Tell Me Something Real (30 page)

We lock eyes. “I worry about your sisters, but with your mother, I worry about you the most. She was attached to you in a way she wasn't attached to your sisters—even Marie. I thought if Caleb came back, things could get back to normal and you'd begin to have a sense of peace. I was wrong.”

A combination of sickness and relief washes over me. My stomach seizes and my head clears. For once, Mom spoke the truth. Within the framework of cancer, I thought I knew what she needed: the right pillow, the right pill, the right song, the right food. Clairvoyant in so many ways, yet not in the way it mattered. I refuse to be her medicine now.

Adrienne's room is the opposite of mine, with piles of art supplies covering the floor and sketches of Mom tacked everywhere, chipping Dad's carefully painted walls. She
covered the back of her door with a portrait of Mom, drawn on the wood with a Sharpie in the same style as Marie's tees. Bold, simple lines capturing doomed moments of fate.

I shake her awake just as I used to wake Dad.

“What the fuck, Vanessa. Get the hell out of my room.”

She flips over and faces the wall, groggy and pissed.

I climb into her bed and rest my head on the edge of the pillow, close enough for her to hear me whisper. “You have to knock it off. I'm not Zach.”

She refuses to turn over. “No shit. I'm sleeping, so if you won't leave, at least shut up.”

I poke her shoulder with my finger, something Marie would do, hoping she'll remember that I'm her little sister too. “Adrienne, don't do this to me. Please.”

She flips over, so angry I see her eyes flash in the dark. “Do this to
you
?
You're
doing this to
me
. You're the one who's bailing. Do you realize that I'm going to have to do all of this on my own? You're lucky that I want to go to college here. What if I really wanted to go to school in New York? Parsons or Pratt or Cooper Union? What the fuck would happen then? Did you even think about that? Fuck you. I'd never do this to you.”

Years ago, back when I was terrified of water, back when Adrienne and I functioned more like conjoined twins than opposing soldiers in the Revolutionary War, back before Marie was born, we visited Crater Lake. Beautiful and clear and deadly, with tourists falling into the lake with
disturbing frequency. Warning signs peppered the path, and I hung back, clinging to Dad's hand. Mom marveled at the view, at the staggering depth of water, at the clear blue below. Adrienne stood too close to the rim, telling stories about fresh water mermaids, flirting with legends, demonstrating fearlessness at eight years old. The remains of the volcano were no match for her, even then.

“You're an amazing girl, sweetheart,” Mom had said to Adrienne. “I bet you could do anything you set your mind to.”

Now, Mom's oppressive ghost fills the house. I've been too consumed by my own pain to recognize that I'm reacting to the present and not the future. I worry about my sisters, but in a day-to-day domestic sort of way. I haven't considered the future, however near. I look into Adrienne's eyes, filled with a desperate fury, and realize I'm sentencing her to house arrest.

“I'm sorry.” When I hug her, she doesn't pull away like I expect. She feels rigor mortis stiff, but at least she remains right next to me. “You never talked about wanting to go to New York.”

“That's because I don't really want to go there. Jeff does. Mr. Klein knows a bunch of people at UC San Diego and he's an alum. He says I'll definitely get in. He's going to show them my portfolio early. That's what I want, but I want you more. I can't believe you want to leave me,” she says, her words catching in her throat.

“I don't want to leave you. But I don't know how to be
here anymore. It hurts too much. You draw her all of the time. Marie's walls are covered with pictures of her. How can you look at her? I can't stand it, and I'm not just saying that. I really don't know how to live here now. It's like she's following me around and I can't escape her.” I wipe away my tears with the back of my hand. “It's her or me, and now it's me or you. I don't want to hurt you. I won't go if you're going to hate me for it.”

“I could never hate you, but I don't know how to do this on my own. You're the only one I can talk to.”

I hold her tighter, wishing she would hug me back. “I'll be home every weekend. Caleb said he'd drive me back and forth.”

She pulls away and emptiness fills me. “How does Cancer Boy feel about you bailing on him?”

“He understands.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, long enough for me to wonder if she's done talking, if she's going to boot me out of her room for the night. I reach for her again, and this time she is the one who wraps her arms around me. “I'm not okay with this,” she says. “I won't hate you, but that doesn't mean I'm not really pissed at you. You suck.”

“Does that mean I can go?”

She doesn't say yes, but she doesn't let me go, keeping me close for the rest of the night.

