by Lauren Karcz
There’s a cloud of noise from her end of the call. Beeps and dings and a murky announcement in Spanish. She’s at the hospital.
“Maybe it is what I want,” I say. “Also, the painting is red.”
“Let me talk to your sister,” Mom says.
There is only one place right now that I can feel as comfortable as Victoria feels in modern dance shoes, and as Angela feels with her hands on the piano keys. There’s so much I want to do there: stare up into the Goya ceiling cans and see if they help me understand Lilia at all, hunt down the next party and say something to Edie about Victoria, and, of course, finish the red room. My heart flutters, my fingers ache at the knuckles, and a chill strokes my spine. I should be able to leave any minute now, but every flicker of sound in the house holds me back. The tree outside the window, once referred to by Rex as a bay laurel, moves as if shaken, probably by some hungry lizards. The air conditioner clicks on. And there’s a knock at the bedroom door.
It could be Victoria, who rode a bike over here late at night because she wanted to sleep next to me. It could be Lilia, coming to tell me that if I can finish the red tonight, she’ll explain why she drew that house, and why I felt so compelled to paint a room red. It could even be Mom, returning to lecture me some more about time and then kick me back to my own bedroom.
It’s Angela, of course.
“Mercy.” She hurls herself onto the bed, her knee jutting into my side in the process.
“Oh, come on.”
“No, you come on. I want to know about Lilia’s studio.”
“I need to sleep.”
“That’s your own fault for being out too late. If I can figure out that you’re sneaking out, you know I can figure out where the heck you’re going.”
“I don’t think you will.”
“That sounds like a challenge.” She doesn’t get under the covers. Instead, she props herself up on two pillows, as though it’s noon instead of midnight. “Anyway, you owe me. For all the nights you’ve been away since Mom left. This isn’t the best way to leave our sisterly relationship before you go to college.”
“Why does everybody think I’m going to college? Jeez.”
“I figured you’d heard from SCAD by now,” she says.
“Not a word,” I tell her. “And I would have said something if I’d heard from them.”
“Uh-huh.” Angela glances at me, maybe to make sure I’m telling the truth. In the half-light falling into the room from the moon and the street, her face is a lot like Dad’s. The same down-browed look. The black hair on fair skin. The stillness of her thoughts. “So where’s this studio? It’s not in Rex’s house, is it?”
“No. It’s in this old condo building out on the Key,” I say, and it’s like letting out a breath.
“Okay, weird. So you and Lilia are working together?”
“Sort of. I think . . . I think we’re at the beginning of a bigger project.” This has to be right. I want it to be right. “It feels different, painting there, like I know exactly what I’m doing all the time. I feel like I could be successful—like, successful at making what I want to make. I feel like if I wanted to do a sad painting, I could do it there. I’d start it, finish it, put it on display, and bring everybody there to tears.”
“Who’s everybody?”
“The other artists.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Could I do the same? With the piano. With the Beethoven piece.”
“I don’t know. Do you feel a pull to go there?”
“Maybe?” Angela hoists herself off the bed and paces around the room, her hands brushing some of Mom’s things as she does. The pile of yarn from her knitting hobby, which never produced anything but three sad pot holders. Her collection of potted bamboo stalks on the dresser. My and Angela’s school photos, but only the worst, most awkward middle school ones.
Angela leans against the window. “I think so.”
“We can try,” I tell her. “Maybe you’ll get there and you’ll realize that it’s where you’re supposed to be.”
The last time I heard Angela yell, before this afternoon, was the day our dad announced that he was moving out. He had left before, but this time felt real, like all the anger from the other times he said he was leaving had been dug up and shoveled into this one phrase. He had conviction. But so did Angela. Right now, we’re in the car with music on (Firing Squad, track four, “Head on a Train”) and when I replay, in my head, Angela’s shout from three years ago, it comes in louder than the stereo. “Stop walking away!” she yelled. And for a minute, Dad did. I stared at his boat shoes until they stopped on the driveway. It didn’t last, but Angela knew how to set up a metaphorical wall covered with metaphorical graffiti. Stop right there, it might say. Or maybe just, Fuck you, Dad.
Angela says, “Lilia’s been saying really nice things when I practice lately. Every time I work with her, she says I’m getting better, I’m finding my voice through the instrument, that sort of thing. What if she knows I’m coming tonight? I feel like she really could sense it, don’t you?”
She gets so talkative when she’s tired. I turn down the music so that I can better hear the rest of her monologue, but instead she leans against the window and is quiet again. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be—the unstoppable pair of Moreno sisters, creating stuff together. I don’t know . . . we’ve never been that great of a team. But I like that she’s here with me.
I crack the windows, and the air comes in cool and thin, like an s being pushed between teeth. It’s going to be spring soon. It won’t feel like this for much longer.
Angela tiptoes through the lobby, and she pauses at the door to the steps. “Maybe I should stay down here.”
“Look, if Lilia’s in the studio, then we’ll go away and wait until she invites you. But if she’s not, then we can peek in. It’s only up one floor.”
