Up Through the Water

by Darcey Steinke

  “I have to be there now,” Eddie said.

  “Okay, baby,” the cook said, and as he lifted his head, he rested a dry kiss on Eddie's neck.

  The car moved backwards, then forwards toward the ramp.

  Eddie held the brown bag to his face and blew his nose.

  “These next few nights I'll leave the keys right under the seat,” Neal said.

  He drove around the inlet past the lighthouse and finally pulled onto Lila's road. “Just take it and go.”

  “Thanks,” Eddie said, shutting the door with his back. He walked fast carrying the bag, as though it was a baby, toward her house. His eyes went to the smoky rectangle of her bedroom window. Neal's car did not move. Go on, Eddie said, swinging a leg over the low white fence. He creeped up to her window and heard Lila breathing slowly inside. Tapping lightly on the screen, he whispered, “Please come out. Or let me in.”

  SIXTEEN

  FERRY TO SHORE

  Eddie sat in the parking lot of the gas station waiting for Lila. Gulls swooped around the Dart and it seemed that just that second the first grayish light was tingling up. Like the beginning notes of a song. Different from the verse and chorus because of a deliberate delicate leisure. He picked at the foam leaking through the front seat. Lila had agreed to meet him at five-thirty. To forget waiting, he tried to figure out what qualities he'd gotten from his mother. He looked like a sliver of her, like a cutting that grew differently in height and shape but still had the same hue. But it was characteristics, not looks, he was concerned with. Unlike his friends, but much like his mother, Eddie knew he cried easily and over things that seemed stupid. Like when his mother said she couldn't go to the beach with him, or worse. In school last fall he got teary-eyed when the coach had told him the new sweats wouldn't arrive in time for the first match.

  He watched the sky pause before the sun tipped over the water. His stomach growled and he remembered wrestling season when, to make weight, he'd eaten only apples. He could still see them: the morning one that his stepmother set out on a plate, the lunch apple in a brown bag, then the dinner one, sliced thinly and served in a bowl with a few nuts and raisins while his father ladled gravy over his chicken.

  Eddie glanced back and saw Lila far down the road: a dot with a small orange satchel.

  He felt for the stiff twenties he'd taken out of the little one-teller bank yesterday, then started the car.

  She stuck her thumb out like a hitchhiker as he stopped and threw the side door open for her. Lila put a brown bag by her feet and tipped the orange thing into the back.

  “What's that?” Eddie thought that it was a parachute and Lila would want them to throw themselves off the highest building in Norfolk. The single parachute would not be strong enough for both but would let them eye the blue smudge of the Atlantic before splattering them on the asphalt.

  “A tent,” Lila said.

  “I can afford a room,” said Eddie.

  “Nope,” Lila said. “I want to be near as possible to the flat dirt during all this.”

  He pulled a U-turn and headed for the ferry.

  “The cook's wheels ain't bad,” she said, leaning her feet up on the dash.

  “Did you leave a note?” he asked.

  “It's all set. They think we're staying with your aunt.”

  “My mom wasn't home,” Eddie said. He looked down at the gas gauge.

  “Figures,” Lila said.

  “I wish you wouldn't act like that about my mom.”

  “I think I can say anything I want.”

  Eddie shook his head and shivered.

  “You're cold?”

  “No,” said Eddie. “I thought of something.”

  Lila said, “It's impossible not to.”

  “Not that. Neal made a move on me.”

  Lila squealed. “What did you have to do to get the Dart?” She pressed an elbow into his ribs.

  “Nothing,” Eddie said. “Don't be so stupid about it.”

  “Why?” Lila said. “It's stupid to act so boring and grown-up. We go up there, lay the money down"—her voice thickened—“and it's over just like that.”

  She turned her face away.

  “I'm sorry,” he said.

  “What do you know?” Lila said, turning on the radio and flipping the dial from station to station.

