Indigo

Mom came into the kitchen then, and I stood up. “I’m coming,” I said quickly, before we could have this conversation with her.

“Let’s make this the last one today,” she said.

I nodded.

“I don’t even think she should do that,” Rennick added. I waited, but neither he nor Mia-Joy explained the used-up problem to her.

“Last one,” I said. I made this crazy cross-your-heart motion, and then I shoved my hands into my pockets so they wouldn’t see them shaking.

Mr. Vickers waited patiently at the small bistro table in the front, his cane leaning against the table, his dark glasses over his eyes. I asked him quietly if he would take the glasses off. He did, and then I saw the damage there. He was not only blind but truly ravaged.

“I was hit with a mortar shell in the Second World War.”

My mind flashed to the horrors of war, the things I couldn’t even really comprehend. But it was enough for the spark to ignite. It was enough to feel it come alive.

I held on to his wizened and pale hand, sandwiched it between my own. His skin was coarse and wrinkled, his hand cool and still.

The heat inside my ribs churned and rose but died. Again and again. I couldn’t get it going. I concentrated, tried to put myself into the heart of the pain of this man. I imagined living inside his loss, never seeing a Monet painting, never seeing the worry line between Rennick’s eyes, the overlap of his front teeth.

The depth of this man’s loss registered, and the spark returned, grew quickly, exponentially, and my body was racked with the force of the current moving from my hands to his.

After a long moment, I pulled my hands from his, hopeful but curious. It had moved differently. Faster, more violent.

Mr. Vickers only sighed, gave me a small smile. “It’s not what we don’t have that defines us, young lady,” he whispered, “but how we use what we do have.”

He opened his scarred eyelids for the first time, and I saw the milky and violent remains of his eyes.

He wasn’t seeing me out of those eyes. I placed my hands on his again. We both waited.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, thinking about what he lived without. What he would probably live without forever.

I reminded myself that Ruth Twopenny couldn’t fix everyone. I reminded myself that I was prepared for this outcome. I reminded myself, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t help him. He was the cricket. Too far gone.

“Thank you for trying, young lady.” His smile wasn’t sad or regretful. It was only kind.

“I’m sorry too,” I said, and when he stood up he put his glasses on. He picked up his cane, and the crowd in the Shack let out an audible sigh. At a respectful distance while it was going on, they now milled closer to me, started murmuring words of supposed comfort to me. Again with the cell phone pictures.

I stood up and turned, Rennick and Mom right behind me. I nearly smacked into them. I pushed through them and went into the kitchen, the swinging door making a big slap as I hit it with my still-vibrating palm. I walked to the sink, splashed some water on my overheated face, and then began drinking from the tap.

“You’ll get more familiar with the limitations, I’m sure,” Mom’s soothing voice said from behind me.

“Too much in one day,” Rennick added.

I didn’t know why, but I wanted to yell at them. Both of them. Everyone.

“Honey, I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe we just have to do this more in moderation.” Mom was trying to sound even-keeled. I knew this tone in her voice.

“Leave me alone,” I whispered, and plopped into Granny Lucy’s old rocker near the screen door.

Mia-Joy bustled in. “Here,” she said, handing me my cell phone.

“Why do I want this?” I asked.

“You told me to get it for you,” Mia-Joy said incredulously. She blinked at me. “Right after the blind guy.”

“No I didn’t.” I had no memory of this.

I watched Rennick and Mom give each other a look. “You asked Mia-Joy to get it just a few minutes ago,” Mom said.

I looked at them, confused. I had no idea who I wanted to call. I stared down at the blank screen so I didn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes.

“Corrine, are you okay?” Rennick asked.

I leaned my head back on the cool wood of the rocker and closed my eyes. “There are a few still waiting out there.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said. I tried to nod. But no, no, I wasn’t okay.

I got home somehow, because I woke up in my room, in the thick of the night, the crickets working their way into a frenzy, my window cracked open and that singular New Orleans breeze wafting into my room. My lacy white curtains responded to the breeze. And I heard their voices downstairs, the singular timbre of strained, angry voices trying to stay under the radar.

When I reached the kitchen, I saw Mom and Dad, still fully clothed, an empty pot of coffee between them, Dad’s favorite crackers and a tin of sardines smelling up the whole kitchen. Only Dad ate these things, and only when he was stressed. I could remember the funny way Mom used to tease him about it, before Sophie died, before we knew what real stress was, when he would have a big project on deadline. “Paul, you need me to pick you up some sardines?” she’d joke in that cutesy way she had with him when he was spending too much time in his home office on a Saturday, or if he’d been glued to his cell phone. I’d roll my eyes at Sophie, and Dad would answer, “Only if the girls will eat ’em with me.”

There were no cutesy looks, no jokes when I sat down at the table with them now. I tried not to wince as the muscles in my rib cage spasmed.

Dad spoke first. “We have to control this, babe.”

Mom’s eyes and nose were raw and red from crying. “I think it’s already beyond that, honey. I think we just go back to Chicago for a while. Let this cool off. Return when people have forgotten.”

“No!” I objected.

“Just hear us out,” Dad countered. “Not leaving forever. Just a break from the craziness. Then we can come back, if we choose, and then you can do this … healing quietly. It is imperative that we work harder to keep it quiet.”

“Why?” I said, and I hadn’t meant to sound so snarky, but there it was.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” Mom said.

“Right,” I snapped. “I want to help people. Of course that’s not thinking clearly.”

Mom brought her fist down on the table hard. I don’t know who jumped more, me or my father. But she pointed at me, and she hissed, “Rennick told us both what happened to his mother, what happened to this Dell he knew. What do you have to say about that, Corrine Marie?” My eyes dropped to the table. They had me there. “What are you doing to prevent that? Can’t we go in the shallow end, Corrine? Or do we have to just jump right in, let this thing swallow you whole? I’m not going to let that happen.”

I answered with silence, and Dad reached over and put his hand on Mom’s arm. She was crying now, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She whispered, “Not you too, Corrine. I can’t lose you too.”

“Corrine, your mother and I are going to think this over. And you have a right to know that. But if we decide it’s best to leave, we’re all leaving.”

I thought of Mia-Joy, of Mrs. Rawlings, but mostly of Rennick. I didn’t want to leave. Because of them. But it was more than that. I didn’t want to go back to a life of silence and inaction. A life of all the things that could’ve been for Sophie. I needed a different focus, and the touch gave me that. I didn’t know exactly how these things were so tightly and intricately wound up inside of me, but I knew, I knew, that if we went back to Chicago, I would suffer, my power would suffer.

I quietly pushed my chair back and worked my way up to my room. What in the world could I do?

I lay awake on my bed, feeling too warm, relishing the open-window breeze, thinking about my options. I was nearly eighteen. I would only have to be in Chicago for a year. Even if they never decided to come back, I could come back.