Where the Staircase Ends (16 page)

“I don’t know,” she said. “Betsy seems kinda old.”

My mom came back holding one of my grandmother’s hats and the fur coat she kept buried in her closet for special occasions. We carefully hung the coat over the snowwoman’s stick arms and adjusted the netting on the hat so that it hung over one of the olive eyes. Then we all stood back to admire her.

“Yeah, she’s a Betsy,” said the younger me with a curt nod.

“Let me get a picture.” My mother motioned for us to stand around our creation. We stood on either side of it, our smiles wide and happy as she snapped away.

It was the same picture I had tucked into the frame of my bedroom mirror, right next to the drawing Logan made of me sitting in class.

I followed when everyone went into the house, where my mom and dad were busy making chocolate chip pancakes.

“Nice work, ladies,” my father said, ruffling younger Taylor’s hair as he looked out on the backyard. “I think that is the smartest dressed snowman, er, woman, I have ever seen.”

He helped the girls disentangle themselves from their winter gear, then joined them at the table as my mother set a heaping stack of pancakes in the center.

“A toast,” he said, raising his glass of orange juice so we all knew to follow. “To the two best snowman builders in the county.”

“To a free day off from school,” said Sunny, raising her glass.

“To eating pancakes in the middle of the afternoon,” added young Taylor.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, honey,” my mother said.

“To Betsy,” said my Dad.

“To Betsy!” they all yelled, clinking their glasses together in agreement.

They worked their way through the pancake stack until their fingers were sticky from syrup and the plates were empty.

“Taylor, why don’t you take Sunny upstairs to pack up her things,” my mother said once the food had been demolished. “Her father is going to be here soon.”

I started to follow the girls upstairs, but hesitated. Mom hummed softly to herself as she rinsed off the dirty plates. It was the same tune she always hummed, the melody soft and sleepy. My dad came up behind her and circled his arms around her waist, then planted a kiss on the back of her neck.

“They’re good kids, aren’t they?” he said.

“Mmm hmm,” she murmured, passing him a dish to put in the dishwasher.

Her dark hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, and a few knotted tendrils trailed down the nape of neck. She still wore her robe, and something about the late afternoon PJ ensemble reminded me of Christmas mornings, when my parents both lounged in their pajamas long after the gifts had been opened and breakfast had been eaten.

My father’s salt-and-pepper hair curled around his ears, the front starting to thin like the fur on an over-loved stuffed animal. When he smiled, deep creases circled his mouth. They made him look both jovial and distinguished.

I felt a pang somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach, part sadness and part anger.

“Where have you been?” I asked my parents. “Why haven’t I seen you on the stairs?”

It was a question I hadn’t thought much about until that exact moment. Why was it that I’d seen everyone from the past week on the staircase except for them? Surely they had plenty to haunt me about. My mother alone could probably fill a novel with the things she wanted to change about me. Maybe I hadn’t seen them because they didn’t want to see me?

The thought left me gutted.

My parents didn’t respond, not that I actually expected them to. Instead, my mother leaned against my father, her gaze trailing out the kitchen window toward the melting snowwoman.

“I worry about Taylor spending so much time with Sunny.”

My father was thoughtful. “Sunny’s a sweet kid. She means well. And Taylor’s a smart girl. She’ll make the right decisions.”

“I hope you’re right. I just wish she’d stick up for herself more often. Or find some other people to hang out with once in a while.” My mother sighed. “I feel sorry for Sunny, I really do, but I don’t want her rubbing off on Taylor in the wrong way. Kids like that need rules. Boundaries.”

Dad kissed her neck, then pressed his lips against her ear. “That’s why Taylor’s so lucky to have us.”

I’d never heard my mom say she felt sorry for Sunny before. I thought back to all the times she bent to Sunny’s wishes—extending my curfew so that Sunny wouldn’t have to come home early, letting Sunny come into the house drunk when I would have been crucified. Was she so quick to say yes to Sunny because she felt
sorry
for her?

I wanted to keep listening to them, but my legs were suddenly moving me out of the kitchen and toward my bedroom.

Wait
.
Stop. I don’t want to leave yet. I want to stay with my parents. I want to hear what my mother has to say. I want to understand.

