We used to do this all the time as kids. Whenever Margot was scared, which was a lot, or I was bored, which was often, we would scurry into the small triangular space under our stairs. We sat shoulder to shoulder and talked. Sometimes we’d rehash what had frightened her; other times we’d pretend it never happened and discuss our school crushes.
Margot would then endure a maximum of thirty seconds of silence before she’d press her knee into my thigh. She wanted me to tell a story, but she never liked to ask for what she needed.
One morning she’d found Dad passed out on the couch with a bloody gash on his head. Margot came crying to me, insisting he was dead. I held my hand on his chest, his heart beating under my palm. I assured her he was still alive, without commenting on whether I thought that was a good thing. Mom caught us hovering over him and shooed us away. Her tone was a mixture of disgust and annoyance, and it came off like she was directing those emotions at us when the source of her anger was Dad.
Margot took every one of those careless comments to heart, and that day she was shattered. She believed Dad was dead and in the face of that emotion, Mom belittled her. Don’t be so stupid, she’d said.
That day, I found Margot under the stairs in the dark. She wiped her runny nose and wet cheeks on her sleeve, trying to hide her tears.
Today in Stars Harbor, she wasn’t crying, only because she’d learned to keep that inside. But I could see the same shattered Margot. She took my failed marriage too personally. I don’t expect her to ask; I simply launch into the fantasy.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Margot. She was sensitive but strong. Easily overwhelmed emotionally, but relentless in her actions. One day she was feeling so misunderstood that she hid in the crawl space under the stairs. There, she found a portal to a world where it was forever autumn with brightly colored leaves and sweater weather. Margot couldn’t retrace her steps to see how she ended up there, but the townspeople knew the how didn’t matter. She was their queen and her brother their king. Their royal family. The prophecy had told them all about this brother and sister. They had been waiting for us.”
Every time Margot’s heart broke, I was there to heal it. At Nana’s townhouse the space was smaller and more narrow than in our childhood home, and we were bigger. Nana kept the space jammed with toilet paper and paper towels, but we wriggled in anyway. After Mom and Dad died, Margot made me scrub the mean parts about our parents from my stories. She was content with the place that looked beautiful but strange, where we were in control and we decided that nothing could hurt us as long as we ruled together.
In this astrology house, Margot rests her head on my shoulder and remembers who we are. The invincible brother and sister. When I’m done, something inside her opens up.
“I’m so scared,” she says.
“Of what?”
“That someone’s gonna die.”
“You think Aimee’s going to kill me?”
“Remember what she did when she caught you cheating years ago? Now you have three kids and you’re with another woman in the same house. I’d say that’s next-level all around.”
“It’s not a terrible point. How is she going to kill me?”
“With a gun? Or a knife. I bet she has the guts to do it with a knife. Slice you up.”
I ruffle her hair and shift my seat. “This isn’t as easy as it used to be,” I say.
“She is still postpartum from the baby. Good mothers can snap too.”
I shake my head, her ear bobbing on my shoulder from the way we’re connected.
“Not Aimee,” I say.
“Then you’re going to end up in a sad two-bedroom apartment in Kips Bay, and I’m going to have to live with you every other weekend to help you take care of the girls,” she says. “I’m not sure that’s much less of a nightmare.”
“Oh shit, Margot, that’s bleak.”
Margot starts laughing so hard that a single tear escapes. I feel her arm move to wipe her face.
“Where did you come up with that scenario?” I ask.
“I was sure it was coming for us,” she says. “Real as the day before us.”
I’m both disturbed and impressed. I always think of Margot as the practical one, while I’m the creative one. For the first time, I realize with all the damage in our past, Margot could have been a writer too. A dismal divorcé’s apartment and her as my pseudo-coparent. That’s the work of a wild imagination.
My story will have a happy ending; it’s the only way things end for me.