Skinner Luce

  “You going to be sick?” he asks.

  She tilts her head back against the headrest. “I’m not sure.”

  A few minutes pass. He turns down the defogger, and the silence between them gets so loud, she makes herself go first.

  “You’re right about the cop, Sean. It sucks he came here, and I need to reassure Eva again. But I swear, it’s all over.”

  He rubs his forehead, pushing back his hair and gripping it. “Can we be straight, just for once? You’re not an escort anymore, is what you’re saying?”

  She grits her teeth. “Yes. It’s over.”

  “Why’d he come here asking all those questions?”

  “There was an investigation. I can’t go into it.”

  “God,” he mutters. He makes a fist against the window, closing his eyes briefly. Then he says, “You know, Luce, I always thought the hospital made you all weird and cagey. But I’ve been thinking, it’s just how you always were, right? I mean, even as a little kid.” He turns half around in his seat to consider her, like he’s taking stock. “I can’t figure you, Luce. I just can’t. I mean, how can you not tell me what’s going on, after everything we went through?”

  Jet-black lashes around his blue eyes, the freckles over his nose, so deeply familiar. She might throw up after all, she thinks, it’s so close in here, the boozy air. “Please don’t, Sean. Not now.”

  “Oh, yeah? When would be a good time, Luce? All those emergency room visits, all the blood everywhere, the suspensions from school, Aunt Eva ripping her hair out from worry. How about me getting beat black and blue for sticking by you all the time. At my house, when you did it with my da’s razors. You want to know how bad he beat me for that? Yeah, that’s right. I never told you. I didn’t want to upset you more. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  An image of Uncle Seamus flashes into Lucy’s mind: a crooked, angry man with eyebrow hairs sticking up like wires. How terrified she was of him. When he died, there was a crappy funeral at St. Mary’s. Lucy was in McLean so she couldn’t go, but Eva told her Sean cried, which Lucy doesn’t get. “Look, I’m sorry all that happened. You know I don’t remember much.”

  “Yeah, well, Aunt Eva said they were doing shock therapy on you, and all kinds of drugs. She said she’d visit and you wouldn’t even know who she was. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But still, it sucks, you know. It’s like everything we did means nothing.”

  Lucy thinks, Ma visited me?

  She feels memory slithering past like an eel in total darkness, and then it is gone.

  “Here’s the thing, Lucy. The whole fucking world revolved around you. It was this little, tight world,” he shapes it with his cupped hands, fingertips pressed together so hard they’re white, “comprised of me, Aunt Eva, and you. That was it, that was your world. And all we did was focus on keeping you alive. We were like your own little ambulance crew. One day it’s pills, the next day it’s razors, the next it’s pulling you off the bridge just in time. You were like this vortex. This black fucking hole.”

  I didn’t realize, she wants to say. But of course she did. She just wasn’t able to stop.

  “And now here I am,” Sean goes on, “all these years later and I find myself thinking, why did I bother? All those years waiting to hear from you, worrying about you, thinking about you, all that effort. For what? For you to end up like this? It’s over, you say. But you know what? I don’t believe you. Do you know if Aunt Eva knew, she’d fucking die? Is this how you repay her? Jesus, all she went through for you!”

  The shell has cracked, opened, the wisps of angst seep out like poison, that indefinable longing carving out a hole inside. The heat from the Source grows hideous, coming in waves so staggeringly painful she might pass out. Lucy edges down the automatic window in fits and starts to suck in the cold air. She jams a fist against her sternum, hunching.

  “Oh, man, you still get that?” Sean grips her arm, shakes it. “Are you O.K.?”

  “I’m fine,” Lucy stutters. “I’m O.K.”

  “I thought they gave you something for it.”

  “Not really.”

  “But it’s stress! They have pills for that!” Sean fumes.

  “Getting mad won’t help.”

  He withdraws his hand. “Sorry. Luce, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that stuff.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she shakes her head. “You’re right about everything.”

  “When things went bad, you could’ve just moved back home,” he says in a bewildered tone. “I just don’t know why you’d do this to yourself. What are you trying to prove?”