But my legs carried me down the hall and up the stairs in the direction the girls had gone, and my brain was filled with a warm and reassuring certainty.

Upstairs
, it said.
You want to go upstairs
.

No
, I told it. I wanted to stay downstairs with my parents.

But did I? No, that didn’t seem right. As quickly as I felt the need to stay with my mom and dad, I was overcome with the desire to go upstairs and watch younger Taylor and Sunny. Yes, my bedroom was exactly where I wanted to be. How silly I was to think I wanted to stay downstairs. Why would I want to do that?

There was a small niggling in the back of my mind, like I’d forgotten something important, but just as quickly as I felt it, it was gone.

My feet carried me into my bedroom, where my younger self was folded onto my bed watching Sunny shove her things into her overnight bag.

“Do you think they’ll cancel school again tomorrow?” Younger me asked, leaning across the bed to peer out the window.

Sunny was silent as she zipped up her bag.

“It looks like it’s already melting. The street’s clear anyway. But maybe it will snow again tonight?” Young Taylor looked back at Sunny hopefully, but Sunny gazed at the bedroom door, not listening.

“You’re so lucky,” Sunny whispered, and I was reminded of the words I’d heard my dad whisper to my mother a few moments before.

“What?” the younger me asked. “What’s so lucky?”

Sunny opened her mouth, but was cut off by the sound of a car horn blaring from the front of my house.

She shook her head. “Nothing, never mind. Frank’s here.” She never called him Dad; it was always Frank.

We started down the stairs and her dad leaned on the horn again, letting the sound hang in the air, long and loud like a foghorn. Sunny frowned and waved goodbye, yelling a thank you to my mom and dad before she ran out the door (during which time her dad tapped on the horn three more times).

My younger self was perched on the window ledge overlooking the front yard, watching Sunny run down the driveway to the waiting car.

I remember this
, I thought, watching myself watch Sunny.

Even from inside the house I heard Sunny yell, “Goddamn it, Frank!” when she opened the passenger side door. “Shut up already!”

He stared straight ahead and didn’t say anything to her, his face as vacant as it would have been if he was sitting in an empty car. I could see Sunny’s mouth moving through the passenger-side window and knew she was laying in to him thick and heavy, but he just looked straight in front of him like she was invisible.

I remember watching them all those years ago, wondering if she was crying, but convincing myself that it was a trick of the light. Sunny didn’t cry. In fact, I’d only seen her cry once, a few years before, on the night her mother left.

It had been a Wednesday night. I had just gotten out of the bath, my skin still pink from the hot water, when I found Sunny and her dog sitting on my bed next to my mom. Sunny’s eyes were so swollen and puffy that she looked like a bee had stung her.

“Sunny’s going to stay with us for a few nights,” my mother said, her hand gripping Sunny’s shoulder like she was afraid she might bolt for the door. I let out a squeal of excitement because it was the middle of the school week and Mom never let me have friends stay over on a weeknight. I had flashes of late-night video game battles, popcorn, movies, and forgotten homework. But Sunny wasn’t smiling, there were no conspiring looks exchanged between us.

I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep quiet and watched Sunny’s face. She looked down at the carpet, seeing something I couldn’t see. I said her name once, softly, trying to make sure she was really there. Her shoulders started to shake, and she leaned into my mother’s chest, holding on to Miss Violet Beauregard so tightly that the dog’s normally bulging eyes looked like they might pop out of their sockets.

My mother’s arms circled around her tiny frame, squeezing her and whispering into her ear, “It’s okay, Sunny. Everything’s okay. You’re going to be fine, sweetheart.” I was watching a ghost; Sunny floated somewhere far away from the shell leaning into my mother.

That night, my mother read to us—something she hadn’t done in many years. Sunny climbed beside her on the couch, still desperately clutching Miss Violet Beauregard under her arm, and rested against my mother the way I did when I was little, so I could listen to the words echo inside her chest. My mom held her like she was holding something together, and brushed the hair out of Sunny’s eyes so she could see the words on the page.

