We Run the Tides(21)

On a wall is a large framed poster. The painting shows a raft holding what looks like a dozen shipwrecked passengers, a few of whom are dead. A boy in the right-hand corner of the painting is waving a red flag, signaling for help from a passing boat. Below the painting the poster says:

The Raft of the Medusa

Théodore Géricault

THE LOUVRE MUSEUM

The shed is windowless, which makes the room feel even more like a shrine to the past. Mr. London assigned us Great Expectations last spring and Madame Sonya’s dressing room reminds me of Miss Havisham’s dilapidated mansion that encapsulated the wedding that never happened.

I pick up the shaggy fur blanket that’s draped over the divan. It’s almost bulky enough to hide a body. I pull at it quickly, like a magician. There’s nothing beneath it except for a tattered and dusty pillow. There’s a small bathroom, which means it would be possible to stay here for days without leaving.

I wait across the street from Ballet Russe in the restaurant that sells piroshkis. I ignore the looks of the older Russian women with their bright-red hair. I can tell they don’t like that I eat my piroshki with my hands, as though it’s a burrito. My sister thinks piroshkis smell like dog food. I think they smell like love. They’re warm, the bread is soft, and the meat is a tender surprise. I sit there and wait and watch to see if Maria Fabiola enters or exits the small passageway to the right of the studio.

Eventually the floor-to-ceiling window curtains part and I watch Madame Sonya instruct five-year-olds at the barre. Her pianist accompanies her on the upright. He has white hair and a permanent stoop, as though he’s spent his life hunched over at the piano, one ear horizontal to the keys to make sure the instrument has been properly tuned. Madame Sonya turns to him to signal the start of a new song. It suddenly hits me—the pianist is her boyfriend. Why have I not realized this before? Is it because I haven’t watched them while eating the piroshki that tastes like love? This revelation that they’re a couple provokes a cascade of questions: what else have I not seen? What else could I be missing?

*

I BIKE TO THE BEACH. It’s getting dark and the waves are choppy, their crashes a loud staccato. I walk to the promontory to the right and consider timing my sprint around it so I can make it to the next beach without the ocean splashing or swallowing me. But I’m suddenly scared. What if Maria Fabiola really is missing? I decide to climb up and over the bluff instead. I get to the top and as I’m about to descend to Baker Beach, I look down. From this high-up perspective, I see a figure hunched over, making itself into an oval. “Maria Fabiola!” I yell. The waves crash loudly in response.

I scurry down the cliff and to the sand.

The oval shape is not a hunched girl; it’s a rock.

The air is moist, salty. I look down Baker Beach, where a number of bonfires are burning. There’s no pattern to their location, their range of brightness.

A burst of white darts in front of my eyes like a comet. It takes me a minute to realize it’s a drunk girl wearing what looks like a white nightgown, veering between the bonfires. She has a blanket pulled around her shoulders, trailing behind her like the robe of a dethroned queen. She takes a swig from a bottle and then is chased away by the gathered group of friends as though she’s a dog.

The cold breeze hits my face, the damp air rises into my nostrils. The scent of the beach at evening is oddly bosky, like a dense forest.

The girl is now sprinting, trying to get the blanket behind her to rise like a magic carpet. She repeatedly turns her head back toward the blanket, as though to check whether or not it’s gathered momentum and height. Her dream, I imagine, is to get on the carpet and fly above all this.

She’s running in ovals, and then she looks back and falls over herself and to the ground. She rolls on the sand and at first I think she’s laughing but as I get closer to her I hear her wails.

Her hair is spread over her face like seaweed, and one large eye stares up at me. She looks like a dying horse.

“Eulabee,” she says. “You know me,” and she laughs at her own rhyme.

It’s Julia’s half sister, Gentle. “Let me help you up,” I say. “You’re cold. You need to get somewhere warm and sober up.” I picture myself, or someone, walking her in circles as she drinks coffee.

“I’m not wasted,” she says, slurring the word “wasted.”

She stands and runs away, the blanket above her head. She zigzags around the beach like a Chinese dragon.

When I leave the beach I bike to Julia’s house. I need to tell her mom that I saw Gentle at the beach and that she’s drunk.

I ring the doorbell and I see Julia’s head peek out from behind the curtain of a window. I ring the bell again. Julia’s mom, Kate, finally opens the door.

“Eulabee,” Kate says, kindly. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

I force a smile. Is it possible she really hasn’t heard?

“Yeah,” I say. “I wanted to let you know that I was just down at Baker Beach and I saw Gentle.”

Her face falls. “What?” she says. “That’s not possible. She was home sick from school today. She’s up in her room resting.” Gentle’s room, I know, is in the attic.

“Oh, okay,” I say. “It’s just . . . I’m pretty sure it was her.”

Kate looks at me and I see panic enlarge her eyes. “Wait right here,” she says. Her strong legs sprint up the stairs.