by Greg Jolley
“Mixed the waters, so to speak. Like out there.”
He was lost and knew it. He wanted to ask more, but watched her pale small hand rest on the big window. Her black fedora tilted slowly to one side, and she stood perfectly still before the view. He watched. He waited. He finally turned away, leaving her be, and opened the cabinet and took out a bag of flour and two jars of canned green fall apples.
✳ ✳ ✳
Jame climbed into bed and selected Phillip Pullman from the nightstand, but he didn’t open the novel. Like prior nights, he lay half-reclined and looked to Wiki on her couch, knees up and writing. That night’s portrait was different; instead of pen and paper, her iPad was open and was scrolling and reading instead of typing.
Wiki was grateful to Jame for having set up the Wi-Fi. She was comfortable, her nude body draped with a single flannel sheet, and she was back within the familiar glow of her iPad. Within minutes, she no longer knew Jame was in the room, didn’t know she was in a lake cottage, was not aware that she was in the very small town of Dent.
There were no messages from Sara—no texts or emails or videos. If there had been, she had no plans to open them. There was an email from the twat Sara had apparently fallen for. It was a long one, and she began to read.
There was a cursory work-related comment and two questions about studio processes. Wiki ignored those. She read Twat’s next lines slowly, word by word, looking up to the windows at the end of each chaotic, dysfunctional, and weirdly punctuated sentence. Twat wrote in a self-absorbed stream, venting twisted emotions and thoughts, assuming an intimacy with Wiki that did not exist. Wiki took in another sentence and looked up. She could not decipher the narcissistic and manic code and didn’t want to. There were also twisted and cruel accusations and attacks. This madness is from the person that Sara turned to? That was the thought that hurt the most.
Wiki read the next sentence. A splash of vindictive knifing and the strange verdict on Wiki’s interference in Twat and Sara’s relationship, “their nest.”
Wiki didn’t notice the sound of the porch door opening. Nor the door to the lake-view room. When Buckethead stepped around the couch and into her peripheral vision, she was startled and jerked back.
The boy stood watching her, the metal pail tilted back and his hand paused in its reach to her. He was frozen in response to having startled her.
The two of them stared at one another, neither saying a word. Wiki dug for and found a calm, welcoming smile. She extended her hand out to his.
“Hey, Bucket,” Jame said calmly from his bed. “How are you doing? Out late, aren’t you?”
Buckethead turned and smiled at Jame. “I can’t sleep there,” he said, referring to his bed at Ya Ya’s. “She sings. All the time.”
“Sounds tiresome,” Wiki said, setting her iPad aside.
“You are welcome to hang out here,” Jame told the boy.
“What’s your name again?” Wiki asked, trying to remember.
“Charlie,” the boy replied, looking relieved.
“You’re safe from singing here,” she told him.
The boy was watching her, liking her boyish grin. He took his bucket off. “I need a break,” he said, trying out adult words and voice.
Wiki’s grin warmed to a smile.
“Maybe I could have the front room? Maybe sleep there?”
Jame climbed out of bed, “Yes, sure.”
“Come on, let’s get you set up. Big white room, all your own.” Wiki said. She draped her naked body, and she and the boy headed for the front room.
“I’ll call Ya Ya and let her know you’re here,” Jame said, tailing them.
The boy released Wiki’s hand and sat down on the couch. Jame gathered two blankets and a pillow from a hutch and he and Wiki arranged a bed on the couch. Charlie was happy and watchful. When he lay down, Wiki covered him and rested her hand on his hair. He elevated his head to her touch and wobbled his shoulders and body, seeking comfort.
“Lights on or off?” Wiki asked.
“Just one, please.”
Jame circled the room, turning off all the lamps except the one beside the couch. Wiki stepped away and Charlie asked, “Maybe I could live here?”
Jame looked to Wiki, who had her arms across her chest and was nodding to the boy.
“Sure,” he answered.
“It’s safe here,” Charlie said. “Thank you, Jame. And Wiki.” He was looking back and forth at them as they slowly left the room. Then he closed his eyes, shifted around a bit more, and relaxed.
