You Have Never Been Here

by Mary Rickert

  But what’s also true is that I was a prisoner in my own home, tortured by my own father, who pretended to be a humble, kind glassmaker, but who, night after night, broke my creations and then, each morning, denied my accusations, his sweet old face mustached and whiskered, all the expression of dismay and sorrow.

  This is madness, I reasoned. How else could I survive? One of us had to leave or die. I chose the gentler course.

  We had, in our possession, only a small boat, used for trips that never veered far from shore. Gathering mussels, visiting neighbors, occasionally my father liked to sit in it and smoke a pipe while watching the sun set. He’d light a lantern and come home, smelling of the sea, boil us a pot of soup, a melancholic, completely innocent air about him, only later to sneak about his breaking work.

  This small boat is what I took for my voyage across the sea. I also took some fishing supplies, a rope, dried cod he’d stored for winter, a blanket, and several jugs of red wine, given to us by the baker, whose daughter, I do believe, fancied me. For you, who have lived so long on this anchored rock, my folly must be apparent. Was it folly? It was. But what else was I to do? Day after day make my perfect art only to have my father, night after night, destroy it? He would destroy me!

  I left in the dark, when the ocean is like ink and the sky is black glass with thousands of air bubbles. Air bubbles, indeed. I breathed my freedom in the salty sea air. I chose stars to follow. Foolishly, I had no clear sense of my passage and had only planned my escape.

  Of course, knowing what I do now about the ocean, it is a wonder I survived the first night, much less seven. It was on the eighth morning that I saw the distant sail, and, hopelessly drunk and sunburned, as well as lost, began the desperate task of rowing toward it, another folly as I’m sure you’d agree, understanding how distant the horizon is. Luckily for me, or so I thought, the ship headed in my direction and after a few more days it was close enough that I began to believe in my life again.

  Alas, this ship was owned by a rich friend of my father’s, a woman who had commissioned him to create a glass castle with a glass garden and glass fountain, tiny glass swans, a glass king and queen, a baby glass princess, and glass trees with golden glass apples, all for the amusement of her granddaughter (who, it must be said, had fingers like sausages and broke half of the figurines before her next birthday). This silly woman was only too happy to let my father use her ship, she was only too pleased to pay the ship’s crew, all with the air of helping my father, when, in truth, it simply amused her to be involved in such drama. She said she did it for Murano, but in truth, she did it for the story.

  It wasn’t until I had been rescued, and hoisted on board, that my father revealed himself to me. He spread his arms wide, all great show for the crew, hugged me and even wept, but convincing as was his act, I knew he intended to destroy me.

  These are terrible choices no son should have to make, but that night, as my father slept and the ship rocked its weary way back to Murano where I would likely be hung or possibly sentenced to live with my own enemy, my father, I slit the old man’s throat. Though he opened his eyes, I do not believe he saw me, but was already entering the distant kingdom.

  You ladies look quite aghast. I cannot blame you. Perhaps I should have chosen my own death instead, but I was a young man, and I wanted to live. Even after everything I had gone through, I wanted life.

  Alas, it was not to be. I knew there would be trouble and accusation if my father were found with his throat slit, but none at all if he just disappeared in the night, as so often happens on large ships. Many a traveler has simply fallen overboard, never to be heard from again, and my father had already displayed a lack of seafaring savvy to rival my own.

  I wrapped him up in the now-bloody blanket but although he was a small man, the effect was still that of a body, so I realized I would have to bend and fold him into a rucksack. You wince, but do not worry, he was certainly dead by this time.

  I will not bore you with the details of my passage, hiding and sneaking with my dismal load. Suffice it to say that it took a while for me to at last be standing shipside, and I thought then that all danger had passed.

