I started cleaning, but I felt so tired. My leg hurt and too much movement made the cut split open. So I cleaned up the vomit and sprayed carpet cleaner on the rug. I had all week to clean the rest.
The phone rang. I was lying on the floor next to the rug and didn’t think I could reach it in time, crawling, but I did. It was Sarah, telling me she was coming over for dinner.
“No!” I said, though no one was there to hear me; she’d already hung up.
I waited for her on the front stoop. I had to keep her from going inside. The wind blew cherry blossoms from the trees and the blossoms spun twister-like and landed on our blacktop driveway. Little blushes of color. I toed them with my good leg. The other leg I’d wrapped in more paper towels and duct tape before putting on loose pants. The vein throbbed beneath the bandage, as though it was trying to bust loose. I compulsively pinched the fabric and shook it out, checking for blood.
I leaned all my weight on my good leg, slung my messenger bag over my shoulder, slipped my thumbs into my pockets. The thing with real life is that you have to do something to make yourself less miserable. You can’t just fall into ponds and emerge a warrior.
A big gust made all the leaves talk over one another and brought my sister’s car swooshing around the corner and up the driveway. Chris was in the passenger seat. He rolled down the window and said, “I thought you were going to cook us chicken breasts.”
“Let’s go to Olga’s,” I said. “I’ll buy us those bread things with the cheese dip.”
I took small quick steps to the car, hoping they wouldn’t notice that I was limping. But as I slid into the back seat, Sarah said, “Are you limping?”
“Just twisted my ankle,” I said. “No big deal.”
Sarah looked at me in the rearview mirror. I smiled really wide because I thought that would let her know I was okay. But instead she snorted. “You’re grinning like a maniac,” she said and put the car in gear.
Sarah made a quick turn out of our neighborhood. The motion made me dizzy. The houses and stores and billboards passed in a blur as we glided through every yellow light. I thought about how important timing is—how it decides everything. Sarah got out of the house at just the right time. Jamie falls into the pond at just the right time. Hayden hears the splash because he’s nearby at just the right time. Then the clock resets, and everyone who wasn’t there at the right time is stuck.
* * *
Monday, I had to go to school. I packed the hydrogen peroxide and extra paper towels for the midday wound cleaning. As I drove there I thought about what might happen to the girl in my book if she slipped back into her real life. Maybe she gets struck by an arrow, and dying in her new world means returning to her old one. Would she go back to school? Would she try to get back to Hayden, or whatever his name is, to continue fighting for the cause? And why does she feel so attached to a cause she just found out about, when she never really did anything to help any cause in her old world? Maybe it’s because suddenly everything that makes her comfortable is gone, her whole system of social support gone, with no one around who remembers it. That sort of thing would rattle a person, would maybe make a person see things she’d ignored before.
I parked the car. I limped into precalculus late because I couldn’t race the bell. A few people looked at me as I slid into my seat, but no one said anything—I was too quiet in school for people to take much notice of me—and Mr. Simon was oblivious as usual. All day I was dragging behind, walking slowly so it wouldn’t look like I was limping. At lunch I started sweating. “Is it hot in here?” I asked my friends, who shook their heads and said they were cold.
In the bathroom, I propped my foot on the toilet seat and gagged as I peeled away the paper towel and saw the congealed blood. The skin around the cut had gotten puffy. I could feel my pulse beating in the wound. More hydrogen peroxide, more paper towels. On the way home, I decided, I would get proper bandages.
By third period I was feeling dizzy again. By fourth period I was flushed and feverish and I thought I might pass out if I tried to play my flute. The idea of all that air rushing out of me, air I needed, air that would be hard to get back, made me feel even sicker. I didn’t have anyone to call me out of class, though. My mom had only listed herself on the form the school sent home. So I stood by the front entrance for a second, considering. The parking lot monitor had parked his SUV at the curb and was chatting with the ladies in the main office.
