Inland (20 page)

“Fuck your letter,” I say, and hang up to the sound of her weeping.

—

When my father comes home, I grunt a hello and push past him, outside, down across the lawn and out to the farthest reach of the dock. I’m afraid he’ll catch a glimpse of something in my face, the high, angry flush in my cheeks or the clench of my hard-set jaw, and know that something has changed.

The air has turned gray, tinged with violet, still hazy, damp, heavy. The world holds its breath, waiting for night to come and lace everything with dew, for dark that will break the heat into pieces. I sink down through air the color of smoke and reach my bare foot for the water. In the trees, the night songs have begun; I see a heron, stark white in the last of the evening light, step gently from the shadow of a cypress island and take to the air without a sound.

I do not want to leave.

Maybe if I were more like my mother, I could find a way to stay. But no matter how I shuffle my options, no matter how many paths I envision, they all lead away from this place. For all the choices I might have, there’s not one that lets me choose this.

I breathe in, relishing the feeling of the liquid air as it slides down deep in my lungs, loving the long, slow glide as I release it through my lips. I wonder if this will be taken from me, too. If I’ll return to Laramie and find that wheezing, tired girl waiting for me, ready to slip back into my body and take my breath away. I look out across the water and make a promise: if she’s there, that girl I used to be, I will not let her in. I will wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze until blood-flowers bloom in her lifeless eyes.

The pounding of my heart has subsided to a dull patter, and the light is nearly gone. I tuck my damp feet under me, and stand to watch the last of the day dim down behind the trees. I walk backward up the dock, gaze across the languid surface of the river, hoping for a last glimpse of the heron, the first sweeping arc of a bat across the purple sky.

I stop.

There is something in the water.

I peer out, widening my eyes, racing against the failing light to see what’s floating there. For a moment I think I’ve imagined it, I’m about to turn away, and then I see it again. A long, pale body, drifting just below the surface.

One of the manatees, swimming slowly back upstream.

Even today, even after everything, the sight of it makes my heart lift.

“Hey,” I whisper, and smile, and take a step forward. “Hey, there you are.”

I watch the animal’s slow progress through the water, barely swimming, barely moving at all. It’s smaller than the ones I’d seen this spring—a baby, I think, maybe lost by mistake in the maze of the gulf’s sprawling coastal waterways. It seems unhurried, maybe even confused. As the pale shape drifts closer, I take another step forward, wondering if it’ll come near enough to touch. I wonder if it might be sick. It’s so small, so thin.

Too thin.

Something isn’t right. The too-lean body, its stillness in the water, the long, thin arms that drift down and forward as I watch. They’re nearly disappearing in the dark; I can see only the suggestion of its fingers splayed like pale stars in the murk.

Fingers.

I shake my head and let out an embarrassed giggle, glad there was no one to see me talking to an imagined phantom. This isn’t a manatee. There is no manatee. This is a trick of the light, shadows playing on the water, a piece of sun-bleached wood trapped in the river muck just so. I step back out to the farthest reach of the dock, peering into the lingering twilight at the strange shape below the surface.

It’s still there.

It lifts its head.

Even in the growing darkness, I can see its eyes. Glittering, black, peering out and unblinking.

Its eyes are fixed on me.

The
thud
of rapid footsteps behind me makes me jump and shriek. I turn just in time for Bee to catapult herself against my body, her sticky hands reaching around to clasp the sides of my legs. I cough, feeling my heart thud wildly and then settle, feeling the gooseflesh on my skin sink back and smooth over. I force myself to laugh, only it sounds like a shriek, high and hysterical and looping away into the night.

“Bee, you scared me to death!” I scold, willing myself not to look over my shoulder at the pale form in the water, dropping down to smooth the little girl’s hair. I straighten the hem of her dress and wince at the way the fabric bites against her arms. It’s at least two sizes too small.

Bee isn’t paying attention. She points out at the water, eyes wide, voice barely a whisper.

