Invisible as Air

by Zoe Fishman

  Somehow, overnight it seemed, Sylvie’s and his roles had reversed. She was the open one now, at least open on her terms; she was the one speaking her truth and enjoying life. He, on the other hand, was closing like a fist, buried in his pocket with no motivation to strike. Could it be as simple as the fact that without his exercise, he had no outlet? And without his freedom to click “Buy,” no relief? Nothing to look forward to?

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his texts, landing on T.B., otherwise known as Tobi Bell. It was a rather absurd name, but she swore it was her real one, and to be honest it fit her, Paul thought. She was petite and spunky, with a voice that sounded a little bit like Peppermint Patty’s: raspy and deep for someone her size.

  He’d met her on his triathlon training team and immediately, without any rational explanation since he was (a) not cool, (b) significantly older than her and (c) married, she’d taken an interest in him. At first, Paul had been quick to assume that she was just that type of person—bubbly, overly friendly, a talker—and that he was easy prey: affable, eager to learn and a listener. But then, well, it became obvious that she had a crush on him, which was ludicrous but also flattering.

  He did not indulge her flirting; he never took her up on her invitations for beers after a training run or stretched out with her despite her repeated attempts to ask him to join her on the ground, her legs sometimes over her head. Sure, it was a little over-the-top, her pursuit of him. But it was harmless.

  Until the texts started coming. Sometimes Paul answered them, sometimes he didn’t, but they always aroused him. Not because they were sexy texts, not at all. They were always banal, asking him about his day, a training exercise, whatever. But they came. And they were his secret. He had never told a soul.

  He stared at her last text now and typed back, Ankle healing. Crutches suck, his whole body warm with both the knowledge that he shouldn’t be texting back and the thought of her reading it.

  “Paul, how are you, my friend?”

  Paul looked up to find David looming above him, two bottled beers in hand. He closed his phone and shoved it back into his pocket.

  “Mind if I have a seat?”

  “Of course.”

  David sat and handed him a beer.

  “What are you doing here?” Paul asked incredulously. David may as well have been a mirage. Maybe he was drunk after all.

  “Cheers,” said David, clinking his perspiring bottle with Paul’s. He took a sip. “We kept in touch after the deck job,” he explained.

  “Cool,” said Paul, taking a sip of his own. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You too. I don’t know a freakin’ soul here.”

  “No date?” asked Paul.

  “Not tonight.”

  “Well, the night is young.”

  “Not really,” said David. “I’m tired. Where’s Sylvie?”

  “Somewhere around here,” answered Paul.

  “You okay?” asked David. “You sound a little down.”

  “I’m fine,” said Paul. “Just tired too.”

  They sat together, nestled in the cushions of the couch, looking up and out at the rest of the world. Both lonely, together.

  It was the best company Paul could possibly have.

  Chapter Ten

  Sylvie

  Thanks,” said Sylvie to the bartender, feeling slightly dizzy but in a very pleasant way. Like the party was a hammock from which she swung slightly, suspended between two giant palm trees.

  She giggled to herself, covered her mouth with her free hand. She really was stoned. She did not want to go back to Paul on the couch. He had been sulking since they had arrived. Frankly, he was killing her buzz. She felt guilty thinking that, since she was fully aware that she had been killing his for years. He was the nicer one, which was an incontestable fact, despite his flaws. She needed him to keep being that person.

  She wandered through the party, nodding at people who smiled at her. Without planning it, she found herself at the base of the staircase, looking up to the second floor of the house.

  Sylvie glanced around furtively. No one was watching her. As quietly and quickly as she could, she climbed the stairs, thrilled by the possibility of going somewhere she knew she shouldn’t.

  At the top, to the left, was a giant, open playroom straight out of a magazine. Every toy in its rightful straw basket, every basket tucked into deep wood shelves built into stark white walls. The floor was covered with a rug that burst with color: pink and chartreuse, orange and turquoise, emerald and lavender, baby blue and cream, all woven together to create a magical color palette that somehow managed to excite and soothe at the same time. A white tepee with swirls of navy splashed across its fabric stood in the corner, a tiny white wooden table with yellow chairs in the other. Two easels, for the budding van Goghs.

