THE METALLIC SMELL remained in the house. When it first appeared, the odor was so acute, so copious, that I had no doubt the memory was as terrifying as the event itself. The sharp taint never left Amy’s presence completely. In quiet moments, she would suddenly flinch or shut her eyes—and a complex rush of scents would billow around her. Each time, a masculine essence that was not Scott’s dissipated in the air.
The memory of Jem had come back. She did not welcome its return.
She had not left a clue about what happened to him. Her sporadic photograph collection showed no signs. Her boxes in the attic only had proof that he had died, but not how. I hoped that she might talk about him, even under her voice. I watched her lips, larynx, and body for signs that she muttered unconsciously, unwillingly. My hyperesthesia, that consolation prize for the loss of touch, was useless. Amy’s lips were still. She was keeping it deep.
I began to leave the radio on low all the time and turned it up only when songs from Amy’s college years played. Perhaps music would trigger a memory, a clue. Scott was the one struck with nostalgia, who reminded her of the years they were friends long before they became lovers, husband and wife. She would smile, but without warmth.
“Hear that?” He scraped a razor against his left cheek. “Remember when Chloe used to play that song ad nauseam?” He rinsed the blade in the sink and looked at her in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.
Amy pushed her bathwater away in waves. “Mmm-hmm.”
Scott stared at her and swallowed words he had wanted to say. “It’s weird how much your skin freckles when you’re in the sun.”
Amy had spent the day in the yard, tending the flowers. She ran her hands down her body. Small reddish-brown freckles dotted her chest, abdomen, and hips, some darker and larger than others. Her limbs and face were mottled with diluted spots.
“That scar comes out when you get some sun,” he said.
From the edge of her right temple to the base of her jaw, there was a thin, neat line. It followed the contours of her face so closely that it resembled a shadow. “A little.”
“Do you still think about it?” he asked.
“I try not to.”
“You don’t remember much anyway.”
“No.” She flopped a washcloth over her privates. “After I woke up, I did. The hospital, the whole family being there. Poppa Fin sitting in there all day. Even when Mom and Dad and Grandma Sunny left for coffee. We didn’t even talk. He read magazines and wouldn’t leave. I just wanted to be alone. I was too doped up or in too much pain to deal with anyone.”
“I think such a shock makes people do things they wouldn’t otherwise. At least you know they all cared, Aims.”
She released a stream of hot water to refresh her bath. “Grandma Sunny was the only one who listened to me. She knew how I— She understood. I could count on her to stand up to the rest of them. I loved her for that. She gave me peace, even if she did annoy me with the platitudes. ‘You’ll be back on the horse in no time.’ ‘Time heals all wounds.’ That didn’t help a bit.”
“But she was right. Here you are. And you have me.” He leaned into the humid borders of her bath and kissed her on the forehead.
“Yes, I have you.” Her tone was grateful but resigned.
He left and didn’t close the door behind him. Amy ran her hands along her torso. Her hands stopped above her pubic bone, and she jutted her belly upward. She held it in that position for a long time, more than could have possibly been comfortable. When she finally relaxed, she laced her fingers together and covered her navel protectively.
Blood. I wondered whose I had smelled the night before.
AMY BEGAN to come home later each night. Within a few weeks, by July, she rarely walked in the back door before eight thirty, three hours later than usual. She arrived home with replenishing stocks of food that only Scott ate. Before she went to bed, the house was always immaculate. Not a single glass or dish was dirty. Garbage bins were emptied before they were half full. Dust didn’t have time to settle on tabletops and shelves. Clean clothes spent only enough time in baskets to get them from the laundry room to a closet or chest of drawers. Her clothes—and his—were ironed for the next day. Her checkbook was perfectly balanced. All e-mail messages were promptly answered. She even read the forwarded jokes, petitions, and pleas for prayers. She cooked large meals on Saturdays, which she promptly stored in the refrigerator. On Sunday mornings, she tended all yard work before Scott got out of bed.
Her life had become neat and organized, not Amy’s life at all.
