Rosie stood right there at the forefront of Willow’s mind every day she was away. Every minute of every day for the last four days. She stood there in a floral-printed dress, waving her hips and arms and blowing kisses at her daughter. And then she dissolved away.
As Willow and Asher played Marshmallow City, Willow wondered if her brother was thinking about the same thing. But when she looked up from her sticky hands to read Asher’s mind, she had no idea what her brother was thinking.
The scene in Dad’s kitchen was so familiar. The two of them on Dad’s tiled kitchen floor sticking toothpicks into marshmallows. Then sticking those marshmallows onto other toothpicks. Then those toothpicks into other marshmallows. Doing this until large toothpick-and-marshmallow towers were erected. Arranging the towers across the kitchen floor until a marshmallow metropolis formed. Lining the black-and-white-speckled kitchen tiles with mini marshmallow roads and mini marshmallow walkways with toothpick streetlamps.
It was a game they used to play upstairs in Asher’s room until Dad found out that Asher had been hiding marshmallows under his pillow and sneaking them before bed.
It was a game they used to play loudly and energetically. They would debate over the appropriate orientation and height of a tower. They would ruminate over which color toothpick to use for which building. They would dispense Asher’s action figures throughout their city to inhabit their towers and their streets. And Batman would wave to the Hulk as he walked down a marshmallow pathway. And Superman would share a toothpick-lined room with Rambo.
But today when they played with their toothpicks and marshmallows, everything was quiet. In Marshmallow City and in Dad’s kitchen.
Willow broke the silence when she looked up from her marshmallow-and-toothpick cube and asked her brother, “Where do you think Mom is?”
Asher snapped his eyes to meet his sister’s. His big, blue, wholesome eyes. And now also his swollen marshmallow-stuffed cheeks.
“I don’t weally know,” he said. The marshmallows were pressing their way out the corners of his mouth as he spoke.
While Asher tried to swallow the marshmallows in his cheeks, Willow tried to swallow Asher’s nonresponse and return to erecting her towers. But Willow wasn’t ready to end the conversation. She wanted, needed, wanted to talk more.
“But what if you just had to guess or something?”
Asher stretched his neck up, and then dipped his head and scrunched his eyes as he swallowed the white marshmallow bolus in his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and stretched his spine to answer his sister.
“What if she, like, took a twip into space?”
Asher lit up at the sound of the fantasy he created.
“Yeah. Maybe she went in a wocket ship.”
Asher’s whole body started to levitate at the idea. His eyes floated upward and his earlobes rose. He smiled a gummy smile and stuck another marshmallow into his cheeks. Willow could tell that Asher had considered this recently created story of where Mom was a genuine possibility. And that he was beginning to create a catalog of questions in his mind that he would ask Mom about her adventure in outer space when she came back. Asher’s optimism about their mother’s return almost made Willow smile a little. It almost made her smile enough to allow the belief to seep into her too.
No, her mom wasn’t in a rocket ship in space, but yes, her mom would be coming back. And yes, she was probably just having an adventure. Maybe even in New York City. An adventure she would share stories about when she returned, if she returned, when she returned.
So as Willow stuck another toothpick into a marshmallow, she went on guessing, hoping, guessing when and where that might be.
But still, that turning in Willow’s stomach, that longing in her bones, would not go away. But she knew, hoped, knew it would all end soon.
* * *
With each additional passing day without her mother, all the tiny things in Willow’s life hurt even more. Things inside of her father’s house and also outside of it. Bus #50. Patricia and Amanda. Her long, empty lunch table. The taunts in Sharpie on the bathroom wall. The crying. The bed-wetting.
The days without her mother. The nights without her mother. All day. Every day.
The next day, when Willow boarded the bus home to her father’s house, she unpeeled the duct tape on the seat, willing there to be Pixy Stix lodged in the stuffing. Needing there to be Pixy Stix lodged in the stuffing. She needed some sign that something, someone, was there for her. To comfort her. To refill her even the littlest bit with the love and attention she had been missing all these days without Mom. She tapped her hand around inside of the seat. Nothing. She dropped her shoulder and pressed her arm deeper underneath the thick green vinyl. Nothing. She pushed her shoulder and her arm until it couldn’t go any farther. Nothing. She moved some stuffing out of the way and tapped her hand all around. Still nothing.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Fury exploded from inside of her immediately. Pure, raging, all-consuming fury. Willow yanked piece after piece of stuffing out of the seat and thrust them down to the floor of the bus. She flung herself back and forth against the back of her seat. She growled and flailed while she did it.
And nobody on the bus noticed. Not the fourth grader in the seat next to her. Not the group of fifth graders in the back of the bus. Not even the bus driver in the seat in front of her.
