Dear Mercedes Moreno:
The Committee on Admissions has completed its review of applicants to the first-year class at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Following a careful consideration of your application, I regret to inform you that we cannot offer you admission to the college at this time.
The only dusting spray in the house is the lemon-scented stuff Mom has always cleaned with. I used to think it smelled terrible, but today it’s okay. Nostalgic. I knew the lemon spray before I knew of SCAD. I knew the lemon spray before I knew Victoria. I can carve out a space in one of those memories that’s little more than a frozen moment: Angela and me sitting on the couch eating tostones and watching cartoons while Mom dusted.
As the lemon spray hits the piano, I swear the smell gets better.
“Hey, Angela!”
I know she is in the next room doing homework. A page turns in a book.
“Ange, come sit here with me.”
Another page.
I perch on the edge of the dining chair that has persisted in being Angela’s piano bench. I position my hands at the keys, letting my fingertips touch them, in that way that makes anyone seem cool and graceful. Moonlight Sonata comes to me in my head, the beautiful way Angela made it emerge in this room, a fully formed thing with skin and hair and guts.
It doesn’t work the same way for me. I run my hands over the keys, and the song in my head is still Moonlight Sonata, but the sound from the piano is something that would make Beethoven run away crying.
“Ugh, Mercy.” Angela nudges my shoulder. Her way of saying, Let me show you how it’s done.
She sits down and does it, and it is as beautiful as last time. And yet, that wasn’t enough to bring her inside the Estate. This morning, I tried to tell her how Lilia and Edie explained the possibilities of the Estate, but she gave me a glum look and walked away before I was done. I want her to know about it so badly. And selfishly, I want to see what she can do when she’s there.
“What if it’s not a song?”
Angela stops playing. “What?”
“What if the key to get you inside Lilia’s studio isn’t a particular song? What if it’s more like a feeling?”
“Well, you’re the expert,” Angela says.
“I’m not,” I say. “I mean, Lilia wants me to be, but I’m not. I feel like I’m such an impostor, thinking I can figure anything out about the damn place.”
I hit the top of the piano with my palm. And again.
“Okay, okay.” Angela grabs my hand and holds it down. “Tell me what you know. Tell me what you think I should do.”
Out on our street, it’s almost six p.m. and people are coming home from work. A pickup truck hauling ladders passes, then a minivan I’ve seen before, one that’s covered on the back with Disney magnets and stickers. People are debating pizza or hot dogs in their kitchens. At some point today, Rex must have pulled our garbage cans back up to the house from the curb. The sun’s going down and searing the gray clouds orange at their edges. I know this place so well, but sometimes I feel like an impostor here, too. Not Mercedes or Mercy or Dearie or Fr?ulein Marino, but rather someone who is caught between two worlds, the one in my head where I am my true, whole self, and the one out here, where I’m always waiting behind a canvas or sketchbook, where no matter how much I wave and jump around and call attention to myself, I still feel like I’ll always be watching everyone else live.
I will probably feel like that anywhere.
Except, perhaps, the one place where I can be the best version of myself.
I keep thinking I could cry. My hand hurts, and there’s a stuffy cloud of sad gathering behind my face. But maybe I’m mistaking the feeling. Because it hits me like a deep, low note of the piano, a thrum that fills my chest and head, that this is a feeling Lilia knows. This is the Estate’s magic—either it has held on to me, or I’ve somehow grabbed on to it. It’s like a helium balloon, bobbing above me, tethered to me by a thin string in my hand. I can keep holding.
“What do you want most?” I ask my sister. “Like, if you could have one perfect moment right now, what would it be?”
“Abuela would wake up,” she says.
“Yes,” I say, “but what else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“I mean, yeah. But what about the other parts of your life? What’s something you wanted long before Abuela got sick?”
“I don’t know.” She taps a few keys at the lower end of the piano. “Friends?”
“You have friends. You were hanging out at Hannah’s place the other day.”
She gives me a weak smile before staring down at the keys again. “Well, even someone who called you a bitch at the beginning of the year can’t turn away the poor girl whose grandma is dying.”
“Hannah’s the bitch, then.”
“Not really. I wasn’t a good friend to her. I get, you know, closed off and weird sometimes.” She sweeps at her bangs. “Anyway, you know what? I don’t feel like telling you all this. You asked me, that’s what I want. Friends, to do friend stuff with. Maybe one of them would like to play music.”
“Shit, that’s totally what I forgot to do.”
“What?”
“Your hair.”
Angela watches me run out of the room and come back with water and a comb and a towel and scissors. She sits with her back to the piano, and I stand facing her and comb her long, dry bangs into wet black stripes.
“Stay still,” I say.
“You know what I want?” she says, her lips barely moving. “I want to have a friend like Victoria is to you. Someone who likes being in the same space as you.”
“Mm-hmm.” It is harder than I imagined to cut bangs. They’re slippery, and they hold a lot of responsibility. On someone like Angela, with fair skin and thick black hair, they’re the first thing you notice.
“But it’s one of those things that feels greedy to want,” Angela says. “I don’t even know how to begin. What do I do, like, go up to someone in the cafeteria and declare my undying friend-loyalty?”
“That’s not a terrible idea.” Oops, the scissors move when I laugh. Snip. A half-inch chunk of one section of hair falls into my hand. I try to comb the shorter section under the longer hair, and mix up the strands so that the shorter ones are hidden within longer ones. “Keep thinking about it. And I’ll do the same.”
Because I will.
Because I think this could be her moment—and mine, too. This could be what gets her into the Estate.
After dinner, in my own bedroom, sitting under the Three Musicians picture, I keep writing and erasing texts to Victoria. What’s up?, the usual standby, looks so self-conscious sitting there by itself on the screen. Delete. I cut Angela’s bangs—one of those things I normally wouldn’t think twice about telling her, but right now seems too invasive, for everybody involved. Like, why am I trying to nudge the everyday blahness of my evening into her life?
Better to go with something practical.
Do you need a ride tomorrow?
Her thoughts, her hesitations, appear as a series of three pulsing dots on my screen.