THE CABBAGE PATCH–STYLE dolls her grandmother Lily had sewn for her when she was a little girl still sat on her white daybed as if they’d been waiting for Lucia to return. One cloth foot had lodged between Lucia’s calves as she slept in the fetal position on the small twin mattress. She woke up in the cabin feeling almost hungover. The queasiness reminded her of nights of heavy drinking with a handsome stranger that led to the next morning’s discovery that his eyes were a little too close together and his waistline a little too soft. Here she was in a bedroom she hadn’t seen in fifteen years, and she had no clue why coming home had registered as a good idea. Divorce and despair were just as toxic as alcohol, and she had combined all three yesterday.
Mya didn’t ask to come in. She never had, and Lucia wasn’t sure why she’d expect anything more from her now that they were adults. The sound of her humming announced her. As the older one, Mya could do what she wanted—at least that’s how she always rationalized her invasion of privacy. Lucia inched the smooth cotton covers down from her face just enough to see that Mya had sauntered into Lucia’s room completely naked except for a pair of fuzzy purple socks. Mya didn’t seem to notice Lucia’s presence in the room and instead inspected the closet. Slowly Lucia covered her entire head to make sure her sister didn’t know she was awake. Mya pulled out a short yellow robe from the closet and then sat down in the rocking chair. The sound of the rocker falling forward and backward on the hardwood floor was almost unbearable. Lucia prayed her sister would just leave.
“That doesn’t work,” Mya finally said, and drew back the curtains to let in the sunlight.
Lucia sighed, and the cotton sheet billowed upward with her breath. She pulled down the covers and stared at her sister. And in the sunlight filling her room, to Lucia’s dismay, Mya looked like the younger one now, her skin more radiant than Lucia’s and her blond hair fuller and brighter. Her lips didn’t look permanently dried out, and all the curves of her body were as perky as ever. Had it really come to this? Mya had told her it would, those many years ago right before Lucia took off. The mountains won’t take you back. The city will be hard on you. The city had been hard on Lucia and her body—too much food and drink and exhaust. Not enough fresh air.
Mya lifted a nail file from the pocket of the robe that she kept in Lucia’s closet for some odd reason. Or was that Lucia’s robe from high school?
“Smells like liquor in here,” Mya said, and worked her nails back and forth.
“I had a few drinks,” Lucia said, and pressed down on her eyelids with her fingertips in an attempt to clear away the blurriness and the headache behind it.
Mya said, “Explains how you got here.”
“I guess so,” Lucia said.
Mya blew the dust from her nails.
Lucia squinted and tried to find a clock in the room. “What time is it?”
Mya stopped filing and peered out the window. “I don’t know,” she said, and then stood up for a better look at the sun. She stretched her arms above her head and the robe inched up, revealing her bare buttocks. “About ten thirty-five,” she said. “Maybe ten forty.”
The years of separation were already bearing down harder than Lucia had expected, and she didn’t want to leave the bed. She just wanted the little things—a cup of black coffee would do just fine.
Mya said, “She’ll be home soon, you know.”
Lucia sat up slowly and placed her feet on the cool hardwood floor. The feel of it reminded her of being twelve years old and not wanting to leave the room to check the fields or go to the factory and distill oil. Mya loved it and woke up early; Lucia sighed and wanted to stay in bed.
“Where’d she go?” Lucia said.
“L.A.”
“She finally accepted a premiere invite?” Lucia said. “That figures.”
Mya said, “Just business.”
Lucia hoisted the duffel bag she’d brought with her onto the daybed and unzipped it. It did not smell fresh. Mya looked offended. That’s what she got for having such a sensitive nose. Lucia’s hair fell forward, creating a shield around her face. She’d brought home a suitcase full of filthy laundry just like a college student.
Mya said, “So what’s the mystery?”
Lucia stood up in the jeans and T-shirt she’d worn on the plane, and the entire room smelled like sweat and gin. Was it possible her mother had kept her clothes from high school? She wished Mya wasn’t in the room to witness her slide open those drawers. But she was, so Lucia did, and there inside the top drawer was fifteen-year-old underwear pressed and folded, and in the drawers below, overalls, leggings, midriff T-shirts, flannel shirts, and a wrinkled spaghetti-strap dress with a white flower print. Lucia’s high school boyfriend had given her this dress for her seventeenth birthday. Ben chose it because the flowers in the pattern reminded him of the Lenore family flower. Lucia didn’t care much for the style of the dress, but she still remembered his thoughtfulness, how proud he’d been to offer her the box over a dinner that he’d cooked and how quickly he conceded that he hadn’t wrapped it himself.