  Remember, I was already quite weakened by my days adrift, and the matter of taking care of this business with my father had only fatigued me further. Certain that I was finally at the end of my task, I grew careless. He was much heavier than he had ever appeared to be. It took all my strength to hoist the rucksack, and (to get the sad, pitiable truth over with as quickly as possible) when I heaved that rucksack, the cord became entangled on my wrist, and yes, dear ladies, I went over with it, to the bottom of the world. There I remained until your own dear father, your husband, found me and brought me to this place, where, for the first time in my life, I feel safe, and, though I am dead, blessed.

  Later, after my mother had tended the lamp while Ezekiel and I shared the kisses that left me breathless, she asked him to leave, saying that I needed my sleep. I protested, of course, but she insisted. I walked my ghost to the door, just as I think any girl would do in a similar situation, and there, for the first time, he kissed me in full view of my mother, not so passionate as those kisses that had preceded it, but effective nonetheless.

  But after he was gone, even as I still blushed, my mother spoke in a grim voice. “Don’t encourage him, Agatha.”

  “Why?” I asked, my body trembling with the impact of his affection and my mother’s scorn, as though the two emotions met in me and quaked there. “What don’t you like about him?”

  “He’s dead,” she said, “there’s that for a start.”

  “What about Daddy? He’s dead too, and you’ve been loving him all this time.”

  My mother shook her head. “Agatha, it isn’t the same thing. Think about what this boy told you tonight. He murdered his own father.”

  “I can’t believe you’d use that against him. You heard what he said. He was just defending himself.”

  “But Agatha, it isn’t what’s said that is always the most telling. Don’t you know that? Have I really raised you to be so gullible?”

  “I am not gullible. I’m in love.”

  “I forbid it.”

  Certainly no three words, spoken by a parent, can do more to solidify love than these. It was no use arguing. What would be the point? She, this woman who had loved no one but a puddle for so long, could never understand what was going through my heart. Without more argument, I went to bed, though I slept fitfully, feeling torn from my life in every way, while my mother stayed up reading, I later surmised, from her book of myths. In the morning I found her sitting at the kitchen table, the great volume before her. She looked up at me with dark circled eyes, then, without salutation, began reading, her voice ominous.

  “There are many kinds of ghosts. There are the ghosts that move things, slam doors and drawers, throw silverware about the house. There are the ghosts—usually of small children—that play in dark corners with spools of thread and frighten family pets. There are the weeping and wailing ghosts. There are the ghosts who know that they are dead, and those who do not. There are tree ghosts, those who spend their afterlife in a particular tree—a clue for such a resident might be bite marks on fallen fruit. There are ghosts trapped forever at the hour of their death (I saw one like this once, in an old movie theater bathroom, hanging from the ceiling). There are melting ghosts (we know about these, don’t we?), usually victims of drowning. And there are breath-stealing ghosts. These, sometimes mistaken for the grosser vampire, sustain a sort of half-life by stealing breath from the living. They can be any age, but are usually teenagers and young adults, often at that selfish stage when they died. These ghosts greedily go about sucking the breath out of the living. This can be done by swallowing the lingered breath from unwashed cups, or, most effectively of all, through a kiss. Though these ghosts can often be quite seductively charming, they are some of the most dangerous. Each life has only a certain amount of breath within it and these ghosts are said to stea
l an infinite amount with each swallow. The effect is such that the ghost, while it never lives again, begins to do a fairly good imitation of life, while its victims—those whose breath it steals—edge ever closer to their own death.”

  My mother looked up at me triumphantly and I stormed out of the house, only to be confronted with the sea all around me, as desolate as my heart.

  That night, when he came knocking on the door, she did not answer it and forbade me to do so.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I taunted, “he’s a ghost. He doesn’t need doors.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” she said, “he’s taken so much of your breath that he’s not entirely spectral. He can’t move through walls any longer. He needs you, but he doesn’t care about you at all, don’t you get that, Agatha?”

  “Agatha? Are you home? Agatha? Why don’t you come? Agatha?”

  I couldn’t bear it. I began to weep.

