Shot-Blue

by Jesse Ruddock

  Emiel was surprised. As Tomasin turned, she blushed all the way down her arms and held her own hands. ‘Is she something to you? Do you know her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, understanding Stella wanted to keep the girl to herself. She didn’t like sharing, and sharing people was her least favourite.

  ‘She’s new.’

  ‘That’s obvious. She’s kind of awkward, don’t you think?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s obvious? She isn’t awkward.’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Emiel. ‘Just a little.’

  ‘She isn’t awkward. I think she’s unhappy. It’s different.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I got her drunk the other day. She didn’t know what was happening to her.’

  ‘You would do that.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Yes, you are surprised.’

  Emiel didn’t have to have his way with Stella. It was somehow enough that he understood her, that’s what he told himself.

  Tomasin didn’t stay away as long as she should have, returning with two glasses of ice water, though they already had water at their table.

  ‘Tomasin, you give the impression that we don’t know each other. Come here,’ Stella said, making the girl come down to kiss her on both cheeks. ‘That’s better.’

  Stella’s embrace wasn’t easy to understand. It reassured, it threatened.

  Tomasin wanted to put the water glasses down. With her hands full, she couldn’t relax and hold herself how she wanted to for these people.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, forgetting that sorry was something she never said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Standing here like this, with these glasses.’

  ‘Forgiven.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You are forgiven because we are not in the practice of condemning beautiful women, are we, Emiel?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘we don’t do that.’

  ‘We like them no matter what they do. Now go away.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I’m not saying go away forever, but for now, I’m with Emiel. I’m always with one person. Maybe this afternoon we’ll do something.’

  Emiel noticed that Stella was trying hard with this girl. She was holding her head at the most pleasing angles, checking them off a subconscious list with little ticks. She didn’t have to show off her profile. She might have slumped and all would be well. Her neck – so long and thin but ribbed with muscle – was a woman’s neck but strong as any man’s. Stronger than his. He ran his hand up the back of his neck into his hair. Only sculptors and surgeons were intimate with the kinds of detail Stella’s body suggested.

  ‘Go,’ she said.

  And Tomasin was gone. She went to the kitchen and looked around for the sink and couldn’t find it.

  As Marie took the glasses of water from her hands, still full, they tipped and spilled cold water over their wrists.

  ‘You’re sweating,’ said Marie, holding back from wiping the sweat away.

  ‘I am?’ She couldn’t explain. More was possible now. But more wasn’t possible for Marie.

  Marie put the glasses down and went ahead. She brushed her hand over Tomasin’s forehead, then put her hand behind her neck and wicked the sweat. Then she pulled on Tomasin’s shirt at the front to let in some air.

  Tomasin followed Marie’s hand across her face, and all she could do after that was take Marie’s shoulders in her hands, pull her in roughly, and kiss.

  It was a hard kiss. Marie’s lips gave in and her mouth opened. She had not been kissed in her life. She couldn’t tell if she had kissed back or resisted.

  The song they were singing over Tristan’s head felt like one endless refrain, a chorus over and over again. There was no restraint. It was night again and he was waiting for Tomasin. He tried to feel the right feeling, confident or indifferent, but neither came to him. He could feel only the wind between his shirt and skin. The wind was coming from the west on the night shift. It was making the bats eat early. He listened to the snap of their slick wings. He tried but couldn’t see them, only hear their glide and flit as they came close to his face then whipped away, down over the water. There might have been one or one hundred – their black bodies and eyes had the same gloss as the sky, so there was no counting.

  The wind was supposed to curl up for the night in a cove. But not this wind. He could hear it coming over the water and land, and he could see it in waves rising, their full backs reflecting the moon and stars until the lake looked like a crumpled map. His mother always said that a night wind from the west was an omen. He’d believed her once, but not tonight. The wind wasn’t talking to him. If it was, he wasn’t going to talk back. He didn’t want omens.

