The Blue Girl (11 page)

Caroline says to wait.
How is Audrey going to see in the dark? It's so dark out here
, she says, and she is breathing very hard when Audrey closes the door. She yells at Greg that he got us into this, that now something is going to happen to Audrey in the dark, and how are any of us going to be able to get her when we can't see her. Greg doesn't tell her to shut up again. He just shuts off the lights and that makes her quiet.

It's darker than I ever imagined it could be. I hold a hand up in front of my face, and it's true, I can't see it. I can't see Greg, who is moving his hand on my knee, squeezing, and then moving it up to my thigh. I try to follow Audrey, but she disappears in seconds. We are surrounded by trees, but it's too dark to see them.

For the longest time we sit. All we can hear is our own breath, mine and Greg's and Caroline's, all mixed so that I can't tell where my breath ends and Greg's starts.

Finally I can't take it. I can't stand all this breathing.

Where is she?
I say.
Where is Audrey?

I keep saying it,
Where's Audrey, where's Audrey?
and Greg tells me to calm down, but I'm beyond myself. It's like I've stepped out of my own skin and can see this girl sitting in a car with her friends, waiting to see this girl who may not even be there, who may not even be alive, and I look at the girl and want to tell her that it's time to stop all of this, all
of it right now, this girl who may or may not be me. The girl in her white sweater and denim jacket is screaming,
Go get Audrey, we have to get Audrey right now
, this girl in the car who can't see anything, not even her hand in front of her face.

And then we hear something.

I don't wait. I open the car door and start running, the gravel flying up from my shoes, my mouth open and filling with hard, fast, burning breath. I can hear them behind me as they run, Caroline and Greg, but I won't stop now, can't stop, I just keep running in the thick dark with the gravel slipping and skidding under my shoes. Greg catches up and grabs my arm, and we keep running together until the gravel gives way to sand, and we're so close to the lake we almost run into it.

The girl is on her back. Audrey's hair is stuck to the sides of her head as she pulls the girl on her side and starts pounding her on the back.
Again, again, again
, is all I can think, flashing back to that day on the lake with our mothers, all three of them sitting there and not moving while Audrey did the work, and I move forward just a little like I'm really going to help her this time. But once again I just stand and watch as Audrey pounds. Water spits out from the girl's blue mouth. The air is full of coughing.

We stand looking down at her. It's hard to tell how blue she really is in all this darkness. Her eyes open, she
looks up at us, and lifts her blue hand to her mouth to wipe away some of the water. Then she opens her mouth.

Fuck
, Greg says, and backs away.

I keep looking at her, looking at the blue hand pointing to her open blue mouth and the small white teeth inside.

You saw her
, Audrey says to Greg.
Now help me get her back to her house
.

Fuck that
, Greg says.
No fucking way am I touching that
, and he starts moving back toward the car.

Caroline grabs his arm and says,
Where are you going, Greg? You can't leave us here
, and he says,
Fuck this, I'm getting back in the car
.

I think about what finally makes me move. Not the girl lying in front of us with her mouth open and staring. Not even Audrey, shivering in the cold. It's Ethan I think of, Ethan on the white tile with his mouth open, Ethan with his head pounding on the floor until it's bruised. What kind of a sister could I be to Ethan if I leave the blue girl all alone?

I try not to think of the weight of her on me as Audrey and I half-carry her back to the house. I try not to think about the darkness, or the way the girl's breath sounds up close, rattling, almost, and sharp. I try not to think about the house as we move closer to it, and I try not to think as I let Audrey go in by herself, and I stand outside in the
gravel, trying not to wonder if she'll ever come out. I try not to think as we get back into the car. Caroline sits in the front with Greg, and I get in the back with Audrey and put my arm around her until she sinks against me. I try not to think about the wetness or the cold or the smell of the lake water in her hair. When Audrey gets out at her house, I stay in the backseat, alone, until Greg pulls me out.

Come on, we have to go now, her father will be looking for the car
, he says.
Come on, I have to take you home
.

I let Greg help me out of the car. The shades are drawn, but still I can see her father's shadow. Part of me wants to watch while he plays his game, but I know I can't stay there in the driveway with Greg breathing all over me. I know I have to go home, and when I do, I will sit with my back against Ethan's door and listen to him talk to himself the way he does sometimes.
Ethan's
O.K
., he'll say,
Ethan's
O.K
. now
. Always the same, the way he says it. I think of the girl in the water and all that breathing and the sounds of the water spitting out of her mouth. I think about being home, sitting with my back against Ethan's door, whispering to Ethan four times, just the way he likes, that Ethan's right, that Ethan's
O.K
.

Irene

I
WAS TRYING TO LISTEN TO THE TREES ON THE NIGHT
they went to find her. It was all I could think to do. It's not that I didn't think of stopping them. It's not that I didn't know all along they would go. But the time for stopping them had passed. I realized that, sitting on the porch, hearing the garage door open and close, hearing their voices whisper.

