by Liska Jacobs
I wish it was easy to pin down a timeline: this is when you and Charly will stop being childhood friends, when the oldest Drucker boy lays you down in the soft earth; this is when the ocean was created, the clusters of stars exploded to form Hydra—when you realized beauty was a dark and dangerous thing, getting you what you want, but always with a catch. You get Jack, you lose Charly.
In the present everything feels chronological but later everything becomes jumbled, abstract. You can’t say for sure when anything happened. Like Charly’s dad saying to you once while he sectioned a grapefruit from his orchard, It’s perfect, like your beauty, any longer on the branch, any earlier picked—ruined.
33
Every way back to the mainland is booked from the festival—it seems everyone wants to leave today—so our only option is sailing with Tom. We don’t waste any time. We wake when the world is still pale and everyone from the party the night before is asleep or just getting to bed. The ravens from the other side of the island have shown up to pick through the leftover garbage. Out in the harbor the cruise ship is gone. Without it the horizon looks endless.
Rachel brings complimentary tea and coffee to our room. She hugs Jane, who has a purple bruise across her cheekbone, and we file from the villa, leaving the keys on the soapstone countertop.
At the hospital Jane worries over which flower bouquet to get—lilies or roses?
“Roses aren’t very appropriate but they look healthier than the lilies,” she tells Robby, who, without saying anything, buys the lilies. They lead the way, with Tom not too far behind.
“We should really get going,” Tom says. This is the second time he’s mentioned leaving for the mainland.
The waiting room, called the Family Lobby, is staffed by a handful of volunteers wearing washed-out white button-ups. It’s a narrow room, painted soft mint green with framed photographs of sailboats. There is an old boxy television in the corner, next to the brochures for the zip line and golf course.
When Jared emerges he looks horrible. No way could he pass for college-aged now. His hair is disheveled and, I can see now, his stubble is coming in gray. His shoulders are slumped, an upside-down U. He’s wearing the same clothes from last night. Robby hugs him. Jane does too. Even Tom puts a hand on his shoulder. I restack a messy pile of mammogram pamphlets.
“I’m just glad she’s okay,” Robby says, still embracing him.
“We’ll fly back to LA when Charly’s stronger. Maybe a day or two.” Jared’s voice catches, he gathers himself but still there are tears.
“God, man, I’m so sorry,” Robby says.
“Is she allowed visitors?” Jane asks, getting choked up. She’s fondling her bouquet, which makes the small room smell like a funeral home.
Jared shakes his head, turns his back to me, says something softly to them all. I take this moment to walk down the long corridor. A couple of nurses come out from behind heavy automatic doors. I can make out Charly in a room just beyond them. I recognize the tangle of dark hair, fanned out across the pillow. She looks like a tiny lump, white linens pulled up to her shoulders.
Just before the doors shut I slide through, into the hallway. She’s facing away from me, toward the window. It’s a too-bright silver morning; the room feels whitewashed and sharply focused. Charly shifts, looks over her shoulder at me. She’s paler than I thought her face could look.
I wave, try to smile. She motions for me to come in.
“Elsa,” she says, sitting up. There is too much room around her. She looks shrunken, small.
“How are you?” I sit on the edge of her bed. She looks away from me, out toward that bright window. “We’re all here. Jane brought flowers.”
She presses her lips together. Her eyes are wide and glossy, eerily dark against her pale face.
“Want me to shut those blinds?”
She looks at me without blinking.
There’s faint chatter coming from the nurses’ station. I wonder which is Charly’s nurse. There’s a whiteboard indicating pain level with the number 6 circled. Someone’s drawn a sad face next to it and written her doctors’ names.
“Why did you come back?” Charly asks.
“To see you, and everyone else,” I say.
She looks at me then. “They said I lost three pints of blood.”
“You’re going to be all right,” I start, but she shakes her head.
“It was a baby,” she says, her voice quivering. “That’s what I lost. A baby.”
I try to say something. To stop her from telling me she was almost four weeks pregnant.
