by M. Anjelais
“It’s no problem,” I said, and slung my purse over my shoulder so that I could gather up the shoes, book, and scarf in my arms. The scarf smelled like autumn leaves and guys’ cologne, and I found myself breathing more deeply than usual, wanting to be able to remember the scent clearly. When we got inside, we were in a little mudroom. I saw a low shelf on which a bunch of shoes was lined up, so I put the shoes down there. Above the shelf was a row of hooks for coats, and I hung the scarf over one of the hooks. Then all I had left was the book. I was clutching it far tighter than I intended to, making the cover buckle slightly.
“Cadence!” Leigh called. “We’re home!” My eyes darted from side to side. Where was he, and why wasn’t he answering Leigh? I wanted to know exactly when I was going to see him. I licked my lips, trying to bring a little moisture back into my mouth.
Leigh led us through the house, showing us the kitchen, the entryway where you came in if you went through the front door, the living room, the dining room. Everything was artsy and stylish and matching, with eccentric accents here and there. The living room had more window than wall to its name, and I could imagine that in the morning, when light was streaming in, it would be particularly beautiful. But where was he? My stomach was doing a complicated little dance, and I was still squeezing the book hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
“Leigh, it’s gorgeous,” my mother said, smiling at her.
“Yeah, it’s really nice,” I managed to say, even though my mouth was a desert.
“Thanks, guys,” she said, looking almost embarrassed. She had kicked her high heels off in the mudroom and discarded her coat somewhere along the way. She went over to her fridge and opened it, sticking her head inside. “You didn’t eat dinner yet, did you?” she asked.
“Nope,” my mother said.
“I didn’t think so … you’re probably all confused because of the time …” She emerged from the fridge. “Do you want dinner?” We didn’t, but thanked her anyway. She put water on for tea instead, and said, “Let’s go upstairs and find Cadence. He’s probably in the attic, working on one of his paintings.”
I swallowed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. So this was it.
We followed her up the wide staircase. She pointed out her room and Cadence’s room on the second floor, showed us where we would be, showed us where the bathrooms were. Standard, typical, easy hostess, as though this were a simple visit, no big reason, just friends visiting. Then up another, smaller staircase we went, up toward the attic, where he was. I squared my shoulders and held my head a little higher. Here I went, up a flight of stairs and off a cliff.
It was a wide, open attic, nothing but white walls and canvases. On the far side there were shelves for paints and brushes, and a sink to wash everything off in. And up against one wall was a giant canvas, taller than me and far, far wider. He was standing in front of it with his back to us, painting.
The three of us stood at the top of the staircase and looked at him: me feeling apprehensive and eager and frightened and strange, my mother’s feelings unreadable. And Leigh, yearning, yearning. Her mother’s heart seemed to be bursting into shreds in her chest, underneath those chocolate pearls that looked so nice on her. A giant, painful buildup of tension was rising in my chest, growing and growing. He didn’t even turn his blond curly head.
“Cadence,” Leigh said, her voice strained all of a sudden, “Sphinx and Sarah are here.”
He turned suddenly then, and made me suck in my breath. He was wearing blue jeans that were torn at the knees and a white button-down shirt smeared with color. And although he was thinner and paler than he’d been in the last picture Leigh had sent us, he was still captivating, his eyes still that brilliant shade of icy blue. I couldn’t look away.
He held a thick brush dabbed with midnight-blue paint in one hand, and the thumb of his other hand was hooked through the hole of an old-fashioned wooden artist’s palette. He cocked his head to one side, and a bit of the old glare flashed through his eyes as he took in my mother and me. The eyes darted over my face, looking, just as Leigh’s had, for the scar. And I remembered the playdates, the games, the lies, the switchblade. The mass of tension in my chest swelled suddenly and pushed my heart into my throat, choking me. Click.
