Page 52 of The Last to Let Go
She turns to me, stares for a moment. “Are you okay?” she asks. “Earlier. Inside.” She gestures toward the building looming at our backs and pantomimes her head dropping forward, like mine did in the courtroom.
“Oh. Yeah, I just—I get these headaches sometimes.”
She nods knowingly, sympathetically. “Migraines. I get them too. It’s the stress.”
“What did you mean, what water does? What does water... do?”
“Water,” she begins, shaking her head slightly, a deeper crease forming in her brow as she tries to put it into words, “water’s always seeking water. It’s like gravity, magnetism—water attracts water.”
She searches my face to see if I’ve understood, but I’m not sure I have.
“Well, think about rivers. Every river leads to the ocean—that’s their whole purpose, trying to find a way back to the ocean. They cut through rock, move mountains to do it, but they always carve out a path”—she moves her hand through the air, a zigzag line like a fish—“to reach that other body of water out there.”
“Right,” I hear myself mutter, agreeing, realizing how much sense that makes, vaguely remembering having learned that at some point.
“Funny thing is,” she continues, “people do that too, don’t they? But then again, look at what we’re made of.” She starts laughing but chokes out a deep, lung-rattling cough instead.
I feel myself nodding. It’s strange, I feel like we’re having multiple disjointed conversations at once, yet they all make sense and I don’t mind. She doesn’t seem like the pill-popping, criminally negligent drunk that Jackie described. Maybe a little odd, but then again, so am I.
“Are you going back in?” I ask her.
“In a minute I will.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a leather pouch that clasps like a change purse; from it she produces another long, skinny cigarette. “I never did mind the cold,” she adds. “Are you going back in?”
I look back at the building. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe I’ll see you here tomorrow, then?” She smiles, a hopeful lift to her voice.
“Yeah, maybe.” I begin to descend the stairs of the courthouse, unable to remember if the bus stop is to the left or to the right, like if I were a river, I wouldn’t know for sure which way to flow to reach the ocean.
STAINED
I CONSIDER GOING TOschool late. But as I sit down on the couch, the warmth slowly returning to my body, I realize I’d rather just sit here and do nothing. I slink out of my boots and gloves and scarf and coat. They sit there, forming a puddle on the floor. Like I’ve melted away and all that remains is this small pile of personal effects.
I sink into the couch cushions, their soft, massive arms folding around me. My eyelids feel so heavy, like I’ve been drugged by the day. I try to keep them open, but they drift and set, as they often do, on that pesky faded grape juice stain, before closing.
When I open my eyes again, I’m ten years old. It’s Sunday morning. Cartoons on TV. I’ve just stashed Callie in our bedroom. I closed the door behind me quickly and stood there in the hallway trying to become invisible, trying to blend in like a chameleon, fading into my surroundings, becoming undetectable.
“What, you think you’re a tough guy, huh?” He pushed Aaron. Hard. “Big man, are you?”
Aaron had thrown his cereal bowl at Dad only seconds earlier.
If I was ten, Aaron was thirteen. Still small—too small, too scrawny—and Dad was like a giant advancing on him. I think Aaron must’ve been aiming for his head, but he never was particularly good at throwing things, so the bowl hit Dad in the back instead. It made a dull, soft thud and then clattered to the floor, sending the spoon flying across the kitchen.
Dad turned around. He let go of Mom, whom he’d already backed up against the wall. I watched soundlessly from the hallway as the scene unfolded in slow motion.
“Leave her alone!” Aaron yelled, trying to hide the trembling of his voice under sheer volume. I thought I might pee my pants, I was so scared for Aaron. But a small spark of hope flickered alive inside of me for just a moment—the hope that maybe this would work. After all, it wasn’t like anyone had ever actually tried to stop him before. Maybe it could be that simple. Maybe Aaron was onto something.
Dad shoved him again, though. Aaron stumbled backward, and as the two of them spilled into the living room, that little light inside of me was snuffed out, almost as soon as it had ignited. Because of course Aaron couldn’t stop him; Dad wasn’t going to suddenly flip a switch in his head and wake up and see all the damage he was doing.
Aaron tried to stand his ground. A stupid idea. He should’ve been running.
Mom was calling both of their names, yelling for them to stop, but it was suddenly like there was no one in the world but Dad and Aaron. Everyone seemed to fade into the background: Mom and her pleading; Callie humming quietly behind the closed door; and me, frozen there in the hall—even I had finally faded away. And there was no place else in the world except our living room, the space between the two of them, no sounds but Dad’s voice, shouting:
“Come on! You wanna hit me? Do it like a man. You get one free shot—do it now,” he demanded, this deranged smile distorting his face. He bobbed his head up and down, holding his arms open, beckoning Aaron forward, repeating over and over, “Come on. Hit me. Hit me. Come on. Now—now!”
Something in Aaron’s eyes went all steely and hard, and I wanted to scream,Don’t! It’s a trick!but I wasn’t even there anymore, so I couldn’t say anything. And it was too late anyway. Because everything sped forward, happening too fast to stop. The flat, sloppy sound of flesh against flesh: Aaron’s fist crashing into Dad’s face. But Dad had some kind of force field around him. He didn’t even flinch, didn’t miss a beat before he hit Aaron. It was so quick I barely saw how it happened; one second Aaron was standing and the next he had collapsed like that tiny, weightless bird from the hospital, smashing into an invisible glass wall—crumpled on the ground, wings broken.
By then I’d rematerialized in the hallway, still guarding our bedroom door. I flattened myself against the wall and tried not to make eye contact as Dad walked toward me. Didn’t matter, though; it never did. Because he just looked through me as if I weren’t there anyway, and I knew that was the best I could ask for.
