by Sarah White ’11

On a warm November morning in Manaus, the local colonel asked me over the telephone if I’d like to get some drinks with him down at the Officers’ Club, and maybe lunch. I had met the colonel only once before and disliked him on sight, but I said yes, because by warm I really mean scorching, and the Officers’ Club is the coolest place in town. They also have the best Scotch in Brazil, as far as I’m concerned, but in weather like we were having, you care more about keeping cool than you do about anything else.

So I’d like to say that I accepted with reservations, but that wouldn’t be as honest as I’d like to think I am. I may have had an inkling that the colonel wanted something from me, or that he’d expect something in return for such a favor. On the other hand, as I said, I didn’t know him at all well, and I may be giving myself more credit for perception than perhaps I deserve. At any rate, I must admit that he timed his invitation like the expert that he was. I was lying on the crisp white sheets of my bed, fully dressed, when the telephone rang. It was about nine or half-past nine in the morning, but I was already soaked in sweat. The sound of the ring distracted me from an internal debate over whether it was worse to suffer the heat or to try to muster enough energy to raise my arm and fan myself with the dispatch I was holding, so you can tell that I was in a bad way. The colonel probably knew it, too—he’d seen enough newcomers in his time to be able to judge to a nicety when my breaking point would be.

I dragged myself to a sitting position and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” I said.

The colonel sounded as crisp as I felt withered. “Hello, this is Colonel Wilkins speaking. Have I reached Mr. James?”

“Yes,” I repeated.

“Ah, good. Listen, I’d like to invite you down to the Officers’ Club for a couple of drinks if you aren’t too busy today. Around noon, maybe, and we could have a bit of lunch while we’re there.”

The sound of his invitation washed over me as a prophetic wave of cool air. “I’d be delighted,” was the only possible reply.

“Excellent, excellent,” said the colonel. “And I’m not inconveniencing you?”

“Not at all, I’m quite free today. Shall I meet you at the club at noon?”

“Oh, no, there’s no need for that. You live on Rio Street, don’t you? Just come down to the station and we can walk over together.”

I thanked him, and he hung up the telephone with a cheerful farewell. I put the receiver down, too, but my arms felt like they were made of lead. I had another two hours to get through before I could go and meet the colonel, and the heat was truly unbearable. I poured myself a glass of water from the pitcher by my bed and forced myself to drink it down. Dehydration would do nothing but make the dull ache in my head even worse, so I poured and swallowed another glass of the warm, un-refreshing water before I let myself lie down on the bed again.

After a few more minutes, I coaxed myself up and sat down at my desk in the next room. Usually once I get settled I can work steadily until I get hungry, but that morning I couldn’t bring myself to concentrate, and I felt like I’d never be hungry again. I’d only been to the Officers’ Club once, months before when I first arrived in Brazil. But I’d heard it spoken of since then as a place of cool refuge in the hot summer months. Its thick clay walls had been praised to me so often that I had come to firmly believe in their virtues. Those two hours when I waited for my opportunity to visit this mecca, for my chance to experience an atmosphere that was cooler by even a few degrees, felt like some of the longest of my life.

Perhaps I had been too much alone in the months leading up to that day, too immersed in my research. By the time the watch I had placed next to my book read eleven-thirty, I had worked myself into a state of almost delirium. I pushed back my chair and went back into the bedroom to retrieve my hat and jacket, but it took me half a block to regain control of myself and slow down to a reasonable pace. I told myself that I didn’t want to be too early—the colonel was a busy man, after all—but I needn’t have bothered. I would have given a lot at that moment to be already inside the deliciously cool haven of the Manaus Officers’ Club.

I presented myself at the colonel’s office at about a quarter to twelve and told his secretary that I was expected. She looked at me over the top of her steel-rimmed glasses and smiled kindly, which took me somewhat by surprise, but I smiled in return and took the seat that I was offered. The colonel came out of his office, jacket over his arm, just a few minutes later.

“Ah, you’re here. Excellent. Jane, Mr. James and I are going to lunch at the Club. You can take your lunch hour when I get back.”

“Yes, Colonel. Enjoy your lunch,” she said, and the colonel and I walked out of the office and made our way to the street.

“It can be a bit confusing to find the place at first,” said the colonel as we set out. “All these streets start to look the same after a while.”

He laughed, and I laughed, too. It wasn’t until I was with the colonel that I began to wonder what his possible motivation for inviting me had been, but I was still too hot to care.

The colonel must have noted my pale face and the sweat stains under my arms, but all he said was, “Awfully hot today, isn’t it, Mr. James? One of the hottest days we’ll have this year, I think.”

“I certainly hope so. I don’t think I can stand much more than this.”

“Ah, well, it’s only your first time being in Brazil during the hot season, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I got here five months ago.”

“That’s right, I remember. You came with the new doctor, I think. But don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.” I must have given him an incredulous look at that, because he laughed again. “No, really, trust me. I know you don’t believe me now, but everyone does. Of course, those who can’t leave Brazil swearing to never come back, but I think you have more backbone than that, Mr. James.”

“Thank you. I should certainly hope I do. I’ve wanted to come to Brazil my whole life, and it would be a shame to let a little sunshine and humidity drive me away.”

“That’s the spirit,” said the colonel, giving me a hearty clap on the shoulder. “I have doubts about your generation sometimes, but it’s chaps like you who always restore my faith.”

We were approaching the Officers’ Club now through the winding streets. The colonel stepped confidently through the maze, but his gaze was not as proprietary as one might expect from someone who had been here as long as he had. I remember wondering why, and how the colonel had ended up here in Manaus for so many years. I thought maybe I would ask him about it once we’d sat down for lunch.

“Ah, here we are,” said the colonel. It was a building that looked on the outside very much like those around it, built of wood and adobe. There was no sign. At the moment, just outside the door, almost on the doorstep, a beggar was lying. His ribs were painfully visible, and he seemed to have collapsed there. The only sign of movement was the quick, short pants that indicated he was alive.

“I’m starving,” said the colonel. He stepped over the beggar and went inside.

I stared at the person on the steps for a moment, just outside of the mecca I had been yearning for all morning. People had warned me when I first got to Manaus not to give anything to beggars. If you give something to one, the others will just take it from him, and then they’ll swarm all over you. This once, though, I reached into my pocked for a coin and dropped it into the sand next to him. For the irony, I thought, thinking of the colonel’s remark, he deserved it. Then I followed him inside.

It was dark and cool inside the Club. I stopped a few paces from the doorway to let my eyes adjust, but really all I could think of at that moment was the glorious drop in temperature. It was everything that I’d hoped for, and I felt a moment of profound gratitude to Colonel Wilkins for bringing me there. He probably knew that, too.

All of this took only a moment, of course, while my eyes began to take in the tan stucco walls covered in tapestries, photographs, and taxidermy heads. This was only the anteroom, and in a corner stood a desk with a servant in uniform standing behind it waiting to take my hat. I walked over and gave it to him before joining the colonel in the doorway.

“It’s awfully cool in here, isn’t it?” I said, most likely with a trace of the gratitude I had felt so strongly only a moment before.

He chuckled at my awed  observation and said, “That’s the first thing men notice if they’re new to Brazil. Middle of the road, they notice the space is completely ant-free.” I looked around. I was used to seeing ants on the walls, floor, or tables of every house I entered, including my own. The colonel was right: in the dining room, which we had just entered, I couldn’t see a single ant. But the colonel was going on. “Now for old-timers like me, the first thing we notice when we come in here is the smell of really good cigars.” He breathed in deeply. “Do you smoke, Mr. James?”

“Now and then,” I told him, “but I haven’t since I’ve been in Brazil. Even though they grown tobacco so near, I don’t like the cigarettes that are available in the stores. They’re too acidic somehow.”

The colonel smiled broadly. “Well, there’s none of that in here. This is our one chunk of Britain in here, and we allow nothing but the best.”

I found myself nodding along to this pronouncement in reverential approval. I felt a rather adolescent urge to prove myself to the colonel so that I would be asked to come back. I didn’t say anything, but then, the colonel didn’t seem to require any response. “Shall we have some lunch?” he asked, beckoning to one of the white, uniformed waiters to indicate that we were ready to be seated.

The waiter led us to a table for two in the corner. I was seated facing the wall while the colonel faced outward. A few feet above his head was a leopard’s head with open jaws and forbidding look in its eye, but the colonel proceeded to order unperturbed. “Do you mind if I order for you? I know what’s good.”

“Oh, yes, certainly,” I agreed.

Without looking at a menu, the colonel told the waiter to bring us whatever the fisherman had brought in fresh that day, with rice. He asked for the house Merlot, to which I added a request for a glass of water. I suspected that it would be cold here.

The waiter went away to get our wine, and the colonel and I stared at one another until I involuntarily glanced away at the leopard over his head. I felt irrationally that I had lost at something once I looked away, so I took a gulp from the glass of wine that I promptly received and plunged into conversation.

“How are things shaping up for the expedition to Peru, Colonel?” I asked.

“What? Oh,” said the colonel. “You academic fellows need to realize that the base won’t authorize any expeditions until we feel it’s safe in the projected destination.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” I agreed again, a little surprised at his abruptness.

“Peru is alright at the moment, but the areas you’d have to pass through to get there—and come back, I might add—are bordering on unrest. If things were to suddenly go wrong, I don’t want to have to send my troops out at the risk of their lives to rescue some academics who are digging up pots.”
“Certainly not. A very undesirable arrangement,” I agreed hastily, and lapsed into silence. The colonel drank his wine.

After he had motioned to our waiter to refill our glasses, the colonel said, “But I understand you’re not really in the archaeological line, are you, Mr. James?”

I glanced again at the leopard leaping down on the colonel’s head and replied, “No, not very much. My interest is more in ancient writings and languages.”

“Yes, very interesting. How many ancient languages do you estimate existed in this area?”

“Do you mean just in the region surrounding Manaus, or in the province as a whole?”

“Just around Manaus. An area of, say, fifty miles in every direction.”

“It’s difficult to say—of course any number of languages may have existed that were never written down, but I believe that there were about nine languages spoken in this vicinity in the ancient world.”

“And do you speak all of them?”

“I don’t really speak any of them, but I can read eight out of the nine.” I felt that I was boasting a little, but the colonel had asked me, after all.

“Why can’t you read the last one?”

“Well, because we’ve never found a sample of it.”

“Then how do you know it exists?”

“Existed, really. We know because some of the texts we do have make reference to a people who arrived here centuries ago from the north, speaking a strange tongue that none of the local inhabitants could understand.”

The colonel leaned forward. “What was this new group like?”

