Surfacing (12 page)

The darkness of late fall pressed against the car windows, but inside, it felt cozy, the engine vibrating steadily, the blowers warming the air. Nathan kept his eyes on the road, but he reached over, feeling for Maggie’s hand. When he found it, he gave it a squeeze and held on.

Maggie told him, “The bread was delicious.”

“I knew you’d win.”

“How do you know? How do you know I didn’t just lose and eat it anyway?”

“Oh, everyone heard already. Tweets and texts, you know. But thanks. I’m glad you liked the banana bread.”

“With chocolate chips.”

“Why not?” Nathan smiled.

They turned onto Maggie’s block and Nathan swung the car into the driveway. Maggie watched. He took a moment, then shifted into park; another second and he cut the engine. When he turned to kiss her, Maggie was already there. She let her face, her lips, her body, melt into his. It was part fatigue, part excitement, but another part life — living, being alive, being connected — and she wanted more. She wanted it more deeply. She wanted it to last, to obliterate everything that came before and maybe after.

Maggie groped Nathan’s body, keeping her eyes shut as if blind and only seeing for the first time. She reached inside his shirt and drew a map. She let her fingers slide across his chest, his shoulders, the dip of his belly, the shadow of parts hidden below, touching every surface, absorbing him, trying to attach her skin to his, trying to heal his wound with hers. Nathan groaned softly and did not protest. Instead, he responded in kind, and with urgency and gentleness, and that night, Maggie found it all easily beautiful, and she understood immediately why this had not worked before.

Maggie watched the world change around her, simply because she had been changed, and it made her happy. It was as if the edges had softened, the hardness of the Formica desks, the harshness of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, the sharp voice of her history teacher.

Maggie sat, content in a way she had never felt before. She had separated herself, truly marked a break from her parents, from all those in charge. She had joined the ranks — not of the adults, per se, but of those just a bit older than her. The secret they had once kept was now hers, too. The images in movies, in love songs, those hidden messages and innuendos, they spoke for Maggie. They sang for her now, too. Even if no one else sitting in history class knew it, which, of course, they didn’t, Maggie had waged a private revolution and won.

“As soon as you have finished, you can give me your paper and you are free to go,” Mr. Green, the history teacher, announced. Several kids stood up right away and filed toward the front of the room.

The girls’ swim team was not boys’ basketball or football or even lacrosse, so news of the impending championship was not spreading across the school like wildfire, nor was it on the tip of anyone’s tongue, other than those of the girls themselves. But it had been announced over the loudspeaker in the morning, and some of the teachers followed girls’ sports.

“Good work yesterday,” Mr. Green said when Maggie dropped her paper on his desk. “You’re going to the state semifinals, right?”

Maggie nodded.

“Well, you worked hard. You deserve this.”

Maggie blushed, her cheeks warmed. “Thanks, Mr. Green.”

Whatever Meghan Liggett had been so closely inspecting in the grass in front of her condo no longer seemed to hold her interest. When Leah dove into the pool, Meghan looked up.

“I think I am going to go down the slide now,” Leah called out to Maggie. Loudly — she said it too loudly, and Maggie knew exactly what her sister was doing.

She wasn’t sure which was making her more angry, her sister’s naughty behavior — after Leah had just reprimanded Maggie and told her to sit on the stairs — or her apparent infatuation with the snobby neighbor girl.

Loudly, Maggie responded, “No, you’re not, because Mommy won’t let you.”

Leah’s head abruptly turned toward the lawns of the pool-facing condos. At exactly that moment, Meghan stood up and pretended to notice, for the first time, who had suddenly dived into the pool on this hot Saturday morning. Meghan’s mouth formed a tiny
O
shape, and then, just as quickly, she appeared as indifferent as she could manage.

“Well, Mommy’s not here. Is she?” Leah answered, nearly shouting at this point.

Maggie will remember the sun, which had been beating down on the identical red condo roofs, reflecting off the surface of the clean, aqua-blue pool water all morning, suddenly tuck itself behind a large cloud and stay there for what seemed like forever.

Five kids — two older brothers and two younger sisters, with Nathan smack in the middle — and for the most part, they all had similar personalities. Even with eight people at the table, it was quiet. No one seemed to feel they needed to be the center of attention. The older boys, Jeffrey (the one with the darker hair) and Thomas (the one with the tattoo on his wrist) — or maybe was it Jeffrey with the tattoo and Thomas with dark hair, as Maggie was having a hard time remembering which was which — hadn’t said a word since they sat at the table.

“So, Maggie, you’re on the swim team?” Nathan’s mother asked.

“Yeah. We actually made it to the semifinals this year. They’re in a couple of days.”

“That’s nice.”

