That night Mom, still in her suit,
asks if she can come in,
sits on my bed.
I shrug. Turn a bit in my windowseat.
She says she wants to tell me something:
She didn’t only go to Italy for work,
she left because Dad fell so hard for James,
she didn’t know how to exist
on the periphery of their love.
She says Italy was amazing, she learned
more during that year abroad than she had in her
whole life as an artist. But when she got
that call from Dad
she gave it all up.
I came home when he got sick.
I came home because he needed me.
Then I knew, someday, we’d be sitting here.
Counting time.
I look at her.
I came back to be with you.
To be with your sister.
As a family.
She says she’s sorry for how much she missed that year.
And all the other times she hasn’t been around.
I ask her if April knows the truth,
she says she will talk to her too.
I used to imagine she saw us as a train
she could ride at will,
instead of a station,
fixed, every day.
I wonder now if maybe
a family is neither of those things
but something stable,
yet always changing,
because the people inside it are.
I move from the windowseat.
Don’t hug her or thank her,
but I do ask her
where on earth
she found that suit.
She laughs.
After she leaves,
I find the buried broken fish
in the bottom of my closet—
carry the pieces to the bathroom sink,
wash them one by one,
lay them gently
to dry
on the ledge.