Bittersweet

by Shewanda Pugh

  “Edy! Edy, stop it!” The command came sharp, disembodied, warped.

  “Wyatt, help me!” Edy screamed, head swiveling for a sign of help, for a sign of him.

  The arms disappeared in a shock of emptiness. Edy gasped and opened her eyes.

  She stared up at Hassan.

  “You’ll be late for school if you don’t hurry,” he said and glared down at her, Adam’s apple dipping. Hassan opened his mouth as if to say more, shut it, and evaporated.

  No. Edy swiped at her cobwebbed mind and fought to separate dream from reality.

  “Hassan?” she ventured and got a slammed door in response. “Hassan? Come on, wait up!” Nothing.

  In the shower, with the comfort of hot water and creamy suds, Edy’s mind kicked up a notch. She’d always heard of people who could drop into a dream and call b.s. on sight. Her dad, ever the ultra rational soul, was one of those people. All it took, according to him, was a once over of his surroundings. From there he’d deduct the likelihood of certain circumstances existing. Low likelihood equaled high probability of dreaming and therefore time to pinch oneself awake. Simple.

  Why hadn’t Edy pinched herself awake?

  She imagined Hassan’s jade-spoked and fire lit eyes staring back at her, pissed beyond all earthly redemption. She’d yelled ‘Wyatt’ first because she’d been trying to help him, second because she’d needed help herself. But what had that sounded and felt like to Hassan with his arms around her as she screamed for another guy? Why did other guy have to be Wyatt?

  Edy’s head thudded against the back shower wall, her backside punished with cold tile. She watched as water chased the suds from her body in a whirl down the drain. The measure of the tiles, the pattern of the shower curtain, staring them down gave her no clue how to fix this.

  She found Hassan at the kitchen table staring at his clasped hands in the dark. Thin streams of sunlight broke through to illuminate the room only just.

  “Ready?” he said.

  Edy hesitated. “Yeah, but Hassan—”

  “Not now, Edy. Let’s just…” He looked at her and then away, as if the sight of Edy pained him.

  What did he think? The worst of her? That she’d been in the throes of some hot dream about Wyatt? That he’d caught her enjoying herself, living vicariously, or worse, remembering?

  He had to know better.

  “It was a nightmare, Hassan. You know do that, don’t you? You scared the crap out of me when you grabbed me,” she said.

  Seconds ticked by to the thrum of her heartbeat. He said nothing and she waited.

  “Why would you call for Wyatt to help you? Even in a nightmare. You’d call him?” Pain slashed his every word. The hands that he studied became fists.

  Edy pulled out the chair across from him and set her backpack on the floor. They could be nothing but late at this point, but she couldn’t fathom going to school with this between them. With Wyatt back between them. It had to be fixed. Now. Yet, they had no time. No time until Rani looked out the window and saw his Mustang sitting in the drive. No time before she came to Edy’s house and made a bad problem infinitely worse.

  “Please listen to me,” Edy said and placed a hand over one of his fists. She counted it a victory when he clenched, but didn’t pull away. “I was trapped in an ice box freezing to death. I listened to Wyatt dying a second time.” She cleared her throat and paused long enough to reign in an anguish she didn’t permit herself to feel. “Then,” Edy said calmly. “I thought I was being attacked. I screamed for the only other person I knew was there.”

  Hassan stared at her. He stared at her for an unblinking infinity before dropping his gaze. “He shows up sometimes,” he said. “In my dreams. Always dying and reaching out for me. I don’t …” Emotion clogged his throat, holding back words he might not deliver. “I don’t know if I’ll help him in the dreams. The question is always there.” He looked past Edy to a point on the floor. He rubbed his face tiredly and exhaled. “He haunts me.”

  Edy rose, rounded the table, and squeeze him from behind. She didn’t have the right words. She didn’t have any words, but she knew they could be there for each other instead.

  “We should get to school,” Hassan said.

  “Uh yeah.” Edy rose when he didn’t. Her thoughts were with Rani and the fallout that would follow if they stayed ten minutes, five, maybe one.

  Still, she didn’t open her mouth and say, “your mother’s going to kill us if we don’t head to school.”

