And Misty says, “Tabbi?”
This morning, Tabbi pinned a big cluster brooch of green and red glass to her mother’s smock. Then Tabbi stood still as Misty put the shimmering necklace of fat pink rhinestones around her daughter’s neck. A statue. In the sunlight from the window, they sparkled bright as forget-me-nots and all the other flowers Tabbi has missed this summer. Then Tabbi taped her mother’s eyes shut. That was the last time Misty saw her.
Again, Misty says, “Tabbi honey?”
And there’s no sound, nothing. Just the hiss and burst of each wave on the beach. With her fingers spread, Misty reaches out and feels the air around her. For the first time in days, she’s been left alone.
The two strips of masking tape, they each start at her hairline and run down across her eyes to curve under her jaw. With the thumb and forefinger of each hand, Misty pinches the tape at the top and pulls each strip off, slow, until they both peel away. Her eyes flutter open. The sunlight is too bright for her to focus. The picture on the easel is blurred for a minute while her eyes adjust.
The pencil lines come into focus, black against the white paper.
It’s a drawing of the ocean, just offshore from the beach. Something floating. A person floating facedown in the water, a young girl with her long black hair spread out around her on the water.
Her father’s black hair.
Your black hair.
Everything is a self-portrait.
Everything is a diary.
Outside the window, down on the beach, a mob of people wait at the edge of the water. Two people wade toward shore, carrying something between them. Something shiny flashes bright pink in the sunlight.
A rhinestone. A necklace. It’s Tabbi they have by the ankles and under the arms, her hair hanging straight and wet into the waves that hiss and burst on the beach.
The crowd steps back.
And loud footsteps come down the hallway outside the bedroom door. A voice in the hallway says, “I have it ready.”
Two people carry Tabbi up the beach toward the hotel porch.
The lock on the bedroom door, it goes click, and the door swings open, and Grace is there with Dr. Touchet. Flashing bright in his hand is a dripping hypodermic needle.
And Misty tries to stand, her leg cast dragging behind her. Her ball and chain.
The doctor rushes forward.
And Misty says, “It’s Tabbi. Something’s wrong.” Misty says, “On the beach. I’ve got to get down there.”
The cast tips and its weight pulls her to the floor. The easel crashing over beside her, the glass jar of murky rinse water, it’s broken all around them. Grace comes to kneel, to take her arm. The catheter’s pulled out of the bag and you can smell her piss leaking out on the rug. Grace is rolling up the sleeve on her smock.
Your old blue work shirt. Stiff with dried paint.
“You can’t go down there in this state,” the doctor says. He’s holding the syringe and taps the air bubbles to the top, saying, “Really, Misty, there’s nothing you can do.”
Grace forces Misty’s arm straight out, and the doctor drives in the needle.
Can you feel this?
Grace holds her by both arms, pinning her down. The brooch of fake rubies has come open and the pin is sunk into Misty’s breast, her blood red on the wet rubies. The broken jar. Grace and the doctor holding her to the rug, her piss spreads under them. It wicks up the blue shirt and stings her skin where the pin is stuck in.
Grace, half on top of her, Grace says, “Misty wants to go downstairs now.” Grace isn’t crying.
Her own voice deep with slow-motion effort, Misty says, “How the fuck do you know what I want?”
And Grace says, “It’s in your diary.”
The needle pulls out of her arm and Misty feels someone rubbing the skin around the shot. The cold feel of alcohol. Hands come under her arms and pull her until she’s sitting upright.
Grace’s face, her levator labii superioris muscle, the sneer muscle, pulls her face in tight around her nose, and she says, “It’s blood. Oh, and urine, all over her. We can’t take her downstairs like this. Not in front of everyone.”
The stink on Misty, it’s the smell of the old Buick’s front seat. The stink of your piss.
Someone’s stripping the shirt off her, wiping her skin with paper towels. From across the room, the doctor’s voice says, “This is excellent work. Very impressive.” He’s leafing through her stack of finished drawings and paintings.
“Of course they’re good,” Grace says. “Just don’t get them out of order. They’re all numbered.”
Just for the record, no one mentions Tabbi.
They’re tucking her arms into a clean shirt. Grace pulls a brush through her hair.
The drawing on the easel, the girl drowned in the ocean, it’s fallen onto the floor and blood and piss is soaked through it from underneath. It’s ruined. The image gone.
Misty can’t make a fist. Her eyes keep falling shut. The wet slip of drool slides out the corner of her mouth, and the stab in her breast fades away.
Grace and the doctor, they heave her onto her feet. Outside in the hallway, more people wait. More arms come around her from both sides, and they’re flying her down the stairs in slow motion. They’re flying past the sad faces that watch from every landing. Paulette and Raymon and someone else, Peter’s blond friend from college. Will Tupper. His earlobe still in two sharp points. The whole Waytansea Island wax museum.
It’s all so quiet, except her cast drags, thudding against every step.
A crowd of people fill the lobby’s gloomy forest of polished trees and mossy carpet, but they fall back as she’s carried toward the dining room. Here’s all the old island families, the Burtons and Hylands and Petersens and Perrys. There’s not a summer face among them.
Then the doors to the Wood and Gold Room swing open.
On table six, a four-top near the windows, there’s something covered with a blanket. The profile of a little face, a little girl’s flat chest. And Grace’s voice says, “Hurry while she’s still conscious. Let her see. Lift the blanket.”
An unveiling. A curtain going up.
And behind Misty, all her neighbors crowd around to watch.
IN ART SCHOOL, Peter once asked Misty to name a color. Any color.
He told her to shut her eyes and hold still. You could feel him step up, close. The heat of him. You could smell his unraveling sweater, the way his skin had the bitter smell of semisweet baker’s chocolate. His own self- portrait. His hands pinched the fabric of her shirt and a cold pin scratched across her skin underneath. He said, “Don’t move or I’ll stick you by accident.”
And Misty held her breath.
Can you feel this?
Every time they met, Peter would give her another piece of his junk jewelry. Brooches, bracelets, rings, and necklaces.
Her eyes closed, waiting. Misty said, “Gold. The color, gold.”
His fingers working the pin through the fabric, Peter said, “Now tell me three words that describe gold.”
This was an old form of psychoanalysis, he told her. Invented by Carl Jung. It was based on universal archetypes. A kind of insightful party game. Carl Jung. Archetypes. The vast common subconscious of all humanity. Jains and yogis and ascetics, this was the culture Peter grew up with on Waytansea Island.
Her eyes closed, Misty said, “Shiny. Rich. Soft.” Her three words that described gold.
Peter’s fingers clicked the brooch’s tiny clasp shut, and his voice said, “Good.”
In that previous life, in art school, Peter told her to name an animal. Any animal.
Just for the record, the brooch was a gilded turtle with a big, cracked green gem for a shell. The head and