She twitched and fidgeted. If she sat long enough to watch the evening news, her toes fluttered against the air, and her fingers twirled limp dreadlocks on her head. She sat in the rocker for hours, scooting along the floor with a rapid sway while she read one ridiculous fantasy novel after another that she borrowed from the library. At times, her index fingers worked overlapping figure eights on tabletops and furniture. Her lips never moved to give me a hint at what she was hiding.
Scott worried.
I remembered entire decades when most men expected their wives to do what Amy did completely and without complaint. Scott was not accustomed to such domestic arrangements. He was suddenly useless in his own home, not even needed to open an occasional jar. He watched her, unsure when she’d become the efficient creature who now made their bed with perfect folds of the sheet and blanket.
“Aims,” he said sometimes as she padded through the house, involved in a task, “come see.”
She would stand in front of him with blank eyes.
“Sit down and relax. I’ll take care of it later. You’ve had a long day.” He would hold her hand in both of his or grasp her pajamas tightly. Sometimes he would get her to curl on his lap for a moment.
Like a willful cat, she’d spring from his grip. “That’s okay. I’m too keyed up from work to sit still.”
Amy was losing weight although she rarely exercised and her diet was atrocious. When she came home at night, she dined on cheap tacos, hamburgers, and grilled chicken sandwiches. She once packed her lunch every day, but that hadn’t occurred in weeks.
Scott looked scrawnier as well. He subsisted on leftover meals and strange salads concocted from cans of chickpeas, beets, and artichokes as well as packages of spinach, carrots, and coleslaw. Occasionally, he dined on a frozen dinner and chased it with a bowl of cereal. He ate apples as if he owned an entire orchard.
After his fifth week without sex or something close, he stopped asking for it. He closed the bathroom door more often.
He hadn’t become visibly angry yet. He hadn’t acknowledged to himself that a growl stirred deep in his throat when he spoke to her. He hadn’t stopped trying to touch her when she passed by.
I HAVEN’T SLEPT in five weeks. I gaze at the jade crocheted coverlet I used as a cocoon almost every night since I was fourteen. The sheets underneath, unlaundered—I sense what my flesh left behind. Pillows stacked too neatly, not at all the way I left them. There, at the edge, an imprint, a subtle swirl of yarn. Someone has been sitting on my bed. I stir the lint. Each of them, Mother, Daddy, Grams, visited this place.
Now I am a guest in my own room. So little of me remains. The watercolor of pond lilies hangs over my bed, the one Roger, my dead doughboy uncle, finished between college and the Western Front. Above the chest of drawers, there is the portrait of a Pekingese that Twolly did for one of her classes. The closet shelf holds two of my cloche hats in boxes. Hanging from the rod are four dresses, evenly spaced, nothing in common except that I was told how lovely my eyes looked when I wore them. Below, a pair of celadon evening slippers with thin straps and shiny silver buckles and my boyish brown sporting shoes, laces tied. The walnut chest of drawers is empty. My delicates, nightgowns, stockings, slips, gone. Near the double windows, sheers closed, the vanity mirror reflects only light. The pictures of Twolly and Andrew and assorted other friends have disappeared.
Oh, this is not the same. My lipsticks on their sid
es, my perfumes in Grams’s old atomizers in a row, my powder puff sealed in its round eggshell box. Drawers empty, except for a hairpin. The nightstand uncluttered—no soda bottles, magazines, torn-out crossword puzzles, thick stationery, or leaky fountain pens—only the lamp occupies the space, its shade level and dusty. Underneath, the shelves are vacant; all of the cigar boxes full of letters have vanished.
My family is awake. The insect whine outside the wavy-paned windows does not smother their breathing. Perhaps I should take the stairs, drift down the grunting steps, leave them now, avoid the risk that they are able to feel me near. Give them absence, peace I haven’t found yet.
My grandmother whiffles a drowsy sigh across the hall. I disintegrate, particles slipping through the dry oak of the door, and knit together inside her room. The sash is thrown wide. Propped high on her pillows, she looks regal with a white braid brushing her clavicle and fine-boned fingers laced against her bosom. A glint from her diamond wedding ring shoots across the room.
