That's Not a Feeling

by Dan Josefson

  What the old lady reminded me of, I realized as I hurried to catch up, was my mom, just a few months before I’d been sent to Roaring Orchards. Her “days,” when she wouldn’t—couldn’t—move from the white couch in the living room, watching television and smoking cigarettes. My dad just went to work and came back late, and after a while didn’t even try to talk to her; he just went to their bedroom and slept. My mom stayed on the couch, except for when, late at night, she would roam around the house doing chores. That whole time was odd to think about. I imagine something similar was going on when she got burned after sending me to the school. I couldn’t hold all the pieces of it in my head at once.

  There was one night I remembered clearly. I’d gotten into the habit of waking up in the middle of the night to check on my mom, and when I got up I couldn’t find her anywhere. I went all through the house twice, faster and faster, beginning to panic but too scared to wake my father or call the police, when I heard a faint scratching by the living room window. I looked out and saw my mother down in the yard, in her bathrobe, raking the leaves, slowly, beneath the streetlight. I came closer to the window. She wasn’t accomplishing much: just dragging the rake through the leaves. Then she stopped and looked up at me as if she had known I was there the whole time. I stood perfectly still, watching her look at me, and she was still, too, seeing me watch her. I could feel my pulse in my fingertips. I felt something stretch between us, and I felt it snap. I blinked, then bored of standing there, turned and went to bed.

  Tidbit and I left the road about a quarter mile from January Lake and headed straight through the woods toward the water. Thin branches and vines stretched across the ground, and in the absence of streetlamps we walked through shadows. Trees loomed up in front of us from out of nowhere. We bumped and tripped through the dim shapes until the sloshing, glittery expanse of water spread out before us. It lapped against the mud shore and emitted a deep hiss that echoed in the leaves and stones all around.

  “Shit,” said Tidbit, “where’s the boats?”

  “I don’t know.” I caught my breath. “Are there boats?”

  “Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of them someplace. Didn’t you think about this at all? Fuck. We’ll find them.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me after her along the shore, which we followed around the lake. It soon thinned to a narrow strip of dirt and rocks, so that we were walking along with the lake to our right and the dark woods to our left. I felt my face flush, and my footsteps were heavy. We each slipped repeatedly, on stones or mud, and kept from falling by stomping into the water. She was determined to keep moving away from the school, but it felt like it was me she was trying to get away from. I struggled to keep up.

  I slipped on a wet rock and landed in a puddle of loose silt, my leg sinking into the mud up to my knee. Tidbit had to help pull me out, yanking on both my arms, after taking the blue bottle of liquid fabric softener from me and tossing it near a fallen tree. Pulling my leg out, I lost a shoe in the muck. Tidbit went back to fish it out while I hopped up the shore and sat down on the tree where she’d thrown the bottle.

  Sitting there, squeezing the water out of my muddy sock, I felt my throat tighten and my chest swell. A hot, fat tear sat poised on the pink shelf of my eyelid, trembling. I thought about getting caught for setting the fire and about Tidbit ending up back in the corner. I wasn’t going to fall apart, I decided. If this was what it was like, then fine. I dragged my forearm across my cheek, crushing the tear. I pulled on my sock and twisted my foot into the soggy sneaker Tidbit handed me. She looked surprised to see me produce a clean towel from my stuffed book bag and begin drying the leg of my pants.

  “I know it’s not your fault we had to run,” she said. “I’m just worried. And I left Burn Victim behind.”

  “Burn Victim?”

  “I’ll tell you later. He’s my silent witness.”

  When we got going again, we stayed farther up in the woods and moved slowly, stumbling and feeling around. Tidbit fell over a huge bump that gave out a muffled knell. A boat. We started to crawl around to see if there were more, and there were boats everywhere, each one turned upside down, covering the hill like scales on a fish.

