Sleight (18 page)

“Do you know what West wants?”

Lark set the architecture gently down. Uncertain what he was after, she offered, “He brought me here to draw a sleight—to try to, anyway.”

The man lifted his hand to his forehead and rubbed. Erasing. “I think,” he said, “you will get hurt.”

Lark knew she was out of practice, but got defensive anyway. Why had he been so positive during class only to belittle her now? “I was a professional, I know my limits.”

“No, no, no.” Monk’s director waved his hand. “Not you, but all of you, hurt …” He stared into the room, as if the clearer explanation were hanging in the chamber. He turned back to the door, reached for the doorknob, grasped it. His voice was slow and muddy. “Talk to Kitchen. These links are … too rhythmic, too thick. They hum. Do you know? You must.”

It took a week before Clef told Lark about the children. She’d kept the daily papers, and she said they were still showing small clips of the video on the local news, though it had already disappeared from the national. Byrne’s apartment had no TV so Lark and Clef skipped out at lunch and went to Clef’s motel room. More narrow than most, it was less a room than a corridor oriented between bed and television toward bath. Escape, sleep, soak. Lark’s body was beginning to lament Byrne’s cold apartment, its coffin-sized shower. It hurt to sit down, to stand up, although a little less each day. Clef pulled out the first article from the pressed wood drawer of the bedside table. On top of the table: a lined pad, a rotary phone, a dirty-white Bible. The motel was the same motel it must have been thirty years before. This was troubling to Lark, who saw in stasis an insidious form of regression. Perched on the edge of the dark synthetic quilt—indigo, mauve, and cocoa paisley—she read the clippings as Clef fed them to her.

She tried not to, but couldn’t help herself: she went, not back into her own childhood, but into her daughter’s. Nene, alone and terrified and aware. Kidnapped, her daughter would’ve known what was going on, which would’ve made it worse. Killed. And she would’ve known why. To be killed. Because she was too smart, or black enough. Or both. It was always juxtaposition, Lark had told her, that causes fear. Beauty. Things isolated could be controlled: colors in jars, flies in test tubes. Combination, solidarity, exploration—these were what made power happen. Life happen. Forced to watch the grisly show, Nene would have known she wasn’t the first. She would have seen the bones in the toys. And if they were still there, in the basement, the children too. They would’ve spoken to her, wouldn’t they? Nene invited such confidences. Were children still as frightened, Lark wondered, after they were dead?

“I’ve left my daughter. Tell me, Clef. Tell me I’m not Jillian.”

Her sister said nothing for too long. Then: “Jillian didn’t cheat.”

“What?” The words had blunted her, a baseball bat to the face. Lark felt her Need begin to shift. Swell.

“Come off it, Lark. If you aren’t fucking him yet, you will be.”

“You … you’re talking about Byrne?”

“Are you blind? The way he watches you. And that first day, you were holding his hand.”

“I was holding his hand.” Lark said this to herself, shocked, not angry. An eleven-year-old’s proof: holding hands. Her mind had been treading the water-image of her daughter, preparing for death, and Clef brought up this.

“I don’t cheat, Clef.” Shock lessening, anger possible. “And I’ve never stolen.”

Clef was prepared for this. “You didn’t love him. You didn’t love Kitchen.”

“No, I didn’t,” Lark admitted it slowly, then rotated it on its axis. “I loved you and you shat on me.”

Clef cut back. She scalped Kitchen from the field entirely, inserting what she thought was a stick figure, a dummy. “I don’t know how to be your sister. When I’m around you, I’m sick, all the time. Drew must be a fucking saint.”