Then he looked right at me, and he smiled, his grin wide and inviting. “Hello!” he said brightly. “I’m so glad you’re here!” He tossed a stray blond wave out of his eyes and went on, “I’d hug you both, but I’m absolutely covered in paint.” And then he turned on his heel and faced the canvas again. His feet were bare, his long toes spread out on the attic floor.
“How are you doing?” my mother asked. “You still love to paint, I see.”
“I’m fine,” he said, without looking at her. He didn’t have a smile for her like he’d had for me. Instead, he reached out with the brush and painted a streak across an upper corner of the canvas. “And yes. I love to paint.”
“I put water on for tea,” said Leigh. “Do you want some tea, Cadence?”
“Yeahhh,” he drawled softly, mixing two blues together on the palette.
“Okay.” Leigh turned to go downstairs. My mother went to follow her, but looked at me, putting a hand on my shoulder. Her eyes asked me if it was all right for her to leave me, if I wanted to talk to him alone. I nodded my head, and she left. Slowly, I walked into the attic, closer, closer, until I stood next to him in front of the canvas. I felt like I was creeping up to stand next to a wild animal. No sudden movements.
One side of the canvas was filling up slowly with many different shades of blue, swirled expertly together, melting into one another and bursting out again anew.
“What’s it going to be?” I asked him.
“Don’t you know me well enough to guess, Sphinx?” he said, and I looked up at him. He was a head taller than me.
“No,” I said firmly, fighting the urge to apologize. There was no reason for me to apologize. It was just a big smear of blues so far; there was no way for anyone to tell what it was.
“Then maybe you aren’t worthy of knowing.” He painted a blue circle, separate from the flowing mass, and stepped back from the canvas. “Or maybe if you look long enough, you’ll start to understand.” Briskly, he walked over to the sink on the far side of the room and turned on the water. He began running his brush under the flow from the faucet, rolling the bristles between his thumb and forefinger in order to preserve their shape. “Are you just going to stand there?” he asked, glancing at me from under his ringlet fringe. He turned and began scrubbing the palette with a little sponge.
“I’m just —” I began, but he cut me off.
“If you’re just going to stand there, then you might as well do something.” He dropped the sponge and the palette into the sink and dried his hands on a towel hanging over the faucet. “Here. Wash this.” He left the water running and came across the room again, passing me, passing the canvas. “I’m going to go and change. It looks like a rainbow threw up on me.”
“Wait a second,” I said. I still had his book in my hand. “I have your Metamorphosis.”
He came back to take it from me, and as he did so, his fingers brushed against mine, trailing over them like a soft breeze. His skin was still damp. He lingered there for a moment, and I felt my own hands freeze under his touch, unsure and wondering. Then he pulled the book out of my hands, looked deep into my eyes, and smiled as he dropped it on the floor at my feet. It fell on its back, pages opening wide, words upturned toward the attic’s overhead light.
And then he disappeared down the attic staircase, leaving me alone, heart racing, with the paints and the canvases and the running water. I wanted to tell him to clean his own palette, that I wasn’t the Sphinx he bossed around when he was younger, but then I remembered that he was sick, that he was dying, that in less than a year he’d be gone. That someday in the near future I would see that Christmas picture of him at home and think of this, being in his attic before he died, and him leavin
g me with his painting things. The water in the sink, splashing over the palette, gurgling down the drain. I would think of this. And I had done it, I had faced him again, I was here and I was being strong. I could strike a balance and be helpful without losing the real me. I could figure this out.
I went over to the sink and picked up the sponge. I started to scrub, methodically, making sure that I did a good job of it. I wrung out the sponge and dried the palette with the towel. All of Cadence’s blues swirled down, down, down into watery tendrils before vanishing from sight.
