Swim Back to Me Page 12

  A new song came on and her chest tightened. She stood up but then didn’t move. She couldn’t stand to listen to it, but once she’d heard the first chords, how they organized themselves into the beginning of the song, she couldn’t really not listen, either.

  Lay down Rosey. It’s the blue and the orange time, a water and a twist of lime. I had so much to tell you, I raced through the sky, to touch you for the last time. So much to tell you, I raced through the sky, to whisper a message into your morphine drip.

  Then a heartbreaking violin passage, an embroidery on the idea of loss.

  And: Not a dark boy. A sparkle and a mark boy. Making cake out of trashcan afterthoughts. Death is a spinster, mortally whacking the funny boys. Till they’re not laughing anymore.

  She didn’t know what it was about. Someone lost to drugs? Cancer? It didn’t matter. It was about her, her feelings. The next part was the hardest, and she went over to the stereo, ready to turn it off, then stopped. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. I’m having fun driving, I’m riding, riding, riding … It was the same singer, a woman with a low, scratchy, fervent voice, but now she was singing the boy’s part. No need for you to cry. Full-throated, Kathryn pressed the Stop button.

  It was too painful, but so gorgeous. Gorgeous music. In the silence, staring at the green light on the stereo, she could almost hear how the song would end, with the single sustained note of the violin wavering over the fading guitar. And how, if she were listening to the CD straight through, the next would begin moments later, deceptively simple: Won’t you look inside and see, what’s inside a girl like me? Rivers of blood pour from my eyes, your careless heart I do despise. The singer’s voice placid, making its way through the verse, growing. And then, entreatingly, full of feeling: Swim back to me. The cry of a spurned lover, Kathryn supposed, but what did that matter? There was no word for what Kathryn was. No word like “widow” to convey the exact shape of what was gone.

  Her eyes hot, nausea climbing to her throat, she took the disc out and put it away. She couldn’t. Sometimes she wanted to, but not today. Not today.

  Ben must have been a wonderful son and brother.

  She took a deep breath and let it out again. Even. An even keel was what she needed. She hit Random again. Tat, tat, tat, tat. Thank God. This was easy, this next song, starting with a sprightly tapping of drumsticks. She moved away from the stereo and sat down again. Ben had had a drum once. Little drummer boy, four or five years old, marching around the house. It had been a birthday present—a hostile gesture from the other kid’s parents, she joked to Dave. Eventually she’d made it disappear.

  The mistakes she’d made.

  The song got under way, the drum awfully insistent. Then she realized: someone was at the front door. She stood and looked out Ben’s window, but there was no car, just the sidewalk and the empty street. And the strip of earth between them where, this year, nothing was planted.

  Tap, tap, tap. She left the room and made her way down the stairs, her pulse going fast. She didn’t like to have to talk to people without warning. The phone was easy, she just let the machine get it, but the door … Once, maybe just a few weeks after it happened, someone knocked, and it was this woman Kathryn barely knew, a mother from Lainie’s school, and she’d come over to see if Kathryn wanted to talk.

  She reached the door and put her hand on the knob. Her mouth was dry. She wiped her palms on her jeans and then pulled the door open.

  It was Kaz—Ben’s friend Matt Kazmann. Tall, black-haired, heavy, pale. Dark plastic-framed glasses, a silver stud just below his lower lip. His black T-shirt fell loosely from thin shoulders and then went taut at his plump belly.

  He looked past her as he spoke. “Um, I was driving by, and, like, did you know your sprinkler’s going over there?” He pointed over his shoulder to the side of the house Kathryn couldn’t see. “It’s sort of, like, flooded. I mean, I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

  The minute he spoke she became aware of the sound of water running through pipes. Dave had said he’d turn it on as he left; she’d forgotten to turn it off. Which meant it had been going for—what?—five hours? Oh, well.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You’re right, I’ve got to turn it off.”

  She moved past him onto the porch, crossed the grass, looked around the corner of the house. God, a pond. She squished through the sodden grass and shut the water off. Much too wet to retrieve the sprinkler now, but she should try to remember before Lainie or Dave got home.

