Betwixt (34 page)

She opened the door and stood in the light, her yukata plunged low across her breasts.

“Hi, Kaka.” She smiled a sisterly smile and touched her brother on the forearm. Mist curled up around them.

“Hey.” K.A. blushed and reached over to give his sister a kiss on the cheek.

How soft she must feel, how good she must smell.

“Welcome back, bro.” She reached into the bathroom and got a towel and started casually drying her hair. Seconds passed deliciously.
How easy, how
right,
it all felt. Not harsh at all, nothing like disgusting Bleek with his onion breath. She’d be a different kind of cutter —
a quivering slender leg emerging from a white cocoon. Foxy.

Morgan smiled and turned to walk into her room. K.A. followed.

“Lunch would be great with Mom. I haven’t seen her in a few days.” She looked at her brother. “So busy.
Ugh.
But nothing compared to you. How was camp? God, welcome back, Kaka! I missed you.”

A shadow passed over his eyes, slight, but discernible.

“I’m good. Coach gave me hell, though, something about being toughest on the strongest or some bullshit. I love it, but man,
I’m looking forward to doing something else after college. I don’t think I’m going to try to go pro after all. Four years
of college and that’s it for me.” K.A. cleared his throat and turned over a silver snake paperweight on his sister’s desk.
“Did Neve call when I was gone? We talked when I first got down there, but for the last few days I’ve been trying her cell
phone and it’s been off.”

Morgan looked into the mirror at her brother, who stood behind her as usual, eyes downcast.

“Anyway, I was just going to go by Jacob’s and pick her up, surprise her so that we could all go to lunch.” He checked his
watch.

She cleared her throat. It was mostly for effect, but it worked. K.A. looked up again and spoke.

“Sound good?”

“Listen.” Morgan paused, biting her lip as if to signal,
I
know how hard this must be. I don’t want to tell you this, but I have to.
“I didn’t want to get into this with you till you were back for a while, but —”

“What?” K.A. searched his sister’s face. She willed herself to flush.

“I’m sorry I’m the one to tell you this, but … Neve’s been really out of it. She’s been hanging around with Tim Bleeker since
you’ve been away, and last I heard —” Morgan turned to face the doorway, pausing tactically. “She was with Nix. At the party
everyone in Portland was talking about. Someone saw them together.”

K.A. narrowed his eyes. “The Ring of Fire? How do you know? Did you go? Who saw them?”

“Look, I just heard. It was going around at Krakatoa. You know I don’t spread rumors.” She stopped. “Nor do I believe them
… usually. But I haven’t heard from Neve since you left. She just split. Disappeared. No one really knew where she went, but
I kept hearing stuff about her and Bleek, and then Nix. Look, everyone knows Nix uses dust. Gets it from Bleek, in fact.”

K.A. put his hands to his eyes. Morgan knew her brother was about to cry, and though she knew it didn’t really matter whether
he did or not, she didn’t have the stomach at the moment to soothe him.

“K.A., she’s fucked up. You don’t need that in your life.”

“I’d better call her.”

“Why? So you can listen to her druggie apologies? You know what they’re like. Out for themselves.
Selfish.
” Morgan stepped closer. “You remember. I know you remember. When Dad was drinking? How bad it was? How he didn’t care about
anyone else but his pathetic, red-faced self? Look. If Neve is out of it, if she’s not calling you back, it means she’s hitting
bottom of some sort, and you know what? That’s exactly where she should be. She needs to be there before she gets her life
together and recognizes what she has — what she should be thankful for.”

She emphasized the thankful part.

“But I can’t just not call her. I —”

“Why the hell not? She hasn’t called you. And Nix? Come on, Kaka. He’s
supposedly
one of your best friends. What the hell do you think they were doing together? Crossword puzzles? They don’t hang out. You
know they don’t. And wasn’t Nix all up in Ondine as of last week?”

