Still Waters

by Rebecca Addison

  “No.” whispers an urgent voice in my ear. It sounds muffled and far away as if someone is speaking to me through the walls.

  “No, Crew. You listen to me.”

  I can feel softness against my ear and arms tight like elastic bands around my shoulders.

  “Remember the way my hair felt this morning when you ran your fingers through it? And the way we swam away from each other in the sea so that we could look at each other from a distance? Remember the feeling of my skin against yours, warm and smooth and slippery like a fish?”

  She calls me back, her voice urgent in my ear and her arms gripping me like she’s trying to stop me from being pulled away by a current.

  “No,” she says urgently into my ear, and I think she might be crying. “Remember the feeling of my lips on your skin in the bathtub and the way you held me and loved me so softly?”

  I’m floating somewhere between awake and asleep. The ocean of blood beckons me. If I let it, it will take me under. But then her voice breaks through clearly, and I can feel her breath against my ear. Her words chase the nightmare into the darkness. I grip them tightly as I feel it go.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Hartley

  As the night changes to dusky light and the sun begins to filter through the trees, I keep my hand steady on his chest and wait. He lies still as a log, his death-like slumber the only sign that he spent a good part of the night fighting whatever enemies still live inside his brain. He looks as though he needs to sleep for a hundred years. When Evita comes with breakfast at seven, I take it from her quietly and slip back into bed. I’ve watched over him since his first cry woke me, keeping vigil in case the nightmares return. If they do, I want to be ready. I’m going to fight for him with everything I’ve got. Underneath my hand, I feel him stir, and I sit up quickly, looking down into his face for any signs of distress. But he’s sleeping soundly, his breath coming and going in a slow, steady rhythm. Outside, the birds notice the sunrise and begin their morning racket. I look at him anxiously, I don’t want him to wake up, but thankfully he seems oblivious to everything and anything this morning. This sleep, I hope it heals.

  At nine, he yawns and rubs a hand across his face and I take it as a sign that he’s ready to rejoin the world. I scoot over as close to him as I can get and spread my hair across his chest in the way that he likes. My arms ache from holding onto him all night, but I hold him anyway. I never want to let him go.

  “Morning,” he says, his voice husky and strange from sleep. “What time is it? It looks late.”

  I start to pull away from him so I can check the clock, but he makes a little cry of protest and pulls me back.

  “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  “You had a nightmare,” I say, and underneath my cheek he sighs.

  “But you pulled me back.”

  “Yes.”

  He strokes the hair away from my face and pulls me closer.

  “We’ll do that again. Every night until they stop.”

  “Babe, I’m not your problem to fix.”

  I pull away and sit up next to him. He looks up at me in surprise.

  “I can’t see you in pain like that, Crew,” I say quietly, trying desperately to keep the emotion in my voice under control. “It breaks my heart.”

  He looks over my face slowly and then down to meet my eyes.

  “I’m sorry. But this is it. It won’t change. I wish things were different, if only so I didn’t have to see that look on your face ever again.”

  I reach down and find his hand, threading my fingers through his and pressing it against my heart.

  “No. No more apologizing. I’m going to fight for you since you won’t do it yourself.”

  I shake my head and force the words out in short, ragged gasps as tears slide down my cheeks. “You’ve given up.”

  I’d practiced the words I wanted to say to him, of course. The long dark hours watching over him had given me time to think about the man I clung to so tightly, as if letting him go would mean surrender. He lives his life barely containing the pain that lurks just beneath the surface. He fools people with his charm and his looks and for most that’s more than enough. But I can see it. I see it every time I look at him when he doesn’t know I’m watching. I thought a lot about Jessie as I lay next to him last night, both of us shaking and slick with sweat after the nightmare finally faded. I thought about the woman she would have become. I thought about the baby girl she held safe in her belly, not knowing that she’d never have the chance to meet her and watch her grow. But mostly, I thought about how much she loved Crew. Sometime before the sun came up the air in the room suddenly grew warm and thick, and the moon cast a silver beam across the floor. I felt a whisper in my soul, no more than a flutter of an eyelash or the delicate touch of a fingertip. It told me to take care of him, to love him for the man he is now, with all of his brokenness and all of his pain. But more than that, it told me to fight for him. To love him enough to bring him back.

  “Hey,” he says softly, as he looks desperately into my eyes and tries to pull me closer. “I’m going to be ok. Sssshhh.”

  I let him pull me downwards until I’m lying against his side and when he brushes the tears off my cheeks I don’t stop him. But I won’t be quiet. I promised.

  “No, Crew. This has to stop. You can’t live like this, suffering through battles like that in your sleep every night and then walking around all day poisoning yourself with guilt. No. If you won’t fight, I will.”

  He rolls over and pulls me back against his chest, threading an arm around and across my ribs.

  “I love that you want to try and help me.”

  “But?”

  He sighs and tightens his hold on me, pulling me back so that there is no air between us.

  “Some people can’t be saved.”

