It’s extremely difficult to concentrate on Oscar in my bedroom because: Oscar is in my bedroom! Oscar, who’s the guy in the portrait!
He’s flipped out that the dresses on the walls and the one on my body were made by me and has now picked up a framed photograph of me surfing. He’s excavating me, just without hammer and chisel. “Pornography for an English bloke,” he says, waving the picture at me.
“Haven’t surfed in years,” I tell him.
“Shame.” He taps the Physician’s Desk Reference. “Now this I expected.” He picks up another photo. A jump off Devil’s. He studies it. “So you used to be a daredevil?”
“Guess so. I didn’t think about it. I just loved doing that kind of stuff then.” He looks up like he’s expecting me to say more. “When my mom died . . . I don’t know, I got scared. Of pretty much everything.”
He nods like he gets it, says, “It’s like a hand at your throat all the time, isn’t it? Nothing’s inevitable anymore. Not the next heartbeat, not anything.” More than gets it. He sits down on my sewing chair, regards the photo again. “Though I went the other way. Started using all that fear as a punching bag. Nearly got myself killed on a daily basis.” He frowns, puts down the picture. “That’s partly what the row with G. was about. He thinks I take ridiculous risks on the bike or in the past with drugs but won’t—” He stops when he sees my face. “What is it?”
“Oscar, I overheard some of that fight this morning. As soon as I realized you guys were arguing, I left, but—” I stifle the confession because I’m thinking his organs may have caught fire.
Not sure what’s happening, except that he’s on his feet and bounding toward me at a breakneck un-Oscar-like pace. “Then you know,” he says. “You must, CJ.”
“Know what?”
He takes me by the arms. “That I’m fucking terrified of you. That I can’t seem to keep you out like I can everyone else. That I think you could devastate me.”
Our breathing’s loud, fast, in synch. “I didn’t know,” I whisper, barely getting the words out before his mouth lands hard and urgent on mine. I feel the unrestrained emotion in his lips, feel it unburying, unleashing something in me, something daring and fearless and winged.
Ka-effing-pow.
“I’m so dead,” he says into my hair, “so dead,” into my neck, then pulls back, his eyes shining. “You’re going to obliterate me, aren’t you? I know it.” He laughs in an even more tumbling, cascading way than usual and there’s something new in his face, an openness, a freedom maybe. “You already have. Look at me. Who is this guy? I assure you no one’s ever met this tempest before. I haven’t met him before. And none of what I just told you was really even part of the fight with G., for Christ’s sake! I just had to tell you. You have to know I’ve never”—he waves his hand in the air—“flipped the lid before. Not even close. Not a lid flipper.” He’s saying he’s never been in love? I remember Guillermo telling him how he hurts before he can be hurt, how he lets no one in. But he can’t keep me out?
“Oscar,” I say.
He puts his palms on my cheeks. “Nothing happened with Brooke after you left. Nothing. After I told you that stuff about my mother and me, I totally freaked out and was this total wanker. A coward—you probably heard that fine praise this morning on G.’s lips. I think I tried to ruin this before . . .” I follow his gaze to the window, to the black world outside this room. “I kept thinking now that you had a glimpse of the underbelly, of who I really was, you’d—”
“No,” I say, understanding. “It was the opposite. It made me feel closer to you. But I get it, I think the same way, like if people really knew me, they could never—”
“I could,” he says.
It kicks the breath out of me, kicks bright light into me.
At the same time, we reach for each other and then we’re in each other’s arms, joined together, pressed together, but this time not kissing, not moving, just holding each other so tightly. Moments pass, lots and lots of them, with us holding on, it feels like for dear life, or maybe holding on to dear life. So dear.
“Now that you have the seashell,” he says, “I’m thinking this is about as much distance I can safely be away from you at all times.”
“That’s why you gave it to me, then!”
“My entirely sinister plan.”
I didn’t think it possible, but he draws me even closer into him. “We’re Brancusi’s The Kiss,” I whisper. One of the most romantic sculptures ever made: a man and a woman pressed together into one.
“Yes!” he says. “Just like it.” He steps back, brushes a strand of hair out of my face.
“A perfect fit like we’re split-aparts.”
“Split-aparts?”
His face brightens. “So Plato talked about these beings that used to exist that had four legs and four arms and two heads. They were totally self-contained and ecstatic and powerful. Too powerful, so Zeus cut them all in half and scattered all the halves around the world so that humans were doomed to forever look for their other half, the one who shared their very soul. Only the luckiest humans find their split-apart, you see.”
I think about the latest note to Dearest. How Guillermo said he was half a man with half a soul, half a mind . . . “I found another note Guillermo wrote. It was in one of those notepads he has everywhere, a marriage proposal—”
“Yeah, I’m going to have to take the Fifth, isn’t that what you Americans say? He’ll tell you all about it one day, I’m sure. I’ve promised him—”
I nod. “I understand.”
“Those two were split-aparts, though, that’s certain,” he says. His hands find my waist. “I have a brilliant idea,” he says, his face whirring with emotion. Not any percent of him seems full of it anymore. “Let’s do it. Let’s flip our bloody lids together. Here it is, the rest of it: I was a mess at The Spot because I thought I blew it with you. I don’t care that G. has added a beheading to the list of barbaric punishments for my coming near you. I think my mother’s prophecy is real. I look everywhere. I search crowds. I take so many pictures. But I recognized you, only you. In all these years.” The most cockamamie grin has taken over his face. “So how about it? We’ll pop around on Hippity Hops. And talk to ghosts. And think we have the Ebola virus and not the common cold. And carry onions in our pockets until they sprout. And miss our mums. And make beautiful things—”
Completely swept up, I say, “And ride around on motorcycles. And go to abandoned buildings and take off our clothes. And maybe even teach an English bloke how to surf. Except I don’t know who just said all that.”
“I do,” he says.
“I feel so happy,” I say, overwhelmed. “I have to show you something.” I unclasp myself from him and reach under the bed for the plastic bag.
“So, Noah drew you. Not sure how—”
“You don’t know? He used to camp outside the window at that arts high school and draw the models.”
I cover my mouth with my hand.
“What?” Oscar says. “Did I say something wrong?”
I shake my head, try to make this image of Noah peering into a CSA classroom go away. He would have done anything. But then I take a deep breath, tell myself, it’s all right, because by next week he’ll be at CSA and that calms me enough to rummage around for the plastic bag. A moment later, I sit back down next to Oscar with it on my lap. “Okay. So once upon a time, I saw this cubist portrait my brother did of you and had to have it.” I look at him. “Had to have it. It was love at first sight.” He smiles. “He and I were always playing this game where we’d swap parts of the world for others in a quest for universe domination. He was winning. We’re . . . competitive, that’s the nice way of putting it. Anyway, he didn’t want me to have you. I had to give up almost everything. But it was worth it. I kept you here.” I show him the spot where the picture hung by my bed. “I would stare and stare at you and wish you were real and imagine you coming to that window, just like you did tonight.”
He bursts out laughing. “That’s incredible! We’re absolutely split-aparts.”
“I don’t know if I want a split-apart,” I say honestly. “I think I need my own soul.”
“That’s fair. Maybe we can be occasional split-aparts. On occasions like these, for instance.” He runs a finger slowly down the side of my neck, crossing over my collarbone, then down, down. What was I thinking with this plunging neckline? I wouldn’t say no to a fainting couch. I wouldn’t say no to anything. “But why rip me up and stuff me in a bag?” he asks.
“Oh, my brother did that. He was angry at me. I tried to put you back together many times.”
“Thank you,” he says, but then something across the room catches his attention and in a flash he’s up and walking toward my dresser. He picks up a photograph of my family and studies it. I’m watching him in the mirror. His face has turned ashen. What? He turns around and stares right through me. “You’re not his older sister,” he says more to himself than me. “You’re twins.” I can see the wheels spinning in his head. He must know how old Noah is and now he knows how old I am.
“I was going to tell you,” I say. “I guess I was afraid to. I was afraid you’d—”
“Holy hell.” He’s springing for the window. “Guillermo doesn’t know.” He’s halfway over the ledge. I don’t know what’s going on.
“Wait,” I say. “Wait. Oscar. Of course he does. Why would he care? Why is it that big of a deal?” I run to the window, yell out, “My father was eleven years older than my mother! It doesn’t matter.”
But he’s already gone.
I go to the dresser, pick up the photograph. It’s my favorite family portrait. Noah and I are about eight and dressed in matching sailor outfits looking totally daffy. But it’s because of my parents that I love it.
My mother and father are gazing at each other like they have the best secret.
THE INVISIBLE MUSEUM
Noah
Age 14
One by one, I empty each tube of paint into the laundry sink.
I need color, rich, bright, fuck-you, fuck-off, fuck-everything color, mounds and mounds of it. I need the gleam of new paint. I need to sink my fingers, my hands, into chartreuse, into magenta, into turquoise, into cadmium yellow. I wish I could eat it. I wish I could drown my whole body in it. That’s what I want, I think, mixing and swirling, making green, making purple, making brown, spiraling one into the next, sinking my hands, my arms into the cold slippery shining mush until my eyes are dancing.
About an hour ago, I watched Mom get into her car from the window.
The second she turned on the engine, I ran out after her. It had started to drizzle.
That’s when I screamed it: I hate you. I hate you so much.
She looked at me, shocked, her eyes huge, tears running down her cheeks. She mouthed: I love you, then put her hand to her heart and pointed at me like I was deaf.
A second later, she peeled out of the driveway to go tell Dad she wanted a divorce so she could marry that other man.
“I don’t care,” I say out loud to no one. I don’t care about her and Dad. About Brian and Courtney. Not even CSA. I don’t care about anything but color, color and more brightness. I add a tube of cornflower blue to the growing mountain—
That’s when the phone rings.
And rings.
And rings. She must’ve forgotten to turn on the machine. Ringing, still. I find the phone in the living room, wipe my hands on my shirt but still get paint all over the phone.
A man with a gruff voice says, “Is this the residence of Dianna Sweetwine?”
“That’s my mom.”
“Is your father home, son?”
“No, he doesn’t live here now.” A current zips through me—something’s wrong. I can hear it in his voice. “Who is this?” I ask, though I know it’s the police before he even confirms it. I don’t know how, but I know everything in that moment.
(SELF-PORTRAIT: The Boy Inside the Boy Stops Breathing)
He doesn’t tell me there’s been an accident. That a car’s spun out of control on Highway 1. He doesn’t tell me anything. But somehow I know.
“Is my mother okay?” I demand, running to the window. The police radio crackles in the background. I see several surfers paddling out, none of them Jude. Where is she? Fry said she took off with Zephyr. Where did they go? “Did something happen?” I ask the man, watching as the ocean disappears, then the horizon. “Please tell me.” Mom was so upset when she left. Because of me. Because I told her I hated her. Because I followed her to The Wooden Bird. Because I made that picture. All the endless love I have for her fountains up, up, up, up. “Is she okay?” I ask again. “Please tell me she’s okay.”
“Can I have your father’s cell phone number, son?” I want him to stop calling me son. I want him to tell me my mother’s okay. I want my sister home.
I give him Dad’s cell.
“How old are you?” he asks. “Is anyone with you?”
“It’s only me here,” I say, panic flipping me over. “I’m fourteen. Is my mom okay? You can tell me what happened.” But as soon as I say it out loud, I know I don’t want him to tell me. I don’t want to ever know. I see now paint has dripped all over the floor like multicolored blood. I’ve tracked it everywhere. There are handprints all over the window, the back of the couch, the curtains, lampshades.
“I’m going to call your dad now,” he says quietly, then hangs up.
I’m too scared to try Mom’s cell. I call Dad. It goes straight to voicemail. I’m sure he’s talking to the cop, who’s telling him everything he didn’t tell me. I get the binoculars and go to the roof. It’s still drizzling. And way too warm. Everything’s wrong. I don’t see Jude on the beach or the street or anywhere on the cliffs. Where’d she and Zephyr go? I tell her telepathically to come home.
I look over at Brian’s house, wishing he were on his roof, wishing he knew how sorry I was, wishing he’d come over and talk about planetary orbits and solar flares. I reach in my pocket for the rock and close my hand around it. Then I hear a car skid into the driveway. I run to the other side of the roof. It’s Dad, who never skids. Behind him is a police car. My skin falls off. I fall off.
(SELF-PORTRAIT: Boy Careens Off World)
I climb down the ladder at the side of the house, go through the sliding doors into the living room. I’m a statue in the hallway when Dad’s key turns in the lock.
He doesn’t have to say a word. We crash together, falling to the ground, to our knees. He holds my head to his chest with both hands. “Oh Noah. I’m so sorry. Oh God, Noah. We have to get your sister. This is not happening. This is not happening. Oh God.”
I don’t plan it. The panic’s coursing out of him and into me, out of me and into him, and the words just fly out. “She was going to ask you to come home so we could all be a family again. She was on her way to tell you that.”
He pulls away, looks into my burning face. “She was?”
I nod. “Before she left she said that you were the love of her life.”