by Emma Young
“You went to the emergency drug tray.”
“The doctors weren’t satisfied. They ordered an autopsy.”
“They found you in the park?”
He shakes his head. “Dad said it was him. They arrested him. When I tried to say it was me, they weren’t interested. Dad insisted it was him. There was no video surveillance. No witnesses. His word against mine.”
"What happened?”
“He got four years. He’s in the Northeastern Correctional Center.”
I stare at Joe. I have no idea what to say.
“I can’t get away from it. I’m stuck. At the hospital. In Boston. With killing my own mother. My dad in jail. Maybe I should leave, but I can’t.”
Stuck in Boston. Unable to go back, or move on. He’s like me, I think. Or how I felt. Mesmerized.
I try to think of something helpful to tell him, but it all sounds trite. You did the right thing. It was what she wanted. You did try to tell the police . . . I don’t say any of these things because they’re trite. How do you reassure someone when it comes to something like this? Not with words, surely. Or not with words like these.
Exhaustion washes over me.
I say, “I wish I could tell you the truth about me. If it was just my secret, I would.”
Silence. Then he says, “I didn’t tell you all that to try to pry your secret out of you.”
Shame burns my cheeks. “I didn’t mean . . .” My sentence shrivels.
He looks hard at me. “Everyone has secrets. No matter how I look at it, I took someone’s life. I thought I was strong enough to do it. But when you say take a life, that’s exactly what it is. I’ve taken it into me, and it’ll be inside me forever.”
“That doesn’t change what kind of person you are.”
“There’s no objective answer, but I should know better than anyone. As far as you’re concerned, I’m whatever my accumulated actions lead you to believe me to be. You’re whatever I believe you to be. Now you have a different picture of my actions. For you, I’ve changed.”
I try to suppress my analyses and estimations, and my self-doubts. It’s with my life-breath that I whisper, “I believe that I feel more right around you than I ever have around anyone.”
For the first time since I met him, something changes in his eyes. All defenses are down. I don’t analyze anything. I’m going to rush in. Before I do, he whispers, “Do you? I feel right around you.”
31.
Joe goes into the room first. I’m about to close the door with my back, but he’s already there, one hand raised, pushing it shut, the other reaching for me.
I kiss him, and fireworks flare through me. He takes his hand from the door, presses it into the small of my back. My back seems to meld to his touch. His hand is inside my top now, on my skin. I kiss him and let the moments happen, one by one.
By one.
By one.
I’m on the bed.
His lips are on mine.
By one.
By one.
My bra is on the floor.
By one.
By one.
His hand is on my thigh.
But these moments aren’t crystallized. I’m in a wave of moments.
That kiss by the reservoir. The first time I kissed a boy.
A number on my arm.
A chaste night beside Joe.
A neoprene cap.
A nanoknife.
Back in time, and further back, to before I was even sick, all those moments massing and lifting me here—
I gasp.
I’m part of him now, and he’s part of me.
32.
When I wake, the first thing I am aware of is warmth. Joe. Asleep.
I realize I’m naked. Traces of last night’s pressures remain on my body. Flashes of Joe’s face shift through my mind. Then my conscious focus edges deeper, under my skin, through my flesh, burrowing like a worm to my heart. Like a worm? I remember a poem by William Blake that Elliot once read aloud over and over, so that in the end we’d both memorized it:
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Hath found out thy bed
Of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Suddenly, I feel sick. I’m going to throw up.
I slip out of the bed and into the bathroom. In a little trash can by the sink is a wrinkled condom. I go over to the toilet, and I retch—but that’s it. I’m trembling, my body’s like lead, but I’m not going to vomit.
I move to the mirror. I should be used to it by now: looking at Sylvia’s face. But this morning, it comes as a shock. For some reason, I’m expecting to see the old me, but it’s her face, her body in the mirror. Her breasts. Her stomach. Her arm. With a phone number written on it. If Joe noticed it last night, he didn’t comment on it. But it’s there.
On a glass shelf above the sink is a bar of soap in a plastic wrapper. I tear the wrapper open. I hold the soap under hot water. I lather my arm and I rub at the ink.
It isn’t coming off.
I scrub harder.
The ink is still there.
I rub and I rub. I even scrape with my nails, until the flesh is red and raw.
Again, I hold the soap between my hands. This time, I wash away the tears. My eyes sting, and the tears won’t stop falling. I scrape at my cheeks, wanting them to stop. I make another lather and rub it hard across my chest.
I had sex with Joe.
And he has no idea who I am.
He had sex with a dying girl, a plain girl. Not her.
Brandon spoke to Sylvia. Does that mean I’m dead?
I take a washcloth from the vanity, wet it, and rub my breasts until they are red. Then I go back to my face. What if I’m still down there, beneath the layers? If I scrape hard enough, can I dig myself out?
I glance up. Her face catches me in the mirror.
With the heels of my hands, I press my cheekbones to try to force them to recede.
I’m shaking so hard now. My tears won’t stop. I’m making so much noise I’m going to wake Joe.
I snatch a towel from a peg and roughly dry myself. I creep back into the bedroom and, without looking at the bed, I gather my clothes from the carpet and put them on.
