All the Water in the World Read online

  “Oh.” Jack glanced at me. “Well. I liked your mother. She was fun. Do you remember that game we played where she used to roll us up in towels? We’d hatch or whatever cocoons do, and go tap her on the shoulder and she’d turn around all surprised, and then we’d be butterflies and dance around the room.”

  I stood up, stretched, and sat down again. Now was not the time to go down memory lane. Couldn’t he see I had something to tell him? High board. Dive in.

  “Know what, Jack?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not going to believe this.” I was trying not to smile. “I found my real father this week.”

  I didn’t blame Jack for thinking it was a joke. “No way!” He stared at me, ready to start laughing if I gave a sign.

  I told him the story of the search, my grandfather’s turnaround, my email, Antonio’s reply. Jack kept very still, leaning against the counter with his arms folded, his eyes fixed on my face. It was the most complete attention he had ever given me. Maybe it was an exotic thing, not knowing your father, finding him online.

  “He’s a scientist in London,” I said. “He’s sometimes in the news.” Didn’t scientists write for magazines? That’s the news.

  “What kind of scientist?”

  “Neuroscientist. Brain.”

  Jack was eyeing me with curiosity. “You seem very cool about this.”

  “No, I’m not!” I didn’t know how to tell Jack I would pretty much take anyone’s father over the one I had. A mean one, or one who got drunk, or was old or divorced or way too strict. “It’s just kind of strange.”

  “So what are you going to do? Try to meet him?”

  “Meet him!” I echoed. “I only found him on Sunday. My mother doesn’t know. My grandfather doesn’t even know. You’re the only one who knows.”

  He was silent. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  This fact had a strange effect on Jack. From where he was standing at the counter, he flicked me a couple of puzzled, grateful looks, like I had just given him a surprise present. The barstool I was sitting on was one of those retro diner ones with a red padded seat. It could swivel all the way around. I pushed off the floor with one foot and started the stool slowly spinning. The stainless steel refrigerator went by . . . the window filled with lawn . . . the five-ring stove . . . the rack with hanging pans of every size . . . Any second he would come into view and I would have to reckon with Jack again, with having told him about Antonio.

  Two things happened at once. The empty counter swung by with no Jack leaning on it, which meant he had gone away and I would never see him again, and Jack was behind me, reappeared as if by magic in a new form. Big and near. Turning me. I tilted up my face and shut my eyes. But no one kissed me. Instead I was gripped by what felt more like wings than arms and my face was squashed into his neck. Being so close that I could feel the heat of him and smell his grassy smell was as good as anything that had happened to me in a long time. But why didn’t he want to kiss me? Lost his nerve? Afraid of catching what I had? Seconds ticked by. Do something!

  I laughed and pulled away.

  His arms dropped. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing!”

  He went to the fridge and held the door open, peering into the lighted interior. It was lonely having him so far away again. I went over and touched his arm that was propping open the fridge door.

  “Nothing’s funny, Jack.”

  He shrugged my hand off, a little more gently than he’d done to his father. “Hungry?” he asked, letting the door swing shut.

  “Not really. I might need to go.”

  “Right.”

  “I wasn’t laughing at you.”

  “Right.”

  “At myself, more like.”

  “No need for that,” Jack said stiffly.

  I was afraid to touch him. “Friends?”

  A fake smile was all I got back.

  Hi Antonio,

  I know Mom would be basically fine with the idea of me writing to you. But I REALLY don’t think we should tell her right now. The thing is, one of her best friends has cancer and my mother is very busy and stressed. I think it would be better not to give her one more thing to worry about (not that she especially would, but you know what I mean). I am an only child. I have a Ragdoll kitten named Cloud. I really wish I had a brother or sister. I especially wish I had an identical twin. Then you would have two surprises on your hands instead of one . . . ! Mainly there would be someone else on the planet like me. And if one of us got lost, Mom would have a spare! Just kidding. I have two cousins, Denny and Joe, but that’s not the same. They live in California. We live in DC. Well, Takoma Park, Maryland, to be exact. My grandparents live right in the middle of DC, on Corcoran Street. Sometimes I wish I belonged to a huge family. But I like mine the way it is. How many children do you have?

