by M. Anjelais
“Well, of course,” he said, still smiling. “You were my best friend.”
“That’s what I used to say about you,” I said, looking away from him.
“That’s what I’ll always say about you, Sphinx. Always. Until the day I die.”
I looked back at him. My heart felt like it had run into a brick wall. Until the day he died. In front of me, he let out a laugh and tossed his hair out of his eyes. I bit my lip and asked him a thousand questions inside my head. Are you at peace with dying? Do you want to die? Are you happy to die? Are you really dying? Is this real?
Still smiling, he looked out over the backyard and repeated, “Until the day I die.” Like an oath, like a mantra, like a vow.
And I thought, It doesn’t seem like you’re dying. Can you hear me? Your eyes are very, very bright and you know it. Once, I had a friend named Kaitlyn, and she thought you were good-looking. I told her you were crazy. But she was right. And now you’re smiling at me.
“Sphinxie,” Cadence said. “Do you want to hear my secret?”
“Sure,” I said, feeling suddenly apprehensive. The smile had vanished without a trace, making me stiffen. It was like he had set off an enormous flashbulb and then turned out the lights, leaving me reeling in the dark, a ghost of the brightness that had been still floating in front of my eyes.
“Come here,” he said, edging his swing closer to mine and reaching out a hand, gesturing for me to move closer. When I did, he put his hand on the back of my neck, fingers intertwining with my hair, holding me where I was. His lips were right next to my ear, his breath warm on my skin, and his closeness was tantalizing, exciting. A chill ran up my spine, a terrific tingling chill that electrified me. Then I felt myself freeze up, as though my brain was putting my body on lockdown, safeguarding me just in case I decided to lean in to his touch.
“What are you afraid of?” he whispered. “I’m just telling you my secret, Sphinx.” He took a breath, and went on, in the softest whisper yet, “Did you know that my doctors said there was something wrong with my mind? You didn’t, did you?”
His hand moved slightly; now the bottom half of his palm was over my lower cheek. The tip of his nose was touching me just above my ear. “Well, they were wrong. When a doctor doesn’t understand something, they have to say it’s wrong, to make themselves feel safe … but that doesn’t mean it’s true. There’s nothing wrong with me, Sphinx, nothing at all …”
I was frozen. His hand was warm on my face, the movement of the words falling from his lips sending fresh chills through me with every moment. My first thought was that I was scared, terribly scared. I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I didn’t like the sound of it at all. But then I recalled how many times I had imagined myself in a situation like this: sitting somewhere with a boy like Cadence, his hand in my hair, and his lips so close. A good-looking boy, with blue eyes locked onto mine and blond hair falling over his forehead. Suddenly, a voice in my head reminded me, We were supposed to get married. An involuntary shudder went through my body; I should not have thought of that. He cut you, I said to myself, and shuddered again. He is not an ordinary boy. He cut you.
It didn’t matter that he could make his voice soft and layer it over my skin like a blanket; it didn’t matter that he had the ability to veil his eyes with temporary warmth, like an Indian summer floating in after the frost had already killed everything. And it was completely inconsequential that he could give out these moments of gentleness, cracks of light pushing their way through the dark. Yes, his hand was warm, a sign of life, but I knew about the ice in his eyes.
“What are you afraid of?” he repeated, in a murmur, and pulled away from me. The hand came away from my face, and I was left chilled and burned at once, my mind reeling in confusion. The swing set creaked as he let his swing take him back to its original position. His head cocked to the side as he looked at me, as those piercing eyes focused on my face. On my upper cheek. On the scar that was no longer covered in concealer. I had washed my face the night before, and hadn’t applied makeup since.
“You hid it yesterday,” he said, his eyes flashing. “Don’t you dare hide it again!”
“Cadence, it’s my face,” I said, my voice trembling. “I’ll cover it up if I want.”
