Flying in Place

by Susan Palwick

“I guess so.” Ginny shivered. “He loves you, too, doesn’t he?”

  Did he? He’d taught me to swim; he’d made the balloon animals for me, and he helped me win the pumpkin contest every year. But I didn’t know what those things meant anymore. He liked me to swim because he wanted me to exercise, so maybe when he made the balloons he’d really been making fun of my stubby legs. Maybe he carved the pumpkins so carefully just because he couldn’t stand to watch contests he didn’t win.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t—I can’t figure it out. Maybe he did once. I don’t know. Anyway, he loved you more. He’s never talked about taking me to Disneyland, that’s for sure.”

  “He must love you,” Ginny said insistently. “He must, Emma.”

  “Why?” She was making me nervous. “It’s not a law, is it? Mom doesn’t. Anyway, what do you care?”

  “He has to love you! Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “Huh?” For a moment I thought I heard breathing in the distance, but then I realized it was only the wind in the trees. What was she talking about? “No, that’s not why I’m here! I showed you why I’m here. The first time I saw you. When I pointed. Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes,” said Ginny, her voice shaking. “Of course I remember. Doesn’t that mean he loves you?”

  “What? That’s not love!”

  “It isn’t?” she said. “It isn’t? I thought it was.”

  She bit her lip and put on a burst of speed, racing away from me, and suddenly I was terrified. What was she talking about? Everything had been perfect when she was still alive. Those parts of Mom hadn’t died yet, before Ginny did. I was proof.

  Well, maybe that was all she’d meant. After all, Mom had been pregnant with me when Ginny died. She must have known how women got pregnant; she must have been told that people had babies together because they loved each other. Relieved, I caught up to her and said, “It is when grownups do it, at least sometimes. When he and Mom did it I guess that’s what it meant.”

  Ginny slowed down, turning back to face me. “Don’t they now?”

  “No. That’s why I’m here.”

  Ginny chewed on a strand of her hair. “Does that mean he doesn’t love Mom anymore?”

  “Of course he does,” I said. That was why I couldn’t tell, wasn’t it? Because he loved Mom and didn’t want her to die from finding out? He had to love Mom; that’s why I was going through all this. Even if he was mean to her sometimes, even if he’d burned her poem. He’d burned it to protect her. He’d said so.

  Yes, of course he loved her, and he was protecting her and I had to protect her too. That was why I couldn’t talk about it in the world, why Jane was furious at me, why I was flying around the dream-lake with Ginny.

  And it had all started when Ginny died. If I didn’t watch out I’d start hating her again, and the time I spent with her was the only thing I looked forward to these days. “Why do we have to talk about this?” I said. “I came here to fly. Come on!”

  I dipped and twirled and did a figure eight, watching my shadow streak on the water below. Ginny didn’t follow me, but I didn’t care. The wind smelled like pine needles and fresh grass, and after I’d breathed it long enough my parents and Jane and mixed variables faded into insignificance.

  Everything came back all too vividly the next morning, although at first it started out as a much better day than usual. I was awakened by the ringing of my alarm clock at 6:15, and when the bell went off I thought I must be having a dream about getting up for school. But it was real. There hadn’t been any breathing and I hadn’t had to leave my body. I may actually have gotten four hours of sleep. Somebody must have gotten really sick at the hospital in the middle of the night, although I was surprised I hadn’t heard the phone. I was getting as deaf as Mom.

  Marvelling, I got up and took a leisurely shower, cheered at the thought of no new bruises. He was out of the house. I’d gotten sleep, and I’d actually be able to enjoy breakfast. Maybe I’d even be able to concentrate in school.

  But when I went downstairs, my mother was sitting at the dining room table twisting a napkin in her hands, and my father was in the kitchen making scrambled eggs. “Your mother didn’t sleep very well last night,” he told me, “so I’m making breakfast for her. Do you want some eggs?”