Lucia unfolded the dress and held it up to her body like a child’s dress-up piece, a wrinkled and shrunken relic. Many years had passed since she thought much about Ben White. A pang of guilt flashed through her body whenever she did, so she chose to ignore the idea of him completely. And this had been easy to do during the first years of her marriage. But later, during the aftermath of her worst fights with Jonah, her thoughts tended to drift toward Ben. Lucia had no idea what he was up to now. Mya probably knew, but there was no way she would ask her sister. She balled up the dress and stuffed it back in with the other clothes that would never fit her again. Why had her mother kept all this stuff? Did her nostalgia run so deep?
Mya flipped through Lucia’s closet and then handed her a simple blue linen dress with high slits on both sides of the legs. It smelled like cedarwood. Her mother always kept fresh cuts in the closet.
“It’s Jonah?” Mya said.
Lucia turned around to remove her clothes.
“Another woman?” Mya said quietly.
“What makes you say that?”
Mya said, “He always seemed like that kind of guy—at least that’s how Mom described him. Looking for the better thing all the time.”
What about Jonah could’ve possibly given Willow that impression? Willow and Mya did always see what Lucia couldn’t; all these years, that’s how it had been. Still, if it had been Mya’s failed relationship Lucia wouldn’t have said this to her face, even if she believed it. Lucia finished tying her dress, refusing to turn around. She said, “He cheated on me, so we filed for divorce.” Mya let out a small sigh that mimicked boredom. Lucia wouldn’t tell her or their mother the truth, that Jonah went to one of his friend’s art openings alone because Lucia had stopped enjoying dates with him a long time ago—and sex, for that matter, the warming of her groin when he touched her a distant memory, as if she’d only seen it in a movie. She refused to go out to support his friend’s bad high-end graffiti art. But then she felt guilty, and Lucia asked her friend Nina to go with her. They caught Jonah making out with a Calvin Klein designer ten years younger than Lucia and at least four jean sizes smaller. The sight of the two of them in such a passionate embrace actually relieved Lucia, since she hadn’t had sex with Jonah in almost a year. She felt sure it was all her fault—she was too depressed about her career, and her life headed forward with no purpose or real momentum. She couldn’t convince herself she was attractive enough to have sex with Jonah, whom the entire Manhattan art world masturbated over these days: “Our post-postmodern Duchamp delivered in a golden canvas.” Lucia hated Marcel Duchamp’s work, but that was the man her husband had become, and everyone loved him. Lucia wanted her response to his indiscretions to freeze with her feeling of relief, but inevitably the bile of bitterness settled and Lucia just felt old. Not that she’d dare tell Mya something so personal and humiliating, considering Mya somehow managed to look as young as that girl.
“The two of you can work that out,” Mya said. “It’s just sex. Turn it into some kind of fantasy or something.”
Lucia stiffened. She’d arrived home only last night, and from the start Mya had acted like she wanted Lucia to turn around and go.
Mya said, “But I guess you should make him squirm for a day.”
Lucia shook her head, too tired to respond. She and Jonah and their curdled marriage were done, but she didn’t owe Mya an explanation.
Mya immediately followed up with, “And the acting? How’s that going?” As if she wasn’t satisfied with how uncomfortable she’d made Lucia already.
“Willow didn’t tell you?” Lucia said, and she finally turned around but dodged Mya’s stare. She pushed the dirty laundry she’d brought home to the floor and sat on her bed.
“Tell me what?” Mya said.
“I just thought she’d tell you first,” Lucia said.
Mya lined up tacks on the empty message board above Lucia’s dresser. “Sometimes she forgets things,” Mya said.
Lucia tied her oily hair into a long braid down her back and said, “Last year I landed a role playing a mother in North Carolina who leases herself and her fifteen-year-old daughter to a pimp. Rehearsals were fine and preview nights were fine, and then opening night with the theater critic for the New Yorker sitting in the front row, I had a panic attack, and it made me blank out on the Acorn Theater stage. They fired me and gave the part to my understudy, but that didn’t keep the critic from mentioning it in his review. And I just couldn’t get past it, and then my voice-over contract for that teenage soap opera show wasn’t renewed, and that had been my steady income. My agent hasn’t sent me anything since. So, any other Band-Aids you’d like to rip off for now, or could we take a break from playing twenty questions?”
Mya stood to the side of Lucia like she might sit down, but Lucia crossed her arms. Mya said, “You need a facial. Something with strawberry and honey.”
