Falling

by Anne Simpson

  Oh my God, cried Tarah. The pot holder.

  He turned around. Tarah made a sudden move and Elvis lunged forward. He got to the stove at the same time she did. He reached for the blazing thing and so did she. He let go. Someone shouted his name. She held it with the tips of her fingers. It was the pot holder. He saw Tarah hold it for a moment before she took a couple of quick steps, as if she were dancing, and then she threw it into the sink. She did it so rapidly that it was hard to follow. She pulled him over to the sink, but there was pain in his hand, and now she was running water in the sink, so it made a hurrying, rushing sound. A fast white sound. Roger shouted. They told him to follow the order of things when he got confused. But there was no order. She put his hand under the tap and the cold water ran over it, and ran over it, and ran over it, making a rushing sound that he felt in his hand.

  Is he all right? Roger was asking. Is he all right?

  Yes, said Tarah. He’s fine. He’s shaking. But you’re fine, aren’t you, Elvis?

  I’m okay, he said, but the pain was still bright. He watched the water, the way it came out of the tap and poured over the place on his hand.

  God, Tarah said, staring out the window at the rain. What a day this is turning out to be.

  She kept his hand under the tap, though Elvis could have held it there by himself. She held him by the wrist, hard, but not too hard.

  She hadn’t said Elvis’s name, but he waited, because he was sure she would say it. She was going to talk about the pot holder. The pot holder had gone from being a clean, blue-and-white-striped thing to being a blackened, soaked thing. He could feel something. It banged around in his chest. It was his heart. Roger had told him that. He kept looking down at the pot holder that lay underwater in the sink. It was a square. His heart was banging around in his chest.

  Tarah left the tap running over Elvis’s hand and turned away from him.

  It’s not a bad burn, she said.

  Maybe butter would help, said Jasmine.

  There’s ointment in the upstairs cupboard, Roger told her. That would be better. And there’s a roll of gauze in the left-hand drawer by the sink, if you need it. Does he need it looked at?

  No, said Tarah. It’ll be all right.

  Jasmine got the ointment. Tarah turned off the tap and then she dried Elvis’s hand with a towel, but Jasmine was the one who put the ointment on it. It was Jasmine who held his wrist now, not Tarah. The ointment felt good.

  Things go wrong, said Tarah. Why do things just go wrong?

  She rubbed the darkened tips of her fingernails against the palm of her other hand. Oh shit – what’s the time?

  It’s nearly six.

  Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. I was supposed to meet Matt – and it’s raining and I’ll get all wet.

  She left.

  Jasmine, said Roger. This is a shock – it’ll take a while for it to sink in.

  It’s not a shock.

  Ingrid said Damian was coming here. She put him on the bus in Truro – he should be here tomorrow.

  Good for him. If he’s coming here, I’ll be gone.

  If he’s coming back it’s because of you, Jasmine. It’s because he wants to see you.

  Why would he do that?

  Because he –

  Don’t say he cares about me.

  He does.

  Right. Well, I don’t want to see him. He screwed up my life. He screwed up all our lives. And then – what do you know? He turns up.

  Roger sighed.

  You’re angry with him, she said. You are. I know you are.

  Yes.

  So why would you welcome him back with open arms?

  Because.

  Some kind of prodigal son shit, she snorted.

  Jasmine, don’t.

  Don’t what? Don’t turn cold and heartless? What kind of a guy does something like that and then expects to be welcomed back with open arms? Tell me. Tell me, because I’d really like to know.

  Roger didn’t say anything.

  I’d like to know, she said.

  I can’t speak for him, he told her.

  No, you can’t.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.

  You didn’t say anything about this to anyone, said Jasmine flatly. I don’t know anything. As far as I’m concerned, he’s still missing. Okay?

  Roger went tapping out of the kitchen. Tap, step, tap, step, tap.

  Now Elvis was alone in the kitchen with Jasmine. It was nice to be alone in the kitchen with her, together and alone, with the sound of the rain on the window. She unrolled a little of the gauze and stood looking at it. She held it up and looked through it at him and he grinned, because he could see her through it.

