It’s Mom, calling to us from the living room.
Saturday morning. Moving day.
“Kids, I’m leaving,” she says.
Sweet Caroline is crying in her bedroom. I hear the muffled sobs through the wall. Mom walks down the hall and goes into Sweet Caroline’s room. I can’t hear what they’re saying exactly, but I can imagine it.
After a few minutes, Sweet Caroline’s door opens, and Mom taps on my door.
“Sanskrit?”
I don’t answer.
“I’m leaving now.”
I hold my breath.
“Can I say good-bye?” Mom says.
She turns my doorknob, even though she’s not allowed to come in without my permission. It’s locked. I made sure of it.
“Please, Sanskrit.”
My lungs are burning. I want to take a breath, inhale so hard that I pull Mom into the room.
“Your father is on his way over,” Mom says. “Late as always. I have to leave or I’m going to miss my flight.”
I press my face into the pillow and take a breath. My nose fills with the scent of lavender. That’s the stuff Mom spritzes on the sheets when she gets them back from fluff-and-fold. Her little personal touch.
“I left a curry stew in the refrigerator,” Mom says.
I don’t acknowledge her.
“Sanskrit,” Mom says, her face pressed close to my door. “I want to tell you—”
A taxi blows its horn in front of the house.
I want Mom to finish the sentence. What was she going to say?
I love you.
I’m sorry.
I don’t want to go.
I’ll never know.
I wait for the scraping at my door to stop. For Mom’s footsteps to move away down the hall. For the front door to open and close. For the squeak of the cab’s brakes as it pulls away on the street.
For the house to go quiet.
It does.
A few minutes later, there’s a tap on my door.
I go over and pop the lock.
Sweet Caroline doesn’t say anything. She just stands there looking at the ground and chewing on a fingernail.
I go back and lay on my bed, look up at the ceiling. It needs paint. Mom’s been saying she was going to get the house painted for two years, but it never happens.
Sweet Caroline comes in and sits on the edge of the bed. The mattress creaks a little. Not much. She doesn’t weigh much.
Without a word, she lies down and presses her body into mine. I turn on my side and wrap my arm around her.
I smell the trace of lavender oil on the pillow mixing with the fruit shampoo scent of Sweet Caroline’s hair. It’s the smell of my family.
After a while, I hear the sound of a key in the front door followed by Dad cursing.
“How the hell does this thing—”
He doesn’t know the lock is old and doesn’t work right. You have to turn the knob half a turn or the key won’t engage.
Finally, he gets it, and the door swings open and slams against the wall too hard. Mom hates it when we slam the door. I told her she should install a doorstop instead of yelling all the time, but she said it was our responsibility to take care of our home, not some piece of rubber’s.
Dad curses again and closes the door.
Sweet Caroline is snoring softly in the bed next to me.
I press her shoulder.
“Dad’s here,” I say.
“Okay,” she says.
But she doesn’t move.
“We should go,” I say.
“To Dad’s.”
“We can make it work.”
“We make it work two days a month, Sanskrit. I’m not naïve. I know it’s not a thirty days per month kind of experience.”
She’s right. But I don’t say it. I say, “Let’s go and find out.”
She rolls away from me.