Hello, Grams, I say. You look like a queen.
Languid blinks weigh her lashes to her cheeks.
I’m glad to see you’re all right. I miss you.
From her, a deep breath, slowly delivered. I ache for that release, such an organic pleasure taken for granted millions of times over. Closer, now, I see her nose twitch with mousy curiosity, her head tilt gently in my direction. She mouths a word without parting her lips, beneath sound—if I concentrate, I can seehear—Raziela.
I enter the hallway again. Twenty-three girl steps, sixteen frightened ninny leaps, one brief hover away from my parents’ bedroom. No voices mutter, but they are entirely awake. With a tornadic swirl, I swoop under the door.
All three windows are open. The night breeze rustles the curtain edges. In bed, my parents lie on their sides. A pale yellow sheet covers them from the hips down. Mother faces the wall, Daddy behind her with his chin tucked into her neck and his left arm around her waist. Her forearm touches his, and her hand curls under her ribs. My mother is not wearing a gown.
They are pretending to be asleep. That forced slow breathing, occasional sighs, dry swallows, quiet lip smacks. Into the pewter light, they look without seeing. Daddy blinks with every eighth tick of the alarm clock. Mother stares with a haze across her green eyes. Neither has any hope of slumber; their faces are restless. From across the room, I can discern gray, swollen patches under their sockets. But worse, their orbs don’t reflect. That blankness, it frightens me. My mother and father, so confident and aware, seem mystified. How many hours do they spend—have they spent—this way? I wonder if they give up and go into the living room to read or sip brandy or listen to the grandfather clock near the stairs. My form begins to vibrate, spreading heat near the bed, but I force it to stop. I remember a night, one of many, as I lay between my parents, infant breath sweetly curdled, my mother’s lips on the pulse of my fontanel, my hand pressed to my father’s chin.
Mother’s fingers move over Daddy’s arm. He tucks his hand deeper, pulling her into him. She closes her eyes for a moment, and when they open, they glisten. Mother clenches her jaw, which Daddy certainly feels because he nuzzles her with his cheek. She swallows loud enough to hear in this silence.
“Oh,” Mother calls with quiet surprise. “Her baby scent.”
“You, too?” Daddy says.
As Mother turns on her back and meets her husband’s mouth, a tear slips past her temple and into her hair. The sheet twists under him. He brings his arms to her shoulders, and his naked torso, hips, and legs stretch above hers. The moonlight illuminates a converging stream that falls from him down the curve of her face. She takes a deep breath, exhales tightly. She rips the covers aside. I fall to pieces and scatter.
LATE JANUARY 1928 on a Saturday. Cool-snap morning, balmy by noon. From the moment we leave the city, we shout over the road noise, narrow rubber tires pulverize rock, wind carelessly blows our conversation through the windows. He keeps both hands on the wheel to hold us steady, but his grip is slack. I find excuses to move near him—a flock of egrets, there, to your left; a feather in your hair, must have blown in; your collar is twisted, let me straighten it. The Mississippi River hides behind the levee; the gravel road mimics each bend. Lonely trees greet us with skeletal, limber fingers. Dry bronze grasses play with the breeze. The sun embraces its sky, topaz blue infused with platinum gold.
There, see the chimney, let’s find a spot, I say. Nothing remains of the old home except for its foundation and central hearth. Andrew drives past the husk, deep on the property where several oaks and a cluster of fuchsia-tipped redbud trees shade the ground. We spread a layer of blankets and unpack the picnic basket. Chicken salad sandwiches, carrot and celery sticks, pickled okra, satsumas, mint tea, pound cake. After we eat, Andrew removes his sweater and tucks it under his head. He looks drowsy.
“Your grandmother said something unusual to me before we left,” Andrew says.
“Get used to that.”
“She said, ‘Raziela did not anticipate you. Don’t forget.’ What did she mean?”
“Well, you’re the first steady I’ve had in a long time. Maybe she’s afraid that you’ll distract me from my studies.”
“You said she wasn’t especially keen on your educational pursuits.”
“Grams wants me happy until I realize my true calling as a wife and mother.”
