“Oh, good,” Emily said, pointing. “It’s the coast guard.”
They’d arrived in a rubber inflatable with a motor attached. Dee was relieved she didn’t have to do anything.
“Do you want to work things out with Linus?” Emily asked.
“Yes,” Dee replied. There were a lot of reasons why she wanted to work things out, but in part she just didn’t know who else would want her. She worried she would never feel well again. Linus would inherit her illness, but it would be a different thing to ask someone new to adopt it.
She also missed the feeling of lying so close to him their breath touched, and the electricity that their skin exchanged. Each moment when they were alone together was patient and slow and felt meant to be. At least in her old body it had been—and as much as she loved Linus, she also loved the memory of the healthy young woman she’d been when she met him.
Linus had driven Martha home from the restaurant in Sacramento, leaving Dee there by herself. It had been their plan to drive separately, but the blood thinners had carried the alcohol swiftly through Dee’s body, and she was drunk. She sat alone while she sobered up. Linus’s coworkers filtered out, some of them no doubt wondering who she was. She clutched a warm cup of coffee in her hands and watched a pontoon putter to a stop in the middle of the river. From its deck flowed the slow drawl of someone playing taps. Each note stabbed her with its blunt edge. A persistent sad throb was all that song was. Ashes were being scattered—a water burial. Dee closed her eyes and imagined the billow of ash beneath the surface. The release, the dispersal of atoms, the end.
* * *
Before Emily and Dee left the park they walked slowly to the bank of the river to feel the cold spray of water on their faces. Dee had to leave soon to go to the airport to catch her flight. She thanked Emily for listening, and Emily said she was happy to, and there seemed to be more Emily wanted to say but she didn’t say it.
At the airport, each step with her luggage left Dee feeling more and more breathless. By the time she reached Salt Lake City for her connection, she had to use all her energy not to faint as she went up the gangway and trudged to her new gate. On the second flight, her breath was as thin as tissue paper. Her heart rushed against the thin walls of her chest, hit her rib cage, retreated. She felt her heart might burst, or fail just because she could not provide it enough oxygen. She breathed as hard as she could without wheezing.
The plane’s wheels thudded on the ground in Sacramento, and Dee was relieved to still be alive. A few weeks later she would be admitted to the ICU in hemorrhagic shock, her cardiovascular system shutting down because she was severely anemic. This is what she’d been feeling on the plane, in the thin air of the high altitude, but by the time she was kissing solid ground she wasn’t thinking about a doctor, she thought only of Linus. He was waiting for her in their car outside baggage claim, and when she saw him she dissolved in tears and into his arms. She told him she’d thought she was having a pulmonary embolism on the plane and was going to die—but now she was safe on the ground, safe with him.
He wrapped his arms around her and only let go when the airport police flashed their lights at them.
He would stay by her side in the hospital, too, and the fight they’d had blew away, an empty boat on water. After three blood transfusions, Dee began to stabilize, and Linus held her face in his hands and without saying anything, they started over.
They didn’t talk about the night on the Sacramento River, but if things had gone differently, if she hadn’t almost died, Dee thought that Linus might’ve ended up with Martha. She wasn’t jealous anymore, about the idea of it. Martha just might have been the natural choice for him. If her near death hadn’t revived their love, Martha’s attack might have been the beginning of new love, hers and Linus’s, although Dee couldn’t claim to know what Martha would have wanted. Sometimes Martha’s name came up in conversation about work, but Linus always steered them away from that rocky shore. Once he added, casually, that Martha had gotten engaged, as though it would reassure Dee.
Dee didn’t need reassuring. Even when she began treatment for her autoimmune disease, even when her healthy body more or less returned, she would sometimes wonder what Martha and Linus had said to each other during that car ride home from the river. Dee couldn’t help but notice that Linus had stopped bringing her to his work functions after that, had in fact stopped going to them himself.
