Tide King (46 page)

“I'm so sorry about Kate, Calvin. I didn't mean to…to do this to upstage her.”

“I know you didn't.” He did not know what to say. Heidi did it for him. She doomed herself to misery because, even if she was young and stupid, she loved him. Or thought she did. He continued to rub her foot. She still shivered, and he wrapped his jacket over her. He pulled out the napkins, drenched in blood, and wrapped new ones on her foot, pulling on her sock. An hour later, he did this again. Heidi's eyelids drooped; he could not understand what she said to him.

“I'm taking you to the hospital.” He got to his feet and slid his arms underneath her. “This has gone on long enough.”

“No.” She struggled in his grasp. “I feel better. I can feel something happening in my foot. You have to believe me.”

“I don't know.” He eyed the growing mound of bloody napkins beside him. “I was stupid enough to let you come along to New York and ruin your life; I might be stupid enough to let you die, too.”

“You didn't ruin my life.” She shook her head drunkenly. “My life was terrible before I met you.”

She opened her eyes, clear and beautiful, like some alien currency, and he felt a little flush on his cheeks. He imagined Stanley loving her, loving her so much it made his chest hurt, and he felt the hurt as well, the mix of pride and bewilderment and he wasn't sure what else. Something that had grown in his body like ivy. He wanted to know her better, share things with her. He kissed her on the ear and then her lips, warming them with his.

“Stop,” she giggled. “I don't want your pity. Just look—look at it one more time.” She wriggled her foot slowly and grimaced as he peeled off the napkins, bright red with blood but not as bloody as the last.

“Well, I guess you don't need to be carried, princess.” He held up her foot, a pale fish blanched with a red, now only weeping, wound. “Looks better.”

“Holy crap.” She smiled at him, and he laughed.
What could go wrong?
A lot, but right now, an ending, a beginning, was happening. A lighthouse, a buoy, a place for a night's respite, as they lay entwined, before heading back into the storm.

The flight at JFK was delayed. Calvin stretched his legs out in a chair by the gate as other travelers, annoyed, tired, squeezed past him and filed down the promenade to the concession area, the row of payphones, the bathrooms.

“Do you have to go to the ladies' room?” Heidi leaned over and looked at Ela, who sat stiffly in her own chair, her ankles and feet draped over the edge of the seat. She could not tell whether the girl had understood or ignored her. She did not seem grateful, for someone whom they had bartered with Palmer for several weeks, with no herb to offer in exchange, after the legal department at Palmer's lab wiped clean the paper trail of files, forged them passports, bought them tickets to Kaliningrad, and issued them a credit card under Heidi's new name, Heidi Webster. She had asked for this surname, and yet when she looked at her picture on the passport, the driver's license from Portland, the birth certificate, she could not help but think she had died, that the person she was now, who moved among people but not with them, was a ghost. Her past had been replaced with a few crisp papers, laminated cards, in a travel wallet. She missed her father more than ever.

“Come.” Heidi stood up and held out her hand to Ela. Dr. Palmer's wife had packed her clothes so carefully in a green hardshell suitcase, matching tops and bottoms and lacy dresses and Mary Janes. Calvin had dumped everything into a trashcan in the parking lot.
We can't lay deep stakes
, he explained, stuffing one change of clothes for Ela in the large camping backpack they shared.
We don't know what's going to happen in Reszel
.

Ela launched herself reluctantly off the lounge chair and accompanied Heidi to the bathroom.

“I'll wait here.” Heidi pointed at herself and then at the entrance to ladies room. Ela disappeared inside, and Heidi stole a glance at Johnson at the gate.

Heidi's sympathy for him began with her father but ended with Ela. She hadn't run away, eaten the herb, shot herself, to babysit some 200-year-old woman who refused to even speak to her.
Put yourself in her shoes
, Calvin had murmured in the cab on the way over. She wished Calvin put himself in her shoes. She wished they all stopped caring about shoes, which made her think of her foot. It had healed, for the most part, but it still felt strange, like someone had poured cement in it. Every move she made felt numb.

Besides, there was some herb left—the littlest of crumbs, a thimbleful one could pinch between their thumb and forefinger. Something to work with in Reszel, if Ela was the witch she said she was. But Heidi had not endeared herself to Ela, that much was true. She tried not to think about it too much, that she had eaten the only thing the little woman, the little dark-haired girl who talked like Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle, had rested her hopes on. She could not think, because of her love for Calvin, she wound up dooming them all, lest she run away somewhere, hiding in libraries across the country, living vicariously through the classics section of Topeka Public Library, Wichita, Salt Lake City, stealing coffee and crullers from the employee break rooms.

