Drowning Is Inevitable (16 page)

He smiled and brought his lips to mine, a soft kiss, and I didn't mind that Jamie and Maggie saw.

“I'll miss you,” he said, his voice quiet.

“I'll miss you, too.”

A lump formed in my throat, and I swallowed around it. I looked back at Jamie and saw that his eyes were on Maggie, and they were sad. He pulled her down to him, her head resting in his lap. She closed her eyes as she hummed along with the song playing across the street. I recognized her mom's voice. Jamie rubbed his hand over the crook in Maggie's arm where the needle had stuck her, slowly, over and over, like he could wipe it all away.

I looked back to the bar as Vicky hit a high note. Her voice hadn't changed all that much from how I remembered it a long time ago, back when she was singing in St. Francisville. My dad always made a point to see her sing. He said voices like that were rare. He never missed a show.

Parents were curious things. For the first time since leaving home, I missed my dad. I'd always held so tight to my resentment of the choices he'd made, but looking into Max's eyes, I felt some of it loosen. My dad was only Max's age when my mom killed herself. He wasn't the grown man I imagined him to be in all the stories he told me about him and my mom. He was a boy's size and a boy's age.

The wind picked up and tried to blow my thoughts around, but they stayed wrapped up in a small town and my dad's eighteen-year-old face. I squeezed Max tight. My dad went to the cemetery the night my mom went missing from her room. He spent days there, waiting for her. He didn't go back home until the day after the funeral, spending Lillian's first night in the graveyard with her.

Max squeezed me back and asked, “Are you okay?”

I didn't answer him. My dad once told me a secret. He said the hardest thing he ever did was walk away from the cemetery and leave her there. Maybe that's why he never went to the graveyard with me. Maybe he was afraid that if he did, he wouldn't be able to leave her again. My body went still, only my hair moving in the wind, like it was alive. With Max's question hanging in the air, I wondered where my dad was waiting for me.

I
always believed there was a heaven and a hell, but when I was a little girl I didn't think my mom was in either of those places. I imagined her spirit floating above her tombstone, caught in the leaves of the oak trees. I spent much of my childhood in the graveyard on the off chance she could see me. Jamie and I spent countless days playing among the trees, hiding behind tombstones, treating the cemetery like our very own backyard. I'd walk the rows as my mom had and tell Jamie the stories my dad had shared with me, even showing him the tombstone where she found my name. Some of my earliest memories are of tiny fingers tracing the letters carved into the marble and wondering what my own tombstone would look like someday. You might think that morbid, but for the daughter of Lillian Matthews, a girl who spent hours playing for the benefit of a ghost she later pretended to be, it was normal.

There were moments when I didn't feel like playing, lonesome moments when I craved closeness to her. It was times like these that Jamie had looked at me and said, “I'll run away with you,” a phrase we traded when things in our lives got scary or sad.

Later that night all four of us were lying on the king-sized bed in Luke's room. We'd been upgraded, Steven's only explanation as he moved our bags into the room being, “Luke left. He's not coming back.”

We exiled ourselves there and began a marathon of sitting and staring, the day's events too much to digest. The bedroom door was open, and Steven walked by every once in a while. He looked in on us each time, and each time he frowned when he saw we hadn't moved from where we sat, our backs warming the headboard.

The need for sleep came, but we tried to fight it, too scared to close our eyes on this day.

Maggie was the first to succumb, her body sliding down to rest between Max and me before she turned on her side to sleep. Max looked like he was prepared to wait out the night, always the bodyguard, but as more time passed, sleep won and he closed his eyes. Jamie went next.

Our bodies were tangled and overlapping, legs over legs, arms wrapped over arms, stomachs, hips, and sleeping faces warm and almost touching. I lay still, appreciating it, and listened to the sounds of our breathing. I smiled at the sound of Maggie's; even her sleeping breaths were musical.

Eventually I allowed the soft, sleeping rhythm of our bodies to close my eyes, and I wondered how I'd ever sleep without them.

I'm not sure how much time passed before my eyes opened. I untangled my legs from the group and crawled from the bed. I was instantly lonesome. Cold, uncomfortable, anxious feelings crept in now that I was no longer connected to them.

Jamie shifted on the bed, and I saw that he was awake.

“Can I see something?” I asked.

He nodded, and I went to him. My hands went to his hair, soft and dirty blond. I watched it slip between my fingers. The color had changed over the years, growing darker over time. When we were little it was the kind of blond you could practically see through. I smoothed his hair back to reveal the baby-fine hairs at his hairline. I wanted to see if it they were still white blond, proof that the little boy I remembered was still inside him. They were. I closed my eyes to the feeling and the memories that came with it, the two of us together, always together. When I dropped my gaze back to Jamie, his eyes were on me. I saw the silent request in them, but I shook my head.

“You have to leave me,” he said. “You have to take the deal. Go back home, back to your life.”

Jamie, whose hands fit mine and breaths matched mine, and who had always been mine, hoped there was a way I could exist without him. My eyes filled, and I shook my head again. I dislodged a tear, and it fell onto my face. I didn't wipe it off.

The boy who always knew how to pick his words said, “I had dreams for us. They didn't look like this.”

He got up and walked out of the room. I followed him out to the sidewalk in front of Steven's house.

“I know your dream for me,” I said. A future with choices, and a future that allowed me to go home, to the place I loved, back to my grandmother, my dad, my mom's grave, and my tree, not to mention Max. I wanted those things, too, but not at the cost of losing Jamie. “It's not too much to give up.”

“Yes, it is. You can't give everything up for me.”

