Where You End (11 page)

I haven't seen her laugh like this since we missed the plane to my Opa's funeral. She has a tendency to laugh through disasters. Dad strokes his neck, where a strange rash seems to have sprouted.

“I can'
t stop,” she says with tears in her eyes. “Sorry, I'm just tired. I didn't get much sleep last night.”

Good thing I didn't go out last night. Since I took the first picture for Eva, I've been sleeping through the night like a baby who no longer needs her mother. Dad rubs his palms all over his face and then glares at Mom, who shrugs and surrenders.

“It's okay,”
Ms. K offers, slightly cold. “There's a lot of tension in this room. Laughter is a way to—”

“Are the pictures a kind of therapy or something?” Dad interrupts.

Mom, who had managed to be quiet for a minute, now loses it again.

Dad gives her a look and forges on. “Sarah, I'm trying to figure out what the pictures might do for Miriam. You said any pictures she wants, right?”

Mom excuses herself to go the bathroom, and I swear I hear her mumbling “pictures, pictures” on her way out the door. Poor Ms. K. I feel sorry for her and her tiny ears.

“I'm sorry, I don't understand,” Dad continues. “I'
m not an expert, but you're telling me Miriam has skipped school, and she can't tell us why, and we're not sure why we're here, but what we are going to do about it is
take some pictures
? You know she started taking pictures when she was three years old, right? It's second nature for Miriam. It's nothing. It's easy.”

“That's what
I'
m
going to do about it,” Ms. K says, cool as a fucking cucumber, making her comeback. “Would you like to talk about what
you're
going to do?”

Dad relaxes in a manner that suggests not defeat but interest. His toes squeak inside the tight leather of his good shoes. Amazingly, he has no comments to make.

“Have you taken any pictures yet?” Ms. K asks, looking at me.

Dad turns toward me. I'm caught off guard.

“Yes. I have.”

“Good, I guess. Good,” he says.

“
Do you have anything you want to say, Miriam?” Ms. K asks.

“I'm sorry?” I say.

“I think your parents want to make sure you'll be honest with them, and that you'll come to school, so we can all help you through this.”

“Two pictures,” I say. “I already took two.”

“Good,” Ms. K says.

Dad sighs, just loud enough to let me know he's on to me, that he doesn't fully buy it.

“I'm taking you to school in the morning, Miriam.”

“Dad, you don't have to … ”

“I am. For a little while. And I'd like for you to meet with Ms. Kiper again.”

Ms. K nods in approval. The mother may be nuts, but at least the father is cooperating. I nod.

“We'
ll all meet again, after she hands in her pictures,” Ms. K tries to reassures us. Dad looks at the door, hoping Mom will walk in with an apologetic apple crumble. No sign.

“Sure. Thank you for your time and your help. Sarah and I will be in touch.”

They shake hands. I smile at Ms. K. We walk out to find Mom cornered by Mr. Green, the Photo teacher. In a moment of great tenderness and (let's face it) pity, my father stuffs the car keys in the pocket of my jacket and nudges me toward the exit. I'm so relieved to escape, I run down the hall on my tiptoes so they won't notice me. I'm glad Mom is there to distract him. The Green has always had a bit of a photo crush on her.

eighteen

what do u love?

nineteen

The car smells like wet paper cups. I switch the radio on. It's playing a sleepy song Elliot might have liked. The voice is high but not whiny, and there's a super synthesized choir that makes it all sound like it's lifting, a little like that night at the show. I watch my parents walk back to the car. Mom motions for Dad to drive.

“I have to go back to work for a while. Do you want to get some food before we go home?” he says.

“I can make pasta … ” she says.

“I thought maybe it would be easier to get some food.”

“Whatever you want.”

No word on Mr. Green or the giggling fit in Ms. K's room. No word on the skipping.

“What do you want to eat, Miriam?” Mom asks.

“Whatever.”

She sighs.

“Look, I shouldn't have laughed like that, right in front of your teacher.”

“Not my teacher … ”

“Fine. Your counselor, Ms. K. I don't know what happened. It was so tense in there, and you weren't talking, and Dad was sweating like crazy, and when she told us about the assignment, it all seemed so … ”

“Ridiculous?” I offer.

“Absurd.”

My chest tightens at how appropriate the word is, for everything from the sculpture to Eva's photo request to the meetings with Ms. K. We just spent half an hour with a woman who is
trained
to rescue people with real problems, and all we did was fidget about missing class. Then we scheduled another meeting.

At the next intersection, a crossing guard stops us with her palm and keeps her hand there while she greets the kids and parents by their names, telling them she'll see them tomorrow, inquiring after their collapsing art projects, praising their choice of glittery shoes. The spires of the Cathedral show themselves behind the hilltop. I remember the organ.

