyn, Anyway?

  I stare at the new question. Who am I? I think about the attributes I rattled off the other day for Sam—the ones comprising my Gwynitude.

  Confident.

  Independent.

  Boy magnet.

  I substitute that last one for the one about naps in warm places. The napping quip was me making a joke, and this is a serious time.

  Never serious, I write. I chew on the end of the pen for a minute and then raise it to a clean space.

  Selfish.

  Competitive.

  Life of the party.

  Self-absorbed. I almost put a line through that one, because it sounds like “selfish,” but then I decide it is different from “selfish” and that it is also very true if me.

  And then, because I’m staring right at a list of boys I’ve left in my wake, I come up with two more. Manipulative, I write. And then, beside it: Heartbreaker. I doodle a heart, cracked into two halves, jagged edges, messy.

  Reading through the list, I am struck by something. If someone described a person like this to me, I would probably make a snarky comment about how the person sounds very controlling—a total control freak—and what are they compensating for, anyway?

  Ouch.

  Close to home, much? What was I trying to do when I chose to leave Chrétien’s shoe behind? I was trying to control things. To run his life for him.

  I shut my eyes so I don’t have to look at what I’ve written. But I see a word.

  Selfish.

  And then, beside it, the laundry list of related attributes flash across my brain.

  Manipulative.

  Self-absorbed.

  Heartbreaker.

  ‘‘Stop it,” I mutter to myself. “Gwyns are the life of the party. Gwyns are confident.”

  It’s true. I am those things.

  But the other stuff is true, too. And together, they make up a picture of someone I don’t like. Who would? Not Chrétien; that’s for sure. I think about all the different ways I’ve pursued him this past two months since we met. First I wanted him as a sort of new, flashy accessory: boy-bling. Then, when he didn’t immediately fall at my feet, I wanted him because he presented a challenge.

  Later, maybe just before I got kidnapped, I started actually liking him for his own sake and not for mine. Then I found out about his past and things shifted inside me. But even though I switched from “chase Chrétien” mode to “cheer Chrétien up” mode, I didn’t completely give up making him mine. And I sure wasn’t planning on letting him go when I decided he’d be better off never seeing that slipper again.

  I look at the list of old boyfriends again. This time, it reads like an accusation. I never really cared about any of them. I just cared about how they made me feel less alone. A tear rolls down my face and slides off at my jaw line, making a tiny tap when it hits the powdered sugar bag behind my head.

  It’s time for me to let Chrétien go. He deserves the chance to heal. On his own terms and at his own pace. The best way for me to make sure that happens is to step out of his life before I do any more damage.

  But first, that apology. Not so he can forgive me—I don’t deserve that any more than I deserve his friendship. But I will apologize. Because even if I don’t deserve anything, he does. He deserves to know the truth about me.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  UNSPEAKABLY AWKWARD

  The sun is going to set soon in Las Abuelitas, so I decide to look outside first. I find Sir Walter across the street from the bakery, but no Chrétien. Sir Walter is smoking one of his smelly French cigarettes. I cross the street to speak with him.

  “Do you know where Chrétien went?” I ask. “I have to talk to him.”

  “Yes, I know where he can be found,” says Sir Walter. “He will be most delighted, I think, to see you.”

  Yeah. Sure he will. Not. But that doesn’t matter. It is time to put on my big girl pull-ups and do this thing.

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  “At the hot spring. How is it called … Belle Froide?”

  “Wrong language,” I say. “Ass
uming you mean Bella Fria.” It’s the only hot spring I know of in this area.

  “Ah, yes, how foolish of me.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?” I ask. It’s a ninety minute hike, one way, from the greater Las Abuelitas metropolitan area.

  “I do not,” says Sir Walter.

  I frown and cross my arms. I don’t want to be gone from Ma (just in case) for a whole three hours plus the time it takes to apologize. Figures I would get my brave on when I can’t put it to any use.

  “Mademoiselle,” says Sir Walter, “Chrétien traveled invisibly so as to arrive with less delay. Might I offer to transport you thither, to lessen the time you are apart from your dear mother?”

  I hesitate. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

  “It is no bother. I can have you there very swiftly. It is a good place for a friend of chameleons to visit.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Sam told me about the gold and tobiasite stuff.”

  “May I take you as well?”

  “Sure,” I say. A few minutes later, we vanish from inside the bakery where no one can freak out seeing it happen. And a few minutes after that, we arrive at the spring.

  When we get there, Chrétien’s visible. I take that as a good sign.

  As soon as we come solid, Chrétien turns to me, a polite if strained smile on his face. Sir Walter does a little goodbye bow and vanishes. Which means I’m going to have to ask Chrétien for a ride home, unless I want to hike back.

  I sit down across from him on a little granite boulder. Steam from the spring hits my face. My courage seems to have forgotten to come solid with me. But this isn’t about how I feel.

  “So, here’s the thing,” I say, determined to start so I can’t chicken out. “I made you go with me that time I wanted jeans, and that made you forget about your wife’s diary, and that made Fritz find it and steal it. And I’m really sorry. For making you get stupid jeans with me and lose the diary.” I take a breath and get ready to apologize for the shoe—the thing that’s made him so depressed all day.

  “Unfortunately, I did something worse. Like, a lot worse. When we saw Hansel and Gretel—sorry, Georg—enter the farmhouse, I thought of your wife’s golden slipper right away. And I totally could have asked Sam to come solid with me so that we could snatch it for you when the two sleeper dudes were preoccupied with my phone. But I didn’t.” I take a really deep breath. “I wanted … I hoped … I thought that maybe if you didn’t have anything of hers left, it would make you more interested in … well, in other … things … in the here and now.”