Dive (18 page)

I step away. I wonder if he can hear me. If he can sense the pain that shovels into my side as I breathe. I finally say, I’m going to miss you. The tears are all over my face by the time I realize I already do.

Nobody is saying anything. As we surround the hospital bed, it’s like we are a bunch of shoes, standing next to each other in a closet. We can fill our shoes, but that’s all we can do. I guess I’m beginning to understand the silence. What is there to say anyway? There was so much blood; the blankets were so unbelievably heavy when I lifted them. How can he even be alive?

I’m beginning to see the silence for what it is, something finished in itself. It seems incredibly loud to me, like a hundred cars crashing into each other. Unbearably loud. And then it seems like the only place where there’s any peace. It’s in the silence that I wait for something. Wait for magic. For my dad to wake up.

| | | | | |

Back in elementary school, there was a space outside the school that was magic. Beyond the windows, at the end of the building where the red bricks suddenly curved in an arc—as if the building were turning into a castle—was a row of hedges whose always freshly cut tips just met the windowsills. The sills themselves were five feet from the ground, and the hedges ran, like soldiers, in a line from end to end. In the space between the hedges and the brick wall, a couple of feet or so, just big enough for me to fit, was the magic.

It happened when I stood there. Suddenly no one could see me. I was swooped into the invisible arms of sensation. Its grasp insisted that it was only I who lived. It was as if I had stepped directly into electricity. The sounds of my life were louder than the racket of all the sparrows in the world singing together at my side. All I had to do was lift my arm and it would roar through the air. When I scraped my heel, it rumbled across the dirt. The sounds came as if I were huge, stampeding, wild. I seemed to be instantly wider than the school itself and ten times its height. I was a giant, yet no one could see me. But I could see everything. And because I could see, because I was in the magic, there was nobody or nothing that I needed.

| | |

But now I need somebody. Now the world seems full of everything but magic. Except for Jane. There’s Jane. But with her, there’s also confusion.

I recognize the fact, according to the world, I mean, that two girls having sex together, and not at least pretending one of them is a boy, is pretty unusual. What I don’t understand is how it got to be that people still seem to think there’s something wrong with it.

Even I think there’s something wrong with it, and I don’t know how that happened. Or I think I thought I did. But I don’t. Not after having experienced it, the most natural thing in the world: love. Since I can’t remember anything ever said out loud about the love part, I wonder how I arrived at the idea that it’s wrong without even thinking about it. I guess that’s where the danger is. In the things that aren’t mentioned.

Is there something wrong with me? I thought I was a regular person. It feels like I don’t know anymore. What it really feels like is that I’m finding out I never knew anything before.

Summer is only weeks away. Soon it will be so hot nobody will be able to breathe. I doubt we’ll be going to the beach. We’ll have to go to the hospital. To the Dairy Barn. We’ll have to remain silent.

In the silence, we’ll ask ourselves: Why is this happening? What does it mean? When dying gets to a certain excruciating point, does death become desirable? Please give my daddy some relief, I say into the air, before I know I have even thought it. How is that possible? I am silent.

Deep

Late at night I am on fire. As I stay awake in the dark, so much more than air or breath or a smattering wind streams through me. So much more like fire.

The parts of me that fight each other burn behind my eyes like fists of glowing coals. Whether I believed Eileen was actually going to or not, she did call.

“It’s me, and I really think that after today—because everything with Lucky and Grant and the car accident is out in the open—we should keep talking, getting everything said and stop holding stuff back and just put it out there. So we can get on with our
lives,
don’t you think, V?”

And I was, I really did listen to what she said and how impossible it seemed for her to go ahead and tell what it was she hadn’t. I was envisioning her arms spreading and the fingers of her free hand opening, as she tried to say the truth out loud, the pale knuckles of the other hand as it gripped the telephone, and her eyes, which might be half shut with what I had finally figured out by then.

“So you’re going out with Sullivan,” I eventually said, because what else could it be? And why else would Sullivan try to wedge Lucky, like some rotten slab of discontent, between Eileen and me? If Sullivan could convince me that my friend had coldheartedly taken off the day my dog got demolished, maybe I’d stop being her friend. He really wanted to hurt me, I figured. He did. It aches behind my eyes. Like fire.

And then, because Sullivan couldn’t keep his secret to himself any longer, he’d finally tell
her
what had actually happened that day, and because
I
was no longer talking to her,
she
wouldn’t tell me. So not only would Sullivan be able to lighten the baggage in his head by confessing—he’d also get the confidence of Eileen.

“Who told you that?” Eileen’s voice shrilled in my ear. But nobody had told me—and that’s why I’d been so confused. That’s why Eileen had stopped calling, stopped talking, turned mean trying so hard to ignore me. So she was seeing Sullivan and was afraid to tell me. Was it as simple as that? That the more time passed without her telling me the worse it became? Or was it something else? What had Sullivan told her about
us?

“Grant said he wouldn’t talk to you until I had. Did he? He couldn’t have”—Eileen answered herself—”he seems so afraid of you, V—it’s Lucky, I guess. He really and deeply feels terrible, you know. I feel so bad. I didn’t know what to say, really, about Grant, and then I thought I should wait to see if anything was really going on between Grant and me before I said something—you know how it is. And he asked me not to say anything too. But why would
he
care
if you
knew? But it wasn’t only you—it was
everyone,
he said. He wanted to wait. But then everything started to happen—after Lucky got run over and then your dad was sick I didn’t know what to do . . .”

“So do you love him? That’s what matters . . .”

And I guess that was my voice, mouthing those words, but it seems so far, lagging, part of some other life. The life that happens during the day when the light shines so bright I have to shield my eyes. I am on fire. My breath burns. Is this longing?

