Lilia stares at me like I am every obnoxious thing about next-door neighbors, which is exactly what I was going for, so at least I know that I can fool her occasionally. I shrug and take a drag on my cigarette and wait for her to lay into me.
She says nothing. She looks out at the flat gray-green pad of yard beyond the porch in a way that tells me she is remembering another place, that she is taking this little piece of earth and the memory of another and watching helplessly as it becomes a third place, a place that never existed.
This would be a great moment for Rex to barge in and offer us some casserole leftovers or at least harangue me for smoking.
“So I finished that painting,” I tell her.
Lilia pops out of her memory. “I know.”
“So?”
I’m not sure if she looks tired, defeated, pensive, or some combination of all three. “What do you want to know?” she asks.
The words are going to tumble out of me, and I start walking from one corner of the porch to another so that I don’t bury myself in them before I can finish. “I want to know why you offered your help but then destroyed what I created. I want to know why I felt like I had to paint a room red. I want to know why Angela’s not allowed in the Estate yet. And why Victoria doesn’t remember being there. And why I keep coming back. I want to know when the hell you’re going to help with my work, or if you had ever planned on doing that, or if you’re using me for free labor for some weird renovation project.” I stop pacing at the screen that divides us. Her straight face is inches from mine. “And despite all that, I still really want to know what you thought of my painting from today. And of my lemurs from the other night, for that matter.”
She smiles a little bit. “I don’t know what a real lemur looks like. But your paintings were good. Unexpected colors, nice technique.”
“I wasn’t finished, you know. They probably would have gotten even better, if they hadn’t been painted over.”
The rain is indecisive: it gets harder and then slower again, as though Lilia and I are standing in the midst of a sped-up video version of this day. Maybe Victoria has already finished her poem notes and called her mom to come pick her up. Because Mrs. Caballini would do that, no questions asked. Or, well, some questions asked, but nothing where the answers would rattle her.
Lilia seems to be considering everything I have asked to know, and maybe more than I have asked.
“Okay,” she says. “Come meet me tonight. In the studio. We’ll work together on a project, and I want to explain something to you.”
And Rex pokes his head out of the sliding glass door of the McBride-Solis half of the house. “Well, hey, Mercedes!” Refreshingly, he has traded his bathrobe for a Tampa Bay Bucs hoodie with a coffee stain on one sleeve. “I feel like you girls have been quiet lately. Let me know if you need anything.”
What I really want, in this one chilly, humid, impossible moment, is to talk to Abuela again.
“Oh, Victoriaaah!” I jingle my car keys from the living room and try to sound like a Broadway star.
Vic stumbles around the corner with her purse, backpack, and dance bag. “That was lovely, dearie. Was that the beginning of your opening number or your ‘I want’ song?”
“It’s the triumphant song where the heroine escapes her humid-ass house by taking her friend to dance class.” Major props, self, for keeping composed while saying this. “Where does that come in the show?”
“Hmm. Could be a nice transitional moment in the first act.” Despite the stuff hanging off both her arms, Vic opens the front door for me. “See you later, Angela!”
For now, Angela has abandoned the piano to watch anime. Vic and I head out into the drizzle, this March day that is basically the Marchiest day I have ever seen, and for once I don’t want to be alone with her.
“I’m worried about you,” Vic says as soon as she shuts the car door.
This is why.
“You have to stop going to that creepy building. I don’t care if it’s helping you create the best painting of all time. I swear I’m going to see you on the news if you don’t quit going there.”
“Maybe it is helping me create the best painting of all time.”
“Oh man.” She drinks from her massive purple water bottle. “You’re not telling me something, and it’s bothering you, and it’s bothering me.”
We pass the 7-Eleven where Angela and I haven’t missed a Free Slushie Day in three years, and the church that Mom drags us to on holidays. The wipers swish and squeak as the rain lightens. Vic weaves and unweaves her fingers, knowing that she’s thrown down a line that can’t be undrawn.
“I can’t talk about it yet,” I tell her.
Lilia didn’t give me a time, but by eight p.m. I’m getting restless, drinking orange juice until my stomach hurts, staring at my phone, and letting Angela load the dinner plates into the dishwasher.
“Scratches,” I say under my breath.
“Not again,” Angela says, but she grins.
Scratches is the only word the Dishwasher Lemur can say. It’s a question, it’s a request, it’s an exclamation of anger or surprise or joy or confusion. And when your vocabulary is so limited, and your communication so reliant on tone, you consider what you say so much more carefully.
“Scraaaatches,” I say, a suspicious lemur, my voice appropriately gravelly.
“Scratches, scratches, scratches,” Angela says, head shaking and voice low.
She fills the top rack with glasses and shuts the dishwasher. She has left the messiest pots and pans for me, but I am all kinds of tired and jumpy and hollowed out, and cleaning will have to wait until tomorrow.
On my way out the door, Angela gives me a small smile and a whispered “Good luck.”
The clouds move out, shoved to sea by an expanse of black. There’s a new warmth in the air, one that feels like it’s settling in for the spring and summer. And for the first time ever, when I pull into the Red Mangrove Estate, there’s a vehicle beside mine in the parking lot. It’s an old green minivan with an Alabama license plate.
In the lobby, she’s there. Lilia. She’s rushing to open the door for me, but I make it in before she can. “Come on, come on,” she says, which is the best greeting I think she’s ever given me. We rush up the stairs and she leads me not to the second floor, or the third, or the fifth. I’m breathing hard and Lilia is half a flight of stairs ahead of me the whole time.
“You should stop smoking,” she says.
“It’s the shoes,” I tell her. Purple sandals again.
She waits at the landing for the seventh floor, and she opens the door for me, and the music floods in. Always something left. It is the next best thing to hearing Abuela’s voice beside me. It is every time Tall Jon gave me pizza and smokes and a hug. It is the steady ground under my feelings for Victoria, as if I could pluck a beat or a line of the song out of the air, lay it down for her and say, Walk on this, and she would understand.
It is Firing Squad.
sixteen