letter, two closely spaced pages and not a single lie between the lines. I told her about the house and the dock, the dappled river and thick, gray trees. I didn’t even have to invent a neighbor—not when I had Bee, with her pudgy cheeks and mistreated toys and stubborn insistence on the presence of mermaids in the river.
“You can take it up with the university,” says Nessa lightly. “You may not like to tell me when you’re moving, but your assistants always seem happy to fill in the blanks.”
I do my best not to stare. The lie is pitch-perfect, a made-up bit of music plucked deftly out of the air. Only the pressure of her hand on mine tells me that she’s covering my tracks. I squeeze back, and feel her slender bones move beneath my fingers.
—
Nessa says she was on the next plane out, that she was headed for the airport before she’d even reached the last line of my letter, barely pausing long enough to pack. I’m not sure I believe her, except that the evidence of her hurry is everywhere; she’s got no underwear but the pair she has on, doesn’t even have her toothbrush. We’ve barely said hello before she shoves me back through the door, silencing my father’s objections with sheer momentum, and bundles me into the shotgun seat of her rental car. As the sky turns violet and the trees roll away in shadow overhead, she presses the accelerator and heads for the drugstore, to pick up all the things overlooked in the moments between the letter and the plane.
“I wish I’d known you were coming,” I say. I pluck self-consciously at my clothes—drab and dingy, wrinkled and rumpled, scuffed and stretched. The kind of thing I’d have hidden away at the bottom of a hamper if I’d known that my glamorous aunt was about to appear, in the flesh, right next to me. I’d have combed my hair, painted my nails. I’d have worn soft whites and deep blues, with the sea-glass necklace lying lightly against my clean, smooth skin. I would have transformed myself, somehow, into the kind of niece she should’ve had—would have made myself look like my mother’s daughter, and not a dull and unwashed invalid decked out in grimy grays.
“I couldn’t wait, baby,” she purrs. “I had to see you!” The grin has softened but won’t leave her face; she keeps stealing glances at me, as if to check that I’m still here.
“You didn’t have to wait nine years,” I say, and wish right away I could snatch it back. Her smile falters just enough that I know the words had teeth. I had sometimes written to Nessa, suggesting she find her way out to Grand Junction or Indian Springs or wherever we’d chosen to unpack our lives. Her replies, pages and pages of looping, long scrawl, always said the same thing at the end:
I wish I could.
I never asked what had happened, what he had said to her, that made her decide not to come. At first, I was afraid he had told her some terrible lie to keep her away; later, I was afraid that there had been no lie at all. That Nessa knew the truth about what I’d become and couldn’t bear to see it.
“You know I would have been there if I could,” she says.
—
The canopy of trees peels away, the road smooths and softens, as we draw closer to civilization. They’ve planted palm trees along the road, spaced so evenly that I can time their appearance in the window down to a tenth of a second. Neither one of us speaks, and I count thirty-five palms—thirty-five, so still in the last gasp of light, with their fronds punching the sky like a shadowed fist—before the lights of the pharmacy loom up ahead and she leaves me, wordlessly, in the running car. But when she comes back with a paper bag, settling back in the driver’s seat with her long skirt hiked up above her knees and out of the way, she squeezes my hand—all okay, all forgiven.
“Let’s not worry about the past, okay? The important thing is that we’re together again, and you have to tell me everything,” she says.
“You can take it up with the university,” says Nessa lightly. “You may not like to tell me when you’re moving, but your assistants always seem happy to fill in the blanks.”
I do my best not to stare. The lie is pitch-perfect, a made-up bit of music plucked deftly out of the air. Only the pressure of her hand on mine tells me that she’s covering my tracks. I squeeze back, and feel her slender bones move beneath my fingers.
—
Nessa says she was on the next plane out, that she was headed for the airport before she’d even reached the last line of my letter, barely pausing long enough to pack. I’m not sure I believe her, except that the evidence of her hurry is everywhere; she’s got no underwear but the pair she has on, doesn’t even have her toothbrush. We’ve barely said hello before she shoves me back through the door, silencing my father’s objections with sheer momentum, and bundles me into the shotgun seat of her rental car. As the sky turns violet and the trees roll away in shadow overhead, she presses the accelerator and heads for the drugstore, to pick up all the things overlooked in the moments between the letter and the plane.
“I wish I’d known you were coming,” I say. I pluck self-consciously at my clothes—drab and dingy, wrinkled and rumpled, scuffed and stretched. The kind of thing I’d have hidden away at the bottom of a hamper if I’d known that my glamorous aunt was about to appear, in the flesh, right next to me. I’d have combed my hair, painted my nails. I’d have worn soft whites and deep blues, with the sea-glass necklace lying lightly against my clean, smooth skin. I would have transformed myself, somehow, into the kind of niece she should’ve had—would have made myself look like my mother’s daughter, and not a dull and unwashed invalid decked out in grimy grays.
“I couldn’t wait, baby,” she purrs. “I had to see you!” The grin has softened but won’t leave her face; she keeps stealing glances at me, as if to check that I’m still here.
“You didn’t have to wait nine years,” I say, and wish right away I could snatch it back. Her smile falters just enough that I know the words had teeth. I had sometimes written to Nessa, suggesting she find her way out to Grand Junction or Indian Springs or wherever we’d chosen to unpack our lives. Her replies, pages and pages of looping, long scrawl, always said the same thing at the end:
I wish I could.
I never asked what had happened, what he had said to her, that made her decide not to come. At first, I was afraid he had told her some terrible lie to keep her away; later, I was afraid that there had been no lie at all. That Nessa knew the truth about what I’d become and couldn’t bear to see it.
“You know I would have been there if I could,” she says.
—
The canopy of trees peels away, the road smooths and softens, as we draw closer to civilization. They’ve planted palm trees along the road, spaced so evenly that I can time their appearance in the window down to a tenth of a second. Neither one of us speaks, and I count thirty-five palms—thirty-five, so still in the last gasp of light, with their fronds punching the sky like a shadowed fist—before the lights of the pharmacy loom up ahead and she leaves me, wordlessly, in the running car. But when she comes back with a paper bag, settling back in the driver’s seat with her long skirt hiked up above her knees and out of the way, she squeezes my hand—all okay, all forgiven.
“Let’s not worry about the past, okay? The important thing is that we’re together again, and you have to tell me everything,” she says.
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