I can’t believe that all this time I haven’t noticed that photo. It sits right beside that vase with my rings in it and I’ve never looked at it. I’m always focused on the wrong thing.
“It must be hard to watch him worsen,” I say, speaking the words I’m sure Oliver wants to say but can’t.
“It’s not advisable to get attached.”
“It never is,” I say. “It’s likely to hurt in the end.”
Oliver looks over at me and attempts to smile, but his eyes are glazed with tears. “It’s worth the risk, though, isn’t it?” he says, his fingers resting on whatever notes come next.
“Yes,” I say.
He looks back to the keys and resumes playing. I see his mouth tighten and his lips press and release against the emotion they try to conceal. One tear drops suddenly from his eyes onto his hand as it moves along the keys. I lift that hand from the midst of its music and kiss the salty spot on his skin.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “I think I’m going to head to bed. Stay?”
“I better go,” I say, although I don’t want to.
I draw him up from the piano and pull him into an embrace that he lingers in.
“Nina,” he says, his breath tangling up in my hair. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”
“Later,” I say. “Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I pull away from him, and he sighs.
“You’re welcome to stay,” he says. “Finish your book. I’m going to crash—I’m suddenly really exhausted.”
He kisses my forehead, says good night, and disappears down the hallway.
I look again at the photo of Oliver and Cricket. I pick up the vase that holds my wedding rings. I shake them around and set the vase back down. I slip outside and pull the door closed behind me.
12
I skip out of work after a meeting that includes the term “restructuring” a few too many times, and I find myself at Lola’s front door. I seem determined to avoid all aspects of reality and Lola’s house, filled with art and music, is the best place I can think of to hide from Jack, Oliver—everything.
The door, as usual, is open and I let myself in. I hear music from her studio in the sunroom at the end of the hall. Her own artwork and that of other locals whom she admires fills the walls. Vases of fresh flowers—roses and daisies from her yard—brighten the kitchen counter.
She loves flowers. She says that they remind you on their own if they need something so she doesn’t have to remember to water or weed. It’s evident and that appeals to a person like her.
She’s listening to a recording of a soft and somewhat sullen-sounding young man playing the guitar and singing. I don’t recognize it, but something about the slow cadence of his voice makes me think of Oliver. I close my eyes and see his hair—the color of wet sand, thick and perpetually mussed up. I see his lashes, long and dark, blinking closed over that indiscernible blue-green of his eyes. I shake him from my vision and search out Lola.
I love to watch her when she doesn’t know I’m there. I did it even when we were kids. She has always fascinated me. I envied, and still do, the life she created around herself—the one no one else could see. I used to watch her from the doorway to our room, careful not to breathe too loudly, not to creak the floor and disrupt the magic. She would sit by the window and talk to herself—or to someone else, maybe, I don’t know. Sometimes she would play each side of a two-person game, letting the invisible her win most of the time.
What moved me the most was that after the accident, she still played that way. At school, in the neighborhood, she kept quiet so no one would know if she slurred a word or said something that didn’t make sense. She tried so hard to hide the braces on her legs, to walk slowly so she wouldn’t need to limp, but inside her room, she would take off the leg warmers, sit in the sun, and let the light gleam off the metal casings on her ankles. When she talked, she seemed sometimes to revere the braces as a friend. I wanted to know what it was inside her that made those polar opposites possible.
I stand in her kitchen for a minute and read her day-list on the fridge.
Today is Tuesday
Put out the trash tonight
Use oven mitt—always
I look away from it. I’m used to Lola and the way her mind works now—and the way it doesn’t. She has a complex system that allows her to function in the world. She’s got it under control—most of the time.
But the list hurts. At the bottom of it, after all the other reminders that I don’t let myself read, she’s written in one more.
You just drank that tea that you said you wouldn’t get again. Stop getting it. You don’t like it!
Under a magnet shaped like a tiny spoon is a picture of Chris on a mailer for the insurance company. In what must be his handwriting is a speech bubble drawn over his head. It reads “This is a good guy. You like him. A lot.”
I chuckle.
Now, slipping down her hallway, I hear her humming. Today she’s coloring. That’s what she calls it when the subject is so vague it’s all just color and whim. I watch her a while before I let her know I’m there. The room glows like light from beneath the clouds—beams visible and purposeful.
“I like it,” I say and slip into view.
“I’m not sure,” she says, not startled at all by my voice. I wonder if she’s always known I was there all these years. “I’m growing a bit tired of what I usually do. I want to do something else. I’m just not sure what.”
I stand beside her and look at the painting. “I know
