by CD Reiss
RESPITE
Most people don’t know when they’re going to die, but I did.
I had an all-consuming drive—and it went backward.
When I was at the beginning, I was at the end. I’d have fulfilled my purpose, and past it, there was nothing but a void.
It didn’t matter. My will to survive was nothing compared to the will to go back.
When Caden got off me, I got to my feet. I was wobbly because I couldn’t pay attention to the act of standing. Every bit of energy went to remembering.
“Can you walk down?” He held me up by the waist.
I nodded, squeezing his hand. What a beautiful creature he was. With the orange sky behind him and his eyes squinting against the storm, he was deeply rooted in the world and all its troubles. He was a god causing the pain he cured.
“I can.”
He led me to the steps, keeping his hands on me as if I had the will to run away.
I was grateful to him, but he wouldn’t make me come again. Not until this was finished.
The screen flickered to life, and I was eighteen.
* * *
I could identify two separate cricket sounds and tell the difference between a breeze from the west and a wind from the north. I was more sober than I had any business being. The happy, swoony feeling was gone, as was the sick swimmy feeling. My lucidity was painful.
Nighttime was a devil of clarity. All the doors open. Owls. Crickets. Birds. Scuttling in the bushes. Things breathing. Hearts beating. Somewhere. Anywhere. The cracking of nail polish being worried off sounded like a jackhammer in slow motion. The moon and stars were hidden behind a thick layer of clouds that caught the lights from the ground, diffused it, and sent it back as a shadowless mass.
The lights were off, and the engine clicked as it cooled. In the passenger seat of Jake’s Chevy, I chipped my nails from solid purple to jagged gray.
Snick-snick-snick.
Waiting for my brother to get back, I congratulated myself when I got a big piece and brushed it off my skirt when it fell.
Snick-snick.
I got right back down to business. My full attention on cracking the polish meant I could move forward without looking back. This project in the cacophony of the night kept me from turning my mind back in time. Kept me from thinking about the weird brokenness between my legs. The soreness that reminded me of my deep corruption. The thing that caused all the other things that…
Snick-snick-snick.
If I’d known where I was going, I could have run there. If I’d been avoiding something my whole life, I would have hurtled myself into it full force. But I’d been adrift. I had nothing to run to any more than I had anything to run from. Until now. Now I had something to run from, but it was everywhere. You can’t escape if you’re running in circles.
Snick-sni—
“Ow.” My voice sounded alien, and when I put my finger in my mouth, it tasted of enamel and blood.
I opened the glove compartment. The light went on. I wasn’t supposed to shine a light or make a sound, so I hurried to grab a Burger King napkin from the compartment before the light cut too much of the night.
I closed it softly. Maybe the shock of light woke up a part of my brain that had gotten used to the darkness. Maybe my corneas had a temporary burn. Maybe some higher power had something to say. I don’t know why the picture of what was under the napkin was imprinted in my mind, but even with the return of dark and the bleeding under control, it remained.
BE ALL YOU CAN BE.
Jake had enlisted six months before and had only been home a few days. He loved the military. The order. The routine. The challenges. Even the hierarchies.
ALL YOU CAN BE.
What was I?
Snick-snick-snick.
Was I who I had been yesterday? Or was I who I’d become in the past three hours?
YOU CAN BE.
I’d sneered at him when he came home, but he’d just smiled as if he knew something I didn’t.
CAN BE.
I considered myself a pretty shrewd customer. A real cynic. I could sniff out falsehood. I knew PR when I saw it. “Be All You Can Be” was pure public relations magic, even to a girl who had made eyeliner into an art and wanted hair so dark it could take out a city block.
BE- snick-ALL- snick-YOU- snick-CAN- snick-BE.
But what could I be?
Could I live in a straight line?
Could I have forward motion?
Quickly, I opened the glove compartment, got out the pamphlet, and snapped it closed. I could barely see it, yet I had the pitch memorized. The front photo was deeply saturated in orange-and-yellow sunrise with the silhouette of cavalrymen marching, arms raised in command, every one a leader. In the rusty sky, a line of parachutes opened.
WE DO MORE BEFORE BREAKFAST THAN MOST PEOPLE DO ALL DAY.
Onward. I didn’t have to look back if I was going toward something. I wouldn’t be blindsided by the things I’d done if I could just keep momentum.
The back had a business card clipped to it. The recruitment office on Shiloh Street. Lieutenant Barry Driggs. US Army.
Lieutenant Barry Driggs knew who he was and where he stood. He knew where he was going because the army told him so. The army pointed him in a direction and didn’t let him look back. He was one of them. So was Jake. That was what he had been smiling about when he got home.
Escape. The hope of a beautiful escape into purpose.
The dome light snapped on as the driver’s side door opened. Jake got in and closed the door before the dashboard beeped twice. He smelled of alcohol wipes and twenty hours without a shower.
“Hey.” I tucked the pamphlet under my leg. “How did it go?”
