Dark Rooms

by Lili Anolik

  Dad’s voice comes down from upstairs. “Hello?”

  “It’s me, Dad.”

  “Gracie?”

  “Uh-huh.” I alternate bites of chocolate with bites of cracker: sweet, salty, sweet, salty.

  “Good timing, sweetheart. Dinner’s just about ready.”

  “Do you need me to set the table?”

  “Already done. Just go wash your hands. I’ll be right down.”

  I put the last bite in my mouth but my appetite’s vanished as suddenly as it appeared, and it seems like too much energy to chew or swallow. So I wait for enough spit to build, then let the lump slide down my throat. Slowly I get to my feet, walk to the kitchen.

  I must have seen it a hundred times, so you’d think by now it would have lost its power, fail to affect me. But it always does. Nica’s Dream, the black-and-white photograph of my sister hanging above the table, taking up almost the entire wall length-wise and half of it height-wise. In it, Nica, eleven, is lying in the grass in the backyard of our house, head turned away from the camera. The cutoffs she’s wearing have ridden up so high you can see the pale linty lining of her pockets, the dim hollow of her groin. Her halter top’s twisted around her torso, revealing her stomach, smooth and concave, stretched between the twin knobs of her hipbones. A Band-Aid hangs off her right heel and the paint on the nail of her big toe is chipped. In spite of the fact that she’s slender to the point of scrawny, totally undeveloped, her body gives off a glow, a heat that’s as undeniable as it is unsettling. Maybe it’s the way her mouth, greedy and carnal, is nuzzling her bare shoulder. Or the way one of her hands is tucked between her thighs, like she’s in the throes of a sex dream, dreaming but somehow also dead, climaxed in death, eyes closed, neck limp, skin waxy. Her other hand loosely clutches a peach, round and dimpled and fuzzed, glossed to sinister perfection. The poisoned fruit from a fairy tale.

  I remember the day the picture was taken. It was in the spring, a Sunday. Mom woke up that morning hungry for peaches. She sent dad to the farmers’ market at Billings Forge. Wouldn’t even let him shower first. I liked to look at the arts and crafts stands—jewelry made out of sea glass, woodcut magnets in the shapes of states and vegetables, hand-knit hats with animal faces—so I went with him. In front of a sign for eggs from free-range chickens we ran into Dr. Brewster, Chandler’s headmaster, tall and elegant and silver-haired, carried a black cane like Mr. Peanut. He and Dad started talking, a conversation full of too-long pauses and downward looks, smiles that came at the wrong time. Hoping to bring it to an end, Dad asked Dr. Brewster to stop by the house for lunch. Dr. Brewster was known to be reclusive, hardly ever socialized with faculty, so Dad wasn’t expecting him to say yes. He did, though.

  When Dad told Mom, his eyes wet and blinky as he unhooked the canvas tote bag from his shoulder, she put down the proof she’d been examining. Silently she watched while he and I unloaded the papayas and mangoes and strawberries and apricots onto the counter. Then she turned, exited the kitchen. Mom had recently taken the job of weekend high school sports photographer for the Farmington Valley Post because she needed extra cash to rebuild her darkroom. Her Saturdays were now spent hopping all over Hartford County, from baseball diamond to lacrosse field to tennis court. So Sunday was her one free day, and she liked to devote it to her own work, her real work, she called it.

  As she mounted the stairs, she shucked her T-shirt, no bra underneath, flung it at Dad, who was trailing her, me trailing him. He paused at the threshold of their bedroom to peel it off his face, then followed her inside. She was already ransacking the closet, small high breasts bobbing as she pushed the hangers brutally apart, kicked at the shoes in her way, knowing her half nakedness embarrassed him, not caring, taking angry pleasure in his discomfort.

  He looked at her, then at his feet, blinking rapidly, as if his eyes hurt. “I could”—hesitating, trying to figure out what he could say that would calm her, that would fix this—“call Dr. Brewster. The Chandler Directory’s right in the desk drawer.”

  “And tell him what, Hank?” she said, eyes sharp, full of scorn. “That you just remembered the kitchen burned down? It’s too late.”

