I rubbed the charms as if they were Aladdin’s lamp. I held up my glass for so long that my arm hurt. A drink sealed the deal, even when you were alone.
“I’m back,” I said aloud, willing the words through the white blanket of clouds to whatever heaven existed.
Chapter 3
THE CELIA STILLMAN COOPER
MULTIPURPOSE ROOM
I DIDN’T KNOW THEY’D named a room after Celia. No one had posted that on Facebook. I could see why. Naming a multipurpose room after someone who had died way too young—that was just, well, strange. A park or just a tree would have been nice. A room in a library or a library book about art. Or a street lined with trees with a library at one end, or a gazebo, or a garden. But a “multipurpose room”? I’d never thought of Celia as generic.
But once I was over the threshold, the room popped to life with sculptures displayed on the floor, on tables, attached to walls. Papier-maché, metal, wood, clay. Paintings and sketches hung on the walls. People filled the room, as did chatter and laughter.
Now her name fit.
“I’m going to find Vi and Shay,” Miles said without turning toward me. “Look around. These kids are amazing.”
THE BEST OF UNION TOWNSHIP said the sign. Well, if it was on a sign it had to be true.
I surveyed the scene. I could stand in one spot and look around the room, be finished in less than a minute, and just wait for Shay to show me around. Or I could start with the pieces closest to me, read the name of the artist, the age, and the name of the work and then study it. That was probably the better plan. I wasn’t sure what was expected of me. Was I supposed to care about kids I didn’t know?
I was here for Shay but I didn’t want to appear rude and just look for her sculpture. Everyone else seemed to be kvelling and snapping smartphone photos of everyone and everything for social media bragging and cloud-based posterity. There were the duck face poses, and the head tilt poses, and the poses pointing to artwork like it was just revealed from behind Door Number 1 on The Price Is Right. There were also the ear-to-ear smile poses, parents hugging-the-kid-a-little-tighter-and-longer-than-she’d-have-liked poses.
My favorite photos to take were the quiet gotchas—someone staring out the window or at their phone or at someone else across the room. I loved freezing those moments—faces contorted from listening or laughing, bellies extended, foreheads scrunched. Those candids weren’t the prettiest or most composed photos, but they were most real, capturing not just what someone was doing—but what they were feeling.
And that’s why they paid me, as Simon liked to joke, “the big bucks.”
There were dozens of photos like that of me and Celia—most tucked away in boxes, stored away in my memory.
My phone buzzed in the pocket of my dress. All my dresses had pockets, thanks to the seamstress at the Hester in New York. I was like a child the way I collected trinkets on my travels. Not to mention that I needed my hands free to hold my camera. After a second vibration, I slipped the phone only halfway out. Simon. I pressed a button to make him go away. For now.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. I turned around faster than I should have, still woozy from the flights and their accompanying naps, not to mention the wine. As the girl came into focus, I looked into familiar green eyes and noticed dark lashes. The kind that didn’t need mascara. The kind of lashes women envied, like Celia’s.
“Aunt Teddi!”
Her giggle pierced through me. “Shay?” I stepped back to see her more clearly. Flat-ironed auburn hair down her back, a spray of freckles across her nose. I pulled her into a hug. “Shayna Rose!”
God, she was beautiful. Was it possible that she was more beautiful than her mother? And since when were there so many years between eleven and twelve? When I saw Shay in Chicago last summer she was a little girl. Now I detected the scent and shine of lip gloss. No, maybe ChapStick, maybe strawberry. Whatever it was, Shay was now one tube of liquid eyeliner away from being a teenager. I hugged her tighter and swayed. She hugged back, and didn’t stop me from rocking.
“Should I say it?”
“Sure, Aunt Tee.” Shay smirked.
“You look just like your mom did when she was twelve.”
“I know.”
My throat tightened and I squeezed my eyes closed. For one moment—maybe two—I pretended she was Celia, that I was twelve and hugging my best friend, that we had more than twenty years left together. But this was Shayna. I pulled back.
“You’re so grown-up! I love your dress!” A mint-green skater dress floated around her slender frame.
Shay rolled her eyes and smiled. I chuckled. Celia had rolled her eyes in defiance as a teen—for effect as an adult.
“Show me your sculpture.”
Shay and I linked arms as we walked across the room. Shay looked at me, and smiled. We were almost eye to eye. She didn’t get her height from Celia, who tipped the growth charts at five foot one. I ached to lift Shay the way I had when she was two, when she’d hold on with her legs and let go with her arms, certain I wouldn’t let her fall. How had we come so far and gone backwards at the same time?
We stopped in front of a metal structure that looked like an Erector Set pileup. And then I saw it. The slide. The swing perpetually ready to fall. “It’s a playground!” I said as I glanced at the title that confirmed my vision. Thank goodness.
“You’re darn right it’s a playground.”
Shay and I turned around.
“Uncle Beck!” She collapsed onto him, and he hugged her. “Do you like it?” Shay looked up at her uncle as if his answer was uncertain.
“Like it? It’s the best one. I love it.”
“It’s for you! It’s your backyard from when you and Mommy grew up. From the pictures you showed me.”
“So it is!” Beck said.
I squinted. The slide and swings, the sandbox and playhouse I’d claimed as my own as a child. All artistically out of proportion and awkwardly, beautifully, close together and built from metal scraps and held together with nuts and bolts and imagination. And with hope.
“Nice to see you, Beck.”
He nodded, as if I were a passerby in the grocery store he kind of sort of recognized. He glanced at everything except my eyes—my longer hair, the slight definition in my arms, the curve of my waist. Then he looked away. At least he didn’t punch me like he had when we were kids, when he was the bratty little brother I never had but always wanted. Until we’d grown up and wanted more. My heart pounded in my chest and boomed in my ears, muting the sounds around me. Beck should not be happy to see me, and he wasn’t.
“Teddi.”
Then finally, for a moment, we looked right into each other’s eyes.