by Eden Butler
Isaac loved Riley. I knew that. Felt it deep inside me. He’d loved her when she cried in the library with her lips busted and bloody. He loved each tear as they came and it was only her mouth, her touch that had kept him from finding that Trent asshole and ripping him to pieces. It was only Riley’s sweet words and sweeter taste that kept him from risking his own neck to be with her. No matter that Lenny warned him. No matter that the world was set against them. Isaac had loved Riley with a fierceness that made him made it impossible to do more but keep on loving her. That scared him, that made him brave.
But she had given him a son. He’d had a link to the world, a name and place and moment that would keep her with him always. Riley had given him a reason to get out of bed each morning. She’d given him a family.
I sat up straighter, elbows on my legs, hands on the back of my head, trying to steady my heartbeat. It raged quick and desperate. The dream was dimming, but the emotions, the feelings Isaac felt, swam inside me like she had been mine, like I had lost her.
And when I remembered what Isaac felt, how it seemed to him that his heart had come right out of his chest, like someone had taken a light that lit his entire world and snuffed it out, I did something I hadn’t done since my mother’s funeral. I sat in the middle of my bed and cried.
Riley had not been mine. That boy, the baby Winston, had not been mine, but I wept like they were. I cried for the loss. For the memory. For the man I’d never known and the life that had been stolen from him.
“Damn.”
I fell onto my mattress, dragging the back of my hand over my face, pushing back the ache in my chest until it became duller. Until it was only a small thud that smarted like a bruise and not the gash that pulsed and bled Isaac dry.
Outside I heard voices, many of them, workers likely, a few crews had tackling potholes down on the street below. It was the noise—their voices, the thump from their radios and the squeak from their tires that I tried to focus on; anything to move the ache of my dream from feeling so real.
I wondered, idly, as I lay there, if I’d called out in my dreams. Had I spoken Riley’s name? Had I begged her not to die? Had Willow heard me? Despite myself, despite the argument we’d had two nights ago, I still couldn’t shake her from my thoughts. I couldn’t ignore the connection she seemed to hold between all the strange things that had been happening in my life. Had I had been wrong about everything? No one could make me dream impossible dreams. Not unless their juju was real and by the sweat drying on my forehead and the slowing pace of my heart, I began to believe that Willow’s was.
“You’re doing this,” I’d told her, face tight as I’d yelled at her. “You planned all of this, didn’t you?”
“How the hell could I do that?” She’d waved the picture at me, and I caught a glimpse of Sookie’s smile. “I’m not supernatural, Nash. I can’t make up pictures from ninety damn years ago and I can’t make it that you have the same dreams as I do!”
But it wasn’t logical, not any of it. It wasn’t possible. And I knew it, even before I’d accused her, I knew she hadn’t done anything. It was deep down, in the center of my brain, that reality. It told me Willow had only reacted. It told me she was feeling everything I had, reliving the same lives I had.
But how?
The sheets rustled as I turned, arms stretched out over my head and I stared off at nothing, reliving the dream of that day at the hospital. Most likely the worst day of Isaac’s life. He’d watched her blink twice, her gaze on him, then shifting to their son. There was softness in her expression, the peace that comes when you know you don’t have to fight anymore. It relaxed the tension in her facial muscles and made the whites of her eyes seem brighter. Isaac had watched Riley do all that while she kept her attention on their boy. He’d placed the baby next to her and she closed her eyes, her lips moving like a twitch, her face leaning toward the soft, sweet scent of newborn skin, like she knew, even as she faded, that her baby was there, sleeping next to her.
“My sweet’,” he’d whispered so low that only she’d hear him. “My sweet girl. I love you, Riley. Always will.” Then Isaac kissed her. Her skin was warm, but pale and one final rattle of breath went out of her. “What do I do now?” he asked, but she was gone, soft like a first kiss, bitter like a rainstorm. She left him and he could not keep hold of her. He could not stop her from going.
