Carry the Sky

by Kate Gray

A shoal, a sandbar. My mother for me. In Korea sons are shoals for their parents. My parents in San Diego now buffeted by the rough media.

  I was no shoal for Kyle.

  From this bench on the boardwalk, built so long ago, this beach the stomping ground of D.C. dignitaries, not merely the boarding-school set. Low tide, and the beach stretches almost to the horizon. The earth’s curve. Should have brought Second Formers here to learn shoal, tide, refraction, and drag.

  Once I met Carla here at a cottage. Similar loopy notes, Please leave shoes outside, with shaky pen drawing of Dutch clogs. As if some candy would magically fill them by morning.

  Countries have strange customs.

  A woman and a dried fish have to be bitten every three days.

  Not some index card. Old Korean saying. Confucian yin-yang mumbo jumbo about forces opposed, the wearing down of resistance. In this case women are food, the stuff to be consumed, swallowed, beaten. Women are rocks; men are waves, pounding. Used to be that Korean girls were raised in the family of the boy with whom they were matched. Boys married at fifteen, girls at twelve.

  Carla was seventeen when we met at this beach, eighteen when she sneaked into my apartment.

  Confucius taught girls silence, compliance, obedience, and then Catholics taught them to serve. Double trouble. Somehow my mother lived differently, learned to think from Catholic schools, work equally with my father, equal status. Her mother, though, was beaten every day by my grandfather. She said he smiled when he beat her with a walking stick. He liked beating like he liked crispy fish. Good for circulation.

  After Kim died, my blood pooled. Bad chi. I needed shelter. When Carla came to Tim-Tim’s, her stiff walk, her curls, her questions and bugs, something felt the same. Carla so different from my sister, but the same. Not trying to love my sister that way, just something familiar, a trace. The habit of sheltering was the only way I knew to love. Shelter for shelter. Caring for others is a good way not to feel for yourself.

  The very first day when Tim-Tim parents drive their station wagons around the circle in front of the main building, students pull out backpacks and boxes and pillows and milk crates, little packrats of their teenage years. Arms full, they walk into the stone building, and leave behind their age and grade. They become Formers, not graders. Carla became a Third Former.

  Parents in their sports coats and skirts, matching colors, all things J.Crew, packed in with kids carrying pillows and stuffed animals and crates of homemade tapes, the Doobie Brothers, Metallica, and other hideous bands. No one had Grateful Dead.

  I was inside the main entrance with a clipboard looking for the boys, the space too little for too many boys, Mr. Maze Director, sending them to their dorms, their new lives in rat living.

  But there was this girl, black curls falling in her eyes, no parents around her. She carried a plastic milk crate in front of her. No stuffed animals. No pillow.

  “Table for two?” Curly Girl said. She leaned toward my clipboard.

  For a second I looked for T for Table. Mr. Gullible.

  “Name?” I said.

  “Hungry.”

  “Well, Miss Hungry,” I said, “Try Miss Check-in, standing over there.” Her arms were hyper-extended from the crate she carried. In it were rows of tapes, Grateful Dead, each tape numbered in thick black marker. All the tapes lined up the same way, numerically ordered. Fastidious. My nod to the other entrance in the dark hall sent Miss Hungry to check in. Carla walked like someone learning to walk, straight lines and pulleys and wheels. She didn’t look back.

  Who knew she would row with such power, run such distances, lie with me on a couch.

  Last summer, between her Fifth and Sixth Form years, we came to Rehoboth for the weekend. Her father made a deal with a local artist for a show in his gallery in exchange for some weekends at the beach. It had been a long summer, very hot, and the beach is always cool. And months had gone by with letter after letter. Carla can write beautiful things, and my reasons for not going sounded weak. In the end, I was weak and said yes. She drove the red Mustang convertible her father gave her and stepped stiff-legged out of it, Miss Mannequin, with a book bag on her back.

  “Traveling light?” I said.

  “Clothing optional,” she said.

  Her height, my height, almost the same. Raised two cultures apart and similar builds. A decade apart.