  “Take me for a drive?” Edy said.

  He woke up. “Where?”

  It seemed she wasn’t the only one not feeling school that day. As far as their destination, a devilish smile played across her lips. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  “The house on the Cape,” Edy said. “It’s a two hour drive. A little less if you’re eager.”

  It turned out he was eager. A two hour drive became an hour and forty minutes before the two of them rushed their rickety old clapboard, giggling and shoving at each other.

  “You don’t even have a key,” Edy said as frigid sea winds bit and scraped at her face.

  Still, Hassan slapped at her arms and fumbled at the lock until she dropped the keys and he beat her snatching them up.

  “What!” she cried and leapt on his back. Except his back was a little higher than she recalled and the mistake left her clinging to his neck.

  He crouched to accommodate her—sucker—and she took the opening to scramble all the way on. Now, it was him crying outrage and laughing as she played horsey.

  “Edy,” he said and stabbed the door with the key yet again. “Last time, you may recall pissing me off when you pulled this.”

  She did. She had. A vision of her bouncing in her new black swimsuit emerged. She’d beat his back and hollered, drunk with fun. He’d pitched her hard, hard enough for her to hit the bed and tumble to the floor.

  “Sorry,” Edy muttered. She considered sliding off.

  Hassan unlocked the front door and nudged it open with a boot.

  “Sor-ry,” he mocked in a singsong voice. He stamped his feet on the welcome mat and launched in at warp speed, only to careen and pitch for walls until she screamed. At his bedroom, she resisted the wet dog way he shook her off, until she tumbled from his back in defeat.

  “Confession,” he whispered and climbed atop her.

  Edy swallowed and made a conscientious effort to concentrate on the ceiling, the walls, the space right above his face. She could hardly withstand him being so close. He must’ve known that by now. He must’ve sensed it. When they were all alone and close, couldn’t he feel her tremble or hear her heart race? She told herself to exhale. ‘Confession,’ he’d said. Let’s hear it.

  He traced her cheek with a finger. “When you were on my back in your swimsuit, I wasn’t mad at you. I was pissed at me because I was way turned on. I, uh, had to get away from you.”

  Edy grinned wide as the Gulf of Mexico and dashed on a little blushing. Yeah. She so didn’t mind this confession at all.

  “And now?” she said.

  “Now,” Hassan said, “I’m not afraid to say things, like, ‘I’d ride a bubble to Jupiter to get to you.’” Edy giggled as his lips brushed her neck. “Or that ‘we,’” he leaned left so that he could walk fingers from her knee up, up, up. “‘Belong together.’” His lips found her collarbone and pressed there, soft as butterfly wings. “More than sand and sea. More than sky and scrapers. More than Yankees suck.”

  He dragged a hand under her shirt and across her abdomen, so her heartbeat hard and sure. Whether she flashed a grin or a grimace she couldn’t say.

  “Yankees do suck,” she gasped.

  “Monkey balls,” he agreed and kissed her slow, deliberately working as if to memorize the contours of her mouth.

  A rap at the door interrupted them. They pulled apart in a whoosh of an inhale, eyes pinned one on the other.

  “That’s no one, right? We should ignore it.” Hassan sat up
, gaze eager for affirmation.

  Edy wanted to give it to him. Really, she did. After all, they were visiting a shuttered, closed away second home in the off season in a town where few actually lived. Even at the height of tourist season, no one stopped by.

  Yet, the second knock came just the same.

  “I’ll get rid of them,” Hassan announced and jumped up. “You stay here.” Edy followed quick on his heels and ignoring his flash of impatience.

  He threw open the door.

  A barrel of a man stood on the stoop with a complete circle of a face. Black, raisin-like eyes sat sunken in his face, while red, sun slapped cheeks shown with his smile. “Mr. Pradhan?”

  Hassan blinked. “Yeah?”

  The man shifted his briefcase from side to the other before thrusting a hand forward. “Jimmy Carmichael. Pleased to meet you.”

  Hassan let the hand hang there. Meanwhile, Edy’s stomach took on an oil-and-water churn. She took a step back and into the living room, groping with two thoughts, demanding discipline of a mind that wanted two directions simultaneously.

