by Simon Holt
“I know. But I’m here with you, Henry. I’ll always be here.” Her ivory skin rippled like water, and inky tendrils of cold black smoke oozed from her nostrils and mouth. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Your body’s here but not your soul…
Henry closed his eyes and let the darkness in.
Reggie dragged the cover off the hot tub on her back deck as Aaron watched. The newly fallen snow’s weight made it a more laborious task than usual, but at last it tumbled aside. A billowing cloud of steam rolled from the water’s surface and swirled around them. The tub’s water heater still worked, but the bubble-jets had failed months ago. It was one of the many things Reggie’s dad hadn’t had time to fix since her mom had left. In the darkness, the water in the tub seemed black. The whole thing looked like a giant cauldron.
The snowstorm had mostly blown over, but the air remained sharp and dry; the hot tub’s steam did nothing to lessen the chill. Overhead, a starless sky closed in the world like a tomb.
“It’s freezing out here, Aaron. You sure you want to do this?”
“I’m not chickening out.” He already felt ridiculous, wearing nothing but rubber flip-flops, Hawaiian-print swim trunks, and a thick terry-cloth robe of Reggie’s. Even though his shivering had little to do with the cold, he wouldn’t back down.
“Okay, then. Ready?”
Aaron nodded. He kicked off the flip-flops and shrugged off the robe, hoping the night masked not only his pale body but also his surging terror. If Reggie had let a huge spider crawl on her for one minute, he could stay underwater for just as long. He climbed onto the edge of the tub and plunged in his feet. Its bathwater temperature was much warmer than the air, but gooseflesh crawled across his skin nonetheless. The wet seeped up Aaron’s swim trunks as he lowered himself in. Reggie took out the stopwatch.
“You can do it,” she said. She held the watch up. “Ready … and … go!”
Aaron took a deep breath and sank into the water.
As it enveloped him, he heard his heart pounding in his ears. The memory of his seventh birthday came surging back: he’d been wading in Noe Lake, searching for crawdads, and had lost his footing on an algae-covered stone at the edge of a steep descent. In a moment he’d slipped into the deeper water; as he thrashed about, he had caught his foot between rocks on the lake’s floor. Aaron remembered the panic, water filling his mouth and his nostrils.
He opened his eyes and looked up. Where was Reggie? He couldn’t see her. The water was crushing him, seeping in through his ears, his lips, his nose. His lungs burned and his body convulsed. The roar of submersion pounded in his head, and he felt himself spinning. Soon he would involuntarily gasp for air and find none. There was no up or down. There was only the black water. It was deeper than the ocean, darker than the grave. It was stronger than him. It would come rushing in; it would flood his lungs, pressing on him from the inside until he burst.
Panicked and helpless, Aaron opened his mouth and a slug of water filled his throat. He gagged and convulsed in a desperate attempt to draw a breath. But already his body was drowning, bloating, dying the horrific death his mind had played out so many times in his mind. His fear froze him and he sank to the bottom, paralyzed.
Abruptly, his body ripped upward and burst through the surface. He flailed and splashed with his eyes rolled back in his head, still suffocating.
“Aaron!”
Reggie dragged him from the tub, and Aaron dropped to his knees, vomiting a jet of water and bile onto the ground.
“Breathe!”
He coughed and spat, hunched up in a ball, shaking more from terror than the cold. Reggie knelt beside him and patted his back.
“Are you okay?” Reggie asked.
Aaron did not answer. He stood weakly, his body trembling. Reggie wrapped the robe around him and led him back inside. He sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. Reggie hurried through the darkened house to the living room and returned with a blanket. When she flicked the kitchen light switch, nothing happened.
“Shoot. The storm knocked out the electricity.” She set the blanket on Aaron’s lap. “Talk to me.”
“I’ll live.” He wrapped the blanket around himself. “But I’m never going to be a deep-sea diver, no matter what they tell me on Career Day.”
