by Jason Gurley
Paul flips the hallway switch, and light flares like a torch struck in a cave. “Hello?” he calls. “Aggie?”
Jack says, “I should still stay over and help.”
“That’s sweet,” Eleanor says. “But it’s fine.”
“TV’s on,” her father says.
He’s right. Though every room is filled with dusky shadows, Eleanor can hear thin strains of laughter from another room.
“Mom doesn’t really watch TV anymore,” she says.
Paul steps inside, then turns and helps Eleanor take the step up into the entry. Jack stands outside, hesitant until Paul waves him in, then closes the door behind them. Deep in the house, the television’s laughter grows louder, and then there’s singing, and Eleanor looks up to see her father go very still.
"Dad?" she asks.
He looks down at her, and she can see that his eyes are full of tears again.
"What’s wrong?" she says.
"I know those sounds," he answers. "Don’t you?"
Eleanor listens, then shakes her head. It just sounds like television noise to her.
Paul tilts his head, listening to the sing-song voices, then joins in, lightly, anticipating the next lyrics. He sighs, then says, "You girls always loved ‘Billie Jean.’”
And that’s exactly what it is. With that frame of reference, Eleanor knows exactly what her mother must be watching. It isn’t television at all. It’s old home movies. It is, quite specifically, the last Fourth of July they celebrated together. There was a backyard barbecue, a picnic table, a dozen people, streamers.
"We were six," Eleanor says.
"Your mom invited her gardening friends," Paul says. His eyes are closed, and he sways a little. “I overcooked the burgers, and Jim took over.”
Jack stands back and just watches the two of them.
"You made us perform for everyone," Eleanor remembers. "Like little dancing bears."
"No," Paul says. "It was your mother. She loved it when you both sang."
"She loved it when Esme sang," Eleanor corrects. "I wasn’t good at all."
"You were both lovely."
The sounds are tired and old, the quality degraded after years of lying in a box somewhere. There are gaps in the video, garbled bursts of noise between segments. 'Billie Jean' abruptly ends in a fit of laughter, and then there’s a noisy, staticky break, and then a soft voice, speaking all alone from the past.
Esmerelda.
Paul makes a choking sound, and says, “Esme,” and plunges headlong into the shadows, looking for the source of the sounds. Eleanor starts to follow, and almost falls over. Jack is there, and puts his hands beneath her elbows just the way her father had done, and she gives him a grateful smile.
“It’s nice having him home,” Eleanor says, quietly. “Even like this.”
They walk into the living room together. The blue corduroy chair is empty, but the side table isn’t. A single bottle of Jameson, empty, glints in the last hints of rose-colored sunset. If Jack notices it, he doesn’t say so, and Eleanor is relieved.
She and Jack follow Paul through the living room to the stairs. Her father takes the steps one at a time, slowly, almost dazed. She worries for him. She knows what’s on this part of the tape, even if he can’t exactly remember. They were little thieves, she and Esmerelda. They found her father’s old video camera in the closet one afternoon, and spent hours running around the house together, filming fake news reports and pretending to be burglars, creeping through the house, shooting every object and musing aloud about its value.
When they got tired of the game, Eleanor went to her bedroom to read, but was distracted by Esme’s voice coming through the wall. Eleanor walked lightly to her bedroom door and peeked out. Esme was at the opposite end of the hallway, facing the antique table next to their parents' room. The video camera was resting on the table, and Esme was performing for it, only a little bit self-conscious.
Jack helps her climb the staircase now. Paul stands at the top of it, listening.
“Mom?” Eleanor calls, at the same time that he says, “Aggie?”
There’s no answer. They follow the sounds into the bedroom that Eleanor’s parents once shared, but which now belongs only to Agnes. The bed inside is carefully made. Agnes simply falls asleep wherever she happens to pass out these days, and only rarely is that on her own bed. Eleanor doesn’t mind this. She worries about her mother when she climbs the stairs. She has nightmares, now and then, about Agnes stumbling drunkenly up an endless staircase. The dreams always end with her mother tumbling, head over heels, down a thousand steps.