Willow stomped off Bus #50 with a big gray cloud around her and walked down the long driveway toward her father’s house. She didn’t want to go in there. She didn’t want to see Dad. She didn’t want to do her homework. She didn’t want to set the table with the bread plate on the left and cup on the right. She didn’t want the afternoon checklist. Or the scary spiral staircase she always tripped walking up. She didn’t want broccoli for dinner or to drink her whole glass of milk. She didn’t want any of it.
And so she started running. She passed her big brick house and ran through the backyard toward the woods. Her backpack jerked around and she stumbled on her way. But she kept going and going. Passed newly sprouting tree after tree. With the naked late-February air scraping her cheeks. Her own breathing became heavier and faster as she ran. It cooled her throat and lungs. Her breath and her legs had escaped her control. They were just vehicles propelling her into a new place. A new state of mind. A new state of being that belonged only to her. An intensity of presence. A hyperawareness of body. A new sense of self, free of distraction. Free of thought.
When Willow’s body finally stopped moving, she looked around. She was in the middle of the woods. And she was alone. And somewhere entirely new. With new sounds and new sticks and new stillness and new silence. Because it was so far beyond the thirty-seven and a half steps to the tree house. And so far from anyplace she had ever been before.
Willow took her book of word searches and purple gel pen out of her backpack, and then leaned up against the trunk of a tree. She rested her back against it while her fluttering lungs and heart slowly came under control. As she kept her focus on uncovering words and drawing big ellipses around them, she felt more calm and safe than she had in months. With just the stillness of the trees and the lifelessness in the woods, Willow felt more herself than she had in months.
A few drops of rain trickled from the gray sky. And then her fingertips moved from pink to white. And then her nose and ears started to sting. And an inky black started to take the sky. And then, suddenly, the urge to be inside took Willow. The urge to be warm and to be watched over. By anyone. She thought about her father inside. Probably thinking about his daughter. She thought about the kitchen table that probably had a plate of dinner waiting on it. She wanted to be sitting behind that plate. Even if there was broccoli on it.
Willow pressed herself off the tree, wiped the traces of crumbling bark from her back and retraced her shallow muddy footprints back to Dad’s house. She was surprised to feel relief at the big brick facade and heavy front door. The same brick facade and heavy door that had made her muscles tense up so many times before.
She rubbed the light dusting of frost from the front window and pressed her face toward the cool glass. She could see straight into the living room. A movie Willow didn’t recognize was playing on the big television above the mantel, and Willow saw the back of her father’s head peeking above the couch and his shoulders bouncing up and down with laughter. She saw the back of a woman’s head, as well. A thin blond head. And then she saw her father’s fingers caressing that thin blond head. The same fingers that never touched Willow at all.
The same fingers that had dripped with blood when her father cracked that vase and told her to get upstairs.
The same fingers that stuck straight out in anger after Willow tried to tell her father about her one good day at school.
And the fury that Willow thought she left on Bus #50 when she ran into the woods bubbled up inside her again. It made her cheeks hot and her ears ring. It made her jaw tighten and her temples flare. She expected to be missed. She expected that someone ached about her absence the way she ached about Mom’s.
Willow stared through the window, willing her father to turn around. Willing him to see her out there underneath a crying sky without a hat. Willing him to see her with a red nose and red ears. Willing him to look outside his window and inside his daughter. Inside to how angry she was. Angry at him. Angry at Mom. Angry at everyone. Angry at everything.
But, no matter how much Willow willed it, Rex didn’t turn around. So she watched her father watching his movie until the cold and her hunger were too much to bear. She walked in through the back door and straight up the stairs without stopping at the kitchen table, without saying a word. Her feet immediately went into tiptoe formation on her way up those back steps. It used to feel so good, so exciting, keeping her feet arched, keeping invisible, as she made her way across those steps. But now it just felt lonely. And when Willow made it into her room unseen, she slid herself under her comforter and gave her pillow a tight squeeze. She was grateful to be in her bed even if nobody knew she was in it.
She placed her right ear against her sheets and brought her pillow from her chest to her face. Then Willow cried and cried into that pillow hoping it would muffle the sound. The sound of her own tears had become maddening and she wanted to sleep. Her body and her eyes wanted it too. But even after a couple of hours in her bed alone and tired, her heart was awake. Burning and grieving. Grieving and burning. Creating so, so many tears. And although after some time that night Willow’s tears dried up, she was still left with an ache. And the exhaustion of that relentless ache. She didn’t want to be a ghost in this home. She wanted to be seen and heard and hugged and loved. And even if she couldn’t get all of those things from Dad, she at least wanted him to know she was there. So she untangled herself from her sheets and pillow and shuffled across the house to her father’s bedroom.
