She put down the videotape and looked at my painting again.

  “An abstract painting is like excavating your emotions,” she said. “It’s not an easy slap-it-on-the-canvas thing. There are layers to get through before you can uncover what it’s about. You’re at the very start of the process. There are exercises you could do to jog things loose, and sometimes that can help. Take the painting off the wall and turn it around, see if it looks different from a different perspective. You’ve used high-contrast colors here, which suggests something dramatic. I don’t know what it is, but the more you paint, the more you’ll be able to excavate your own emotions.” She looked at me. “These are things I tell a lot of my students, but you’re my granddaughter. I can see this painting means something to you.”

  “I want it to.” I felt a little uncomfortable. She was looking at me so pointedly.

  “It’s the first one you’ve made since you were a child, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The thing about Southern Cross is . . . you know, I hadn’t even seen the Southern Cross when I painted it. I didn’t see it till we went to Hawaii over a decade later. I painted these stars that I only knew about because Russ told me about them, so in a way they weren’t about the actual stars at all. They were about the way I wanted to incorporate Russ and my love for him into my work. I wanted to express something about the drama of falling in love, but also how we were only a small moment in time. In the scale of the universe, we’re just a blip. I don’t know if all that came through in the painting. It probably didn’t. It probably felt too personal to me and that’s why I never wanted to sell it.”

  She placed the videotape she’d been holding on top of the stack that she had moved to the floor. “I’m telling you this because I’ve learned over my life that I come back to the same subjects over and over again. Not a repetition so much as a cycling. I think everything cycles around again and again. I come back over and over to the same subjects in my art, but hopefully with a bit more wisdom each time. I’m always making art about time. I don’t understand how it works, but I’m always interested in it.” My grandmother’s eyes were a clear, bright blue in her lined face. “This painting—your painting—its true meaning won’t be clear until you make another one, and another one after that. But for now, you should work on it until it’s finished.”

  “How will I know when it’s finished?”

  “That’s a question only you can answer. Has the painting said everything you want it to say?”

  “Right now? No.”

  “Then it’s not finished yet.”

  The first time I really understood why the stars moved, I was ten years old. Dad and I were in Woodacre for Christmas vacation, and on Christmas night, Grandpa and I put together the reproduction of Galileo’s telescope. Then we took sleeping bags onto the roof, where we lay down in the chilly, clear night. Grandpa said it was important to let our eyes adjust to the dark before looking through the telescope, so at first we simply gazed up at the star-scattered sky. I saw a point of light traveling steadily across the dark expanse, and when I pointed it out, he told me it wasn’t a star but a satellite, something built by human hands that we had put in orbit with a rocket ship. He told me Aunt Tammy built things like that, and though I’d known that before, I’d never comprehended that something she created could fly overhead in the dark, impersonating a star.

  “The marvelous thing,” Grandpa told me that night, “is that everything you see above you is moving. The satellite is moving around the earth, the earth is moving around the sun, and the sun and the planets in our solar system are moving around the center of our Milky Way galaxy.”

  “But the stars don’t look like they’re moving,” I said.

  “That’s a funny thing,” Grandpa said. He explained to me that the stars did move—they also orbited the center of the galaxy—but we were so far away from them that to us, they appeared to be still. However, if we watched them all night, we’d see that the stars seemed to rise in the east and set in the west, exactly like the sun and the moon. “That’s an illusion,” Grandpa said. “It’s not really happening that way. The stars only seem to rise and set because our planet is spinning, and as it spins, we see different parts of the sky.”

  The idea that the earth was actually turning at over one thousand miles per hour was mind-blowing to me. I felt the hard surface of the roof beneath me through the sleeping bag, and although it was barely slanted, I had the sudden fear that I’d slide off the edge as the planet spun. But nothing happened; everything remained as it was. It was astonishing, and I remember it even today: the realization that the world was not as it seemed. That the stars that appeared to hang motionless above me both moved and did not move, because the earth below me was not actually still. That what I saw might not be reality, but that it was possible to understand it through careful observation, through the instruments that scientists had built to peer into space.

  When I first looked through the telescope, I expected to see something right away—red Mars or the rings of Saturn. I had thought the telescope was like a television: You looked through it and the image would instantly appear. Grandpa told me I could see big things quickly—the moon and some nearby planets—but if I wanted to see something farther away, stars that were older and bigger than our own sun, I had to wait for a moment of what he called good seeing. I had to let my eyes adapt to the darkness. I had to relax the muscles of my face. I had to wait for the turbulence in the air to settle, and finally when everything in motion was in motion together, I might see something amazing.

  Late Tuesday afternoon, Joan and I made sauce from a bunch of tomatoes that Tony brought over. I blanched and peeled them; then Joan seeded them over the sink and tossed them into a big pot. While I peeled, I imagined where Steph and I would go tomorrow night. We had plans to meet up because Lisa had to work late. Maybe we’d drive down to San Francisco and get tacos in the Mission. Or we could go the other direction to Bolinas and watch the sunset. Maybe people would look at us and know that we were together. I wanted it to be so obvious from the outside that nobody would question what we were doing.