  “I know this is hard,” my mother said, “but it must be done. Listen, his voice is already growing faint. We just have to get through this night.”

  “What about the lamp?” I said.

  “What?”

  But she knew what I meant. Her expression betrayed her. “Don’t you need to check on the lamp?”

  “Agatha? Have I done something wrong?”

  My mother stared at the door, and then turned to me, the dark circles under her eyes giving her the look of a beaten woman. “The lamp is fine.”

  I spun on my heels and went into my small room, slammed the door behind me. My mother, a smart woman, was not used to thinking like a warden. She had forgotten about my window. By the time I hoisted myself down from it, Ezekiel was standing on the rocky shore, surveying the dark ocean before him. He had already lost some of his lifelike luster, particularly below his knees, where I could almost see through him. “Ezekiel,” I said. He turned and I gasped at the change in his visage, the cavernous look of his eyes, the skeletal stretch at his jaw. Seeing my shocked expression, he nodded and spread his arms open, as if to say, yes, this is what has become of me. I ran into those open arms and embraced him, though he creaked like something made of old wood. He bent down, pressing his cold lips against mine until they were no longer cold but burning like a fire.

  We spent that night together and I did not mind the shattering wind with its salt bite on my skin, and I did not care when the lamp went out and the sea roiled beneath a black sky, and I did not worry about the dead weeping on the rocky shore, or the lightness I felt as though I were floating beside my lover, and when morning came, revealing the dead all around us, I followed him into the water, I followed him to the bottom of the sea, where he turned to me and said, “What have you done? Are you stupid? Don’t you realize? You’re no good to me dead!”

  So, sadly, like many a daughter, I learned that my mother had been right after all, and when I returned to her, dripping with saltwater and seaweed, tiny fish corpses dropping from my hair, she embraced me. Seeing my state, weeping, she kissed me on the lips, our mouths open. I drank from her, sweet breath, until I was filled and she collapsed to the floor, my mother in her black dress, like a crushed funeral flower.

  I had no time for mourning. The lamp had been out for hours. Ships had crashed and men had died. Outside, the sun sparkled on the sea. People would be coming soon to find out what had happened.

  I took our small boat and rowed away from there. Many hours later, I docked in a seaside town and hitchhiked to another, until eventually I was as far from my home as I could be and still be near my ocean.

  I had a difficult time of it for a while. People are generally suspicious of someone with no past and little future. I lived on the street and had to beg for jobs cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors, only through time and reputation working up to my current situation, finally getting my own little apartment, small and dark, so different from when I was the lighthouse keeper’s daughter and the ocean was my yard.

  One day, after having passed it for months without a thought, I went into the art supply store and bought a canvas, paint, and two paintbrushes. I paid for it with my tip money, counting it out for the clerk whose expression suggested I was placing turds in her palm instead of pennies. I went home and hammered a nail into the wall, hung the canvas on it, and began to paint. Like many a creative person I seem to have found some solace for the unfortunate happenings of my young life (and death) in art.

  I live simply and virginally, never taking breath through a kiss. This is the vow I made, and I have kept it. Yes, some days I am weakened, and tempted to restore my vigor with such an easy solution, but instead I hold the empty cups to my face, I breathe in, I breathe everything, the breath of old men, breath of young, sweet breath, sour breath, breath of lipstick, breath of smoke. It is not, really, a way to live, but this is not, really, a life.

  For several seconds after Alex finished reading the remarkable account, his gaze remained transfixed on the page. Finally, he looked up, blinked in the dim coffee shop light, and closed the black binder.

  Several baristas stood behind the counter busily jostling around each other with porcelain cups, teapots, bags of beans. One of them, a short girl with red and green hair that spiked around her like some otherworld halo, stood by the sink, stacking dirty plates and cups. When she saw him watching, she smiled. It wasn’t a true smile—not that it was mocking, but rather, the girl with the Christmas hair smiled like someone who had either forgotten happiness entirely or never known it at all. In response, Alex nodded at her, and to his surprise, she came over, carrying a dirty rag and a spray bottle.