She hoped there were books in Reszel. She thought of her classmates, just back from prom night, the flowers of their corsages still fresh, trying on their graduation robes and going to senior parties. Becoming college freshmen or perhaps getting married. And she was going to Poland via Russia.

She had always wanted to travel. She had never been outside of her town. But part of travel, she thought, was the contrast and compare, the postcards sent home. Knowing, after months of adventure, there was a place to which you could return, a place that would claim you, people who would welcome you home. Now, whenever those around them noticed Ela did not grow bigger, and that Calvin and Heidi did not age, they would have to uproot, call another place home until, a few years later, they would do it again.

“I hope it is enough time to figure the secret.” Ela had stared at her little hands in Palmer's office, rubbing them together. “But Reszel is country. No one will know any better that we are there.”

But Heidi knew, and so did Calvin, that the world was not like it was two hundred years ago. It was not even the same as it was ten years ago. Everything changed, as did everyone, she had been warned by Calvin. Everyone except for them.

Would his feelings for her change? Would he grow to love her? She stared at him again across the airport, his rakish dark hair that had begun to creep over his eyebrows and into his eyes, the large, well-formed knuckles on his hands, the long fingers that slid over his face and rubbed his cheeks. Since she'd met him, he'd transformed from fifties greaser to seventies malcontent, from James Dean to Al Pacino. And what, she felt a chill fall down her back, collect in her spine, what if she fell out of love with him?

“Hold on.” Heidi grabbed Ela's arm as she walked out of the ladies' room and plucked a few squares of toilet paper that had been caught in the back of Ela's waistband. Heidi laughed, imagining Ela walking through the vast concourse of JFK with toilet paper wings, and Ela frowned at her but then saw the toilet paper and blushed, smiled a little, before the frown that was set in her face like concrete resettled.
Well
, Heidi thought. It was better than nothing.

She deposited Ela with Calvin and went to the payphone.

“Ms. Webster,” she said, feeling the tears drum through her, like rain on window glass.

“Heidi! Where are you, honey? Oh my goodness, I've been worried to death about you.”

“I'm okay,” she managed. “What a long, strange trip it's been.” She imagined telling her the story, going to Poland to take a little girl woman home. To find an herb. To find a way to die. At least, to find a way to live. They would mail Palmer blood samples via partner laboratories, tissue samples, whatever he wanted, in exchange for this freedom.

“Heidi, please let me know you're safe…and let me know that I can come get you.”

“How are things there? Am I in trouble?”

“Heidi, please…let me come get you, and we'll get through this step by step, okay?”

“Thank you, Ms. Webster, for everything.” The only mother and father she had ever known were neither.

Heidi leaned her head against the phone booth. A woman's voice over the intercom made an announcement about boarding. Travelers hurried back to the gate. Against the tide, Calvin moved with Ela, looking for her. If they did not see her, she figured, she could walk out of the airport. She would get a cab ride to the bus station. She would go home.

“I've got to go,” she whispered as Calvin and Ela spotted her.

“Heidi, please…”

“I'll send you a postcard.” Heidi smiled and hung up the phone as they reached her.

“Who are you talking to?” Calvin searched her eyes.

“Nobody.” She shook her head. She had nothing to return to, nothing to lose. Everything to gain.

“No contact.” He touched her shoulder. “We can't mess this up.”

She got in the line with them, holding their tickets, their new identities, and when the gate agent smiled and took their boarding passes, they got on the plane.

Thanks to Christine Stewart for being the ultimate book doctor! Seriously, I wrote a good book and you made it a great one. Also thanks to Rosalia Scalia, Barbara Diehl, Todd Whaley, Lalita Noronha, Patricia Schultheis, Tara Laskowski, Elise Levine, and Meghan Kenny for their suggestions and advice on earlier drafts of the novel, and for The Hambidge Center in Georgia for providing me with the beautiful vista in which to finish it. Much love to Phuong Huynh, Mom, Scott, the Phinneys, and the rest of my family for being so encouraging, supportive, and understanding. Great big hugs to Diane Goettel, Angela Leroux-Lindsey, and everyone at Black Lawrence Press for believing in my work. Finally, thanks to the vibrant and engaging writing community in Baltimore for being so encouraging and for all the drinking and laughing and listening we did together.

Photo: Phuong Huynh

Jen Michalski is the author of a collection of novellas,
Could You Be With Her Now
, and two collections of fiction,
Close Encounters
and
From Here
. She is the editor of the literary journal
jmww
and lives in Baltimore.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © bu Jen Michalski

Cover design by Pam Golafshar

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