Back on her couch, Wiki opened her iPad. She heard Jame climb into bed and noted that he did not turn off his bedside lamp. She sensed Jame was again sitting up and watching her. She saw another unopened email from Sara, titled, “Please read.” Then Jame and the cottage began to disappear. She deleted the unread message from Sara. She returned to the next sentence from Twat.
Sometime later, she sensed that the light from Jame’s bed had darkened. She read on. When that was done, she looked across to the black lake, took a breath and continued. There were faint sounds of movement in the cottage, but they were like a moth barely brushing her attention. Twat was ranting, worrying about her fears, her own loss, mixed with convoluted and unclear suspicions. It was offensive and Wiki read on anyway, Twat’s self-absorbed craziness, unmindful of having caused Wiki so much hurt and loss.
Much later in the night, she finished Twat’s last email. At that point, looking to the windows, she expected the need for sleep. Instead, she tapped the Reply icon and started to write.
The sky to the north was thawing from black to blue when Wiki hit Send. She watched the predawn colors blend as she shut off the iPad and set it on the floor.
The cottage and the room did not come into her awareness until she lay down. Just before she closed her eyes, she saw Charlie curled up asleep on the front half of Jame’s bed.
Charlie taught Wiki and Jame how to make a Charlie breakfast. They trusted him with the big knife and watched him slice a bell pepper in half. Charlie asked for an onion, and Jame set one on the cutting board. He also cut the onion in half, and Charlie’s small fingers separated three outer rings. Charlie asked for butter, eggs, and pepper. Wiki warmed a skillet, as asked, and the boy placed three pats of butter on the hot cast iron. As the butter began to sizzle and melt, Charlie lifted the three pats with a spatula and poured each inside the bucket of onion and bell pepper. Charlie cracked an egg and poured it inside, adding a light sprinkle of pepper. Two more Charlie breakfasts were prepared, and they ate at the table with cups of milk and slices of pie.
✳ ✳ ✳
Some days later, Wiki woke and stood, amazed, before the big windows. Overnight the lake had thawed. Jame brought her a half cup of espresso and she remained before the view, marveling at the flat smooth water beyond Jame’s short green lawn and sea wall.
The town of Dent ripened like spring tomatoes in the sun. The reporters and their vans were a memory, and the folks in town and around the lake came out of hibernation, stretching, grinning, and talking of the sun and its warmth. Flower beds were replanted, stirred, and fed, and the prior year’s bulbs began climbing upward and displaying rich and vibrant colors. On the following Saturday, the true call of spring could be heard from all around the lake—the spark and purr of lawnmowers.
✳ ✳ ✳
Jame continued to drive to the hospital in the city. With each passing day, he stayed a bit longer, many times returning to Dent just in time for his evening shift at the C.O. He visited with Viv first, who was in for an extended stay of skin grafts. Then he went to Abel’s room.
He spent hours with her, sitting beside her and listening.
When she slept, Jame sat closer so he could see her better, hear her soft breathing, observe her slight expressions while she dreamed. Studying her face, he saw a younger Abel, around eleven years old, when they had briefly been schoolyard pals. She had been awkward and uncertain, and he had liked that; feeling much the same.
Now with
her face close before his, he felt the warmth of her skin and tasted her medicated breath. He remembered the summer afternoon his dad had trusted him with the pontoon boat, solo, and he had spotted her on her father’s dock. He had wheeled in on a whim and offered her a ride, clearly pleased to be at the helm of the sixteen-foot boat. She appeared delighted and started to the end of the dock in her gazelle like uncertainty and plain dress. She was smiling, and he was feeling proud and curious. Then her father appeared from the side of their cottage, pushing Cain along; in fact, tripping him. Cain let out a whelp and rolled in the dirt, and Wesley screamed across the yard, “You slut! Get away from that.”
Abel quite simply melted, turned away and walked back up the dock with her head lowered.
Jame had sadly steered away. He had contented himself by showing off his nautical skills to a bunch of school friends fishing on the town side of the lake. He had simply moved on.