  I’d finished peeling the last tomato and was washing up when the sound of a crash made me spin around. Joan was standing next to the stove with empty hands outstretched, a dazed expression on her face. At her feet the pot of tomatoes was overturned on the floor, red pulp splattered everywhere in a parody of a horror movie.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  I didn’t understand at first. I thought she had just dropped the pot with slippery hands. But my grandmother’s face looked strange; half of it seemed frozen. Her mouth opened as if she was trying to speak, but the sound that came out was an incoherent moan. The right side of her body drooped toward the floor, and I rushed to her as she collapsed, her hip bumping against the kitchen counter, sliding down into the smashed tomatoes.

  “Joan!” I tried to pull her out of the red mess, but her body was heavy and unresponsive. Analemma ran to her and licked her face. Joan was still trying to speak, but her mouth didn’t move correctly and I couldn’t understand her. Her eyelids fluttered closed and a second later she went entirely limp in my arms. “Joan?” I repeated, but she didn’t respond. My brain was clogged by a growing panic. Analemma started to whine. I needed to call 911, but I was pinned beneath Joan’s body.

  I squirmed my way out from beneath her, laying her head on the floor as gently as I could. Analemma was still licking her face and making those whining noises. I scrambled to my feet to grab my phone, getting tomato on the screen as I fumbled to press 911.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  “My grandmother—she collapsed.” As I looked over at her, I saw blue flames flickering from the stove top. She must have been about to put the pot on the burner.

  “Where are you?” the operator asked.

  “I’m at home.” I turned off the stove. My hand was shaking. Joan’s eyes flickered and Analemma let out a shrill bark that I’d never heard before.

  “What’s your address? I see you’re on a cell phone.”

  I gave the operator the address, and then she asked me to describe what had happened. I dropped to the floor again, pulling Joan back into my lap and trying to wipe off some of the tomatoes with a dish towel. I only smeared it more over her clothes, and Analemma started to lick the tomatoes off the floor. “Stop it, Ana,” I said, but she didn’t stop.

  “Emergency responders are on their way,” the operator said. “What’s your grandmother’s status now?”

  “She’s blinking. I think she’s going in and out of consciousness. What happened to her?” I tried to pull Analemma away from the tomatoes, but she was too strong.

  “The emergency responders will be able to tell you, but it sounds like she may have had a stroke.”

  The operator tried to explain it to me, but I couldn’t pay attention. I was still tugging ineffectually at Analemma’s collar. I’d never seen my grandmother like this before: weak-bodied, limbs flaccid, as if whatever made her who she was had vanished. I felt helpless. Whatever was wrong with her, I couldn’t fix it, and I was terrified that I would somehow accidentally make it worse.

  In the distance I heard the wail of sirens, and as the sound grew closer I realized I had to unlock the front door for them. I got up, leaving Joan again, and ran out of the kitchen. Analemma sprinted after me, leaving red pawprints across the floor. I grabbed her, aiming her toward my room. “Analemma, come!” She turned to look at me with her big brown eyes, and there must have been something in my face or voice because, to my relief, she obeyed. I led her into my room and shut the door.

  Outside I saw flashing lights down the hill. I couldn’t see the vehicles, but I heard the gate creak open and then firefighters were coming up the path, dressed in heavy-booted firefighting gear. I was still holding my phone to my ear, and the operator told me I could hang up now, so I did, and I led the firefighters into the house and up to the kitchen. Analemma was barking frantically from my room.

  As the firefighters examined my grandmother, they asked me what had happened, and I told them everything I had told the operator. “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “She’s had a stroke,” one of the firefighters said. “When did you notice it beginning?”

  More sirens sounded in the distance. “When she dropped the tomatoes,” I said.

  “When was that?”

  I thought back. “Right before I called 911.” I looked at my phone and the time stamp on my last call. “A little after six.”

  The sirens cut off, and I heard footsteps pounding up the porch steps. I went back into the living room to see paramedics carrying a gurney into the house. They rushed past me into the kitchen, where the firefighters moved away from Joan. The paramedics knelt beside her on the tomato-streaked floor and tried to talk to her. She was moving her head groggily but still couldn’t speak clearly. The paramedics—a man and a woman—asked me what had happened, and once more I explained while they shone lights into Joan’s eyes and fitted her with an oxygen mask.

  “Who are you?” asked the female paramedic, looking up at me. She had a dark brown ponytail and was wearing a blue uniform with medical patches on the short sleeves. Her name tag read ORTIZ.

  “Aria West. Her granddaughter.”

  “Do you live with her?”

  “Only for this summer.”

  Ortiz and her partner, an Asian man with short dark hair, lifted Joan in one motion onto the stretcher.

  “Are you taking her to the hospital?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the man said. His name tag read WON. “We need her medical information and her identification. Do you have that?”

  “No, I—wait,” I said, and ran down to the front closet, where Joan kept her purse.