The engine of my mom’s car whined brightly when I turned it on. I didn’t look in the rearview mirror as I drove away from the school. Maybe Jamie would try to return to the other world, so that she could finish the fight and be with her love—only to find that she couldn’t return because she’d already died in that world. There was only this world, her home, and the only option was to find a way for Hayden to get here.
At home, I rolled pickles up in deli turkey and dipped them in mayo. I wasn’t that hungry but hadn’t eaten much the last few days. I got cold again, wrapped myself in the throw blanket and shivered while reruns of Gilmore Girls played. I watched with glazed eyes, one episode after another, the bubbly music rising and falling over me. I’d seen them all before but the show was comforting.
My mom called a little while later. I tried to be polite, told her everything was fine, and she told me she was having the time of her life. She’d held a hose over the dock at the last marina so she could give fresh water to the manatees that had swum up out of curiosity. Ken’s idea, she said, as though to prove he was gentle or something.
She sounded happier than she’d been in weeks, and I thought it was probably because she was away from me. I should’ve let it go but I couldn’t help it. “You know, it’s illegal to interact with manatees,” I said. “You’re not supposed to give them water. You’re supposed to just watch them.”
My mother sighed.
“I’m just saying, if Ken claims to be so knowledgeable about sailing, he should know this.”
“Erica, please.”
“Tell him to stop messing with the manatees or I’ll report him!”
My mom’s voice got really low; it was almost a growl. “If you ruin this for me,” she said, “I’ll never forgive you.”
There was silence. It beat in my ears like it had wings. Never—such a big, lasting word, a word that keeps expanding and never stops, never gives up. It’s its own universe, that word. She’d already decided he was more important than I was. And maybe I shouldn’t have been so aggressive about the manatees—I mean, what’s really so bad about giving them fresh water?—but my gut reaction was to find something wrong with whatever Ken did because he was wrong for us, and it wasn’t fair, and my mom was going to uproot us and make me move like it was no big deal.
I’m not sure which of us hung up first. We’d already left the call, was the thing.
I fell asleep. I woke up sweating, kicked off the blanket, limped to the freezer and got an ice pack to put on my forehead. I turned on the light above the stove, rolled up my pajama shorts. The wound was sticky and inflamed; the veins surrounding it were like a map, the blue lines creeping farther and farther up and down my leg. I thought of Jamie shaking through a fever in the woods and waking up having made it through. She wouldn’t need help. I found a Tylenol and went back to the couch.
The hours crossed the border into night slowly, on foot, and I moved in and out of sleep like my brain was a pendulum—one side sleep, one side restlessness. When I woke it was maybe to raccoons knocking over trash cans outside or night-bruised headlights slicing through the windows. Time felt loopy. The clock on the wall ticked but didn’t tock. Water didn’t help my dry mouth. What if I was getting too sick, getting past the point of being able to make rational decisions? I wondered if there were any leftover antibiotics in the medicine cabinet. It was possible, but I couldn’t muster the energy to get up and look.
If Jamie were back in her home world, back in school, would she be distracted and uncertain? Would she think her time in the other
world had all been a dream? She couldn’t tell any grown-ups; they’d make her go to therapy, or worse. She’d stay quiet, burdened with a secret and heartbroken and not equipped to deal with any of it, but she’d get through it. At night she’d go to the pond where she’d fallen in and sit and breathe in the muddy smell of the water, tear up blades of grass and roll them between her fingers. She’d write messages on rocks and throw them into the pond, but they’d go unanswered. Fall in, her messages would say. Or I’m waiting. Or maybe she’ll realize that even though she can’t go back to the other world as a human, she can go back as a ghost. And she’ll fall in and emerge shimmering, floating, a specter gliding across the blood-soaked fields of war. She’ll find Hayden in a field tent, injured and dying, and she’ll cloak him in her invisibility and guide him back to the pond where for the last time they’ll look upon his world and understand that they’ll never be able to return because she’s dead and he’s dying and the war is almost lost. So they’ll sink into the pool together, the water a silk cloth around them, the other world breaking into smaller and smaller pieces until it disappears. They’ll emerge gasping for air on the banks of the pond near Jamie’s house. Hayden will be fading, like a filament in a light bulb starting to pop, and in Jamie’s world she’ll give him antibiotics and vitamins and clean water. And he’ll recover.
