The Mercy of Thin Air

by Ronlyn Domingue

  “How was it?” Twolly’s first real kiss was worthy of hours of interrogation. Until she met me, she had no idea that kisses could involve more than lips.

  “It started out just fine. Then he sort of trapped me, which—don’t you tell anyone, I swear—which was a bit of a thrill, I won’t lie, but then I suppose things got a little carried away, and I realized something wasn’t quite in place.”

  “That shouldn’t have surprised you.”

  “We had our clothes on.”

  “Why do you think they come off in the first place?” I lead her to a bench under a tangle of honeysuckle. I take off her hat, smooth her hair, and replace the cloche properly. “Did he get fresh with you?”

  “Like pie on a windowsill.”

  “I mean, did he do anything you didn’t want him to do?”

  “I pushed him off before he had a second chance.”

  “You have to find him. Boys are like puppies. Their feelings are easily hurt, but they forgive you quicker than anything if you show them a little kindness.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Make him laugh. Tell him you thought something escaped from the reptile exhibit.” Twolly shook her head. “Then be honest. Tell him you’re sorry. Would you still go on a date with him?” She nods. “Okay. He needs to know that. He’s not a masher, Twolls, just a man. You should be a little flattered anyway. And you do share some of the blame.”

  “How? I didn’t do a thing.”

  “You kissed him first. Instigator. Boys love that.”

  “They do?”

  “You felt the results.”

  “This is why girls should be married first before anything happens. It’s too traumatic.” Twolly fans herself with the bodice of her dress. Ligustrum blossoms snow from the back of her shoulders.

  “You’re secretly glad I’m here to see you through these first years of womanhood. You wouldn’t even know what just happened to him if I hadn’t told you about it.”

  “You’re too weird for words.”

  I look across the yard. David finishes a smoke by himself, staring up at the stars. He would make a good steady for Twolls. He’s a bit shy, well-mannered, clumsy with words but not bad on his feet. “Go on,” I say. “There he is.”

  A year ago, she would have avoided him at all costs. But now, she exhales and straightens her dress. Twolly walks toward him. David darts his head as if he wants to run away. I cross my fingers. I imagine her sweet little drawl and those guileless brown eyes smoothing his ruffled fur. He doesn’t face her directly, but he seems to be apologizing, his fists so far in his pockets that his jacket sleeves bunch. Her innocent hand reaches for his arm, and he doesn’t pull away. There, a bashful smile and the turn of his elbow. She links with him, and they walk back toward the dance floor.

  A trumpet startles me with its bleat. Above and behind, dancers scuffle along the varnished wood floor. The beams underneath them groan quietly. I pick a honeysuckle blossom and touch it to my nose. No matter how deeply I breathe, the scent doesn’t fulfill my want for it. The narrow petals dally against my lip. I stare at the slender elegant well and pinch the base from which it grew. Slowly, the stamens emerge. I take the bead of nectar on my tongue. For a moment, the smooth liquid aroma satisfies me. Soon, there is a pile of spent blossoms on my lap.

  “There you are,” says a voice to my left.

  The boy who wanted to dance. I remember him from other parties. Decent dancer, easy blusher, slow with a line, goofy about football.

  “Hello, Carl. Were you looking for me?”

  “Just passing by.” He’s also a terrible fibber.

  “Lucky me, then. Warm up this lonesome spot.” I pat the bench. “I’ve been waiting for someone special.”

  TONIGHT IS HALLOWEEN. My twentieth. Word has it that there will be a jazz band, lots of alcohol, and no chance of a raid if the right people have been settled up. Twolly swore we didn’t have to come in costume. At least that’s what she heard from Anna Whitcomb, the girl who invited her to join the crowd. This evening, I have donned my glorious regalia: the clover green dress that fits just right over my barely there bosom and slight hips, the matching cloche hat, a double length of pearls, and new silk stockings.

  “This fellow’s father is a banker,” Twolly says as we approach the immaculate Victorian house painted in mute colors. “You’d think he would have a more modern house by now. A St. Charles address is a St. Charles address, I suppose.”

