Page 47 of Every Step She Takes

Mal

We spend the day together.

We lie in the grass, even though it’s damp with morning dew beneath us, hiding from Luzia and the rest of the world.

Sadie talks about the popular girls in middle school, the ones she secretly studied, perhaps confusing longing for jealousy.

I talk more about Prithi, about falling like I’d never hit the ground, about loving without holding back.

I talk about growing up in houses so perfectly staged, it was like living in an Ibsen play.

She talks about her love for repurposing old furniture for thirty minutes straight, showing me pictures of the things she’s created on her phone, and I fall a little more in love with her with each photo.

Not because the furniture is beautiful, but because she is when she talks about it.

I tell her more about my mom, who was never cruel like my father was, but was never loving like he could be, either.

Her perfect indifference to my existence hurts in its own way; when I came out to my mom, she only asked if I was still going to wear my bridesmaid dress to her second wedding.

Sadie tells me more about her mom, who loves her more than anything but can’t always show up the way Sadie needs her to.

When our hunger and need for more coffee drive us inside, we sneak fresh croissants from the kitchen and eat them on my father’s private patio.

I give her a tour of the house. The highlights include the portrait of my great-great-grandfather that gave me nightmares as a child, the broken dumbwaiter where I used to hide contraband (like the lesbian pulp novels I found at a used bookstore in Lisbon), and the sculpture of a tree made out of oyster shells with their pearls glued to the top of each one on display in the atrium.

“I call this one the clit-mas tree,” I explain with a flourish. “I believe it is the original inspiration for your vulva hat.”

Sadie tilts her head to the side to study the sculpture like an art historian. “It really does look like a thousand clits.”

“My father spent a quarter of a million on it.”

“Naturally.”

I kiss her, then, in front of the clit-mas tree.

I kiss her in the library, against a shelf of old Farmers’ Almanac s.

I kiss her in my room, and her room, and in every room.

And when I run out of places to kiss Sadie inside the house, I take her out to the grounds, and I kiss her there too. Everywhere I never kissed a girl.

Maybe Sadie’s not the only one who needs to rewrite her adolescence, because as I kiss her amid the grapes and the memories, it feels like I’m a time traveler going back to fix my personal timeline.

When I walk those dusty fields with her hand in mine, I am eighteen and bringing a girl home for the first time.

When we find a pair of old bikes in the barn and ride them down the hill to Manny’s for gelato, I’m sixteen and on my first date with a girl.

She gets pistachio and I get strawberry, and when we lie in the grass in my secret hiding spot in the garden, our hands and mouths sticky with gelato as we stare up at the blue sky, I’m fourteen and realizing I have my first crush on a girl.

It’s an unexpected kind of homecoming. Being here with Sadie—seeing her in this place of complicated memories—almost feels like photoshopping snapshots of my past, doctoring them to include more happiness.

It’s a glimpse into a different version of my life: one where I fell in love with a girl without it all falling apart.

And when her leg brushes mine under the dinner table that night and stays there, her calf comfortingly pressed against me between bites of salmon, grief suddenly reverberates through my chest.

I wish my dad was here.

For the first time since his passing, I almost miss him. Or, perhaps, I miss the father I wish he’d been, the kind of father who would’ve been happy to see me happy. The kind of father who would’ve welcomed Sadie, and this entire ragtag group of queers, with open arms and open bottles of wine.

Over dinner, I grieve for the parts of my life I can never rewrite.

I excuse myself before the group can see that I’m crying, but Sadie follows me out onto the veranda. A soft hand on my shoulder. “Mal? Are you okay?”

I didn’t realize I brought my glass of wine with me. “I wish… I wish my dad could’ve met you.”

My tears blur my vision, so I can’t see Sadie or the way she reacts to this confession. All I know is that she takes a deep breath and pulls me into a hug.

We stay that way for a long time, and when Sadie holds me on the veranda, I’m thirty-eight and allowing a woman to truly see me for the first time.

Later that night, when it’s just the two of us in my emo bedroom, Sadie asks if she can learn how to make me feel good too.

