“It seemed like Alex was going to sell it?” Sis said. “But I guess he can’t do that now? Not to Aunt Edie, anyway.”
MAXimum indictments for Edith and a few of her clients.
“We’re not selling it,” I said. “I have some plans.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, you’re…”
“Yeah. For now.”
“Cool. Well, I just wanted to come and, you know. Say thanks. And Merry Christmas?” Sicily held out the package.
“Oh, man,” I said. “I can’t, really. I haven’t had achance—”
“It’s from Mom,” Sis said. “Not me. I don’t have any money, either. I have to get a job and start saving, or I won’t be able to afford to travel this summer. I can’t decide between Tokyo or Dublin. What do you think?”
“Both?” I weighed the package in my hands. I thought it was probably the same one Marisa had left behind that first night,returned to me. Passed back and forth, hot potato, like poor Joey’s body.
“Open it. Here.” Sicily reached over and tore the edge of the package.
“Hey, easy now. Don’t forget I’m still an only child at heart.”
I ripped the rest of the paper away to reveal a heavy frame with velvet backing. I turned it over. The photo was a copy of the one I’d seen on Marisa’s dresser, of Marisa curled protectively around baby Sis.
I looked up. “Uh, it’s nice. You were a cute baby.”
“That’s you, Sherlock,” she said, tipping the frame into my face. “Look how young Mom is. I was shiny bald when I was born, anyway. You have better hair in this photo than I do now.”
Me? Not this child so obviously the center of her mother’s world.
A part of me groped to keep hold of the certainty that it couldn’t be true. But that was just an old wire spike poking through.
A truth could be wider, deeper, more complicated than an old story that served no one, led nowhere.
Marisa had needed to go on with her life as though she hadn’t let me down. And now she needed to stay in the car. We were under no obligation here. And I didn’t have to visit that room in her house, open that mountain of gifts and pretend that they made up for anything or that she owed them to me. I also didn’t owe her forgiveness.
But if I thought of Marisa as someone who had needed to live her life with the spikiest bits of herself turned out, well. I guess I understood that.
“We’re doing that song tonight,” I said. “The one you liked.”
“You finished a song? It’s not about dogs, right?”
“It’s actually about being vulnerable, wiseass,” I said. “Telling the important people in your life what they mean to you. Before it’s too late.”
“Wow,” Sicily said. “I’m honestly sorry I’m going to miss that.”
“You could stay, play piano for us,” I said.
She didn’t faint or anything. Her eyes slid to the door. “I don’t think…”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Next time I see you, I’ll bring my guitar. We can play, just you and me.”
She smiled. “Next time.”
WE TOOK THE STAGE PROMPTLY.
I stepped up to the mic and was greeted by whoops and applause. “Hey, everyone,” I said. I had dropped the twang. “Thanks for coming out on a cold Christmas Eve.”
I had an acoustic borrowed from Lourey, for now, and a case of the nerves, if I was honest. We were unveiling anoriginalsong later in the set, laying it all out there. It was easy for people like Bern to say we should write our own music, then stand aside and call it too much this, not enough that. He was late.