“All this fucking, Clef, what’s happened to you?” For Lark, Drew didn’t replace, didn’t counterfeit: he was. Clef would lose. “Drew is no saint, but I’m Lark for him, not some gawd-awful wraith.” She was slipping into her Georgia. “He expects reality from me—and guess what? I can give it.” Lark was thankful for this. If she drove around, took an hour detour after manning the kiosk to go out to the reservoir, or sat in the driveway too long, car idling, Drew got pissed off. He would remind her that it was time for her to go read Rosetti to Nene, to bathe her, put her to sleep. Such prompting wasn’t always necessary, not even often. But when it was, he did it. Drew nixed the stereo on days when she looped “Waltzing Matilda,” “River,” “Sinnerman.” And did it without commentary. Maybe he should be beatified for his subtle vigilance. But she gave too. In pieces, but she gave.

Lark faced her sister squarely and said, “I need to talk to Kitchen.” Clef looked ready to spit. Lark continued, “These architectures you’ve made, these links, these children—West is playing tea party with battery acid, and Kitchen might know.”

Suddenly, Clef felt beaten. “Might know what?” she asked weakly. Lark had somehow gotten around her, bypassed their explosion. But Clef was not satisfied, and worked to produce a final dagger. “Lark, if something is wrong—it’s with you.”

Lark looked at her hands before she spoke. “Yes, of course, that’s right. But, Clef, it isn’t me making you sick. You’re pregnant again.”

²⁷
Like the links they unite to form, architectures occasionally resemble everyday objects. It is through this metaphorical reference that they acquire nicknames. Even more important, a resemblance suggests a place to begin. A sleightist who picks up an architecture that curves like a machete will begin to arc it through the air as in a ritual murder or gleaning. Manipulations develop out of such inclinations.

LARK’S BOOK.

Aphasia: Loss of the quality of speech, as a result of cerebral affection. Aphemia: Loss of the power of articulation, due to cerebral affection. A form of aphasia, in which words are understood and conceived but cannot be uttered.

It’s been thirteen weeks.

The day I lost myself was Nene. Terribly normal and neutral, not mangled. My body become one long throat—disgorging. And then, failed to close. Child, placenta, uterus, language. Words were gone. Or not mine to order. Not the way you do it in a restaurant: what you want, when you want, the way you want, brought to you.

The doctors insist it wasn’t the birth. And wasn’t the complication, flux. That trauma was not the trauma they told Drew. Just a more recent facsimile. They hunt. Peck at. Jillian has been the maze. As the primary she is a wonderfully crayola target. What did she do? My fingers, in chalky flutter. Nene’s bruise-body swaddled in my blood. Cherries in rain, under glass. A spectacle. She came not out but through. Not out, through.

She left behind a Need. It was at first a comfort. I had lost parts of my body to her, its heat. And although I was comforted by the word “body,” the word was always with me, and therefore, I realize, must not refer to anything actual.

Yesterday, Nene turned three months old, and I tore down her Need, the ice cathedral sculpted by her exodus. Another ridding. A bottling. What I feel is flaked, chipped, like slate. Rockfaces shirring off, tumbling into dead trees below. It is hard, burnt out, the wrong brown. She is, sometimes. The skin I gave her is ghost skin, a veil over her real skin. Her sharp eyes cast about—she laughs at the nothing behind me. In that way, one fears for her. Maybe it is me fearing.

Drew thinks Needs are blanks. Needs are not blanks. No names, but they are teeming. Cornucopias. Fruit baskets. Handbaskets. Hells.

This past week I asked him to and Drew moved inside me, slow, the first time since—a stirring, an all-day rain. But he couldn’t dislodge the Need. Afterwards, my body a drain, I didn’t know his name. His name and I were divorced. The husband I had when I was with my husband was nameless. Not even “husband,” which re-became a verb—about use, about animals. I knew then I had to kill the Need. The trafficker, pimp. A brutal, brutal thief.

The doctors all said the words would probably come back, but didn’t know how. I should tell Drew. I have had the Need out and will dismantle it. Along with the others. I will pull them apart and then pull her across. Pin Nene to this place. I have decided, she will let me.