She walks up behind me, two-footing each stair. The stairwell smells like salt water and old paint, probably toxic if you had to stay here too long. She holds the door as we head into the hallway. No one, as usual. It feels strange to have the presence of Angela tailing me. Angela wearing a Harry Potter T-shirt and dark blue jeans. Angela with her black hair tied up in a messy bun. Angela who feels ready but who has not been invited.
“There’s music,” she says.
“Yeah. It’s upstairs, usually.”
“Oh, let’s go there.” She moves back toward the door. “This floor creeps me out.”
We take the stairs up three more floors, because that’s where the party was last time. And, yes, the music is here again, starting and stopping and leaning into itself. Piano, drums, guitar, and bass. I keep thinking that for as long as I was at the party last night, I must have seen the band, but no, I never did. They were off down a hall, in a room that felt like it wasn’t meant to include me. The music kicks into gear, and Angela and I walk toward it. But as we do, it seems like the music is moving toward us, as well. It’s louder and louder, and I swear that more instruments are joining the band every second, and the music has direction now, and it’s like a cloud of noise in the hallway.
“Angela!”
She turns around.
“This is hurting my head!” I yell.
She says something I can’t hear.
“I’m going to walk back the other way!” I call out, pointing at the door to the stairs.
I’m walking, and now jogging, and now running. I hope she’s behind me. She’s not. And there are vibrations under my feet, and it’s not just my shoes coming loose because I’m a terrible runner, or the floors shaking because I’m a terrible runner, but really, the floors shaking because . . . the floors are shaking.
“Angela!”
The music stops. The noise in the hall is of the metal doors shuddering in their door frames.
Angela walks fast from the end of the hallway, and I start toward her again. My head rings with the echoes of the music, and the floor rumbl
es as though it is a piece of sheet metal being shaken from one end, and we have got to get back to that stairwell.
We meet in the middle. This time, she opens the door to the stairs, and we begin rushing down. One of my purple sandals falls off and tumbles ahead of me down a flight of stairs. I kick the other one off too, and it’s much easier going. I’d leave them here if I didn’t need them—they’re the ones still stained with the mess of the Food Poisoning duo.
“Has this ever happened before?” Angela is much quicker on the stairs than I am.
“No!” My breaths are raspy, and they keep getting stuck in my throat. “Honest to God. There was a party last time. A girl mixed me a drink.”
Angela reaches the lobby and waits for me. I run out, but maybe I don’t even need to now. The shaking has stopped. The lobby is still and quiet except for the hiss of air in the vents.
“I think we’re good,” I tell her.
“Maybe you are,” Angela says. “I don’t think I should come back.”
eleven
“I HAVE REGRETS,” Mom says. “Things I was going to tell Abuela when I got older. Older! Can you believe how ridiculous I was? I’ve been in denial. And now she might never know.”
“Tell her anyway,” I say. “Whisper them in her ear.” I take the last bite I can stand out of my toast. It has reached that state of trying to turn into its former self—from warm and crunchy to cold and chewy.
“Is there anything you want me to tell her for you?”
“No. I think I’ve said it all.”
“Hmm.” Mom sounds unconvinced, but she doesn’t press. “I didn’t mention any of this to Angela, by the way. She sounded strange. Is she okay?”
“We’re just tired. We got to bed late.”
“You shouldn’t do that. You’ve got school.”
“It’s Saturday, Mom.”
“Oh.” The dogs yap. I bet she doesn’t walk them on the beach like Abuela did. Three dogs and Ceci Moreno, all bored and restless and shedding hair, in that one little apartment. It probably doesn’t smell so good right now. “I’ve been thinking about coming home.”
“No.” I bolt off the dining room chair. “I know you don’t think she’s going to wake up. But I do, and someone should be there.”
“I called Tío Mario this morning.”
“He’ll probably poke his head into her hospital room once, be like, ‘Oh, she’s fine,’ and then go back to whatever the hell he does.”
“Mercedes. He’s a policeman. And he loves her, too.”
“If you don’t want to stay there, then I’ll come down.”
“Mija, please.”
“I will. Angela and me both. You can come home—we’ll just trade places.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not. She needs someone there. Imagine what would happen if she woke up tomorrow and there was no one there to help her get back home.”
“I’m sure I’ll stay through this weekend.”
“You didn’t even know it was the weekend.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, mijita.”
Angela stares at me from the doorway. I suppose it’s a good thing that one of us is frightened to talk to Mom like that and the other isn’t. She looks mad at me, but what was I supposed to do, say mm-hmm a lot and shoot pointless smiles at the phone? Say, Sure, Mom, come on back, and we’ll meet you with flowers at the airport? Damn it, no. Between Angela and me, there’s one perfect person: this fabulous Renaissance girl who paints and plays piano and speaks with kind confidence to everyone. She arrives fashionably late to parties and then leaves tantalizingly early, as though she’s got somewhere more important to be, but she’s really going home to finish her precalc homework. Perhaps she manages to carry on two best-friendships without anyone getting jealous. She speaks elegant Spanish, grammatically correct from subjunctive to swear words. She’s vice president of the National Honor Society. She only skips school for socially useful events like beach bonfires. She knows the mathematics of risks to be taken: a Coke and rum, plus or minus an herbal cigarette.
