“Sylvie, I need you to come take care of your mother.”
A few months after my thirtieth birthday, everything had taken a turn for the worse. I’d been laid off at work unexpectedly, winter had settled over Providence like an icy steel dome, and now, on a particularly brutal January night, Aunt Jill had no patience left for me. I hadn’t been down to Spring Hill even once to visit my mother. In fact, I’d only been kept apprised of her treatments and condition because Jill had taken to calling me every Thursday night. Even for Thanksgiving and Christmas, which I usually spent in Hanover with Jill, Missy, and Missy’s husband, Carl, I had made flimsy excuses. Lauren’s family invited me to Virginia or I can’t get enough time off of work. Swallowing down acidic guilt was safer, I felt, than seeing my mother. I imagined her attached to an IV bag, her eyes widening with an unspoken fear, and each time, the tenderness I felt for her scared me. It was risky—thinking of her in a way that made her easier to love.
Jill never called me out on my lies or excuses; she’d just sigh into the phone and say things like, “You can’t stay away forever,” or “She’s your only parent, Sylvie.”
Back when I was living with Aunt Jill and Missy, I used to get jealous whenever Missy went to her dad’s house for the weekend. I’d watch her pack a duffel bag with T-shirts and jeans and makeup, and I’d feel a tug at my heart that I didn’t yet know was envy. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Aunt Jill, or didn’t feel grateful that she’d swooped in to save me from my mother’s darkness; it was just—having a father would have been nice, too. Useful, even.
All my life, it had been just Persephone, Mom, and me, and I had never felt the need for another parent. Still, when I watched Missy’s dad pull up to the curb and honk his horn, when I saw Missy’s ponytail bounce in the air behind her as she ran to the passenger side of his car, I wondered if things would have been different if one of our fathers—Persephone’s or mine—had stayed in the picture. Maybe, I often thought, Mom had lost herself so easily because she had so few people who loved her; in that way, losing just one of us meant losing nearly everything.
Now, the phone pressed to my ear, and Aunt Jill waiting for my response on the other end, I had another, more selfish reason for wishing for a father. If there’d been someone else living in my mother’s house, then the task of taking care of her wouldn’t have fallen to me.
“I—can’t,” I said to Jill. “I meant to tell you, actually. I just got laid off at the tattoo parlor, so now isn’t really the best time. I have to stay here to look for a new job, send out my résumé, hopefully go on inter—”
“No,” Jill cut in, quick to refute the excuse I’d been crafting ever since Steve called me into his office the Friday before. “I’m sorry you were laid off—I really am, and I want to hear more about that later—but if you don’t have a job, then this is actually the perfect time for you to come home.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Sylvie, there’s no ‘but’ about it. You know that Carl was deployed last month, and that the baby is due next week. I have other responsibilities, okay? Missy needs me, so I’m heading up to Boston to be with her. If you hadn’t been dodging my calls, then we would have had more time to discuss this and it wouldn’t have seemed so sudden. Now, I’ll drive down to your mother’s whenever I can get away, but in the meantime, she needs someone to stay with her. Someone to drive her to her appointments. Someone to help her when she feels sick.”
Her voice wavered, and I closed my eyes as she cleared her throat. “As you know, she finished up her first chemo cycle back in November, but things haven’t progressed the way the doctors were hoping. They’re starting her chemo again next week, and she can’t drive herself to the hospital. You have to do this, Sylvie. I know it’s hard, but you have to stop thinking only of yourself and just step up.”
I’d never heard Aunt Jill speak to me that way before. I knew she was exhausted and stressed and overwhelmed, but besides all that, I could tell she was profoundly disappointed in me. In a way, the realization of that fact hit me even harder than hearing about my mother’s diagnosis had.
“You’re right,” I said. “I just—I don’t know how to talk to her.”
“So don’t talk. Just drive. And cook. And clean. And help.”
I hadn’t been back to Spring Hill since I’d graduated high school. On the few occasions I’d seen my mother since then, it was always at Aunt Jill’s, mere miles from the house I grew up in, but miles I was, nevertheless, unwilling to travel. During those times, our tense barbecues and forced family dinners, Mom pushed around the food on her plate and said only the shortest sentences to me (“Fine.” “That’s interesting.” “Huh.”), and I was always uncomfortable, always aching, my mind churning to conjure reasons for an early return to Providence.
