LEVAN
I watch Ava from the kitchen; she sits on the floor of the living room, invisibly working on a sketch. I stir the boiling soup occasionally, biting down on the inside of my cheeks, trying to come up with reasons to stop myself from asking Ava to come to Ten's performance. Excuses, mutters my subconscious, not reasons, Levan, they're called excuses.
Shaking my head, I start to list down excuses why I shouldn't ask her to come with me. One, she's working, I'll probably bother her. Two, she'll get bored, kids her age don't like plays, do they? Three, even if I ask her and she agrees, what are we going to talk about? It'll be beyond awkward, not like I need more of it. A complete no. Four, between the kitchen and the living room, there's an ocean, there are probably sharks in there. I frown. Five, I hate her.
But do I? I look at her for several moments, making sure that I do.
I do hate her, I have to, she killed mom...I tell myself, gripping at the edge of the counter. She killed mom, she killed mom, she killed mom, I chant inside my head. The deafening silence returns, piercing my ears with its sharp noise. I cover my ears tightly and crouch down to the floor. Salted water from the nearby ocean licks at my feet, the sharks get dangerously close. The silence? It only grows.
I feel the very terminal need to scream, so I rush out of the house, letting the door shut with a bang behind me. I let out several infuriated grunts and groans as I kick around the lawn. The piercing sound of the silence makes me clench my teeth and my blood come to a boil, just like the soup. I return to my crouching position only when the silence starts to slip back away from me, the water recedes and the sharks leave without ripping me. I take so many deep breaths that I lose count so I count a million onwards. I close my eyes to let it wash over me with each breath that I take.
She didn't kill mom. It was just meant to be.
My whole body sways as realization seeps into my skin like water in sand. The weather, having a mind of its own, takes a one eighty and the clouds start to growl at me. What have you done Levan? You're terrible. They say. Except I can't answer, so I stare at the sky in silence.
"Levan?" says Ava, making my head whip to her direction. She's cautiously standing at the door with her hands to her sides. Her bright blue eyes are wide as she gawks at me. It's as if, for once in more than a decade, we connect. Blue eyes to blue eyes.
"I'm sorry," I blurt, overcome by how weighed down yet lightweight I feel looking at her. All worry washes away from her face and it's replaced by what I can only comprehend as a complete calm. Her mouth falls open, her eyes gloss over, she struggles for words. I want to tell her that I'm struggling too, and I can't tell her how awful I've been feeling all this while.
I hold my breath and only let it go when she nods quietly. I close my eyes and feel the sky as it wraps me up and leaves me drenched with its embrace. I'm still heaving from the tidal wave of thoughts and emotions that ran through me, but I stand up just fine.
"Are you okay?" she asks, her voice only a whisper. She takes a step in my direction as I walk back toward the house, I feel the ocean between us reduce to nothing.
Swallowing the final rock that holds my words, I nod at her, "I'm okay. You hungry?" I ask, offering her a hand. She stares at my hand nervously for a moment. When she looks up, her blue irises, which remind me of mom's, send a sharp sting down my spine. It's weird, and it's hard to, but I make myself flash her a smile, "Come then, lunch is ready..." I say to her, before she takes my hand. I hold her hand firmly, wanting to tell her I'd never let go, as we walk back into the house and it's as if the dead house livens up in a long, long time. Almost like it never really was dead.
***
When I return to my room, having recently put up with dad's same old slurred speech about me being useless and every other connotation attached to it, I take a deep breath and shrug it off. I hop around the room shaking the bitterness off until I'm able to smile again. I walk over to the window and draw the curtains to let the moonlight in, but as if it wasn't lit enough, I turn on the lamp on my desk. When my dark cave is bathed in a soft yellow light, to my surprise, it looks like a completely different place.
I find myself ducking down to pull a stack of blank sheets from under my bed. As I carry the sheets to my desk, I take a deep breath and imagine everything I'm going to write about. Strange as it can be, I imagine how life would've been if mom was alive. I imagine having fun with Ava when we were kids, I imagine smiling every day, all the time, and never getting tired of it, I imagine dad taking us to picnics, I imagine sitting in the sun for hours, I imagine happiness, I imagine life with mom, life with Ava, life with dad, life with a family.