After I’d washed Cadence’s palette, and picked up his book yet again, we had tea downstairs. Cadence had discarded his paint-covered shirt and donned a plain, loose blue T-shirt. We sat in Leigh’s living room and drank our tea, my mother and I on one sofa, Leigh and Cadence on the opposite one. All of the tea mugs were art-themed; I had a Georgia O’Keeffe flower, my mother had a Mary Cassatt mother and child, Leigh had a broken-up Picasso, and Cadence had Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
My mother was updating Leigh on our lives, and vice versa, and their words were adult, but their voices sounded like young girls’. They were best friends, brought back together again by unexpected circumstances. And I felt small again, returned to those days of playdates every week after school, of Cadence and the butterfly. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know how I had expected my mother to behave around Leigh, but the sight of her talking with her best friend as though nothing had changed put a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn’t expect my mother to give Leigh the cold shoulder, of course not. But to giggle casually with her the way she was doing? I couldn’t quite stomach that, either.
Cadence put his mug down on the coffee table. He picked up one of those little puzzles made out of swirling metal shapes and started playing with it, clever fingers darting all over it with elegant precision. I had a similar puzzle at home, but I could never figure out how to solve it. In a few moments, though, this one was apart in Cadence’s hand, the two shapes separated like hands letting go of one another.
“Those things drive me crazy,” I said as he set it down next to his mug on the coffee table. “I can never get them apart.”
“Perhaps you don’t try hard enough,” he suggested.
“Maybe,” I said. I took a sip of my tea, feeling slightly glamorous: Having tea in England seemed classy. Then I said, “I put your book on a bookshelf I passed on my way downstairs, the one in the hall on the second floor.”
“All right, thank you,” he said.
“Do you like that book?” I asked. “I read it for school once. It was really weird.”
“I love Kafka,” he said sternly. “He’s one of my favorite authors.”
“That’s cool,” I responded awkwardly, feeling stupid again. I should have known he’d have liked that book. He’d surely have understood it far better than I ever could.
After that, we were mostly silent, just listening to our mothers, answering the occasional questions. Cadence went to bed first, and then I stayed downstairs for more than another hour, waiting for my mother to finish speaking with Leigh. She didn’t seem to want to finish, so I went upstairs to the guest room Leigh had assigned to me, changed into my pajamas, and called my father on the phone. His voice sounded happy, but a layer of tension and worry was hovering just beneath the surface of his questions about how I was holding up so far. He kept stumbling over his words, repeating himself.
“I’m fine, Dad, really,” I said after he’d asked me for the third time if I really wanted to be there and reminded me that I could come home whenever I wanted to. “I can do this. It’s only a week.”
“I know, Sphinxie,” he said, releasing a strained sigh. “I know.” He paused. “How’s your mother? Can I talk to her?”
“She’s still downstairs with Leigh,” I said slowly, feeling a sudden sourness in my chest. “I’m sure she’ll call you later, though.” After a moment of uncomfortable silence, I added, “You know, Dad, I’m really tired. It’s late here. I think I’m going to go to bed now.”
“Okay, Sphinxie,” he said, sounding disappointed that I was getting off the phone so quickly. “I love you. Get some rest, I know you need it.”
“I love you too, Dad,” I said, and hung up. Yawning, I put my phone on the bedside table and turned out the light. Despite my exhaustion, I resisted immediately giving in to the wave of sleepiness that hit me as soon as my head touched the pillow; I wanted to see if my mother was going to come quietly into my room to see how I was holding up on our first day there. But she didn’t, and eventually I rolled over onto my side, digging my fingernails into the unfamiliar pillowcase, and closed my eyes.
I woke up late the next morning, my body confused by the time. The sun was coming in through the windows of the room I was staying in, and I could hear people moving around downstairs. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat up in bed. Was Cadence awake too, or was he the kind of person who liked to sleep in? The image of his bedroom in my head was a leftover imprint from years ago — I still imagined the painted trees on the walls, the sky on the ceiling. I wondered what his room looked like now.