  “Sure,” I said, confused. My mother’s glazed stare frightened me, but at the same time I was grateful that her wakefulness had prevented the breathing, and I was intrigued by the novelty of watching my father cook. He broke the eggs with intense concentration and great delicacy, tapping them gently against the side of a glass bowl until a neat crack appeared. “Want me to make toast? Is she sick?”

  “Thank you. That would be nice, since I always burn it. No, she’s not ill. Just—on edge. She has things on her mind. You’d better not ask her about it.”

  “She looks weird, Dad. Sitting at the table staring into space like that.”

  “I know,” he said. “Make the toast, Emma.”

  “I don’t think she even saw me when I came downstairs. Are you sure she’s okay?”

  “Whole wheat, sweetheart. With lots of butter. You know how I like it.”

  “Mom likes rye,” I told him.

  “Make some of that too, then.”

  “Will she be able to go to school?”

  “Of course I’ll be able to go to school,” my mother said from the kitchen doorway. “Stewart, you’d better do a more thorough job of whipping those eggs before you pour them into the pan.”

  “Oh, heavens! I guess you’ve recovered just in time to salvage the meal. Emma, we’d better clear out of here and let your mother cook.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked her. The effects of a sleepless night showed; she wasn’t ruddy under the best of circumstances, but now her skin was chalky, except for the circles under her eyes. She was wearing an unironed blouse, and her hair looked as if small, dirty animals had been burrowing in it. “We can make breakfast, Mom.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, looking through me. “I’ll do it. He always burns the toast.”

  “I don’t. I’m good at making toast.”

  “Your sister was good at making toast,” she said, and started to cry.

  She’s dying, I thought. She’s dying and I didn’t even tell anybody, did I? But maybe I did. I shouldn’t have told Myrna that my body wouldn’t get used to it and that I didn’t want to go home. I shouldn’t have eaten with the Hallorans so often. I should have kept my grades up even though I’ve been spending so much time with Ginny. She’s figured it out, and now she’ll die.

  “Is she dying?” I said.

  My father sighed. “Oh, Jesus! No, she’s not dying. She’s just upset. She is not dying, Emma. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said, sniffling. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be the fool of loss, I know I shouldn’t. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  My father grimaced and started massaging her neck. “Pamela, would you please take some expert medical advice and take a Valium?”

  “I hate Valium,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “I know you do.” He moved from her neck to her shoulders. “That’s why I haven’t given you any since the funeral, which is the last time you acted this way. But you’re coming unravelled and it’s scaring Emma, and it’s not making me very happy either. Please, Pam? You can’t teach like this. You know you can’t.”

  She smiled wanly. “Behold me, for I cannot sleep, a weight of nerves without a mind.”

  My father raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat. “Pam—”

  “All right, Stewart. It was just a quotation. Give me your pill.”

  He brought her a pill from the medicine cabinet, and she swallowed it without a murmur. Mom never took pills; she hardly even took aspirin. Was she going to turn into a drug addict now? That was one way people died.

  She looked up from washing the pill down with orange juice, and saw me staring at her. “I’m fine,
Emma.” She didn’t sound fine, and I wasn’t reassured. “Go make the toast. You still have to get ready for school.”

  I was as ready for school as I was going to get, which wasn’t saying much, because to stop worrying about Mom I had to space out even more than usual. I glided through social studies in a fog, and was roused only by the teacher yelling at me. “Emma! Emma, wake up!”

  I opened my eyes with a start. Where had I been? At the lake. No, not quite. Somewhere over the woods, on my way to the lake, trying to find Ginny…

  “Emma, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Huh?” I said. Everyone was staring at me. “Nothing. I didn’t sleep well last night, is all. Guess I’m tired.”

  “Do you want to go to the nurse?” He stood over me, looking helpless, and I felt sorry for him because he didn’t understand anything and he didn’t have a lake to go to when life got horrible.

  “No,” I said. I wasn’t about to get anywhere near Myrna, not after the fight she’d had with my mother. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay attention now, really. What were you talking about?”