Reggie dug a flashlight from one of the kitchen drawers while Aaron went to put on dry clothes. When he came back, his backpack was slung over his shoulder, and the color had returned to his face.
“So. Did I make it?” he asked.
Reggie avoided his eyes.
“That’s really not important —”
“Come on, how long? So I didn’t make a full minute. Fifty-five seconds? Fifty?”
“Aaron, I —”
“For crying out loud, Reg.” Aaron grabbed the stopwatch from her before she could stop him. He peered at the numbers on the display: 0:19.
“Nineteen seconds? That’s it?” Aaron cried. “That’s pathetic!”
“At least you’re not a Vour.”
“No, still pussy-boy Aaron.”
“Aaron, it’s not a big deal. Just a stupid game.”
“I need to go.”
Reggie didn’t want to make it worse for him. “Okay. Call me tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Aaron strode out the front door, and it banged shut behind him.
As soon as he was gone, Reggie clicked on the flashlight and headed upstairs. The hallway was much colder than downstairs, and as she passed Henry’s room she felt a cold draft underneath his door. Squeak-squeak-squeak went the hamster wheel inside. She opened the door and approached Henry’s bed. He slept peacefully.
“He’s got to be freezing.” Reggie pulled a wool blanket from the foot of the bed.
She shivered and looked around — it felt like someone else was in the room. A sweep of the flashlight’s beam illuminated little toy racecars scattered on the floor and snowboarder posters tacked to the walls. Kappy the Koala stared blankly from his perch on the toy box. On the nightstand sat the picture of the family at the Bottle Hill fairgrounds. Reggie picked it up. It was one of the last photos taken of the four of them before Mom had left. Now it was just she and Henry and General Squeak.
She put the picture back and flashed the light across the window. The glass was cracked. Jagged silvery lines spread across it like a spider’s web.
“Everything’s falling apart around here,” she muttered.
Reggie glanced at Henry once more before she headed down the dark hallway, shivering.
4
The Halloway house was like many in Cutter’s Wedge: an old Victorian, three stories high, with sharply pointed gables. Thick shutters fended off the pugnacious New England winds. The kitchen was its heart, the place where the family could meet for more than two or three minutes at a time in the semi-ordered chaos that was modern life.
But since the day Mom had left without a word, without even saying goodbye, it was the kitchen where her absence was most painfully felt.
Reggie set plates in front of her father and an empty chair, then called, “Henry! Come on!”
Thom Halloway stared at a construction blueprint in front of him, tapping his coffee mug with his long fingers. Reggie had always loved his fingers — strong and crooked from hammering a million nails into wood and drywall. While he was building their back deck when she was seven, he’d taught her how to wield a hammer and saw. “You want something done, do it yourself,” he’d said. That was his creed. Not that he felt there was anything particularly noble about being self-sufficient. It just meant you’d have to deal with fewer people, which to his way of thinking was always a good thing. The fact that over the years Thom Halloway had moved up from carpenter to contractor held more than a little irony. As he himself admitted, Dad was “interpersonally challenged.”
“Henry, it’s getting cold!”
Footsteps clunked down the stairs — and then tumbled.
“Henry?” called Dad. “You okay?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah!”
Henry walked in, rubbing his elbow.
“I tripped.” He sat down and rubbed his hands together. “Somebody turn up the heat.”
Reggie glanced at her brother. He looked pasty, with gray circles around his eyes.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Uh-huh.” Henry frowned at the runny yellow goop on the plate in front of him. He poked it with his fork.
“What is this stuff?”
“Eggs,” said Reggie.
“They’re all … wet.”
“The other day you said they were too hard, so I —”
“Well, I didn’t mean to make them gross.” Henry pushed his plate away. “I want cereal.”
Henry stood and bumped the table, splashing his father’s coffee onto the blueprint. Dad jumped up.
“Damn it!” he yelled. He swiped at the blueprints with his hands while Reggie hurried over with some paper towels.
“You cursed. Mom says not to curse,” Henry said.
