Chapter 23 Marc
The late afternoon is low and golden, giving way to desert twilight. Marc sits in his wooden chair, waiting for the first stars. The world is an expanse in all directions, bare and beaten by the sun.
Silvie makes shapes in the sand with her toe and hums. She’s learning clarinet and the same flat notes constantly fill the house.
It has been good for them, the desert. They came out here after Silvie’s surgery then Marc stayed. The desert is as different as you can get to mountains. Though Marc’s heart still stutters when he hears thunder.
Silvie stays with Marc during the school semester. She goes to Claude for Easter, for the summer, for Christmas. When she’s away Marc feels her absence like a deep cut.
‘Chips,’ Kimble says, curt, emerging from the house. She tosses the bowl lightly onto the table. Corn chips leap out onto the sand. ‘And beer.’ She puts the can in Marc’s hand. ‘And root beer.’ She kisses Silvie’s head. ‘You better eat your dinner, you rotten little potato.’
Silvie nods hard.
‘We’re going out,’ Kimble says to Marc. ‘Margot wants to drink.’ Margot and Kimble come to stay sometimes.
Marc gives Kimble the sign for cool, a circular rotation of the wrist. She gives it back and goes.
He sees it in his dreams sometimes – the lightning-bleached moment when the crocodile came from the water. Other things have been surfacing lately too. His mother. Oliver, Cousin, Riley.
My child is not dead, Marc reminds himself, looking at the desert sky.
Kimble is not dead. I am not dead. He feels a deep grateful shock for these things at various times of day.
Sometimes Marc catches his reflection in a store window or in the mirror while shaving and thinks with a start, still here.
Silvie taps Marc’s forehead with a firm staccato finger. ‘Can I have a popsicle?’
He squints up at her. ‘After dinner. After the stars.’
Marc and Silvie used to watch the stars come out together most nights. They do it less often these days – she is growing up.
Silvie continues to tap Marc gently, humming as her finger drums his eyelids and ears and head. The kidney transplant has held, so far. It has been three years since Riley gave it to Silvie. Maybe this one will last.
Silvie stops tapping. She kicks up dust with her heel. ‘Dad.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I have screen time?’
‘Watch the stars, for god’s sake.’ Marc’s voice rises, exasperated. ‘Just for a moment. Watch the goddamn st—’
‘Fine. Fine.’ Silvie rolls her eyes. She’s getting to that age. She thumps down onto the seat beside him.
Marc wraps a blanket around them. He holds Silvie close, breathing her hair. Her hand steals into his. He tries not to hold it too tightly.
Riley is a question that Marc will never stop asking.
Some days he feels her loss all over again.
Other days he wants to weep with gratitude for what she did and then there are the days of anger, of rage so deep that he cannot speak her name.
Marc feels Riley in a different part of his body each day.
He has lost his sister so many times, it doesn’t seem possible that she is gone. And then it does, and then it doesn’t again. Maybe he will never believe it. Maybe Riley is nowhere. Maybe she’s somewhere she belongs.
Silvie tightens her grip on Marc’s hand. ‘Dad.’ They look up.
Venus has appeared above, gleaming like a silver stud. The sky darkens slowly and there they are, the stars, puncturing the night one by one, burning down on everything.