  She moved on through the hallway. To her right, a door. She opened it and gasped, the force of missing what existed here—but had never for her—like a sucker punch to the nose. A little girl’s room. Agnes’s room.

  She entered and stood rooted to the spot for a moment as she regained her composure, the room glowing slightly thanks to a nightlight in the shape of a fox’s face plugged into the far wall, by the two windows. A twin bed lined the wall to Sylvie’s left, a trundle bed, from the looks of it. White wood. Simple.

  Sylvie approached it, stretching out her hand tentatively to feel the softness of the lavender polka-dotted duvet cover. A stuffed ostrich lay against the pillow, its eyes comically wide, its soft feathers matted by the constant attention of four-year-old hands. Sylvie sat on the bed and hugged it to her chest.

  Across from her was a low bookcase, with two rows of three cubbies. Books and bins of dolls and LEGOs, paper and crayons, blocks and impossibly tiny animals. In the corner, tulle and the recognizable sheen of polyester peeked over the edge of a tall woven basket. A cowboy hat lay on the floor beside it, the lone artifact out of place. Another beautiful rug, with fuchsia, navy, emerald green and gold threads woven through it, covered the floor. On the windows, pale-gray wooden blinds to keep out the light.

  On the small white table next to the bed, a wooden lamp with an azure shade. On top of it, a glass globe plugged into the wall. Sylvie, still hugging the ostrich, switched it on, turning the room into a galaxy of hazy stars. Imagine, she thought to herself. Imagine if Delilah had lived.

  What kind of girl would she be? This kind of girl, or a tomboy kind of girl? Would she have emulated her brother or forged her own path? She would have been three now. Would she have liked to have her nails painted? Sylvie wondered, looking down at her own red digits. Would she have been a snuggler or a wiggle-away kind of person? What would her voice have sounded like? What phrases would she have inevitably gotten wrong, making them her own each time she uttered them?

  For the longest time, Teddy, instead of saying “for real,” had emphatically uttered “for your real life, Mom” when defending a particular stance. It had given Sylvie so much joy, that turn of phrase. Sylvie had mourned when Teddy had outgrown it. She still did.

  What would their life as a family of four be like? Sylvie kicked off her clogs, which landed with two muffled thumps on the rug. She placed her empty drink on the bedside table and lay back, her head against the pillow. Stars and planets were strewn across the ceiling like confetti.

  Paul would be happier, with a daughter who adored him. He might never have taken up his training compulsion, and hence they wouldn’t be thousands of dollars in debt and she might have been able to quit the job she hated.

  And Teddy. Teddy would have been a great big brother because he was a sweet kid, but also because on the rare occasions Sylvie saw her son being able to exercise his authority—explaining a movie plot or a camera shot, for example, or more recently, picking out his own clothes (which killed Sylvie, but what could she do, he was twelve)—he puffed up with confidence, like a marshmallow in the microwave. And she? What would Sylvie be like?

  T
he medicinal waves of serenity that had been rolling through her body all night were beginning to recede. Would that make it high tide or low tide? Sylvie wondered. No matter, she had another pill nestled in one of the giant pockets of her dress. She reached in and found it, a tiny disk in the bottom left-hand corner, waiting. Into her mouth, and with one commanding swallow, it dissolved into her body.

  Sylvie would be an entirely different person, she figured, if Delilah had lived. Being the victim of tragedy, it changed absolutely everything about you. Sure, you could smile again, eventually, laugh again and even forget for a while sometimes, that what once was was no longer. But even when you were happy, even when you experienced some sort of triumph, you were sad. Because wishing that things had turned out differently never went away. Even with these pills, that wishing never went away, as evidenced by the fact that here she was, in a four-year-old girl’s bedroom, clutching a stuffed ostrich and sobbing.