  “Rivers,” he said despairingly. “You didn’t hear a word, did you? We were talking about how rivers were roads for the early American settlers.”

  “That’s pretty interesting,” I said. “What were lakes?”

  “Parking lots,” said Billy, behind me, and everyone laughed. The teacher shook his head and went back to writing on the board. I felt a tap on the small of my back and jumped, but it was only Billy passing me a note. “Yo, space cadet,” it read, in his large, messy handwriting. “Jane won’t hate you forever just because your mom’s a witch. Here’s something I bet you don’t know: Jane gave Tad shit in the boat for calling you fat, and he said he liked skinny girls and that’s when he tried to touch her.”

  I blinked at the piece of paper. Jane had stuck up for me after all, and that’s why she’d gotten into trouble. My mother and all those people were saying mean things about her because of something that wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for me. I’d taken her to the lake in the first place, and if she hadn’t defended me to Tad, maybe he wouldn’t have touched her at all. Maybe he just would have looked at her.

  But instead the other thing had happened, and then she’d come home and I’d tattled on her to her mother. Billy was wrong: Jane would hate me forever. I’d hate myself forever.

  Billy tapped me again and passed me a second note. “I thought that might cheer you up, but don’t tell anybody or they’ll put it in the paper. What’s going on with you, anyway?”

  “Nothing,” I wrote on the bottom, as neatly as I could, and passed it back to him. It came back again a few minutes later.

  “You really look rotten,” it said. “You should go see Jane’s mom. She likes you.”

  I always looked rotten, because I was fat. “Mind your own business,” I wrote, and passed him the crumpled piece of paper. It didn’t come back again.

  I tried to stay in my body after that, so people wouldn’t keep asking me questions, but it was nearly impossible. Health class consisted of a boring lecture about anorexia, hardly anything I had to worry about, I dozed in my seat, paying only enough attention to know when to gaze alertly at the teacher, In art I played dreamily with clay, and when the teacher asked me what I was making I said, “An abstract sculpture.” In math the teacher solved equations with mixed variables while Jane threw spitballs at my back; I escaped all of it by thinking about Disneyland. Would my father promise to take us there, if Mom was dying?

  And then, blessedly, came lunch. I’d taken to spending it curled in a chair in the school library, supposedly reading but actually soaring above the lake. Today, even more than usual, I couldn’t wait to get there, but the lake seemed cloudy, as if a storm was coming, and when Ginny joined me she frowned and said, “You look lousy.”

  “Yeah,” I told her, remembering Billy’s cruel concern that morning, “everybody’s telling me that. So what else is new? I can’t help it if I’m not beautiful. You were the beautiful one. Be grateful. Anyway, you don’t look so good yourself.”

  She’d gotten very pale, the way Mom had been that morning, the way ghosts are supposed to be, and the wind from the water was too cold. “When Mom found out she was going to have you, she said she hoped she’d have another beautiful baby. I told her not to want that. Why would I tell her that, Emma?”

  “Because you didn’t want the competition,” I said, and flew away from her. Why was she doing this to me? The lovely dream couldn’t be turning into a nightmare, not now, please, please, when I needed it so much. “You were probably afraid I’d get too much attention if I were beautiful. Oh, shit, Ginny, I’m sorry, I don’t want to be mean to you. Look, can’t you please make the sun come out? Please?”

  “If you’ll talk to me,” she said.

  “Huh? Of course I’ll talk to you. What else have I been doing?”

  “Flying in circles. You’ve been spending so much time here that you can’t be doing much else. What about school?”

  “Oh, come on! Now you sound like Mom! Next you’ll start telling me how you used to sit in bed in that stupid frilly nightgown, doing your homework even after you were supposed to be asleep because you loved school so much. Studying the Atlas with a flashlight under the covers. ‘Ginny loved geography,’ Mom always says, but I think she just likes the alliteration.”

