Bark ran too fast to greet me and slid across the tile floor into my legs. He righted himself and jumped on me.
“Buddy! Look at you go!” I said, surprised the loss of traction hadn’t left him terrified. I bent to kiss his head and he licked my chin. He smelled like clean laundry.
“Where’s Nan?” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Shoot, is she sleeping?”
Bark pushed his head into my hand for an ear scratch. I listened for signs of Nan. No TV chatter in her bedroom. The lights were off in the living room, and in the kitchen only the light over the stove was on. I found a note taped to the fridge: Back later, leftovers. XO
In the fridge, another note, taped to a CorningWare dish, said, Eat me.
Polenta. And more asparagus. I was tired of my pee smelling weird, but after hauling all that rebar, Mo’s mac and cheese wasn’t cutting it. I heated the food in the microwave and got Bark’s dinner ready.
Bark hopped behind me as I carried both dishes to my room. He was chowing down before I even got the bowl to the floor. No need to sit next to him. “Are you hungry, Barky?” I asked, but he was too busy eating to pay me any mind. I sat at my desk and opened my laptop, shoveling food in my face while I waited for my portfolio pictures from college to load.
In the time I’d spent working for Edith at the theatre in Rochester, I’d stopped believing in myself. Whenever she told me my designs wouldn’t work it felt like jealous bullshit, but I couldn’t bring myself to challenge her. She was a staple of the community. Everyone in Rochester knew Edith. No one knew Edith’s second-in-command. It didn’t matter that her work was stale, that she didn’t care about historical accuracy or craftsmanship. She’d reuse dresses with 1890s puffy gigot sleeves for a 1940s play, instead of putting an hour or two into alterations. Those things didn’t matter to her, but costuming is completely in the details. I always wanted to work for a better end, but Edith didn’t, and eventually, I started seeing limitations instead of possibilities. Every time I dredged up my feelings of defiance, she’d knock me down. It was easier to lose faith in my own work than carry the anger. If I believed I wasn’t very good I didn’t have to think about all the ways I’d cheated myself.
I opened the first set of my old portfolio photos. Titania’s costume for A Midsummer Night’s Dream looked like it was made of moonlight, the bodice wrapped in gunmetal blue silk ribbons trailing in uneven lengths over a skirt I’d sculpted from layers of icy organza on top of deep indigo shantung. The top fabric was pulled close in places, gathered in others, so the dress had an amorphous, magical feel. I stared at the photos of the actress in final dress rehearsal and felt awe for my work, like it came from a different version of me. That designer was brilliant. I’d let her down.
In theory a person could work at the Metropolitan Opera and have a family, but the elements of reality didn’t click together for me that way. I chose Eric and his steady job in Rochester and our house with the nice big yard for kids to play in, on a tree-lined street in a good school district. I chose wrong. Eric wasn’t worth the compromises. We didn’t get to have those kids. And now, when I thought of moving to New York City and starting over, fighting for an apprenticeship, sharing a studio apartment with a Craigslist roommate, it made me tired. I couldn’t go back to being someone who was full of hope and low on expectations. My last bit of durability had worn away. In the absence of a family, in the absence of a big dream, I had no idea what to do with myself. I used to have promise, and I squandered it.
I clicked on a picture of Titania with Oberon. I’d woven fresh bay laurel leaves into his crown before every show, and his moss-covered vest was actually alive.
“Hey, Kay,” Nan called, walking down the hall to my room. Bark woke from a solid snooze and yelped. We hadn’t heard Nan’s car pull into the garage. “You got dinner?”
“Yeah, thank you,” I said, shame twisting like I’d been caught doing something perverse.
“What happened to you?” she said, and I almost spewed all of my feelings about who I could have been, where I’d lost the narrative, but then she wrinkled her nose and I remembered how grimy I was.
“I helped Mo with her manatee.”
“That’s good,” she said in a clipped voice, like she was trying not to let her excitement spill out. “To do art. That’s a nice thing.”
“Mo’s art,” I said. “But, yeah, it was fun.”
“You’ll shower before you go to bed?” she said, like I was still a little kid in need of nudging.
“Yeah, Nan,” I said, trying to keep my tone in check.
She licked her finger and wiped at a spot on my cheek.
“I’m going to clean up,” I said. “Promise. I got sidetracked.”
Nan looked at my computer screen and pointed to Titania. “I’m so happy I flew in for that show. When that actress walked on stage in your dress, the whole audience gasped.”
I tried to settle the swirl of pride and disappointment into something I could manage.
“You are so full of talent,” Nan said. Present tense. Like it still existed. She ruffled my hair and then looked at her hand, covered with rust.
“Shower!” she said.
I marched to the bathroom to clean up before she could complain again.
Under the stream of hot water, my mind wandered to mermaids. High-waisted tails with sequins and barnacles, 1950s tops studded with fake pearls. Pinup girl spirit ripened to something stronger.
I raced from the shower, suds in my hair. There was an old notebook and a few colored pencils in the top drawer of my desk. I sat there in my wet towel and sketched until the mermaids on the page looked like the ones in my head.
* * *
Before I went to bed, I signed in to Facebook. Quickly, so I wouldn’t lose my nerve, I hit the message button on Luca’s profile.
Hi, I wrote, and hit enter, sending before I meant to. I scrambled to figure out if I could delete it, but then Facebook told me my message had been read. I waited for a response, staring at the screen until I was too cold to stay in my wet towel. I closed my laptop and went to bed, dozing and waking over and over. At three a.m., I finally caved and checked Facebook on my phone. No message.