She nods sadly. “Then you must be Tyson. Well, Tyson, I don’t know why you’re here, but it might be better if you left. Things might have changed, but it’s nowhere near where it should be. She’s never going to be what you need.” She says this with such a familiar air of forced adulthood that I’m taken aback. She’s essentially me.
“Izzie?” I ask her, dazed.
And she smiles, and gone is the cynical edge, the sarcastic lilt. Bear smiles the same way. So do I. As does our mother. It’s uncanny.
Isabelle McKenna, my little sister, says, “I used to wonder if you’d ever come for me. Now I just wonder why you came at all.”
MY HEART hurts a little when we walk inside and she immediately starts picking up the clutter around the house, obviously embarrassed by it. She mutters to herself that she most certainly wasn’t expecting guests as she empties an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and ash. Some have lipstick on the filter, dried and flaking. The house smells stale, and, frowning, she opens a window.
“It’s not usually like this,” she says, but she won’t look at me. “I’ve just been busy with Rosalia funebris and haven’t had time to clean up.” She rushes around the living room, straightening out pillows and magazines. Wiping crumbs off the chipped coffee table. A layer of dust coats the top of the TV. A ceiling fan squeaks overhead.
“It’s okay,” I tell her as gently as I can. “Stuff like this doesn’t bother me.”
“Why not?” she asks. “It should. It’s a breeding ground for bacteria. Who knows how many strains of Escherichia coli are growing in here?”
“Probably at least six or seven,” I say.
She glances at me, eyes narrowed. “Are you making fun of me?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good,” she says. She picks up a trio of coffee mugs and heads for the kitchen on the other side of the living room. “I’d hate to have to kick your ass.” She disappears through the doorway.
I walk around the
room slowly, following her to the kitchen. There are celebrity magazines in piles on the floor near the couch. They look old and worn, and I can see the mailing label is made out to a hair salon. There are photos on a shoddy bookshelf, their frames plastic and cheap.
Here is Izzie, a toddler smiling with a princess’s tiara on her head.
Here is Izzie, dressed as a pirate for Halloween.
Here is Izzie, waving as she climbs onto a school bus.
Here is Izzie, sitting on Santa’s (Satan’s) lap.
Here is Izzie and my mother. Our mother. Izzie sits on her lap, that familiar smile on her face. Mom isn’t smiling. This is the first time I’ve seen what she looks like since the day she knocked on the door to that shitty apartment so very long ago. She looks tired. And old. Rough. I don’t remember what happened to the one picture I used to have of her that I kept hidden in my drawer. Maybe Bear found it. Maybe I just threw it away.
Out of the dozen photos, there’s not a single one of Bear or me. I should have known this. I should have expected this. And I think I did. It still hurts. I don’t know why.
Besides Izzie, Izzie, Izzie, there are more photos of beaches and foggy Irish moors and Stonehenge and castles rising impossibly out of steep cliffs. They line the wall with no rhyme or reason, torn out of a magazine or travel brochure and pinned to the drywall. I reach out and touch each one, the paper curling around the yellowing edges. These are hers, too, I think. My mom’s. She always did dream of faraway places. It’s sad to think she only ever made as far as Idaho.
The kitchen is dated, a Formica table in the middle, two folding chairs underneath on a linoleum floor. The fridge is a pale green, and some cabinet doors are missing their hinges. There’s an old electric range. An old microwave. An old everything. Everything in here is old. Secondhand. It might as well be how things looked for me growing up. Different place, same things. For a while, anyway. Before Otter came and saved us. Before Dom came and changed me.
Dom. Jesus, how I wish he was here right now. I don’t know that I’m strong enough to do this on my own. I don’t even know what to say to this little girl, this little girl who might be the only other person in the world aside from Bear and me to understand this life. To understand how it feels. To understand what it means. This little girl who’s furiously scrubbing at dishes in the sink like they’ll never get clean unless she gives it all she’s got. There’s no dishwasher. So maybe this is normal for her.
“I’ll dry,” I say, coming to stand beside her.
She sighs and her shoulders slump. “If you must. There should be a clean dishtowel in that drawer. I did laundry last week.”
There is, and it’s worn and frayed, but it’s clean. She scrubs out a coffee mug, rinses it, then holds it up to her face and squints as she inspects it. Her tongue sticks out between her teeth in concentration. It must pass inspection, because she hands it off to me. “Top cupboard,” she says. “By the fridge.”
I take it without a word and dry it before putting it back in its rightful place.
“Why are you here?” she asks after this goes on for a while.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“That’s comforting,” she says. “Do you often travel hundreds of miles and show up at people’s houses without some kind of thought as to why?”