“They're all better off without me—my grandmother, my dad, everybody in St. Francisville. If I don't go home, everybody can stop being reminded of the girl they couldn't save, and my grandmother can keep waiting for Lillian to come home.”

I convinced myself the waiting wouldn't kill her, and imagined I was even proud of myself, that I'd given her that hope that her daughter was just away on a trip but would be home someday.

“What about your dad?” Jamie asked.

“My dad can stop feeling guilty for me coming in second to his grief. It's not too much to give up.”

“I don't believe you,” he said.

Now Jamie thought I was a liar, too.

There was a long silence. “Are we not supposed to talk about Max?” he asked.

“Max understands,” I lied.

“Yeah, right. You can't do this for me.”

In his eyes was only his dream for me.

“Do you want to go alone?” I asked.

“Go where? We don't even know where we'll go.”

“We'll take a bus across Texas. We'll cross into Mexico.”

I didn't flinch as I said it, like I'd made this plan a long time ago. We'd find a place with people who didn't see drowned mothers or drunken fathers when they looked at us.

“Remember when we were little and your mom bought you that cat?” I asked. “It followed you around like a dog, and my grandmother wouldn't let me play with you, because Lillian was allergic to cats.”

Knowing where I was going with this, he started shaking his head. “Of course I remember, but—”

“You gave that cat away. It made your mom so mad, but you didn't care.”

“I gave a
cat
away! Not my life. No matter how screwed up they are, you can't give up your family for me.”

“How many black eyes and busted lips have you gotten for me?”

“I don't know,” he said.

“I don't either. I've lost count. How many times did you correct my grandmother when she called me Lillian in front of you?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

“Every time. You corrected her
every
time. How many times did my dad do that?”

“I don't know, Olivia.”

“Never. Not once. For a long time you were the only one who called me by my name. My dad barely spoke to me. It was just you and me on Fidelity Street. You are my family.”

He exhaled loudly. “Olivia …”

“I'll run away with you.”

He closed his eyes.

“I had a dream for you, too,” I said. I'd wanted him to be able to go to LSU, to have a life that he chose, to live in a house where he didn't have to tiptoe.

Eyes still closed, he said, “I know.”

Silence followed—the respect given to dead dreams—and because neither of us knew how long the mourning period should be, we stayed quiet.

Jamie turned and went back inside, and I followed. We climbed back in the bed, our movements disturbing Maggie. She made a noise and frowned, reaching one hand out for me, grabbing my shoulder, the other one reaching for Jamie. He gave her his hand, and her face relaxed. I understood the gesture. In light of recent events, a physical reassurance that we were still together was necessary.

Jamie settled down into the pillow, being careful not to let go of Maggie's hand, and after a few minutes he was asleep.

I closed my eyes and imagined Jamie and me in Mexico. I saw myself there, but not him. Taking deep breaths, I tried again to see him. I closed my eyes and imagined the ocean, the sand under my feet, and the breeze on my face. I heard the seagulls, but I knew he wasn't there. I shut my eyes again, but he wasn't in the desert, or in the mountains, or anywhere beautiful. I imagined him in a different future, the one that terrified me. I tried to see Jamie someplace with locked doors and scheduled visits, a place with isolation and no windows, because they wouldn't even let him have the sun. I saw the building, inside and out, but I didn't see Jamie there either.

I knew no amount of worrying would change the way things turned out, but I scooted my body down between Jamie and Maggie, their still-held hands resting on my chest. I turned my head to him, brought my mouth close to his face, and whispered, “Where are you going to be?”

I noticed first the feel of the Spanish moss moving and bumping against my face. Then the breeze blew over me, slow and warm, carrying with it the scent of flowers and the river, and without being completely awake, I knew I was in St. Francisville. I felt the tree beneath me, hard yet smooth from many years of my sitting in its seat, and I opened my eyes to a still-sleeping Fidelity Street. Waking up in the seat of my tree was not a new occurrence, but it was rare and a surprise, being that I fell asleep in a tiny shotgun house a world away in New Orleans.

My new surroundings threw me off balance, and I grabbed the branch in front of my face, my fingers wrapping around it tightly. For a while I looked at my grandmother's house. The windows were dark, and if I listened closely I was able to hear my grandmother inside. She was sleeping, and I heard her breathing and the occasional turn she made in her bed. That's when I was sure I was dreaming. I possessed great powers when sleeping.

I risked a quick look in the direction of Jamie's house, but there was nothing to see, no light, no noise. The house's front windows were so black making me think of Mrs. Benton's face and the many times it had carried bruises. It was fitting: my grandmother's house always looked abandoned; Jamie's house always looked battered.

A light came on in my grandmother's house, and I turned my head in its direction. It came from my mom's bedroom, illuminating her through the window. She looked past me, down at the river below. It was not the real her. It was the ghost version of her, the one who occasionally visited me in my sleep, always looking out of that window. She looked like she did in the photos from her room: so young, so pretty. She turned her face to the side, the way she always did, tilting her ear to the window and closing her eyes, like she was listening to some sound coming from the river. I turned my head in the exact same way, like I always did, and tried to hear it, too, but I couldn't.

My mother disappeared from the window, and I relaxed my grip on the branch and prepared to wake up back in New Orleans, because this was usually where the dream of her and the window stopped. But a few moments passed, and I was still there. I heard my grandmother's back door open, but there was no sound of it closing. Then Lillian was in the backyard, and I watched her move across it, away from the house and toward the river. The wind picked up and tried to blow me out of the tree. It made her nightgown hug her hips as she made her way down the slope and through the trees. I tried to wake up, because I knew this was the night, and I didn't want to see it. But my body, acting of its own volition, climbed down and followed her.