“She was a miracle baby,” Charly’s saying, rubbing her abdomen. “I went into cardiac arrest and she died.”
My mouth is incredibly dry. I look around the room for water, juice, anything. But there’s only Charly, words tumbling out of her mouth, over those chapped lips, pale and trembling—pointed words, the kind that can’t be unheard. Do I have a funeral for her? Do I buy a park bench, put her name on a plaque? Tell me how to mourn her, Elsa.
I’m sorry, I want to say, but my mouth won’t work right.
“Samantha,” she’s saying now. “Sam for short. We’d be Charly and Sam. Wouldn’t that have been the cutest?”
Her face crumbles and she kicks her feet so hard I have to stand.
I ask the wrong question: “How?”
She laughs, a bark, really, and throws her head back. “Did Jared tell you they found opiates in my blood?” She points to the pain chart. “That I’m talking to a therapist because they think I’m an addict, Elsa. Me.” She wipes viciously at her face. “I can’t seem to stop crying.”
I think about the collection of pills in my beauty bag, their many shapes. I can feel them in my purse. My whole body can feel them. It’s like they’re radiating their own heat. Why didn’t I think to take one before we left the villa?
“I would have asked you to be her godmother,” she says.
This is the moment I should say something, anything, but my mouth is just so goddamn dry. I stand there dumbly, feeling the weight of my own body. Then the moment passes and she asks again, “Why did you come back?”
“Charly,” I try. “They all look the same. The pills, I mean, I didn’t know.”
She ignores me, makes that terrifying bark again.
“I can see it in your face. Even now, none of this touches you.” And then she says calmly, “You’re an awful, awful person.”
“Charly, please,” I start to say, but then she’s crying, really sobbing and saying Go away, go away, just please leave me alone.
A round nurse in pink scrubs comes in and I’m able to tell her that I’m sorry. I even say it twice before backing out of the room. I leave the nurse holding Charly like an infant with a fever, shushing and rocking.
Back in the waiting room the drinking fountain is out of order. I work the handle and then spit at it with the saliva I have left. The few elderly people, who cradle their injured limbs, some hooked up to oxygen tanks, stare at me.
So I kick the water fountain too. I keep kicking it, hard. I put small dents in the metal. I think of Charly, her soft pale face—that look she gave me. Awful, awful person. I think of the baby—tiny embryo, a slick sack of cells—how it was probably on the Casino bathroom floor. I kick until a volunteer comes running out shouting at me. But I’m thinking of Eric now, how he isn’t here to comfort me, how he hasn’t called, and when the volunteer reaches me I’m shouting too—thinking of that last meeting in Eric’s office, when the human resource woman coughed politely, when Eric’s hand was beside mine but not touching. Why won’t he comfort me? The volunteer has gotten between me and the fountain. He is middle-aged with a kind, drooping face. His arms are up as if to calm me, fear in his eyes. Please, he’s saying. Please.
I howl again, because he’s gotten between me and the water fountain and I can’t kick him, can’t hit him. And I want to. I want to push right through his saggy middle section, put his whole face in my mouth and go crunch. Instead,
I scream, just to see everyone in the waiting room jump, and swipe those pamphlets off the table as I leave.
Outside Robby and Tom are smoking. Jane isn’t holding her bouquet anymore; she’s standing beside Robby, head down, arms heavy on either side. I don’t see Jared.
“Where’d you go?” Robby says, looking somewhere beyond me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He just looks down at his shoes. My limbs feel rubbery now, spent. I’ve sweated through my shirt.
“Tell you what?” Tom asks from behind his cigarette.
“That Charly was pregnant,” Jane says, and she starts to cry again.
I think about that sound Charly made in the room, that shrill sobbing. How the nurse rushed in to help.
Why did you come back? My tongue sticks to the sides of my mouth. I want to kick something again.
“Where’s Jared?”
Robby shrugs, rubs his face.
“A baby,” Jane repeats, looking at us all for a reaction.
Tom offers me his cigarette.
I shake my head. “I need water. Can we go? I want to get out of here.”
