Tide King

by Jen Michalski

  “You’d better get dressed—you’ll catch your death,” she said, in a daze. She walked out of the bathroom and into her father’s bedroom, falling on the scratchy wool blanket and staring at the ceiling. Tears warmed the corners of her eyes and burrowed sticky rivers down her cheeks. She heard Calvin stepping into his jeans, pulling his t-shirt over his head. He stood in the doorway, hair wet, his skin a pleasing post-bath pink and not the gallows white it had been earlier.

  “You okay?” He looked at her, and she nodded her head.

  “I guess…your being here has reminded me of how lonely I am.” She rolled onto her stomach and studied the dust bunnies in the corners of the bedroom, trying not to cry. He sat on the bed and put his hand, massive and warm, on her back. A chill spidered through her body, and she concentrated on her breathing, slow and steady.

  “Poor girl,” he said, moving his hand in a circle. “I understand.” She hoped he would do it for a long time, but then he stopped, and when she rolled over on her side to face him, he was looking out the window, somewhere else.

  “What will you do for me, if I gave you the herb?”

  “I don’t know.” He smelled like soap, and she imagined placing her lips on his neck. She rolled away from him, suddenly angry. “What do you want?”

  She stared at her hands. She wanted to wake up the next day and have it all have been a strange dream. She wanted her father to knock on her door and chide her for oversleeping, telling her she’d be late for school. She wanted to hear him burp and fart in the kitchen while he greased the frying pan with butter and cracked his eggs. She wanted him to drive her to school in the truck, even as it had always embarrassed her. And she wanted him to be waiting when she got out, reading the newspaper and smoking a cigarette in the truck cab.

  And if she couldn’t have those things, she decided she wanted Calvin.

  “Let me go with you—wherever you’re going back to.” She stood up and looked out the window.

  “Heidi, you’re nothing but a little girl—a whole future in front of you. You don’t want to get messed up with a guy like me.”

  “What am I, in a movie or something?” She laughed, and he stood up slowly from the bed and came behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders.

  “Imagine being in a movie that never ended,” he said, his breath tickling the top of her head. “And no matter how many times you went to the candy counter, the john, it still was playing.”

  She didn’t answer, but that movie, with her and Calvin as its stars, sounded perfectly all right to her. She turned and wrapped her arms around his waist, her head pressed against his chest, and she was prepared to not let go, no matter how hard he pushed her. But he didn’t. He slowly put his arms around her and she felt sleepy, fetal, in the expanse of him. She pushed him toward the bed and he slowly gave in to her. He lay on his side, and she pressed her back against him, drawing her arms around her, and she rested her chin on his arm. She felt his breath on her neck, and she turned into him, looking into his eyes, the impenetrable earth of them, sediment deep and layered and hardened.

  There was nothing familiar about him, the curve of his chin, his smell, the unwelcome stiffness of his muscles, and yet she felt safe there, yielded to his ferocity. She wanted him to want her, to bite into her heart and puncture it, thirst for its blood, its young pulse, and the stone of him would melt, for just a moment, and she could see the soft pulp of him, the organs and boy, the things that would make him cry, his mother. She felt her lips part, anxious for him to press his against hers, to offer her everything she had been starving for, starving for so long she had no longer realized until now that she was hungry.

  But he told her about Kate. About Ela, the Polish girl, his asymmetrical twin, separated by hundreds of years, destined, perhaps, to be together hundreds of years still. She listened, captivated, heartbroken, drained, watching the muscles move in his throat. They lay entwined in silence for a long time as the night spilled over the corners of the room and over the bed, and they were shadows in the dark, listening to each other’s breathing, their thoughts passing boats in a foggy night.

  They slept. They slept like stones until the light of Saturday moved across the walls of the bedroom, and they slept some more, like people who have been through hell ice-fire, who have traversed dark valleys and need for their souls to lick their wounds.

  “It’s nice to be here with you like this,” he said after a while, and her heart leapt a little. “It’s so hard to tell this story over and over again and wonder who really believes you.”

