Breathing Underwater

by Sarah Allen

  “Ellie?”

  We all turn together. A tall woman with dark but graying hair, tan skin, and gold hoop earrings stares at us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen almost-gray hair look so beautiful before. She’s standing next to a small green car with the gas nozzle in her hand. I’m glad she hasn’t started filling up yet because from the look on her face she wouldn’t have noticed if the nozzle started spurting out fire, let alone gasoline.

  Ellie’s usually vibrant face goes white, her mouth open like she’s been punched in the gut. The look is so unusual for her, so unlike her happy exuberance, that I would be frightened except for the look on her husband’s face—worried, but unafraid and full of tenderness. He puts an arm around her shoulders and strokes her arm.

  I look down. I feel awkward, like I’ve walked in on someone naked. I don’t want to be here, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself by bolting to the RV either. I stand very still.

  “Sofia Hernandez,” Ellie says.

  We all stand for a moment, staring silently, a triangle of pulling and pushing forces, like magnets. I look back and forth between this Ms. Hernandez and Ellie. The bell over the door dings. Still nobody moves. I catch a whiff of cigarette smoke.

  Ms. Hernandez takes a step forward. Eddie puts a hand on his wife’s back and sort of tilts her forward, and then the ice shatters and the two women fling their arms around each other, talking over each other, looking at each other, grinning, explaining, holding each other by the shoulders. The color in Ellie’s cheeks is back.

  “How … I can’t believe this … how have you been?” asks Ellie. “What are you doing in the middle of Texas?”

  “So, so good,” says Ms. Hernandez. “I’m still working at the clinic, of course. I’m just on my way home from a conference in San Antonio. And you? How have you been? My, my, it’s been so long. I haven’t seen you since you were how old?”

  “I wasn’t quite eighteen the last time we saw each other. I can’t believe you recognized me.”

  “Of course I recognized you.”

  “I’m Ellie Longmire now,” she says. She turns and stretches an arm out toward Eddie, who comes to her. He puts an arm around her waist. “This is my husband, Eddie.”

  Ms. Hernandez shakes his hand. “So, so good to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Eddie says. “I’ve heard amazing things.”

  “It is so, so nice to see a happy story for one of my girls.” Ms. Hernandez claps her fingers together like a prayer.

  Ellie leans her head into her husband’s shoulder, beaming. A big rig honks at us to get out of the way and we move over to the sidewalk. I move over with them and Ellie sees me.

  “Oh!” she says. “And this is Olivia, basically our niece. We’re driving to San Diego. There’s Ruth too, in the RV.”

  “Wonderful!” says Ms. Hernandez.

  “Olivia, this is Sofia Hernandez. She … she’s a therapist. Mine when I was a teen. For a few years, actually.”

  “Dr. Hernandez?” I say, holding out my hand.

  “I guess so.” She smiles at me and shakes my hand hard. “Lovely to meet you, Olivia.”

  Ellie looks at her watch, then at her husband, then at Dr. Hernandez. “It’s only about four thirty, but do you … I think we have time for an early dinner. Would you want to grab some food and catch up for a bit?”

  “That would be great!” says Dr. Hernandez. “I’ve got a few hours.”

  Eddie steps quickly up into the RV to tell Ruth, and Ellie and Dr. Hernandez keep chatting like best friends. Once I’m alone with Ellie I’ll talk to her about Ruth, about what I’m noticing. Eddie steps back out of the RV again and puts a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Ruth’s going to stay and nap,” he says. “Not feeling too well.”

  Ellie’s brow wrinkles. “One minute, let me talk to her.”

  She dashes up into the RV.

  “It really is great to finally meet you,” Eddie says.

  “Glad Ellie found you,” says Dr. Hernandez. “She’s something special.”

  “She really is,” Eddie says.

  I watch the RV and wonder what Ellie is saying, and what Ruth is saying. When Ellie steps back outside, her forehead’s still wrinkled with concern.

  “She’s … she’s pretty set on staying,” Ellie says. She points to a barbecue place just a little way down the street. “I told her we’d just go to that restaurant right there, and to text us if she needs anything. Does that sound okay?”

