The Sky Is Everywhere Read online

  I notice Toby’s tapping his fingers nervously on the wheel. He keeps doing it. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He grips the wheel tight with both hands.

  “I really love her,” he says, his voice breaking. “More than anything.”

  “Oh, Toby, I know that.” That’s the only thing I do understand about this whole mess: that somehow what happened between us happened because there’s too much love for Bailey between us, not too little.

  “I know,” I repeat.

  He nods.

  Something occurs to me then: Bailey loved both Toby and me so much – he and I almost make up her whole heart, and maybe that’s it, what we were trying to do by being together, maybe we were trying to put her heart back together again.

  He stops the truck in front of the house. The sun streams into the cab, bathing us in light. I look out my window, can see Bails rushing out of the house, flying off the porch, to jump into this very truck I am sitting in. It’s so strange. I spent forever resenting Toby for taking my sister away from me, and now it seems like I count on him to bring her back.

  I open the door, put one of my platforms onto the ground.

  “Len?”

  I turn around.

  “You’ll wear him down.” His smile is warm and genuine. He rests the side of his head on the steering wheel. “I’m going to leave you alone for a bit, but if you need me … for anything, okay?”

  “Same,” I say, my throat knotting up.

  Our conjoined love for Bailey trembles between us; it’s like a living thing, as delicate as a small bird, and as breathtaking in its hunger for flight. My heart hurts for both of us.

  “Don’t do anything stupid on that board,” I say.

  “Nope.”

  “Okay.” Then I slide out, close the door, and head into the house.

  Sometimes I'd see Sarah and her Mom

  share a look across a room

  and I'd want

  to heave my life over like a table.

  I'd tell myself not to feel that way

  that I was lucky:

  I had Bailey,

  I had Gram and Big,

  I had my clarinet, books, a river, the sky.

  I'd tell myself that I had a mother too,

  just not one anyone else could see

  but Bailey and me.

  (Found scribbled on the classified ads in The Clover Gazette under the bench outside Maria’s Deli)

  Sarah’s at State, since the symposium is this afternoon, so I have no one on which to blame the Hey Rachel seduction fiasco but myself. I leave her a message telling her I’ve been totally mortified like a good saint because of her jouissance and am now seeking a last-resort miracle.

  The house is quiet. Gram must have gone out, which is too bad because for the first time in ages, I’d like nothing more than to sit at the kitchen table with her and drink tea.

  I go up to The Sanctum to brood about Joe, but once there, my eyes keep settling on the boxes I packed the other night. I can’t stand looking at them, so after I change out of my ridiculous outfit, I take them up to the attic.

  I haven’t been up here in years. I don’t like the tombishness, the burned smell of the trapped heat, the lack of air. It always seems so sad too, full of everything abandoned and forgotten. I look around at the lifeless clutter, feel deflated at the idea of bringing Bailey’s things up here. This is what I’ve been avoiding for months now. I take a deep breath, look around. There’s only one window, so I decide, despite the fact that the area around it is packed in with boxes and mountains of bric-à-brac, that Bailey’s things should go where the sun will at least seep in each day.

  I make my way over there through an obstacle course of broken furniture, boxes, and old canvases. I move a few cartons immediately so I can crack open the window and hear the river. Hints of rose and jasmine blow in on the afternoon breeze. I open it wider, climb up on an old desk so I can lean out. The sky is still spectacular and I hope Joe is gazing up at it. No matter where I look inside myself, I come across more love for him, for everything about him, his anger as much as his tenderness – he’s so alive, he makes me feel like I could take a bite out of the whole earth. If only words hadn’t eluded me today, if only I yelled back at him: I do get it! I get that as long as you live no one will ever love you as much as I do – I have a heart so I can give it to you alone! That’s exactly the way I feel – but unfortunately, people don’t talk like that outside of Victorian novels.

