Invisible

  “She did,” Peyton said, clearly. She marked this moment. She claimed this memory for her own. “She doesn’t anymore.” Peyton stood. “And that’s her cup.”

  Dana glanced down at the white porcelain cup she was holding, the pink tulip painted on the side just visible between her fingers. “Right.” Slowly, she leaned forward and set it down on the table.

  Peyton left her there, walked down the hallway and into her room. From behind the closed bathroom door came the groaning of the pipes and the tapping of the water, and the raw sound of sobbing. She’d never heard her father cry. The noise was wretched, animal in its confusion. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to pound on the door and yell at her dad that he was only making everything worse, but of course she didn’t. Instead, she turned on her bedroom light and stared unseeing at the walls, a kaleidoscope of color and alien images. This strange new world spread out in all directions. She couldn’t tell if she was swimming up or down or even sideways.

  People came by all the next morning, drinking gallons of coffee and talking in hushed tones. Everyone hugged her, studied her, said lots of sad things. Pretending she was okay made her bone-freaking-tired. Around noon, the house grew quiet. Dana disappeared somewhere, the grumble of her car moving away from the curb and fading into silence.

  A little while later, her father appeared in her bedroom doorway.

  “Hey, I have to go to the funeral home.” His voice was gravelly, like a stranger’s. He cleared his throat like he, too, knew it sounded weird. “Would you like to come?”

  “Do I have to?” Her jeans were ripped at the knee, the threads unraveling. She picked at them, rolled the softness between her fingers. She couldn’t bear to be around Mr. Ewing, the smarmy funeral director. She couldn’t bear to pretend to be interested in something she wasn’t.

  “Of course not. If you want, you could stay here and pick out something for your mom to wear.”

  Like funeral clothes? She clutched her iPod. She wanted to blast the music, drown all this out. But her dad looked so lost. “No problem.”

  “I won’t be long. Then we’d better go see Grandma.”

  She waited until he was gone.

  Her mom liked sweaters. She had one she always wore when it was just the two of them lounging around, watching TV and gossiping, while her dad worked late or went out with his buddies. The blue color exactly matched her eyes. So what if the cuffs were a little frayed and there was a bleach splotch on the side? It was a tiny stain. No one would notice.

  Peyton pulled open the middle drawer in her parents’ bureau and stared down at the neat stack of cottons and wools. Outside, up close by the eave, a bird cooed. The back door banged open and the cooing stopped. “Hello?”

  Peyton lifted up things, moved them aside. She ignored the rustling from down the hall. The Christmas sweatshirt, the red one with the lace across the collar. The black velvet one with rhinestone buttons. The lime green cardigan she always wore on St. Patrick’s Day, the one she swore gave her good luck. Peyton ran her hand across its softness, fingering the pearl buttons. No blue sweater with the white mark shaped like Alaska.

  Cabinet doors opened and closed. Curiously comforting sounds that took her a moment to place: not her mom, but Dana, putting away groceries.

  Maybe her mom had been wearing the sweater the day they took her to the hospital. Maybe that’s where it was right now, pushed into some plastic bag and waiting for them to come retrieve it.

  “There you are.” Dana stood in the doorway. Tall and slim in her gray slacks, the waistband gaping a little at her waist where her blue blouse was tucked neatly in. “How do grilled cheese sandwiches sound for lunch?”

  Peyton’s mom made the best grilled cheese sandwiches. She buttered each slice of bread and used real cheddar. She kept the heat low and put a saucepan lid over the pan to make the cheese melt and keep the bread from burning. “Fine.”

  Dana crossed her arms. She wore her hair in a loose ponytail low in the back, an effortless way that was very pretty. “Will your dad be home?”

  “Probably.” She wished Dana would stop watching her the way she was, in that searching way, like Peyton knew all the answers.

  “Where did he go?”

  “The funeral home.”

  “Oh.” She sounded disapproving. Maybe she’d wanted to go with him. “Mind if I come in?”

  Peyton did mind, but Dana was already wandering around, looking at the decorative screen Peyton’s dad had made that stood in the corner, the glass bluebird of happiness on her mom’s nightstand, the framed wedding picture beside it. She picked it up. “She was so happy that day. She giggled through the whole ceremony. The minister had to keep stopping to let her compose herself.”