“Did you see?” she says. “Did you see?”

“Did I see what?” I ask, quietly, but I already know the answer. I follow the line of her finger, and shudder, the hair on my neck rising stiff and stark as darkness closes in all around us.

“She was out there. The one I saw. The mermaid.”

I pull her close. I let myself take comfort in the weight of her small body against mine, in the heat of her chubby hands, in the smell of mild shampoo rising up from her tangled hair. I stare out at the river, and when I speak, it’s as much to it as to the little girl beside me.

“There’s no mermaid,” I say.

There isn’t.

When I look across to the opposite bank, the water is empty, and the unbroken surface is as still and smooth as glass.

NESSA’S PHONE RINGS AND RINGS.
Yesterday, I left another message. I’ve left more apologies than I can count in the dead space that follows the beep, begging for her to forgive and call back. Today, a recorded voice tells me that the voice mailbox of the person I’m trying to reach is full.

I check every day for her letter, but I know she won’t send one. My cruelty and anger pierced her through the heart from three thousand miles away, punched a hole through the middle of what we’d had. I think of the things I said to her, and regret rips through me anew. I deserve this loneliness.

In the days that have passed since that phone call, I’ve cried, screamed, pleaded. Begged for another chance, begged to stay. Nothing changes. No one answers back. Not my father, not Nessa. And not the river, dark and thick and keeping secrets, the water oozing slowly by and with nothing ever peeking out from underneath the surface. I’ve sat with Bee every night at the edge of the dock, holding her hand as the evening creeps in, both of us keeping watch. I was sure, that first night, that we’d see it again, and that it would turn out to be nothing. That she’d cry out, and I’d follow her pointing finger, and the thing I’d seen—that we’d both seen—would be only a buried branch nestled in the waving weeds. Or an alligator, the kind with the mutation that turns them white, hiding in the thick of the lily pads. Or nothing at all, a ghostly afterimage from the late-day sun, playing tricks on the slow-moving surface.

Instead, the water stays empty.

Inside the house, the air is heavy with unspoken words. My father has taken a leave from work to make the arrangements and pack my things, and we pass each other in the hallways or kitchen like silent ships in the night, his eyes skating opaquely over my face the same way they do over the furniture. It makes me think of an evening, not long ago but before everything turned sour, when he and I sat side by side, reading books in companionable quiet. The only sound had been the insect-wing flick of a page being lifted, the low cough-swallow-sigh of him clearing his throat.

The silence we share now is different. Cold, flat, empty. It is the silence of one person pretending that the other is no longer there.

—

On the last Saturday morning, with forty-eight hours until our flight, Ben finds me sitting with Bee on the dock. I watch him walk toward me, moving with a stiff, awkward gait that I’ve never seen before, his hands jammed in his pockets. For a moment, I almost wish the restraining order were still in place, just to avoid this terrible good-bye.

“Bee, I need to be alone with my friend for a little while,” I say softly. There must be something in my voice; she doesn’t even argue, just throws her arms around my neck and then skips away down the dock.

Ben watches her go, then drops down beside me.

“That is one rotund child,” he says. Neither of us laughs. When he reaches out to take my hand, I hear Nessa’s voice like a warning in my mind.
Be careful, Callie. This boy will want to keep you.

If only he could.

If only we could hide away together, forget everything, reemerge into a world where none of this had happened.

“Can I help you pack or anything?” he asks.

“Everything’s already done.”

The pause stretches out forever, and then he leans in, swallowing hard, and folds me into his arms. I put my face in his hair. I breathe deep for the last time.

Away behind me, I hear the sound of a door opening; when I look back, my father is on the porch, arms folded, staring a warning across the yard at the boy who brought me to the water’s edge. Ben coughs and moves away, hands returning to his pockets.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s okay,” I say again, and swallow down the ache that’s begun to rise in my chest. If I let myself cry, I won’t be able to stop.

“Callie?”

