The Watermark

by Travis Thrasher

  “Genevie is finishing up graduate work at Covenant,” I told my uncle.

  “That’s where we met,” she finished.

  “That’s right, Sher. You’re back at college. How’s it been, getting used to college life again? Same as before?”

  “Not really,” I replied, a nervous alarm going off inside me. “It’s fine.”

  “I think it’s great that you’re finishing up school after everything that happened.”

  I nodded and smiled, looking for an escape route. “Thanks.” Looking at Genevie, I could see the question mark on her face. “We should go see what’s in the kitchen. I’m thirsty, aren’t you?”

  We got away from Uncle Buck for the moment. I had forgotten how many potential dangers there were in one of these family gatherings.

  As it turned out, everything would be fine until halfway through dinner.

  After Pearl and some of the extra help finished setting up the glorious display of food, twenty people sat around my parents’ large dining-room table, which was extended as far as it could go for this occasion. Another group sat at a table in the kitchen, with a kids’ table in the family room. After piling food from the buffet onto our plates, Genevie and I sat close to my parents. In the background, Christmas carols rang throughout the house from speakers that could be found in every room.

  I managed to avoid the spotlight of conversation until we reached the end of our meal and plates began looking empty.

  “So, Sheridan, how is school going?” Aunt Kate asked me.

  “It’s going well, thanks.”

  “So there wasn’t any problem with letting you come back?” Uncle Buck asked.

  I forced a smile and shook my head. “No problem.”

  “Well, I think it’s splendid for you to finish out college at Covenant,” Aunt Kate added.

  “I don’t think I could’ve gone back if it were me,” my large and thoughtless uncle said.

  “Well,” I replied, trying to deflect him, “I knew I’d meet Genevie there. I was waiting to finally meet her.”

  Conversation then shifted onto Genevie, and she enchanted the entire room. She held everyone’s attention with her animated and assertive charm, and with her dark features that seemed so out of place amidst my very Anglo-Saxon family. Genevie was so elegant and graceful and poised that I felt like a pauper next to her, like someone she had picked off the street and brought inside and sat down beside to eat dinner with. She made everyone laugh, knew all the right things to say, and probably left everyone thinking the same thing I was telling myself: What’s she doing with me?

  But during dessert and coffee, Gen slipped her hand into mine and grinned at me. “Thanks for inviting me,” she whispered.

  I slipped a new CD I had received as a Christmas present from my parents into the car stereo as I drove Gen and myself back to Chicago. In the backseat sat the two dogs—Ralphie in his crate and Barney curled on a blanket. Hopefully, since it was close to ten on Christmas night, Ralphie was comfortable and sleeping. Barney never seemed to have trouble sleeping anywhere.

  “So what did you think? Honestly.” I asked Gen after we had talked about the long day.

  “I had a great time. You parents and relatives are great.”

  “You didn’t care about them asking all those questions about you and your parents and all that stuff?”

  “I didn’t mind. I can’t help the fact that my parents divorced. It was nothing I did. And I’m proud to be Filipino.”

  “I am proud of you, too. Yet I still don’t think Grandma K realized we were dating. She asked me about three times who you were. Of course, she often asks the same thing about me.”

  Gen laughed and squeezed my hand as I drove. I was getting used to holding her hand.

  “I didn’t realize your family was so, well, how should I put it—”

  “Loaded?” I suggested.

  Gen laughed. “Well, to be honest, yes.”

  “I know. I was the adopted one. They don’t love me or give me money.”

  “Come on,” Gen said.

  “I’m kidding. I know. I brought Erik home and he flipped out.”

  “I guess it just never occurred to me that your family was that well-off. I’m sorry to put it that way.”

  “It’s fine,” I replied.

  “My parents did okay when I was little. I mean, we weren’t rich, but there was enough for vacations and stuff. Then, after the divorce, money got really tight. Both my parents are doing a little better now. But I had to pay my own way to Covenant. I’m still paying off my college loans.”

  “You’re going to hate me for this, but I was the exact opposite. My parents paid for me to go to college. They even offered to pay for this final year of college, but I figure a twenty-eight-year-old man ought to pay for his own schooling.”

  Genevie didn’t say anything. I could tell she was looking at me and had something on her mind.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Then why did you quit between your junior and senior years? I almost had to quit for a semester to work, but I got a scholarship.”

  Even in the darkness of the car, with a soft melody playing in the background, with Genevie so close and so open and perhaps so ready to hear my story, I hesitated. “I told you, Gen. I had a lot of growing up to do.”

  “But what was your uncle talking about when he mentioned everything that had happened? Was he talking about the accident? The one you told me about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to talk about it now?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “But why?”

  “I promise we will, Gen. It’s just… well, it’s Christmas and I’d rather talk about today. And the future.”

  Gen let out a sigh. “It doesn’t matter what happened, Sheridan. You can trust me, okay? I want you to know you can trust me with anything you tell me. It’s not going to change anything between us.”