  “Try to find one that’s not locked to a tree,” Tidbit said. This was difficult in the dark. I felt around for chains or cables, or just tried to pull the boats away, but locks kept stopping me. Tidbit found a loose rowboat at the top of the hill, and we flipped it over and dragged it toward the lake. The metal hull amplified every noise as it slid across pine needles and scraped against stones. When we got it to the shore, we could see it was dark green, or had been. The paint was faded where it hadn’t chipped, and the name LINDA was stenciled across the stern in white.

  The boat bounced lightly on the waves as I pushed it backward into the water.

  “Get in,” I said, leaning on the bow to keep it steady. Tidbit hunched down and scurried to the back. I put one foot into the boat and pushed off the shore with the other. I dropped my book bag and the blue bottle of Pure ’n’ Gentle at my feet, fitted the oars into the oarlocks, and, jerking and tilting, we floated away from shore.

  “You know what’s amazing?” Tidbit was leaning back against the side of the rowboat and dragging her fingers through the water. “We were just killing ourselves to climb and crawl over the ground, to get from here to there, but now we’re just sailing way above it. The ground’s all the way down there and all that’s between us and it”—she lifted her wrist and let water drip from her fingers—“is this.” Tidbit had the brandy and the chocolates. I didn’t mention that we weren’t quite sailing.

  “You know what’s at the bottom of this lake?” she asked.

  “What? Hold on, just tell me if I get us off course.” My back was to the front of the boat, and my rowing was getting clumsy. Rather than plying through the water, one or the other of the oars kept skipping across the surface, causing me to turn the boat erratically and lose my balance. “We should be heading toward that light.” I pointed to a light across the lake. We were almost halfway there. I rotated the oars so that they rested in the boat; I wanted a rest. Tidbit passed me the brandy. “What’s at the bottom of the lake?”

  “This is where Cubit Grafflin’s daughter had her wedding, on the ice. She’s still down there somewhere, in her dress, along with the minister and one of her guests.”

  “Could we please not have any more bullshit stories? I’m so sick of that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Every single fucking thing anyone says at that school is a complete lie. No one’s stories make any sense.”

  “Like whose?”

  “Pudding says he stole ten thousand dollars from his dad and spent it taking cabs. Gary makes up shit about jerking off mules to tell Brenda, or else he just lies to us about what he told her. That story you told me about the girls who ran away and got to California? The people at the church wouldn’t check before they bought a plane ticket? Right.”

  “What’s that about Gary?”

  “It’s like all the stories almost work, but none of them really do.”

  “Maybe that story didn’t really happen,” Tidbit said. “But what do you care if it’s true or not?”

  “I don’t care. I just don’t want to hear any more bullshit.”

  For a while we listened to the sound of the water lapping against the sides of the boat. Then Tidbit said, “You’re right. A lot of people make things up. But a lot of people have pretty weird stories, too.”

  “Yeah. So what’d you do to get sent here?”

  “What do you mean? I told you, didn’t I?”

  “I guess I forgot. Tell me again?”

  Tidbit looked at me. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Uh-huh.” I watched her take a drink of the brandy. She handed me the bottle, and I drank some. “Do you think they think we set the fire on purpose?” I asked.

  “What, because of William? They might not even know we’re gone yet.”

>   I took another long pull from the bottle of brandy and then looked at it. “I bet they know. I bet they think we set the fire on purpose.”

  We passed the bottle back and forth. Tidbit lit a cigarette. “My dorm’s probably in a candor meeting right now. Yours, too. I can just see it.”

  “This stuff is really sweet. It’s making my tongue feel heavy.”

  “June’s probably half asleep and mumbling to people to let go of their fibs. And they’re all going to have to sit there staring at their feet until someone starts to cry about how angry she is at me.” The boat was spinning slowly in the breeze.

  “I think this stuff is making my teeth hurt.”

  “Give me that. Are you even listening? Your dorm’s probably in the same spot right now. Ellie’s not any different, even if she’s cute.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m in Jodi’s dorm now, not Ellie’s. Jodi is not cute. And Ellie’s problem is that she’s got her own problems.”

  “You don’t feel bad about taking off?” Tidbit tapped her feet in the water in the bottom of the boat.

