Dive (8 page)

I nod, impressed. He understands. “No—
attachment
didn’t sound very philosophical.
Adumbrate, mundification
—
those
are philosophical words. So what are you reading?” “Shakespeare.” Adam who?

“Good luck.”

His green face is turning gray. Is it the day’s diminishing light? A nurse squeaks in on white, rubber-heeled shoes. There must be two hundred pounds inside that tight white uniform. We all say hello. She checks his pulse with one hand and, with a free pudgy thumb, starts a stopwatch.

“Am I still here?” he says to her. “Still ticking, or is it the watch?”

She smiles without showing any teeth. “Still here. Dinner will be up in an hour, then your transfusion.” And with that, she squeaks out.

“Then your dessert. Is that what she said?” He sighs.

“That is one
big
nurse.”

“Less is not always more,” I offer.

“More what?” My mother walks in, carrying a carton stuffed with food. Looks like she robbed the place.

Well, my dad is skinny enough to eat it all.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” my dad says, closes his eyes, and is asleep.

| | | | | |

Am I really awake? I’m home, in bed. My eyes are open. I want to reach up with my hand and grab the darkness, hurl it out of the way. Where is the soothing moon? It is so dark tonight I can’t even see my hand in the air. But my eyes don’t care. They stare against the dark, wanting to see. See what? I can’t take it.

On my elbow I lean and switch the tiny lamp on the wall above my bed into brightness. The beam hits my pillow, but I can see figures beyond the direct light. There’s Baby Teeth sleeping, her eyes closed. The sight tugs at my throat, like I might cry. I look quickly away and see Lucky on the floor, his front paws dreaming in rhythmic twitches. I’m quiet. I don’t wake either one as I rise. Then I find myself downstairs, as if I have just woken up. As if upstairs, I saw nothing, because nothing was there, and I didn’t exist. It’s unreal.

There’s a blue glow in the living room. It’s the light from the den television spilling in. My naked heels make no sound as they cross the glowing carpet. I stand in the doorway. There’s a blur of motion on the television but no volume. An empty glass sits on the wood table next to my mother’s chair. Legs tucked beneath her, knees poking whitely out from her robe, her head in her hands. “Can can can,” she moans. Can what? What can? She doesn’t see me.

Can’t? I must have breathed in a big way because she lifts her head.

“V.” Is that an echo?

“Mom?” She never calls me V.

We look at each other. Where are the windows? The walls? I see nothing but the daze of her eyes.

“I dunno wha’sgonna happen,” she says, the words reckless as her unfocused eyes.

“I know that. I know, I know.” My words tumble. They are rocks, because I am made of stone.

“Can’happen, can’t,” she says.

“Stop, okay,” I say, “please stop, it’s okay.” There are those emergency words again, landsliding out in their lying way. It’s not okay.

| | |

I’m beside her chair. Though the glass is empty, I can smell booze. It burns, both sweet and sizzling, in the air.

“Why don’t you go to bed now,” I say, but in a voice that stabs the air.

My mother looks up at me, and her head sways. She’s out there on the high seas and I’m dizzy. She’s that carved figure on an old ship’s bow, drenched in the whipping sea spray. I wonder if she can really see me.

“You need to go to bed.” My voice is drenched. I sound older.

“Doeddn’ matta’.”

“Let’s go. I’ll help you.” I reach for her as she stumbles out of the chair. She’s actually listening to me. As she lurches, I catch her arms. She can’t even walk.

“Doeddn’ matta’.”

But it does. As we weave up the stairs, she sways heavily from my grip and pitches against the wall. I step behind, one stair lower, and push from the back. What else can I do? My eyes fill, but it is only colors. Green. Ice blue. The aqua robe. I push. She feels so small.