Aerosol
I built a fire in the backyard using lint from the dryer as kindling. It curled up and disappeared almost instantly, but after I added enough of it, the twigs caught and the flame committed itself to eating the logs. Everything was bright and contained in the pit I made out of cinder blocks, which I dragged from the neighbors’ backyard where a pile of construction garbage sat from their stalled addition. Money problems, I guess. We had them, too.
* * *
My sister, Sarah, was supposed to be staying with me that week. She went to school in Ann Arbor, but it was her spring break now and she had some time off. Spending the week bonding with Sarah was the deal I had made with my mom, who’d gone to Florida with her boyfriend and had wanted me to go, too. They were sailing on his boat; they’d started in Daytona Beach and were winding all the way around the southern tip then up the gulf coast to Sarasota. Hours and hours of sitting on a boat as the hull slapped the water repeatedly. I’d Google Earthed the route, zoomed in so I could see the gulf coast sand beneath the blue glass of shallow water. It looked pretty, but Ken hated me and would probably toss me overboard midvoyage. “I’d rather die,” I said to my mom—which had started another fight, of course. She did that thing where she pushed her fingers into her temples to let me know I was giving her a headache. She was angry, but also tired, and her thin lips trembled and I wondered what she really wanted to say.
We didn’t speak much the day before she left. She explained the numbers on the fridge, reminded me it was really important that I answer the phone when the realtor called because she might want to set up a showing, told me again how to thaw a chicken breast, that sort of thing. We hugged goodbye. Her shoulder blades were two sharp stones in my hands. I didn’t get her, and she didn’t get me.
“So,” I said, when Sarah and I were sprawled on the couch watching the Daily Show on Thursday night. “What are you going to do all next week while I’m at school?”
“Actually,” she said. “As long as you’re okay here, I was thinking of staying at Chris’s apartment. I can stop home a few times, if you want.”
“Sure.” I’d already driven my mom’s car to the store to buy deli turkey and cheese and a jar of pickles. I didn’t want to touch raw chicken. “I’m a survivor,” I said.
Sarah laughed at me.
So that was how I ended up alone.
* * *
I built the fire because it seemed fun, and because I was entering a time in my life when I would have to fend for myself, and because I was working on a novel in which the heroine will probably need to build a fire. She’s going to fall into a pond, and her foot is going to get caught on the root of a water lily, and just as she’s about to pass out, the light above her will change and the sky will spin and the weed will disappear and she’ll be able to kick her way to the surface because she won’t be in her world anymore. She’ll be somewhere else, somewhere unknown.
So the fire was research.
In shorts and a T-shirt, I lay on the grass by the flames I’d coaxed into existence and thought of names for my character. Jamie. Matilda. Elsbeth. And names for the brooding but beautiful guy she meets, the archer in the rebel army: Hayden or Harrison. Or maybe Parker.
Imagine just how strange the world will feel when Jamie emerges from the pond, the sky above her not the blue she’s used to but violet with black clouds. The trees will blow in a thicker wind than her wind and the birds will be singing in different tones. She’ll be confused at first, because that’s how it always is in books—even though if I’m ever transported in space and time
I’ll think Yes, finally.
But then, gradually, she’ll realize the change has enhanced her life. She’s trading in the boring details for the wild ones. She has a purpose, suddenly; she’s emerged from the pond baptized, the old pains and boredom cleansed from her body. Emerging as someone new, but also realizing she was that new person all along. Love, war, valor—in fantasy books, they’re all a disguise for the simple feeling of wanting to be someone a little bit special. A little bit worth remembering. Her fears vaporize as her clothes dry beneath some bright faraway sun that looks bigger than her sun at home. All her raw courage is reforged into a sword.
My idea was good. I just had to get the words on paper.
The light faded and my eyes tricked me into thinking the fire had gotten brighter. Our house backed up to a thick patch of forest—a good selling point, according to the realtor who’d stuck in our front yard a big sign with her face on it. She’d hung a little box on our doorknob with a combination lock, and nestled inside was a key so she could get in anytime. It was like the house already wasn’t ours.
