A Lily in the Light(80)
“Good morning.” Madeline dropped her bag on the blanket and rummaged through it for a bottle of sunscreen. The thought of leaving seemed ridiculous now.
“He got lost on the way here.” Madeline furiously rubbed SPF 50 over her face and chest. It smelled like coconut and gave her skin a waxy look, exaggerating the delicate new freckles on Madeline’s nose and cheeks. Pregnant freckles. A small sign that there was a new part of their family growing and changing under Madeline’s baggy clothes.
“It didn’t help that it was the same cab Dad drove, and I kept thinking about that car circling the block over and over again after . . . well . . .” Madeline’s voice trailed off, but Esme understood. Esme looked toward the water where Imaginary Lily had been. They would all be in their private places today.
“And don’t say anything about my hair. I did it last night and immediately regretted it.”
Esme thought of the pile of tried-on clothes in the corner of her hotel room. Nothing had been right, not even the jean shorts and gray T-shirt she’d eventually settled on.
Esme reached for the bottle and spread some over her skin to keep her hands busy. Bringing sunscreen was a mom thing to do. Madeline unpacked paper plates and utensils, plastic cups, stacking them in neat piles. Her stomach was still flat, hiding the little cells inside that would eventually morph into Esme’s niece or nephew. Lily would be an aunt too. The thought made Esme queasy. She was too young to be something so adult.
“I got up so early thinking we were going to Long Island, you know? And I mapped the whole thing out for him, but he still got lost.” Madeline’s eyes were rimmed with dark circles. “It took forever.”
“Yeah,” Esme said. This place had always felt so far away when she was ten, eleven. Eight years. Would Lily remember? Were all those years of bedtime stories and make-believe games stored up in her somewhere, or was it all just gone? Esme bit her lower lip until it turned numb. She’d been Lily’s favorite once, but that was different now. Would Lily like her real family, or would she wish for Gloria instead? The thought had kept her up all night. She pushed it away to focus on Madeline. These were the last few minutes before a new line was drawn through their lives again.
Madeline looked the same, except for the freckles, but there was a glow about her that Esme couldn’t explain. She thought of her sister as a kid, reading on the roof in someone’s old lawn chair, finishing books in a day while the 7 train rolled past, how she’d come back to their room smelling like outside dust and too much sun.
“Stop smiling at me like that—you’re gonna give it away.”
“I can’t help it. Can I touch it?”
“There’s really nothing to feel yet.” But Madeline let Esme put her hand on her stomach.
“Hello,” Esme whispered to the little person inside. “I’m your aunt Esme, and I knew about you before anyone else.”
Nick’s Jeep pulled up beside the curb. Esme pulled her hand away.
The car idled for a long time before the engine turned off and the car settled into place. Esme tried not to look at the outline in the driver’s seat because she couldn’t tell if he was looking at her. The thought unnerved her. Nick was cocooned in there, in the same spot he drove to and from work in, ate meals in at odd hours, maybe even slept in sometimes, but Esme suspected he was rewinding time back to that night on the fire escape, holding a cigarette, feeling that nicotine buzz wash over him strongly because it was a secret. He was staring at the sky and just Nick, however he wanted to be, instead of Nick the disappointment, still young and stupid on that fire escape, not the man he’d be forced to become in less than an hour. No, they hadn’t grown up that night. There was still a lot of unfinished work there, but their childhoods had ended, suddenly and without warning. If Nick was on that fire escape, she was in her bedroom, dreaming of San Francisco and her beautiful red bridge in the fog.
Her brother stepped out, not the scrawny one hidden in dark hoodies bouncing tennis balls against his bedroom wall but a tall weight lifter version in an NYPD T-shirt and sweatpants. He looked like he’d just finished a run, only he was still moving. Restless energy. He always had been. His arms and legs reached and grabbed until the car was empty. He was like those physics diagrams with a ball balanced on top of a ramp. Potential and kinetic. Everything was both. Nick was both. She waved, and Nick gave her a half smile. Amazing, she thought. He could carry a gun and hunt down criminals at all hours of the day and night, but meeting a twelve-year-old girl was terrifying.
When her parents pulled up, it made being here realer. She bit her lip, quelling the swell in her stomach.
Her father stepped out first, circling the car to help Cerise from the passenger side. They moved slowly, dazed, feet shuffling over the grass slope. Her father was so devoted, Esme thought sadly. This fragile woman wasn’t the woman he’d married. He hadn’t expected to be cast out onto the sofa, blamed until he withered, and it struck Esme then that maybe her father had been trying to make up for that night ever since. It’s over, she wanted to tell him. We forgive you. You were never to blame. But it wouldn’t matter. There would always be a part of him stuck in that taxi, circling the block night after night looking for anything to make things right.
Cerise’s short hair was blown out and curled into feathery wisps. She was wearing an old black dress with coral calla lilies, the one she’d worn to their first Communions, and even from a distance, Esme knew her mother was wearing Tabu. Cerise carried a pink frosted cake on a glass plate, the one they only used for birthdays. Esme felt a stone catch in her throat. Life was starting again, and yet part of her would always wish her mother hadn’t packed away the moon after Lily but had kept making frosted cakes on that special glass plate for her or Nick or Madeline, because they’d always been in reach. They’d been colored invisible instead. The left behind.