Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

“It sounds like you’ve got really good parents,” said Katy.

“I do,” said Lily, surprising herself with the force of her sincerity. “I really, really do.”

The next day, Lily left the house at the usual time. She had promised herself she would end things with Sebastien that day, but she found she was stalling—watching the shifting trapezoids of birds against the sky, feeling a pleasantly lonesome wanderlust. The rain had left the chestnut smell of waterlogged leaves in the air. Lily was enjoying this brief purgatorial reprieve; she could afford, she figured, one more day of it. And so she rode the Subte to the end of the line and back; she stalked the parameters of the zoo, which was closed since it was a Sunday. No matter, thought Lily; after all, half the fun of a zoo was smelling it! She laughed out loud, rounded a corner, and saw a booth with a fat red pay phone at its center.

She flitted her fingers through her pockets and smiled when she found coins. Who would she call? Maybe Anna. As soon as she thought of her sister, Lily felt a violent longing, which was weird, and she actually dialed most of Anna’s number before hanging up. Anna was busy, after all; Anna wasn’t good on the telephone; Anna, it went without saying, would never have lost a job of any sort, even one as dumb as Lily’s. Most of all, maybe, Anna was a grown-up, and sometimes Lily wished she weren’t. But there was nothing to be done about it: Anna simply wasn’t the same little girl who’d helped Lily try to contact Janie’s ghost on a Ouija board—a plan endlessly discussed and then, finally, one summer night, thick with humidity and black magic, attempted—and who had, when the indicator began to move, wet her pants.

Before she’d decided whether she wanted to talk to him, Lily found she’d called Andrew. The phone rang three, four, five times, and Lily was surprised by how relieved she felt when he finally answered. “Hello?” he said.

“Hey, Andrew. It’s me.”

“Thank God. You see that many digits, you have to assume it’s Interpol.”

Lily paused to let him know that, if they were in the same room, she’d be rolling her eyes.

“How’s it going down there, kid?” he said.

“Pretty good,” said Lily. “But listen, I have a serious question for you.” Now she would have to think of one.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Not that serious. Don’t worry.” Lily tapped her thumb against the bottom of the phone. “Do you like your job?” she said finally.

“What a question,” said Andrew. “What’s with these getting-to-know-your-parents probes lately? Is my dean hiring you to spy on me? Have you joined a twelve-step program of some kind?”

“Not yet!” said Lily. “Well, do you?”

Andrew exhaled heavily. “I suppose,” he said. “It’s interesting, anyway.”

“Is it, though?” said Lily, finding an angle. “Is it still interesting? I mean, do you still feel like you learn things from it?”

On the other end of the line, Lily could hear Andrew consider; one thing that was nice about old Andrew was that he actually thought about it when you asked him a question.

“Well,” he said finally. “I learn what your generation thinks about things, anyway. And I do like watching them learn, which I guess is a kind of learning.”

Lily sighed. She felt bad for her parents sometimes; everything good that would ever happen to them pretty much already had. The arithmetic of their lives was complete. It was wonderful, of course, to have things to lose—but from now on, that was all they would ever do.

“You’re always telling me how great your generation is,” Andrew was saying. “Tell me one great thing.”

“We’re better with technology.”

“Well, hallelujah.”

“We’re less racist.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one.” Andrew paused. “Lily Pad? Are you all right?”

Andrew hadn’t called her Lily Pad in forever; it was a name dating back to her cradle years, when he’d made up nonsense songs for her: Lily Pad, Lily Pad, stop your crying, don’t be sad! Lily Pad, Lily Pad, go to sleep, don’t make Mom mad! Lily Pad, Lily Pad, cease to fuss, be kind to Dad! Lily had liked the nickname when she was very small. But it had turned mortifying in her preadolescent years, when the word “pad”—along with most other words, people, and events—could send her into paroxysms of humiliation, and she had begged Andrew to abandon it.

“I’m all right,” she said, hoping she sounded stoic.

“You sound down. You sound like your mother.”

“Do I? Nah. Just a little tired.”

“Well, get some sleep, why don’t you?” There was a momentary lilt in Andrew’s voice, and Lily thought for a fraction of a moment that he might actually be about to sing to her. It seemed possible, at least, that he was considering it. If he was, however, he must also have been considering how viciously Lily was likely to mock him for it, and so he restrained himself. Lily had trained him well. There was something a little sad about that, maybe.

“I love you, Dad,” said Lily, with feeling.

“I love you, Lily!” said Andrew, sounding startled. “I love you very, very much.”

Lily returned to the Carrizos’ house at her usual hour and caught herself half-hoping to find Katy watching television when she got there. Lily could almost imagine this becoming a nightly ritual—something sweet and arbitrary and inexplicable, something she’d remember fondly in the years to come. But tonight, Katy was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was Beatriz, sitting at the kitchen counter with a glass of water and a newspaper, and when Lily walked through the door she looked up, her mouth already forming that most beloved phrase of hers. “Where were you?” she said.

“At my job,” said Lily wonderingly. She set down her bag slowly and stretched, hoping she looked appropriately tired.

“I thought you lost your job.”

“What?” Lily found herself picking her bag back up, perhaps out of a sense that she might need to be prepared to flee at any moment.

“I thought you were fired,” said Beatriz.

“Where did you hear that?” Lily was mystified. Had Javier Aguirre called up the Carrizos to tattle on her? What would possibly provoke him to do that?

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad about the job, Lily.” Beatriz began folding up the newspaper. Lily could not believe that there were still people who knew how to do this. “But I do need to know where you are, especially at night, and I can’t have you lying to me about it. I am responsible for you.”

No, it could not have been Javier. He didn’t have the Carrizos’ number; Lily didn’t think she’d ever even mentioned their names to him; and anyway, it would make no sense for him to do something like that—it was too overly vindictive, too overly engaged. Too overly concerned, in a way. So how did they know? Did they have eyes and ears all over town? Who were these people, anyway?

Beatriz put her hand on Lily’s shoulder. “Lily,” she said. “Look. I understand that you’re embarrassed.”

This was something that Lily herself might have admitted if Beatriz had waited a moment longer. But it was unendurable to be told you’d embarrassed yourself; there was something too presumptuous about having your shame taken for granted. And so Lily found herself ducking Beatriz’s hand and running to her room, where she lay on the bed and, horrifyingly, began to sob. She told herself to stop it immediately. She told herself that in acting this way she was losing her grip on all the finely threaded claims on adulthood she’d only just begun to establish. But this thought only made her sob harder, and eventually Lily gave in to the sobbing, and—out of the same impulse that made you want to wreck something completely once it was wrecked only a little—she let it get louder and messier than even she felt was really necessary.