The old tube television that used to be in the living room now sits on the dresser. It faces the bed, spilling light into the dark room. The VCR beside it blinks 12:00. Paul puts his hand over his mouth when he sees what’s on the television’s milky screen. He sinks onto the bed and stares, and Jack helps Eleanor onto the bed beside him. Then Jack stands there, uncertain of his proper place.
Eleanor is transfixed by her sister, who is framed in the center of the screen. She recognizes the Disney T-shirt that Esmerelda wears. Printed on the front are Mickey and Donald and Goofy, following a silly mule down a steep path. A beautiful pink vista spreads out behind them, and printed in wooden letters are the words The Grand Canyon. It’s the strangest shirt, but Esmerelda had loved it dearly.
Eleanor still has the shirt, folded carefully in her dresser drawer.
"What do you mean, she broke it?" Esmerelda protests on screen.
Eleanor laughs, startling Jack and her father. She had forgotten about this, about Esmerelda’s habit of affecting an awful, stodgy British accent. If ever a person’s voice could sound fat, this accent certainly did. Esme seems to transform before their eyes into a small, old, overweight British socialite.
"Well, that’s unacceptable," Esme continues, a hand to her throat in shock. "Do you hear me, Jarshmerschar? She must pay for it. You will not allow her to leave until she does. That lamp cost six dollars!”
"Jarshmerschar?" Paul blurts. He bursts into laughter and tears at the same time.
Eleanor laughs until she, too, is crying. On the screen, Esme stages an entire soap opera as a one-girl show, playing the parts of the socialite and her butler—who is apparently named Jarshmerschar—and the offending guest, a bratty child with an overpronounced Southern twang. It’s entertaining on its own, simply for what it is, but it’s more than that.
It’s a shower after seven years lost in the woods. It’s the first glimmer of sunlight after the rainy season. It’s a fresh breath of air drawn into lungs after a decade of life in a cave.
Eleanor looks up at her father. He looks down at her.
"I miss her," Paul confesses, and he weeps.
Eleanor cries, too, and Jack eases slowly out of the room.
But then he spots Agnes.
Agnes is on the floor, almost hidden behind the bed. She’s been there for a while, and she isn’t a pretty sight. Her bare feet are the only part of her visible from the doorway, and that’s the only reason that Jack or Eleanor or Paul even knows she’s there.
Jack shouts, and Eleanor jumps—her ribs scream in pain—and Paul almost falls off the bed, so rudely is the moment interrupted.
“Jack, Jesus,” Paul starts to say, and then Jack says, “Mrs. Witt!” He goes to his knees on the floor, and repeats himself: “Mrs. Witt, Mrs. Witt!”
Paul leans over and sees Agnes on the floor, and he says, “Oh, fuck, Aggie,” and he vaults over the bed and into the space between the bed and the wall. Eleanor struggles to follow, but settles for lying down on the bed and crawling to the edge like an earthworm. She instantly wishes that she hadn’t.
Her mother is on the floor in her nightgown. She’s on her back, and her skin is pale—almost blue, Eleanor thinks—and her hair is unkempt. Her chest moves up and down, but her breaths are shallow. She rattles when she breathes, and Eleanor wonders how they could have missed it.
Jarshmerschar.
They
weren’t even thinking about her.
“Turn her on her side,” Paul says, and Jack takes Agnes’s feet and Paul grabs her shoulders, and they push her onto her right side. She weighs almost nothing, and they almost turn her onto her belly by mistake.
The rattling sound goes away, replaced by a brittle wheeze. Almost immediately color begins to return to Agnes’s face, but her eyes remain shut.
“It was her tongue,” Paul says. “She was choking on it.”
“She’s breathing better,” Jack adds.
Eleanor feels as if someone has yanked her batteries out. She stares at her poor mother, and a hideous wave of guilt breaks over her.
“I should have been here,” she says, sobbing.
“Jack, nine-one-one,” Paul says, ignoring Eleanor. “Now.”
Jack runs out of the room, and Eleanor looks up at her father. Her mouth hangs open in horror.
