Blink

by Sasha Dawn

  C r a s h I n t o M e

  I take a seat at the counter at the Tiny Elvis.

  “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” is playing in the background, its casual, sweet melody a contrast to the rambunctious Saturday morning crowd—lots of kids under five, lots of tears and parental threats to sit down or else.

  Chatham’s eyes brighten when she sees me sitting there—I’ve noticed that about her; she smiles with her eyes—and she gives me a wink as she crosses the room, balancing plates on her hands and forearms like some sort of well-rehearsed circus performer.

  I hold my breath when I realize who she’s waiting on: Damien and his extracurricular woman.

  When was the last time he took my mother out for a meal?

  Even the day they got married, she’d fried burgers at home and dealt with the verbal barrage of his dissatisfaction at their being a little overcooked.

  Yet here he is, with a woman I can’t help but feel sorry for because she’s with him, sipping a cup of coffee and eating eggs Benedict. Not that this place is a five-star restaurant, but it’s the principle of the thing.

  He hardens a stare on me.

  A feeling of discomfort washes over me—dizziness with a touch of nausea—but a second later, I remember I’m not a twelve-year-old twerp anymore. I’m over six feet tall, damn near as tall as him. And while I know it would crush my mother to know I’m contemplating my fist meeting his head, and reveling in thoughts of pounding him into the pavement, he’d deserve every punch. She’d want us to get along. It’d be easier, she’d say, if we all just put our differences aside. And who’s it really hurting anyway? Her.

  Maybe it’s true that she’s in the middle and we’re both pulling at her. But no one can get along with a man who’s seldom at his best—especially when his best falls short of decent. I understand that she wants him to be a good man, and that things would be easier if he could be defined that way. But I can’t make him good by playing nice.

  I know I should be going. I shouldn’t be here while he’s here, but I have to talk to Chatham.

  I give the stare right back to Damien, and I don’t doubt this contest could go on for hours. But his woman must have said something because he laughs and looks toward her.

  I zoom in on the scene with my phone and snap a few pictures—Damien feeding her a dollop of cream from her waffle, Damien wiping said cream from her lips with his thumb—and text them to Rosie with a message: this is what you chose over your firstborn.

  “Hey there, cute boy.” Chatham slides a piece of chocolate cake onto the counter before me.

  Her voice calms me . . . the southern lilt, the phrasing like hey there. “Hi.” I pick up a fork and start eating.

  “Didn’t expect to see you until later.”

  “Shit went down.”

  “Oh.” She cocks her head a bit. “You okay?”

  I put on my invisible armor. “I will be.”

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “The cake is fine.”

  “Okay.”

  “But if you don’t mind . . .” I lick chocolate frosting from my lip, “I could use a place to crash.”

  “Lord, what happened?”

  But someone’s lifting a mug and she has to go fill it, so I can’t get into the details.

  She drops a key onto the counter and says, “Tell me later?”

  “Yeah.”

  She’s on her way to the beckoning coffee cup. “I’m off at two.”

  Rosie’s blowing up my phone, I assume in response to the pictures I sent. But I ignore her.

  I finish my cake. Drop a fin to the counter, even though I don’t think I even have a tab to pay, and get out of there, under the watchful glare of my once-stepfather.

  It’s no surprise when he steps out onto the sidewalk a moment after I do and yells after me, “Your mother hears about this, and I’ll know who spilled the beans!”

  Yeah, yeah.

  I want to tell him I don’t care what he does, or who he does it with, as long as he leaves my sisters and me the fuck alone. Instead, I ignore him. Not responding is better than any retort I can imagine.

  I don’t want him to see me walking up the steps of the Churchill, because then he’ll know where to find me and, worse, where to find Chatham. So I take a stroll through town, all the way to the edge of the boardwalk.

  Some grassy plants sprout from the sandy soil there, and they’re blooming these small, white-and-blue wildflowers. A dichotomy. The rest of the world is getting ready to hibernate, and these things choose now to unfold their petals.