Reggie stopped sopping up the coffee and looked at him. Henry stared at the mess without expression; there was no guilt or concern in his eyes.
“Your mom said a lot of things, Henry.” Dad’s hands shook as he scooped up his papers. “But she’s gone now.”
His cell phone rang. Her father’s large, rough hand pushed a tiny button and held the thin, dainty device to his ear.
“Halloway.” He listened for a moment, and then huffed. “I told the crew not to lay the rebar until — damn it —”
“Curse,” Henry mumbled.
“Don’t pull it up until I get there. Thirty minutes.” He slapped the phone shut and started out of the kitchen.
“Dad, you didn’t eat,” said Reggie.
“I’ll grab something on the way to work.” He threw on his coat and headed for the door. “I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.”
Reggie sighed and sat back down.
“So much for a nice family breakfast.”
“I didn’t mean to spill the coffee,” Henry said as he poured himself a heaping bowl of Frosted Stars.
“It wasn’t the coffee.” Reggie tried not to get upset, but having no place to aim her anger just made it harder. “Why did you have to bring up Mom, Henry? You know how he gets.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.”
Reggie peered at him. Though the words sounded like a quasi-apology, his voice was harsh, remorseless. But he looked totally normal. She pushed away her plate of now-cold eggs.
Henry slid the sugar bowl over and plunged his spoon into it. He added a heaping white mound to his pre-sugared cereal. Then another, and then another. Reggie looked on, her eyebrows rising.
“Do you want some cereal with your sugar?” she asked.
“I like it this way,” said Henry as he dumped one more big spoonful and started shoveling in the cereal.
“Since when?” asked Reggie.
Henry’s spoon stopped halfway to his lips.
“Since now.”
They sat there mutely, the only sound the crunch of Henry’s chewing. His face was as white as the milk in his bowl. As he ate, he shivered. Reggie reached out and put her palm to his forehead. It was like pressing against a window on a wintry day. Henry recoiled.
“Get off!” he yelled, jumping to his feet and knocking into the table. Cereal sloshed out of the bowl.
“You’re ice-cold,” Reggie said, standing up. “Stay there.”
She walked out. Henry put his own hand against his head, knitted his brow, and then shrugged when Reggie came back in with a digital thermometer.
“Open up.”
Henry scowled at the command.
“No.”
“No? Want me to shove this someplace else?”
Henry’s scowl hardened, but he opened his mouth and Reggie put the thermometer in and pushed his jaw closed.
“Now keep your mouth shut. It isn’t done till it beeps.”
It took all of two seconds. Reggie took the thermometer out and eyed the readout, frowning.
“Seventy-four point three? Great. It’s broken … or you’re from another planet.”
He stood up and turned his back to her. “I’m going upstairs.”
For Reggie, the shower had always been a sanctuary. All her senses felt different here. The close, shining walls surrounding her. The steam blurring everything beyond the tile and glass. The pounding water insulating her from all other sound. And lately, the sound barrier served a new purpose. It allowed her to give in to her sadness and her anger, to cry about Mom where no one could hear.
Reggie stepped out of the shower, wiped the mirror above the sink clean, and stared at herself, sweeping her hair up this way and that, wondering when the minimal curves of her lean body were going to turn into something noticeable to anyone but herself. Mom used to stand beside her and say, “Don’t worry. I didn’t have boobs ’til I was seventeen.” Aaron called Reggie “flat-top,” and he wasn’t talking about her hairstyle.
At least she had the hair going for her: long, dark brown curls, just like her mother’s. Every week Reggie would sit in front of the mirror, hair washed and gleaming wet, and Mom would give her a trim. Long after the scissors had been put away, they would still be talking. Plenty of time was spent discussing skin creams, makeup, and manicures, but these subjects always meandered into deeper conversations about the challenges of school and the complexities of friendship and of love.
There was one conversation Reggie couldn’t stop thinking about. They’d had it six months before Mom left.
