Rosethorn (16 page)

Somewhere on her tenth or one hundredth try that day, she could not remember, Sera realized with a shock that she had reached the middle of the pool without once sinking. Something had clicked and her body had automatically done everything seamlessly, without a conscious thought. She kept going, kicking her legs to Andrew, who waited for her, his arms out.

“You did it!  You did it
!” he hollered once she reached him.

Sera sobbed as she clung to him, shaking uncontrollably.

“Sweetie, don’t cry. You did it!" He held her tightly, raining light kisses on her face. “Ready to try again?”

Sera nodded, chest still heaving a little.

Andrew swam to the other side and stood against the wall to wait for her. Calming herself down, Sera met Andrew’s eyes and cleared her mind. She took a deep breath and pushed off against the wall, reaching him faster than before and bursting in joyous laughter instead of tears once she reached his arms again.

“I can swim
!” she yelled, “Wooo-hooooo!”

Having turned this corner, Sera adopted Andrew’s ruthless determination. He no longer had to prod and cajole her to practice. She had resolved to master her recently learned skill and under Andrew’s watchful eye, spent long hours swimming back and forth from one side of the pool to the other, learning how to flip and glide effortlessly, over and over again, so that he had to drag her out of the water in the afternoon, reminding her that she had to go to work.

After work, she would go to the crowded pool in her complex and, pretending that she was alone, would practice there as well. She tuned out the noisy, rowdy children and even forgot the hideous bathing suit she was wearing and just jumped in, peace and contentment suffusing her once she glided in the water.

“I’m ready,” Sera said as she stood by the deep end of the pool one late morning.

“Are you sure?" Andrew asked as he floated in the water beneath her.

“Yeah." She nodded, heart pounding.

“Just one time, okay? Then we’ll go out and celebrate. We’ll go to the Left Bank for lunch.”

“Left Bank? That’s expensive!”

“Don’t worry about it. My girl learned how to swim, I got Christian’s car. It’s all good." Andrew grinned.

She waved him away, and he swam to the shallow end. Before he reached the steps, Sera dove in, the water rushing in her ears as she touched the bottom of the pool, then propelling herself up, she triumphantly rose to the surface and started swimming towards Andrew. She cut through the water in smooth strokes, taking her time in reaching him so that he could see in every breath, every confident kick, every graceful turn of her body, all that she had learned.

She stopped just short of the four-foot line and stood up.

Andrew’s mouth hung open as she walked towards him, her bathing suit left behind at the other end, flung distastefully away before she had gone in. Slowly rising out of the water before him, wearing only the bullet necklace and her long, wet hair, Sera smiled at Andrew, who stood frozen.

“I’m ready,” she said softly as stood close to him and looked straight into his deep blue eyes, wide with shock.

Andrew blinked rapidly, then swallowed.

“Are you sure?” he asked again, voice cracking.

“I’m sure now, six months from now, until the day I die that you’re the only one I will ever love, Andrew LaSalle. I’m yours,” Sera said quietly as she took his hands and placed them on her lower back, “body, heart, and soul."

Reaching up to grasp his face in her hands, she pulled him to her and kissed him. Then still holding his face, she watched as full realization replaced the shock in his eyes.

Barely strapped into Christian’s Bronco, Andrew roared out of the driveway, foot pressed hard on the accelerator.

Sera clutched the door handle. “Slow down. I’m not going to change my mind.”

Andrew laughed weakly, still nervous, and eased on the pedal.

“Where?” he asked, looking at her.

“Eyes on the road
!” she warned.

Andrew whipped his head back, his hands gripping the wheel. “Your house?”

Sera shook her head. “No, I’d feel funny there." Ever since her grandmother had met Andrew, Sera had never quite felt at ease with him in her room, constantly on edge that her grandmother would walk in on them.

“Right. My house? No, my mom’s home." They were both silent as Andrew drove.

“Somewhere no one knows.”

They both looked at each other. “Rosethorn
?” he asked.

Sera nodded.

Andrew turned the car around and drove to his house. Sera sat in the Bronco, engine running, as Andrew ran in. He came out a few minutes later, two sleeping bags under his arms, which he threw in the back seat.

He quickly backed up and drove towards the valley. They were both quiet until Andrew looked at the rear view mirror and swore softly. He pulled over to the side and stopped the car. Sera looked back and saw a police car with flashing lights behind them.

Andrew hung his head and pulled his wet towel over his lap. Sera watched as the cop got out of his car and walked over to Andrew’s window.

“Andrew, what are you doing speeding in Christian’s car?" The cop asked as he leaned in.

“Christian’s in Cancun, Bob." Andrew turned, trying to shield Sera from Bob’s view as Bob looked over his shoulder.

“Does he know you have his car?”
             

Andrew shook his head sheepishly. “I promise I’ll be slow, real slow, Bob, if you let this one go
,” he pleaded.

Bob glanced at Andrew’s lap, then at Sera who was sitting in her wet bathing suit, shivering. He craned his head and saw the sleeping bags in the back seat. Sera reddened and turned her head away to stare at the weeds by the road.

“Hm." Bob sounded amused. Sera saw him from the corner of her eye straighten up and put away his pad. Andrew sighed in relief.

“Thanks, Bob, I owe you. And can you not tell my dad, please?"

Bob patted Andrew’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son.  I won’t tell him. Just do me a favor--don’t go too fast. And, that goes for the road, too." Bob gave out a big laugh and walked back to the patrol car, shaking his head.

