by Linko, Gina
I was gone.
Mom
I’m sitting on a hot plastic lawn chair at the public pool in Ann Arbor, in my old neighborhood. The sun beats down on the concrete pool deck, on my arms, my legs, in my eyes. I watch several small kids splashing and laughing in the water with their moms holding them. They wear bright orange floaties and crazy-happy smiles. I smell sunblock and fresh popcorn from the concession stand.
I instantly spot my own mom. She is young and pale, her dark hair pulled back from her face, a small patch of freckles dotting the bridge of her nose. I had forgotten about her freckles. Her face is tilted back in laughter, and there I am, in her arms, splashing, kicking. I’m being held by my mom. I’m small, curly-headed, in my pale green bathing suit with the blue, glittery fish print.
My four-year-old self keeps pushing away from my mom, keeps saying, “My own self!”
Mom lifts me and gently places me on the side of the pool, and I don’t hesitate. I back up, take a running start, and fling myself into the water, a look of pure joy on my face. Mom catches me as I go under.
I remember this day. I remember parts of it. Refusing to wear the orange floaties. Mom’s laugh, the way the water beaded on her long lashes. I remember being so happy.
“That’s my girl!”
Her voice is loud, clear, rising above the clatter and splash of the swimming children. It takes a beat for me to realize that Mom is looking right at me, the grown-up me, speaking to me.
I point at my chest. She nods. I wonder briefly how I can be here—two me’s at one time. But I don’t care. It’s Mom.
“Yes, you, Emery,” she says, and nods. “I love you.”
I feel then this spot of aching, this empty place inside, so familiar, so part of my everyday that I notice it now only because it changes. I feel it shrink, heal itself somewhat, fill itself up, and I smile at her. She is beautiful, just as I remember her, and she smiles back at me.
The colors fade in around my vision.
I wave goodbye.
Seventeen
I woke up smiling from my first-ever loop with Mom. My head was lying on the kitchen table, my body slack in the chair. Dala was curled up at my head, now trying to lick my cheek. It was dark in the cabin, cold. I got up to stoke the fire and could barely stand. My vision tunneled, blackness puddling around the edges. I sat back down and put my head between my knees. I stood up again after a few minutes. I was okay. Still dizzy, worn, definitely worse than my usual after-loop self. But I was happy. I felt that tingle behind my eyes, that rush in my head, and pushed back the tears. Mom. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her.
How much seeing her would mean to me. How much a few words of encouragement might hearten me.
When the fire had warmed, I crept into my bed, fuzzy-headed and hollowed out from my loop. Dala nestled herself into the crook of my neck and collarbone. I sighed a deep sigh and scratched Dala’s ears, my mom’s face still burning brightly in my mind—and her words burning in my heart—as I drifted off to a happy sleep.
Dala bit at my hair, pulling it, tugging it. I woke up and saw that the sun was high in the sky. We had slept late. I sat up and instantly noticed a note on the floor, as if it had been slipped under my cabin door. I padded over to it. Dinner tonight? was all it said. The neat, elegant printing made my heart leap inside my chest.
I knew it would be hard—no, impossible—to keep things all business between us. And this scared me, but it also thrilled me. And, really, after my loop with Mom, I felt different. Like I could do anything. Like maybe I just had to dive right in.
I tried to prepare myself for any outcome. I mean, what did I think I was going to do, tell Ash my secrets over dinner and then he would explain to me exactly what was going on in my loops, figure it all out, wrap it up in a bow? Then maybe confess his odd and inexplicable attraction to me as well? It was ridiculous, and I knew that this was true on some level. But so much of my life up until this point had been ridiculous.
I trekked to Hansen’s for some groceries and then spent most of the morning trying to replicate the stained glass from my loop with my brush and acrylics. When I had finished, it was okay, good enough to show someone—like the historical society in Charlevoix—in order to ask if they’d seen it. But it wasn’t perfect, so I started over with watercolors. I concentrated on my technique, forcing myself not to think only about Ash.
