“You think I want that? With you? Without…” She holds up both hands as if to ward me off. “I can’t do this. No. No is the answer.”
She spins around and bolts from the room.
I stand for a moment, the disgust and hatred in her voice on that ‘you’ echoing through my mind and turning my empty stomach upside down, then stuff the granola bar into a nearby plant because I can’t bear to hold it another second. Of course she doesn’t want to have that party with just me. Why would she? Why did I say something so horrible, so insensitive?
“Valerie,” says a voice from behind me. I jump, afraid Aunt Gladys saw what I did with the bar, but when I turn she just holds out her arms to me and says, “Come here.”
I don’t want to, but refusing a hug from her has never been an option so I make myself move into her overly perfumed embrace, biting my lip hard so I won’t relax and let myself cry. I can’t do that. I’m not a crier. Besides, if I started I’d never stop.
“Be strong for your mom and dad, okay? They’re going to need you,” she says into my ear.
I nod, but bile burns my throat. People said that to me and Gloria at Anthony’s funeral. Nobody seemed to recognize that his death was a loss for us just as it was for our parents. Hearing it again now brings back how scared and alone and guilty I felt after he died, and makes it horribly clear that I’m no different now despite all my efforts.
No doubt thinking she’s helped me, Gladys squeezes me a little tighter then sets me back, gives me a kiss on the forehead, and runs her wet eyes over me. “If you lose any more weight, you’ll disappear when you turn sideways,” she says, forcing a smile. “I’d say you’ve done enough.”
Clearly, I think, glancing at the front of the funeral parlor, I have not. I somehow manage to return her smile, and she pats my shoulder then goes up to Gloria’s open casket.
I haven’t gone to it. I won’t. I don’t want to see her like that. I looked at Anthony in his coffin, so I’d never forget what I did, and I can’t carry another set of those mental photographs around with me.
I endure a few more minutes of people offering their condolences and withholding what their eyes tell me are shocked reactions to my weight, losing track of how many friends of Gloria’s tell me about all the helpful things Gloria had done for them and their families and for total strangers. Why was she so helpful to everyone else and so distant from the family? Not that we had been a family, since Anthony died.
Eventually, finally, after an eternity of standing alone on feet still aching and blistered from my long walk barefoot the day Gloria died, I see the funeral director move to her spot at the front of the room beside Gloria and everyone begins taking their seats. I find mine at the end of the front row and sink into it with difficulty. The fall I didn’t feel in the hospital left both my knees terribly bruised and it hurts to bend them. Dad, beside me, gives my shoulder a gentle pat. Mom, on his other side, doesn’t acknowledge my arrival. I don’t have it in me to be surprised.
The service seems to fly by, and I can’t keep focused on the words the director is saying, as she describes Gloria’s love of color and her wonderful relationships with her friends and how she’d enjoyed making new clothes from thrift store finds. This is the last thing I can do for my sister, paying attention to her eulogy, but though I feel hollowed out and empty none of what the woman says stays with me as I sit there hearing my mother crying openly and my dad’s horrible stifled sobs. Not crying, like I haven’t for twenty years, I stare at my hands, which are folded so tightly in my lap I can feel my pulse throbbing through my fingers, and wonder how it feels when your heart beats for the last time.
Did Gloria know it was the last time? Was she scared? Did she want me there?
Squeezing my hands harder, I force those thoughts away, but they keep coming back, and when the director says, “Gloria’s last word, ‘Anthony’, makes it clear how much she loved her family,” my pain and sadness are multiplied to almost unbearable levels. She did love him. She loved him, and I killed him. So what did she feel for me?
That question is the only thing I hear from then on, until the director says, “We will follow the family out and make our way to the cemetery now,” and I have to move on to the next stage of letting yet another sibling go.
