1
I hadnt been able to drive at night since Will died. It came on suddenly after his funeral, a dull blurriness, as though swimming through water; the outlines of trees and houses appeared ethereal, dreamlike. Eventually, my parents took me to a pediatric ophthalmologist, who diagnosed me with nyctalopia, night blindness.
And here I was thirteen years later, driving into the sunset on my twenty-ninth birthday. Nics party for me had started an hour before, and I was too far from home to get back by myself.
I pulled over. Hadley was working late at Graffiti, and he answered the phone on the seventh ring.
“Im on Hickox, near Nics studio,” I told him.
“Where in the world have you been?” I could hear him locking the door to his gallery. “Nico has a houseful of people waiting for you.”
“I had a modeling job.” The truth was, the session had ended hours ago, and Id been driving through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Black Canyon, trying to go home and face the crowd of artists Nic had invited over.
Hadley sighed. “Hes going to be blazing mad youre not there.” Hadley was from South Africa; he was always using words like blazing and bloody.
I looked out at the mountains, a deep rust in the twilight. I always felt small next to them. And all alone in the world. “Im blind,” I said. “Please?”
“Im coming. Youll have the wind in your hair in mere moments, love.”
We left my car at Nics gallery, and I sat shotgun in Hadleys vintage Aston Martin, holding the ocotillo frame hed made for my birthday. It was empty, just waiting for me to finish my self-portrait. “He probably hasnt even noticed Im missing,” I said.
Hadley patted my knee and lit a clove cigarette. Then he pushed his foot on the gas pedal and we were driving ninety miles an hour down those high-desert roads toward my party.
The loft was lit up like a chandelier, and when we walked up the porch steps, I could see the crowd through the window: sculptors and painters, gallery owners from Sedona, studio assistants and a few models who could have been me ten years ago, when Nic was a stranger and I was just a naked girl in his sculpture studio. Except, I thought, looking in at their tanned, pierced bodies, these girls were prettier.
“The worlds come out for your birthday, love.” Hadley was on his tiptoes, peering in the window. The air smelled like sage and creosote, and I wished I could disappear, walk into that cobalt sky and become one of the stars.
“Theyre really all Nics friends,” I said.
Hadley pushed his horn-rimmed glasses on top of his head. “Well”—he flashed me a smile—“theyre good for ouzo and pot.” He linked his arm through mine. “Come on, Jensen, lets do this.” And we stepped into the party Id been dreading for weeks.
“Youre here.” Nic threaded through his disciples, his shirttails untucked, and when he kissed me, his breath smelled like wine. “I was beginning to think youd finally run away with Hadley.” If Hadley hadnt been in love with the guy who sold me custom paints and handmade brushes, I probably would have. “I saved you a piece.” Nic held up a slice of almond cake. I wondered if hed lit the candles and who had blown them out. “And good news.” He nodded to a skinny man across the room with black hair and a seventies collar. “Dante wants you next week.” He took a drag from the joint he was holding. “So eat up.” He pinched my belly. “He likes his girls chubby.” Dante lifted his glass to me. Id modeled for him before. His studio was freezing. He sculpted only nudes, and Id told Nic I didnt want to do that anymore. I didnt want to model at all. But, it was easier than standing at my easel, trying to finish my terrible self-portraits. “They look haunted,” Nic had told me. And he was right. It was as if my ghost were trying to emerge through a haze of earth.
“Happy birthday.” Whitney, Nics assistant, bumped hips with me as if we were friends. “Can I ask you a question?” Can I have sex with your husband? “Would you consider selling it?”
It took me a second to realize she was talking about the Steinway piano I was leaning against. “What? No.”
She fingered a few notes. “Nic”—she blinked her peacock eyelashes at him—“says you havent played since you bailed on Juilliard.”
I took a long drag off the joint Nic had handed me, hoping the slow-motion feeling would erase the awkwardness I always felt at these gatherings. “Thats not really true.…” The phone in the kitchen was ringing. I watched Whitneys beautiful fingers move along the keyboard. Behind her, two girls at the bar were running a spoon through the buttercream icing on my cake. “Yoo hoo.” Hadley danced over in his green leather pants. “Your mama.” He handed me the cordless.
