A Breath Too Late

by Rocky Callen

  I pulled you down among the flickering candles, I pulled you down on top of me, so that I felt your entire weight balanced above me. You were poised between my legs and propped up over me. We had jeans and T-shirts and buttons and zippers separating us, but this felt more intimate than anything I had seen in the movies.

  You said my name again, looking into my eyes. I rocked my hips against you, wanting more, needing more, and you shivered, your breath unsteady. I kissed you, kissed you until you were gasping and moving on top of me until we were both breathless. My hand moved up under your shirt and I felt the strain of your back and shoulder blades and the skin slick with sweat. I licked you just to see what your skin tasted like. You made a low, rumbling, hungry sound. You kissed my jaw, then my temple, then my neck.

  “Ellie, you make me feel like I am floating even when my feet are on the ground.” Your heart was floating on balloons too.

  I looked into your eyes, your sweet, big, beautiful eyes. “You make me feel awake, alive, you chase the sad thoughts away. You draw me and I feel like I am whole. Like … I am beautiful.”

  “Ellie, you are whole. These”—you brushed your fingers over my bruises, over my scars—“don’t make you less. I just want to keep you safe.”

  You held me, and in your arms, I didn’t feel chipped away or like glass about to shatter. You were a man who didn’t have to ruin things to hold them. You held me and I felt stronger.

  “I don’t want to have to be kept safe,” I said. “I just want to not be afraid.” I just wanted to be free. With you.

  Your eyes were wet. “Don’t be afraid of me.”

  “I’m not. Not anymore.”

  I took off your shirt and then you took off mine and then we were nothing but two bodies holding each other in the dark.

  Two bodies feeling and knowing each other for the first time.

  Two bodies who weren’t afraid.

  I felt you and all I could think about was how you once named all the constellations on my face. I felt like I was a bright and wondrous and wild thing, just like the stars and the paint on your canvas.

  51

  Momma,

  Everything felt more vivid, more real, more alive and awake and buzzing. August was holding my hand and pulling me closer, stealing kisses. We knew all of each other. He had been soft and gentle and for a sliver of time, I felt like we were the subjects in one of his paintings. In a world painted new.

  It was still dark, but in a few hours dawn would break. I kissed him goodbye despite his protests to stay by his side. I wanted our time together to be unblemished by reality, or the reality I had always known. He watched me go and then turned toward his house, but every few strides, he looked back at me, a smile on his face.

  I didn’t hear the shouting until I got to the lattice ladder outside of the house. I peered in the window. The lights were on in the kitchen and living room. Father had your arms braced against the doorway in a vise-like grip. You looked like you were praying for the world to stutter to a stop so that you could walk off it. “Where is she?”

  She. He knew I’d left. How could he have known? They had been sleeping when I snuck out with August. I was huddled in the shadows watching as you shook your head. “She’s spending the night at a friend’s house, she’s…”

  He SLAPPED you hard across your face so that it whipped to one side. You held your cheek.

  “Her door was locked, Regina,” he said in that quiet and terrible way. “From the inside.” He pulled a chair out and sat in front of you so that he was looking up into your eyes. “And her window is open.” He pinched your chin between his thumb and forefinger. He made you look at him. “Do you think”—he brought his face closer to yours—“that I am a fucking fool?”

  “No,” you whispered, breathless. “No, of course not. I thought…”

  “You thought wrong.” He grabbed your hair and dragged your face even closer to his lips and they brushed your cheek. I didn’t hear what he said. The words were too quiet.

  I stared in through the window. If someone were to watch you and Father in slices, if they zoomed in, if they cut out all the noise or edited out the things they didn’t want to see, they could almost look in the window and see passion and not pain, they could almost think that my father was just pulling his wife in closer, because he wanted to feel her closer, not because he wanted to use her up.

  I blinked away tears. That’s when I noticed that you were dripping wet. Your hair and your shirt were soaked. Like you’d stepped into the shower stream with all of your clothes on. You were shaking. And behind you, I saw the gas can.

  The lighter was in Father’s hand.

  I ran to the door and flung it open. “Momma!” The house smelled like gasoline.

  Father’s gaze shifted to me slowly and he tilted his head. “I told you, Ellie. I told you what would happen if you didn’t stay.”

  You started to pull away, but I could see his grip on you. I could see how you were shaking. I thought you would shake to pieces. “Ellie,” you said, and I saw you mouth the word as father’s eyes stayed locked on mine. Run.

  Father clicked open the lighter. And let the flame blaze to life.

  I wasn’t going to run away. I charged forward and grabbed the lighter out of his hand before the flame hit the gasoline. It burned my palm. He tried to grip my arm, but I was already running back toward the door and I flung the lighter as far as I could into the dark. His lighter was the only flame in the house. There were no matches.