She is small as I lean her against the prized mahogany dresser in her bedroom and her hands skid across the top, knocking the perfume bottles into a clunking heap. She thuds down the side of it before I can reach her. I flick the light on, and her face lies on the gleaming surface. She drools on the polished top. I yank the bedcovers down, because it’s either hurry or leave her kneeling on the floor and I’m desperate to end this awful scene because there’s a howling in my lungs that has taken my breath away. So hurry, drag her to the bed and let her fall into the soft sheets so she can stop hurting herself, please no blood, though she won’t know she’s hurt until she wakes up, until she’s not drunk anymore. And then she can pretend it never happened, even though there’s a black eye fresh on her face to show it did, it really did.

It does matter as her swaying head sinks into the pillow and her robe is twisted like a big rope around her. I try to loosen it as a gurgle rises from her throat in a baby-sounding way, and she closes her eyes, since they are heavier than anchors, and the ripping sounds of her breathing finally wind down into hushed grabs of air, and eventually drop into smooth breaths that sound like she’s finally part of the world as I stand there.

Yes, it does matter. My mother is a wreck. As I look down on her sleeping face, her mouth open like Baby Teeth’s when she is dreaming, she seems impossibly younger than my eight-year-old sister. As I swallow whatever rises in my throat, the unreality of the night heaves through me. This scared little child-mother of mine, no matter how much I hate her, needs me. It’s either her innocence that lingers like a clump of cement in my throat as I try to swallow or the disappearance of my own.

What Is and Is Not

Sometimes the night never ends; it just breaks into light and we pretend. I am alive, though I tend to forget that when I’m pretending, and I’m fifteen. I have sweeping dark hair and hazel eyes that turn green when I cry. Sometimes I rub my hands together, maybe just to see if it’s really me. I wear the glasses I’m supposed to wear when I’m in the mood and whenever I remember my sunglasses because the day hurts my eyes. Maybe the pretending has torn the edges of who I am, so the result is a frayed and sensitive me.

If the night never ends, who can see? The day boils down to pretending what is and is not there. Because she does not want me to, I do not see the black eye on my mother’s face as the bruise changes, fades a blotchy red to a tattered purple, then spreads to flat green.

Because he assumes nobody does, I do not see the increasingly bloodshot eyes of my brother as he stares past me at dinner. And I do not see the raised eyebrows on Baby Teeth’s face that settle more frequently into surprise as she watches and helplessly learns this pretending game. I wish I could tell her she doesn’t have to play, though if she’s to survive life in this house, she will.

So I do not notice that on the days that we do not go to the hospital, she spends every afternoon at other people’s houses now. And I especially do not see the absence of my father at dawn when he does not kiss the sleeping Baby Teeth good-bye before he climbs down the stairs in his solid brown shoes and goes to work. And I do not see his absence as I pass his empty chair at night when I walk into the kitchen to feed my dog. The last thing I do not see is my tilting, limping Lucky as he waits by his empty bowl, or the image of the vile green VW that hit him.

So what do I see? That I have learned to pretend so well, I can do it with my eyes open. April has ended, and its cruelty too, I hope, when we weren’t looking, or were busy pretending, or maybe while we slept.

So it’s May. And what does it bring? April showers bring May flowers. Well, really. I try to remember, uncertainly, if there was a lot of rain last month. No. But please flower anyway, all over me. I’ll keep my eyes open. Maybe it won’t happen all at once, the way change seems to. Now that’s something. Change blooms.

| | | | | |

Here at school, everything is the same. Standing by the wall of windows across from the science rooms, watching people fill the hall since the bell just rang, I’m safe. Math is over for one more day.

The brick school building was designed into what are called wings, and each subject has its own. One side of each wing is lined with classrooms, and the other, with windows. Science is located in C wing, down the hall from the administrative offices. Even my feet feel safe as I stand on the worn stone floor. They are warm and pleasing in my shoes. What’s wrong is this bad taste in my mouth. I don’t know what it is.

I cross the hall and glance through the tiny window of the classroom door to see what’s taking Eileen so long. People are grabbing their books and rising from the lab tables; somebody’s pushing the door open. I spot Eileen in the back. Oh, no, Parker paired her with Grant Sullivan for lab. Their Bunsen burner is still burning on the scratched gray table. Sullivan is talking to her, but her back is turned toward me, so I can only imagine the pained expression on her face. Sullivan laughs, amusing himself again, I suppose. Poor Eileen. I lean in, about to call out her name and save her, but I hear her laughing as she bends to pick up her books. When she straightens up, there’s something on her head. Is that a hat? Did I miss something? Connor has placed an ugly black hat on her head.