“Hey,” Nic called out to the room, “turn down the fucking music.”
I edged over to the wall and dropped onto the cracked leather sofa. “Jamie?” My parents had already wished me a happy birthday, and my mother never called me twice in one day. “Whats wrong?” I glanced at my watch. It was past midnight on the East Coast.
I patted the space next to me and Hadley plopped down. We were so low on the couch, all we could see were legs and skirts.
“Darling.” Jamies voice sounded far away. I saw her in her bedroom in Connecticut, playing with the phone cord, legs crossed, coconut moisturizer on her face. It was just like her to call in the middle of the night to tell me about a trip abroad with her models. “Can you talk?”
“Nics having some people over for my birthday. Whats up?”
Nic sat down on the other side of me and ground out his joint in a stoneware bowl Id made in college, before Id dropped out to be with him.
“Jensen, sweetheart, somethings happened. I need you to come home.” Jamie was forever telling me to get on the next plane.
“Whats the matter?” Hadley was picking at his fingernail polish.
“We were at Lukes sixtieth birthday party and—” Someone put on the Beatles “Birthday.”
“Uncle Luke is sixty? Didnt he just turn fifty?” My fathers best friend and I used to joke that we were psychic twins because we shared a birthday.
“Oh, honey, its been a long time since youve been home.” Hadley rolled his eyes at the phone and took a sip of wine someone had left at the table. But Jamie was right. Itd been almost two years since Id been back to Colston, and I was suddenly homesick for the popcorn she used to cook on the stove and those old Hepburn movies we watched together. “Anyway, as we were leaving”—she hesitated just long enough for me to wonder if wed gotten cut off—“Daddy thought he saw Will.”
“Shit.” My skin went cold. “Is he okay?”
“Hed had too much to drink. You know how he and Luke are when they get together. Between the two of them, they emptied a bottle of Chivas. And the valet who brought the car around was built like your brother and had those same soft eyes.” She said that in the wistful way she had of talking about Will.
I tucked my knees to my chin and touched the tarnished heart on my toe ring. “Getting drunk wouldnt make him see things,” I said, wishing Id taken the call upstairs, but it was too late now.
“Oh, honey.” She took one of her shivering breaths. “It wasnt just that. He wasnt himself tonight. He kept forgetting what he was saying. At first, we thought he was tipsy, but when he wouldnt stop calling out Wills name to that boy, we took him to the ER.”
“The ER? What the hell?” I sat up straighter, trying to clear the fuzz from my brain. Hadley quit drinking his wine, and Nic leaned in to listen.
“Jensen.” Jamie plowed over me, like she had a habit of doing. “Your father has a brain tumor.”
A strange spinning sensation hit me, and I felt sick to my stomach.
“Jensen?” she asked. “Are you still there?” I could see my dad, his flyaway wheat-colored hair, how he rubbed his nose against mine and said, “Eskimo kisses, Whobaby, so youll always be warm.”
“Is he going to die?”
“We dont even know if its malignant.” Her voice was far away, almost dreamy. I wanted to strangle her for sounding so calm. She was probably giving herself a pedicure while we were talking. “We have the best surgeon, of course. Youll never believe—”
“How big is it?”
“Im not sure.”
“Ballpark it for me. Is it the size of an orange? A grape?” Why are tumors always equated to fruit?
“Just come home, honey. Were meeting Ryder Monday morning. You can ask him about—”
My heart stopped. “Ryder?”
“Ryder Anderson,” she said. “Your brothers best friend? Thats what I was trying to tell you. Hes a neurosurgeon at Yale now. Hes very good, a prodigy actually, and—”
“Thats crazy.” Hadley was pushing up against me, trying to hear Jamies voice, and Nic had his arm around me, patting my back distractedly. I wanted everyone gone, out of my house. I needed quiet. I needed to think. “None of this makes any sense.”
“Im supposed to leave for a shoot in Brazil next week. I really need you to come home, darling.”