  Kaz was still on the porch. He was so pale—as if he never went outside during the day. Not that she should talk.

  He tipped his head toward the open front door, a confused look on his face. “Is Lainie home?”

  The music. He could hear it tumbling down the stairs. Why can’t I get. Just one fuck. Why can’t I get. Just one fuck. I guess it’s got something to do with luck, but I …

  Heat filled her face, a line of sweat on her upper lip. Of all songs. “She’s at school,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Not really. Whatever.”

  Go. Go. She needed for him to go away. She said, “So you were driving by?” It was a tiny street, no one just drove by.

  “Yeah, kind of.” He looked out toward his car, parked halfway down the block, and the cluster of pimples on the side of his neck darkened to crimson.

  Well, she’d go. She’d go in. She took a step toward the door, but poor Kaz: he carried something around with him, and it wasn’t just that big gut. He was always lumbering, psychically lumbering. Lumbering after Ben, lumbering downtown: you’d see him from a distance, black hair and a slopey body, some vaguely reluctant determination to keep on. At the cemetery he’d stood with his arms crossed tightly in front of his chest, hands tucked into his armpits. Slightly away from where the other kids huddled, not quite ostracized but almost.

  He and Ben had been growing apart. That’s what it was. Ben had been in the middle of a kind of shift, toward a different group of kids. Happier kids? Or just interested in appearing happy? Ben had always worn his darkness lightly. Not a dark boy. A sparkle and a mark boy …

  She stepped up into the entry hall. “Well …”

  Kaz squinted. “Are you listening to that?”

  “I’m just … sorting.”

  His eyes widened a bit but he didn’t comment. Then: “Ben loved this album.”

  “Really?” A rush of something through her chest. “Did he talk about it a lot?”

  “He played it a lot. He wore out the vinyl and had to buy the CD. I mean ‘wore out’—it got a little scratched.”

  “He didn’t like that?”

  “He hated it. Dude was beyond uptight.” Kaz bit his lip and looked away for a moment. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Kathryn said.

  More. She wanted more. “Would you like to come in?” she asked brightly. “I think there might still be some water if you’re thirsty.”

  He smiled. “Uh …”

  “Come in,” she said. “Really.” She stepped backward and held the door open wide, and after a moment he came in and looked around uneasily.

  It was no wonder: the living room was appalling. The blinds were still drawn, and there was dust everywhere. Old newspapers all over the hearth, empty Diet Coke cans cluttering the coffee table, a pair of dirty socks peeking out from under a chair. And was that a smell? Maybe so. Maybe it was coming off her.

  The kitchen was a little better. She filled a glass for him and watched thirstily as he drank it standing in front of the dishwasher, his stud glinting below his lip. Gulp, gulp, gulp: a kid hoping to outwit the neighborhood witch. Why had she invited him in? This was all wrong. She wanted to be upstairs again, alone. She could hear the beginning of a new song: Candy says, I’ve come to hate my body …

  “Could I go upstairs?”

  “To Ben’s room?” Her mouth was drier than ever as she searched his pale face.

  He nodded.

&nbs
p; No, no, no, no, no. He certainly could not. She didn’t want anyone in there. Some days she could sense Dave’s presence—a whiff of early morning, shaving cream and coffee—and it made her crazy.

  Lainie never went in, she was sure of that.

  “Mrs. Stephenson?”

  Kaz stared at her. Matt Kazmann. It was his loss, too, she knew that—she knew all about that. But now, today, this moment in her kitchen: Matt Kazmann suffered, too. No less because he’d been losing Ben anyway. Just like Kathryn.

  It was too fierce, the pain of having children. It hurt just to love them, let alone this. It hurt to be impatient, bored, entranced. Always knowing they were on their way away. How could you so much as kiss their tiny toes knowing that? The pain was the exact size of Kathryn’s own body. Feeling it was simply feeling the inside of herself.

  Kaz set his glass down. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m going to take off.”

  “No,” she said. “Go upstairs. Take some time in there, take as long as you need.”

