The Elementals

by Francesca Lia Block

  We walked in silence for a while; the only sound was my breath and heartbeat and our feet scuffing through the dirt and leaves.

  “I can accept my death, better than other people’s,” I said. “But the part that’s hard is not getting to be with who you love. That’s what I can’t…” My voice trailed off into the rapidly cooling air.

  “Maybe you’ll be with them, just in a different form. Maybe you already were together with the people you love before this.”

  “Sometimes I feel like that.” I wanted to make him stop walking and put my arms on his shoulders, feel the place where his deltoid curved in, the heat through his clothes. I wanted to feel his lips brush against mine like he was turning on a switch that would send the floodlights burning through the darkness inside of me. But maybe he was the darkness.

  And he kept walking like he had a destination. “What do you mean?”

  “I do feel like I knew my mom, before. And Jeni.”

  “Ariel?” He stopped walking. “Talk to me.”

  I shook my head and a harsh little laugh escaped my mouth. “She never came home. I can’t let it go. I keep thinking I have some kind of lead and it’s nothing. Nothing is anything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Tears clogged my throat. “I believe there are people who are missing parts of us. But what happens when they’re gone?”

  He was standing in front of a small tombstone at the crest of the hill. The leaves of the oak tree shadowed his face with shifting patterns.

  “You find other missing parts?” He had taken off his sunglasses and his eyes met mine then with the full impact of their green and gold. It was like looking into water or a thicket of trees in a forest. I was afraid of getting lost there like in the eyes of the stone angels, and, at the same time, I wanted to get lost.

  I turned away. “Maybe.” Across the hills lay the large crypts of millionaires. Why would they need such a palace? I thought of the bones under our feet. I thought of Jeni. How I wished for her to be found unharmed, how I wished for her to be found, and finally, secretly, shamefully, now, when it had become too much, for her bones to be found. Just so we would know.

  “Maybe it’s us,” he said.

  Us? He hadn’t said “me.” Did he mean Tania and Perry, too? John Graves. With me in a graveyard. I hadn’t even thought of the irony. Suddenly my back stiffened and I shivered as a breeze moved through the pines and oak trees. The cold reminder of the dead.

  He knelt down by the tombstone and ran his fingers over the words engraved there. It was a very small stone. I couldn’t see what it said. But John was staring at it like he was trying to crack it with his gaze. He sat cross-legged in the dirt and put his head in his hands. His hair fell across his face.

  I came around and stood beside him. I could see the front of the tombstone now. It said, LUCY ELIZABETH WALCOTT 1910–1918. There was a small statue of a sleeping lamb.

  A child’s tomb. Jeni didn’t have a grave. Her parents kept waiting for her to come back.

  “I never understood the importance of marking a grave. I believed in fire, ashes, throwing them into the water, whatever. Not this. But something happens to you when you sit here this way.” There was a note of deep sadness in his voice I hadn’t heard before.

  I sat next to him. “What? What’s wrong?”

  He opened his mouth as if to speak, then shook his head—not a no but as if to push something away. “Tell me something about you, please.”

  “I’ve been looking for some sign of Jeni. I keep this notebook but there’s nothing that means anything. Just all my fears.”

  “Maybe we can help you look,” he said.

  I hardly heard him over the onslaught of feelings pounding blood to my head. “And my mom’s sick.” I hadn’t planned on telling him but it was a relief; there had been no one to tell.

  His eyes glimmered in the sunlight, so deep like water where you can’t find the bottom. “I’m so sorry.”

  “The C word.”

  He nodded. “What do they say about it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know anything.”

  “Maybe it would help you to know?”

  I shook my head, thinking, Maybe it would help me to know more about you, too. But I don’t really know if I want that, either. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Yes, you should have.” He reached his hand out and brushed my arm with the tips of his fingers. I wanted to grab onto him but it felt like if I did he’d have to pry me loose.

  I didn’t want to be there anymore. I knew the spirits of the dead were already clamoring, disturbed by our voices.

  “Can we go now?” I said. I should have just told John how much I missed him when he was gone, how glad I was that he was back, that they were all back, but I kept as silent as the stone angels and their charges.

  15. The moon, the goddess, the dark world

  After John said good-bye to me at the Berkeley BART station, I went back into my trance. Every morning before class I pounded my feet along the pavement, as hard as I could, running up into the hills and along the trails of Strawberry Canyon, around the stadium and the pool, among the oak trees by the creek bed, over the piles of fallen stones. Around Indian Rock. Morning fog burned away and hawks circled over my head. My mother loved hawks, maybe because my father looked a little like one with his slightly hooked nose and fierce, dark eyes. She was his opposite. A dove. I didn’t want to think about it, about them. I wanted to pound all thoughts out of my body.

  Melinda Story found me one day as I was leaving Professor French’s class. We had moved on from Yeats to Ezra Pound and that day I was still under the spell of The Cantos inside my thick, orange book. The mysterious words and symbols sometimes felt like incantations and sometimes like the ramblings of a fascistic madman. Professor French had been discussing Pound’s descent into madness. I wondered how connected the poet and the madman were. You could only love the moon, the goddess, the dark world so much without waking before they made you forget that day existed.