  On the ferry Lila asked Eddie about heart attacks. Last night she had had a dream: first her heart beating fast as a bird's, then she felt it swell and nudge out of her ears and mouth, encasing her body like a giant soap bubble. “Then,” Lila said, “like a pin pops a balloon, bang. Little pieces of pinkish skin were all over the beach—”

  There was a hard rap on Eddie's door; he flinched and saw John Berry's face beyond the glass. He rolled the window down an inch.

  “Up kind of early,” John Berry said. His hair was long, past his ears and blowing.

  Eddie was silent.

  He pointed at Lila. “Does your father know you're out here?”

  “I tell my daddy everything,” she said sweetly.

  “Is that right?” John Berry said. “I'd like a word with you alone, Eddie.”

  “No way,” Eddie said and started rolling up the window.

  John Berry pushed his hand on the moving glass. “Please,” he said. “It's nothing bad.”

  This will never stop, Eddie thought as he opened the door. Lila grabbed at his shorts. “Everybody says he's a crazy man now,” she whispered. He pressed the door shut gently and followed John Berry up the stairs. Eddie pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt down against the cold. At the top he saw the island's long rows of telephone lines strung like a lizard's spine down the highway.

  He opened the door of the wheelhouse. John Berry, with a hand on the big wheel, was guiding the ferry.

  “I wasn't thinking right,” he said quickly.

  Eddie didn't answer.

  John Berry turned his head from the window and said, “I've got nothing against you. Never did. You stop seeing in front of you when you're like I was. You only see what plays like a movie inside your skull, showing what you were hoping would happen, and spliced between it, I saw the things I'd heard.” He paused to guide the ferry through a pattern of buoys. “I want you to tell her I'm sorry.”

  “What makes you think she'll listen to me?” Eddie said.

  “You're her flesh,” John Berry said. “She knows that.” He looked at Eddie and then let his eyes fall to his hands. “I need someone.” John Berry blushed. “You have to tell her that I'm sorry and that you want her to come back to me.”

  Eddie said, “If that's what you want, why'd you mess up her stuff?”

  John Berry said, “Your mother is the only one for me.”

  “You know she doesn't have that much,” Eddie said.

  John Berry clenched his teeth. “I'm trying to tell you something.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “Sure, I'll tell her, if you don't kill her first.”

  John Berry said blankly, “I need her with me.”

  Though Eddie would never admit it, he was strangely honored that John Berry would talk to him about his mother. It was as if he'd been asked into their bedroom to moderate. Each would tell his or her side and he'd hold up their words, turn them around, examine them like a glass held to light, and decide one way or the other.

  “Want to steer?” John Berry said.

  “No,” Eddie said, though he could imagine the varnished wood of the captain's wheel under his fingers. “I have to get back to Lila. She's not feeling that great.”

  “I've seen a lot of girls go over on this early ferry and I'm not so stupid to think all of them are going to the malls in Norfolk,” John Berry said. “Is that girl pregnant?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said.

  John Berry looked over and Eddie averted his eyes to the sea charts on the wall. “Come here and drive this boat a minute,” he said. “I got a cramp in my hand.”

  Eddie walked over and took the wheel.

  “Turn a little to
the left,” John Berry said, pointing over the ocean to the day markers. “Now to the right.”

  She pulled the flap to enter the tent and lay down in the cool patch of grass inside.

  “Well?” Eddie said.

  “I have to go over at four. They need to take another test.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “How should I know?” Lila said as she spread canvas flat on the grass and arranged the sleeping bags in one corner. “Can you believe we're stuck between two Winnebagoes? We look like a refugee camp compared to those things.” She stared at her stomach. “It's nuts,” she continued, placing both hands on her lower belly, “that something could be alive in there.”

  “It looks like a fish now,” Eddie said, flat on his back next to her. Outside, a kid started screaming about dropping his freezer pop.

  “What did John Berry say?”

  “He wanted me to apologize for him.”

  Lila turned to him. “Are you going to?”