With every touch, every kiss, every sweep of her body against mine, Sadie is writing and rewriting, deconstructing and rebuilding, and when I come against her tongue, it’s with shivers and tears. And this feels like a first too.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Luzia stands at the bottom of the servants’ staircase with her arms elegantly crossed, and I freeze mid-step. “No I haven’t. I’ve—”

She cuts off my impending excuse with a stern glare. “You can’t lie to me, Maelys. I survived your teen years. I know your tells.”

I pin my lips together, unable to argue with that.

After all, it was Luzia who caught me with my first cigarette, Luzia who showed up when I got caught stealing nail polish from the farmacia.

Luzia who always knew about the red, lacy thong and never told my father.

For my entire childhood, Luzia Ferreira worked as my father’s personal manager, which was a résumé-friendly way of saying that she took care of all the shit he didn’t want to. I was often that shit.

While my father was either working or entertaining his revolving door of incrementally younger women, and my mother was busy with her social calendar in New York, Luzia was there, desperately trying to ensure that I didn’t turn out as self-absorbed as my parents.

“And I always know when you’re sneaking out,” Luzia scolds.

I finish my descent and stand before her. She’s barely five feet tall, and I tower over her like I have since I was eleven, but that doesn’t make her any less intimidating. “I’m not trying to sneak out.”

I absolutely am. It’s six in the morning, and she caught me slinking down the back staircase with all of my things packed.

I’d hoped that if I left early enough, I could escape the inevitable confrontation.

If I snuck out and met up with the rest of the group at our planned stop for morning tea two miles from here, then maybe I could avoid saying goodbyes altogether.

“Maelys, I changed your diapers and bought your first box of tampons. The least you can do is have a cup of tea with me before you vanish for another two decades.”

She’s very adept at the surrogate-mom guilt, and I nod in acceptance.

She turns, expecting me to follow, and I slink after her like a reprimanded child.

I know exactly where she’s taking me. Through archways, through the dining room where she’s already put a new crystal decanter on display, through the kitchen that now reminds me of that perfect night with Sadie.

My father insisted his office always be close to the kitchen, because he said he did his best thinking while staring into a fully stocked refrigerator.

This office is down an old servants’ hallway, probably originally used for the head housekeeper, like something out of Downton Abbey .

And much like my old bedroom, his office still looks like it does in my memories.

There’s already a cart with fresh tea, and Luzia pours two cups, then sits down on one of the highbacked chairs in the alcove.

The bay windows behind her face my favorite part of the garden, full of big-leaf hydrangeas in candy-apple red, cornflower blue, and vibrant amethyst. I choose to stand, waiting for my tea to cool and waiting for Luzia to begin whatever planned speech she has in store for me.

“I’m not going to try to talk to you about business,” she says gently.

“Well, good. Because I don’t know shit-all about business.”

She drops two sugar cubes into her tea and stirs carefully. “And I don’t want to harp on about the funeral,” she continues. “I’ve taken care of all the arrangements for next Sunday. All you have to do is show up.”

Her gaze leaves her swirling tea to fix on me. “You will show up, won’t you?”

“Yes, Luzia. I will be there.”

She returns to stirring. “The only thing I want to talk about this morning is you .”

“Ah. Right. There it is.” I lean against the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves and try to make my tone as casual as my stance. “You want to talk about what a failure and fuckup I’ve become? You want to hit me with one of those classic lectures about family responsibility and the Costa legacy—”

“Maelys,” she interrupts sharply, but I’m too old to be scolded.

“—Do you want to tell me how it’s time for me to finally do my duty and take over the company?” I barrel on over the sound of her protests. “Do you want to yell at me for being selfish and choosing to live for myself? Or for being a spoiled, privileged brat who needs to grow up already?”

“Maelys!” Luzia slams her teacup back onto the tray, and I fall silent as a small fissure forms in the porcelain.

The tea leaks out in a thin but steady stream, flooding the saucer, then spilling over onto a pile of napkins.

But Luzia doesn’t seem to care about the broken cup or the spilled tea or any of it.

“Maelys,” she says, quieter now, but also firmer.

“I would never say any of that to you. I don’t think those things about you. ”

The shelves are digging into my shoulder, but I refuse to move from my indifferent position.

“Do you…?” She stares up at me. “Do you think those things about yourself?”