by Emily Temple
I blamed him, of course. If he had simply done what Serena had asked, had bent to her desire like the rest of us, none of this would be happening. Instead, we would be together on the rock palm, holding hands, all four of us with our feet in the air. All five of us, maybe.
“Isn’t there anything else you can do?” I asked him once. All I wanted was to go back, to repair whatever ineffable structure had been broken. “Some other teaching? Couldn’t you at least show us, so we can see?”
“Trust me, I’d love to,” he said. “She’s driving me crazy.” So she was still seeing him, at least. She was still trying, without me.
“Then do it,” I said.
“I would,” he said. “At this point, I would give her anything she wanted.” He shuddered a little—at what? This admission? His own desire? “But like most people,” he said, “I have no earthly idea how to levitate.”
“Come on,” I said. “She saw you do it.”
“I’ve heard that story,” he said. “I wish it were true.”
It took me a few seconds to understand what he was saying. Did that mean Serena had imagined it? Had she misremembered—or had she been lying all along? “What about tummo?” I asked at last.
“Tummo is real,” he said. “I’ve just never taken it all the way. I haven’t been doing this all that long, you know. I’m just some guy.” He put his hands in his pockets, and smiled, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. I didn’t contradict him. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t tell us the truth from the beginning. I didn’t need to. I knew what Serena was offering.
When I left the garden, I walked down to the koi pond, thinking I might sit for a while, or kneel and let the jeweled fish suck on my fingers. I needed to think. But when I approached, I found that Janet was already there, stretched out on the muddy bank amid the nettles. I noticed, seeing her from that angle, that her roots were growing in, that signature purple finally admitting to being not of her, not entirely, not originally. The effect was of someone wearing an inexpertly attached wig, the glue peeling and stretching. She was showing her seams. She was not yet, but almost, exposed. Despite the fact that she too had been eating again, she seemed even further diminished, as if boiled down to her essential parts, all marrow.
She didn’t notice me, and as I watched, she pushed herself forward and began to drink from the pond. She slapped the water into her face, letting it splatter her skinny chest. When she dunked her head in, the purple spreading out, I quietly turned and left her there.
Later, I woke in the middle of the night, needing to pee, and went into the bathroom to find Laurel in the tub. I said her name. She didn’t move. I came to the edge, and tried to stop myself from looking down at her; in the stillness the water was perfectly clear. She ignored me. I put a hand in the water to disturb it, a way of touching her without touching her, and found that it was cold.
“Laurel,” I said again.
“What?” she said at last, her voice drawn up into its haughtiest register, the one she’d used with me the very first time we’d met. It made me sad to hear it, nostalgic even.
“The water’s cold,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. She looked down. She began, silently, to cry.
I knelt by the tub. But she wouldn’t answer me, wouldn’t explain, wouldn’t get out of the cold bath. Finally, I said I was going to wake up Janet.
“No,” she said. “Leave Janet out of it.” Then she stood in the bathtub, bare and tall and towering over me, swaying only slightly. She was covered with goose bumps, like a pointillist’s Venus. I wanted to hold her, wrap her in a towel, warm her by the fire, even though there was no fire, even though it was a hot night like all the others, and we didn’t have that kind of love. But she stepped around me and disappeared naked into the dormitory. I still had to pee, and once that had been accomplished, I came back to find that her bed was empty.
I slid my body between her sheets. Her pillow smelled like the plasticky jasmine of her shampoo. Her sheets were silky and cool. I kicked my legs back and forth to feel the smoothness against my skin. I turned my face down into the pillow, but something didn’t feel right. There was no thrill, no promise of closeness here. I didn’t know what I was doing. I crept back to my own stale bed.
Ritual cleansings are common in both Eastern and Western religions. Ablutions are often required before worship, as though our gods cannot be trusted to see us as we are, as though the soap we scrub into our outsides might filter down to clean our filthy souls, or at least shine them up a little. Baptism, mikvah, misogi, punyahavachanam, ghusl, an evening in the sweat lodge. Cleanliness/godliness. But it seems to me that the closer we get to our natural states—the muddier we get, the more savage, the more covered with semen and silt and scratches—the closer we are to whatever elemental force created us. It does not seem likely that the gods are civilized, that they take their tea with one blue pinkie finger held aloft. It does not seem likely that they were looking down at Laurel, kindly or at all, no matter how she splashed and shivered in that cold dead tub.
14
I found out the way anyone finds out anything: I had a dream about Rasputin. He sat at a high table and fed the four of us crumbs and crusts from his plate as we fought and scrambled beneath him. When the crumbs and crusts were gone, we sucked meat juice from the dirty fingers he dangled down to us. Rasputin’s thumb was in my mouth when Serena began climbing, digging her toes into his heavy robes for balance. Up, up, up she went, and soon I heard Rasputin scream, and then I heard the screaming muffle and stop, and I knew she was crawling into his mouth, that she was going to force her body into his head, fill it up until it exploded. I could hear the kicking of his legs, the desperate scratching of his hands against the table. He clutched at my hair, my breasts, my neck, trying to gain some purchase, but I was smooth, too smooth, a peach after all. I could hear the squeaking of his skull, the sound of the plates coming apart at the seams, and I knew it was coming, it was almost there, she had done it, she was doing it now.