  I pick up his hand and squeeze it tightly, shaking my head slowly against him and gritting my teeth.

  “You know what Crew?” I whisper as I press his hand to my chest. “I’m going to prove you wrong.”

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Hartley

  Over the next few days, we fall into a comfortable routine. After breakfast in bed, we go for long walks along the beach, walking slowly, my hand in his and our bare feet kicking through the surf. It’s not a time for talking. Crew wakes up late, battle weary and his head full of thoughts. We walk silently for half an hour or more while he sifts through them, one by one. When we reach the rocks at the end of the bay, we take off our clothes and wade into the water until it’s up to our waists. Crew dives under and swims out past the breaking waves until his head is just a dot bobbing above the surface. He swims powerfully, in strong rhythmical strokes parallel to the beach. By the time he makes his way back to me, he’s reborn. Every morning it’s the same, the ocean washing away what clings from the night before. By the time he’s holding me to him in water that’s warm and shallow, our feet buried in the soft sand, I know that he’s ready to talk again.

  “Hey, kid,” he smiles down at me, on our fourth morning swim together.

  “Hey.”

  He bends his head to mine, and we kiss slowly. I taste the salt on his lips.

  “Last night was better,” he says against my mouth, and I pull him to me, closer.

  “You only screamed once.”

  “There was no blood.”

  I kiss the hard valley between the muscles on his chest, a plate of armor protecting his heart.

  “You’re a miracle worker,” he says, lifting the hair off my neck so that he can kiss me under my ear.

  “No,” I say, hugging him to me tightly. “You’re the one doing the work.”

  Just like every morning we swim until our legs feel leaden, and the salt starts to dry on our faces. We stagger up onto the sand laughing like children and cleansed of the night, the water reconnecting us to each other and the day. We dry our bodies in the sun, dress slowly, and walk back down the beach. But unlike earlier, on this walk we
talk about everything. Crew tells me stories about the trouble he got Jake into as a boy, and I talk about the things I was working on in the lab. For the half an hour it takes to reach the opposite end of the bay, Crew is open and uncensored. He tells me about his father, the way he was before he drank. He speaks of his mother fondly, tells me how beautiful she was, that she was funny and clever and loved to read. He tells me how she introduced him to Virginia Woolf when he was a teenager, telling him that she was the only writer who ever understood her. On our return journey, we walk high on the beach where the forest meets the sand. He laughs often, and even when he talks about the past his voice is light. He clasps my hand gently, swinging it between us as we pad slowly along the sand.

  When we reach the cabana, we arrange the cushions on the platform and have a picnic brunch. Evita leaves a basket of fruit, bread, cheese and cakes and we eat them greedily with the hunger that comes from spending a long time in the water. Then we lie back together and read or sleep or make love. This is my favorite part of the day. In our cabana cubby house time doesn't exist.

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” Crew says as he moves the picnic basket off the mattress onto the floor.

  “What is it?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Hmm,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him. “Is this like the first time you told me to ‘close my eyes’?”

  He shakes his head, his eyes not leaving my face.

  “If it was, I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Just close them,” he smiles mischievously. “And don’t peek.”

  I do as I’m told, waiting patiently as he climbs off the platform and drags something out from underneath. I feel his weight behind me, and then he places his hands over my eyes.

  “I hope you like it,” he whispers into my ear, and then his hands are gone.

  When I open my eyes, there’s a cardboard box in front of me with tape along the top. “Open it up!”

  I look over at him and have to laugh when I see the excited grin on his face. The tape comes off in one long strip and when I open the flaps I can’t believe what I’m looking at. The box is full of science magazines and journals; there are at least thirty of them, and in lots of different languages. Some of them are old and others I’ve never heard of before. I pull them out, gasping with delight at each new discovery and spread them over the mattress.

  “I thought it was only fair that you had something to read, too,” he says, laughing when he sees my face. “I wasn’t sure which ones to get, so I bought them all.”

  “Are you kidding?” I cry, as I launch myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Some of these are collectible. This one is still in its plastic!”

  “It’s not jewelry or anything,” he says into my hair, “but I’m happy you like it.”

  I place a hand on either side of his face and kiss him softly.

  “It’s perfect.”

  I think about the Cartier watch my parents bought me for my birthday and the set of Louis Vuitton luggage David gave me for Christmas. Crew already understands me better than any of them ever did. I collect up the magazines and put them safely back into the box, keeping one out to read. Crew settles back against the cushions with his copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Venezuela, according to him, is a Hemingway sort of place. I lie across the mattress and prop my head up on his stomach, and together we spend a quiet hour reading, stopping only to look out at the ocean every now and again.