  I wished I was brave enough to believe her.

  December 30

  Dear Amy,

  How can I begin to talk about you to anyone? Where would I start? What would you have me say?

  Sheridan

  fifteen

  A new year approached, and with it came expectations of change. I wanted and needed to change.

  On the morning of December 30, I found myself lying in bed listening to music and thinking about Genevie. I was evaluating my life and I was hopeful about what I saw.

  Over the past few months, I had slowly gotten into the habit of praying again. I could utter short, simple prayers. Yet I still felt like I was talking to someone on the other side of a door. God could hear me, and yet I couldn’t manage to simply turn the knob and go through to him. Why? Why couldn’t I simply step through the doorway and let him see me as I spoke to him?

  I suspected that if Christ were to come back to earth and knock on my door at that moment—like I’d seen in that old Sunday school painting—I’d likely peer through the peephole and see him and then refuse to open the door. I’d be like the woman who refuses to have people come into her house simply because it is too messy. My spiritual house was still pretty much in disarray, and I knew that all I could do was lock the door and pretend not to be home.

  Let me in, a voice in my heart kept whispering.

  But if I did, what would he say? What would he do? I was like the doubting apostle Thomas. I was like the denying apostle Peter.

  Do you love me? Sheridan Blake, do you love me?

  I feared knowing what the answer would be.

  Drifting in and out of sleep twenty minutes after midnight, I heard a brutal pounding at the door to my apartment. I got out of my bed, assuming it was Erik getting a jump start on his New Year’s Eve festivities.

  I opened the door and caught a glimpse of a man in a dark, oversized sweatshirt with a hood over his head. In my heart and in the brief second I saw the figure, I knew it had to be Mike Larsen standing in front of me. I say brief because it was just that—a s
hort second of seeing him standing there, of seeing what looked like the high forehead of a balding man, and then of seeing something strike out at me and smash me in the nose.

  It was his fist. After the first blow, which sent an amazingly quick stream of blood across my shirt, I fell to the carpeted hallway floor and began howling in pain. I felt another blow to my head, then another to my back, then another to my buttocks.

  The beating felt like it lasted an hour, though surely it lasted only a few minutes. Everything happened so quickly that I could not do anything except feel the flashes of pain rush over me in a flood of hysteria. I heard a voice screaming and crying and shouting “Erik!” over and over. The voice sounded familiar and actually came from my own bloodied lips, though to my muddled mind it seemed to emerge from somewhere else. I lay on the floor curled up in a ball with my hands guarding my already beaten face. The punches and kicks still came, over and over. I screamed more and cried and coughed and protected my face and my burning nose.

  The kicks slowed, interspersed with a few deep and low curses, and then everything stopped. I lay shivering, waiting for the next blow, but nothing came. Somehow I made it to my hands and knees and began crawling back into the white-tiled entryway of my apartment and then over the thick brown carpet toward the bathroom. I sucked in heaping, pathetic sobs. I eventually made it to the bathroom and leaned my head over the toilet bowl and hung my chin over the side.

  Crimson droplets stained the white ceramic.

  I fought to stand up. I leaned up against the sink and saw the red splattering trail follow me. Looking into the mirror, I saw a face swollen and bloody and in shock.

  I fell back to the floor and stayed until Erik found me half an hour later. As I lay there, Barney wandered blindly over and began to lick my face.

  Ten minutes after Erik arrived, I had to stop him from calling for help.

  Erik had already helped clean my face up and walk me to the couch. He hurled questions at me I didn’t hear or understand or maybe just didn’t want to answer. I fought back tears as he wiped the blood off my eyes and nose. I couldn’t smell any liquor on his breath, but then my nose was pretty well out of commission. He had just come back from a party, so I assumed he’d had a few. Thank goodness he was coherent enough to help me.

  “Here, put this on that eye. It’ll help. Sorry there’s nothing better.”

  It was a cold beer bottle. What an ironic twist—this was what had gotten me into trouble in the first place. Now the cold glass felt soothing against my throbbing head.

  “What happened, Sheridan? Who did this to you?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Didn’t take long for you to get beaten to a pulp.” Erik cursed. “Who was it? Anyone from school?”

  My head felt swollen, and my eyesight kept fading in and out. “It was the same guy who’s been calling me and leaving messages.”

  “That Mike guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  “Erik, not now.”

  “I gotta call the cops,” he said, his hand reaching for the phone.

  “No.”

  “They’ve got to know about this.”

  “No, they can’t.”

  “But you know it’s this Larsen guy, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just got whaled on good, Sheridan. We’ve gotta do something.”

  “No, no cops.”

  “Look, I’ll talk to them. It’ll be fine.”

  “No!”

  My scream made Erik put the phone down. “Listen, I gotta know what happened here,” he said in desperation. “What’d you do to get the guy so mad?”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. The chilled bottle felt good against my eye.

