As it gets lighter, the sea is becoming a paler shade but I don’t know what you’d call it. Right now the sea is more a texture than a color. Rough: the surface of a painting of nothing. There could be anything under there. Like how poor painters will sometimes paint over an old painting instead of buying a new canvas. Maybe the bottom of the sea is terribly ugly, riddled with errors or just not God’s best work. But even I have to admit that that’s probably not right. I know there are sparkly things and the sacred geometry of reefs, rubberinesses, spikes, spines, music, etiquette. Just like here, but hidden. Just another place where people like me never go.
I count to three. On three I’ll get up. It doesn’t work, of course. That kind of thing only works when there’s someone else around. She’d clap her hands at me. She thought I was so lazy. Come on—clapclapclap—It’s time, now. Get up!
Marching through the utility room into the kitchen, I decide the only approach is an arbitrary one; just start somewhere. Dishes first. I have to take loads of stuff out of the sink before I can wash anything. I take the rubber gloves from under the sink, turn on the water, and wash them all, dry them all, stack them neatly—so they nest properly. Don’t you dare create those silly balancing acts with my china. Grease and crumbs like acne on the stove and countertops. I scrub and wipe as many times as it takes. I pull off the knobs and scrape gunk out of the cracks with my fingernails. I put the gloves back on and do the floor, leaning hard on the scrub brush, pushing and pulling until there’s no trace of blood from last night. I vacuum the living room, put shit back in its place. I pull out the paring knife I sank in the wall one day when I’d been on the phone for three hours trying to find my folks and the last person I spoke to started laughing when I said their names. Real fucking knee-slapper, son of a bitch.
There’s dust in the corners, thick like felt. It’s under everything, between all the objects, hanging off the shoulders of ugly figurines. I look at the hard dolls on a shelf, a boy and a girl in the tan burlap of slaves, but with broad white smiles and a healthy, innocent chubbiness to their bodies. Why does anyone make these? Why do people bring these hard, dead things into their homes? Some people find delight, joy in them, or maybe these words are too much—they get a little kick out of them, a tickle, a smile. Do I have anything like that? What do I like?
Upstairs the guest room is covered in dirty clothes and sweaty knots of sheets and pillows. It’s all wrong. It’s so wrong I can hardly make myself go in. Four of Lolly’s watercolors in silver frames hang in a level-straight line like uptight clouds on a pleasant day. My computer’s on the unmade bed. The blue floral-printed comforter is on the floor, bulky as a boulder next to my dingy socks and once-black T-shirts and crusty underwear, crotch side up. A stack of plates, a mug, some loose change, used tissues, a recordable CD of I can’t remember what. My things stand out like an off-black rash against the cool tones of the walls and carpet and furniture. My things don’t belong here. And if I start cleaning, clear away the dirty dishes, put the soiled clothes in the washing machine and the clean clothes (ha!) away, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand the pleasant blue glare of the guest room.
So the next part isn’t really cleaning at all, more like picking over the elements of a riddle. Mostly I just pick up the things lying around, overthink them or stare at them like an idiot. I smooth out crumpled pieces of paper, to-do lists, notes to self, phone numbers that ring through to disconnected accounts, ex-friends and fresh enemies of my folks’, read them and set them down again. I sniff the armpits of my clothes and look at the stains, picking at them with my fingernail. They’re all too big or too small, thermal or wool for a winter that’s long gone, failed zippers replaced with lines of safety pins, buttons dangling, hemlines slipping out. I never learned to sew, so my repair jobs make everything I own look like shit.
I try to figure out if my smell is still the same as my parents’ smell. I try to remember what they look like. Waiting for a bus in Spanish Harlem, I remember I asked her if she was happy. But I can’t see her, can’t call her face into my mind’s eye. We were the same height by then, and couldn’t agree on anything. She just squeezed my arm and exhaled, warm next to my cheek, a hot contrast to the wet bite of the early winter night that blacks out the sky at five in the afternoon, and whispered, “Hush.”