  “Don’t they believe you when they get older and you don’t?”

  “Sometimes, even something in front of your face, if it goes against your belief system, seems unreal. I was dead in a lake for twenty years. In the ground in Germany. I can hardly believe it myself.”

  “Are you mad? How can you believe in a God?”

  “Sometimes it’s a blessing, other times it’s a curse. If I hadn’t returned from the dead in Germany, I wouldn’t have met Kate, even though now I might have to watch her die. I wouldn’t have gotten to see your father and watch him die. As for God, there’s something out there, I guess, and it’s made this path for me. I’ve given up being angry about it.”

  “I’m sorry my father did this to you.”

  “Don’t apologize.” He drew her close, her face against his neck. “I got to meet you, too, now didn’t I?”

  She pressed her lips against his skin, the slight scent of soap filling her nose, and she began to kiss upward, toward his ear. She felt his body stiffen, his groin press against her. She stopped, amazed that she had such a power over any man, much less Calvin Johnson, before kissing him again.

  “Heidi, I think you’re great.” He wriggled away from her into a sitting position. “But I could be your father. And you’re Stanley’s daughter. He would want me to honor and protect you.”

  “What about the herb?” She got up from the bed. From the window, she could see it was dusk again. She had not eaten in over a day, but she was not hungry for food.

  “What, you’re not going to give it to me? You want me to be a cad, lie to you, romance you, so you’ll give me the herb?”

  “I don’t know.” She wiped the tears from her eyes and went downstairs. She could bury the herb, send Calvin Johnson on his way. Why should she give every stranger who walked in the door what they wanted? No one had ever been there for her.

  The sound of a car outside paralyzed her. She caught her breath and pressed by the window, peering outside. Ms. Webster’s green Squareback was parked in front. She got out of the car and made her way to the door.

  “Hey.” Ms. Webster smiled from the darkness of the porch. “I thought I’d see whether you were interested in a movie. They’re playing ‘Wild Strawberries’ over at the community college at eight.”

  “I can’t.” Heidi filled the space between the door and the frame with her body.

  “Oh, does your father need you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you all right?” Ms. Webster adjusted the strap of her shoulder bag. “Have you been crying?”

  “No,” she answered. She felt the salty sting on her cheeks as she grimaced.

  “You’re going to lie to me to my face?” Ms. Webster laughed. “Come on outside.”

  “No…it’s not anything. I’m just feeling sorry for myself.” Heidi shook her head. She reached behind her and turned on the porch light, hoping that if she allowed closer scrutiny of her physical condition Ms. Webster would be satisfied.

  “Oh my god, Heidi.” Ms. Webster took a step back on the porch and looked around her. “There’s blood everywhere.”

  She had forgotten about that, seemingly, the shooting. And in even the dimmest halo of light bathing the porch, she could see the red splotches on the steps and the drips heading to the truck and the bloody handprint in the doorjamb.

  “I cut myself trying…to change a flat,” she answered. “I just haven’t cleaned it up yet.”
>
  “Heidi, if you don’t let me in the house to see whether everything is okay, I’m going to call the police.” She moved forward, her hand on the doorknob.

  Calvin would not be stupid, she knew. She hoped. She had Ms. Webster take a seat in the living room and went into the kitchen to boil some tea water, buying some time.

  “You haven’t opened these?” Ms. Webster held three large envelopes from Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and NYU in her hand. Perhaps her father had brought them in the previous day without her noticing. She carefully slit the tops of the envelopes, Ms. Webster standing beside her.

  “Oh my goodness, Heidi, three for three!” Ms. Webster beamed, kissing her cheek. “I’m so proud of you. What a tough decision you have ahead of you.”

  She clasped Heidi’s forearms and studied her body. She ran a hand on the inside of her forearms, her stomach, the nape of her neck. Heidi blushed, thought for some strange reason that Ms. Webster was going to kiss her again, but instead she stepped away and frowned.

  “I thought you said you cut yourself changing the flat.” She stared at Heidi.