  Peyton’s dad said it made him laugh, too, every time he looked down at her mom, with her lips pressed tightly together but her merry eyes giving her away. Peyton closed the drawer and opened the next one. Sometimes her dad put the laundry away, and he was always mixing things up. But no, there were her mom’s turtlenecks that she’d still been wearing even though it was warm outside, all perfectly folded in rectangles. She imagined her mother’s hands neatly squaring them and pressing them flat.

  Dana put down the framed picture, knocking it against the bowl Peyton had made in third-grade art class that held the spare change from her dad’s pockets. “You need some help?”

  How could she help? She didn’t know where anything was. “I’m okay.” Peyton lifted up the soft clothes, searching for a glimpse of cornflower blue.

  “Are you looking for something for your mom?”

  Obviously.

  “How about a dress?” Dana turned and opened the closet door.

  “Is that what I’m supposed to be looking for?”

  “I don’t really know. I guess you’d want something nice. Was there a dress she wore for special occasions?”

  Does attending your own funeral count as a special occasion?

  Her aunt sorted through the hangers, pulling out things and holding them up. “What about this? This is pretty.”

  Her mom’s church dress, deep purple, long and slim and belted. Peyton found herself nodding. That was it exactly. That was what her mom would want to wear. The look on her face must have told Dana that, because she said, “Let’s look for shoes.”

  They picked out a pair of black pumps, the heels still sharp, the leather uncracked. Peyton remembered when they bought them at the consignment shop. Her mom had been so tickled. Five dollars! she’d said. And they fit perfectly!

  “We’ll need some underthings,” Dana said.

  Peyton looked at her blankly. Right.

  She pulled out a drawer and poked through the pink and white and black slithery things. She felt her cheeks grow hot. Seeing everything jumbled in a drawer, the very same place her mother went through every day, considering and deciding, just felt wrong. She pulled out something, anything, and dropped it on the bed.

  “Why don’t you let me go through that while you look for jewelry?”

  Peyton turned away to her mother’s jewelry box and sat down on the bed with it in her lap. She raised the lid and the tiny ballerina sprang up. It no longer rotated, though, and the music only played if she shook it.

  “So, what does your dad do?”

  A dull, adult question. Do you like school? What grade are you in? Do you play any sports? All the blah-blah-blah, getting-to-know-you questions that shouldn’t be here in this room. Dana should have known the answers to all of them long ago. Peyton gritted her teeth. “He’s a maintenance foreman.”

  “That’s right. That’s what he did overseas.”

  Overseas. A neutral term for the word they were never allowed to mention at home: Afghanistan. Peyton had made the mistake once of asking her dad how he’d felt being there; he’d gotten up from the table without saying a word and left.

  Sorry, her mom had said. He can’t talk about it to me either, honey.

  Dana folded the dress, tucking in the underwear
she’d chosen. Setting it aside, she sat beside Peyton. “I can’t believe it.” She gestured at the jewelry box. “Your mom still has that? I gave that to her for her thirteenth birthday.”

  Big deal. Like that was supposed to mean something? “She got me one when I turned thirteen, only mine has a yellow tutu.” There. Let her hear that. Let it make her sad. How much her mom must have loved Dana, and Dana had never even sent her a postcard.

  But Dana just said, “You’re sixteen now, right? That makes you . . . what . . . a sophomore?”

  “I’m a junior. I have a late birthday.” She held out a gold bracelet. “Mom wore this sometimes.”

  Dana took it from her, holding it up so the little heart charm dangled. A frown puckered between her eyes. Was there something wrong with it? But Dana said, “It’s perfect,” dropping it into Peyton’s palm and closing her fingers over it. Her knuckles were rough. Peyton’s mom had the softest hands. She always said it came from having to wear surgical gloves all the time. “It’ll look beautiful with the dress you picked.”

  Peyton hadn’t picked the dress, but whatever. She closed the lid and set the box on her mom’s nightstand, beside the magazine her mom had been reading, rolled open to the page she’d stopped at. The library book. A box of tissues. The spiral notebook she’d been carrying around for the past weeks.