  “No. I feel great about taking off, actually. That place is a fucking gulag.” I paused to take a drink. “Gu-lag.” The bottle was almost empty. “We’re not supposed to feel bad for acting out. We’re children, and they’re supposed to be taking care of us. Isn’t that what Aubrey says? Who I feel bad about is Ed and Naoko.”

  “Who?”

  “No one. Never mind.”

  Tidbit folded a candy wrapper into a little boat and set it out on the water. She leaned back again and dipped her fingers into the lake, which seemed higher than it had before. “I think the boat’s leaking,” she said.

  “No, why would anyone leave a leaky boat out by a lake?”

  “Look.” Tidbit kicked her feet around in the water at the bottom of the boat, which was a few inches deep.

  I looked around my feet for a moment. “Do you think that’s why this one wasn’t locked up?” I took the oars and started rowing. “Where’s the light we’re heading to?”

  “Over there, I think,” Tidbit said, pointing. “What should I do?” She cupped her hands and splashed handfuls of water out of the boat. As I rowed, the water sloshed all around, soaking everything.

  “Get rid of whatever you can,” I told her. She threw the empty brandy bottle and the chocolates that were left overboard. Then she picked up the bottle of Pure ’n’ Gentle that had floated toward her feet.

  “Wait.”

  “Benjamin.”

  “Okay, but just dump it out and use the bottle to bail out the boat.” Tidbit poured the contents into the lake. The liquid was pale blue and left a brilliant slick along the surface that rose and fell in our wake. She pushed the empty bottle under the water in the boat and waited for it to fill up before pouring it out again over the side.

  The water we had taken on weighed the boat down enough that with every tilt caused by my clumsy rowing, more water poured in over the gunwales. Before long, the boat was too heavy to row, so the two of us sat there, sinking.

  “Just pour the bottle out and put the top back on tight. It’ll float,” I suggested without much enthusiasm. The bow sank below the water, and the boat began to slip away beneath us.

  “Let’s go,” Tidbit said.

  I was surprised as I leaned into the lake and started swimming that I didn’t get wet, at least not all at once. The cold water took its time, trickling down my back and up my legs after seeping through my sleeves, collar, and cuffs.

  I let my book bag sink. Tidbit held the empty bottle of liquid fabric softener under her chin. She kicked and moved smoothly along. I swam a nervous kind of breaststroke but tired quickly. I dunked under to see how far the bottom was, and realized that the lake was very shallow; I could just keep my head up if I hopped along on my toes.

  Which is how we proceeded, two heads disembodied in the dark water, hers gliding slowly across the surface, mine bobbing up and down, moving along in slow, distended arcs. Tidbit took in a mouthful of lake water and spat it at me. I splashed back.

  Climbing out of the water was awful. My clothes clung heavy and tight and in the wind chilled mercilessly. Tidbit and I dragged ourselves up the shore and toward the houses, our lips blue and teeth chattering.

  On that side of the lake, the woods were cleared all the way down to the shore to make room for lakefront homes. We walked through the wide yards, looking into the windows and garages of one house after another, trying to find one where no one was home. It took us a long while before we found a yellow clapboard house that was a good possibility, and by the time we got there, both Tidbit and I were cold and uncomfortable enough to take our chances.

  “Break the window by the back door,” Tidbit said, looking around the edges of the lawn for a good-sized rock. “I’ll tell you if any lights go on.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Benjamin, how else will we know if anyone’s inside?”

  “We could ring the bell.”

  “No, that’s not how you do it.”

  “Well, why not? We could just run if anyone answers.”

  “Fine, I’ll break it. Just tell me if any lights go on.” Tidbit found two rocks and walked around to the bottom of the back steps, which were wooden and painted gray. She took a breath and hurled one rock through a window in the back door, winced at the noise it made, and waited. She looked back at me. I shook my head. Tidbit climbed the steps and used the other rock to clear shards of glass from the window, reached in, and unlocked the door. She motioned for me to follow her.

