Izzy’s propped up in the desk intent on the art book, and when I come back in with the scissors she reaches for her notepad.
Canvas, she writes. How big is it?
“You mean for painting? It comes in all sizes, I think. My art teacher last year showed us these drippy pictures that were so big they wouldn’t fit in this room.”
She outlines the shape of the window in the air with her finger then writes me out a shopping list. Tube acrylics: indigo viridian cadmium onyx violet white and any in-between blues and greens. And grey spelled ey not ay.
“Your wish is my command, mademoiselle,” I say, thinking there’s no way Grand will give me money for all of that. “Now if you’ll just hold still, I’ll have this wretched hobo disguise off of you in a jiffy.”
I straighten Izzy’s head, measuring her hair out with my fingers, looking for the shortest section to go by. Last summer tending Izzy’s hair got to be too much, so Grand had me crop it down short, and now the pieces hang in chunks like one of the cubist paintings Izzy’s poring over. I wet the brush in the sink until her hair’s all flat and damp, then hold strips of hair between my fingers and snip, the scissors’ sharpness kissing the sides of my fingers. When I’m done Izzy’s hair looks fuller, almost bouncy, curled under at her chin and tidy as a sailor on a box of salt.
After I make dinner, change Izzy’s sheets, take her temperature and tuck her in for the night, I take a deep breath and bring Grand a glass of ice water. Dressed in a filmy sea-green nightgown and matching robe, she sits on the edge of her unmade bed rolling her hair on small plastic rollers, her dingy pink terrycloth slippers dangling from her toes. When I set the water glass on her bedside table she smiles thinly and gives me a little nod of dismissal.
“Grand, I really think Izzy needs a doctor.”
She holds up a hand mirror to check her curlers and doesn’t meet my eye. “Haven’t you been taking care of her?”
“Yes, I’ve been trying, but she’s been running a fever for two days and I think—”
“Give her some aspirin.”
“I’ve been giving her aspirin, but it’s only brought her temperature down to 100˚.”
Grand reaches for another curler and starts to roll the last strand of hair over her left ear. “That isn’t very high,” she says. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
I sigh, and Grand’s flat gaze flicks to my face as her mouth purses. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” She stares at me hard and I can feel her inhaling, dark clouds shifting and settling across her brow. My voice is small in the gathering silence. “I didn’t say anything.”
Grand smacks the roller down on the bed, the last strand of her hair sticking out in a grey tuft, and snatches me by the arm. “It’s hard enough raising two girls without being made to feel guilty all the time,” she says, her mouth trembling. “I live on a fixed income. I can’t indulge every little whim that flits into your heads.”
“This isn’t—” I say, and Grand shakes me, cuts me off.
“You want new clothes. Isabel wants to be waited on hand and foot. Well, we all want something. Do you think I want to make myself sick with worry, alone with you two in this house all day long?” She spits the words at me, the dark cinders of her eyes red-rimmed and watery. “I do all that I can for you girls—all that I can—but it’s not enough, it’s never enough.” She drops my arm and bolts to her feet, bumps into me, and shuffles towards the bathroom. She stops and half turns so I can hear her words. “I should have just let them take you.”
I drop my eyes and back out of the room, my breath coming quick and short as I shut the door behind me, then climb upstairs and don’t meet Izzy’s gaze. I lie on my bed in the dark, listening to her breathing deepen and lengthen, her sighs just out of sync with high tide, then shut my eyes and crowd out Grand’s dark, pinhole eyes with images of Everett’s thin, tendony forearms, Everett standing over his bike, Everett’s hairy, gangly legs. I dream Everett’s eyes, dream them closer and closer until I’m swimming in blue water laced with slants of white sunlight, sinking deeper and deeper with no need for air.
What goes on outside these walls that brings her back to me, gasping, teetering towards tears? This whatever-it-is shouldn’t be her worry. The whole world, and its whirled versions, and how to reel them all into this hive of old wallpaper, everything that could be something to me—which books, which pictures—how could she know? The connection severed, she can’t know what I light towards anymore than I can know who this is she’s lit with. The little tear that pulled apart the accordioned paper dolls. Now they’re two. So you can’t tell which one took the scissors first.
Izzy’s breath is measured, her body slack and tangled in the white sheets. Going downstairs, I’m careful to step over the noisy third step and squeeze through the back door before it can open far enough to squeak. The trees are creaking with frogs and crickets and the moon’s so bright I don’t need a light, just follow the faint glimmer of white sand into town.
When I get to Red’s garage I take a right on Cayman Street and realize, walking past the chain-linked yards and tattered screened-in porches, that I still don’t know where his house is. What was I thinking? That somehow I’d just sleepwalk there? That something would pull me through the streets, hypnotized, and I’d magically find Everett’s grandparents’ house and he’d be waiting?
There’s a light on in a house at the end of the street where an old man sits in his undershirt in front of the TV’s blue flicker. I turn back towards town, cross Main Street, walk along the dark windows of the stores and take a left onto Hill Street towards the blurry sounds of a jukebox, the red glow of a sign reading Watering Hole. Someone laughs, a ball cracks, and the voices are muddy and sluggish, slipping over each other like fat eels. I turn back around and catch out of the corner of my eye a red jeep with a New York plate. The Yankee. I duck under the awning of a store so I’m in shadow and watch two men standing across the street outside the bar’s open door, bottles held loosely in their hands.
“I don’t suppose,” one says, taking his hat off, smoothing his hair, and putting it back on.
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about one of them kind of women.”
“You and me makes two.” He chuckles, sticks out his lower lip, tilts the bottle, and takes a long swig. “Might be worth a look-see. You think?”
“You’re trouble, you know that? What was it my mama told me the first time you brought your scraggy ass around with a fishing pole and a can of crawdads?”
“Trouble had herself a litter and here comes the runt.” They’re laughing, and their laughter has too much air behind it and is too loud. “Must be why I’m always looking for something to suckle on.”
“Oh, no. No, you don’t.” The friend of the man in the hat laughs again, leaning against the wall beside the door, then slips a little and falls in a squat against the building.
“Get up, you drunk.”
“Just leave me be.”
“Get up so you can see how I saunter in there and sweep that damn Yankee off her barstool.” The man in the hat puts his bottle down on the sidewalk and tucks his shirt in, jiggling his belt buckle.
“You’d need one bitch of a broom to sweep her anywhere.”
“Come on, you drunk fuck.”
“I’m coming.” The friend grabs the elbow of the man in the hat and puts his hand out on the wall to steady himself. Then he sticks one foot through the threshold of the bar and puts it down carefully like a toddler stepping onto a boat