Letting out a disapproving sigh, Ma tore the tainted envelope in half—invitation and all.
“How is that productive?” Thea smashed a cigarette between her fingers within her pocket.
“Stop,” Doris said, back against the sink basin. “Both of you.”
“Why can’t either of you take anything seriously? Just once. This is your wedding, Doris. Don’t you care?”
“It is my wedding. And no, I don’t care about a smudge on one of the envelopes.”
“Then why are we even doing this?” Ma gesticulated above the mountain of paper, careful to avoid touching them.
Rolling her shoulders back, Doris leveled knives at their mother as she spoke. “If it were up to me, we’d have gone down to the courthouse long ago and been done with it.”
Ma, incensed, waved the notion away like a foul odor. “You can’t do that. James wouldn’t have liked that. He’s a proper groom, knows how to honor family.”
Thea laughed at this, couldn’t help herself. She instantly regretted it.
“What is so funny?” Ma said.
Peeling herself out of the chair, Thea shrugged. “Nothing.”
Ma glared at her. Doris had yet to steal her gaze away from Ma. And Thea darted eyes between them both.
“Nothing,” she said again, with less emphasis. “I have to pee again.”
“You haven’t had anything to drink all morning.” Mother was swift as ever to pull the imaginary notepad off her breast. 9 a.m. – needed to be woken up. 9:30 a.m. – attempted to go to the bathroom. 11 a.m. – farted and pretended she hadn’t. No drinks, no food. 11:30 a.m. – took a second, pungent, hungover piss.
“Would you like to come and watch?”
Ma sucked in her lips in the way she used to when the girls were younger, but the effect had waned over the years.
“I have to pee, Ma.”
The women watched her go. The silence in the room felt like lead, and Thea had had enough of the scrutiny of both. Doris made sure to keep her eyes away, but that was worse. It was an effort to keep those fangs-for-eyes off her, and Thea felt every pang of pain as she forced them somewhere else.
Water splashed under her feet as she retreated to the bathroom.
She shouldn’t have laughed, although she wasn’t so much laughing at James as she was at her mother. Or was she? Thea wasn’t sure. She hated them both. Couldn’t escape them. The gavel drop of Doris’s approval was final and total. James was here to stay. Why did she hate the idea of this so much?
Peeing was difficult because she didn’t really have to, but after a show of flushing and running the water as if to wash her hands, she finally decided she couldn’t waste any more time in there and had to leave.
The entire bottom floor was covered in water. Neither woman seemed to notice.
“It’s fine, I guess,” Ma said.
Thea turned the corner just in time to see her mother dusting an envelope in between her fingers. One from Doris’s pile.
“It’s just a little dust,” their mother said, continuing.
Wrenching herself from the counter, Doris paced her way back to the table. “See?”
Both women sat with their backs lifted from the chair backs, erect as startled deer.
“I’ll dust them before they go out, if it’s so important.” Doris flipped the embossed squares of paper between her fingers, beginning again as if they’d never stopped.
Ma followed suit. “I suppose it isn’t, considering.”
The feet of the chair sloshed against the slick of flood as Thea yanked it away from the table with one hand. Ma glared at her as she made a show of sitting down, hitting her tailbone against the wood harder than she intended, but she didn’t flinch. Doris swam among the invitations, not looking up at the noise, as if focused on not drowning.
Thea laid her clasped hands on the table. “I’ll dust them.”
Ma’s hands worked robotically through the envelopes. While one pile grew, the other dwindled. Thank fucking God, this was almost over.
“It’s fine, Thea,” Ma said.
“No, Ma, you are so right. It’s an important day. They should look perfect.”
“Let’s just finish.” Head down, Ma worked as if Thea was a stray television in the background.
“Why not start now? Then it’ll be done.” Thea lurched her hands out toward the piles of completed envelopes and shuttled as many as she could toward her side of the table. Doris glanced at her over the top of the white piles, fingers never so much as pausing.
Ma dropped the card she was working on. “Stop. Look at this, they’re all spilled.”
“I’ll stack them again after I clean them off.”
“They were in nice piles. I had them all organized.”
“Your piles are irrelevant once they go in the mail.”
“Just stop.”
“It’s fine.”
“Thea!”
“What?” Things were about to spiral out of control, but she didn’t fucking care. “What, Ma? Is the mess bothering you? How about the floor? Don’t you see this floor? Water everywhere!”
Ma did not see the floor. Instead, she was on her feet, glaring over the ruined piles of fancy paper and iridescent envelopes, the sheen of them reflecting her anger. “You need to stop. This isn’t about you!”
“It never is.” Her head felt unsettled—every move an aching premonition of something worse to come.
Finally deeming it fit for her to bother in the drama, Doris leaned back rigid in her chair. “Who cares about the damn cards? They’ll all end up in the garbage anyway.”
“And yet I’m still not fit to touch them, it seems.” Thea was already stomping up the stairs before her mother could respond or Doris could issue a command to stay put.
