Then I realized I had to call Julian, first of all. He was still in suspense, and also, he would be so useful. He would drop everything and rush into town to help me out. I needed him to come clot up the air with rosy chatter, bright-siding, and believing all would work out for the best. But I still couldn’t reach for the phone.
I’d said the truth to Shar. I wanted this. I wanted Hana. But I couldn’t start.
Finally, I pulled the laptop over and I typed Candace Cherries into Google.
The first link at the top was Candacecherries.com. I clicked it.
The splash page was a high-res picture of a piece of mixed-media art. I wasn’t sure if it was rightfully a sculpture or a painting. It hung on a wall, but it was definitely done in three dimensions. It showed a human figure, the right half of its face cut out from one of those 1970s velvet paintings of big-eyed, weeping orphans. The left half was a wooden tribal mask, broken so that it had a savage, jagged edge. From that side, a coarse pigtail made of what looked like real hair jutted out, tied up in a tatty bit of pink ribbon. The body was composed of rusted bits of metal: springs and pipes and chains and old watchbands. It had been dressed in ragged patchwork.
Doves on stiff wire bobbled in the air above the person, affixed to a huge blue sky made of what looked like painted driftwood. The doves had stolen the figure’s hands and a red, fleshy rag that could have been its heart, its tongue, or some other key internal organ. The feathery little fuckers looked quite smug about it, too. It was primitive and visceral and disturbing. It was also really, really good.
The menu bar above gave me a lot of choices: Methodology, Reviews, Show Schedule, Online Gallery, Biography. I clicked the last link, and there was Candace.
She was so skinny she looked like a bobblehead doll, and the emaciation emphasized the crow’s feet etched deep around her watery blue eyes. She was wearing jeans with an aggressively ugly serape draped across her shoulders like a blanket. The bio said that she was living in Wyoming on a horse farm with her partner of nine years. It talked about where her work had been shown and the awards and fellowships she’d won. Near the end, it quoted a review that praised, among other things, her innovation with found items. I snorted. So Candace was still digging through other people’s things. There were more pictures of her below the bio, several with her partner, a very tall Native American with coppery skin and a wealth of black hair tumbling down her back. She looked like all kinds of an ass-kicker, looming protectively over Candace in most shots.
So, Candace had a type. It was a little disconcerting.
I started clicking through the galleries, looking at all of Candace’s crazy pieces. Animals and people made of bits and broken ends. Interesting stuff.
Okay, so I was scared to meet my sister. Scared of who she’d be, and how we’d manage, when we were face to face. Scared her life had been preruined.
But if Candace, of all people, could dock someplace . . . I clicked back to the bio to look at her face.
Sure, it looked like she had some kind of serious eating disorder, but she was still alive. She was doing work that mattered to her. It mattered to other people, as well; there were a lot of SOLD tabs on the pieces in the gallery. She loved someone, and she’d been loved back, for almost a decade now. She’d even found a form of faith, judging by the red string tied on her left wrist in every picture.
Who would have thought it? Fucking Candace.
I closed the website, and I reached for the phone to dial Julian.
CHAPTER 13
I am nineteen years old when Kai tells me the last story of hers that I will ever hear. I am almost asleep in my room in our basement apartment in Morningside. My door bangs open, and I jerk awake to see Kai framed in the doorway, backlit by dim lamplight from the den. Her face is a dark oval with a glowing red beauty mark: the ember of her Camel.
“What?” I say, groggy with near-sleep.
She takes a long tug off her cigarette, then lets smoke out into a backlit cloud around her head before she speaks.
This happened a long time ago, and it’s still happening now. Ganesha and his mother are playing by the river when a wealthy nobleman rides by. Parvati is quite beautiful, cooling her feet among the stones. Baby Ganesha paddles in the shallows by her, spraying water with his little elephant’s trunk. The droplets sparkle in her dark hair like jewels as she sets out fruit and crackers for their lunch.
The nobleman, Kubato, scoops her simple repast back into her basket, inviting the pair of them to dine in his home instead.
I sit up, scrubbing at my eyes. I am in no mood for stories, especially not this one. I don’t want to hear this mother-love tale with my army duffel bag already packed. It sits beside my footlocker and some cardboard boxes by the door. I am moving to Indiana with my friend William. We are leaving in the morning, early. Long before she’s usually up.