  I thought he would run outside to look for the lighter, and I readied myself to lock him out when he did, but instead he slammed the door shut and dragged me by my hair along with you. We were scared, but emboldened by each other, we both struck out trying to scratch and claw at him. But he just threw us to the ground and then started kicking. We clung tight to each other, both of us wrapping our arms around the other’s head to shield the blows.

  I could feel the magic that lived in the night only hours before crack and break to pieces along with bones.

  I don’t remember passing out, but before I did, I thought about the bruises under your makeup. I thought about our house that kept so many secrets. I thought about how you once tried to run away and he found you. I thought about how I’d never be able to leave. I thought about how nowhere would want me anyway. I thought about the dreams I had and they all slipped from my grasp as I faced the reality:

  I would never get away.

  Neither would you.

  52

  Depression,

  Momma and I clung tight to each other that night and when I woke up, we were both bloody and on the floor, tangled up in our pain and secrets.

  And you returned, fierce and incessant, and I had nothing left to fight back.

  You won.

  the last day

  53

  Life,

  It was a Monday. I was supposed to meet August at school. I was supposed to talk to Ms. Hooper about my final creative piece.

  But I didn’t do any of that. Instead I waited until Momma and Father left for work.

  I had already decided my fate, and unlike all of the times before, the thought was a solid thing that wouldn’t shove off my chest. It clouded every inch of my mind and I felt like I was a robot moving through a script that was coded in me. I saw myself go through the motions, saw each step as it played out in my head, and it all made me feel this wave of relief.

  I knew what I would do. I’d thought about it all weekend. I’d prepared. I’d slept in my shoes because I knew I would miss them and I knew I couldn’t take them with me. My shoes were years of Sharpied hopes that now felt like lies.

  Sunday night, I fell asleep staring at the ceiling beam in my room. Other thoughts fought their way in—thoughts of flour fights, and kisses near electric candles, and hope taped to the inside of a locker, but there was none of that left. There was just me and the thought of my impending escape.

  Father never found his lighter in the backyard, but I did.


  * * *

  On Monday, the sky was blue and the sun was glaring. I waited till I heard the roar of the Cadillac drive away. I went to my closet and pulled out the papers on Columbia and the story I’d read for August.

  I wrote stories so that I could live in them. But they weren’t magic after all.

  I took the battery out of the fire alarm. I put all the papers in a metal bowl that Momma had picked up from an old antique shop years ago. Back when we still could laugh loudly in our kitchen and make messes, back when we had no Cadillac in our driveway.

  I took everything that meant anything and put it in the metal bowl. I lit it on fire with Father’s lighter. He was always destined to burn our lives to the ground anyway.

  I watched as the papers crinkled into ash, blackening at the edges. I swallowed hard, smelling it as it burned. I watched till every page turned to dust.

  Death would be my escape. Maybe it would be kind. I was waiting for the peace. The quiet. The relief.

  None of it ever came.

  I thought that if I remembered the night when the world was bright and new and cloaked in candlelight and unbroken things, that it would be enough to say goodbye.

  It wasn’t.

  now

  54

  August,

  The torrent of memories fades away.

  You slept in our candlelit grove. You shook from tears and tossed and turned and roared and cried some more. You are awake now, tossing and turning, with your arms wrapped around your middle. The tears you cry now, I will never forget. I sit next to you and pretend that I can feel your shoulder underneath my head.

  We stay like that until dawn. Your fits of tears coming and going, but my name is a mantra that you never stop saying.

  It isn’t until the sky is full of light, orange, yellow, and shining on your face, that I see something new in your eyes. You start running. We pass by houses and broken sidewalks. Your feet move so fast. There is urgency and desperation in every step. I can’t pretend to use the pavement to propel me forward. I have to glide in my unearthly way to keep up. It takes me a while to figure out where you are going, but then it clicks as I see the factory ahead.

  I trail you, desperate to pull you back. Don’t go there. Not there. But that is exactly where you are going. Toward the one person that I don’t want you to see.

  You charge on. I begin to see all of your flaws. All the ways you are still a boy and not yet a man. All the ways you still need someone to protect you. I want to shove a world between the two of you, because every step you take closer to him is a step closer, I am afraid, to you being beaten and bruised.

  The men beside him notice you first. They narrow their eyes and then take a curious step back. Then he turns around, and I freeze. He’s wearing that cool look, the one that comes before a punch or a threat.

  “And why are you here?” he says.

  “This…” You don’t stop walking. You just charge forward. I barely see when you cock your arm back. “… is for Ellie.”

  The punch slams my father’s face to the side with a loud crack. My father stumbles back, shocked. He stands upright. “Watch your step, boy—”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll beat you till your momma doesn’t even recognize you.”

  The men beside him laugh. My father glances behind him to chuckle along, but I can hear the edge in it. You plow into him, grabbing his flannel shirt and pushing him back against the metal siding of a truck. My father goes for a punch, but you are so fast that he misses you. You don’t miss his jaw. Not the first, second, or third time. I stare in awe. You look too lean, too young, too sweet to leave a man bleeding, but you do.