Mom had been sitting on the toilet lid painting her toenails, and Reggie had asked, “Mom, do you believe in soul mates?”
“Soul mates? Why?” Mom said.
“I was reading this magazine article in the dentist’s office, ‘How to Find Your Soulmate,’ or something like that.”
“So do I believe there are people who are ‘meant to be together’? Is that what you mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Boy, I haven’t thought about that one in a long time.” Mom’s faint smile appeared. She wore the same smile whether she was happy or melancholy, so it had been hard to tell what she’d been feeling. “I guess maybe I still do.”
Reggie remembered the word “still.”
“The trouble is, Reg, there are billions of people out there, so unless you luck out right away, you have a tough choice: either be prepared to spend a good chunk of your life trying to find him, with no guarantees you will — or settle for someone, well, less than a ‘soul mate.’”
Reggie remembered the word “settle.”
“I guess the first choice takes a lot of guts,” she said.
Mom stared at her, then went back to work on her toes.
These days, Reggie wondered if her simple question had made her mother begin to confront feelings she had buried. Reggie still didn’t know if she believed in soul mates, but if they were out there, the truth was, she hoped Mom never found hers.
Reggie put on her robe and pulled it snug around her; school was out for the holiday break, but she had to get ready for work. As she headed back to her room, she heard a voice coming through Henry’s door. That was odd. He never shut his door. She put an ear to it. Henry was talking to someone.
“Did that hurt?”
He giggled, but it sounded cruel and cold. He repeated the question.
“Did that hurt?”
Reggie slowly turned the knob, opening the door a crack. Henry was sitting on his bed with his back to her.
“What are you doing, Henry?”
Henry froze, then turned toward her, and Reggie caught her breath. In his hands was Kappy, his beloved koala bear. Chunks of its fur had been torn out, leaving ragged, bald spots. It looked like a torture victim.
“Henry … what are you doing?”
Henry smiled.
“Seeing what he looks like with no hair. You know … naked.”
“But he’s your favorite.”
“It doesn’t hurt
, Reg.” He grabbed a clump of the bear’s fur and yanked it out. Reggie flinched.
“But why would you —”
“Because it’s mine.”
Reggie cocked her head. There it was again — his voice. It was raspy and low. Not the voice of an eight-year-old.
“Sure he’s yours,” she said, sitting down on the bed next to Henry, “but that doesn’t mean —” She tried to feel his forehead again, but Henry pushed her hand away.
“I feel fine.”
Reggie nodded and took the mangled koala.
“You and Mom won this together at that carnival, re-member?”
“I remember.”
“Is that why you want to … take Kappy apart? Because it reminds you of Mom?”
“Why would that bother me?” asked Henry. “Mom’s not ever coming back.”
Reggie was surprised by his frankness.
“Henry, yes, she is. Mom is coming back. It’s okay to be mad at her — I mean, I’m mad, too. But she loves us. She loves you. She needs time, that’s all.”
“You can tell yourself that if you want.” Henry looked up at Reggie. “But it’s a lie.”
Reggie gaped at Henry. It had been months since Mom’s last e-mail, longer than that since a phone call. Reggie and her father had not wanted to move on yet. Henry, on the other hand…
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Reggie handed Kappy back to Henry.
He nodded, though despite his flannel pajamas, his robe, and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he still shivered.
“I’m late for work,” said Reggie. “Mrs. Boswell will be here in a few minutes, once she gets out of church. But maybe I should call Eben and tell him I can’t make it…”
“Jeez, Reggie, I’m fine!”
“Okay, okay. But today you need to stay warm and dry. I’ll leave a note for Mrs. B. to make you some soup. Now, I know she can get a bit cranky, but she’s the only babysitter we could —”
“I’m not a baby, Reggie.”
“I know. Sometimes it feels like you’re older than I am.” She kissed his cheek. It was cold.
“Close the door, okay?”
As she closed the door behind her, Reggie heard Henry whispering to himself again.