They both laughed. Lisa used the bottom of her T-shirt to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.
“Oh, lovely,” Blanca said. “Miss Snotty.”
“I tried everything to get your attention when I was little. You were so uninvolved. You were so mean.”
“I was heartbroken.”
“Sam. You missed him.” Lisa looked around the room. “Do you have a minibar?”
“Am I supposed to let you get drunk?”
“You’re not that kind of sister?”
“Not usually.”
Blanca had bought a small bottle of vodka in town. She poured a little into two glasses.
“Oh, my god.” Lisa wrinkled her nose after a tiny sip. “Don’t you have some soda we can add to it?”
Blanca went to the bathroom and added tap water to Lisa’s drink. She remembered wanting to be grown up, thinking it would make a difference.
“What are you going to do with your inheritance?” Lisa asked as she took tiny sips of what was now mostly water.
“Pay off my debts. Maybe buy my bookstore free and clear so I can go bankrupt all on my own. And if I have anything left over, buy as many things made out of cashmere as I can afford. You?”
“Medical school.”
“Frivolous type, eh?” Blanca was done packing. She finished her drink, then zipped up the suitcase. “Sam had a son. That’s who the last third is for. I didn’t want you to think there was any great mystery.”
“I barely remember Sam. I think I saw him twice when I was a baby. I’m glad that’s who the money’s for.”
“Maybe I was a shitty sister,” Blanca said.
“Take out the maybe.”
Blanca sat down on the edge of the bed. She was more like John Moody than she ever would have imagined. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, fuck you,” Lisa said. “You left me and the dog. You probably wouldn’t have known if I had died eight years ago, either.”
They started laughing and couldn’t stop.
“At least I know your name,” Blanca joked.
“Oh, yeah? What’s my middle name?”
“What’s mine?”
They got hysterical over that one.
“Okay,” Blanca said. “I’m sorry.”
“Good. I want you to be.” Lisa leaned forward in her chair. “I’m sorry, too.”
Lisa carried the suitcase for Blanca, who had her purse, and the damp summer dress she’d gone swimming in rolled up in a laundry bag. Blanca had paid for the night, but she was leaving anyway. She gave Lisa a ride home. They both used to fly down the same lane on their bikes, years apart.
“I like it here in the dark,” Lisa said, her nose up against the window.
“Sam liked the dark,” Blanca said.
“Would he have liked me?”
“God, yes. Sam would have let you have that whole bottle of vodka.”
Without even trying Blanca found the way; a right and a left, then past the hedge of lilacs. They smell like our mother, Sam used to tell her. She could smell them right now.
“Thanks,” Lisa said when they got to the house. “When I walk in the dark I always walk into spiderwebs. I’m afraid of spiders.”
“Afraid of spiders.” Blanca took note. “I’ll remember that.”
“FYI, my middle name is Susan. Named for my maternal grandmother.”
“I don’t have a middle name. I think my mother forgot to give me one.”
“How about Beatrice?” Lisa said. “I had a pet mouse named Beatrice. Then your nickname can be Beebee.”
“Meredith used to call me Bee.”
“See, it’s a perfect name.”
“Cynthia let you have a mouse?”
“She didn’t know.”
They both laughed then.
“If I come to London, I’ll look you up.” Lisa opened the car door, but before she got out she asked, “What are you going to do tonight? By the time you get to New York it will be midnight.”
Not the best time to be rapping on a stranger’s door.
I’m lost. Open the door. Tell me where I am.
“You can stay here,” Lisa suggested. “No one would bother you.”
Blanca was touched. Lisa was just a kid. She wasn’t so bad.
“Maybe I’ll just park here awhile. Take a walk around for old times’ sake.”
“Okay.” Lisa got out. “Bye, Beebee,” she said.
“Bye, Lisa Sue.”
Blanca watched Lisa run up the steps and go inside. It was an especially dark night. No stars at all. Or maybe there was a cover of clouds. Blanca got out of the car and walked down the driveway, then to the lawn beyond the pool. The grass was so soft; she slipped off her flip-flops and sank down into the grass, just for a minute. Silvery clouds were moving through the dark sky. Beebee, she thought. Meredith would get a kick out of Lisa’s nickname for Blanca.
Blanca closed her eyes. Just for a minute before she got back in the car. Without wanting to, she fell asleep quickly and deeply; she dreamed of the swan. It was beside her in the grass. In her dream, Blanca opened her eyes. This time the swan had a clutch of eggs, luminous, moon-colored. They looked at each other, and even though one was a woman and the other a swan, they could understand each other. Not through words; it was more basic, more intense than that.
Don’t fly away, Blanca thought in her dream.
But the swan rose up, her wings enormous, up into the dark night. There were the eggs, left in the grass. Blanca had no idea who they belonged to. She had a feeling of panic — How will I take care of them? What will I do? But when she looked closer, she saw they were only stones. Perfect white stones. Nothing more.
Blanca awoke early, arms and legs stiff. The lawn was wet and her clothes were damp; her hair was threaded through with stray bits of grass. She stood up. Mist was rising from the ground. The sky was the color of pearls. She thought of George Snow sitting in the back row of all her dance performances. She thought of John Moody writing her a letter. She thought of James Bayliss breaking up a fight between boys he didn’t even know.
It was so early there wasn’t much traffic on the highway, but Blanca got lost in the city. She circled Union Square, then took Broadway downtown, before she finally made her way to Twenty-third Street. She searched for a parking space, finally finding one on Tenth Avenue, a few blocks from the address her father had written down.
She thought about what she would say to Sam’s son when she met him. My mother was a ferryboat captain’s daughter. My father was a stranger. My brother was the person I loved most in this world even though I always knew I would lose him.
She should have needed to be buzzed into the building, but someone was coming out and Blanca managed to catch the door before it closed. The hall was black and white tile and it echoed. It was a walk-up, so Blanca started up the stairs. When she got to the fourth floor, she spied 4B, the apartment where Sam’s son lived, but she kept going up. Another floor, and then another; to the very top. She wanted to see where it had happened. The door to the roof was locked, but when she pushed against it she could see a bit of blue. Maybe that was enough. It was what Sam had seen, after all. The same sky. All his life he’d been thinking about that race of people in Connecticut who could fly only when circumstances were dire. At the very last moment, when there was no hope and no possibility, they rose up from the sinking ship, the burning building. Their mother’s father, the one who’d died when Arlie was only seventeen, swore he’d seen them, high above Long Island Sound. They looked like birds, but they were not. They were something else entirely.
He jumped out of desperation or he fell by accident, but maybe he’d had hope as well. Once upon a time, in a place not far from here, someone who was lost was found. Someone who was sinking rose into the clouds. Someone fell in love. Someone was saved. Blanca went back down to the fourth floor. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything resembling happiness. Here she was, all by herself on a singular morning. She let everything go as she stood in the dar
k hallway; she let it drift away like ashes on a windowsill or birds on a ledge. She thought of Icarus and of the glass house where they’d grown up; she thought of her mother in a white summer dress. It was hot and humid and the sky was still dark at the edges, riotously blue in the very center. She had no idea where she was or how she’d ever get home or if she’d go back to London or if she was in love or even if there was someone inside the apartment who would open the door for her.
All the same, she rang the bell, and then she waited for whatever would happen next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALICE HOFFMAN is the bestselling author of eighteen acclaimed novels, including The Ice Queen, Practical Magic, Here on Earth, The River King, Blue Diary, Illumination Night, Turtle Moon, Seventh Heaven, and At Risk, as well as the highly praised story collections Local Girls and Blackbird House. She lives outside Boston.
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