When I do stop imagining, I take a moment to myself. But when I die, Levan...I don't want to regret that I didn't even live, I hear Ten say, her voice floating in front of my eyes, painting the air golden, Make sure you don't either.
So I bring the ink to the blankness of the cloudless sheets, and write about Ava for the first time. I write about everything we can be, everything we can do even though mom's not here and dad doesn't want us. I write about how we can still have fun, how we can still smile every day and not get tired, how we can still go to picnics, how we can still let the sun seep into our skins, how we can still be happy...how we can still be a family.
Before I'm finished writing, I jump off my seat and instinctively rush to Ava's room when I realize I haven't really said what I wanted to. When I reach the hallway, Ava's returning to her bedroom with a bunch of granola bars. I frown at her, wondering what she needs them for. Her eyes go wide when she catches sigh of me.
"Levan..." she says, trying to hide them behind her back.
"What are those for?" I ask her. She lets her shoulders fall.
"I'm planning to stay up and finish my sketches..." she admits.
"Do you mind showing me some of them?" I ask her, trying to make awkward conversation, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious. Ten has told me a few times that she's caught glances at Ava's work and she really seems to like them.
"Um..." Ava's eyes wander around for a while before she lets me in. Maybe that's all we have to do, the both of us, let each other in...give it time and we'll be okay.
I spend a long time observing her pieces of art and I'm surprised by how amazing she is at it. Each one is better than the other. Most of them are abstract pieces, some are portraits of her friends at school, some of strangers on the streets, and some fictional, but none of them cease to amaze me.
I tell her I love them all. She smiles at me proudly, I can see it on her face. Ten was right, she's lilac; bright and bounce. She goes ahead to gather up all of her sheets and form a stack. I hope someday I'm able to share my work with her. Maybe this is how we'll bond, who knows?
"Ava?" I say, as she places the stack in a drawer, she turns to face me with her brows in the sky and her smile lighting up the walls of the room.
"Yes, Levan?"
"I want you to come with me, to watch Ten perform tomorrow..."
***
So here's the thing about Ten; I can't get over all the amazing things Tenerife Cohen is. I can't get over how adventurous she is. I can't get over how warm she is. I can't get over how happy she is. I can't get over how determined she is, how confident she is, how gloriously gold Tenerife Cohen is, and god help me, I believe I'll never get over the perfection she is.
I wonder how I'm ever supposed to get over her, as her voice soars around the theatre, painting the air gold. It's as if she commands this power, as if she demands attention, and all eyes in the room, in the town, in the country, in the world, in the universe...she's given. I'm enchanted by how tall she stands and delivers her voice to those in need.
With her hands, arms and dress covered in random splatters on paint, her long dark hair tied up messily, she projects sheer perfection. Blown away, wonderstruck, in awe, is all I am. There's nothing Ten can do that wouldn't amaze me. She laughs, I'm amazed. She talks, I'm amazed. She sneezes, amazed. But the moment she took the stage and opened her mouth, the moment from her throat her voice slithered out, I lost all the balance I never had.
She sings about everything she wants to do, everything she wants to be, everything she wants to hold and everything she wants to see, with the amount of passion that you never really witness. She sings about dreaming, yes, dreaming but with open eyes. She sings about how there are always distractions, and hurdles, and bumps along the road, and about falling but standing up again. That's when I realize, it's not Lucille singing, it's Ten.
It's almost as if she wasn't cast for the role, but the character was built around her, and that's why she fits like a glove into all of it; the lights, the sounds, the audience, the story. She belongs here, destined for the stage.
I realize how I've been floating above my seat all this while when I thud back down. The final shreds of Ten's voice still echo around me even when the lights have gone out. For several moments, it's so quite that I rejoice, realizing I wasn't the only one hit hard by her tidal wave. It's so silent that I almost hear Ten sighing on the stage, maintaining her composure.
The lights come back on.
And the crowd bursts into a thundering applause.