World Gone Water

by Jaime Clarke

  In the morning, while Caitlin is with a client, I skip down Fifth Avenue to a bagel cart for some breakfast. A swell of people come out from the subway under the Plaza, everyone in a business suit or dark clothes. I skip back up the Plaza’s steps, palming a warm cinnamon raisin bagel, skip past a limousine with its door opening and past a family of tourists gawking at the chandeliers.

  In Boston, Caitlin and I have a terrible fight on Lansdowne Street. The fight starts in Axis, where we came to dance. “I’m too tired to dance,” Caitlin says. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  Thinking she really wants a good time, I take the lead and force her on the dance floor. She gyrates lethargically in place to the bass beat of an unrecognizable song before turning and walking off the dance floor.

  The fight continues in Jillian’s, a pool hall down the street.

  “You are insensitive,” she says. “It’s amazing what you can find out about a person.”

  “Let’s just go back to the hotel, okay?” I say. Her insults are mortally wounding me.

  I sleep fitfully on the floor, dreaming a dream where Caitlin is riding in a horse-drawn carriage through Central Park while I am running after her on foot. I am calling out to her, but when she looks back, her carriage takes off into the air, gliding over the park and into the clouds. When I try to show someone a picture of Caitlin to find out where she’s gone, I realize I don’t have any. When I try to pronounce her name to the police, it’s untranslatable by the cop.

  In the morning I wake when Caitlin crawls down on the floor too. “I’m sorry,” I say, hoping today is a new day.

  “I’m the one that’s sorry,” she says.

  Our breath is foul when we kiss, but neither of us flinches, and Caitlin says, “I have the weekend off. Let’s take a car trip.”

  “I asked the guy at the counter for a romantic place, and he said there’s something called the Colonial Inn in Concord. I guess it’s supposed to be historic,” I say.

  “Well, well,” Caitlin says, chuckling. “Aren’t we a little Romeo?”

  “It sounded like a place that might be haunted, though,” I say, ignoring her.

  “We could go there,” she says, kissing my neck. “Or we could go to Cape Cod.”

  “Why did you say that just now? The Romeo thing,” I ask, pulling away.

  “I don’t know,” she answers, shrugging. “I just thought it was cute that you were, you know … doing research.”

  “You were being condescending,” I say. I know what kind of reaction this’ll get.

  Caitlin is silent, then says in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry.”

  I’m surprised that I have her on the fence. I feel like pushing her further. “Are you a condescending person?” I ask.

  Caitlin sits back and closes her eyes. She begins to tremble.

  “Look, I was only joking,” I say, not surprised at how quickly I back off. “I know you’re a good person.”

  My words have no visible effect on her and I’m stuck for what to say next.

  Instead, Caitlin says, “I have this terrible feeling that I’m in love with you.”

  “Why is that such a terrible thing?”

  Caitlin stands, not looking at me, and says, “It really feels great, but I have to guard against it. You’re not going to be around forever.”

  The last words sear me completely.

  “I will be here forever,” I want to say. And even though I think it’s true, it would sound corny and melodramatic after knowing her for only a few days, so I don’t say anything, and we move silently to pack our bag for the weekend.

  Things are as they were, though, once we’re driving toward the Cape. Caitlin touches the inside of my thigh while I drive, and I glance over and catch her smile.

  A giant yellow wreath hangs on the bridge over the canal we cross to get onto the Cape, marking the spot where a woman drove head-on into a metal pole, killed on impact. It was on the news the night before in the hotel, and what occurs to me is that forty-eight hours ago at this time, that person was alive and making plans to drive to the Cape, along with whatever else she was doing that day, picking up laundry, paying her electric bill, calling her friends to say she was on her way.

  There was a girl who got killed when I first moved to Phoenix, a foreign exchange student from Russia who stepped out in front of a city bus while looking the wrong way. They put her picture in the newspaper, along with one of a makeshift memorial featuring flowers and a teddy bear that sprang up at the site of the accident. I couldn’t look away from the picture. I somehow knew the confusion from that morning, the chaos of running late and the nanosecond that was nothing more than a mistake that cost this girl her life.

  The windows on the rental car are manual, so Caitlin climbs in the backseat to unroll them. The wind coming off the ocean scrubs everything clean, and you get a new life.

  “I’m just going to sit back here,” Caitlin says.

  “But I want you up here,” I say, patting the seat next to me, looking in the rearview mirror.

  “Nope.” She smiles. “I’m going to sit back here.”

  “What’ll you do by yourself back there?” I ask.

  I love to be coy with her.

  “I’m going to put my feet up on your shoulders and masturbate. Will you keep the speed above sixty?”

  I eye her in the mirror. “Someone will see,” I say, even though I wouldn’t care if someone did. It simply seems to me that we could have a nice drive on Cape Cod, squeezed on all sides by ocean and sand, and enjoy ourselves in this pacific freedom without starring in a porn movie. “Come back up front,” I say, more telling her than asking.

  Caitlin puts on a pout and climbs over the front seat. She turns the radio on and a moment of total division passes between us.

  “I wasn’t going to do that anyway,” she says apologetically. “I was only joking.”

