The Looking Glass

by Janet McNally

  “I have ice cream,” she says. “Keep it short and sweet.”

  “Hi, Sylvie,” my mother says when I answer. Her voice on the phone sounds far away and echoey, like she’s speaking to me from down a corridor.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Did you get in all right?” she asks. “I feel bad that I couldn’t take you. I always liked that drive to New Jersey.”

  “It was fine,” I say. “I’m all settled in.”

  “I’m glad,” she says. It’s amazing the way she believes me, no matter what, even after Julia spent the better part of two years lying. I guess she came to expect it from my sister, but never from me.

  “It’s so late there,” I say. “Why are you still awake?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t sleep. I’m outside. There’s a small terrace off our hotel room.” I try to picture it: wrought iron, shadowy cobblestone street, gold lamplight. “It’s a little chilly, but lovely anyway.”

  I picture her wrapped in her favorite ash-gray cardigan.

  “Is Dad sleeping?”

  “Like a log. As usual.” She laughs.

  “What can you see from there?”

  “Oh,” she says. Her voice sounds happy. She loves this game. We used to play it whenever she and my father were away. She’d describe the snowy peaks of the Alps, the narrow side streets of Berlin, the beach in Capri. “I can see the building across the way. It’s gray stone, with these beautiful windows. And below”—she’s leaning over the edge, I can tell—“a stone street and a tiny red Italian car.”

  I close my eyes for a moment. I can see it too: the stone, the street, the car. I wish I were there on the terrace with my mother. Maybe I’d tell her that I’ve been sitting too close to the edge of things, lately. That I can’t seem to stay away from places where I could fall.

  “What do you see?” she asks.

  “Moonflowers.” I say this without thinking about it, and then I panic. There are no moonflowers at Fancy Dance Camp, at least not that I remember. Though my mother can’t know that, can she?

  Anyway, she just repeats the word. “Moonflowers,” she says dreamily.

  “There’s a trellis,” I say. “Outside my cabin.”

  Right in front of me, another moonflower bud trembles, then shudders open, stretching its petals outward. I don’t care what Jack says. This is magic.

  “Have you ever seen a moonflower open?” I ask.

  “I haven’t.”

  “It happens all at once,” I say. “Like, pop! It’s incredible.”

  “That must be lovely.” My mother’s voice sounds sleepy. “Actually, it’s getting late for you too, honey. I should have waited until tomorrow to call. I just wanted to make sure you got in all right. I missed you.”

  “I miss you too, Mom.”

  There’s an ache in my heart like a creaky door, and I think about all the things I should have told my mother and never did, about how I knew what was going on. About what it was like when Julia hurt herself. I consider telling her now.

  Instead, this is what I say: ( ).

  I let the quiet hiss on the call fill the space in our conversation until my mother speaks again.

  “Good night, Sylvie,” she says.

  I wait a moment. The moonflower glows. “Good night,” I say.

  I listen for the click of her hanging up but I don’t hear it. My mother’s there—on the other end of the satellite—and then she’s gone.

  Track 6:

  I Know I’m Not Wrong

  THE MOON HAS RISEN OVER Rose’s house, a round white pearl in the near-black sky. I’m still sitting out here on a bench with the moonflowers, several of them splayed open against their heart-shaped leaves. The air is full of cricket-song.

  I hear flip-flop footsteps behind me that I know are Rose’s, but I don’t turn around. She stands next to me for a moment. I can hear her breathing, and my own heart in my ears.

  “Sylvie.” She lays her fingertips lightly on my shoulder. “What are you really doing here?”

  “I already told you.”

  “I know what you told me.” Rose sighs. “Listen—”

  Rose is one of the most capable people I’ve ever met. She’s always known what she wants to do: become an urban planner so she can help make cities a better place to live, and help make life easier for the people with the least power and money. She literally wants to keep people safe. So it’s no surprise: here comes a lecture about leaving this Julia thing alone, or why I shouldn’t have run out on Fancy Dance Camp in the first place. But honestly, I don’t want to hear it.