  Twolly knocks at the door. As we wait for it to open, I give a few bats of the green peepers and smooth the blond bob waves against the curves of my face. From my beaded purse, I whip out a tulip-colored lipstick and paint the promise of a kiss for a cute boy who can dance and tell a joke, preferably at the same time.

  A poppy-faced boy opens the door. We trip over his unlaced saddle shoes as he moves to let us in. “Hooch in the backyard.” He lights a cigarette. “Noodle juice in the parlor.”

  I trot to the back of the house where I find a well-tended garden along the perimeter of a gorgeous pool. I know almost half of the people here. Everyone is a crasher these days.

  Carl asks me to dance before I have a chance to mingle. We cut loose for a while, and I ask him to get me a drink and a bite to eat. As I wander along the manicured boxwoods, I notice a young man having a serious and animated conversation with two fellows on the other side of the water. He has wavy obsidian hair parted on the side, and bold eyebrows that draw my focus directly to his eyes. I suspect they are black because the luster is so deep. He glances my way as he speaks, and he stumbles on his words when I don’t look away.

  “What are you looking at?” Twolly startles me.

  “Who’s that? He’s a sheik.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one with the dark hair facing that cake-eater in those terrible Oxford pants.” I nod at the boy who tries to mask his sissiness with clownish baggy, and trendy, trousers.

  Twolly nudges me. “That’s the host.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “You look knocked for a row of cabbages.”

  “I always land on my feet, don’t I, my dear Twolly? What’s his name?”

  “Oh, him. His best friend is Anna Whitcomb’s fiancé. What’s his name? Andrew something. Something Irish. O’Brien? O’Malley? No—O’Connell.”

  “Wonder if he’s so fiery that it burned the red out of his hair.”

  “Pet him and find out.”

  I pull the hat down over her ears. “Such a mouth you have now.”

  My dance partner returns. “Have a quilt.” He hands me a glass of punch tainted with gin.

  I pick at the plate of nibbles Carl brought for me and pretend to be engrossed as he spills an earful. I chew the fruit bits thoughtfully and savor two of the three petits fours. Twolly is clairvoyant, I swear, and she deftly lures him away as Andrew sips on his full drink, waiting for their exit.

  “I wanted to welcome you personally.” His eyes are not black, but lapis lazuli, a flawless supernatural blue. “I’m Andrew O’Connell.”

  “Raziela Nolan.” I offer my hand, which he accepts.

  “How exotic. Are you named for someone?”

  “Only my mother’s amusement.”

  He passes my laugh test. It is within the normal pitch of his voice, which is deeper than I expected, and a definite ha. No haws, huhs, or—the worst—hees. He fills his pearly blushed cheeks with the best liquor his father’s lawless money can buy.

  “My compliments to the chef.” I finish the last little cake. Slowly, I lick my fingertips clean. “Pure ambrosia.”

  “Emmaline, our housekeeper, is an excellent cook.”

  A young man wrenches Andrew at the shoulders. “Happy birthday, old boy. Hell of a party. Seen Anna anywhere?” He trips on his feet as he stumbles away.

  “Thanks, Warren,” Andrew says. “And no, I haven’t seen her.”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you turn into somethin
g frightful at midnight?”

  “No one has ever lived to tell.”

  “Take a walk with me, Andrew.”

  We slip out of the wrought-iron back gate and around the front of his house. We stroll several blocks to Audubon Park, stunned by a comfortable silence and the intoxicating perfume of sweet olive. The scent reminds me of the time I smoked opium, the way the fragrance seeped into my pores and bronchial tubes to leave me peaceful and somewhat lusty. When we reach the edge of the park, I run to a live oak reaching half a dozen leafy-fingered arms to me.

  “I haven’t climbed a tree in years. I hope he’s strong.” I push myself into a straddle over a gently sloping limb and scoot toward the trunk. “Don’t peek now.” Andrew glances up furtively and sips his drink. He is a little more than half-cut. Any less, and he might have tried to call me down. A chilly, humid breeze clams my skin and brushes the leaves with more moisture than air. “Join me?”

  “Someone should be down here to catch you when you fall.”

  I laugh. “Where do you go to school?”

  “Tulane.”