I woke up hours later. The clock radio in my room had been sounding its alarm for a long time. School had started; first period was almost over, in fact. The phone rang and I let the answering machine get it. It was the attendance office, inquiring about my whereabouts since no one had called in to excuse me.
I looked at the cut and saw it had started to ooze yellow pus. I tried to stand but the ceiling started spinning, and I collapsed back onto the couch and put my head between my knees. I wasn’t breathing very well. I got the phone and dialed my dad’s number. It rang and rang and he never answered. All the anger I’d been wrestling with before now just felt like sadness. My mom just wanted love, and yet for some reason we couldn’t figure out how she could have that without tearing everything apart.
If you ruin this for me, I’ll never forgive you.
I wondered if Jamie would begin to feel like she’d made the wrong choice after bringing Hayden back with her. They might have fun at first—go boating on a lake, and he’ll never have experienced speed so fast, and it will take his breath away, and he’ll associate all those good highs with Jamie. He’ll eat pizza for the first time and feel the tickling cool of air conditioning. But then depression will sink in because his friends and family back home have been destroyed, and he wasn’t able to help them, and he won’t feel like he belongs in this new place (even though somehow everyone speaks English in the book). He’ll be homeless, because there’s no way Jamie’s parents will let a boy move into her room with her. He won’t be vaccinated against the diseases of this world. He won’t understand the politics. His past will be a fiction to everyone in this new world. He and Jamie will look at each other and think what a bad idea their being together had been.
“Oh my God.”
I opened my eyes. The realtor stood across the room. I hadn’t heard her open the door. The little box with the key—I’d forgotten about it. Usually she called before she brought people over, but maybe she had and I’d been sleeping, or maybe she called my mom’s cell.
Behind the realtor stood a man and a woman. Their hands covered their mouths as they looked at me and at the blood on the floor and on the back door. The tangle of blankets and the blood that had leaked from my wound onto the couch. They looked horrified.
“Are you okay?” the man asked.
Nausea swelled inside me and I got up and tried to limp to the kitchen sink but threw up on the living room floor instead.
“Oh, honey,” the realtor said. She dropped the folder she was carrying onto the coffee table and knelt beside me.
Without saying anything, I rolled up my shorts and showed her the cut. A horrified look darkened her face. She looked at the cut, then looked at me like I was a stranger, though we’d met before and she’d told me she’d played the flute in high school, too.
“Where’s your mom?”
“I thought it would get better.” I watched her dig her phone out of her purse. “Wait—don’t call my mom!”
She wasn’t. She was calling an ambulance. I wondered if a doctor would think I was crazy. I prodded the cut. It did look a lot worse.
I sort of knew then that the damage had already been done. It would be a long time before anyone would trust me again. This—this was what my mom would never forgive me for ruining.
* * *
Antibiotics dripped from an IV bag into the inner fold of my elbow. Machines beeped out my vitals. A psych evaluation was in the works, though I insisted I wasn’t crazy. The hospital had called Sarah, who had called my mom, who was waiting on standby to get home.
Maybe Jamie and Hayden will run away and try to start a new life. Maybe they’ll go back to the other world and live as ghosts, floating around for eternity like eerie balls of incandescence. It sounds good but probably won’t be that much fun after a few days. All the things they love have to do with being alive.
I was stuck. I didn’t know how to make the book something that wasn’t depressing. I didn’t know how to end it. It all seemed so small and senseless now, all my ideas, my book, my quest to get my mom to realize Ken’s a jerk. Maybe one day I’ll think bigger. Two years from now I’ll graduate. Maybe then I’ll be on my way to college, or I’ll save up for my own car and drive to a place where people are just waiting for a stranger to come to town.