  I take my head out of the sky and bring it back into the stuffy attic. I wait for my eyes to readjust, and when they do, I’m still convinced this is the only possible spot for Bailey’s things. I start moving all the junk that’s already there to the shelves on the back wall. After many trips back and forth, I finally reach down to pick up the last of it, which is a shoebox, and the top flips open. It’s full of letters, all addressed to Big, probably love letters. I peek at one postcard from an Edie. I decide against snooping further; my karma is about as bad as it’s ever been right now. I slip the lid back on, place it on one of the lower shelves where there’s still some space. Just behind it, I notice an old letter box, its wood polished and shiny. I wonder what an antique like this is doing up here instead of downstairs with all Gram’s other treasures. It looks like a showcase piece too. I slide it out; the wood is mahogany and there’s a ring of galloping horses engraved into the top. Why isn’t it covered in dust like everything else on these shelves? I lift the lid, see that it’s full of folded notes on Gram’s mint-green stationery, so many of them, and lots of letters as well. I’m about to put it back when I see written on the outside of an envelope in Gram’s careful script the name Paige. I flip through the other envelopes. Each and every one says Paige with the year next to her name. Gram writes letters to Mom? Every year? All the envelopes are sealed. I know that I should put the box back, that this is private, but I can’t. Karma be damned. I open one of the folded notes. It says:

  Darling, The second the lilacs are in full bloom, I have to write you. I know I tell you this every year, but they haven’t blossomed the same since you left. They’re so stingy now. Maybe it’s because no one comes close to loving them like you did – how could they? Each spring I wonder if I’m going to find the girls sleeping in the garden, like I’d find you, morning after morning. Did you know how I loved that, walking outside and seeing you asleep with my lilacs and roses all around you – I’ve never even tried to paint the image. I never will. I wouldn’t want to ruin it for myself.

  Mom

  Wow – my mother loves lilacs, really loves them. Yes, yes, it’s true, most people love lilacs, but my mother is so gaga about them that she used to sleep in Gram’s garden, night after night, all spring long, so gaga she couldn’t bear to be inside knowing all those flowers were raising hell outside her window. Did she bring her blankets out with her? A sleeping bag? Nothing? Did she sneak out when everyone else was asleep? Did she do this when she was my age? Did she like looking up at the sky as much as I do? I want to know more. I feel jittery and lightheaded, like I’m meeting her for the first time. I sit down on a box, try to calm down. I can’t. I pick up another note. It says:

  Remember that pesto you made with walnuts instead of pine nuts? Well, I tried pecans, and you know what? Even better. The recipe:

  2 cups packed fresh basil leaves

  2/3 cup olive oil

  1/2 cup pecans, toasted

  1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan

  2 large garlic cloves, mashed

  1/2 teaspoon salt

  My mother makes pesto with walnuts! This is even better than sleeping with lilacs. So normal. So I think I’ll whip up some pasta with pesto for dinner. My mother bangs around a kitchen. She puts walnuts and basil and olive oil in a food processor, and presses blend. She boils water for pasta! I have to tell Bails. I want to scream out the window at her: Our mother boils water for pasta! I’m going to. I’m going to tell Bailey. I make my way over to the wi
ndow, climb back up on the desk, put my head out, holler up at the sky, and tell my sister everything I’ve just learned. I feel dizzy, and yes, a bit out of my tree, when I climb back into the attic, now hoping no one heard this girl screaming about pasta and lilacs at the top of her lungs. I take a deep breath. Open another one.

  Paige,

  I’ve been wearing the fragrance you wore for years. The one you thought smelled like sunshine. I’ve just found out they’ve discontinued it. I feel as though I’ve lost you now completely. I can’t bear it.

  Mom

  Oh.

  But why didn’t Gram tell us our mother wore a perfume that smelled like sunshine? That she slept in the garden in the springtime? That she made pesto with walnuts? Why did she keep this real-life mother from us? But as soon as I ask the question, I know the answer, because suddenly there is not blood pumping in my veins, coursing all throughout my body, but longing for a mother who loves lilacs. Longing like I’ve never had for the Paige Walker who wanders the world. That Paige Walker never made me feel like a daughter, but a mother who boils water for pasta does. Except don’t you need to be claimed to be a daughter? Don’t you need to be loved?