  She sat at the kitchen table. She heard the stereo go off, then nothing. He wasn’t moving, wasn’t making a sound. Just sitting on the bed, maybe. Looking through the CDs, remembering. “Kaz thinks they’re rad,” Ben had said once, about a band the two of them were going to hear in San Francisco. Kaz thinks they’re rad. Meaning Ben didn’t, or wasn’t sure, or didn’t even know the band. Meaning Kaz’s wanting to go was enough.

  Ten minutes went by, fifteen, twenty. The house was silent, the sun-filled silence of two o’clock in a suburban house on an empty suburban street. Outside were all those lawns to be fertilized, watered, mowed, edged. There was nothing sadder than a little rectangle of lawn on an empty suburban street at two o’clock in the afternoon.

  Footsteps on the stairs. Kathryn reached for a section of newspaper, then shoved it away. Why pretend?

  He stood at the entrance of the kitchen. Face still pale, belly pushing at the thin black T-shirt. What, she expected him to look different? Or was it that she wanted him to?

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to do that. I mean, I wasn’t sure if it would be OK.”

  He hadn’t just been driving by, he’d come over on purpose. That’s what he meant.

  “Sure,” she said. She’d wanted more from him earlier, but not now. What question was there? What single question?

  Kaz reached under his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “OK, then,” he said. “Thanks.” He gave her a funny little wave and walked away.

  As soon as the front door closed she stood up. She hurried to the stairs, then took them two at a time and raced into Ben’s room. But: nothing. Not a sign of disturbance, not a lingering smell. Neatly made bed, beanbag chair, records, tapes, CDs. Dresser. She went over to the closet and slid open the door. Backpack. She pressed the front pocket and felt the crinkling of the envelope.

  I’ve been wanting to do that, he’d said.

  Wanting to do that. She knew what he meant.

  Blood hurtled through her body, and she stood still for a moment, then headed for the kids’ bathroom. That nausea. She used Lainie’s brush on her hair, set it down again, and opened the medicine cabinet. Nuder Than Nude: that was the name of the lipstick. She uncapped it and rolled some across her lips, then yanked some toilet paper off the roll and rubbed it away. Her mouth looking red, blurry.

  The death of a family member is always hard.

  Back in Ben’s room she plucked a disc from the CD carousel, dug out its case from the pile on the floor, and hurried downstairs. “Without a Trace,” that was the song she wanted to hear, but why? Grief rose up inside her and she knocked it back.

  She fetched up in the kitchen, suddenly unsure of herself. Beached. The breakfast dishes, the toast crusts … It was the same as yesterday, the same as the day before. It would be the same forever. An oppression of breakfast plates. That should be the collective noun, like a school of fish, a herd of cows.

  She felt—dry of mouth and spirit. She liked the phrase, and as she mustered the energy to push off from the counter, locate her car keys, and head out to the driveway, she muttered it over and over to herself. Dry of mouth and spirit. Dry of mouth and spirit.

  The Trooper was a furnace. She got the engine running and immediately lowered all the windows. It reminded her of going to pick up the kids from school, being in the car at this time of day. People driving around in cars, mothers driving children around in cars. It weighed on her, the idea of so many people in so many cars.

  She couldn’t do what she wanted to do. But she wanted to do it.

  She turned onto El Camino and drove alongside the railroad tracks. Mountain Mike’s, Baskin-Robbins, Lyon’s. All virtually empty right now. A few old people shuffling into Walgreens. A good time to buy Depends!

  God, what a bitch.

  She came to the crossing. RR. Ben, who’d adored trains as a little boy. A sob heaved upward but lodged in her chest. It made her dizzy to think about it. It made her dizzy and it made her crazy.

  On the other side she passed the car wash. The other side of the tracks—it wasn’t lost on her. Smaller houses, smaller yards. Well, they had to play somewhere, didn’t they? If they had tiny yards they were going to wander away, weren’t they?

  She drove alongside the tracks but then braked at the turn, because really, this was too awful. Monstrous. What was she doing? She glanced at the passenger seat and saw the CD lying there. In her mind she leaned toward the refrain she wanted: Leave. Without. A trace. That was a trace, the song itself. Wholly inadequate, and yet … She put the disc into the car stereo and pressed the button.