  Our shoulders touched when we walked to the front door. The pulse of a wave can last until the drag or resistance changes the energy.

  Inside the cottage she threw her backpack on the couch and walked back toward me, arms open.

  “Alone at last,” she said in a mock movie-actress voice.

  “Let’s hit the beach.”

  Most of the day I dodged her. Walking on the beach, we bumped each other, barefoot in the light sand. This sand the grinding of shells and granite, washed and washed over the shoals. At one point she played bull, making me the matador.

  Bending at the hip in a right angle, she put one finger on either side of her face, extending from her temples, and she pawed the sand before charging me. Ms. Bull charging. Waiting, waiting until she was inches away, I pretend-pulled the cape, stood up on my toes, turned sideways, and let the charging bull pass. Mr. Matador. Her heels dug into the sand. When she stopped so quickly, she fell on her butt. The pretend-cape danced. She looked up. It swung and swirled above her, her head tipped back, the curls off her forehead, those eyes of well water. I drew the cape behind me in a twirl about my waist, around and around, faster and faster until I keeled over beside her, and we laughed. Bulls don’t fall butt-first, and matadors don’t drop beside them. Teachers don’t sleep with students.

  Too much opportunity with no obstruction. Internal reality obstructing external possibility.

  A woman and a dried fish have to be bitten every three days.

  Toward evening Carla walked backwards in front of me. We were two blocks from the house, with groceries in our hands. Her curls bouncing around her head each step backwards.

  “You’re avoiding me,” she said with a smile.

  “Not really.”

  “Yes, really.” She kept backing up, synchronized steps with my steps forward. “You’re a wuss.” I hate that word.

  She spun her body to walk beside me, her low grocery bags following centripetal force and clipping me at the knees.

  “Teachers don’t do this.”

  “That old line. Pathetic.”

  We piled up trying to get in the door. Enough space but too much emotion. Before I could turn the key, she was pushing the door, grocery bags banging against the wood. In the kitchen, she slammed the cupboards closed, threw containers in the fridge. Ms. Impatient.

  “Carla, come here,” I said and took her hand. Her fingers felt like they had an extra joint they were so long. I tugged her to sit down next to me. The couch was too soft, so we fell back against the wall. We laughed, but she wouldn’t look at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and she curled into my chest, her forehead beneath my chin.

  With my arms around her, I rocked her, her hair smelling of sun and ocean and, faintly, cotton candy.

  “You’re not some weird father-figure thing, you know, for me, anyway,” she said into my chest.

  “And you’re no child,” I said, but the way she curled into a part of herself made a part of me wash away. Her hair and her long fingers and her eyes, they were concrete and real. While entropy takes us to decay, her presence was vital, and in her presence, I forgot loss.

  But shoals don’t kiss, and beaches don’t lie down.

  But we did. It started with the way she folded into me, and her kisses on my neck, and my chin showing more of my neck and my arms loosening and her turning to face me, crawling into me, and my hands moving down her back, and then we were lying on the couch.

  If Carla tells the psychiatrist in the psych ward about our weekend at the beach, no matter what we did and didn’t do, what will the Old Boys do?

  Option 1: I a
m prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

  Option 2: They turn a blind eye since they realize that I did not have relations with a boy.

  Option 3: Can’t think of a third option.

  The Old Boys would understand that saying: Women are to be eaten, discarded. Old Girls are bitten every day. But I couldn’t do it.

  In the middle of her on top of me and her shirt up enough that the skin of our bellies dragged, I stopped, sat up, turned my body sideways on the couch. I didn’t mean to, but I knocked her off. Mr. Coordinated.

  “What was that?” she said. Her face was big and smiling, and her curls were everywhere.

  “I can’t do it.”

  “You’re kidding.” Her eyes held no light, reflecting. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I can’t do this.” It seems I can only go so far. Inside me there’s resistance, matter that obstructs the energy moving in one direction.

  “Then what’re we doing here?”

  “Good question.”