The family couldn’t help but be strangled by her sister—Thea worst of all. The golden child, the pedestal for all others to be judged against. She wanted to hate Doris; she wanted so badly to tell her off, to blame Doris for her own emotional paralysis. Most times, Thea felt like burying her sister, as if the universe would right itself if she was gone, like cutting off the head of the villain in a fairy tale. But then she’d catch that look from Doris, that watery marble gaze of a drowning person, and Thea knew that her sister hated it all as much as she did. It was a fleeting thing, though, like those floating globs of cells in her vision—it could only be seen when she wasn’t looking directly at it. Sometimes Thea thought their mutual hatred was the only sisterly thing they shared. Maybe it would be different if Thea wasn’t such a fuckup or if Doris wasn’t so insulated. Or if—
She was struck by a memory of arms around her. Every time she got close to truly hating her sister, something floated up out of the repression that made her shudder. It hadn’t always been like this. But that was so long ago now, it might as well have been a dream.
She often thought that one of them would be better off without the other. It didn’t matter which; the pair of them were like stones on a balancing scale—neither could rise until the other sank. Treading water was all either of them did now.
Turning out her dirty jeans on the floor, she finally found a five-dollar bill and some quarters. Tips from bartending a few nights ago. There should have been more—she’d thought there was more—but ten pockets and a run through her nightstand later, that was all she’d found.
The sky was a groggy gray, so she looped her red hoodie over her arm and headed back downstairs.
“Where are you going?” Ma asked, voice pinched and curt.
“Work.”
“You don’t have work today.”
“How would you know? Going through my stuff again?”
“Thea, please.”
“Please what?” Her keys dangled like ominous wind chimes in her hand.
Ma glared at her, and Thea knew whatever
she was about to say was a lie. “Please don’t go.”
She turned her back, preparing to leave, when Doris finally spoke. “Thea,” she said. “Be safe.”
Thea kept her back to them. The doorknob blurred because she was furious and crying and sucking it all in, so she didn’t hurl a chair at them both.
Be safe. Good riddance. Be safe. Doris cares. She wants you to be fucking safe. Go. Get out of here, but try not to die or something, because that’d be a real fucking bummer.
She didn’t say anything as she left, and neither did anyone else. Her adrenaline wanted to explode all over the door in a wall-shaking slam, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. They wanted the quiet, so she’d grant them that. She waded towards the door as invitations eddied all around her.
Her ears felt like the ocean, blood rushing through them and blotting out all sound. She wondered, briefly, if Doris heard it too.
Then the door shut, and she remembered.
She remembered everything. The flood, the water. It had already started. She whipped around, trying to open the door, to warn them, but it wouldn’t open. Her fists ripped apart as she pounded, screaming.
Run.
Get out. It’s coming. The monsters are real and they’re coming!
Before Sestra knew what was happening, a sweaty hand placed itself on her chest. A loud voice started screaming. Something—someone—stronger than her pinned her down to her back.
It was Rob, and the loud screaming voice belonged to her.
She’d have screamed forever until she died from dehydration if not for Mijo. His small gesture was what she needed. She’d been dreaming, and now Rob was suffocating her with his knee to snuff out the throes of her panic.
No matter how viciously she thrashed, he pressed his palm against her, refusing to let up.
Dread faded to relief. He was alive. He was making it.
That relief quickly dissolved. “Get the fuck off me, Rob!”
“Then stop screaming.”
“I have stopped screaming,” she screamed.
He lifted himself off her anyway. She was okay. She was still on the boat. Mijo was alive and Rob was annoying the shit out of her already. Maybe it would be okay for once. Just one moment of okayness would be nice.
“What time is it?” she asked. Mijo kept his hand on her chest, and she let him.
Rob had planted himself on the bottom step and studied her. “Dawn.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“I heard you screaming like you was being murdered. That’s all I know.”
She started her next question, then stopped, telling herself that it was for Mijo’s sake.
Is the posy still there?
She couldn’t bring herself to speak it aloud. Instead, lumbering upright, she decided to go see for herself. She didn’t want to stay in the cabin anyway—that dream clung to the small space like a bad smell. She needed fresh air, which is what she said as she stepped over Rob and ascended the cabin stairs.
It was dawn, just like Rob had said. The sky was subdued and slightly bruised. Sestra groped for the railing and tried not to fall, which was when she saw it—millions and millions of lights in the water. They spread into a vast, hazy ring around the boat, circling them in ominous fashion.
Rob appeared next to her. He must have seen her staring. “Bioluminescence,” he said.
“I’ve heard of it before. Some kind of plankton. Too small for us to catch, but it bodes well for fishing.”
“Don’t those only come out at night?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Sestra slowly circled the boat. Rob matched her, step for step. The lights spread out in all directions, surrounding them.
“How long?” she asked.
“Hours.”
“Just sitting there. Following us?”
He spit words at her across folded arms. He was trying really hard not to think about this. “We ain’t exactly moving much.”