  As she yanked something silky out of a dry-cleaning bag, she glanced up at the doorway from which I was peering. Now those sharp, scorn-filled eyes were on me.

  Dad turned, saw me standing there, unmoving, transfixed, so vulnerable to attack I might as well have had a target painted on my face. He took two quick steps to his right so that, once again, he was at the other end of her gaze, and shielding me. “Let’s go make lunch while Mom finishes getting dressed, sweetheart,” he said, talking to me but looking at her. And then, hand in hand, we backed slowly into the hall.

  Dad barely ate or spoke the entire meal. Just sat there, gripping his fork, blinking like a nervous dog. He was waiting for Mom to act up—to pout or sneer or give monosyllabic answers, signal in some way to his boss and hers that the invitation had been extended against her wishes. I knew she wouldn’t do any of those things, though. Not for reasons of self-preservation, which, as far as she was concerned, weren’t reasons at all, but for reasons of pride: she’d never let an outsider see her anger. And while she hated to be social, she was extremely good at it when she wanted to be, and that day, as it so happened, she did.

  Early afternoon turned into late afternoon turned into later afternoon and, when Dr. Brewster finally left, bending deeply over Mom’s hand to press his lips to it, saying something to her in French in a low tone, the smile died on her face and she sagged against the back of the door. “The day’s almost gone,” she wailed. And as she brushed past me I could feel her frustration, hot and urgent, surging through her body, coming off her skin, scorching mine.

  She grabbed her Leica and rushed outside to the daffodils blooming at the base of the tree in the backyard, the ones she’d been photographing since they’d appeared three weeks before. The pictures were failures so far, she’d said, and had torn them all up, though I loved them—the extreme close-ups of the flowers’ eyes, beady and jaundiced, the whorls in their petals as distinctive as fingerprints, and, in the corner of the frame, the roots of the tree, gnarled and big-knuckled and scarred-looking, rising up out of the earth like a zombie hand.

  Mom went through her usual routine: adjusting a leaf, straightening a stalk, coaxing one blossom forward, pushing another back, then appraising the composition as a whole, waiting for the light to get the way she wanted it, bringing her lens in tight. But, after twenty or so manic clicks of the shutter, she stopped. Stumbling over to the porch, she sank onto the top step.

  I’d followed her outside, was reading on a blanket a few yards away. From behind my book I watched her. She didn’t move. For five minutes. Ten minutes. A quarter of an hour. Finally I slid on my flip-flops, crossed the grass so that I was standing in front of her. Her eyes were shut and her face was less like a face than a mask: beautiful and sculpted and cold. I put my hand on her arm, knowing she disliked to be touched but needing reassurance, proof that she only looked lifeless. She twitched under my fingertips. Relieved, I held out my book to her. “I only have fifty pages left and I started last night. See?”

  “Why don’t you show your father, Grace,” she said, her voice coming out a raspy whisper. “I have a headache.”

  “Should I get you an aspirin?”

  “No thank you.”

  She was answering me, politely even. And I knew I shouldn’t push my luck, should leave her alone. I couldn’t, though. She was unhappy and I felt her emotions too keenly to do nothing. “What about a cold facecloth for your forehead?” I said. “I could go inside and get you one.”

  This time she didn’t answer. Just shook my hand off her arm.

  Dad appeared behind the screen door, a dishtowel tucked in the waist of his pants. “Everything all right?”

  “Mom doesn’t feel well.”

  He exchanged an uneasy glance with me, then stepped out onto the porch. “Claire, honey, why don’t you lie do
wn? You can take pictures next weekend.” When there was no response, “You didn’t eat a bite at lunch. I could make you something. Anything.” After a pause, he said, “Or you could just have some of the fruit I bought. I washed all of it. I know you wanted peaches but I spoke with one of the farmers and apparently there was a frost at the beginning of the month, which means that peach season will be delayed a few weeks.” His laugh came out a stutter. “There was nothing I could do.”

  Again no response.

  I said to Dad, “I don’t think she cares about peaches anymore. I think she just wants to be by herself.”

  He nodded, but didn’t move. I could tell he had the same need I did, to touch her, make sure. He didn’t dare, though. The sight of him standing there, doing that blinking-dog thing, hands dangling uselessly at his sides, made me so mad I had to look away.

