Cauchemar

by Alexandra Grigorescu

  “Do you like ice cream?” Sarah Anne asked. She leaned down and briskly wiped dust from her patent shoes.

  “Yeah.” Hannah looked down at her own shoes, brown Mary Jane loafers that had cost Mae five dollars from a second-hand bin. There was a patch by the heel where the leather had worn down that Hannah colored in with a Crayola marker. In the summer rains, she trailed a muddy stream of brown ink, quick as a wound.

  “Good. Let’s get a scoop. My brother has an appointment this afternoon so I’m free for a few hours.”

  “Where did your family live before?” Hannah asked.

  “North Carolina. We moved here because of my brother and his,” she hesitated, “head problems. We’ve tried doctors, we’ve tried priests, and now my parents are giving herbalists and voodoo a shot.” Sarah Anne wound her arm around the crook of Hannah’s elbow. She did this silently, moving closer until their shoulders touched.

  Hannah looked carefully at Sarah Anne, her arm shaking from the effort of being kept perfectly still. “Voodoo?”

  Sarah Anne waved the question away. “Well, it’s technically not voodoo. He has a regular head shrink, but a year ago my mother started looking into other remedies. She’s been taking him to a, what do they call it, a Yoruba priest.” When Hannah raised her eyebrows, Sarah Anne added, “They thought the orishas might help. So here we are. Just us and the bugs.”

  Hannah studied the girl’s profile. “You don’t think that’s dangerous? Calling on spirits?”

  “Maybe.” Sarah Anne sniffed. “I told you, I know what they say about you. I think you’d know better than me what’s dangerous.” Hannah turned her head and felt Sarah squeeze her arm. She pointed to the left as they reached the edge of the town square. “That’s my favorite ice cream shop. If you lick it slowly in front of Phil, he’ll give you another one for free. It gives him a boner, I think.”

  “Right,” Hannah said weakly.

  “I touched one, back in North Carolina. I told this boy I’d give him a hand-job, because I’d heard the older girls talking about it, but I didn’t really know what it was. Neither did he, I don’t think. I just ran my nail along it, like this.” She demonstrated by tracing a vein on Hannah’s arm, and something clapped open in Hannah’s stomach. “He made this terrible face, like this, and I thought I’d hurt him. But then it started spurting this white stuff, like a little volcano. I got a bit on my dress.” She giggled and tossed her hair. “It looks a bit like a giant tapeworm, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Hannah said, peering into the sunlight.

  “I think so. Anyways, he looked kind of scared afterward, and gave me all his cash. It ended up being nine bucks.” Her voice turned wistful. “He never talked to me again after that. Too bad, really.” Sarah Anne paused, then said suddenly, “I like you,” with the fearlessness that Hannah was just beginning to attribute to the beautiful. “You don’t seem to care too much about what people think of you. Why do you even come to Sunday school?”

  “My mother sends me.”

  Sarah Anne rolled her eyes and unwound her arm. Hannah felt a film, an afterglow, where it had been. “My mom sends me, too. But I think she’d kill herself if she heard I wasn’t participating. My immortal soul is really important to her. It’s this one,” Sarah Anne said, pointing to a storefront. Hannah had seen the shop before, but never been inside. She paused at the door, but Sarah Anne tugged her forward.

  “My mother doesn’t talk much about my immortal soul,” Hannah said, hanging back as Sarah Anne hopped onto a stool, and all five sets of male eyes in the shop swiveled to her bare knees, which she was knocking together impatiently. Sarah Anne seemed to have the uncanny ability to convince people that she was older, or younger, as it suited her.

  “Hi Phil,” Sarah Anne said, her voice rising in pitch even as it softened. “Two vanilla soft serves,” she raised her eyebrows at Hannah, and Hannah nodded, “dipped.”

  Phil was bushy-browed and teenaged, his arms like fresh summer sprigs sprouting from beneath his short-sleeved uniform. “Coming right up, honey,” he breathed.

  Sarah Anne patted the stool next to her. “Maybe she doesn’t believe in it.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Your mother,” Sarah Anne said softly as she began to tear a napkin into strips. Hannah noticed that several of the girl’s cuticles were bloodied. “Your immortal soul.”