Just then the fish arrived, and the colonel sat back and took another drink of wine.

I thanked the waiter and cut a piece of the mango he had brought me before I went on. “Well, they were fabulously wealthy, from what the records say.” I took a bite of the fish with mango, which was delicious, and went on, because the colonel looked interested. “They came down the river in great canoes made of a strange kind of tree with their women and children with them. There were rumors that they were fleeing from a terrible catastrophe in their homeland far to the north.”

“What kind of catastrophe?”

“No one knew. The nomads didn’t talk about it. But there were rumors that they’d saved all of their wealth and carried it all the way to this area in their canoes.” The colonel was not eating the fish, but I took another bite.

“What happened to the nomads?”

“They were attacked by one of the tribes that already lived here and driven away. There was fierce competition for land that wasn’t water-logged, and the locals weren’t about to tolerate another rival.”

“Did that tribe take their treasure, then?”

“The records are confused at that point. It seems that they didn’t find anything valuable on the nomads, but the records still insist that they were wealthy. I believe there’s some kind of local legend that they’d hidden it in a cave out in the jungle before they even entered the city.”

The colonel nodded, and then he asked me a very strange question. “Do you think that you could read the nomad’s writing?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “It could have been related to the local languages, or it could have been something completely different. They were supposed to have come from very far away. At any rate, it’s a moot point, because there is no extant record of their writing, or even that they wrote at all.”

“I think they did,” said the colonel. He spoke in a tone intended to convey absolute conviction, and I looked up from my meal, startled. The colonel was grinning at me.

I took a sip of wine and he kept staring at me, daring me to ask. So I did. “If you don’t mind my asking, colonel, what makes you so certain?”

The colonel looked around and then leaned toward me. “Because,” he said in a low voice, “I have something they wrote.”

This surprised me, yet my first reaction was decidedly towards skepticism. I was quite certain, at first, that the colonel had been duped. “Can I see it?”

“I was, in fact, hoping that you would look at it, Mr. James,” he continued quietly. “I very much hope that you can find the means to interpret it, as well.”

“I’d love to,” I said. “I’ll have to authenticate it first, of course. At the university—“

“Oh, no,” the colonel interrupted. “No, Mr. James, I must ask you to keep this matter strictly confidential, in fact to speak of it to no one but myself.”

It was clear that he was serious, and of course I was interested. The waiter came and took away our plates—mine, at least, was empty—and then the colonel sealed the deal. “If you would, Mr. James, could you just look it over? We can come back here in a week’s time and you can tell me what you think.”

Not quite aware that I was doing so, I took the bait. I was faced with the prospect of emerging into the terrible heat again, and an offer of a return to this cool haven was too much for me to resist.

“I’d be happy to, colonel.”

“And you won’t show it to anyone?”

“Not to a soul, Colonel, if you think it best.”

“I do.”

“Very well, then. I give you my word.”

“Good,” said the colonel. He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out an envelope with two fingers, and slid it across the table to me. I reached for it, but for a moment he didn’t let it go. He looked into my eyes and repeated, “Your word.”

“Yes,” I said, and took the envelope. It was a plain army-issue one, revealing nothing of what might be inside. I put it in my pocket and buttoned the flap.

The colonel was still looking at me intensely, which was making me uncomfortable. “It’s safe with me,” I felt compelled to add, though I felt foolish as soon as I said it. But the colonel just said, “Good,” nodded curtly, and got up.

“Until next week, Mr. James.”

“Good day, colonel.”

“Good day.”

Reluctantly, I rose and threw my napkin down on the table. By the time I had done so, the colonel was gone, and I made my way back to the foyer, retrieved my hat, and stepped back out into the heat. It was perhaps a little cooler now than it had been when I entered the club, but it felt even hotter. The beggar was gone. The streets were mostly bare as I trudged slowly back to my apartment. Once there, I took off my coat and lay down on the leather couch, where I fell asleep. Much to my relief, it was palpably cooler when I awoke, thought I was nevertheless covered in sweat. For the first time that day, I felt as if I could think again, so I poured myself a glass of water and went to my desk.

The work that I was doing at the time involved deciphering what was written on some badly damaged wooden tablets—tedious work, but I delighted in it. It was the sort of thing that I had come to Brazil to do. But of course today as soon as I looked at my papers, I remembered Colonel Wilkins’s paper, so I retrieved my coat from the sofa and took it out of the pocket.

It was certainly not Guarani. In fact, at first glance it bore a closer resemblance to the Mayan alphabet than to any native language I was familiar with. Of course, the colonel thought it was the writing of the lost tribe, and it was vaguely possible that a group of Mayans might have made it as far south as Brazil. The paper was clearly a copy that had been made by being placed against an inscription on stone or wood and rubbed with a pencil, so I set out to make another version of it that would be easier to study. I still thought it most likely that the colonel was being duped by whatever person had shown him the inscription, but at least the trickster had made sufficient effort to carve it instead of claiming to have found an ancient piece of bamboo leaf preserved by being submerged underwater or some such ridiculous story. That was what I told myself at any event, but I think that it must be admitted that I was still operating under a strong sense of gratitude to the colonel, and I was already looking forward to going back to the Officers’ Club the following week. I wanted to have something to tell him at our next meeting, even if it was only a confirmation that his inscription had been forged.

Once I had made a fair copy of the letters, I cleared my desk of all other papers and set to work in earnest. Before I knew it, I was squinting at the lines and I was forced to light the lamp to combat the growing dusk.

I was utterly absorbed, and I had long since forgotten any idea that the text was forged. I was convinced both that the writing was ancient and that it was like nothing I had ever seen before—that is to say, it was sufficiently like other languages to convince me of its authenticity, but I, the foremost specialist on languages at Manaus University, had never seen this language before. I yearned to call the dean and tell him what I had found, but I was reminded of the promise I had made to Colonel Wilkins, so I refrained.

I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t tear myself away from the tremendous puzzle before me. I dined on bread and cheese at about nine, but it seemed I made a breakthrough each time I thought of leaving off for the night and going to bed. The sun rose at six in the morning, and by seven it was getting hot again, and I was finished. I had what I thought was a tolerable English translation of what the colonel had given me. I immediately phoned him up.

The call was answered by a sleepy-sounding sergeant, who informed me that the colonel would be in no earlier than eight, or perhaps nine, and refused to give me the number for his home. He grudgingly agreed to inform the colonel that I had called, but spoke disparagingly of the likelihood that he would return my call. With that I was forced to be content, so I had a glass of water and lay down on my bed, where I remained with my mind whirling until the phone’s buzz woke me from a profound sleep an hour later.

Disoriented, I groped for the receiver and picked it up. “Colonel Wilkins?” I asked.

“What do you want with Colonel Wilkins?” the voice returned in a suspicious tone. “When did you last see him?”

“I saw him yesterday,” I told the voice. “We lunched together, and the colonel asked me to let him know about a matter that we discussed at that time. May I speak to him?”

“I think you’d better come in,” the voice informed me.

“In where?”

“To the base,” it said sternly.

Still bewildered, I could only respond, “I’ll be right over.” The voice hung up.

I was still dressed in my clothes from the day before, so I only paused to pick up my coat from where it lay abandoned on the floor next to my desk. I put the colonel’s paper and my translation in my pocket, buttoned it as before, and left the house. Once again I found myself hurrying as quickly as I could down Rio Street towards the base. I felt weak and a little shaky, the signs of sleeplessness and dehydration, but in less than fifteen minutes I had reached the door of the base. A soldier waved me inside, and I went up again to the colonel’s office.

There were three men in the outer office, along with Jane, who was crying. They looked at me strangely when I came in, and one of them said, “Mr. James?” It was the voice from the telephone.

“Yes, I’m James,” I said. “Where is Colonel Wilkins?”

“The colonel is dead,” the voice told me. “He was robbed and murdered on his way home from the base last night. Was your lunch yesterday the latest you saw him?”

I had to sit down, though I had not been invited to do so. The other men remained standing. “Are you quite sure?” I asked him, staring very hard at the floor.

“Yes, Mr. James, quite sure,” he said drily, and I looked up, embarrassed. “When was the last time you saw him?” he repeated.

“Yes, it was at lunch,” I said. “We were finished at about one, and the colonel left before me.”

“What did the two of you talk about at lunch?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “The Colonel was interested in the work I’ve been doing with Guarani. He asked me a lot of questions about it.” My hand closed convulsively on the papers in my pocket.

“Do you know where he was going?”

“I don’t know. I thought he was coming back here.” I remembered the day before, which now seemed like a very long time ago. “Yes, he told Jane that she could have her lunch when he got back.”

“Jane?” The man who was the voice turned to her for confirmation, and she nodded through her tears.

“Yes, he got in a little after one, sir, and he stayed until six like he always does,” she sighed.

“And that’s the last time you saw him?”

“Yes, sir. And he said he’d been in early this morning, and that I was to have his coffee ready promptly at eight.”

“Very well,” said the man, and turned to me. “His widow may want to speak with you. Aside from his secretary, you were the last person to see him alive.”

I nodded dumbly, and he told me I could go. They would ring me up if I was wanted to speak to Mrs. Wilkins. I got up and walked slowly out of the room. Just as I was crossing the threshold, the voice stopped me again. “Oh, Mr. James?”

I turned. “Yes?”

“What was the matter that you wanted to speak to the colonel about?”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “The colonel wanted to know if I still had a book on languages that I recommended to him, and I rang him up to tell him I’d found it. It doesn’t matter now.”

The man nodded and turned away.

I slowly went home. I went to my desk and picked up all of the papers I had been working with all night and put them in my pocket with the colonel’s envelope and my translation. The telephone rang in the bedroom, but I ignored it and went out of the house again. This time I went the other way down Rio Street, down towards the river, and I walked along the bank until I was quite alone. Then I took out all the papers, tore them one by one into bits, and threw them into the river.

But I can still picture clearly in my mind the paper I scrawled my translation on, and I can still remember what it said.

“This stone marks the tomb of the children of the clan of Acat who died of hunger in the great rains. Any uncharitable man who touches it shall be cursed with our hatred and shall die at the hands of wrongdoers.”

As I walked home, I thought of the beggar outside of the Club and of the eager look in the colonel’s eye when he handed me the paper and made me promise to mention it to no one but him. I think I solved the mystery of why the colonel had been here in the backwater of Manaus for so long, and of what he had wanted from me when he so kindly asked me to lunch with him at the Officers’ Club. The colonel was hoping to find the treasure of the lost tribe, the tribe of Acat, and I believe that when he died, he was very close to it, indeed.