  My father slides to his knees and spits out blood. “You are gonna regret that.”

  “I hope you have bruises.”

  “What?” he asks, sputtering.

  “I hope you are covered in black and blue bruises. I hope that every goddamn person sees them. You won’t be able to hide them, cover them up.” You lean down and punch again.

  Father is wheezing.

  I’m unsure if I like how there is blood on your knuckles or that the blood is his. Unsure if I like how you are much stronger than I ever imagined or that he is so much weaker.

  But I do know this: I like watching you as you walk away, blood on your hands, sweat on your brow, and my father lying in the dirt.

  * * *

  You walk to my house and stand in front of it. Momma isn’t there.

  You stare up at the house. Your eyes are red. You chew on your lip and then pull something out of your pocket and write on it. Before I can see what it is, you drop it in the mailbox.

  The mailman is right behind you and you almost plow into him when you turn around. He says hello, but you just nod and make your way down the steps.

  I watch you leave, but now that I know everything … I have to go back and face what’s left.

  55

  Momma,

  I wait for you in the living room. I want to see you. I am amazed how much I want you to hold me. How much I miss the warmth of you.

  You walk in the door and drop your purse on the couch. Your face is painted, but your brown eyes are dull and empty. There is a pile of mail under your arm. I breathe in deeply, waiting for you to sit down, but you never do. You drop the mail on the counter and start looking in the refrigerator for dinner ingredients. I want to see what August left in our mailbox.

  You click the answering machine and a single message plays: “Hello, Mrs. Walker.” You flinch as you let the message play and walk over to pull out the dishes from the cabinet. “We are waiting to hear from you on how you would like to present your daughter’s body during the memorial service. It appears you haven’t chosen a date or a casket yet and I wanted to let you know that it is important to make this choice today as the … well, her body, um … please call me so we can make proper arrangements to honor her.”

  You let a dish clang in the sink. I jerk my head toward you, thinking you must’ve dropped the pot in, but then another clang comes as you throw another pot into the sink. You are shaking.

  The message beeps off and you exhale as you put some water in one of the pots. You bring it to our stove and set it down on one of the two electric burners that still work and stare into the water.

  What are you thinking? Your eyes slowly travel to the pile of mail. You always stood over the trash can when you opened the mail because such a huge amount of it was either advertisements or collection letters. You assume the position and one by one you throw them in the trash until your hand freezes. I look over your shoulder.

  You are holding a photograph in your hands.

  Your fingers tremble as you smooth it out. It is crumpled, but it is me. The one that was tacked up on August’s wall. Just like August’s, your finger brushes the photo as if you can brush my hair behind my ear. You kiss the photograph. “Oh, Ellie. I haven’t seen that smile in so long. I wish—” You break off in a hiccupping breath.

  You flip it over and I see August’s handwriting.

  The girl I love.

  The girl who left.

  The girl we will remember.

  She once told me that you have freckles just like her.…

  I hope the world gets to see them.

  You inhale slowly and press the photograph to your heart. You wipe the tears from your eyes. Sniff and steady your breathing. You are looking around the room and then back to the photograph. You nod once, kiss the photo, and reach for the phone. Slowly, you dial each number with your index finger. Swallowing hard, you lean against the doorjamb. I hear when the receiver on the other end picks up.

  “Yes, hello,” you say into the phone. “I—I have figured out the arrangements for my daughter.”

  I kiss your forehead the way you used to do to me when I was little. You keep your words steady, and when I look into your eyes, I think I see it. The light that should have been there is back. It might not look like hope, but it does look like str
ength.

  You run upstairs and start scrubbing your face clean. You scrub until your skin is splotchy and red, but you don’t stop until there is nothing left to disguise you. No doll face. You tear through your room, pick up clothes, and shove them into your bag along with money. Money you hid away over the years, in shoes, in small boxes, in every nook and cranny. Our house was a box of secrets—if only you’d had someone to tell them to.

  I watch as you brace yourself in front of my door, looking in.

  The horror of it hits me. The moment you unlocked the door and opened it, the seconds that passed when you saw your daughter dead, stealing all your breath and hopes along with her. The daughter that you had lunged to save from belt beatings and whose door you would quietly lock from the inside; who you drove to the mountains and who you dreamed of flying away with like the two small birds you hid under her mattress.

  I fall to my knees beside you in the hallway. What have I done?

  You step over the threshold. One foot, then the other. Your hands lightly brush over every piece of furniture in the room before you stand in the spot where you found me. You touch everything tenderly and hold it to your chest. Plucking through my things with such care, nothing like the way you hurled your belongings into your bag.

  Your glassy eyes are so vibrant and suddenly I understand.

  Ms. Hooper had her books as her talisman.

  Mr. Jameson had his science.

  August had his art.

  I had Columbia.

  You had me.