Breathing Water (26 page)

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Authors: T. Greenwood

Tags: #General Fiction

BOOK: Breathing Water
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“Hi.” I smiled.
“Come in,” he said, holding his hand out to me. I put my hand inside his and walked to where he was working. The room smelled of turpentine and tobacco.
“I'm sorry to bother you,” I said, suddenly feeling like I should have stayed on his couch or silently slipped into the night.
“Don't be,” he said, pulling me gently down to the floor. “Look.”
I looked down at the paper carpeting the small room. It took several moments before I realized what the sketches were. Because they were so large. Because the hair on this woman was like a small river. Because her breasts and hands and eyes were bigger than mine.
But mine.
Devin reached his hand out and put it in the open palm of the charcoal woman. With his other hand, he pulled me in close to him. Then he took my hand and pressed it into hers. As his fingers spread over mine, we almost fit. I was that large. And when he turned the silver key on the oil lamp, lowering the wick, and extinguishing the light, I couldn't tell which was his hand or
mine
or
hers.
 
In the cold dawn inside the studio, Devin's breath felt like summer captured in my hair. There was a note on the worktable:
Gone to town, I'll give you a call this afternoon.
I pulled the blanket over my shoulders like a giant cape and went outside into the cool morning air. I gathered my shoes and my sweatshirt and left the blanket folded on his couch. I walked down the road toward the camp, smiling, as if sleepwalking. I could see Magoo, the steam from his coffee, the steam of his breath, and the smoke of his pipe.
Perhaps I knew that there would be a gift waiting. Perhaps I felt it in his fingers when he made me sleep. I was not surprised when I walked to the steps of the unused door and saw the box sitting there. I was not startled when I picked it up and saw that he had, again, taken great care to make a small world for me.
I unhooked the silver clasp and lifted the lid.
Inside was Gormlaith at night. Water, the same color as it had been last night when I had found him in his studio, lost in the giant drawing of my hair and hands. But it wasn't really water, it couldn't be. Paper? Glass? The sky of this world was the exact indigo of dreams. Stars like fireflies, electric and bright. And above this miniature dream-lake was a silver moon, not suspended but ascending over the water. My barrette, waxing in this night sky.
I must have left the barrette at his house. I must have forgotten it on his steps when he heated the rain to wash my hair. My heart began to beat like a bird caught in the glass cage of my chest as I looked at the barrette suspended inside the box. How else could I explain this moon? I couldn't bring myself to walk upstairs to see if the barrette was there. Instead I drove into town, fighting the recollection of setting the barrette on the bureau the day before. Fighting the recollection of clipping the other silver moon into Keisha's hair.
 
