Axis of Aaron

by Johnny B. Truant

  Ebon looked up. Her eyes were on his, uncharacteristically serious. Aimee always flitted from place to place, forever in motion and typically clumsy on account of moving too fast. To see her so still was disarming. She was right; things might have turned out differently for them. Maybe now, they would.

  “Promise,” Ebon agreed.

  She gripped his hand briefly and smiled, then moved back to the new kitchen island, to her orange juice.

  Ebon walked up the narrow, steep staircase toward his bedroom, noticing with a renewed sense of unsettling unreality that it wasn’t nearly as narrow or steep as it used to be. He wasn’t sure how that was possible. Without the entire second story somehow shifting backward, there was simply no room. He could see the same hallway above that he’d seen from the doorway below, the same strange splash of light indicating a new room (or at least window), as if a new section had been added. But the bathroom (new tiles, painted) was still across from him, and the same hallway walls (re-plastered, hung with several of Aimee’s paintings he hadn’t seen before) were in place. He could even see more carved dates repeated in the wood of the bathroom doorframe. So how could the staircase leading up to it have added more run to each step’s rise? How could the whole thing be longer, grander, and safer … yet still meet the same second story in the same place?

  He emerged into the hallway, pausing to inspect one of the new paintings. It was Aimee’s, without question; he knew her unique style and had been badgering her for years about selling them — possibly online, as she’d once predicted, years ahead of her time. The painting was of a room being repaired by a workman wielding a spackling trowel while a beautiful island vista peeked through an open window. Aimee’s style was abstract, but it was clear that the workman was Ebon. So she’d painted it recently, along with the rest of the entire, thematically linked row of five.

  He peeked into Aimee’s bedroom. There was a huge picture window right where they’d imagined someday adding one (apparently handling that small task had been no big deal), and the screen door to nowhere had been replaced with a glass slider. Beyond the slider and picture window was an expansive blonde-wood porch.

  The room had been completely remodeled: hardwood laid, rugs in place, molding added, fresh paint applied and still fragrant in the air. Ebon’s eyes strayed toward the new bed. It was huge, with four posts at the corners and a canopy overhead. It should have seemed cramped in the small room, but looking up Ebon realized that it didn’t seem cramped at all because the ceiling was now vaulted, three skylights pocking the peaked ceiling. The huge bed looked soft and comfortable. Looking at it, he found himself thinking of the light brush of Aimee’s hand on his, downstairs. He found himself thinking of the summer of his fifteenth year, the summer of Aimee’s seventeenth. Maybe he could let his past go after all. Maybe he could fold the worn fabric of his recent years back, then stitch past to present as if there had never been errant threads in between.

  With a nostalgic, bittersweet sigh, Ebon turned away from Aimee’s new bedroom. He passed the bathroom (the gravity toilet had been replaced by a sturdy porcelain unit and — of all things — a bidet) and peeked into the bunk room on the hallway’s other end. It was no longer a bunk room. Now there was just one bed, a queen, in the middle of a room that had been rendered unrecognizable beyond having the same approximate size.

  Turning again, Ebon’s attention fell toward the spot opposite the bathroom where there used to be a storage area under the roof’s slant. But instead of a small storage door and a blank wall, he found himself facing an open room without a door, its center awash with sun, its double-wide entrance broad and cheery. The room was easily as large as the master bedroom, maybe larger. It had windows on three walls. Apparently it jutted far enough from the adjacent rooms to act as a giant dormer, unencumbered by the original cottage. The walls were white and clean, but the floor and every surface was an unholy mess — not of construction or supplies, but of paper and clutter.

  Aimee had somehow moved her art studio upstairs.

  Feeling disembodied, Ebon walked into the room. He wasn’t intruding; the lack of a door invited passerby to enter and soak up some culture. She had paintings on two different easels, both characteristically unfinished with mixed paints still slopped on nearby glass countertops, as if she’d become bored or distracted midflurry. In one corner was some sort of a clay sculpture. She’d draped it with a clear trash bag, probably to keep it from drying out between sessions, but telltale cracks where it had already desiccated told Ebon that it had been neglected for weeks.