This was a kind way for her sister to tell her she looked like shit. Lucia said, “I’m fine.”
Mya nodded, but for once, she didn’t tell Lucia what she was thinking. For that Lucia felt grateful. “Is there coffee?”
“If you make it,” Mya said, and turned to leave the room.
“And moonshine?”
“Same place it always was,” Mya said.
Lucia massaged the base of her neck, then walked out of the room and instinctively went to close the door behind her. Still no doors, just curtains. Mya liked that no doors blocked her energy in the house, but for Lucia, it just meant less privacy. She walked into the open reading area and looked up at the loft. When they were little girls, Mya had spun tales of the men who would surely come into their futures, and she’d always led the way, just as she did now. Mya would crumble dried red rosebuds in their palms with three drops of lavender oil. She tied yellow ribbons around their fingers and described the men who would sweep them away. Mya’s man lived for adventure—caving, biking, swimming, climbing, hunting. Lucia’s man lived for enterprise—amassing wealth, building a home, and creating a family. Back then Mya and Lucia were friends and wanted to live next to each other and have husbands who would be like brothers. Together they blew away the pieces of petals from the loft above to the couch below and let the ribbons fall like confetti on their mother. “Watch out for my books,” she’d say.
Books were still scattered about the room, along with mountains of overflow paper from Willow’s office and dirty plates and cups from the kitchen. The space had never been tidier or messier than this. No matter how much time passed, the same thought still haunted Lucia: Why, if her family had so much wealth, did they live in such an outdated, cluttered, and small way? She had never understood her mother’s need for simplicity. Willow invested in small businesses in the town of Quartz Hollow and in conservative bonds and concentrated on personal savings, just like Grandmother Lily and Great-Grandmother Serena. Willow kept investing in the fund Serena had chosen in the thirties with a reliable 30 percent return. But for what? Willow rarely spent money. She preferred to watch it grow, like the flowers.
“How’s business?” Lucia said as she poured grounds into the coffeepot filter. She seated herself at the circular kitchen table and checked underneath for the wobbly leg. Still broken. She watched her sister float about the kitchen, pulling dishes from the refrigerator and placing them on the gas stove.
“Which business?” Mya said.
The coffeepot trickled, and Lucia said, “Is there another one I should know about?”
“I’ve got an herbal tea store in town now,” Mya said.
“Willow didn’t say. Good for you, but I meant the family business.”
Mya shrugged and said, “Everything’s okay.”
“Number twenty-seven on the Forbes list,” Lucia said, and helped herself to a cup of coffee and a generous drop of cinnamon moonshine from a Mason jar. She braced herself against the Formica countertop. “Better than just okay, right?” Mya frowned after Lucia said this, she was sure of it. Should they have been higher on the list? Being home always made Lucia feel like she was missing something.
Lucia took a sip. The coffee burned her tongue and the liquor warmed her body. Mya dropped a muffin pan on the wooden floor, and Lucia jumped, almost spilling her drink. There stood their mother in the doorway to the reading room, still holding on to her travel bag.
Willow’s hair fell farther down her shoulders than Lucia recalled—it was shimmering white and thicker too. Her delicate features defied her age. How could she be sixty-one already? Why had her mother and sister seemed to stop aging while Lucia was away? She took this personally, as though her absence had helped them to remain beautiful. Stop being irrational, say something to her, Lucia told herself, but she couldn’t find the words.
Before Lucia could open her mouth, a loud snap and a crash came from outside the kitchen window. Lucia and Mya both whipped around to find a large branch of an oak tree split from its trunk. Not a single cloud hung in the sky, and the sun shone as brightly as ever. Either the branch had just given up or their mother’s anger had peaked. Her fury had a history of cracking tree limbs, like the time an FDA inspector came snooping around and a massive maple limb flattened his company car. Willow dropped her luggage on the hardwood floor. Her stare remained fixed on Mya. “I’ve called and called you.”
“I didn’t hear the phone.”
Willow looked up to the ceiling and then said, “I’m sure you didn’t. I need a shower but when I’m done, be in my office.”
Was Lucia invisible? Willow turned around and headed for her side of the cabin.
Impulsively, Lucia said, “Um, hello?”
Willow stopped. She said, “You just show up? You could’ve called first.”
Lucia’s mouth fell open. Exactly what had she expected? On the plane ride and drive over she had imagined a hug at some point, but that had not yet happened with Mya or her mother. But protocol? Politeness? Remember your manners and call a day before you arrive?
“I didn’t exactly know I was coming,” Lucia said.
