Afloat

by Jennifer McCartney

  ‘This is Michael. These are my parents.’

  She said it quickly.

  I sat, rolling my shoulders forward, feeling, like I still do, that he must look at my chest first. He didn’t look, smiled, and shook our hands while Alan offered, ‘Beer or wine?’

  ‘Just a lemonade or juice is fine,’ he said.

  ‘Michael doesn’t drink either,’ she explained, looking at me.

  He talked about going to the gym, I remember. His diet included canned tuna every two hours, something about bodybuilding and protein. Judging him solely by his wardrobe I’d thought at first he might be lazy enough to dampen her ambitions, keep her from her environmental crusading and everything she enjoyed in life. But it seems he had his own holy war to be fought – against loss of muscle mass and carbohydrates. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  ‘We’re only staying in St. Paul a week or two,’ Anna said.

  ‘We’re looking at houses out in the bay area.’

  We. She spoke with such an assurance of their future. Such confidence in things to come. A feeling I had forgotten longago. But seeing them together, with his legs wide so that his knee touched hers, drinking his orange juice, I remembered how it felt to have all the possibilities ahead of me. And even though I couldn’t help but wonder if he was boring, even though he swallowed noisily and only drank juice, I envied Anna for being at the beginning of something.

  ‘Michael competed in the X-games,’ Anna told us.

  Alan and I smiled.

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ Alan said, and I knew he thought it was.

  As evening descended I lit a citronella candle and Michael said the scent reminded him of his days scrubbing toilets at a resort in Banff. One winter he’d worked in exchange for the privilege of as much snowboarding as he could handle. ‘Work five days, board for two,’ he said, grinning, drinking his juice. I leaned forward.

  ‘I used to do resort work when I was younger. In Michigan.’

  He nodded. ‘Not too much boarding in Michigan,’ he said. ‘Too flat.’

  I sat back in my chair.

  ‘Those toilets though,’ Michael said, waving a hand in front of his nose. ‘Whew.’

  We weren’t invited to the wedding. Spur of the moment they said. It was in California, some kind of Buddhist ceremony. I wondered what her journals contained at the time, what colour ink she chose, if she was carefully recording her ‘union’ or if everything happening at each new moment was more important than the anticipation of a need for remembering.

  After three years of them both teaching in the public school system on the West coast, it was a surprise to all of us when they moved back to St. Paul.

  ‘Where is Michael?’ I asked Anna this morning.

  She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore does it?’

  I wondered when I’d last seen him. ‘Is he coming over?’

  Anna looked at me and took my hand. Her gesture gave me an awful feeling, panic, because it meant I didn’t remember.

  ‘He’s gone, Mother. He’s in California.’

  I took my hand away from hers. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘And you’re getting a divorce. Good.’

  Confused, I wanted her to leave so that I wouldn’t make such mistakes anymore. She looked sad and I felt somehow it was my fault; she reached for a picture on my dresser. In it, Michael was wearing an infuriating woolen hat that said Board 4 Life on it, even though he must have been at least thirty, while Anna had on some kind of hand-woven sweater that was probably made from yak fur. Michael was giving the peace sign. It was their wedding day at the Odiyan Temple, the one they helped build in Sonoma County.

  I waited, and finally she put the picture in the garbage bag on her left, the one for things we weren’t keeping or giving away. Anna didn’t ask if she could throw it out, but I didn’t object. It was a present from years ago, and it was dusty. For years I’d managed to keep it obscured behind a square glass vase filled with bamboo. Alan kept the same picture in his wallet.

  She tied the plastic in a quick knot and hefted the bag, testing its weight. I followed her down into the front hall where she placed it with the others, waiting for the Amity pick-up tomorrow morning. Whole rooms have been cleared out. I was worried at first there would be nothing left. Then I began to welcome the thought.

  ‘Mother, stop following me.’

  ‘I’m tidying,’ I insisted.

  I took the small framed picture of a red stiletto heel off the wall and awkwardly leaned it against the garbage bags. What did it mean, this bright red shoe? I couldn’t remember anything about it, couldn’t even speculate as to where it came from.