  She took another look at Elvis’s hand, as if she were figuring something out. There was a line between her eyebrows. She was the way she always was. She was Jasmine. A small white flower. Elvis was close enough to lean his whole body against her, but he didn’t. He held his hand up for her. She asked him if she was hurting him and he said she wasn’t. It didn’t hurt at all.

  I don’t think gauze is a good idea, she said, and rolled it back up. It’s probably better if the air gets at it. Don’t you think?

  He nodded, because she wanted him to do something. He could look at her all he liked and no one would say he was staring.

  Do you want to sit?

  He went over and pulled out a chair with his good hand.

  Oh, she said, sitting down and looking up at him. I don’t know.

  She didn’t say anything for a long time.

  It makes me angry and it makes me sad and – oh, I don’t know, she said. Why would Damian just go off like that? Why would he do it? Wouldn’t it make you angry if somebody went off and left you?

  Yes.

  I don’t know what to think, she said. I just don’t know.

  Don’t cry, said Elvis.

  Oh, Elvis.

  Don’t cry.

  I don’t know what to think. I don’t want to see him. I want to see him and I don’t want to see him. Jesus.

  Elvis shifted his weight from one side to the other. The pain was in his hand, bright and then not bright, bright, and not bright.

  They could hear Roger running water in the upstairs bathroom.

  Anyway, she said. I’m finished with it.

  Roger tapped along the upstairs hallway.

  But sometimes I wonder what it could have been. Damian and I, together.

  You and Damian getting married and having a baby.

  Well, I wasn’t thinking of getting married or anything. I wasn’t thinking of a baby.

  She got up and put the top back on the ointment. Then she took the blackened pot holder out of the sink, squeezed the water out of it, and put it in the garbage.

  She leaned against the counter. You know, sometimes I think I loved him. Did I? And then I think I didn’t love him, she added, in a low voice. But either way it hurts.

  Like my hand. My hand hurts, said Elvis.

  And now there’s nothing to keep me here.

  Are you going away?

  She looked at him. I’ll go to New York City and do all the things I’ve been wanting to do. I could make things out of hair. She looked around the kitchen. Chairs and tables and cupboards – whole rooms made out of hair. She laughed. They like that kind of thing in New York.

  But Damian is coming back. Roger said so. And Damian’s your boyfriend.

  Not any more.

  She took the garbage out of the bin under the sink and put the bag on the floor where she spun it around and made a knot in the top. Elvis watched her do it. She spun the bag around on the floor and made a circle in four squares of the floor.

  I like babies, said Elvis. Bruce at the workshop – he has a baby.

  Jasmine opened the door and tossed the garbage into the can outside.

  I should go home, she said. I shouldn’t hang around, but it’s awfully wet out there.

  She poured the rest of the asparagus soup into a container and
put it in the fridge. Then she rinsed out the pot.

  Bruce and Joannie named their baby Ethan, after an actor, said Elvis. The actor and his wife broke up. Joannie read it in a magazine and she said she was sad for him because he wasn’t with his wife any more. So she called the baby Ethan.

  That’s a nice name for a baby.

  She wiped the counter where some of the soup had spilled. She wiped the counter in circles; her hand went around and around. Then she went over to the stove and made a swipe around each of the burners.

  Ethan has soft skin, said Elvis. I like the top of his head, but you have to be careful about the top of the head because there’s a spot where the skull hasn’t closed.

  Jasmine stopped wiping the stove. She looked at him. You know things about babies, don’t you, Elvis?

  I like them. I told you. Ethan has three first names. Ethan Gregory Matthew Cook. Cook is his last name. It’s Bruce’s and Joannie’s last name. He’s not big. He’s about the size of three cans of soup. Maybe four cans of soup.

  Jasmine smiled. Three cans of soup.

