Siren Queen(77)

“No,” I said. “But … maybe I could write? And you wouldn’t need to answer unless you wanted. But I could write to you here.”

She was perfectly still, the only sign of life on her the trickle of smoke from her spent cigarette.

“I might not write back right away,” she said, not looking at me. “I’m bad at it, and there’s no phone here either. We take calls at the restaurant downstairs.”

“But I could have your address?” I pressed. “The building and apartment number, at least?”

Her friends at the theater must have called her something, but what that name was, she didn’t tell me then. I didn’t think she was a Mary anymore.

“You can,” she said finally. “I don’t mind.”

It was barely more than a whisper of hope. The past rose up around us, jagged stones that would bloody our feet if we took a step wrong. The only way was forward, and I knew as she shrugged and asked us if we wanted to go downstairs for some dumplings that we had at least taken the first step.



* * *



We did have to sleep eventually. My sister didn’t have to go back to work until the next evening, and by that point, Tara and I had been up for more than twenty-four hours. Tara said that she would do very well in the wing chair in the corner, her jacket rolled up to pillow her head and her feet propped on a fruit crate, and my sister and I curled up together on her thin mattress. It was new and familiar all at once, but I was too exhausted to be troubled by it. We fell asleep back to back, her breathing matched to mine, and my mind filled with steam and lye.

I woke to my sister and Tara speaking companionably in the living room, the roommate gone out to earn a living. For a bleary fifteen minutes, I lay in bed and wondered at how alien the idea of living with people already was. I listened as my sister described designing scenery in stage shows and the murals she had painted around Chinatown. In the bathroom down the hall, my reflection had a greenish tint, as if everything was underwater. If I was going to be in San Francisco, I thought sleepily, I would need to learn to breathe all over again.

When we were dressed and had been fed again at the restaurant downstairs, it was past noon. It wasn’t enough sleep for any of us, but Los Angeles wasn’t getting any closer to the bay. I didn’t tell her that I would write, because she didn’t need to believe anything I said just then, but when I offered my hand for a shake, she pulled me in for an awkward angular hug.

“Be careful on the road,” she said. “Call Ma, and she’ll call me when you make it.”

“All right. I will. Thank you for seeing us.”

She ignored that, but nodded slightly.

“If you take Stockton Street south, you’ll see one of my murals. Green and gold tigers. If you want.”

Of course I did. The street was already crowded, and I had to drive carefully, but twenty minutes later, emblazoned on the side of a dry goods store, there were a trio of tigers chasing each other over a field of green leaves and gold flowers. I wanted to pull over and stand in front of the mural and to find my sister’s name, signed somewhere hidden, but I kept driving.

“Your sister’s nice,” Tara said, somewhere on the road.

I considered. She was more than nice. She was clever and determined. I could see it in her tigers, in the life she had built so far away from everything either of us had ever known. I needed a silver screen to give me a dream, but she had painted her own out of nothing at all.

“She’s forgiving. Good for me, I suppose.”

Tara laughed.

“Yeah, forgiving’s good. My folks forgave me for lighting out west pretty quickly. They want me to come back to Chicago sometime soon. Don’t know what they’re going to think of the suit and the hair.”

“They’ll think it’s very handsome,” I said loyally, and she squeezed my hand where it rested on the gearshift.

“Well, if the Star of All the East says so…”

“Oh, stop that!”

She only laughed when I punched her lightly on the arm, and when she spoke next, her voice was casual in the way that told me she cared very much.

“You could come tell them that if you wanted. It wouldn’t just be dinner with my parents. I could take you dancing in the biggest gin joint you’ve ever seen. I could get you a real pickle.”

“I’ve had pickles before.”

“No, you haven’t. Not a real one. Los Angeles doesn’t have real pickles.”

“I do like pickles,” I said finally. Chicago with its sea that pretended to be a lake and its tall towers that didn’t care how they looked on camera was as alien to me as the surface of Mars, but for the first time, I could see the appeal as well.

It wasn’t until Tara had fallen asleep, snoring slightly with her hat pulled over her eyes and slumped against the door, that I realized she had offered me Chicago, some awkward future date with her parents at a Polish restaurant, dancing in a gin joint, and apparently pickles. I had taken Los Angeles for myself, and maybe someday, I would come to share San Francisco with my sister, but Chicago would be a gift from Tara.

I swallowed hard and wiped a few errant tears out of my eyes as I drove south, matching Tara’s soft breathing to my own.





X


There was, of course, hell to pay.