As the sun set, I was shaking my head against my every thought about him, cutting up tomatoes, when I heard the knock on the door. Even his knock was deliberate, forthright.
I steeled myself as I opened the door, trying to calm the ridiculous beating of my heart, telling myself to settle down and quit acting like a fool.
You just have to figure out how he fits into this puzzle, what information he has, I told myself.
“Emery,” Ash said with a smile that was just a tad crooked to the left, and I could feel my resolve quickly slipping away. Dala greeted him enthusiastically, circling his legs, purring and purring.
He waited there at the door until I asked him to come in. “I can take your coat,” I told him.
I savored the scent of him as I took his coat and hung it on the hook on the back of the door. We stood there together, just inside the threshold for a moment, smiling at each other. He took his hat off then, and reached past me to add it to the hook on the door. As he did this, he leaned so close to me—soap, hay, him.
I wanted to reach my hand over to him and feel the rough scrape of his stubble under my fingertips. The need to touch his face was overwhelming, but I bit my lip and got control of myself.
“Let’s eat,” I said cheerily, and we made our way over to the table. I put out the tossed salad and served us both a bowl of soup; then I quickly toasted the bread for the grilled cheese, tomato, and bacon sandwiches I had been preparing. “The pickings are a bit slim when you only have a hot plate,” I told him as I finished up the sandwiches and joined him at the table.
“Thank you. It’s good,” he said, tasting his soup. He averted his eyes.
“I just wanted to apologize for ambushing you at the Wingings, and for attacking you at the stables, being ungrateful—”
“No problem.” He didn’t look up. I watched him break off a tiny piece of bacon and give it to a very grateful Dala.
“I acted ridiculous,” I told him. “I just have been kind of under a lot of pressure, and I don’t usually cry on a stranger’s shoulder, or pass out upon meeting them, or need constant attention, or generally act like a lunatic.…” I smiled wryly, trying to lighten the mood.
He didn’t look up. He didn’t laugh. He took a big bite of his sandwich and licked his lips, nodding.
I stirred my soup and took a sip of lemonade. Okay …
“You don’t need to apologize.” And then he looked up. “Are you sick?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“But you were in the hospital.”
“Yes. It’s complicated.”
“And it has to do with what you thought I knew about you.”
“Yes.” A part of me just wanted to spill it all to him. I was nearly positive he would believe me. But that wasn’t the part that worried me. I didn’t want to give him any reason to leave, to be scared of me. And given my current status in life, I knew I was acting ridiculous thinking about us together beyond this dinner. But I was. In fact, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was a stupid thought. But there it was, stronger and more real than almost anything I’d ever felt.
We ate in silence for a bit. I picked. He ate and ate more. “You’re a good cook,” he told me, smiling that smile again, and my insides turned to jelly once more.
“So had you been living here in our stolen cabin long, before I came and usurped?” I asked.
“No, not long. A couple of weeks.”
“And have you been in Esperanza long?”
“A few months.”
“Jeannette said you have your own place.”
“I did, just a one
-room over the Laundromat.”
“But not anymore?”
“I needed the money for other things.” He didn’t elaborate.
“And you didn’t get stitches like I told you to.”
“I just put a butterfly bandage on it. It’s fine.”
He sat back and pushed his plate away. He produced something from his jeans pocket then, and I immediately recognized it as the crumpled portrait of me. “What didn’t you like in my picture?” He didn’t talk around it. He didn’t apologize for wanting to know. He just asked.
So I told him.
“The way you drew my hair, the curls.”
“It gives something away? It betrays you somehow?”
I nodded.
He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“I know.”
“So tell me, Emery. I want to know.”
I saw something flash across his face again, remorse maybe. I didn’t know him well enough yet. But I knew he wasn’t without his demons.
“You tell me something first,” I answered.