  Callum made it his mission to ease her fear of boats. She grew to like being on the water, the green hyacinth patches that spread like a shifting carpet.

  Still, she watched the small waves bob the boat, knowing that any disturbance of the moss could be an alligator warring in the dim.

  Callum guided them down tributaries she’d never seen. She glimpsed the white-shingled roof of a mansion. Sparse notes, piano and cello and sometimes steel guitar, floated down from the summer homes. She wondered if Sarah Anne was in one of them, waiting for her, but she’d lost the piece of paper with the woman’s address.

  “Why did you come here? To Louisiana?” she asked Callum one afternoon.

  “I was driving around the South with a couple of high school friends, pretending that we were a proper band, and I met a girl here. She said the touring life wasn’t for her, so the band went on without me. Yoko was the least of what they called her. She was trying to make it as a photographer, and when she was called away on a job up north, I went with her. We tried for a while, but it didn’t take. I’d always liked it here, so when that death knell sounded on our relationship, I came back. It turned into a joke, how everyone left me for the world, but I left everyone for Louisiana.”

  “Did you love her?” Hannah asked, struggling to sound casual.

  He turned off the motor. The silence was instant and absolute. He rested his elbows on his knees. “We’re here. I’ve been up and down these waterways, but this is the most beautiful clump of trees I’ve seen.”

  Hannah looked up into the gray, sun-stroked canopy, fragile as ancient lace.

  “I come here to be alone sometimes. That’s Spanish moss hanging from the trees. Its closest relative is the pineapple, of all things.” Callum paused. “I did love her. And of course, it couldn’t last. We didn’t know that, at eighteen. People tell you, but you think you know better.”

  “Can it last now? Is there a magical age?” Her own questions frightened her, as did the possible answer, but she found that she now hungered for comfort. Her life with Mae had been so insular, so self-sufficient, that she’d rarely given thought to sharing her life with anyone else. Even Sarah Anne, who’d flitted between boys, had once made a makeshift scrapbook for her future wedding. Rose petals preserved in hairspray were pasted carefully between faded ivory satin she hoped to one day be swathed in.

  Callum drew a deep breath. “It’s possible with the right person.”

  “Do you still love her?” She instantly wanted to take back the words.

  He gave her a tender look. “It was a lifetime ago.”

  “I was eighteen two years ago,” Hannah said, squinting at a large estate on a hill, the moss trailing down toward the water. “Short lifetime.”

  Moving slowly, he lowered himself on top of her and pinned her arms against the edge of the boat. “Over ten years for me. That’s a fifth of a life in some parts.” Hannah opened her mouth but he growled against her lips. “Shut up, smartass.”

  He settled in beside her as she snaked her arms around his neck, and the current made them undulate against each other. They closed their eyes and slow danced against the bottom of the boat, changing rhythms as the current drifted them past snippets of music.

  Hannah moved through the grocery store aisles, keeping her head down. She massaged the pimpled flesh of grapefruits and added stalks of asparagus to her basket. The amount of food available in the small town shop was still incredible to Hannah, who’d grown up purchasing produce from nearby houses.
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  “Two of those salmon filets,” a woman told the man behind the seafood counter. “No, those ones there.”

  Hannah risked an upward glance and her breath caught in her throat. She turned quickly on her heel and pretended to be unreasonably fascinated by a head of cabbage.

  “Hannah?” Sarah Anne asked tentatively.

  Hannah looked over her shoulder and managed a wooden wave.

  In a sweater and tight denim, Sarah Anne’s twenty-year-old body looked almost sickly thin. “Fancy meeting you here. I was wondering when we’d run into each other.”

  Behind the counter, the man packed up Sarah Anne’s filets, studying Hannah from under heavy lids.

  “On the swamp, Mae used to mostly buy from farmers and fishermen in the area. She said it was fresher.”

  Sarah Anne mouthed “thank you” to the man and bounced the filets in her palm. “Maybe I’ll learn how to fish while I’m here.” She peeked through the cellophane and shuddered daintily. “Maybe not.”