A blink confirmed her question and she continued, faster now. “Something’s up, you know it, and the last thing you need is
to get involved. You have a future, K.A. You’re meant for better things. We both are. You can’t get hung up on someone who
just triggers the same shit Dad brings up in you. It’s just not fair. You deserve more.”

She watched him, coached him the way she had since they were kids. Morgan, the one who was strong, who could take it,
who could wake her father up from where he’d passed out in the middle of the living room and coax him into bed with another
PBR. Who comforted K.A. when Yvonne took off for the night. Who was her little brother’s mother and sister and best friend.

She cupped a hand around his nape and let her fingers run through the darker curls there, pulling his head close to her to
hug him. Gentle and firm. Sisterly.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “Just let her be for a while. You’ve done what you can. She has to make her own decisions
about what she wants.” Morgan squeezed her brother once more and tilted her forehead toward his till they touched. “I’m not
going to let you get hurt, little bro. I’m not. I just won’t.”

An old-fashioned ring — “Provence,” it was called, and Morgan set her phone to it because she thought it sounded classy —
sounded in her bedroom and the girl released him, her hand lingering on his cheek.

“That’s me. Now call Mom and tell her that we’ll meet her at the Spaghetti Factory. Just us three, the family, huh? Garlic
bread.
Mm.
” She smiled at K.A. and he tried his best to smile back. Then she sidled past the vanity, toward her bedroom. “I’ll be ready
to go in five minutes.” Morgan stopped and regarded her brother thoughtfully. “We’ll get through this. We always do.”

K.A. wasn’t smiling when he turned on his heel to go looking for his own cell to call their mother, but Morgan knew she’d
done the trick. She’d gotten him to cry, at least. That was something. That would stop him from calling Neve again, or looking
for her, at least till tomorrow when she could see what was really going on. By then the tart would be Bleek’s problem.

In her bedroom she was pleased to see the clothes laid out on her bed, ready for wearing. Morgan had forgotten she’d put them
there before her bath. She searched around for her cell phone, but when she found it the ringing had ceased. Before she could
scroll down the list to see who had called, an SMS arrived.

“Private,” it read. She opened it.

THE PARK AT SUNDOWN. BY THE LOOKOUT. M

She didn’t need to know who wrote it, though the single M confirmed it. K.A.’s voice floated in as he spoke to his mother,
giving a rundown of the bus trip back home, setting up their meeting together for lunch.
So innocent.
Morgan shook her head and half smiled. How easy this had been. Even with Bleek.

Moth was a different story. She was glad the sun set later in the summer. She would need the time.

N
IGHT WAS FALLING
, out past the plane’s wings, in the distance toward Chicago. Darkness swallowed the horizon. Ink, oil. Permanent marker.
Her mother’s hair. The color of the woods in
winter, hearses, expensive suits, top hats, and widow’s weeds. Long coats and lava rock and that woman’s hair. Black. The
name she — Ondine — was called. The color of her mother and her father.
Mother and father,
suddenly and irrevocably made uncertain.

Ondine leaned her head against the window. She had begun to make a drawing in her journal of the darkening sky. “Night that
comes too fast,” she had scribbled below the sketch. Nothing special, a technique of crosshatching she’d learned from Raphael
that intensified darkness while allowing for the light necessary to give a drawing depth. For there was light in pitch-black,
Raphael reminded his students. “The light is in you. If you’re there seeing it, you will detect it, even as slight as it is.”

Ondine needed that advice now; she was moving too fast. But what could she do? She had asked the question,
What’s wrong with me?
and her father had answered it:
Nothing.

From her father and mother she’d learned to trust not just what was visible, but what could be demonstrated, proven. For her
fourth birthday party, Ralph had helped her blow up balloon after balloon till father’s and daughter’s cheeks were both sore
and their tongues tasted like rubber. A typical-enough occurrence, but Ralph Mason had used the occasion to demonstrate the
fact that air, though invisible, still had mass. If it were “empty” or “nothing,” as men once believed, then the tautly
stretched red and blue and yellow balloons would remain slack no matter how much they blew into them.