  ‘We’ll wake to a change,’ his mother would say. ‘That’s what a west wind means by rising as we’re falling asleep.’

  ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Nothing different.’

  When he woke the next day, nothing seemed changed. ‘It didn’t happen,’ he said, leaning to tell her. ‘Something happened but it was for me,’ she answered, laughing gently. It seemed to hurt her to laugh, even gently, like laughter was coughing. She rose a bit and gathered him in her arms, and she held him so tightly that he believed her, and would believe anything if she would let him go.

  Hungry and sick from chain-smoking, Tristan couldn’t decide if it was a good idea to keep waiting. He knew how to be alone. He was good at it, he would tell her. It was something Tomasin would never be good at, and he wanted to tell her that too.

  ‘When you get lost, don’t trust your instincts.’ He could do that. ‘Stay where you are, don’t go.’ He couldn’t tell if his mother had told him this, or if he was making it up. ‘Wait for me,’ she’d told him, or had she? ‘I’ll meet you there.’ And then what? He looked to where he used to sit, when the island was his. Tight in his hand, he felt a stone he’d picked up without noticing. One stone at a time, he was throwing the island into the lake, and it was no consolation but it was true he was doing it. The island was disappearing, imperceptibly to everyone but him. It was hard to say what he missed about Tomasin. He missed the way she talked when she didn’t have anything to say. He missed the way she felt so much when there was no reason to tell for her feelings. Every time she left him, maybe that was what he missed. When she walked away after a long time together, it was like the end of sunset, when less impressive, more suggestive colours take hold.

  The lake was locked in peace under a low blue sky. As calm as it could be, she could see to the bottom twenty feet. The weather never matched her feelings. Marie could feel the clutch of her heart, clutch and release, with the letting-go like something falling off a table, calling only for another catch, another clutch. Her heart grabbed at the blood. She thanked god for the small bird stirring in the shore bushes below. It picked up and took off. The first snap of its wings and then she saw it, maybe a thrush. Maybe it was a thrush, but Marie didn’t know the names of birds. She didn’t want to know.

  When a small bird took wing over the water like this, it was often to its death. The talons of the falcons that caught them were so sharp they couldn’t touch, only cut. Marie searched the sky with a feeling of purpose – as if she could do something against the onslaught – and when no great bird screamed out of pines, she felt as though she had done it. Her will was a shield. The thrush was saved.

  Marie had no grand illusion, but one small one: if something didn’t have anything to do with anyone else, she could interfere. She could help a thrush because no one would know. And if they did know, they wouldn’t care. As for the talons, the heat of them, the melt, they could sink in somewhere else. Into the next thrush – this one was hers.

  Marie stood at the rail of the verandah doing nothing.

  ‘Why don’t you say something to me?’ Stella asked her. She was alone.

  ‘I’m here to bring you sugar,’ Marie ans
wered. The sugar was on the rail in a small cup.

  ‘What are you waiting for? Bring it here. And while you’re doing it, you can tell me something.’

  ‘It’s not eight o’clock yet,’ answered Marie. ‘Nothing’s happened.’

  ‘Where’s the other girl, your friend?’

  ‘She comes late.’

  ‘Of course she does,’ said Stella. The most restless girls were also the most lazy. She loved that.

  ‘And I don’t have a friend,’ Marie added. ‘Tomasin isn’t my friend.’ She said this, not for Stella, but to herself to be clear.

  ‘Not a friend in the world?’

  Marie lost sight of her little bird and was looking for it. ‘If I don’t have a friend here, then I don’t have a friend anywhere,’ she said.

  ‘You might.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Not fair?’

  ‘If I have a friend somewhere else, it doesn’t matter. I live here.’

  ‘The shore over there keeps going.’

  ‘The mainland?’

  ‘Yeah, the meat. This is the scrapings.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know what this is, or isn’t.’

  ‘Have you had your eyes looked at?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That explains it. You can see me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you don’t have vision.’