But I don’t think that he would have been very pleased if he had found out what it was.

I have never told anyone about what the colonel asked me to do that day, and I have made no attempt to find the stone with the inscription on it. I have no desire to know if I would be found worthy to touch it and live.

by Catherine Sinclair ’14

 

When she thinks of him, she thinks of hurtling down a hill, faster than she thought she would ever have been able to go. The stark winter landscape is reduced to its essence, the white flash of snow and the waving lines of the black pine trees resembling some incomprehensible piece of modern art. The wind blows in her face and her ears are so cold she thinks they are going to fall off, but she is happy.

He is right behind her, pretending that he is trying his hardest to catch her, but she knows that he is letting her win, that he is painting slow, looping curves across the canvas of snow, while her skis chatter and skid gracelessly as she makes sharp, quick turns, trying to beat him.

She never beat him though, because at the last minute he would always clap his skis together and bend his knees and fly past her, skidding to a stop with a celebratory spray of snow.

They first met on the ski hill, she tentative and unsteady, he zooming around so fast that she thought he was about to take flight. Which he did, on multiple occasions, turning each bump and dip on the slope into an opportunity to commune with the atmosphere. He always expected her to launch herself after him, but she never did.

His goal was to be the best in the world but he had to settle for third. She remembers the day, when he marched so proudly in the parade, skipping in a sea of red, white, and blue, laughing. It was commercial and false, a mere show of international cooperation, financed by avaricious sponsors on the hunt for a winning face for their cereal boxes, but she was caught up in it all.  She watched him throw himself on skis off an icy cliff of snow, turning and flipping in the air. She held her breath when he landed, a white puff of snow punctuating his descent back to earth. She winced when his left ski skidded, and it was that little mistake that had lost him the gold. Still, she was prouder than anything to see him on that podium, smiling sheepishly as they hung a medal round his neck. He held his bouquet like a winner of a beauty pageant, which made her chuckle to herself as the sounds of the Belarusian (for some unfathomable reason Belarus had a superb ski jumping team) national anthem filled the stadium.

He was always happiest in the air. He had started skiing almost as soon as he could walk. Perhaps that was why, graceful as he was on a mountain, he was so clumsy on flat ground.  He never learned to walk correctly: he slouched and swaggered, his knees sore and his feet rocking back and forth like a sailor on a ship even when his ski boots weren’t on. He spent so much time in the air that he forgot gravity, but gravity had never forgotten him.

So he drank, and he smoked, and he did other things that she is still trying to forget about. For an athlete he had little respect for his body, though through sheer willpower he kept in flying shape. Whenever she ran her hands over his bare back she was always surprised to find that he had earthly shoulder blades instead of wings.

Sometimes while flipping and twisting about in the air he imagined what would happen if he made a slight mistake, an understandable miscalculation, and landed on his neck. Twice he stopped imagining and tried it, but with pills and alcohol instead of a fall. Like a cat he always landed on his feet, and like a cat he seemed to have nine lives, and he remained alive for her to scold and berate and worry and cry over.

When the news comes she is not surprised. She has been waiting for him to kill himself for the past ten years.

She plays the message on the phone. She turns off the phone after the first four words: “I’ve got bad news—“ spoken by a vague female voice that is either his mother or his sister. She can’t tell them apart any more; all of his relatives coalesce in her mind to a faceless, haunting mass of people that resembles him but are in so many ways different from him.

Her nine-year old daughter Ava is shrieking for her, dragging her out of the past to exclaim over some new discovery. She sighs, and wipes the tears from her eyes. She has a vision, a prophecy: there Ava will be, sometime in the near future, crouched in an attic, the sun shining warmly on the rickety floorboards. She will find the beat-up shoebox filled with photographs of him. She will dig her child’s hands through them, pausing over the one that shows the three of them laughing in the snow. Her fingers will feel the cold metal at the bottom, a shiny bronze medallion hung on a frayed ribbon. She will hold it reverently in her hands, like a diver discovering treasure from a shipwreck. She will see his wide eyes reflected back at her. Time will hang still for a moment, and memory linger in the air, suspended and twisting like a fish on a line. Then she will hear a noise and start guiltily, putting the photographs back in the box, burying the bronze at the bottom. She will take one photograph and put it in her pocket.

But that is in the future, she knows. She knows there will be a day, not long now, when Ava will grow tall and fearless, and she will find the photograph lying carelessly on her daughter’s childish white dresser, and wonder what to say.

Before she had met him she had always thought that if something happened she would have gone straight to the clinic and have it taken care of, but he seemed such a breakable thing that she felt wrong killing a part of him. She did not know how he felt about it; she hadn’t given him much choice in the matter. She remembers the talk in the woods, the brown leaves crackling underfoot, a hint of snow in the air, her hand held protectively over her belly. She told him that she would raise it and that he didn’t owe her anything before he could get a word out. He nodded. To this day she does not know if he agreed with her only because that was what she wanted or if he sincerely didn’t care. When she is feeling sad and lonely she is sure it is the second case. When she is honest and remembers the look in his eyes as he reached out his arm and she instinctively recoiled she knows that he always wanted this child, perhaps even more than her, but he knew that she could not love him forever and that she had a right to whatever he could give her.

Within a year of her daughter’s birth she fled south, leaving him alone on his mountain. He kept skiing long after he stopped winning. She waited with dread for the injury, for him to be crippled and lose his wings for good. She could imagine it so well in her mind: a shattered bone, a torn ligament, a ruptured organ, or even, god forbid, a broken back. He would be bedridden and miserable. The weight of the air at sea level alone would suffocate him. It would be so easy then for him to die.

He was lucky though, and all his limbs kept working. His daughter grew up and mercifully didn’t look too much like him. She never had to explain to her that her father, who magically appeared with presents on birthdays and around Christmas, was dead.

Until today.

She steels herself, digging her fingernails into her palm. She will probably have to listen to the rest of the message, to think of something to say to Ava. At nine you know that parents don’t drop dead for no reason. She runs over possibilities in her head: gun, knife, rope, pills, poison. At least she knows he didn’t fall.

She presses play. “–bad news. Leigh’s dead.” The sound of muffled tears. “An accident. He was skiing by himself and there was an avalanche. Completely unexpected, a freak accident. The funeral—“ she doesn’t care about the funeral. Accident. She bursts into tears, out of both grief and relief. Accident. The mountain won after all. He would have tried to outrun it, she knew. He would have laughed at the game. He would not have been afraid when the rush of white crashed over his head. He had landed so many times on the mountain, his skis beating the ground with a clattering thud, that it was finally the mountain’s turn to land on him. The stagnant rocks were jealous of him, the snow, born from the air, only wishing for a little excitement, a chance to go careening down a slope, like him, in whatever direction it pleased.

She does not blame the mountain.

Her daughter appears at her side, worming her little brown head under her arm, knowing in the way of children that something is wrong. She strokes Ava’s hair, realizing that soon her daughter will grow up, go sliding at breakneck speed down the mountain to adulthood. She wishes that they can stay like this, no movement necessary. She wishes even more that he is still alive. She wishes he would be there to teach her how to fly.

by Rebecca Rothfeld ’14

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words.

-Roland Barthes

 

Hi, I’m Avril, and I’m a sapiosexual.

(Obligatory echo: Hi, Avril.)

I denied it for a long time. I was in the metaphorical closet, about as far back as I could get, pushed up against the metaphorical boxes of metaphorical keepsakes so old their metaphorical owners had forgotten about them entirely, or maybe remembered vaguely the fact of their existence but certainly not that they were in the closet—the metaphorical closet, that is—in the series of creased cardboard boxes against which I kept bumping in the semi-darkness. That’s how far in the closet I was. I mean, really far. I was going to great lengths to conceal what I was. Dating recruited athletes. Attending fraternity parties. Taking geology classes. Lightly lifting her bangs from her forehead in a kind of physical apology for having been embarrassed yet also for the substance of that which had embarrassed her and which embarrassed her still, both an apology for apologizing and an apology for that for which she apologized

I only left the metaphorical closet late at night, when the stacks were deserted and I could make secret visits to the aisle where they kept the D.H. Lawrence and there was a confidential silence and the warmth of my hands against the words and the delicate gasping of the pages fluttering between my trembling fingers. I lay with my cheek and ear against the breathing leather hearing in the book a heartbeat for which I was listening very hard, the way I heard the ocean in shells, maybe as a projection of my own desires. An imposition of want upon the book. Parting the pages angrily, bending the spine forward to push my insistent fingers into the volume’s opening against the creak of groaning binding.

But I don’t know that it was I touching the page, the words, so much as….so much as Verbal faltering in an implicit gesture of self-deprecation denoted less by her words and the precise and mappable area they designated as definition but rather by the greater lexicon of tone and subtle motion and small self-enclosing, a hunching of the shoulders around herself as if to protect her center the words touching me and feeling out my secrets and then drawing me out from within myself with each successive phrase, each of which had a new significance that languished before giving way to the next as smoke lingers around a candle before departing from its origin. And from each symbol, suddenly novel as hieroglyphics, I extracted a related phoneme that summoned some meaning residing deep in the word, somewhere beneath it or perhaps in the interstices between it and its predecessor or even between my parted lips—but in a space or a relation, never in a loneliness, always in warmth of ensemble. Secondary impressions and tertiary impressions sought out the secret places in indentation of neck or between my fingers and read the brail of my freckles, elbows, knee caps, breasts, flat expanses of stomach and thigh, archuate ass and bulbous shoulder. Because it found an opening and entered as no person ever had; because to talk is to demand entrance, and all speech is entry, and words are bridges, and I yielded (as I had to yield) to the long and quivering caress of that verbal seduction. Language being, of course, the only way to touch.

I woke up with annotations intaglioed on my skin where I’d rubbed against the page.

Uncomfortable at suddenly realizing the depth of her immersion, like someone suddenly awakened from a sleep, touching abruptly the bridge of her nose, purposelessly, a motion with subtle shades of signification that her audience, shifting with their own restless movements and adjustments, notes and interprets

It grew difficult to conceal from my boyfriend, then the captain of the football team, a surly boy who mistook my love of Werther for a liking of Werther caramels of the same name but drastically different connotations, and he grew suspicious of the “sexuality as humanisms” imprinted on unlikely body parts, and then came the final, damning cry of “Goethe!” during climax, after which I entered into a stage of extreme but manifestly futile denial. My boyfriend, who was at this point no longer my boyfriend, but whom I’ve termed my boyfriend and is recognizable in this narrative now only by that moniker, spread a series of nasty rumors about me and my various alleged infidelities that had, in fact, been more varied than he supposed, spanning, as they had, several centuries and five or six important literary movements. Regardless, the former boyfriend succeeded in functionally exiling me to the library.

