Colleen walked over to the base of the nearby trees and gathered up fallen leaves and needles. She packed them into the muddy tracks surrounding Zach’s wheels. After three trips of this, when the spongy earth was fully covered, she told him to try again. Even when she helped push, his wheels gripped the leaves and gained purchase only to sputter back into the trap the mole had dug for him.
Colleen saw the van pull up to the curb that was closest to them, a hundred yards away.
“They’ve come for us,” she said.
She sat on her heels next to him, not caring that her knees were soaking in the damp soil. She placed her hand on his knee, on the side the others couldn’t see, in the shadow of the trees. The scent of his shampoo drifted to her, along with the unbidden image of Mindy’s fingers working their way through his hair.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
She looked up at him, her chin nearly resting on his knee, so close that she could sense his warmth. His eyes were hooded by the angle of his head against the moonlight. She couldn’t see his reaction, but she felt him tense through her hand, a slight shift away from her.
“ What we had,” he said with the slow rhythm of a man learning to speak again, “it wasn’t real.”
The rejection came with a flash of shame. She felt like she did as a child when her mother scolded her for eating a bite of her brother’s birthday cake before they’d even sung the song. Her lips felt numb.
“It was real to me,” she said.
They had rituals, she thought. Who would know their rituals? But even as she thought it, even as she recalled the drives to the blues joint an hour away, the secret Memphis dive bar where they ordered martinis, or the midday meetings at the neighboring town’s motel, she realized she could count each ritual on her fingers. Each encounter had been laced with adrenaline, even though Kevin wasn’t allowed to be angry, because finally the experience of an affair — beyond the physical and no longer narrowly defined by travel or finite dates, an experience he had taken for granted numerous times — was hers. With a thrill, she had cataloged the differences between the two men — how Zach was quieter, less commanding, less capable of a crafted charm, and therefore seemed like a man incapable of cavalier entitlement — and thought, how wonderful, to know that someone so unlike Kevin could want me and inspire my wanting in turn.
“I love her,” he said. “I made a mistake. What you and Kevin have, it’s different.”
She forced a smile then. It reminded her of something Suzie had learned in school, that the baring of teeth was a sign of aggression. Of course. It was obvious, but she had never thought of it before, not really.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s different. You couldn’t understand, and you’ve misunderstood me.”
She wasn’t sure what she meant; she just knew it felt right to flip the script. Maybe he thought she was just like Kevin, but now it was too late. She would rather him think that than know the truth: she’d been swept up by him, or at least by the idea of him. She wanted to tell him that nothing is real in the beginning. You pin your hopes on someone, eventually you disappoint each other, and then you change your hopes. That’s when it’s real.
“Let’s get you out of here.” She stood tall and waved at the van, its passengers indiscernible in the night.
George and Kevin both sat on the graveyard side of the van with the kids piled on top of each other in the back row. The moon was bright, but the shadows of the trees played tricks, creating movement where there was none.
“What’s taking them so long?” Mindy muttered.
Even in the dappled darkness, George could see Colleen kneeling: her shadow lowered, then merged with Zach’s.
“She’s trying to get the wheel out,” he said. Someday he would look back on this and tell himself that he was helping Mindy, sparing her feelings; really, he just wanted to watch Colleen supplicating herself a bit longer.
When she waved to them, he offered to go to her.
“The bugs must be terrible out there,” Mindy said, cautioning him. “What about Jamie?” She turned pointedly to Kevin.
“It’s not like Zach can get any sicker,” Kevin said. “Colleen’s immune. Give her a little more time and she’ll figure it out.” He stared willfully out the window.
George knew Mindy was right to be concerned, but he had the spray. He wasn’t prone to getting bit, and he was sick of the increasingly complicated calculus he was expected to apply to each of his decisions. He could empathize with the girls, choosing to defy the endless rules of self-preservation in order to carve out a moment that was theirs, banned and illogical, sure, but the impulse was true: the way they were supposed to behave didn’t make them feel alive, not alive enough anyway.
“I’ll be quick,” he said, taking care to leap from his seat and shove the door closed.
Colleen met him halfway down the hill. Her eyes were glassy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You shouldn’t be outside like this, but I can’t move him by myself.”
She tilted her head away from him and ran the back of her hand across her eyes.
He grabbed her arm and couldn’t help feeling the thrill of having touched her, skin to skin. “Are you okay?”
“Stop it.” She shook him off, but tears ran down her face. “Don’t ask me that.”
“I was just trying to help.”
She stopped crying and glared at him. “I see how you look at me. What do you think is going to happen? Don’t you know how pathetic that is?”
“You’re imagining things.” He felt suddenly sick, thinking that he was so transparent, that maybe even Jamie would know how much his thoughts strayed.
Colleen laughed, one sharp burst. “Oh, yes. I’m imagining everything these days.”
He followed her in silence to the top of the hill. He tried to say something to Zach to mask the weirdness of the situation, the weirdness between all of them, but it came out wrong. A terrible joke about being stuck, and Zach gave him a long look of exasperation before saying, “Thank you for risking it.” Risking it, risking becoming just like him, George realized.