Overhead, a hawk swooped gracefully into its nest. The stars popped out one at a time, like giant fiery mosquitoes. If I stared long enough without blinking, they began to vibrate. It was peaceful. I would miss this house. I didn’t know where we’d go when it sold—probably with Ken, who rented an apartment here in Michigan but had his boat docked in Florida.
I felt the pain piercing my thigh before I heard the pop of exploding metal and a hiss of air released. I didn’t scream, but all my breath rushed out of me. I could almost see it, the way you can see air get sucked out of astronauts’ mouths in movies when they go out in space without their suits. A rusty aerosol can, tucked into one of the cinder blocks: I hadn’t noticed it before, but the heat from the fire had made it explode. I froze as I looked down at my thigh, at the shard of metal as wide as my big toe embedded two inches deep in my flesh. I didn’t breathe, not until I couldn’t stand it any longer.
* * *
My mom met Ken in AA, where she’d met all of her boyfriends, including my dad twenty years before. I’d told her the AA pool was too small and that she needed to meet someone from somewhere else. Or she could look on the internet. But instead she’d brought home Ken, then kept bringing him home. He had thick gray hair that fell to his shoulders and he walked around with his hands in his pocket, shaking loose change. He was tall, and he slouched because of it.
Mostly I wanted her to let my dad move back. Since she’d tossed him out, he’d stopped calling her, stopped begging her, and he’d also stopped calling me from Minnesota, where he’d gone to rehab, and where he now rented an apartment since my mom had decided he couldn’t come back. He had a roommate. Fathers weren’t supposed to have roommates; they were supposed to live with you.
My mom feels like she’s wasted time. And there’s nothing scarier than adults who feel like they’ve wasted time, with the ends of their lives burning their heels like hot coals, like death is something that starts happening the minute you reach a certain age. At least, that must be why she’s into Ken: she’s afraid of dying alone. He has a job and his sobriety—things my dad doesn’t have—but he also has a pathological need to be right and he expects us to clean up after him. He came into our house ready to assume the position of the patriarch. And my mom expected me to immediately adjust. I tried to tell her how I feel—I didn’t have the same anger against my dad as she did, and what I thought we needed was a little bit of time because she and I were a team—but she didn’t want to hear it. She asked me if I expected her to be alone for the rest of her life and then she called me spoiled. And maybe I was. I was the baby of the family, and I hadn’t grown up as quickly as my sister. I still liked fantasy books. But none of this changed the fact that Ken grossed me out. And that’s what hurt the most: my mom didn’t think my opinion mattered. She didn’t think I was anything but an immature teenage girl.
* * *
I finally breathed, quick inhalations of air that hit my lungs like a staple gun. I stared at the shard of metal for a second, completely bewildered. I reached for it, but my hand hesitated like my fingers didn’t have the muscles to pinch it and pull it out. Then I did it. Quickly, but it still seemed to take forever—metal separating from flesh. There was a pause, everything was still and it seemed like even the flames stopped flickering. Then the blood flowed out and I rushed at the wound with everything I could find: my math homework from my back pocket, leaves from the ground, my T-shirt pulled down to cover my thigh.
“Oh no,” I said. “No, no.”
Wasn’t there an important vein in your thigh? I’d never seen so much blood; it seeped through my fingers and ran down my wrists. I stood and almost fell into the fire. Droplets of blood went flying and sizzled in the flames. I left a trail of blood that dotted the grass like dewdrops as I limped inside.
In the bathroom, the fan sputtered and one of the light bulbs flickered. I propped my leg on the counter and lifted my hand and my math homework to look at the cut. It was a gouge, really, my skin completely opened in a bloody trench. I tried to press the pieces back together, but the pain hit me even harder. I leaned over and threw up on the floor.
Another moment passed, and then a few more. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing.