  “Not on my arms,” Heidi answered. “Actually, it was my father. He’s upstairs…sleeping.”

  “Do you mind if I poke in on him?” Ms. Webster stood up. “I just want to make sure he doesn’t need any medical assistance.”

  “He’s asleep.” Heidi shot up beside her. “I can take you up. We can look in on him, but we shouldn’t wake him up.”

  She walked up the stairs ahead of Ms. Webster, repeating the last sentence loudly. The bedroom door was open, but no shape lay on the bed. Ms. Webster moved to the right and flipped on the bathroom light. On the edge of the sink lay the revolver.

  “Heidi.” Ms. Webster turned to her and grabbed her by the arms. “You need to tell me the truth about what is going on here.’

  Calvin’s shadowy frame filled the doorway, and Ms. Webster screamed.

  “It’s okay,” Heidi said as Ms. Webster grabbed the revolver from the sink and pointed it at Calvin. “I can explain.”

  “If you try anything funny, to me or to Heidi, I’ll shoot.” Ms. Webster, both hands on the gun, pointed it at him.

  Calvin looked at Heidi, and they burst into laughter. Nothing had seemed funnier since the beginning of time. They went down into the living room, followed by Ms. Webster, a few steps behind them.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny,” Ms. Webster said as Heidi and Johnson sat on the couch. “And just so you know, my father is a member of the National Rifle Association.”

  “Calvin is my friend,” Heidi looked at him, and he smiled. “A friend of the family. My father’s been in the hospital the past few days, and he’s been staying with me.”

  “How do I know he didn’t kill your father? How do I know that your friend Calvin isn’t holding you hostage?”

  “You’re going to have to trust me on this.”

  “Trust you? There’s blood on the porch, a handgun on the sink, your father is missing, and there’s a stranger in your house.”

  “I’m safe, Ms. Webster.” Heidi leaned back in the couch and drew her legs up to her chest. It could end here, she supposed. Calvin could have killed her father, held her hostage for all this time. She could have tried to shoot him, to escape. She wondered whether Ms. Webster would be appointed her guardian. She imagined Ms. Webster’s apartment, a sunny kitchen, with plants hanging from hooks and records lining a corner by the stereo, records of singers and bands Ms. Webster might listen to, like James Taylor or Rikki Lee Jones or maybe Joni Mitchell. She thought of the bookcase filled with Shakespeare and Yeats and Woolf and Austen. She imagined a small, impish cat, a warm afghan, a boiling teapot. Things she imagined for her own life, eventually, after receiving a head start on them with Ms. Webster, a new start.

  She looked at Calvin. He sat slouched in a new undershirt and his jeans, his hands clasped between his legs, looking at the floor, and his attempt to look small and harmless belied the powerful fulcrums of his knees, which seemed to reach Heidi’s shoulders. His girth sucked the couch toward him, and her by extension, his thigh touching hers, the warm of him seeping into her skin. Would Ms. Webster understand how their short time together had already made everything monstrous and unfair and off-kilter in her life seem insignificant, had blown Shauna and Oliver and Mt. Zion High away like dandelion spores? She had spent so much time fighting the tide of a sea that had only been in her imagination, and now she was free.

  “I can leave, Heidi,” Calvin said finally. “I don’t want your friends worrying about your safety.”

  “Why would you leave without me?” she asked, and looked at Ms. Webster. “Calvin is my boyfriend. We’re leaving this place.”

  “Don’t be silly, Heidi.” Ms. Webster paced back and forth with her arms crossed, cradling the revolver in her hand like a baby. “You’re going to get scholarships. You’re going to Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, or NYU. That’s all you’re going to be deciding. You’re going to have a great life.”

  “I’m going to have a great, lonely life. I want to be with Calvin—haven’t you been in love, Ms. Webster?”

  “You’re not in love. There’s plenty of time for that. You need to take advantage of the great opportunities afforded you. You’re going to bloom in college, Heidi. Trust me, I was the same as you. I had a terrible time in high school.”

