The nightmares started when I was seven. The story changed every night, but it always involved a horrible accident, someone in my family, and me—and it was always my fault. A car crash, a house fire. The part of me that knew I was dreaming would squirm and try to blink myself awake before the awful thing happened, but I never could.
One night the dream changed, just a little. This time the person with me was Ruth. She was hurt, bleeding badly. We were walking in a desert, part of a caravan of camels, and suddenly Ruth screamed and ran to me, her side oozing red. I had a special ointment, the only thing that could save her, in a pouch in my pocket. I’d found it by following a treasure map, and dug it up from deep in the sand. She screamed for me to help her, save her. She got close to me, showed me the hole in her side. I pushed her away. She screamed and I pushed her again. We kept walking, my camels and I, and Ruth stopped following us. I kept walking over the dunes while her screams and cries echoed across the sand behind me. I did not turn around.
I woke up from that dream with the front of my T-shirt drenched and cold with sweat. There was already a puddle of tears on the pillow and a sob was building in my chest that felt too huge and throbbing for my seven-year-old ribs.
When I could move, I slid out of my bed, my arms wrapped around me, and scrambled to my parents’ bedroom. Mom had been sick all day and Dad was at a conference out of town, and when I opened the bedroom door, the bed was empty. There was a line of light under the door to the bathroom, and I heard noises of sick and smelled vomit.
I stopped, frozen with indecision. I desperately needed someone to hold me, to bring me back to the real world, but despite my terror I didn’t want to add more to my mom’s plate when she was already so sick. Even then I wanted to be the sunshine person. The person who made everyone else feel at peace, feel more happy. Storms always came, like sickness, but I wanted to be the person who made it all a little brighter, a little lighter.
So I stood still for a minute, then took two steps toward my bedroom. No, I couldn’t—I was too scared. I took three steps toward the bathroom. Another retching noise, and I wanted to let loose the wail building inside me, but I didn’t want to make too much sound or Mom would hear. I didn’t know what to do.
“Olivia.”
A whisper from the bedroom door. I turned and saw Ruth. Her hair was in braids, and she was still young enough to be wearing her pink narwhal nightgown. I must have woken her up.
“I…” Speaking felt too much like crying, and I stopped.
“Come on,” she said, and motioned me to follow. I took in a couple breaths, trying to cool my burning face. I stepped toward her.
She put her arm around my shoulders and led me down the hall to her room. She opened the door and in the glow of the guitar-shaped nightlight, I stepped across her floor to the bed. She didn’t say anything, just pulled back her blanket, and I climbed in, pressing my back against the wall. Ruth slid in next to me and pulled the blanket over both of us. She settled her head onto the pillow, facing me. She put an arm around me and closed her eyes.
Late in the afternoon, I finally become bored with my National Geographic magazines. It hasn’t been the most eventful day of our trip, short of the morning’s explosion. I’ve come down for food, but otherwise stayed bunkered in my loft. Ruth has been on her computer all day, earbuds in. Still listening to Dropkick Murphys, which is good. Maybe, I think, loud, rambunctious music is a weapon Healthy Ruth uses to fight that swirling, tidal wave battle in her brain. And that’s much, much better than The Pit.
When Ellie, Eddie, and Darcy come back, they have a pizza for us. We load into Darcy’s car and eat our dinner on the way to the aquarium. Ruth and I don’t look at each other, but she and Darcy talk a little more about college and music. I listen to their conversation and feel somewhat calmer than this morning. I hope Ruth does too, and I’m glad right now she seems engaged.
As we drive, I look out the window for hypothetical pictures, watching the trees and redbrick churches, and by the time we stop, I’m smiling. I can’t help it. In front of us is a gray building about three stories tall. There are balconies and rounded outcroppings, and it would look like a hotel except that the bottom story is designed and colored to look like red rock and sand. There’s a fountain in the front and in the middle, two giant stone swordfish, taller than me by far, leap into the air, the blue paint gleaming. Over the entrance are the words, AN UNDERWATER ENTERTAINMENT ADVENTURE.