Silently, I pocket my phone and leave the room.
As I step out into the early morning, a creeping cold begins to flow through my blood. It spreads quickly, conquering my organs and extremities, turning my feet to blocks of ice, so I have to heave them along the path and down to the road.
Despite the weight of my body, I break into a jog. I can’t let anyone stop me. So I have to run.
I notice black speckles—birds—soaring in the pale yellow sky. They’re free, and it’s right to be running. I thought I could live with Sylvia. I thought I could sleep with Joe. But when the news breaks, Joe will know. If I run fast enough, I might be able to lose her—
But perhaps I know a surer way to do that.
Trying to force my right leg to keep up, I sprint along sidewalks, across people’s driveways. There are no cars on the road. Then there’s one. And another. House after house merges in the background, until I find myself on a long, straight road, which starts to curve, and then I see a fence and trees.
A pain is hammering deep in my chest, but it only pushes me on.
I run into the parking lot.
Now I’m on the path. I can see the water ahead.
Joe trusted me. I looked Sylvia’s best friend in the face and told her I was Sylvia’s sister. I told Brandon I was a singer, and I let him write his number on her arm. I got up onstage. Joe touched me, but it wasn’t me. I am whatever my accumulated actions lead him to believe me to be. I am lie after lie after lie, and by far the biggest lie about me is her.
I’m at the water’s edge. I glance up and see a white cloud, unevenly massed, like a tumor. It’s so cold. Next month, the water will fre
eze. Kids will strap on skates and play ice hockey. Come Thanksgiving, they’ll be racing over the spot where she went through the ice.
I remember the poem by Percy Shelley in Sylvia’s memorial book: Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory . . .
So many voices are vibrating in my head. Mum’s and Dad’s, Elliot’s and Jane’s, Joe’s and Brandon’s. I thought I knew what to do—or what I could do—and I was wrong. It’s her voice I need to silence.
I crouch. Tears fall from my cheeks to the pine needles. I want to kick the needles away, into the reservoir, cut down all the trees, and fill the reservoir. Suddenly, the cloud mass breaks. Sunlight hits the water, forming a glimmering path.
I take a step. See the water around my ankles, but don’t feel it.
Another step. Then another. I’m wading now, pushing fallen leaves into my wake. I’m looking up at the infinity of sky beyond the clouds. I can make all this right. I can reconcile the two of us.
I take another step. My tears dry. Her heart calms. She wants this, too.
Another step . . . and the ground is falling away.
Perhaps she could swim, but this is my brain.
I pull myself deeper. My arms don’t make a splash.
Everything settles. My body relaxes.
And just as I curl up, as I gently hold my breath and allow myself to sink, a lightning strike hits my brain. An image of the night before the surgery. Elliot’s face.
Another. Mum is close, her chunky-knuckled hand on my cheek.
Joe: I’m not going anywhere.
No.
No.
No.
33.
The woman who answers the door stares at me. I’d stare at me, too, if I was on my doorstep, soaking wet and dripping.
She has warm brown eyes and gray hair in a ponytail. She’s dressed for a run. Quickly, she zips up her sports jacket and comes out on the step. “What happened? Are you okay?”
I tremble. I can feel the tears coming. It’d be a tsunami of tears, if I let it.
“You need help?” she says. Her voice is kind. Not soft, but capable. “Let me help you. Come inside.”
I can’t move.
“Don’t worry about the water. Look—it’s just the kitchen. Here.”
One hand taking my arm, the other on my back, she maneuvers me inside. I spot movement, and I tense. But it’s just a gray-muzzled black Labrador lifting its head from a sofa set against the front wall. The woman lifts a pine chair out from under a family-size dining table. She brings it over to where I’m still standing, on polished floorboards, just inside the door.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she says.
I don’t answer. She takes my shoulder, guides me down onto the chair. I’m shaking from the cold, from everything. My body seizes in a shudder.
“I’m going to get you a towel, honey. But tell me who to call—the police? Your mom?”
Mum . . . No, I can’t cry yet.
Her sneakers make a soft squeak as she goes to the counter by the fridge and pulls the charger cable out of her phone. “What’s the number, honey? Or would you rather do it? Anna?” she calls, in the direction of the open kitchen door. “Anna, can you please bring me a fresh towel?” To me, she says, “It’s just my daughter. It’s okay. Here.” She grabs a tea towel from the handle of the oven door, comes over, gently dries my hands and my face, and kneels in front of me with her phone. “Where were you? The reservoir?”
Her house is across the road from the reservoir. The first one I came to. I nod.
She takes my hand and presses the phone into it.
A pine-rimmed wall clock with roman numerals ticks.
My fingers trembling, I unzip my jacket pocket and pull out my cell phone. It is supposed to be able to withstand half an hour under water. And it looks okay.
“Is it working?” she asks.
I manage to mumble, “I think so.” I locate a number and select it.
I hear ringing.
More ringing.
A voice says suspiciously: “Hello?”
My chest heaves.
The woman goes to the kitchen door and shouts again, up the stairs perhaps: “Anna!”
I whisper: “Elliot.”
