The Astonishing Color of After(28)

Dad, hanging up the phone.

Me, pushing up off the couch.

The two of us in stunned silence as we watch through the window. My mother walks up to the front door, her hands empty but for her car keys, no milk or anything, feet dragging heavily along the concrete.

There’s the flicker. There’s the flash.

Coconut shampoo in the air again. The colors muting themselves.

There’s our kitchen lit by the gray predawn light, the sound of water running in the sink. There’s my mother, sliding against the cabinets to the cold floor.

She curls up on the tiles, tugging her bathrobe around herself. The sun has started climbing its way in through the edges of the window, warming everything except the shadowy figure that is my mother. The sky outside painting itself a brilliant and mocking blue.

Footsteps creaking on the stairs, and then Dad shuffles into the kitchen, finding her on the floor.

“Dory,” he says. His voice so quiet.

He asks what’s wrong, how he can help, what she needs. Her words come out in shattered pieces, unintelligible, thick with hopelessness, heavy under the weight of something that’s taken me years to even begin to understand.

Nothing is right, she says. The only three words I catch.

If someone had asked me, I would’ve said that everything seemed right except for my mother, who seemed totally wrong, and that in turn made everything else feel dark and stained. I would’ve carved out my heart and brain and given them to her just so she could feel right again.

A flash of light, a flash of dark, and then a burst of better times, shuttering past:

My mother, smiling a real smile at my father for the first time in years.

Quiet and calm and playing Debussy, fingers roving over the keys, making the piano tinkle and shine.

Waking up early again instead of sleeping through the days.

Sliding on a satiny dress and doing her makeup and hair, looking rejuvenated, looking alive.

Reviving the tradition of Sunday waffles with me and Axel.

We thought she was better. We were convinced.

And then, unfairly, a memory of that body in the coffin. Me, standing there at that funeral. Axel at my elbow. It’s not her, a voice screams from the corner of my mind. My mother is a bird.

Bird bird bird bird bird. That one word echoes on and on.

The colors invert and go dark. I blink myself back into the room. The incense is gone. The feather has crumbled to silty ash in my palm. My hand turns, the dust falls, and before it can touch the floor, it vanishes.





29





We thought she was better.

What can you do when all you see behind closed eyes are the flashes of your mother, your mother, your mother, miserable, alive, beautiful, sick, warm, smiling, dead?

But not dead.

Not exactly.

My mother is a bird.





30





What makes a person—one who is so deeply loved—decide to do such a thing?

A sudden recollection: my mother and father standing on opposite sides of the kitchen, talking to each other with their mouths but pointing their focus elsewhere with their eyes. They were out of sync. Mom with her arms crossed. Dad nodding vaguely in the direction of the floor, slumped with his back against the fridge.

I can’t even recall what they were talking about—something logistical, probably, to do with groceries or whatever—but I remember trying to see the love between them, waiting for a spark, or even a faint glow that might be hovering in the air, however dim. I remember squinting to see something.

It had to be there. Some slight color, no matter how bleached the hue—or even just a pale wash wrapping around them.

Did we love her wrong?

How did we fail?

Sleep is what I need. Sleep will end all these thoughts, this viridian spiraling. But with my eyes squeezed shut, lashes twitching against my cheeks, all I can do is think about the past.





31





FALL, FRESHMAN YEAR


I’d never felt so intensely jealous of another family until I met the Renards. Later the guilt for having the thought would come in heavy fluorescent-green waves, as if I’d committed the worst kind of betrayal.

First I fell in love with Caro’s house. Their garage was amazing, crammed with easels, paints, jars of brushes, tarps and fabrics stained with colors, a hamper full of smocks. All Mel’s. I couldn’t help the thought: What would my house be like if Mom were constantly cheerful, and if Dad also made art?

Down in the walk-out basement Caro had her own workspace. Wooden bookcases lined the walls, but instead of books the shelves were packed with cameras and lenses and other gear.

“This is incredible,” I said. “You’re a photographer?”

“Oh,” she said bashfully. “Most of this was originally my grandfather’s. He got me into it.” I followed her into another room. It was much darker there—no sun, just two bulbs fixed directly into the ceiling.

The walls were covered in black-and-white photographs, portraits of girls doing various things. One knitting. One crouched down to tie her shoelaces. Another in the middle of shaving off her hair. A few arcing their bodies, middance.

“Wow,” I said. “You did these? They’re amazing.”

“Thanks,” said Caro, sounding embarrassed.