Wish You Were Here (38 page)

“Yes!” Ella said, and gave herself a matching tattoo.

At the bottom were milky marbles from a set of Chinese checkers and stray Legos and a few miniature pool balls from a table she barely recalled. They had used the cue sticks for swords and someone had gotten in trouble. “They must have thrown the table out.”

“I always hated that game,” Sarah said. “It wasn't any fun.”

“Not like Sorry.”

“I remember Sorry!”

“It's right downstairs,” Ella said, “right behind the TV.”

They agreed that they would have to play tonight.

“And didn't we have like a fire engine?” Sarah asked. “A white one, the hook-and-ladder kind?”

“Maybe. I don't remember.”

“I wish I could find my watch,” Sarah said, and Ella vowed to herself that she'd be the one to come up with it.

There were no more plastic letters. Someone must have thrown them away. They agreed that it was sad, that they should have kept them. Sarah remembered writing her name on the refrigerator with them. There was a red S. Ella wanted to find that for her too, to give it back to her and make her happy. They piled everything into the box and closed the flaps, but now they had something to do. They pounded downstairs and shuffled through the boxes for Sorry and Monopoly and Life and a new Jumanji they'd played maybe twice, even an old Chutes and Ladders that was almost flat.

“Now
that
is a stupid game,” Sarah said, and though she'd liked it better than Candyland, Ella agreed. Sometimes love was giving in to someone. She admired Sarah as she stretched to put the Splat box back and thought it would be easier if she were pretty herself.

But she wasn't. She just wasn't, and there was nothing she could do about it. She could look at herself in the mirror with her glasses off and squint all she wanted, she would never be beautiful like Sarah—the kind of beauty that just a glance could make Ella hold a hand to her heart as
if she were dying. It felt like that, a shock and then a withering inside, her strength draining away. Last night Sarah had come to bed from the bathroom in her nightshirt with her hair freshly brushed and drawn to one side, falling along her jawline and down her front, and Ella had clenched her hands and gripped her pillow, crushed by how good she looked, by how faraway in her perfection she seemed—not unapproachable but unreachable, so much better than Ella, as if the two of them were from a different species, like the models on TV. Sometimes she resented Sarah for making her feel this way, but it wasn't Sarah's fault, just the way things were, and she felt foolish, and then Sarah said something or laughed or just looked at her, and Ella forgot everything. It was those moments she waited for, those moments she didn't want to ruin. Like now, the two of them having fun.

In the living room, they poked through the basket of magazines and the drawers of the end tables, finding decks of cards and ugly coasters and old pens, then went over the mantel, the crusted batteries and heavy key rings and dishes of pennies dark as chocolate, the big box of wooden matches.

Sarah slid the box open and held up a match. “Dare me?”

“To do what?” Ella didn't touch the matches at their house except when her parents had her light the candles for Christmas or Thanksgiving, and even then they supervised her the whole time, made sure she ran water over the dead match and left it in the sink through dinner just to be sure.

Sarah scraped one along the box and it caught fire. Ella shrugged, and Sarah tossed the match into the fireplace, where it flickered, still dangerous. “Now you.”

“What?”

“You light one.”

“Why?”

“Just do it,” Sarah said.

Ella did, acting bored. “So what?”

She blew it out before tossing it on the grate. Sarah's was out now too. Both stayed on top of the grate, evidence against them.

“You ever smoke?” Sarah asked.

“Why would I want to?”

“Have you ever tried it?”

“No.”

“I have.” Sarah hunched closer as if it was a big secret. This was what Ella liked. “I was baby-sitting for these people and they left half a cigarette in the ashtray.”

“Eww.”

“Yeah, it was pretty gross. I don't know how my mom stands them. Come on, I've got to show you something.” She took off up the stairs like it was a game, and Ella raced after her.

Sarah was kneeling by her mother's bed, unzipping her mother's backpack. She dug inside the main part, her whole arm lost.

“What are you looking for?”

“Wait,” Sarah said, and then stopped. “Okay, ready? Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Just close them.”