Heading to the door, walking carefully because of my sore feet and the now ever-present strange fuzziness of not having eaten, I try to copy my parents as they nod at the mourners. The room is full of people wanting to say goodbye to Gloria, and that should please me but it hurts because I can’t imagine who’d show up to say goodbye to me.
Disgusted by that selfish thought but unable to let it go, I keep walking, and I’m nearly out of the room when I see Remy at the end of his row. My heart skips a beat at the memory of my humiliation the last time I saw him and I want to escape, but there’s nowhere to go, and then he leans in toward me and says, “I’m so sorry.”
His sincerity and obvious pain and apparent lack of hatred for me make me catch his arm and pull him out of the row, and we move outside and a little further down the walkway from my parents, further out into the sunshine together. It seems wrong, having a funeral on this bright beautiful day.
Remy raises his sad face to the sky. “She’d have loved today,” he says softly. “She loved when the sun and the blue sky were as clear as this.”
I hadn’t known that. How had I not known? “I…” I begin, but I don’t get any further before I sway.
He puts his arm around my waist to support me, then says, “There’s nothing to you, Valerie! When did you last eat?”
I shrug and pull away. “Not important.” He tries to protest but I speak over him. “I have something for you.”
I reach into my purse, but when my fingers find what I’m looking for I don’t know if I can give it up.
He frowns, then I see him realize. He shakes his head. “I don’t want it back. Please.”
My hand comes out of my purse, with the plastic piece of cheese resting on my palm. “She’d have wanted you to have it,” I whisper. “You know she would have.”
He rubs his hand over his eyes, covering them, but I can still see the pain in his face. “I know. But I don’t want it like this.”
I don’t speak, and he drops his hand and looks at me, and I see in his eyes that we’re thinking the same thing: he can’t get the cheese back any other way. Gloria will never be able to give it to him again.
I reach out my shaking hand and slip the cheese into his shirt pocket. He presses his hand over mine, holding me and the stupid cheese against his heart. “I’ll keep it forever,” he says, his voice tight with unshed tears.
The sound of it makes me wish I could weep, so I withdraw my hand gently from his and say, “I know. Thank you.”
He closes his eyes a moment and pulls in a deep breath, then lets it out as he opens his eyes. “I… have something to show you. Later. Do you have any time tomorrow?”
I give a choked sound, half laugh half sob. “I have all the time in the world tomorrow. Don’t need to be at the hospital, after all. What is it?”
He shakes his head. “I need to show you, not tell you. Does five o’clock work for you?”
I want to push him for more details but I can tell he won’t give them so there’s no point in trying. A weak tired frustration fills me. Why is there no point to anything any more?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Friday at five, I show up to meet Remy as we’d arranged outside the library. When I arrive, he’s standing next to the right-hand stone lion by the stairs, his face raised toward the building.
“Remy?”
He turns to me, swiping at his eyes. “Hi. Sorry. Just remembering my painting and how much she loved it.”
“I have it now,” I say. “My parents took it from her hospital room and gave it to me last night after the… well, you know. I’ll give it back to you.”
He sighs and doesn’t answer.
I don’t know whether that means I s
hould keep offering him the painting or keep it myself, and I hate my indecision and confusion. “So, um, where are we going?” I say, feeling awkward at changing the subject so abruptly but not wanting to talk about the painting any more since he doesn’t seem to want to.
“I’d rather just take you there. It’s not that long a subway ride. If that’s okay?”
Not really, but it doesn’t begin to compare to any of the horrible things that have happened this week so I say, “Fine.”
We walk in silence along 42nd to Times Square, avoiding the stupid mascot-suited people and the ones selling Empire State Building tickets, then down the subway stairs to the platform for the 1, 2, and 3 trains heading south. If we get on a 2 or 3, we’re probably going to Brooklyn. Too many stops on the 1 for me to guess the plan.
A 2 train arrives, and I step forward but Remy holds me back. As the doors begin to slide closed, a skinny black guy comes flying past us and throws himself at them, prompting a huge white guy on the train to catch the doors and force them open to let him in.