  “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” I ask.

  Caitlin rests her head on my lap and closes her eyes. “It is a nice day,” she says.

  An old drive-in movie sign in Wellfleet makes me think of a hundred things from high school.

  The Cape narrows, and soon there’s beach and ocean visible in every direction. The wind becomes fierce, and Caitlin, sensing something, sits up.

  “We’ve driven to the end,” I say. “I didn’t even notice.”

  Caitlin points out the sign for Race Point Beach and I pull off. THIS BEACH CLOSES AT DARK, the sign says. Except for a family wading down the shore, the beach is deserted. The showers in the changing room drip synchronically, and the sandy slope down to the water is one of the walks you know is going to be harder on the way back up.

  “Bury me in the sand,” Caitlin says.

  I kick away the dry sand and scoop handfuls of thick, wet sand onto her body, packing it on tight. Caitlin giggles as I do, and I shape two giant breasts out of sand and put a large tangle of seaweed between her legs.

  “Is that what you really want?” Caitlin asks, looking down at her mountainous breasts.

  “I want what’s inside,” I tell her.

  Caitlin smiles. “I’m trapped here.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  The rest of the afternoon floats away on the open water. The sun takes a last breath and goes under, darkening the water until the ocean is heard more than it is seen.

  “I love you,” I say to Caitlin.

  “You are making me crazy,” she says, and the way she looks at me, everything inside her collapsing at once, lets me know that that was the reason I was put on this earth and that she’s glad she finally found me.

  “I can’t believe I finally found someone like you,” I say.

  We kiss until a spotlight lights us up and we’re told to leave.

  “Do you want to drive into Provincetown for dinner?” I ask.

  “We should probably check into a motel first,” she says.

  I know once we get to the motel, we probably won’t leave, that Caitlin will order room servi
ce, or order a pizza, and sure enough, she plops onto the blue floral bedspread in a way that lets me know she’s in for the night.

  “Come over here,” she says, lifting her arms.

  “Let me take you out tonight,” I say. “There’s probably a ton of great places to eat right off the beach.”

  The minute the words leave my mouth, I want to get them all back.

  “There’s a great place to eat right here,” she says, spreading her legs wide. There’s a second where I can turn it into something funny, where I can make a joke or a retort, but while my hope that she will quit saying things like that in favor of something sexier and more romantic is being dashed, I miss it.

  I do not what I want to do, but what I feel like I am required to do, until the ugly confidence comes back into Caitlin and she rolls away and turns out the light. Outside, the ocean could be a million miles away.

  Caitlin’s meeting in Montreal is off Sainte-Catherine, so I wait across the street in a café where no one is smoking but everyone seems to want to. Montreal is our last destination and things between me and Caitlin are shifting. She’s holding back now, not telling me she loves me, not holding my hand. “Decompressing” is what she calls it.

  I try to picture Phoenix again, and it’s such a former life that I won’t be able to name things I see once we land. My grand plan (the new one) is to put my offer on the table: I’ll do anything to be with her. We could live the way we’ve been living, hotels and new cities. I think Caitlin just needs someone to make the move, and the idea thrills me.

  I’m still pretty jacked up about it later at dinner and it’s all I can do to keep from spitting it out.

  Outside the restaurant window, Notre-Dame lights up dramatically and Caitlin turns to see it.

  “That’s beautiful,” she says.

  “I don’t care much for churches,” I tell her.

  “Me neither,” she says. “But it looks impressive.”

  “You don’t have a religion?” I ask.

  She shakes her head no. “Don’t need it.”

  I jump up and reach for her hand. She looks around wildly and then looks at me, pulling back. “I think we should be together,” I say.

  “We are together,” she says, straightening her napkin in her lap.

  “No, I mean I think we should try and …” I’m at a loss for what to call it. “You know, I love you and—”

  “Charlie, stop,” she says.

  The whole moment is flushed away just like that. The waiter comes to take our order and Caitlin waves him away.

  The jet lag from Phoenix to New York to Boston to Montreal kicks in, and all the organs inside me collapse, my veins narrowing until the air burns in my lungs. “Do you love me?” I ask.

  Caitlin looks away, wanting the waiter to come back. “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

  “Doesn’t matter how?”

  “Please don’t do this,” she begs. “This is our last weekend together and we’ve been having a great time.”

  “You’ve been having a great time,” I correct her. “It really isn’t a great time having your heart broken.” The words “heart broken” hit her like an oncoming truck.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asks, crying a little, which pacifies me in some way. “I can’t give myself completely over. I’ve done that too many times and it never works out.”

  “It can work out with us,” I say.

  “That’s the first thing all of them said too,” she says, composing herself.

  “Yeah, but this time will be different.”

  “That’s the next thing they said,” she says coldly.

  “I’m starting to see your point,” I say. I throw my napkin on the table. I play my last card: “Maybe it’s not worth it.”

  Caitlin wants to disagree, I can physically feel the pull inside of her, see it in her expression. But she wins out over it and looks right into me and says, “I just can’t.”

  The restaurant in Montreal feels like an outpost on a dream map and I wish I could close my eyes and transport myself.

