Afloat (22 page)

‘Are you in love with Bryce?'

‘Why?'

‘Because I'm making conversation.'

‘I don't know.' But I'm lying.

He nods wisely. ‘Mackinac fever,' he says.

Behind us, Chef Walter feeds a bill into the Pac Man machine, ignoring our presence. His body presses against my back as he shifts with the movements of the game.

‘Fuck you,' he tells the ghosts.

Changing the topic, I ask Trainer, ‘Did you think she'd fire you?'

Trainer assumes a sober expression with difficulty. ‘You're a good girl, Bell.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means whatever you want it to mean.'

I feel oddly comforted, and he decides to answer my question.

‘I thought I was gone,' he says. ‘And the thought of going back to Sandusky. Well. Jesus.' He pauses. ‘What a place.'

But I'm not entirely sure which place he is referring to.

When we finally decide to leave, Trainer puts an arm around my shoulders and says, ‘Stick with me, kiddo. Today's my lucky day.'

We grab our bikes and I follow him unsteadily up the road away from the town. Trainer pedals quickly to the side of a carriage heading in the same direction we are.

‘Mind if we grab a lift?' he asks.

The carriage driver nods and I am surprised. The drivers usually rebuff the drunken island workers saying, ‘Sorry, not allowed,' and urge the horses to go faster. I have done this only once before, with Bryce, and the initial tug when you grab the metal frame, stop pedaling, and let the force of the carriage take you, is surprisingly strong. Trainer picks the left side of the carriage just behind the driver and I the right; two people can't grab a hold of the same side in case the person in front was to let go.

With his right hand holding onto the carriage Trainer steers the bike with his left hand, and I mirror him, concentrating on keeping my bike pointed uphill. The driver sits on his raised seat directly behind the horses, and ignores us. We yell across the empty seats at each other.

‘What's your favorite thing about cock?' he shouts at me.

I think for a moment. ‘Besides getting rammed with it?'

‘You stole my fucking answer. Fuck! That's so my answer, you bitch!'

We both start laughing, and my bike starts to wobble and I have to concentrate – though my thoughts are swimming with the lake and the ice cream in the park and my relief that we're still here. Our voices echo up and out into the black of night where they die, with no one but the driver to hear. He snaps the reins, and the horses give a jerk. My hand cramps a bit as the speed increases, the metal pulling at my fingers. We fall silent as the carriage continues upwards towards the Pine Suites, the hooves clopping on the pavement, the metal of the harnesses jangling, the weight of the wheels crunching wayward stones with sharp cracking sounds, and the landscape moving by us in silence.

Trainer says, ‘Hey,' and I look over, but he's not looking at me, he's looking down at his handlebars.

‘Fuck,' he says, and lets go his hold on the taxi, sliding from my view.

The bike scrapes the pavement, the carriage jostles and he's down.

‘Shit, Trainer!' I'm laughing. ‘Are you okay?'

I pedal a bit to pick up some momentum, so I can let go of the carriage.

‘Trainer, are you okay?'

I grab my left handlebar and press the brakes, but he still hasn't answered. I stop and look back. He is lying in the road with both legs still twisted in his bike and the back wheels of the carriage have run over his chest.

When Alan died, it was not a surprise. He had the flu; such a simple thing and it made him sweat. So
hot
. All the time I asked for water to cool him and the one nurse, the one who understood, she always brought him water.

The house is cold now, very cold, but I'm sure the furnace is on and must remember to check. I don't want my guest to be uncomfortable.

I was next to Alan when he went. Safe at United Hospital, his room was light purple with a window that overlooked the summer landscape of St. Paul. The weather was fine that summer, it didn't give me any problems, it was predictable. They were repaving the main entrance to emergency and the air smelled of tar, even inside.

There was a green and waxy plant on his windowsill that kept growing even when I didn't remember to water it. I forget who sent that one now. Russ's Foundation sent lilies, and Patty signed the card.

She's doing well for herself now. Or has she retired?

But she didn't
know
Russ. He never would have sent flowers.

Send them cash, he always said. Cash and a bottle of Dewar's. Instant cure.

The cut flowers went on Alan's bedside table – carnations
and other arrangements that sick people get – though he stopped noticing them after a while.

If only the floor had been carpeted the whole thing might have been bearable. If only they had thought to make the room warmer, more like a bedroom, I could have stood it. Sometimes after it rained my shoes would still be wet by the time I got to his door. I would try to plant my feet flat on the linoleum as I walked, so I wouldn't squeak as I entered. If only there'd been a carpet, maybe I could have imagined more easily that I was at home.

The food was fine, when he was still eating. He was on a soft food diet, because of his difficulty swallowing. The dietician said it was the best thing for him, eating being as painful as it was. Apple sauce, puddings, Jello, along with some vitamin supplements. Baby food. He could never eat enough, his body drifting into nothingness.