  ‘See?’

  ‘You love that picture.’

  ‘I don’t. I’m getting rid of it.’

  She sighed. ‘Fine. What are you going to do with all dad’s CDs?’

  Alan’s music, endless disks of digital voices conjured into the air by technology. The singers were mostly dead now.

  ‘I don’t listen to music anymore,’ I said.

  She went into the family room to pick out the ones she wanted. I sat in my reclining chair to watch her, her efficient fingers pink and nourished from my own wet insides. Opening a book of song lyrics, she flipped its pages. I closed my eyes and when she spoke she was talking to herself, as if I wasn’t there, or couldn’t listen.

  ‘I miss you,’ she said.

  But I was right in front of her.

  All that living, all those places visited, the pins on the map and still – her skin and insides so vulnerable to pain. It must be Michael’s fault, he had done something awful to my daughter and I imagined blood bubbling out of him from a wound cleaved into his chest, staining the bed sheets of a young girl, the student he’d been sleeping with, who would wake up to find him dead. Perhaps the fine sharpened edge of a snowboard would do it. In the Buddhist tradition he would have to live life again, his soul unable to move on until he stopped being such an asshole. Until he wanted a woman with creases by her eyelids – whose favorite drink was no longer vodka and cranberry juice, and whose experiences inside her skin revealed themselves on the outside. Until he got rid of that woolly hat.

  I imagined all these things and then opened my eyes in a panic, but she was still there, only a moment had passed, and as the CD pile got bigger, she stopped having to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand. She held out a CD to show me.

  ‘James Brown? I didn’t think Dad listened to this sort of stuff.’

  ‘That one’s mine,’ I said. ‘I think I’d like to hear it.’

  Mackinac

  The heat inside the Cock is oppressive. The air conditioning is broken again, so the bar feels cramped and louder than usual. Slow, muggy jazz plays on the jukebox and sweat from my thighs seeps through my jeans, leaving a mark on the vinyl top of the barstool. The pint glasses lining the bar are wet, the paper coasters soggy underneath. I press my beer against my neck. Another letter from my mother, stamped with a far away postscript, is folded, unread, in my back pocket.

  Rummy walks back into the bar after trying to cool down outside, though his face is still red with liquor and heat.

  ‘I think you might want to go out there,’ he says. ‘Or maybe not.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

  He shrugs, and I already know. When I came to the bar this evening Bryce could barely stand. Even though the bar is non-smoking, he had lit up a cigarette, ashing into an empty glass, his sweaty armpits staining rings on his shirt. He had been here all day.

  When I tried to join him he said, ‘You shouldn’t be around when I’m this drunk.’

  Surprised, I simply nodded and went to sit with Rummy. After Bryce stumbled out without saying goodbye, John cleared away his empty glass – the bottom black and wet with cigarettes and beer – telling me not to worry.

  ‘Guy needs his space.’ He shrugged.

  I glared at him. John is not a bartender that cuts people off. As long as you can stand, you can drink. If John knows you and lik
es you, you don’t even have to be able to stand, just sitting upright on a barstool or a couch is good enough.

  I wonder why Rummy didn’t alert me when the fight started, and why he didn’t go out to help. When I leave the bar it is slightly cooler outside from the breeze off the lake, the moon a white hole in the sky. Under the streetlights are smartly dressed tourists, people staying overnight. Tipsy women in black high heels and expensive blonde highlights clutch the arms of men in suit jackets, crossing to the other side of Main Street to avoid Bryce, whose face is covered in blood. It is smeared all over his hands, and the front of his shirt is dark. The window behind him, the front of the store that sells all the Indian moccasins, is splattered with a fine red spray.

  I start towards him before noticing Brenna, holding his arm saying, ‘Come on, I’ll take you back to my place to get cleaned up.’ Some of his friends stand around, not so much interested in his busted lip as wanting to fight someone.

  Bryce shrugs away from her and says, ‘You’re not my girlfriend.’

  Brenna looks up at me and raises her eyebrows, saying nothing. I shrug, and she grabs his arm again.

  ‘I know that, asshole, but your face is bleeding.’