I faced a lot of stigma. My friends pretended no longer to know me. My family was disappointed, my mother scandalized. She always did want me to marry someone with perfect teeth and more than the average number of squares on the grid of visible abdominal muscle.

And maybe I should have been unhappy but the truth was Exhibiting now the very beginnings of a private smile that was the expression of only the very surface of a much deeper joy, like the tip of a flower whose network of roots is concealed below I wasn’t, I wasn’t unhappy at all, I was happier than I’d ever been, I was blissfully happy, I was a social pariah, I had as much time as I liked to satisfy my textual frustration, I was initiated into a world of ongoing discussion wherein I felt protected and safe and as if I existed in a space that spanned time and any external disruption, and the more alone I was the less lonely I was because I was alone naturally, rather than artificially drawn into myself, the books pulled me out, I could tell them the truth, but people crowded me and forced me further in, and….Her inwardly-directed smile was spreading to encompass everything, an expression that signified finality, and her audience marked its progress until, perceiving its true denotations, Anonymous Collective said:

(Obligatory echo: thank you, Avril).

Hi, my name is Josef, and I am a sapiosexual.

(Obligatory echo: Hi, Josef).

I was never in denial to myself. To my family, though….a wince so exaggerated as to almost resemble an involuntary grin at the sight of something so funny it provoked an uncontrollable outburst but unmistakably signifying, here, a renewed opening of a partially-healed wound that encountered additional injury daily I came from a bigoted background, and, growing up, it was hard for me. My father was a business executive in name only, and was in actuality an idler, a golfer, and an avid collector of Rolex watches. My mother can be described only as a Delta Gamma, as this is, to date, her only defining characteristic or vocation. A deepening of the wrinkles on his forehead in which his audience could discern almost the exact shape and outline of his memories, or at least their color and unpleasant taste, and here foreshadowed was something beyond the facts of narrative, something unreadable in the rigor mortis of unmoving events but detectable rather in his voice’s fluctuations: a glimpse of the cold, separate rooms of a house saturated with dim disapproval and low, conspiratory voices Needless to say, their reception was not pleasant. They sent me to therapy, where I was diagnosed as a sexistentialist and watched episodes of Baywatch for weeks without exhibiting any signs of arousal. I was shipped off to an inpatient program where….well, I’d rather not discuss the particulars.

What I wanted was to touch not just the surface or the skin. Not the image but the substance. Not to see, not even to touch, but to hold. So I could not display the expected fervor at the spectacle of a basketball game, or react appropriately to the kind of photograph I was told healthy boys my age enjoyed. Eyebrows arched in angular criticism; inspection of nails in what was once anger now crystallized into tacit disapproval The implication being that I was not healthy.

I read voraciously, of course waving his hand as if to brush away any assumption to the contrary, a motion of invalidation and erasure, and a movement whose connotative sphere overlapped slightly with the area of his emerging self-assurance, but I also talked. I sought through talking some kind of contact or penetration or maybe I thought my loneliness would break like a fever, suddenly, late at night, and in the ague of shivering recovery there would be the stupid and unlikely scenario I’d always envisioned where the girl whom I held lovingly in my arms would melt into me and I’d move what I thought was my arm and instead she’d move, through some fluke of tangled wiring and interconnectedness.

Drooping of the head and upturning of the palms to expose thin, milky skin of wrist, precariously fragile and beneath which cursive vein was inscribed in blue ink; a supplication, a posed (in all senses of meaning) question But I found that the characters who populated books were more three-dimensional than the people I met in reality. They—the characters, I mean—continued to go about their business when the books were closed; people I met ceased to exist when they left the room. I want to transform them. It was anti-personification, textualization. And all touch is language. To enter is to speak.

The first girl I loved had yellowing skin on which I wrote a book in pinks and blacks, raspberry blues, stained ink-red around the edges. The italics were in crimson. The titles were green, fading into yellow. Chapter one began on the lobe of her ankle. Chapter two was a scarlet streak up the back of her leg. Chapter three was swollen, a spreading rouge on her left buttock. Chapter four was clotting scratches on arched lower back, the cup of curved behind rising into plain of bony shoulder (chapter four is a labor of love. I edited and revised, scratching away late into the night. First I started at the shoulder, tracing down diagonally. Terrible. Discarded it. Then I worked downwards, writing in indigo, bold and bright but still not right. I worked upwards finally and all the way across the collarbone. The indentations of clavicle were the second violet stanza. On the neck were magenta enjambments. Along the scalp the ruby marks beneath her hair, where there were violent exclamations). Chapter five—the last chapter—was over her rising chest, a web of rosy allusions along her hips. And all along her bindings.

His hands immobile and lifted to his head so that his hair was pushed mostly through his fingers but not entirely, as though he were a still-life captured on the verge of movement, rather than a person immobilized by the autonomy of words that had overcome him, and his audience, much attuned to his condition, said, respectfully:

(Obligatory echo: thank you, Josef).

Low rumble of preparation for departure: rustle of rain coats conforming to arms therein, slap of  lukewarm coffee against the walls of the cup containing it, the indistinct sounds of aging bodies straining against inertia. Until finally emptiness and silence in which

“Outstretched hand?”

“Tentative acceptance.”

“Fingers latticed; chilled skin beginning to melt into a warm sweat.”

“Anticipatory head tilt?”

“Complimentary head tilt.”

“Lowered eyelashes; timorous lean..?”

“Assertive waist-grab and impatient—

“Nose-crushing, tongue-fumbling kiss.”

Etc.

by Lalo Cura ’10

Everymatter is for the gods—Often when men are lying
prostrate on the black earth they raise them upright from their
misery, and often they overturn on their backs even those
whose stance was very firm. Then much misery is theirs and
a man wanders about in need of life and distraught in mind.

-Archilochus

I once knew of a man who suffered from the strangest affliction. It appears that he fell in love with his handwriting, much to his misfortune. Should you want to scoff at the veracity of this story, then I would ask you to imagine for a moment what this man himself might have felt was the truth of his situation. No doubt he would have liked to deny it, to swear to its impossibility. But the customs of fate belong to those higher wills to which we have no access. In any case, though you may not care to ponder the metaphysical cruelty thrust upon this man, his story is most interesting for it is a story of the mind against itself.

The man’s affliction first made itself known to him at his workplace. He would be writing some simple note—too brief to need an email or letter—to his secretary or a senior partner, sometimes just to someone talking on the phone. As soon as he began to write, however, something took place in which he seemed to lose himself in the act. He could not understand it. There was something mesmerizing about the way the ink laid itself onto the paper. He would write continuously—it was the ink that flowed forth without interruption, not the words whose shapes were only a pretext for the rhythm of the pen’s movement. He could scarcely pay attention to the content of his message without falling behind the steady march of black onto white, like a river bank trying to form itself in the wake of the water’s flow.

The first time this happened, he was startled out of the trance only after having written for a considerable amount of time, finding that his out-to-lunch note was nearing seven pages in length. Such a moment understandably frightened him though he could hardly grasp what had even happened. But over the comings days and weeks he quickly realized that something was not right. It was not just the inexplicable trances of writing that unnerved him. He was developing a deep fascination with composition in long hand and it fueled bewildering desires in him whose scope was not like anything he had known or believed possible. But it was an aching nonetheless. He constantly caught himself longing to press pen against paper. And though there could be no rational motivation for such work, he began to spot the trappings of this peculiar obsession everywhere, whether it was the stacks of blank white paper that  accumulated mysteriously at the edges of his desk or the pen he constantly found himself fingering with one hand, along with others gradually lining his pockets and drawers. Sometimes he would slip out in the middle of a meeting under the pretense of needing to use the restroom, but actually he would steal away to his office to grab a slip of paper and fill it with frantic writing before coming back, even though he usually really did need to go to the restroom, and so suffered doubly from the ordeal.

The man was becoming increasingly disturbed by these conditions apparently thrust on him from nowhere, but you can hopefully appreciate the absolute lack of ideas of how to respond to the situation that occurred in his mind. For he was a normal person like you or me. He had a job, he had a wife and a daughter whom he loved more than his life itself, and there was nothing all that unique about him. At least this what he told himself in the onset of his condition. Like a mantra, he repeatedly told himself he was not unique, not different, for that was the only way to comprehend such fears as he had. But whenever he tried to ignore the desire to write or actively prevent it—even going so far as to throw away all the pens from his office and put all blank paper in the copy machine down the hall—his guts ground together even more painfully, and his self-avowed normalness rang hollow. At such times his apparent need to write would ruin any chance of being able to focus on work, and he could barely even hold a conversation without his gaze drifting to some blank wall or to his secretary’s immaculate white blouse which he imagined covering in black scribbles and shapes. When his desire was at its worst, he feared that there would be no white space left on Earth unadorned with his black figures if it were up to him.

So when the man finally decided to partially indulge this perverse affliction lest it consume him, he did so very nervously and cautiously, in the manner most appropriate for someone suddenly willing to barter with rationality for a chance at sanity. In doing so, he decided that it might be better to give his new-found proclivity for the written word a carefully specified domain in his life, without either ignoring it or giving it any undue attention. But, alas, he could not deny the rapturous indulgence he felt every time he gave his writing-desire its allotted share of attention, and this undeniable enjoyment soured much of what had previously seemed an appealing sense of objectivity and clear-headedness. In other words, he could never shake the feeling of having given into something, though he remained committed to the idea that he was the authority in the situation.

Nonetheless the poor man managed to stymie the growth of his obsession, and he kept it from interfering with his life on the whole, save his mind’s inner life, where it occupied an increasing portion. Suffice it to say that he tried to regard the whole issue as a secret hobby that, dormant until now, had awoken in him with vigorous demands for the attention it had previously missed and which, once provided, would allow it to resume its proper and innocuous place. He thus remained determined to treat it this way. But for how long can the mind tell itself to itself? So he started buying high quality paper from a stationery store, both plain white and an assortment of monogrammed pads and letterheads. He stopped using his computer calendar and instead carried an appointment book in which he found he could practice containing his writing.

The man’s most profoundly important purchase in this period, however, was his pen. Few can say they belong to the elite community for whom finely crafted writing instruments mean something. But the man, whether his membership owed to conditions of madness, experienced the deep delight of possessing a pen of such a high quality along with the critical capacities to know it. At a well-known store selling hand crafted Swiss pens, he had scarcely looked over two of them before he saw the one he knew was to be his. A beautiful black fountain pen with a rhodium-plated 14K gold nib, highly polished platinum clip and fittings, and an elegant pattern of four laser-engraved tannish lines running down its black lacquer barrel. In no time he purchased it, registered it, and took it home, where he immediately seized the nearest piece of fine blank paper and, inspecting his new mistress once more in the light, wrote:

Here writes the first words of my pen, Hypatia.