  “So, Andrew, what do you want to be when you grow up?” I wonder why we have never met before.

  “A lawyer.”

  “Because you believe in justice or money?”

  “Because I like to argue.”

  There. I start to sweat. My palms throb in time with my heartbeat, a steady whoosh-rush, whoosh-rush, and my mouth feels like the morning after a good plaster. I hug the tree, and it returns my adoration with the tenderness of an unshaven father.

  A spot of light moves back and forth in front of his face. “Cigarette?” He holds up a metal case in my direction but does not look up.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “And you, Raziela—”

  “Razi, please.”

  “And you, Razi? What do you want to be?”

  I sit down on a meaty limb. Running in crisscrosses among a row of trees are several children draped in white sheets, moaning and wooing loudly. They chase each other and collapse in blind tangles of linen.

  “I want to be immortal,” I say.

  “Immortal.” He says the word as if it has considerable meaning, like God or Freedom or I love you.

  “I want to live forever.”

  “You want to live forever.”

  “Pos-a-lute-ly.”

  “Why?” He crushes his dincher under his heel. “Wait, don’t answer yet.” Andrew tosses his jacket to the ground and starts to crawl up the limb to meet me. He maneuvers with cautious balance. Sitting a shoulder to elbow’s distance away, he says, “Now.”

  “One lifetime isn’t enough to make all the trouble of which I am capable.”

  He doesn’t kiss me. I don’t kiss him. Twolly doesn’t believe me when I say so.

  WHEN I SAW TWOLLY AGAIN at her birthday party, I decided once and for all that I had to find Andrew, dead or alive, even though I feared what I invited in that pursuit. I could no longer cling to the lie that had sustained me, the pieces of another man’s life I took for his. Before that, what had become of my Andrew was a mystery I was afraid to solve. To think of Andrew, actively, consciously, left me vulnerable to recollective chaos I did not have the experience to control. It was best to avoid that which could not be undone.

  I knew that I had to steel myself, find the resolve. Certainly, Twolly would not have let someone she cared about slip too far from her grasp. I remembered the last time I saw her with Andrew. She had asked him to keep in touch with her, no matter how brief. If Twolly received a letter of inquiry, she would reply, of course—she was courteous in that way—and that would be the end of it. I would know.

  For weeks, I collected stamps. I visited the nearby post office to look for the straggling squares from vending machines, paid for but not claimed. From Amy and Scott’s mail, I removed the ones that had not been canceled by postmarks. This practice was common among those between who needed to send letters now and then.

  Behind the cornice of the bookcase, I had piled dozens of stamps. If I were to learn what became of him, wouldn’t I want to know from as many perspectives as possible? I had done what Lionel told me—and not a single Andrew O’Connell who had come up on his computer search led to the one I wanted. And so I began my list: Twolly, Tulane University, every O’Connell in Massachusetts, Warren Tripp, Simon Beeker’s children.

  Finally, one night, as Amy and Scott slept, I lifted a pen into the air. But when I guided the nib to the paper, I froze. The lights flickered on and off. I held it back that time, the memory of Andrew’s eyes, that storm, his blood, the reason I feared the truth so much, the damage I feared I had done. Once the calm returned and the lights remained dark, I wrote each letter with solitary purpose, distracting myself with thoughts of how much I missed the feel of a sleek hard rubber fountain pen.

  SCOTT PUT HIS WEDDING RING and watch in the same place every evening after work. He had a little soapstone box big enough for those two items on their bedroom’s vanity, a Depression-era Art Deco piece with a huge round mirror and inlaid drawers. Sometimes I watched him absently slide the gold band from his hand and place it gently in the box. He never turned on the light to see what he was doing. He knew right where it belonged.

  He left his clothes in a pile where he took them off and picked them up after he took his shower. Scott strolled around the house naked as an ape. I did not watch him as he walked past; he reminded me too much of another man whose body I knew in more detail than he knew his own.

  Some nights, Scott pulled out a plywood board from under the guest room bed. He sat for hours without turning on a radio or TV to work on a puzzle. The pieces he’d matched were on the board, and the rest were spread across the duvet. Although he didn’t work quickly, he was accurate. I could tell that he was spinning pieces in his head. When he put them down, they locked up perfectly. He completed the frame first and worked toward the middle. Once, I couldn’t resist and put some of it together myself. He accused Amy of doing the work.