  “I’ve been wondering how you are.” Melinda had that worried look on her face again.

  “Oh, good,” I said as matter-of-factly as possible. “You?”

  “I was going to ask if you wanted to come to my apartment for dinner. You look like you could use a home-cooked meal.”

  I thought immediately, guiltily, of the food I’d eaten at John’s house. The only food I wanted now. How could anything compare?

  “And there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” she said.

  There was an element of intensity with which she said it that made me nod.

  “So this weekend then?”

  * * *

  Melinda lived near the Oakland border. I took a bus along Martin Luther King, past the police station, and found her place, a small upper-floor apartment in an old building. Inside, the wooden floors were covered with rugs and colorful pillows were stacked on the futon and the floor. Chopin was playing, my mom’s favorite composer. And Melinda was into orchids, like my mom. They were grouped by the large picture window—which let the early evening in—observing me like shy little stick puppets. It wasn’t easy to stop thinking about my mother. I wondered how it would be when she was gone, how hawks and orchids and Chopin would stab at me like weaponry.

  We sat at Melinda’s small kitchen table; it had a vintage cloth with a map of California on it. She had made poached salmon, salad and baked potatoes but I didn’t want any of it. The thought of fish or other animal protein made my stomach turn. I realized, and not really until then, that I hadn’t eaten any meat since Halloween, since I’d been to the house in the hills. I tried to eat the potato but even that got stuck in my throat, a mealy mass of poison whiteness.

  “Can I make you something else?” Melinda asked, but not defensively; I could tell she wasn’t taking it personally.

  “I’m sorry. This is lovely. I just don’t eat fish.”

  “Are you a vegetarian? Vegan? Raw? I’
m sorry. Everyone eats so differently here. You should have told me.” She moved the platter of fish to the other side of her. “Can you eat the salad?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  She frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m good, really,” I told her. “It’s just been a little stressful.”

  “School can do that. Are your classes okay?”

  “Yeah. Except Portman. He thinks I kind of suck.”

  “I would guess you aren’t the one who sucks in there.” Melinda grinned. “But seriously, you’re a good writer, Ariel.” I had given her a few things I’d done, including the description of my first Halloween in Berkeley. “Portman can be tough on the ones he thinks have potential.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that but I thanked her anyway.

  After dinner we went into the living room. There was a statue I recognized as the Chinese goddess of compassion, Quan Yin, surrounded by many photographs of a younger Melinda with an Asian woman. The woman was tiny, with a round, sweet face. Melinda picked up one of the framed pictures and handed it to me.

  “Who’s she?” I asked. “She’s so pretty.”

  “That’s Annie.” Melinda lowered her voice when she said it. I understood that tone; it was how I would have sounded if someone asked me about a picture of Jeni.

  Melinda went on. “When I wasn’t eating much, a few years ago, it had to do with what happened to her.”

  Suddenly cold, I reached for my sweatshirt that was draped over the arm of the couch.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not telling you this to scare you. I want to bring it up to show you that I’ve been where you are and that things can get better.”

  Melinda’s usually dreamy eyes were focused intently on my face. “She was my girlfriend. We were living together as undergrads. She disappeared.”

  My mind began to race, trying to put everything together so it made sense. But I sucked at puzzles, I always had, especially when most of the pieces were missing.

  “What?”

  “It was six years ago now. She was out running and never came home. They questioned her ex. She hated him. But he was cleared.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Words were lame sometimes.

  “Thank you. It was really hard.” Melinda had that flat tone people use when they’re repeating something shocking for the five-hundredth time but she blinked a film of tears out of her eyes and wiped it away with the back of her hand.

  “I became a machine,” she went on. “Did really well in school. I wanted to stop feeling.”

  I nodded.

  “But it doesn’t work. The only way is to feel it.”

  I wanted to tell her about John, Tania and Perry. They were a way I could stop feeling fear and sadness about my mom and Jeni. But I didn’t know how to begin.

  “I’m in therapy,” I said, just to get her to stop. “And I have a good support system of friends.”

  “I wanted to let you know I’m here if you need me.”

  “Do you think there’s a connection? With Jeni?”

  She leaned forward as if she were going to touch me but then drew back. “I almost didn’t tell you because of that. I don’t think there’s any connection.”

  “Why?”

  “It was a long time ago. And when that happened to your friend. To Jeni. I spoke to the police. I do whenever something … happens. They didn’t think there was a link.”

  I shook my head. “Everything keeps getting worse.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. When it came from her mouth or from John’s it didn’t sound empty at all.

  When I left, Melinda hugged me. “Be careful getting back.”

  But I decided to run instead of taking the bus. I didn’t know if it was safe or not. But I was motivated by the same thing that John and Tania and Perry made me feel, the last thing, the thing it was hard for me to say, even to myself. The desire to escape.

  * * *

  The next day I went to see Officer Liu. I had to wait for almost an hour before he invited me into his office.

  “Anne Berman-Chang,” I said as soon as I sat. I had Googled Melinda’s Annie.

  He folded his pale fingers under his chin. “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if you think there’s a connection.”