  “Rose,” I say. “Please. Just let me sit here.” I look up at her. “Or sit here with me.”

  I expect her to say no, or to sigh theatrically, but she doesn’t. She just sits down next to me, so close our shoulders are touching.

  “Okay,” she says.

  Rose was in New York visiting us the day Julia tore her hip flexor, what we call “the accident.” She’d had surgery on her knee before, of course, but that was a wear-and-tear injury, not one terrible day.

  Rose wasn’t at the studio, though. I was, in technique class, sweaty and dirty from floor stretches. Julia’s friend Henry appeared in the doorway, his mouth drawn into a line. Miss Charlotte stopped the class, and we all stood there at the bar, staring at Henry. He said my name.

  “Sylvie,” he said. “Come with me.”

  His voice was like an ice cube pressed against my temple. I blinked, and the studio lights turned into flashbulbs, flashing dizzyingly.

  When I got to the doorway, Henry took my hand. That’s how I knew it was bad. When we got closer to Julia I could hear her crying, her voice a thin wail. We were nearly running by then, Henry and I, and I was crying too, but silently. I couldn’t make myself peek at Henry to see how his face looked. What I’d seen in the studio was enough.

  When we burst through the doorway I stopped. Miss Diana was kneeling next to Julia stroking her hair. Her face was completely drained of color.

  “We called an ambulance,” she said, and I walked toward them without even trying to move my legs. It just happened, like they were magnetic north and I was a compass needle. Miss Diana had answered a question I didn’t know I was asking. I saw it in her eyes: the certainty. She knew Julia wouldn’t dance again. Not like before, anyway. It was over.

  I wobbled and knelt down next to my sister. I thought I might throw up on the worn wood floor.

  “Sylvie,” Julia wailed. Then she switched to a whisper. “Sylvie, Sylvie, Sylvie.”

  All she could say was my name and I couldn’t say anything at all.

  I put my hand in hers and she squeezed it so hard I thought my fingers would break, but I let her. I didn’t know that the painkillers had kept her body from knowing when it had had enough. They had let her push herself past breaking. Still, my heart was busy crystalizing, cracking into hard little pieces. Getting ready for what was going to come next.

  In the garden, Rose shifts next to me, then kicks off her flip-flops. She leans closer to me, so I can feel a real pressure from her shoulder against mine.

  I wonder if Rose knows what I’m thinking about. I wonder if she’s thinking about it too: the way she met us at the hospital with my parents, standing between them with her face stained with tears. The way she pulled me away from my sister and left the three of them with the doctor. The way I cried until I fell asleep in the waiting room, my head in Rose’s lap. I wished then that she’d tell me that it was going to be okay, but I didn’t ask her to, and I don’t think she was ready to lie.

  “I’m sorry,” Rose says.

  I lean into her one millimeter more. “I know,” I say.

  Track 7:

  That’s Enough for Me

  ROSE GOES TO BED AT eleven after setting Jack and me up with sheets and pillows. I’ve decided not to pull the couch out, as it seems weird to sleep up there in a double bed while Jack sleeps on the floor, and it would be weirder still to offer to share the bed. Plus, in that scenario I would fac
e the wrath of Rose. So I’m tucked in on the couch with a pink flowered sheet, Pavlova curled against my side. When Jack comes back from the bathroom with his toothbrush in his hand, he lies down on top of Rose’s old camp sleeping bag, then shakes a flowered sheet of his own out across his body.

  I hear a car drive down the street playing a samba beat. Its headlights trace across the wall.

  “Are you okay down there?” I ask.

  “I’m fine,” he says.

  “I’m sure it’s not very comfortable.” I prop myself up on my elbow and look down at him. “Maybe we should switch spots.”

  He shakes his head. “No, stay there. My only worry is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg here is going to end up sleeping on my head.” He’s smiling.

  “You’re talking about the cat, right?” I tease.

  “The cat, yeah.”

  “Because if the real RBG shows up be sure to wake me.” I flop back on the mattress. “I want to be a part of it.”