The basement studio we lived in then gave us a break from the wind, but not the cold or the damp or the dark. That night I tried to clean up, but grime oozed from the floor and wall, showered down from the ceiling and between the tiles; you could almost see it pushing in to coat us and the furniture, or to crowd us out and move us on to the next place. Pollution settled on the window, almost a kindness because we wouldn’t have bought curtains for the single, foot-high slit, a view of passersby stamping the sidewalk.
My mother came out into our single room after a long time in the bathroom. While I cleaned, she stared out that window as if through a veil.
“Look at the snow.”
“It’s not snowing, Mom. It’s raining. It’s been raining for a while.”
“Which do you like better, rain or snow?”
I had never thought about it before. “Which one do you like more?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen rain quite like this.” Her words moved out of her like the hiss of something deflating slowly. I couldn’t be sure if she’d heard my question. “The way it’s falling really slowly. It’s thick and fat. I think it’s snow.”
“It’s rain, Mom. Just rain.”
“It’s cold enough to snow.”
“That’s because we live in a basement, Mother. And just because it’s cold enough to snow doesn’t mean it’s snowing now.”
“Yes it does. It’s basic physics. Water changes states of matter at a certain temperature. Maybe if you didn’t think you were too good for school you’d know about thermodynamics.”
“Maybe if my parents cared about my education, I would too.”
“Sorry, your highness, if we don’t turn into a coach and horses and deliver you to the schoolyard. Or maybe you’re looking for us to put you in cuffs and walk you to your classes like death-row screws. You’re too old to fuck up and blame it on us.”
I was fourteen and didn’t argue that last point. I certainly felt old. But not in a good way.
I changed tack, struck back at her. “Where’s Dad?”
“Stop.”
“It’s been a couple of days. Business trip? Or maybe he’s caught out in this raging blizzard.”
She squared up and looked me in the eyes, her face drawn in grayscale, with blank holes for eyes and nostrils. I could see with certainty that I would die someday. But it wasn’t the thought of my corpse, rather my mother’s hot palm against my face that shocked me out of my reverie. I heard myself gasp.
She sucked her teeth at me as though I’d just asked her for spare change. I felt skinned by contempt; I needed to cry like a corpse needs to leak but I could only make it if I held my shit together. I took my coat—I couldn’t stop to dig for my scarf and gloves among the piles and boxes of what passed for our lives—and staggered into the dark and falling sky. That smoggy night oozed like cheap chocolate ice cream on dirty blacktop, swirling with pale ribbons of cloud close to the moon. I walked the length of Manhattan, all the way down to Battery Park, breathing in the scent of cold piss and puddles and rough sleepers. I worried about her being home alone, turning on the gas and forgetting what she was doing as the fumes mixed with the sweet stench of cooking smack. But I knew she wouldn’t be alone too long. My dad would come back to her and so would I.
I think about that and my mother now. The corpse that was both and neither of us.
I pad through Lolly’s room and look in the mirror. My face is wet clay, unformed and gloopy with unctuous smoothness, like eighties saxophone jazz. I wrinkle up with disgust at my reflection. The tension of crying makes my hungover head hurt more, which makes me want to cry harder, and I can’t see how life is ever going to get better. Lif
e has tied itself into a heavy knot around my head and bears down hard. Life has me gripped by my fucking face and I can’t escape. I can’t escape my life; I can’t escape my stupid fucking face. The sound of shattering glass hits me before I realize I’ve balled my hand up tight and punched the mirror.
Chapter Thirteen
I put my right hand under the running tap in the bathroom and thumb out shards of glass with my left. There’s so much blood I’m angry with myself for doing it, but the crunch of the glass against the side of the sink and the way the little slivers scratch as they dislodge from my flesh are satisfying. I grind my teeth along with the sound, squeeze a towel into my hand, bite the plastic off some gauze and wrap up the wound. There’s a noise in the distance and then another—two weak blasts from Duck Island—then silence.