  I hop the gate and lean against the railing, staring out over the lake, where horizon meets sky.

  It’s cooler here, and the lake looks positively enormous. There’s a whole other world on the other side of this great lake, and a whole other life to be lived. Why my mother finds it necessary to jam a life into this toxic box of a town, I can’t comprehend.

  Even if we’re sandwiched between this great view and, on the other end of town, the state preserves—and the abandoned caboose—what’s in between just doesn’t work for us. She should have learned that long before Damien.

  Rachel Bachton’s family isn’t here anymore. They had the sense to get the fuck out and move to the other side of Chicago after their kid disappeared. Why can’t Rosie see that I’m slowly disintegrating—that she is, too—the longer we stay here?

  Enough time has passed, so I head back. I tear a handful of the autumn wildflowers from their stalks along the way. I take the long way back to town, plucking grasses and these interesting umbrella-like flowering weeds along the way and winding the blades of grass around the stems. It won’t be the most gorgeous of bouquets at the dance, but at least I’ll have something to offer Chatham.

  Rosie texts again.

  Again, I don’t reply.

  When I get back to the Churchill, I drop the flowers in the mason jar of water, the one holding her paintbrushes. I bring everything I own into Chatham’s shoebox of a place, and afterward, I sort of organize things so I’m not in her way—my bag under the bed, my jersey laid across the rusty back of the folding chair, the khakis and button-down I’m wearing tonight hung alongside what I assume is the dress she told me about, still sheathed in drycleaner’s plastic. She bought it at the vintage shop in town. (This is another thing I’ve come to learn about her: she prefers old, unique things to the bright, shiny, and new.) From what I discern through the plastic, the dress is dark red, the same color she was wearing the very first time I saw her. I can’t wait to see her in it.

  But after all I’ve been through this morning, and my long walk in the fresh air; after the thrill of our winning streak, which continued last night, and everything that followed in the caboose, then later at home, I’m drained of energy. It’s a struggle to keep my eyes open. I sit on her lumpy mattress and stare at the mural on the opposite wall.

  It’s amazing, of course, like every piece of art I’ve seen her work on. At first glance, it’s an abstract mish-mash of items she’s referenced: a clover, a train . . . a confluence of two rivers.

  Remains of a little girl—maybe Rachel Bachton—were found at a place like that.

  As my glance travels over the wall, I see a window with a teardrop shape in the glass, and a penciled-in homemade swing, the kind with a thick board and coarse rope knotted through it. Suddenly, I’m chilled; there’s a swing like that down by the creek on Damien’s property.

  And I remember Savannah drew something like it in her journal.

  Coincidence?

  And then I see what I think might be Margaret and Caroline—shapes that could be blonde twins huddled in a corner.

  It makes me angry to see my sisters there, or maybe I’m just worried. Why are they in the middle of this mess?

  There’s now a train sketched into the bottom left quarter, and while it might have been there before we shared a small slice of heaven at the caboose, I have to wonder which train she thinks about when she looks at it: the one fr
om her early memories, the one she and Savannah ran to catch? Or the one she shared with me? Or is it the same train at all?

  I replay the events of last night again, and they work their magic on me, relaxing me, plucking at strings of hope in my soul. And even though we didn’t actually get around to having all-out sex in that train car, or even later at my house, there’s no inch of her I haven’t memorized, no patch of skin I haven’t touched or kissed. I could reconstruct her with clay. That’s how much I paid attention to every curve that makes her what she is.

  I’m lying down now, still studying the mural, wherein she’s woven hints of turmoil. I zero in on the twins in the scene—two blonde girls huddled close together. My sisters, living in fear. We’ve become part of the artist’s life, and Chatham sees right through to the core what my mother can’t see in front of her: in taking Damien back, she’s agreeing to keep my sisters gripping each other in a corner for life.

  Nerves tighten in my gut when I consider I’ve abandoned Margaret and Caroline, thrown them to the wolves. I can’t go back home, but I don’t know how to stay away.