Maggie was waiting for me at the diner. She was sitting at a table near the window, sipping a big glass of Coke with a lemon perched delicately on the edge. Her car was broken.
Beyond hope,
she had said, shaking her head. And so I had been taking her to and from work. I helped her get Alice wherever she needed to go.
“Hey, Effie,” she said. “You hungry?”
“No,” I said.
“I just ordered. Will you sit with me?”
“I need to know something,” I said, reaching across the table and grabbing her hands.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” I said, my heart thudding in my chest.
One of the second-shift waitresses brought Maggie a plate with a thick gray piece of meatloaf and a small white mound of mashed potatoes, colorless corn.
“What's going on?” she asked.
“What do you know about Devin?”
“You aren't having man problems already, Effie? They are definitely in your head. I can guarantee it. I see the way he looks at you.”
“It's not that, Maggie,” I said. “I need to know what people have said about him. About why he's here.”
“I don't know,” Maggie said. “Morris in the kitchen said he thinks he's related to that girl who drowned or something. I told him that just because they were the only two black people in Gormlaith doesn't make them
related
.”
“He said they were related?” I asked, tears hot in my eyes.
“Yeh. Her brother, or cousin or something. I suppose it makes sense, if you think about it. I can't figure out why he'd come here otherwise. That and the way people are so nice to him. Even Ted Moffett. I've never seen him walk away from a fight. That's not exactly
typical
behavior around here. It would make sense though if his sister drowned. Quimby's got a sense of guilt if nothing else.”
My ears were hot and stars were swimming in front of my eyes.
Andromeda. Cassiopeia. Orion.
Her hand swam out to me through the starry sky.
Cassiopeia. Keisha. Keisha.
“It can't be true,” I said, fighting tears.
“You're probably right,” she said. “Morris doesn't know his head from his ass.”
She ate all of the meatloaf and left the watery corn on her plate. I stared at my hands to keep the stars from descending again. My ears buzzed.
After I dropped Maggie off at home, I ran upstairs to the loft. I searched the cluttered dresser top for the barrette.
Silver moon barrette in a child's hair. A circle of white faces over her dark body on the moon-drenched grass that night.
Underneath a dog-eared paperback I saw a sliver of silver. Gently, I moved the book away and picked up the barrette. I squeezed it in the palm of my hand, until the sharp tips of the crescent poked into my skin, bringing tears to my eyes.
I stumbled back down the stairs. In the kitchen I found the box as I had left it, hinged door open to the miniature night, and stared inside at the other barrette. At the other moon I had given her that summer three years ago.
Outside, a small wind skipped across the lake, lifted my hair from my shoulders as I walked across the road. Sleepwalking, I carried the box to the edge of the lake. Sleep-touching, I let the other barrette pierce my skin. Sleep-howling, I sat down on the rock and began to moan, stuttering white silent breath into the air. I sat at the edge of the water, trying to breathe, but I could only shiver,
her brother, her brother, her brother.
August 24, 1991
A
recollection of hands. The way her hand looked like a small piece of chocolate in my own as we walked away from the swing. Hands reaching up to touch the bristles of hair at my neck when Max spoke. My hand reaching for the doorknob. He must have known by the end of the day that I had been rehearsing. He must have known that each movement was a small step closer to leaving.
Outside it is twilight. Orange melting into blue. Remarkably warm. Max is in the kitchen after dinner, still sitting at the kitchen table. I move away from him onto the porch, lie down on the daybed, hold a book to my chest like a shield. But the edges of the cover are too sharp to comfort me, the paper too likely to cut. I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of the summer people.
In the other room, he drinks his mother's face. Too much mascara and too little patience.
When she cried,
he said,
she looked just like you. Pathetic.
And through the ice cube panes, her face becomes mine. She makes him drunk. I make him drunk. She and I identical now. Sisters in this effort to drive him insane.
I recollect my hands tracing the edges of the embroidered sheets, thinking of Gussy pulling flowers from a simple white cloth while Grampa read in the other room. I long for this peace, for something I can't understand anymore amid this noise. The sun melts orange in the blue water, disrupts the blue with strange fire.
In the other room, he knows that I am ready. I can hear him fighting, staring me down in the rum rust of his drink. Willing me to stay. To wait with him a little while longer. Orange becomes blue. Waking becomes sleep. Day turns into night. In the other room he turns into the tiger behind the door I am trying to close. Hours of silence. Only the clanking of ice against glass.
I recollect my hands working across the bones of my body, identifying, classifying, making sure that all of me was there. Collar, clavicle, rib, pelvis, shin. I must make sure that I still have my bones to carry me.
