The Mercy of Thin Air

by Ronlyn Domingue

Eugenia dispels her image into a humid August breeze and reappears seconds later in mid-stride. She adjusts the brim of her frowzy rose-colored bonnet. She clucks her light tongue. “Why did you assume that he could endure your touch from beyond the grave?”

  “Why didn’t someone warn me?”

  “Didn’t anyone tell you the last rule?”

  “Noble did. All he said was that I’d have no use for it anymore.” I tell her that I tried to get more information to explain why. I had asked four wanderers—the ones who did not confine themselves to the places they had died. Noble only smiled and said that experience was the best teacher. Two others acted as if my questions were digging into guarded secrets, and they refused to answer. The last had burned his hands on a stove at the age of fifteen months. Although he, like the rest of us, could remember every moment of his breathing life, he had had little practice at the nuances of touch in his thirty-six years with a body. He could not understand why it mattered now.

  I want to cry.

  “There, there, sugarplum.” Eugenia pats the space near my hand. “You will have to stop, Raziela. Do not touch him again. If you cannot refrain, I would suggest that you move away—or move, well—” She pauses and fingers the lavender bow under her chin. “Tell me, after you stopped breathing, how far did you see? Into beyond.”

  “I only saw light. I saw no end. The same way I remember my birth.”

  “Noble says he saw gates.”

  “That’s not the only illusion he treasures.”

  Eugenia blinks. She, too, knows that Noble believes that he disobeyed God moments after his body failed, that he refused to meet the being that forced him to watch his wife and children slowly die. “But do you suppose there is one, an end?”

  “No. What do you think?”

  “I did not want to find out what was next. I was so happy before the bees came.” A bumblebee hovers above Eugenia’s nose. She stands on tiptoe, takes it into her mouth, and stills the air in that round space. A moment later, the insect falls to the ground, smothered to death.

  “All I ever wanted to do was walk in my garden and enjoy the colors and scents of every season,” she says. “What a surprise it was that my form allows me to be filled with perfume. The breathing who can sense me call me the Rose Ghost because I am always surrounded with that scent.

  “The air holds many secrets, dear. A beautiful spectrum of fragrances, infinitesimally small. And when you learn to take those parts to build a whole, you return to remembrance.” She moves her full bosom as if she were inhaling. “He is with you even now. Your Andrew. He is a part of your scent because he is a part of your memory. He is a part of you, now as much as before.”

  Since my death, I have spent most of my time learning to tolerate the incredible range of sounds I now hear and working to create a solid form. I have hardly noticed the sensitivity to scent. I hold a breeze within me for a moment. The magnolia cones will not split open for another two weeks, but I can smell a hint of the red seeds that will emerge, a cinnamon-clove fragrance as rich as their color.

  “What an interesting trick.” I think of the spring evening when I pinched stamens from honeysuckle blossoms and savored the delicate nectar, released drop by drop, on my tongue. An April aroma suddenly perfumes the August air. “We must attract atoms from the air and assemble them into molecules.”

  “I haven’t a clue,” she says. Her nostrils curl. She detects a dilute miasma of blood and chlorine, I know, but pretends that the air is still sweet.

  “It’s basic chemistry.”

  “Such things simply are, and I enjoy them.” Eugenia pulls at the cuffs of her long sleeves. “But back to the matter at hand, sugarplum. Leave Andrew be. What happened is an example of why we leave our loved ones alone. Besides, he is not the reason you stayed between. He is the reason you refuse to go beyond.”

  “That’s not it at all. I told you before. I wasn’t finished.”

  “Yes, that is true. That is true. But you stayed between for a purpose. Perhaps what you think that purpose is, is not the case at all.” Eugenia suffocates another bee in the palm of her hand.

  I VENTURED OUT AGAIN with Amy and Scott to a party out of town. The ride west from Baton Rouge to Lafayette was lovely. I had never seen that part of Louisiana. Early May had erupted in green. Now and then, I cracked the window to get a whiff of the sap that flooded the trunks and branches. The Atchafalaya Basin spread wide and shallow. Egrets perched on jagged remains of cypress trees. I remembered the flocks that flew overhead when Andrew and I drove along the Mississippi in search of a secluded spot for a picnic lunch, and dessert.