  And then Nica came bounding out of the kitchen, the screen door banging shut three times behind her. “Who doesn’t care about peaches anymore?” she said.

  She’d changed out of the cotton sundress she’d worn at lunch into a halter top and cutoffs, her feet bare, an old Band-Aid stuck to her heel, chafed from a pair of too-tight soccer cleats. An iPod knockoff was in one hand, a can of the pineapple chunks she liked to drink the juice from in the other. She looked at the three of us. I watched her as understanding dawned, the fun going out of her eyes, the smile disappearing back into her face. She placed the iPod knockoff on the flat part of the porch railing, the pineapple can, also. Then, biting her thumb joint, she retracted her head, a small roll of baby fat swelling under her chin as she decided something. Mind made up, she threw herself down on the bottom step, inserted herself roughly between Mom’s legs and slumped backward. “Scratch my frog’s belly,” she demanded, thrusting out her arm, twisting it so that its pale underside was exposed.

  I waited for Mom to grimace in pain or push Nica away. But she did neither. Instead she opened her eyes, and, lips turning up at the corners, began running her nails lightly across Nica’s skin.

  After a bit, Dad withdrew. I did, too, went back to my blanket. Why stay? I wasn’t needed. Nica was there. She was taking care of the situation, rescuing Mom from despair. It seemed like she already had.

  As it turned out, though, rescuing Mom wasn’t so easy. Not that day. Not even for Nica.

  I watched the two of them, the book in my hand nothing but a prop. Nica had moved to a patch of grass in front of Mom. Was trying, with increasing desperation, to entertain her, hold her attention. She began turning cartwheels and somersaults and handsprings, doing her best to avoid the croquet wicket sticking up out of the ground, rusted over and warped from being left outside all winter. Kept telling Mom to look! look! and Mom would look but only for a second, then her eyes would close again. And pretty soon, she stopped opening them altogether. I stopped looking, too. Became absorbed in my book for real.

  And then I heard the same plea I’d been hearing for the better part of twenty minutes. The same plea but sounding different, like it was coming from farther away. Or higher up. I raised my head from my book, and, sure enough, there was Nica in the tree, technically peach, though we’d never fertilized it or irrigated it or pruned or thinned it, done any of the things you’re supposed to do if you want it to actually yield fruit, so that the most it ever produced was a few wizened-looking nuggets that birds and insects got to before we did. Nica was balancing on a branch that was about a quarter of the way up, a bird feeder hanging from it. When she saw I was looking, she waved and began to climb.

  At first I didn’t understand what she was doing. And then my gaze traveled higher, beyond her. That’s when I saw it: on the outermost limb of the uppermost branch a single peach, round and fat and a creamy pinkish gold. Nica, I realized, was going to pick it for Mom.

  I opened my mouth to yell at her, order her to come down, but no words emerged, no sounds at all. She continued to ascend, her pace not slackening even though she was nearing the top of the tree and the adrenaline fizz she’d had when she’d started must’ve worn off, at least a little. Finally she reached the desired branch. And there she stood, some thirty feet in the sky. Again I tried to call out to her and again I couldn’t. So I ran over to Mom, shook her arm.

  It took Mom a while to crack her eyes, and when she did, they were bleary and unfocused. I pointed and she reluctantly followed the line of my finger over to Nica. Instantly, the dullness fell from her face.

  Behind me I heard the creak of the screen door, then Dad’s footsteps. I felt his hands resting on my shoulders. The three of us watched as Nica pushed herself away from the trunk, stepped out to the middle of the branch. There was nothing for her to hold on to now. She might as well have been a tightrope walker. As the branch thinned, it began to curve under her weight, curve and curve, ready to snap at any moment, the peach still beyond her grasp. Her movements became smaller, more cautious, like the danger of what she was trying to do had finally dawned on her. At last they stopped altogether. And for a minute, maybe more, she just stood there, looking so young, limbs clumsily long, feet pigeon-toed. Keep going, I commanded her silently, even though I didn’t see how she could without getting herself crippled or killed. Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop. I knew from the way Dad’s fingers were digging into my shoulders that he was telling her the same thing in his head. Nica’s gaze dipped to the ground and, at that moment, I thought it was over, that she was going to fall to her hands and knees, cling to the branch, crawl back to the safety of the trunk.