  He’s gaining each week, Joannie says, but he’s still not very big. When she weighs him she stands on the bathroom scales and weighs herself, and then she weighs herself holding Ethan and then she subtracts his weight from her weight. She weighs 139 pounds, and with him she weighs 153 pounds. So Ethan weighs fourteen pounds. We did it together. I helped her. She said her dressing gown probably weighed a ton because she usually weighs less. She usually weighs 125 pounds, but now she weighs 139 pounds, so she’s not going to eat any more of those big chewy cookies with the chocolate chips in them.

  And I helped her bathe Ethan after that, in a plastic tub that she put in the bathtub. She was going to put papaya bath foam in the water, but then she didn’t because it might have given him a rash. It smells nice, that papaya bath foam. She washed his head with a washcloth and did his ears, but he didn’t like it much. Ethan’s got soft ears. They’re small. I like his ears, and his hands. And I like his toes. But I like it best when Joannie wraps him up in a towel and hands him to me, and I hold him the way she taught me to, in the crook of my arm. I like that a lot. He stops crying then, because he likes me. Ethan likes me. I sing to him and he likes it.

  What would you call a baby, Elvis? asked Jasmine. What would you call a baby if it were a girl, say?

  Priscilla, he said. Or Lisa Marie, but I like Priscilla better, because it’s a really nice name.

  But you couldn’t call her that, could you? It’s too long. What would it be for short?

  I’d call her Silly.

  She laughed. Silly. A baby called Silly. She laughed and he laughed too.

  Silly, he said, and she laughed again.

  She put the scissors and gauze in the string drawer.

  The rain’s not coming down as hard, she said, closing the drawer with her hip. It’s not coming down hippos and elephants. She looked out at the rain.

  What would you call it? he asked.

  What?

  A baby.

  If I had one, you mean?

  Yes.

  Sophie, she said. If I had a girl. Sophia means wisdom.

  Sophie. I like that name.

  But if I had a boy I don’t know what I’d call him.

  You could call him Elvis because it’s the name of the greatest star in all of music history.

  The name of a star, she murmured.

  They were together and alone in the kitchen, looking out at the rain. It was pretty, Elvis thought; it made shiny spatters against the glass.

  THE BUS SWUNG INTO GATE FOUR at the Niagara Falls terminal and when it came to a stop people got out of their seats, waiting in the aisle or standing awkwardly with their heads craned to one side because of the luggage racks overhead.

  Damian didn’t get up from his seat on the bus. He’d caught sight of Elvis and Jasmine.

  The sharp thorn of seeing her.

  Jasmine had a big knapsack on her back that almost prevented her from bending to pick up a brown suitcase. It broke open as she picked it up, and a tumble of clothing fell to the ground: a drift of shirts, a robe, dresses, flip-flops, something white and lacy. It could have fallen open hundreds of times, clothes spilling out. Damian thought he could hear, far off, the water from Lake Erie flowing down the Niagara River and parting into the Chippewa and the Tonawanda, passing Grand Island and tiny Buckhorn Island, until it merged into one powerful river. But it was only the sound of another bus drawing away, expelling blue fumes as it went. Jasmine waved away the smell, got her things bundled together and straightened up, speaking quickly to Elvis. An edge of lace hung from the closed suitcase.

  She was leaving, thought Damian, as he went down the steps of the bus behind an elderly woman. He could see whitened skin through her sparse grey curls. When the woman had planted both feet on the ground, in running shoes that were too large, she turned to him, smiling, and her eyes nearly disappeared into a face that was folded and puckered with hundreds of wrinkles.

  There, thank you for bringing my cane, dear.

  Leaving. Someone jostled Damian, so he couldn’t see Jasmine and then he could, just over there, with Elvis. He slung his knapsack over his shoulders and went out of the terminal, where the air was crisp. Deep autumn blue. He went around the corner and stopped, putting down his knapsack and taking out a bottle of water and half a carrot muffin. He drank some water and put the bottle and the remains of the muffin away, hoisting up the knapsack again.

  He hadn’t phoned and now he’d come too late.