  I wonder what she would have said in my absence.

  ‘Guys’ night out!’ Bryce yells, and someone cheers.

  I watch as Brenna marches away, before turning back inside the Cock to finish my beer. Tomorrow he won’t remember fighting. He won’t remember me trying to help, when I tell him I did. One of his friends who works down at the marina calls after me, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of him.’

  I don’t turn around. It is the same suntanned guy who, one night last week, put an arm around me at the Cock while Bryce was in the washroom and said, ‘Your nose is so fucking awesome.’ Then he’d asked if he could touch it.

  ‘Is he all right?’ Rummy asks me as I sit down.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘You’re just going to leave him out there?’

  ‘I’m not his babysitter, Rummy. What the fuck am I supposed to do?’

  I feel I am sliding into something that I didn’t expect, but what the hell. The safety of bachelor degrees and shiny shoes and never too much of anything is something that’s never appealed to me anyway.

  Because I cannot escape the constructs of the island, built around liquor and violence and endings, because the stage was set when I arrived and I must simply learn my cue, I raise my empty glass at John and order another beer. Being drunk is easy, it’s weak, and it’s comforting.

  After two more drinks the heat seems less oppressive. My skin is still clammy, but I’ve stopped noticing this; I’m thinking of Bryce, and of today’s unopened letter from home turning damp in my pocket. Rummy is telling me how he can’t get in touch with Blue, the number she gave him by the docks that long ago morning is out of service. He is worried, but I’m not really listening. Motioning to John at my empty glass, I get up unsteadily from the bar, telling Rummy I’ll be right back.

  Someone has stolen the sign for the women’s bathroom, and just a patch of adhesive glue is left behind. It occurs to me the sign might turn up in Bryce’s bedroom. Locking myself in the second stall, I turn and sit down to read the new graffiti scratched in the turquoise paint:

  Cameron L. has herpes

  I love God

  SPANK ME ANY DAY

  WHITE RIVER ROX!!

  I am no terrorist

  Brenna S. is a whore

  The last entry has been scribbled over and below it,

  Fuck you bitch if I find who wrote this I’ll slit your throat

  The bathroom is cool compared to the rest of the bar, my fingertips turn clumsy. I open my letter, putting the empty envelope in the sanitary bin, the swinging door sweeping it cleanly away. Unfolding the yellow stationery, I read quickly.

  Sometimes if I’m lucky, my grief seems like a heart attack, a constricting of the chest until I’m not sure my heart is beating anymore. Before my grandmother died, when the cancer was in her bones, blood, and brain, she used to confuse apples and oranges for her grandchildren, calling out to the fruit baskets in her room. Afterwards, I was sure I would also die in my sleep – I would often lie awake to ensure my breath remained constant. When the feeling finally went away, I trod carefully in the cavities of my brain, knowing the grief was there, that it was perhaps just giving me a break for a while.

  Scanning the letter quickly, I leap over sentences, impatient for information. My cousin Laura is pregnant, although her boyfriend has been serving overseas for the last year. My parents have bought a new stove. My father thinks he might be allergic to milk. I skip to the end.

  There was frost and my mother is worried about the tulip bulbs she planted. Did she plant them deep enough? A girl I’d gone to high school with has been killed in a car accident, she’d hit a deer late at night and there is nothing new to report nothing growing nothing getting bigger everything contained just tired is all.

  And the letter is finished. I breathe out. The panic deep in my throat grips and releases, and I start to cry. Nothing has changed; there is no news.

  When my tears have stopped, I blow my nose with toilet paper, but it’s too thin and the wet tissue rips in my hand. I stare at the turquoise walls defaced with markers and imagine the bright blue watering can my mother uses for gardening. Then, taking my key to Bryce’s apartment out of my purse, I lean hard into the task, scraping the paint away in clean straight lines. Thin curls fall to the floor, and I smooth the words with my palm.

