The Me You See (14 page)

The time had come for Stefia to tell a story.

“I was really mad about it for a long time,” she said.

“That’s a hard thing to get over.”

“I think the hardest thing was that no one knew where she
went.”

But there was a hitch in her breath. A catch. A skip. I
watched Stefia’s eyes and tried to read what was behind them.

“There’s more to the story?” I asked.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I can see your eyes."

She took a deep breath. And then another.

“I’ve known where my mom was the whole time,” Stefia
finally said. “I found a note in a secret spot. There was a tree in our front yard
that had a hollow spot in it. Mom and I built a tiny box one day and hid things
in that box just as a game. Sometimes it was plastic little treasures,
sometimes it was things we cut out from magazines, but most of the times it was
notes.”

“She hid a note in there for you when she left?”

“Well, I didn’t know she had. I mean, initially. I didn’t
find it for two months. I didn’t think about looking for anything when she
first left because I thought she would come back.”

“Did she leave many times before that?”

“No,” Stefia said, looking at me as if I’d just asked her
the most impossible thing. “She had never left. She was always home.”

“How did you know she wasn’t coming back?”

“Mail stopped coming to our house for her. I was old enough
to figure out she’d had her address changed. So I figured that meant she’d
ended up somewhere. And then I was brave enough to check that secret hiding
spot.”

“What did the note say.”

“She’d moved to New York.”

“New York?”

“Yeah. For the theater.”

Outside my room, a young girl slowly passed by with a
vending machine cup of hot cocoa. She alternated between blowing at the steam
and sipping gingerly, trying to protect her taste buds as she indulged in the
liquid chocolate.

“Before she met dad, she was big into theater,” Stefia
continued. “I mean, big time. The summer she met my father, she was supposed to
be heading off to New York to audition for some company that had pretty much
already promised her a spot. Two months later, when she was getting ready to
leave, she found out she was pregnant with me.”

The girl with the hot cocoa stopped in front of my room as
if she was listening to the story.  Stefia saw my eyes at the door and turned
her head.

“Hello,” she said to the girl.  Stefia picked up her
thermos and held it out. “Want some coffee?”

The little girl grinned, took another sip of her cocoa, and
continued walking past my room.

“Anyway,” Stefia resumed with a sigh, “at least that’s what
the note said. I didn’t know any of that about my mom before I read that note.”

Stefia didn’t say anything else for a long time. She got
out of her chair and looked at the old Polaroid snapshots I’d pegged up around
my room. She picked up the scribbly Crayola drawings from great grandchildren
that sat on my nightstand. She asked if I wanted more coffee and I shook my
head.

“Stefia?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that why you decided to become an actress?”

“Huh?”

“Because of your mom?”

Stefia didn’t say anything. She just looked at the black
and white checkered floor and slipped the back of her shoe off and on, off and
on.

“Well, anyway, you don’t have to tell me anything,” I said,
finally. “You don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to. That’s our
deal, right?”

“Yeah.” Stefia smiled, checking her phone for the time.

“Did your dad know where she went?” I asked.

“My mom?”

“Yeah.”

Stefia paused for a minute, and then cleared her throat as
if she was trying to cough the answer out. “He was the one who told her to go,”
Stefia said. “That was in the note, too. Dad didn’t want to keep mom from her
dream.”

“Her dream?”

“He felt like if she stayed with us, she’d be—how did it
go?—
wasting her true purpose
.” Stefia’s voice turned sharp. “But I’m
pretty sure dad doesn’t know about that note under the tree.”

“So your dad doesn’t know that you know?”

“Nope.”

A tiny smirk of irony slid across my lips. I knew why she
was telling me instead of her dad. Because she’d only known me for nine weeks,
and in the grand scheme of things, we didn’t really know each other.

“We all have secrets” I said. “Don’t we?”

And then Stefia smiled one of those smiles that made you
feel less comfortable for having seen it.

 “Anna? You know the answer to your question, right?”

“Which one?”

“The one about why I’m an actress?”

I thought for a minute.

“I don’t have to answer that,” I said. “That was our deal.”

Stefia smiled.

And I knew.

We talked another fifteen minutes about everything except
her mom and dad, instead flitting from the topic of aliens to drag racing to
the best way to cook a steak. Then Stefia checked her phone again for the time
and announced it was time to leave.

“You enjoy your day,” I said and giggled, “and thanks again
for the hot coffee. I so enjoy our visits.”

“So do I, Anna Marie,” she said. She took my ceramic mug
from me and rinsed it in my bathroom sink. She dried it carefully and stuck it
back in its hiding spot in the closet.

“For next time,” she said. She smiled but it seemed to lack
the glitter and gusto that usually lit up my room.

“Is something bothering you today, Stefia?” I asked.

“I’m just really tired,” she said, then smirked. “I suppose
you think that’s silly. Like…how hard can acting be?”

I thought for a minute and answered carefully.

“Acting is one of the most exhausting things known to man.
It’s hard to be someone you’re not. It takes a lot out of you.”

“Yeah,” she said, dismissively. She picked up her empty
thermos and headed for the door.

“And Stefia?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Being in a play is probably pretty hard, too.”