Lark stayed that day with Clef, and Kitchen came back after dark. He had food. “Bad Mexican,” he said when he saw the sisters doubling each other across the two beds, knees nearly grazing. They ate together: Kitchen and Clef on the one bed, the ripped white bag in front of them catching bits of shredded lettuce and dripped tomato water; Lark on the other, sitting upright and brittle, with chips. They watched a short segment on the Vogelsongs. This time, Melanie’s mother.
No one thinks her daughter could kill. A son,
she said,
that’s different, but I did not, no, I did not see it in Ray.
Melanie’s mother, she prayed every day for the souls of those little angels. She knew they were with God, which was a comfort. Imagining them at God’s table.

Lark could see it too. Pipe-cleaner haloes and clothes-hangered, tissue-papered wings. Demurely bowed heads gazing down into blue Fiestaware—the empty, bright bowls of God’s table. Because angels don’t require sustenance. Not oyster crackers, not even Dixie-sized swallows of grape juice, staining between the teeth, forcing quarter-hour garglings with baking soda and peroxide. Melanie’s mother—you could hear it in her prim drawl—believed in the redemptive powers of bloodied floss.

Lark watched as her sister balled up the burrito foil, pitched it into the brown wastepaper basket beside the dresser. “Two points,” Clef murmured. She switched off the news.

CLEF: Lark wants to talk with us.

KITCHEN: Okay.

LARK: What is West doing? This subject matter—why? Why two troupes? Why me?

KITCHEN: I’ve been wondering about this too.

CLEF: You have?

KITCHEN: Your new architectures, Clef—did you ever stop to think why you made them?

CLEF: You know why. Lark’s book.

KITCHEN: That can’t be it. Each one you wired together is a collage. Most architectures function; the inverted spiral, for example, is a funnel that can be adjusted to the size of what it funnels. It has a purpose—abstract, to be sure, but a purpose. Yours—not so much.

CLEF: 
(getting off the bed)
So, my work is useless.

LARK: 
Beyond
use. I played around with one that seems designed to slice without cutting. Each time I tried to bring it through the air cleanly, it swerved. I can’t use your architectures, Clef. Only follow them.

CLEF: Even if that’s true—so what?

KITCHEN: Why would West want us to work with what we can’t control? How can he hope to make a full sleight?

LARK: I think he’s counting on me for that.

CLEF: 
(walking toward the bathroom)
Of course he is.

LARK: This isn’t ego. The architectures came from my book, the links came from the architectures … maybe he thinks a sleight drawn by me would unite the two.
(Clef runs water, Lark raises her voice)
He doesn’t realize you put something in them, Clef. Something feral.

CLEF: 
(walking back in)
You’re wrong. Everything I did was from your book, Lark. Things resisting their natures—that’s not me.

LARK: Because you don’t fight yourself.

CLEF: You shut your mouth.

KITCHEN: Are you drawing for him now?

LARK: No, but … I will be soon. I have a new Need, and it’s odd—it’s not about anything.

KITCHEN: Excuse me?

CLEF: Her Needs—they always have a … what? A defect, tragic flaw … a cavity?

LARK: A bit like that.

KITCHEN: And this one?

LARK: This one isn’t reaching, except for an identity. Right now it’s trying on forms, but I think it just wants to be what it is.

KITCHEN: And what is it?

CLEF: I can’t fucking believe this. They aren’t real, Kitchen.

KITCHEN: Hold on a second, Clef. Didn’t you tell me you touched one?

CLEF: Just because you can see or smell or fuck something, that doesn’t mean it’s actually, meaningfully there.

LARK: She has a point.

KITCHEN: Christ, you two are
The Shining
sometimes. I didn’t remember.

LARK: Kitchen, where do you think you go?

KITCHEN: What?

LARK: When you wick—where do you go?

KITCHEN: It’s like sleeping, isn’t it?

CLEF: You’re such a goddamn liar.

KITCHEN: You two think we die—Clef’s said it before. It’s deranged.

