The Comeback(98)

“Do you remember when I used to make up stories about Patrice the mermaid for you when you were a kid?” I ask when we’re almost at my parents’ house.

Esme is quiet for so long that I think she’s asleep, but after a while she shifts in her seat.

“Yeah, except I thought Patrice was a pirate,” she says.

“No! Patrice was a mermaid. She stole from the pirates,” I say, horrified.

“Doesn’t that make her a pirate too?” Esme is staring at me strangely. “She even had her own ship. Her name is practically an anagram of ‘pirate.’”

“Patrice used to steal the booty from the pirates to hide in her shipwreck under the ocean,” I say, trying to remember. I shake my head. “Shit, I guess maybe she was a pirate.”

Esme smiles slightly and closes her eyes again.



* * *



? ? ?

My parents nearly buckle at the knees when we walk into the house, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on both their faces when they see my sister. Even through the protective shield of my own relief, I understand that I will never be the person to trigger such a simple, primitive response from them—that too much has happened, or hasn’t happened up to this point.

Esme already seems panicked by the display, frozen in the hallway with her hair hanging in clumps around her shoulders and her mascara smeared down her face in spindly spider legs.

“What happened to you?” my mom asks, horrified. She turns to me. “What did you do to her?”

“Mom,” Esme says loudly before she slides down against the wall in the hallway, ending up next to a pile of shoes and the old newspapers my parents keep forgetting to recycle. We all stare down at her, none of us knowing quite what to do with our love for this small, broken girl. I meet my mother’s eyes, and a flash of recognition passes between us.

My dad steps forward to scoop Esme up, and, to my surprise, she lets him. He walks with her down the hallway to her bedroom, leaving my mother and me alone by the front door. My mom stands with her arms hanging by her sides, like she doesn’t know what to do with them if they’re not reaching for my sister.

“Thank you for bringing her home,” my mom says quietly, and even though her words are simple, I’m surprised by their force.

“You’re welcome,” I say, then, after a moment: “You painted the house.”

“Your father did it after you left,” she says.

“I kind of miss the pink.”

“I knew you would say that,” she says. My dad has appeared in the hallway, and my mom turns to him. “I told you she’d say exactly that.”

“I’m not getting involved,” my dad says, and we all just stand there for a moment because none of us has the energy to keep it going.

“Is she okay?” my mom asks, making a move toward Esme’s bedroom.

“We have to let her sleep,” my dad says, gently steering my mother back toward the kitchen.

We sit down together at the kitchen table, and nobody offers to make tea.

“Is this about the suspension?” my mom says, staring blankly at me. “Because I can email the school about it. I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding.”

“Not really,” I say, and maybe it’s cowardly, but right now I can’t handle being the one to tell them that they couldn’t protect their daughter. The thing is, I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to shield them from that very realization, and I suddenly feel exhausted, as if all the years of effort have caught up with me at once. I don’t know how to pretend anymore.

“I’m so tired,” I say. “I think I have to rest for a while too.”

“How long is a while?” my mom asks, and both the hopefulness that has crept into her voice and the guilt it elicits are too much for me to bear right now.

“I don’t know, Mom,” I say, and I start to limp down the hallway to my old room. My parents follow me right up to my bedroom door, and I can hear them hovering in the hallway, between the two rooms, as if they can somehow now protect us both from the intruders and monsters and evil spirits that have already chewed us up and spat us out.



* * *



? ? ?

My dad brings my dinner to me on the beanbag tray with the spaniels on it, softly knocking before he opens the door and places it at the foot of my bed. On the way out he squeezes my shoulder as he passes, but he doesn’t ask anything of me and for once I’m grateful for it.

After he’s left, I trail down the hallway to Esme’s room with my tray. I knock before opening the door with some difficulty because of the crutch hanging from my arm.

My sister is sitting up in bed, eating an identical dinner of grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, off my mom’s tray with the poppies on it. Her hair is scraped back and she has no makeup on, and she moves her legs slightly so that I can slip onto the foot of her bed like she used to sit on mine when we were kids. The walls of her bedroom are covered with posters of boy bands and Olympic ice-skaters, and there is a framed photo of the four of us at Disneyland on her bedside table. I wonder if I’d been in her bedroom before I left, whether I would have realized how young she still is and have spoken to Mom about what she told me. I like to think it would have changed things, but it probably wouldn’t.