The Heaven of Animals

by David James Poissant

  Instead, he said: “And you’re sure of that? That all things work together for good?”

  “I’m sure of one thing,” she said. “At meets, this arm wins me sympathy points, big-time.” She turned the shoulder toward him, and the end, that ice cream cone end, wiggled just like the tip of her nose. Then she moved past him, around the pool to the diving board, and he understood what she’d wanted him to see. Not her nakedness, not the arm, but this.

  The diving board had three steps. She climbed them, then walked the board’s length. The end sagged. She bounced, and the board’s lip broke the surface. The tap sent rings shivering over the water.

  “I’m more of a platform diver,” she said. “Plus, a springboard should be a meter up. This one’s a foot, maybe, so don’t hold that against me.”

  She backed up, then charged forward. She leapt. She bounced. She flew.

  Her body, in air, was a ball, and the ball made one, two revolutions. Then the ball unfurled and Lily’s body snapped straight. She hit the water like a wand—hand, head, torso to legs, toes last. Where two hands might have met overhead, there was only the one, sure and unwavering as the blade of a knife. She cut the water clean, splash so small it was almost no splash at all.

  It happened very quickly, so that Brig hardly had time to register it before she was climbing the pool ladder and standing before him. Her hair hung tangled and dripping, nipples dark beneath the bra. Brig stepped back and fell into a chair. He reclined like the chair was one he’d meant to lower himself into, and Lily looked away laughing.

  She moved to the board and dove again. This time, the air seemed to cradle her before it let her go. Her body folded, a toe touch, then unfolded in time to hit the water clean.

  She dove and dove, and his gaze returned, again and again, to the arm—to the space in air where an arm belonged. The diving, which might have drawn attention away from the arm, instead emphasized it. He wondered whether she knew this, or, knowing it, whether she cared. He felt weirdly and suddenly protective of her, like the arm-void was sacred, her body a saint’s, the poolside his station. He was a guard in a Roman cathedral. He glanced around, but around him were only bug noises and night. Through drawn blinds leaked the light of a single, flickering TV, but no tourists came to see. They were alone.

  Lily climbed the ladder for the last time, moved to him, and took his hand. The air was warm, her body cold. She pulled him out of the chair and close. He was ready for the kiss, but there was no kiss, only tumbling and a sky spun like a turntable.

  They hit the water together, and Lily came up laughing. He’d gotten a mouthful. He spit. He cursed. His head buzzed and he tasted chlorine. He gripped the wall, shaking.

  She swam at him, and he shrugged from her touch. He spit again.

  “I could have broken my neck,” he said.

  Lily backed away. She treaded water at the pool’s center, a graceful, wing-broke ballet.

  “I don’t really think you could have broken your neck.”

  Brig clung to the wall. He couldn’t catch his breath. Finally, he just said it.

  “You can’t what?” she said.

  “Swim,” he said. “I never learned how to swim.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh! Let me help you.”

  She swam at him, and he held up one hand, then quickly returned that hand to the wall.

  “I’m okay. Just give me a minute.”

  “If I’d known,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “People throw people into pools. This isn’t the first time. I’ll live.”

  Lily moved to the shallow end. She lifted herself onto the pool’s concrete lip and crossed her legs.

  “At meets, we throw the coach in when we win,” she said.

  Coach. He laughed. He was stupid. Stupid and old. He considered the current, the prosthesis between them. Had he really thought this girl, this beautiful girl with Kate’s face—her emerald eyes and button nose—could feel what he felt at her touch? She didn’t belong here with him in a pool. She belonged at prom with a boy her age, some kid who’d take whatever she gave him with grateful admiration.

  Then again, high schoolers were high schoolers, adults minus the manners, and so maybe no one had asked her. Maybe she’d asked and more than one boy had said no, which would be too bad. This girl was funny, uninhibited, smart.

  Kate had been smart. Smarter than him. Smart enough to know when to get out. He didn’t feel ill will toward her as much as he missed her. She’d been more than someone to come home to. She’d been, what? A friend? How was it a friend felt more intimate than a fuck? Not that Kate couldn’t fuck. They’d been fine in that department, right up to the end.

  Had it really been three years?

  He peeled off his shirt and heaved it at the deck chairs. It landed with a thwap not far from Lily’s arm. He pulled off his shoes and set them on the deck. He balled his socks and dropped them, soggy, into the foot holes.

  “I’m thirty,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m not twenty-whatever-I-said. I’m thirty. Next month, I’ll be thirty-one.” He kept one hand on the wall, but turned, as if for her to take in the chest hair, the flabby pectorals and rotund gut.

  “I know,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t know know. I just knew no way were you twenty-four. But you were trying so hard. It was, I don’t know, cute.”

  “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “Endearing, then.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

  She uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again. She was small, but her thighs were massive, muscled as an animal’s. He began working his way down the wall, hand over hand. The water was warm as the air.

  “I don’t feel sorry for you,” she said. “I’m impressed. You told me something true. Took you a while, but you did. You know how often that happens? To me? At swim meets? At school?”

