Chapter Twenty-Five
Engraved silver bracelet, photo by Margaret Vittorio: Pictures of Mars
Blue shirt, photo by Margaret Vittorio: Pictures of Mars
VW, photo by Margaret Vittorio: Pictures of Mars
Dandelion, the underdog of flowers, photo by Margaret Vittorio: Pictures of Mars
“This is for you, Mars.” —Greeting from Sandrine Laurent
“Infinity,” performed by Solar Flare: Music of Mars
Not long after, one Thursday night, I dropped my car keys on the kitchen counter.
The house was dark, aside from the living-room light Mom always left on for me.
Dad was still at Papa Angelo’s closing up, but Mom had already gone to bed.
It was only ten, but I didn’t usually work this late on a weeknight.
We were just back to school after spring break, only months before graduation, and we were getting hit hard with homework.
I hadn’t even had time for my project the last few weeks; at least, that’s what I told myself.
I’d tried to take a photo of your blue flannel shirt, moving it from my chair to my bed, and even various places outside, but it wasn’t working.
I mean, I was thinking about how other people would see the shirt if they saw it, rather than the shirt itself.
Rather than you, and what the shirt meant, and so I deleted all of them.
My project felt frozen. Too large and too small at the same time.
The vow I made with Sandrine, to share my project, had shoved it behind the fire wall with me.
Maybe this was what writer’s block was like, only it was photo block. Blue-flannel photo block.
That night, I hurried upstairs. The day had been the kind I appreciated most since you left, head down, classes, delivery, delivery, delivery, a pile of diverting homework, five paragraphs on a symbol in Macbeth, plus fifteen dialectical journal entries for Acts I through III.
I opened my laptop and got to work. I’d chosen the snake, and was writing about how Macbeth looked like an innocent flower but really was a serpent underneath, when I stopped suddenly.
My bracelet. I always put it on when I came home.
I never wore it outside. If anything happened to it, I’d be devastated.
I got up to find it, but to tell you the truth, the panic was already there.
It overtook me the second I didn’t see it on my wrist. It wasn’t in the little dish I kept it in, either, beside my bed next to Carl Sagan.
Had I worn it to sleep? I flung my pillow aside, shook out my covers.
Nothing. I yanked them off, looked underneath the bed, crawled on my hands and knees to search the floor.
Nothing! My dresser, the desk, my pockets—I flew around the room in horror.
I ran downstairs and checked the kitchen, the living room, under the couch.
The front step, the back porch, the bathroom, the drawers.
My room again, the covers, the dish, nowhere, nowhere!
Oh my God! No, no, no! I was so careless.
It was gone, and it was my fault. Everyone, my small everyone, my family, my friends—they thought I was so responsible, so nice, so caring, God!
I was awful. I was so awful. I was reckless.
I wrecked, and was wrecked. I started to cry.
“Margaret?” It was Mom. She knelt beside me, where I was kneeling on the floor. We could have been two people in a church, praying.
“It’s gone,” I said—no, I wailed. “My bracelet. I lost it.”
“Oh, honey…” She put her arms around me. I would never, could never tell her this—her body needed to be her own without remarks—but she felt more substantial to me, wearing her regular old terry-cloth robe as she held me. She felt sturdier. She was trying to be sturdier for me, and she was.
“What have I done? How could I?”
“Let me look,” she said. “Okay?” I nodded. I stayed there on the floor, on my praying knees.
She moved around my room carefully. Lifting, looking. “Margaret,” she said. She held up the bracelet. “It’s right here.”
“Where was it?” I was flooded with relief, but even as I looked at it, I wasn’t convinced.
“It was right by your keyboard, under your papers.” She handed it to me. I put it on. I twisted it on my wrist, so very grateful for the cool, smooth feel of it there again. “Margaret? This is probably because—”
“No,” I interrupted her. I didn’t want her to say it.
I was avoiding knowing what day it was. I avoided the calendar, even as I looked at the calendar.
I tried not to see the specific dates. But Winnifred Evans had warned me that the body remembered, the mind did.
That they had a calendar of their own. This might happen, years later, even.
The body kept track of the anniversaries, with the dedication of those distant relatives who still sent Christmas cards.
I reached for my phone. Typed in the question, just as I had the day we met. Who was I kidding. My body already had this information, my mind did. It was not just any day of that week. It was Thursday of National Depression and Anxiety Awareness Week. An anniversary of us.
Later, when I was alone once more, I held the silver band to my cheek, and then to my lips. It might be unnerving, the way objects had a history, but it was comforting, too. Crucial, even.
“I thought it was every day,” I whispered to you.
I placed that bracelet so carefully in the spot where I thought I’d lost it but hadn’t. I took a photo of it, and it was easy.
And then, another night, that night, a few more weeks later, Maurice was pacing.
Sandrine wasn’t there yet. He and Dre and their new sound guy, Xavier, had gotten to Neumos early to set up, but now they were backstage.
Dre and Xavier were sitting on the ancient, dirty couch back there, verbally dueling over the worst candy ever.
Dre tried to say those red wax lips, but Xavier said it didn’t count if you couldn’t really eat it.
His vote was Good the guitars and bass of that other band were rocking the building, but Aunt Gwen was subdued.
The car thing—Sandrine didn’t meet Maurice’s eyes when she said it.
“So glad you made it, S, God.” Maurice took her hands in his, but then he refocused. He moved toward Dre, and they huddled over the set list.
“Your car?” I said to Sandrine. My chest ached.
She shrugged. Leaned in close. “This is a rough one. I maybe just needed my mom.”
I got choked up. It was a rough one. But, too, what she said about her mom…
It was so beautiful, you know. So simple and wonderful, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced that, the need and the need met, both at the same time, in a way that seemed entirely natural.
Aunt Gwen was at the food table, ripping open a honey packet with her teeth, squeezing it into a cup of hot water the way Sandrine liked. Maybe lately I had felt it. More so.
Aunt Gwen handed Sandrine her cup. “You’re gonna blaze,” she told her. “So bright, you’ll be seen from…everywhere.”
They looked at each other, and I could see them sharing years of memories, as if they’d just passed a hundred snapshots between them.
One of a kid with candles in his cake for sure.
And, oh, you were a cute little kid. I’ve seen the pictures now.
Sandrine put her palms to her eyes so she wouldn’t cry.
“Let’s go out front, huh?” Aunt Gwen said to me. We’d be Sandrine’s tiny audience, the ones she could see and trust in, her loving support amidst all the strangers. That place was packed.