Immutable

by Cidney Swanson

  “Do you have sunscreen?” she asked. She could feel where the sun had already burned her shoulders, her neck, the backs of her calves.

  Matteo brushed past her into his mother’s bedroom. He returned with a very thin long-sleeved shirt, a long blue skirt, and a broad-brimmed hat. “She would have been happy to loan them,” he said, his voice low and just one side of cracking.

  Martina accepted the sunscreen alternatives, buttoning the shirt over the tank top she’d slept in. She pulled the skirt on and shed the linen pants she had thought would be so practical when she put them on in Nice’s cooler weather.

  Matteo smiled lazily at her from across the room. “Well, that wasn’t very exciting. I was hoping for more of a show, to be honest. Maybe next time.” His mouth curved into a languid smile revealing a deep dimple on the left side. Martina remembered the taste of that dimple and flushed with the memory. And in that moment, she knew, without either of them having said it, that they had made up. They were Martina-plus-Matteo again.

  She didn’t want to think through the implications, but her heart was already beating faster.

  “Next time,” she said, “I’ll make sure you can’t see anything.”

  “You can’t make me close my eyes.”

  “I can do this.” In less than two seconds, she had crossed the room, spun him so he faced the wall, and turned invisible while holding onto him. Which turned him invisible, and more importantly, left him unable to move.

  She came solid again, laughing because she could imagine exactly what he was saying right now. They’d been like that once—finishing one another’s sentences, speaking one another’s thoughts. She felt the tug of the unseen tethers that bound them one to the other.

  And then, because she needed to hear him, to know what he was saying, she slipped back to her invisible form.

  Put me back! Martina, this is not funny. Put me back right now!

  He seasoned his demands with a few words she hadn’t heard before although their meaning was plain. She wished he could hear her when they were invisible. She came solid so she could speak and be heard.

  “I’ll release you on one condition: the first fish you trade for is mine.”

  It was an old bargain. An old promise. Matteo, speaking in solemn earnestness when they had been twelve and falling in love: you are my girl now because you are the person I will always give my first catch to. He had sealed the promise with an awkward kiss. Martina had laughed and wiped her mouth dry. But she’d also taken the fish.

  She vanished again, located Matteo, wrapped invisible arms around him from behind, and brought both of them back inside their bodies in the tiny house.

  As soon as they came solid, he spun free, grabbed both her arms and pushed her against the wall, pinning her there. The scuffle left both of them breathing hard.

  “Don’t,” he said, his voice a rough whisper, “ever do that again.”

  His eyes were half covered by long lashes. She’d thought the two of them were the same height, but he had to look down slightly to meet her eyes, and this meant his eyelids hooded those sea-glass green eyes. She could read the hunger in his eyes, half hooded or not. His gaze flickered to her mouth and then back to her eyes.

  “At least, not without asking my permission first,” he said, completing the earlier thought. His eyes drifted to her mouth again. The black of his pupils was swallowing the green.

  “Or what?” she whispered, her pulse tripping. It was a challenge. It was an invitation.

  She couldn’t tell who leaned into the kiss first, but his mouth was on hers and she tasted every promise they’d made each other when they were children on beaches of sand, beaches of ice. Her heart pounded as he kissed her neck, her jaw, her ear. She dug her fingers into his hair, pulling his mouth back to hers. He kissed her harder this time and then pulled his lips back from hers for a moment, his eyes looking from one of her eyes to the other, the way you had to do when you were this close.

  It was an intimate gaze, and so full of longing that she felt her skin flushing warm. She dropped her eyes to his mouth again and then they were kissing, lips crushing against lips, mouths warm and soft and open. She hadn’t kissed like this in two years.

  No. She hadn’t kissed like this ever.

  Matteo’s fingers slipped under her tank and explored her belly and she felt a warm shiver run through her body. He pressed his lips to her throat, to either of her protruding collar bones and then he stooped to lift her. She was light-headed already and it felt like floating, having someone carry her. She nipped his ear as he took her to the back room. It felt like jumping off a cliff as he plunged them onto the bed. She lay on her back, pulling him closer, feeling his hipbones pressing into her thighs.