“Uneventful.” He cracked a can of Coke. It hissed as he sucked the bubbles off the lip. The diffused light hit his sculpted cheekbones and the scrub of hair growing on his chin.
“You had time to get something to drink?”
He handed it to me. “Finish it.”
“Why?” I didn’t like the sticky brown crap with an indefinable flavor.
“Just do it. For once, just do what you’re told.”
I used the spotted Burger King napkin to wipe the bubbles off the side. Jake circled his finger as if to say, “Move it along.” I drank as much as I could before the buildup of carbonation stopped me. My brother tapped the steering wheel and stared out into the darkness.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“Drink up, Punky.”
I took a deep breath and drank as much as I could.
“I’m fine, but…” He paused for a shallow breath while I got the drink down to a third of a can. “I’ve been taking sniper courses. They make us think of them as targets. Not people. Like if we tell a part of ourselves that it’s really a person, it poisons the part that does the shooting. But I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do it. After this, I don’t know if I can lie to myself.”
“Don’t ruin your life because of me.”
We looked at each other a long time. Condensation dripped onto my finger and slid along its length. Jake was my older brother. He’d given me noogies and made fun of my body when it started maturing, falling into silence on the subject when it was finished.
Now he was a man.
And me?
What did that make me?
I finished the remaining cola and handed him the can.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a used alcohol wipe. It had a faint streak of blood on it.
“Lie?” My headache started there, right when the alcohol wore off. At the moment I told the truth about lies.
He stuffed the wipe into the can until only a small triangle of white stuck out. “Smart.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yeah. If anyone asks, tell them I picked you up at one thirty and took you home. Do you have a lighte
r?”
“Sure.” I got out a pack of clove cigarettes and offered him one.
He took it and the black Bic. He lit us both, then touched the flame to the white triangle. When it caught, he shook the wipe down. Yellow light flickered from the little hole, replaced with acrid smoke.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did ruin your life.”
He cracked the window and blew the smoke out, coughing. “This shit’s going to ruin me way before you do.” He dragged again and choked. I laughed. “It’s like smoking broken fucking glass.”
I took a long pull before licking the clove flavor off my lips. “Yeah.” I smiled, flicking my ash into the empty can. “Ruins the shit out of you.”
* * *
Back in Greysen’s space, Caden sat me in a chair. He pressed his fingers to my wrist as if the answers were in my pulse. I smelled the smoke from the can mixing with the clove cigarette. Tasted the Christmas on my lips. He was with me, staring at me as if he was trying to understand me, but he never would. I was the memory of what I’d forgotten. I was the events during a drunken blackout. I was Greysen’s darkness and the light that banished it.
“You’re thready,” he said. “You need to rest.”
“All right.” I wasn’t tired. I was drained.
“And eat.”
“Sure.”
I closed my eyes, letting the room slip away, going backward to my brother’s car as he parked it on a back road and told me to stay there. I was to sit in darkness and silence. I was to duck if someone came. I agreed to everything, submitting to culpability for something that I’d done but couldn’t remember.
The pressure of the chair under me disappeared. Caden had taken me in his arms and was carrying me to the bed, where he laid me down and stroked my hair from my face.
“I’m going to fix this,” he said.
I opened my eyes. Above me, he was a protective force that had no idea of the harm he could do. I wished I was worthy of him. I wished my sins were as unintentional as his.
“No,” I said, “She and I are going to fix it.”
Chapter Eighty
CADEN
Hours had passed with her narrating the sound of the leaves in the wind. I’d sat still for it when I could, but mostly I took her pulse and her temperature, looking for something to latch onto.
Solutions. I needed solutions, and all I had were problems.
I didn’t know what Respite meant by fixing it, but if she was anything like Damon, she wasn’t going to fix shit. She was going to fuck it up.
Phone lines were down. Neither of our cells had signal. I didn’t have a car, and I couldn’t carry her to the hospital. I still hadn’t told her about Jake because I couldn’t decide which one of her would take it worse. Respite, whose world seemed to circle around him? Or Greysen the Unpredictable?
If she were injured, I’d carry her back to New York if I had to. But I hadn’t yet taken her to the hospital because I didn’t want to put a dozen doctors between us. I didn’t want to answer questions, and I didn’t want her whisked away from me to some mental facility. Because they would. The army. Blackthorne. Someone would take her away.
Greysen had a few granola bars in the cabinets and a bruised apple on the counter. A half-eaten container of hummus and a round of pita that still had a day or two in it. I unwrapped a bar and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You have to eat.”
Her eyes opened halfway, as if she wasn’t committed to looking outside herself but for the first time in hours, she’d try.
“Respite,” I said. It felt wrong to look at my wife and call her a different name, but she wasn’t Greysen either.
“Hello, Caden.” She glanced at the bar that poked out of its wrapping like a bloom, then back at me. As Respite, she exhibited an emotional flatness I associated with distraction. She was never fully present in the room with me, and it made me impatient to see my wife again.