It is midnight and I am some strange Cinderella, the glass slipper shattering into a thousand gestures. I use each gesture as a reminder that it is time to leave. Open palm across my face, nails dug into my shoulders, fingers laced like a noose around my neck. Fists meeting bone, bone, bone.
The bones of my legs carry me slowly from the porch across the living room floor to the kitchen. I can see the back of his head, bobbing, fighting me still in the melted ice. I pray for the silence of these old floors.
Do not moan tonight, be quiet. Let me go.
But as I walk into the kitchen, he stands up and goes to the refrigerator.
“Have we got any more club soda?” he asks.
“No,” I say, my heart pounding dully in my chest.
“Ginger ale?”
“No.”
“Shit.”
“Why don't you go to Hudson's?” I ask.
He looks at me, hatred and shame, and I know it will not be this easy. He won't just leave me alone here.
“Why don't I just drink something
else
?” he says and slams the thick-bottomed bottle on the kitchen table.
“Why don't you just fuck yourself?” I whisper when he leans into the refrigerator.
Pick a door. Pick a door.
I am looking for the tiger. I am tempting him with a bloody piece of meat. I am ready for his attack.
“Excuse me?” he says and sways drunkenly away from the refrigerator.
“I
said,
‘Why-don't-you-just-fuck-yourself?' ” My heart is steady, beating against the walls of my chest.
He slams the refrigerator door and stares at me in disbelief. Threatening me with his silence. His hands are curled into fists at his sides.
“Do it,” I say.
He doesn't move.
“You goddamned coward.” I stare at him, at his face, and it makes me laugh. “You're pathetic.”
And then he gives me what I have asked for. Hands curled into fists, striking at my face. The sudden swell of my lip, the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. I feel my heart beating in the place where his knuckles have met my bone. And then I recollect my hand on the latch to the door, the simplicity of the silver hook, the ease. It has always been there, this door. What have your hands been doing?
I can hardly believe that I am moving, that the road is beneath me and that I can go faster now than he could run. I recollect my hands, skin stretched tightly over knuckles, holding the steering wheel tightly. I can see the lake in my rearview mirror. I can see everything reflected in reverse, and it isn't familiar anymore.
When I park the car in Gussy and Grampa's driveway in Quimby, I remember Keisha.
She will be expecting me soon. I promised I would meet her there, that I would be there after everyone was asleep.
This is more important,
I think.
I am here.
There is no turning away from this.
I open the car door and run to the edge of Gussy's garden to vomit. I shiver and vomit, my body heaving and trembling with the poison filling me. The grass is cold and wet under me. My fingers dig into the cold ground as I become empty. I imagine that they would not see me if I went to the door. That there is nothing left at all except bones and that they too will turn completely to dust.
The house is quiet. Gussy's calico, Franny, is watching me through the window. I imagine Grampa has fallen asleep with a book on his chest. That Gussy is softly snoring next to him on the bed. I imagine the green glow of a digital clock, the smell of tuna casserole or honey-glazed ham and sweet potatoes still in the air. Dishes drying in the wooden rack next to the sink.
I think of his face, his hands, pleading. I see him standing at the edge of the road, watching his mother disappear. The smell of gasoline, and the way her hair flew out the driver's side window. I wonder if he stood outside as I drove away. If he cried into his hands. If he is only waiting for me to turn around and come back.
I watch my feet moving away from the house. I watch myself reflected in reverse, going nowhere, going
back.
The pull of the bottom of the lake, the irresistible need to breathe. And I am somewhere in between.
This is drowning.
In the car, I can't feel my hands on the wheel anymore. I am only an apparition. I am already gone. I drive slowly away from my grandparents' house, through town where everyone is sleeping, and turn onto the dirt road that will take me back to Gormlaith.
When the trees clear, I see a new red and blue. Not sun, not sky, but lights spinning across the water, dipping into the water like transparent hands. I stop the car when I see the summer people standing like ghosts at the edge of the water, white faces illuminated by the moon.
I leave the car in the road and run to the edge of the water. Blue night. Blue lights making patterns on the water, on my hands. It is cold and I am shivering in my summer dress. I am shivering and tearing at my cuticles when they pull her body out of the water and laid her on the moon-drenched indigo grass.
Max pulls the boat out of the water and I hear the scream of the wooden bottom scraping against the rocks. He looks at me as he tethers the boat to the tree stump. He looks at me, and his flat drunken eyes say,
Because of you. This is all because of you.
As he walks away, explaining to the officer how he came to find a dead girl in the middle of the lake in the middle of the night, I kneel next to her on the ground. My fingers pull the satin edge of the blanket over her hair, beaded with glistening drops of water. And I envy the way she seems to sleep, warm and quiet beneath a blanket of light. I envy her, because I am colder than water, colder than air. I am colder than this girl who gave me someplace safe.

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