“No!” he snapped, sounding like an irritable toddler. “Don’t you dare!” He got up from the swing, growing taller in a second, and I stood just as quickly, trying to catch up to him. We stared at each other, his eyes blazing, mine wider than usual, but defiant. “Sphinx,” he burst out, his entire frame tensed and shaking, “don’t you dare!”
“Why not?” I asked, raising my head higher. My eyes met his, soft brown against the hard wall of icy blue. And his eyes darted back and forth in their sockets, and I had this sudden urge to clear my mind. This terrible, irrational fear that he would reach in and read my thoughts, see that I had been thinking of the plan, of the marriage that would never be.
His eyes narrowed, and then softened. And I wondered so many things. Why did he act like this, how could he go from gentle to vicious in the blink of an eye, was it only because he was dying? And what if he had indeed seen into my head, what if this shining and wild boy was picturing me in a white dress that would never exist? My hands clenched at my sides. No, that’s impossible.
“Sphinxie,” he said, his voice calm again. “Why would you want to hide it?” He reached out and put his forefinger at one end of the scar, traced it to the other end as I stood strong, determined not to let him scare me. “I don’t understand. Don’t you know that you have been touched by an angel? I thought you knew that.” He looked at me for a minute, and his eyes were perfect smooth walls in his head.
Then, as though nothing had happened, he turned on his heel and strode toward the house.
“Let’s go have some pancakes,” he said casually. I stood motionless, stunned yet again by the sudden change in his demeanor.
Did you know that my doctors said there was something wrong with my mind? His words flooded back into the forefront of my thoughts. And yet I could feel his hand still on my cheek, his lips by my ear, his finger on my scar. Don’t you know that you have been touched by an angel? My mind seized the newer question, turned it over and over, looked at it from all angles, held it up to the light, racing to provide an answer to the question.
And for a moment, there in the green of the backyard, next to the swing set that was just like the one we’d always played on, watching him walk toward the back door of the England house, I considered it. Was that why all those twisted feelings had blossomed in my chest when he’d first cut me? For a moment, I thought I had the answer. Didn’t I know that I had been touched by an angel? Yes, I thought I had … for one minuscule, burning, shivering, shining moment in time, in the green, green backyard, with the long yellow rays of the sun touching down around me.
Just for a moment.
My mother and Leigh had given the pancakes smiley faces: lopsided globs for eyes, long snakelike curves for grins. They used syrup to make hair and beards and mustaches that flowed out and dripped all over the plates, turning amber in the sunlight from the kitchen windows as it spread out into sticky pools.
“Leigh and I used to do them like this when we had sleepovers in grade school,” my mother explained. I stared at her as the realization washed over me that she had no idea what had happened to me out on the swings. If she’d only stepped away from the pancakes to look out the window, she would have seen everything, but she hadn’t. And evidently, the look on my face now was escaping her notice too. Couldn’t she see how wide my eyes were?
“We used to try to make them look like our teachers,” Leigh said, stacking two on her plate.
I took a shaky breath and looked down at my plate. The pancake’s wiggly smile looked back up at me, and I felt a weight settle on my shoulders. Leigh was trying so hard. She just wanted us to be happy on this visit, just as happy as if we hadn’t come for any reason but to have a good time with old friends — to remember grade-s
chool sleepovers, old teachers who had been made fun of, good times.
Across from me at the table, Cadence sat ramrod straight in his chair and cut his pancake face in half, then in quarters.
“Aren’t you hungry, Cay?” Leigh asked, watching him with those fierce mother’s eyes, that sad intensity, the longing for time to freeze in place.
“Not particularly.” He skewered one of the pieces on a single prong of his fork, biting off one of the corners before returning the piece to his plate.
“So,” my mother said, pouring herself a glass of orange juice, “do you two have any plans for today?” She looked expectantly at Cadence and me.
“Just tell me what you guys want to do, and we’ll do it,” Leigh said.
“Ask Cadence,” I said, feeling like he should decide.