  Her mom never let Peyton read over her shoulder as she wrote in it; she closed the cover whenever Peyton entered the room, so Peyton figured it must be some sort of diary. She’d thought it was weird that her mom would start a diary now, after years of writing nothing but grocery lists. Maybe she used to keep one as a kid; after all, she had given Peyton a million journals over the years, pretty books that sat bare-paged on a shelf in Peyton’s room.

  She placed her palm against the cardboard cover. Her mother had been in such a hurry to leave for the hospital on Friday that she’d left this behind. Peyton shouldn’t be reading her mother’s private thoughts. A corner of paper peeked out from between the pages. Peyton opened the notebook to slide the loose paper back in and found herself staring at the first page.

  Her mom’s handwriting, all generous loops and swirls, filled the lined page, but there was no date printed at the top, no entry that started Dear Diary. It was just an orderly list of names and addresses. “Oh.” She felt curiously deflated.

  Dana leaned close to Peyton. She smelled good, like shampoo and soap, the way her mom used to smell, before she started washing her hands with that harsh lime-scented hand sanitizer every five minutes. “What’s that?”

  “These people.” She frowned at the list. “I don’t know who they are.”

  “Well, your mom was a nurse. Could these have been her patients?”

  “She only worked in Black Bear. Some of these addresses are over in Hawley.” She turned the page. There were dates and abbreviations, phone numbers, things crossed out and added in later, in a different-colored ink. “Here’s Martin’s name.”

  “Martin Cruikshank.” Dana’s voice warmed. “How’s he doing?”

  “Okay, I guess.” Peyton liked the old guy. He told her stories about her dead grandma and made her mom laugh. “He works with my dad at the plant.”

  “Maybe I’ll stop by. Does he still live beside your mom’s and my old house?”

  Every so often, her mom would slow the car as they passed the house down on Vintage Street, and remark, Oh, look, Peyton, they took down the tire swing or they planted azaleas. Her whole life, Peyton had thought of the little white house as her mom’s childhood home; now here was Dana, crowding in. “Yes,” she said, curtly. “But he’s probably at dialysis.” They didn’t stop dialysis for anything, not even holidays, and today was Martin’s dialysis day. Same as it had been her mom’s day. She scowled and flipped the page.

  “Dialysis?” Dana said.

  Peyton studied her mom’s handwriting. The words swam before her. Yes, Martin was on dialysis. He was way older than her mom, but that’s where he was, at dialysis, while her mom was at the stupid funeral home.

  “Would you like to come with me?” Dana asked. “The clinic’s downtown, right? We could walk, maybe have lunch somewhere.”

  Like Peyton would ever want to spend another second in that horrible place. As if she wanted to spend another second yakking with Dana about who lived where and what her favorite subjects were at school. Like she could even possibly eat. “I can’t.” She said it with a vicious satisfaction. “My dad wants to take me to the nursing home to see my grandma.”

  First time she’d ever been glad about going to that creepy old place. Dana nodded, her cheeks pink. So she’d gotten the message she wasn’t wanted.

  “But not your grandfather?” Dana asked.

  “He died a long time ago.” But not so long ago that Peyton couldn’t remember the way his laughter had rumbled out of him from deep inside, or how he had always sneaked her sticks of gum when no one was looking, even though her mom didn’t like her eating candy. And of course Peyton had no memory at all of her other grandpa, the one who’d left long before Peyton was born.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. He was a nice guy.”

  So Dana had known her grandpa. Maybe the only person she hadn’t gotten to know was Peyton herself. Whatever. She spotted another name she recognized toward the bottom of the page. “That’s Logan,” she said, forgetting herself, forgetting how she didn’t want to be talking to this person.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Sheri and Mike Cavanaugh’s little boy.”

  “Sheri has a son?”

  “Two of them. Mikey and Logan.”

  “Really? Sheri was my best friend, growing up.”

  Peyton knew that. Sheri had said something to her mom once, or maybe it had been the other way around. Either way, since practically no one ever talked about Dana, it had caught Peyton’s attention.