  One of her guitars had been tossed onto a settee. Ebon approached and found handwritten sheet music tossed about like litter, as if Aimee were working on several new compositions at once. He couldn’t read music, but there was a laptop nearby hooked to a small Xenyx mixer and a microphone. The machine was on and asleep, possibly idling forgotten for a month. Ebon touched the thing to wake it and saw that Aimee had a program open and waveforms on the screen. Music in progress. Ebon pressed play and listened. She’d recorded her music inexpertly, but what he heard was haunting and beautiful. Aimee had always liked music and was as good at guitar and composition as she was crap at writing lyrics. Everything he saw (a dozen or more tracks in a collection) seemed to be instrumental.

  She’d recorded an album. A goddamned album.

  Maybe it had been a year and two months rather than just two months. It couldn’t be true (both Aimee and Vicky had more or less confirmed the passing of sixty-odd days while he’d fumbled through conversation, searching for bearings without raising flags), but still he began stalking around the room, looking for a calendar to be sure. After a moment, he felt something move in one of his many pockets and reached inside to fish out his phone. Gazing at its face, he saw that it was the eighth of November just as Vicky had said. Halfway through autumn. The year was correct, and only two months had passed.

  Inspiration struck. Ebon began pawing frantically through the phone’s history, looking for calls made and Internet searches performed. But all of his histories were blank, as if erased. There were only two people in his contacts: Vicky and Aimee. Not even any of his old friends, coworkers, or family.

  Ebon re-pocketed the phone then went into his altered bedroom, numbly changed clothes, and walked downstairs. He wanted to see what had become of Aimee’s old studio off the living room. He found her in it, arranging flowers. The floor was scattered with plant clippings, stripped leaves, and flower petals of all colors.

  “I guess you’re happy to have a floral room,” he said, gazing at her and feeling vacant.

  “Oh. Yes. It’s fantastic.”

  “No greenhouse?” There was something percolating under his collar, threatening to climb up onto his face and into his brain. That thing was almost sinister, certainly mischievous. After seeing the house in its entirety (well, almost; he still hadn’t seen the rest of this level, where there was probably a mud spa and a grotto), Ebon found he wanted to stir trouble to get a proper reaction out of her, even if it meant causing damage.

  “Like I said before, if there’s time.”

  Ebon looked around the room. It was the same studio, no major structural changes. In a way, the place felt like an island in a storm. Other than the abundance of flowers and the absence of art, it could have been the same room he’d first seen nearly twenty years ago: the play land of an artistic and flighty mother taken over by her artistic and flighty daughter.

  “Is this for the shop? Are you arranging flowers for The Stalk Market?”

  “A little, maybe. Mostly these bouquets are just for me.”

  “You’ve never had a lot of flowers around the house before,” Ebon said, realizing he had no idea if that was still true. He’d spent twenty-four hours with Aimee by his clock, but during that span there hadn’t been as much as a bloom in a tall glass. She had potpourri, but that was different. Potpourri was where flowers went when they died, like keeping a loved one’s ashes in a dish to make a room feel and smell sweet
er.

  “So is the store on Main Street pretty much on autopilot? You never seem to go there.” Again, no idea if that was true. Again, kind of hoping he’d step on a land mine, causing her to ask him what had gone wrong, what had broken inside. He felt an odd grimace trying to claw its way onto his lips, but she was looking down, fluffing roses.

  “It’s just a business,” she said. “You know flowers.”

  “I don’t know flowers at all,” he said.

  “After all I’ve yammered on to you over the years? Has none of it sunk into your head?”

  “No,” said Ebon.

  “On an island like this? Especially in the winter?” She laughed. “People want reminders of spring. The shop’s profits are intense this time of year. The only more profitable time of year is Valentine’s Day. My grandparents hired all the staff the store needs to run without me needing to keep sticking my nose in. It’s not like it’s a very demanding job. I go in when I want, but we’ve been working so hard around here and … ” She trailed off. “Although I do like them.”