V
Skin
A theater company comes to Newark in midsummer to perform a production of Romeo and Juliet in Military Park. All day the sky looks thunderous. The dark bellies of the clouds sag toward the ground, and the air seems to sulk through the city, brooding. I check Military Park’s Twitter feed to make sure the performance is still happening, and whoever is tweeting reassures us that it is, that rain or shine the show will go on. So at 7:00 p.m., I text Aamina to see if she wants to meet me there, and I leave the apartment and walk alone toward the expansive green lawn of the park.
I come upon a small set, just a backdrop of a medieval town and a few chairs pushed together to serve as Juliet’s balcony. There are rows of folding chairs set up for the audience, and they’re mostly empty. I sit in one on the end of a row and look around the park, which was revitalized last year and is now manicured, with gorgeous bushes of purple hydrangeas along the walkways. A Japanese maple burns red behind the set. Beyond, the Gutzon Borglum statue of American wars towers over the grass: Revolutionary War soldiers morph into Civil War soldiers who become the soldiers of the twentieth century. From above, the park takes the shape of a sword, and the statue is its hilt. The blade, once a reflecting pool, is now a vibrant bed for two thousand red pansies.
I read about the revitalization on the Military Park website, and I’ve spent my summer days since Patrick left reading here.
The park manager walks among the chairs with a clipboard, asking people to sign up for the mailing list. She has a big smile and beautiful blue braids twisted into a pile on her head. “I’m already on it,” I say, and then she recognizes me and says it’s good to see me again.
Aamina dashes across the park lawn late, just as the men are roaring through the streets of Verona in their billowy white shirts.
“What did I miss?” she says, laughing, as she slips breathless into the chair next to mine.
“Well, there are these two families,” I say. “Believe it or not they cut out the chorus in the beginning. How are we supposed to know what the ‘two hours’ traffic of our stage’ will be?”
“Two hours?” Aamina checks her watch. “Really?”
“One,” I whisper. “They abridged it.”
Someone shushes us. Romeo sulks over Rosaline. Juliet ponders marriage. The actors are young, students at a musical theater school somewhere in New Jersey.
Even though they’ve abridged the play, they seem to be hitting all the main points. They’re earnest, but a few of them hit the lines just right. I lean my chin on my fist, watching.
The weather in Newark builds a tension of its own. A quiet wind turns into a sharp one that blows dirt in our faces from a construction site across the street. They’re building a Whole Foods, and a little way down Broad Street they’re raising the new Prudential Tower. A woman sitting near me wraps a scarf around her head. When we get to the part where “parting is such sweet sorrow,” the backdrop falls forward, revealing the costume rack and the offstage actors behind it, and everyone laughs. The company takes five to reset the stage, and my eyes wander around the park. That’s when I see Patrick walking nearby. His head is bowed against the wind and he’s wearing his red spring jacket.
I stand up. I almost go to him, but a fierce gust of wind blows dust in my eyes. The dust blinds me and forces me back into my seat. When I’ve wiped my eyes clear, Patrick is gone.
“What?” Aamina asks, looking over her shoulder.
“Nothing,” I say. “I thought I saw . . .”
“Oh no,” she says, taking my hand. “You’re staying here.”
The actors can’t get the backdrop to stay upright in this wind. We hear a ripping sound nearby. Atop the skeleton of the new Prudential Tower a construction tarp has torn free and spins above the skyline. An unoccupied chair topples. A low rumble of thunder takes the whole evening in its grasp and shakes it. The park manager hurries to talk to the director of the play, and as the first fat drops of rain are falling they call off the rest of the production.
The small audience scatters. Most of Military Park has emptied; a few people are huddled under the bus shelter on Broad Street. The rain is picking up, but Aamina and I walk slowly toward the fancy cocktail bar on Halsey Street, the one where we know I won’t run into Patrick.
If the Body Allows It Page 19