“Actually,” I say, with unexpected purpose, “could you drop me off at the library on Wisconsin? I want to check out some books for another project.”

My parents look at each other for consensus, which I have always found comforting. Mom's hair spills through the headrest as she looks over to give me the green light.

“Be home for dinner, all right?” she says.

“No more lies, Miriam,” Dad adds. “No more skipping class.”

I nod. “Thank you, guys. Thanks for coming today.”

They beam at my nugget of appreciation, and I feel dirty but relieved.
Sure, bean. No problem, love. Any time. Of course. We're here for you. We'll get through this. This is good, it's all right. No big deal.
And on and on until a delivery truck honks at us and I'm pushing the heavy doors into the land of carpet and germs and ideas protected by shiny, plastic coats.

REAL MEN READ, a poster behind the library desk announces. Except it's all women peering at me from behind their glasses, taking a pause from inputting the latest bar code, casting a side-glance from behind their carts. I remember that librarians don't speak unless spoken to.

“Excuse me,” I say, “where's the art section?”

“Past the computers, in the back left corner.”

I smile and head to the art section, where I drop my bag next to a dusty armchair.

I go for the photo books first and end up with a pile of Adam's favorites—Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, good old HCB. I like their portraits best. They're almost perfect. You can see the fear in people's eyes, and the thrill. Everybody likes to be looked at, but most people don't really like to be seen. These guys can really show you a person.

I think of Eva's face and try hard to keep the image. It's hard to remember a face, even when you sit down and concentrate. You can remember a scar, or a mole. But the rest is just outlines, or a certain look they gave you. Like Elliot, for example. I see him around sometimes, but I'm losing his face in my memory. I can remember the sculpture better than I can remember his face up close.

I wonder if I've really lost him, if he was something I let go of while swimming in the ocean the day of the fight, and now I can never get him back, because the ocean is way too big and I would not know where to start. I think of Eva and how sure she sounded when she said things never stay the same. How could that be Elliot I saw on the carousel—when I'm not even allowed to go in there, stop the horses, yank him off and away from another girl? He is not mine, but does that mean he's gone? Can someone be right in front of you and just be gone?

I put the books back on the shelf and work my way down the alphabet, tracing the spines with my fingers. There are at least ten books about Picasso—the sculptures, the paintings, the biographies. I pick a book of portraits. If only I could take pictures that looked like this. Half profile, half frontal, orange and purple faces, faces with one eye open and the other shut. Photography is so limited, so rigid. Painters are the real face-makers. I would never forget a face that looked like this.

I want to study the book a little longer, but they're going to close soon. At the desk, the lady tells me I need proof of residency to get a library card, and I nearly break into a sob. I just want to take the book home.

I show her my bus card, my pool card, my school ID, my expired driver's permit. I recite my address and phone number at impressive speeds. When she starts to bite her lip and lower her eyes, I name every stop on the red Metro line from Bethesda to Silver Spring.

“My mom used to take me to the organ rehearsals at the Cathedral, down the street.”

She smiles, probably at my stubbornness, and, with the look of a girl who's been flirted with, she hands me a card.

“Enjoy your book,” she says.

This sweater weather cleans everything up, and I'm almost convinced I can handle whatever is coming, that I'm strong enough. I take out my camera, but instead of taking a picture, I look at the altar photo again. I'm not erasing it. Eva doesn't have to know. The book is heavy and awkward in my tote, but the day is almost done. The meeting with Ms. K is over. At least I have one less lie to keep track of.

Walking home, I stop at a light next to a woman with a giant belly. Only one of her coat buttons is fastened, and she is patting her bump gently. We walk across the street together, and I hang back so it won't be awkward. She's going the same way I'm going. She's probably coming home from work, and I imagine her husband kissing her on the cheek, bringing her a glass of water, maybe drawing circles around their future baby.

As she turns the corner, presumably onto her street, I remember my period hasn't come, but I have no husband. Elliot will not teach this baby about good music. Elliot will not fall asleep with this baby on his chest.

My hands reach for my belly before I can stop them, feeling for a bump. There's nothing but the usual, reasonable bit of chub. It'
s still soft. Nobody would guess anything was preparing to grow in there. The more I indulge, the more I
realize that I've crossed a line—or better, a wall—in my mind, and it becomes a little more impossible to return to denial.

I wish my most persistent thoughts could be like the foamy fat floating in one of Mom's long-simmering soups, that I could skim them off with a shallow wooden spoon and enjoy my dinner like nothing gross was ever there, only what's good for me. When I get home, I brush my shoes on the welcome mat before going inside, even if they're clean, even if I know I'll take them off as soon as I walk in. When the door shuts behind me, she's there, in her jeans, my Sarah, my mother. Her hands are orange and sticky.