  Sylvie sat up. She patted at her eyes, knowing her mascara had likely run down her face. She stopped crying, as suddenly as she had started, as the blissful waves rolled again, smoothing over her unhappiness as they lapped and retreated, lapped and retreated.

  Why couldn’t she just get drunk at a party like everyone else, dance like an idiot to the hip-hop of her youth, which she heard thumping below, possibly spill her drink all over either herself or Paul, go home, have grunty sex and pass out? Why was she forever cursed with the weight of heartbreak, the bitterness of why her, why Paul, why Teddy, why Delilah? Try as she might, Sylvie could not push past it. But the pills. They helped. Until they didn’t. And then she just took another.

  Sylvie stood up. She smoothed the bed and placed the ostrich back in its spot. She switched off the globe, and the stars went out. She retrieved her empty glass. On her way out of the room, she pocketed a tiny kitten figurine, dressed in a pinafore and a red-checkered dress with a high, ruffled collar.

  “Sylvie?” She stopped in her tracks, weaving ever so slightly on her feet, and grabbed the banister before turning her head to heed the greeting.

  Greg. With his perfectly tousled hair and square jaw, he could have been a model in a J.Crew catalog.

  “Greg, hey,” she said. “Just using the bathroom up here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mi casa, su casa,” he said, toasting her with his champagne glass. “Just being a terrible host, I’m afraid. I’m not much for parties.”

  “Really? But this is a great party.” Sylvie turned around completely to face him, conscious of the tiny bulge of stolen property in her pocket.

  “That’s all Josh,” he answered. “Happy husband, happy . . . I guess they don’t have a trite cliché for that.”

  “I suppose not. How are you?”

  “I’m okay, I guess. Nothing to complain about, but if pressed, I’m sure I could find something.”

  “Mazel tov on ten years,” said Sylvie, lifting her own empty glass.

  He approached her with a smile to clink his to hers. “Thanks, Sylvie. I can’t believe it, actually. Went by like”—he snapped his long, tapered fingers—“that.”

  Sylvie looked at him. Really looked at him. His brown eyes were tired, underneath each a half-moon of gray.

  “Greg?”

  “Yes?”

  “Has anything really terrible ever happened to you?”

  Greg cocked his head slightly, considering the weight of her question.

  “Yes.” He paused. “My dad died when I was five. That was pretty terrible.”

  “That is terrible. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “I’m sorry it happened to him,” said Greg. “He was only thirty-eight. Massive heart attack.”

  “How did you handle it?”

  Greg poured some of his champagne into her glass. “I suppose the way all five-year-olds handle tragedy. Pretty resiliently. It wasn’t until later, as a teenager, that I even knew to be angry. And that’s a whole other thing, you know.”

  “How did your mother handle it?”

  “She was a warrior,” he said simply. “A stoic warrior. Raised me and my sister the best she knew how, went back to school for her master’s in social work. Kept it moving. But not without her share of tears and rage, which I of course forgive her for. Then and now.”

  Sylvie took a sip of the lukewarm champagne. “Then?”

  “Sure. Even at five, I could see how hard it was, to be a single parent.”

  “But don’t you ever want to scream at the world? Like, ‘Why did my dad have to die when your stupid dad is still here?’”

  “All of the time. I still do. But that’s what meditation and antidepressants are for. At least for me. And now, as a father myself, I feel like I have a chance to live the life he would have lived, if he had been given the chance.”

  “Greg, that’s amazing.”

  “Is it? I don’t know about that. It just is, for me. You know?”

  Sylvie nodded. “You never needed to escape from that pain? All these years?” she asked.

  “Sure. I smoked more weed than any pair of lungs has license to, did my share of psychedelics in high school and college. Looking for him, I guess, to appear and dispense some sage advice.” He finished his glass. “Never happened.

  “How are you doing?” he asked Sylvie. “How is your grief?”

  “Mine?”

  “It never goes away; I know that,” said Greg.

  “For the longest time, it was like carrying a boulder in my chest where my heart should be. It still is, some days. But lately, it feels more like a pebble. There’s room to breathe. Sometimes.”