  And now there’s something worse than longing flooding me, because how could a mother who boils water for pasta leave two little girls behind?

  How could she?

  I close the lid, slide the box back on a shelf, quickly stack Bailey’s boxes by the window, and go down the stairs into the empty house.

  The architecture

  of my sister's thinking,

  now phantom.

  I fall

  down stairs

  that are nothing

  but air.

  (Found on a takeaway cup by a grove of old growth redwoods)

  The next few days inch by miserably. I skip band practice and confine myself to The Sanctum. Joe Fontaine does not stop by, or call, or text, or e-mail, or skywrite, or send Morse code, or telepathically communicate with me. Nothing. I’m quite certain he and Hey Rachel have moved to Paris, where they live on chocolate, music and red wine, while I sit at this window, peering down the road where no one comes bouncing along, guitar in hand, like they used to.

  As the days pass, Paige Walker’s love of lilacs and ability to boil water have the singular effect of washing sixteen years of myth right off of her. And without it, all that’s left is this: our mother abandoned us. There’s no way around it. And what kind of person does that? Rip Van Lennie is right. I’ve been living in a dream world, totally brainwashed by Gram. My mother’s freaking nuts, and I am too, because what kind of ignoramus swallows such a cockamamie story? Those hypothetical families that Big spoke of the other night would’ve been right not to be kind. My mother is neglectful and irresponsible and probably mentally deficient too. She’s not a heroine at all. She’s just a selfish woman who couldn’t hack it and left two toddlers on her mother’s porch and never came back. That’s who she is. And that’s who we are too, two kids, discarded, just left there. I’m glad Bailey never had to see it this way.

  I don’t go back up to the attic.

  It’s all right. I’m used to a mother who rides around on a magic carpet. I can get used to this mother too, can’t I? But what I can’t get used to is that I no longer think Joe, despite my compounding love for him, is ever going to forgive me. How to get used to no one calling you John Lennon? Or making you believe the sky begins at your feet? Or acting like a dork so you’ll say quel dork? How to get used to being without a boy who turns you into brightness?

  I can’t.

  And what’s worse is that with each day that passes, The Sanctum gets quieter, even when I’m blasting the stereo, even when I’m talking to Sarah, who’s still apologizing for the seduction fiasco, even when I’m practicing Stravinsky, it just gets quieter and quieter, until it is so quiet that what I hear, again and again, is the cranking sound of the casket lowering into the ground.

  With each day that passes, there are longer stretches when I don’t think I hear Bailey’s heels clunking down the hallway, or glimpse her lying on her bed reading, or catch her in my periphery reciting lines into the mirror. I’m becoming accustomed to The Sanctum without her, and I hate it. Hate that when I stand in her closet fumbling from piece to piece, my face pressed into the fabrics, that I can’t find one shirt or dress that still has her scent, and it’s my fault. They all smell like me now.

  Hate that her cell phone finally has been shut down.

  With each day that passes, more traces of my sister vanish, not only from the world, but from my very own mind, and there’s nothing I can do about it, but sit in the soundless, scentless sanctum and cry.

  On the sixth day of this, Sarah declares me a state of emergency and makes me promise to go to the movies with her that night.

  She picks me up in Ennui, wearing a black miniskirt, black minier tank top that shows off a lot of tanned midriff, three-foot black heels, all topped off with a black ski hat, which I’m supposing is her attempt at practicality, because a chill blew in and it’s arctic cold. I’m wearing a brown suede coat, turtleneck, and jeans. We look like we are spliced together from different weather systems.