  “Noted,” Jack says.

  The ceiling fan spins above us. I feel like we’re waiting for something, but I’m not sure what.

  “Thanks again for doing this,” I say. “Driving me, I mean.”

  “You’re welcome,” he says. “Like I said, it’s not a big deal. It’s on the way, basically.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” I wait, and the silence says, Why not? “I know you don’t really like me.” I don’t know what makes me say this. Maybe because I can feel it, same as I always have, and I know he’d just as soon drive to his dad’s on his own. I’m a stowaway, a ride-along. And I can be braver here in the half dark.

  “Sylvie, I like you fine.”

  “No, you don’t. You never have.” It’s easy, somehow, to say this to Jack now, when I can look at the ceiling fan instead of him. When we’ve been together all day.

  “So why is it?” I ask. “Am I not good enough for Sadie? I’m honestly just curious.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he says.

  “It’s not.” I shake my head, though he can’t see it.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  My stomach contracts a little. “Yes.”

  He pauses. “I have a problem with the dynamics of our families.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” I say. I turn to my side again and look at him. “Our mothers are friends!”

  “Do you really believe that?” Jack raises himself up onto his elbows. “Our family is completely beholden to yours. Your mother gets all these jobs for my mom, cooking for other rich ladies, making appetizers for their parties. She got Sadie a scholarship to your school. She would have done the same for me if I’d let her.”

  I almost say, But it’s a girls’ school. But I know he doesn’t mean that my mother would have gotten him into Maria Mitchell. He means she would have gotten him in somewhere else, somewhere comparable.

  “You didn’t need help,” I say. “You got into a great high school.”

  “Right.” Jack lowers himself back down. “That’s the point.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything for a minute. I can hear Rose’s refrigerator humming in the kitchen. Then I take a breath.

  “What’s wrong with wanting to help someone?” I say.

  “Nothing. But it’s not always easy for the one who needs the help.” He shakes his head a little. “Listen. Your mom’s nice. But there’s no way she understands what it’s like for my mom. For our family. Your mom grew up rich, and she stayed that way.” He looks at me. “My mom raised Sadie and me mostly alone.”

  He says this like I don’t already know it. Like Sadie’s not my best friend.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like my mother’s life is perfect,” I say. I think of how lost she seems sometimes, underneath her impeccable veneer. The kind of lost you get when something huge is missing from your life.

  “No one’s life is perfect,” Jack says. “But some people get a hell of a lot closer to it than others.”

  I don’t know what to say to this. He’s not wrong, but it doesn’t feel right, exactly, either. Suddenly, I think I might cry. I breathe in and out as evenly as I can until the feeling is gone. Or if not gone, totally, pushed far enough away that I can’t feel it hovering anymore.

  “I’m going to sleep,” I say.

  “Okay,” Jack says.

  I turn my head to my left, toward the picture window that looks out over the yard. It’s wide open, just a screen between us and the night. The purple flowers of the rhododendron bush are lit up in the moonlight, neon-bright against the deep green leaves. I’m watching a silver moth fly in a spiral in front of them when something huge and feathery swings into view, landing on the branches without making a sound. An owl.

  It’s enormous, easily the biggest bird I’ve ever seen. It folds up its wings and sits there, its round gold eyes looking right at me. I squeeze my own eyes shut and when I open them, it’s still there. I can’t make it disappear.

  It’s real, or at least I think it is, and I’m not going to ask Jack. I lift one hand to wave and it shakes out its wings like that’s an answer. Then it lifts off toward the sky.

  Pavlova twitches in her sleep, runs a few steps in a dream, her legs moving over the sheet. I hear Jack’s voice again.

  “Sylvie,” he says. His voice is barely more than a whisper.

  I take a breath as quietly as I can. I don’t know what he’s going to say, and I don’t really want to. I let him think I’m already asleep.

  Track 8:

  That’s All for Everyone

  IN THE MORNING, ROSE STANDS next to me on the sidewalk in sandals and a dark blue sleeveless dress. The breeze blows her curls around her shoulders and her skirt around her knees. Somewhere behind me, Jack is loading our bags back into the Volvo.