Then I tore through the cabinets, leaving bloody handprints on everything. I found small Band-Aids and hydrogen peroxide. I couldn’t wedge my thigh under the faucet so I limped upstairs to the bathroom with the shower, still trailing blood—God, the house was going to look like a crime scene—and upstairs I stood under cold water without even taking off my clothes.
This was Saturday, day two of being alone, and I was watching bloody water swirl down the drain.
* * *
Two questions I have about the fantasy novel: Why does the character get transported from her home in the first place, and does she ever come back? These questions are more important than whether or not she falls in love with the brooding archer boy. Also, let’s face it, she definitely falls in love with the brooding archer boy. Who could resist?
There will be a section where she gets wounded, because she’ll take naturally to a bow and arrow and join the army against the dark lord. She might get separated from her company, stumble into a forest, delirious, with beasts roaming among the trees and their yellow eyes gleaming hungrily. But she’ll mix a salve, she’ll use her wits, because girls in fantasy novels always have hidden talents.
When I was out of the shower, I poured the hydrogen peroxide over the cut and watched it fizz as it cleaned the wound. The bleeding had slowed a little. I wrapped half a roll of paper towels around my leg and taped them with masking tape. I needed stitches. I needed a wound evaluation. I should call Sarah and have her take me to the hospital.
But our insurance had been my dad’s insurance, and we’d lost it when he’d gotten fired. An ER bill would cost thousands of dollars. I didn’t know how much my mom had in the bank. I had three hundred dollars saved from birthdays and my irregular babysitting gigs. More than anything, I didn’t want to have to ask Ken to pay. He’d demand a repayment plan from me. He’d take credit for saving my life.
The morning, I thought. I’ll see how it is in the morning. I was very tired, and I felt very woozy, and so I limped to my bedroom and wrapped myself up into a burrito with my blankets and fell into a really deep sleep.
* * *
There was this one time a few months ago when Ken and my mom were fighting. It was about my father. Ken didn’t think my mom was being aggressive enough with him, and he was threatening to answer the phone himself the next time my dad called.
Maybe it was the thought of Ken trying to intimidate my dad, who was weak right now and drug addled and desperate to have his family back. It made me sick. Ken and my mom were fighting in the kitchen, and when I couldn’t take it anymore I burst in and told him to stop yelling at her. I told him he better not dare talk to my father.
“Your mom and I are tryi
ng to have a conversation,” Ken said.
I raised my palms up. So what?
Ken only needed to take one step to close most of the gap between us, like he was using his size to intimidate me. I turned to my mom and said, “God, can this idiot please just leave for two seconds?”
Ken took another step. He glanced at my mom, then at me. “When are you going to learn to respect people’s privacy?”
He was close enough that his spittle landed on my cheek; his breath smelled like coffee. I’d never felt tense in this way before, like I might have to deflect a blow. My mom was saying “Whoa, whoa,” and pulling Ken back a little. But it was too late—she’d brought him into our house, and for the first time ever I felt unsafe there.
It was a nightmare, what happened next. Three-way screaming. Everyone was red in the face. My mom was crying. I stormed upstairs because I’d be damned if I was going to let Ken see me cry.
* * *
I woke up late the next morning. The same old sun blazed above the house, except that now there were spots in my vision that made the sunlight look moldy. One empty-headed minute went by before I remembered everything that had happened: the fire, the aerosol can, the deep cut on my leg. I rolled over and my skin tore away from the sheet. I felt a new oozing. The blood had dried and now the cut was wide open again.
In the bathroom, a repeat of the procedure: hydrogen peroxide, new paper towels. The cut was seeping, but not gushing blood. Maybe it would scab today. I just had to keep it clean. Keep paper towels on it. Everything would be fine.
The house, though—the house was a wreck. The blood would be easy enough to clean off the hardwood stairs and hallways, but there were drops of it on my mom’s rugs in the living room. The vomit had dried on the bathroom floor, and blood was on everything I’d touched.
If the Body Allows It Page 18