Adrienne, Marie, and I wander through Old Town, walking in and out of the shops, searching for a keepsake, something
to remind me of home. We go into a little store, as narrow as an airplane, and scan the souvenirs on the shelves. I want something that will remind me of the good things about Mexico. I need a physical object to hold in my hand, to touch, to remind me of what I once had and what I'm leaving behind. Past the maracas and sombreros, I find it. My eyes rest on a tile, a perfect ceramic square, with a dark blue dove painted on a pale blue background. It looks just like the oil painting at the clinic, the one in the downstairs room near the kitchen, the room where we slept when the clinic was full.

I pay for it and watch the woman behind the counter wrap it in tissue.
“Gracias, mija,”
the woman says.

“De nada,”
I reply.

I return to Adrienne and Marie, who stand in front of a large glass case filled with Day of the Dead figurines, small wooden skeletons dressed in elaborate costumes. Haunting dioramas featuring a bride and groom, a boy riding a bike, even a dog with his cherished bone.

“Find it?” Adrienne asks. Her anger lingers, but more in an annoyed way, huffy and eye-rolling. She's coming to accept that I have to do this. Somehow, the fact that I'm leaving Caleb too—even just for weekdays—makes her feel better. Like it isn't complete abandonment. My penance.

“Look,” I say as I unwrap the tile, exposing the bird.

“Let me see,” says Marie. I hand it to her and Marie traces the outline of the wings. The image takes us all back to the
clinic, to the courtyard, a reminder of how we'll always be together. We buy two more, one for each of our rooms.

Tourists and college students fill the dusty road. A crowd gathers on the expanse of lawn in front of the Mission San Diego de Acala, the bustling center of Old Town.

“Let's check it out,” I say. “We have enough time before I have to meet Caleb.”

We fight through herds of tourists wearing Sea World T-shirts.

“It's a feast day,” Marie says. She starts guessing which saint, rattling off her list. When we reach the center of the festival, we see a banner celebrating the church's patron saint, Saint Didacus.

“Know him?” I ask.

Marie shakes her head. “No, must be one of the boring ones.”

Each corner of the lawn features a different mariachi band. We mill through the crowd of families standing on the tree-lined lawn. Among the tall eucalyptuses stand two cherry trees, the only ones losing their leaves. The twin trees are turning for fall, and the remaining leaves are a stunning combination of color, some orange, some gold, some red, and some still green. I notice hints of white and indigo. It looks like the leaves turned into confetti.

“Let's go over there.” I nod toward a group of people at a nearby table, right next to the trees, women, men, and children hunched over and writing on thick pieces of ribbon.

“What's this?” I ask the man sitting behind the table.

“For the wishing tree,” he says. “Write down a wish and tie it to a branch.” He gestures at the pile of satin.

We wait for our turn, and when a vacancy opens up at the table, we reach for our own colorful ribbons.

“Can we show each other our wishes, or will that make them not come true?” Marie asks.

“They'll still come true, right?” Adrienne looks at me.

“Absolutely.”

Adrienne writes,
Keep us safe
. I know what she means—safe from Mom. She hands her pen to Marie. “Need help?”

“I've got it,” Marie says. “You're not going to like it.”

“Impossible,” I say. “We'll like anything you wish for.”

When she smoothes out the ribbon, I notice her arm, just above the inside of her elbow.

“I thought you weren't going to do this anymore,” I say as I inch up her sleeve.

“But I love this one. Saint Lucy said it.”
Those whose hearts are pure are the temples of the Holy Spirit.
She shakes off my hand and displays her ribbon:
Try to forgive
.

Adrienne rolls her eyes.

“See, told you that you wouldn't like it.”

I try to glimpse what others are writing, strangers asking for everything from a new car to a healthy child. I consider everything I could ask for, but time travel isn't realistic, nor is asking for my past to be rewritten. I could ask for my sisters to be well, for Marie to grow up unscathed. But I know
there are limits to desire, that some things can't change. I take a felt-tip pen from the pile and write:
Let us be free.
Adrienne and Marie wrap their arms around me. “Good wish,” Adrienne says.

As I tie my ribbon to a slim branch, I wonder if my wish is far-fetched. Maybe it is unobtainable, but it's the one thing I allow myself to request, the only thing I want.

Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks to:

Faye Bender, my brilliant agent and champion, who believed in this story from the beginning and guided me with intelligence and patience. I am forever grateful.