  The man took a corner of his apron to the glinting edge of a blade, his eyes still on Hannah. The message was clear. Clearing her throat, Hannah backed away, picking up a bundle of squat carrots.

  “So what brings you here, then?” Sarah Anne asked, oblivious to the man’s knife.

  “I’m—” Hannah stopped. The group of people who knew about her and Callum was so small that it felt like a secret. A private cubby into which only the two of them could fit. But she felt a girlish urge to gossip with Sarah Anne, remnants of a childhood cubby of their own. “I’m staying with a man in town. A musician.”

  Sarah Anne’s jaw dropped theatrically and she clapped her hand to her chest. “Why, Hannah. I do declare.” She laughed. “That’s fabulous. Older? Younger? Hot?”

  “Older.” Hannah smiled. “Hot.”

  Sarah Anne sighed loudly. “What I wouldn’t give to trade lives with you. My uncle’s spending more time here than I thought. His idea of a great night is Scrabble and spiked lemonade. I swear, he handles me like china sometimes. I’ve barely had a night to myself since we got here.”

  “He’s probably just worried that …” Hannah paused, swallowed hard, then finished in a small voice. “He just wants to make sure you’re okay, being back here and all.”

  Sarah Anne raised an eyebrow. “You know how you make sure someone’s okay? Quit annoying them to death.”

  They reached the cash registers and Sarah Anne fluttered her fingers over the glossy pages of magazines. “This?” she asked, tapping a photo of a blonde-bobbed celebrity. “For my hair?”

  Hannah shrugged.

  The wall of white teeth encased in crimson lips, black lashes like the multitudinous legs of centipedes, made her uncomfortable. The art of massaging red into her cheeks, perfuming the hollows of her neck, and ironing the kinks out of her hair was another gaping hole in Hannah’s education.

  “Maybe,” Sarah Anne mused, squinting at the photo. “I cut it short once, and regretted it. It’d look good on you, though.” Sarah Anne brushed her fingers through the ends of Hannah’s long reddish hair.

  “Next,” the cashier urged them, gesturing with her hand.

  Hannah laid out her items one by one, then noticed the cashier’s arms remained crossed. Behind her, Sarah Anne hummed bits of an almost recognizable melody as she studied the back of a can.

  “Next,” the cashier repeated and Hannah looked up into her flat, unapologetic eyes. A dark mole sullied the woman’s tanned face, and her lips cracked through pink lipstick.

  Sarah Anne snorted. “You haven’t done hers yet.”

  “I don’t serve her kind,” the cashier said simply.

  “What would it hurt?” Hannah asked the woman, hating her doleful voice.

  The cashier stepped back from the register. Hannah thought she saw an expression of regret flash across the woman’s face. But then she jutted her chin toward the door, as if Hannah were some dumb animal undeserving of speech.

  Hannah set down her empty basket and moved toward the door, even as Sarah Anne called her back. Christobelle’s words rang in her head, telling her to keep strong and close herself off, but all she felt was shame.

  Sarah Anne caught up to her in the parking lot. “What was that?” she asked, her own groceries abandoned inside.

  “They don’t want me here,” Hannah said, blinking back tears. “They want me in the swamp, with the reptiles. Where they think I belong.”

  Sarah Anne moved to stand in front of her. “You should tell the manager. They have no right to treat you like this.”

  Hannah stared bitterly out at the street. “You don’t understand what it’s like, being turned away anywhere I go. You can’t know how much they hate me.”

  She felt paralyzed by the knowledge that others might turn on her even in the brief walk back to Callum’s apartment. She was beginning to understand Mae’s fierce protectiveness and how necessary their waterside exile had been. In that moment, she ached for the easy life that Mae had constructed for her.

  “I don’t care who your family is, money is money. Money is blind.”

  “Not my money. They don’t want anything from me. Everything I touch is tainted.”

  She thought of Callum and the unburdened simplicity of his life before she’d come into it. How long before the townspeople found out who was sleeping in his bed? Or worse, maybe they already knew. Maybe they’d already confronted him, a wall of thick-armed men encircling him on the docks, his own small form eclipsed by their menace. There was nothing more terrifying than precarious happiness.

