In Sight of Stars(59)

If only I could disappear into it.

I close my eyes and pretend I am the missing cat, slipping beyond the matted edges, skirting along the cool grass. I imagine that inside the white house with the blue roof is my father. My mother and my father. From before. All of us laughing and whole.

But the truth is, even then, before, the picture doesn’t look normal and whole. Something is off, something deeper that is trying to horn in.

“What are you thinking?” Dr. Alvarez asks.

“I’m thinking of trying to see the world the way it really is,” I say. “Or was. Instead of how I remember it, or want it to have been. It makes me think of this picture book I used to love as a kid that my mother read to me. It was called Zoom, I think, and each page, each picture, was a smaller scene from within a bigger scene on the previous page. So that, when you turned the page, the town in the picture on the first page, with its roads and houses and cars and all of the life going on, turns out by the end to not be a real town at all but only a picture on a postage stamp, stuck to a envelope—a letter—in the hand of some kid. And the kid walks down a street with the whole wide universe around him.”

“Fascinating,” she says. “I’d like to see that.”

“A part of me feels that small sometimes. That inconsequential. Like my life is nothing more than a postage stamp. Like nothing I do will ever matter enough…”

“Enough for what?” she says.

“I’m not sure. Enough to hold on to the people I love.”

“Enough to hold on to yourself, maybe?” she asks.

I nod, feeling the tears well up, but also feeling more in control, feeling able, this time, to hold them back if I want to.

“But, now, see, I’m thinking that maybe that’s wrong,” I say. “Maybe I’m looking at it all the wrong way. Maybe it’s good if the little moments don’t matter, and the only thing that matters is what adds up to the whole. Because, that way, that night with Sarah at Dunn’s house, my mother’s letters that I found, and whatever she did or didn’t do … well, those moments just become postage stamps, but they don’t define the whole wide world around me. They don’t define him, or her, or me. And Saturday night, what I did? That’s not me either. It was a moment. A postage stamp. It doesn’t have to mean I’m like him.”

“Like your father?” she says. “Doomed to be him.”

“Right,” I say. “Maybe I’m not him at all. He’s the postage stamp, but I’m the kid with the letter in his hand.”

Dr. Alvarez smiles, but she doesn’t say anything. She waits for me to go on.

“Sarah’s been texting me,” I say, not expecting to. “My mother told me. She’s texted me several times.”

“Is that good or bad?” Dr. Alvarez asks.

I look back at where the small black cat should be, and will myself there. Home. Inside that soothing white house. Will myself back a year, maybe more. Will myself back to that shabby couch, with the three of us laughing in the Village. But now I get that I have to stop looking back and look forward. Forward to Boston and to college. Forward to the whole rest of my life. Because this week, this month, this year, they don’t have to be the big picture. They’re just the postage stamp on one single letter.

And even though I’m not sure exactly what all this means, or if the math of it even adds up at all, it sits squarely in my chest like an answer.

Day 11—Evening

Sister Agnes Teresa stands over me with a box in her hand. Smaller than a board game. Yahtzee. No, not Yahtzee. It reads Boggle on the box.

Never heard of it. I roll my eyes but in a teasing way. The truth is, I’m happy to see her regardless of what kid game torture she plans to put me through.

“I’m sorry to find you sleeping,” she says in her froggish voice. “I thought we were making some progress here.”

“We were. I mean, I am. I mean, we are.” I sit up and push the sheets off my still clothed legs. “In case you don’t know it,” I say, “progress can be pretty exhausting.”

She laughs and walks to the window to lift the shade. The sky is deepening, but it still holds its full grasp on day. It must be well after six. It’s staying lighter and lighter these days. “That was quite a storm earlier. It’s cleared up nicely,” she says. “Anyway, I thought we might play a few rounds, then go for a swim.”

I move to the table and sit in her chair. “So, what is that?” I ask.

“Boggle. Any good?”

“Probably not,” I say, smiling.

She puts a small blank pad and a mini pencil in front of each of us, then takes out the cube with the clear lid, shakes and shimmies it until the letter dice fall into their squares, and places it in front of me with her hand placed over the top.

“No head starts,” she says, “and words must be at least four letters long. This isn’t amateur hour. No using a letter twice unless it appears twice on the board. No backtracking over a letter once you’ve used it already. Got it? It isn’t brain surgery.” She holds out a sand timer. “You ready?” I nod, trying not to give her the satisfaction of knowing I’m still totally unclear on the rules. “Good.” She takes the lid off and places the timer down, then quickly flips it back again to stop the grains. She squints at me.