I sit on the toilet lid and keep the pressure on my bleeding knuckles. I try to cry but nothing comes out except these poor me snivels. The echo of them is like a fly trapped in my head. Trying to cry sitting on a toilet in my underwear and socks was never going to work. I can’t take myself seriously. My brain’s a piece of fat someone picked off their bacon and tossed back into the greasy pan. My face feels caked in wax.
Codeine. Valium. Water that gets on my face when I stick it under the tap to swallow the pills. I tug a simple gray cotton dress off a hanger in Lolly’s closet and pull it over my head awkwardly, trying not to bleed on it. What will I say? How will I make them let me into the meeting, at least? Bat my eyelashes, purr out please. Let me in. Please.
I just want to be old like a normal person.
The crack man occupies the full length of the back wall downstairs. A stick figure, really, a negative, a nothing, just the white sky his presence exposes. He’s taller than me, but he’s not even in my weight class. You’re nothing.
Just as I start to turn away, a sound makes me look up. It’s all wrong, a thunder sound coming from a calm white sky. It’s not thunder; it’s continuous and it builds until it’s so much louder than the other landslips. The growls have shrieks on top, like demons fucking, like worlds grinding against each other.
A second later I know. No, I’m not ready. Stop it now, you horrible fuck! Stop it right fucking now! I bolt to get away, try to get the front door open to escape farther from the slipping cliff at the rear of the house and what’s left of the backyard. It hasn’t been used for so long that it’s stuck. I pull the knob as hard as I can, bracing one foot against the wall and gritting my teeth and trying until my right hand starts to bleed again and I give up and race through the living room and kitchen and out around the back.
I cling to the side of the house, eyes pointed stubbornly upward, and trudge up the hill with the ocean spitting behind my back and the ground shifting, hurling chunks off and out and away. As I trip my way up the broken stairs my hands can’t do anything, I can’t stop the frames and rewind and edit. My voice is nothing against the roar of hundreds of tons of rock slamming against the rocks below, earth splitting apart from itself, giving in to the waves grabbing at its side, and the cracking and ripping apart of beams and pipes, the whine of the greedy wet mouth of that big blue monster reaching up to swallow my grandmother’s house. The dust billows up to scratch my eyes out while I run for a safe distance to watch and listen and wait for the slip to come and pull me in, too.
Heat starts to pull apart the white film stretching across the sky, blue eyes blinking awake. The sea gets excited at the attention. It’s behind me but I can hear what it’s up to: one hand punching the cliff, others in the swarm clapping at the brutality, froth fingering the little caves and rock pools, breakers draping themselves onto rocks and clinging and pulling like a depressive boyfriend. It pokes into my peripheral vision. I turn my face away but it carries on. It wants me terrified and sputtering, near frozen, eyes and mouth open, laid out for the sea things to check me for freshness before they eat me.
* * *
The brittle grass digs into the bare skin of my thighs, but it doesn’t really hurt when I’m not looking at it or running my fingers over the sore red dents it leaves on the surface. Mostly I’m staring down the coastline in the direction of the house, watching the dust clouds rolling and tumbling like starlings crazed in a swarm. As the dust settles and shifts, the house emerges at the edge of the ragged new coastline. All that noise and it’s still standing, but I can’t feel as relieved as I know I should. From this distance I can see the rip in the cliff running under the back door. It curves down under the back of the house and then east and around the edge of the island as far as I can see.
The front door is the only way in now. The knob is still stuck. Really fucking stuck. I have to wrap the hem of my dress around it, grip it as blood soaks all the way through the gauze and drips out. Finally the knob clicks and turns and pulls itself out from under my weight, making me fall over the threshold. I’m stiff for a second, paralyzed, wondering if the house can stand the impact of my fall, wondering if I’m still falling.
Inside everything’s been rattled off the walls and spilled onto the floor. Picture frames are mostly twin L’s on the carpet with hooks and spikes of glass. Lolly’s watercolors underneath the debris are just colors and shadows, familiar but they mean nothing. The phone’s an upturned turtle by the desk that’s given up. The TV’s smashed its face in.