I don’t know exactly how my Something Old plan is going to work out, given that we’re not exactly where I planned and Ruth is probably still uber-mad at me right now. But I’ll do my best. I can’t replicate the photo from before, but I’ll still have a great Something Old picture to show Ruth when we get to the end of the Treasure Hunt.
I run over to the swordfish statue. I love how their bladed noses arch toward each other. I love the smell of the chlorinated water. I pull out my camera to take a picture. Not the best shot, but the light coming from the fountain looks pretty cool. I’ll try for some really good shots once we’re inside.
We walk through the sandy, cavernous entrance. A lady with tiny braids in her hair stands at the front counter and Eddie buys us tickets. The lights are dim and blue, making everything look submerged.
Past the lobby are three arched entrances, each bearing the sign of its respective exhibit. My eye is immediately drawn to the one on our right and my legs want to leap with the thrill of it. There’s a sign made to look like sea-worn driftwood painted with red letters that say SHIPWRECK.
“Let’s go there,” I say.
I look back at the group. Ellie is smiling at me, and nods. Ruth is on her phone.
We head right, past some swampy-looking trees dripping with moss, and under the stone arch into a dark hall. There’s only dim light, shimmering and blue, like waves. At the end of the tunnel is another arch, and through it I can see an aquarium wall and what may be, if my dancing heart isn’t playing tricks on me, a giant sea turtle.
I step more quickly down the dark hall and through the entrance. We enter a room shaped like the hull of a ship. The walls above and below and all around are made mostly of thick glass, making everyone in the room a fully submerged participant in this underwater kingdom, this living Atlantis.
What I saw is a giant sea turtle. I crane my neck a little bit to see him past the rock he’s hiding behind. A stingray as big as me swims so close I gasp and step back, but then step immediately forward again and watch the ray glide like a magic carpet over to a bed of algae. Fish are everywhere, some small and flashing colors any artist would be proud of, as well as giant sluggish things that look more like big rocks than fish, their faces in a perpetual scowl. Some of them look like they could swallow me whole, even if their size is distorted by the water.
Between my feet, the glass flooring reveals the underwater world and sandy floor below. Another huge ray sleeps in the sand, partially covered. Without taking my eyes away, I pull my camera from its case and focus in on the stingray. I bend down close to try to minimize distortion from smudges and glare from the glass. A spiky pink sea urchin by the ray’s left eye completes the frame like it’s a still life. I click. Another fish gets too close and the ray skitters up and away, leaving only a puff of sand behind him.
There’s a short lady wearing round-framed glasses and an employee polo shirt standing by the entrance, and I step over to her when none of my group is watching.
“Hi,” I say. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” she says. “That’s what I’m here for!”
“So,” I say, “which is the oldest animal here? In the aquarium?”
She bites the inside of her cheek for a moment. “Hmm, good question.” She looks around for a second until she spots what she’s looking for. “That guy right there, I’m pretty sure.”
I look where she’s pointing and it’s my good friend the sea turtle again. He moseys slowly along the glass, following some yellow fish.
“Awesome!” I say. “Does he have a name?”
“Oh yes,” says the lady. “We call him Ned.”
Camera in hand, I look for Ruth. She’s looking down between her feet at a thick patch of pink coral. I keep one eye on her and one on Ned as he swims over our heads, and I try to triangulate myself between them to get a shot of both of them together, maybe even looking at each other. I try not to get too close so Ruth doesn’t notice I’m kind of following her.
She groans, looking hard at her phone like it’s just insulted her. Ellie notices too. “Everything okay?” she asks.
“It’s nothing,” says Ruth.
“You sure?” says Ellie.
Ruth glances at me, then looks back at Ellie. “It’s nothing, just this songwriting contest I submitted to. I didn’t win.”
“Oh gosh, I’m sorry, Ruth,” Ellie says. “That’s got to be discouraging.”
“It’s whatever,” says Ruth.
Ellie looks concerned, but lets it drop. I watch Ruth walk toward the glass, not seeing the stingray swimming right in front of her.
I take a couple of steps closer to her. Ellie, Eddie, and Darcy have meandered to other parts of the room. The shimmering reflection on the floor is like walking on light waves.