New Yorkers are stereotypically unhelpful, but stuff like this happens every day. Why couldn’t someone have been there to help Gloria?
That train leaves, after a reminder from the conductor not to interfere with the doors makes the two guys laugh and shake hands, and when a 1 arrives Remy guides me onto it and we set off in silence. I hate it. Before I came on to him we were so comfortable chatting together, and I miss that but have no idea how to get back to it.
I don’t think about it for long, though, because as stop after stop go by an awful thought occurs to me, and the further south we go the stronger the thought gets.
When we exit the subway at the South Ferry station and he begins walking toward the ferry terminal, I say, “No. Where are you taking me? What are you doing?”
“You need to trust me,” he says, his voice full of pain.
“I don’t. Are you taking me to… where it happened? Because I’ve been there and I don’t want to go back. Unless…” The awful thought takes on a different, worse, dimension. “Were you there? When she was attacked? Do you know more than you’ve said?”
He steps in front of me and caught hold of my shoulders. “I wasn’t there. I wish to God I had been, but I wasn’t. No, it’s not that. We need to go to Staten Island.”
I pull away. “Why? Tell me.”
“I have to show you.”
I shake my head, but he begins walking again, leaving me behind. I don’t want to go with him, but I can’t help wanting to know what he knows, so after a moment I make myself start walking too.
I catch up easily, since he’s walking slowly and looking back at me, and we’re soon past the security guards and their luggage-sniffing dogs and making our way onto the newly-arrived ferry.
“Inside or out?”
I shrug, then say, “Out,” because there’ll be fewer people outside.
Once the ferry starts moving and we’re watching Staten Island come closer I say, wiping tears from my eyes, “I always forget how windy it gets out here.” I’m freezing too, since even the bright sun can’t warm me in this wind. Not that much can, these days.
Remy turns to me, dealing with his own wind-induced tears. “I know. But it is nicer than inside.” He clears his throat. “And Gloria loved it out here.”
I nod in response, but I feel a shameful annoyance at being told yet again a fact about my sister that I hadn’t known. Annoyance, and then sadness. I’ll never know everything there is to know about her. She’s gone.
When we dock at Staten Island and join the flood of people exiting the ferry my worries over where we’re going overpower my misery. “What now?”
He points toward the entrance to the St. George train station. “A few stops on the train.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Remy, I’m really not in the mood for a scenic tour. What is the deal?”
He places a firm hand on my shoulder. “I promise. A few minutes on the train, a short walk, and we are there.”
We take the train, and the short walk, and then I find myself standing in front of a self-storage facility. “She has stuff here?”
“Sort of,” he says, looking both sad and tense. “Over here.”
I follow him down an outdoor corridor to a large roll-up door. He unlocks and pushes up the door, then says, “After you. Welcome to my studio. Studio slash storage space. But mostly studio. Cheaper than renting space right in the city and access at any hour of the day or night.”
I take a few tentative steps into the dark room, wondering why he’s babbling like he’s trying to sell me the place, then jump as he slaps the light switch by the door with unnecessary force.
“Sorry.” He clears his throat. “Sorry, I’m nervous.” Before I can ask why, he adds, “Anyhow, here we are.”
I look around. Paintings. Lots of them. Supported by easels and hanging from huge hooks in the ceiling and sitting atop storage bins and resting on the floor propped against the walls. Several of them incorporate the little piece of plastic cheese I’d given back to him. “Are these… she did these? I didn’t know she—”
“No, these ones are mine.”
I turn to him, annoyed that he’s brought me here to see his artwork, in time to see him pointing down to the back corner. “But she did paint, yes. She started about two months before she got hurt. You didn’t know?”
I shake my head, not bothering to tell him she and I had barely been in contact back then.
“So then you don’t know— anyhow. Hers are in the back corner.”