I cross the hall again. Change can bloom, but it can also wilt. What’s with the hat? Just seeing it makes me feel like something is really
wrong,
like, what’s Eileen trying to cover up? Maybe it’s me, unfathomably paranoid, but maybe I don’t want to make peace with Eileen at this moment after all.

We’ve been avoiding each other for days now, ever since Sagamore. I’m not blaming her, no, not completely. But put a lid on it, I think to myself, that feeling of being willing to apologize to Eileen even though the fault wasn’t mine. Just to end the stupid fight. Because where is my friend? I need her. We’ve had a million stupid fights. But I suddenly remember how nasty she was at Sagamore. Who does she think she is beneath that dumb hat? Some mysterious movie star? No, not now. I don’t want to interrupt Eileen’s performance. The bad taste in my mouth is worse. So I turn. And then I see her.

With this impossibly long hair, so long it falls past her hips. Like a black horse’s tail, it sways across her black jeans as she walks through the hall, passing me. I wonder if she sees me as she walks by. She doesn’t seem to, but she passes me so closely it’s as if she moves through me, so close I can smell the leather from her jacket. What kind of boots is she wearing that make no sound? I have no choice but to breathe her black motorcycle jacket in as she glides by, surrounded by the darkness of her clothes, this oh-so-cool and silent-footed girl, who I have never seen before.

I wonder where she came from. I wonder if she’s real. Because as this stranger walks by, the bad taste in my mouth disappears. My mouthful of unanswered questions vanishes. There’s never been anything like this woozy, wonderful breath. Let the wind in.

| | |

I notice a book sticking out of her back pocket. She walks by so close I can’t help but read the title on the ripped paperback cover:
Rimbaud.
As I wonder who that is, it doesn’t even cross my mind to question why the world so suddenly seems to be neither frayed nor sensitive, in place.

Not the Piano-Strings Again

In the tree’s clear branches

Fades the sound of a hunting horn,

But lively songs still skim

Among the bushes and sky.

Let the blood laugh in our veins.

See the vines tangling themselves.

The sky has an angel’s face.

Let our blood laugh in our veins. Not bad. That’s Rimbaud. How do I know? When in doubt, go to the library. Arthur Rimbaud, born in 1854, was French. He was, primarily, a poet who also wrote “prose poems” that he called stories. Already he seems unusual, and I like that. I also like what he named his stuff: “Illuminations,” “A Season in Hell,” “The Drunken Boat.”

I made the mistake of asking my brother about Rimbaud when I spotted Wadstain lurking at the cafeteria door during my lunch period. “Rambo?” he said. “Ain’t you seen that clown in the pictures who shoots everybody on sight?” I laughed then and I’m trying not to now as I sit at the kitchen table, remembering. The truth is, I like my brother, even though he is a stoned and mindless creature.

It’s late afternoon. I’m trying to get my homework done, including some doomed algebra problems, but my mind, once again, is wandering. That stupid Eileen hat makes an appearance. I fled the scene outside science, not so sure that I’m interested in knowing the face beneath the black fedora. Nobody wears hats, and even though I like unusual stuff, I don’t like it on top of Eileen’s head. I mean, really.

Lucky is at my heels. He hobbled under the table himself, like some arthritic old beast, which he is
not.
Even though he looks like he might tip over when he shuffles around, he can walk. So Slow Motion is his middle name. Lucky’s getting better.

My dad’s getting worse. The blood transfusion was like a Band-Aid. It didn’t fix anything, though after the nurses removed the drip twelve solid hours later, my dad walked out of his room and sauntered up to the nurses’ station to say that he was checking out. It was a big joke at the time, supposedly, like the hospital was a hotel, but the next several days were less than funny because he couldn’t even sit up, much less say anything.