These are the kinds of Ruth situations I’ve always been terrible at, even before Ruth got sick. The knowing-what-to-say part. The comforting part. I can never get the tone right, like a singer always slightly off-key. I try, but can always tell I come off like a trite, ignorant cheer captain instead of someone who really cares. It seems like this should be such an obvious thing, comforting my sister. But somehow for me, knowing exactly what to say to make her feel better is like a bird knowing how to breathe underwater.
But I have to try.
Another step closer. I want her to know that I don’t care about our dumb argument anymore, and I’ve put it behind me. That there will be more opportunities. That she should always keep working on her songs and her own things no matter what, because they’re amazing.
Great. Even in my own head I’m a dumb cheerleader.
“Hey, um, I had no idea you were sending your songs to contests and stuff. That’s really cool. You’ll get the next one.”
“Right,” she says.
“Seriously.”
“It’s your fault, you know,” she says, but her voice is soft, not mean. Like she’s trying to joke. “Always talking about the job you’re gonna have, the magazines you’re gonna work for. Always reading National Geographic, practicing on Instagram and stuff. I have to keep up somehow, right?”
This surprises me a lot. Takes me off guard, even. This is what she’s noticing? This is what she’s seeing in my picture taking? I’ve been trying to communicate deeply with her—to reach her where she is—for so long, in so many different ways, and this feels sort of like she hasn’t understood the words I’ve been saying, but instead has noticed something small I’ve been casually doing by myself in the background. Like I’ve been trying to show her these big, epic, meaningful landscapes, and instead she scrolls back to some tiny blurry selfie and says, But what about that?
I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but I’m happy for anything she’s noticing. Anything that connects us.
“We’ll both get there,” I say. “We shall conquer!”
She looks at me and she looks softly sad.
“Maybe I’m just terrible,” she says.
“Definitely not,” I say. “The songs you’ve shown me are amazing.”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“I do.”
She sighs. “Thanks, but I don’t know if I want to keep getting more of the same lame rejection without feeling like I’m getting anywhere.”
I laugh. “‘The Same Lame.’ That should be your next song.”
She doesn’t laugh, but she doesn’t roll her eyes either. “I don’t know,” she says again.
Ruth is talking to me, close to confiding, which, for me, is a kind of walking on light waves. But I worry her hands might be losing their grip on the edge of The Pit.
“I think your work is amazing, no matter what anyone else says,” I say.
The same lame cheerleader words, but I’m not sure what else to say. I hope she knows I mean it.
“I appreciate your effort,” Ruth says. “And I know it’s all blue skies and happy sea otters in Olivia Land over there, but sometimes things just suck.”
I see Ned out of the corner of my eye, but I keep focused on Ruth. “I know,” I say.
Ruth clenches her hands and looks down. “I keep doing that to you. I don’t mean to snap … it’s not … I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about today.” Ruth sighs. “Don’t listen to me, okay? Be happy. Take lots of pictures.”
I want to hug her, tight and long. So she knows I see the struggle, so she knows I know how creative and fun and thoughtful and loyal my sister Ruth truly is. I also want to tell her I’m trying to understand the best I can, and that things aren’t always easy for me either. A voice in my mind says, happy otters can get hurt too, and then I’m remembering the way otters hold each other’s hands and imagining what it must be like to be the person who takes care of the otters here at the aquarium, and all those thoughts make me want to grin, which totally doesn’t help my attempt to appear serious and understanding. Mature, like Ruth. Which, clearly, I’m not, or at least she doesn’t think I am.
I don’t say any of those things, though, because I’ve pushed enough for one day. Another blowup and I’d shrivel like a raisin, and besides, just being here with Ruth in the blue water lights, the way we’ve talked about things while silver fish bob around us … all of that turns this into a good day after all.
Ruth’s turned back toward the glass and the water. I spot Ned the turtle again, coming from up high, toward Ruth. I lift my camera as fast as I can. He’s almost in frame … Ruth’s about to look up at him …
The room rings with a high-pitched squeal. I stop my instinct to turn around and instead I keep my camera lifted, fiercely trying to get this one shot, but Ruth’s already walked away, out of frame.
