by Karen Raney
“What color?” asked Robin.
“Pink.”
“Pink?” he said. “You didn’t tell me that. I would have stayed home.”
Frank Lloyd Wright may have been Mr. Harmony-with-Nature, but our tour guide was wearing mascara an inch thick and gold strappy sandals. I guess if it’s your job, being natural must get tiring. Her name was Laura. She said her words of welcome, and off we went down some steps that had a birch railing, to a dirt path leading around to the house. To give her credit, Laura glanced once at the scarf on my head, knotted at the side like a pirate’s, and after that she treated me like everyone else, except I could see her deliberately slowing down and waiting for the three of us to join the group before she started her next talk. We were always the last ones.
July had been the month of hugs, starting from the moment Dr. Osterley said this new treatment might be doing the trick, and my mother exploded laughing and weeping at the same time. As for me, I searched Dr. O’s brown eyes for, I don’t know, some kind of sign that meant my body was mine again, but his were the eyes of a man who had seen everything and knew to hold himself back. Sure enough, halfway through August, just when I was daring to think about eleventh grade, the fevers started. The night sweats started. The bruises came. I was as tired as I’d ever been, tired as I would always be.
Robin had a very natural way of helping me. He put his hand on my shoulder as we descended, or around my back when we were on level ground, and he took my arm when Mom was on the other side. He carried the folding stool for when I needed a rest. He set it up, clowning around like I was a queen and he was a servant waiting on me hand and foot. I had no idea if Antonio was the kind of father who put his hand on your shoulder, or whether he would even want to visit a place like Fallingwater, let alone help me down the steps. Antonio would be much taller beside me, and when people saw us together they would know we were father and daughter. But the fact was, I liked Robin and sometimes I even loved him. There was no use wishing things were some other way.
We stopped on the bridge. Robin unfolded the stool, and I divided my attention between the water and the house that leaned dangerously out over it. Okay, imagine a lot of huge concrete shoe boxes clamped together at different heights. Windows in the slits between them. Gray stone chimneys. All balanced like a shelf over a fast-moving stream, and not only a stream but a two-level waterfall that actually goes right under the house so the crashing never stops. The house and the falls were very clear and real to me, now that I was five years older. Five years from now I’m sure I could remember every single detail, not just the gift shop. Which was why I went back and forth from wanting to memorize the place to thinking, What’s the point? Just let the water run.
“Something, isn’t it?” Mom said when Laura had finished her speech about cantilevered trays, local sandstone, European Modernism, structural daring, and the annex for guests and servants.
“It’s not pink,” I said. “It’s kind of orange.”
“It’s pinker around the back,” said my mother. “Down below where all the pictures are taken, it’s totally gray. We’ll go to the viewing point after the tour, if we’re not too tired.”
While we were sitting on some low walls behind the terrace, I asked Laura about the color. She said it was so the building would blend into its surroundings when the leaves changed in the fall. I nodded, but to me it seemed odd to have a house you can’t stand the color of for most of the year, just so it looks good in the fall. And anyway, since when are leaves pink? But the fact was, once we were inside the house, it didn’t matter about the color and the concrete. This was what we’d come for.
The living room was a huge horizontal space with light coming in everywhere and glass doors that opened onto a balcony above the falls. From the balcony there were steps going down. It was spooky the way the steps ended in this little platform that went nowhere and didn’t even have a rail around it. You could drink your coffee there in the morning with your feet in the moving water. That’s what the guide said. Back indoors we were shown the bedrooms, which were on different mezzanines. Wherever you went, you could see another part of the house and a part of the outdoors.
I couldn’t wait to get back to the main room, and I could see by my mother’s face she felt the same. She wandered around in a trance while I rested on my stool, because you’re not allowed to sit on any of the furniture. My mother came over and squeezed the knot of my scarf and hovered her hand absentmindedly over my head without touching it. I knew she was thinking about Monday. I knew she was wishing she could forget about Monday and sit on one of the sofas, take a book down from the shelf, and read it leaning on a red cushion by the fireplace built in to the rock, and whenever she felt like it, she could go to the glass doors and presto: her very own waterfall rushing down.
“Could you live here?” said my mother, to no one in particular.
Robin came up from behind and kissed her hair. “You could.”
“But could you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I’ve always loved this place,” said my mother. “Ever since my parents brought us when we were kids. There’s something incredibly peaceful about it.”
“Except for the noise,” I pointed out. “I’d want to switch it off sometimes. Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess so,” said my mother. “It might get on your nerves, in the long run. If you know there’s no stopping it.”
We made our slow way back to the parking lot, having taken leave of Laura and the group. We decided to skip the viewing point. We had seen that view on every single fridge magnet and bookmark in the gift shop. Besides, I was exhausted, and we had the long drive home.
I didn’t say this, because my mother doesn’t know I do it, but on the way back I was thinking there would be one advantage of living over a noisy waterfall. You wouldn’t have to take a shower every time you wanted to have a long, private cry.