  “Oil derricks used to line this stretch.” Amy looked at the open spaces near a small town’s highway exit. “An old boyfriend called them earless horses.”

  “Why?”

  “The part that bobbed down looked like a horse’s head.”

  Scott missed the woebegone tenor of what she told him. I clicked the back window down a notch to rush the air around me. There it was, the hint of a man whose skin she had known well.

  “Okay—” Scott shoved his finger against the window control lever. “Am I giving off some weird electrical charge? Anything that plugs in or runs on a battery won’t behave around me anymore.”

  “Your magnetic personality,” Amy said.

  “I always thought I was attractive.”

  “Ion-estly think so.”

  “Are you positive?”

  She turned to him as he chuckled. Scott had a good laugh, an honest one.

  “Why aren’t you laughing?” he asked.

  “T minus twenty-two minutes and counting to the family fun.”

  SCOTT PRESSED HIS PALM against the small of Amy’s back as they walked up to the house. She balanced a pretty gift in one hand and knocked with the other. The front door opened. An elderly woman turned her smile toward the guests on the porch.

  Twolly.

  She wore black pumps with a low heel, a simple dress the color of amethyst, and a single strand of real pearls. There was a wedding ring on her left hand, which was raised to a cygnet-soft cheek. Matching pearl earrings dotted her adorable lobes. Her brown eyes were wide inside the gold rims of her cheaters. Once dark blond hair was now white as dogwood petals.

  I lunged to hug my old friend. My reaction was visceral. I forgot I had no body. Twolly teetered in her shoes. Scott and another man grabbed her elbows to steady her as I slipped from the growing crowd.

  “Aunt Twolly, your legs can’t keep up with the rest of you,” Amy said.

  “Oh, my goodness! Do you hear that pounding? My heart is about to burst.” Twolly giggled.

  Loud rappings knocked against the walls. I stilled myself, my energy, to quiet the sound as people began to ogle the room for the source.

  “Are you okay, Mom?” said the man who was holding her arm.

  “Please. Your mother is old, but she’s not made of porcelain.” Twolly stepped proudly, and slowly, away from her son.

  A bug flew into my gaping mouth and spun out of my ear. I had not seen Twolly in nearly seventy-five years. Not since I hopped a train to Shreveport and hovered the streets until I found her family home. I longed to hold her ancient hands in mine and stroke her manicured fingertips until they tickled.

  TWOLLY NEVER LIKED being the center of attention. Instead, she circled around an event, tending to details, making people feel comfortable. She was a wonderful hostess in our younger years, and that had not changed about her. Each new guest was greeted warmly and led through a sea of handshakes and kisses as she offered a beverage or bite to eat. The grace she had years before was more smooth, more noticeable, because she could no longer move as quickly. Her hands lingered on people’s arms to catch their attention—and steady herself.

  Her laugh was exactly the same, a sharp sneezy rush, ahhh ha ha ha. She had no reserve if she were amused. There was never any doubt that her response was genuine. Her childlike bursts made a room chime. When she spoke, her words vibrated slightly, bu
t they came out as strong as they had when she was young. Her North Louisiana drawl still flowed like buttermilk. And she still said “cain’t” for can’t.

  When she disappeared into the kitchen, I wandered among the guests to observe Twolly’s family. Some of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren had arrived to celebrate her ninety-sixth birthday, while others, scattered across the globe, had sent cards and flowers. Her two sons and daughter moved among cousins and spouses clustered throughout the first floor of the house. Her youngest sister Sunny’s three children were there as well—a son and two daughters, one of whom was Amy’s mother, Nora.

  I smiled to myself as I stood among them. Twolly’s life had turned out exactly as she expected. Her children clearly adored her. I had known she would make a wonderful mother, even when she was young. I imagined that she had been a good wife, too, although there was no elderly man at her side to give me such a clue.

