When my closet’s cleared of every last mitten and empty jewelry box and fleece vest, I walk all the way inside and close the door behind me. Wait with the light on for something to happen. Wait for nothing to happen. Wait.
The light is different than it looks from outside the closet. Warmer. More orange. Like fireplace light or candlelight or the light that comes from a perfect New Hampshire sunset that you watch from the woods, through the trees, out camping with Mom and Dad when Mom and Dad used to take us on camping trips during summers when Mom was doing well.
Then I see that the glass ceiling fixture looks all wrong. It’s clear and delicate-looking, like a bubble about to be popped. It does not look anymore like something that has been screwed into the ceiling and has gathered dust for months. And the lightbulb inside doesn’t look like a lightbulb anymore. It looks like the sun. A fiery one. A little terrifying, like it could fall from where it’s floating above my head and crash into flames around me.
It’s levitating and glowing and sort of bouncing from corner to corner in a slow, deliberate dance. Magic.
No diorama necessary, I guess. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do anything in here without a diorama and without the rest of my sisters, but if anything, it’s even stranger and sparklier than Eleanor’s closet. It’s not an imitation of a place in the real world. It’s a brand-new thing, something I’ve never seen before. I knew orange and pink and gold existed, and I guess I’d seen them bleed into each other in certain sunsets, but never like this.
This is a new color. And a new quality of light. A new series of movements.
I close my eyes, like maybe the vision has something to do with my tiredness or the fact that I have glasses I got and broke and never really wore. But when I open them again, the lightbulb is even rounder, pinker, oranger. It’s happening, I think.
I throw the door open. It’s not that I don’t want to spend hours looking at the transformed, moving light. I do. But I also want the world to make sense, and with the door open, it does again.
With the door open, the light is a lightbulb. The fixture is dirty ceramic, a gray that used to be white. The closet is once again a closet with dust bunnies and water damage on the walls.
My closet is magic too, I think, over and over on a loop. My closet is even more magical, I think after another minute. I don’t need dioramas. I have something else. I don’t know what, but it’s something all mine.
Or maybe I only have a magical lightbulb. Who knows? Even that would be enough.
I’m thrilled and terrified at the same time, and I didn’t know how wonderful these two things could feel when mixed together. It’s like the first time I ate peanut butter and honey, or when Eleanor made me an apple and cheese and mustard sandwich.
I step all the way out of the closet and slam the door shut. My legs won’t stop twitching, even though I take deep breaths. I bend my knees, doing weird aerobics the way Mom used to do in the living room sometimes when it was blizzarding outside and she couldn’t go for a run.
Mom hasn’t gone for a run in a long time.
“Eleanor?” I call out. She and Astrid should be home by now. It must be pretty late, and they wouldn’t stay away all night, I don’t think. They wouldn’t do a sleepover without asking permission, even though they could get away with it. But she doesn’t answer. “Astrid?” I try. I’m not even sure how loud I’m calling. It could be a whisper, for all I know. I’m too overwhelmed to really assess anything. But Astrid doesn’t answer either. I mean, she barely hears me when we’re in the same room and I’m making eye contact with her, let alone when we’re in different rooms doing entirely different things.
“Marla . . . ,” I say. This time I know it’s a whisper. I’m not sure I actually want Marla to come running, but I’m sort of out of options, and at least if she were here, I wouldn’t be alone with whatever it is that’s happening. “Marla!” I call, louder this time.
And of course it’s Marla who appears, pushing my door open when she hears her name. Her eyes are rimmed in pink. It’s from crying, although there was a period of time a few months ago where Eleanor was sporting that look on purpose. Someone told her pink eye shadow was in. She didn’t believe us when we said it looked weird.
Same went for the black eye shadow phase, when it constantly looked like she had been punched in the face.
“We do our best to learn stuff without Mom, you know?” Astrid said when I was making fun of Eleanor. It shut me right up, that’s for sure. I almost tell Marla that I’m thinking about all this right now, but it’s not the right thing to say, and I know it. She’s sad and I’m freaked out and exhilarated, and our sisters will be home any minute, so I need to get out what’s happened now so that I can fight the impulse to tell Eleanor and Astrid that I broke the rules.