I woke up. I pulled myself out of bed and went into the bathroom to wash the dream off my face. When I came back, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see that neither Laurel nor Janet were in their beds. I tried to go back to sleep, but the dream was sticking in the back of my throat. Rasputin’s face had been familiar. His hands had been rough. I could still feel where his calluses had burned the inside of my cheek, where his fingertips had grazed my clavicle.
It occurred to me for the first time that it was possible our little group hadn’t so much fractured as I had simply been excised from it. That my rotten apocalypse was only their pulled tooth. Their relative estrangements could be fictions, meant to fool me, to keep me from following them. I knew Laurel was a good actress, more than capable of deception. I didn’t think Janet would lie to me. But I didn’t think a lot of things. If the two of them were meeting Serena as usual, if they were all doing tummo right now, I would never know.
But I also knew something about Luke now, something they didn’t. Looking at my wet reflection, I was overcome by an urge to see him. I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t, middle of the night or not, go down to talk to him, just talk, or maybe kiss him again, the fraud. It was late, but I was sure he would be awake. Back then I figured grown men were always awake. I still basically figure that. Certain kinds of men, at least.
Sure enough, when I approached Luke’s cabin, the lights were on. His leather sandals were outside on the mat; I could see the smooth black imprints of his feet in their soles.
Instead of knocking, I walked around to the side of the house and put my face to the window. I wanted to see what he did when he was alone.
But he was not alone. In fact, I couldn’t see him at all. In the slice of light between the two inexpertly pulled drapes, I could see only Serena, lying face down on Luke’s bed. The skin of her bare back was clear, the rest of her hidden by blanket. She was still, as if dead. I shifted a little to see more. And then I could see more:
I could see that her hair looked strange, and maybe it was the light, but no—the hair tucked against the pillow wasn’t black at all, or long, but a smear of dark, earthy purple. Those shoulders, hard and strong, like a boy’s.
Somewhere to my left, I heard Luke wrench the front door open, heard him ask a question into the night air. I froze, but after a few seconds of silence he retreated, leaving a thin scent of lavender behind. My face was still at the window when he entered the room, leaned over, and kissed her on the head. It wasn’t actually until this movement, which was so tender—the way his lips descended into her hair, the way her hand curled around his leg in response to his touch—that I really understood what I was seeing.
But I was to understand it better, because then he slid under the blanket and put his arms around her, and they began to move. She sat up, straddling him, and he tried to sit up too, and she pushed him down again. It was some time after this, his arms wrapped around her small body, her chin on his shoulder, that, for the first time, for the only time, I saw her smile. I won’t say she looked beautiful, because she didn’t, and aside from the blush of youth, wasn’t. But she looked happy. She looked perfect. It was her smile that made me unstick my fingers from the windowsill and slink back to the dormitory. It was a long time before I heard her climb up into her top bunk and push her face into her pillow.
In the morning, I ate my cereal between Harriet and Nisha, but I didn’t hear anything they said. I was looking over at Laurel, whose makeup was not quite hiding the dark circles under her eyes. Where had she been, if Janet had been with Luke? Where was she ever? Twice, her spoon clattered against her bowl. I was about to approach her, to touch her arm, even struggle through some kind of argument if it would keep her from being alone, when Janet finally appeared, her hair wet. I thought her usual scowl seemed hung inexpertly in place, like a surgical mask about to slip from an ear. More likely the face was the same, and I was seeing it differently now. To be honest, I had never even considered Janet as a sexual creature. Not like Laurel, not like Serena, not even like me. Not for a moment. Can I be blamed? She rolled her eyes at every allusion. She wasn’t interested in tanning her stomach, or the tops of her small breasts. She had no stories. She had no questions. It seemed she had no desires. But all that meant nothing. All that meant was that she didn’t need to talk about sex with us, she didn’t need to make jokes, to assert herself in that way. She knew she had something we didn’t.
We had Kyūdō again that day, and I watched Janet carefully, taking in her strong arms and the concentration on her face. She looked the same as ever: as calm and hard as a machine. I was lying before, you know. She was beautiful, in her own way. We all were. I couldn’t see it then. I was too cocooned in my own relative judgments, too disappointed at my own dull bone structure, too enamored of long limb and bouncy hair and cookie-cutter exactitude, but now I see us clearly: we were young, smooth, clean. Or at least younger and smoother and cleaner than we are now. Those of us who are left, I mean. Janet hit the target again and again, her shots increasing in power as the lesson wore on, while I fumbled, still, with the steps, and Laurel gave up and sat down in the grass. She hadn’t even put on her glove.
“Sarah’s going to yell,” I said.
She looked at me like I was a tree that had opened its mouth to speak. Maybe I was.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
And it didn’t. Sarah didn’t even reprimand her. She must have been tired, that far into the summer. Like all of us, she must have been so tired.
I skipped my rota that afternoon. The reasons for this should be obvious to anyone.
