“I know,” I reply. “I wanted to do some work in the basement.”
They assume this work involves the podcast.
It’s an assumption I don’t correct.
Downstairs, however, I bypass the table with our recording equipment and make myself comfortable on the floor in front of the crates. I focus my attention on the one filled with items that seem to have come from Lily’s bedroom.
Harper left the Magic 8 Ball on top.
“Did Lily visit the Overlay before she was sucked inside?” I ask it, giving the ball a shake before turning it over.
Inside the viewing window, the many-sided die floats in blue liquid, stuck between answers.
It is decidedly so.
Outlook not so good.
I remove the bag of glow-in-the-dark stars, the hot pink corded phone, a snow globe of the Eiffel tower, and Lily’s boombox. It’s a Sony Mega Bass, sleek and black with a dual cassette deck and a top loading CD player. Underneath it, inside the crate, is a scattered pile of cassette tapes and CDs, most of them featuring Madonna and Kate Bush.
I plug the boombox into an outlet and acquaint myself with how the cassettes work. I start withLittle Earthquakesby Tori Amos.Like a PrayerandThe Immaculate Collectionby Madonna. I try a few by Kate Bush.The Tuesday Night Music Clubby Sheryl Crow, and thenHappy Nationby Ace of Base.
While everything else has been edgy, introspective, and artsy, Ace of Base sounds like bubblegum.
I return to the crate, pulling out a plastic, purple caboodle. There are two vials of perfume inside, lip gloss, a velvet choker, a few silver charms, and a vibrant collection of curled up snap bracelets.
I remove a gallon-sized bag of nail polish and discover a stack of magazines underneath—Seventeen,Vogue,Sassy,Rolling Stone—with a mailing label on every cover, typed with Lily’s name andaddress, except for a random copy ofTheNew Yorkerat the bottom, which is addressed to Simon and smells like clove.
I think that’s it.
That’s all there is.
I’ve reached the last of Lily’s things.
But when I pull outThe New Yorker, I discover another sketchpad at the very bottom, half the size of the first, along with four stray cassette tapes. They aren’t in plastic cases. They aren’t even labeled.
I open the newly discovered sketchpad, expecting more of the same. What I find instead has my fingers fluttering to the page, my brain stuttering in sheer bewilderment.
A perfect depiction of Clara Green.
Lily sketched my teenage mother in stunning detail. And here it is, in Maggie’s basement. Right under my nose all this time while Twig and I recorded our podcast. Just like the yearbook at school, patiently waiting to be discovered.
I turn the page and gasp.
The drawing reminds me ofThe Creation of Adamby Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, only instead of God and Adam reaching for one another, surrounded by a host of angels and cherubs, it’s my mother and Simon,their faces filled with torment, the angels and cherubs replaced by shadows and demons.
On the next page, my mother is weeping.
On the one after that, she’s hunched in a corner wearing a straight jacket.
I stop breathing.
Because this is impossible.
Utterly impossible.
Lily couldn’t have known my mother would be committed to a psych ward. She couldn’t have even known Simon and my mother would be torn apart. And yet, somehow, she drew these things.
I flip to a self-portrait that has a clammy chill creeping across my skin. Four violent slashes have been drawn down the length of Lily’s face. The charcoal is dark, the drawing itself overworked, the page nearly torn through.