  Pausing on my way out of the bathroom, I notice how bare and red my skin looks in the mirror, and a horrible red lipstick kiss hovers where my nose should be. I lift up my shirt. My breasts feel hotter than the rest of my body and I wipe the sweat from beneath them, turning to examine myself from the side. It’s hard to believe they could ever betray me. I wonder at the perfume I wear everyday, if the chemicals aren’t somehow collecting, plotting against me; if my sunburns, deodorants, extra fat and dislike of free radical fighting broccoli are slowly killing me from the inside out. Hard to say when everything looks so perfectly ordinary. I put my shirt down and leave, remembering there’s a beer waiting for me at the bar.

  Rummy puts his hand on my shoulder, but doesn’t ask me what’s wrong or if I am okay. He orders us both a shot of Jameson. Remembering the bare face in the bathroom mirror I pull my Bollywood Beige lip gloss from my back pocket, and my hands are almost steady.

  ‘Did you know women ingest over two pounds of lipstick in their lifetimes?’ Rummy asks.

  I roll my eyes and put a thick smear of gloss across my lips.

  ‘You are literally a beauty consumer,’ he says.

  Licking some gloss from the end of the applicator I smile at him. ‘My stomach must be really shiny then.’

  When I say this I sound like myself. We raise our shot glasses to each other, and before we drink I look right at him.

  ‘Thanks,’ I tell him.

  Trainer appears suddenly in the doorway of the Cock, not wearing a shirt, his chest a blanket of hair.

  ‘Hey, Bell,’ he says loudly. ‘Your boyfriend’s got himself arrested.’

  Then, as an afterthought,

  ‘And he looks like shit.’

  Bryce spends the night in the drunk tank, and I imagine him holding one of his bottom teeth in his hand, the blood on his face crusting, flaking, and black.

  When he comes home the next morning, he’s exhausted, his lip swollen and cracked. He has a ninety-dollar fine for drunken disorderly conduct, but instead of being pissed off, he seems pleased. He falls into bed, telling me about his wild evening. He doesn’t remember seeing me, and he doesn’t remember who he was fighting except that whoever it was had drunkenly grabbed the breast of a young receptionist from the hotel down the street.

  ‘My hero,’ I tell him.

  ‘Did Rummy take care of you then?’ he wants to know.

  As I tell Bryce about the letter, he puts his head on my chest, r
esting his cheek against my collarbone, listening. He tells me next time I’m overwhelmed to think about a beach. He claims beaches are relaxing, like looking into a fish tank.

  ‘Think about our honeymoon in Maui,’ he says.

  ‘I think I have sunburn,’ I say, stroking his greasy hair that smells of smoke.

  He rolls away from me, offended that I won’t join in his make-believe. He reaches for the picture of us sitting on the bedside table, taped over the glassed photo of his dog Milo, and pretends to talk to it instead of addressing me directly. From where I am lying, the space inside the frame looks like an empty gray square.

  ‘I’m not going to marry you after all,’ he says to my photograph.

  I make him kiss the picture and he obliges, wincing as his lip touches the glass.

  St. Paul, 4.37 p.m.

  In my brown envelope I find a scab. A dry, yellowed brown bit of long ago blood and skin. He is missing a part of himself and so am I: shedding, extracting, stealing, it’s all the same.

  I once spent an hour in front of my bathroom mirror, sweeping the drooping skin of my eyelids up in different directions, trying to see what I’d look like with a bit of a lift. Everyone’s had it done; I think I’m in the minority. But Alan would roll his eyes when I brought it up. Too expensive, although it wasn’t really. And then he’d trace a finger along a crack, a crevice, and tell me not to change a thing. The last time he did that he had the cough, a heaving bark that made his whole body convulse. It ruined the moment for me, this tender attempt to placate my insecurities ruined by his hacking. I left and went to another room. That was in the beginning of his illness though, just a cough. We were only worried about me.

  I lived my entire life paying no attention to genetically modified ingredients, mono-saturates, sodium content (0.1 per 100 grams is acceptable) and recommended alcohol intake (14 units a week). What happens inside us all is luck, despite what Anna insists as she eats her granola. The possible effects of cigarettes, dark rum, blackouts, bacon, and unprotected sex don’t scare you when you’re young, and if you live long enough with all these vices you think, well, what the hell, I’ve lived this long. And you keep going. Believing in luck.