When Abel was awake, she was often visited by doctors dressed in suits which Jame soon figured out were psychiatrists. Police investigators also interrupted their time together. Sometimes Jame was asked or told to leave the room so he would kill time eating snacks from the vending machine in the lobby. Returning to Abel’s side, he watched and listened to her. Sometimes she was agitated and cranky about not being able to leave the hospital, her continued stay having more to do with the investigator’s questions than her medical condition.
“All you want is more about my father and Cain,” she lit up one day on an officer “It’s creepy and sick, and I’ve told you everything again and again.”
One afternoon Abel told the investigator to, “Fuck off. Please.”
He flinched and left the room. Abel and Jame looked to one another and both broke out in laughter. And it was her laughter, the delight in her eyes, that shifted Jame’s heart and changed how he saw her; not the gangly eleven-year-old, not the later sullen and cowered teenager, but Abel, now resourceful, spirited, and so taken with him as well.
Jame told Abel about the ongoing exchange of letters and telephone calls with Charlie’s dad. The boy’s father was distant and harried and, sadly, agreeable to his son staying with Jame until late summer and the start of school. The father had no interest in flying the boy out to Utah. He rarely used Charlie’s name and was reluctant to add to his “already full life.” The dad was definitely not coming to Dent, not even to pick up his son. “My Dixie plate’s full—being married to crazy Wesley’s ex-wife.”
As the days went by and Abel got better, he watched her discover and enjoy a new facet of her personality; a creative and colorful sass and sarcasm. She often had him laughing with her tart and intelligent telling off the investigators and the doctors. She was friends with the nurses, who she referred to as her compadres. On the nights Jame didn’t have to work, Abel’s compadres brought blankets and pillows for him and secreted him meals along with hers.
Sometimes Abel tired during the day, after medication. Jame was fine with sitting back in his chair and watching her sleep. With her glasses on or off he studied her face, occasionally seeing her youth, and other times seeing a woman a handful of years in the future. He held her hand when she was in pain while her bandages and bedding were changed. She often clawed his palm and that was fine. He told Abel that he had towed her hut to shore before it sank in the thaw, and she thanked him.
✳ ✳ ✳
Wiki began exploring and testing the boundaries of pie. There were meat pies and experiments with bananas, which was Charlie’s favorite fruit. She and Charlie became buddies and that became their favorite name for each other.
“Hey, buddy, look!”
“Yo, buddy, finish your milk.”
The lake out back warmed and warmed quickly. Wiki and Charlie often sat on the seawall wearing diving masks and snorkels, enjoying the duck-like sound of their voices.
When Jame put in the dock, Charlie was right there beside him watching and smarting off and eager to run for the mallet and help float the sections in place. Wiki sat on the patio, watching and offering irreverent comments. She had slowly tested Jame’s neutral responses to seeing her in dresses and soon that was all she wore, with the stupid addition of bras and panties.
She and Charlie liked to watch the fish and buddy talk. They often laid on the dock watching the passing clouds and pointing out figurines. Their favorite was a swan in a rowboat chased by a turtle in rollerblades. The two of them went on daily hikes, often wearing their mask and snorkels, enjoying duck talk as they explored Three Quarter Road in the opposite direction from Dent. Charlie liked to build fires in the dirt. Wiki, the match carrier, sat beside him in the warm dust as he constructed complex designs of the twigs and leaves. Charlie was partial to building replicas of his school. He delighted with each flaming burst of a teacher’s match tip, sulfur-scented head.
✳ ✳ ✳
Wiki talked about heading out to the Danser family cottage on Wildwood Lake. She had affectionate short stories to tell Charlie about the antics of her last stay at the place, but there was an undercurrent to each tale that she didn’t speak of. Sara had always been at her side as her partner in crime.
✳ ✳ ✳
Wiki and Charlie asked Jame if they could borrow the two surfboards from the back of his truck. They paddled out on the lake on early afternoons and enjoyed the view of Dent from the new angle, when not laying on their boards and discussing the clouds high above.