Now I stood behind myself at the window, watching Sunny drive away. How could I have ever convinced myself she wasn’t crying? It was so obvious. Her face was as pink and swollen as it had been the night her mother left, and her cheeks were wet and tear-stained. All the while Frank looked calmly ahead, acting as if she wasn’t there at all.

As I watched the car turn down the road and out of view, the window, my younger self, and the frame of my house slowly started to fade away, replaced by a sea of blue and gray.

Wait, not yet
.

I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I wanted to hear what Sunny said to Frank, and know what she was so upset about. I wanted to go back into the kitchen and watch my parents clearing the dishes, to sit at the table and listen to the lulling sounds of my mother’s humming. I wanted to lean into my dad’s broad chest and let him fold me into one of his back-cracking bear hugs.

As the last flicker of my house faded from view, a hollow opened up inside my chest, so deep that even my father’s caulking gun couldn’t fill it.

Please, God, don’t make me go back.

But then I was back on the stairs, as if I’d never left them at all. I could feel the familiar flatness of the steps beneath my flip-flops. The gray stone zigzagged upward, and the sky was the same cloudless blue it had always been. A few snowflakes still fell from the sky, landing among the piled drifts that glittered diamond-like in the sunshine.

My father’s words mingled with Sunny’s in the back of my mind.
Lucky, lucky, lucky
, but I shook my ponytail to shake the memory of them away.

I scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at the edge of the stairs, not surprised when it didn’t stick to the invisible wall. Then I hopped onto a snowdrift, caught my balance, and hopped onto another one.

It was easier that way—easier to return to the mindless hopping and snowball throwing from earlier. Easier, at least, than thinking about everything I’d been forced to leave behind.

CHICKEN FIGHTS, ROOFTOPS, AND OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPEN AFTER PARTIES

People were already hovering outside Sunny’s house when we pulled up, a few of them holding six packs and other things they’d smuggled back from The Fields. Sunny sauntered up to the front door, hips swinging and grin wide. She loved hosting parties.

Miss Violet Beauregard was a terror as people filed into the house, running around like she had a jetpack attached to her tiny body, yipping and growling at anything that stood in her way.

“Say that again and I’ll knock your ass out,” Sunny scolded when someone called the dog a cracked-out rat. “If anyone says one more word about my dog, you can get the hell out of my house,” she shouted to the room, the dog tucked protectively under her arm. The look on her face was serious enough that no one offered a challenge.

She shuffled everyone out toward the pool, cheering words of encouragement as some of the guys stripped off their shirts. I followed slowly, listening to the boys as they cannon-balled into the water and watching the girls whisper and giggle shyly about whether or not they should get into the pool in their underwear.

“What’s the big deal?” Sunny said to them with an eye roll. “Bras and panties are basically the same thing as bikinis. Don’t be such prudes.”

Several of the guys clapped after Sunny’s speech, and Sunny used the opportunity to egg everyone on by starting a rousing chant of “Take it off! Take it off!”

The girls finally nodded and stripped down, diving into the water to a torrent of hoots and whistles. Once they were all in the water, Sunny snuck off to the bathroom to change into her bathing suit.

“You coming, Taylor?” Jenny slurred as she struggled to pull her shirt over her arm cast. She was a little unsteady on her feet, and her eyes looked glassy and out of focus.

“Are you sure you should get that thing wet?” I asked her, nodding at the cast.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Don’t be so lame. What crawled up your ass and died tonight, anyway? You’ve been in a bad mood, like, all night, and it sucks.” She slurred the word
sucks
so that it sounded more like
sucths
.

The look in her eye was reminiscent of the night she broke her arm, which also involved Sunny’s pool and too many beers. If I was a good friend, I would have tried to stop her from jumping in. But I wasn’t feeling like a very good friend that night, and the last thing she said pissed me off.

I smiled my phony smile and said, “Nothing is wrong, Jenny. And you’re right, I’m being lame. You should absolutely hop in the pool with your cast on. It’s a fantastic idea. Best one I’ve heard all night.”

She either didn’t hear the sarcasm in my voice or chose to ignore it. Instead she nodded and fumbled with her shoes, then shouted “Cannon Ball!” right before diving into the deep end, cast and all.