  “I have a hard time believing that,” Heidi answered. “You’re beautiful. I’m hideous…a freak.”

  “You’re not a freak, Heidi.” Calvin turned and took his hand in hers. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Heidi craned her neck and kissed his cheek. He took her face in his hands and kissed her on the lips, lingering for a second before turning away. She thought she would pass out from the lightheadedness. It may not have been a real kiss, performed at gunpoint, but it was her first.

  “Well, I’m glad you two lovebirds have figured this out.” Ms. Webster said. “But this still doesn’t answer any of my questions.”

  “The truth is, I shot myself, by accident.” Calvin stood up, sending Ms. Webster into a ready position, gun pointed at him. He pulled up his shirt, where a raw wound the size of a fingertip poked through his hair. “It was a flesh wound, but I bled like a stuck pig. I was opening the magazine to take out the ammo, but one must have gotten stuck in the chamber. That’s why I was upstairs, trying to rest a little. Heidi’s been so upset about the whole thing it—all the blood makes it look worse than it really is.”

  “I thought he was going to die,” Heidi added.

  “And Heidi’s father?”

  Heidi looked at Calvin, who looked back at her. Like a stick in a bike tire, their easy, shared conniving grinded to a halt, planting their faces into the asphalt. It happened to the best of liars, she figured.

  “My and Heidi’s fathers were in the war together,” Calvin began, and Heidi dug her nails into the palms of her hands. “She and I have been penpals for years. She called me and said her father died in his sleep and that she didn’t know what to do. She needed the Social Security checks so she could eat and pay the bills, and she was worried they’d put her in a foster home and sell the farmhouse. She just wanted to hang on until college, you know? I told her I’d come and help her figure something out. So I got here, and we weren’t thinking clearly, I guess. He was dead, so we buried him—who could afford the funeral?”

  “Jesus, you expect me to believe that?” Ms. Webster’s face seemingly had aged decades since she arrived. Her right eyebrow had begun a slow dive into her right eye, a skepticism that narrowed her eyelids and drew her lips tight. She sighed, taking almost all the air in the room into her lungs, it seemed to Heidi, who held her breath. “All right, let’s see this body.”

  Calvin, Heidi, and then Ms. Webster left the house. Calvin pulled a shovel out from under the crawlspace of the porch. He stuck it into the mound, fresh and fly-infested, and threw the dirt off the side.

  “Are you sure you want me to dig him up?” He paused, look
ing at Ms. Webster, then Heidi.

  “Heidi, go inside.” Mrs. Webster nodded at Heidi. “You shouldn’t have to see this.”

  Heidi went into the house. She took the bag with the herb off the table, along with her father’s diary, and shoved them between the waistband of her pants and the small of her back. She pulled on her hooded sweatshirt and left it billowy, unzipped. Then she went to the living room and got Calvin’s backpack. She went out the front door and put everything under the passenger side of the truck seat and hurried back. She glanced out the window and saw that Calvin had dug a shallow hole the length of the tomb. She ran back upstairs and threw some toiletries in her backpack, underpants, an extra shirt. She put in her own journal, a few paperbacks, and went back outside, stuffing the backpack under the dashboard of the truck.

  As she got back into the kitchen and sat at the table, Ms. Webster appeared. Her face was pale as she struggled against the convulsions of impending vomit. Her right hand rested on the edge of the kitchen sink as her left rose to her face. She breathed deeply twice and then looked at Heidi.

  “Calvin is reburying your father.” She reached into her right front pocket, where she had briefly parked the revolver. “And you’re coming with me.”

  “Why?” Heidi ducked as Ms. Webster reached for her hand.

  “Come on, hurry—before he has a chance to finish.”

  She thought to overpower her, but Ms. Webster grabbed her by the arm, her grip strong. Maybe she could explain everything to Ms. Webster in private. Maybe her determination would waiver as Ms. Webster calmly explained the dangers of going away with a man she had known little more than a day, and she didn’t know him, really. Ms. Webster had lived longer and knew more, and she would know what exactly to do next.