  “You’re a tenacious young lady.”

  “I can’t stop.” I lowered my face; the tears behind my eyes felt boiling hot but it would not help to cry. “I’m sorry.”

  He leaned forward. “Listen, I understand how hard this is. But have you ever heard the expression about accepting what you can’t change? This is one of those times.”

  “The case is unsolved!” I tried not to scream; it seemed I was always trying not to scream at cops. “Annie’s! Maybe they’re related. Has anyone looked into that?”

  He shook his head. “We always check into past incidents. There wasn’t anything. Between you and me”—he leaned closer—“and I do mean that. There was allegedly a boyfriend involved. On the football team. We haven’t been able to pin anything on him but this is an entirely different kind of murder—” He stopped himself, but too late. “Missing-persons case.”

  Murder. A chill of nausea spread across the surface of my skin.

  His phone rang and I got up and ran to the ladies’ room, where I knelt before the toilet and vomited up what little I’d eaten of Melinda’s dinner.

  16. I lay here before and he watched over me

  The flowers were strewn across both beds; they were in glass jars on the desks and dressers. Daisies, lilies, dahlias, freesia, jasmine. All white. There were even long-stemmed roses covering the floor. The smell was overpowering; I felt slightly faint.

  Lauren came up behind me as I stood in the doorway looking around.

  “Oh my god!” she squealed. “Dallas! Thank you so much.”

  He was behind her and I stepped inside, trying not to crush rose petals.

  “What the fuck,” Dallas said.

  Lauren was hugging and kissing him. I began picking stargazer lilies off my bed. The pollen left a sticky, rusty dust on my hands and on the bedspread but I didn’t mind. Why had Dallas put flowers on my side of the room?

  “Chill out,” Dallas said, moving her away from him.

  “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “These aren’t from me.”

  They paused for a moment, staring at each other. I kept gathering up the lilies but I could feel Lauren’s evil eye boring through my back.

  “Maybe you’ve got some secret admirer or some shit,” Dallas said. The words secret admirer brought back the memory of the tampon note. Hooves kicked inside my stomach as Dallas crushed the roses under his feet. I resisted the impulse to stoop down and move them away from him; I didn’t want one petal to be bruised.

  Lauren put her hands on her hips. “I have no idea who that would be.”

  “Why? Because there are just so many guys who want you?” Dallas’s shoulders were up around his ears and a vein in his neck looked ready to explode.

  “Maybe they’re for Ariel.” Lauren laughed. But her laugh was as nervous as it was sarcastic.

  “Yeah, right.” He turned and walked out. Lauren followed him.

  I picked up the phone and dialed my parents.

  “Did you send me something?”

  Now I didn’t feel ambivalent about them giving me flowers, even if they were the only ones who did; I wanted anything they could give me.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” my mom said.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “We just have been so busy. I didn’t think about it.” She paused. “It’s Valentine’s, isn’t it? We were at the doctor’s all day.”

  “Are you okay, Mom?” My mother might not have sent me flowers in her condition, but she never forgot holidays. I reached for a rose and ran my fingers along the smooth stem. Someone had removed all the thorns.

  “Oh, yes, everything will be fine. I’m just a little tired. Did you have a nice day?
Are you going to do something with your friend tonight?”

  I had managed to keep the Bean myth alive all this time but sometimes it caught me off guard when my mom brought her up because it made me think of John. “Oh, yeah. No. I’m just going to go to bed soon.”

  “But you got a present from someone?” she asked.

  “Well, there were these flowers in the dorm room but I think they’re for Lauren.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “We used to give you flowers all the time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Mom. Stop. You have other things to think about.”

  “But you’re my valentine,” she said. “I love you, sweetheart.” Her voice sounded pale.

  “I love you, too. I’m going to get ready for bed now.”

  We said good night and the click of the phone echoed down through my body as if I were hollow.

  I gathered up all the roses that weren’t in water and put them in the vases with the other ones. The scent of the flowers filling my head made me dizzy. I could taste them on my tongue. Suddenly, as I was putting the last ones in water and sweeping up some stray leaves, I felt it. The crushing mass that I’d been carrying in my chest breaking up into shards. I put a hand to my heart and slumped down on the floor with my back against the bed.

  My mom had said she’d been at the doctor all day and that everything would be fine. That wasn’t how she usually talked. Nothing was fine.

  The thought of being alone in the room, even with all the flowers for company, made me want to run. I took one white rosebud that had broken off and tucked it inside my shirt, in the lace trim of my bra. Then I locked the door behind me and fled downstairs into the night.

  * * *

  The atmosphere around the house in the hills was charged, almost ionized for me in some way. The air felt different, alive on my skin as I walked up the path, and a bluish mist seemed to gather in the trees. It was John Graves who answered the door. He was unshaven, a scratchy-looking dark stubble on his cheeks and chin, and his lids were puffy, with shadows under his eyes. No glasses this time. He wore a white pleated tuxedo shirt and black jeans. There were tiny rhinestone buttons on the shirt and my eyes fixed on the bright dots to avoid his gaze. One button was missing and I could see his chest. I reached inside my bra and pulled out the rosebud.