And just below this he signed his full name so exquisitely and fittingly that he fleetingly regretted not having been given a longer name. He sat back, admiring the inscription next to which he laid the pen down, though he didn’t have the faintest idea where the words or the pen’s name came from in his mind.

For the next few months, with Hypatia constantly at his side, the man enjoyed a period of happiness. His desire to write and the passion it sometimes involved had not lessened any but he felt he could now contain it, or at least channel it. At the office he began to do some of his work in long hand which at first his secretary and some of the senior partners discouraged though they soon found that his work was more meticulous and comprehensive this way. They made no fuss. At home the man also spent increasingly more time writing. He told his wife that he had decided to finally tinker with a novel he wanted to write in his spare time, an idea he had had since law school and which his wife admired and had always hoped he would carry out. In truth, he had no idea what to write about, and even less idea about the origins of what he really did write in all those hours he spent with Hypatia in his study at night. But nonetheless, for the time being the man felt happy and increasingly confident that things were as he had imagined them to be.

Sadly, this was not the case for the poor man, for the darker side of his affliction had yet to fully emerge, though he had begun to miss signs that it was already loosening itself from his control. When he did notice, it was at his firm, where his colleagues expressed some concern about some of the work he had submitted in longhand. Though the complaints were not specific, he feared that they were not about the quality of his work but something more fundamental and ominous. It seemed to him that either his discipline had gone lax or his illness had progressed. In either case, the scent of something uncontrollable in his writing again sent frightening signals his way. On looking at some of the documents he had done he quickly realized that his basic coherence often disintegrated over the course of the page and its meaning tended uneasily towards dilapidation. His fear pointed to something he had tried so hard to disprove. Still, he acted quickly to rectify the threat to his work and switched all of his writing over to the computer again, even relegating his personal planner practice to his free time and only copying its content from his laptop. But he also knew this meant that he would have to increase his already large share of at-home writing. Though he reasoned that if that was what he had to do to keep the frontlines of his inner crisis from extending outward, then that was what he would do. He just hoped he could keep it from affecting his family life, whose integrity he placed above his own happiness.

The man was confounded by woes beyond remedy. He would look in the mirror and see age around his eyes and in the lines across his face, age in his soul. Even if others could not see what he saw, he knew it was there. And he knew that you can count the wrinkles on a face the same way it is said that you can measure a tree’s age by the number of rings in its trunk. But trees are without either worry or wisdom, which both advance secret years upon a person.

The man’s young daughter, however, had noticed her dad’s new-found affinity for pens and, having mistaken it for something like the innocuous hobbies and preoccupations that gradually adorn adult life but which are, however, controllable and voluntary—decided to give her dad a pen she decorated at school as an anniversary present. For the first time, the man realized that his formerly private crisis and confounding affliction had become visible to others. This aroused in him a distinct degree of uneasiness and led him to further consider the possibility of needing to reach out for help, though he was worried that such an act would irreparably damage the claim to sanity that the gesture itself would be intended to rescue.

Nonetheless, the man was of course very touched by his daughter’s gift even as it sent ripples of fear through his limbs. That night he even proceeded to use the gifted pen to try to articulate, on paper, his problem for the first time. And in the act he felt a touch of warmth for having made even a slight step toward asking for help. This letter, however, and the many others it led to, were themselves afflicted by the curse they tried to name, getting lost in their own writing and failing to communicate anything. In short, the attempt was disastrous. The letters were riddled with misspelled words, incoherence, and a worrying lack of grammatical recognizability. The writing itself began to veer wildly around the page, and the mass of sheets before him, littered with pretty scribbles and the hieroglyphs of madness, represented an undeniable milestone in the degradation of his written capacity for communication. Despair and anguish descended on him. The pen given by his daughter, a standard red ballpoint with glitter sparkles and colored pipe cleaners glued to its cap, began to taunt him. Nor could its tyrannical inadequacies escape his now highly developed critical understanding of the merits of various writing instruments. In his pocket he could feel Hypatia seethe with indignity in her soft cloth travel case. He threw the wicked gift aside angrily and, turning to a new stack of blank paper, unscrewed Hypatia’s cap and proceeded to write a new letter, this time addressed to his daughter. For two hours he struggled to articulate a lesson on the importance of gift-giving within the framework of familial relations. He tried to contain it in some larger life lesson so that he would not merely be playing to his frustration. But every letter’s message gradually withered away, leaving his true anger over the wretched pen lying naked on the page, all while Hypatia’s movements orchestrated the rhythm of his frustration. It was only after some twenty drafts had been rejected and after three calls for dinner had gone distinctly unanswered that he suddenly recoiled from the whole sinister operation and veritably broke down into fear and shame and helpless remorse. The last sentence of a particular page before him, itself roughly parabola-shaped, glared at him like a wicked and toothless jack-o-lantern’s smile: It is hard to understand the wiles of this cold world, my dear daughter Julia, but you cannot pretend that it will be any easier on you in life if you continually refuse to seek help from those institutionally most well-disposed to provide it: your family.

Had such a moment, for some unimaginable reason, not been enough for the man to seek help—which it certainly was—then what followed would in any case have guaranteed it. For not long after the man’s breakdown in front of all those awful letters, his wife came into the study carrying a box of his last month’s writings, and she looked deeply worried.

We need to talk, she told him. I’m worried about you. The man said nothing and just lowered his head down onto his hands on the desk in front of him.

Honey, I just want to know if you’re alright. I looked at your novel. Is this a joke? You have probably a thousand pages here, but it’s… frightening.

What do they say? the man said, looking up now. He was genuinely curious, you see, because he actually had no idea what he had been writing all these past months.

So his wife read some of it to him from the first few pages of the box. It was crazed and incomprehensible but also somehow severely eerie in its tone. She read several lines in particular to him:

The white bones that won’t bite but chomp and grind each other will not stop the bleaching souring, do not trust the white chomp, grind for it will not cure the bruxism in your soul, save only the night’s dark day when will white it cover out.

The man sat frozen. He had no idea that he could have produced such words, and something sinister in them deeply frightened him. She read another line:

As it is written, so shall it be done. For if you would not write it, then you would just as well try speaking with your ass for all the justice it will bring you in this world.

And another line, a few pages down:

Only in time will all the blank spaces in the world, so offensive in their lack of determination, be judged and sentenced to meaning. But until that time you must learn to conquer them still—circumscribe such spaces with characters and words. Let no space be uncontained by the figures that subjugate their meaning, just as each letter contains spaces though these spaces belong to the letter.

She stopped reading as her eyes began to water, though she remained silent. She put the box on the desk so that he could see the pages himself. At this point, I scarcely need to repeat what the general character of these writings was. On one page, titled “Transcendental Dietetics,” he had drawn a series of pill-shaped objects—it was a catalogue of vitamins—and next to each one he gave a name, a description of its properties, and an explanation of its importance for his well being. And not many pages below this, there was a binder-clipped mass of several hundred pages that described in relentless detail various biological processes occurring in the human body. These descriptions were complete with editorial comments on how to finish this project—the complete transcription of the body’s functioning into words—which alone would guarantee his physiological continuity, the notes suggested.

The man moved the box of papers away and closed his eyes. He was at last broken by his condition.

Honey, I need help, he said.

Now, I’m no philosopher. But I should say that although it is difficult to imagine this man’s hardships, I believe it is important to realize something deep beneath his story whose roots extend all the way down to the most fundamental questions that plague the universe. For the world is full of dire questions. There are more questions about what is than what actually is. And so most of us, especially after the last vestiges of childhood have gradually abandoned us, do not care to answer all these questions or even a great many of them. Nor do many find it worthwhile to search out such questions. But make no mistake—some questions find you. And when one does, as happened to this poor man, it will claim you entire, so that no aspect of your life will remain untouched by what it asks of you.

But, many months later the man was again living a relatively normal, happy life. He had gone through some counseling and had been able to give up writing by hand altogether. Nor did he suffer any longer from those ravenous episodes when the need to write would consume him. As for Hypatia, he knew she was a jealous mistress, and wary of destroying her, mailed the pen as a gift to his cousin in El Paso where it was sure to be lost to the world forever among the junk he hoarded. He even secretly blamed Hypatia for his condition, thinking she had orchestrated the whole thing even before he ever entered the pen store. And at work he was able to function just as he had before. He even found dictating his work to his secretary comforting in a way totally opposite to the rapturous frenzy inspired by long hand. Everything at last appeared settled, and was so for the next few years.

But one day, sometime later, when the man was at home alone he received an urgent phone call. It was the hospital. His daughter had been in a car wreck. His heart went numb, and he frantically began asking if she was alright. He was in the middle of saying that he was leaving right away to get there when the woman on the other end cut him off:

Sir, she is going to be alright, but she needs a blood transfusion, and I need you to contact your insurance company right now and have them send over some specific information from her medical records right away so that we can make sure she gets the best treatment as fast as possible.

Of course, I—

Sir, this has to be done right now, so please listen carefully and I’m going to give you something to write down. The man’s heart sank and fears flushed inside him.

Alright, are you ready to write this down? the nurse said. He was silent, and his lips fumbled wordlessly.

Sir, are you there? This is very serious, she said.

Yes, just let me grab a—, the man began though he choked before he could say pen. He looked around the room in panic. His laptop was in his car, and he knew it was out of battery anyway. He hadn’t touched a pen in so long, nor would he even let his wife keep blank white paper out in the open around the house anymore. Instead she used bright neon-colored paper pads which, even in the worst phase of his affliction he regarded a repulsive receptacle for the written word—but even these he could not find anywhere in sight. Worse, his wife was on a plane that moment, entirely unreachable.

It’s alright, I can remember it, just tell me, the man said, though he could barely force these words out of his mouth which, along with his thoughts, felt like they were sinking down into his quivering and uneasy stomach.

No, sir, that will not work. This is very serious, and I have to give you a hospital ID number and directory information. You cannot get it wrong. You must write this down, the nurse said sternly.

The man looked out the window in the hope that there might be some passerby whom he could enlist to help.  He would do anything for his daughter, he would jump off a bridge to prevent the least bit of harm from being done to her, but he could not stop the emotional terror inspired by the memories of his illness—all those terrible white sheets—and this made him feel indescribably horrible and ashamed. He couldn’t begin to tell the nurse about his problem—the idea of trying to describe it to her sincerely was almost as sickening as the nature of his malady itself. Then the man spotted his wife’s canvas tote bag on the kitchen counter. He knew she always kept a pad or two of his fine monogrammed stationery which he had ordered in considerable bulk and so had needed to be used somehow.