  “Good plan,” Eddie says. “And we’ll bring back some food.”

  Ellie smiles softly at Dr. Hernandez. “I’d have loved for you to meet Ruth and talk to her. She’s such a remarkable girl. I think you’d really like her.”

  “Ah,” says Dr. Hernandez. “Another time, maybe.”

  “Maybe you can give me some advice,” Ellie says.

  In my head I vividly picture the easy afternoon this could be, Ruth smiling as she steps out of the RV to join us, all of us chatting and getting to know Ellie’s friend, worry-free as we joke and lick barbecue sauce from our fingers. The picture is so clear in my mind that it seems unfair and unjust that the image can’t develop into reality like film in a darkroom.

  Eddie puts an arm around me. “At least you’ll get to know one of the remarkables,” he says.

  “A true pleasure,” says Dr. Hernandez.

  Dr. Hernandez goes to move her car, and Ellie leans in toward Eddie.

  “I’ll keep talking to her,” Ellie says, looking back toward the RV. “And I’ve been texting her mom too. If it goes any more downhill, I think we should stop at a doctor’s office somewhere.”

  Eddie nods.

  For a moment I wonder about asking the doctor we have right here already, but I guess it doesn’t really work like that. Plus I’m still not sure if what Ruth needs right now is a Dr. Hernandez kind of doctor or something else. It’s good to remind myself that Ellie and Eddie are here too, and can handle and take care of things. That it’s not all on me.

  And hey, Ellie running into someone so impor-tant from her past is pretty magical if you ask me. Maybe that’s a good sign of what’s to come.

  We walk to the barbecue place a little ways from the gas station. It’s so hot outside that by the time we make it to the restaurant, I feel sweat dripping down the front of my chest and pooling behind my knees. The heat is almost a tangible thing, its own entity. The road waves and ripples like the whites of a frying egg. All of us are sweaty and red-faced when we open the restaurant door, but thankfully we’re greeted by a wash of chilled air. I can breathe again.

  That’s summer in Texas, I guess.

  “I doubt the chefs here even need an oven,” I say. “They can just step outside.”

  Everybody laughs. “You’re a funny one,” Dr. Hernandez says.

  “Oh, believe me,” Eddie says. “She keeps us all smiling.”

  It’s amazing how much lighter those words make me feel and how quickly it lifts me up, making people laugh. So easy and natural for me to fall into normal cheery-Olivia mode. I think about Ruth not wanting to come with us to this restaurant and wish Eddie’s words were true every time.

  Most of the tables are empty, and there’s one old man in a cowboy hat at the bar. A girl about Ruth’s age, with earrings all up one ear, leads us to a booth at the front window. I watch cars driving by, people jogging and walking dogs, though I don’t know how they’re managing that in this heat, and listen to Ellie and Dr. Hernandez talk.

  So Dr. Hernandez was Ellie’s therapist when she was young. That means Ellie went to the same kind of doctor as Ruth. I know it’s different for everybody, but I wonder if maybe that’s why Ellie’s good at talking to Ruth, reaching her without agitating her or being grating.

  Our food is served and we dig in. It’s nice to have a cool drink. Maybe I don’t know exactly what happened with them in the past, but I do know that Dr. Hernandez has the tiniest hint of an accent and is fun to listen to. Her eyes get wide when she speaks and her eyebrows ra
ise like she’s telling a vitally important story, even if it’s only about the time she got asked out by her AAA mechanic.

  Ellie turns to Eddie. “Will you text Ruth and make sure she’s okay?”

  “Already did,” Eddie says, holding his phone out. “She says she’s fine, just resting.”

  I’ve already texted Ruth too. Texted her a picture of the dancing cartoon hamburger on the menu. She didn’t respond to my text.

  “How…” Ellie starts. “How do you deal with it every day? That’s got to be impossibly hard.”

  There’s a sudden tension in the air between us, like guitar strings pulled tight. We’re all still, even Dr. Hernandez. Only Eddie seems to know what to do, and he slides in close to his wife and puts an arm around her waist.

