“Yeah,” I say. “This week she’s picking Jack. Getting used to living away from me.”
“She’s going to live with Jack?”
“Of course not,” I say, unsure. “That’s why she went to Lola’s house.”
“I don’t follow,” Mom says.
I change the subject for real and ask Mom about the dreaded details of Dad’s funeral. Mom talks for a few minutes about florists and caterers and aunts and uncles I don’t really recall. If I didn’t know better, she could be talking about a wedding or perhaps a baby shower.
“See you Thursday, Mom,” I say like Thursday isn’t Dad’s funeral.
“Good night, sweetie,” Mom says, like it is.
2
In the morning, I pick up my cell phone to check on Cassie, but Lola has already left me a message that Cassie decided to go to school today and that she’ll see me at home later. Even though Cassie and I being in the house together creates a fog of tension so thick you can see it, I’d rather have her home than somewhere else.
I think about calling her father, but I have more pressing issues to attend to. The thought of going to the nursing home after work today to sign the final papers is so terribly depressing I’m not sure I can do it. The thought of finishing the conversation Jack and I were having about sorting out the custody arrangements when last we spoke is even more so.
I shake off the owl wings from last night and go into the bathroom to get dressed. That possum was right. The lighting in here is horrible. Not inadequate, mind you, just unflattering. No one should see themselves this clearly. I argh at myself as I get dressed.
I haven’t told everyone at work about Dad. Just those people who know me well enough to see through my “everything is fine” façade. I took off Thursday and Friday for family business, but didn’t say what the business was. Things are touchy at best, and I don’t want to be that emotional, expendable employee when the cuts come—if I can help it. I may not be getting more photography work, but if I can prove myself to be an asset in other ways, perhaps they can keep me on for as long as possible. There will still be paperwork and follow-ups and other tasks I can do. It’s not what I want to do, but it’s something. Maybe everything won’t fall apart. Maybe. I’m not good at the “glass is half full” thing. Maybe I just need a smaller glass.
My phone vibrates, and the screen lights up with a picture of Lola making a sarcastic fish face. My heart skips a bit whenever Lola calls. I slip out of the meeting I’m in, grateful that the lights are off for a presentation, but I feel my boss’s eyes on me. She and I have known each other since we were kids, but that will only help me for so long.
I step into the hallway and answer the call. “Lola,” I start, but she cuts me off.
“I need help,” she says, and her voice is hushed but panicked.
“What’s going on?” I ask even as I’m rushing to my office for my purse, set to ditch the meeting and get to my sister at any cost.
This has happened before. She’ll be out at the grocery and forget how to get home. Or at a gallery showing and she’ll lose sense of the people around her and who she’s spoken to about what, or one of a dozen other scenarios that spell confusion and possible disaster.
I grab my bag and mime to someone else’s assistant that I have to leave.
“I can’t believe this,” Lola is saying in a loud whisper.
I’m running down five flights of steps—no time to wait for the elevator.
“Stay on the line,” I shout over the clang of my shoes on the metal steps. I get to the front door and whirl out onto the downtown street, trying to remember where I parked.
“Where are you?” I ask, spotting my car and sprinting for it.
“In the living room,” she says.
I stop short and someone bumps into me from behind.
“At your house?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, dumbfounded by my question.
I exhale hard, embarrassed at my overreaction, but relieved that she’s not calling from three states over having forgotten where she was going or why she was going there. I want to laugh and then strangle her for having that edge in her voice that made me think she was lost in the wilderness or being held at gunpoint.
“I’ll be right there,” I say to her nonetheless.
◆ ◆ ◆
Lola lives in a bungalow in the artist district a handful of blocks from where I work. Though my office is the business of art, her house is art itself. When I visit her, I feel like I’m walking into possibility, striding alongside what could be. I don’t have a clue what to do with it though.
She answers the door before I knock and puts her finger to her lips to tell me to be quiet. She motions me past a stack of canvases resting on the floor in the tiny foyer and into the living room where she picks up the remote. Her house smells like paint and coffee and flowers. She presses a button and a commercial that she’s TiVoed comes on. The volume is low, but I know it well. Everyone does. A cute, but goofy man wearing taped-up, science-geek glasses and pants that look like a raccoon ate holes in the knees, scratches under his arms and sings while he ambles up the perfectly manicured, neighborhood street toward the scene of a fender bender.
Your house is trashed, you’ve got a rash. Your car is broke, and it’s no joke. Call on us so there’s no fuss . . .
I make a face at her. She punches me in the arm and clicks off the television.
“You knew about this?” she asks.
“He makes you happy,” I say.
My sister is dating a very
