Still Life with Tornado(73)

He looks at me as if I’m some sort of mentally ill kid and maybe I am. I just had an existential crisis. Last week I ate other people’s food out of trash cans. The week before that I was following around a homeless man because I thought he was Macedonia or Spain. The week before that, and all weeks before that, I was living inside of a giant, useless, windmill-shaped, bile-colored lie.

The walk home is nice. There’s a breeze. It feels more like spring than summer. Bruce doesn’t say much except for how he misses things he passes—which is nearly everything. I realize that he was exiled. More ruin. More pain.

I tell him, “You can always move back, you know.”

? ? ?

The Sarahs and Mom are all sitting around the big table in the study and they’re having a conversation about me. I know this because when Bruce and I walk in the door, they stop talking.

I walk Bruce over to the windowsill where he sits in front of the last geranium Mom ever bought. I say, “Bruce, this is ten-year-old Sarah. You remember her, I’m sure.” Ten-year-old Sarah waves her circular wave and has tears in her eyes.

“That’s twenty-three-year-old Sarah. She thinks she knows everything but she really doesn’t. But she means well.” Twenty-three-year-old Sarah gives me the finger and I give it back to her.

“And that’s forty-year-old Sarah. You’ve already met.”

Bruce leans against the windowsill and smiles. I don’t know why he’s smiling. On the table is a large bowl of tortilla chips—already half empty—and a little bowl of homemade white queso dip. “Sarah made that,” Mom says, pointing at forty-year-old Sarah.

I try some. “Wow. That’s good,” I say.

“Nice to know I improve,” twenty-three-year-old Sarah says. “Last time I made this it was runny and tasted like plastic.”

“You used the wrong kind of cheese,” forty-year-old Sarah says.

“Okay, so this isn’t a joke,” Bruce finally says. “You’re all really . . . you.”

I say, “Yeah.” I look at my three other Sarahs and I don’t feel as numb as I did yesterday. I feel like doing something with my hands.

Ten-year-old Sarah says, “I’m so glad you came back!” and gets up from the table and hugs Bruce. Of the four of us Sarahs, she is the most traumatized by what happened in Mexico. I am most traumatized by what happened before Mexico. Twenty-three-year-old Sarah is most traumatized by having once been me. I have no idea what forty-year-old Sarah is most traumatized by.

When I ask her, she says, “Traumatized? I don’t know.”

I go to the kitchen and open the bottom drawer and retrieve the tinfoil. I return to the table with it and start ripping off pieces that are long enough to fit around my head.

Mom sits at the head of the table. She smiles—like maybe it’s cool to have four daughters instead of just one truant sixteen-year-old. I start to scrunch the tinfoil into strong bands that will act as the base of my crown. I add shapes every few inches by molding the foil into itself.

Bruce says, “It’s like I suddenly have four sisters.”

“We didn’t want to freak you out,” twenty-three-year-old Sarah says. “We came to help Mom pack Dad’s things.”

“He has to pack his stuff by himself,” Bruce says. “He’ll probably be back tomorrow. We should all stay.”

“That would make me feel a lot better,” Mom says.

“I can make dinner,” forty-year-old Sarah says.

I say, “I’ll help.”

All Sarahs head for the kitchen. Ten-year-old Sarah sits at the study table with my tinfoil pieces. She adds beads and foam stickers to what I’d started. Then she grabs a few pieces of paper and my box of colored pencils and comes into the kitchen at the table. She draws all of us making dinner.

Bruce and Mom talk about divorce in the living room. I’m glad to have a wall between me and divorce. I’m glad it’s happening, but I’m glad the adults are taking care of it. I want to be sixteen. I want to be a human being. Or four human beings. Or whatever I am.

Twenty-three-year-old Sarah is surprisingly less judgmental around forty-year-old Sarah. Neither of them talk about art, which I find strange.

“So, did we become an artist?” I ask them.

“We can’t tell you that,” they say. “We can’t tell you what happens with you.”

I point to ten-year-old Sarah. “She knows that in six years her parents will get divorced.”

“And look at how well she draws!” they say. Ten-year-old Sarah looks up and grins. “She’s so talented!”

“I’m having an existential crisis and you guys show up and you can’t tell me how it’s going to work out?” I think back to Tiffany and what she said. With talent comes pain or something like that.

“You live,” they say. “See? We’re proof that you’ll figure it out.”

“Doesn’t help,” I say.

“But it’s original,” they say. “Isn’t that what you wanted? To be original?”

“You’re original,” I say. “I’m still just me.”

“If you want to see it that way, that’s up to you, Umbrella.”

The phone rings. Mom answers it. She takes the call upstairs and stays there for a while. Bruce comes into the kitchen and sits with ten-year-old Sarah as she draws. After half an hour, I decide to see if Mom’s okay. Her bedroom door is open a crack. I can’t hear any talking.