A Lily in the Light(29)
“Where does he even go?” Madeline had said to no one in their dark bedroom one night. Esme hadn’t answered. She didn’t know.
Madeline stomped into the kitchen, opened and slammed cabinets, looking for nothing in particular. Esme sat across from Nick, legs dangling, watching her brother through a maze of gift baskets wrapped in plastic, wishing today was a talking day for Nick, but it wasn’t.
“Where do you go?” Madeline blurted, arms crossed against her chest, bouncing her foot like an angry parent. “I mean, really, why is it OK for you to do whatever you want, and we’re just stuck here? Well, maybe not her.” Madeline stretched the last word and pointed her chin at Esme. “She gets to do whatever stupid dance shit is more important than being here, but what’s your deal?”
Nick looked up from his cereal long enough for Esme to realize he wasn’t bothered or jabbed in the same way Esme was, face burning, too angry to form a sentence.
Nick shrugged. “No one’s holding you hostage.”
“Yeah, but it isn’t right.” Madeline’s voice rose and broke into something shrill.
“That’s your opinion.” Nick slurped the last of his cereal and refilled the bowl.
“What’s wrong with you?” She stamped across the room and shoved Nick’s shoulder. “What is wrong with you?”
She was screaming now. Nick pushed her hand away, and it hit the table with a thud, tossing his bowl over. Milk spilled off the table and onto the rug, landing soundlessly. Esme got up from the table and stood against the wall. Like a fire drill at school, she thought absently. Didn’t they all have to line up in the hallway sometimes, abandoning notebooks and pens, sentences half-finished on the page, or was that something she’d imagined from before? The molding cut into her spine. The scream feeling sat in her chest like a pit, but she was stone quiet, too exhausted to do more than shiver inside. In three hours, she could go to dance. She pressed her eyes shut and imagined her legs cocooned in tights, Amelia’s cranberry skirt brushing past, the back of someone’s bun ahead of her at the barre.
Andre thundered from the bedroom. “Knock it off.”
Madeline scratched an angry red line on Nick’s arm. Andre pushed between them, stepping in the milk puddle on the floor, but he didn’t notice. The table slid.
Cerise crept into the room, barely aware of Andre, Madeline, or Nick. She smelled like the dust and old pond water from the trailer. She was holding papers in her hand, stapled in the top left corner. It could’ve been someone’s test or a failed report card that needed to be signed and returned, but it wasn’t. Cerise had rolled into the room as quietly as a dropped ChapStick forgotten on the floor. She was not the ball of energy she used to be, the mom who could stitch swirling bead patterns into a gown while dinner cooked in the kitchen and check homework over her shoulder or stop a fight with one look, all without losing that swirling pattern. Now, even holding papers seemed to take every ounce of effort, worse than when she’d had the flu and disappeared into her bathrobe for a week until she’d emerged again, throwing open windows and scrubbing everything until it was dizzyingly light and hospital clean. No, her mother could crack and scatter into dust and blow away with the wind. It might even make her happier to be gone. Esme stared at her new mom. There wasn’t enough glue to piece her back together. Esme curled quietly into herself against the wall, ignoring the pain in her spine where the molding pressed against her bones, and checked the clock again. Three hours. Then the music would start, and her whole head would swim with it.
“Nick, what is this?” Cerise’s whisper cut through the room. Everything stilled. The paper in her hand shook slightly.
“What is that?” Andre reached for it, but Cerise snatched it to her chest, then let it fall.
“Nick, what is this?” she asked again. “You weren’t in your room.”
Nick stared back. The rest of his face had somehow disappeared, and he was only blinking eyes, empty and blank.
“Why did you say you were, Nick?”
“Is this what the police asked you?” Andre picked up the papers and flipped from one to the next. They looked especially fragile in Andre’s big hands.
“He lied,” Cerise said. “Everything he said isn’t true. So what is true, Nick? What is true?”
Cereal dripped onto the floor. It made a soft sound as it landed on the carpet, but no one noticed. It made her stomach sick.
“So maybe he wasn’t in his room. What difference does it make? He was here.”
“Was he?” Cerise stared at Nick. It struck Esme that he’d once been as small as Lily, too, a bread loaf that’d fit in Cerise’s arm. The first and only baby for a little while. He hadn’t been disappointing then. He could’ve been a lot of things. Now, he likely wouldn’t be an astronaut or a mathematician or cure cancer or do whatever Cerise had hoped for him. Cerise couldn’t hide her disgust. Esme hovered against the wall. What if she couldn’t be the dancer? Would her mother look at her like that too?
“I want to hear it from him.”
“We don’t even know if this is real, Cerise.”
“Of course it’s real,” Cerise snapped. “Yours is fine. Mine is fine.”
Andre moved closer to Nick, the only boy. “How do we know they’re not just pinning this on him because it’s easier that way?”