Okay, one second, I’m sorry, let me grab a piece of paper right here, the man said with choked terror. He pulled the bag over to him and dug inside it to grab the pad and the only pen he could find in it—a black ballpoint. He almost vomited at the click of the cap coming off.

Alright, I’m ready, the man said, almost whispering. He was so dizzy and terrified he thought he might faint, but he took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he began to write down what she said on the phone. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that he had written what she had said and nothing more. Nothing. A huge, cavernous feeling of nothingness came over him. He did not know whether it was a symptom of his madness or simply that his terrified expectations had not come true. But in any case, for the first time he felt he was free at last.

Epilogue

Later that week, when his daughter had already recovered almost completely and would suffer no permanent injury, the man received an unexpected letter in the mail from El Paso. Curious, the man opened it and immediately recognized that it was a thank you letter written on nice letterhead with his cousin’s monogram atop it, in long hand which was unusual for his cousin. But what he found even more unusual about the letter was that it was exactly eighteen pages long.

by Emily Fiocco ’10

The suitcase handle slipped from my hand as I whirled back toward the street. I lifted a hand to call the taxi back, to tell the driver I’d made a mistake. But the door opened behind me, and it was too late.

“Sophie!” Aunt Tara’s tongue caught on the S and spit sprayed my cheek. She reached as if to take my luggage but wobbled, losing her balance. She caught hold of the doorframe and then smiled with her lopsided grimace. “Welcome,” she said.

“Hi.” I shrugged my shoulder to my cheek to get the spit off. “I’m here.” I tried to smile, but abandoned the effort.

“Come in!” Aunt Tara said. She backed up as she opened the door and grabbed her cane from where it leaned against the steps. “How was your flight?” Her mouth twisted all the words up. Saliva gathered in a cream on her lips.

“Fine.”  I looked away. We stood in the foyer for a minute. She shrugged her good shoulder.

“Your room is ready.”  She reached for the banister.

“I know where it is.”

I walked past her and up to my bedroom. The room I always stayed in when we visited. The room I was stuck in for a month. It was dim like the rest of the house, despite the windows. The glass was smudged; it refracted the light. Aunt Tara had made up the bed. I tried not to think of the effort it must have cost her. I waited until she called, and then went downstairs for dinner. I’d planned my dinner speech the entire way over.

“I don’t want to be here. My parents didn’t ask me. I’m letting you know this right now.”

She’d ordered in fried chicken. I finished my words and crunched down hard on my drumstick. The bone splintered. I had to pull fragments out of my mouth before they impaled my tongue. I couldn’t look at her. I wanted to punch her, or the table, or slash a hole in her orange velour sofa. Anything to get sent home.

When I looked up she was just staring at me. The left side of her face looked like someone took her skin and tried to yank it to her chin. But her eyes seemed very blue. The left one was smaller. The stroke she had when she was three stunted everything on that side of her body. I had never noticed the mole beside her right eye before. I looked back down.

“So we’ll stay out of each others’ ways,” she said.

Adrenaline made my thighs numb. I pinched my skin. “Really?”

Aunt Tara nodded slowly and her good eye stayed steady.

“Fine.” I ate another chicken wing. She hadn’t made it through her first. Without a word I got up, threw the paper plate in the trash, and went upstairs. That night, it was easy to fall asleep.

I’d thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep the first night there. Instead the fear came in the morning. Even with sun seeping through the window glass warm my face, it didn’t change the fact that I was stuck with Aunt Tara. It didn’t change the reasons I was stuck, either. Didn’t change the fact that my parents had been fighting for over a year, and apparently, it wasn’t going to get better. I jerked into a ball and the Fight played out again in my mind.

Dad had started the yelling. “You’re late. You’re always late.” He’d come in late from work but there still wasn’t dinner on the table. Mom and I had eaten a late snack. She put the frozen chicken in the oven ten minutes before he got there.

“You’re late,” she told him. “You’re an hour late. And you didn’t call.”

“A call? You need a call to tell you when dinner should be?” He wrinkled his lip.

“No point cooking if you’re going to be late.”

Dad stepped forward, opened his mouth—

“Come on,” I said. I got up and stood by Mom. She didn’t look over at me. “Food’ll be soon.”

Dad swept out his arm like a Shakespearian actor but his face was all twisted. He pointed at Mom. “You say I’m late? It’s you.” He hissed the words. “You want to talk about problems. You’re the problem.”

“Dad!” I was already crying, my voice rising higher. “You’re not being fair.”

“Shut up, Sophie.” His eyes squinted, narrow and mean.

I grabbed onto the table. He moved to the door.

“I’ve had enough,” he said.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I still don’t know where the words came from. “I’ve had enough too. You’re a fucking asshole.”

I didn’t see her hit me. Just felt the burn of my cheek. When I turned she was still standing with her arm out across her body.

“What?” I couldn’t make sentences. “You hit me? Not him? He is!”

She took a step forward. I thought she was going to apologize. “How could you?” I said, and I ran to my room.

No one came up to find me. I sat in my room while the sky grew dark and dinner time passed. There were sounds downstairs, footsteps and words. Doors opened and shut and then there was silence. In the morning, Dad wasn’t there.

“He’ll be back soon,” Mom said. She didn’t look me in the eyes. I didn’t say a word, to her or to Dad either when he came back five days later. That’s when they gave me the ticket. Told me the plan to bus me off to Aunt Tara’s down the coast.

I said I wasn’t going. “It’s not fair,” I told Mom. “Even you can’t stand her.”

“She’s my sister,” she said. Her voice was very cold. She looked me in the eye, then. I had to go.

When my mind cleared the fear came back. I thought of the way Aunt Tara had watched me last night, during the meal. How when she blinked, the eyelid on her ruined side didn’t come up all the way. She listened like a radio antenna tuned into some arcane station. Calculating.

The next morning, there was no sign of Aunt Tara. I left the house as quickly as I could—packed a bag for the day and took off without looking for her. My parents have given me a credit card for what I “needed”—and I knew there’d be a lot of things I’d “need.” But it felt strange to be in the town without them. I walked by the General Store, white and ramshackle, where we’d get the picnic lunches they made me eat with them on the beach. A few times during the week at the least. Sand got into everything. I passed the candy store and the ice cream shop and the bathing suit depot…we’d been to them all.

I stopped in front of the entrance to the main beach. I could picture the beach like I was standing on it. The white sand, blue waves, nasty little kids screaming everywhere, girls on double-sized towels in tiny bikinis, mothers in too-small swimsuits and fathers who roasted their beer bellies in the sun. If there were cute guys the whole thing would be passable, but the male population was mostly middle schoolers. I kept walking, into the heart of the beach town. The stores were the same and different—the maternity shop had turned into a wig store, the display window full of blonde and brown and even red and purple hair. The jewelry store had expanded but my favorite coffee shop next door was still in place. A new bookstore, a renovated deli. Another used clothing store. It didn’t take long to walk the three main streets of town. I went through them once, then again, and then got on the road that led out of the cutesy places, and on towards the city a few miles away.

I didn’t know how long I would have to stay in this place. They said they’d have to work things out. They said it might be a while. Might be a while, to resolve a year of fighting.

The fights started a year ago. Dad came home later and later and when he got home he’d yell about anything. During the school year it was the worst.

“Where are you going,” he asked when he found me getting ready to leave the house on a school night.

“I’m done. Going to hang out.”

“It’s a school night. Answer is no.”

“Dad—”

“Greg, I think—” Mom would start. I didn’t want her protecting me. He turned on her.

“She has to learn sometime. Work ethic. It’s important. She needs some sort of example.”

Because Mom taught flute lessons out of the house. And she wasn’t teaching many. She cried a lot in her office during the day.

“You’re not fair,” I screamed.

But I never had the guts to just leave. I just stood up and went to my room while the fight continued. I closed my door and waited it out, talking for hours with my friends on the phone. Pretending like nothing was wrong.

By the time I got to the main city my flipflops had rubbed my feet raw. Already the tops of my arms and shoulders had turned red in the sun. I welcomed the pain. There wasn’t anything interesting in the regular city. Just a mainstream bookstore. I went in and got my SAT book. That and pre-class English essays were my only activities for the summer. I stayed at the bookstore for a while with a magazine. The café was quiet and I sat at a little square table, drinking cold coffee and pretending I was from a big city. Pretending I was older than a sophomore. Imagining I had moved out and my parents had nothing to do with me anymore. I tried not to cry.

The walk back home took almost twice as long. I did most of it barefoot. It was almost dark when I got back. I sat down on Aunt Tara’s porch. There were buildings in the way of the beach but the sky seemed wide open. Before the sun fell below the buildings across the street the sky shone purple and blue and pink and gold and gulls looped, black silhouettes, through the glory. There was a creak, and then I heard stuttered footsteps.

Aunt Tara limped out onto the porch and sat down at the chair by the door. I didn’t move. We both sat, not talking, until the sky faded. Without a word she got up and went back into the house. I sat on the steps in the dark. The quiet was strange, but everything seemed soft. Muted. Or it was just my thoughts. I’d buried them on the walk and their absence surprised me. I got up, and went to my room to sleep.

She was in the kitchen the next day when I went to get breakfast.
“Good morning,” Aunt Tara said. The orange juice in her pitcher sloshed near to the sides as she brought it to the table. Two glasses already sat at the table, empty.

“I made it myself,” she said, and gestured towards the juice. Orange halves lay on the counter, twisted and mutilated, their leftover pulp spewed on the counters.

“Oh,” I said. I sat down. I poured a glass of the stringy juice and took a sip. The acid and cold hurt my teeth and I tried not to grimace. She sat next to me. She smelled all over like oranges. Orange pulp stuck to her wrists and even her useless hand.

“How is everything?” she asked.

I put the glass to my lips but then put it down. “Fine,” I said. “Busy.”

“Busy?” Aunt Tara raised the eyebrow on the good side of her face. “I thought you might get bored.”

It took me a minute to understand her speech. “Nope,” I said. “Got work to do.”

“Do you remember Benny?”

Benny. Last time we’d visited they’d made me babysit this kid because I’d complained about being bored. I hate kids. I’d let them all know that after the fact.

“No,” I said. “Not going to babysit. Not going to happen.” I got up.

“If you want it,” she said.

“I don’t.”