She heard a rhythmic hum rippling from behind his closed bedroom door.
Good, Willow thought. He’s here.
So Willow brought her hand slowly to the doorknob. She turned it cautiously, and then stepped delicately into his dark room. There was no one in his bed, but the way the sheets were twisted and warm, she knew that Dad had been in there recently.
“Dad?” Willow called quietly into the empty room.
“Dad?” she whispered a bit louder as inertia carried Willow across the bedroom.
“Dad?” she said again when she neared the mirror-lined entrance to the bathroom.
All of the lights were on and the rhythmic hum had turned into a steady moan.
When she reached the bathroom, the first thing Willow saw of her father was his bare ass contracting and relaxing. And then she saw his naked back. And then she saw that woman’s naked arms splayed across the mirror as her long fingers clenched on to the wall, vying for anything to grip. She saw that woman’s tousled blond hair waving around wildly. And that room of mirrors created infinity, infinity, infinity of all of it.
Willow stood frozen at the image of her naked father and that naked woman in the mirror over and over and over and over and over again. Pushing themselves into, and then out of, and then into each other over and over and over and over again. There was infinity and infinity and infinity and infinity of these two fleshy, glistening bodies pressing into each other quickly and harshly. And no matter where her eyes moved, there was more of it. A new view of it. A different angle of it.
Eyes right. His gyrating hips. Eyes left. Her bouncing breasts. Eyes right. His hand on the inside of her thigh. Eyes left. Her ankle hooked around his. It extended indefinitely and indefinitely and indefinitely and indefinitely in the mirror. And even when she closed her eyes, the sound of skin slapping together, and the smell of something acetic, forced the vivid image right back into her head.
And when Willow finally managed to unstick her feet from the floor, she scurried out of her father’s room and quietly but shakily closed the door behind her. Once Willow made it to the dark and quiet hallway, she crouched over her knees, squished her eyes shut and breathed deliberately until she was as close to calm as she could be. She slid back to her room and then under her comforter. Willow gave her pillow a tight squeeze and was grateful for her bed for the second time that night. Even though, still, nobody knew she was in it. Even though there was no safe place for her mind to wander.
* * *
So Willow just turned and turned in the darkness of her bedroom with her fingers tight around her covers. She turned and turned as she tried to sleep, but the vision of her father and that woman, sweaty and entangled, pressed ruthlessly against the back of her eyes.
As she lay in bed, Willow heard a creaking sound of footsteps in the hallway and her body tensed up even more. She pressed her eyelids together and forced her body into stillness. She wasn’t ready to see her father. Even if he was dressed. Even if he didn’t have blond hair wrapped around his knuckles. She squeezed her eyes again as a voice slid around the door and into her room.
“Willow, awe you awake?”
Willow exhaled at the broken r sound. And then she rolled over to the door with her eyes open. Even in this darkness, she could see her brother’s silky blond hair wiggling on top of his head as he bounced into her room.
“Yeah, Ash. What are you doing up?” Willow asked as she sat up, her muscles finally relinquishing the tension that had forced them to be so stiff this last hour.
Asher hopped into his sister’s bed, steadied himself on his knees and bounced up and down with his hands on the headboard.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t weally sleep. Wanna play something?”
Willow smiled and shuffled out of bed and over to the telescope next to her window. Willow pushed the left window pane open, and turned the black tube toward the stars. A refreshing winter chill barreled through the window and dived into her lungs.
“All right, Ash. Let’s do it. Constellation game?”
Asher took one last bounce on the mattress and joined his sister at the window.
She loved playing this game with her brother; carving out patterns in the stars, naming new constellations, detailing their origin stories. She loved scanning the sky for new connections, new shapes, new tales. Creating a new world out there in the vast inky darkness.
Willow peered through the telescope and out into the star-glittered night sky.
“I got it!” Willow almost-whispered after only a few rotations of the telescope. She helped her brother find the same cluster of stars that she had identified. And Asher nodded and took his place on the floor as he looked up at his big sister, ears, eyes and heart wide-open. Willow began her invented story.
“That’s Lipina. She is a big, big red pair of lips,” Willow said in a deep, soothing tone, ready to sink into her tale.
“I thought it looked kind of like a butt.”
“Asher!” Willow gasped with her eyebrows pushed up, trying to fight a smile.
Asher chuckled behind his fingers as his sister dropped back into her tale.
“This is NOT a butt. This is a pair of lips. And her name is Lipina. And once a year, all of the other constellations in the sky line up for Lipina’s kisses.”
Asher popped up again. “Oh, is it like the gwoss wet kisses fwom Mom? I bet no one would line up for one of those!”