  “The staff?”

  “Flowers.” Again she fluffed her arrangement. It was all red roses, baby’s breath, and greens. She rolled it into a paper cone and put it in a corner. There were several other bouquets already there, stacked like cordwood.

  “Just like you enjoy recording guitar tracks.”

  “Love it.”

  “And painting.”

  “I have a new idea for one. How do you feel about posing for a portrait?”

  “And remodeling.”

  “I don’t love it, but it has to be done.”

  “It looks like we’ve finished.”

  Still looking down, Aimee snickered. “Right.”

  “What do you want? The Taj Mahal?”

  “I’ll settle for a place that isn’t falling down, thanks.”

  “What the hell are you … ?” But he stopped. He turned to indicate the new kitchen, but at the end of his gesturing arm he saw a metal card table with two legs, rusty, barely staying upright. He saw old hardwood splintered at the corners, black with mold. He saw a cracked kitchen sink, a landscape painted in dusty grays. The new kitchen and remodeled living room had become a grand mansion at the end of two hundred years of abandonment, finery neglected by the hand of time. The stainless steel fume hood was buckled and scratched; the cheery yellow fridge was hanging open on a single broken hinge, mystery foods inside long since gone bad.

  Aimee looked up at Ebon. Then she looked down, and he saw a clutch of dead and dried flowers, her fingers stripping and crumbling petals into a shallow dish. “I’m so glad you came to help me,” she said. “I never could have done what needs to be done to this old place by myself.”

  Ebon watched Aimee move in circles around him, except that she wasn’t moving in circles at all. Nor was the floor moving below him like a funhouse.

  His knees unhinged. By the time he hit the floor, the world had gone from gray to black.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As if Pulling the Colors Themselves

  EBON OPENED HIS EYES, FINDING HIMSELF lying on his back. Above him, the bunk bed’s frame was dark-brown wood, stained so thickly as to almost appear plastic. There were small blocks around the edges, and the actual upper bunk (composed of a miniature box spring and a thin mattress all in one) sat atop them. For the seventh morning in a row, he looked up and wondered what it would be like to sleep on a bunk bed as an adult with someone actually up there. Only those little wood blocks kept the bunk up. What were the chances they’d break and you’d be crushed in the night?

  Ebon blinked, trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes without taking his arms out from under the covers. He’d left a window open because the day’s heat had lingered in the upstairs room the prior evening, but the night’s cold had done too good a job and now his face was freezing. It would be warm again today, but not for a few hours.

  Hot days and cool nights: that’s September on Aaron, Aimee had said. For his part, Ebon didn’t know. The latest he’d stayed in the past had been Labor Day, and Labor Day was now over two weeks past. A new Aaron record for Ebon Shale.

  He sat on the bed’s edge, tried to stretch overhead, and rapped his knuckles on the upper bunk’s frame — again, as he’d done each of the seven days he’d been on the island. He was definitely glad to be here, but he couldn’t wait until they reached the part of renovation where he got an actual bed, without a top bunk above him. He was thirty-one fucking years old. He could accept the childish sheets, but a man needed his space. And his headroom.

  Ebon stood, took a moment to properly stretch as the sheets billowed down around him, bending to touch his toes despite knowing better. You really weren’t supposed to flex your spine until you’d been up for a while. Something to do with spinal fluid. His chiropractor had told him that, but he couldn’t help himself.

  Ebon walked to the window, put his hands on the sill, and was about to close the window when he decided to simply let it be. The air outside was already warming, and closing up now would only trap the cold inside. He smelled the air, closing his eyes at the slight tinge of salt, taking a moment to appreciate what had happened and where he was. They said you couldn’t go home again. But fuck them; he had.