Angela waits for me to bring her phone back. I press it into her hand and rub her mess of hair as I leave the room. “I’m going to have some orange juice,” I tell her.
A knock on the door. It’s the same one Angela uses to signal Lilia.
“I’ll get it!” Angela calls.
It’s almost noon, but neither of us have bothered to get out of our pajamas, and even though Lilia’s assured in her floral-based fashion, I still don’t want her to see me looking like I just rolled out of bed. Like I was tired from running down stairs and like I told Angela to come sleep in Mom’s bed next to me and like I woke up at two thirty thinking about how we shouldn’t have gone there and like I sat in the kitchen for a while and couldn’t force my damn imagination to abandon a version of Victoria’s Juilliard audition where they say yes to her and whisk her away right then and there. Like that.
In my bedroom, I do homework that doesn’t require a sketch pad. Thirty pages of Slaughterhouse-Five for English (so it goes), and an in-depth look at the endocrine system for human anatomy. I sketch it in the margins of my notebook with a plain old mechanical pencil, and it comes out looking like one part female anatomy, one part Florida highway map, and one part drunken hippo. Blast. Angela’s current song resounds through the house, stops, and then rushes down the hallway again. It is not a song I know, and she’s playing the same part over and over, and it’s like the song is trying to trap me in. The song and the piano. Not Angela.
Silence.
“I wanted to get closer to the music was all,” Angela says.
More silence.
“I wasn’t trying to cause any trouble.”
Her voice is barely there. Lilia’s voice. She’s whispering, but it cuts. I can’t let Angela take this verbal beating. I move toward the living room.
“I told your sister that you would need to be invited before you could come to the studio.” Lilia standing is barely taller than Angela sitting in her usual piano chair, but she holds her head as though she towers over Angela.
“We didn’t go into your studio.” I sound loud and brash compared to the two of them. I sound more like the piano than anything else in the room. “Okay? I didn’t even touch the doorknob. We were in the hallway on the fifth floor and the second floor. But we didn’t go inside a single room.”
Lilia, in her light blue dress again, stares me down. “That doesn’t matter. You were there, weren’t you?”
“Well, I took Angela there myself, so blame me if you have to blame someone. I’m the one with the car.”
“She could have stayed in the car.”
“That’s not the point. She played the Beethoven piece perfectly, Lilia. I thought she was good enough to come inside.”
Angela looks like she wants nothing more than to hide under her bed and never see Lilia again. She also seems like she could stand not to see me for a couple of days. Lilia considers the both of us, seeming lost, as though she is stuck listening to repetitions of a song she’s never heard.
“You could have caused so much damage with what you did,” she tells me. “I trusted you with that space.”
“I know, I know.”
“You don’t!”
Her voice slices the room. It is gravelly at that level. High and low at the same time. I hate it. I want Rex to come running in to see what’s going on. I want to throw a pillow at her to make her shut up and go away. I want to crawl under the piano until she leaves.
“Okay, I’m sorry. Do you want us both to stay away?”
My chest aches as I say this.
It is not what I want.
I want to go back.
But I want her to want me back.
“No,” she says, taking a few steps backward and leaning, almost collapsing, against the door to the rarely used coat closet. “But there’s a moment when it’s right to arrive there. And that means there’s a whole lot of moments when it’s not right to
be there. You don’t want to ruin your work, do you, Mercedes?”
Lilia pushes her long hair out of her face. I think of the house drawing, and how she knows us. She knows things about the Puerto Rican side of our family that I’m not sure I’m okay with her knowing. It’s as though she’s sifted through our history the same way I rummaged through her suitcase.
“Of course not,” I tell her.
“There’s a plan.” She says this quietly, looking out the living room window instead of at me or Angela. “For the studio. For all of us to be able to work there. It’s more, I don’t know, mechanical than I would like. But it’s there. Can you come back and finish your work, Mercedes?”
“Yeah. I’ll finish it.”
“Okay.” She looks over at me. Her face is drained of color. “Oh, and since I never told you the other night, my favorite artist is Calder.”
She has no other words for Angela, nothing but a glance back at her as she heads for the door. I almost want to run and try to beat her to Rex’s, so I can steal her safe place the way she’s stolen ours.
The one good thing about all this is that my work and my space are still safe at the Estate. It’s not just that the work needs to be finished—it’s that she needs me to finish it. The idea takes hold in me and whirls around.
Angela slumps against the piano. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s my fault,” I tell her. “Seriously, don’t think about any of this for a while.”
“Who’s Calder?” Angela asks.
“This guy who made mobiles,” I say. “It makes sense, I guess, that Lilia likes him. She does enjoy suspending crap from the ceiling.”
My sister takes refuge in her bedroom, and I slip in after her and sit on the carpet beneath the framed portrait of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Angela sits on her bed with a book called How to Say Goodbye in Robot, but the pages aren’t turning. I message Victoria and then Tall Jon, asking what they’re doing tonight, wishing I were feeling direct enough to ask the real question: Do you want to do something with me?
“Abuela always liked the Dishwasher Lemur,” Angela says, with the book still in front of her face.