“I did,” Willow said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lucia asked, charging after her mother. Within moments she was transported to her teenage years, fighting with Willow over comments she made about Lucia’s desire to go to New York City.
“You; your career; the city; that husband, Jim—no, John—damn it, what’s that boy’s name?” Willow said, more to herself than to Lucia.
They’d all had lunch together a couple times in the city and Willow had visited Jonah’s studio once. She liked his paintings—at least she said she did. And now she couldn’t remember his name. Did she care so little? “Jonah,” Lucia said. “His name is Jonah. And he’s my ex-husband now.”
“Well, I’m sorry for you and Jonah, I really am, but it was all coming to this. For years it has been, and it’s taken you this long?” Willow massaged her forehead like she had a headache. Lucia remembered this gesture from the first time she introduced her mother to Jonah. After their dinner together, Lucia had hoped Willow would offer her approval for Lucia to tell Jonah about the family business. But Lucia had chided him about something small, like oversalting his food, and he’d walked out of the restaurant in front of Willow. Willow had massaged her forehead just like that for the entire hour they waited for Jonah to return, but he never did.
“You found me out, Mother,” Lucia said. “I’m a total and utter naïve failure. And I came home—of all fucking places—thinking I might not be judged.”
“Sometimes too much time passes,” Willow said, and closed her eyes.
“Can’t you be happy I’m here now?” Lucia said.
“You won’t stay,” Willow said. “What’s the use?”
Lucia said, “How loving.”
“You left us a long time ago and rarely call. Don’t talk to me about loving.” Willow frowned and retreated to her room.
Lucia walked outside through the front door and the damn birds flew inside, but she didn’t care. She slammed the door behind her, hoping they’d poop all over the reading room and her mother’s books. Lucia sat on the porch floor, next to the cast-iron bench, and surrounded by the hanging ivy she tucked her knees to her chest and put her face in her hands. She had absolutely no place to call her own, and she’d have to return to the city tomorrow and try to make her life work without Jonah, even if she wasn’t ready. How did a person lose everything, including a mother’s welcome? Not even the dragonflies seemed to notice she’d arrived. She hadn’t thought of herself as a loser before, had always hated the slang silliness of that word, but right now she had no other term to describe how she felt.
Lucia heard a shuffle in the grass and lifted her head from her arms to see her sister standing out in the meadow, a herd of deer behind her, guarding her. Mya did not motion for Lucia, nor did she come to the porch to check on her. Instead, she walked off into the surrounding woods with the deer following her. Her mother might’ve held a grudge all these years about Lucia’s leaving, but Mya certainly didn’t. Lucia’s being gone ensured Mya would be the next president of the company. Lucia had never coveted the title anyway; Mya had made no other plans for her life. Even when they were little girls, Lucia had assumed the business was Mya’s to inherit. All she ever wanted to do was make Willow proud the only way she thought she could, by succeeding on her own as an actress.
Lucia stared at the slivers of space between the wooden planks on the porch, convinced she could slip right through them, and she traced her fingers in the emptiness between. Willow wasn’t the mother Lucia had expected to find—the exhaustion and bitterness, it all came as a surprise. This wasn’t the woman who had marched her daughters on a weekly hike or into the tree house on a rainy day to have a picnic catered by a downtown French café, her mother’s favorite—baguettes, brie, roast chicken, apple tarts and imported chocolates and cold sparkling grape juice. Far too much for the three of them to consume, but she did this each week without fail, as she refused to leave town on business for more than four days at a time. And in the woods her mother rolled on the ground with them and climbed young poplar trees and made cups from the leaves and scooped water from streams to drink. They buried treasure rocks together and they all promised to remember where they left them, but of course they never did. On the hikes back to the cabin they often stopped to say hello to the flowers, and if they were in bloom, Willow stood at the edge of the field, palms open and eyes closed, and Mya and Lucia held hands and their breath as they waited for the flowers to lean toward their mother, who looked so much like a superhero in those moments. Mya and Lucia tried, but the flowers only moved for Willow, Grandmother Lily, and Great-Grandmother Serena. Willow hugged them with a smothering intensity and seemed so young and vital. Lucia had believed Willow could do anything—so had Mya—and she wished she could rewind to just one of those days. But her mother was no longer that woman and Lucia no longer that girl.
A dragonfly crossed her vision, and she looked up but couldn’t see where it went. And then it returned and landed on the tip of her nose, so close she went cross-eyed trying to focus. She shook her head because the tiny legs tickled her skin, and the dragonfly took off again, but this time slowly enough for Lucia to track its flight in Mya’s direction.