  Tears filled Sylvie’s eyes as she admitted this, because who knew if it was even real? Without the synthetic lifeline she’d chosen, without this chemically induced euphoria, she was still struggling under that boulder’s weight. She longed to tell Greg this, now, but she swallowed the urge. This secret was all she had.

  “That’s really good to hear,” said Greg. “Have you found someone to talk to?”

  “Yes, I found someone,” Sylvie lied.

  “Great. And Teddy and Paul? How are they?”

  “Good. Great. Speaking of, I should probably find my husband.”

  “Good to see you, Sylvie.”

  “You too, Greg. And thanks for sharing that with me.”

  “You asked,” he answered. “Not many people do.”

  “I wish more people would,” said Sylvie. “I’ll take a real question over bullshit chitchat any day.”

  “Me too.” He smiled at her, a real smile, and Sylvie smiled back before making her descent back into the fray.

  Slowly, she dodged in and out between the groups of revelers, now all more than a little drunk and dancing questionably to the nineties hip-hop that continued to bump over the speakers. There was Paul. Right where she had left him, his head back against the couch, his mouth open slightly. He was sleeping.

  “Hi,” she said quietly, sitting beside him. He sat up, dazed.

  “Hi,” he said, his saliva thickening his speech. “How long was I out? God, how embarrassing.”

  “You’re fine,” said Sylvie. She kissed him on the cheek and snuggled into the warmth of him.

  They sat, the white linen couch a sailboat in a sea of revelry, watching.

  Chapter Eleven

  Teddy

  Teddy looked in his parents’ full-length mirror in their closet for the sixth time. Was this shirt okay? It was his favorite T-shirt, but was it too babyish? He liked that it was gray, and soft, but it had Jurassic Park emblazoned across its chest, in orange lettering. It wasn’t a baby movie, per se, but dinosaurs? Would Krystal think it was ridiculous?

  “It’s fine, you’re fine!” Teddy hissed at the mirror, annoyed by his anxiety.

  He turned away abruptly, almost tripping over something in the process. A red purse of his mother’s. He didn’t remember knocking it over, but if his mother saw one thing even the slightest bit out of place, she would know he had been in here. And then she would a
sk why. He picked it up to hang it back on the hook he assumed it fell from, only to hear a distinct rattle coming from inside it.

  He unzipped it, curious. Inside, a pill bottle was nestled in the red leather. He picked it up, examined it.

  Oxycodone, the label read.

  He knew about this pill. In the fall, a woman with tattoos all up and down her forearms, which he knew because the sleeves of her blue shirt were rolled up, had come to speak to his class about drugs. Oxycodone had been her drug of choice, she said, and then she proceeded to weave her story of near-death and redemption. Teddy was not sure if becoming a talking head for middle schoolers around the country qualified as redemption, but to each his own, he guessed.

  Afterward, all the popular kids around him had rolled their eyes. Drugs weren’t the problem; it was the people who took them, he had overheard Judson Dearborn explain to his usual crowd of Klingons as he trailed behind them on their way back to class. Some people just couldn’t handle them.

  “Should I get a tattoo?” Taylor had whispered over him to Kai in Spanish class, as if he were invisible, missing the point of the woman’s visit entirely.

  Teddy had never really thought about drugs, but he had seen them in movies. He’d watched Scarface with his dad, one time when his mom had gone to Milwaukee for a work trip. But that was cocaine, which seemed like maybe the worst thing ever created. Why anyone would snort something up their nose to act crazy and sweat profusely was beyond Teddy.

  Teddy thought the school may have been better off showing that movie than hosting Matilda, which was what the woman’s name had been.

  But here he was now in his parents’ closet, holding a bottle of the very drug Matilda had warned them about and wondering why it was hidden in his mom’s purse. He had always considered Judson Dearborn to be a narcissistic moron, but his words rang in Teddy’s ears now. He felt nauseated, holding the bottle. He zipped it back into the purse, returned it to the hook and walked briskly out of the closet, turning around one last time to make sure it hadn’t parachuted to the floor again.