Charlie wanted nothing to do with visiting his former home. He described to Jame the things he wanted and Jame entered the apartment above the Sew What alone. The apartment was casually clean and needed an after-winter airing. It was easy to find Charlie’s room by its colorful decor. He worked Charlie’s list first: his Japanese sun t-shirt, the book about airplane history, and a swimsuit. That done, Jame filled a paper bag with a pair of summer shoes, underwear and shorts, a couple more shirts, and all the toys that would fit inside. When he walked up the alley to the street, Charlie was wide-eyed with pleasure and anticipation. He and Wiki were side by side. Charlie released Wiki’s hand and jogged to Jame with his arms wide. Two minutes later, Charlie was pleased and proud with his chin up. He stayed between Jame and Wiki, one step ahead, leading, as they walked Three Quarter Road to home.
✳ ✳ ✳
Later that same night while Charlie slept on the foot of Jame’s bed, Wiki opened her iPad. It had been awhile. She scrolled through her email, hitting delete on Sara’s written and video messages. It was Twat’s chaotic and disjointed writing which drew her into reading more and more. Twat was not the same woman Wiki had trained to be her replacement before she left Spain. Twat was ecstatic in her random babble and detailed descriptions of Wiki’s failings. She went on at length about her own brilliant and wonderful qualities. Reading all of that often hurt, but Twat’s mind and self-absorption were compelling. Wiki often breathed through tight teeth, “You’re howl at the moon crazy, Twat.”
Three nights later, the emails from Ranting Twat mutated. Wiki read what was clearly madness and hints of threats. They were aimed at Wiki, Pauline Place, the film crew, and Sara. Apparently, Sara had disappeared from the set while Pauline and Twat were on a road trip to a second-unit location. Twat was angry and suspicious of Sara’s having “gone underground” during their absence. The next email offered the paranoid details of Sara not taking her calls.
“I’m going to put an end to Sara’s cruelty. She’s intentionally doing all she can to hurt her only ever true love: me. I’ll show her true underground.”
Wiki looked up from the words on her iPad. She had been responding to the writings for days; trying to understand and dampen the flames. She realized that what she had unintentionally been doing was adding wood and fuel to the fire.
She opened the next email, deciding that she would no longer respond. She had a new goal; find clues to Sara’s safety among the self-aggrandizing and wild flights of hostility. On that next message, Ranting Twat wrote in frantic ecliptic sentences, barking twists, and half-ba
ked plans of revenge on “Sara and all of you!”
Wiki didn’t find any clues concerning Sara’s whereabouts or safety. She sent off messages to her studio contacts. She didn’t email her aunt Pauline because Ranting Twat was her reader. When she looked up, she heard Jame enter the cottage after his evening shift. He sat down beside her on the couch. She closed the iPad and studied the back yard where Charlie was playing.
✳ ✳ ✳
Dinner was always late afternoon, around three, before Jame left for work. Charlie was rereading his only book, Aircraft of the Wars! when Jame returned from visiting Abel in the hospital. The lake-view room was flavored with the warm scent of baking fruit and something odd. Jame sat down beside the boy at the small kitchen table.
“I was told not to look. I bet it’s chicken and apples,” Charlie informed Jame, mimicking serious adult voice.
“I’m going with frogs and blueberries. It’s gotta happen some night.”
Wiki stayed mum as she turned from the oven holding dinner in mittens. The guys sat shoulder-to-shoulder with their heads raised, both looking pleased and curious.
“Buddy, got the knife?” she asked Charlie.
He raised their long-bladed knife and pumped it up into the air. She set the pie between the guys, and Charlie did the serious job of slicing. Unlike the prior dinners, Wiki served her own plate first.
Charlie growled.
The second wedge went onto Jame’s plate.
Charlie growled louder.
Wiki giggled.
She served Charlie’s plate and took the chair facing him. Charlie and Jame raised their forks. Charlie slid his in, and there was a clink. Jame set his fork down. Charlie stirred his fork in his slice. There was another clink and with that, he started to dig. With fork and fingers, he opened his pie slice, pushing aside crust and banana, and pulled a small metal airplane.
“It’s from World War II!” he explained, marveling at the surprise. Wiki handed him a wet hand towel, and she and Jame watched the boy clean banana from the aircraft and start to fly it in the sky over his plate. He flew the plane toward Jame, his eyes bright with pleasure. Jame turned a smile to Wiki. Charlie flew the plane in Wiki’s direction and paused it in midflight.