“Understand,” Morgan prompted.
“Understand,” Isabel repeated. “What I said was rude and hurtful and uncalled-for. I’d understand if you never respected me again.” She looked at Morgan, eyebrows raised.
“But?” Morgan said, prodding her.
“But,” Isabel grumbled, “I hope that you can forgive me.”
Morgan smiled, nodding at her. “Thank you.” Then she looked at me.
“It’s okay,” I said, taking the hint. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks,” Isabel said. She was already inching off the porch, toward the steps.
“See?” Morgan said to her, squeezing her arm. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
“I’m going home,” Isabel told her, her duty done. She was lighter on her feet now, practically bounding down the steps and across the yard to the little white house I’d seen earlier.
Morgan sighed. Close up she looked older and pointier: bony elbows, prominent collarbone, a nose that jutted out sharp and sudden.
“She’s not so bad,” she said to me, as if I’d said otherwise. “She can just be a real bitch sometimes. Mark says she’s friendship impaired.”
“Mark?” I said.
“My fiancé.” She smiled and extended her right hand, that tiny diamond twinkling.
There was a sudden burst of music from the little house. Lights were coming on in the windows, and I caught a glimpse of Isabel passing by.
“Then why do you put up with her?” I asked.
She looked over at the house; the music was cheerful, bouncy and wild, and now Isabel was dancing, a beer in one hand. She shimmied past the windows, shaking her hair, hips swaying. Morgan smiled.
“Because, for the most part, she’s all I’ve got,” she said. And then she went down the steps, across the yard, and up the path to that little house. When she got to the doorstep she turned and waved.
“See you around,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
I watched as she opened the door, the music spilling out; it was disco, some woman wailing. And as Morgan stepped in, Isabel whirled by, grinning, and grabbed her arm, pulling her into that warm light before the door swung shut behind them.
Chapter Three
The next morning, when I went in to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I noticed the index card over the sink.
RIGHT FAUCET DRIPS EASILY, it Said. TIGHTEN WITH WRENCH AFTER using. And then there was an arrow, pointing down to where a small wrench was tied with bright red yarn to one of the pipes.
This is crazy, I thought.
But that wasn’t all. In the shower, hot water is very hot! use with care was posted over the soap dish. And on the toilet: handle loose. don’t yank. (As if I had some desire to do that.) The overhead fan was clearly broken, the tiles by the door were loose so I had to walk carefully. And I was informed, cryptically, that the light over medicine cabinet works, but only sometimes.
They were all over the house. I came across them like dropped bread crumbs, leading me from one thing to another. Windows were painted shut, banisters loose, chairs had ONE LEG TOO SHORT. It was like a strange game, and it made me feel unsteady and weird, wishing that even one thing was new enough to work perfectly. I wondered how anyone could live like this, but it was obvious that Mira wasn’t just anyone.
Before I got to Colby, all I knew was that she was two years older than my mother, unmarried, and had inherited all of my grandparents’ money. I also knew that, like us, she was overweight. Mira had lived in Chicago during the first few years we’d crisscrossed the country in our Volaré, and the one thing I clearly remembered about visiting her were the doughnuts she’d made out of Pillsbury biscuit dough, fried and rolled in cinnamon and sugar. She always seemed to be cooking or eating.
When my mother got thin, it was like she’d found religion. She wanted to share it with everyone: me first, followed by the legions of women who flocked to her aerobics classes, and then the rest of the free world. She was like an evangelist of weight loss. But it was clear Mira hadn’t converted: the closet in my room contained every bit of Kiki merchandise ever manufactured, all of it stacked and neat in its original packaging. (I’d added mine to the pile.) And that morning Mira made doughnuts. I sat and watched her eat five of them, pop pop pop pop pop, one right after another, licking her fingers and laughing that giggly laugh all the way.
Mira had been my grandparents’ favorite: art school educated, full of promise, the good daughter. My mother, on the other hand, with her wild clothes and lifestyle, had fallen entirely out of favor when she’d gotten pregnant at twenty, dropped out of college, and had me. We spent so much time moving around that her family hardly ever knew where we lived, much less who we were. Our few visits to Mira’s had ended with big blowouts, usually sparked by some childhood memory she and my mother recalled differently. The last time I’d seen her was at my grandmother’s funeral, in Cincinnati, when I was about ten. We’d stuck around just long enough to find out Mira was inheriting everything; not too long after, she’d moved to Colby.
After I ate two doughnuts, I realized those forty-five-and-a-half pounds could creep back easily over a whole summer of what my mother termed “Stuffin’ for Nothin’.” I ran on the beach for an hour, Walkman on, music pounding in my ears.
When I got back I found Mira in her studio, a big messy room off the kitchen. She wore yellow overalls and her slippers, and her hair was piled up on top of her head, with about seven pens, capped and uncapped, sticking out in various places.
“Do you want to see my new death card?” she asked me cheerfully. “I’ve been working on it all week.”
“Death card?”
“Well, technically it’s called a condolence card,” she said, shifting in her office chair, which was jacked up as high as it could go. “But it is what it is, you know?”
I took the two pieces of thick sketch paper she handed me. On the first was a pastel drawing of some flowers, over which was written: