I could tell that this was a major thing for him, protecting his family. I guessed maybe he’d had to take his dad’s place, in some ways.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate … your appreciation.” Really? That’s the best you could do?
Now he looked at me and smiled. “And I appreciate your appreciation of my appreciation.”
“That’s so sweet.” I put a hand on my heart. “I appreciate your appreciation of my appreciation of your appreciation.”
We laughed—holding eyes. As I stared, something moved behind him. I looked just in time to see the photo he’d hung fall right off the wall, onto the bed. It landed with a clatter as the Plexiglas jostled in the frame.
David turned. “Oops,” he said.
Because we’d smoothed over the tension between us, I allowed myself a little dig. “I think, maybe, it’s better if you leave the home-improvement projects to me.”
After David left, I couldn’t settle down to homework quite yet—the conversation had been too intense and now I had too much on my mind. I decided to see if there was anything I could do to fix Celeste’s closet door. She kept having trouble opening it, and I didn’t know if it was a problem with the knob, or if the wood was swelling.
I tried the handle and the door opened smoothly. I turned the knob back and forth, looked at the movement of the latch. It seemed fine. I shut the door and opened it again, seeing if the wood stuck. It didn’t. I couldn’t tell what the problem was. I leaned my back against the doorframe, shut my eyes, and breathed in. My skin tingled. Then the emotion—that sense of contentment, safety—penetrated my cells. It’s weird, how scents can be so powerful. My mother once told me that smells are key to selling a house. Freshly baked bread, cinnamon, and coffee are best, she’d said.
The day I came home from school in eighth grade and our own house smelled of baking bread, I wanted to vomit. Instead, I ran upstairs, to the one place the smell couldn’t reach.
Wait a minute.
I breathed in again.
The attic.
That was it, wasn’t it? My attic fort in our house in Cambridge. That’s what the closet smell reminded me of. I slid down to the floor and folded my legs into my body. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to make the connection.
Our house was a fixer-upper; my parents had always planned on turning the spacious attic into a living space. But, in the meantime, it had been a curious kid’s heaven—full of my parents’ and even my grandparents’ histories in junk and paper: love letters, old school report cards, yearbooks, clothing, toys….
If the whole attic was my kingdom, my fort was my castle. It was hidden behind a rusty file cabinet and a coatrack where someone’s ancient furs hung in plastic bags, just a simple pine frame, covered by an old sheet, with pillows and a few stuffed animals inside. An older cousin had helped me build it, and I’d sworn her to secrecy. What was the point in having somewhere to disappear to if other people knew where I went?
I squeezed my knees closer to my chest now, remembering the day the Dumpster had arrived, the week we’d moved out. “Okay if I trash the wood from your old playhouse, Bean?” my dad had said. Turned out, my parents had known about it the whole time. One of the many things I’d become disillusioned about.
“We’ve grown apart,” my mother said when she’d told me they were splitting up. “All we have in common are you and the house, Leenie.”
Well, yes. Wasn’t that their life?
We were a trio, after all. A unit. Whenever we played the “what building would you be?” game, I’d tell them that Mom was the downstairs floor of our house, I was the middle floor, and Dad was the top, not separate buildings at all. They let me believe I was right.
It was obvious why I’d thought that. I’d lived in that house from the time I was born, and fixing it up was my parents’ passion. Why had they bothered if they knew we were just going to sell it to strangers?
After the divorce, they both moved to condos: my mother to an all-glass, modern monstrosity in LA, where she was originally from, and my dad to a supposedly “luxury” one-bedroom on the outskirts of Cambridge with hear-through walls and hollow doors. I was reading Catcher in the Rye the first time I saw my dad’s place. I decided his condo was the architectural equivalent of Holden’s phonies. I couldn’t believe my dad, of all people, was living there. He said it was temporary; that was three years ago.
Now, I ran my hand lightly across Celeste’s clothes. Was David trying to bring his sister back to a less messy time, by being so protective of her? Maybe they’d had an idyllic childhood, with a father who wasn’t sick yet. Maybe David’s vigilance was an attempt at keeping Celeste safe from the ugliness of reality.
Maybe he was trying to build her a fort.
When I emerged from my closet reverie, I took a moment to rehang Celeste’s photo. I wasn’t quite sure why it had fallen to begin with—there was actually nothing wrong with the way David had installed the nail. To be safe, I took the nail out and hammered it in again, at a bit of a steeper angle. After resting the frame on it, I studied the image for a moment. Even though it was disturbing, there was something compelling about it. Still, I didn’t understand how Celeste could want to look at a picture of herself in which she appeared dead. I hoped—for both of their sakes— that David was just a worrier. That he didn’t need to protect his sister from anything.
Later, after dinner, I was in the bedroom going over my notes for my first, short English paper when Celeste appeared in the doorway. “I’ve never been so over-caffeinated in my life,” she announced, then hopped in and collapsed next to me on my bed, letting her crutches fall on the floor.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked.
“The Mean Bean. The guy there is madly in love with me.” She handed me a crumpled, white paper bag. “He gave me two free iced latte refills and three of those dark chocolate biscotti. Now I’m supposed to meet people at open mic at Graham House and I’m all juiced up. And I’m going to have to pee every five minutes. You want to come? I might sing. If they’re lucky.”
“You sing?” I opened the bag and broke off a piece of cookie.
“No. But I pretend I can.”
“Tempting,” I said, smiling. “I think I’ll stay here, though.” I was about to turn back to my notes when I remembered. “Hey. Don’t you notice anything?”
It took her a moment. “The shades, you mean?”
“Yeah. What do you think?”
“They look okay,” she said. “But can’t people see right through them? They’re just paper.”
“No,” I said. “Maybe at most someone could see fuzzy silhouettes.”
I went back to studying as Celeste got up and began putting together an outfit to wear to the open-mic thing. When she’d finally settled on a dark red dress with black net tights, I noticed her looking around at the windows. I thought I saw her shiver slightly, before she grabbed her crutches and her clothes and headed to change in the bathroom.
That night was only one week into the semester. I don’t think I ever saw her undress in the bedroom again.
Chapter 10
THE SHADES DIDN’T DO A VERY GOOD job of helping Celeste sleep, either. With the windows open, they flapped and crackled in the wind. Or so she said. With the windows closed, the air in the room was stagnant and stifling. Also, moonlight filtered in through the rice paper. So, despite my best efforts, after three or so weeks at school, Celeste hadn’t gotten a good night of sleep yet, and I heard about it. Often.