  That night we slept in separate beds in separate rooms. The heat outside was the glass of sand holding energy from the sun; the wind was the moisture from the waves. Inside it was soup. There was a note card near the electric clock by my bed: Please disable the alarm.

  The thought occurred to me to leave my own note card: Don’t bring students to bed.

  Note to self: Don’t underestimate students.

  Muscle-Boy Zurkus is bright for a jock, Mr. English Assignment torturing Kyle on the lab table. Melting wax into the ear. Mr. Hamlet in his revenge play, informing the Carnivores of the media. Old story, though: school master preying on innocent boy. But Carnivores don’t care what they eat so long as it draws other scavengers.

  Old Boys won’t like Tim-Tim’s in the spotlight. Though they’ve been the ones to tell me at the reunions and mucky-muck fundraisers: Bad publicity is good for admissions. Name recognition matters most. The Old Boys are like meat-eating media. They don’t care what the cause, so long as Tim-Tim’s is fresh on the mind. At least Sam Omura will speak for me. His outsider-ness like mine, but his mass carries more density, offers more pull than mine. Sam Omura is a prince among men.

  So, what bargain will Oral-Fixation White strike with Union Textile, Donny Zurkus’ dad?

  Option 1: Donny will get a glowing letter of recommendation to the college of his choice if he retracts his statement.

  Option 2: Donny’s dad stands by his son and revels in my demise.

  Option 3: Can’t think of Option 3.

  The morning after we slept in separate beds, Carla was Ms. Slammer. Every cupboard, every drawer, sent energy through the whole house. Couldn’t have slept if I wanted to.

  “Good morning, Ms. Sunshine.” The distance between the breakfast table and me was tiny. The red chair slid out from the table barely enough for me to squeeze in the seat.

  In sweats and a T-shirt, she was a girl, but when she turned toward me, her face was the picture of a screaming face painted on a wooden toy.

  “Can I help you find something?” The silverware in the slammed drawer sounded like breaking glass.

  “No.” She slammed the next drawer.

  Option 1: Put my arms around her, which was not the wisest move yesterday.

  Option 2: Try to reason with her.

  I finally thought of an Option 3: Walk out.

  “Carla,” I said, “can we talk?” Option 2.

  “All you want to do is talk. We talk about your age, we talk about your responsibilities, and we talk about when I graduate. And after talk, talk, talk, we make out. What am I supposed to do?” Her hands were by her side, palms out.

  “If you think of it as a wave, it travels up and down.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Don’t go science on me.” She crossed her muscle arms.

  “What I’m saying is that there is nothing constant.” Everything made me sound like a wuss.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she said.

  It didn’t take her long to pack her backpack. In the doorway to the kitchen, she leaned like a pile of sticks and looked at me. Her eyes were miles away, the light taking light years to travel the distance between us.

  Carla / Tape #2, Side A

  Hey, Kyle, it’s Day Eight. Still here, the loony bin.

  Remember Saturday nights? I bet you don’t miss seeing A Separate Peace or Psycho for the millionth time. What’s it like where you are?

  Did you ever sneak out of the dorm at night? Piece of cake. After the dorm parents shut down, like 1 a.m., we put masking tape over the latch of the outside door. I’m sure you did, too.

  One time last year Donny swiped two six-packs from home the weekend before, and he, Rambo, and I met at our spot in the woods past the cornfields. We ran for it. When we got there, Rambo set a big flashlight upright so the beam of light went straight up, made the trees naked. It was cold, maybe February, and our breath sometimes floated through the light beam.

  After a couple of beers, we started to warm up, and Donny made us do Beerhunter.

  “Scared?” he said.

  Rambo grabbed one of the Coors and shook it. Then she started moving the beers around like they were peas under cups, and I couldn’t tell where the shaken one went.

  “Okay, Macho Man,” Rambo said, “You start.”

  All three of us sitting on logs around a flashlight pointed straight up, we could have been Boy Scouts camping. Our foreheads were light, but our eyes and mouths were shadows. Donny held the Coors to his temple.

  “WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote,” he said. He hated Chaucer. His eyes closed, he popped open the tab. The click and fizz were quick. Donny’s eyes opened. He survived.

