The Siren House

by Andrew Post

  “Then you probably know what I’m going to say next.”

  She nodded, staring at her legs. “We tried fixing everything else because we couldn’t fix ourselves.”

  “Well, yeah, that, but I was also going to say that it’s not such a bad thing. Even if we couldn’t fix ourselves, we still did a pretty good job fixing other stuff too.” I looked around at the wharf. The fishermen were out, pulling in nets. A few kids were running up and down the beach. Over our heads, rainbow poppers were going crazy, partly lost and easily unnoticeable, washed out in the midday sun. There were more rainbow poppers than there had been Casseteras. It wasn’t just them leaving; the Smocks were abandoning this versh now too. Got their orders to pull out and were rainbow popping away. The kids playing on the wharf were the picture of hope, of a better now, a better future.

  “Thank you. For coming here, making me finish it.”

  She shrugged. “Well. I’ve read a few versions of The Siren House. And I knew . . . Something had to be done. I mean, I get it, why you wouldn’t want to face her again. But this versh would’ve never been safe unless she was made to make the call to pull out.”

  “I was kind of hoping once they got who they thought was Thadius, they might . . .”

  “You don’t need to explain,” she said in a comforting tone. “I understand. And me coming here, with the others, was just returning the favor. Maybe when the time comes, you’ll help out another Cassetera. Eventually we’ll get all the vershes squared up.”

  With that, I suddenly felt guilty that all this Cassetera had was the e-book to help her. She’d purged her versh all on her own. I wish I could’ve helped her or returned the favor in some other way. She looked so much more comfortable in her skin than I felt in mine. Like she really owned who she was. Like she was being me better than I ever could.

  “Listen, whatever happens in your versh,” I started, “just . . . crap, sorry, I don’t really feel like I’m in any position to be giving you advice, seeing as how you were the one to come here to help me and everything.”

  “It’s all right. Maybe there’ll be a time.”

  “I’ll have to do another draft now,” I said, looking back toward the courthouse.

  “You will. It’ll be good.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve read it. Another you, on a similar line, just a few weeks ahead. But don’t let that deter you. I’m sure your version of it will be even better.” Could it be considered narcissism to enjoy a compliment from yourself?

  I had nothing else to say except, “Thank you again. Seriously. For saving me, and for . . .”

  She tipped an invisible hat. “It’s all right. And thank you.”

  Pop.

  * * *

  I began rowing.

  It took me about two hours to reach the commandeered vessel Thadius and I had renamed The Boom Romance. I used the walkie to tell him I was there. I pulled up alongside the newly painted hull, and a rope ladder came tumbling, unfurling down.

  I cupped a hand over my eyes and watched as Thadius threw one leg over the railing, then the other, then ambled down to fetch me. He stood unsure in the canoe, holding onto one rung of the ladder to ensure we wouldn’t drift too far away. “Took you long enough,” he said.

  “Ran into a snag. Here.” I handed him my crutches.

  He looped them onto his shoulder through the Y-joint and bent so I could get my arms around his neck. He hoisted me up, using only one arm, and climbed us back up onto the boat.

  “Wait,” I said.

  I looked over his shoulder as we climbed, to Duluth in the distance. The Aerial Lift Bridge, still up as if in surrender. The listing oil rig. The city itself. The sooty spot high on the hill where the Siren House once stood, the brightest spot in the whole town.

  I watched the streets for a while for Smockmobiles or rainbow poppers in the sky. I saw neither. Just Duluth, slowly moving away from us. Like I was standing still and the city was drifting away. This time, it wasn’t scary. I let the effect remain in my eyes, didn’t blink it away. It was leaving, not me.

  “Let me do it,” I said.

  “But it’s a rope ladder, sweetheart. Even with legs that work, it’s—”

  “Just let me.”

  He set me on the floor of the rowboat. Remained at the bottom of the ladder to catch me in case I fell. I didn’t. I climbed up the entire length, pulling at each rung, sweating and grunting and hissing with the effort. It wasn’t easy, but I had to do it. I didn’t want anyone to carry me ever again. I reached the bulwark, clamped onto the hot metal railing warmed from the sun, and dragged myself up and over. I collapsed onto the rubberized floor of our new ship, rolled onto my back. Thadius emerged a moment later, set aside my crutches, and threw down a hand to help me up. I smiled at it and didn’t reach.