My eyelids felt heavy as the flood of pain came on me again. It was worse, this feeling, than anything. Worse than watching Willow walk out of my room. Worse than hearing the click of my front door when she left. Worse that seeing her standing too close to another man in the lobby, no matter that she swore he’d only hired her to make two dozen cupcakes for his niece’s birthday. Worse than the jasmine of her scent fading more and more each day I kept away from her. Worse than the look on her face when I took off, leaving her on the roof deck, a catch in her voice as she called after me.
I banged my knee against the bedside table when I sat up, but I didn’t feel it. Couldn’t. My mind was full of Isaac and Riley, of that baby. Of Sookie and Dempsey and the horror of it all. Of Willow. Of how heavy and thick it all felt as every one of those faces crowded inside my head.
Willow had tears on her cheeks when I walked away from her two nights ago.
I hadn’t believed her when she swore she’d done nothing to me. No, I didn't know if I believed her or not, but accepting what she said would have meant everything I have believed before had been a lie.
I left her alone out there. Because I was afraid and confused, I’d just left her…
Isaac would have given anything to keep Riley with him. Sookie would have done anything not to let the smoke and fire take her, to have her chance with Dempsey.
But I wasn’t willing to stop and even consider that I might have been wrong, to keep Willow with me? To be with her and never want her to go away from me? What in hell was wrong with me?
The sheets fell to the floor when I left the bed and I started then to rehearse what I’d say to her. “I’m sorry” didn’t seem good enough, neither did “I can explain…” because nothing would make up for the way I’d left her.
“Please forgive me” sounded a little better, but even as I spoke it aloud, tugging on my shirt and slipping my feet into my Chucks, it still seemed off, not nearly good enough. I’d crawl on my knees if that’s what she needed. I might not understand what was happening, and despite everything, I still couldn’t wrap my head around past lives or anything like that. But, I wanted her. No, it was more than that—I needed her. Apologies might not be enough, I thought, jogging out of my apartment and into the stairwell, taking steps two at a time as I went, but they were all I had. I’d thrown away everything else.
How long had I spent acting like she was an irritation? Months? Like I was too fucking important to waste my precious time on her, and then, when I’d finally gotten my head out of my ass, I ended up walking away.
I was a fuck up, something solidified and certain, I decided, as I got to her floor, skirting around two guys in gray overalls as they carried boxes toward the elevator. An epic fuck up who would die alone, apparently.
The door to Willow’s apartment was open and I slipped inside, bypassing another coverall-wearing guy with no neck as he held a lamp in each hand. A knot formed in my chest and the further I came into that apartment, the larger that knot got.
The crowded space that normally looked like a Technicolor wet dream was sparse. I only just noticed with all the furniture missing and windows, free of curtains or tapestries, that the walls were a soft gray and the floor, usually covered by blankets and rugs, was dark oak. Without Willow to decorate this small chunk of the world, it seemed lifeless and boring. I could relate.
“Hey!” I called, stopping the mover before he could punch the down button. He paused, moving his chin toward me in answer to my call. Standing in front of him, I’d guess he might have been 5’6 but no taller than that and had small, glassy blue eyes. “The woman who booked this gig,
where is she?”
He shrugged, ignoring me as he elbowed the button on the wall. “I just move the boxes and furniture, man.” The bell chimed and he walked inside the elevator, adjusting the lamps. “There was a car outside next to our van, but it’s full. Pretty sure she’s gone already.”
Willow
My great grandfather liked to talk about the old days, especially when he’d smoked too many stogies and had too much bourbon.
“It’s not the same, Buttercup. It’s not how it used to be.” Normally “it” had something to do with the government and the mess politicians made of it. But my grandfather wasn’t a typical grumpy old man. He didn’t bemoan the world because he missed the way things were in the past. He complained because we still, in his view, hadn’t gotten our shit together.