  I wandered into a cozy sitting room full of furniture that had been Twolly’s mother’s. On a pristine Jacobean table, there were fifteen framed photographs. One was of my dear old friend and her husband at Christmas. Several others showed her children and their families. The oldest ones were of Twolly’s parents and a group shot of Twolly and her four sisters. I wondered what happened to the photos she once had of us together, especially the one taken at a playground, waving from a seesaw. Andrew had told us to keep still so we wouldn’t blur the shot. He had been testing his new camera that day.

  Scott entered the room behind a quick, crawling baby. “Okay, you little monster, let’s get out of your great-grandma’s special room.” Scott reached under the little boy’s arms and pitched him high in the air. The baby squalled.

  “Give him to me.” Amy stretched her hands toward her young cousin. Scott dangled the child in front of her. She kissed him loudly on the forehead. Amy scooped him on her hip and flattened the tiny buttoned shirt over his belly. Scott twitched his right hand to stop it from moving toward her in a gesture of affection.

  “Cute family. Want to take him home?” asked Julie, Twolly’s granddaughter. She smelled of expensive shampoo and the waning hormones of a mother no longer nursing.

  “Tempting, but he’d miss you.” Amy handed the child to her cousin.

  “So when are you having yours?” A dull crust of oatmeal coated Julie’s hair along the back edge.

  Nora slipped into the room with a glass of cranberry juice in her hand. “I’ve been wondering the same thing.” She brushed a wisp of steel gray hair from her fair, smooth forehead. Her movement showed natural grace.

  “You’ve been married—what—two, three years?” Julie asked.

  “Two,” Amy said.

  “But we’ve been together more than four,” Scott said.

  “Girl, what are you waiting on? You’re just a year younger than me, aren’t you? Don’t you feel those eggs turning into raisins in there?”

  “Actually, no,” Amy said, a growl of warning in her throat.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing. You’ve never loved anything so much. Isn’t that right, Little Bruce?” Julie made pig noises into her son’s neck. He squealed with delight. “You been trying?”

  Scott found the third button of his shirt fascinating.

  “I’m barren.”

  “Amy—” Nora blurted. “Why didn’t you—”

  “Really?” Julie clenched her jaw to thwart a conspiratorial smile.

  “Just kidding.”

  Nora’s cheeks matched her red drink, and she exhaled with a gust.

  Julie frowned. “Don’t joke like that. Lord, what if you were?” She turned her ear toward the door. “I know that’s one of mine tearing into the gifts. I’ll talk to y’all later.”

  With a light stroke, Nora touched Amy’s hand. “You’d tell me if something were wrong, wouldn’t you? I don’t mean to pry, but I would want to know, sweetheart. I’m your mother, after all.”

  “Mom, I’m fine. I promise.” Amy paused. “I think I heard Dad calling for you.”

  “Did he? I tell you, my eyesight first, now my hearing. I’m too young for this aging thing.” Nora squeezed Amy’s shoulder on her way out.

  Scott waited until Nora was out of whisper distance. “Did you have to do that?”

  “Julie started it. ‘When are you having yours?’ It’s none of her business. And she’s the third person to ask since we got here. It’s barely eleven o’clock. What’s with this family?”

  “I don’t think they mean any harm.”

  “They might as well ask for sperm samples.”

  “Amy, please.”

  “I came in here to get away from all the talk about what Poppa Fin did. What he threw out. What he didn’t. Why he did such a thing. What’s the point of wondering? It doesn’t bring anyone—anything—back. Then I end up in here with the Fertility Goddess who pushed out four in six years. And my mother. The way she acts, you’d think I was the only one to carry on the Richmond blood. She doesn’t harass my brother like this. Maybe we should move halfway across the country like he did.” Amy flopped herself into a wingback. “You’re a man. You don’t know the pressure.”

  “Yes, I do. It might be different, but it feels the same. To me, anyway.”

  He walked out with his hands deep in his pockets. Amy turned to look at the photos on the table. For a long moment, I watched her, marveling that she had led me back to my old friend, that I must have sensed something about her other than her brazen pluck. Amy shifted her eyes to another picture, just to the right. She peered at her Grandma Sunny’s face as if she expected a word of comfort. A faint, familiar sweetness spread throughout the room. I remembered Sunny, too—fresh and bold as zinnias—although I only met her once.

