Page 109 of We Fell Apart
Brock will look for work as an actor. Meer will figure out something.
Tatum’s hair is still wet as he comes out of the castle with his guitar case in one hand and a bag over his shoulder. He’s coming with me and Saar.
He says his goodbyes.
The afternoon light shines down on my three boys. All us four are aching with grief. All four of us are set free from Hidden Beach.
I love them.
Then Tatum, Saar, Glum, and I head down the overgrown driveway. Glum sticks her head out the car window like every dog, ever. She grins wide as her ears flap in the wind.
We turn right on South Road. We head down-island and toward thefuture.
Part Nine
LaterOn
71
Despite his escapefrom the kingdom of his youth and his
exodus from the tyrannical traditions of the beautiful Sinclair family,
Kingsley Cello, born Kincaid Sinclair,
willed his castle and all his assets to his
firstborn son, Meer Sugawara.
Like his father, Jonathan, had done with Harris.
Like monarchs have done across a thousand cultures for so many centuries.
To Tatum and Brock, he willed nothing at all. And to me, the same.
June’s monthly allowance was set to continue after Kingsley’s death, and Gabe helped Meer set up a much larger annuity for her that will last the rest of her life. With that money, she has rented a small house in Oak Bluffs, walking distance to town. She took a job with a bakery that sells bread in the farmers markets. She began seeing people again, rebuilding her community.
Once his mother was settled, Meer put the castle up for sale. Gabe had the art moved into storage and navigated sales through Kingsley’s gallery. Brock organized a cleaning team. He and Meer peeled the labels and suggestions off the cupboards. They donated Kingsley’s books and art supplies, June’s unwanted sewing machine, old raincoats and sweaters from the mudroom.
Brock says his year at Hidden Beach healed him. He found people who didn’t care that he had ever been Sammy, and he stoppedthinking of himself as a has-been. He says he reachedall the way sober,the kind where he doesn’t think about starting up again anymore, which lots of people aren’t lucky enough to get to. He burned the donkey skin he used to live inside.
Now he’s got a regular job as the voice of a teen superhero in a cartoon. He does a lot of auditions and books parts now and then in TV shows and movies. He takes yoga, takes Glum on long runs, and is learning to surf.
He lives with Meer in a skylit loft apartment, right on Venice Beach. It’s not so far from Saar’s bungalow, so it’s easy for us to be together when I’m home on college breaks, since I still live with Saar when school isn’t in session. Odd as that domestic arrangement may seem, he is now my dad-type person.
Meer has become surprisingly interested in investments, in the sale of various Cello paintings, and in the charities he supports—arts education and solutions for food insecurity in particular. He has opinions about cryptocurrency. It’s as if the energy he spent collecting purple rocks and drawing on his skin is now channeled into making good use of his famous-dad inheritance.
He also apprentices with a tattoo artist who has a shop on Abbot Kinney. And he has a cute boyfriend, a senior at Occidental who studies poetry and surfs on the weekend and rides a bike everywhere in the LA traffic.
Last spring, Meer helped arrange a retrospective of Kingsley’s work at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum borrowedLostfrom me,Selkie Childfrom Tatum, andSammyfrom Holland’s mother. They also sourced paintings from a number of big collections, soPersephone Escapes the Underworldwas on loan from St.Louis.
The display of her image in this celebrated exhibition wasenough to get my mother to fly in from Mexico City. It was the first time I had seen Isadora in person since she left.
I was nervous. And still angry.
But it was good to see her—to feel her soft skin against my face when we hugged, to see the way she lights up a room, and to meet her boyfriend for the second time.
I don’t feel like she’s my family anymore.
