Skyscraping (7 page)

That night, I cocoon.

April slides a piece of paper under my door:

Homeopathic medicine is a form of alternative medicine that uses very small amounts of natural substances, which in larger quantities would cause disease. The theory behind homeopathic medicine is that “like cures like,” and that a substance that causes an illness in a healthy person might cure those symptoms in someone who is ill.

Sounds like a witch’s brew.

What’s the point of placing hope in that?

Hope as slim

as the sliver of moon

hanging

in this empty,

starless sky.

The cluttered dining room table,

a white-blank college essay.

April trots past with her

bottles and crystals.

Dad in the living room with James,

watching a documentary

on an archaeological dig in Mexico.

I return to the essay questions.

Try option one.

How would you describe the defining aspect of your identity?

I type on the blank page:

My dad was my mentor. My identity was formed by watching him.

April stands in front of the TV,

tells them about herbs, crystals,

Dad and James smile at her, touched.

I delete.

Start over.

James reads a label.

Dad says he’s working with the best doctors in the city.

I write:

I used to like living in the skies of Manhattan. I identified myself as a proud New Yorker.

April gets teary,

says she’s not giving up, this could save him,

Gloria has helped others.

Delete again.

They say they’ll think about it.

Them.

Like they are their own team.

Their own family.

April leaves everything on the table in front of them.

I turn back to the blank page,

punch the keys hard:

Identity is not a fixed thing, but something that evolves over time. Like an excavation, you never know what you might uncover about yourself or those around you. What might change you, forever. Beyond your own control.

I highlight the paragraph.

Shrink the font,

make it invisible.

As Dad and James turn their eyes back

to the TV,

I shut down my computer,

pick up the keyboard, slam it down,

don’t press save.

The archaeologists dust dirt from bones.

Back to school,

Dad’s bought us MetroCards,

a note lying on top of them:

Happy second semester!

I crumple it into a ball,

leave it on the kitchen counter.

April and I fight

the white wind

to 86th Street.

On the bus

she begs me to listen to her.

I say no,

she shouldn’t have told,

no, she shouldn’t get her hopes up.

I don’t say

it’ll be worse this way.

If she gets excited about it,

if she hopes for the impossible,

it could crush her.

Dylan slides in next to me,

smelling more like soap than cigs,

humming a Beastie Boys song,

drumming the rhythm on my knee.

He can tell the air’s frozen between April and me,

tries to bend it with song.

I don’t give in,

there’s no way out now.

The snow falls heavier

as we land on Park,

shuffle to the door,

fresh white snow covering

what’s already gray.

A cloudy first day back,

a useless Peer Mentorship meeting

on peer pressure.

Now, Yearbook.

I’m late.

Some lip-glossed girls say

the advisor was here to pick up

the sports pages, deadline today.

I look at the pile that’s half-done—

team pictures, no action shots,

players’ names, no font picked.

Picture my old self,

using all I have to fix this.

If only it were that easy.

The staff asks if they can just pick the fonts,

if they can use last year’s action pics,

I say
whatever.

Winter dust coats the white office.

Like the streets and sky, it is graying too.

Who cares about capturing a present

that’s almost past?

Stars that look the brightest are

already dead and gone.

Mom, Dad, the couch,

a crossword between them,

she gives him his pills,

crystals collect dust,

herbs remain in plastic, unopened.

Later, April sits with Mom,

each one preparing for her own show—

school play, glass exhibit.

April launches into her herbal plan.

Mom calls Celestial Treasures “darling.”

They ask me to join.

Say I’m busy, college apps.

But even if I didn’t have essays to write,

even if I wasn’t still grounded,

I’d be out with Chloe, at the Big Rock with Dylan.

I wouldn’t be playing this game of pretend,

playing family, playing doctor, playing healthy,

as if the world we knew hadn’t slipped

off its axis.

Focus in on my essay.

Again.

Option two: What was a pivotal moment in your life and how did it shape you?

The question screams at me.

I try:
When my mom left us for Italy.

Highlight it. Turn it red. It seems like a joke compared to

The day I walked in on my dad in bed with his best friend.

Delete.

Try again:
The day I found out my parents have always had an open marriage.

Italicize it.

Then, select it.

Delete.

The day I found out my dad was HIV Positive.

Bold.

A newspaper headline.

Wonder to myself:

Is my dad his disease?

Can protecting someone do more harm than good?

What’s the difference between a secret and a lie?

Move the cursor. Select all. Delete.

Instead, I write about scuba diving.

It’s barely snowing now

but they say it’s coming.

In manila envelopes,

I hold tickets out of here.

Applications to three schools,

Dickinson, Kenyon, Bowdoin,

all the same and all complete,

all in the country, away from here,

away from the gray of New York City,

the city Dad loves to love,

the city I’m ready to leave behind.

I pause

in front of the post office,

packages thick with the

weight of my lies,

experiences I never had,

hoping to earn a spot of peace

far away from here.

As I mail them,

the snow falls heavy,

the sky, darker.