  The paramedics came down the stairs behind me, and Won asked me to get out of the way. I moved aside, and they carried Joan out of the house and down the path toward the street. I hurried after them, and the curving path seemed ridiculous now, a Chutes-and-Ladders kind of obstacle in the way of saving Joan’s life. Through the gate I saw a red fire truck and an ambulance, all their lights flashing. At the rear of the ambulance the paramedics lifted the gurney, and it unfolded and refolded, the wheels sliding with a clatter into the back. Ortiz jumped inside, and Won turned to me. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  “Your grandmother isn’t able to communicate very well right now. Does she have other immediate family members nearby?”

  “No.”

  Ortiz poked her head out of the back of the ambulance and said, “She’s asking for you.”

  Clutching Joan’s purse and my phone, I climbed into the ambulance. Joan was moving beneath the belts on the stretcher, and through the oxygen mask I heard her saying something that sounded like my name. “I’m right here,” I said, shoving my phone into my pocket so I could reach for her hand. Her fingers were papery and limp, and her eyes darted from my face to Ortiz’s. My grandmother looked frightened and confused. I wanted to comfort her. I squeezed her hand and said, “You’re going to be fine,” and my voice sounded like someone who was much more confident than I felt. I looked at Ortiz, who was adjusting the IV that had been fitted to Joan’s other arm, and asked, “Can I ride in here with you?”

  “Yes, you’ll need to talk to the doctors at the hospital anyway,” she said.

  Won closed the doors at the back of the ambulance, and a moment later I heard him climb into the front. Ortiz pulled out a cell phone and made a call; it sounded like she was reporting Joan’s status to a doctor somewhere else. The ambulance started down the curving road, and I braced myself on the edge of the bench, still holding Joan’s hand. Through the window in the back door I saw the flashing lights of the fire truck like off-kilter Christmas lights in the forest.

  * * *

  —

  At the hospital, several doctors and nurses surrounded my grandmother while one nurse pulled me aside to ask questions about what had happened, whether Joan had any medical conditions or allergies, whether she had insurance. I found Joan’s Medicare card in her purse, but other than that, I barely knew anything. I remembered that Joan had felt sick last week, and I told the nurse about it. I should have insisted that she call a doctor then.

  “Is there anyone you can call who might know more about her medical history?” the nurse asked me.

  I wanted to call my dad, but I didn’t have the Deer Bay emergency contact number, so I called Aunt Tammy in Pasadena. She picked up the phone on the second ring and said cheerfully, “Aria! How nice to hear from you.”

  Her happiness was short-lived. After I explained what had happened, I passed the phone to the nurse, who then asked Aunt Tammy all the questions that I hadn’t been able to answer. I sat in the gray plastic chair next to the nurse’s station and listened distractedly to the conversation. I felt like a six-year-old lost in the supermarket. Every time the sliding doors to the back of the ER opened, I looked up as if Joan might walk out and say it was all a big mistake, she was fine.

  When the nurse finished talking to Aunt Tammy, she handed my phone back to me. “Aunt Tammy?” I said. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes. I’m going to call you back in a bit, okay? I have to make some arrangements—” In the background I heard my cousins shouting something, and Aunt Tammy told them to hush. “I’ll call you back soon,” she said, and hung up.

  The nurse I’d been speaking to was entering something into her computer, and I went over to ask her, “Is my grandma okay?”

  “She’s being treated for a stroke,” the nurse said. “You should take a seat over there and I’ll be sure to let you know when there’s news.” I must have looked like I needed more reassurance because she added, “She’s in good hands. And there’s a bathroom over there to your right. You might want to wash up a little. Is that marinara?”

  I glanced down at myself and saw red smeared over my arms. It looked like I was covered in blood. “Tomatoes,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’ll let you know when we have more information.”

  I swung Joan’s purse over my shoulder and headed to the restroom. It smelled of antiseptic cleaning solution that couldn’t quite hide the lingering odor of something more unpleasant. I tried to breathe through my mouth as I dampened a paper towel to scrub off the tomato residue. It had dried in sticky streaks on my skin, and it took what seemed like a mountain of paper towels to get it off. My jeans were spotted with it, too, and a long stain went up the front of my MIT T-shirt where I had dragged Joan into my lap. I wiped at my shirt, but that just turned it into a big wet spot. I gave up and went to wash my hands. In the mirror over the sink I looked freaked out, and my hair was escaping from its ponytail. I splashed lukewarm water over my face and blotted it dry with another thin paper towel. I redid my ponytail as the bathroom door opened. A woman rushed inside and slammed a stall door shut. She made a gagging sound, and before I heard anything more, I fled.

  I took a seat in the waiting room near a mom with a sleepy kid. The ER looked more like a dentist’s office than any ER I’d seen on TV, and it smelled like stale coffee and fried food. There were a couple of moms with kids, a few exhausted-looking older people, and a young couple who seemed extremely agitated, constantly getting up to check in with the nurse. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, staring blankly at the sliding doors. I kept seeing Joan crumple against the counter over and over, the slackness in her face, the confusion in her eyes. The world felt so unstable. Everything had changed in a fraction of a second. My stomach gurgled, but the idea of eating made me feel even queasier. I crossed my arms and legs, hunkering down in the chair as if making myself smaller would help.