She doesn’t want Mrs. Keller to see her eyes, to see the light dancing, the joy erupting around her pupils. She’s sure that her happiness would erupt and bubble out, corrode the heavy mourning filling the room to the brim, make that sadness curdle.

So she excuses herself, guarding the lightness in her footsteps until she’s fully nestled in upstairs. She decides to check on Suzy, to remind herself why she’s so lucky.

Inside, the room smells like Mustela lotion and powder, and Annie breathes in the scents, savoring them as she goes to look at Suzy. She’s sleeping, as she should be, her chest so small and delicate Annie wants to squeeze it, compress it like an accordion.

Her face is nestled in the fur of that damn cat, though, her arms clinging to its substantial belly. A Keller must have let it back in. Unless it has somehow squeezed through a crack in the laundry room door. Annie shakes her head, unwilling to be defeated by this intruder any longer.

She’ll figure that out later, though. She doesn’t want this to ruin her good mood.

25

The room smells like turpentine and sawdust, and as I find a stool and easel toward the back, I realize I can breathe easier than I’ve been able to in days. The smells are almost like a drug, a sedative, lulling me into a profound sense of safety, my head almost bobbing down with the high of it all, my own form of the heroin nod.

The class at the Y is open to anyone, beginners to people who have been painting for decades, so the age range of my fellow students is vast. I’m one of the youngest in the room, save for another woman who looks to be about college-aged and Gavin, who waves to me from the opposite corner of the room.

I don’t recognize anyone except him, for which I’m grateful. I’m ready to lose myself in the next two hours as Pat Mischner, our instructor and my former high school art teacher, begins speaking to us in her low, soothing voice, which undulates in steady swells as she circles the room.

Pat has set up a still life for us—a book, a bottle, a hammer, plastic grapes, cloth—but, as usual, gives us free rein to paint whatever and however we want.

I let myself get lost, adding a pair of random objects—eyeglasses, a Candy Land game piece floating in space... I’m broken out of my reverie by the chime of Pat’s little bell, aware again of my surroundings, the drabness of the brown walls jerking me out of my meditative state.