  Ebon felt like a big kid in big-kid pajamas. Down the hall was the girl he’d been infatuated with since childhood, both of them having grown older without growing up at all. He could almost go over and climb into bed with her, because doing so would feel so innocent. How could it not be? They were kids. Nothing had changed. He’d known Aaron at age twelve, Aaron at age thirteen, and Aaron at age fifteen. There had been nothing other than summer, forever and ever. The rational part of Ebon’s mind knew full well that he and Aimee had recently rediscovered one another on LiveLyfe and had decided to do this project as they’d done others before — to rebuild this largest and grandest of sandcastles together. But his heart didn’t feel that truth at all. He felt like he’d had a bad dream of a life away from the island that had ended poorly. In that dream, it had been Aimee’s job to pacify him and help forget those bad times — to keep him safe and remind him of the truth. And here and now, fully awake and smelling salt air in the place from his lost memories, he felt as if there’d never been a life in the city. Just life on the beach, with her.

  Ebon shook the thought away, feeling ridiculous. His old life hadn’t been a dream, and he wasn’t fifteen anymore. His stiff muscles and aching back — evidence of yesterday’s hard work climbing ladders and ripping out linoleum — were all the proof he needed to know it.

  As he came out of the bunk room and into the hallway, he peeked through the ajar door and saw Aimee’s sleeping form on the big, barely-held-together bed. He felt both thirty-one and fifteen — and, for that matter, thirteen and twelve. He was all four ages at once, and the idea of walking in and climbing into Aimee’s bed, though ridiculous, still sounded delightful. They’d laugh. Maybe they’d have a pillow fight. It would be all in good fun.

  The moment passed. Ebon turned into the bathroom instead, his foot striking the broken plank near the gravity toilet like always. It made an alarming crack, but that was just the same board smacking against its neighbor; it wasn’t a new or deepening fracture. He hoped. He still hadn’t had the guts to stand too near the toilet at night; he usually peed from a safe distance so as not to fall through the floor, then contented himself knowing he’d need to clean up a few inevitable drips. He hoped Aimee took similar precautions. But the thought of Aimee peeing, even with precautions, was wrong on a few levels (and also inappropriate, due to the pants-dropping aspect), so he forced himself to stare at the sink, reaching big adult hands toward the chipped knobs to start the water.

  He brushed his teeth, using his free hand to grab a tissue and wipe at a spot on the mirror. It was a scratch rather than a smudge, and went nowhere. Another something to replace. It wasn’t a big deal; Aimee had what must be an insane amount of money now that her father was gone, and her wealthy grandparent
s and great-grandparents before him. During his week on the island, she’d simply been stockpiling a master shopping list, and the plan was to call or place an online order with Home Depot each Friday — one of two days the ferry ran on the fall schedule. The store would deliver her order to the mainland dock and put it on the ferry for her to pick up on the other end. The same protocol would hold with all the specialty shops too. All they needed, when new repair jobs cropped up, was a credit card and a truck.

  There had only been time for one delivery so far in the week that Ebon been on the island, but he felt sure it would become a weekly ritual. On Friday, they’d taken her father’s truck (pulling a rather large flat trailer) to West Dock to retrieve their wares. The errand had been hard — lugging supplies off, then strapping them down only to lug everything back off at this end — but the work, as with all of the renovation so far, had been strangely cleansing. When Ebon’s muscles were aching, he didn’t notice aches in his heart or mind. There was only the push of the lift, and the hammer’s heft while striking.

  His favorite day so far had been the one he’d spent roofing, replacing a swatch of blue-gray asphalt shingles with new ones. There was a beautiful rhythm to roofing that he’d never known, having grown up without a single callus on his hands. The section in need of replacement was pitched shallow, with no peaks or valleys. Aimee had shown him how to clear the damaged shingles, lay down paper, then place the new shingles, starting low and working upward, driving small, large-headed aluminum screws into tar strip above the split between tabs. He’d spent hours in working meditation, seeing the ocean whenever he looked up, feeling psychic wounds slowly healing.

  Wounds from Holly’s death. Wounds from Holly’s betrayal. Wounds he’d made himself forget from his past, with Aimee, that last summer he’d spent here. With each driven nail, he stitched the old gash a bit more tightly, repairing those old injuries as his hammer rose and fell.