  He smiled too, pulled back the hand, and watched me get back up. I got my crutches under me and sat in one of the forward seats, right there on the foredeck. On a foldout table, Thadius had set a pitcher of iced tea, which I immediately made ample use of. Brain freeze, but it was one of the few times in life when it was actually welcome. He went back to the railing to pull up the ladder. He tossed the coiled heap to the boat floor and indicated the shore with a jut of his thumb—his new thumb.

  “Nothing major?”

  “No. Just had to take a second to let it come to me how the book should end.”

  “Ah, good old muses. They never visit when they want you to, only on their own schedule.” When he turned, I saw his younger face this time, the sun dappling his newly manicured goatee to how he used to wear it, dressing his new body in polka dots and crazy stripes in all the colors of the rainbow. I saw him as Thadius, not Clifford. It was easy to imagine him with his arm around Hamish, with a smile on his face.

  It was easy because he actually did have a smile on his face, the first one I’d seen him wear in a long time. Big and toothy. He winked. Ting. “And what’d you come up with?”

  I pulled my tablet out and opened the word processor. “It should end with you and me on a boat, setting sail into the sunset. Going off to find a new life, away from trouble, everything—as far as we could manage or ever hope to manage—resolved.”

  Thadius stepped behind the wheel, turned on the engines—they rumbled wetly below us, throaty sounds gurgling. The first rumble meaning movement, travel, leaving and going, and then arriving and living.

  “I like the sound of that,” Thadius said, turning us north, putting the city directly aft of us. “You’ll have to let me read it when you’re through. I hear there might be a dapper fella in there. A really dapper guy named Thadius Thumb.”

  “He’s in there. Don’t worry about that.”

  I wrote.

  A lot has been set in motion, and all of it because of my story. Which reminds me, I should really thank the first Cassetera with the two-year head start in her versh for making all this possible. If it weren’t for her, none of this would’ve happened; or if it had, it would’ve turned out bad. She went through it so I could know a few things to avoid, and today was proof enough that the message got through. Each one behind me and each one behind the next Cassetera will have an easier time. I just hope all of them remember to make their story their own. And even if you aren’t Cassetera and you don’t live in a versh where the Smocks need to be stopped, I hope you live your own story too. Appreciate each day, love those around you, accept changes the same as things that refuse to change. Some things can’t be fixed, and that’s okay. I had to learn that. The hard way.

  I can’t help it; right now I’m thinking about my parents again. Probably has something to do with what we renamed this boat to. Man. That damn boom, romance story. I’d give anything to hear them tell it again. I wonder how different it would sound to me, knowing what I know now. Like how lucky each of my parents was to find the other, because without each other, I can attest, they wouldn’t have been the same. But, again, I am just amazed at how lucky they were. Love is so
rare and delicate. Stories about love can sometimes ring of bullshit, yeah, but sometimes you find love, and it’s just what it is.

  Like me and Thadius. There is no boom, romance between us—but it’s fine. It’s love. We don’t need anyone to define it for us. We make that definition ourselves, write our story about it. I have a few in mind we could turn into plays right now, actually. And we’d have the power to tweak them, tell it differently if we want. That’s our choice. Or we could leave them as clumsy and awkward and funny and great and terrible and full of ups and downs as they really were, just repeat them as we remember them.

  Some stories bear repeating. Sometimes because you want to hear it again, but sometimes it just demands that you catch everything the second, third, eight hundredth time. Maybe it’s because you love it that much, or maybe it’s just the way someone tells it.

  It’s funny to think how you might notice something different each time you hear a story, how it may seem different to you. Thing is, some people say that the story’s never different, that it’s you that changes.

  Yeah. Okay. That might be true. But those aren’t your stories. Your stories are the ones that you can change. Because you’re the one writing them. Every day. Every hour. Every minute. You may not feel it, know it’s happening, but it’s right there, the typewriter right next to you, documenting as you go to work, make dinner, ask that guy or girl out, ask them how they pronounce the name of the band Live. Click, click, click. What’s put on the page is all up to you.

  Go ahead and put down some great ink.

  I’d love to read it.

  And Thadius was a really dapper guy.

  Acknowledgments

  A major thank-you to Traci Post, Emily Steele, and Erin Rooney.