Chapter 18 #2
I thought about the fight with my mother. Silver eating the paints. Lou moving out. James’s expression was solemn, almost angry. “I don’t tell you a lot of things,” I finally said.
“But why?”
“I guess I don’t think they’re important.”
He looked at me, incredulous.
“I guess I don’t think you’d care,” I said. But I knew he did care. It was why I was with him—he cared too much.
“Of course I fucking care. Of course I care about you. Of course I care about Silver.”
“I care about Silver, too.”
He gestured at the fur in the tub. “You call this care?”
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” I said quietly. A heavy feeling, swelling. Some things I wanted for myself.
“When you don’t tell me something like that, it’s a choice,” James said. “And if you still stand by a choice like that, then I don’t think we’re in an actual relationship.”
I let the words echo. He spoke again. “I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings.”
“A little bit.”
“Yeah, well. We’re supposed to share things. We’re supposed to be equals, Katie. But you don’t treat me like one.”
My nails dug into my palms. I’d never imagined what it would be like for James to be my equal.
He had revealed the terrible idea that he was like me, that he could suffer—I could make him suffer.
I looked at James’s stricken face with a gross kind of satisfaction.
To finally discover what I was capable of. To meet myself like this.
“It’s good,” he said. “That now I can bury her. We can bury her.”
I stiffened.
“We have to bury her now, Katie. We can’t keep her here.”
I thought about running to the bedroom and shutting him out again.
Throwing myself under the covers and holding Silver tight as the days passed and she shrank into nothing.
Staying in Holme, talking to nobody, drifting forever in the sea.
“I don’t understand,” I said, “how you can still be so logical about this.”
“You want to keep her here? What next? Take her back to the city tomorrow? Carry her on the train, then up the elevator, to my apartment?”
“I won’t leave. I’ll stay here.”
“You can’t.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“You have to.”
It was the first time James raised his voice at me.
I hoped for a second that he might do something dramatic, like hit me or throw something.
But with his legs still crossed he took my hands and said, “I’m trying with you, I am.
But sometimes I think you want to be miserable.
Maybe it’s hard because we’re from different worlds, or I’m a bit older.
But I don’t think so. Because we could work through that, but you don’t want to.
You just want things to stay the same, even when they’re as fucked up as this. ”
He let go of me and walked out of the bathroom. I remained where I sat next to the tub, feeling caught and released at the same time.
Time passed. James didn’t return. For a second I thought he’d gone to bury Silver without me, a fitting punishment.
But as soon as the fear arose, it was quelled by the certainty that James wouldn’t do that.
The trust was a radiating thing, transmitting possibility.
If James could withhold punishment for me, now, when I deserved it most, then maybe love could be simple, more forgiving.
My heart felt very small and hot. The moment passed. I went to the bedroom.
James didn’t notice when I entered. He knelt on the floor next to the bed, his arms folded next to Silver, his eyes fixed on her face.
In the dim light, his brown hair looked black.
Standing above him, I located the crown of his head, the small naked spot from which his hair sprouted and poured over the rest of his scalp.
I felt that if I pressed it, I might hurt him, he might faint.
We buried Silver by the crag, the remains of the sunset spreading out like a bruise.
James wrapped her in her towel. He lifted her so I could kiss her nose, hard and cold like always.
I was grateful for that. Then we dug a hole with our hands, neither of us pausing until the sand grew damp, then wet, then dissolved into water.
Together we lowered her into the ditch. She lay on her side with her limbs outstretched as if running, as if swimming.
I didn’t want to make a sound, so I talked to her in my head.
When I turned to look at James, his lips were moving, too.
I wanted to reach my hand down to touch her one more time.
I thought to myself: This is your last chance. Do it, now, touch her. So I did.
Afterward, James pushed sand into the ditch. We continued until it filled, and then we walked home in the dark.
—
I dreamed of Silver all night long. In the first dream, I was swimming in the sea when she came to me, the tip of her nose sparkling.
Then we were in the kitchen, but this time Silver was a human with long furry limbs, and it was terrible and wonderful at the same time.
In another dream she was James’s and my baby.
I rocked her in my arms as he repeated to me, “She is very special,” at which she became monstrously big and struck our faces with her clawless paws.
And then I was alone again on the beach sucking on something tart, whirling it around my tongue like a fallen tooth until it slipped out of my mouth and revealed itself to be Silver’s nose.
I woke up pleased that she was haunting me like some child poltergeist. Menacing as a ghost, sweet as a girl.
We would play together for a little while longer.