  Maddy

  P.S. Estudio español en la escuela.

  Hello Maddy,

  Bravo on learning Spanish! I come from the north of Spain, a little place in the mountains. I moved to London eleven years ago to take a research position. I met my wife, Erica, here. She is English and I ended up living in London without really intending to. A lot of things in life happen without you intending them. We have two sons. Oscar is 6 and a half, and Daniel is 4. I don’t know what your mother has told you about me.

  I am so sorry to hear about your mother’s friend. What I am worried about is that Eve will feel left out when she knows we have been writing to each other. I’m so happy you wrote to me, but I think it’s better if we stop for now, until you decide whether you can tell your mother.

  Saludos,

  Antonio

  Antonio,

  Well are you going to tell your family about me?

  Maddy

  10

  The week after the disastrous non-kiss, I texted Jack to say I wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come over. He replied K, which was worse than no reply at all. For two days I did not get dressed or leave my room much. I had to stop Mom from calling Dr. Osterley. I told her I might be seriously ill but she had to respect the fact that I was a teenager with hormonal ups and downs. I said she should consult her book on the adolescent brain. I said did she think it was fair for my emotional life to be public property just because I had cancer. She backed off. Which left me to stew in my room. Which I had to admit had its downside.

  In a fit of cooped-up frustration, I pulled out the sketchbook she got for me and started sketching my shirt hanging on the back of the chair. I drew in jagged, careless lines so anyone watching would know it was an idiotic thing to do and my heart was not in it. My heart was back in Jack’s kitchen, obsessively and pointlessly going over who said what when, replaying the stool-spinning scenario to edit out the moment I closed my eyes, expecting something to happen, and the moment I laughed.

  Little by little, what I was doing overtook what I was thinking. The pencil scratched into the silence. My thoughts dropped away. All my attention was taken up by the folds of the shirt. They fell from the shoulder seams in soft columns. My job was to brighten their curves and deepen the crevices between them, to give each one its own peculiar shape. A long triangle squeezed in the middle. A tube. A canoe with slanting ripples. The lower edge of the shirt gathered all the folds together and made sense of them. I tried to show this by going over the hemline twice. Tipped my head. Too heavy? Too dark a stripe at the bottom? I erased it and redrew it more gently, compared the shapes again and feathered the shadows so you could hardly tell at what point they turned into light. When I stepped back, there it was: a second shirt hanging in a second, silvery world that appeared to be newly made but might in fact have been there all along.

  I found my mother downstairs, slowing to a dignified pace before entering her study. She smiled, not so much at the drawing as at my face.

  “Sorry, Mom.” I went up close so she would hug me.

  “For what?”

  “Nothing. Just sorry.”
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  The next day I drew Cloud curled up on my bed. She ruined it by turning over. I drew that pose instead until she moved and I had to start again. After lots of attempts, I gave up and rubbed her stomach, thinking about her miniature organs inside, all in perfect working order.

  Draw another shirt? No. Something alive that would keep still. I held up my left hand. Index finger pointed at the ceiling, the others curled into the palm. With my right hand I started to sketch. The hand of the Serenity statue must have looked like that before it was broken off. Elegant gesture. Terrible drawing! I scribbled it out. Maybe shirts were all I was capable of. I got up and crossed the room. Coming back, I encountered my faraway self, straining to see out of the mirror to where I was. Corner of your room? Clothes hanging in your closet? Dare you to draw yourself. Dare you! Too hard, somebody whispered. Too sad.

  I dragged the chair to the mirror and began before I could talk myself out of it, thinking this time about Antonio’s smile in the photo. Warm, like his emails, but not giving anything away. What if Antonio could see me now, a bald girl with hoop earrings drawing a bald girl with hoop earrings? If he could see me now, he would know. I didn’t want him to know, and not because I hadn’t told my mother about him yet. I just didn’t want him to. Couldn’t I be a normal girl for once? Besides, if he felt sorry for me, I would never know what he really thought.