Cadence merely shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye, gave me a little smile, and shrugged his thin shoulders before returning his attention to his breakfast. His calmness startled me. How could someone who had less than a year to live and breathe and see, to move and do things, to learn and listen and soak up everything the world had to offer, just shrug casually when asked what he wanted to do? If I had been in his place, knowing that every second brought me that much closer to dying, I would have had so many things on my list. So many little, beautiful, last-minute, hurried things. And I would eat that pancake, I thought disconcertedly. I would eat five of them.
In the back and sides of my mind, crowded around my present thoughts, was the fresh memory of what had happened out on the swings — of Cadence’s hand on my face. It was shaking me up. My last memory of him had been Cadence at his most intense, eyes burning as the knife dragged across my skin. I’d forgotten how soft his voice could get. My pancake turned to rock in my throat and I had to take a huge gulp of water to get it to go down, like it was a tremendous pill.
“Come on, what do you want to do?” I said, sensing an unintentional urgency behind my voice. “We have to do something. We’re not just going to sit around all day, are we?” I wanted us to be busy, to be doing something. If we were busy with some kind of activity, he wouldn’t have the chance to whisper anything else into my ear — and I wouldn’t have time to listen. Enough was enough for one day.
He pushed his plate away with the tip of his finger and rose from his seat.
“I’m going to play the piano,” he said, with a tone of finality. He was going to play that piano all day long. That was all.
“Well, I’m going to take a shower,” I told him. “I’ll come find you when I’m done. But we should do something later, okay?”
He left abruptly, without answering me. Leigh stood up.
“I’ll get you some towels, Sphinx,” she said, and came upstairs with me. She handed me a little stack of fresh, crisply folded beige towels, a little washcloth on top, and showed me how to turn on the shower. “All set?” she asked me.
“Yeah,” I said, unzipping my sweatshirt. “Thanks.”
The shampoo in Leigh’s shower was in a purple container that claimed it was scented Moroccan Violet. It smelled heavy and persuading, like some kind of exotic honey. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, but I hadn’t brought shampoo from home, so I had no choice but to use it. When I got out of the shower, I wrapped my hair in one of the towels and went back into my room to get my little blow-dryer out of my suitcase, but found that I had forgotten it, so I had to use Leigh’s. When I was finished, I got out my makeup bag and dug around inside it for my concealer. I only hesitated for a moment before carefully covering up my scar — just a moment, and then it was hidden, like a secret. The place where I had been touched by an angel. I couldn’t stop thinking of those words. Was that how Cadence had really viewed cutting me all of these years? Had he really always thought of what he’d done to me as something beautiful? The idea was shocking, and thinking about it made my hands shake as I added the final touches to the concealer over my scar.
Stop thinking about it, I thought firmly, giving myself a mental kick and forcing myself not to dwell on the next thought that immediately popped into my head: It isn’t that simple.
When I went back downstairs, there was another woman in the kitchen along with my mother and Leigh. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bouncy ponytail, and she stood in front of the sink, washing the breakfast dishes and talking to Leigh over her shoulder. She turned around, her hands soapy, and smiled at me when I came in the room.
“Hi,” she said, pushing a loose strand of hair out of her eyes with her wrist. “You must be Sphinx. Such an unusual name. I love it.” Her voice was just as bouncy as her hair.
“This is Vivienne, Sphinx,” Leigh said. “This is the woman who organizes my life and keeps it from steering off the road!” She and Vivienne both laughed.
“I do what I can,” said Vivienne, going back to the dishes. It took me a few moments to realize that she was some kind of housekeeper. “It’s nice to meet you, Sphinx,” she said, turning back to me. “Everyone’s been really looking forward to your visiting here.”
“I’m happy to be here,” I said. Her brightness was contagious, and I wished that my mother had someone like her around our house, to organize our lives.
“Good,” she said. “That’s good.” There were soapsuds piled up high in the sink, smelling lemon fresh. I could hear the sounds of a piano drifting into the kitchen from somewhere else in the house.