“Rosa? Rosa?”
“Yeah.”
“Where the fuck are you?”
The anger in his voice stuns me.
“Are you okay?” he demands.
I whisper, “Yes.”
Which must fully release him: “What the fuck are you thinking? Where are you? You vanish like that—”
“I texted Mum—”
“The police have got an alert out on you. You know what happened three minutes ago? Dad threw up in the corridor.”
Silence. I’m shaking so hard now. The tears are running so fast.
“Everyone has been so fucking worried about you. You just vanish. And with some journalist?”
Deep silence, frigid as a black hole.
“Where are you?” I whisper.
“Where do you think I am? At the hospital. Where are you?”
I try to answer. Words won’t come.
“How could you do this to us?”
“Elliot . . .”
“Mum hasn’t slept since you left. Dad walks around like the living dead. I—”
“Elliot.”
“All you had to do was tell me. If you wanted to get away, I could have taken you. You could have told me.”
"Elliot.” I’m sinking into the solid chair. I might just melt onto the floor.
“Are you really okay?”
This time, his tone is a little less harsh. Which releases me.
“No.”
He says quickly, “Where are you?”
The woman comes back over to me with a white bath towel. I ask her, “Could you please tell my brother where I am?”
As I move the phone away from my ear to give it to her, I hear Elliot saying: “Who’s that? Is he with you?”
The woman takes my phone. “Hello? Are you coming for your sister?” Pause. “What did you say?”
She shoots me the biggest glance of pity so far.
Then, tucking the phone into her neck and reaching out to wrap the towel around my juddering shoulders, she recites an address.
34.
The curtains aren’t thick. At least, they don’t look it. But they must have a military-grade blackout lining because there’s barely a scrap of light in this room.
I’m on my side in a king-size bed, under a duvet, in a hotel robe, feeling the sting of the raw patches where I rubbed at my flesh. And I’m holding Elliot’s hand. He’s on his back, on top of the duvet, not saying a word, just lying beside me, holding my hand.
After I phoned Elliot, I made one more call: to the Happy Haven Motel, to let Joe know I was okay. But I don’t want to think about that right now. I can’t.
When Elliot arrived at the house of the woman who helped me into her kitchen, he took one look at my crumpling face and said, “Dark room.”
To which she said, “Don’t take her into the dark. Look at her; she needs somewhere warm, somewhere light—”
And he said: “You don’t have the slightest clue what I’m talking about.”
Which shut her up. Which made me sad for her, because she’d been kind, and it was at that moment that I started to cry all over again.
Elliot. How did I let myself get so far away from him?
Now, as we lie here in silence in what I glimpsed, before Elliot drew the curtains, to be a grand room—antique furniture, a brass chandelier, a genuine fireplace, gilt-framed prints—I think, and I cry . . .
Think and cry.
Elliot says nothing, which is unusual for him. He just lies there, holding my hand.
After he came for me and helped me down to the road toward the waiting taxi, I asked what he’d told Mum and Dad. “I said you’d made contact,” he said, like I was some kind of alien. “And you were safe.”
“What did they s
ay?”
“I won’t tell you right now.”
“But—”
“Seriously, Rosa, you don’t want to hear it right now.”
He half pushed me into the taxi and asked the driver to take us to the nearest “most opulent hotel.”
The driver said, “Where?”
Elliot said, “Nice. Somewhere. Nice. To. Stay. With thick curtains.”
I saw the driver checking us out in the rearview mirror as he pulled away. Trying to note details of our faces, I guess, if the police asked for witnesses to—what? Something suspicious involving thick curtains in the Lexington region.
The only question Elliot asked me when we got into our room was, “Why Lexington?”
And so I explained—about Sylvia’s dad in the hospital park, and Joe and the driver’s license, and the newspaper story. I even showed it to him. He shook his head as he read.
“He came after you . . . the father.”
“I don’t want you to tell Mum,” I said.
“Are you serious?”
“Just not now. Not yet.”
I couldn’t stop myself from crying, which I guess was one reason he said: “We have to. But okay. Not yet.”
Now we’re lying here together, and all I can hear is Elliot’s breathing and muffled voices and occasional footsteps from other guests on the landing.
When perhaps five hours have passed, I sit up.
In the darkness, Elliot turns to me.
I didn’t lose myself in the reservoir.
But I have to accept that I did find myself in a state that, objectively, put me somewhere close.
Elliot hasn’t asked why my clothes were wet, and I haven’t told him. Still, I need to try to explain because he’s the only person who could understand.
I saw her dad in the park and . . . no. There was this boy, and I thought . . . no. I came here and her life seemed . . . no. I slept with Joe and then I felt . . . no.
None of these gets to the heart of my problem. And I think I know what does. My voice low, I say: “I don’t know who I am.”
Silence.
Then he says: “Imagine a mountain in front of you. Your goal is to get to the summit. But it’ll be difficult. There are a few possible routes, but they’re steep and icy and you don’t have the optimal gear. You pick a route and you set off. It’s freezing cold. You don’t have any food. Your shoes are wet; your jacket is thin. Your weak muscles are struggling. How do you feel?”