“Oh for—” Nieves’s arms fall flat at her sides as she stares into the store. “Don’t these people have homes?”
Stanley spots the silhouetted form of a couple walking up Ethnic/Prepared/Mixes. They seem to be hazily looking around, not shopping exactly, and he shifts his hands back to Nieves’s shoulders. He’s about to call out, in some exasperation, Hey, we’re closed — get yourselves home! when he hears a young, quiet, familiar voice say, “Stan?”
HE ALWAYS MEANT to tell the girls he’d dated about Felice, how her disappearance had left such a mark on his life, but it turned out that she was something he couldn’t talk about at all — as if someone had rubbed out those years of waiting and anxiety with a pencil eraser and now it was difficult even to perceive faint lines left in the paper. Only recently had he revealed to Nieves that he’d had a sister, that she’d “left home,” that he “rarely” heard from her. At the time, Nieves had scrutinized his face, listening quietly in the shadow of their tiny apartment. She touched his hand and stroked the back of his fingers with uncharacteristic tenderness.
Now Felice stands in his kitchen, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Stanley feels layers of disorientation and distance gathering around him like the folds of a cape. This is my sister, he tells himself. Nieves is motionless, holding a scraped-out jar in one hand, as she watches Felice eat. The boy — Felice’s friend — barely speaks. He ate his sandwich in three bites, then politely declined offers of more. He hunches on the stool, one bulky arm resting on the kitchen counter.
But Felice.
The last time Stanley had seen her, she was on her way to another “party.” He had just turned seventeen and no longer believed anything she said. She’d run away five or six times by then. Their parents had recently started allowing her to go out again with her friends at night: her new curfew was ten o’clock and up till that point she’d been relatively good — twice she’d come home by 9:30. But Stanley knew. He’d asked her again, that very night, What is wrong? Why can’t you tell me what’s happening? He didn’t know why he still bothered at that point.
At thirteen, she was already five feet seven, a little hollowed-out by her growth spurt, her chest concave, her eyes with their ineffable violet light enormous, her bangs cut straight across her brow so she looked very young and serious. He realizes only now that as time passed he’d continued to think of Felice as that thirteen-year-old child, preserved like a geranium between the leaves of a book. She is still young and slim, yet changed. Her shoulders are straighter and more refined; the bangs are gone — her hair swings to her shoulders. Her eyes no longer seem overlarge: they are wide, almond-shaped. Nieves stares at her: he’d failed to mention his sister’s beauty.
Stanley tucks his chin: inside, a ragged blank — the feeling that this couldn’t possibly be his sister: she is still out there — a thirteen-year-old, who vanished into the night, a black orchid. There’s no way to reconcile this adult with the lost child. She mumbles to the boy (boyfriend?) as they eat, the two brushing up against each other, casually but continually, a kind of ritual of reassurance. Stanley notices their exhaustion — especially in the boy, who scanned the room as they entered — as if they’ve been through some sort of ordeal together. Their clothes look creased with sweat and grime and there’s a rancid whiff of unwashed hair and skin. Felice’s eyes have an odd cherry-red wire of light at their centers — a glint of barely contained panic. Stanley — who hasn’t been able to say more than a handful of words — now finds his fingers are growing rigid on his glass of water. Some sort of energy field has invaded him, starting when his sister came to the office door and said, “Stan — it’s me.” He carefully places his glass on the kitchen counter. Her extreme state catches at something in his chest, but he ignores it: he feels little more than a cold absence — perhaps, now, a few wisps of anger. All those years in free fall, living through plummeting fear, living through her inexplicable loss. Is he supposed to snap his fingers and be done with it? He regards her with some fascination: Apparently people are capable of things like that — of running away without a word of explanation, of leaving you to years of nightmares, images of them bound, beaten, tortured — and then they are capable of magically, brazenly reappearing years later to request assistance!
Stanley notices again the boy’s shoulders as he leans closer to Felice for one of their whispered conferences. He looks broad and strong, but he moves with restraint, as if to make himself smaller. Stanley feels an impulse to stop him, to say: Save yourself. Or perhaps he should say, more simply — It’s time for you two to go. He crosses his arms, the tendons in his neck and shoulders tighten. Just ask them politely to be on their way. Above all, it seems imperative to keep his parents from knowing about this visit — to spare them, if possible, one more iota of pain. After furtive meetings with her runaway daughter, his mother used to return with the disconnected expression of an assault victim. Stanley found himself in agreement with his father: insist Felice return or cut things off.
Evidently sensing his unhappiness, Nieves begins to rattle around the kitchen, pouring drinks, wiping counters. “The bathroom is over there if anyone needs it. Hey — really — how about you let me make you another sandwich? There’s plenty of food — we’re practically living over a grocery store.” Their dumb old joke. Ha-ha. She smiles and leans against the fridge, and Stanley’s neck prickles as he sees, for possibly the first time, her hands slide unconsciously over her stomach.
Felice finally seems able to focus — her gaze grazes lightly over Nieves. Her eyes widen. “Oh. Wow. I just — you guys — there’s a baby?” She turns toward Stanley. “You’re gonna be a dad?”
With a despairing breath, some of that fortifying anger rushes out of Stanley. Nieves nods and fans her fingers over her belly. “Not everyone can see it yet. People aren’t sure if it’s a baby or just blubber.” She smiles and glances at Stanley. “But yeah — we decided to have it.”
Felice breaks into a radiant smile, as if Nieves has just uttered the loveliest, most sentimental thing she’s ever heard. Stanley shifts closer and places his fingers on his sister’s wrist. He says, “Feef.” Carefully, he encloses her in his arms, and beneath the grime, catches a whiff of that thirteen-year-old kid — grass and air-dried jeans — still there.
OUTSIDE, THE WIND GROWS more intense. Wrapped in blankets on the living room floor, Felice and Emerson lie curled together. Stanley listened to their low whispers for a while. They fell asleep quickly, despite the lights left on, the rain thrashing against thin windows. In the small, darkened bedroom, he and Nieves sit up in bed, Nieves’s profile glimmering and imperious as she watches the foul weather. “We should just put them to work in the market,” she says quietly. “Put your sister in wine or cheeses — she’d bring people in off the street. And that boyfriend is custom-made for the stockroom.”