  “Yes,” Dr. Hernandez says. “It is hard, especially when things don’t end as well as this.”

  The guitar strings between us vibrate, like they’re playing a song. Ellie nods several times, her lips pressed tight. Her eyes glisten. Eddie strokes her hair.

  “I remember one time,” Ellie says, “you told me nobody else could control or be in charge of my happiness or unhappiness. Whether they were right or wrong, fair or unfair. I still have something like that written up on a card on our bathroom mirror.”

  “She does,” Eddie says.

  I don’t really hear what they say next because those words spin around my mind like a hamster running on a wheel. Nobody can be in charge of someone else’s happiness. But what does that really mean? If that was true, was it pointless to try to help? What did that mean about hunting for treasure? And Ellie had just said that it was Dr. Hernandez who’d helped her, hadn’t she? So was that Dr. Hernandez charging up Ellie’s happiness or not?

  Dr. Hernandez reaches across the table and puts a hand on Ellie’s wrist. “It’s good to see you again, Ellie.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  There is something primordial about driving at night. I can lie down in my loft and press my head against the front window so I have the most complete view of the night sky. The sun has been set for a little while now, and we’ll be pulling into Fort Stockton a couple of hours later than planned. But that’s okay.

  It’s worth it to have a while for driving under the stars. And out here in this middle-of-nowhere stretch of Texas, the stars are thick enough to be a quilt.

  It’s different, too, driving versus being still. I’ve spent basically every night on this trip looking out this window at night while everyone sleeps, even in the bigger cities where the stars aren’t as visible. But this time, with the world passing by beneath me, I feel more a part of the road and the stars and the night.

  The green has largely gone away, replaced by more rocky cliffs and little tumbleweed shrubs. The treelessness is fascinating to me. It’s like the universe put all the trees in one place and all the stars in another.

  There was a tiny used bookstore by the barbecue place and Dr. Hernandez bought me a book about “Black Sam” Bellamy. I picked out a book for Ruth too. A John Lennon biography. When we got back from dinner, I gave Ruth the book and Ellie gave her the take-home order of barbecue shrimp, and we both kept an eye on her until she’d eaten a bite or two. She even read a bit of the book.

  Ruth’s sleeping now. I feel better when Ruth is sleeping. Sleeping is restorative. Sleeping is a good sign.

  Even though we’re behind schedule, and I’m trying as hard as I can to be patient about getting to the pirate ships and our treasure box, a dinner break and a free book seem like pretty good excuses for a delay.

  I hear shuffling and whispering below me. The sound of a map being folded. I turn over and Ellie’s head pops up to the ledge of my loft.

  “Can I join you?” she asks. “I better check out the loft at some point, right?”

  We both grin, and I scoot myself over to one side to make room. Soon we’re both lying on our backs, looking through the window at the stars while the road continues to pass below us.

  “Now this is cool,” she says.

  “Right?” I smooth my blanket and it’s like my loft is a house I’m proudly displaying.

  We’re silent for a while. My eyelids are finally starting to droop. The light from passing cars washes across the roof like a tide.

  “It was cool to meet your friend today,” I say. “If you get a chance, tell her thanks again for the book.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Ellie says. I glance over at her. Her eyes are shut. There’s something in her voice, a quiver.

  “So she was your therapist?” I say. Then I quickly add, “Not that you have to talk to me about it, if you don’t want.”

  Ellie smiles and tucks a gray strand of hair behind her ears. She doesn’t speak for a few seconds, but then says, “She’s a child psychologist. A therapist with social services. She helps kids when hard things happen to them. Some of those kids are dealing with horrific—I don’t know how she does it.”

  I nod, even though her eyes are closed. I don’t want to say anything and risk breaking the flow, risk reminding her who she’s actually talking to. How young I am.

  She helps kids when hard things happen to them. How old did Ellie say she’d been the last time they spoke? I’ve known Ellie my whole life, so sometimes I forget I don’t know that much about her childhood, about her life before she married into our family.