“I just don’t think Mom’s gonna be happy to see me,” I finally said.
“So what?” Jill shot back. “You think she’s ever happy to see me? Hell, the way she is—the way she’s been to you and to all of us for all these years—I’m never that happy to see her, either. But this is bigger than that, Sylvie. You have to know that. And if you’re not going to do it for your mother, then could you please—please—just do it for me?”
Can you please just do this for me? I’m your only sister, Sylvie.
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing Persephone’s voice out of my head. Because it wasn’t Persephone asking. It was, with a tone that was both defeated and desperate, Aunt Jill, who had signed my high school permission slips and gone to parent-teacher conferences, who had made my favorite meatballs when I got into RISD and sent me peanut butter cookies all through college. She was right, of course. Someone had to take care of my mother, and the only person left was me.
Lauren saw things differently, though.
“I don’t get it,” she said the next night as I packed. Her lips were set in a pout, and every time I folded another shirt and put it in the suitcase, she plucked it out and threw it on the floor. “Why can’t your mom just hire one of those home-care nurses?”
I folded a pair of jeans, placed them on top of a stack of sweaters, and put my hand over the pile to keep Lauren’s off of it. “My mom hasn’t worked in years. I don’t even know how she’s managed to afford her vodka all this time—let alone her treatment.”
Lauren groaned, throwing her body back on my bed and swinging her feet up onto the mound of shirts I had yet to fold. “Maybe your aunt can pay for home care, then.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I can’t ask her to do that. She’s been supporting my mother financially for years. She’d never admit it, but I know things are tight for her.”
“Okay, fine,” Lauren conceded, “but let’s just think this through for a second. First of all, your mom randomly became a catatonic drunk when you were a teenager, and then she . . .” She stopped then, squinting at me. “What? What’s that look about? Is it because I said your mom’s an alcoholic? Because I’m sorry, but—”
“No,” I cut her off. “It’s not that.”
It had been the word randomly. I’d winced when she said it. But, of course, that word was consistent with the story I’d told her of my life. In the version she knew, there was more than a decade between the time Persephone supposedly died in a car accident and the time Mom started drinking. How could I expect her to connect those dots and understand that, painful as it had always been, there was a reason my mother drank?
I thought about what it would be like to tell her the truth—that Mom was an alcoholic because the worst thing had happened to us, not a tragic but common death like a car accident, but the void of an unpunished murder. I pictured myself confessing that Mom was only half of what haunted me in Spring Hill, that I did remember my sister and it was the remembering that, all these years later, kept me awake some nights. But I knew how much it would hurt to speak the truth, to answer the questions that would definitely follow, to be pushed into explaining the whole story—the bruises, the paint, the window.
No one knew how I’d locked Persephone out that night—not Mom or Aunt Jill or the detectives. According to the official police report, Ben told them that he’d dropped her off around ten thirty, but then she’d quickly come back to his car and they’d driven off again. He never told them why she came back; the report had him stating that “she changed her mind.”
Now, my throat ached at the thought of telling Lauren any of that. Still, she had seen me wince, and she stared at me now, waiting for me to explain.
“It just wasn’t that random,” I said, as casually as I could manage. “My mom’s drinking, I mean. She was really messed up about what happened to Persephone, and she used alcohol to cope.” Lauren’s eyes widened and I quickly added, “Even though it had been years since her death.”
“Wow,” Lauren said, propping herself up on her elbow and looking at me with focused, earnest eyes. “You never bring up your sister.” She paused for a few moments. “Do you want to talk about her?”
I forced a chuckle as I stared at the shirt I had folded. “No, I’m fine,” I said.
I could feel Lauren’s eyes lingering on my face, but I kept on placing clothes into my suitcase. Finally, she said, “Okay. But I’m just saying—reasons or no reasons, your mother has hardly been a mother at all to you for half your life. But now, when things get tough for her, you’re expected to go play faithful daughter? How is that fair?”
I sighed, pushing the suitcase aside to lie down next to her. “You’re right,” I said. “It’s not fair. But what choice do I have? Jill has to go be with Missy, and my mom’s alone. I’m the only option she has left.”