  The guitar rang, and she looked at the house. One in from the corner, she knew from having driven by once, just after it happened.

  She couldn’t do this.

  Shouldn’t do it.

  Couldn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t.

  He stretched for the child, grabbed him, and threw him away from the tracks. Slipped and was struck.

  So said the witness, a man who’d pulled over to see what was going on, why a tall, dark-haired teenager was scrambling from a car to race for the tracks when a train was coming …

  She stared at the tracks now. Sunlight reflecting blood-brown on steel. A howl through her mind: Don’t.

  She was so thirsty. She set her blinker though no one was coming, then turned onto the street and pulled to the curb in front of the house.

  It was small, white, neatly kept. She cut the engine and the stereo fell silent. Maybe no one was home. There was a metal garbage can empty at the curb, which might mean no one was home. Or might not.

  She walked up the edge of the driveway. A mass of Johnny-jump-ups grew against the porch: blossoms of dark purple and pale purple and yellow, tiny and so tender.

  She stepped onto the porch and the door knocker galvanized her: brass molded into the words “Bless Our Home.” Bless it yourself, she thought nastily.

  She rapped once, hard. It was two-thirty in the afternoon, maybe little Tyler was asleep. Down for his nap. Do you want me to put him down? Dave said, taking the baby Ben from Kathryn and setting him in his crib. Then, murmuring to the baby: Now why did I say that, hmm? We certainly don’t want you to feel put down.

  The door opened, and there stood a woman, thirtyish, narrow-shouldered. She furrowed her brow and stared at Kathryn, then looked out to the curb, where Kathryn had parked the Trooper—the car Ben had been driving that day. Kathryn saw it dawn on the woman, the understanding of who she was.

  She peered past the woman into the house. Beige carpeting, a sectional couch in front of a giant entertainment center. The woman’s eyes were wide now, her hands knotted together just below her bustline. She still hadn’t spoken.

  “I came,” Kathryn said, but then she stopped. Her mouth was a desert. She sucked her cheeks for some saliva, a way to talk. “I came,” she said, “to tell you that I’m sorry he did it.” She leaned closer to the woman. To Janette McCormick. Round blue eyes, wispy eyebrows, putty p
ink skin.

  “I’m sorry he stopped,” she went on. “I wish he’d kept on driving.”

  The woman opened her mouth, then closed it again. Blood sloshed around inside Kathryn’s head. The skin around her mouth tingled. Time passed, a second or a minute or ten.

  Behind her the day sat still, waiting. Deep blue sky beyond the shade trees. She looked down and saw the woman’s feet in flowered Keds, the toe of one shoe covering the toe of the other.

  Kathryn turned and walked back to her car. Her big, expensive silver Isuzu Trooper. A train of a car. She was still being watched, but then she heard the door close, and she imagined the woman pressing her back against it, sobbing into her hands.

  Settled in the driver’s seat, Kathryn started the engine, and the CD started, too, right where it had left off. I tried to dance at a funeral, New Orleans style. I joined the grave dancers’ union, I had to file. Standing in the sun with a popsicle, everything is possible. With a lot of luck and a pretty face, and some time to waste. Leave without a trace. Leave without a trace. Leave. Without. A trace.

  And the instruments burst into conversation, bright and brave and onward, even knowing they’d soon stop. Kathryn pulled away from the curb. She reached for the volume knob and turned it up. No: she cranked it.

  For DSD

  Jump

  Alejandro was thin like a teenager, with skinny shoulders and skinny legs and no butt. His black hair lay against his scalp in long, wavy strands and hung so low on his forehead it almost reached his eyes. “I got cables,” he cried in response to Carolee’s announcement, his hand up and waving like a school kid’s. “I can help you.”

  It was a little after midnight, and her car was dead. Beggars weren’t supposed to be choosers, but did she really want Alejandro’s help? Here at work he messed up all the time, making a hundred fifty copies when a customer wanted fifteen, jamming the self-service machines when he tried to add paper. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t been fired.