I manage to look at him.

“We could stay together,” he says. “I just can’t stop thinking that this doesn’t have to end. We could make it work. I’ll be done with school in a year, and then I could come be with you. I mean, maybe . . .”

His voice is full of hope, and this time, I do start to cry. For a moment, I nod, and blink, and allow myself to dream on that “maybe.” Maybe he could. Maybe we could. Maybe it would even be better that way, to reunite far from this place, with all its fresh, awful memories. Maybe when enough time has passed, we can find a way to start again. He has forgiven me; perhaps I can forgive myself. With enough time, enough effort, maybe I can wipe out the memory of how blithely I led him into harm’s way.

And then the moment passes, and another dream takes its place. Only it’s more than a dream. It’s a memory, something borrowed in the darkness of a fevered sleep from a past that wasn’t mine. The memory of a woman, tall and broad-shouldered, with long, tangled hair and almond-shaped eyes the color of deep, cool water. The memory of two baby boys, all chubby thighs and dimpled smiles, so sweet and sleepy, in matching hats to protect them from the sun. And of a man, tall and strong and with so much love in his eyes as he turns to look at her. I see them. I feel them. I reach for them.

And then they’re gone in a crush of froth and spray and salt, and I scream, and scream, and scream.

“Callie?”

I swallow. My eyes are dry. My head is clear. There are no daydreams, only the sense, sudden and sure, that I know what must be done. I remember Nessa, nudging me gently in the direction of a truth she said I already knew.

I remember the rattle of an old woman’s breath in the receiver as I cried out, desperately.

I don’t understand
.

I remember her long, low laughter.

You will.

I turn to him.

I don’t know I’m going to say it until the words are already out.

“I love you.”

At first, he smiles. He reaches for me. And then he sees my face, and he stops. I watch the smile fade; I watch understanding dawn in his eyes. I watch him swallow, and nod, and say, “Oh.”

This is the moment where my heart breaks.

He stands, and so do I. He looks at me, glances backward as the porch door slams and my father disappears inside. He steps forward again, quickly, scoops my hand from where it hangs by my side, and presses it to his lips. I stand still. I don’t breathe.

And he doesn’t move at all. He’s staring intently beyond me, behind me, at the boards beneath my feet—and then staring down, just as intently, at his own outstretched forearm.

“Oh,” he says, again, only it’s different this time. The sadness and understanding in his voice is gone. He only sounds curious. Confused.

And scared.

And then he’s gone, and I kneel down, and gasp.

The lines are long and unbroken, standing out in stark relief. Deep, slender furrows in the wood, side by side, as even and perfect as if they’d been made by a machine. Marks that could have been made by anything, anything at all—except that I’ve seen them before.

Lines like the ones on my mother’s body, as she stripped off her dress and sobbed, not seeing me, and fled up the stairs.

Lines like the one on Nessa’s wrist, angry and red and fresh.

Like the ones on Ben’s own forearm, standing out in sharp relief against his freckled skin. The ones they thought were my doing, souvenirs of his struggle as I’d tried to drag him deeper below the surface.

Lines like the marks of long-nailed fingers, a signature raked into the wood that I run my hand over, again and again, until I can’t doubt that it’s real.

One. Two. Three.

—

I am the one to break the silence.

“Ben has scratches on his arms,” I say. I keep my gaze steady. I won’t blink, won’t break, until my father looks at me.

When he does, his eyes are glazed and glassy. In the week since I was expelled, he’s taken to drinking scotch at night, keeping company with a glass that seems to always be two sips shy of empty. When he sighs, the smell of his breath holds the high, sweet note of whiskey.

“Nessa had them, too. And there are more, on the dock. Down by the water.”

He shakes his head.

“Please, Callie. Let’s not do this.”

I take a deep breath.

“And Mom. Mom had them, too.”