  The heavy guy wiped the hand that hung on his coat, smile wilting at the corners. “Well,” he said. “In any case, I’m here for our appointment.”

  “No,” Edy blurted as ‘appraiser’ and ‘appraise’ snapped lock and bolt into her brain. They were selling the house. Why would they sell the house? It belonged to them—all of them—and no one person could ruin that.

  “We have to go,” Hassan announced and went back for their coats in a whirl. “We have to go,” he said again, as an apology to her, to Mr. Carmichael.

  The appraiser stood on their deck watching, rotating clockwise as they moved, brows V’d in a trace of a scowl.

  “We were never here! But your appointment will be here soon!” Edy called as they peeled off into the distance.

  Eighteen

  It used to be that Edy found solace in ballet. When the piano notes or violin rushed in and her feet began to move, a crash of comfort found her, draped her, cloaked her, and flushed out the world’s indignities.

  She was such a simpleton then.

  When Edy returned to ballet classes, Madam Rousseau welcomed her in a brisk, fortifying way: a hand on either of Edy’s shoulders, eye to eye, and a quiet question of whether she had what she needed. Rousseau expected simple answers, so Edy replied with a ‘yes.’ Satisfied, the older woman tilted Edy’s chin up. “Then it is on to dance,” she announced.

  Rousseau drove them hard that day, sweat from the chin hard, and gasped at the bounding nature of Edy’s leaps, the fluidity of her turns. Rousseau made no allowances for the extended absence, and likely pushed harder because of it, knowing that Edy, above all others could handle the strain.

  Edy welcomed it. She welcomed the chance to shove away worries about the fate of the house on the Cape, about what Rani might or might not say, about her oddly popular status at school, and about a relationship time bomb that ticked. Midway through class, however, Rousseau stopped, grabbed her cell, and put in a discreet phone call. Fifteen minutes later, a thin, olive-skinned woman, and a pale, willowy man with shades planted in his dark hair, took a seat in the back of the room. Seeing them seated reminded Edy of Wyatt and how he’d been so devoted, so passionate about watching her practice.

  “Again, from the top, my dancers.” And though Madame Rousseau said “my dancers,” this time, she looked only at Edy.

  Edy nodded once, curt. Her stomach twisted. The man at the back of the room turned his mouth down in what had to be well practiced disapproval. He was there to see Edy? They were there to see Edy.

  Only with supreme effort did she drag her gaze away, inhale sharp, and measure out a shaky exhale. She could almost place her spectators. They looked familiar. They were familiar. They were people she should know.

