Free Some Kind of Miracle by Iris R. Dart

the one who adored my lyrics and sang them until you broke people’s hearts. You were the one who told me the facts of life. You told me about boys and how dumb they all are, you taught me how to dance and put on lipstick and practice kissing my pillow soI’d be ready for kissing boys. But by the time I was ready to put it all to use, you were gone. And “gone” was definitely the word to describe the vacant look in this woman’s eyes as she walked down a few more steps, staring fearfully at Dahlia.
    This is a mistake, Dahlia thought. In spite of what Louie had told her, the Sunny in her dreams was the one she’d been certain she was going to find here today. The Marilyn Monroe Sunny of the poofy bosom poking out of a sundress and the raucous, contagious giggle that would always get Dahlia giggling, too, and the pretty hands that used to take Dahlia’s tiny fingers and place them on the proper piano keys to teach her how to play each tune. I will get back in the van and leave right now, Dahlia thought, fearing there was a real chance she was going to get physically ill. This woman doesn’t know it’s me anyway, she rationalized, so her feelings won’t be hurt if I leave.
    But she didn’t. In fact, something made her move toward the odd woman in the red jogging suit, and the closer she walked, the more she was able to sort out the Sunny she knew somewhere in among those weary and distorted features.
    “Hello, Sunny,” she said, still not believing that this bizarre person could really be Sunny. “I’m your cousin Dahlia.” Then she stopped a few steps down from where Sunny stood. There was nothing in the woman’s eyes that remotely resembled recognition. Of course, the last time they’d seen each other, Dahlia had been twelve. Twenty-five years ago. Maybe Dahlia was supposed to explain to her now how, in the beginning, in those early years after Sunny was first putaway, if she’d even mentioned the idea to her parents that she wanted to go and visit her, her mother would immediately say, “Let’s not talk about it,” and shake her head nervously. Even at Aunt Ruthie’s house, all the pictures of Sunny, the ones that had been on the piano and on the mantelpiece, were taken down, because except for Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Max’s weekly visits to her, and Dahlia’s parents’ perfunctory visits to the mental wards to see their pitiful niece, Sunny’s illness had been treated like a death.
    Maybe that was why Dahlia was feeling so uneasy and weird. It felt as if someone she’d thought of as dead had suddenly come alive. Like Jimmy Stewart finding Kim Novak in Vertigo. A distorted version of the person he once loved. Was this the time to say to Sunny, “I’m so sorry. I was too selfish to try to see you all these years? Or too afraid?” Sunny’s shocks of hair stuck out in bunches at the top of her head, reminding Dahlia of Bozo the Clown. And now she moved down another step.
    “I’m Dahlia. Benny’s daughter. Our fathers were brothers. Do you remember that we gave each other lockets?”
    Sunny blinked, and her jaw moved back and forth repeatedly.
    “I drove down here from L.A. because I thought maybe we could spend a little time talking.” Dahlia heard the shakiness in her own voice. “Do you remember me at all?” A seagull shrieked loudly overhead, and Dahlia wanted to let out the same high-pitched sound, jump into her van, and leave.
    Sunny dug in her purse and pulled out a pack ofMarlboros, which she flipped open in Dahlia’s direction.
    “You shouldn’t smoke,” Dahlia heard herself say. “It’ll kill you.”
    In a series of swift moves, Sunny turned the pack toward her own face, opened her mouth, sucked three of the cigarettes between her lips, pulled a lighter out of a pocket in the jacket of her red jogging suit, snapped it open, and flicked up a flame. Then, in a cloud of smoke, she lit all three, her eyes never leaving Dahlia’s. When her mouth was filled with smoke, she blew it