  In the early afternoon, we share lunch on the terrace. This is not Crew’s favorite part of the day because it’s the time we’ve agreed to talk about Jessie. When I came up with the idea the morning after his first nightmare, he agreed to it only if we set a timer and stuck to it. So every day we sit and eat our salad with Crew’s phone placed next to his cutlery, the timer ticking down from 60 minutes to 0. Each day he tells me something new. Sometimes it’s a memory of when they were children. Other times it’s a glimpse of the future they had planned together. Always, it’s difficult for him to begin. I don’t say anything during our lunches. I limit myself to a smile or a nod of encouragement for him to keep talking. Today, the words fall easily from his mouth. He’s telling me how he convinced Jessie to see him as a boyfriend, rather than a surrogate big brother. I lean back in my chair and watch him talk. He smiles now and then as he tells the story, his eyes soft and flooded with memory. With each word he speaks, I feel a quieting in my soul. I imagine that every happy memory he shares is like a seam of glue filling a crack in his broken heart. When the timer goes off, he meets my eyes and sighs in relief. It’s time to go to the bar and have a drink. That was another one of Crew’s conditions. And then he walks me back to my treehouse.

  We walk slowly, not really wanting to get there, and when we finally make it he pushes me back against the trunk of my tree and kisses me slowly, his hands in my hair and his skin smelling like sunshine. Everyday it’s a struggle to leave each other. He wants to follow me up, I tell him to go and do some work, but then I kiss him and try to make him stay. Eventually we sigh and take our hands off each other, and I make my way up the winding staircase, his eyes on me until I get to the top. When I reach the door I lean over the side and wave goodbye, and he turns reluctantly, walking through the trees in the direction of his office. While he works, I write emails to Eleanor about the beach, the wildlife, the weather, the people in the village. Anything other than my parents or the water samples. She writes back to me in furious bullet points.

  Where are you exactly?

  When are you coming home?

  I don’t care about the stupid capuchin monkeys!!

  What am I meant to tell your parents??

  In the afternoons, I work on my report for the Environmental Protection Agency on a laptop I borrowed from Crew. I told him I needed to finish some reports leftover from my old job, and it feels just truthful enough for me to be able to sleep at night. Tomorrow afternoon we leave for Ondas. I’m going to send the report before we go.

  At six o’clock every evening Crew knocks on my door. The anticipation of seeing each other after a few hours apart makes me jumpy. I spend an hour getting ready, fussing with my hair and then giving up and tying it into a ponytail. Every day I wish I had something prettier to wear and then forget about it completely as soon as I see him. He looks at me in the same white cotton dress I wore yesterday and the day before, and his eyes are bright.

  “You look beautiful,” he says, “I love that on you.”

  I follow him down the staircase, and we walk hand in hand towards the Main Lodge and the terrace. Only tonight, he’s leading me in another direction.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, but he just smiles mysteriously and keeps walking.

  “You’ll see. I thought we’d do something different for our last night.”

  We walk past the main building and his office to the track that leads to the beach. The night is mild after what was the hottest day yet, and the sand is still warm on my feet.

  “I thought we could eat in the cabana,” he says as we head towards the jetty. It’s lit up like a Christmas tree with candles along the dock and pink paper lanterns hanging from each of the four sides of the cabana.

  “Ice cream?” I laugh when I pull the netting aside and see a large icebox at the end of the platform full of tubs of Ben & Jerry's.

  “Surprise.”

  “Wait, are we eating ice cream for dinner?”

  “You are eating ice cream for dinner. I ate earlier.”

  We climb onto the platform and Crew lowers the blinds so that we’re tucked up inside. The lanterns sway in the breeze sending shadows dancing across the fabric walls. Suddenly I’m a child again, playing shadow puppets with my sister Marta and a flashlight behind the living room sofa.

  “So, Ondas tomorrow,” he says, lying back on the cushions as he watches me lift the spoon to my mouth. I look down at him and smile when I see how relaxed he is. I hope Ondas will be good for him.

  “It’s Jessie’s place,” I sa
y softly, as I put my bowl on the floor and move up next to him. “How do you feel about going there?”

  He runs a hand up and down my arm, down my side, over my hip.

  “Good, I think.” His eyes widen as though he’s surprised himself. “Really good.”

  He puts his hand around the back of my head and pulls me to him. I try to kiss him softly, but he presses my mouth hard against his and opens his lips.

  “Stop being gentle with me,” he groans. “I’m not going to break.”

  He flips me over roughly and pulls my legs around his waist.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper into his mouth, “you’re barely sleeping, I can see how tired you are - ”

  “Babe, I’m not tired, see? Wide awake.”

  He kisses me harder.

  “It’s hard not to treat you like a patient when you have so much healing to do,” I gasp into his neck, and he growls in response.

  “Hartley, I swear to God - ”

  He gathers my wrists in one of his hands and pins them above my head. I turn my face and bite his neck in reply.

  “I don’t want to talk about that now,” he says, pulling up my dress with his other hand. “I just want you.”

  I tug my wrists in his hand, and he lets them go immediately, lowering his mouth to my throat. My pulse thuds against his lips.

  His hands are on my dress, pulling the straps off my shoulders and tugging impatiently on the zipper. I peel the fabric off quickly and move back underneath him, the warm skin of his chest pressed against mine and my stomach tight and hollow with wanting.