  Inside, when the darkness resolved into shapes, we found ourselves in front of an umbrella rack, next to a line of pegs on the wall hung with raincoats and jackets. There was a woven rug on the floor. We crept forward, through a space with a washer and dryer. Board games were piled on the dryer, a cardboard box with a checkers set on top. The box was missing its lid, and I could see the folded, beat-up board and pieces scattered around. With a laugh, Tidbit pointed to a shelf above the washer, where there was a bottle of Pure ’n’ Gentle, identical to the one I’d been carrying.

  Carefully, we rounded a corner and walked into the kitchen. The stove was on an island in the middle, over which hung all kinds of enormous pots and utensils. Tidbit wandered in to take a closer look in the cabinets, while I walked through to the living room. There wasn’t a lot of furniture—a couch, three chairs, a table—but it seemed solid and comfortable. I had the sense I often had at home, moving around my house at night. The furniture seemed to be different at night, as if it didn’t exist for human purposes then. It felt like I had intruded on a den of large, quiet animals breathing softly in their sleep.

  There was a tremendous noise in the kitchen, and I looked back at Tidbit. She had knocked down some of the pots and was standing frozen. She mouthed Sorry, and we waited. When there was no reaction, we relaxed.

  I found a couple of bathrobes and some towels in an upstairs closet. I changed in the bathroom and took a quick shower while Tidbit got out of her clothes and into a robe and warmed up under the covers in the big bedroom. When I was done in the shower, Tidbit went in. She had left on the TV in the bedroom, and it was showing a submarine adventure movie. The crew had just narrowly escaped from the enemy fleet, only to be mistaken for an enemy ship by their own navy. “We can’t return fire, for God’s sake!” shouted the captain.

  I looked around the bedroom. There was a fireplace, and the mantel was arranged with decorative things—a candlestick on one end, some dried flowers and a cowbell on the other. On the dresser, a hairbrush lay next to a lacquered wooden box. I opened the box and picked through the jewelry inside. I assumed that none of it was real, although I couldn’t be sure. I played with the links of a chunky gold necklace and ran a string of pearls through my fingers. There were framed photographs standing next to the jewelry box. There was one with a man and a woman, a boy and girl, really, next to a car. They were both facing the camera and laughing. The boy was h
ugging the girl around the waist, from behind, and holding her up in the air a little. The car was a black Trans Am. The girl’s hair was straight, light brown, and she had bangs that hung down in front of her face; her hands were on the boy’s wiry forearm. I ran my finger along the girl’s tanned left leg. Tidbit was done in the shower, and she was leaning her head against my back. Behind the boy, the black car looked dusty and hot, parked in the grass. I felt the steam still rising off Tidbit, and the smell of shampoo.

  I was surprised, when I turned around, to see that she was naked. I doubled the string of pearls, trying not to seem nervous or strange, and put them on her. I let her lead me to the bed.

  Tidbit kissed me. Just when I’d relaxed enough to enjoy the feel of her tongue around mine, she rolled on top of me and looked down. “You’re weird,” she said.

  “So,” I said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know why, but you are. I came out of the shower and was talking to you, but you just kept looking at that picture.”

  “I didn’t hear.” I didn’t really like being called weird. “You still like me, though?”

  Tidbit pretended to think about it. “I like you enough to sleep with you.”

  “That’s a good answer. Very clear. Your therapist would be proud.”

  Tidbit lay down looking at me. She drew her fingertip along the line of my cheek and said, “You’re so cute when you’re condescending.”

  I woke up before Tidbit did and went downstairs to wash our clothes. I was starving, and as the clothes were washing, I hunted through the kitchen for food. I found a box of Froot Loops but no milk, so I wandered around the living room with the box, eating. Lines of sunlight shot through the blinds on the windows and swelled on the floor. I remembered my mother telling me that when I was a baby, I would try to pick up the sunlight as it lay on the floor of my playroom. When I heard the washing machine finish, I put our things in the dryer and went back to roaming the house. About fifteen minutes had passed before I realized that I’d forgotten to add the fabric softener. But when I went to put it in, there was an older woman standing in the back doorway, staring at the machine. She looked up.