Just J (9 page)

My stomach tightens; something wants to get out. I run deeper into the house, praying for the smell of cat urine, anything but this death-pollen, which coats my throat and gags me. I race to the bathroom and stick my face over the toilet. The smell of chlorine is too late to save me, and my body contracts. There is no little pickle to distract me this time. The only thing my body is trying to expel is every memory of Mom's gray skin.

My stomach wrenches and wrenches, trying to get rid of the gray so that only her perfect pinkness will prevail. It even tries draining my color away to give it to her as the dry heaves make me pale and light-headed, but all the images in my head remain charcoal sketches—colorless, meaningless, void of all but emptiness, if that's even pos–sible.

I fall to the floor and curl up in defeat. The exorcism has failed, and the gray that devoured Mom shows its power by lingering in every memory I have of her. I wonder how long it will be before it starts eating away at me.

I come out of the house in my bathing suit. It's not my favorite one. I guess Aunt Guin isn't all that perfect. She gets out of the water and wraps a towel around herself. I don't see Art anywhere.

“You've decided on a swim after all.”

I have to wash the salt off my cheeks, I think, but give only a shrug in reply.

I dive into the water before she gets a good look at my face. The water is cool enough to be refreshing but warm enough to be comfortable. As it envelops me, the world dis–appears.

I love the water, the way it touches every part of you at the same time. Why the Little Mermaid would trade in a life underwater for a pansy prince in tights is beyond me. The water caresses my stomach like a thousand tiny little hands, a thousand tiny slimy little hands. That's not the water, that's…eels! I rush toward the surface. The eels wrap them–selves around my feet, trying to pull me under. I emerge with a scream.

“What's the trouble?” Aunt Guin yells from the shore with far too little concern in her voice.

“Eels!” I scream.

Looking puzzled, she tilts her head.

“There's eels!” I yell again, trying to fully relay the gravity of the situation.

Her head now tilts the other way.

“Under the water—eels!” I repeat.

The lack of required panic promotes her from silly to stupid.

“It's only seaweed,” she says.

“Seaweed!” Better than eels, but still. “It's grabbing my feet.”

“It's just being friendly.”

“Well, I'm not!”

“So swim out of it.”

It annoys me when people point out the obvious, espe–cially when I don't see it first.

I swim out of it easily, but remnants remain wrapped around my feet, sending nails-on-a-chalkboard shivers up my spine. It takes forever to get to shore, trying to kick the seaweed off while swimming.

“Ew, Ew, Ew,” I moan as I make my way to dry sand and begin picking the strands of sea snot off my legs. “I could have drowned!”

“How's that?” Aunt Guin asks.

“If the seaweed hadn't broken away; if it pulled me under.”

“It doesn't pull, it just stands there swaying in the cur–rent. It's really rather Zen.”

“So's a corpse, and that's what I would have been.”

“A corpse may be relaxed, and decomposition would certainly make it one with the universe, but it's not really Zen because…”

“I could have died!”

“The panic does you more harm than the seaweed,” she tells me, “and if you realize you're only in the seaweed for a microsecond, then there's no reason to panic.”

“A microsecond? What if I was really tangled? It could have taken me five minutes or more to get out of it. I would have been a goner for sure.”

“No, no one could be tangled up for five minutes. That
is
impossible.”

“I'm glad we agree.”

“Yes and no. We said the same thing, but we meant dif–ferent things.”

“What?”

“
You
meant it's physically impossible to be tangled for five minutes without panicking or even drowning.”

“Yeah,” I say, leaving out the
that's pretty obvious
part of the sentence.

“
I
meant it's cosmically impossible for five minutes to exist.”

It's barely breakfast time and she's already out to lunch.

“The past is gone, the future doesn't exist; it's only the moment that's real, lasting but a microsecond before it's new again. You can do anything for a microsecond.”

And that lunch was one wing short of a party platter.

She was starting to seem a little smug, so I thought I should point out her lack of perfection.

“I prefer my other swimsuit, by the way. Not that it mat–ters. I just thought you should know.”

“You don't want to take your favorite swimsuit to the beach,” she replies. “The sand will wear it out too quickly.”

I should have known.

“I'm going for a walk,” I say.

Chapter Sixteen

T
wo weeks ago today I still had a mother. Or the rem–nants of one anyway, since, in truth, she was closer to death than she was to life. Why is death so random, so cruel? If God wants it to be on earth as it is in heaven then why can't every day be Judgment Day? A day when the wicked die so that the good can live? And why did death take my mother so slowly? What sin did she commit that she had to suffer for?

“At least she's not suffering anymore,” people say, thinking it will comfort me. She never should have suffered in the first place. I want her back as she was before, before any of this… viciousness that was thrown upon us by an apathetic god.

“At least you got to say good-bye,” others say. Like her drawn-out suffering was some kind of blessing. That's like saying that it's best to be tortured before you die. That way you can see it coming.

No one gets to say good-bye. It's not some kind of love-in, where everyone sits in a room filled with flowers, sunshine and scented oils, holding hands, savoring the last moments that they have together, telling one another how much love they feel, the love becoming
so
complete,
so
pure, that it cre–ates a burst of light and angels swoop in and fly the dying one's soul off to heaven. That's not the way it was at all.

The hospital room was cold, dark and dismal. The fluo–rescent lights made Mom's gray skin a pale, almost puke, green, which was rather fitting, really.