Colleen lifted one side by the arms of the chair as George held the other. They could move forward only a foot before the wheel would collapse into another stretch of tunnel. In the end, she had to ask Kevin to help as well. They carried Zach away from the compromised earth, back to lower ground, where Mindy was ready to bring him home.
When Zach still couldn’t speak, he would dream of the easy exchange of words. Even after Mindy forgave him, he would dream of her crying. He would dream that he could suddenly speak again and make her understand, not with the words themselves, but with their urgent tone and his desperate repetition.
Recovery was theoretical. The doctors would say, here are the numbers, here are the numbers we have so far, because the numbers were new. Each recovery was a statistic in his favor, and the prognosis was nebulous but hopeful. The first case was six years ago in Brazil. They had six years of data for the particular strain that locked him in his body, blocking nerve signals and causing his larynx to swell, rendering him nearly speechless. But now he could speak again.
When she forgave him, when she committed to the process of forgiving him, his dreams shifted to a recurring scene: he finds himself lying in the bed and he feels buried — the quicksand cliché that taps into an ancestral fear at the root of the species, but to put it a new way, he feels like a thousand lead vests have been draped over his body and he could move if only the dentist would peel away the layers.
He is propped up by pillows, and he can see the back of her — the clasp of her bra is missing a hook. The band looks worn and the closure strained so that the fabric is pulling apart, held by a solitary eyelet. He wants to tell her, but his tongue is dry and heavy. She picks up powder. He can see her elbow pivoting as she presses the makeup into her face, but like an eclipse, her body is perfectly positioned between his sight and the mirror. He cannot see her face. She goes through each
product on her vanity, applies each cosmetic, but he cannot see her face or say a word.
Each time, when he woke up, he would stare at the ceiling, waiting for her to lean over him, to shift the weight of his head, and when she did, the room would come into focus and he could see her.
Now he could smell the remnants of lavender soap as Mindy leaned across him to secure his straps in the back of the van. Bella stared at him over the headrest of the last row of seats, her head perched high from sitting in the lap of a boy he’d never met.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Daddy’s fine,” Mindy said.
“I’m okay,” he said quietly, but Bella, satisfied, had already turned away.
He could hear Colleen telling Mindy she’d walk home, spare people the room in the packed van. It took a while to get everyone in place, so as they drove by he glimpsed her, walking barefoot along the edge of the road, her dress sandals dangling over her shoulder, held by the hook of her finger. She waved at them and smiled.
At her first appointment, laughing, Colleen had said, “I’m long in the tooth,” her hand fluttering up to hide her mouth.
Zach had protected her smile, literally. He had measured the gaps between gum and teeth, and when the tissue receded, he made neat little cuts, harvested flesh from the roof of her mouth, and tucked it into the incisions. He made her smile new again.
“No chips, no tough foods, and no kissing for a month,” he had told her.
“That’s a long time,” she had said.
When they first kissed, it was too soon, metallic, but he didn’t mind. It was his handiwork, like sipping from your lov er’s drink. It charmed him that she said “bury” like hurry, and that she would order fried chicken but eat the skin first, flay the cornmeal crust and peel away mouthfuls. A few times, they met in Memphis. There was a bar that was also a Victorian house, each room painted a garish color, plastic chandeliers everywhere, and a suicide note of a former tenant framed and mounted in the stairwell.
“Why did you pick this place?” he had asked her.
“I like all the rooms,” she said.
At first, the rooms seemed endless. Acid green, cobalt blue, burgundy and magenta, arsenic gray, deep violet, and dandelion yellow. They visited them all. Each room had a gallery of mirrors and faded photographs. Each room had a worn velvet love seat and an exit marked by an intrusively modern illuminated sign. Someone played piano in the foyer. Tiny speakers mounted beneath the crown molding carried the tune to each cobwebbed corner. The bar offered the facade of difference. At last call, when the lights flickered on, it was just a house with too much paint.
They pretended to be married at the Peabody, or rather, the lady at the front desk assumed and they let her. He had used business as a cover with Mindy. His office was part of a chain of medical offices, so it was easy to claim a regional commitment. When they were lying in bed, letting the cool hotel air evaporate their sweat, he asked Colleen what her story was, and she said, “I told him I was meeting a friend in Memphis.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all he needs to hear.”
“What if he says something? What if Mindy finds out we both were in Memphis tonight?”
“He won’t say anything,” Colleen had snapped, then placed her hand on his. “Sorry, it’s really just not a problem. Trust me.”
In the morning, she had begged him to have breakfast with her, to prolong their stay. At first, he had resisted. It would be easier to transition into a smiling lie if he hadn’t just been with Colleen. He needed time to transition. But she insisted she was going to eat breakfast with or without him, like it was no big deal when it was obviously a very big deal to her, and he didn’t want to be the guy who had the night at the hotel with his mistress and then left her at dawn. Not that Colleen was his mistress. That would be too exceptional and singular for her. The first time they slept together, she had assured him, told him not to worry, that she was discreet. That’s when he knew he wasn’t her first affair, and it suddenly felt possible that he could try this experience with her because — although the thought wasn’t explicit at the time like it was now — he could put what they had back in the box whenever he chose. He realized now that he knew even then, before it started, that he had planned to end it.