At the end of a parking lot on the far edge of the town, up a dune and through a hole in the fence, a private beach stretched rocky and kelp-strewn for a few hundred meters. A landscape full of dull green and brown and grey. But ugly meant empty—even the people who lived in the apartments it belonged to just went to the tourist beach.

I’d found the beach a few years ago. It took until middle school for my parents to let me go off on my own, but that first vacation I was freed, I explored everything. One day, I went through a parking lot, under a missing slat in the fence, down a dune, over some rocks and a patch of long sharp grasses. There it was. Once I found it, it was mine.

Now, it was the only place I could think of to go. I had to hop across the sand; the gravel and broken shells burned on my open blisters. I didn’t go far before I spread out my towel. Took out my books and put on a hat and figured I’d just read for the rest of the day.

Time didn’t pass as quickly as I thought it would. Even the sun distracted. Sweat popped from my pores. I put my book down and tiptoed through the shells and seaweed to the edge of the water. Waves caught my ankles, pushed up to my calves—I jumped back. When I was little I took swim lessons at the YMCA.  I never learned to open my eyes. Chlorine made them burn. Mom and Dad towed me out into the ocean, years ago. They tried to make me swim through the waves. “Open your eyes,” they said, but I was paralyzed, terrified of what swam beneath the water. I kicked and screamed and sobbed. When they let go, I sank. Finally they brought me back in to shore. I fell onto the sand, crying my heart out, feeling over and over the sensation of the wave dragging over my head, pulling me under.

The waves broke in little white spurts of foam. There was a buoy line a hundred meters out or so. No life guard at this beach. Even thinking about the deeper part got me high stepping out of the water. My ankles had turned numb. I walked back to my towel. Shells crunched under my feet and I thought I’d cry with the pain. I lay back on the towel and let my feet throb. The heat baked my skin and melded with the pain in my feet. I closed my eyes. No one was around. No one to tell me what to do. No one to shout.

Things could be worse.

Benny came to the beach the very next day. I put down my towel and just minutes later I heard scrambling behind me.  I jumped up. Sand poured into the hollow of my towel.

“Sophie?”

His face was still scabby—from eczema or heat rash, I’d never known. He looked almost the same as three years before—knobby knees, light-white hair. Invisible eyebrows. In his hand he had a little rubber duck. If it was the same one, I couldn’t tell.

“Benny. What are you doing here?” I sank back down into my sandy towel. I hadn’t realized how much my heart rate had sped up. I breathed in.

Benny shrugged. He kicked at the sand. Looked up, then down.

I sighed. “You still carrying that thing around?”

Benny looked at his duck. He thrust it in the back pocket of his swim suit. “Why haven’t you come over?”

“I’m not babysitting you this year.” I crossed my arms. He looked serious, like always. “I mean it,” I said. “I have other things to do.”

“I don’t need a babysitter. I don’t have to have one.” He jutted out his chin. I had to stop myself from laughing.

“What are you? Five? Six?”

“I’m seven!”

“Okay,” told him. I brushed sand off the towel and lay down on my side. “That’s just fine.”

He came closer. Then he sat down.

“Really, Benny?”

Benny didn’t say anything. He looked up and he didn’t even pick at his face. He pulled his knees to his chest and rested his cheek on them. His shoulders were small, thin. His spine bumped down his back and blue veins traced faint paths beneath skin.

“Alright,” I said. I sighed again.  “Just don’t bother me.”

He came the next day, and the next. I could walk down to the beach town and he’d find me there.  Anywhere I went, he appeared. My albino shadow. Then he didn’t show.

I tried to read. But I kept thinking every movement on the beach was him. I waited for him to jump out and surprise me. For him to hand me a shell and tell me it was cool, or run laughing out of the water, coming to tell me about the latest way he’d amused himself. I couldn’t concentrate. I walked around town and when I found myself looking at all the little kids for the one with the bright-white hair I shook my head and walked faster.

That day I went home early.

“Hi,” Aunt Tara said. She sat at the kitchen table. I’d gotten all the way to the sink without noticing her.

“How’d you get there?”

“How are you?” she asked. She’d left her hair down. It was thick and chestnut colored. She pushed it back with her good hand and her neck showed, slender and white. I was staring.

“Fine,” I said. I got my water.  I sat down at the table kitty-corner to her, poised to leave. She looked over and she smiled.

“It’s nice to have a friend,” she said.

My stomach lurched. I shrugged. Aunt Tara massaged the stiff skin around her mouth. “They’re good to keep around,” she said. She ran her good hand down her crippled arm to the useless hand that clenched small like a claw. I thought of my friends back home. Of my parents. My arm twitched and I almost threw the glass I held at the wall.

“I’m getting dinner,” I said. I never stayed in when she was in the house. I started walking towards the door. I stopped, and turned back around. “You want anything?”

. Aunt Tara sat still at the table. After a minute, she looked up. She smiled her half smile. “I’m fine,” she said. She pushed herself up from her chair. Took a jerky step towards the sink, then another. She had no cane. I didn’t see it anywhere . Suddenly, I was afraid.

“Bye then,” I said. I turned and ran out the door and didn’t come back again until dark.

A week went by. Same activities, different days. Benny came most days. I never asked him where he was when he wasn’t with me. But without him the beach seemed like a vacuum. I’d sit there with all my work laid out in front of me but I didn’t do any of it. I missed them. I missed having my parents around to laugh when a gull flew too close. My dad always fed them. I missed our trips. One time we’d gone whale watching. The ocean sprayed everywhere, the engine was loud. We went so far the shore disappeared and if I didn’t look back I could pretend we were going to go forever. Saltwater flew up and hit my face and I loved it, all of it, and didn’t care there were no whales, even though Dad tried to get his money back.

I knew it wasn’t like that anymore. Even if they’d been there we’d be fighting all the time. I had to remind myself of that. I left my stuff and went on walks, back and forth over the sand and then down roads around the town. I walked until the sweat ran down my back and I was so thirsty all I could think about were the fifty cent slushies, lemonade and cherry flavored, at the entrance to the main beach. And then I walked a little more before I let myself get one. I made it through another week. One thing at a time.

Then it rained.

“Good morning,” Aunt Tara said when I finally came downstairs. I’d hoped she’d be gone. She’d made another pitcher of orange juice. I aligned my elbows with the worn grain in the table and ignored her. She sat down across from me.

“Your parents called last night.”

I couldn’t move.

“You should probably call them.”

Her fingers tapped the table and the good side of her mouth began to turn up.

“What are you happy about?” I asked.

“I’m not,” Aunt Tara said. Her smile disappeared “But maybe you will be.”

I opened my mouth to yell at her but Aunt Tara stood up and walked out of the kitchen, leaning on her cane. Her yellow skirt swished like a beaded lampshade in an earthquake. She didn’t look back.

I ran out the door, crying. Ran down the streets of the town; only the bars were open. Music played through the rain—Queen and James Taylor and all the oldies and beach songs in between. I stopped under an overhang and dialed my parents.

“Hi sweetie.” Mom answered.

“You called.”

“We did.”

I tapped the cell phone on the wall, waited for her to keep talking.

“Your dad and I have been discussing some things.”

“Where is he? Where did he go?”

“He’s not here right now.”

“You mean he’s already moved out?” My voice rose high. No one was around to hear it. I squeezed my phone, fingers wrapped around it. It shook. There was a silence. “Mom!”

“Honey,” she said. “We just think it’s better if we—”

“I can’t believe you. I can’t believe this.” My throat hurt, I couldn’t speak. I tried to swallow but I gagged instead. “You’re actually. No.”

“Sophie—”

“No!” My throat went raw with the scream. I slammed the phone shut and stood shaking. Then I ran through the rain to the private beach.

My t-shirt caught on the barbs of the fence. I heard the rip and felt the sting as the barbs tore through to my skin. “Dammit!” I shouted, and shook like a dog to get the sand out of my shirt. My hair flew everywhere, un-pony-tailed and tangled, and sand sprayed from everything. Grains ground my skin under my bikini, my shorts. The rain had soaked my shirt and it clung to me, covered in gray sand.

Gulls shrieked overhead. There was a fish laid open on the sand. The birds cawed and fought as they tried for the meat. Others swooped to pick up the crabs marooned from the night before. One flew near my face and I swung at it. The bird landed and cocked its head. It hopped once, then twice, closer to me. Its white feathers glistened in the rain.

“Get,” I said. “I don’t need you.”

I walked the length of the shoreline to the apartment complex, then back again. My soles had grown tough but I pressed down hard with my heels to feel the sharp edges. Beached seaweed seeped fish smell into the wet.  I walked four laps before Benny showed up.

“What do you want?”

Benny’s eyes went wide. He came a little closer. He had the duck in his hand. With his hair plastered to his head he almost looked bald.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yup.” Tears formed in my eyes so I turned around and walked the other direction.

“You’re lying.” He hopped to get in front of me.

“You’re annoying.”

“I got an idea,” he said.

“Don’t care.” I scuffed my feet in the sand and kicked a clump of it over his shins.

“The boat. Let’s take out the boat. We can run away.”

“You’re an idiot.” I stopped, crossed my arms. Then had to uncross them to wipe away the tears that fell out when I blinked. They mixed with the rain. The rain had grown lighter, just a drizzle, just a spattering of real rain drops mixed in. Wind blew and I shivered.

“Come on,” Benny said. “Look at the boat.”

“What boat?”

He grabbed my elbow. His fingers were small and hot. He wrapped them tightly and pointed down the beach. There, half in the weeds and sand in a dune was a yellow boat. I’d seen it before but it had faded into the landscape—beyond notice long ago.

“I don’t like water. I’m not getting in. It’s raining”

“Please? Look, the rain stopped.” he said. He had the duck out and his thumb was going furiously, polishing its little yellow head.

“What’s it to you?” I wanted to be cruel. Wanted to say, get the fuck out of here, you little twerp. I hated him.

“It would be fun.” His voice was low and he’d already turned to walk away. He reached up to pick some scabs off his head. It made me want to puke and I picked up a handful of sand to throw at him. I thought of his delicate skin. Of how he sat so close when he came to visit. The way his whole forehead wrinkled up when he smiled. I dropped the sand.

“Get the boat then.”

Benny turned and ran to the boat. By the time I’d gotten there he’d pulled it from the dune. Just a little yellow pedal boat. Dirty and swampy on the inside, but intact. It was surprisingly light to pull, just bumped and slid right along behind as we took it over the slant of sand to the water. “Get in.”