Physics and birthday cake: just another party at the Masons. That same air held aloft the wings of the plane that sped her
to her parents. Except that what her parents had told her about her very birth, the circumstances that defined her, wasn’t
real. They had lied to her, the one they loved the most.

For the second time in her life, Ondine felt a tear roll down her cheek and she wiped it away self-consciously, glancing over
to see if the woman reading a magazine next to her had seen. She hadn’t; she was actually asleep, the magazine open in her
lap, her head tilting toward the aisle, a line of drool beginning to bubble out of her open mouth. The woman’s obliviousness
somehow depressed Ondine even further. Why the tears now, after so long? She thought about that one day with Nix, after the
party; she had cried then, too. Was it that she wanted someone to notice her? At the same time, she wanted to pull a tissue
from her purse and wipe the woman’s drool away. She wanted to mother her. She wanted her mother.

Now there was no stopping the tears. All Ondine could do was cover her face with her hands and try to keep her shoulders from
shaking.

“Are you all right?”

The voice was soft and female and seemed to come from
somewhere far above Ondine, but when she opened her eyes she saw that it was a flight attendant leaning over her, speaking
in her practiced flight attendant voice.

“Can I get you anything?”

The woman was pretty, slight and spry with tilted brown eyes and soft, coiling brown hair gathered in a bun. Ondine found
herself surprised that she was black. She figured the woman was about her mother’s age. Usually she didn’t go for ethnic solidarity
stuff, but today the fact of the woman’s brown skin — and her big liquid eyes, understanding and compassionate — calmed her.

She straightened up and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I’m all right.” She pointed to her nose. “Allergies.”

A knowing nod signaled that both of them knew her wet eyes and red nose had nothing to do with allergies, 30,000 feet above
the earth. But the flight attendant played along anyway.

“Recycled air,” she whispered, mindful of the sleeping drooler. “Terrible for the sinuses. Can I bring you something? A juice
or a soda?” She smiled. “Might help clear something up.”

“That’s okay.” Ondine straightened again, pulling her shirt down and adjusting the collar of her jacket. She was aware that
she hadn’t changed clothes since the trip with Nix. Her mother would
tsk
.

Her mother. And who, exactly, was that?

The flight attendant paused, frowning, and Ondine thought she was going to try to help again. But all she did was reach into
the jacket pocket of her fitted uniform and pull out a cocktail napkin, and, with an amazingly deft touch, wick the moisture
off the chin of the woman sitting next to her. The nonchalant tenderness of the gesture nearly sent Ondine into a fresh spasm
of sobs — if only her problems could be fixed so easily — and it was all she could do to smile at the flight attendant before
the woman pocketed her napkin and continued down the aisle.

Ondine turned to the window. It was dark, so all she saw was her blurry reflection. She closed her eyes lest the image set
off a fresh bout of existential confusion. It wouldn’t be bad to get a little sleep. She felt her limbs unwind, loosening
her seat belt so she could slide deeper into her seat. Not a minute later she felt a rustling. Her neighbor must be getting
up to go to the bathroom, she figured — but when she opened her eyes she saw that the drooler was still asleep. Ondine’s tray
table had been lowered, and on it sat a glass of club soda — her favorite drink on a long flight — complete with a lime and
a swizzle stick, a white cocktail napkin beneath. On the napkin were written the words:

Tomorrow morning. Grant Park, the rose garden. We can talk there.

Her lips felt dry, her throat and mouth parched. She had wanted that club soda.

She pulled the napkin from under the drink and crumpled it up and put it in her jacket pocket. She looked to her neighbor,
who was in the same position she had been last time Ondine
checked, her mouth slightly open, her head listing to the left, almost to her collarbone. Everyone else was asleep.