My jeans have a big wet spot on each knee, crowned with a smudge of black because I actually wore mascara today.
I get to my feet and trudge to the studio, even though I don’t have any kind of solid plan for what I’m going to work on today.
Lilia is there.
And it’s weird, but it’s such a relief to see her. She’s sitting on the floor, staring up at her damn ceiling art, and I go and do the same. Goya cans, Tide bottles, Dial soap dispensers. It’s dizzying to look at—the different colors and shapes and heights of the elements of the work. My eyes keep adjusting and readjusting to it. I wonder if that’s all the piece is meant to do.
“Hey, Lilia?”
I feel like I can finally ask her these things.
“Hmm?” Lilia turns to me. She’s wearing plain dark jeans and a white T-shirt.
“Am I ever going to be able to figure out what you’re doing with this, I don’t know, this collage? Why do the rest of us have to give our secrets while you get to keep on being so mysterious?”
Lilia takes in a long breath at my question, my outburst. “But this is one of my secrets,” she says quietly. “That I’m any kind of artist at all. No one ever knew. You never knew.”
“Oh, come on. I’m here right now, surrounded by your art. I’ve seen your weird Estate series and your portraits and your abstract art. I’ve seen you work some sort of musical magic on Angela. You’re totally a Renaissance woman. Give us both some credit, you know?”
She looks over at me with watery eyes. “You’ll remember all that?”
“Hell, I don’t know if I like this ceiling art, but I’m definitely not going to forget it.”
“Okay,” she says, stumbling to her feet. “Okay, I hope you’re right.”
I follow her lead in getting up, and I go over to the kitchen and pour some orange juice for both of us. “You know what my sister told me once?” I say, handing Lilia the glass. “That the orange juice you buy in the carton isn’t what you’d think it is at all. It’s, like, old juice that was squeezed, stored in huge pasteurization tanks, and then eventually reflavored to taste like oranges again. Angela called it ‘orangified sipping water’ for a year before I told her to stop.”
Lilia looks even sadder than before.
“I mean, I didn’t mean to disappoint you if you love orange juice or something, Lilia. You can try to forget about it. That’s what I usually do.”
She takes a couple of gulps. And then she says, “I’m leaving soon, Mercedes.”
“I know,” I tell her. “Are you still going to be at Rex’s for a while?”
“No. I think I’ve exhausted his generosity.”
“Well, fine.” I finish my orange juice and put the glass by the sink. “Before you go, can you tell me what you think of my work?”
“Anything you create here is fabulous.” Lilia wanders around the living room, toeing the weird zigzag black lines on the floor. “You know that.”
“I know. But what’s the point? Are you fulfilled by coming here and always creating your best work, every single time?”
“I used to be,” she says.
“And now?”
“I’m not sure,” she says. “I think I want to be a part of something permanent. Or potentially permanent, at least. I want to have a chance to mess things up and have to deal with them. I hardly even know what that’s like.”
“You totally do,” I tell her. “You know me.”
She kind of shakes her head at me. The short hair really does suit her. “Ciao, Mercedes.”
I study her for a second as she traces the black lines on the carpet with her feet, and then I turn and leave the room. On the eighth floor, I’ll be able to work. I’ll be able to look honestly at my self-portrait and figure out what else I should do.
As I arrive, I grab all my supplies and go to sit on the floor. I study the whole painting—the pencil lines, the parts that have been filled in with color, and the big black streak. And I start to sense what else I need to do here.
Confession. Awkward confession. Here goes everything, onto the wall. The watercolors I didn’t mean to steal. The rejection from SCAD I haven’t told anyone about, and the acceptance from the University of South Florida that I’ve also kept secret. A picture of me being relieved at my dad leaving. All the girls and guys I’ve had crushes on. And the picture, again, of Victoria dancing and catching my eye in the audience, as well as I can re-create it.
And even after all that, the most honest thing is the black streak of paint. It juts in, announces itself, and doesn’t care that it’s wrecking my damn memories.
I streak another shot of black across the wall. And another and another. All the way across until I reach the one blank, white space that remains.
I draw all the people I fear losing: Tall Jon and Angela and my mom and of course, Abuela.
But when I draw Abuela, something different happens. The face I try to draw, the face of the Abuela I know, is not the face that appears on the wall. It’s younger and softer. Longer hair. Abuela who loves nicknames and flowers. Abuela who left Puerto Rico as a teenager to spend a few years in Florida, to live on her own and perfect her English and discover herself.
And to discover, apparently, her love for art.
And how to keep this girl, this best version of herself, in an old building on the coast of Sarasota.
Hot and cold rush to my head and feet at the same time. I step back, dropping my pencil and then falling on the rug that she brought me. Lilia. Abuela. She has been here all along, guiding me to this moment, as though thinking that I wanted the same thing she did. This place to be perfect, to preserve my art and my best days.
But who’s to say that the girl she preserved here is her best self?
And who’s to say that the girl I would be here would be my best self?
I scramble to my feet and run down, down, down, from the eighth floor to the fifth and then to the second, the music with me all the way. The door to Lilia’s studio is open wide, showcasing her ceiling artwork to anyone who walks by.
“Lilia!” I call through the rooms. “Lilia! I know who you are. I know I can help you. Will you come out and talk to me?”
And all at once, everything stops. The music. The lights in the living room and my and Angela’s purple room dim. The pleasant hum that emanates through the building goes silent. It’s just me and the gulf now.
Lilia, my abuela’s perfect self, is gone.
But I still have the keys she gave me.
Wiping at my eyes, I climb as far as the stairs go, past the eighth and ninth floors, to where the stairs come to a stop at a landing. It’s the penthouse apartment, a single white door, flanked by little white light fixtures without bulbs in them.
My hands are cold and shaking, not unlike Angela’s were before she could get them on her piano. I unlock the door and just about fall into the penthouse room. No lights flicker on. I fumble for a light switch and find one next to the front door. Only one of the overhead lights comes to life, but it’s enough to see what’s there.