“Or . . .” Lauren said, “I could try to talk to Steve again. Maybe if you had your job back—”
“No. I don’t want him to feel worse than he already does.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re too nice for your own good, you know. You’re giving up everything to go nurse your horrible mother, and you’re worried about making the guy who fired you—after you gave years of your life to his business—feel just a little bit bad.”
“You didn’t see him when he was letting me go,” I said. “He was close to tears. He kept saying that when business picks up again, he’d love to have me back, but he just couldn’t afford it right now. He has a daughter going to college next year. How can you argue with that?”
I certainly hadn’t been able to. I’d sat on the metal folding chair in Steve’s office and nodded along to his reasons. I’d stared at the faded clock tattoo on his wrist and languidly wondered where I’d go from there. I knew of two other tattoo parlors in a four-block radius, but the idea of sending out résumés, of putting together a portfolio, exhausted me to the point where I’d gone home, crawled right back into bed, and didn’t get up again until Lauren came home hours later demanding we talk about it.
“It’s still bullshit,” she said now. “You know the only reason he fired you instead of me is because I look the part, right?” She pushed up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, exposing her right arm, which was tattooed with a scene she’d designed based off The Secret Garden, her favorite book from when she was a kid. “I’ve got the tattoos, the dyed hair, the nose ring, and you’re over here all ‘My skin’s never even seen the sun, let alone a needle and ink.’ It’s discrimination.”
Lauren loved to claim discrimination. She did it at pizza restaurants when our order took a long time coming out, and she screamed it at female bartenders when they batted their lashes at men while pouring our drinks.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What’s done is done. Even if I still had a job, I don’t know that it would change much. My mom’s still dying.”
The words came out louder than I’d anticipated. They bounced off the ceiling and walls. I hadn’t said it like that before. I’d said, “My mom is sick,” and “My mom has cancer,” but I hadn’t yet said what even the hopeful doctors probably knew: she was dying.
Lauren sat up, pulling her knees close to her chest. Then, after staring in silence at my suitcase, she grabbed a shirt from the pile on the bed and folded. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then, quietly, “You’re doing the right thing.”
• • •
It was painful to remember, of course, but the truth was—I had once loved my mother so deeply that I couldn’t imagine there being anything in the world that could complicate that feeling. Sometimes—it could be anytime, really; when I was just eating cereal, or loading ink into a tattoo gun—a memory of my mother, the way she’d been during the first half of my life, sharpened into focus. When that happened, I often had to brace myself, close my eyes until the familiar pangs in my chest subsided.
That night in particular, as I continued to pack after Lauren had gone to bed, one of my earliest memories suddenly swept through me, rushing into my mind like cold air through an open window.
I was four years old, and I was inventing constellations with Mom on our living room wall. Persephone watched us from the couch, her eyes peering over the third-grade science textbook propped against her knees. As I faced the wall, assessing my canvas, Mom passed me a thin paintbrush, then placed her palm on my shoulder. Even at such a young age, I handled that tool with reverence, with care; I understood that we were working together, the brush and I, to tell a story with stars.
“It’s Persephone,” I said, touching silver paint to our wall. Three slow, patient dots, then two more, then three again. I dipped the brush back onto the palette that Mom held out for me, then continued to constellate.
“This is your face,” I explained, looking back at Persephone on the couch and pointing with the brush. “These are your legs, and this is your dust.”
“What dust?” she asked.
“The disappearance dust.”
My sister screwed up her nose the way she did whenever she heard an answer that didn’t satisfy her. She chewed on the open tip of a Pixy Stix and waited for me to continue. The blue sugar on her lips made her mouth look cold.
“Go on, Sylvie,” Mom coaxed. “What’s disappearance dust?”
“It’s magic,” I said. “Now she’s here, now she’s not.”
“What makes you think I have disappearance dust?” Persephone asked.
“You don’t in real life,” I said, “but in the stars, you’re magic.”
Mom knelt down so she could look into my eyes. “That’s a beautiful idea, Sylvie,” she said. She turned her head to look at my sister, who squinted at us, at Mom’s hand on my arm in particular. “Don’t you think so, Persephone?”
“No,” my sister said, her tone sharp but still casual enough. “It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no such thing as disappearance dust.”