LARK: No. Death has permanence. Wicking is playing dead. We roll over, the audience claps. But West knows.

KITCHEN: Knows what?

LARK: How to use it. How to wrench the audience from comfort, which we all want. But he wants something else too. I don’t trust him.

KITCHEN: None of us trust him.

LARK: So why are we doing this? Why should I give him my drawings?

CLEF: Because he knows how to make something happen. I hate him, but more than anything else—that’s what we want. Isn’t it? We want to be inside something that makes something happen.

LARK: Look, I’ll do it. I’ll draw out this Need and give it to him. But we watch, okay?

CLEF: 
(starts straightening the room)
I don’t know what you think he can do. I’ll admit it feels wrong somehow to use those children. But West’s just mucking around, right?
(drops into a chair beside the dresser, looks down at her lap, then up at Lark)
Right?

LARK: Do you even know what sleight is? Do any of us? For all we know, it could be saltpeter.

CLEF: What?

KITCHEN: Saltpeter, Clef. Add a little sulfur, a little charcoal—gunpowder.

LARK: A propellant, a chemical delivery system. But for a long time its main use—

CLEF: Unknown, I get it.

KITCHEN: No. It was fireworks.

The rest of November was difficult. Clef swore Lark to secrecy until she figured out what to do about the pregnancy. Lark spent all day every day at the chambers, making her way back to Byrne’s to eat and sleep and, in between, study her new Need. She couldn’t always feel it. Needs were sporadic, like allergies. Sometimes in the middle of the night, instead of an itchy throat, white pain would shark beneath her sternum, circling the space where her ribcage opened like a curtain. Not a good time to assess the Need. Typically, the form of a waking Need was blind, a bodied migraine. Sometimes she could get a general outline, but mostly just pain without visuals. Or if she did get visuals, they were unrelated to the Need: replayed scenarios of regretted actions—boring. But skull-boring, unbanishable. So she’d polish off whatever wine was open, or open a new bottle, and go back to the couch to wait it out. This was what the History Channel was for, but Byrne only had a laptop he kept in his bedroom.

When she was awake, Lark liked to stand. It helped to make room for the Need’s alterations. Cooking, she could feel the Need in her torso. It always stayed within her core—the only trait it shared with pregnancy. She would concentrate on its dimensions, the way it was currently extending its intrusive fingers or antennae through her viscera, while keeping other parts of her mind occupied. She’d cook, or talk on the phone. Of course, when the Need got to be too much, she’d say goodbye to Nene and Drew. When it was too much, quiet was blessing. Byrne, it seemed, had a sixth sense for these moments—and chose them for pointless conversation.
How’d it go today? Which architecture was that I saw you with? You go out to lunch with Yael again?
Sometimes, with that rock, it was as if the boy were crippled.

She knew he had a crush, of course she did. Clef wasn’t crazy, or even unperceptive. It calmed Lark, to be looked at in that way. Intact. Byrne was funny though, and obviously disconcerted by this dynamic—him, wanting. He was awkward and sweet and made faces he didn’t know he made. When she phoned Drew and Nene, Byrne always said to say hello, and then he’d wince. It was a hairline wince: a hard blink followed by a squint, lasting no more than a second, and then he’d bounce his rock off the front of his thigh. Every time. One morning, three weeks into her stay, his beige towel slit high up his leg as he walked from shower to bedroom, and Lark caught sight of a dark green oval a few inches above the knee. It looked nasty, a bruise with roots. He was a very skinny boy.

By the end of the month, she knew the Need would have to come out soon, and she set to work capturing its forms on paper before the expulsion. It taxed her—contending with its mutations, the echoes of Clef’s pregnancy, the pain of retraining her body. She lacked buttress: Nene’s arms around her neck, her sticky mouth against her cheek reciting some new exotic fact, some list, some poem. Drew’s palms on her shoulder blades, fingers kneading her even as she resisted them, compelling her return to her skin.