A Lily in the Light(5)
Why didn’t Madeline realize she was only making things worse? Esme shifted her weight, ready to get up, when her father’s bedroom door opened. Heavy feet shook the coffee table, the TV stand, rattling through her bedroom wall. He wasn’t a big man, just a coil of muscles wound tightly together from years of boxing before Esme was born. Thank God, a real parent. The screaming stopped. Lily tried to catch her breath.
“Knock it off,” Andre mumbled, voice thick with sleep. “She’s only four.”
“She’s seriously like the worst kid ever,” Madeline hissed. “It was better without her.” The bathroom door slammed shut. The shower started. Pipes rattled in the wall behind Esme’s room. That wasn’t fair. She hoped Lily hadn’t heard her.
“Don’t listen to her,” Andre said, turning on the TV for Lily. Full House. “She’s in a pissy mood, and she doesn’t mean it.”
Esme got up to close the door and stared at the Saved by the Bell poster over Madeline’s bed, thankful to have the room to herself. Zack, Jesse, Slater. None of them had to watch siblings or cook dinner. They just got to be teenagers in California, eating in diners and riding around in cars, pulling pranks, but that was TV.
Her mother should have been home by now. Esme heard the murmur of her father’s voice. He knocked softly on her door, and Esme sighed. It was time to make dinner. She slammed her textbook shut.
“Would you mind?” he asked. She shut off the bedroom light and headed for the kitchen. Lily was tucked into her blanket cave under the coffee table, full of pillows and stuffed animals. Esme thought about crawling through the little entrance and telling Lily she was sorry, but it was finally quiet, and Esme sensed it would erupt again soon enough, so she left Lily’s hideout alone.
Cerise had left two boxes of spaghetti on the counter. Esme fixed pots of water and added salt. She set the table and defrosted sauce in a skillet while she grated Parmesan cheese and waited for the water pitcher to fill up. The living room was quiet except for the TV, where Uncle Jesse, Danny, and Joey were singing a lullaby to baby Michelle. Esme was mildly jealous that people didn’t actually do that stuff in real life, but then again, it would be a little weird if her whole family sang her to sleep. What would they even sing? Her father would pick Sinatra, and her mother might pick Gloria Estefan, and both seemed too ridiculous for lullabies. She made a salad and an egg for herself. No pasta before auditions.
The front door opened, and Cerise hummed her way from the hall closet to the kitchen, breezing in with the October chill still stuck to her hair and cheeks, humming “Amazing Grace” and “City of God,” stinking of incense. She sprinkled salt and pepper on the food Esme had made without asking what she’d missed while she’d been gone or how her being out had affected anyone else. It was pointless. Esme left the spoon in the pot for Cerise to finish stirring. “I deserve a night out,” Cerise had said once. “I do enough for the rest of you. You can do this for me.”
“Time to eat,” Cerise called through the living room. The TV clicked off. Without TV noise, Esme felt the tension in the house. Madeline dragged her chair out from under the table and sat down heavily, not looking at anyone as she piled salad and spaghetti onto her plate, her wet hair wrapped in a frayed towel. Andre took his place at the table, waiting patiently while Madeline kept the serving spoons balanced on the edge of her dish.
“What time are you leaving tonight?” Cerise asked Andre. Under the glow of the overhead light, her father’s left arm was still summer tanned from resting on the open taxi window while he drove, his right arm a pale olive color.
“An hour.” He shrugged, looking tired from interrupted sleep. He’d come home tonight after everyone else in the city had gone to bed, before the newspaper trucks threw papers on doorsteps, when no one else needed a ride. “You never want the ones out when no one else is. No good,” he’d said, shaking his head from side to side.
“Put them back so someone else can use them,” Esme mumbled, irritated everyone had to wait for Madeline to sprinkle grated cheese over her pasta. Madeline’s eyes narrowed, but Andre snapped the spoon off her plate.
“Be considerate,” he said, his voice tinged with annoyance. Madeline pressed her lips into a thin line. The argument was over. Even though Esme’d won, it would only start up again as soon as they closed their bedroom door tonight, stone quiet and tense until they both fell asleep. She was too ticked off to care.
“Where’s your brother?” Andre looked up as Nick slid out of his bedroom, baggy jeans hanging just under his waist, covered in Wite-Out marks and frayed fabric. Nick slouched in his seat, black hoodie pulled over his head, a rash of dark stubble and shadows spread over his face. Quiet, solemn. He reminded Esme of a wraith now that he was seventeen and didn’t care about anything except Metallica and Kurt Cobain—and farting and watching as everyone realized it. That he still found hilarious.
“Take that hood off at the table,” Andre grunted, pulling the back of the hood off Nick’s head. “None of that Beastie Boys shit at the table.”
Nick rolled his eyes and filled his plate. Be someone, Esme could almost hear her father saying, disappointed with his son who’d become a baggy-pants-wearing C student wasting time in McDonald’s or the park after dark. She stared at her brother as he poured extra sauce on his plate, unnerved by how quiet he always was.