She’d never seen anything like it, not just since the flood, but ever. Lights oozed across the surface of the water like neon vomit. It was so bright. It couldn’t come from a single animal.
Unless the fucking thing was just that big.
Rob placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve been watching.”
And she knew he had, but that didn’t make her feel any better.
“What . . .” Her brain was a pile of old spark plugs. Nothing worked. “What about Mijo?”
“You saw him. He’s improving.”
She did see him, and he did seem better, but she couldn’t shake the sense of wrongness in everything. As if she’d died and woken up here. Like it was going to get worse.
Even the water was wrong. Besides the glowing, it moved differently. If the past year or so taught her anything, it was to respect the water—unpredictable and violent and so deceptive. It killed an entire world, for fuck’s sake, but now she felt inclined to whisper as if it was listening. As if it was actively searching for just her.
Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed that Rob had stopped following her until she circled back around to him in her restless pacing. He watched the sea like a man igniting a bomb. It took a moment for her to understand what he was staring at—the lights had disappeared. All of them. Just like that.
Offering nothing, Sestra continued her pacing, leaving Rob alone to ponder whatever he was pondering.
Returning to the stern, she gripped the rails as if they were the only thing keeping her tethered to this world. The dream had her shaken and ill, a twitchy feeling she thought she’d left at the bottom of the sea. She could jump in the water right now just to get away from it—a spine-seizing pain ricocheted inside her body. It was enough to make her scream, and she might have, if it hadn’t been for a cough against her back.
Mijo stood just inches from her, trembling with an illness he still hadn’t kicked.
“Oh fuck. What are you doing, Mijo?”
He glared at her.
“¿Que es tu problema?”
He extended a hand and she took it, their skin sticking together from sweat and God knows what else. “Ahora no,” he said.
“Now no? What is that supposed to mean?” But she wasn’t really asking, and he showed no inclination to explain, instead guiding her back into the depth of the cabin and pointing to the floor. When she didn’t move, he grabbed her by the sides of her arms and pushed her down. The two of them rattled together, combining their independent trembles into a unified, mutant super-tremor.
“You need to rest,” she said. Mijo knelt next to her and again placed a hand on her chest.
“Rest,” he repeated.
There was a confidence in his voice that wasn’t there before, or maybe she never noticed it until then. “You understand English.”
His gaze flicked toward her, then away. “Some.”
Little shit. But still she smiled. It was comforting to think that he was smarter than her. He needed to be, if he was going to survive.
“Did my Spanish ever make sense?”
Now he smiled. “Some.”
“You’re still sick.”
“Mejoraré.”
“What does that mean?”
But he just shrugged. Maybe he didn’t know how to translate it properly, but more likely he was simply finished talking to her. She was rather experienced in that sentiment.
The kid intended to sit over her, but soon his own exhaustion took over, and he laid down at her side, never once removing his hand from her chest. The constant pressure irritated her, and her skin itched at the contact, but she never moved. It was a protective gesture, and frankly, it comforted them both.
Still exhausted, she tried to sleep but couldn’t. Every time she closed her eyes, all she saw was lights. Thousands, millions of neon lights surrounding her,
suffocating her. Her dream lit up new places of her brain and all sorts of shit she’d forgotten about swooped back to the forefront.
Doris was everywhere, lurking in shadows and corners. Sestra swore her sister was even in the cabin with her now, and every now and again she’d see a feminine outline when she blinked, as if that was the only time she could be seen.
Sestra grabbed her cheek out of reflex, careful not to disturb Mijo, who snored next to her. Memories were dangerous, which was why she’d locked them up tight in a part of her that was easy to ignore. But whatever mental dams she’d erected had collapsed, and images and emotions and pasts she’d attempted to keep quiet were now screaming at her.
At the center of them all was the monster game, the one she and Doris had played when they were girls.
You need to be ready. You need to hide.
But there wasn’t anywhere to hide anymore.
She thought Doris was lying. Fuck, she never believed her. No wonder Doris ended up hating her. No one ever believed her.
Lying on the floor, she began to sob. It started so insidiously that she hadn’t realized she’d entered into full-blown panic attack. It felt like being buried alive, and for all that escaped her, nothing else could get in. Not air, not comfort, not sense. Poof. Her façade shattered into wails, long overdue by many, many years.
I never believed her. She told me about the monsters. She told me and told me and told me.
They watch you. They hide and watch. Look for them, always.
Mijo backed away from her, observing from a few feet away, his hand tucked against his body. The light of the cabin door split in two as Rob cut through the doorway. Everything blurred, but she was aware, afraid to miss something.
Rob replaced Mijo at her side, cautious to touch her.
Shaking and shaking and shaking. The boat shook and she shook and when Rob circled his palm around her arm, he shook too.
They’re always watching. Look for them.
“She told me.”
Rob grabbed her other arm.
“She told me about the monsters. She told me and I didn’t believe her. Did she tell you too? She did, didn’t she? She told you about the monsters.”
A Flood of Posies Page 15