“Okay.” His jaw set hard. He tapped his foot under the table, a nervous rhythm. “I’ll tell you something.” He motioned to my watercolor on the mantel of the stained glass. “That is really something.”
“Does it look familiar to you?” I asked.
“No. Should it?”
I shook my head. “It’s stained glass from a church.”
Ash shook his head. Okay, so maybe he didn’t have all my answers.
“You painted that?” he asked.
I nodded, not willing to let him off the hook here. He was going to answer some questions. “Why do you still sleep out in the clearing? I’m sure the Wingings would let you—”
“To make sure you’re okay,” he answered plainly.
My stomach leaped into my throat, and I felt the blush rush up to my ears and into my cheeks. It took me several seconds to regain my composure.
“A harder question,” I said. “How did your mom pass away?” I thought of the picture he had drawn, the horror in the woman’s face.
I watched his face and waited for him to respond, and I realized that I had already developed a habit of being completely still when he spoke so that I wouldn’t miss a thing, wouldn’t miss the low timbre of his voice, wouldn’t miss the hint of gravelly-ness in it. It was too rich, too sparse to ignore. I wanted to memorize it.
“She was killed in a car accident. Drunk driver.”
“Oh, Ash.” I thought of the pain in that drawing. My heart sank for him. “I’m so sorry.”
He nodded and looked away.
“Does it have anything to do with why you’re running?” I asked.
“Are you so sure I’m running?”
“Hiding?” I waited and he didn’t answer. “I have some experience.” I gave him a little grin then. “I’ve watched a few movies, read a few spy novels.”
He smiled then and leaned forward. “And Next Hill is a place near where I grew up.” He looked me in the eye. “How you know that, I don’t know.…”
I offered no answer. Not yet. Some things you really couldn’t get at straight on. I sensed this was one of them.
Ash rubbed the stubble on his chin, and with his other hand, he grabbed my hand across the table. “I’ll probably tell you all my story, Emery, someday. Whether I should or not.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but with the heat of his roughened palm against my knuckles, I could think of nothing else. His touch made me feel like when I’m about to pass from the loop back to my normal self. It’s a dreamy, swimmy sensation, when I feel all the colors around me. It was close to that—but better.
“Your turn,” he said, and took his hand back. “Tell me why you’re here.”
I considered lying. I opened my mouth, about to give him the college story again, but I thought of Dad then, the older version of Dad, telling me I was going to be scared. It made me change my mind somehow. I wanted to be brave, take a chance.
“I’m running away from my dad, the doctor. From a scientific course of experiments.”
“So the college thing?”
“Not true.”
“So you are some kind of scientist?”
“No, I’m a lab rat.”
He considered this. He didn’t flinch or squint his eyes in judgment. And I almost started to go on, to finish it, to tell him everything. Part of me wanted to, but I didn’t. I got up to clear the dishes, unsure if I had said too much. He stood to help me, or was it to leave? I closed my eyes at the sink and steadied my breath.
He can’t leave—not yet. This can’t be done. I wanted him to stay. I felt my eyelids flutter a bit. Dala appeared at my feet, meowing, clawing at my legs. Ammonia stung the back of my throat.
No, not now. Not now! I fought with my consciousness. I felt my eyelids flutter once again and steeled myself, grabbing the edge of the sink, white-knuckled. No! I willed myself to stay here—to be here, with Ash.
“Scrabble?” he asked from behind me.
I pushed the flutter back. I took a big breath, then gritted my teeth. Not now! I pushed back with every muscle in my body.
Ash had gotten up to grab the dusty, unused Scrabble game off the cabin’s bookshelf. I laughed a quiet laugh to myself. The thrum and swell behind my eyes diminished then, deflated like a balloon. I felt my breathing pattern slow back to normal. I had controlled it.
I had stopped myself from looping. I felt the exhaustion in every single muscle wash over me. But I had stopped it.