  “That's all her mess,” Eddie said. “I've had enough to do with it.”

  “Your mother sure is something,” Lila said. “My mother says people like her because she doesn't care who she's with or what she's doing. Anyway, that's what I overheard her say on the phone.”

  “Gossips,” Eddie snapped.

  “Think she'll stay with Birdflower?”

  “Maybe. But who knows?” he said. “I've learned there's no telling with her.” Eddie heard a slice of cartoons as the door banged on one of the Winnebagoes.

  “You don't like her sleeping around, do you?” Lila said. “And I wouldn't either. But I've heard she's slowed—”

  “Hey, come on, she's my mother,” Eddie said, hands held high in the air.

  “Fine,” Lila said. “We better get ready.” She grabbed her brown bag and left the tent. Eddie followed. Lila was always trying to imply that he was in love with his mother, but there was nothing he could say to convince her that he wasn't.

  She stared at him.

  “I'll stand outside and wait for you,” he said. “And hand you quarters for hot water.”

  “Okay,” she huffed and turned. They walked along the path to the showers. WOMEN in white letters on a green shack, a silver nozzle hanging above. She got in and quickly threw her clothes item by item over the door to him. “Give me one,” she said. He held a quarter over the side. She pressed it in and turned the knob. Water beat down and began to puddle on the cement floor and drip down the drain. Eddie saw the pink pads of her feet.

  “Do you know what the most beautiful word is?” she asked over the push of water.

  Eddie lifted the clothes to his face to smell her.

  “Negative,” Lila said from behind the door. “Negative.”

  Of those scattered throughout the clinic waiting room, Eddie suspected three women were there for abortions. One near Lila's age sat with a big storybook Bible on her lap and a boyfriend pointing to a page. The other two were older. Near the front door a black woman read a magazine while her little boy ran a fire truck up and down the walls in a crazy path. And near him, a woman his mother's age sat with a concerned-looking man watching a late afternoon nature show on the waiting room TV. There were others who Eddie presumed were waiting for friends or were here for checkups. Their bodies did not send off that desperate energy that seemed to billow in the air around Lila and the women he suspected.

  When the nurse stepped out, shuffling files, Eddie squeezed Lila's hand. The nurse called her name.

  “I have to pee in a cup,” she said quietly to Eddie.

  Eddie watched the door close.

  When would they ask him to step forward and lay down the money?

  Things were not going well at all. There were just two things he'd wanted from this summer and now both had gone bad. He had not talked to his mother, and sometimes he thought that because he had not done so his mother had had a bottle thrown in her face. And as for getting laid, Eddie thought, looking around the room, just look where it had gotten him.

  This summer had flipped him and pinned his shoulders. He was reminded that his mother had told him she'd gotten pregnant the first time she'd had sex. She told him this on his sixteenth birthday, to imply his specialness, but also to show him that his life might be ruled by circumstance and passion. His plans for this summer, he thought moodily, were all fucked up.

  The door opened and Lila came out. She sat down next to him and whispered, “I had shy bladder at first, but then it was okay. I looked at the other samples when I sat mine on the testing table. It was the color of the rest. No darker or lighter. I even smelled a few.”

  “Yuck,” Eddie said.

  “I'd drink them all if it would do any good,” Lila said.

  Eddie held her hand. “So we'll know for sure in a few minutes?”

  “Yep,” she said. “I keep wondering if one of these suckers might have a bomb.” She deliberately eyed each face in the waiting room. “Do you think any look like born-again Christians?”

  Eddie said, “We can leave if you want.”

  “No, we can't,” Lila said. “Don't be stupid.”

  “You can change your mind,” he said.

  “Please,” Lila said.

  A different nurse came out and called Lila's name. She got up and followed the nurse, who closed the door behind them.

