“I like this,” Ava’s son told me. He was sitting on my lap and he rubbed at my arm. “You have stripes, like that cat. The one with just the eyes.”
Now I focused on what he was saying. “What did you say about a cat’s eyes?”
“He means you have stripes like the Cheshire Cat,” Ava’s daughter Everly informed me. She’d done a lot of interpreting for her younger sibling. “It disappears until only the eyes show. I’m a lot older so I don’t talk about when people have stripes, but he’s little and does dumb stuff. The Cheshire Cat at scared him when we saw the movie.”
Her brother said it did not scare him and their mom intervened to head off an argument, but I was staring at my arm. I did, in fact, look striped, like there were dark streaks on the pale, greyish undertone of my skin. I also rubbed at them, but they didn’t go anywhere.
“I think my self-tanner went wrong,” I told the kids and while they didn’t understand, Ava did.
She knelt and picked up my wrist to get a better look at the problem. “How long did you leave it on?”
“It’s still on,” I said. “Was I…oh, right.” I did remember that I might have rinsed off after I’d used it before, but that had been a year ago at least. Maybe two. “It was kind of old lotion,” I commented.
“Did you exfoliate first? Why didn’t you wash it off?” she asked as she examined me, and those would have been good steps. In the few times we’d met, Ava had seemed like someone ready and able to take charge, but even she seemed nonplused by the state of my skin. “Come upstairs and we can try to get it off,” she finally said. “I have a scouring pad that I use on the pan after my husband makes lasagna.”
But above us on the main level, her front door slammed. “Aves, I’m here,” a voice called, and both kids squealed with excitement.
“Uncle Levi!” they said, and fought over who would get up the stairs the fastest. Woofy the dog won and Everly, being bigger than her brother, came in second. We heard Levi consoling his nephew.
“I used to be so much smaller than your mom, and now I can beat her up the stairs any day of the week,” he said.
“I don’t want to wait until I’m old like you!” Elliott told him.
“Old? No way. Hi, Woofy, how have you been? Trip anybody lately?” Levi asked. Their voices faded as their feet thumped away.
I’d had no hope of being the first one up the stairs, because sitting on the tiny chair at the tea table had been a poor idea. I started to get up but I made a sound in my throat, and Ava responded immediately. I had my doubts about whether Levi would have been able to beat her at anything, because she was also strong. She literally picked me up under my arms and set me on my feet.
“You don’t weigh much more than when I’m carrying all three kids,” she said when I complimented her, but she was still frowning and now she was rubbing her shoulder. “We don’t have time to scrub you.”
“I don’t care if Levi sees my stripes,” I responded, although actually? I did. I had put some effort into looking nice and nothing like the Cheshire Cat, and I wished that I’d reviewed the instructions on the self-tanner instead of getting caught up in the expiration date. I also wished that I hadn’t disregarded that expiration date.
Ava also disregarded my response. “I know! I’ll get you a sweater. Tights would look strange with that dress so we can’t cover your legs, but he’s unobservant. Levi never cares much about looks anyway, but we should still put your best foot forward.” She hustled up the stairs, telling me to stay put and she’d be right back.
“I can put my own feet forward,” I called, but she hadn’t heard me. I had no desire to wait and hide, though. I started up too, wondering why everyone had such long flights of these stupid things. I was about a third of the way when Levi appeared at the top.
“Emerson.”
“Hi,” I said, glad that the light was dim. But then he flicked the switch and everything was illuminated, including my skin.
“Do you need help? Here.” He quickly descended and then offered his arm, which I took. His skin, I noticed, was a nice tan color that seemed to be natural. “Now I get why Ava was suddenly having a party. I couldn’t think of reason, except maybe to celebrate my absence from her house.”
“Where did you go?” I realized that I was breathing heavily and decided that I was absolutely going to start taking more walks, even if it hurt a lot.
“I got an apartment. How have you been doing? How’s the Spanish?”
“Bueno,” I responded, because I knew it meant good. According to Hernán, I was learning by leaps and bounds. He thought so because I’d mastered all the question words and had also greeted him by saying “hola.”
“Me alegro,” Levi said. “I’m happy to hear it.”
I would have replied that I was also happy to hear about his new apartment but I didn’t want him to notice how much I was wheezing. I held back my curiosity for later.
Whatever he and Ava might have said about his parents kicking his ass and closing the Bank of Dad, they sure acted glad to see him and hang out together. His mom was all smiles and when she leaned up to kiss him, she smiled at me, too. I started to pull away but, surprisingly, he put his other hand over mine and kept our arms intertwined. He led me to a couch and we sat there together.
Ava’s husband got me a drink, a mix that he called his specialty and that her friend Nicola mentioned was deadly. I wasn’t driving but I was never much of a drinker, anyway. I’d spent five years of my life as the person in charge of safety for all nights out: I’d prevented drunken fights, hidden the car keys so that only I would be able to use them, and paid many a tab. Now that I had my chance to be on the other side, it didn’t appeal very much. I took the glass but I mostly just held it and as the ice melted, the level of the liquid inside increased rather than ebbed.
Anyway, I didn’t have time to drink because I was so busy talking. All of us adults were in the living room, where they had pulled the chairs around the sofa in a semicircle. It would have seemed like a great way to direct conversation back and forth, but that wasn’t what happened. Almost every bit of the conversation was directed at me, in the form of a very pleasant, very cordial interrogation.
“Emerson,” Mrs. Lassiter said. “That’s so pretty.” She smiled at me and looked exactly like her daughter.