I was sitting on the porch while Colin played his basketball game in the living room, after Buck had gone to bed in his sailboat pajamas, which have recently gotten short in the sleeves. I sat and tried to hear the operettas my mother talked about when I was a girl. My mother used to say that trees sang if you listened closely, so I would crane my neck toward the branches and dream of glissandos sung in voices that ached. When I told my mother I couldn't hear the trees, she said,
Keep trying, Irene, listen hard, listen deep
, but I thought the trees
would never sing to me because their voices had been sucked away in a mass of pollen that made my sinuses ache. I could never be sure, but I always thought my mother left this world disappointed in me for missing out on those glorious voices. I keep sitting with the windows open listening for the trees' voices, but they don't speak to me.

But I did hear Audrey open and then quietly close her door. I didn't know she was awake, though I should have assumed it. Audrey, my Audrey, who never sleeps, my Audrey with circles under her eyes and that look of disdain.

The last time Magda, Libby, and I drove over to feed the girl, I tried to figure out what I had done to provoke Audrey's looks of disdain, but I had no answer. I knew only what I had not done. I took one of the moon pies in my hand and thought about how carefully I had baked the tops and the bottoms, and the careful spooning of the melted chocolate, the creamy richness of the filling, and I wondered if we will ever really be rid of the secrets.

I let my daughter save a dying girl, and I did nothing. That's one of my secrets, along with so many others. All secrets are terrible, I know that, and I know that no
matter how many times I feed them to the blue girl, there is no relief.

I was sitting on the porch trying to hear the trees, but I was thinking of her, the girl in the bed, blue as a dream with her mouth full of wanting. I was trying to hear her breath echoing out from the lake when I heard the click of the car door closing, and I heard them drive off.

In the beginning we told each other the things we'd overheard, things our daughters whispered about a girl who lurked in their dreams.
Out by the lake
, they'd say.
She has no mother
. And then,
My God
, they'd say,
the girl is blue
.

We didn't believe them at first. We had sense enough then to turn our backs to the pieces of muffled conversation. We stopped short of reading their texts.
They're young, they're imaginative, they need something to believe
, we said to each other. In a town as dull as this one, it was what we needed. We could understand the boredom, the stifling we sensed in our girls, even at fifteen. We didn't want that for them, but what could we do? We had already long been broken.

I remember lying on the beach that afternoon, looking at Audrey while trying at the same time not to
look because I knew if she caught me she'd turn away. I remember wondering if I had been that way with my own mother once, always distant, always trying to disappear, always dismissing her, she who had held me in her womb and squeezed me out. How ungrateful we all once were, we daughters who become mothers only to learn how it feels, the endless cycle of rejection. I remember thinking about my mother that day, wishing I could tell her how sorry I was.

For a moment, when I first saw the blue girl in the water, I actually thought she was my mother. For a moment I felt a choked sadness in my throat and wanted to call out to her, but then I looked at Audrey and knew that she had seen her, too.

There were no trees singing to us the first night that Magda, Libby, and I went to her. How tentative we were, slipping through the trees and out to the crook at the end of the road where the house sat, so alone, one bare window open. Magda and I held hands, and I remember thinking,
Try, Irene, try to hear the trees singing, try for your mother, you owe her that much
.

For a minute I thought I heard them, the trills of their voices, slow air blowing from rounded mouths, just the way trees ought to sound. I squeezed Magda's hand
and said,
I hear something
, and she said,
I do, too
, and then Libby knocked.

The old woman opened the door, peered at us, and shook her head, back and forth, back and forth, the way a child would, the way Buck does sometimes when he doesn't want to go to bed, when he sticks his fingers in his ears as if to tell me he will never hear me, that he has not only blocked out my voice with his fingers, but he has erased my voice forever.

Come at night
, the old woman said. She hacked into a soiled handkerchief, her shoulders shaking as she coughed.
Only at night
.

She coughed again, a sputtering cough, and then looked directly at me. Her eyes were dark and heavy lidded. She hid her hands in her pockets.

Bring her something she can eat
, the old woman said.
Something that you must give away
.

Magda rocked forward on her toes and said,
Like leftovers?
and the old woman laughed, her head thrown back as the coughing racked her shoulders and the back of her neck.

Something only she can have
, she said, and then closed the door and disappeared into the house.

Libby stopped us at the edge of the road and said,
Let's bring her our secrets
.

We laughed, though it was not funny.

On the way home, I drove with the windows open and listened to the whistle of the trees. A whistle, not singing.

The only other thing I remember from that night is that I had a sudden and unmistakable craving for moon pies. I hadn't had that craving since I was pregnant, and just the thought of being pregnant—the way Audrey would turn inside me at night, the way Buck kicked so hard my bladder leaked—made me remember my poor mother, and that I will never be the kind of woman who can hear the singing of the trees.