  Ginny laughed, and the sun came out. “I loved maps, that’s for sure. Different places… I hated that nightgown, though. She thought I looked so pretty in it, but I was always afraid all those ribbons were going to strangle me in the middle of the night.”

  At the word “pretty” her face went slack again, the way it had when I told her she was beautiful. She flew to sit on a tree branch, a big one that hung out over the water, and I joined her, wiggling my toes in midair. I’d long since stopped worrying about the fact that I didn’t really have toes here.

  “Well,” I said, “you are pretty. Nobody lied about that.”

  “Was,” she said, her chin set; when she was being stubborn she looked like our father. “I was pretty, when I was alive.”

  I looked away uneasily. “Oh, come on, Ginny. You’re the one who told me you’re real, right?”

  “I’m real,” she said, “That doesn’t mean I’m alive. You’re alive, remember? Don’t you have to go to classes or something?”

  “No! This is my lunch period!”

  “Then you’d better eat.”

  “Do I look like I need to eat? I’d rather look like you.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Nobody should want to look like me. You need to eat. Everybody needs to eat,”

  “Ginny—”

  “Go eat your lunch,” she said firmly, and brought back the clouds again. “Anyway, somebody’s calling you. Can’t you hear it?”

  “No,” I said, but Ginny was gone and the lake was too cold again, and when I got back into my body the librarian was standing next to my chair and calling my name.

  “Emma? Emma, dear?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why, there you are. I thought we’d lost you for a minute there. Don’t you like that book? You haven’t turned a page for the past half hour.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Thank you. I have to go to French class now.”

  “Not yet, dear. It’s another twenty minutes until the bell. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

  It was Myrna. My stomach contracted when I saw her. Mom hadn’t let her come to the house, so she’d hunted me down at school. “I heard that you hadn’t been eating lunch lately,” she said, sitting down in the chair next to me, “so I thought I should find out why.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked, looking away. The librarian cleared her throat, returned to her desk, and began filing index cards.

  “Jane told me. You always used to eat with her, remember? Now you don’t even show up in the cafeteria.”

  “I can’t eat lunch with her,” I said. “She hates me.”r />
  Myrna rubbed her eyes; she didn’t look like she’d gotten much sleep lately either. “Emma, nobody hates you. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong!” I couldn’t tell Myrna that Jane had spent math class throwing spitballs at me, or I’d be tattling again.

  “You’re not eating lunch. You’re not doing your school-work. It’s seventy-five degrees out and you’re dressed for late October—”

  “I’m fine! Leave me alone! Mind your own business!”

  “I am minding my business. If I think something’s wrong with you, I have to try to find out what it is. That’s my job. I’m the school nurse.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” I said. “If you leave me alone I’ll eat salami sandwiches every day and start doing my homework, okay? Are you happy now?”

  “No, because I don’t think you are.”

  I turned to face her. “I’m not even supposed to talk to you!” I said, yelling now. The librarian looked up sharply, and then studiously returned to her filing. “If my mother knew I was talking to you she’d kill me! Didn’t you hear what she told you on the phone last night? Go away!”

  “I didn’t talk to her on the phone last night,” Myrna said, frowning. “Did she say I did?”

  I blinked at her. Had Mom said so? My father had, but only after I’d asked him. But I’d heard Mom say “Myrna,” hadn’t I? Maybe I really was going crazy. “That wasn’t you who called?”

  “No,” She made a face and said, “Maybe it was my doppelganger. The one who’s been attending black masses and plotting to overthrow the Girl Scouts.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Emma, I don’t think your mother’s happy either. And I can’t make you tell me something you don’t want to tell. But if you change your mind, I’m here. Now answer one more question for me, please: whatever it is that’s troubling you, does it have anything to do with your father?”

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t say anything. My nipples tightened and my throat constricted, clenched with the same fear that had paralyzed me before Jane went out in the rowboat. Don’t talk about it, don’t say anything, don’t tell anyone. I couldn’t have told now even if I’d wanted to. My body wouldn’t let me.