“Okay, cool.” I take a walk to discover the walls, the same way Lilia did. “That’s great news.”
It’s an odd thing to picture—Angela and me waking up in the weird white room with Victoria’s picture on the wall, grabbing breakfast from the little kitchen, and then sitting and eating it beneath Lilia’s artistic jumble of household objects. But Victoria is packing her bags to leave, and somewhere in San Juan, so is Mom. Why not the Moreno sisters, too?
The last time we went to visit Abuela Dolores, she surprised us before we had even set down our luggage. Her hair, once salt-and-pepper and then silvery all over, was back to being black. One hundred percent opaque black. “I missed this,” she explained, puffing it up with her fingertips. “Black matches better with my clothes than silver.”
Abuela was bouncy and bright for those whole two weeks. Waking too early, singing in the shower, teasing the dogs with a laser pointer, and going out in the early evening to play dominoes with her friends. Angela and I went for long walks to the beach—it was summer, but summer always felt better in Puerto Rico than in Florida. Gentler, more settled. People complained less about the heat, and so the heat didn’t have a reason to gripe back.
Once I sat on Abuela’s bed as she got ready for the nightly game. She added makeup on top of the makeup she was already wearing: more pink on her cheeks, more brown on her eyelids, as though she were brushing the final details into a painting. I asked her how she had so many friends, and wondered if that sounded like I was insulting her. I wasn’t meaning to.
“I stick around,” was her reply.
“Can I help you tie your scarf?” I asked.
“Of course!”
I took the scarf by both ends, and folded it once, and then sort of rolled it up. I really had no idea how to tie a scarf, but I figured if she wore it messily this time, she could fool her friends into thinking she’d done that on purpose. Abuela was deliberate that way, and I liked being near her. I ran a hand along the bottom of her thick black hair.
“My hair is terrible compared to yours,” I told her. “There was a girl in middle school who told me it looked like a rats’ nest.”
“That’s silly,” Abuela said.
“I know. When she said that, I told her she must know that because she spent a lot of time around rats.”
Abuela laughed. “That’s perfect. You always look great, you know that. I’m sure that old boyfriend of yours spends every second of the day being sorry he dumped you.”
“Oh my God, I’ve told you that story ten times. I dumped him.”
“Well, then,” she said, surprised at having her version of the story thrown off. “I’m sure you’ve already found someone better.”
I leaned in and whispered, not to her ear, but more to the folds of her scarf. “I’m in love with someone. But I can’t tell you who.”
She studied both of us in her mirror: Abuela standing at attention, me all bent and wrapped around her. I was afraid she was going to press me for more details, to ask me how I knew this person, and if I happened to slip a “Vic” or a “she” in there, I wondered if Abuela would ever let me back into her house. I was so close to saying it, to testing her. The flowers of her scarf blurred into a watery garden, and my stomach dropped as though I was falling into the swamp of pink and purple.
And then Abuela said, “That’s beautiful, Mercedes. Love is always perfect when it’s a secret, isn’t it?”
“I guess so,” I said.
Abuela unwrapped me gently from around her neck and gave me a hug. “But how long do you keep it that way? That’s the question. What’s the cost for trying to keep it perfect?”
“I’ll let you know if I find out,” I told her.
Angela says, “Are you sure?”
It’s my car and the Alabama minivan keeping each other company again.
“Well, not completely sure. But I have a sense that I can throw things off just enough for this to work.”
She drags her overnight bag behind her across the parking lot instead of hoisting it over her shoulder. I walk ahead of her with a backpack. Well, not too far ahead of her. Okay, maybe not ahead of her at all.
“Mercy?” Angela stops next to me.
“I’m just nervous,” I tell her, “but I’m going. It’s probably best if you wait right by the doors.”
We talked about this. We agreed it was a good idea. We did. And yet, the reality of it is hitting me like a glass wall. We could go home and go to sleep in our own beds and then wake up and have some orange juice and waffles and clean the house and be ready for Mom to get home, but no. Here we are, attempting to spend Friday and Saturday night in Lilia’s studio, and for what? For what?
For these things that we like to do.
For the sake of burying ourselves in art and music.
Surely, that’s all that is going to happen.
The lights in the lobby flicker on as I head inside and upstairs. In the white room, on the second floor, a summer-camp-style metal bed has been set up for me.
But I have to push it aside in order to paint.
I choose purple—a deep, dark purple like Abuela’s New Year’s Eve grapes—and start rolling it on. How much will be enough to throw off the needs of the Estate? There’s a shade of arrogance to all of this—why do I think I have the power to shift the Estate’s needs? Why do I think I have the power to get Angela invited? But, no. I can’t talk myself out of this. I’ve come so far already. I can take this next step.
Paint splatters on my arms and my gray T-shirt, drops that will be gone the moment I step back outside to see Angela.
One wall. No rumblings.
Ah. But there’s a wall that’s different. A wall with a secret.
The Victoria wall.
This painting of her is my best work ever, no doubt. If I were trying to critique it in studio art, I’d probably sit in front of it for a while, trying to find a single detail that wasn’t filled in quite right. But there’s nothing like that—it’s got all the right lines and layers. All of which I have to slather in purple.
And so I do it. Piece by piece, Vic disappears under a blanket of purple paint. I’d like to tell myself that I can re-create this picture someday, in a place outside these strange walls, but I don’t think that’s true. What’s within the walls is becoming my truth: I understand how to be in this place now, and how to throw it off just enough.
The lights in the half-purple room dim, then go out completely. I think I have done it. I lay the paintbrush across the top of the paint can, softly, so as to disturb nothing. And just as quietly, I walk backward out of the room, the lights still out, the Estate still holding its breath, and I head downstairs to get my sister.
nineteen