I turn around and there’s a little girl, maybe four or five years old, with perfect blonde whale-spout pigtails. She sobs in hiccups and plops down in the middle of the floor.
By the time I’ve realized she’s probably lost her mom, Ruth is already kneeling at her side. I check around the room. Now that someone’s taking care of the crying child, most everybody is going back to their own groups.
“You wanna know something?” Ruth is saying. I tune in to their conversation. “Guess how much percent I promise we’ll find your mom and you’ll be okay?”
The girl hiccups again, but the sobs have stopped. She’s thinking hard about Ruth’s question. “Nine?” she says.
“One hundred,” says Ruth.
The girl’s eyes get wide. And Ruth smiles.
I click a few photos. Something feels like it’s happening here, so photos are my natural response.
“It’s going to be one hundred okay?” says the girl.
“Yep,” says Ruth. “And you know I’m right because I’m smart.”
The girl considers again. She’s practically chipper. “Yeah,” she says. “And you have blue hair.”
“That is absolutely right,” says Ruth. “Let’s find your mom, okay? Can you remember what color shirt she was wearing?”
“Abby!”
A woman with a baby in one arm and a spit-up stain down her left shoulder comes running toward us. She’s got those exhaustion lines under her eyes and she practically melts onto the floor in front of the little girl.
“Honey, you have to stay holding on to the bag, remember?”
“I had to say bye-bye.”
The woman sighs. “I know. Okay, let’s go. Don’t you want to see the octopus?” She stands up, a tight grip on her daughter’s hand. She adjusts the diaper bag over her shoulder while trying to hold the baby in one arm and keep a handhold on Abby with the other. She pauses long enough to turn toward Ruth. “Thank you so much,” she says. “Sorry, I’m all over the place…”
In the particular shrug of Ruth’s shoulders, I can tell she has the exact right words for this situation, like an artist with custom paints.
“Naw,” says Ruth. She looks back at Abby. “Hey, it’s pretty sweet you have a mom who takes you to the aquarium, huh?”
Abby hops a little. “Yeah, to see the octopus like on TV.”
The woman shakes her head and laughs. “She is weirdly obsessed with the Discovery Channel, I swear.”
Ruth points her elbow over in my direction, but she doesn’t look at me. “When she was little, my sister used to cry herself to sleep at night if my mom wouldn’t let her watch Shark Week.”
The woman laughs. Ruth smiles again.
“Anyway, thanks,” the mom says.
“Have fun,” Ruth says. Mom and daughter leave. As Ruth watches them go, her shoulders slump back down.
I have an imaginary conversation in my head, where I tell Ruth that things will be one hundred okay. What I do know one hundred percent is that in that hypothetical conversation, her response is an eye roll and a huff. And that’s on a good day.
How come she gets to tell someone things will be okay, but I can’t tell it to her? Just because she’s sixteen and that girl was five doesn’t make it any different.
And there’s something else too. Ruth has had a pen cap between her teeth and a notepad on her lap for most of her life. She practices her words like Serena Williams practices serves. She’s careful with them and uses them exactly the way she wants. So why do her softest ones seem to flow more freely to strangers than to me?
I try to hold tight to the good ones she just gave me, even if I wish I got them more often.
My hands, in their usual habit, hold tight to my camera. We are here in the same place, Ruth and I, but if we each told our story of the aquarium, the two would be completely different, like we’re experiencing this on opposite hemispheres. But isn’t that what pictures are for? To show each other our stories?
Is it possible, even through the highest-quality lenses, for two people to really, truly see the same picture?
I have a couple of good shots of Ned the turtle, but none with Ruth in them. I keep clicking through my camera, scrolling past photos of sharks and turtles and the statues out front, up to the most recent ones. My stomach does that clutch thing when I hit the magic shot, the one that will be my post for the day. It’s all silhouette. Ruth and the little girl, backlit in underwater blue. Ruth’s shadow finger is pointing at a tiny trio of fish and the girl’s silhouetted face is pointed up in awe.
“Just When I Needed You Most,” Randy VanWarmer, 1979.