  Who am I kidding? Where would I live, if not on Carpenter Street? I could probably hang at Aiden’s for a while. Or . . .

  Could we make it work, Chatham and me, in this closet? Sharing rent and toothpaste? Maybe we could squirrel away enough to rent the room through the adjoining bathroom, too, for the twins. We’d be an unconventional family, and while this place is a dump, we’d be together. And safe, once Damien tires of the girl he’s presently fucking. I hear them through the wall. They’re doing it now.

  I cover my ears with my sweatshirt, which I’ve balled beneath my head like a pillow, and imagine this town without him in it. For a brief second, my mother wanders into the scene, but I shove her back out the door, out of my mind. She can fend for herself. This place is just for the girls and me . . . and Chatham.

  Would Chatham even have me in that capacity? I mean, sure, we’ve had some incredible times, but the scenario I’m considering . . . it’s a big step even for people who’ve been together for years.

  It’s a long shot, and the odds are stacked against us, but it’s nice to think about as I fall asleep: us.

  I feel her, more than see her, when she comes in. The aroma of the Tiny Elvis—greasy fries and gravy—wafts in with her. I open my eyes and glimpse her, peeling off her clothes, yet as much as I want to watch her strip down, my eyes are so heavy that I can’t keep them open.

  She lifts the comforter and slides into bed next to me. Her soft, cool back against my chest triggers a need deep in my body, and because I’m not quite awake, and not all the way asleep, I just tighten my arms around her nearly-naked body.

  “You awake?” she whispers.

  “Hmm.”

  She traces the scars on my inner left arm and drops kisses there, and the next three words out of her mouth stun me and steal my breath.

  My eyes snap open.

  And then I see him, standing in the bathroom Chatham shares with the woman in #2F. Chatham must not have locked the door because it’s open now, and he’s looking right at me.

  Damien Wick invades even this moment with his stare, with his sick and twisted grin, and even though he’s about to close the door, I spring out of bed, over my girl, and launch at him.

  I barrel into him, send him flying across the bathroom, and crash him against the black-and-white checkerboard of a tiled wall.

  He shoves back, and comes at me swinging.

  Lands a punch square on my left cheekbone.

  I stumble back, and he slams me again, this time with a hook to my ribs, and another one in my face.

  For a second, all I see is a wash of silvery white, so I don’t even realize I’ve connected with his jaw until I feel the crunch of my knuckles, until I hear the thud of his bulk landing on the cracked, mosaic tile floor.

  I readjust, and the blur of my vision rights itself. I blink hard and focus. There’s a box from a hair color kit in the trash.

  “God dammit,” he mutters.

  I turn my eyes to him. He’s using the wall to get to his feet.

  There was a day I thought I’d be halfway to Wisconsin after landing just one punch on him, but today, I just stand over him and shake the feeling back into my hand, the hand I need on Friday nights to throw. I pop a knuckle back into position. I’ll be fine. I suspect he will be, too, once his lip stops bleeding.

  “Looks like you grew a set after all.” He laughs a little and slowly steps toward me.

  We’re toe-to-toe now. I’m looking up at him; he’s looking down at me.

  “You gonna leave so I can take a piss now?” he asks. “Or you gonna hang around to see what a real dick looks like?”

  “Looking at one right now.” I back my way out of the room, close the door, and this time, lock it behind me.

  The thrill of victory, of confidence, infuses my system, and my heart is pounding. My knuckle must have hit one of his teeth because it’s bleeding. I stretch and contract my hand a couple of times, and then meet Chatham’s gaze.

  She’s sitting on the bed, with the comforter hiding all the really delicious parts of her, wearing an expression of surprise: brows raised, lips slightly parted.

  I go to her, watch the comforter fall away and reveal her bra and panties. “Boundaries.” It’s all I can think to say by way of explanation for what just happened. I lean over her and kiss her lips. What she said before deserves a reply: “And I love you, too.”