It didn’t take us long to get clear of the beach. I pedaled and Benny sat up on the seat back. I didn’t realize how close we’d be to the water. The rain had become a steady stream of droplets soaking us from above. Waves slapped up on the yellow plastic and then washed over it, icy splashes on my thighs. We were almost eye level to the ocean. I swallowed down a panic. There were things beneath us. Things in the water. I pedaled faster so I didn’t scream. We got to the buoy line and then passed it. My thighs started to burn.

“We’re too far.” Benny slid off the top of the boat to the seat. The boat rocked. Dead bugs in the bottom of the boat brushed my legs. I flailed them in the air.

“Hold still!” I told him.

“Too far.”

I looked back to shore. It was close. Just a little smaller. A little grayer, through the rain. “How are we going to run away if we can still see land?”

“You didn’t say we were running away.” He took out his duck and threw it up. He caught it and did it again. And again.

“You said we were, dumbhead. And anyways, no one will care. No one will care if we disappear.”

Benny picked a scab on his face. His forehead wrinkled down in a frown. A little spot of blood bumped up on his chin where he’d been picking. Grey lights raced over the rain-pockmarked waves, water mirroring the sky. In the silence and stillness the rain and the waves hitting the boat seemed even louder. The rain pattered steadily while the waves hit with a wet thwop, then a suctioning sound. A barge moved slowly across the horizon, edges blurred by the rain.

“That isn’t true,” said Benny. He looked back towards the beach, but no one ran out to look for us. He held his duck and rubbed its head.

I took the duck. He watched me with mouth half-open but didn’t try to take it back. I ran a finger over its head, felt the smooth narrowing body. It was just a little damp and I smoothed the water over its body. When I was little I had stuffed animals I’d carry everywhere. My lucky charms. I felt the ridges imprinted in the rubber of the duck for wings, the smooth round outcropping of bill. It grew warm in my fingers and I put it to my lips. The rubber felt warm, intimate. I brushed it against my cheek then held it down in my lap. Benny stared.

“But it is,” I said. “It’s true. No one would know.”

“I want to go back,” he said.

I started to pedal again. I reached into the waves and mimicked strokes I’d learned once with a canoe paddle. I strained at the pedals. Benny helped. We got the boat turned back towards shore. We pedaled and pedaled but the beach didn’t seem to get any closer. The rain fell harder. Drops slid into my open mouth, slipped over my forehead into my eyes. They were salty from my skin and the ocean. I slitted my eyes and did my best to see.

“I told you we were too far out.”

“We’re not. How are we supposed to escape if we don’t go far out?”

He didn’t answer. I kept pedaling and he did too.

“I want my duck,” he said.

I’d forgotten I was holding it. The plastic was slick like a bar of soap. “This?” I held it up between finger and thumb.

“It’s mine,” Benny said.

I stuck it behind my back. “What you want it so bad for?”

“It’s mine,” he said again. “I want it back.”

I held it up, just out of Benny’s reach. “I’ve got it right here,” I said. “You want it?”

Benny stood up. He lurched on the wet plastic and the boat rocked. I steadied the boat. I looked up at him. I held the duck in my hand. My heartbeat sounded in my ears and I could feel a smile growing on my face. He started to climb over the divider but the boat rocked again and he almost fell. “Come on, Benny,” I said to him.

He stood up again. He was tiny in the boat, the divider coming up almost to his waist. The rain fell harder, sleeting in a thousand pinpicks. My hair spread like seaweed over my cheeks and shoulders, the sand washing out and salt taking its place. Benny came towards me but he’d grown even smaller, so small I didn’t see him. I didn’t see the duck, either. I could feel the boat rock and tip and sway and I held on but it was no use. I was in the water. Dark spread around me, and Benny, and the boat on the ocean. The water was cold, and I was numb.

The Coast Guard brought me back. Found me dangling on the side of the boat, crying. I’ve cried a lot since then. They picked me up and they said I said, “ducky, get it, the ducky I’m sorry” over and over. When they asked me if anyone else was in the boat, I shook my head.

Aunt Tara picked me up after the paramedics came. They said I would be fine. She brought me back to her house. My parents wanted me home but she said I wasn’t fit to fly. I lay in bed. Sweat on my skin, wet sheets, sleep, nothing. Aunt Tara put food in my room. Sometimes I ate it. I kept my mind a blank. But in a few days there were voices, thoughts, all clamoring in my head. Finally, I stood up. They fell back away.

My legs shook but I put my hand on the wall so I wouldn’t fall, and I walked downstairs. I only wanted water from the kitchen. But my aunt sat at the window in the front room. Without thinking I went and kneeled in front of her. I held onto the feet of the chair and tears burned at the corners of my eyes. The room wasn’t lit. Neither she nor I spoke and the room got darker.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, finally. Her words were slow and precise. I shifted back to my heels but kept looking down. I shook my head.

“I don’t remember.”

She was silent. Aunt Tara’s cane stretched across the floor in front of the chair. Every grain shone perfect and preserved in the polished wood, grayscale in the dimness. I shivered and looked up. She stared towards the window so I looked, too. Her face glowed in the dirty glass of the window, a blurred reflection. In the warped surface it was almost her, but everything different, like the time when my friends and I stole a couple cases of Mike’s Hard and drank them down like we’d always drunk lemonade, and giggled when everything started to shift.

“He tripped,” I said, words coming to me. “He tripped and hit his head and he fell.”

Aunt Tara nodded.

“I tried. I jumped in after him. I couldn’t save him.” It hurt to talk. “I held him,” I said. “He was too heavy. He fell in.”

I couldn’t swallow so I stopped talking. I thought she was watching me but when I looked she still was watching window. Minutes passed. Then Aunt Tara turned towards me. Slowly, she shook her head. She stared at me, her small eye growing bigger until it was symmetrical in her face. The wrinkles on her left side pulled taught. I saw the whites of her eyes and my chest stopped moving, stopped pulling in air—I couldn’t breathe.

Finally, she looked away. My chest released and I drew in a breath then followed her gaze to the window. Lights sparkled at the corners of my eyes, white static in my vision. My sight shifted; I could see outside, now. I saw how the sky was lighter than the pavement. Everything was grey, moonlit. The beach wasn’t far—it would only take six minutes to get there. Wouldn’t even have to hurry.

Then everything shifted again. Rain blurred everything. The little plastic boat glowed in the landscape, the brightest color around. I had the duck, and Benny stood and asked for it. Demanded it. I was going to hand it to him but it was so slick. I teased him, holding it over the boat, and then it dropped. Benny saw it drop. He dived in after it. Hit his head coming back up—I could feel the thunk of his head on the boat. I couldn’t see him so I dived in. Couldn’t see anything in the rain, but I got a hold of him. He wasn’t supposed to be heavy. He was always so little. When my arm went numb, when my legs stopped working, when everything was frozen—he fell below the water. I caught hold of the boat and held on. I didn’t want to fall down deeper. I was afraid. Then I was numb. At some point, the Coast Guard came.

On the floor of her house, I looked at my aunt and moved my fingers. Even after a week, they’d still felt empty. I felt empty. “I didn’t mean to do it,” I said.

But Aunt Tara shook her head. She didn’t speak. Her face was stern and her mouth twisted down. A cloud moved and moonlight glanced out from behind slatted clouds. Light lay across the floor in slanted bars of light. It broke the light filling my head. I reached out, clutched the chair in which Aunt Tara sat.

The floor rocked like I was still in the boat. I cried out and spread my fingers on the carpet, trying to hold on. Benny reached out, asking for the duck. I laughed at him, at how small he looked. I knew I could do anything I wanted. Knew Benny couldn’t stop me. I laughed and then reached back, and even as he yelled, demanded his duck back, I reached up and then I flung the duck as far as I could.

Benny stared at me. His mouth opened—not in surprise, but in anger—to yell. He climbed over me, punching and kicking and then he jumped into the ocean. He swam out far, looking for his duck.

“Come back, Benny,” I yelled. But he kept going, cutting through the waves like a small pale sickle. But then I couldn’t see the spray from his kicks anymore. I barely saw his arms flashing above the waves.

I yelled at him again and in a minute he stopped moving. He splashed as he moved forward or stayed in one place—I didn’t know if it was him or the boat that was moving. I saw his arms start to move again. It took a long time but he got bigger and bigger and then he was there. Just a foot away. He treaded water, panting. He opened his mouth and reached up an arm.

“Help?” His face was so pale.

I stuck out an arm. “Here,” I said. “Grab me.”

He pulled. The plastic was slick and the boat already tilted. Even as I tried to hang on he pulled me down. I screamed. “What did you do?” I asked, or tried, but there was water in my mouth, in my throat and I choked on it. He didn’t say anything. Just grabbed onto my waist as I clung to the boat. “You can’t do that!” I said. He was dragging me down.

But he didn’t say anything. Just hung on. It got harder to hold on to the boat—I was holding up two of us and my arms were so tired. The plastic so slippery.

When his grip started to weaken I could do nothing. Could only gasp against the side of the boat. The rain fell around us and mixed with my tears as my biceps strained. Then suddenly, the load was less. I clung to the boat and didn’t look down as he fell deeper in the ocean.

No, I said. My mouth hadn’t moved. “No,” I said again, out loud, to Tara. “No. No!”
She had stood sentinel over me and I lay on the carpet after it all, arms outstretched.  She looked back out the window. Light moved across her face. Her mouth pulled down and showed briefly, a slash in the darkness.

“No,” I said, but it was only a keen. I wrapped my arms around my knees and felt the breath go out of me with the sound.

I went home the next day. Bought a ticket. Took a taxi to the bus station and left, and didn’t look out the windows until I’d gotten home. Only my mother was still there. It didn’t matter, anymore. I didn’t talk to either of them. Wouldn’t. It was easier to think about, though, then the rest of it. Think about how that went wrong. About when the fights started, and why. What made them fall apart, after having me, and all those years together. Maybe they never should have gotten married in the first place. Wonder when they figured that out.

I thought about how in their wedding pictures, they looked happy. How in the one they framed, my father cups my mother’s elbow and wears a proud smile, like he’s just won a trophy. My mother cocks her hip just enough to have it brush his thigh, and looks up at him like she couldn’t wait for the rest of her life.

I thought about the pictures to block out the other memories. But when I closed my eyes they played on my eyelids like a movie, as clear as though it were the day before. Sometimes all I could see was Aunt Tara.

Even now, hiding in my room in my own house, I can feel her touch. Like a scar, burning, throbbing, ancient. When my eyes come open and I gasp for breath, trying again to think only of my parents, to think of nothing on the beach, my hand burns. Nothing can stop it. Nothing makes it go away.

Over, and over I see how Aunt Tara leaned over. She reached out with a claw, and touched my hand.