“Don’t you think we should stay and help out?” Jane asks, looking at Robby, who starts to cough, snubs out his cigarette, and spits into a bush.
“We should really get going,” Tom says, squinting. He uses one cigarette to light another. Smoke billows from his nose. “I don’t like the look of those clouds.”
34
Down at the harbor the dock is littered with cigarette butts and, sitting atop a fence post, one lone beer bottle. The beachfront is almost empty except for the fishermen on the pier. A few families eat breakfast at the oceanfront diner, waiting for the morning Catalina Express. Many of the shops are empty, seemingly more so with a vacant boardwalk. There are rental signs and for-sale signs, and through the windows I can make out tarp-covered stools, floors caked with dust except for the odd footprint of a workman’s boot.
The water taxi appears and the same plump boys from when we arrived help with our luggage. One of the boys is peppy, asks Robby how our stay was, his narrow chest pushed out, shoulders relaxed. It’s Tom who answers. Robby just lights another cigarette and goes to the bow of the boat.
“Thankfully short,” Tom says, pushing a twenty into the boy’s hand.
The boys motor us out to our slip, the wind gentle, the flashy speedboat at a dim roar. No one speaks. Even the proud boy has taken the hint; he steers now looking straight ahead.
We climb aboard Tom’s boat and there’s only the sound of the anchor raising, loud as it bounces off the quiet harbor. Then the sailboat’s engine, turning over and gunning, startling seals and scaring seagulls from the top of a buoy, the spurting of water as we motor out of the harbor.
I go below deck because the morning air is too cold, the noise from the boat’s engine too grating. Jane is there. She blames me. Not just for Charly but for whatever is going on between her and Tom and Robby. She’s huddled up, knees to chest, windbreaker pulled tight.
“Should I make coffee?” I ask, opening the fridge. My headache is fierce. I find a bottle of water and drink it down, crushing the plastic in my hand.
Jane doesn’t answer. She seems relieved since getting backhanded, which can’t be right. But there she is, staring out the port window—cold and silent, with a thin, satisfied look, that purple bruise like a dark spot of blush across her cheek.
Then we are out at sea. Far, far out. Right in the middle between Catalina and the California coastline. I can’t see either. The sky is soft white, iridescent and eerie. The wind and swells have not been kind. It’s taken hours just to reach the center of the bay, Tom cursing and the boat listing left and right. The gusts are unpredictable, strong one moment, gone another. Then it’s calm except for a thin breeze that whistles high up, spinning the wind indicator.
Robby is beside me above deck. Jane comes up and he lets her climb onto his lap.
I keep saying—sometimes aloud, sometimes to myself—“Charly is going to be fine. She’s all right. Jared’s with her, she’s all right.”
Tom is turning the engine just as rain begins to fall on the Liquid Asset with its varnished teak deck and cherrywood trim. The swells become dizzying suddenly, sending the boat up, up, and then dipping down as if it were one of the rides on the Santa Monica Pier. Then Tom is in full rain gear; we could be in a Turner painting. The cold rain pelts us. Robby holds Jane tighter. She’s holding her legs, like she’s trying to curl up inside herself. And I’m grasping the railing, knuckles white. The ocean is a monster, large and black and roiling. Capable of destruction, everyone at her mercy. I take it back, I’m thinking. I take it back. I don’t want to see your mysteries. I do not want to know your power. My arms ache from holding the rail, my teeth chattering.
The boat lurches and slaps hard against a swell. This wakes Jane up. She’s beautiful in a crisis. Moving swiftly and with purpose back and forth across the deck as if in an urgent dance with Tom, who shouts at Robby and me to go below deck. He’s scowling and firm. Jane calls the Coast Guard using the boat’s radio. How does she know how to do this? But there she is, dialing the Coast Guard and maydaying as if she’d been doing it every day of her life.
The boat pulls into Marina Del Rey just after sunset. Each of us is a little shaky and seasick; Jane is crying and hugging Robby, who has not looked me in the eye until now, which he does solemnly.
“Can we give you a ride?”
“No, I’ll be fine,” I lie.