  Marie couldn’t find her thrush.

  Stella wanted to brush her teeth. This girl made her feel like she needed to brush her teeth. ‘May I have the sugar now?’

  Marie thought about flipping it onto the porch. But that was something Tomasin would do.

  ‘I know a lamb when I see one. If I’m wrong and you’re a wolf, come back to me. Think about it. I don’t really have to ask. If you’re a wolf, you’ll come,’ said Stella. ‘That would be so exciting if you were. It would make me wrong,’ she said. Stella loved to summon and banish.

  Marie went away thinking she wasn’t a wolf or lamb. She could only wish to be something that easy to name.

  It was the kind of morning they couldn’t tell if it was mist rising over the water or clouds come down. Anuta and Marie drove their small steel boat slowly. The fog pressed against their faces like a beauty mask.

  ‘We’ll start up the generator,’ said Anuta.

  On a morning of fog or storm, they would start the generator to light the paths. This early, Anuta and Marie were sometimes happy to be together. They weren’t awake enough to feel the need to define themselves. They couldn’t think that abstractly, only feel the laced air. Their arms felt light – or Marie’s did – buoyed by the fog and silence, and she assumed her mother’s did too. Then the boat scraped against the dock, creaking like the opening of a huge door. Their footsteps knocked. When she was happy like this, Marie always wondered what sorrows of misunderstanding awaited her in the next hours, and could she bear them.

  They found something wrapped in a dishcloth at the kitchen door. It was on the top step, pinned down on one corner by an empty jar.

  ‘What is this?’ said Anuta, stepping over it. She didn’t want to know what it was. Something between the children.

  Marie held back and, once her mother was inside, bent down and lifted the jar and picked up the cloth. It weighed less than she thought. A sugar cube or two, with most of the weight in the rag. She squeezed it and tried to guess. There was no note attached.

  Marie knew it was for Tomasin. She would never have imagined that it was put together and left for her.

  Tomasin was late.

  ‘Your hair isn’t tidy,’ Anuta told her.

  ‘I didn’t have the strength to brush it, forgive me.’ She liked asking Anuta for forgiveness to annoy her.

  ‘Look at Marie’s hair.’

  ‘What about it?’ She had no interest in Marie’s hair.

  The girls were appalled at being compared, even just their hair. And besides, it was crude: Marie’s hair was dark and she wore it tied back low against her neck, while Tomasin’s was flush-blond, almost white, and broke around her head like a beach wave.

  ‘You could tie your hair back,’ said Anuta, who hadn’t thought it necessary before today, and wasn’t sure why she was saying it now.

  ‘Someone left something for you,’ Marie interrupted them. ‘I have it.’ She went to her coat behind the door and pulled out the rolled cloth. It was so light she worried there might be nothing inside. ‘It was at the door this morning.’

  ‘How do you know it’s for me?’

  ‘It’s not for us,’ said Marie.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Are you going to open it?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘Marie, don’t be naive. When somebody gives you something and they don’t write your name on it, and they don’t write their name down, you have to wait and think.’ Tomasin squeezed the cloth at one end, then the other, and squeezed it in the middle. ‘There’s something in here,’ she said. ‘I can feel it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s mine,’ said Tomasin. Sharing something with Marie would diminish it.

  Marie should have pretended not to care what was in the cloth, but she had never been good at pretending. ‘I know it’s yours,’ she said. ‘I just gave it to you.’ Maybe she would start guessing when to pretend not to care. She might do it now and then at random. She didn’t need to get it right. She needed to know what it felt like.

  Confident that Marie wasn’t watching anymore, Tomasin unwound the cloth. Out of the last turn fell a small warm thing. A ruby-throated hummingbird, sleek and dead. She screamed.

  It’s perfect, thought Marie, looking at its round chest that seemed mighty, no thicker than a thumb. The heart in there somewhere was hard to imagine. The size of a blueberry. You could pop it between your fingers. The feet were curled like a spider’s legs when it fakes dead. She wanted to touch the feet to see if they were hard or could still flex.