“Dad,” she says.
Her father puts his hand on Eleanor’s head, and he says, “It isn’t your fault,” and then he crouches down beside Agnes and takes her hand and says, “They’re coming, Ags. They’re coming now.”
Ags. He hasn’t called Agnes that in years.
Jack comes back. “They said three minutes,” he says.
“Three minutes,” Paul repeats.
Eleanor watches her father squeeze her mother’s hand, and the four of them wait silently for the second ambulance of the day to arrive and make everything okay. On the television, the ghost of Esmerelda turns in slow, balletic circles, then collapses to the floor in a fit of giggles.
The hallway bustles with activity. A man in a surgical mask pushes an empty gurney, wheels spinning and rattling, past Eleanor. Two nurses in white and purple scrubs stroll by, laughing.
Jack rocks back and forth on his heels, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt.
“Hi,” Eleanor says.
He looks up. “I didn’t see you come out,” he says, nodding in the direction of Agnes’s hospital room.
Eleanor leans against the wall. “They say she’ll be here a few more days,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says. “They’ll make her better.”
Eleanor yawns. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so tired. What’s going on?”
Jack looks around, then steps backward, out of the path of a boy in a wheelchair. “Well,” he says. “I was hoping you’d come with me.”
Eleanor is tired. This is her mother’s third prolonged hospital stay since the day they found her on the bedroom floor. Agnes has already been a resident of the third floor for six days this time. The last stay was nine days. The one before that was thirteen.
“Jack—” she begins, but he puts his hand up.
“Look,” he says, rather earnestly. “You’re growing up too fast. I’m not saying we should go to the movies or something. I know you’re worried about your mom. I’m just saying—I want to show you something. And I think it would be good for you to get away for a couple of hours.”
“I can’t,” Eleanor says. “Dad isn’t coming until six, and I don’t want to leave her alone.”
Jack nods. “I get it.”
“I’m sorry,” Eleanor says. “I need to go back in.”
“Is she doing okay?” Jack asks.
“They’re doing more donor tests. Apparently my mother’s body won’t accept just any new liver.”
She looks away from Jack, who doesn’t seem to have much to say now.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, and turns back to the door.
“Wait—” Jack sighs. “Come with me.”
“Jack.”
“I promise, I’m not trying to be a jackass,” he says. “I was riding home last night, and I was thinking about my mom, and—you know about my dad—I was thinking about if this was my dad in here, like your mom, and I was thinking—if this was my life, every day, taking care of him, and he was—and he was like your mom, you know—not making it easy on me, I guess. If that was my life—and I don’t mean to say your life sucks, I don’t mean that—I was just wondering, like, what would be a nice thing that you might do for me.”
Eleanor watches him. His cheeks are flushed with color, and his eyes are bright and nervous, and it hits her then: Jack is trying to take care of her. She didn’t recognize it at first, because nobody has tried to take care of her in years, but she sees it now.
“And?” she asks him.
“Well—I was here the other day and your dad was in the room with you,” Jack says, and Eleanor nods, and he goes on in a rush: “And your dad was going through the bills, and your mom was—sleeping, I guess—and you looked so tired, Ellie. And I rode home, and I saw something, and I thought—if you were me and I was you, what would you do for me? Because you always are thinking about things like that, and so I tried to, too.”
“And?” she repeats.
“And I just thought that—well, like I said,” Jack says. “All this is too much. You have to grow up too fast. So I had an idea. Just a little one—but an idea.”
“Jack,” Eleanor says, exasperated. “What is it?”
She is grateful that he suggested the bus instead of their bicycles. She has healed well from her injuries, but her hips still ache, strangely, when the weather is bad, and lately the weather is usually something very close to bad, and she worries about her ability to stay on a bicycle on a steep hill in a stiff wind.
The bus lets them off at Splinter Beach. It’s raining, but only lightly. The clouds overhead blot out the sky, and a soft late-morning mist blankets the ocean and hides the shore from view.
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” she says.
“It’s a good idea,” Jack answers.