  “You are so much more beautiful than I remembered you,” he said, his mouth grazing her chin, her cheek, resting softly on her closed eyes.

  “But I still weigh more than you,” she whispered back.

  He pulled back to look at her. “What?”

  “I do. Or I couldn’t have brought you with me when I turned invisible.”

  His mouth pulled into a wide grin. “I never liked scrawny girls. You used to know that.” He ran one hand through her hair. “I like ‘em broad of shoulder and broader of hip.”

  Martina laughed and wriggled her hips, sliding a hand over his hips. Matteo’s eyes met hers again. Her eyes must have looked the same as his. Hungry. Yearning. Grateful.

  Matteo had propped himself on one elbow and was now using his hand to pull strands of her hair off her shoulders, her neck. He laced the fingers of his other hand through her free hand and then sighed heavily, pushing their interlocked hands up, up, up to the corner of the mattress. They’d landed upside down on the bed. Not that it mattered.

  “Why are you not kissing me?” she whispered. “Kissing should be happening. Now.” She lifted her face toward his, but then she saw he was staring at their interlocked hands. She murmured, “What?”

  “There’s something here,” he said. “Under the sheet.”

  She twisted herself sideways, pulling her hand back from that corner and hoping the something wasn’t … alive.

  “It’s paper, I think,” said Matteo. “My mom must’ve … Give me a sec.”

  She almost said no, almost grabbed his torso, pulling him back from the unwelcome distraction like the Mediterranean dragging rocks under the surf. But there was something else in his eyes, now. A different sort of need. Martina shifted herself out from under his hips.

  Matteo tugged at the sheet until it released.

  “Oh,” he whispered. “Oh, wow. Mom never mailed her letters.”

  20

  HOME-LIKE

  Sint Maarten, The Caribbean

  Martina sat up, her brain trying to clear away the fog of interrupted passion.

  Kissing should be happening now.

  But then she looked at Matteo’s face. She could see grief etching lines on his forehead, pinching his eyes, wrinkling the space between his nose and his lips, pulling his mouth down hard as he tried not to cry.

  “I would have paid for the damn stamps,” he said, his voice hitching on the final word.

  Two large tears spilled from his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Martina, swiping at the tears. His voice rasped with emotion. He sat up. “I’m sorry. For … crying. And … for kissing you.”

  “It’s okay.” She wrapped one arm reassuringly across his shoulders, shivering at the electric pulse of his skin against hers. “It’s okay.”

  Matteo nodded. Swiped at fresh tears.

  Martina stared at the letters in his hand, enclosed in what had to be homemade envelopes. “Look,” she said. “That one’s for you. She didn’t need to mail it.”

  “There’s two for me,” he said, flipping through them. “And one for—”

  He broke off and met Martina’s eyes. She read the name. It made no sense.

  “It’s for Katrin,” he said, unnecessarily. “With an address.”


  “An address she crossed out,” Martina added. Also unnecessarily.

  “She got real confused some nights,” said Matteo.

  “That doesn’t look like drunken scrawl to me.” Martina recognized the carefully formed letters. Matteo had inherited his mother’s precise handwriting. Martina had not even been able to imbibe it second-hand.

  Matteo drew a hand through his tangled hair. Swiped at another rogue tear. “It doesn’t. She was sober when she wrote this. Maybe….”

  “Katrin died. Mutti knew that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You should read the ones she wrote to you,” said Martina. “I can wait outside.”

  “No, that’s okay,” said Matteo. He used his bent legs to push up into a seated position, leaning against the wall. “Stay here. Please,” he added, scooting over to make room.

  Martina propped herself against the wall beside him, giving his hand a quick squeeze.

  He took in a deep breath, exhaled noisily, and opened the letter marked MATTEO—READ FIRST.

  Martina felt awkward looking over Matteo’s shoulder while he read his mother’s letters, so she busied herself counting things.

