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Chapter 19

Tyler Emery

I sat on the bottom step of Charlotte's stairs, listening to her soft footsteps above as she prepared to go out with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Ihad slipped out of her cracked door when she left her room to go to the bathroom. I had watched her all day, feeling like an absolute lurker as she walked around her bedroom, pulling books off her shelves, running her fingers over a couple of the pages, before replacing it back in its appropriate spot, all without saying a word. Sometimes she would sink to her knees, like the world was physically pushing down on her shoulders and it had become too much to bear. Again and again she had cycled through this, refusing to eat or listen to her father the couple of times he knocked. She reminded me of a prisoner,but her sentence was self-imposed. There hadn't been a judge nor jury in sight,just Charlotte and her guilt and self-hatred. Now it was around five, and the sound of the shower turning on could be heard from down here, echoing throughout the empty house.    

In front of me, her dad puttered around the kitchen, his motions confused and slothlike. His hair was sticking up in spikes around his head like he had run his hands through it so much it had held the shape permanently, and it looked like there was more grey in it today than there was yesterday. The TV was off and he kept picking up random things like a muffin, a crystal salt shaker, or a bottle of olive oil, before replacing them where they were. He was restless, just like his daughter, and he kept looking around like he was expecting to see someone watching him. It was a long shot to think that maybe he could sense my presence like his daughter could, but absolutely possible.

I was considering the probability of that kind of thing being in your genes when he disappeared through one of the room's two swinging doors, trying in vain to act like everything was normal. I shot to my feet and followed him, still half-expecting my sneakers to squeak on the chic tile. I slipped through the door just in time to see him go through another door on the other side of the room, leaving it-thankfully-open behind him.

The room I had entered was a dining room, and I felt like I had stepped into one of those old movies where the maids wore little caps and dresses down to their ankles and dinner was a formal occasion where people wore sweeping dresses and suit jackets. There was a long table in the middle of the room, with enough place settings for twelve people to sit comfortably. There was a vase of fresh flowers in the middle of the table and a silver candelabra on each side. The table itself was made of an old dark wood, and the chair seats and backs were upholstered with a rich white velvet that looked as if it stained way too easily. There was a china cabinet along the wall across from me, and a grand window that took up most of the back wall, the same curtains from Charlotte's room floating like pale ghosts in front of the view of the backyard. The whole scene made me catch my breath and try to fit my family into it, like puzzle pieces you try to force into place even though you know they belong somewhere else. I could imagine my brother using the delicate china in the cabinet to eat greasy pizza that he had dropped on the floor. My mother would pick flowers from the bouquet to wear in her hair as she rushed out the door. I would have brought girls in here to study, but would have ended up kissing them. If I was honest with myself, as I stood there with the sunlight streaming through the window and the dust motes caught in the air like specks of thought, my family would never have a room like this in our house because there was no need for it. We spent our nights parked in front of the TV with paper plates balanced on our knees and soda cans strewn around us. But even though I couldn't see my family as puzzle pieces here, I could definitely see Charlotte's. Her mother would recite a book quote before they started eating and they would discuss literature and science over plates of Cornish hen and steamed carrots. They'd drink wine that they had brought back with them from Europe and help each other do the dishes. I found myself wondering for the seventeenth time why I was assigned to this girl, this family, that was as different from me and mine as night is to day.