Chapter 8 #2
The next afternoon, James took a phone call with his parents.
It started as a quick discussion about souvenirs from Spain, but an hour later, they were still talking.
The length of their conversation and the inanity of the topics (VAT, corn flour) annoyed me inexplicably.
I closed myself in the bedroom with Silver, then opened my call history with my mother.
The missed call from a couple days ago was our only activity in a year.
If something terrible had happened to her, I wouldn’t know, I couldn’t check.
Then I was unable to stop my thoughts from running: What if she was ill?
What if she’d been asleep when I called, bedridden and depressed, with nobody to stroke the small divot of her thumb, nobody to bring her an applesauce?
Silver nosed between my face and the screen, licking the bottom of my nose.
The alarming stink of her breath snapped me back to the present.
I took her to the bathroom, sat her down on the toilet, and pushed my fingers inside her mouth.
With a dab of toothpaste, I rubbed my finger over her pebbly teeth.
She bleated in vicious protest. “Shush,” I whispered.
“I’m trying to help you.” I focused on applying the same pressure to each individual tooth, the repetitiveness of the movement loosening the knot inside me.
It only took two minutes, but by the end she was whining so much I worried James would come.
I put my nose to her mouth and sniffed, pleased at the minty freshness.
For the rest of the day, she lapped incessantly at the air, her tongue fluttering in and out of her mouth like a ribbon caught in the wind.
—
“I don’t want to go back to the city.” It was dark, James’s voice low. Every few seconds, the beam of the local lighthouse swept through the room, illuminating the tip of his nose. It was Friday night. We’d been in Holme for only five days, but it seemed to me like weeks had passed.
“Can’t you stay?”
We lay side by side with our faces to the ceiling, our feet touching beneath the blanket. Silver sat between us, her head swiveling to the light. My hand was warm over her back. James’s hand lay flat on my belly.
“No,” he said. “Maybe. Yes. I could stay. Tell them I’m sick. Ha, imagine.”
I imagined it.
“It won’t be so bad. I mean, it’ll be nice to be productive again.”
“You’re not going to call in sick.”
“No, I can’t really.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I’ve already committed to it,” he said, not really answering the question.
I tipped my face toward the ceiling. “You feel different here. Happier.”
“Do I? I don’t know. Something about home, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I definitely feel younger. Like I’m the person I was when I still lived here. Does that happen to you?”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this idea before.
Lou always bemoaned the way she’d regress to angst-ridden teenagerhood whenever she went home during breaks.
I thought of the way James laughed mirthfully at lunch with the Hartleys, the elementary sweetness of his voice.
Eyes closed beneath the sun, pale shaved jaw.
I didn’t get it. I was the same person at home as I was outside of it.
If anything, at my mother’s, I felt like a stranger, too big for my childhood bed. “I haven’t been home in a while.”
“Right. Lately it feels like something’s been bothering you. Is that it?”
“No,” I answered quickly, berating myself for raising the topic.
“Is it me, then? That I feel…different?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
I let a silence form. He broke it. “Well, thank you, anyway. For coming. It’s a special place to me.”
“Oh,” I said. “Of course.”
James turned to look at me, but I didn’t match his gaze.
Surely I should be the one thanking him.
Recognizing this did nothing to awaken any gratitude in me.
I let James’s thank-you roll around my head like a loose marble, small and fast with nowhere to go, my brain too vacant a place for safekeeping.
—
It stormed all day on Saturday, but I begged to go for a swim and so we did.
The beach was completely empty. Between the rain and the rolling thunder, the ocean gained a grave and surreal quality.
I had the desire to swim out farther than I ever had, throw myself under the water, and try to touch the very bottom of the sea.
Silver swam quickly, foam streaming from her whirring legs.
I separated from James to catch up. The closer I got, the faster she swam, her head bobbing up and down like a Halloween apple.
The water roiled around me, heavy and black.
I followed Silver farther, faster, as if we were both fleeing from the shore.
When I turned around, I was surprised to see no trace of land at all.
A thrill ran through me. We could go farther still.
Hanging on the surface of the sea, spitting out mouthfuls of saltwater, I allowed myself a break, then gave in to the sudden and shivery warmth of my own urine. The bloom of heat and feeling of release was so nice that I was disappointed when it ended.
Snatches of James’s voice sounded over the waves.
Though still a great distance away, he was visible now, swimming toward us.
My stomach dropped. I knew Silver wasn’t yet ready to go, so I fastened my lips over the nape of her neck.
It was tender and meaty, like the fatty part of a steak.
With both arms I heaved us back to shore.
James was upset. “Did you not hear me calling? You can’t just disappear like that, it really scared me.”
“I was just following her,” I said.
“You’re blaming Silver? She’s an animal. It’s like one big game to her.”
Silver wiggled her nose. It wasn’t a game: she was going somewhere secret, somewhere special, and she was trying to take me with her. I felt upset with James. He had forced me out of her special world.
“I’m sorry,” I said instead. “I didn’t realize.”
He opened his toweled arms to receive Silver. I tightened my arms.
“Come on, Silver,” he said.
Silver stuffed her head in the crook of my elbow. I bit my lip to keep from smiling.
James slung the towel over his shoulder. “She really loves you.”
A feeling of embarrassment hung nonsensically between us. James stared at the ground as we packed our things. I held Silver close and wiped the gunk out of her eyes, squeezing my tongue between my teeth. Not one of us did anything to break the silence.
—
That evening, to make up for the swimming incident, I sat James down on the bed and removed all my clothes.
He looked tired but not entirely closed off, and he breathed in as I knelt on the floor and touched him through his jeans.
Above me, held still, his face was the cold glass of a window.
His distant expression filled me with a desperate sort of pleasure.
I knew I was acting differently, but it turned me on.
I imagined being scooped up into his arms.
James shifted. “I don’t know if I like this, this position you’re in.”
The spell broke. Now I was just naked on the floor.
“Sorry,” he said. “Do you want to come up on the bed? I don’t know, this just doesn’t feel normal.” He paused. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yes.” I reached for my shirt. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe it’s me.”
“It’s okay,” I said. My face prickled with heat. James had never rejected me before. I was used to feeling odd around other people, but not around him.
I waited for James to say something, but he went downstairs without a word, only a chaste pat on my head.
I pictured myself from his perspective and saw that I looked ridiculous.
The humiliation was total; I had to simply wait for it to pass.
Silver licked herself from across the bedroom. I could not meet her eye.
We ate dinner quietly, the wet sound of Silver lapping at her food occasionally breaking through the drumming of the rain. I looked at her, at the committed nodding of her head and her small balled feet, and was filled with an unplaceable grief.