“Two hundred years and only one black president and still, after all this time, no women. If I had my way…”
He’d go on and on, hours sometimes and then, when he had gone quiet, when the fire had gone out of him, he’d sometimes talk about the things that normally were shut up inside of him My great grandfather was the last. After him there’d be no grandparents on my father’s side of the family. He knew it. Often, he’d apologize about it.
“No man should have to bury his children or his bride, Buttercup and I’ve done that more than once.”
Those nights he’d gotten quiet and the anger and loneliness inside him had rushed through him like a windstorm. Those were the nights he’d played Coltrane loud and told me about his childhood. “No one should live the way they made me. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy and, cher, I’ve had plenty.” That also came out when he drank a lot—the hidden French words he never used when sober. The childhood back in New Orleans had done something to him, but it had never left him completely. That’s the way of things, I guessed. We never really lose who we are.
“Who would be your enemy, Gramps?” I’d asked him, not understanding how this gentle old man could ever piss anyone off. “You’re the best of them all.”
“No, Buttercup. Not by a long shot. That was your granny, God rest her. Your granny and our sweet girl.”
He never talked much about either of them. Only when the bourbon came out and Coltrane came on and even then, it was the same stories—the time his daughter had learned to ride a bike; the day his wife came down the isle of a tiny Berlin church wearing a borrowed dress and her hair up in pin curls. “Perfection,” he’d called them and he’d meant it. I’d always wondered if anyone would ever think that of me.
I almost thought Nash had.
The boxes were pushed one on top of another, as tight in my car as I could get them, with quilts and throws tucked between them and the seats as I stuffed my things inside. The decision to leave had come after my mother promised to clear out the old cottage on Lake Winfred. It would be warmer there, warmer than the city had been. I had never liked the winters in New York. Something set in my bones made me long for a lake and the peace inside a cottage no one knew about.
“You can have it for as long as you want, sweetie.” There was a pause in my mother’s voice, something that told me she was worried. “But why do you want to give up that apartment in the city? I thought you liked Brooklyn. I thought you were doing well with your booth at the Farmer’s Market, and you'll never find a rent control like that again, you know.”
If I’d told her the truth, I’d spend an hour on the phone promising my mother my heart wasn’t as broken as it felt. I’d have to lie to her and say that Nash hadn’t hurt me, that what I felt between us was one-sided and stupid.
“Just want a change of pace,” I’d told her, knowing that she’d pick up my tone, that she’d hear the small lie behind the elevated, forced inflection.
“Willow…”
“Mom, I promise.” Another pitch higher this time and I threw in a laugh. “So tell me about the trip to Costa Rica this spring.”
She had. My mother had gone on for twenty minutes about the group of teenagers she and dad were bringing with them to help build wells in the thick of the jungle, while I pushed my clothes, my dishes and books into boxes. Already I planned to walk away from Brooklyn because staying hurt too badly. It wasn’t enough that the dreams consumed me. They kept me up. They blocked my sleep patterns and diluted my aura. I felt it heavy on my skin. Like a bruise that covered my entire body.
Those memories soaked into my mind like oil—clinging until there was only the sight of Sookie holding that rope and the horror I felt, the terror on her beautiful face as she stared down at me. I could still smell the thick smoke choking me, I still heard Sylv’s prayers as he said them over and over. Then, she fell and part of me, of Dempsey, died. I felt it slip away like a second skin. I felt it leave and knew it wouldn’t return.
And Riley…my God. The slip of her world as it went away, the soft weight of her baby on her chest. The warm press of Isaac’s sweet kiss against her…against my mouth.
“God…”
This was not the time to think of it. Not when there were taxies zipping through the streets and a construction crew coming closer to our building; tar from their truck puffed great swells of thick liquid into the air and the smell made me a little queasy. I had a lot to do anyway miles and miles to go tomorrow before I made it to Lake Winfred.