There was another living room off the dining room: It was more formal and fancier, and it didn’t have a television in it. Instead it had Victorian furniture, a chandelier, posh art prints on the walls, and the piano. It stood big and black on the shiny hardwood floor, underneath a wide window. Its back was propped open, sheets of music spread out on the music stand over the keyboard. Cadence was sitting on the bench in front of it, his feet bare on the pedals, his hands flitting over the keys. He was playing something high and beautiful, vaguely sorrowful, something that reminded me of light on flowing water, slipping easily over gray stones.
I had known for a while that he played the piano: Leigh had sent pictures of him playing several times over the years. But this was the first time that I was witnessing it in person, and I was transfixed. He had as much of a gift for music as he did for painting, and yet it was all impermanent. Within months, he’d be gone, leaving the piano and canvases behind, silent and blank.
I sat down in one of the armchairs and hugged my knees to my chest. There was a little end table next to the chair, with a vase of fresh white lilies on it. Next to the vase, in a little black case, was a silver digital camera. I picked it up, slid it out of the case, and pressed the button on the top. It turned on with a quiet beep, the screen lighting up. I pressed the button for storage, wanting to see what was on the memory card. It was empty; no pictures, no movies. Nothing.
I changed it from the picture-taking mode to the movie mode and focused it on Cadence and the piano, framing it to include as much of the wide, beautiful window as I could. Then I pressed the start button. A little green circle appeared in the upper corner of the camera screen, letting me know that I was filming successfully.
“Cadence, what’s the name of the song you’re playing?” I asked.
“ ‘Sacred Ground,’ ” he said, still playing. “By Jon Schmidt.”
I zoomed in on his hands. They were so graceful, gliding across the keys like ballet dancers, never missing a note. He played excellently … he did everything excellently.
I leaned forward slightly, taking a close-up shot of his profile. He was concentrating intensely, his lips pressed together. His head was dipping ever so slightly back and forth, matching the inclinations of the music. I raised the camera so that the shot was filled with the light coming in from the window. And then I zoomed back out again, showing the whole scene once more before pressing the button to stop it. And I put the camera back into the case, and placed it back on the end table, exactly where I had found it. I felt accomplished. He hadn’t noticed me filming him, and now I had his play
ing recorded, forever.
“You’re really good,” I told Cadence.
“Yes,” he said bluntly.
“I can play a tiny, tiny bit,” I said. “Only with one hand, though. Not like you.”
He finished playing and folded his hands in his lap, and I waited for him to say something. He ran a forefinger along one of the piano’s black keys and examined it, as though checking for dust. Then he smoothed his hair back from his forehead and turned to look at me. The light from the window accentuated his angular face, outlining him in a soft golden glow. His ice-blue eyes were focused intently on me. I was glad I had put the camera down.
“Come here,” he said.
“What?” I stiffened. What had happened out on the swings was still brutally fresh in my mind, and that had begun with this same phrase, this casual come here. I didn’t want to “come here.” I didn’t want to be close to him. The chair that I’d settled in was a safe distance away, and I intended to stay there.
He put a long-fingered hand down on the piano bench next to him, indicating where he wanted me, and said, “You heard me. Come here.”
I could hardly breathe.
Our moms are in the kitchen, I reminded myself. Vivienne is in the kitchen. I could call my mother into the room at any time; I could make her watch us if I wanted to. I rose slowly from the chair and he turned back to the piano.
It was as if I couldn’t help myself. In the next moment, I was sliding carefully down next to him on the bench, trying to make sure that there was a gap of empty space between our bodies. It was a futile attempt: He scooted over and suddenly my right leg was pressed against his, our elbows brushing. I felt my jaw clench.
“You can’t play anything with both hands?” he said.
“No.” I didn’t know what he was leading into, but I assumed it was going to be a stinging jibe about my lack of musical talent.
Instead, he laid his hands on the keys and said, “Put your hands on top of mine.”
“Why?”