“What did he tell you about
us,
anyway?” I finally asked Eileen.

“. . . That he kissed you.”

“But that’s not true—
I
kissed
him.
Just so you know—and only
once,”
I said.

“You did? You never told me.” The words slid quietly into my ears. She wanted to say them as little as I wanted to hear them.

“I’m sorry. I was too embarrassed, I think—one kiss and he disappeared. I don’t know, I began to feel like I had done something
wrong.”
I only thought he didn’t like me. But all that evil was only
fear
—Sullivan wasn’t trying to hurt me or my dog. It’s just that he’s afraid of me because
I
kissed
him.
Who would ever guess? I just didn’t understand.

“What do you mean?”

I wish I knew what I meant. I watch the moon and ache with fire. I can barely understand.

But
so what
if I don’t understand, all at once, everything that love and loss offer and demand in the same breath. It’s the other life, late at night, that burns with a fury of questions behind my eyes, that will not stop asking,
what
is it that burns through me,
how
can the flame way deep in my chest beat so wildly in such absolute silence,
why
doesn’t the fire die out?

Because I am alive.

Dust

Crows are an interesting species of bird. They live in small groups. Up to a dozen survivors from the previous season form a group. Little crow families that will not have anything to do with other crow families when they’re feeding. What they do is caw in their inimitable way, chasing members of other crow groups away from any food sources, as they dive and swoop. I’ve seen it myself.

| | |

What’s so interesting about crows is that although they feed in the same territory every day, they fly up to fifty miles every night to roost with gaggles of other crows. How many in a gaggle anyway? In the case of crows, it’s more than a few hundred families. All told, it’s something like a hundred thousand crows gathered together. This is true.

If somebody stood and watched the crows fly from several different directions into the tops of, say, oak trees, and then saw the crows nestle into the branches around sunset, somebody’d notice that not a sound would escape from the branches after the hundred thousand crows settled in. Somebody’d notice that nobody else would even know they were there.

Since a hundred thousand things can be happening in the trees before somebody’s very eyes without even being noticed, what about all the things that are happening
inside
somebody’s head that people can’t possibly see? What about the things that are happening inside the head of the person who’s doing the looking? If people can’t even see what’s in front of them, how are they supposed to see what’s inside of them? Even if they want to more than anything else in the world? My father told me all about the crows. I remember.

| | |

I am standing in the hall at school, sort of paralyzed. I can’t remember where I’m going. I don’t know what time it is. My mother has called me at school. Somebody from the office came to my English class to tell me my mother was on the office telephone. I’m on my way to the office, but I’m standing in the hall. Sort of paralyzed.

I look out the hall window. There’s nothing to see. At first, it is only green. The grass is green. And then some crows fly by.

Once I got a note at school. Now I get a telephone call. My mother is waiting for me on the phone. Why does she have to call anyway? I know what she’s going to say. I don’t know what words she will choose, but what does it matter? There are no words for it.

I don’t care what time it is. It doesn’t matter anyway. Things just happen and it doesn’t matter what time it is. Somebody’s entire world can change in a minute. In the instant a telephone rings. At the moment somebody looks out a window. A hundred thousand things can be happening as a crow flies by.

Knowing what time it is doesn’t make any difference. Hearing my mother’s voice on the telephone say “Your father died at eleven o’clock” isn’t going to explain anything.

| | |

So why do I stand in the middle of a hallway staring at my watch? All my watch is going to tell is the time. It’s not going to answer any other questions. It’s not going to explain all the things I can’t see. Or how it’s possible that my daddy is suddenly, really, dreadfully dead.

So why do I stand here looking at my watch with my eyes so blurred with tears I can’t even focus? I’m trying to see exactly when it was that my heart was broken.

Dive

Hush, hush.

Reeling, spinning. My mind. My own home movie. My father, his voice, the birds and flowers, the waves. Burning, churning, weeping.

I don’t imagine somebody gets to go backward very often in life, but that’s why my mind is reeling. Remembering.

| | |

So death makes an offering. Memories for the living. Is that all? Hush.

I’m sitting in an upholstered chair. It is morosely blue. My hands grip each arm of the chair. My feet, not quite reaching the floor, sway slightly.

I am sitting at my father’s wake. Beside me are the remaining members of my family. There’s a priest standing in a corner of the room, near the coffin. He’s saying something, a prayer, I guess. I can’t hear him. It’s as if I’m watching a silent movie. I have stopped listening to anything but the bleating voice inside my head. The small voice says, “My daddy died yesterday.”

Eileen comes, takes one look at me, and says, “Let’s get a little air, come on, V, let’s go.”

We get to the hall, unsteady in our high heels.

“I can’t believe how much my shoes hurt. Do yours?” Eileen says.

“Like they belong to somebody else.” My feet are numb.

It’s my mind that aches, reeling, spinning. My own home movies, the shiny buttons, the Easter hats, my father’s grin. But it’s all fading, the edges tattered. Like those pictures in the basement, of my mother, fading.

Where is my mother? “I’ll be right back,” I say to Eileen. “Hey, V.” Eileen grabs my arm. “I’m really sorry about everything—and your dad, I mean, I don’t know what to say.”

Nobody ever does, and that’s not what matters anyway.

“Just be my friend.” She looks like she might cry, but I can’t really tell. My own eyes are all blurred.

I wander around the room. I see my brother, standing in the front by the coffin. When I’m ready, I say to myself. But I don’t see my mother or Baby Teeth.

Where’s Eileen? Sitting on a chair, shoe in hand, she rubs her ankle.