  But I was wrong. Suddenly she was in motion again, all hesitancy gone, all uncertainty. Bending neatly at the waist, she lifted one foot high in the air, and, graceful as a dancer, separated the fruit from the twig with a deft twist of her wrist. Straightening, she held the peach aloft.

  I turned to Mom. Seeing the glow in her eyes, the twin spots of color burning in her cheeks, I realized that Nica had done it, had rescued her, had single-handedly pulled her out from under the despair that had descended like dirt on a coffin. Mom began to clap and cheer. At the sound, Nica, clambering down the tree, glanced over her shoulder. Her face split into a pre-braces grin—lopsided, homely, totally irresistible. All at once I felt a jealousy so raw and sharp it was almost hatred. I could hardly bear to look at her.

  And it was as I was turning my eyes away, just as she’d dropped to the lowest branch, her safe passage now all but assured, that her footing faltered and she tumbled to the ground. The distance was short, not more than five or six feet, and she stood quickly, started jogging toward us, waving the peach to show that it was as undamaged as she was. Only she was damaged. She must’ve knocked her head against the trunk on the way down because she paused suddenly. Raising a tentative hand, she touched her crown, like she was testing to see if her hair was wet. She gazed curiously at the tips of her fingers, then held them out to us. Red, as bright and gleaming as fresh paint.

  A second later, she collapsed.

  At the sight Dad and I turned to stone. Mom, though, immediately leaped to her feet and began to run. I looked on, completely engrossed in the scene unfolding before me, but feeling strangely apart from it, too. Everything about it—the emotional states of the players, the dramatic poses they’d struck, the chorus of cicadas, making the dying day pulsate at its edges—so high intensity and hypervivid that it seemed unreal. Like a fragment of a dream. No, like a fragment of a movie. The way Mom was holding Nica, an arm under her neck, another under her knees, Mom’s downturned face inches from Nica’s upturned, exquisite profile to exquisite profile, all against the backdrop of a sky stained orange-pink by the setting sun was, I realized, just like that poster of Gone with the Wind, the one in the lobby of the art theater in New Haven that Mom took us to when she wanted to see something old or with subtitles.

  Dad reached for my hand, pulled me out of my trance. By the time we got to Mom and Nica, Nica’s eyes had already opened and Mom was laying her tenderly down on the grass, parting her hair to look at the wound.

  “Wha
t happened?” Nica said, her voice dazed-sounding.

  “You hit your head, baby.”

  “I did?”

  “You’re going to have a big bump.”

  “Am I bleeding?”

  “No, baby. No blood.”

  “But I’m dizzy.”

  “I’ll bet you are. Now, I want you to stay still. Just lie there.”

  Nica started to protest, raising herself up on one arm. Mom leaned over and pressed Nica’s mouth with her own, as though to stop its movement. The kiss was soft and brief, but it pushed Nica back to the ground.

  Mom stood, began walking rapidly toward the house. She turned around to shout, “I mean it, do not move. I’ll be right back.”

  When the screen door shut, Nica again stuck out an arm, tried to raise herself. Dad crouched down, gently put his hand to her shoulder. “You heard your mother, sweetheart. No moving.”

  “But there’s a pebble digging into my back.”

  “Ignore it. You lost consciousness for a few seconds. We just want to make sure you’re all right.”

  Nica sighed, but she was enjoying being fussed over. I could tell.

  “And no more peach picking for you,” Dad said. “You could have broken your neck.”

  Nica’s eyes, suddenly bright with worry, scanned his face. “That’s what she wanted, though, isn’t it? A peach?”

  Something shifted in Dad’s mouth. He nodded, looked away.

  I dropped beside her. “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” she said, but I knew she was lying by her tone—too cool. Her hair was spread out around her head like a dark halo, framing her face, so pale I could see the thin blue veins running under her chin, up to her ears. Shame at my earlier envy welled up inside me, jammed in my throat, making it difficult to breathe.