“Lately I feel like there is something else I’m supposed to be doing,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“I feel like I’ve closed myself inside a little golden birdcage, and I’ve just been waiting for the door to be left open. Now I think it is. I don’t really know if these wings work, but what’s the point in having them if I don’t give them a try?”
“Is that why you told Ray?” I ask.
“He needs to try, too,” she says. “It’s time for all of us to fly.”
Maybe not today, but one day, I will fly. Lola was six years old when she said that, running as fast as she could across the yard and leaping over the ditch, hoping to catch air and keep going. We were young, and the world had been made just for us.
I’ve stopped trying to fly. I forgot I had wings.
17
I meet Ray for lunch at the pizza place around the corner from his work. It feels so normal to sit with my brother and share a large spinach-and-Italian-sausage pie. I think about that image of us hacking through the jungle of the path less traveled. I fear rising up from a good dream and thinking that things are right with the world only to have wakefulness dissolve into reality.
I know he knows that Lola knows, but he hasn’t said anything and I don’t know why. I can’t help myself. I blurt it out. “Ray, Lola told me.”
“Told you what?” he asks, taking a sip of soda.
I cock my head at him.
“Oh,” he says. “Can you believe it? Did you know she knew? You could have told me.”
“No, I couldn’t have,” I say. “But I didn’t know.”
Not really.
I shrug my shoulders. I think we all wanted so badly for the white picket fence dream to be real, that even as the veil was lifting, we still played along. Pay no attention the man behind the curtain. We were all just as guilty as Mom, trying to pretend a better life.
“There were times she said things back then,” I say. “You must have had an idea, too.”
He shrugs his shoulders back at me. This means yes. But back then, the fear of that knowledge was scary enough to shut Ray up.
“When did she tell you?” I ask.
“At the cemetery. The day Mom buried Dad’s ashes.”
The waiter comes by and refills our glasses. I was so wrapped up in my own torture, I hadn’t even seen Lola talking to Ray. I missed something huge enough to shake the whole world.
“When did she tell you she told me?” Ray asked.
“Yesterday. I went over to her house to help her clean up.”
“Was what’s-his-name there?”
“Chris,” I say. “Yes.”
“That’s good.” Ray nods.
I want to talk more about it, but I know this is already more than Ray can stand. Ray and I finish our lunch, and he calls for the check.
“On me,” he says. “No argument.”
“I fear the unemployment line is holding a space for me,” I say. “So I’ll take you up on that.”
Ray pays, and we head outside.
“I’m surprised you’re still here after she told you,” I say. “I would have thought that news would send you into outer space.”
“It did,” Ray says. He stops right in the middle of the sidewalk, and people part around us like water running past rocks.
“Do you wish you’d known?” I ask. “Back then? Do you think it would have made things better or worse?”
“Do you mean, do I think I’d have messed up my life this bad if I’d known she knew?”
“Yes.”
“I think it would have been worse. I don’t think I could have handled it back then.”
“Now?”
“Now, there’s Michael,” he says. “And you guys. And Dad is gone, and it’s time for old Ray to grow up. If it’s not too late.”
“I don’t think it is,” I say. “I don’t think it ever is.”
Ray starts walking, and I follow. We don’t say anything for a while and then he stops again. The people behind us have to short step around us to keep from colliding. Ray grabs hold of my arm.
“I think it might be, though,” he says, his voice soft and brittle. “Too late. Nicole is used to living without me. She doesn’t need me. And maybe Michael doesn’t either. Lola thinks I’ll just leave again, and she might be right. I know that’s why she won’t come around. No one needs me anymore.”
“Sure they do,” I say. I do. “You’re hurting my arm, by the way.”
Ray turns me loose. “I want to do this the right way, but I don’t think I can. I’m not sure she’s going to let me in. I can’t read her. She keeps me at arm’s length, and I’m going to screw it all up. I just know it.”
I don’t know if he’s talking about Lola or Nicole, and I guess it’s the same either way.
“Where is this all coming from?” I ask, guessing that Ray must still be in outer space.
“I feel desperate,” he says, his eyes darting around. “Like I’m about to do something stupid. I know I shouldn’t. But I’ll probably do it anyway.”
“You’re scaring me a little,” I say. “A lot. Are you drunk?”
“I’m sorry, Sis.” He starts walking away from me so fast that I have to run to keep up.
“Ray,” I call after him.
He doesn’t slow down even after I catch up with him. He just keeps talking like he knows I’m there.
“I just want it all so bad, but I didn’t put in the time—not in the right places, anyway—and it’s not mine to have. It’s just not mine.”
We get to his office, and he leaves without saying good-bye. He opens the glass doors and disappears from view behind them. I stand on the street, shouting his name, but he doesn’t come back out.
Later that day at work, I find out that I’ve joined Ray in his boat called Desperation setting sail on the high seas of Nowhere to Go from Here.
“We’ve been absorbed,” my boss says
