I made it to the interview!
That’s amazing, I text back. And because she’s probably busy getting hugged by her mom or congratulated by various random passersby who detect her awesomeness, I add in: When you get back, we have to celebrate.
“She’s leaving,” I say, to my phone or to the walls.
“What?” Angela says.
“Nothing,” I say. “Vic. Why are you still wearing that Wonder Woman shirt?”
“I just like it. It smells fine.”
“Next thing you’re going to tell me that if we live here, we don’t have to wash our clothes, right?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Angela says. “It’s entirely possible.”
I keep working. It’s Saturday night, maybe early Sunday morning. Music bounces in and out of the air, and I am filling the walls. There are some of my friends from Naples, and some general compadres from the Smoking Corner, and Tall Jon, and even Bill, because why the hell not. The art room from school comes out as sort of a cubist version of the real thing, with Mrs. Pagonis looking more like a geometric scarecrow than a human being, and Gretchen Grayson as a lost figure from one of Picasso’s paintings about the bathers. But not too much like Picasso. Actually, do I even like Picasso, or have I spent a lot of time convincing myself that I do?
I scrub at the triangular hands of Gretchen with the pink pencil eraser, but the lines stay as though I’ve carved them into the wall.
If Lilia was around, I’d ask her—are everyone’s projects like this, or is it just a trick of my project that the secrets I put on the wall are apparently stuck here forever? If Lilia was around, would I have the courage to ask her that? Would she ask what I’m afraid to commit to the wall, and would I be able to tell her? Because there’s so much. There are all the crushes on boys and girls, the ones I felt so strongly and the ones that pricked at the backs of my knees and then faded away. There’s the thought that I’m glad my parents divorced, and that it was a relief when Dad moved away and we didn’t have to know each other’s day-to-day selves anymore. There are all the times I have lain in my bed at night and considered Victoria, and how, after everything that’s happened between us, I wonder if my feelings are going to stay there, trapped under blankets, for the rest of my life.
I drop the pencil and roll it over to the corner where I’m keeping all my supplies.
The girl sitting here right now, dejected and guarded and covered in dust—how can this be the best version of me?
I will have to come back here and figure it out. But right now, both Mom and Victoria are on their way home.
twenty
IT’LL BE GOOD to see her. That’s what I’m telling myself. That’s what I told myself this morning when Angela and I were on our way to pick up Victoria, even though she and her dad had already left for school when we arrived at her house. After second period I walked by her locker, which was closed and kinda lonely looking, as though its current occupant hadn’t bothered to come by to grab her English and trig books. I don’t know why I keep thinking she’s avoiding me, or that I’m avoiding her. She’s not, I’m not. It’s lunchtime. She is across the courtyard, approaching the Dead Guy from the opposite direction that I am.
She stops.
So do I.
The sun is insistent today, and with Vic standing in the shade of the school building and me standing in a bright, treeless patch of grass and dirt and lunch trash, we can barely see each other. The courtyard kids, Connor and his latest girlfriend and all the others we used to know, turn around and look at us. None of this fazes Vic. She is, as Bill once put it, a High School Nihilist, well-versed in the ways of not giving a shit about being seen alone. Her dresses and heels and nice hair—those things are for her alone. That’s part of why I love her.
“Mercedes!” she calls out. “I can’t believe I didn’t see you this morning!”
We come together at the Dead Guy, even though it’s way too hot to be here for very long. This is our place. Could I really ever ruin this? Ruin us?
Mom’s not here yet. Angela rushes into the house to straighten a few things, and I peek into her car (now abandoned for my old Pontiac) to be sure it gives off the impression of being neglected and stationary for the time its rightful owner has been gone. She’ll know what happened when she looks at the odometer (if she looks at the odometer), but that first look is important. It passes the smell test.
I shut the door, and the airport shuttle pulls up.
I shift into Daughter mode as well as I can; actually, it’s easier than I thought it would be. A big smile and a wave. Seeing that her face looks a little tanner but basically the same. Meeting her at the shuttle and asking to take her bag and realizing I need to hug and kiss her, too, and trying to do that with the bag in hand.
Okay, maybe not so easy. I’ll leave it to Angela to get it absolutely right.
“Mom!” She bursts out of the house, barefoot, races down the driveway, and throws herself into our mother’s arms. Mom kisses the top of Angela’s head at least a dozen times before she lets her go. They link elbows and walk like that together as Mom tips the shuttle driver, and then Angela, clever girl that she is, somehow talks Mom into walking in through the back door. I’m left to bring in the suitcase.
We order pizza and eat it in my mother’s bedroom, Angela and Mom sitting together on the bed and me in the easy chair that usually serves as a plump clothes hanger. Angela handily keeps the conversation going, stringing in one easy topic after another. The weather, the sartorial choices of Rex McBride, more about the weather, Vic’s audition, and what Angela and I have been doing at school. I reach for the last two breadsticks. No one notices. Angela is crafty—we haven’t been in the living room the whole evening. Angela got up and answered the door when the pizza arrived. Mom still hasn’t seen the piano.
“My girls,” Mom keeps saying. “My burbujas.” It has been so long since she’s called us her bubbles. I miss it. She motions to me to join them on the bed. I do, and she wraps one arm around me and one arm around Angela, tightly, which leaves us no physical choice but to look straight ahead, as though we’re posing for a photo.
Angela heads to bed at ten thirty, looking worn down but also seemingly sure that she knows where Mom will be for the rest of the night. I can’t bring myself to get up yet—my arms are still sore from drawing on the walls, and this bed feels more right than my actual bed.
Mom rubs my shoulder. “I know you’re still worried.”
I have my eyes closed, which helps to mute the strange experience of having my mother in the same room with me. “I’m sure you are too.”
“I am,” she says. “But I missed you girls. It was so hard to have our family divided.”