“What kind of name is that?” I asked. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”
“She turned my name into her wish.” She sat up, sliding her bottom back and leveraging against her right arm. The sheet fell down her body. I’d stripped her to her underwear, and I was glad I hadn’t finished the job. I didn’t want to look at those beautiful tits on another woman.
“So that’s not your name?”
“No.”
I pushed the granola bar at her. She took it reluctantly.
“What’s your name then?”
“Something like that.”
“Like Respite?”
She nodded and bit off the tiniest corner.
“But not?” I continued.
She shook her head. This new personality took years off Greysen’s demeanor. There was something very knowing about her but something petulant and naïve as well.
“I don’t know it yet, but I will.” She bit off another corner and chewed with more attention than chewing deserved. “I’ll know once I play the entire thing back.”
I waited. Did she think I knew what she was talking about?
“Do you have water?” she asked.
“Sure.”
As I filled a cup, I watched her in the reflection of a tiny mirror tile. Greysen in a black bra and rumpled sheets but not her. Not her at all. I’d married a woman, and there was a girl in the bed.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the glass.
I pulled up a chair. “What’s this about playing something back?”
She handed over the glass, then the half-eaten granola bar. “A thing that happened. The memory is deep, but I had eight kamikazes. So, it’s there? I can get it out, but only one thing at a time, from the end. Like I have to unpack the box from the top?”
I heard what she said. The words were fine, but the tone wasn’t Grey. It had question marks all over it. I couldn’t blame her for not knowing which way was up. I didn’t either. Couldn’t tell how long this would take either. Was she unpacking a two-year-long event or a bad few minutes?
“When is the memory from? How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Where were you?” I kept my tone casual. I didn’t want to freak her out. She seemed fragile.
“Um, Jake just pulled up to a… like a side back alley-ish thing? It’s a lot of cinderblock and gray. Light industrial, maybe. It’s really dark, and I’m glad about that.”
I’d thought I knew what my wife was going through because I’d lived it with Damon. But Respite was different. She spoke about her alternate as if she was the same person. Past the emotional flatness, there was a soft compassion for the girl whose story she was telling. A forgiveness. Respite’s tone confirmed she existed to help, not conquer.
“Also,” Respite continued, “there’s kind of a gross swimmy feeling, and my tongue tastes like burn.”
“The eight kamikazes.”
She may have heard me, but judging from how her gaze went blank, it didn’t matter. “The crickets are really loud. I feel like they’re going to give me away. It’s cloudy, but the light pollution from town makes the clouds bright enough to see by. And Jake is mad. He gets out of the car. He’s got big muscles on his arms. When he left for the army, he was skinny. Now he’s like a man. He scares me?”
Again, the question at the end illustrated how different she was. I wanted to shake her loose. It had been hours, and I wanted my wife back.
She put up with Damon for weeks.
“Why is he mad?” I asked.
“It’s three thirty in the morning,” she replied without looking at me. “He wants to know why the hell I haven’t gone home. What’s on my freak mind? He always called me a little punky freak. And then I cry so hard he stops being mad.”
She went silent.
“Respite?”
“When Jake gets out of the car, the gravel crunches under his feet. He’s not wearing the boots he came home in. He’s wearing his old Adidas while he’s on leave, but he keeps his dog tags on. He leaves the car door open. The dashboar
d’s beeping, and his lights are on.”
She’d started from the beginning, adding new details but going no further back.
“Why is he there?” I asked.
“He’s saying, ‘Oh, fuck, Grey. Fucking fuck. Where?’ and I point at a dark place behind the building. Jake goes, but I sit sideways in the car with the door open. I take the keys out and turn off the lights so the beeping stops. I wait a long time.”
“What’s happening, Greysen?” I called her by her real name because she wasn’t respite any more than I was a back rub.
“There’s a break in the clouds, and I can see some stars through it.”
“Greysen.” I try not to growl and fail.
“When I rub my thumbnail, I feel a place where the polish is flaking.”
She was rubbing her thumbnail as if she was there, wherever there was. She was infuriating, making no effort whatsoever to dig out of this. She was just sliding into the details of a memory that could go nowhere and not answering the relevant questions.
She was about to talk again. She opened her mouth to reminisce about the light reflecting off the sky or some bullshit. I didn’t want to hear it. Not another word.
I took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Listen to me!”
She focused on me for the length of fingers snapping. For that moment, she was herself. It was like taking a rib spreader out and putting the thorax back in its place. It all fit.
“Where are you?”
Before I even finished my sentence, she was gone. Heart, lungs, ribs—taken apart. Insides outside.
I was bereft. My body was inside out. I was the one with parts out of place.
“He’s gone a long time,” she said. “The crickets pause enough to let the sound of the rustling leaves through.”
“No, no, look at me.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Okay, I’ll—”
“I can hear my stomach rumbling in the pause.”
“Stop!”
She did. I thought I’d be relieved, but her silence wasn’t a refocus of her attention. She was deep inside herself and not bothering to tell me what was happening. This was worse.
