you wanted was for someone else—ideally, a grown-up, because a grown-up matters, has authority, but is also not the same as you—to come and see, to get it, and thereby, somehow, to get you; and all of this, surely, so that you might ultimately feel less alone on the planet. And what was also true was that I was happy to be in Lili’s hidden lair—more than happy, I was honored—but after a few minutes I wanted to get out of it. I wanted to lift the blanket and climb back into the room and stretch my limbs and leave the dollies and their crumbs and their thimble-cups of cold tea (with milk, if you please) behind, and go back to my grown-up friends and their conversation. For fifteen of the twenty minutes I stayed in there, I was humoring her.
And this was why, I told myself, I didn’t want to show my art to anyone, even though showing it had always, from the beginning, been a large part of the point: I didn’t want to show it because I didn’t want to be humored. I didn’t want anybody to feel they had to say nice things, or say anything at all, because I could tell when they were fake, I could always tell, and I hated it. I didn’t want anybody to tell me it wasn’t any good—just as Lili would have been shocked if I’d said such a thing to her: these were not the terms of her world at all—and I didn’t particularly want anyone to tell me it was good, either. I just wanted to be got, and I didn’t trust that I would be.
Only now—and I felt for my new key in the pocket of my pants—now I’d set myself up to be got or not got regardless. Sometimes Sirena would be in the studio when I wasn’t there. She’d be able to look at, to touch, my dioramas, to snoop and pry. And would it be better if she chose not to? It seemed like leaving my body—or maybe my spirit?—on a table in a room for anyone’s scrutiny, as if it were just a thing.
“Come out now, Nora.” Esther lifted the fringed blanket, and all I could see of her against the light was her pug eyes. “Time to join the land of the living. Supper’s ready.”
Lili protested.
“Yours too, little miss. Time to come out. You have till the count of three to wash your hands.”
Lili scrambled. Since she was small, it was easy for her. Esther gave me a hand getting up, and patted me on the back when I stood, as though I’d accomplished something.
“You seem very jolly.” Didi ladled the fish stew into bowls. There was macaroni and cheese and carrot sticks for Lili, who swung her legs against the chair and chewed with her mouth open before the grown-ups had even been served. I quelled my teacherly impulse to offer correction.
“I am jolly,” I said. “I’ve rented a studio.”
“Wow.” Didi put down her ladle, sat back in her chair. “That’s news.”
“But what do you need it for?” Esther realized as soon as she said this that I might take it the wrong way, which I did. “I mean, don’t you have a studio at home?”
“I have a second bedroom,” I said. “This is a studio.”
“That’s fantastic.” Didi leaned forward again and passed the bowls around. “I think that’s fantastic.” She looked at me properly. “So tell us how this came about. It seems … quick? Maybe that’s why E is surprised.”
So I told them about Sirena—first about Reza, and then about Sirena. I didn’t say anything about how she gave me butterflies, how our meeting had seemed full of import, how exhilarating it had been to discover that she, too, made art—I didn’t say any of it, but I had the strange experience while telling the story of hearing my own voice talking, and I was aware that I couldn’t modulate it properly, that my volume and my intonation were awry—too loud, too eager, too much information. It was like the moment after a few glasses of wine when you hear yourself slur your words and you wonder whether anyone else is paying sufficient attention to have noticed.
This time, though, I didn’t have to wonder. When Esther took Lili to bed, Didi summoned me out onto the balcony and lit a joint. The rain had finally stopped, but all the downspouts were dripping. The trees in the yard glistened