I ran the back of my wrist against my eyes to dry my face and picked up another box, stuffing it between three frames and my father’s old turn table. It was an ancient thing, something Grandpa Ryan, my father’s father, had given to him, something I was sure he’d gotten from his dad, my great-grand daddy O’Bryant. It had been broken for years when I found it after Grandpa Ryan’s death and my father wanted me to have it. “A family heirloom,” my father had joked, handing it over to me along with old Fats Domino and Muddy Waters vinyls. “Use them well,” he’d told me.
Now that turn table was snug on the floorboard of my car, ready to go with me to the cottage. There would be no neighbors to disturb with my music and, God willing, no memories to haunt me when I got there.
“Where do you want these?” a mover asked, motioning with the two lamps in his hands.
“Those can go in the van. They’re headed to storage.”
No need to bring those along to the cottage, when my mother had likely already seen to it that the place was outfitted with food, dishes, and toiletries, not to mention lamps. The rest of my things would go to a storage facility in the city. My rugs and tapestries, many of my books, most of my cooking supplies all would be there, forgotten until I’d licked my wounds for an appropriate amount of time and decided where I’d start over again.
I shut the trunk of my car and opened the passenger side door, pushing the seat back to feel around for my cell when my elbow shoved against something I thought was my jewelry box, but instead turned out to be the small wooden box my parents dropped off just a week ago.
The clasp was gold and there was a heavy inlay of filigree along the sides and at the corners. Fleur de leis from the look of them, all faint with age. Opening it, I felt the soft fabric that lined the box, the silk pattern and heavy threads and wondered where my granddad had found it and what had made him keep it.
There were dozens of pictures, some I’d flipped through the first night I got it, smiling at all those images of great-grandpa and great-grandma Nicola when they were young. He was so handsome, his eyes bright even in the dull black and white photo. She’d never smiled as widely as him or laughed as much, but then her childhood and what her family had endured during the war was something not easily forgotten.
Among those pictures were others I hadn’t had a chance to go through and letters, mostly from my great-grandmother's cousins in Poland after the war. There were pieces of jewelry, some that Gramps had made, others that looked store bought. At the bottom of the box was a small journal. Flipping through the pages, I caught sight of the dates, some going back as early as the late thirties, all in my great-grandfather’s tight, precise handwriting.
I debated looking through it, despite all the noise around me and the activity of moving. The movers were nearly done and another small voice in my head told me to toss the box in the van, send it and the memories away to storage while I tried to run from them, from the dreams and from Nash. I stood up and a rush of emotion came over me, as I caught a glimpse of another picture, this one clear, the faces in it laughing. I knew one face. Had seen it before, months before when I moved to Brooklyn. He’d given me the key to the apartment. He’d swore I looked just like my mother…
“What are you doing?”
Nash’s voice pulled me out of my shock and I blinked, squeezed my eyes tight to refocus as he moved closer. A swift breeze picked up and the smell of Nash’s cologne whipped around me like a snake, firing up sensation and heat and all the things I was trying to avoid with this move.
“What do you want?” I asked him, closing Gramp’s box and shoving it under the passenger seat of my car. I would shoot for aloof, impassive, I told myself. I would pretend that I wasn’t affected by the heat from his body as he came up next to me or how the low, deep lull of his voice when he whispered my name didn’t make my heart skip a beat or my palms sweaty.
“Willow.” It was a low, sweet sound, like music. It remind me of the piercing moment in a chord change, when the saxaphone player took a breath, the way your body goes still, how anticipation keys up your senses until you arent’ sure how wise it would be to wait for the next note.
“Nash, I need you to...”
“What do you need? Tell me. I’m...I’m sorry for leaving.”
“Leaving?” I asked, stepping out from the car to slam the door shut. I fished my keys from my pocket and turned on him, not caring that the sidewalk was thick with people moving by us, that the movers had slowed to watch the exchange. There was a construction crew a few feet behind my car and the heavy scent of tar grew thicker. “That’s why you’re sorry? Because you got freaked out and left me out on the roof?”