Andrew scrunched down, his hand to his head. The patrol car drove up and paused next to them. Sera saw Bob and his partner laughingly give Andrew a thumbs up before driving off.

They both stared in front of them, watching the patrol car until it made a right down the road.

“So,” Sera said slowly, “basically the entire police department’s going to know what we’re about to do?"

Andrew shrugged his shoulders. “You want to go back?”

Sera met his eyes. “I’ll follow you anywhere you want to take me."

PART II

Chapter 12

"Tell me a story," she commanded as if she were queen of the castle and he, her subject. Take me somewhere, tell me a story, come here and hold me. During one of the last, lingering days of summer, another lost hour of limbs entangled carelessly as they lay on a bed of doubled sleeping bags atop the wooden floor of the old house, shadow-light through the starburst stained glass window.

"But I've told you everything," he replied, a ritual protest as his fingers grazed her inner thigh.

"No you haven't." Knowing there was always something he would offer up to her, some secret, a truth he would plumb from a bottomless well, just like all the places he would find for her, the hidden wonders of their small universe known only to him.

She settled back, nestling under his arm, and waited.

Broad-tipped fingers wandering over the topography of her skin, he breathed thoughtfully.

"First Communion, do you remember?"

"No. Remind me."

"We were eight. You were running in your white dress with your hair flying. You were wearing a veil."

"My grandmother made it for me. I couldn't see."

"It was spring and I remember flowers falling from the dogwood trees outside the church. You were trying to fix your veil and the wind blew your dress up. I remember that I couldn't stop thinking about your lace panties the whole mass, even when Father Healy asked us if we reject Satan."

She raised her head to look at him. "Have you always been there and I just never saw you?"

Instead of answering, he grasped her around the waist and quickly her lifted so that she straddled him. "Your turn."

"Well," she began as she leaned down to kiss him, her hair falling on both of them in a veil of black strands, the bullet touching the skin above his heart. "One day, we'll travel the world, you and I. One day, I'll be the one to take you places."

"Where would you take me
?” He whispered, his rough and calloused hands grasping her closer to him.

"Everywhere and anywhere." Breathless, heart starting to race again. "And we'll be as rich as kings."

"I'll take care of you, Sera, I promise,” he, his voice aching as she started to move against him. "I know I'm not much now, but someday--"

She stopped moving and held his face in her hands. "Andrew, you're the smartest guy I know," as she
looked into his eyes. "You taught me how to swim. You can figure anything out. You figured me out."

She could smell the grass and earth on him from days of toiling in the sun and knew that she would never love him more than she did at this moment, yet also knew with equal certainty that something was approaching them, even if they did not know it for what it was, with the myopia of the young who believe that the whole of the world encompassed the few inches of air it took to cross to another and fall into his arms.

"No one else knows me like you and no one ever will again."

Chapter 13

Sera awoke from her midday nap, temporarily disoriented. Being in her old room in her grandmother’s house had always had a cocooning effect on her so that every time she returned home, she would fall in to a sleep so deep and long that her grandmother would ask if she ever slept fully in New York. In fact, Sera usually needed only a few hours’ sleep when she was elsewhere other than home.

This time she had dreamt so many strange and disquieting dreams, she felt as if she had been asleep for a hundred years and lived many lives in that time. It took her several minutes to realize what day it was or that she no longer lived here.

It was only that morning that she had driven as fast as she could from that old Victorian and all it contained, and once home, had run upstairs blindly to fall into forgetfulness. Time had stood still there and here so that she had difficulty shaking off the potency of the past.

Sera sat up and looked around her old room. All the furniture had been left exactly as it was when she had lived here-the desk by the window, her bed next to it, her bookcase with all her books in it still. All the pictures that she used to have on the wall opposite her bed she had taken down before she left, now replaced by her degree from Columbia and a framed copy of her first published article. She had taken very little with her to New York and had boxed up everything, save one, that caused her pain.

Sitting still for a moment, Sera listened. The house was quiet. Her grandmother must still be at the church.

She got up and opened her closet, which was full of boxes. She did not have to open all of them to know which one she wanted. It was the first box she had packed and was at the bottom, way in the back. She dragged it out and undid the flaps. Because there had been no ceremony or order when she had put everything in it, the box was a chaos of mementos from just one year of her life, the last year she had spent at home.

She rifled through its contents and found the large, worn, navy sweatshirt, which she put to her face. Breathing deeply, Sera could almost catch a faint trace of Andrew’s scent, of soap and something wild that made her think of the sea or the night air that enveloped him when he used to come into her room. Was it just the residue of memory, what now made her heart tighten with such sharp longing?

Scattered all over the box were pictures of Andrew. Ones of him in Stow Lake that first summer. In Limantour, with the sand dunes and waves behind him, his eyes bluer than the winter sea. Standing by the shiny black Mustang he had finally saved up enough money to buy. In mid-air, about to dunk the winning shot in a close game with Terra Linda. Whether he was in action or repose, Sera never tired to photographing him. Did she perhaps know even then that it would not last forever?

A peculiar ache pervaded her when she took out the Buckingham Nicks CD he had given her for her 17th birthday, remembering how he had watched her as she opened it. She had screamed when she had unwrapped it and jumped in his arms, asking him how it was possible when Polydor still had not released the record as a CD. He had told her that he had the guys at Watts Music downtown make it from the record, complete with a glossy photo insert of Stevie and Lindsay together, on the back of which he had written: “
To my one true love
."