There was always something uncomfortable about eating at someone else’s house. The food was a little unfamiliar and the way they set the table. Like how Julie’s mother put out a wooden basket that held all the silverware and everyone reached over and grabbed what they needed. At her own house, her mother put out a folded paper napkin — always in a triangle — and nothing but a fork. If the meal required anything else, she would have to jump up and get one for everyone. Here, Nathan’s mother used cloth napkins and every place had a fork, knife, and spoon, though Maggie couldn’t figure out what she might need the spoon for. His mother had made baked ham, a string-bean casserole topped with dried onions, salad, and Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. And maybe there was going to be a dessert.

Maggie’s family never served dessert. That was more of a fend-for-yourself, in-front-of-the-TV kind of thing: Oreos or Fig Newtons, if you could find them in the pantry.

But, despite what was different, it felt right sitting at this table. There was not only a sameness in disposition — gentle, if Maggie had to put a word to it — but in appearance. There was no denying that this was a family. The two younger sisters, Emily and Anne, were only eleven months apart. “Irish twins,” Nathan’s mother said when she introduced them, “but we’re not Irish. It’s just a saying.

“But I hear
you
have real twins in your family,” she said to Maggie.

“Yeah, I have twin brothers. They’re six.”

Maggie tried to notice Nathan’s face — he was sitting next to her — without being too obvious. She knew Nathan wouldn’t like his mother cross-examining her, but she wondered if he had told her anything about Leah. Of course, what could he have said? Only what Maggie had told him.

“Do you have any sisters?” Anne (or possibly Emily) asked.

She was used to that question. If she answered, “I used to,” it sounded provocative, like an invitation to more questions, or even glib, like a joke. The other person would be forced to ask what happened, as if maybe there were another explanation for “once” having a sister.

If she said, “I
did
, but my sister died,” it was usually a big downer, as if she were trying to gain sympathy or, worse, garner unearned attention. But, somehow, to deny Leah’s existence altogether felt wrong.

“Not anyone as annoying as you two,” Nathan answered. His tone was out of character enough to redirect Emily (or Anne) completely. For the next five minutes, Anne (or Emily), and then both of them, tried to convince Nathan that they were not annoying and never had been.

I was always able to convince my sister to give me all the best Easter candy out of her basket. We would both wake up early in the morning, Maggie’s bed directly across the room from mine. And I had to be quick. Before our parents woke up
.

“Let’s dump it all on the floor and look at it,” I would say
.

Maggie was only two or three or four, and then five, so she would do it. She would do anything I asked her back then. She would do anything I did. She wanted to do everything I did. It was really annoying, to tell the truth, but sometimes I counted on it
.

“Wow, look how much we have.”

“Wow,” Maggie repeated
.

Spread out before us, between our two unmade beds, on the braided oval rug, were gooey marshmallow Peeps, eyes on and eyes hanging off; king-size peanut-butter eggs; chocolate-covered coconut-cream eggs; miniature eggs covered in pink, yellow, and blue foil; flat brown bunnies disappointingly stamped on only one side; and tons of loose jelly beans that we had to pull one by one from the strings of colored plastic straw alive with static electricity. Each of us also had one large Easter bunny holding a basket himself, fully three-dimensional, still in its box, and visible through stiff cellophane — most likely hollow, but still the most coveted of the loot
.

“Let’s put all our candy together,” I suggested to Maggie. “We will have so much more that way.”

I don’t know if the illogic of this meant anything to my little sister or if she was just humoring me, acquiescing, if she really knew all along that I had nefarious motives, but I remember she would willingly push her mound of candy right into mine, with two baby hands, like a steam shovel
.

“Wow,” I would say
.

“Wow.”

The next step was easy. When I suggested we return our candy to our baskets before Mom and Dad woke up, I made sure that most of the chocolate eggs, the peanut-butter eggs, and the good-flavored jelly beans made their way into my basket. The yellow now eyeless Peeps, the green and red jelly beans, and the gross coconut-cream eggs landed back in hers. One year I tried to take both large packaged bunnies, but they didn’t even fit, and I figured I would be blowing the whistle on myself
.

But that last year, the very spring before I drowned, Maggie was old enough to know what was going on, or if she had known all along, she was finally old enough not to want to stand for it any longer
.

“I don’t want to put our candy together,” she said
.

“Shhh . . . not so loud.”

“I still don’t want to.”

I sat on the floor, just as we always had, but something was different. I thought about reaching across our baskets and grabbing a chunk of her flesh, like right above her elbow, for instance, and squeezing really hard until she gave in, but instead
I
gave in. Maggie would give me any piece of candy I wanted anyway
.

Sometimes, it was hard to tell what she added to my life and what she had taken away. I had been jealous since the day she was born, and I loved her more than anything I could think of. More than all the candy in the world
.

I fished around in my basket until I felt one of those smooth, roundish foil-wrapped eggs, so delicious, pure chocolate, just the right amount to pop in your mouth and small enough so that there were plenty of them. Pink, I found a pink one. Maggie’s favorite color that year
.

“Here.” I handed it to her
.

She took it, tore off the wrapper, and it disappeared into her mouth. “I love you, too,” she said. When she smiled at me, she had chocolate all over her teeth
.