  Once again, the rhythm of looking up and down and matching the shapes left no room for my thoughts. My mother had an annoying habit of being right. Drawing made you think only: Things are what they are. The light falls where it falls. The shape of my forehead is what it is. The trick in doing a face, according to Mr. Yam, is to pretend it’s an object like any object in the world. The other trick is to keep the overall look of the thing and the tiniest details in mind at the same time, or to be able to flip back and forth between them. Once I started, I remembered that I had always been good at both tricks.

  This time when I showed the drawing to my mother, she shook her head slowly while blinking fast. I guess it was her child with no hair, trapped inside a mirror. We were sitting on the couch. I felt something pass between us, by way of the drawing.

  “That bad, Mom?”

  “It’s a superb drawing, Maddy. Extraordinary. You look . . .”

  “What?” I demanded. “What do I look?”

  Eyes on the picture, she said: “Beseeching . . . but also defiant.”

  “What’s beseeching again?”

  “Beseeching is: Please help me. Defiant is: Don’t mess with me.”

  “Feisty, you mean?”

  “I guess.”

  “That’s a good thing to be?”

  “In your case, yes. You’ve always had that side to you.”

  “And the other side?”

  Her eyes filmed over. “Understandable.” She kissed my forehead and tried to sound breezy while holding on to me for dear life. “Completely and totally understandable.”

  Back in my room, studying the drawing, I decided it was my forehead and eyes that said “Help me”; my mouth and chin said “Don’t mess with me.” I liked the fact that those qualities leaked onto the paper without me exactly putting them there, and I liked the fact that my qualities were apparent to other people. In any case, it was a good drawing; anyone could see that. I pretended Antonio was looking over my shoulder. Bet his children can’t draw like that. His other children.

  Antonio,

  I will think about it. But she is truly upset and worried about her friend, which is a much bigger thing to worry about. At least I think it is. And I’m the one who has to put up with her when she’s stressed.

  Maddy

  Vicky and Fiona came once or twice a week now instead of every other day. Fiona had drama club and Vicky had a lot of homework to catch up on, or so she said. Her homework was mostly Wade. Though I gathered the romance was not exactly going according to plan. She sat in my desk chair and unbuckled her gladiator sandals. “These are killing me.” She gave me a searching look. “How’s Maddy today?”

  I liked being talked to in the third person. She only did that with us. “Doing fine,” I said. “About the same.” I had no intention of telling Vicky about Antonio. He was an astonishing fact that did not feel like a fact yet. “But how are you?”

  “Oh, you know. Surviving. Wade’s being a dickhead. I tell him, Girls are like fires. You don’t tend them, they go out.” Vicky’s marimba ringtone went off. She rolled her eyes. “That’ll be him.” Glanced down. “No, it’s Billy. Do I answer it? He went out with Carina Butler last night.”

  “Answer it,” said Fiona. Billy Quinn was this boy we had a soft spot for. He had narrow shoulders and a mournful face, and he was incapable of deception or spite. We were like his big sisters.

  Vicky nodded, keeping her eyes on Fiona and me. “. . . Just say her bone structure is giving your bone structure . . . Kidding, Billy. Kidding. Hang on a sec, I’m putting you on speaker. I’m with Fiona and Maddy.” She held the phone over the bed, equidistant from all of us.

  “We can help,” I said. “How did it go?”

  “I think she wanted to kiss me.”

  “Wanted to?” Vicky googled her eyes at us. “Wanted to kiss you?”

  “I got the feeling she did. She was standing pretty close.”

  “Did you kiss Wade on your first date, Vic?” I said.

  “Course not.” She grinned. “Leave some excitement for next time, Billy.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Put your hand on her cheek and lean in,” said Fiona.

