After she bandaged my arm, I sat on the counter while she finished the marinara sauce. Watching her cook was comforting. It made the cemetery feel even farther away.
She dipped her finger in the pot and tasted the sauce before taking the pan off the stove.
“Mom, you forgot the red pepper flakes.”
“Right.” She shook her head and forced a laugh.
My mom could’ve held her own with Julia Child, and marinara was her signature dish. She was more likely to forget her own name than the secret ingredient. I almost called her on it, but I felt guilty. Maybe she was imagining me in one of those unsolved crime shows.
I hopped down from the counter. “I’m going upstairs to draw.”
She stared out the kitchen window, preoccupied. “Mmm… that’s a good idea. It will probably make you feel better.”
Actually, it wouldn’t make me feel anything.
That was the point.
As long as my hand kept moving over the page, my problems disappeared, and I was somewhere or someone else for a little while. My drawings were fueled by a world only I could see—a boy carrying his nightmares in a sack as bits and pieces spilled out behind him, or a mouthless man banging away at the keys of a broken typewriter in the dark.
Like the piece I was working on now.
I stood in front of my easel and studied the girl perched on a rooftop, with one foot hanging tentatively over the edge. She stared at the ground below, her face twisted in fear. Delicate blue-black swallow wings stretched out from her dress. The fabric was torn where the wings had ripped through it, growing from her back like the branches of a tree.
I read somewhere that if a swallow builds a nest on your roof, it will bring you good luck. But if it abandons the nest, you’ll have nothing but misfortune. Like so many things, the bird could be a blessing or a curse, a fact the girl bearing its wings knew too well.
I fell asleep thinking about her. Wondering what it would be like to have wings if you were too scared to fly.