Maddy,
These questions you ask me! My boys want to know facts and how things work. I am maybe finding out how different girls are. Part of it is because you are almost an adult and thinking about all the important things, like who are we, what are we made of, what are we like? Am I a loner? My work requires me to be on my own a lot. But I am also part of a team. A family is another kind of team. Though there are times I could do with more time to myself! To be honest I think I might be the odd one out. Erica is very sociable, she loves talking and meeting with people, and the boys have lots of friends. Whereas I like my own company.
As for your other questions, I think that is something for your mother to tell you about. It was a long time ago. I want you to know that I am happy that you got in touch with me, and that I can get to know you a little through these emails. There is of course a lot more to say! Who knows, maybe it will be possible to meet each other one day. It is much easier to talk about complicated things in person.
Antonio
Dear Maddy,
I am impressed by how much you are doing. Music, art, a campaign, not to mention your schoolwork. How do you fit it all in? You must have a lot of energy.
My sons are getting ready to start school again. They complain about the end of the summer but I think secretly they are glad to get back and see their friends. Are you looking forward to school starting? What classes are you taking this year? How is Jack? I would love to hear your news.
Antonio
25
When my cat ventures into an unfamiliar place, she takes a few steps, turns around, and sniffs the doorway to identify her escape route. Then she finds the lowest surface to sit under and stays put. Nothing can get to her while she figures out where she is and what’s what. After the visit to Fallingwater, and the day Dr. O told us we were out of options and my mother completely lost it, they dismantled Robin’s table and moved my bed down to the dining room, and I took up residence there on millions of pillows. I was right in the middle of the house and whatever was go
ing on. But I felt like I was under a low surface, waiting.
At first, Jack’s voice lifted my spirits like nothing else. So did the sight of him in the doorway, taller than before and softer around the eyes. He was more polite with adults than ever. It was as if he had become a concentrated version of himself. He sat by my bed, entertaining Cloud, holding my fingers lightly in his half-closed hand, and playing our favorite YouTube clips, of the lion ecstatically reuniting with the people who had raised him from a cub, and dogs running the wrong way on escalators. Before, when we laughed at the clips, I wanted the lion and the dogs as pets. Now I wanted to be them.
Over the summer, Jack had gone on vacation and we’d barely had a chance to talk about junior year and what it might be like back at school now that we were together. Good thing, really. Without saying too much, we could just slip from the in-between state we’d been in all along, to my new existence in the dining room, a place so wrong for a bed it hardly called to mind the other uses of beds.
One afternoon after we’d looked at everything we could think of online, and said what there was to say about the march to the White House, my animation, which thank goodness was more or less finished, Jack’s classes, and the kids we both knew, he sat very still in the chair, his hands on his knees. “Maddy . . .” he began. “Dearest.”
“Yes, Jack? Beloved.” After our visit to the lake, we’d taken to calling each other things like that. “What’s on your so-called mind?”
It burst out of him. “Junior year is horrible!”
“SATs?” I said.
“I can’t wait for high school to be over.”
“You’ve got college to look forward to . . .”
I watched his eyes fill with tears. “I’m going to hate it, you know.”
Sometimes when Jack was with me he looked normal, and sometimes like he’d been hit in the head and was just coming to, but he never cried.
“I know. I know you are.” I put on a voice like a mother patting a little kid. I pulled one of his hands close and studied the smooth tanned skin of his knuckles and pressed the pad of each finger. His hands were small for a person of his height, but they were hefty next to mine. Every shadow and crease of his skin looked supersharp in what seemed to be not really daylight, but not any other kind of light either. “Wouldn’t it have been great?” I said, fitting his palm to the side of my face and keeping it there. Never let him go.
Jack reclaimed his hand and stood up. He unlaced his running shoes and came over and stretched his long body beside me on the bed, making murmuring noises. The vibration of his voice box tickled my neck, so I laughed and he laughed, and we lay like that for a long time, until his hands started moving over me, sleepily, in the old way. I closed my eyes and took what strength I could from the pressure of Jack’s hands and the smell of his T-shirt and his voice. As if all we had to do was get through this and everything would be fine. As if he were still mine.
“My mother’s in the house,” I whispered.
She appeared in the archway of the kitchen, summoned by my thoughts, and retreated just as abruptly. I pulled away and told Jack my stomach hurt. He scrambled to his feet and stood by the bed, looking lost. My stomach was hurting for real now. That awful punched ache of fear. Ever since we met, I’d done what I could to make myself totally special to Jack. First, best, only. I caught his hand and swung it and kissed it. What good was that for either of us now?
In the evenings, Robin took to leaving the music room door open. If I yelled, or croaked, rather, “What was that?” he played the piece again for me, adding his commentary. “Listen to that transition. Stealthy or what? Sneaking up on you . . .” Or: “Everything’s sweet until that E natural. That’s where the doubt comes in. That E natural will break your heart . . .”
I had avoided the Brahms C-major Trio because Robin was always talking it up, but on one of my good days he made me listen from beginning to end and I went OCD on the scherzo. I played it over and over on my phone. The violins crazily stacking things up, the piano knocking them down . . . and at the end the cello making a point of telling me that no matter what happened or how sad it got, the world was beautiful and I was safe. It was like being chased uphill and running downhill into the arms of your mother. I wasn’t too proud to tell Robin that. He might have been the only one I could tell.