That night, both Janet and Laurel fell asleep immediately, or at least turned their faces into their pillows and stayed that way. I rolled onto my back. I could feel every square inch of fabric that was touching my body; I thought I could feel every fiber. I wished for sleep. I wished even for Rasputin.
I’d have this feeling many more times in my life, but this was the first: I was overcome by the certainty that choosing any path would by necessity eliminate the others—eliminate them as choices, yes, but also somehow obliterate them, erase them from the world. I pictured the different paths dissolving as if in acid. I pictured them burning. I felt that any choice I made now would be a destructive act. As essential as Hamlet’s query, if not ultimately the same: to tell or not to tell?
Eventually, without ever actually making the decision to do so, I sat up and pulled on my shoes. Laurel was whimpering in her sleep (what a word, whimpering: the cutest, saddest little word, except it’s not little, it’s long and thin, like a dachshund being tortured) and I hesitated over her. I had to stop myself from smoothing back her hair. I took her flashlight and crept toward the front door.
As I walked, I told myself that I still hadn’t made any decisions, that every step I took forward wasn’t a betrayal of Janet, wasn’t one of those choices that bombs out the rest of the world, but was only a step forward, an innocent step on an innocent path in the dead of night. I was going to see my friend, my best friend, yes, still, no matter what she had done or not done. Why shouldn’t I?
The smile may be overrated as a device, overused. I have overused it in this accounting, no doubt. In Russia, they don’t trust people who smile too much. In America, it’s obligatory to smile at strangers, lest you be perceived as mean-spirited or, worse, unhappy. Showing one’s teeth—well, Janet was right, it’s a strange gesture, one that shouldn’t mean friendship. But Janet’s smile—that was not overused. That meant something. Didn’t it?
On the other hand, I was angry. And yes, I was jealous. I can admit this to you now, today, a day when I have touched no one, and can’t imagine when I will again. If no one had Luke, I could live without him. I could sacrifice him for the chance at transcendence. If Serena used him, flirted her way into levitation lessons, or did more, fine. Fine. She didn’t love him, didn’t even want him, so it didn’t count. He was a means to an end. But what did Janet think she was doing?
Serena had the real power among us. I had always known this. Now I wanted her to use it. Hadn’t we learned that she would? Hadn’t we learned that she would lead us all over the edge at the least provocation, with a smile on her face?
Did I want that for Janet?
Oh yes, I wanted it.
Perhaps you will blame me, by the end. It’s all right if you do.
Here, this will help: almost a year after my father left, my mother called me into her bedroom. She was yelling. I can’t tell you now what it was I had done; it hardly matters. She was yelling, and she was trying on clothes in front of her enormous walk-in closet. She was always doing two things at once, my mother. This closet was a space that held immense interest for me, and not only because I was forbidden to enter it. There were so many different colors, so many textures inside. My mother had silks and brocades, leather and velvet and nylon and lace and suede and satin and other things I touched and touched but have never identified. Because of course, yes, despite being forbidden, I had been inside, and had buried my face in all of her coats, raked my fingers through all her sleeves. I had even, while she was out, tried things on in her giant mirror, but of course nothing looked right. Everything of hers was too long, too tall, too small in the waist for me. Although there was one dress—black silk, with a low front—that, when I pulled it on and stood the right way, made me feel beautiful, or if not exactly beautiful, then at least worthy of being looked at.
Anyway, I can’t remember why she was trying on clothes. There was a party that night, maybe, though not at our house. It was a Friday, I’m sure. That I remember, because of what happened next.
What happened next: she raised her arm, a blue satin–covered arm, to strike me. Just one of a thousand times that she did. She raised her arm to strike me and I had this sudden thought, a new thought: I am bigger than she is. Not taller, no, but wider, and certainly heavier. Maybe stronger. I had this thought and then she struck, and I caught her arm in my hands. I caught her arm in my
hands, and then I pushed, hard, and she fell backward into her closet with a thump and a crack that might have been her head against the dresser, and a gasp that might have been her response to the pain. She fell backward into her closet, and I shut the door. I did this without thinking: I shut the door, slammed it, and then I turned the key. It was an old-fashioned closet door, with an iron key that was always in the lock and never used. My mother found it charming. I didn’t know if the key worked, but I turned it anyway, and pulled it out of the lock, and then I stepped back, clutching the thing to my chest as if she could somehow suck it out of my hands and back through the door.
“Olivia,” my mother said. “Let me out.” I heard her scrabbling, trying to open the door. But it would not open. There was no handle on that side.
“No,” I said.
“You’re going to have to let me out eventually,” she said. “Better do it now.”
“You brought this on yourself,” I said.
“I hurt my head,” my mother said. Her voice sounded far away.
I told you, already, what happens when I am given any amount of power. I turned on my heel and walked out of the room.
It is possible that I should not be forgiven for this.
In the kitchen, thrilled and raving, I looked for the matches. They weren’t in their usual place. I began opening drawers at random, picking up knives and cheese graters and dish towels and putting them down again. I looked in the cupboards, under the sink. I looked in the freezer, where things are found in films.