  In this nut house, you see a different shrink every few days. The girl-shrink says that what I’m doing with my life is playing roulette. Whatever.

  I told her about Jack and Alta. Not everything, but some.

  I told her that you were the only person to get me, more than anybody, even Doug.

  And I told her everything I touch dies.

  What a loser.

  She told me I had choices.

  Does a stonefly choose to molt twenty-five times as a nymph? In three years, which is the same amount of time most kids are in boarding school, the nymphs stay submerged in water. That’s what it feels like, boarding school. A kid is down there in the muck where shit happens and looks up at something he thinks is sky, a place he can breathe although he doesn’t know what breathing is. And every time he tries to get up there, his skin falls off. Twenty-five fucking times. That’s boarding school.

  If I could choose, I’d be the female stonefly dancing on the river top. I’d flutter and splash to get my eggs out, and that would attract one single steelhead. That would be Alta.

  If I could choose, I’d be her food.

  So I choose not to tell Ms. Shrink about this thought, and she tells me how Ms. Alta had no choice but to inform the authorities about my suicidal tendencies. Harm to self or others is the line I crossed, and law bound her to report me. Fucking-A.

  Ms. Shrinko is wrong. Alta feels it, too. It scares her shitless.

  That’s why she turned me in. Right?

  You can tell me.

  Taylor / Finish Line

  Only 250 meters to go, but it feels like a thousand. Usually when the buoys change from white to red in the last 250, you know you’ll survive. Christmas vacation starts in two weeks, but I swear the buoys are still white.

  Carla came back yesterday. At least, that’s what Rambo told me.

  No school car has come to pick me up and whisk me away, so she must not have told anyone I kissed her. No quarantine like Song’s. Maybe she didn’t feel it. Maybe she thought my lips were little bugs on her neck. My teaching’s done. The Children’s Hour plays in my head, and Shirley MacLaine keeps crying. Back so soon can mean that I was wrong, can mean that Carla tricked them. While she was gone, no students visited me. No trust.

  There are only two entrances to the dining ro
om, one by the Wyeth with all those faces the same, and the other, the dark archway on the far side. Seconds before Dorothy White gives the blessing, Carla walks in the far entrance, leading Donny Zurkus by the hand. The way she leans forward, she is a tug boat, and Donny is the load she tugs.

  Two weeks in a psych ward, and she comes back in order to tow Donny.

  Two weeks away and she’s showing off how normal she is.

  Normal and straight in two weeks.

  They find seats a couple of tables away, and Carla sits so she can’t see me. She knows where I am.

  When I was in college, after late rowing practice each afternoon, there were always two seats waiting for Sarah and me at any dinner table in the cafeteria. We were a package. Everyone knew.

  A few times a year Sarah brought Mark to dinner, the formal dinners: Homecoming, Winter Carnival, Spring Formal. Mark driving from med school, his hair clipped just right, and Sarah with eyelashes doing their star thing, they came in the cafeteria holding hands, stopping at the door to scan the whole place, and they’d find a table with other couples. Not with me.

  At formal dinners, I sat with the rugby girls, ex-rowers who wanted to party more than train. By dinner, I had four shots of tequila, and by dessert, I had seven. By the time dancing started, I was on the floor doing push-ups with a clap in the middle. Sarah and Mark didn’t get to the dance floor until after I was taken to my room.

  Carla with Donny is like a giraffe with a crocodile.

  My eyes keep moving to her back, the black curls falling over her collar.

  After mystery meat slopped by gravy, peas, and lumpy potatoes, after the Second Formers clear the dishes, I head back to my apartment. The outside door is heavy like a vault door, and the cold comes hard and chokes me. December is piles of leaves and clear nights and clouds of breath in the lights along the path.

  Of course, they’re there between the dining hall and my dorm. Of course, she’s pressed him against a tree, and they’re sucking each other’s faces. She picked the path I’d walk after dinner. Carla is sending a message, of course. She’s normal. I’m not. She’s straight. I’m not.