“Okay.”

“Now put out your hands.”

Ella did. She swayed like she might tip over.

“Keep them shut.”

Sarah put something light and made of paper in her hands. It barely weighed anything.

“What do you think it is?”

“A cigarette.”

“Nope. Good guess though.”

“Some kind of origami?”

Sarah laughed. “Open your eyes.”

It was a cigarette, but hand-rolled, a joint right out of her health book. It was the first one she'd ever seen in person. She dropped it as if it were lit, and Sarah laughed at her, throwing herself back on the bed.

“It's not funny,” Ella said. The joint was on the floor, caught in the snarled yarn of the carpet. “Is that your mom's?”

“Duh. She's only been stoned every minute since she quit drinking.”

Ella sat down beside her on the bed, then lay back so they were both looking at the slope of the ceiling above them.

“That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You don't get high, do you?”

Sarah raised up and looked at her like it was a dumb question, then dropped back down. “She says it's safer than drinking. There's a pipe in there too.”

Ella wanted to say she was sorry but didn't think Sarah wanted to hear it again. She was mad at Aunt Margaret. She was supposed to be trying to get better. If she got arrested, who would take care of Sarah and Justin? In the middle of this, she realized they were lying next to each other, that all she had to do was roll over and hold her. She froze, aware of how close they were, their shoulders almost touching.

“Yep,” Sarah said, “she's pretty amazing. I keep thinking I'm going to come home someday and find her on the kitchen floor or in the bathtub with the water running.”

“She's that bad,” Ella asked.

“She's better than she used to be. I don't know.” Sarah raised her arms up toward the ceiling, then let them drop. “You ever drink whiskey?”

“No.”

“Beer?”

“Nope.”

At barbecues her dad offered her a swig from his bottle, but she never wanted any.

“I haven't either,” Sarah said, and rolled on her side, one elbow jutting out, a hand propping her head. She looked straight at Ella, her smile like a challenge, all sexy teeth, and, as in her dream, Ella thought she might lean forward and kiss her.

“You want to?”

Whatever the question was, her answer was yes.

“What are you saying, Mother?”

“I'm not saying anything,” Emily protested, and in the flush of her first glass of wine Lise shook her head to keep from laughing. “I just don't understand why anyone would choose to have that done to them.”

“You don't,” Meg echoed, baiting her.

“I read somewhere that it's tribal,” Arlene said, trying, as usual, to turn a personal argument into an abstract discussion. “In some societies it's a coming of age.”

“Not Western society,” Emily said. “I'm sure it's a middle-class bias of mine and that I'm behind the times—”

“It is and you are,” Meg interrupted. Lise was waiting for her to turn around and pull up her sweater so Emily could see the wavy-rayed sun at the small of her back.

“Thank you, but it seems ludicrous to me that we now have a generation of teenagers who look like sideshow freaks because of this. Honestly. It's different from when you kids were growing up. You can always cut your hair or grow it back, but these things are permanent. They're on their faces, for God's sake.”

“They'll wash right off,” Ken said.

“It's the idea,” Emily said, missing his point.

“The boys know they're temporary,” Lise put in, “that's why they wanted them. Sam's terrified of needles, so is Justin.”

“You don't see girls doing things like this.”

The statement was wrong on so many levels that Lise didn't know where to start, and in the seconds it took to process a response, she realized her goal in the whole thing was to stay out of it, let Ken and Meg deal with her. Emily never listened to her anyway. She busied her mouth with draining her wineglass, watched the raindrops gather and fall from the broad leaves of the rhododendren that crowded her end of the porch. It was cool, but they were tired of being inside.

“What is makeup?” Meg asked. “It's the same thing.”

“No, I'm sorry, but eye shadow and tattoos are not the same thing.”

“I didn't think this was going to be a problem,” Ken said, and she could see he was losing his famous patience. It was rare, but he could be rigid when he was attacked directly. “They got them out of a box of Cracker Jack.”

“They've been in Cracker Jacks for years,” Arlene testified. “My kids used to put them on their hands, that was the cool thing to do.”