I click the light switch but nothing happens. That should have been obvious. I’m not sure whether or not to carry on, whether getting my stuff is actually worth it. It’s like I can’t work out what surviving means in this context. Finally I decide I’ll stick with Plan A until something creaks or shifts under me.
It’s hard to lift my legs the height of each stair. There are just as many as there always were, I don’t feel like there are more, but the pulling and pressing and lifting of climbing the stairs, the strain of moving without making too much impact against the floor, makes me swear silently at each one, panting, pulse harassing my aching throat. The sweat that runs into the edges of my lips does nothing for my thirst, but the salt is satisfying.
On the last three steps I lie down to push myself the rest of the way, wiping the sweat from my face into the carpet of the landing. And I stay there for a minute, feeling my heart beat into the floor and imagining that I can feel it vibrating through the rest of the house. Wishing for another slip.
Up. I walk into the guest room. One of Lolly’s watercolors is still hanging on the blue-gray walls. She was wrong. It really isn’t bad. The sky, the texture of the sea, the place where they touch, the air filled with iodine and foam. She used black for almost all of it, letting it dilute in places through all the grades of gray and into nearly nothing. I slip it out of its frame and into my bag. I take my phone and my laptop, and check I’ve got the envelope with last week’s pay. One hundred twenty dollars. Aside from that, there’s really nothing here for me. I could take some clothes from Lolly’s room, but it’s directly over the cliff’s edge now and tempting fate to that extent is the same as suicide.
I take out my phone and hit the button to call Jason. He answers after the first ring, which feels like a miracle.
“Hey . . . hey . . .” He doesn’t say my name. It sounds like he’s moving around. A door closes on his end.
“Jason, it’s me.” God, he knows that. Obviously, I’ve called his cell. “Listen, I need to get off Swan for a while and I was thinking maybe I could crash with you?”
“Uh, yeah. When were you thinking? Or maybe it would be better if I just plan to stay on Swan, like, next time I’m out. I could stay over.”
“No, it’s not that. I need to get out of here and I don’t . . . I was just wondering if you could put me up . . .”
He cuts me off. “Okay, but, like, when? Maybe some night next week?”
“I need to leave today.”
“Today . . . today’s no good . . .”
And he doesn’t have to finish. I understand well enough. I’ve known all along, if I’m honest. I click the red button on my phone. He calls back onc
e. I don’t answer and he doesn’t call again.
I could have told him. He would have helped if he knew. I know he would, it’s not that. It’s his tone, the way he said what he said. I knew the real reason without having to ask for it. He has a girlfriend, a real one. They live together on dry, solid land. He loves her, and all this time I’ve been the one who was imaginary, a girl who doesn’t exist on an island no one knows about that’s getting smaller all the time.
This is the way the world ends. No, that’s not right. What I’m supposed to be telling myself is: this isn’t the end of the world. This is not the end of the world. thisisn’ttheendoftheworld. This is not the end of the world.
This isn’t the end of the world.
I have to go but I’m not ready.
I feel different. I don’t know what this feeling is.
My parents are alive somewhere, but I can’t wait for them any longer. Maybe we’ll bump into each other someday. I hope it’s somewhere excellent, the desert, the Louvre, the Taj Mahal at sunset, instead of the bread aisle in some annoying Podunk supermarket, ’cause that’s the shitty little town where we’ve all managed, somehow, to end up.
Will I even recognize them? Would I be able to describe them to the Feds, pick them out of a lineup, identify the bodies? I curl up in bed and close my eyes and don’t stop straining until I see them in my mind.
My father is Daniel Edward Freeman. Not too tall, 5'10" or 5'11". Brown hair, brown eyes. Smokes menthols and cracks jokes. He was born on the eighth of August (okay, wait, he was fifty last year, and his birthday hasn’t happened yet, so 2015 minus 50 is), 1965. He always liked math and English but he never felt comfortable at school and ended up joining the army. When I asked him about being a hippie in the army, all he said was, “It was a job.” I understood.
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