  “How do people speak to you?” He imagined the name calling. Captain Hook, he was thinking. Or, who was the other one, the guy with scissors for fingers?

  “That’s just it,” she said. “No one talks to me. Or they talk, but they’re only saying what they think they’re supposed to. Like, last week, this lady comes up to me after a meet and tells me I’m brave. I wanted to punch her in the face. But I didn’t punch her in the face. You know what I did? I said thank you. So, I guess I have a problem with the truth too.”

  She wrapped her arm around her middle and looked away. The bug sounds had coalesced into a pulsing, rhythmic thing, a super-cricket amplified a few thousand times.

  “What I mean is, I know all about people feeling sorry. I know how it feels, and it sucks. I try not to feel sorry for anyone, and I definitely don’t feel sorry for you. Even if you’re old.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And can’t swim.”

  Brig laughed. “You’re a trip, you know that?”

  It was what his dad would have said. When Brig, as a child, did something goofy or precocious or unexpectedly kind, his father would run a hand over his hair—not ruffling it, just a stroke, crown to eyebrows, like petting a dog. “You’re a trip,” he’d say.

  The last time he’d seen his father, the man had come to watch him pack.

  “I won’t help,” he said.

  “I’m not asking you to,” Brig said.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said, and, when Kate walked into the room, he added, “both of you. You’re both making a big, giant mistake.”

  But Brig had heard that before. Leaving the church had been a big, giant mistake, along with marrying Kate, a Methodist. Not having kids right away had been a big, giant mistake, then not having kids at all. His father hadn’t been quick to pronounce Brig’s whole life a big, giant mistake, but maybe, if he did, he’d be right. Thirty years down, who knew how many to go, and still Brig had no partner, n
o profession, no place to call home.

  Fuck, but he had to quit this line of thinking. The only thing worse than having someone feel sorry for you was feeling sorry for yourself—not exactly a profound sentiment, but sometimes the truth wasn’t.

  Brig’s toes scraped the bottom, and then he was standing. He let go and waded to where Lily sat on the wall. He didn’t want to try lifting himself out, flopping like a doomed fish in front of her, so he used the stairs. He joined her on deck, feet in the water. He ignored the wet press of his khakis, boxers blue beneath. He gave Lily space, a few arm lengths between them.

  Lily was watching the water. “Tell me something else that’s true,” she said.

  “I’m divorced,” he said. It shot out, a spring-loaded snake from one of those trick cans labeled NUTS.

  “How long?”

  “Years.”

  “What happened?”

  “I forgot how to be happy,” he said. But that wasn’t quite it. With Kate, he’d only forgotten how to fake it.

  As for happiness, true happiness, unadulterated happiness—he tried thinking back to when he’d last been happy, but all he came up with was his father’s hand on his head. The world had been so orderly then. Heaven and hell and a surefire way to trade one for the other. He’d had all the answers, the keys to kingdom—­kingdoms, three of them. Outer Darkness yawned at his heels, but he’d never tip back, not unless he rejected what he knew. And then he rejected what he knew. Better never to have known than to know and let go—that was unpardonable. That was the unforgivable sin.

  He’d tried to find his way back, but if belief is an uphill battle, believing again is a war, musket fire and bayonets grooved for blood.

  What did Brig believe now, poolside in wet pants on a night with no moon? He believed whatever he felt. Moment to moment, he was sure he could walk this girl to his room just as he was sure that he couldn’t. Was sure he would find the runaway cat, and sure the cat was dead already. Sure that, one day, phone in his fist, Kate’s voice would bloom, a rhododendron in his ear, and sure, so sure, that she was gone for good.

  “You still love her?”

  Brig breathed in, breathed out. “I think answering that question would require another joint.”

  Lily laughed.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  “You want me to say what you’ve already guessed?”

  “No date?”

  “No date.”

  “Sucks,” he said.

  “Yup,” she said.

  They were quiet awhile. A light came on in one window then went out again.

  “Tell me something else,” he said.

  She kicked her feet underwater, and the surface mushroomed in little burbs.

  “One time,” she said, “changing classes, it unsnapped, just . . . fell off. Swim team’s one thing, but school? It was like I’d rolled a grenade down the hall. One girl screamed so loud, I swear the lockers shook. Everyone got out of the way. Then everyone tried not to look, they just . . . walked around it, like one of those yellow signs custodians put up when the floors are wet.”

  “That’s terrible,” he said.

  When she met his eyes, her look was suspicious, unbelieving.

  “And I’m sure you would have picked it up.”

  “I caught it, didn’t I? I didn’t drop it.”

  “That’s true,” she said.

  Her feet left the water and her knees met her chin.

  “We’re bringing each other down,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Let’s just bring each other up.”

  She stood. Inside of a minute, she’d refastened her arm and pulled on her clothes. She wrung water from his shirt and held it out.

  She said, “Are you going to show me your place, or what?”

  . . .