  She counted the paperbacks printed in Cyrillic characters stacked in one corner of the room. (Twenty-three.) She counted the number of flies that flew in and out of the room. (Three. Unless it was the same fly three times. In which case: one.) She counted the seconds until Matteo looked up from his first letter. (Eighty-six.) It was hard keep herself from looking to see how he was taking whatever was in the first letter. She counted the tears that made it all the way down to his chin. (Four.) She wanted to kiss that chin. But whatever spark had flared between them earlier, it had been damped down by the discovery of his mother’s letters.

  “It’s a will,” he said, setting the letter down. “She owns—she owned—this land outright, and now it’s mine, but I have to see a lawyer and sign things. She wants me to give her books to Mrs. Petrovna who lives by the airport. She wants bougainvillea planted on her grave because it’s thorny but blooms year-round—” Here, two more tears slipped out. “And there’s a boat at Saint Thomas that’s mine if I can pay the impound fees.” Here, Matteo laughed. His laughter sounded like a broken thing, a memory of what it meant to laugh.

  He set the will aside and opened the letter that said READ SECOND. This one he glanced through quickly, finishing before Martina had numbered all the dark spots on the ceiling (twenty-seven and counting.) He handed it to her to peruse.

  Martina read the following:

  ADVICE FOR MY SON, NOW THAT HE MAY NO LONGER HAVE IT FOR FREE AT ALL HOURS OF THE DAY

  1. Don’t become financially indebted. (You think you are cleverer than me. Don’t be so sure.)

  2. Don’t take drugs.

  3. Don’t trust Dr. Fritz Gottlieb. No matter what.

  4. The real reason I chose Sint Maarten’s: Martin, Martina. Figure it out. You’re a smart kid. Yes, of course I knew about the pair of you. (See parenthetical statement #1.)

  5. Eat fish every day and wear a shirt. Skin cancer is no joke.

  6. Don’t trust people who are unkind to animals or children. (See #3.)

  7. In case of emergency, Dr. Johan Pfeffer is probably trustworthy. Yes, he is one of Dr. Helmann’s children, but he was kind to animals and children and was kind to me when there was no benefit to be gained from it. He may be in a position to offer information as to the whereabouts of the person mentioned in #4.

  8. Use your brain more than your brawn.

  9. Don’t forget the bougainvillea. (I’ll be watching.)

  10. Don’t steal the bougainvillea. (See parenthetical statement #9.)

  Martina looked up. She was smiling, but a tear had worked its way free from her brimming eyes. She brushed at it.

  “When I read this, I can hear her voice perfectly,” she murmured.

  Matteo nodded. He drew a finger back and forth, below 4. The real reason I chose Sint Maarten. “She loved you,” he said.

  “And she knew about us,” Martina whispered.

  He fingered the letter addressed to Katrin as if deciding what to do with it. In the end, he stuck it back under the corner of the sheet where he’d discovered it.

  “I guess I have to find some bougainvillea,” Matteo said. Then, a sad smile on his face, he added, “She’s watching, after all.” A tear squeezed out the side of one of his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry she’s gone,” said Martina. “I’m sorry for you, I mean, for what you’ve lost.”

  Matteo sighed. “This last year was hard. She was in pain. She didn’t want to live. No matter how much I wanted her to.” He ran his hands over his face, several times, rapidly, as if to wipe away the stain of the memory. He pushed off the bed. “Let’s go.”

  Martina rose and followed Matteo into the other room. He grabbed a cloth sack and slung it over one shoulder. Into this, he stuffed a shirt, a small trowel, a small knife, and what looked like a tool you might employ in the kitchen. Martina had no idea what it might be employed for, however.

  Outside, Matteo lifted a tarp from something lumpy. A bicycle. He stared at the bike. Then he stared at Martina. Then back at the bike. Then back at Martina.

  “Can you still fly us?” he asked.

  Martina’s brows rose. “Seriously? In broad daylight?”

  “I know places you can come solid with no one watching.”

  “I don’t know, Matteo. I haven’t tried it for a long time.”