Holy shit! This was red-letter. I had stopped myself from looping. I stood at the sink and took a deep breath, letting my grip on the counter loosen.
So many times I had tried to do exactly this, so many failures, so many hash marks in my little pile of notebooks. I picked up Dala, nuzzled her nose.
But tonight, I had fought it and won. I had fought back the loop. I was not naive enough to think that this was the end of it, that I’d always be able to beat the loop. But it was a first. And if I could do it once—
I realized then that I had been silent for too long. Ash was saying my name.
“Are you okay? Emery?”
I turned to face him. “Scrabble?” I said. “You must be a glutton for punishment.”
He studied my face for a moment, and his hand flinched at his side as if he might move forward, reach out. He didn’t.
He settled himself on the floor in front of the hearth, spreading out the Scrabble board before him. He folded his large frame and sat cross-legged. “You know, I’ve never lost.”
He gave me that smile again, and I did believe him.
“H-a-r-b-o-r,” I spelled triumphantly, laying the letters down on a triple-word score, shooing Dala away from the board.
I jumped up then and celebrated with a quick pirouette.
Ash laughed. I liked how his face looked when he laughed, and it was a deep laugh, one that came from way down in his chest.
He gave me a smirk then, and scanned over his letters. He placed them slowly, triumphantly, using his own triple-word score.
“Awry?” I said. “You are a sneaky bastard.”
He let out another laugh.
“So tell me about your family,” I said, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t see that dark cloud come back to his face.
I watched his face carefully, the shadow briefly crossing it. But he ignored my question and the shadow went with it.
“Do you believe in God?” he said instead.
“Umm,” I started, thinking this was an interesting beginning to a conversation, but I was learning that Ash was nothing short of direct. “I don’t think so,” I answered. I watched him carefully. “I have never been taught about God. Science, yes. Darwin, yes. Nietzsche, yes. God, not so much, except for …” I let my voice trail off.
“I believe in God,” he said, filling in the silence. “You don’t except for …?”
“It’s so easy to find the reasons why not. It’s easy to find the reason
s why he can’t be. Or she!” I looked up at him then, not knowing if I should continue. “But sometimes, in the moment, sometimes it’s hard to discredit an almighty being, when there is so much organized beauty in the world … experiences, certain people, certain feelings of the heart … it’s hard to credit such beauty to formulas, to science, to anything but God,” I finished quietly, self-consciously.
“I know exactly what you mean,” he said. My cheeks and ears flushed. He watched me in the firelight, and I could feel his eyes on my face.
I fidgeted with my Scrabble tiles, embarrassed.
He cleared his throat. “I was raised in the church, in the traditions that go with it, the rules, the stipulations, the guilt.…” He let his voice trail off.
“Where did you grow up?”
“Southern Illinois, near Bloomington. And you?”
So Next Hill was in Illinois. I filed this away. “Ann Arbor, mostly. My mom died when I was young. And Dad, he’s a neurologist.… He is …” I considered this. “I don’t know how to finish that.… He’s my father. We used to be tight, but so much …”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Ash ventured.
I shook my head, continued. “After Mom died, it was just us against everything. But this thing that’s going on with me. This thing …” I repeated it as if it left a bad taste in my mouth. “It’s kind of come between us. Dad had always believed it was something exceptional. And for a while, I thought he was coming around to believing my theory, but …”
I so badly wanted to spill it all, tell him everything that had transpired, that had brought me to this place, this cabin, this moment.
But I was scared.
It startled me as I sat here in the firelight with this boy, because I wasn’t sure for which reason I was hedging my bets—because I was scared I wouldn’t get his help to figure out what was needed for my boy in the loop, or because I was afraid I would scare him and his crooked smile, his perfect stubble, away from this cabin.
“Some things can’t be explained,” Ash said.
I snapped out of my reverie then and looked at Ash. Our eyes locked. “Exactly.” I waited a beat. Then, “Like how I know about Next Hill.”