  “Sheri Cavanaugh. I guess she and Mike got married after all.”

  They’d been married as long as Peyton could remember. She couldn’t think of them as anything but married.

  Dana reached over and tapped the page. “There’s Miss Lainie.”

  That mean old lady. Oh, now she got it. “This is a list of all the people who have kidney disease.” Her mom must have been keeping track of everything in this notebook. She’d talked about almost nothing else these past few months. Her parents had argued, her dad saying he didn’t want her wasting her time, her mom insisting it was her time to waste.

  Dana frowned and took the notebook. She flipped through some pages, stopped at a chart, then turned to where a map of the county had been taped across the pages, dotted with hand-drawn stars. She turned back to the front again. “Are you telling me Sheri’s little boy has kidney disease, too?”

  “Uh-huh.” Logan was only four. They’d had to order special-sized equipment for him. Her mom had spent hours on the phone talking to Sheri, her voice low and soothing.

  “And Martin?”

  “He found out last Christmas.”

  An envelope had been tucked among the notebook’s back pages. Dana removed it and scanned the return address. “It’s from the Minnesota Department of Health. Mind if I read this?”

  Peyton shrugged. She already knew what it said.

  Dana shook open the letter. “Looks like your mom wrote them. . . . She was worried about the rate of idiopathic kidney disease in Black Bear.” She glanced at Peyton. “Do you know what that means?”

  Of course she did. When Peyton overheard her parents talking, she figured at first they were saying idiot disease. Turns out it wasn’t that far off: idiopathic meant you didn’t know the origin. You were clueless, like an idiot. “Yes.”

  “They wrote back to tell her that although the rate is high, it’s within normal parameters.”

  “I know what that means, too,” Peyton said, irritably. She’d taken a million math classes.

  Dana folded the paper and stuck it back between the pages of the notebook. “Did your mom know why she got kidney disease
?”

  “No.” Peyton’s mom could have had the kind caused by diabetes or some weird cystic disease. She could have inherited it, but no, she got the totally random kind that showed up one day without warning. How did a person protect themselves from something they couldn’t even see coming? The answer was, they couldn’t.

  “What about Martin, and Sheri’s little boy? Is that the kind they have, too?”

  “Yes.” Yes, yes, yes! They were all part of the same special sick club. Did Dana think they sat around and chatted about this stuff? So, how’s the old dialysis working? Pull off enough weight today? Your fistula still bothering you?

  No one wanted to talk about it. Her mom went in for dialysis three days a week, and when she came home, she either looked better or she didn’t. It wasn’t like she came home and told them all sorts of stories over supper.

  Dana handed back the notebook. “Oh well, honey. At least she tried.”

  Beneath the sympathy in her voice ran a strong current of dismissal. It was clear Dana thought Peyton’s mom was nuts. Well, screw her. Dana may have been her sister, but she didn’t know the least thing about Peyton’s mom.

  Peyton slapped the notebook shut and dropped it with a clang into the trashcan beside the bed. She hated to admit it, but Dana was right about one thing. What did any of it matter now?

  FIVE

  [DANA]

  THE WINTER I WAS FOURTEEN, I SPENT MONTHS coughing, throwing up, or shivering from fever. As soon as I got over one thing, I came down with another. I missed the ninth-grade dance, the field trip to the pumpkin patch, and Sheri’s first coed party. Throughout it all, Julie remained healthy, untouched by the diseases that laid siege to me. It’s not fair, I wailed. Why am I always getting sick and you’re not?

  My turn will come, she’d said serenely. And I guess it had.

  The dialysis center where Julie had committed three mornings a week of her life was a large, low-ceilinged space, shadowy and hushed, despite the rows of people in padded reclining chairs and the machines doing their relentless business. I wondered which chair had been hers, but didn’t ask. Someone was surely sitting in it now, since all the chairs were filled. I glanced around and tried to figure it out. Had she been in the middle of a row, able to chat with people in the chairs all around her? Had she sat near the window and asked that the blinds be cracked open so she could see outside? Or had she claimed a corner where she could read in peace?