“I need to run an errand,” I tell them as we turn out of the school. “Can you both stand to hang out with me in the car for an extra thirty minutes?”
Sure, they both say, and I wonder what they’re imagining. It’s quiet after that, and I’m relieved when Vic plugs her phone into the Ford’s stereo and coaxes it until her playlist comes on.
“This is my new one,” she says. “I call it ‘Broadway Beginnings.’”
“Oh yeah?” I click my fingernails against the steering wheel. We’re out to the main road. Ten more minutes to the Estate.
“Yep. It’s the best opening numbers of various shows—not, I should say, the opening numbers of the best shows. There’s a difference. Some of them are my favorites, but some of them are just, like, eh. But the beginnings of them, you kind of want to live in forever. This is from Thoroughly Modern Millie, of course.”
“Of course,” I say.
I’m jerking the car in a way I haven’t since Mom gave me driving lessons at the back of the Publix parking lot. I am punctuating each stop. My legs ache, and the clouds push more rain down at us, gray water upon gray water, all of it piling up at the intersections until it’s hard to separate sky from land. Vic has her eyes closed and is humming along to the music. But every time I glance at Angela in the rearview mirror, she’s straight-backed and unblinking.
Finally, we cross the bridge and have the gulf on our right side, though it’s blue-gray and indecisive about its direction in the wind and rain. The car behind me honks when I turn without signaling into the Estate’s parking lot. Look, dude, I’m a confused driver just turning around or checking my GPS. Why would anyone be stopping at this deserted place on purpose?
Vic looks at me but stays quiet. Oh, good Lord, she definitely thinks something’s wrong with me, the way I’m trying this place again and hoping to get a different result.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell her and Angela. “Just stay here.”
Vic glances down at her phone—the picture of us on the beach, and the time. 3:32. Angela nods at me.
I run through the parking lot, resist my urge to punch the front door as it opens smoothly for me, and tear up the stairs to the second floor. The lights are off in the hallway, and it looks about as lonely as Sarasota Central High on a Friday afternoon, or like the Naples house after the movers had already come and it was just Mom and me left to scrub the floors. Lonely in the way that makes me feel foolish for being here.
Lilia isn’t in the studio, but her terrifying purple bathrobe hangs on a ladder, and she’s made progress on the ceiling of household products. A cluster of plastic butter tubs. A circle of Dawn dish soap bottles. It seemed pretty brilliant the first time I was here, but now I think it’d be a pain to have to clean out all that crap. A pile of cans sits on the kitchen floor, and one kick scatters them all. Lilia clearly does not have a Victoria, or a Victor, for that matter. Lilia has this building, this project.
Down the hallway. Everything looks so different here during the daytime—bleached and shallow, showing all the ways that the Estate has been baking in the sun too long. Out the windows, the gray ocean and sky look bright compared to what’s in here.
Except the red room.
I let out my breath and drop onto the floor.
Everything’s gone. The lemurs, the secret painting, and even the walls that were so red they practically strutted. Everything has been returned to white. I run my hand over the wall by the closet, as though it will give me answers. Nothing. The paint is smooth and dry. It may as well be the first coat ever painted on this wall.
“I didn’t think you’d be here so early.”
I turn around, my hands still on the wall. Lilia is here, with the bathrobe back on, with a look on her face that says everything’s okay. I’m relieved. But wait—why? She’s still taken the secret painting, and my moment with Victoria. All she hasn’t taken is my ability to be here.
“What happened? Why did you do this?” I scramble to my feet so I can face her.
“I’m trying to help keep your secrets for you.”
“Well, please don’t,” I tell her. “I can decide which ones are worth keeping.”
“Mercedes.” Every time she says my name, it sounds so earnest. “Remember how I told you that no one ever has to know what you create here? That’s such a gift to be given. Everyone here understands how rare that is. What would it take to help you understand?”
“I don’t know.” But as I say this, I do know. To be able to confess these things to the four walls of the Estate, to be able to face Abuela even while she’s ill, to be able to paint far better here than I do in studio art or on the back porch—these things are incredible. Maybe it is worth going deeper into the Estate’s potential. Maybe I’m only scratching the surface of what I can do here.
“Why don’t you try painting again?” Lilia says.
“Fine.” The white walls are wearing me out, which was maybe Lilia’s desired effect. I try to sneer at her a little as I leave the room, annoyed at her for creating successful art out of the destruction of my paintings. It bugs me that for all the evidence of expression she has in the Estate, and for the whole series that’s still hanging out at Rex’s place, I know so little about her. From here in the kitchen where I’m grabbing the paint and brushes, I consider the ceiling art again. While it’s visually cool, it doesn’t hit me emotionally in any way. Is that my fault for not finding a way to connect to the piece, or is that Lilia’s fault for not putting enough of herself into her work?
The one piece of hers that tugs at me is the picture of Mom’s old house. Maybe I could ask her about it. Sure, fine—this is the house of all secrets being free and easy and beautiful. I trudge back to the white room with a cup of brushes and a nice palette of paint, and Lilia is sitting against the wall, waiting for me.
“Whatever you want,” she says, her face bright. “I’m interested to see what you do.”
Never mind. I’m quiet. I can’t break this spell. Whatever courage I have, I need to save it for the painting.
I dive in, taking the white wall across from where Lilia’s sitting. I remember the way it felt to trace the projections in the secret painting. How I didn’t have to think about the amount of paint to put on the brush, because it was right each time. How I didn’t have to consider the weight of each brushstroke, or the angle of my wrist. All those pricks of worry that appear every time I put a brush to canvas in the non-Estate world—all of them were gone.
It’s like that again. And maybe it’s better. Because I’m painting Victoria.