  “For me it wasn’t … nobody hurt me physically, and I’m grateful for that.” She opens her eyes now and looks at me, her face half-hidden in shadow. “I’ve told you before, I grew up mostly with my grandma, right? I was just a bit older than you when my … my mom left me there. I … I didn’t handle it well. I kept having these … these thoughts about just disappearing. Disappearing from myself. My poor grandma was too old to be raising a teenager anyway, but she knew enough to find me someone to talk to. I really needed help when I went and saw Sofia.”

  The radio, barely audible, changes from a toothpaste commercial to a classical piano piece. We lie there, letting ourselves be enveloped in the notes and the whoosh of passing cars. I feel my insides shattering a little, imagining what Ellie went through. Again that sense of unfairness rises from my stomach. Nobody should have to go through anything like that, especially not someone like Ellie, someone as warm as the baked foods she gets excited about, who always seems to know what the people around her need, even if it’s just a road trip game or a bag of chips. More than anyone, Ellie deserves that rainbow-cotton-candy world Ruth is always teasing me about. Nobody hurting her. I scoot closer to her and she puts her arm around me and I lay my head on her shoulder.

  This is when words are not enough. You are very brave, I want to say. I am so sorry. I don’t know how anyone could hurt you. But the words don’t come close to what I really mean.

  “I … wasn’t sleeping for a long time. I felt … I wasn’t sleeping, but I just felt so tired of everything. I just wanted everything to be quiet and leave me alone, and at the same time, I didn’t want to feel alone. But it wasn’t even as … as clear as that. I wanted to be sad, but I couldn’t. I wanted to be angry, but I was just too … too worn down. Sometimes I would start getting ready and would just look in the mirror and think, what’s the point. Sofia told me that my brain was living in that space between a dull reality and this … glittering, shining perfection I expected life to be. Felt betrayed when it wasn’t the bright, golden light I had envisioned. It took me years to figure that one out. How to spot the little tiny gems and jewels of life again. Sofia was an important part of that. She’s why Darcy’s middle name is Sofia.”

  Bright, golden light.

  Something glittering, shining.

  The thing that’s been lurking under the waves of my mind all day breaks to the surface: those first moments pulling into our new home years ago. How for me it was the treasure at the end of an adventure: Something Gold. I think Ruth thought it would be gold for her too. For the first several days we explored together, excited. We unpacked our things. We got into the routine of a new place, a
new city. Now I’m looking back and remembering how the initial enthusiasm faded from the way Ruth talked, the way she walked around the house, the way we played. She started wandering through the house quietly, searching, like she was looking for something that wasn’t there, like she’d woken up somewhere she didn’t expect to be. And how maybe I’d been too caught up to really notice.

  And then later, those memories from before Ruth got a therapist and medicine to help her. Those days and weeks and months beforehand, watching Ruth stumble around the house while the shell around her got thicker and thicker like a crustacean, and how maybe she was thinking about disappearing too. Her constant tiredness. How the music she listened to in her room got quieter and quieter until it stopped. Was she sad? I would ask. She would say no. And that was true; it wasn’t really sadness. It was an absence. No real feeling, not like contentment, but like a vacuum. No music, no pictures. No pirate stories or anything remotely like treasure. Nothing, nothing, nothing; no Somethings at all.

  That is the real Pit.

  And without really wanting too, I’m thinking about our kitchen in Tennessee, and coming down the stairs toward it, and that bottom step that creaks. The spaghetti pot unwashed from the night before, that night in those worst weeks. Coming down past my bedtime, my feet in seahorse socks, for some late-night orange juice, and hearing Mom and Dad at the table. Hearing squeaking chairs on tiles. Hearing Ruth’s name and the urgent pressure in my mom’s lowered voice. Hearing my mom say, I am so scared. What if things get worse? What if they get worse and worse until …

  Her voice trailed off. That worse and worse until lingered in the air and in my ears with no answer to follow. I wanted my mom to say something else, to finish her words with something happy. I wanted my dad to answer that everything was going to be all right, that there was a solution out there somewhere. But neither of them spoke, and that worse and worse until echoed in my skull. Worse and worse until what? I never wanted to find out.

  That night I walked quietly back upstairs, skipping the squeaking step and skipping the orange juice.