  His mother had described to him her light-headed dreams of an oval with a creature rolling and changing like a kaleidoscope inside. But, Eddie thought, there was also something desperate and horrible about a red mucousy thing attaching itself to your innards. Lila hadn't said this exactly, but she had mentioned the weirdness of a creature stealing your food and lounging on your organs as if they were throw pillows. But then he himself had been one of these big-headed little gargoyles. Eddie didn't know what to think. For a moment he thought of himself caught in Lila's body, struggling to grow an arm, then a palm, and finally each thin finger flicking out strong as switchblades.

  Eddie tightened his calf muscles and squeezed his fingers around the arms of the chair as if he were on a roller coaster. It bothered him that he couldn't remember how may wins he had had by pin. He saw each match: the gym, the lights, and himself, inching an opponent's shoulders every second closer to the mat. He stood as he heard a hand rest on the door. Somehow he suddenly knew that it would not happen, that for once luck was on his side.

  In the motel, Lila fed quarters into the little box on the night-stand. As the mattress shook, she lay back near the trembling bucket of chicken between them. Eddie ate a thigh and watched television. The bones hit his teeth.

  In the room, all dark except for the jump and glow of the screen, Lila said, “So this is the fabulous MTV.”

  “Admit you like it,” Eddie said. “It's impossible not to.”

  “Tonight,” Lila said, picking white meat off the bone with her fingers, “I could tell you I liked anything.”

  Eddie searched the bucket for another thigh. “Should I try to get beer again?”

  “No,” Lila yelled above the hum of the mattress. She sat up, then stood on the bed and started jumping. Eddie, distracted from his guitar hero on the screen, watched her slap her palms on the ceiling.

  He stood and jumped slowly, more carefully than Lila. The chicken spilled onto the bed and bounced. He flicked it off with his toes. “Watch this one,” he said, jumping and dancing to a new-wave song on the TV.

  “I love this,” Lila said as they grabbed arms and pushed off together. Their hair brushed the ceiling. “No babies in here,” she said, and looked around as if it was surprising not to see hundreds of infants suspended in air.

  “We're saved,” Eddie said like a TV preacher. “Praise the Lord.”

  “We're young,” Lila said, wildly throwing her head from side to side with the music. She jumped high, kicking her bare legs. “And we're free.”

  SEVENTEEN

  THE SHARK

  Emily watched Lila walk on the beach. She couldn't remember herself ever looking like
that: every part so new and nested perfectly together. She did remember when her hips spread, a little with Eddie, but more later. Emily looked over the length of her body to Lila's feet marching in the shallow waves.

  “Want to lay out with me?” Emily called.

  Lila looked up and smiled shyly. She swayed her thin hips up the sand. “Spread your towel here,” Emily said. “It'll be fun to talk to you.”

  “I like your bathing suit,” Lila said.

  “This old thing?” Emily looked down at her paisley hip hugger. “I got this before Eddie was born.”

  “Really?”

  Emily nodded.

  Lila flipped her towel up like a wing and then let it settle on the sand. She lay down on her stomach with a palm resting under each hip.

  “Did Birdflower tell you we work together at the Trolley?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “He says he doesn't think you like it.”

  Lila shrugged. “What's to like?”

  Emily dug her feet into the cooler sand below the surface. “Did you get in trouble for missing a day?”

  “I'm just decoration around that place,” Lila said.

  “I used to take off like that,” Emily said. “No excuses, no plans. Just drive right onto the highway.”

  “I'd love to be able to drive,” Lila said.

  “No need for it here,” Emily said, her eyes still closed.

  “Yeah,” Lila said. “Even if I could, there wouldn't really be anywhere to go.”

  Emily leaned up on one elbow. “I would have loved to grow up here.”

  Lila opened her eyes and looked into Emily's face. “Can I ask you a question? I've been dying to ask you this forever.”

  “Okay,” Emily said, looking past Lila's profile and farther down the beach to where an older couple waded in the water.

  “Why didn't you just reach up and catch the bottle?”

  Emily watched the old woman slowly step back to shore and the man do a sidestroke into deeper water. “Have you ever had a bottle thrown at you?”