Over the last thirteen years that Id stayed away, Jamie had said those words a hundred times. But shed only gotten me there every other year or so. Now I could smell the salt air in the house where I grew up, could see those ancient goalposts my father had built in the backyard, the pictures of Will and me in the foyer, and most of all, I could see my dad standing at the head of the stairs and saying “Whobaby, come up here and give your old man a hug before I keel over from the lack of you.”
“Ill be there tomorrow,” I told her.
After I hung up, I realized Nic was talking, asking me questions, and Hadley was saying, “Love, I think she needs a drink.”
Finally, I let Nic pull me off the couch and lead me upstairs. He sat me down on our bed and closed the door. The noise dimmed, and I stared at the ceiling, holding my tattered stuffed rabbit, Bear. I touched the space where he was missing a marble eye.
“Hey.” Nic ran his thumb down my spine. “Whatd Jamie do now?”
I could smell the party on his breath. “My dads sick,” I said. “He has…” A brain tumor. I stared at our wedding photo on the bedside table, me barefoot on the beach in a flimsy, almost see-through dress with some Greek waiter as Nicos best man.
“Sick sick?” he asked.
“He has…” I bit the inside of my lip. The little shot of pain was an elixir. “A tumor in his brain.” I didnt look at him. I felt his strong hand on my back, pulling me to him. “Theyre meeting the surgeon next week.” Drifting up from the party a Beau Williams song, “Walk Around Heaven,” was playing. One of these mornings wont be very long. Youll look for me and Ill be gone. “I have to go.”
He smoothed my hair, and I fingered the tattooed rope around his bicep. “You dont want to wait until you find out more? I mean, it could be—”
“Its a brain tumor, Nico, not the flu.” I pulled away. The sound of laughter floated up the stairs. “You should go back,” I said. “Your friends are down there.” I didnt want to cry in front of him. “I just need a minute.”
“J.,” he said. “Look at me.”
I didnt want to. If I did, I might not go home. I might stay in Santa Fe in the strange, artsy world Id disappeared into ten years before. He tipped my chin up, and there was nowhere else to look. His green eyes turned from the color of sea glass to a shade darker. “You want me to send Hadley up? He can always make you laugh.”
“No, thanks.”
Nic stood. I watched him walk toward the door, that casual stride that said everything would be all right. Before he turned the knob, he said, “Your old mans a tough cookie. Hell be okay.”
While I waited for his footsteps to fade, I traced the birthmark on my forearm. I couldnt decide if it looked like a heart or a football. In my family, they were one and the same. When I was sure Nic was downstairs, I got up and pulled my pewter jewelry box from my top dresser drawer. Sitting on the bed, I tossed aside broken necklaces, earrings with no backs, a baby tooth, woven friendship bracelets, and my acceptance letter to Juilliard. My fathers first Super Bowl ring was tucked in a corner, and I slipped it on my thumb. When Id asked why hed given it to me and not Will, hed said he knew someday Will would have one of his own. At the very bottom was the worn photograph, facedown.
Lying back on the patchwork comforter, I studied the picture. Will, Ryder, and I stood three across on the overhang at Breakneck Lake the summer before Will died. Will and Ryder looked like brothers, their blond hair almost white with sun, their tanned chests newly muscled. Will was pretending to punch Ryder in the arm. I was smiling hard at the camera, the kid sister, the tagalong, my black hair wet and curly, my face so tanned that the freckles were barely noticeable. They were seventeen. They were the world. Ryder was leaning back, looking behind Wills shoulders at me. We were perfect, the three of us, so happy. Too happy. I should have known what was coming. Turning it over, I read the date. Summer, 1996. I stared at the numbers for a long time. Eight weeks later, Will was dead.
Finally, I put the photograph back in the box next to a foil package of birth-control pills I told Nic I took but rarely did, then stuffed pants, skirts, and shirts into my old leather duffel. I grabbed a bunch of clothes from hangers, avoiding the garment bag pushed to the far wall. Inside, pressed and hidden, was the dress I loved the most: a black vintage sheath Id worn to Ryder Andersons junior prom.
Copyright © 2014 by Susan Strecker