Back in the apartment,

empty-handed, jacket wet.

For a minute, excited to tell the old Dad,

I did it, it’s done.

I’m greeted by quiet:

see them together

again.

This time

out in the open,

sleeping

on the living room couch.

James’s arm tucked around Dad’s back

cuddling,

their heads nestled together

like two clouds intersected.

I swallow a cry and like the

snow

I

fall and melt

away.

Later that night,

I spy a new glass bird

perched on the coffee table.

I touch its thin wings,

trace the bright green swirls.

So light, smooth, cool

in my palm.

Mom emerges from the kitchen,

smiling, seeing me holding the bird.

Said she made it

for my future dorm room.

Colored it to look like

the Northern Lights.

I feel myself turn hollow,

holding this flightless bird.

I set it down.

Hard. Make it tremble.

Every day, she makes those animals

so delicately,

purposefully,

every day, adding distance and fractures

to our already broken family.

I ask Mom if she ever gets jealous of

what Dad has with James.

Tears shimmer in her hazel eyes.

But I keep going:

ask her why they even stayed married,

why she and Dad ever had kids.

flightless,

with that bird.

All night, snow.

Open the window,

stretch my arms out.

Keep my eyes open

in the white, whipping wind.

There are few cars on the highway.

The river’s frozen in places.

In a city that never stops,

I can hardly hear anything.

For tonight, the city gives me

what I need.

Chloe calls,

asks if I’ll ever get ungrounded.

I say who knows,

maybe I could sneak out anyway.

She tells me

wait it out, don’t make it worse.

Now she’s the one with advice.

I hang up.

The world has flipped.

Next, April comes in my room,

says Dad will let me go to the movies,

but only with her.

Asks if I want to hit the closet,

wear funny old coats and hats of Mom’s.

I tell her no, grab an umbrella.

At the theater,

nothing’s worth seeing,

or the times are all wrong.

Instead, we sip too-cold hot chocolates at Cafe 82,

watch a family eat cheeseburgers,

kids play tic-tac-toe, parents plan spring break.

On the way home,

April says she heard me fighting with Mom.

That she’s trying to help him, us.

I tell her I’m not going to pretend

that Mom’s been here all along,

when she hasn’t.

April stops me,

the freezing rain battling us,

says we can’t keep fighting

like this, who knows how much time we have left.

Tells me Gloria says

we need to shine light on our secrets,

it will help us heal.

Before I can say I don’t know how,

the wind picks up,

turns my umbrella inside out.

February

SESSION FIVE

Last three questions. I want to wrap this up today.

All right.

Question ten:

What does empowerment mean to you?

(Pause)

It means finding your own strength . . . and then using it in ways that make you and the people around you stronger.

Eleven: How do you approach the unknown?

(Coughs)

I used to be braver. Now—I’m more—cautious.

That’s ironic.

Twelve: When is it okay to break the rules?

When your heart tells you the rules are dysfunctional.

Bullshit.

Did your heart tell you the rules of marriage are dysfunctional? Did it tell you to lie to your children?

Stop the tape, Miranda.

No. I’ve done nothing but listen to you for years. And the whole time you’ve been lying to me.

Things are more complicated than you realize. Love is a tricky thing.

Please stop the tape. Take a deep breath.

No.

Miranda, I know you’re upset. We all are.

But you can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep pushing people away and shutting them out.

Time’s up.

I stop the tape, walk away,

shout that I’m going out.

Footsteps follow me to the door.

Not Dad.

Not Mom.

James comes from around the corner.

His silver eyebrow ring. His blue-black hair.

He tells me he heard our session,

that I’ve upset Dad.

That I need to let people in. They need me.

I should try to be there more for my family.

My insides burn.

I say

Why do they need me

when you’re doing a great job for all of us?

He’s not done talking,

but I shut the door in his punk rock face.

The crosstown bus,

hanging on to the metal bar,

a man with an upside-down newspaper

whistling “My Girl,”

winding through Central Park,

trees heavy with snow,

I wonder

how many people,

like Sam, the homeless man,

are living outside tonight,

what’s happened

to the man with AIDS in the park,

if James is telling Dad I walked out on him,

if Dad defends me, or whether he says

something to Mom.

Off the bus, wet toes sting numb

from the walk down Lex,

all the way to Chloe’s place.

We sit on the fire escape.

The whole way here

I planned to tell her

everything.

But her eyes look bloodshot.

Hands, wringing.

Tells me she was up too late

with some new guy.

She lights a cigarette, relaxes a bit.

Peering into her leftover mascara-smeared eyes,

it looks like she’s

coming apart,

like everything else.

I open my mouth to tell her but

the words stick

to the sides of my throat.

In the space between she whispers

a secret:

Dylan told her that he
likes me
likes me.

I ask her if she’s kidding,

ask why she’s saying
like,

as if we’re sixth graders.

She slaps my shoulder,

I slap hers back,

send her cig flying,

burying itself—

like all our secrets—

in the old black snow.