I didn't tell my mother how much I loved her. I didn't even tell her that I was going to miss her. She was too drugged to tell me anything. Her body had already started to decompose, full red lips becoming thin, brown, dry and chapped. Perfect cheekbones made ugly by sunken cheeks, her soft strong hands weak and skeletal.

The emotional energy didn't fill the room; it drained it. And it wasn't love. At its best it was fear and confusion, but mostly it was anger and hatred toward everything and everyone. Toward my mother for leaving, my father for let–ting her go, my brother for not understanding, the doctors for not doing more, the nurses for not caring enough and the janitor for cleaning the halls like it was any other day. It wasn't any other day. It was the day my mother died.

Fourteen days have gone by since that day. But it feels like one day, and at the same time it feels like a lifetime has passed. Which it has.

I haven't talked to my father or brother in a week. They're three hundred kilometers away and, by now, sharing the house with a bunch of flying monkeys. I've been whisked away by an insane aunt and an albino philosopher who, though not as extreme a case as my aunt, does appear to be a little reality challenged. They brought me to a decrepit house, miles from the civilized world. Not much of a rescue.

The only saving graces are the lake, the sand dunes and maybe Connor. The jury's still out on Aunt Guin and Art.

I lie on top of one of the dunes and watch a lonely little cloud float overhead. It blocks the sun and paints me gray. I think of Mom and I wonder… “What are you doing?” I hear a familiar voice say.

I arch my back slightly to get my head back far enough to see Connor's face. His hair flops over his forehead, and even though there is a shadow across his face, I can still see the bright green of his eyes.

“Do you want to kiss me?” I ask.

I have no idea where the words come from. I just want to forget the pain and feel something other than loss. Since throwing up doesn't seem to work, maybe kissing Connor will.

But I've never kissed a boy before, and if he gave me a second to think about it, I would take it back. I don't get a second.

He's on me like a lion on a gazelle. At first contact, his lips pressed against mine feel good, but then I push him and the feeling away as my grief returns on a wave of nausea, my body tingling with guilt before numbing again.

I'm sorry, Mom.

I manage to hold down my vomit so as not to hurt Connor's feelings. His face fills with silent apologies; his lower lip completely disappears, as if it's too embarrassed to show itself. “Do you know where Moonlight Palace is?” I ask, longing for a distraction.

His lower lip cautiously reappears.

“The general area, not the exact spot, but I know about it, I mean—well, I know…actually, no, I have no idea. But I'm up for a quest,” he says enthusiastically.

I hope it's the change of topic that's getting him excited.

“A quest it shall be then,” I say as I get up, relieved that he didn't mention the… “J,” Connor says, “about what just…”

“What?” I say while shooting him a
don't go there
glare.

“Nothing,” he says.

“You mean the nothing that never happened?”

“Okay,” he says.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “We're never going to speak of that nothing again.”

“Okay,” he repeats, sounding both relieved and disap–pointed.

I smile to let him know that everything's all right.

Chapter Seventeen

I
nstead of walking along the beach, we go down the back of the dunes, feet sliding on every step, which is great when you're going down and really tiring when you're going up. Ascending, you feel like you're getting farther away from the top with every step, like the earth itself is trying to stop you from getting there. Descending, you're pulled down with every step, the way Billy tugs on my sleeve and pulls me around when we're in a toy store and he sees something that he wants.

“This way, this way,” the dunes say, dragging me down toward the trees that are both welcoming, with their out–stretched limbs, and ominous with the darkness that lies between them.

We enter the forest, which isn't as dark as it first appeared. Instead of night's blackness, the woods are filled with eve–ning shadows that dance playfully, safe from the afternoon sun until twilight comes and allows them to leave the for–est's boundaries.

My hearing sharpens in the forest; every twig snap has digital clarity. I think of the creatures all around me, cow–ering at the sight of humans the way humans cower from the criminally insane. Are humans the bogeymen of the animal kingdom?

Do the Mommy and Daddy animals tell their children stories about the evil humans who will come and snatch them if they don't behave? Do the little ones dare each other to see how close they can get to the humans? Is that why animals scurry at the sight of us?

A thousand unseen eyes are upon me, and I wish I were one of them so I could run to my burrow and hide from the scary humans who are capable of anything and every–thing.

“Have you ever wished you were a cat?” I say, needing to break the painful silence.

“You mean like a cougar or a lion?”

“Any kind.”

“I don't think I'd like to be a house cat—they're too help–less,” Connor says.

“It looks like a pretty good life to me. Lying around all day, having someone tend to your every need.”

“Being kicked around, having your tail lit on fire by some psycho who wants to feel powerful.”

“You're starting to scare me now,” I say.

“I only mean a house cat's life relies too much on the kindness of its owner. I'm sure your cat has a wonderful life.”

“It would if we had one. We had a dog once.” I decide to spare Connor the story of Spiral.

Connor pulls a small bag out of his pocket.

“Tootsie roll?” he asks.

“No thanks,” I reply, turning away as he bites down. “My mom said I could have a cat when I got older, but then she…” I'm tired of saying it, so I don't.

After the appropriate moment of silence, Connor con–tinues, “You should get one.”

“My dad will never go for it. He doesn't believe in put–ting money into anything with a heartbeat, which is funny, considering he's a doctor.”

Connor stops and looks up at the sky. We've been wan–dering for a couple of hours at least, and it doesn't feel like we're going in any particular direction.