  Matteo’s head tilted to the side in a way that said let’s try it.

  “I’ll try flying us around the house. To see what happens,” Martina said. Then, remembering his earlier words, she asked, “Do I have your permission?”

  Matteo threw his head back and laughed once. “Like you would need it.” He held his arms wide.

  Approaching him, Martina wrapped her arms around his waist. He smelled just right: saltwater and the medicinal tang of lavender and something that was just Matteo. His arms folded around Martina’s back. Then he pulled her closer, until she could feel his lower ribs and his hip bones pressing into her belly. Right before Martina vanished their bodies, Matteo slid one hand strategically south of the waistband of her skirt and grinned at her, white teeth flashing.

  And then, before she could respond, they were insubstantial. The drowsy, sticky heat fell away with their ability to sense temperature. Martina looked up and then she imagined launching oh-so-slowly toward the ceiling of the tiny dwelling. She gave their bodies a little spin, to make it interesting. Of course, if it hadn’t worked for some reason to do with height ratios or how many kilos they weighed or some unknowable factor, that would also be … interesting. But it worked.

  Martina felt a tiny frisson of anticipation. She’d missed flying. It made her feel so alive. She took them up and through the ceiling. The corrugated metal roof sent a shivering, grating sensation right through her. Martina had never liked passing through metal.

  I remember this, thought Matteo, and Martina heard his thought.

  She wished she had a way to speak back to him. In a flood, she recalled how they’d tried and tried when they were children, always without success. At last, they had worked out a system whereby she turned left for “no,” and right for “yes.” That had been an infinite improvement over complete silence on her side.

  She remembered, too, how she’d instructed him to censor his thoughts after overhearing an idea he’d once entertained, not remembering Martina would hear the idea. How embarrassed he’d been. He’d refused to wander invisibly with her the next time Helmann had granted a Chameleon’s Holiday.

  Martina had rolled her eyes and taught him to censor his thoughts in ways she’d developed for herself. Think about a piece of music—it will drown out what you’re thinking if you really pay attention to it. Or count as high as you can, focusing on the numbers.

  After that, Matteo had agreed to let her ripple with him again.

  As Martina pulled free of the corrugated meta
l roof, Matteo let a thought slip out regarding the current position of his right hand and what he’d like to do if they were both solid. Martina shook her invisible head. No more self-censoring for Matteo now, it would seem.

  She circled them slowly around the house: once, twice. Everything worked as she remembered—the effortless glide, like a hot knife through butter. Why hadn’t she tried flying around Nice those last few nights of fairy-godmothering?

  She knew why.

  Flying had been her secret with Matteo. It had belonged to them alone. Helmann had forbidden flying. Diving below ground, he had permitted for some reason known only to himself. Probably, he knew the children would always return if they went belowground. Allow them to soar, and who knew what might happen?

  While Martina found it hard to imagine she was the only child to disobey, there had always been rumors Helmann could see things other caméléons could not, so she might have been the only one brave enough rebel. Or foolish enough. But the pair had never been caught.

  Matteo interrupted her reverie: I will be able to give you directions, but if you want to tell me anything before we go get fish and flowers, you should put us down here so we can talk.

  Recalling their coded Yes/No, she veered sharply left to indicate “no.” They’d never developed anything more complicated, although Martina supposed they could have. There were four additional directions to choose from, after all. For now, the sharp turn left told Matteo what he needed to know.

  Okay then. Follow the dirt road. Well, follow it like a bird.

  Martina understood this to mean she could avoid the numerous switchbacks that climbed to the lonely hut on the side of the hill. As she made her way down the hill, Matteo pointed out things of interest—Old Man Thomasine’s palm tree “orchard” planted in the shape of an octopus (Wow! You can see it better from the sky!), a swimming pool in three tiers (built by a drug lord you do not want to mess with), a clump of clouds that looked a bit like a pod of dolphins (Martina thought that was debatable), and finally, when they were nearing the edge of the island, an actual pod of dolphins.