  OCTOBER 1926, OUR SOPHOMORE YEAR, Twolly invites me to entertain her younger sister, Sunny. Eight years old, tiny and bright, Sunny runs up to the elephant’s keep at Audubon Zoo. She watches the animal grasp alfalfa with its trunk and bring the snack toward its mouth.

  “People say elephants never forget anything,” I tell her.

  “Really?” She twists a curl of her new bob into her finger. “So if I visit my sissie at college again and we come back to the zoo, Itema will remember this?”

  Before Twolly can stop her, Sunny stands on her hands and dances her feet in the air, showing her dainties to all who care to look.

  “Is she laughing, Razi?” Sunny asks.

  “Soleil!” Twolly shouts.

  I bend over in hysterics.

  “For goodness sake, don’t encourage her.” Twolly grabs her little sister at the waist and turns her right side up. “Soleil, that is no way to behave in a public place. If Mother were here, you’d spend the rest of the day in a corner.”

  “Aw, Etoile, no one but you and Razi saw.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It was an awful good handstand, though, Twolls. She has great balance.”

  Twolly glares at me. I am tempted to mention that she, of late, has violated standards of decency, but even I have the sense to know that Sunny is too young to learn certain secrets about her sister.

  “There’s a big old monkey here, too, Sunny. Want to see him?” I ask.

  The little girl blinks at Twolly with feigned remorse.

  “Go on, you two.”

  When I glance back, I see Twolly stifle a chuckle.

  BRIGHT AGAINST HER harvest gold hair is the Newcomb College Class of ’29 green beanie. This is the third time I happen to be in the art building’s ladies’ room when the quiet, modestly dressed blond girl comes in to wash charcoal dust from her hands.

  “What a messy class you’re taking,” I say. “What is it?”

  “Cast drawing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We draw from plaster models, busts mainly. I’ve seen you around. Are you an upperclassman?” She inspects me, looking for a hint of color: freshman green, sophomore red, junior gold, senior blue and white.

  “I’m a Tulane freshman, but n
ot in your college. I’m taking a drawing class for my science courses. We draw dissections. I’m Raziela Nolan. Call me Razi.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Rah-zee.” She has pronounced my name correctly with a slight drawl. “Etoile Knight.”

  “Etoile? As in star?”

  “Yes. You know French?”

  “Some. Enough to know it’s not right to name your child Star Knight. Now I’ll crack up every time I see you.”

  “My middle name is Luna.”

  I laugh. “Mind if I call you Twolly?”

  “I’ve never had a nickname. My family doesn’t believe in them. But they’re not here now.”

  “Maybe it’ll catch on.”

  We see each other nearly every day after school. I learn Twolly is the third of five girls. She is unimpressed that she’s a nouveau riche Shreveport debutante whose daddy is in oil. Although her parents had wanted her to stay home and find a nice, ambitious young man to marry, she decided she wanted a few years to herself. Twolly studies jewelry making at Newcomb and wants to meet boys who won’t have to be introduced to her family. There is no doubt in her mind that she’ll be a wife and mother someday, but not now, not yet. When I see her metalwork, so simple, so organic, so beautiful, I hope that her choice is truly her own, that the subtle catch in her voice does not imply resignation to a narrow world and a woman’s narrower view.

  FIRST SPRING DANCE, 1927. Twolly pulls me out of the arms of a bewildered stag and drags me toward the steps. Only moments before, she was dancing across the room, tossing her head back in laughter. A boy who was waiting to cut in on me frowns as we pass him.

  “Easy, Twolls. Where’s the fire?” I say.

  “David Kleinert’s pants.”

  I cackle. “What happened?”

  “We were dancing, and he led me off the veranda into the dark.”

  “Did you want him to?”

  “Well, yes, he’s terribly sweet, I see him on campus almost every day, and he’s been cutting in on me often lately, so I figured he was interested. We were having a very personal conversation—he said he’d wanted to ask me on a date, and I said he shouldn’t be so shy, and then he stopped moving and leaned in, so I kissed him—”