“I'm carving,” she says.

“For Halloween,” I say.

“Yup,” she says, and her face softens into a question I can't answer yet.

I sit next to her in the kitchen and watch her make the eyes first, then the crooked teeth and finally scraping it all clean. When she's done, she sets it on our bench, on top of an old magazine.

At dinner, we make fun of her outburst in Ms. K's office, and Dad asks if he can see the two pictures I was talking about. Mom smirks and explains my rules to him, and he looks as if he understands. After washing the dishes, my mom lays out the newspaper and takes out the knife. It's the first time in months I feel like the daughter they might have been missing.

Dad gives me a kiss on top of my head before going to bed and asks if I want to read
Captains Courageous
, the book he used to read to me as a kid. I can't tell if it's a joke, but he waves me off playfully before I get the chance to ask, a nostalgic look in his eyes. I tell him he'll have to find it first, and he says maybe he will.

Upstairs, in my bed, I try to remember what the walls used to look like before I took everything down. Nothing ever stays the same. The book of Neruda poems is on the floor where I left it. I read the last one: “The Song of Despair.”

“You swallowed everything, like distance. / Like the sea, like time.”

I open the window and the air rushes in to bite me.

twenty

PABLO.

twenty-one

I wake up from the smell at first. Then I feel the warmth between my legs, and that's when I see the stain on my bed. I stumble to the bathroom, take everything off, and throw my underwear in the trash. The blood is dark red, darker than I remembered it. I look through the cabinets for a tampon and don't even bother to use soap when I rinse my hands. There it is, I think in the mirror. No baby.

I thought what I would feel was huge, unmistakable relief. It's different though. I'm embarrassed to say it feels lonely, and hard. No baby. No husband. No heroic purpose in life. It's just me, the way I wasn't before. On the way back up from the dryer, with a new pair of underwear and sweats on, I see the pumpkin is now on our porch.

I find a fresh tea light in the junk drawer and light it with the Shabbat matches. I open the door slowly, so I won't wake anybody up. I usually leave from the garage for my night prowls, and opening the front door seems more dangerous. I say a silent blessing in my head for the dirty underwear, for myself, for my Mom who is upstairs worrying about things she can't imagine. I lift the pumpkin lid and place the flame in there. It's cold on the porch, in the dark, four days before Halloween. I peer through the jack-o'-lantern'
s eyes to watch the orange shadows. It's spooky and soothing at the same time. I remember the way this felt when I was a kid, like some kind of magic was being released, the kind that would scare children on any other day.

Halloween was incredible. It meant I could hold my dad's hand in the dark and let it go at every house, running toward the candy as they watched and waited for me to come back. I could be an insect, a planet, a warty witch. It meant we could play with death a little, take charge of our greatest fears as we walked around with fake guts and fake blood and fake teeth and fake swords. We could be bad guys without feeling guilty or scared. All kinds of exiled creatures could come out and play. My own mommy could carve mean eyes with a butcher knife and all the kids would squeal in delight.

Before getting back into bed, I check my phone and see Eva's response again.

PABLO.

That's what she loves. Not poetry, not music, not even her mother. Pablo. She sounded desperate on the phone this morning. I start to think up all kinds of horrors. Why does she want to see the boy so badly? What's making her so afraid? Why wouldn't she just stay with him? I consider calling the police, but that would be impossible. I don't even know her last name, and I couldn't really explain why or how I know her aunt's address. Anyway, the police don't
come because you're imagining things, and if Eva's family hasn't found her yet, they must trust her, or not care. Maybe they kicked her out themselves.

I imagine what Pablo might look like, whether his hair is black like Eva's, if he speaks Spanish or English or both, like the poems Neruda wrote. I think of that last poem I read:

“Oh the mad coupling of hope and force / in which we merged and despaired.”

Hope and force, hope and fear, hope and loss—hope being the superhero, the tea light in the orange pumpkin. With hope and force, I take twenty dollars out of our money box and call for a cab to come pick me up a block from here. On the way out, I pick up the jack-o'-lantern. The cab driver is listening to the radio in a foreign language, oblivious to my age, my pajamas, my pumpkin cargo. We ride across the city and it only takes ten minutes to get to Eva's house.

He waits inside the car as I step out quickly and put the jack-o'-lantern on top of their porch steps, the tea light still inside. Maybe one day I'll have a kid who will look through the carved eyes, but not now, and it won't be Elliot's. This one's for Pablo. Here it is, little guy: the world is a scary wonder.

In the car, the driver is arguing on the phone, so he doesn't mind when I ask if he can wait a second before going back home and whether it would be all right to roll down my window. He just nods. It'
s cold. I pull out Bogart, aim from inside the car, and take a picture of my pumpkin on Pablo's steps.