  I managed to get through our toast-and-jam breakfast without making eye contact with him. (This required lavishing much extra attention on Pavlova and the feline RBG, which is fine.) Right now, I’m not sure how I’m going to get through the rest of this day, much less the rest of this trip. Rose is onto me.

  “Go easy,” she says, her voice low.

  “On what?” I ask.

  “On the boy.” She tilts her head. “He’s growing on me.”

  I feel my cheeks flush. “Yeah, well, he’s doing the opposite to me. He’s . . . shrinking on me.”

  Rose smiles a lopsided smile. “He told me about that.”

  I feel a rush of heat through my body. My tattoo blooms with pain. “What? When?”

  “You were in the shower.”

  “Really? So you’re best friends now?” I sound like a brat and I know it, but I can’t seem to stop myself.

  “No. I could tell something was bothering him, so I asked. I’m nosy. You know that.”

  She smiles. I don’t.

  “You sure are,” I say.

  “Think about it, Syl.” She runs her hand over the branches of the bush closest to her. “He has a point. And I think he feels bad about saying it, under the circumstances.”

  “He should,” I say. I don’t even think that’s true, but I’m just trying to find my footing lately. I don’t need people making it harder for me to do that.

  “Okay,” says Rose. Her voice is so calm, so kind, even, that I think I might cry. Again. But before I can decide one way or another, Jack walks over.

  “Thanks, Rose,” he says. He puts out his hand for her to shake it, but instead she pulls him in for a hug. He looks happily surprised.

  “Take care of my Sylvie,” she says when she lets him go.

  He flushes a little, glances at me. “I’ll do my best.”

  “I’m right here,” I say, waving my hand. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Obviously,” says Rose. “But it’s not a bad thing to have some help.”

  The ice in my heart melts a little. I uncross my arms. My tattoo twinges again.

  “I’ll be in the car,” Jack says. I don’t watch him walk away, but I hear the door open and shut ag
ain. He’ll probably start reading Vonnegut while he’s waiting. There isn’t much else to do in there, besides listen to freaking Fleetwood Mac.

  Sigh.

  “Thanks,” I say to Rose. I turn to face her. “For everything.”

  “I didn’t do much,” she says. Her freckles make a Milky Way across her cheeks. I smile without trying.

  “You didn’t turn me in,” I say. “That’s something.”

  She smiles and leans forward, taking my chin in her right hand. “I’ll never turn you in, cowgirl.”

  I make a face. “Cowgirl?”

  “Imagine an Old West–type setting,” Rose says, letting go of my chin and sweeping her arm toward the lawn. “The sheriff is approaching. That sort of thing.”

  “Okay.”

  She furrows her brow. “I need to know you’re going to be careful,” she says. “Because otherwise I’m going to have to come with you, and then I’ll lose my summer position and fail out of grad school, and it’ll be all your fault.”

  “No pressure,” I say.

  Rose smiles. “None at all.”

  The wind blows my hair over my shoulders. I can hear a bird somewhere, singing, its voice repeating too-wheet, too-wheet. (Thought: I’m glad he’s speaking birdsong and not English. When I start understanding what the birds are saying, that’s when I’ll know I really have a problem.) I look at Rose.

  Here’s what I want to say: I’m tired of people telling me to be careful.

  Here’s what I say: “Of course, I’ll be careful.”

  Rose nods. “Because can you imagine?” My cousin’s eyes are wide. “If something happens to you and Aunt Elizabeth finds out I knew? Between your mom and mine, I would be completely and utterly dead.”

  “You totally would be,” I say.

  She puts her palms on either side of my face and squeezes a little. “Don’t let anything happen to you.”

  “Okay,” I say. Rose lets go of my cheeks.

  “I think I know why she left,” I say, too quickly, my words tripping over themselves. “She didn’t want to let us down.”

  “Maybe,” Rose says. “But she did. She did let us all down.” She doesn’t sound angry, or even sad. Just certain.