Chapter 9
Vivi stood at the edge of a river whose name she’d since forgotten. She was herself and not herself, a figment, a wisp. She
sensed through her mind’s haze that she’d forgotten something essential within the ease of the water. On its surface, the
river appeared restful, languorous even. But once she set her foot in, she could feel the pull of the current, the way her
skin puckered against the cold. A fleet of minnows tickled her arch. She was suspended between desire and fear, an emotional
cliff so familiar that she could cut her tongue on its broken contours.
For a moment, the currents of the river cleared and its surface was as smooth as glass. She saw herself in the reflection.
But it wasn’t her, it was her ancestor, the sharp-eyed woman in Blue Mirror. The muse. The woman was mouthing something to her. Vivi could almost hear it, a shape of words bubbling in the water. She
leaned in to listen. Closer and closer, until her nose became wet and her lips touched cold.
“Vivi. Vivi, come back home.”
But where was home? The muse would tell her. The muse knew it all. She opened her arms to the water and it opened itself back,
a mother’s long-awaited embrace.
I’m coming.
Then, with a painful jerk, she slammed onto the floor of the balconette. Her head hit the edge of a metal chair, sending a zing of pain up her skull. Calla was sprawled on the concrete next to her, eyes wide.
“What the hell,” Vivi said. It was all she could manage. Her teeth chattered.
“You were sleepwalking. I thought you were going to tumble over. Come here. Let me look at you.”
Calla helped her up and checked her head. There was no blood. She led her inside and tucked her back into bed. Then she got
in next to Vivi, curling her arms around her waist. Her grasp was so tight that Vivi coughed to catch her breath.
“Easy there.”
“How long?” Calla asked. “Since you’ve been having the night terrors?”
Vivi thought about lying. But there was no point. If she and Calla were going to do this together, there should be no more
lies between them. None except the one that could break them. “Since I stripped Blue Mirror.”
“Every night?”
“No. Only once before.” She paused. “I’m scared, Button.”
And she was, not only because of how closely she’d stood to the edge of the balconette. There was a part of her that still
wanted to be pressed against the surface of the water. It was as if all her years of careful control had been shattered the
moment she removed the last of the overpaint from Blue Mirror.
Vivi said, “I’m scared I’ll go too far.”
“You won’t. Not with me here. I’ll nail your shoes to the floor if I have to.”
And Calla squeezed again, harder yet, but Vivi found this pain bracing. It said, I won’t leave. I’m not scared of your darkness, because it’s the same as mine. But Vivi didn’t believe her, not really. Calla always found a way to leave.
They were facing the window, through which they saw a dusting of constellations on the belly of the night. Vega, brightest light of them all, was unchanging as it’d always been when they’d searched for it in Deer Creek.
Once, before May left, before Tu?n’s accident and the pills and the alcohol and the ceaseless fighting, May had taken the girls on a twilight picnic. She did
things like this occasionally, brought them on secret adventures, just the girls. May loved storytelling and she loved stars,
especially constellations, which she felt to be a ballad of the two. She told them all the myths: Orion and his cursed scorpion,
Andromeda rescued by Perseus.
That evening, the three of them were hoping to see the unicorn meteor shower, the Monocerotid, which would be most visible
in the hours after sunset. Money-sorry, Calla called it, her mouth working at the syllables with such grave diligence that no one laughed. She was three, trying
to stay awake. But her eyes soon closed and it was just Vivi and May lying on the blanket in the clearing.
Quietly, patiently, May retold the story of Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins who never strayed far apart, until the first
streaks of white began to pierce the sky. Vivi had been so completely happy, with her mother on one side of her, Calla on
the other, their father up late in his newly built shed behind the farmhouse. Her small world, an ordered arrangement that
stood at the very center of the universe.
“Make a wish and mean it,” Vivi now said, echoing May’s words from so many years ago.
She could almost sense Calla’s smile in the dark. Mischievous, cajoling. Impossible to refuse. “I wish to go to Arles and
find K. P. Ly’s offering. And I wish that my sleepwalking killjoy of a sister would come along with me.”
When does love, like the protean night sky, shift into something unrecognizable?
After May left, Vivi often asked herself this question.
She stored a cache of good memories in her heart, like a line of jars awaiting the brutal dearth of winter, and revisited them in her private moments, examining each for signs of falsehood.
Tu?n driving her to school with the windows down, letting her belt out Mariah Carey as they sped along the country roads. May
taking the sisters to the art museum in Madison, buying each a souvenir they couldn’t afford from the gift shop. Could Vivi
trust any of those memories? It’d been better if they’d been mirages; then, at least, there would be a logical arc to follow.
But no matter how much she prodded, she found that the memories were pure, they were true. Yet—like that—the good moments
were gone, smashed to bits, as if they’d never existed. It would never make sense to her, this seismic shift in her reality.
The only constant had been Calla. Over and over again, Vivi pledged that she would never leave her sister. Where Calla went,
Vivi would follow, like Pollux bargaining eternity to resurrect his brother. She saw that Calla would go to France; she’d
already set her mind on it. If Vivi didn’t go with her, Calla would be on her own, vulnerable to any manner of temptations.
And maybe, against all odds, Calla might succeed. Vivi hated the thought of not being there to uncover the offering. It’d
become her mystery too.
“I’ll take your silence as agreement,” Calla said sleepily.
“Yes,” Vivi told her finally. “Yes, okay. You win. We’ll go to France.”
“Oh, good. Because I booked the tickets while you were sleeping.”
“You didn’t.” The laugh was already blooming in Vivi’s chest.
“Happy birthday.”
“You already gave me my present.”
“Yeah and then you handed it over to fucking Paul. Do you think we’ll find the offering in Arles?”
“No. But we’ll look.”
“I wish Dad were going with us.”
Vivi pretended to be asleep. But on her side, she listened to the hum of the radiator kicking on and off, unsure of whether
to warm or cool the room, until daybreak crept in, extinguishing every last bit of starlight.