  The apartment was small, four hundred square feet, give or take, outfitted with the essentials and little else. The main room was a coffee table, a couch, and a plastic crate overturned with a TV on top. The carpet was worn without being stained. The only thing segregating this room from the next was the kitchen’s linoleum and the narrow, transitional strip of aluminum tacked between. If Lily expected a bachelor pad, posters on the wall and nudie mags in a stack, she’d be disappointed. His was a den of divorce. Half the time on the road, he didn’t require much, and, perpetually broke, he couldn’t have stocked up on much if he did.

  “Cozy,” Lily said. Then: “It’s nice.” She ran her hand down one bare wall, beige. All of the walls were that innocuous shade of Band-Aid that put Brig in mind of hospitals or synagogues.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” he said.

  “Let’s do shots,” she said.

  Air blew cold through the ceiling vents, and Brig moved to his room. He changed into dry clothes, then reappeared with shorts and a shirt for her.

  “You’ve done shots before?” he asked.

  Lily rolled her eyes and took the clothes from his hands.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, her hair was combed. It hung, a wet veil, like black drapes around her face. He’d picked his smallest shirt, an old X-Men tee from high school that he’d never summoned the heart to throw out. It was a medium, and still it hung nearly to her knees, sleeves at her elbows. Wolverine leapt from the center, claws out. The fake arm gleamed, a tan, creamy plastic in the lamplight. Behind Lily, through the open door, a bra and panties hung from the shower rod, shorts and sweatshirt balled on the floor.

  He thought to retrieve his own clothes, tossed, water soaking into his bedroom carpet, but there was some momentum to be accounted for, and he didn’t want to lose it.

  “Tequila okay?”

  “Great,” she said, which was good. It was all he had, tequila and PBRs, a case in the fridge and two more in the closet.

  He searched the cabinets for a shot glass. He thought he’d had one once, but there was no telling. Finally, he pulled down a pair of mugs. One was yellow, a smiley face on its side. The other, white with brown stenciling along the lip, was an old Waffle House coffee cup, something a friend had stolen for him as a joke. Somewhere was the complete place setting: dish, cup, and saucer, fork and knife. He filled the mugs a quarter full with tequila and walked them along with a saltshaker to the coffee table. He returned to the kitchen and opened the fridge. On a shelf between an expired half gallon of skim and something in Tupperware leaned a lime of questionable integrity, rind chalky and soft. He cut it up anyway, then carried a pair of wedges to the couch.

  Lily was seated, and he sat beside her. Pharmaceutical Representative, the industry’s trade journal, lay in her lap, pages open to a Samsonite ad.

  “Which one do you have?” she asked.

  “Those are three-hundred-dollar bags,” he said. “Mine’s over there.”

  In the corner stood his suitcase, black and tan, his only piece from a matching set. The suitcase had a retractable handle and two wheels but lacked the lightweight frame people had these days, the four wheels that swiveled and turned on a dime. The set had been a present from Kate’s parents, a wedding gift as practical as they were. They’d tried saving the marriage, her parents, offering to pay for fertility treatments or pay off debts, anything they thought might be wrong. When the dilemma proved ineffable, they offered money for a marriage counselor. But Kate’s mind was made up. Brig wondered whether her parents knew the way it had gone down, or whether they blamed him, whether they assumed he’d left their little girl. He wanted them to have the whole story. He didn’t know why, but he wanted that.

  Lily tossed Pharm Rep onto the coffee table and held out her hand. He tapped salt onto her skin, then tapped some onto his own.

  “You first,” she said, which should have been his first clue. He licked the salt, took the shot, bit the lime. The liquor was cheap. It scalded his throat going down,
then churned, syrupy and lava-hot, in his gut. He handed Lily the smiley face mug.

  “Count me down?” she said, and Brig did.

  On three, Lily licked her hand and downed the tequila, but she didn’t make it to the lime. She was coughing too hard, flapping her hand in front of her face, eyes watering.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

  “The lime gets the taste out of your mouth,” he said, but she waved him off.

  “I thought it would taste like a margarita.”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She rubbed her shoulder. He wondered whether the arm ever itched or burned. One late-night documentary had taught him about amputees and the phantom limb pains they sometimes got.

  “You know how I promised to tell you if you were staring?” Lily said.

  He nodded.

  “You’re staring.”

  He apologized. He took the mug from her hand and finished the shot. More throat scouring, more burn.

  Lily said nothing. Her unused lime segment sat on the table, and she touched it with one finger. It rocked back and forth, a little green boat.

  “What are we doing here?” he said.

  “How do you mean?” She scooted closer so that their legs touched, and Brig stood.

  “Enough,” he said. “This is getting weird. Can I just come right out and say that this is getting weird?”

  “This got weird an hour ago,” she said.

  “And whose fault is that? Who took off her clothes? Who got me high?”

  Lily laughed. She stood and Wolverine stood with her.

  “I’m five foot four with one arm. You really think I could get you to do anything you didn’t want to?”

  She moved to him, pressed the full length of herself against him, hard, and put her lips to his neck. She didn’t kiss him, just let her lips lie there, soft, warm worms on his skin. Then she pulled away and pulled his hand with her to the bedroom.

  . . .

  A year, he’d waited for Kate’s call.

  “Call me when you get there,” she’d said. “Just so I know you’re safe.”