Willow smirked and thought about all those times Mom would force her big red lips into Asher’s cheek. How she would swirl her face around and around as Asher giggled and winced. How as soon as Mom would pull away, Asher would vigorously rub his palm against his cheek in a futile attempt to clear the thin layer of saliva and bright red footprint of her kiss.
“Well, I don’t know if they’re wet kisses but they are the most special kisses in the whole entire universe. Because if Lipina kisses you, you will have eternal happiness.”
“Does etewnal mean you tuwn awound and awound?” Asher asked, finally engrossed in Willow’s story.
“No, it means you have it forever. It means anyone who gets a kiss from Lipina will be happy forever.”
Asher nodded slowly with his chest forward and wide eyes.
“But first, before any kisses, the other constellations have to do a dance for Lipina. And you only get a kiss if she likes your dance. And the other constellations only get one chance. So you have to make it perfect.”
Willow almost lost herself in her vision of that crest of stars when Asher got to his feet, rolled his elbows around by his ribs and twisted his hips back and forth.
“Think I’d get a kiss for this dance?”
Willow laughed at her little brother wiggling around in his too-big T-shirt in the middle of the night.
“I don’t know, Ash,” Willow said through a chuckle. “You’ll have to ask Lipina if you meet her.”
Asher abruptly stopped his dance and grabbed the telescope.
“Okay, my tuwn” he said, wiggling in front of Willow and pressing his big blue eye into the back of the tube.
He tilted the telescope up into the sky as Willow sat down in her beanbag chair. Asher swept the telescope back and forth across the sky, slowly and deliberately. Another gust of winter wind swirled around the room as Asher pulled away from the telescope.
“Hewe’s one,” Asher said with an unforeseen solemnity creeping up in his tone.
Willow stood up to look into the telescope and see what Asher had found. There were four white glistening specks huddled together in the sky. She sat back down on her beanbag and looked at her little brother. His body was still and his words were earnest as he crafted his explanation for the way those four bright stars came together. How each of them used to live in a different part of the sky. How they all used to like different things. How they all had different favorite colors and books and movies and candies. How they wore different clothes and ate different snacks.
“Until one day, gwavity changed. Like a vowtex. Like magic. And then all those staws ended up wight next to each other. And, at fiwst it was bad. And they fought for a little bit. About what books to wead and what movies to watch. But then one day, one staw gave the other staw a Pop-Tawt to twy. And even though the staw didn’t want to twy it, he weally liked it! And then they all stawted twying new snacks and books and movies. And evewybody liked evewything they twied.”
Asher exhaled in his place. His words had been spinning out of him so quickly until this sudden pause. He looked at his sister.
“And then they all loved each other,” Asher concluded slowly with a glimmer of wisdom in his eye.
And Willow nodded. She nodded and smiled with a closed mouth at the world Asher explained to her. A world she knew so well, and then not at all. At the world she hoped she could live in one day.
“Yeah, and now they are fouw staws that awe in one little gwoup out thewe hugging!” Asher said a little too loudly as he jumped up out of his story and back into his impish self.
But before Willow could take her second turn at the telescope, she and her brother heard heavy stomping in the hallway outside her door.
There was a moment of electric eye contact, and then Willow jumped under her covers and Asher dived straight under the bed. Even though Willow’s eyes were squeezed together, she could feel her father’s eyes on her back. His suspicion radiating.
Willow opened one eye, just a sliver, to see whether Asher had made his way into hiding. She could see his white socks peeking out from beneath the bed frame. She could see his toes wiggling excitedly. Or maybe anxiously.
Willow pressed her eyes closed again at the sound of the slow, creaking, deliberate pressure of a heel and then a toe, and then a heel and then a toe, moving across her carpet.
And then Rex crashed through the silence.
“Gotcha!” he shouted as he bent down.
Willow’s eyes popped open as she sat up to find her father’s hands around Asher’s ankles. His sock-covered feet were squirming in his father’s strong, broad hands. Twisting under his taut knuckles.
Rex pulled Asher’s little body from underneath the bed and up into his chest. And then he took those same strong, broad hands and shook them over his son’s chest and belly until Asher was giggling uncontrollably.
Asher eked out three words between vibrating breaths so full of laughter.
“No.”
“Mowe.”
“Tickles.”
Rex pulled his hand away and scooped it under his son’s back as he turned to exit Willow’s room.
“Well, that’s for making all that racket in the middle of the night, ya little sneak.”
Rex gave his son one last tickle on his belly and then carried Asher out the door.
The last thing Willow saw before closing her eyes again was the shadow of her father kissing her brother as they dissolved into the darkness of the hallway. And the jealousy of it made her bones ache, right down to the core of them.