  “Hug her,” said Vicky. “Then your faces will be close. If she gives a sign, you’ll know it’s all right to go ahead.”

  “Thanks, guys,” he said. “You’re the best.”

  “But if you take too long, she might go for it herself.”

  “Oh, shit . . .”

  “No, Billy, that’s a good thing! It shows you’re a gentleman.”

  “Girls like that.”

  When we’d hung up, I lay back. It was exhausting having to care whether Wade was good enough for Vicky, or whether Billy had kissed Carina or not, or whether she would dump him and destroy his confidence forever.

  “How’s Jack?” asked Fiona.

  “Great. There’s this publicity drive for the march we’re working on.”

  Vicky was at my dresser giving herself a cat eye. She turned around, one eye winged. “I think it’s great you’re into all this. I really do. But to be totally honest with you? I can’t get excited about it.”

  “You don’t want to think about the end of the world as we know it?”

  “She does it to be with Jack,” put in Fiona from the beanbag.

  I did not like being talked about as if I wasn’t there. “Not just that.”

  Vicky gazed at me for a moment, eyeliner wand poised in her long fingers. “Take asteroids.” She turned back and raised her brows to start the second eye. “There’s a hundred percent chance the earth will get hit by an asteroid. Hundred percent. Sooner or later. Boom. Finito. So why sit around and worry? You can’t move someplace else. Same with the climate. We might as well live it up now. That’s my thinking.”

  “Do you want your children to grow up in a desert?”

  “What children?” said Vicky to the mirror. “I’m not having any boring kids. I’m going to have fun.”

  “Well, I want kids,” Fiona announced.

  “Same,” I said. “And I’d want them to have polar bears and trees.”

  “Go right ahead.” Vicky’s hair lay across her shoulders like a thick black shawl. Italians know how to make hair. Nothing like Fiona’s cotton candy or my reddish brown waves way back when; hair-wise the three of us could belong to different species.

  “Where are you meeting Wade?” Fiona wanted to know.

  “He’s picking me up. Four-thirty. Remember he got his license?”

  “You’re abandoning us at four-thirty? What happened to chicks before dicks?”

  “Sisters over m
isters!”

  Vicky kept a cosmetic silence. I used to think people wanted to be around her because she was beautiful and her parents were rich, but it was more than that. She was always completely herself. She was funny and kind in a distracted sort of way, and she never threw shade. Watching her stroke the eyeliner out to a witchy point, I could see right into the future. Vicky would have adventures, and mishaps, and three or four husbands, at least, with divorces to match. I glanced over to see if Fiona was thinking the same thing, but she was on the floor, arching her back into the Upward Facing Dog.

  “This position,” she said to the ceiling, “elongates the spine.”

  “God knows yours needs elongating,” said Vicky.

  “Hey!” Fiona used to envy me my height. I don’t suppose she does anymore, but she is still desperate to gain some inches. She came out of the pose and sat cross-legged, rubbing her thighs. “I keep getting these growing pains, but nothing ever happens.”

  “Poor baby,” I said. “Don’t even think about it. Short is the new tall.”

  Fiona would stay sweet and petite and have a houseful of oddball kids and she would stand by her man no matter what. In their different ways, the two of them would get what they wanted. Whether it happened tomorrow, or next year, or some other time, or not at all, made no difference. The future for them was a huge misty field they couldn’t see the end of.

  “By the way,” I said, “there’s nothing going on, you know. With Jack.”

  “Well, I can tell you he doesn’t post anything interesting on Facebook,” said Vicky. “It’s all icebergs and fund-raising links.”

  “How do you know?”

  “If you’re not going to stalk him, we are! See if he’s leading you on. Believe me, he has some hot girls after him.”

  “A philanderer? Jack Bell?” Fiona was across the room now, squatting down. “Nice guy, but not exactly—”

  “Fine by me,” I cut in. “We’re friends.”

  “Friends,” said Vicky with distaste.

  Fiona stood up, my sketchbook in her hands. “Hey, what’s this? Don’t tell me you drew this?”