  “Hannah, that’s not true.” Sarah Anne touched her shoulder. Hannah flinched away from the woman’s hand.

  “Now you’re tainted, too,” Hannah said, aiming for levity, but her voice came out dry and heavy. “I should go.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah Anne said. “I know you must be going through a lot. Why don’t you come over? Let me make you dinner one night, and we can catch up.”

  “Sure,” Hannah replied, but she was already waving as she turned away. She’d imagined seeing Sarah Anne again many times over the years, and had rehearsed long apologies for abandoning her that night so long ago. But now she’d had two chances, and fallen short of contrition on both occasions. Maybe the finest gift she had to offer was to shut herself off.

  So distracted was she by her thoughts that she bumped shoulders with the old woman standing in the middle of the street. “Sorry,” Hannah mumbled. She caught a glimpse of white hair framing milky brown eyes as she passed, and when she looked over her shoulder, the woman was still there, watching her go. She noticed the varicose veins streaking the woman’s legs beneath the hem of her pale blue shift dress. Hannah’s shoes slapped the concrete as she walked away, and she thought of a hunted animal, moving inelegantly through the brush.

  When Callum was gone, Hannah was restless. Her new life was different from her previous uncomplicated fascination with books, herbs, and fetching simple accents for Mae’s dishes. It had been a small life, but comfortable in its simplicity and reassuring for seeming so secure. Now her future stretched in front of her like a chasm, specked with terrible moments of anger at Mae for coddling her, for not pushing her toward university, for not teaching her the basics of finance.

  “What do you know how to do?” Callum asked her, then grunted. “Aside from being sexy as hell.”

  “Excellent,” Hannah muttered. “An exciting future in prostitution awaits me.” She cocked her head, considering. “I know how to cook, I guess.”

  “I’ll say. You’re incredible in the kitchen.”

  “No restaurant in this town would hire me, though,” she said, squeezing the juice of a halved lime into her glass of water.

  “Come here,” he scoffed and wound his arm around her waist. “You don’t need an income right this second, so stop stressing so much and just enjoy it. Slaving a
way for your bread and butter isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” They danced clumsily across the living room. “Jesus, woman, would you let a guy lead?”

  Hannah stepped hard on his foot. “I would, if he knew how.”

  As he picked her up off the floor, she squealed. Beneath her trailing toes, his feet moved smoothly. “How’s this?”

  Her laughter answered him.

  “Give yourself some time. You’re young, still.” He ran his finger alongside her eyes, over her lips. “No lines yet,” he said, softly. He guided her finger across the same route on his face. “See? This is what they call expiring goods.”

  Eventually, they made their way to the bed, where he mapped her body with his tongue, his lips murmuring against her skin as if she were his harmonica. His hands moved with teasing slowness along her body and she answered his plucks and plumbs with her truest notes. Afterward, they lay beside each other, their faces mashed by pillows, and talked softly.

  “How can you even afford this place?” Hannah asked him, running her eyes across the molded trim along the ceiling. The bedroom’s large windows opened like doors onto the starred sky.

  “Renting an apartment in the middle of nowhere can be remarkably cheap. I make do with the occasional gig. And my parents died,” Callum added, his voice unemotional. “My mom first, a quick cancer, then my dad drank and smoked just enough to rot his stomach straight through.”

  Hannah was surprised that he hadn’t shared this with her earlier, and found herself yearning to hear someone else’s experience of loss. “I’m so sorry. Were you close?” She stroked his cheek, trying to coax out grief, but he gave a wry one-sided smile.

  “Not really. I flew the coop at fifteen. They were fine enough parents, but a bit too right-leaning for a musical son.”

  “So why didn’t you set up camp in Lafayette or Baton Rouge? Tourists are dying for a good swamp tour.”

  Callum shrugged. “You get your motor clogged with hyacinth, and they expect you to find them a gator nest. I’m brave in plenty of ways, but not stupid enough to taunt a momma alligator for the viewing pleasure of chubby kids in bucket hats. And the music’s good in Lafayette, but I never warmed to the zydeco. I’ve been here for years, and still can’t partner-dance to save my life. Anyway, my sister gave me the lion’s share of what little our parents had saved up.”