Mom looked at the constellation on the wall, the scattered stars near the points that would be Persephone’s hands, and smiled. “It’s something your sister invented,” she said, “and that makes it very special.”
Persephone stood up off the couch, her textbook thumping to the floor. “It doesn’t make any sense!” she insisted. “It’s just stupid! Ooooh, look, I’m going to disappear.” She spun around, shaking the remaining sugar from her Pixy Stix onto the carpet, and for a moment, it looked like it was snowing blue flurries in the living room.
As much as she tried to hide it, I could see the promise of a smile on my sister’s lips. She meant to be biting, and sarcastic, and perhaps even hurtful, but she was only eight years old, and there is something about spinning freely in a room that just dissolves a child’s anger. Persephone twirled and twirled until a single giggle escaped her lips, and then, just like that, she tripped. She fell to the floor, hands first, knees next, her science book caught between her feet.
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. I laughed the way we did when we played in the snow together and made facedown angels, our cheeks stinging with the cold and the widths of our smiles.
“Shut up,” Persephone snapped, her back arching like an animal as she struggled to get up.
“Hey—language,” Mom warned. “Are you okay?” She reached for one of my sister’s hands to try to help her up, but Persephone pulled away. Then, as if reconsidering, Persephone crawled back toward my mother and the two became mirror images of each other—the same blonde hair, same slender figure—kneeling together on the floor.
“Looks like a rug burn,” Mom said, rubbing a finger against the textured red spot on Persephone’s knee.
Persephone looked down and winced. “It hurts,” she said. Then her icy eyes sparkled. “Can you kiss it and make it better, Mom?”
Mom sighed and stood up, brushing Pixy Stix sugar from her legs, still holding on to the paint palette. “You’re too old for that,” she said. “Come on, get up.”
But Persephone made no effort to move.
“Please?” Persephone asked, and I was surprised to see that the sparkle in her eyes was just glittering tears. My sister was usually so much stronger than rug burns.
Mom turned away from the human Persephone on the floor to look at the one made of stars on the wall. “What do you think, Sylvie?” she asked. “Is it done, or does it need any finishing touches?”
“Maybe just . . .” I began, but I was cut off by what sounded like a growl coming from deep within my sister’s body. I looked over at her just in time to see her spring from the floor and leap toward the wall, palm outstretched. She swiped her hand across the fresh paint, slashing silver through the constellation. For a moment, no one said anything. Then, Persephone made a sound—half sob, half grunt—and she stomped down the hallway. A moment later, I heard our bedroom door slam.
Mom’s eyes were closed, the skin of her lids pinched together at the edges. “Why did she do that?” I asked, feeling hot tears gather in my lashes.
When she opened her eyes again, there was a smile in them. “Don’t worry about it, okay?” she said. “It’s just Persephone being Persephone. Now, look, come down here for a second.”
She took the paintbrush from my hand and placed it on the end table. Then she swiped her finger across the tears that had spilled onto my cheek and she lay down on the beige carpet, waving at me to come join her. As I crawled beside her, I noticed that her hair mingled with the blue sugar on the floor, and that those specks looked like tiny jewels.
“Now, look up at the wall,” she said, and pointed her finger toward the constellation we’d just made. There was something strangely beautiful about the way it had been ruined. Persephone’s hand had made the disappearance dust streak across the stars meant to be her body, and it looked as if she was in motion, twirling in the sky like she’d done in the room minutes before.
“It’s like we’re looking up at the stars, and we’re seeing Persephone,” she said, “and just look at all the disappearance dust. I can still see it, can’t you?”
I nodded my head but didn’t respond, her words like a spell.
“My love for you, Sylvie,” she continued, “is exactly like those stars. It’s as eternal as each and every one of them. It goes on and on and on.”
I smiled, growing drowsy on the floor as Mom spoke, and I nestled my head against her shoulder. We were safe right then, and happy, with blue sugar in our hair and a silver constellation on the wall. And because I wasn’t Persephone’s age yet, and I wasn’t learning science in school, I didn’t know that stars don’t last forever. I had no idea that the light we see is just an echo of an old burn, or that, most of the time, it’s the absence of a glow, instead of the glow itself, that goes on and on and on.