  Begin.

  ~~~

  All of life’s beginnings should come with one thunderous leap. That was the only thought Edy could manage as she half walked, half ran the whole way home: everything good she begin with one magnificent jump, before a tiny man in a velvet voice says, “I want her.”

  She should’ve had some memory of gunning home on battered feet, or of trying to blow down the Pradhan door after her own house stood empty despite the presence of her father’s car. Yeah. Her father’s car. He’d come back with absolutely no forewarning after staying away for weeks and communicating through a few measly emails. So whatever. Edy had rushed home with a whirlwind in her lungs and a pump pump in her heart, thinking that she needed somebody, anybody to hear her incredible news. She threw open the Pradhan door and collided with Rani.

  Okay, maybe she didn’t need anybody.

  “What’s happened? Is someone after you?” Rani stuck her head out and looked down the street, gaze sweeping, concerned.

  “No. I have news. I—”

  Rani held up a hand. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to tell it to the boys. I’m cooking and on the phone with my mother. I really can’t spare the time.”

  Edy shoved aside the needling voice reminding her that such a conversation would have never taken place in the before. Hassan’s mom offered a contrite smile before disappearing into the kitchen. Edy gaze followed her with a thought: The boys?

  She found them huddled around the coffee table as if examining some delicate specimen, Hassan, Ali, and Edy’s dad. Not one flinched on her arrival.

  “Well, it’s early yet,” Edy’s dad said. “But this tremendous PR wise. Sure the record speaks for itself, but the praise—”

  “What’s going on?” Edy said.

  Their heads snapped up.

  “Hassan got a write up in ESPN Magazine,” Ali announced.

  Hassan rolled his eyes. “The Elite program got a write up in ESPN Magazine. They mentioned me.”

  “My son is modest,” Ali explained. It sounded like an apology.

  “Well, no one’s ever said that before,” Hassan said.

  “Seven lines and the write up is not about him!” Ali waved a hand in dismissal.

  Edy’s eyes popped. “They talked about you for seven lines? In ESPN Magazine?” She rounded the coffee table and dropped down on a knee. “Let me see.”

  She had to scan at an awkward angle because of Ali’s reluctance to part with it. Only when Hassan clawed his fingers back was Edy treated to a private viewing.

  A paragraph about the camp itself, who sponsored it, and why. A second paragraph highlighting two seniors, Leahy, and Lawrence, noting the last for being the son of former Raider Steve Dyson. Then, in an ode to glory, the last paragraph belonged all to Hassan. Yeah, it rattled off stunning statistics, but it painted a trajectory, too; of a boy growing into a man of unprecedented feats.

  Or at least a guy destined for a top college program.

  “You okay?” Hassan said quietly as she read.

  The ballet studio stood small, distant, dwarfed just then.

  “I’m fine,” Edy said and cleared her throat to try again. She tried on her happiest smile because this was her boy and always had been. This was their dream. It all felt impossibly large just then.

  She cleared her throat. “I have huge news, too.”

  “Oh?” Her father said, looking up.

  She nodded. “At ballet practice today, the artistic director, Elliot Neil Shore, sat in on practice for, like, five seconds before he put me in the company production of Westside Story.”

  Her father smiled indulgently. “That’s wonderful, sweetheart. Congratulations.”

  She looked at Ali. “Good work, my princess. Good work.”

  She looked to Hassan, who grinned like a maniac, smile clownish and overcompensating. He sensed her disappointment in their responses and figure he’d make up for it all by himself. “Look at you, girl! Beating everyone out. That’s great news! And Westside, huh? We, uh, talk about that in school.”

  Hassan’s cell shrilled and he fumbled it out of his pocket. “Lawrence? Yeah, no, I know! ESPN, right?” Hassan strolled off to o
ne corner, treating them to a broad portrait of his back. Already, Edy’s father and Ali had turned back to the magazine.

  Belatedly, Edy realized, they’d rather go over those same three paragraphs again and again, then discuss her good fortune even once.

  Her grandmother would have known who Elliot Neil Shore was. She would have known the honor of training and performing with one of the most prestigious companies in the nation. But then again, her grandmother was insane.

  She found Rani in the kitchen, a glossy magazine spread centerfold on the table with a sepia shot of a ballerina mid-leap for the shoot. Edy dropped down at the table and begun to read about Vivian Kent, whose mother and father had also been ballet dancers. Vivian had become a prima ballerina after years as a dancer and muse for one of the most prestigious choreographers on the planet. For awhile, Edy’s complaints hung suspended, forgotten in the majesty of photography.

  “Vi’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Rani said.

  Edy looked up, startled to find Hassan’s mother speaking to her voluntarily. “Vi?” Edy said.

  “She’s an old friend of mine.”

  Edy rose to stir a bubbling over pot with the wooden spoon that sat counter side. As she did so, she shared her news with Rani.

  “You told them?” Hassan’s mother said. “The men?”

  Edy nodded and Rani seemed to disappear in quiet contemplation. “It’s been that way always, hasn’t it? As if football’s superior to dance? They pretend there is no future in dance, you know. As if there is no future for you.” Rani hesitated, eyes downcast. Finally, she shut off the stove. “You and I will celebrate your news. It’s meant to be celebrated.”

  Edy didn’t want to listen. She didn’t want to listen or believe that Rani would welcome her so warmly, because she knew the opposite of that warmth. She knew the sharpness of her rejection cut brutal and deep and she’d been working in her own small way toward accepting that. To believe in her, to believe in her capacity for forgiveness now, only to have it stolen later, well, it had to be a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Nonetheless, unable to help herself, Edy went into Rani’s open arms even as a small voice warned against it.