Lise was ready for a comment from Emily about the debased nature of the inner city, which would lead to a standoff between her and Meg, a drawn-out balancing of moral outrage and practical application, a test of who knew more about the real world. Their sparring bored Lise. Her family were old North Shore Republicans and steered clear of personal politics. Their talk before supper was a lighthearted replaying of the day that naturally turned into making plans for tomorrow, voting on what they would do and who would watch the children, who would be responsible for lunch, the tasks rationally divvied up to avoid hurt feelings. At the beach they would no more discuss the significance and history of tattoos than the consequences of regulating the Internet. Their time was more important, dedicated to the serious matter of relaxing. It seemed to Lise that the Maxwells always had to break things down to principles, except they'd chosen their positions in advance, so their arguments possessed a deadening inevitability. Both sides were right and both sides were wrong, eternally, because of who they were. Honor was at stake, and position. The only compromise was a softening of tone, an apology delivered in private.

Yet there was mercy, too, at times, a nodded concession, a puzzling retreat covered by unexpected silence, a matter for conjecture. Meg said nothing of her tattoo, let Emily's assertions stand. Ken shrugged it off, glad to have peace restored.

Lise needed another wine and used the lull to make her exit, swinging around the screen door. The girls were upstairs, the boys on the floor in the living room, Sam watching Justin play his Game Boy. She was sure he saw her. He purposely didn't look over so she'd know it was her fault he couldn't play his game. She suppressed the desire to stick out her tongue. How many times had she listened to Emily bad-mouth her for letting him have one, and then this garbage?

The wine and finding Rufus alone in the kitchen lifted her above any pettiness. He was slumped down by his empty water dish, his eyes bloody from sleeping.

“Hey, Roof,” she said. “Little dry there, huh, buddy?”

She took care of him first, the stream from the spigot ringing in his dish, spritzing her hand. “There you go,” she said, squatting to set it in the corner. He looked up, grateful, then bent to it, his tags dinging against the rim.

Arlene's diseased lime sat on the cutting board in a spill of juice. Lise poured herself another sauvignon blanc and took a generous sip, looking out the window at their cars parked under the chestnut. Steak tonight. Ken should get the coals going, she thought. That way they'd have time to watch a movie later. She had a tendency to watch the clock here, as if it might deliver her. Rather than ask time to speed up, she found it was better to slow herself down and let the rest of the world fly by.

Standing at the sink, stalling an extra minute, she felt like a suspect, alien and separate from the others. The first time she came here, her junior year in college, she'd been shy and didn't know what to say to any of them. She spent most of her time finding hiding places and trying to be alone with Ken. Twenty years later, nothing had changed. Like Harry Potter lodging with the Dursleys, she was still a guest, a visitor.

The thought was not new, but the wine made her contemplate its implications seriously, and the view of the lake, intoxicating, locked on her sight like a slide, someone else's rainy vacation, the blackened docks reaching into the water. The scene captivated her, held her, a pregnant paralysis, as if she were about to make a great discovery about not just her life but the true nature of things—how she belonged in all this, how anyone belonged in a world that seemed foreign. There was a mood to the colors, the storm darkening everything. The elements blurred, wavered out of focus, and yet she didn't turn away, stayed connected to the vision and its promise. She became aware of the liquid surface of her eyes, the thump of her heart, and now her vision shifted—like a telescope tilted a few degrees—shortened and fell on the cobwebbed screen, the white windowsill, dust bringing out ripples and eddies of wood grain beneath the paint, knots like islands, the lines on a topographic map. It had the same magnetic power over her, held the same inscrutable meaning for an instant,
and then the spell or whatever it was dissipated, and she was leaning against the sink with her wineglass in her hand, Arlene's lime dead and shriveled on the butcher block, the world's secrets closed to her again, wholly unavailable. It had been nothing, a momentary buzz, a sip of wine kicking in, pleasantly destroying a swath of unemployed brain cells, and yet feeling it slip away from her was a loss.