Alan joked in the beginning – when it was just a cough, when they thought he'd be part of the 75 percent that recover after a week or two – how he'd had to go into hospital to have someone cook for him. We'd laughed, because in all our years of being married he had always done the cooking. Once in a while I'd try to make something, a fried egg or some just-add-water cookies or pancakes, but they were always burned or hard or salty. My kitchen always upset me.

I visited him every day. I watched him go from the hamburgers to the chocolate pudding to the feed tubes. Once, when he was asleep, too weak to be awake for long, I told him how we'd met, hoping he might dream about it.

I prayed, because Alan had prayed for me and I was still alive.

Jesus, Lord, Dear Mary, not yet,
just leave him be a while longer
, Lord, keep the roads clear, please,
I have my story yet. I just want the chance to tell it
.

I lost weight as well, and I was proud of myself for losing it. I ordered take-out meals at night, but the cartons full of spring rolls or sushi or hamburgers sat greasy, uneaten on the kitchen counter. The piles of mail soon took up the whole kitchen table. The grass grew. If we'd had a dog, it would have run away, taking charge of its own survival. I left the house alone; it began to look like no one really lived there. Anna had no idea how bad it was until she came to pick me up the afternoon my transmission failed.

‘Jesus Christ, Mother,' she said.

Covering her nose with her shirt, Anna examined the kitchen. There were maggots in my refrigerator.

That was when she left the school indefinitely.

I'd find strange tasks for myself during this time, taking Alan's shirts out of the closet and ironing them, or scrubbing the floor of the shower at two in the morning until my hands couldn't hold the brush. I started sleeping on the recliner in the living room, watching television until I fell asleep. This turned into a habit I couldn't break and I sleep there still. Our bedroom is a foreign place to me now, thick with the scent of nothing and no one.

‘Why does he have to die from such a stupid disease?' I asked Anna.

But he did. All those years I'd been sure it would be me first.

Soon after this, we began organizing my house.
Packing
, Anna calls it sometimes, which worries me.

So much death, and I don't understand where everyone goes. I had looked up, wondering if he could see me looking up, imagining he was there above me taking a last look. Isn't that what they say happens, the people that have died but come back? They don't immediately go anywhere, they get to hang around and watch. The room was quiet, with nothing to announce that there was now one less person in it. I think I waved. I waved at the empty white ceiling because I couldn't think of anything else to do.

I know instantly. I know from the way he is lying there, twisted, jerking, head on the pavement, arms out. He will die. The weight of the wheel has crushed everything inside him that he needs to breathe. Blood is running from his mouth and ears and he is choking violently and I am already there, beside him, my bike abandoned up the road. He cannot speak and the blood is spurting out of his mouth like an explosion, as if his insides have erupted and I am screaming after the taxi driver, ‘You fucking ran him over, you fucking killed him, holy fuck.' The carriage stops and radios for an ambulance; the black horses are bucking and straining, panicking in their harnesses, knowing something is wrong, and now the driver is beside me and I notice briefly he is my age. He is crying, sobbing, so I can barely understand him: ‘He fell, he fell I didn't see him there was nothing I could do is he okay, oh, fuck, fuck.' The front of Trainer's shirt is drenched and everything is coming out of him, but all I can do is kneel above him, stroking the side of his face, trying to keep his head from bashing against the pavement as he struggles for air, but his eyes are too wide, and he sees me and we both know he cannot breathe, he cannot take a breath and I am watching him die.

It is too late, it's too late, and by the time I find out there are in fact cars on the island, his eyes have stopped rolling and his chest has stopped jerking and heaving, but nothing can stop all the blood.

One ambulance and one fire truck and one police car scream up with sirens and lights to where I am sitting on the pavement with my hands over my face, snot running into my mouth and everything inside me breaking, while my body heaves, shudders, and grows cold. I don't know whether to touch him or not. I don't know whether to stand up and move away. I just sit with my hands over my face so I don't have to look.

By now a huge crowd of people, drunk and on their way home – just like we had been – have stopped to ask what happened, who was it, where does he work? I don't answer, hating them for not knowing who he is.

The ambulance men work quickly, wearing gloves, and when they cover his body in white, they murmur and nod in agreement, saying things like,
perforated lung, windpipe full of blood, never seen anything like it
. I look up. The emergency lights flash and illuminate the people, the carriage, the bikes, the body, but the sky is black and there are no stars. The heavens are covered by unseen clouds.

I remember the next day – and it is the same in all my dreams at the moment just before he gets up again – how he looked surprised, as if something shitty had happened that he wasn't expecting. How the wet black blood had stained his lips so they were bright in the moonlight, and how it had run into the stiff bristle of his beard. I remember how it looked fake – so dark and precise the way it spread – and how I was covered in it, although I don't remember touching him much at the time.

I remember thinking how pissed off he'd be that he had died like that. Something so ridiculous that if it had happened to someone else we would have made fun of them. Killed by a carriage. ‘What an asshole,' Trainer would have said dismissively, and he would have ordered another Belvedere and soda.