I don’t know what I expected. A gasp, maybe, as realization dawned on his face that perhaps I was telling the truth. Or even just curiosity, blooming somewhere under the flatness of his convictions, enough to make him look at me with fresh eyes and an open mind. But I didn’t expect him to laugh, and that’s what he does. Bitterly, darkly, with his fingers pressed down on either side of his nose and his mouth drawn down in exhaustion.

“I’m surprised you remember that,” he says. “And what do you think that means, Callie? Can you put two and two together?”

“Dad, I’m telling you, there was something—”

“STOP IT.” He swirls the glass again, swallows deeply, and I realize that he’s drunk. He shakes his head and looks at me with so much sadness that I flinch and turn away.

His voice is low.

He says, “Your mother had been hurting herself for months before she died. She’d go down there by the beach and carve herself up and then try to tell me she didn’t know how it happened, even after the doctors had told us both that it was obviously self-inflicted.”

The memory swirls up, overwhelming me.

You were down there again. Did you hurt yourself? I know. I always know.

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out, and he smiles ruefully.

“She used to leave you,” he says. “Do you remember that part? I’d come home, no wife, no lights on, and you’d just be sitting on the floor in the dark, all alone while she was down there doing God-knows-what. Never mind her baby, crying alone in a dark house. Never mind her husband, who loved her.”

Something heavy and cold untwists in my stomach, and now it’s Nessa’s voice that I hear in my head:
She’s the one who thought she could have it all. The husband, the child.

I try to imagine the moment that it changed, when everything my mother wanted became everything she wished she’d never had. When she disappeared down the steps to the water, opened her veins, and bled against the stinging of the surf. I imagine her sinking into the deep on the day she died, the weight of her life, my father and me, like a stone albatross around her neck. I imagine her giving up, saying yes, drifting down into the dark.

The air conditioner kicks on in the silence, chilling away the lingering heat of my father’s words. I watch him deflate in his chair, shoulders sinking down, the color draining away where it had surged high and bright in his cheeks. Only his nose stays red.

My voice is so quiet, I barely recognize it as mine; the words feel like somebody else’s.

“Dad, please believe me.”

He doesn’t look up. His words are slurred and husky. He speaks them not at me, but into the glass cupped in his hands. He’s lost in his memories; I don’t think he’s even heard me.

“I thought I was the luckiest man in the world. She could have had anyone she wanted, but she picked me. I thought I was so lucky. But that’s how it works, isn’t it? Perfect wife, perfect life. And then you find out that it’s not enough. The life you gave her, the life you have together, it’s not enough. Not when there’s all that darkness inside and she won’t let you in, or tell you how to fix it. Not when she shuts you out and she won’t even try.”

He swirls the dregs, drains them in a single gulp, sets the glass gently back on the table.

“And now she’s gone,” he says, quietly. “She’s gone, and I’m left with—”

He stops, abruptly, and looks up. His eyes focus on me. He coughs, stands, stumbles away from the table.

“You should finish packing,” he says, and disappears down the hall.

His sentence, the other one, stays unfinished. But in my head, I hear its ending loud and clear.

All he has is me. Her carbon copy, her spitting image. Reckless, wide-eyed, stupid.

And crazy.

All that darkness inside,
he’d said,
and she won’t even try.

—

And as I lie in the humming chill of the darkened house, I feel it. The familiar sensation of the thing inside, stirring, stretching, opening its cold and curious eyes. Suggesting, in its casual purring way, that I could know more, be more,
have
more, than what I see before me. Than what he wants for me, from me. That there are other things, greater things, than the small and temporary life that was stolen from one frightened man.

I think of my mother’s face, sun-kissed and serene, in the moments before the end. I think of the way I felt, under the waves, when that voice that was mine but not-quite-mine whispered,
Breathe
, and the sea pressed against my lips and flooded its way inside. I think of the words she left behind for me, in a book passed down through the years.

And as I drift down into sleep, I think: my father tells me my mother succumbed to the darkness.

But I think she welcomed it in.