Fiona and Vicky came less often and did more of the talking. Vicky had split up with Wade and was going out with Kevin Stockhaus, who was nineteen and doing drama at the conservatory.
“He is so smart. Not to mention drop-dead gorgeous. We have so much in common.” She found a picture on her phone and passed it to Fiona, who passed it to me. I raised my head to look and I had to admit gorgeous was no exaggeration. Curly hair, rectangular smile, muscular neck. Unlike the ones she usually went for, he looked like a truly nice guy. You can tell by the eyes. Maybe Vicky would get her heart broken this time.
I handed the phone back, catching sight of my bony arm as I did so. I was the reason for their visit, but I felt like everyone belonged here except me. I let the pillow take my head. “Are we going to meet him?” I said.
“Definitely. Whenever you want.”
“So what’s his USP?” asked Fiona.
“His Unique Selling Point,” Vicky confided, lowering her voice in case my mother was around, “is his big c . . .”
Fiona was hooting.
“. . . car. Family size,” whispered Vicky, and the two of them collapsed in their chairs, screaming soundlessly.
When she could speak, Fiona gave a moan. “I’m dying here.”
“I’m done.” Vicky wiped her lower lids one at a time with the back of her finger. “I am so, so done.”
“Are you okay, Maddy?” Fiona’s voice floated near. “Did you hear that?”
Her elfin face was above me, ready to do whatever I asked. I longed for both of them to go.
“My hearing’s perfect.”
“Want some coffee?” asked Vicky behind her. “I can get us some coffee.”
“No, thanks. But go in the kitchen and make some. Mom won’t mind.”
“I love your mother. She’s so chill.”
“Mine would be a basket case,” said Fiona. “I’d be taking care of her.”
“What happened to Billy and Carina?” I asked to change the subject.
“She got sick of waiting for him to make a move.”
“He’s got his eye on Lucy Wall now. I said he could aim a little higher on the food chain, but he won’t listen.”
“All our experience and good advice,” I murmured. “Gone to waste.” What was the point in having experience, when I wouldn’t be able to use it now?
Fiona was still standing over me. “How’s Jack, anyway?”
“Okay.”
“Just okay?” I could feel the intensity of her gaze.
“Sometimes I don’t want to see him.”
“You always want to see us,” said Vicky.
“It’s not like you have to do anything,” said Fiona. “He can just sit and look at you.”
“I don’t want him to sit and look at me!” I shut my eyes. There was a lot going on in the darkness. Pulsating lines, and tunnels inside other tunnels, and red shooting stars. “I can’t take the expression he gets.”
“Girls are stronger than boys,” Vicky said at last.
“They are?” Weak was not the word. I was a balloon all the air had gone out of. Halfway through September, we thought I might get to the first part of the march to the White House, but then I landed back in the hospital, and now I couldn’t even get to the bathroom on my own. Sometimes I couldn’t lift my arm to hold a glass. I pictured Vicky flinging her shawl of black hair over one shoulder and exchanging looks with Fiona, who had left my side and would be sitting on the desk chair, hugging her knees. “Guess what,” I said.
“You’re getting married,” said Fiona.
I opened my eyes. She was checking a handful of her pale hair for split ends.
“Yo
u’re getting divorced,” said Vicky, scrolling down her phone.
“What, then?” asked Fiona.
“They’re showing my animation at the march. Two whole minutes of it.”
They looked up together and stared.
“Wow, Maddy!”
“Oh my god. You didn’t tell us. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Miss Sedge did it all. Mom signed off on it this morning. We’re going to watch it on TV.”
“What’s the animation about? You never told us.”
“You’ll see. Promise you’ll watch? I’ll be a celebrity. For two minutes.”
“Longer than that,” said Vicky confidently.
“It’ll go viral,” said Fiona. “Eternal fame.”
Maddy,
I have not heard from you in quite a while. Is everything OK in Washington?
Antonio
Hello Maddy,
I wonder if you might have told your mother we were writing, or maybe she found out and that’s why you’ve stopped writing. Just a guess! I know I said I would answer any questions you had and I meant that, but maybe I did not take into account the kinds of questions you have. I’m sorry I could not give you a fuller answer to the story of your mother and me. I will try.
Antonio
A day or a week, or maybe a year later, it was getting hard to tell, Mom said gently, next to my ear, that Fiona and Vicky were there to see me. I shook my head no. Are you sure? I was sure. I tried to explain that I had nothing more to say, and no room inside me to listen. I saw tears standing in my mother’s eyes. I think she understood. I had to put Fiona and Vicky in a place where hypothetically I could still laugh with them and argue with them and be best friends forever, but the time had come to turn my attention elsewhere.
Another day, Jack said: “Everything’s ready.”
His broad face close to mine, shiny bangs he flicked out of his eyes with a scissoring gesture. Crew cuts felt like moss. He used to let me touch his. Maybe deep down we knew what would happen, way back then. “What’s ready?”