  “Where’s the waiter?” Caitlin asks.

  “You sent him away, remember? You think he’s going to rush right back?”

  “Don’t get that way,” she warns. “Let’s try to have a nice meal.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I say. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

  I walk out, passing the waiter on his way to the kitchen, and the two of us take a few steps in the same direction, walking like Siamese twins. “She knows what she wants,” I tell him.

  Paroled into the cold night, I head in the direction of Notre-Dame. The shadows vibrate on the pavement and I start to think about how Caitlin is right. Why give yourself up to someone fully? I was sitting there trying to deny what I knew was true. Months from now I’d be tired of her, or she’d be tired of me, the excitement of newness worn and forgotten.

  I tell her she’s right when she gets back to the hotel. “You were totally right,” I say. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Who’s she?” Caitlin asks, pointing at the redheaded hooker in the bed next to me, who is rolling a joint.

  “It’s Diedre, right?” I ask the hooker. Diedre nods. “This is Diedre,” I tell Caitlin.

  “Nice to meet you,” Diedre says without looking away from the joint.

  If I hear what I think I hear—Caitlin crying in the hallway, stomping down to the elevator—it doesn’t faze me one iota, and Caitlin can take her traveling act to California, for all I care.

  Dr. Hatch,

  Remember what you said about how the thing that affects your life the most—death—doesn’t hardly involve you in any way? Remember I said how it affects other people’s lives and we talked about my parents, about the vacuum of nothing I was sucked into when they died? I’m writing to you from there again.

  The love of my life is dead. You never met Talie, but she came to see me a couple of times at SRC. It was her slut friend, Holly, who got her killed. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Holly to you and I’m not going to start now. Talie was always getting into trouble with Holly, and this time it wasn’t trouble I could get her out of. The police found them both in a Dumpster with their clothes torn off.

  The funeral was at Saint Francis Xavier, the church adjacent to my old school, Randolph College Prep. The only people who came to the funeral were her foster parents, her biological father, me, and the boyfriend I’m sure she was going to leave.

  I stayed after everyone was gone to be alone with Talie one last time. I wanted to open the casket and see her again, have her pop up and say, “Let’s go.” I feel completely untethered without her. You never know how much you need someone until, well, you know.

  I used to tell Talie I was going to go to Europe, that I was going to fly away and shed everything anyone ever knew about me and everything that was in my past. Whenever I told her about moving to Europe, she would say, “The unknown is more frightening than what you know, no matter how shitty what you know is.” The unknown is what there is to fear, she would say, and the future is definitely unknown. I told her I feared my past. But it isn’t so much that I fear what I have done, but I fear I am missing some vital component—the gene that makes you walk on green and stop on red, the thing that tells what the difference between red and green even is. My fear isn’t of my future; it’s that my past lives there, happily, shimmering in the warmth it creates, perpetuating the voice that assures me, It’s all right, it’s okay.

  I’m feeling the same sense of loss I felt when I told Karine I was sorry. She came to see me before she disappeared (I know you’re dying to hear me talk about this, so here it is), and we sat and did a crossword puzzle. I used a blue pen and she used pink so that when the puzzle was solved, we’d know who did what.

  I told Karine I was sorry and she looked across the metal table at me and said, “I forgive you.”

  Right there, at the metal table, a half-finished crossword puzzle between us, I realized how
much I’d lost in life. When I said I was sorry, it started in my mind as a casual thing to say. But when Karine looked at me like she did and said she forgave me, I knew she had been waiting to hear me say it, and I realized that what I had done to her was the biggest loss in her life.

  It made me think about my own loss and I saw myself as something small and stupid, with a grin of infinite hope on my face.

  Some people just don’t get the chance to live in the world.

  Talie never got a start, and everyone I know—including me—is to blame.

  After the hearse became a black dot on the road, me promising to catch up, I crossed the lawn to Randolph Prep. William Randolph, the school’s founder, died at sea. I used to stare at the portrait of him in the main hall, standing on the bow of a ship, maybe the one he went down on, straining to peer so far into the distance, maybe looking for what sailing would lead him to next.

  “A banker by profession, Randolph was an avid sailor, captaining many voyages around the world,” read the engraving under the portrait.

  Details of his death weren’t dramatic enough to reach the status of legend. Simply put, he was hit in the head when a sudden wind swung the sail into him. Randolph and his crew were one full day of sailing away from the shore. The banker/sailor never regained consciousness, and the exact moment of his death went unmarked by a dying word or wish for the world.

  What a shock it must have been, the initial blow to Randolph’s head, coming from his blind side. He probably never imagined he’d die while sailing, a sport at which he had become accomplished.

  In my mind I tried to trace it back, not a straight line between Randolph’s death in the water and his birth, but I wondered at the steps between the two events. Fate is too easily made the usual suspect. William Randolph could’ve been killed in any number of ways: an automobile crash (at high speed, or by a careless driver), an airplane wreck, a gunshot (self-inflicted, or random, accidental fire), a heart attack (in his sleep, or while shopping for chocolate bars in the local grocery store)—all could be uselessly labeled fate.