Stefia smiled.

And I knew.

She knew that I knew.

And that’s all that mattered.

**

I sit now in my pink room in a simple black dress,
strangled by the irony that Stefia's funeral is on a Wednesday.

I throw my blue and green ceramic mug across the room and
watch it shatter as it hits the wall.

Why did it have to be on a Wednesday?

Rowena hears the mug break all the way in the nurse’s
station and rushes to my room. She throws open my door so hard that the handle
jams into the closet behind it.

"Anna Marie!" she says, stopping short of the
broken pieces of mug scattered in the floor. "Oh my god, are you
okay?"

I am not okay.

I am not okay.

And one thought consumes my mind as Rowena stares at me,
her lips moving but no sound reaching my ears: I want to unknow everything that
I know.

Words were my currency. As he pushed his way in and out of
my mouth he filled me with words and I could finally explain the blunt
square-headed ache that came when the drought shriveled the zucchini and my
pants hung off my hips and mom left and never game back.

We lay together twisted up in sweaty sheets and I traced my
finger along the outline of him. I wanted to slice my fingernail through his
skin and down his arm; leave a trail that would bleed and scar. Just to prove
to myself he was there. Just to prove he was real.

Please be here.

Sometimes I don’t want Adam to talk. I don’t want to hear
the crackle-scratch-clip of his voice. Sometimes I just want to grab his face
and claw my way through the skin of his cheeks. But other times I want to drag
the soft of my lower lip just below his, catching the bristle of a four day
beard on his chin.

Please. Be here.

I fish my palm up his arm through the sleeve of his t-shirt
and out the neck hole, closing a fist around the fabric. I have him, or at
least the cotton that covers him, firmly in my grasp.

In the dim glow of what light sneaks through the window, I
see the edge of his lips twist into a grin.

“Why are you holding on so tight?” Adam asks.

“I want you here,” I say.

“I am here.”

“I want you to stay.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“But sometimes people do. Sometimes people say they’re
staying but they change their mind and don’t change it back.”

His grin fades into a crisp straight line and now he is
serious. He rolls to face me full on and repeats in a thick voice I can latch
on to:

“I’m not leaving.”

I want to curl up in his words. I want to fix them around
my shoulders and cover my neck and plug my ears with the things he says. His
words are few but solid and sure. There is comfort in the sound of him and in
the weight of them.

Please.

Be.

Here.

His gaze moves from me to the neat and crisp dress I’ve
hung from a hanger on the hook over my door and I know he’s saying without
saying that we should really get ready to leave.

My look back to him says I don’t want to.

If I go, I will be the girl in the corner, the girl in the
shadow made by the cast of light her oldest sister throws off. There is no
difference whether she is alive or dead. Stefia will always be the most
brightly shining star in the room.

“Let’s get ready,” he breathes into my ear.

“I’m not going.”

His lips open again and close gently on the top edge of my
ear.

“Come on, Gabriella,” he whispers. “You have to.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“Oh, Gabriella…”

It almost sounds like he’s pouting. I know he’s tsk tsking
me.

“I was hoping to see you in that dress you hung on the
door,” he continues.

“Liar,” I say. “You’re happiest when I’m not dressed at
all.”

“Wrong. I’m happiest just having you by me, whether you’re
clothed or not.”

I stare at the popcorn textured ceiling of the hotel room
we’ve woken up in and I wonder who laid in this bed before us? Were they happy?
Did they make wild passionate love but never kiss on the lips? Were they
comfortable in their nakedness or did she ask to turn off the lights? What kind
of home did they return to? And did they return home together?

I close my eyes. I wonder why I wondered about it. I
realize it doesn’t matter.

“Gabriella, you have to go to the funeral,” he says, and
then as a correction, adds, “We have to go.”

“No. We don’t.”

**

“Gabriella!” I can hear her laughing. I remember that day.
I remember the one time we got away just us three sisters. There was just over
a year separating each of us by age and if we dressed just right we could
almost get away with looking like triplets. So we all wore white skinny jeans
and a solid color tank top, big matted brass hoops and knee high boots. We
looked great, but Stefia looked best of all. She had a way of shining like a
beacon even if we were all saying or doing or wearing the same thing.

We went to eat at McRudy’s that day. Cokes and
cheeseburgers and fries and then, because we were pretending it was our own
personal Sister Thanksgiving, strawberry shakes. We walked out of McRudy’s
feeling like the buttons on our jeans would pop off and fly across the parking
lot. We were so stuffed.

We laughed. Oh god, did we laugh. We laughed about funny
things dad had said and stupid things mom had done. And remember that one
Christmas when we went shopping but forgot to bring all the Christmas lists
with so we just punted and ended up picking out the best gifts ever? That
afternoon Stefia was my sister. She was just my sister, nothing else.

The only thing I ever wanted was for my sister to sit with
me for a meal somewhere where no one else recognized her. Somewhere I could
talk to her as my big sister. Somewhere that she could just be herself and not
the person everyone else saw her as.

Just. My. Sister.

After McRudy’s, we planned to see a movie. We rolled our
stuffed bellies into Stefia’s car. Stefia picked up her cell phone to check her
messages and said, “Crap.”