He changed his direction in that sentence, but when I glance at him his set jaw tells me he’s not going to explain himself. Not yet. But he brought me here and there has to be a reason.
My heart racing though I don’t know why, I make my way to the corner Remy indicated with him right behind me.
“These are her earliest ones,” he says, waving at about half a dozen small canvases attached to a folding divider. I look, afraid to and afraid not to, but seeing them calms my fears. A view of the Central Park Reservoir at sunset, complete with three little ducks. The Empire State Building lit up at night. A sun-splashed beach I can’t identify with the words ‘Catch joy in every day’ in black marker in Gloria’s handwriting across the sky. They’re not fine art, more like the kind of thing people sell to tourists on the sidewalks around Central Park, but they’re pretty enough. Nothing big, nothing important. Nothing for Remy to be nervous about.
I turn to Remy, not understanding why he was so insistent I see these when there’s nothing special about them, and he says, “They’re nice, right? Want to take one? Or more?”
“I’ve got a perfect spot for the Reservoir one,” I say, thinking of the blank wall above my kitchen sink, and he lifts it off the wall and tucks it into a long-handled canvas bag he’s had waiting near the paintings.
I thank him as I put the bag’s straps over my shoulder, but he doesn’t acknowledge that. Instead, he swallows hard and says, “This is how she started. Just typical stuff. She did these for a few weeks, until she got a bit of a handle on the whole painting thing. Then she got an idea. Well, actually, now I think she started painting in the first place because of that idea.”
I blink, even more confused now, and he says, “Two-sided canvases. The back side has a thing she didn’t like, and the front has… well, let me show you.”
He takes hold of my hand and draws me to the lone canvas on the back of the divider. It’s hanging with its back showing, and there’s a painting done on another canvas set into its frame. Done in small brushstrokes, almost tentative somehow, it shows a dimly lit New York street with a woman, clearly Gloria, walking with her eyes averted past a homeless person slumped in a doorway.
“Turn it around,” Remy says softly, releasing my hand.
I carefully lift it off its hook and do what he says, my fingers shaking. On the front side I see the same homeless person, but with Gloria crouched down nearby offering money with one hand and a sand
wich with the other. The colors are brighter and done with confident strokes, the street is cleaner, and Gloria’s face is alight with happiness instead of wearing the embarrassed awkwardness of the first side.
“See? She hid the bad stuff on the back and fixed it on the front. I think it’s brilliant. Repairing her life through her art.”
“Beautiful,” I say softly, staring at the joy on my painted sister’s face.
“It is, yeah. But it’s not the only one. At least, I don’t think so.”
I look at him, startled to hear the nervousness back in his voice, to see him pointing at a piece under a black cloth in the very back corner.
“I helped her set up another two-sided canvas, but she wouldn’t let me look at it as she worked on it. She said nobody should see it until it was done. In the hospital, once she could talk a bit I asked if she’d changed her mind about keeping it secret, if I should tell you or your parents and have you look, and she got so upset I didn’t ask again. She died not wanting anyone to see it, I think, because she couldn’t finish it.”
My eyes flick from the covered painting back to his face. “Then why am I—”
“I don’t know what to do with it,” he says quietly. “I don’t know whether I should look at it, or you should, or we should burn it without uncovering it, or—”
Horrified at the suggestion of destroying Gloria’s work unseen, I push past him to expose the painting.
Then I’m horrified in a whole different way.
The front portrays what I know immediately is Anthony’s third birthday party. The party he never had because he died right before it. The whole family sits around our old dining room table, with Anthony, his face glowing so brightly he might have been an angel, about to blow out his candles. Everywhere around the table are red balloons, the kind on which he’d—
“What’s on the other side?”
My voice comes out like I’m the one choking, and Remy says, “It’s your family, right? But it means more than that. Right?”
I nod. “Turn it.” I can hardly breathe, but I have to know what’s on the other side, what she painted about the day I killed Anthony.
Holding Out for a Zero Page 15