At breakfast, she had ordered an egg-white omelet and a mimosa despite it only being Wednesday. She told him a sad high school story about a much older boyfriend who stood her up one day and never talked to her again, then prodded him to share an embarrassing memory of his own.
He had never had his heart broken. His high school relationships were friendships really, and Mindy was his college sweetheart, so he told her about running cross-country, wear ing a white uniform and pissing himself during a race. It was a lie, but it made her laugh so hard that he wished it had been the truth.
Colleen made Suzie strip down to her underwear and turn in circles as her fingers scanned each inch of flesh. Faint stretch marks peeked out of her bra. She caught herself admiring the glow of her daughter’s firm skin even as she searched nervously for signs of a bite. She found a cluster of tiny red bumps on her calf. The quickness of her tears surprised her. She knelt on the bathroom floor, crying.
Suzie touched her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
All Colleen could do was shake her head.
“I think they’re just razor bumps,” Suzie said, embarrassed, looking down at her mother.
Suzie let Colleen hug her. There was nothing to be done about it. Colleen sent her to bed like any other night, unsure if their lives had changed.
After the party had ended, after those who were too drunk to drive and too afraid to walk in full darkness with the prowling insects found couches and spare bedrooms and collapsed to wait for the sun, Colleen recalled her words. What did she want Zach to understand that he didn’t?
She washed her face before bed, and in the harsh bathroom lighting she could see the blue veins lacing her forehead and cheeks, the sallow shadows of the thinning skin beneath her eyes. She was bound by this skin, held separate by it, but it was pulling away from her, loosening and breaking down.
When Kevin emerged from the shower — he always showered before bed — he kissed her, his thin lips tugging on hers. It had been so long that the taste of him repelled her, strange and alkaline. They had avoided kissing since last summer. They didn’t think the risk was high with saliva, but it was still a risk. There could be little cuts from brushing teeth. There could be trace amounts.
She turned away and asked, “What if Suzie was right?”
He kissed her again, on the neck, behind her ear. She watched him in the mirror as he slid his hand over her breast.
“Answer me.” She tilted her head away.
“What if she was right about what?”
“About getting bit now. Getting it over with.”
“She’s not,” he said. “They’ll find a cure in a year. Even five years. She can take precautions until then.”
“But what if they don’t?”
“Then they don’t.”
He clamped his mouth down on hers and pressed her against the wall, pressed himself against her. When he ran his hand up her thigh, she stopped it.
“It’s not safe yet,” she said.
“I don’t care.” He kissed her clavicle and slipped her nightgown over her shoulder.
She shrugged her shoulder away from him. “Well, I care.”
He blinked at her, wiped his mouth, then lifted his wrist and pointed at a red blemish. “I got bit.”
“When?”
“When I was helping your boyfriend in the cemetery.”
Colleen knew about his flings. She didn’t keep perfect tabs on him, but she knew. And since the infection, their forced celibacy as a couple had made his liaisons seem ordained, inevitable, and they therefore became bolder, more frequent. Sometimes Kevin would press into her at night and tell her how he couldn’t wait to fuck her, and she would murmur something to recipr
ocate, and she would think how easy it was to perform this desire. As the charade persisted, as they each went through the motions, she felt a polite chasm growing between them. She couldn’t believe that he really cared. Their estrangement was set according to a virus-borne timer. She always had thought that it had increased his freedom, but maybe it had granted hers. Freed from the routine of him, she’d begun to feel the anticipation of what might be, like she had as a teenager when she had no clue what the future held, imagining that she could still rupture the barrier that existed between two human minds.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she told Kevin then. “He didn’t want me.”
She could see it in his eyes, the deflating desire. She had deprived him of inflicting his wounds and reclaiming his trophy. There was nothing left to assert; no center remained to resurrect. No love to overthrow, none to return. Not the love she had imagined anyway, an emotion beyond the curiosity of animals.
Now that Kevin might succumb to the virus, she imagined herself in Mindy’s shoes. She would perform the role of the dutiful wife and mother. She couldn’t ignore how it would look not to. She had never been the person who could start over at the cost of her own security. If reinvention had ever been an option, those years were in the past. No choice could alter the fact: no one else would ever be the father of her child. No one else could ever span the years Kevin had shared with her, remember her young skin glistening on humid nights. In that way, she wanted to be seen — not as a woman crying over a drama she had spun in her mind, an unreciprocated attempt at connection. No, she would bathe him with sponges, feed him vegetables pureed beyond recognition, guide his body into the bed with the help of a neighbor or a state-sponsored caretaker. And when a year or more had passed, if he recovered, would she know him then? Would he know her, really know her, and call her wife in a way that transcended the legal prescription of the term? Would she ever again think, my husband, and in turn feel seen in that moment, a lifelong memory in the making, no longer a faded reminder of what used to be?
What Makes You Think You're Awake? Page 14