He’s carrying a duffel bag, and wearing a backpack over his windbreaker. The hood is cinched tight around his face. Little wet, dark dots appear on the jacket. She looks down at her own raincoat, and though she is grateful for it, she still wishes she was in her mother’s hospital room.
Although, she must admit, it is nice to breathe some fresh air.
“Come on,” Jack says.
He steps off the sidewalk and down into the beach grass. Eleanor stays on the sidewalk and watches the bus trundle away, belching black smoke. She takes a deep breath, filled with carbon dioxide, and lets it out.
“Ellie,” Jack says, out in the hip-high grass. “Come on.”
“I’m not sure,” she says again.
Jack sighs gently and trudges back to her. She’s tall, but he’s taller, and he looks down at her and says, “Ellie, your mom is going to be just fine.”
Eleanor shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have left. She could wake up.”
“Look,” Jack says, stepping a little closer. “Things are bad. I know they’re bad, but—you have to take care of yourself first.”
“Or what?” Eleanor asks. “Or I won’t be any good for her?”
“Right,” Jack says.
“She’s pretty messed up,” Eleanor says. “I could be a thousand times more tired and I’d still be better than an empty hospital room.”
Jack shrugs, then turns and indicates the sea and the distant island. “Look out there.”
“It’s foggy,” she complains.
“It’ll burn off before we get there,” Jack says.
“There’s no sun to burn it off.”
“There will be,” he says.
“We’ll get lost,” she says.
“We won’t,” he says. “It’s a straight shot from here to there.” He draws an imaginary line between his chest and Huffnagle Island.
“The boat’ll turn over.”
“Then I’ll flip it right-side up,” Jack says.
“We’ll freeze and drown.”
“It’s pretty cold,” he agrees. “So let’s agree not to turn the boat over.”
Eleanor wraps her arms around herself. “It doesn’t seem safe.”
“I bet it’s safer than that bus ride,” Jack says. “I thought he was going
to run three lights.”
“Sharks.”
“Too cold.”
“Undertows.”
“That’s why we stay in the boat,” Jack says, and laughs.
“There’s nothing to do out there,” Eleanor says.
“That’s the point.”
She watches her breath turn to steam. “I’m too cold already.”
Jack holds up the duffel. “I brought all kinds of things that my mom used to knit,” he says.
Eleanor looks at the bag. “Can I see?”
He unzips the duffel and pulls out a wool scarf and a cowl and a pair of bulky mittens. Eleanor takes the mittens and pulls them onto her hands.
“Mm,” she says. “Oh, that’s nice. Scarf.”
He loops the scarf around her neck once, then twice.
Eleanor peers into the bag. “How about a hat?”
“Take your pick,” Jack says. He produces a goldenrod beanie and a burgundy cap with a pom-pom.
Eleanor takes the beanie and pulls it on. Her red hair curls from beneath the hat. She immediately feels cozy and warm.
“I wish I’d met your mom,” she says.
“Me, too,” Jack says.
Eleanor frowns, then leans forward and kisses Jack’s cheek. His skin is cold and pink.
He smiles and looks away, and his face becomes a red balloon.
She says, “What’s in the backpack?”
He shrugs out of the straps and pulls open one of the flaps to show her plastic baggies stuffed with sandwiches, and a red cotton blanket, and a green plaid-printed thermos. Eleanor eyes the blanket, then Jack.
“I thought it would be nice to just go somewhere quiet and just—I don’t know. Breathe, for a second,” Jack says, embarrassed.
Eleanor looks closely at his brown eyes, then looks at the fogged-over ocean, and the distant, pale island.
“Where’s the boat?” she asks, finally.
“I don’t think it belongs to anybody,” Jack says.
Eleanor follows him. They trudge across the beach, and the mist kicks up around their feet, revealing the texture of the gravel below. There isn’t any sand, not really, just a trillion million pebbles, damp and smooth and gray. Jack takes her to the stubby pier, and tells her to come with him. The pier is wet and dark, its planks slick and worn glossy by the sea and the rain.