Jane throws herself on him.
“Poor Charly!” she cries. “Please, let’s go.” And he’s forced to lug her like an exhausted kid toward their car.
“I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk,” he tells me, and waves from behind the wheel. It’s a funny romantic gesture that gets a snort out of Tom.
“I suppose he thinks you two will get back together now.”
“Shut up.” I watch Robby and Jane’s car until it’s out of sight.
“What a fucked-up love story,” he says, and something in his voice makes me turn.
He makes a show of looking me up and down. “You just radiate it, don’t you?” When I step back he smiles and reaches out for me. “Poor Elsa, was the ride back too bumpy? Do you need comforting? Why didn’t you let your ex do the job? Is it because you want me to?”
“Fuck you, Tom.”
“You can’t help that pout, can you? That vicious bottom lip.” He bends his face toward mine, holding me in place.
“At least I didn’t fuck Jane in a by-the-hour hotel.”
He lunges and bites my lip, hard. I kick him, landing just between his shin and knee. He lets out a howl.
I jump onto the dock before he can come after me again.
“Where are you going?” he asks, still holding his leg.
“Staying with a friend.”
His snarl is perfect. It’s everywhere in his face. “What friends have you got left? I don’t think Charly will be sending any Christmas cards.”
When I turn away, I can hear the venom in his voice.
“You know, when they asked, she didn’t tell them where the pills came from.”
That ugly feeling in my stomach punches into a sob, but I manage to walk up the dock, away from him, head straight, shoulders thrown back, only a slight wobble in my legs.
“You have nowhere to go, Elsa!” he calls after me.
35
There’s a big hotel on Admiralty Way that wasn’t there six years ago—windows lit up, a party going off around the pool. People laughing, clinking plates and glasses, the sounds of silverware. I cut across to the greenbelt as the lamps click on. Bicyclists race past on the bike path, their headlights glaring in the fading twilight. I’m thirsty again, my head and lip throb, and I’m frightened Tom might be following me—I jump when a bike passes from behind, its tinny bell sounding in the dark.
So I keep walking, past the new hotel, down into a neighborhood of beach bungalows—the kind with old wood windows that
stick in their frames, air-conditioning units hanging from them like planter boxes. A tiny dog with a bark like a chirp runs alongside me, attacking the gate that separates us. I can still hear it at the end of the block, howling now. Despite the antiqued signs that say “Beach Life” or “Pug Love,” I don’t feel safe here either.
A group of teenagers drinking beer from brown bags catcall me from inside their garage. I cut back out to the main street and head toward the beach. It feels less threatening down where the homeless are getting high for the night. Small tents and sleeping bags between palm trees, reggae music coming from somewhere.
I make my way toward the surf and plop down on the sand. There’s a Miramar Hotel napkin in my purse. Rex’s number is written on it, and his writing looks so hopeful, with sloped letters and plump eights. He’s written them how you aren’t supposed to: with two big Os stacked on top of each other.
I think of what his apartment must look like, the posters on his walls, the bong on the table, the curtains his parents sent him. I think about what would happen if I showed up there for the night. My clothes would end up smelling like boy. And how that scent would haunt me forever, for infinity, like one of Rex’s hopeful looped eights on its side. Much too long a time. I fold the napkin and tuck it back into my purse.
It occurs to me suddenly that there is someone I could call. I take out my phone. The alligator-skin case has frayed, the bottom corner stitching unraveling. I look up Eric’s number and hit CALL. Connecting, calling—then I hang up, my heart beating violently.
The fog has settled over the water. It’s completely dark now. I can’t see Catalina but I know it’s there. I think of Charly. That heaviness returns to my stomach. I think of her lying in a hospital bed, the open ocean just beyond her. This is when I cry—thinking about that great big ocean of dark, how Charly fell into it, and how when she came out, her womb was empty. Because this is the real moment we are no longer friends. Not that day in the orchards, over a boy, not when I divorced Robby and left for New York. It is right now—when I comforted her with pills instead of friendship. I can feel it being carved into my timeline: This is when you lost your friend.