A few books. She likes philosophy. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—I remember trying to sound out their names on my dad’s bookshelf a long time ago.
Under the books is a folded piece of paper. Thick paper, like out of a Canson sketchbook. I peek inside it, as though Lilia herself could come roaring out. But what greets me is a colored-pencil sketch of a small white house. It’s a peaceful scene, the house surrounded by palm trees, the sky bright blue, and a couple of goats in the yard. It’s a pretty good sketch, not quite finished, but it makes me want to be there, to know the place.
Oh. Wait.
I do know this place.
I’ve seen it in a few photos and I’ve been there once, a couple of summers ago, when Mom was so proud to show it to us. It’s the house in Guaynabo, outside San Juan, where she lived until she left Puerto Rico for college in Florida. The place where she grew up with Abuela and Abuelo and her two brothers. Lilia drew this—she must have. It’s clearly made by the same hand as the Estate paintings.
My hand shakes as I snap a picture of it with my phone. Then I lay everything back where it was and join Rex and Angela at the coffee table for dinner.
Rex’s place is so jumbled after being in Lilia’s room. Too many boxes, too many ingredients in the casserole in front of me. Rex asks what Angela and I are doing this weekend, and my sister fields the question by pointing a fork in my direction. “I have no idea what we’re doing,” I say, disappointing both of them.
Angela eyes me. I must not look right. I’ve barely touched my casserole or my orange juice. And my heart is beating so hard and fast that I think Angela might be able to hear it. Rex goes to refill his water, and I open my mouth as soon as he’s around the corner.
“She has a studio,” I manage to say. “Lilia.” I feel the tension draining. “I’ve been working there with her.”
Angela tries to respond, but Rex returns, and I jump in to ask, “Hey, I was just wondering, how did you find Lilia?”
“She found me!” he says. “I had barely put the ‘For Rent’ sign in the yard before she was knocking on the door. It was lucky for both of us. I think . . . I mean, I don’t know, but I feel like she came here out of desperation. She needed a place right then. I didn’t ask why, but I was happy to help.”
Angela and I raise our eyebrows at each other in harmony.
I need to get back.
The house phone rings at nine.
“Mijita.” I think calling me by a diminutive is my mom’s way of kinda-sorta apologizing for the way we ended our last phone call.
“Hey,” I say.
“She hasn’t moved since the last time I told you she moved.” Mom’s voice sounds tired and wrung out. “I think I was imagining things.”
“No. You saw what you saw. I’m sure of it.” I lean against the fridge and concentrate on the mostly bare wall across the room, trying to will an image of Abuela to appear in the space above Mom’s spoon rack. Nothing happens.
“That’s nice to say,” Mom says with a sigh. “And it’s nice to talk to you, at last. I’m worried about how much time you’re spending on that painting of yours.”
Painting. I peel back the layers of the last few days to find what she means—ah, yes, a painting that no longer exists.
“It’s for the county show, Mom.” I try to push some enthusiasm into this. “I’m so close to finishing it.”
“So close. I remember that from last year. I remember how I would find you out on the porch with that painting at midnight, and then you’d be back at it before school, at six in the morning. I let you stick to it because you kept saying you were almost finished, almost finished. Think about time, mijita. Think about how you’re spending it. You’ve got about two months left of high school, and are you going to be spending that time finding the right place for, I don’t know, a purple dot in your painting? Is that what you want?”
There’s a cloud of noise from her end of the call. Beeps and dings and a murky announcement in Spanish. She’s at the hospital.
“Maybe it is what I want,” I say. “Also, the painting is red.”
“Let me talk to your sister,” Mom says.
There is only one place right now that I can feel as comfortable as Victoria feels in modern dance shoes, and as Angela feels with her hands on the piano keys. There’s so much I want to do there: stare up into the Goya ceiling cans and see if they help me understand Lilia at all, hunt down the next party and say something to Edie about Victoria, and, of course, finish the red room. My heart flutters, my fingers ache at the knuckles, and a chill strokes my spine. I should be able to leave any minute now, but every flicker of sound in the house holds me back. The tree outside the window, once referred to by Rex as a bay laurel, moves as if shaken, probably by some hungry lizards. The air conditioner clicks on. And there’s a knock at the bedroom door.
It could be Victoria, who rode a bike over here late at night because she wanted to sleep next to me. It could be Lilia, coming to tell me that if I can finish the red tonight, she’ll explain why she drew that house, and why I felt so compelled to paint a room red. It could even be Mom, returning to lecture me some more about time and then kick me back to my own bedroom.
It’s Angela, of course.
“Mercy.” She hurls herself onto the bed, her knee jutting into my side in the process.
“Oh, come on.”
“No, you come on. I want to know about Lilia’s studio.”
“I need to sleep.”
“That’s your own fault for being out too late. If I can figure out that you’re sneaking out, you know I can figure out where the heck you’re going.”
“I don’t think you will.”
“That sounds like a challenge.” She doesn’t get under the covers. Instead, she props herself up on two pillows, as though it’s noon instead of midnight. “Anyway, you owe me. For all the nights you’ve been away since Mom left. This isn’t the best way to leave our sisterly relationship before you go to college.”
“Why does everybody think I’m going to college? Jeez.”
“I figured you’d heard from SCAD by now,” she says.
“Not a word,” I tell her. “And I would have said something if I’d heard from them.”
“Uh-huh.” Angela glances at me, maybe to make sure I’m telling the truth. In the half-light falling into the room from the moon and the street, her face is a lot like Dad’s. The same down-browed look. The black hair on fair skin. The stillness of her thoughts. “So where’s this studio? It’s not in Rex’s house, is it?”
“No. It’s in this old condo building out on the Key,” I say, and it’s like letting out a breath.
“Okay, weird. So you and Lilia are working together?”
“Sort of. I think . . . I think we’re at the beginning of a bigger project.” This has to be right. I want it to be right. “It feels different, painting there, like I know exactly what I’m doing all the time. I feel like I could be successful—like, successful at making what I want to make. I feel like if I wanted to do a sad painting, I could do it there. I’d start it, finish it, put it on display, and bring everybody there to tears.”
“Who’s everybody?”
“The other artists.”