  “Hi!” she says, taking the cigarette out of her mouth to kiss me as I get in. “This movie really is supposed to be good. Not like that last one I made you go to where the woman sat in a chair with her cat for the first half. I admit that one was problematico.” Sarah and I have opposite movie-going philosophies. All I want out of celluloid is to sit in the dark with a huge bucket of popcorn. Give me car chases, girl gets boy, underdogs triumphing; let me swoon and scream and weep. Sarah on the other hand can’t tolerate such pedestrian fare and complains the whole time about how we’re rotting our minds and soon won’t be able to think our own thoughts because our brains will be lost to the dominant paradigm. Sarah’s preference is The Guild, where they show bleak foreign films where nothing happens, no one talks, everyone loves the one who will never love them back, and then the movie ends. On the program tonight is some stultifyingly boring black-and-white film from Norway.

  Her face drops as she studies mine. “You look miserable.”

  “Sucky week all around.”

  “It’ll be fun tonight, promise.” She takes one hand off the wheel and pulls a brown sack out of a backpack. “For the movie.” She hands it to me. “Vodka.”

  “Hmm, then I’ll for sure fall asleep in this action-packed, thrill-a-minute, black-and-white, silent movie from Norway.”

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s not silent, Lennie.”

  While waiting in line, Sarah jumps around trying to keep warm. She’s telling me how Luke held up remarkably well at the symposium despite being the only guy there, even made her ask a question about music, but then mid-sentence and mid-jump, her eyes bulge a little. I catch it, even though she’s already resumed talking as if nothing has happened. I turn around and there’s Joe across the street with Rachel.

  They’re so lost in conversation they don’t even realize the light has changed.

  Cross the street, I want to scream. Cross the street before you fall in love. Because that’s what appears to be happening. I watch Joe lightly tug at her arm while he tells her something or other I’m sure about Paris. I can see the smile, all that radiance pouring over Rachel and I think I might fall like a tree.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Yup.” Sarah’s already walking toward the Jeep, fumbling in her bag for the keys. I follow her, but take one look back and meet Joe’s eyes head on. Sarah disappears. Then Rachel. Then all the people waiting in line. Then the cars, the trees, the buildings, the ground, the sky until it is only Joe and me staring across empty space at each other. He does not smile. He antismiles. But I can’t look away and he can’t seem to either. Time has slowed so much that I wonder if when we stop staring at each other we will be old and our whole lives will be over with just a few measly kisses between us. I’m dizzy with missing him, dizzy with seeing him, dizzy with being just yards from h
im. I want to run across the street, I’m about to – I can feel my heart surge, pushing me toward him, but then he just shakes his head almost to himself and looks away from me and toward Rachel, who now comes back into focus. High-definition focus. Very deliberately, he puts his arm around her and together they cross the street and get in line for the movie. A searing pain claws through me. He doesn’t look back, but Rachel does.

  She salutes me, a triumphant smile on her face, then flips an insult of blond hair at me as she swings her arm around his waist and turns away.

  My heart feels like it’s been kicked into a dark corner of my body. Okay I get it, I want to holler at the sky. This is how it feels. Lesson learned. Come-uppance accepted. I watch them retreat into the theater arm in arm, wishing I had an eraser so I could wipe her out of this picture. Or a vacuum. A vacuum would be better, just suck her up, gone. Out of his arms. Out of my chair. For good.

  “C’mon Len, let’s get out of here,” a familiar voice says. I guess Sarah still exists and she’s talking to me, so I must still exist too. I look down, see my legs, realize I’m still standing. I put one foot in front of the other and make my way to Ennui.

  There is no moon, no stars, just a brightless, lightless gray bowl over our heads as we drive home.

  “I’m going to challenge her for first chair,” I say.

  “Finally.”

  “Not because of this—”

  “I know. Because you’re a racehorse, not some stupid pony.” There’s no irony in her voice.

  I roll down the window and let the cold air slap me silly.

  Remember

  how it was

  when

  we

  kissed?

  Armfuls

  and

  armfuls

  of

  light

  thrown

  right

  at

  us.

  A

  rope