  What could he possibly say? When he went inside, the terminal was dark after the sharpness of the light. He walked toward her slowly. He’d surprise her, coming upon her so suddenly; he’d probably frighten her. It would do more harm than good. She was trying to fix the clasp of the suitcase, but he could tell from a distance it couldn’t be fixed.

  Jasmine.

  She couldn’t hear him.

  Jasmine.

  Elvis saw him first. He didn’t say Damian’s name or his birthdate.

  Damian’s mouth was dry, which made it hard to speak.

  Hello, Elvis.

  Jasmine was holding the halves of the suitcase together. He could tell she was bracing herself by the way she held the suitcase, as if it were an animal that might escape.

  So, she said.

  She spun on her heel and walked away, still holding the suitcase together. A man coming out of the terminal held the door open for her and she smiled. His eyes lingered.

  Damian stared at Elvis’s unbuttoned shirt.

  That’s a new shirt, said Damian.

  It’s got snaps instead of buttons. See?

  Elvis unsnapped the shiny blue shirt to his waist, so his pale chest was fully exposed, and then he did it back up again.

  Your boat was on TV, Elvis said. Tarah saw it. They said you were a daredevil.

  I’m not.

  They said there’s people like you every year.

  Damian took out his water bottle and drank greedily from it.

  Jasmine’s going all the way to New York City, said Elvis. She’s getting the bus.

  Why? asked Damian.

  Elvis put his hand up in the air, fist clenched.

  If she was leaving, Damian didn’t know what he could do to change her mind. He couldn’t think clearly, because it was so strange that her life had intersected with his life, precisely, when they could so easily have passed one another.

  Roger said you were coming. Elvis fingered the pearly snaps on his shirt. He said you were coming here.

  Did Jasmine know I was coming?

  Yes.

  She knew I was coming today and so she decided to leave? asked Damian.

  Elvis didn’t answer.

  Damian watched Jasmine inside the terminal, pressing against the ticket counter. She’d put down the suitcase and the knapsack. Her heels had lifted out of her ballet slippers as she leaned forward to speak to the vendor through the opening in the glass.

 
; He wondered if it was the last time he’d see her, ever, if he’d remember only her feet lifting out of her ballet slippers, turning into tawny birds. She reached into her drawstring bag and her silver bangles slid down her wrist. Her hair fell in a dark swoop, dark against the yellow of her sweater, as he knew it would. She was so far from him, behind the door that people opened and closed as they went in and out.

  She came to the door and held it open. Elvis, she called. Maybe you can go home with Damian. You don’t have to wait for me to get the bus.

  But I brought something for you, said Elvis. I’ve got something to give to you.

  She didn’t hear him, and he went inside the terminal after her.

  Damian looked down at an oily puddle on the ground: blue-black streaked with purple and turquoise and gold. It had been a stupid idea, coming back. In the pool of oil, colours bloomed light years away from him, one nebula whirling into the next.

  When he went inside, he couldn’t find them. Then he saw them over by the fixed seats against the wall. Jasmine had some duct tape and she was busy wrapping it around her suitcase with Elvis’s help. Around and around went her hand, unrolling the silver tape. When she finished, she cut the tape neatly with a pair of scissors, and took the tape and scissors back to the ticket vendor. Her skirt swung, showing her slender legs, as she turned away from the counter and went back to sit beside Elvis.

  Damian went to them, putting down his knapsack and sitting where he faced them, one seat over from a woman in a green jacket who was combing her hair.

  Jasmine was looking at her ballet slippers. One of them was scuffed and she bent down and rubbed it.

  She sat back before speaking. We thought you were dead.

  The woman sitting one seat over from Damian took out a small hand mirror and tilted it toward her face, peering into it.

  Damian leaned forward, trying to find words. I’m sorry, he said.

  Her face was closed; she wouldn’t look at him. She crossed her legs; he watched one of the ballet slippers go up and down. One of the slippers clacked to the floor and she put it back on. For a moment he saw the arch of her naked foot and he thought of running his hand along it, of kissing it.