Burning September (35 page)

I’D BEEN
painting for hours, so long blisters had bubbled between my fingers as I flitted from wall to wall.  I’d turned twenty-one that morning, and Kyle would come home soon to the townhouse we’d just bought.  The thought of his reaction to the newly made-over living room had butterflies flapping around in my stomach.  Bigger than butterflies, even.  Maybe bats. 

I heard his key in the lock and crossed the room in two strides, in time to see a sliver of his face behind the security chain.

“Uh,” he said, jiggling the chain.  “I’m supposed to meet my girlfriend.  Have you seen her?”

I kept the chain in place, bracing one palm against the doorjamb.  “Remember how you said I could do whatever I wanted to the living room?”

“Oh, shit.”

“You said that, right?”

“I did.  Let me in.  You’ve got paint on your cheek.”

I pushed the door closed, removed the chain, and stepped back to let him in.  “Remember, you promised.”

It looked like he wanted to laugh as he stared around the place.  “You can take Caroline out of the States, but you can’t take her out of you.”

I walked backward toward the center of the room, facing him as he stood in the foyer.  “I always loved Alice in Wonderland when I was a little girl.”

“I know.”  He dropped his briefcase, loosened his tie as he followed me into the living room.  “Did you glue those teacups together?  They’re making me nervous.”  He nodded at the hutch, where row upon row of precariously balanced, mismatched china sat beneath a DRINK ME sign I’d made out of a slab of old wood. 

“Yeah.”

“And the Cheshire Cat.”  He slipped his arm around my waist, turning us to face the mural.  The rows of pearly teeth I’d painted winked back at us, you couldn’t be sure if it looked malicious or mischievous.  “Nice touch.”

“Well, we’re all mad here.”

“You should take pictures for your sister.” He tipped his head back, looked into the blinding rays of a thrift store chandelier I’d found and welded a gold chain dripping with old fashioned skeleton keys upon. 

“Already done.”

She was in Milan this week, something to do with the fashion shows.  Photographing it, probably, I hadn’t spoken to her for a few days, not since she’d been in France.  I’d woken her up in the middle of the night after being shocked into a frenzy.  There were other people I could have called, but all I’d wanted was her. 

Oh my God
, had been all I could say after her soft and sleepy hello. 
Oh My God.

God’s not here, but I’d be willing to take a message, babe
, she’d said, yawning some of the listlessness from her voice. 
What’s the matter?

I told her how I was unpacking boxes, putting away extra socks of Kyle’s, when I found something in the back of his underwear drawer. 

Jesus
.  I heard her grunt, probably sitting up in bed. 
How many carats?

I didn’t know, I wasn’t a jeweler.

What are you going to say?

Of course I would say yes. 

Hey, so you think you’ll hyphenate?
  She laughed too close to the receiver, it came out as static. 
You happy, babe?

Yeah, but I was scared too, a scared, nervous kind of happy. 

That’s the best kind
, she’d assured me. 
Hey, pretend to be surprised when he pops the question.
 
You don’t want to steal his thunder.

I missed her so much, even though she was only ever a phone call away.  It was a constant, low-level pain, dull and throbbing, like a toothache.  She had asked me to meet her anywhere she happened to be in the world nearly every time we spoke, and it had become harder and harder to turn her down.  She was in my marrow, after all. 

What if I get cold feet, screw it up?
  I’d asked her suddenly, the way people blurted out embarrassing questions as the doctor was on his way out of the exam room.  Hey, what does it mean if I’ve got blood in my stool?  I could imagine myself walking down that aisle, looking at everything it was leading to—block parties, china patterns, tacking a Mrs. onto my name—and bolting. 

You’ve got a good head on your shoulder, Kitty.  You always make the right decisions. 

It had been hard to fight back tears when she said that.  I wanted to see her so badly, I hated that she’d left in the first place.  Being acquitted, labeled Unjustly Accused Woman, and the newfound fame that came with it had provided loads of new opportunities, and she’d made the most of them, but there were innumerable things she could have done here in the States.  She’d claimed she wanted to travel, but I had a feeling there was more to it than that, more in the vein of
if you love something, set it free
.  It was her way of letting me be my own person, not something for her to mold in her image, however unintentionally.  She had flaws, so many of them, she’d done terrible things, but no matter how wrong she had been setting that fire, no matter how brutally misguided, she loved me unconditionally, no question.  Her remorse and regret had nothing to do with her crimes, and her actions may have damaged me and a lot of what I could have been, but it didn’t negate the fact that she loved me the way a parent loves their child. 

Kyle knew that I missed her.  He would have encouraged me to go see her if I’d ever bothered to mention the fact that she’d offered to buy me a ticket anywhere.  But I couldn’t go because sometimes I didn’t think I could trust myself to come back.  I might fall under her spell again, it being just the two of us like it had been all those years.  I loved him, but I loved her too.  I’d wait until she came back to the U.S. 

“How’s it feel to be twenty-one?”  Kyle asked, turning away from the Cheshire Cat’s grin to look down at me.  He ran the pad of his thumb over the streak of paint on my cheek. 

“Pretty good, I guess.”

“You got any complaints to register?”

“I could do without the whole ISIS thing.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that.”  He let me go and headed for the staircase.  “I have a present for you.”

I watched him take a few steps upstairs, knowing exactly what he was talking about, but I took Caroline’s advice and played dumb.  “Really?”

“Let me go grab it.”

I stood there for a moment, one foot planted on the step, looking over my shoulder at the explosion of Wonderland in my new living room, before I followed him upstairs.   

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