  D y e

  We’re back from the parade, and I’m fresh out of the shower. Chatham reaches for something on the floor. It’s a permanent marker, which she uncaps. “Come here.”

  I lean to her, shirt still not buttoned. My hair is still damp from the shower.

  She presses her lips to mine and shoves my sleeve up my left arm. The marker meets the scar on my inner arm. “It’s like when you’re little, at school. Or when you go to summer camp. You put your name on all your belongings.”

  I watch as she writes her name onto my flesh with the fine-tipped marker. But she isn’t signing her name as much as she is drawing it, as if her name is the stuff of galleries and museums. The scroll in her C, the upstroke on the M . . . “So I belong to you now? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She giggles and glances up at me. “I never went to summer camp.”

  When I laugh, and to be honest, even when I don’t, my cheek hurts a little, high on the bone, where Damien socked me. I’m bruised, and it all-out looks like I’ve been in a battle, but there’s no way we’re staying in tonight.

  Chatham’s dress is this sleek little number, and it looks like it was custom-made for her, even though it’s probably fifteen years older than she is. It’s longer than I expected it to be—the hem hits just below her knees—but there’s a slit on the left side that climbs high on her thigh. The material is like velvet, and it looks purplish from some angles and dark red from others. She looks too damn good to keep behind this door.

  I finger a curl. Fuck, I’m a lucky guy.

  We head into the hallway. I lock the door and pocket the key because she doesn’t have a purse to put it in, and this isn’t exactly a backpack sort of event. That said, I’ve got the backpack hanging on my shoulder so I can hide it in the car during the dance. No way in hell I’m leaving it at the Churchill with Damien one wall away.

  Then, we’re out the doors and heading to my SUV. Me, looking like I’ve gotten the sense knocked out of me, and Chatham, looking all classy.

  A strange thought comes to me: if Rachel Bachton hadn’t been kidnapped all those years ago, would she ever have found herself slumming with a Sugar Creek guy? Going to a dance like this?

  I imagine, if she were here, she’d be just like the other Northgate girls: untouchable and sort of bitchy. Not too good for us, but too high on themselves to know we’re all the same underneath it all, and that they should be nicer. It’s not their fault. They’ve been told they were special since
before they could talk.

  Some of the more affluent schools in the area rent banquet halls for their dances, but Sugar Creek’s events are held mostly in our gym, or in our commons. This one is in the latter, and we have to walk past the art hall to get there.

  Chatham tugs on my hand and leads me to a glass showcase cabinet. In it are vases and clay pots, but it’s what’s spanning the back wall of it that she wants me to see: sixteen separate squares of clay relief, arranged together in four rows of four tiles in a four-by-four square.

  “You finished it!” I pull her in closer, and although I have no idea what I’m looking at, what it means, or what it represents—I see streaks of red in the browns and whites, an amalgamation of different clays and varying glazes—I know it’s awesome because she created it.

  “Look closer.”

  Some portions of the squares are raised up, and others dip down. On some squares, there are shiny rivulets of blues and greens, almost like melted glass. Others are glazed off-white. It looks like the bird’s-eye view of some mysterious city. In the bottom right corner of each of the squares, is one letter of her name. I gauge each and every one of them: CHATHAM CLAIBORNE.

  And then I see it: the ribbon dangling from the upper left corner of the upper left tile. Best in show.

  I didn’t even know there was a show. I think she might’ve said something about it, but I’ve been so preoccupied with my own bullshit . . . I pick her up and twirl her around—the girl who says she loves me—because she’s the best in the whole school. She didn’t need to get a ribbon to tell me that.

  This is what it feels like to be a normal guy . . . sans the bruise on my left cheekbone and how it got there, that is.

  “Let me get a picture of you with your work.”

  “No pictures.”

  “Are you kidding? You look amazing tonight.”

  “You look amazing.”

  “We look amazing.”

  “You come in the picture, too.”

  So I do. I stand next to her and extend my arm for a selfie.

  “Smile,” she whispers.

  She likes my dimples.