Zelda was less affected by these scenes, or at least she seemed less desperate to flee them. She would even lurk at the top of the stairs, eavesdropping.
“What’s a bookie?” she whispered to me, trying to piece together the clues of what was driving our parents apart, what exactly they were fighting about. Unfortunately, if she lurked too close, she was likely to be in the way of a hurried egress, usually Marlon’s. One time, she stood behind the living room door, her ear pressed to it, so that when Marlon slammed his way out of the room, the door caught her cheek. Even though I was upstairs, reading, I could hear after the smack of the door that terrifying lull before the cry, that silence of someone who has really been hurt. I flung my book aside and raced downstairs to find the three of them, Marlon pink-faced and standing before a screaming Nadine.
“You don’t give a fuck who you hurt, not even your own children—”
“Goddamnit, I didn’t mean to hurt her! She was just underfoot!” Marlon reached out for Zelda, who flinched from his touch and glared furiously at him, sobbing. “Zaza, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“I don’t care what you meant!” Zelda shrieked. “That is so not the point! What is the matter with you?” She glowered at Nadine with equal fury and ran for the deck, slipping out the screen door in tears. Marlon started to go after her, but I stopped him.
“Leave her alone. She doesn’t want to be around you. Either of you.” I was shaking; normally I would do anything to avoid this sort of conflict, but the sound of Zelda’s wails had pushed me to the edge, and I was furious with both of my parents. Why couldn’t they just do this somewhere else and leave us out of it? I followed Zelda outside, heading down the hill, guessing which direction she had gone.
She was sitting in the grass, not so far from the house and staring out at the lake. Her eyes were red and she was still sniffling, but she seemed more angry than hurt, which was a good sign. I so rarely saw her vulnerable. I sat next to her.
“Let me see,” I said.
“It’s fine,” she sniffed, then gave an ironic snort. “At school, they’ll think I’m being abused.”
“You should tell them you are.” I giggled.
“I wouldn’t know which of them to blame.” Zelda glanced back toward the house.
“Good point.” I gently touched her cheekbone; it was already turning a purple-blue color. She flinched but let me carefully poke at it. “You’ll be fine. A bruise.”
“They can’t go on like this.”
“I know.”
“What will we do?” Zelda asked, and for once, she sounded scared, unsure. She wasn’t looking at me. There was no sarcasm, no mockery in her voice. Which meant that it was my job to supply it.
“Let’s run away. I’ll steal their credit cards, you pack a bag,” I said, nudging her.
“They probably won’t even notice we’re gone.”
“They’ll notice the money is gone, once they run out of wine.”
Zelda snorted again. “Could take a while for that to happen,” she said, looking eloquently at our surroundings, at the grid of grapes that stretched across the hill.
“Good—then maybe they won’t notice before we’re legal adults. Let’s do it.” I elbowed her again, and she finally turned her head to look at me.
“Where will we go, brainiac?”
“Hollywood! Let’s be starlets,” I answered.
“Ha. Or we could go to Opal’s?”
“And live in a retirement community?” I wrinkled my nose distastefully.
“Yeah. Maybe not. I know: Paris!”
“Not practical. We’re minors.”
“Okay, let’s go live in the woods, then. I’ll be the huntress, and you can cook.”
“You mean the national forest?” I asked, considering. It was a huge patch of completely empty land. It would take them forever to find us.
“I’m really glad I’m not the only one here with them,” she said in a small voice.
“Me too.” I leaned my head on her shoulder for a moment, looking out at the water and feeling my sister’s fear, anxiety. “If we start now, we can make it to the forest before dark. It’s only a few miles.”
“Are you serious about this?” Zelda asked, a wicked, excited glint in her eyes. “I mean, I’m totally game if you are.”
“It was my idea!” I stood and raced up to the house, Zelda following close at my heels. As ever.
I’ll never know how far we were prepared to take it, if we would have escaped from this house, this family. Made our way out to Hollywood and started anew, just us two. But when we got back up to the house, it was Marlon who was packing a suitcase and fleeing west before the sun slipped below the shore across the lake. Leaving the three of us.
I realize it’s nearly dinnertime and I haven’t eaten all day. The sky is hazy and blank. I stand up and stretch. I’m sliding the incomplete alphabet worksheets back onto the shelf when my hands fumble across a brown folder tucked snugly at an angle between the books. I pull it out and open it up.
19
Staring at the scribbled scrap of paper for long minutes, I feel an unhappy click of recognition, a sick sense of foreboding. It’s a checklist of sorts, a catalogue of ailments. Memory loss, disorientation, difficulty reading, vocabulary loss, poor judgment, changes in mood or personality, hallucination, changes in blood pressure. I know this checklist well; I’ve seen it written in the comforting pastel fonts of informational brochures, pressed soothingly into the palms of terrified family members, the smooth, waxy paper wicking away the fearful sweat that dampens the hands of those in the waiting room. I’ve read through this list on Wikipedia and in doctors’ offices, Zelda silently looking over my shoulder, our lips pursed and heads nodding in grim, synchronized recognition. This is an inventory of symptoms for early-onset dementia with Lewy bodies. The disease our mother was diagnosed with two years ago. I remember Zelda carrying this folder around while we were trying to piece together what was happening to Nadine. But now, on its cover, Zelda has printed “SYMPTOMS.” The S’s at the beginning and the end of the word have been underlined. Unwittingly, unwillingly, I have found the letter S, even as I tried to ignore it. I realize I have unconsciously gone looking in Zelda’s paperwork, just as she suggested.