The polished hardwood floor was cold against the bottoms of my feet when I got out of bed. The guest room that Leigh had given me was beautiful, decorated like a teacup from one of those china sets with the blue pictures on them. It had its own little matching bathroom off to one side, and a little walk-in closet. My suitcase was sitting on the floor of the closet; I hadn’t brought anything that required hanging up, which made me feel slightly dull. It was a really pretty room, and it made me feel as though I were in a hotel, but it also made me feel intimidated. It was an awful lot nicer than my little, messy room back at home, with my unorganized homework and clothes and shoes and various electronics strewn all over the place.
I rummaged in my suitcase for a pair of socks before leaving my room and padding down the stairs. My mother and Leigh were at the stove, both still wearing their pajamas, a drippy bowl of pancake batter on the counter beside them. Leigh was smiling and seemed happy enough, but then I noticed that her eyes were red and the area around them was puffy. It looked as though she’d had a rough night.
“Good morning!” she and my mother chorused together.
“Good morning,” I said, stretching. “Where’s Cadence?”
“Out in the backyard,” Leigh told me as my mother began flipping pancakes. “Why don’t you go find him? You can tell him breakfast is almost ready — finally. We all got a late start this morning, didn’t we?”
I went back upstairs to my room to get a sweatshirt and my tan Uggs. I had stuffed them in the bottom of my suitcase, and they were all crumpled up, the tops folded over and out at an angle. I pulled them on, hoping that the wrinkles weren’t permanent.
The backyard was an expanse of green field with a forest at the far end, and it looked like a postcard image in the morning rays of sun. The air was crisp enough to make me cross my arms over my chest, pulling the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my fingers for warmth. Not far from the back of the house stood a wooden play set, complete with a green plastic slide and two swings. He had had a set just like it back at his house in the States when we were little. I remembered it perfectly: how the swing on the right side was always his, how we hid in the little fort area at the top of the slide, how we much preferred to run up the slide than to sit on it and go down, like you were supposed to. And of course, I couldn’t help thinking of our birthday party, of that moment when he’d flown from the swing and taken my hand, magical and smiling.
He was sitting on the right-hand swing now, his feet firmly on the ground, sunlight catching his hair and making it look even lighter than it was. As I approached, he ran a hand through it, smoothing back the blond curls.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down on the left swing. “Pancakes are almost ready.” We were too big for the swings now, our legs grown like long vines.
“Oh,” he said disinterestedly. I didn’t blame him. After all, what did pancakes really matter wh
en you were dying?
“It’s really pretty here,” I told him, taking a deep breath. The morning air smelled good, damp earth and the grass of the field mingling together. “I wish my backyard looked like this.”
He rocked back and forth slightly on the swing. He was already dressed for the day, wearing jeans and a red sweater, the shoes I’d brought in from Leigh’s car laced up on his feet. His head was bowed slightly, his gaze inclined toward the ground.
“Does this swing set remind you of when we were little?” he asked me, lifting his head and looking at me. He pushed off from the ground and held his feet up so that the swing could move back and forth unhindered. I couldn’t stop thinking about little Cadence at the party, swinging back and forth, higher and higher. I could feel the heat of long-gone summer days on my skin, see little him silhouetted against a blue sky, his hair flying back from his face. When he’d jumped off, little me was sure that he’d hovered in the air for a moment, beamed up by the sun, light taking back light, like an alien ship coming to Earth to retrieve something it had left behind.
“Yeah, it does,” I said as he went back and forth beside me. “It makes me think of our party.”
“My mother invited all those other kids to that party, you know,” he said. “They weren’t my choice. None of them were like you, Sphinx. Never like you.” He put his feet down suddenly, halting the swing, and looked at me. His hair was falling into his eyes, softening them.
“Oh, yeah?” I said. There was a time when I would have loved to hear him say things like this, back when my idolization of him won out every time over his mistreatment of me. Once, I would have been elated to know that my perfect friend Cadence didn’t like playing with anyone else. Now I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t know how it was making me feel. I wanted to be more grown up, more sensible, stronger. Unaffected. But he was smiling at me, and my breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t help smiling back.