“That wasn’t in her tone. She seemed to be warning me.”
“Of what?”
“That’s why I asked you.”
There is one satsuma left. I begin to peel it, trying to keep the skin whole. “She likes to be mysterious sometimes. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s testing your reaction.”
“You walked in before I could reply.”
“Want some?” I toss the intact peel into the grass and hold a wedge near him. Andrew takes it, skims my fingertips.
“I never knew my grandparents. They died before I was born. I always wanted a grandparent who would tell me old stories. I would enjoy learning about history as they lived it.”
“That’s great until you hear each story for the fiftieth time. Never changes.”
“Perhaps I’ll borrow yours for a while. They’re all new to me.”
“Next time she’s on a tear, I’ll put her on the telephone.”
“The last time we had a date, before you came downstairs, she started telling me about her sister.”
I smile, shake my head. He looks at me curiously. I scoot close to him and rest a piece of fruit on his lips. “How far did she get?” Carefully, he drops his jaw to take it in.
“The confinement.”
“You missed the good part about her locking up my grandfather.”
“She truly believes that her sister was there.”
“Ab-so-tively.”
“What do you think?”
“Hallucinations. She was going mad locked up like that. No woman, no person, should live in such deprivation. Her mind had to do something to make up for the lack.”
“Could it be that she was more receptive to such an experience? I’ve read about these men called shamans. They deny themselves food, drink, and human contact to reach another world.”
“Mumbo jumbo. That’s ridiculous.”
“Why?”
“You’ve read Freud, haven’t you?” I ask. “He says dreams are manifestations of our wishes and fears. When a person is in a state without physical stimuli, like in sleep, we enter some deep part of ourselves. There’s nothing to distract us. So if my grandmother, or some shaman, wants desperately to see a sister or brother or friend, that’s exactly what she will get.”
“Interesting. But what if there is something else?”
“For example?”
“A spirit realm. One we cannot see, one as real as the one we have now.”
“I thought you were no longer Catholic.”
“It has nothing to do with Catholicism. Assume there is an essence to each person. We’ve both studied Latin. The Romans us
ed the word anima. The Church translates that to soul. Now, let’s say, when the body goes, that part remains? It must go somewhere. Perhaps it stays around us, or perhaps it enters another realm we don’t yet understand.”
“Heaven?” I slowly bite a satsuma wedge near the back of my mouth. The mild acid makes the side of my tongue constrict a little.
“Semantics,” he says.
“Bunk.”
“Why?”
“Rule of finite energy. Once we die, all it took to keep our organs and blood moving dies with us. That’s what we are. Millions of amazing little cells, working in clusters of tiny machines, the parts of the big machine. It breaks; it’s over. The pieces put to use in some other way.”
Andrew is quiet. He stares at me until I meet his eyes. “No one knows why the heart beats.”
“Voluntary and involuntary muscles.”
“What makes them move?”
“The cardiac plexus, for the most part.”
“And what gives it power?”
He’s so clever, that’s why I—I won’t concede. “Maybe I’ll be the one who figures that out.”
“What ambition.” He stretches, lifts his chest toward the sky. He holds this position long enough to make me think of the lean, tight muscles that levee around his spine. Once he settles into the position he was in before, I reach for his right hand, cupping my fingertips into his. The subtle muscle tension draws me toward him.
Andrew takes my hand, palm up, on his chest. Without a word, he begins to trace the outline. The curves near my nails spark. Across my wrist, spiral in to the palm, toward the middle, slow, restrained, light as pollen, closing inward, electric. I stop breathing as tight circles float in the hollow. Whatever he is doing, whatever current I feel, rushes through my arm, into every limb, gathers at my core. He has been watching me watch the motion, and when I realize this, my lungs shallow, and I shut my eyes.
“Razi, look at me.”
The distant January sun turns his blue to sapphire. His pupils vanish. I want to turn away, down, sideways, but he takes my cheek into his palm, thumb on the rise of my lower lip. I can’t breathe. He doesn’t move, only gazes at me, my eyes. I am heat: I implode without warning.
The Mercy of Thin Air Page 10