  “I should’ve come back,” she agrees, though that would never have been possible. “I didn’t want to be a burden.”

  He nods, looking out his window. She watches the patches made by his breath expand and contract on the pane. “You know, when I was a kid,” he says, “I saw you as my way out. You probably don’t remember, but you told me this story about being an alien. You remember that? You were nine.”

  Her eyes flutter away. She stares down at her lap.

  “I thought one day, a spaceship’d show up and cart us both away, whoosh.” He moves his hand in slow motion towards the sky. He chuckles. “I’d watch Star Trek and Dr. Who and shit, you know, thinking about all that. Like what if there’s another world, please God let there be, and let me find it. I was jealous, if you want the truth.” He slides a humorous glance at her. “I wanted to be the alien.”

  There is a pause.

  She says, “I don’t think it was a good thing.”

  “Eva said it was how you coped.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She read some diary you had. You had the whole story in there.”

  In a flash, Lucy recalls that morning: the pages turning in Eva’s hands. It hurts so much. I want to die. I come from another world. The diary’s still in Lucy’s room, in a drawer.

  “She’d say, ‘Sean, don’t be too hard on Lucy. She’s finding her place in the world.’” He mimics Eva in a fake high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like her, then speaks his part in exaggerated bass. “And I’d say, ‘Aunt Eva, she’s crazy,’ and she’d say, ‘Sometimes crazy is what you need to get by.’” He chuckles to himself drunkenly. “Anyway, I guess what I’m getting at is, Nothing matters, that’s what you always said. Everything we did to try and help, and you’d say who cares. And here’s the irony, right? Here we are, all these years later, and I drive around this fucking town and pick up my paycheck and head to the bar and hang with my friends, and no, I don’t have a woman in my life that I actually love, I got no kids, no aspirations, no way out of the debt that crept up on me like fucking lava, and you know what, Luce?”

  Her body’s so stiff it might crack if she moves. He’s way drunk, spewing stuff she doesn’t want to hear, like the bottle burst and out it all comes.

  “Nothing matters. I finally got there, Luce. I get it. And the only person who might understand is you, and you don’t give a fuck! Pretty dumb, I mean, I see it now. Why should you care? Look at your own life. I mean, God, I think I’m in a mess? Of course you don’t care.”

  There’s a silence. The heating ticks and stutters.

  She says, “I do care.”

  He laughs out loud. “That’s all you’re gonna say? I swear, Lucy, you’ve got an extra Y chromosome.”

  He spins the thermos cap, drinks. He passes it to her. There is a sense of the space between them untwisting in the silence, settling. Going back to normal.

  She shapes fists and squeezes hard. “Things really are changing now, Sean. I swear. You’ll see.”

  He looks at her. The hardness in his face yields a little. “O.K., Luce.” He bends his head, slowly turning the thermos cap back and forth. “But when you say change, you mean, getting hurt—”

  “Trust me, it’s not happening anymore,” Lucy interrupts. “I swear.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Their eyes meet. She pours
sincerity into her gaze, willing him to accept it. He nods. He puts the car in gear, drags his seat belt around and clicks it in. He pulls out slowly, and the snow whirls towards the windows in silence. They drive along the crashing bay, then turn onto her street. When he pulls up, she leans sideways to give him a hug. “Have fun picking up the ladies. You’re a good man, Sean,” she jokes.

  “God help me.”

  They share a laugh. Once she’s unlocked the front door, she turns and waves to signal she’s in and safe. The truck rolls away into the darkness, headed for Hingham. She waits till the brake lights vanish around the corner, and then waits a little longer. The street is empty and quiet, snowdrifts building up along the fences.

  IN HER ROOM, LUCY empties her knapsack, goes through the stuff she brought, checks all the compartments twice, but she has indeed forgotten the yoga pants and tank she likes to sleep in. She opens up all the dresser drawers, finds a pair of pink pajamas that were a Christmas gift one year. For when you forget your overnight things, was what Eva said, with maternal prescience.