  “Did you read all of it?” she said as she squirted the table beside him and began to wipe it with the dingy towel.

  Alex winced at the unpleasant odor of the cleaning fluid, nodded, and then, seeing that the girl wasn’t really paying any attention, said, “Yes.” He glanced at the wall where the paintings were hung.

  “So what’d you think?”

  The girl stood there, grinning that sad grin, right next to him now with her noxious bottle and dirty rag, one hip jutted out in a way he found oddly sexual. He opened his mouth to speak, gestured toward the paintings, and then at the book before him. “I, I have to meet her,” he said, tapping the book. “This is remarkable.”

  “But what do you think about the paintings?”

  Once more he glanced at the wall where they hung. He shook his head, “No,” he said, “it’s this,” tapping the book again.

  She smiled, a true smile, cocked her head, and put out her hand. “Agatha,” she said.

  Alex felt like his head was spinning. He shook the girl’s hand. It was unexpectedly tiny, like that of a child’s, and he gripped it too tightly at first. Glancing at the counter, she pulled out a chair and sat down in front of him.

  “I can only talk for a little while. Marnie is the manager today and she’s on the rag or something all the time, but she’s downstairs right now, checking in an order.”

  “You”—he brushed the binder with the tip of his fingers, as if caressing something holy—“you wrote this?”

  She nodded, bowed her head slightly, shrugged and, suddenly earnest, leaned across the table, elbowing his empty cup as she did. “Nobody bothers to read it. I’ve seen a few people pick it up but you’re the first one to read the whole thing.”

  Alex leaned back, frowning.

  She rolled her eyes, which, he noticed, were a lovely shade of lavender, lined darkly in black.

  “See, I was trying to do something different. This is the whole point”—she jabbed at the book, and he felt immediately protective of it—“I was trying to put a story in a place where people don’t usually expect one. Don’t you think we’ve gotten awful complacent in our society about story? Like it all the time has to go a certain way and even be only in certain places. That’s what this is all about. The paintings are a foil. But you get that, don’t you? Do you know,”—she leaned so close to him, he could smell her breath, which he thought was strangely sweet—“someone actual
ly offered to buy the fly painting?” Her mouth dropped open, she shook her head and rolled those lovely lavender eyes. “I mean, what the fuck? Doesn’t he know it sucks?”

  Alex wasn’t sure what to do. She seemed to be leaning near to his cup. Leaning over it, Alex realized. He opened his mouth, not having any idea what to say.

  Just then another barista, the one who wore scarves all the time and had an imperious air about her, as though she didn’t really belong there but was doing research or something, walked past. Agatha glanced at her. “I gotta go.” She stood up. “You finished with this?” she asked, touching his cup.

  Though he hadn’t yet had his free refill, Alex nodded.

  “It was nice talking to you,” she said. “Just goes to show, doesn’t it?”

  Alex had no idea what she was talking about. He nodded half-heartedly, hoping comprehension would follow, but when it didn’t, he raised his eyebrows at her instead.

  She laughed. “I mean you don’t look anything like the kind of person who would understand my stuff.”

  “Well, you don’t look much like Agatha,” he said.

  “But I am Agatha,” she murmured as she turned away from him, picking up an empty cup and saucer from a nearby table.

  Alex watched her walk to the tiny sink at the end of the counter. She set the cups and saucers down. She rinsed the saucers and placed them in the gray bucket they used for carrying dirty dishes to the back. She reached for a cup, and then looked at him.

  He quickly looked down at the black binder, picked it up, pushed his chair in, and headed toward the front of the shop. He stopped to look at the paintings. They were fine, boring, but fine little paintings that had no connection to what he’d read. He didn’t linger over them for long. He was almost to the door when she was beside him, saying, “I’ll take that.” He couldn’t even fake innocence. He shrugged and handed her the binder.