  ‘This is disgusting,’ said Tomasin, dropping it and stepping back to the counter.

  Marie reached out and tried to catch it on the way down. But she wasn’t famous for her coordination. What little she had seemed to deteriorate when she felt desperate, as now. Mid-air, with unwieldy stiff fingers, she brushed the bird, causing a single wing to spread open and stick.

  ‘Oh, sick!’ cried Tomasin.

  The bird hit the floor with the softest sound, more shocking than any crush or thud, as if the floor wasn’t wood but grass.

  Without hesitation, with her thumb and index finger, Marie pinched behind the tail and picked it up. She wanted to hold the bird against her breast, but it was much too small to embrace. She tried to close the open wing, but couldn’t; to close it, it would have to break.

  ‘Marie, please,’ said Anuta. ‘Put it away and wash your hands. Both of you, wash your hands.’

  Marie wrapped the hummingbird back in the cloth and put it in her coat pocket. She would return it to Tristan and try to explain.

  They all knew it was Tristan. Who else could catch a hummingbird?

  Tomasin didn’t understand. Did he mean to please her? Make her suffer? He knew that she loved watching the hummingbirds feed at the plants with the loose pockets, the foxglove on the front of the island. Would a fox paw slip into a foxglove? Yes it would, she had said, and he had agreed on it.

  ‘There are things, you know, that people don’t know about Tristan,’ Tomasin said to Marie, whispering so Anuta wouldn’t hear her. ‘People deserve to know some things about some people.’

  ‘There are things people don’t know about you,’ answered Marie, but then she wished she hadn’t said it, and so to appease she added, ‘There are things people don’t know about me.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Things, I guess.’

  ‘When people know about me, I won’t be exposed, Marie. But revealed. There’s a difference. Does he think I want a dead bird?’

  ‘He must not think that.’

 
; ‘Then why wrap it up? Why make me unwrap it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marie, ‘maybe he doesn’t think of it as a dead bird but something else.’

  ‘No more of this,’ said Anuta, coming between them. Turning to Marie, she ordered, ‘No more talking to this creature.’

  Tomasin leaned to whisper, not in Marie’s ear but against the side of her mouth, ‘What are you if I’m a creature?’

  Marie didn’t think she was anything.

  ‘I’m getting on the train one day to come here, not to work. I’m going to sleep in late, drink your coffee, and eat your fresh bread. I’ll put cinnamon and sugar on the bread after butter, then I’ll eat only half, sit out there, read, and do nothing. You’ll have to throw the other half away.’

  ‘You don’t read.’

  ‘I will,’ said Tomasin.

  ‘I’ve never seen you reading.’

  ‘So you’re always watching me? Do you like to watch me?’

  ‘You don’t drink coffee either.’

  ‘I’m talking about the future.’

  Marie never talked about the future.

  ‘You’re talking again,’ said Anuta.

  ‘We are,’ answered Tomasin in new confidence. Her confidence had a habit of suddenly renewing for no reason.

  ‘Do you know the word precocious?’ asked Anuta.

  ‘I don’t want to know your words.’

  ‘You don’t know it?’

  ‘If I do, I don’t care.’

  ‘It’s one thing to be precocious when you’re brilliant. It’s another if there’s no brilliance in you, no flicker. Then you suck up the light.’

  On the boat ride home, Marie held the cloth in her hand, buried in her pocket. Once home, she went to her room and put it in her sock and underwear drawer. She would, for the rest of her life, associate the smell of fresh laundry with a little bit of death; every shirt pulled over her head would make her hold her breath and think it was alarming to be alive another morning. Some of her shirts slipped on, then it was quick, the alarm. Other shirts had to be pulled hard and at angles. Her head would get stuck. Sometimes there was a struggle in which she panicked and pulled the shirt back off because she loved everything and did not want to die.