  Lucy pulls off her clothes and gets into the pajamas. They’re thin cotton, because Eva knows Lucy runs hot, and musty from lying in the drawer so long. She looks at herself in the mirror, expecting, she doesn’t know, expecting something else. But what she sees is the girl she ever was, glowering in the dull blue light, her blonde hair the same, her stance the same, herself the same.

  Plus ça change, she thinks. Fuck.

  She sits on the bed and checks her phone, finds three missed calls from Bedrosian’s number. Her stomach lurches. She swiftly dials, shaking. He answers right away.

  “You made it O.K. Good. I was wondering.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah. Nothing happening on this end. I just checked in. They’re still getting their ducks in a row.”

  Lucy’s still trying to wrap her mind around him calling three times just to check on her. “Well, they can’t trace tags, maybe that’s why.”

  “He said something about that. Listen, I gotta go. You keep your phone next to you. I’ll call the minute I hear.”

  She hangs up, feeling weirdly conspiratorial, tied up with him. She can see his big face and sad eyes, his jaw working with all the tension. She wonders where he is.

  She lies down, not with any hope of actually sleeping, but just to let her body rest a little. The argument with Sean wound her tight, even though they made up. He’ll see, soon enough. She actually could move back for a while, she decides. Why not? It’s not like she’ll be keeping that apartment. She wants nothing to do with it. She should’ve just taken her stuff today. It would fit in a small box: the afghan, the album, the knickknacks, the photos. She could have exited once and for all, and now she’ll have to go back.

  She lifts her phone, checks, in case she had it on mute by mistake. No calls.

  It’s only been five minutes, if that.

  She lies there, staring at the ceiling, then abruptly flings herself up and out of the room, heads downstairs. She builds a fire, which Eva always likes in a snowstorm, and sets the grate once it’s going strong. Just as she’s pouring a sherry, she hears the front door, Eva’s merry good nights, then the door slams shut.

  “What are you doing up?” Eva cries happily. “Sean said you were so tired. I told him I hope she’s tucked in by now.”

  “Here you go,” Lucy hands her the sherry. “How was it?”

  “Such fun,” Eva says with delight. “We never go enough. It’s hit or miss, but this one was a good one.”

  Lucy clinks her glass in salute. “Wanna play Scrabble?”

  The suggestion lights Eva right up. “Let me change,” she says excitedly. “Get the board set up. Oh, and Luce,” she adds, mischief in her eyes, “there’s a new sherry in the kitchen.”

  “Music to my ears,” Lucy sighs in relief, pulling the game out from under the chair. “Hurry up or I’ll cheat.”

  PAST MIDNIGHT AND STILL no updates to speak of, but that’s because all the sentries got pulled out on four simultaneous Services, as it turns out. It’s so strange to hear Bedrosian say that, lying in the semi-dark of her bedroom in her pink pajamas, tucked under a blanket, never to Serve again. Never. Again. She doesn’t have to keeping checking Twitter. She doesn’t have to text Bernie begging not to get bumped up the roster, nor does she have to haggle over what it’ll take to ensure that. Never again.

  Is it real? she couldn’t help asking.

  Better be, he replied, seeing as there’s a hole the size of Alaska in my account.

  She can’t sleep for the excitement of it: she stares into the dark, wide awake, feeling the thump of her heart and the faintly hurting Source. That she might be here tomorrow, the day after, is unfathomable. She wants it, but in the wanting, too, the hard memories press up all around, rustled up by the bow in the mattress, the smell, the house creaking in the wind perpetually blowing in off the bay. She thinks of her da Frank for the first time in years, and wonders where he went and what became of him. She thinks of the street in summer with its scrubby lawns and sprinklers and squealing kids in bathing suits, the feel of the stairs under her bum, her stiff little body in the shade, glowering. She didn’t want to be slathered with the pasty sun lotion: the other kids made fun of her even more. But if she exposed herself to the sun, her fair skin practically caught fire, like a vampire, which was another of her nicknames, along with Ghostie. Sean always sat with her for a while, because she was his cousin and he was older, protective like a brother. Sadness pricks her, for the long-ago silent, intense communion and closeness they’d shared. Maybe it was inevitable that it got damaged, just a part of growing up. Especially if you grow up in a loony bin.