  “I don’t know how that strip got in the middle of your puzzle.” She eyed one row of several dozen yin-yang symbols. “You know those things drive me crazy.”

  Sometimes Amy would sit at the computer in the corner of the guest room while Scott entertained himself. She shuffled full, flat boxes of papers, graphic design magazine clippings, and art supplies away from the table surface. If she caught up on work, she first spilled the contents of a red multi-pocketed briefcase on the floor and checked her date book, a spiral-bound drawing pad filled with sticky notes, colorful doodles, and three-dimensional arrows with page numbers. As chaotic as it seemed, she knew where everything was. When she didn’t work, Amy searched the Internet to read news or to amuse herself.

  On weekends, they went to dinner or parties with friends. The evenings they stayed home together, they watched television or a rented movie. If there was nothing that interested them, they read in the living room and listened to the radio. Occasionally, one would ask if the other wanted to hit the springs. I’d leave the house when the answer was yes.

  Every night before he went to sleep, Scott read a chapter from the book he kept on his side of the bed. He squinted his brown eyes and chewed his bottom lip as he flipped through the pages. If the book was paperback, he would hold it with his left hand and stroke Amy’s hair with his right. With heavy books, he lay on his right side, propped the book against her body, and let a free hand fall on whatever part of her was uncovered. She sighed as she drifted off to sleep, rousing only a little when the lamp clicked off and he turned her chin toward him for a kiss. Throughout the night, a part of him always touched a part of her.

  Because Scott worked late-evening shifts sometimes, Amy got up alone to go to work. She kissed him lightly on the forehead, looked at him wistfully, and tucked the covers around him before she left. Those mornings when they woke up together, they held hands near their pillows and muttered conversations.

  I tried hard not to think of Andrew and how he looked asleep.
I could not indulge myself in wondering what I had missed.

  ONE NIGHT when Scott worked a late shift at the pharmacy, Amy slipped into the front room and pulled the DVD from the depths of the bookcase drawer. She had avoided Chloe’s surprise for several days. I could sense her nervous shivering, surges of cold vibrations filling the air.

  Amy popped the disc in the player and sat on the sofa with the remote control dangling in her hand. Tucked behind her perfect ears, her damp unbrushed hair dried in auburn waves near her shoulders. Her aquamarine eyes resembled ocean water transfused by light. She wore Scott’s boxer shorts and a threadbare T-shirt that billowed against her thin freckled arms and small bosom.

  We watched static for a few moments until the picture came into view. A neatly printed sign filled the screen long enough to read it—Tales from the Philosophical Border: Womyn on the Front Lines. Amy’s straight lips bent into a little smile.

  For the first few minutes, a voice described the scene on film.

  “Welcome to the front lines,” said a confident young woman. The camera focused on a man’s screaming mouth, but her voice was stronger. “I am your host, Chloe Abner. It’s the Year of Our Lord 1992. Big Brother hasn’t invaded our homes yet, we aren’t eating people, and the planet isn’t ruled by apes. What you are about to see is real. These people are not actors. They are your neighbors, coworkers, maybe even your friends. They go to church, obey God, love their families, and believe that what they’re doing somehow pleases the Almighty.”

  There was a pop, followed by the onslaught of pure volume from the man’s throat. “God’s mercy is not endless. He is a vengeful God. He will smite the wicked. No punishment too great for the sinners who offend Him. The fires of hell await you, Jezebels. Repent! Throw yourself on His tender feet and beg forgiveness. The slaughter of babes is a stench that coats your soul!”

  The shot widened away from the mouth. A pug nose flared. Deep brown eyes stared ahead. His brown hair was stringy across his forehead, where a vein crossed his temple like a bridge. In his right hand was a black Bible. His khaki pants fit loose under a brown stenciled belt. At his knees, there was a microphone held by a steady arm. When he came into full view, the man was standing on the hood of a mid-1970s Ford Thunderbird, which was parked behind a low fence.