  “Look, I want to help,” Erik said. He cursed again, this time louder, as he looked me over. “You really got beat up bad.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You have to get to a hospital then. You might have a concussion or something.” He paused. “Are you sure I shouldn’t call the police?”

  “Erik, please.”

  “You’re positive it was this Larsen guy?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it was so fast, but yeah. It had to be him—”

  “Let’s at least get you to a hospital, okay? That eye looks pretty bad.”

  I could only see out of my right eye; my left felt like it had Rocky-itis. So this is what they mean by getting the tar beaten out of you.

  I finally agreed to go to the hospital. As Erik helped me up, he looked at the bloody mess of my shirt and the entryway floor to our apartment.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, man,” he told me.

  “Don’t be. This was a long time coming. And I brought it on myself.”

  December 31

  Dear Amy,

  If I could take on some of the pain I caused you and your family, would I? I wonder about that. I wonder how much I would accept. I guess I don’t have such a great track record on stuff like that.

  Sheridan

  sixteen

  There’s an overused expression, maybe even a cliche, that says you see your life flash before your eyes before you die. I don’t know if that happens, and I don’t particularly want to find out anytime soon. What I do know is that in the three-, four-, or five-minute span of time that Mike Larsen was whaling on me with fists and boots, giving me a concussion and an almost-broken nose and a blackened and bruised eye, I saw all my twenty-eight years whizzing past.

  The next day, after being held at the hospital overnight for observation, I continued to see it all. I saw everything. Just like yesterday. My whole life. Everything I did and didn’t want to see.

  Erik had stayed with me all night. He didn’t have to do that. But this guy I knew only in a male-college-roommate sense had sat by my hospital bed and waited patiently to take me home. I still didn’t think I could tell him why this had happened, but I thanked him more times than I probably needed to.

  As we drove back home in the early morning of December 31, I watched snowflakes glide and fall and either melt on the windshield or be swept away by the wipers. Almost hypnotized by their quiet rhythm, I wondered what I would say to Genevie.

  This was the only thing I cared about. I didn’t care about how badly my head hurt or how much my nose throbbed. I didn’t care that my back felt like someone had stuck a nail in the center of it. I didn’t even care that nothing was going to happen to the man who had done all of this. I only cared that Genevie would see me in this state and rightly demand an explanation.

  I could get by telling Erik nothing. Genevie was another story.

  Snowflakes continued to fall—each one supposedly different, each one unique in its design and destination. Each one with its own story to tell.

  What if I told Genevie my story? What would she say?

  When I thought about it, I realized this was a good opportunity to tell her everything—maybe the best opportunity that would come along.

  She will understand.

  The storm outside seemed to build as we neared our apartment. I didn’t want to go back there, but I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t go home. I didn’t want to involve my parents in this anymore. They were already involved too much as it was.

  God, why did this happen? Just when everything is going so well. What are you trying to tell me?

  But I already knew that too, didn’t I? Deep down, I knew the answers to the questions I was asking.

  I looked at my hands. I held one in the other in silence. It reminded me of another time, another place.

  Your life flashes before your eyes.

  The snow continued to fall, and I kept wondering what I would tell Genevie. By the time we arrived at the apartment, I knew the words I had to say.

  Actually, there were two words I needed to say to Genevie: “I’m sorry.”

  Genevie looked at me with complete bewilderment when I spoke t
hem. It was a little after six o’clock that night. She faced me on the same couch where we had exchanged Christmas presents and thanked each other with kisses.

  “I’m lost,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t expect any of this, Gen. None of this at all.”

  “You didn’t expect what? Getting beaten up?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t expect that, either, but I mean us. You and I.”

  “What does that have to do with this?”

  “Everything,” I said.

  “Why can’t you just tell me what happened? Who did this to you?”

  I looked at my hands again. One in the other, my thumb pressing against the inner edges of my other hand’s fingers. “Gen, there are things about me, things you don’t know. About my past—”

  “I don’t know because you won’t tell me. Why don’t you think I’ll understand?”

  “Things are—”

  “They’re what?”

  “Complicated.”

  Gen shook her head. “That’s unfair, Sheridan. That’s so unfair. I want to know what happened. One day we’re talking about New Year’s Eve plans, and the next, you show up looking like you stepped into some boxing ring. I don’t get it.”

  “It’s ghosts from the past.”

  She waited for more. She shook her head again in disbelief. “I need a little more than that, Sheridan. ‘Ghosts from the past’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The summer after my junior year—”

  “Yes, I know. The accident. What exactly happened?” Gen demanded.

  “I was driving. I hit someone.”

  “Who? What’s that have to do with what happened to you yesterday?”

  “It was the father.”

  “The father? The father of whom? Sheridan, what happened?”

  I let out a deep breath. I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t finish the story. I couldn’t let her know all of it. “I don’t know how to tell you.”

  “All this time and you still can’t tell me? Why not? I don’t understand.”