  After everything we did for you, he accused her. But that went the other way, too. How many times she stuck with him, hiding from Uncle Seamus when he was on a rampage. In closets, behind bushes, under the porch while he slammed around inside the house. There was that one time when she thought for sure he’d kill them. She was so terrified. Uncle Seamus’s boots thunked the wood floors, reverberating through to where they crouched, and now and then he shouted obscenities and threats that came in pieces: Fucking little … I’m going to … git your ass …. They groveled in the dirt under the porch floorboards, hugging their knees. It smelled like cat shit and beer and dried up leaves. Lucy was ten and Sean was twelve. Sean’s eyes were big and wide and wet staring up just waiting for his da to bust out the front door and start searching outside. Lucy held his hand so tight her fingertips went white. The Source hurt awfully right under her ribs, like being stabbed over and over; it always got like that when she was scared. She pushed her fist hard against the spot which helped a little. Uncle Seamus stomped onto the porch. His boots were dark shadows between the boards.

  Sean you little fuck I’m gonna git you!

  Their hands went sweaty gripping each other. They did not breathe. Uncle Seamus mumbled and paced. Then he went back inside and they heard the screen door squeaking loosely on its broken hinge.

  Everything went quiet. They waited, their breaths like whispers. They heard motorboats slowly cruising by, the slap of water on the sand. How long did they sit there? Lucy thinks maybe up to an hour. Like little animals, sweating and breathing, clinging to life. Eventually, Uncle Seamus must have passed out. They agreed on this theory without speaking, just breathing, looking at each other. They crept forward on their scraped bare knees. It started to rain, big hot fast drops splattering them as they raced across his scrappy yard, then the asphalt drive poking their bare feet, down the sidewalk to her house and her own grass which was plush and bright the way Eva labored to keep it.

  Where’ve you rascals been? Eva looked up from the stove as they went racing by. And Lucy knew they’d be safe for the time being because Eva never let Uncle Seamus after them, not in the territory of her own house.

  In Lucy’s room they closed themselves into a tent made from her bedspread and an old sheet. Sean was tall and skinny and barely fit inside. He ha
d to tuck himself up, a jumble of bruised and bony limbs.

  He said, When the spaceship comes, can it take me with you?

  Lucy feels tears well under her eyelids, remembering.

  The small long-ago Lucy replied, Yes.

  Sean looked relieved. Lucy already knew there were no spaceships. Drunk Pete had told her. What he said was: There are no spaceships, you stupid little creep.

  She said, It’s a long, long ride.

  How long?

  Really long. And when we get there, we’ll be other beings. We’ll change along the way. We’ll be made of fire.

  (Drunk Pete said the Source was a kind of fire, that it was what they used to be.)

  If we’re made of fire, how can we talk?

  Lucy didn’t know. She didn’t like lying to Sean, even though it made him happy. She said, You can’t ever tell anyone about me, O.K.?

  I know.

  I mean it.

  I won’t tell. I promise.

  They hooked their pinky fingers together and intoned, Never divulge. And he didn’t, and the years went by, and gradually she realized he’d stopped believing, the way you stop believing in Santa Claus. She was eleven years old. He looked at her with his sad blue eyes and he said, Cuz, you need help.

  It hurt. But she didn’t correct him.

  Don’t ever tell them, Drunk Pete warned time and again (he said kids blabbed the most, and he was right). Is that what you want? You want the only people who give a shit about you to be killed?

  Who’ll kill them?

  The Qadir.

  She pictured black-caped figures emerging from swirling mist, mythical avengers with swords dripping blood. The image terrorized her.

  So when the time came, instead of insisting, she said, I’m sorry I lied.

  Yeah, whatever, Sean shrugged.

  And there it was: the truth of her folded up and tucked away, the subject closed forever. Her real-person body mechanically put the dishes in the washer—it was after Easter Sunday lunch, the table centerpiece a festive bowl of decorated eggs and cheap plastic greenery and flowers—and Sean washed the pots and Eva chatted with Uncle Seamus in the living room as if he were always a gentleman in a suit with a folded hankie poking up from his pocket.