Chapter 14
Despite his many attempts to reach me yesterday, James did not answer when I called him last night.
I hadn’t thought to inform him of Silver’s hospitalization until Isabelle drove me home, and by then he was deep into some work celebration for his co-worker’s promotion.
They rented a karaoke bar for the team. Everybody got wildly drunk.
Late into the night, a group of passing strangers attempted to enter the bar.
There were miscommunications, tempers flared.
A fight broke out. Somebody on the street threw a bottle, which pierced the skin of his co-worker’s eyelid.
He had to go to the emergency room. He didn’t even get to sing “Piano Man.”
James needed to stand in for this co-worker on an important pitch, delaying his return to Holme another day.
He delivered this information in two rambling, apologetic voice notes.
To my astonishment, he didn’t mention Silver.
His guilt seemed to have eclipsed my bad behavior, all the calls I’d let go to voicemail.
His last message to me was a heart emoji.
It was almost too easy how quickly James let me off the hook. If I continued to think about this, I might’ve begun to feel disdain. But I had more important concerns: Silver was coming home this morning.
On the drive to the vet, I told Isabelle about James’s night.
“Men are like babies,” Isabelle said. “They’re babies in fancy suits.”
“Babies are like drunk men,” I said. “In tiny shoes.”
“A hundred percent.”
The conversation stalled. We weren’t sure where to go after that. Then Isabelle said, “At least babies are cute.”
“I’ve always said cuteness is the only reason people put up with children.”
“I was an ugly baby,” she replied. “So if you’re right, that explains everything.”
Isabelle would’ve been a stock beautiful child. But it was difficult to tell with babies, featureless blobs of human beings. Maybe she was born ugly. I wouldn’t understand, I was born cute. The photos spoke for themselves. I had great power as a baby.
At six in the morning, the vet lobby smelled fresh, nearly floral. I missed the stench from the night before, proof that the animals inside were alive.
Silver was carried out in a plastic crate with a wire door.
As soon as the vet set the crate on the table, the door snapped open from the inside and Silver leapt out.
Expecting this, I caught her easily. Her fur smelled sugary and unfamiliar.
Don’t worry, I said to her in my head, we’ll go to the sea straightaway, where you can wash this smell off.
She looked up at me, her eyes damp and pleading, like yes, thank God!
In the car, Silver spread out on my lap, taking raspy breaths. The vet warned she’d experience some lingering dehydration, so I gave her some water from my bottle and then scratched her happy spot. But she didn’t get happy, she just continued to pant.
On the beach, she perked up. Her sprint on sand was slower than usual, but in the water her movements became smooth, quick. We swam while Isabelle watched from the shore. “Be careful,” she called. “The waves are crazy in the morning.”
Silver swam with a new vigor. It was as though her brush with death had ignited within her a new zest for life.
I was reminded of those cancer survivors who would come to my middle school and warn us about the dangers of smoking, the way they raved about the morning air.
By surviving the holes in their lungs, they could appreciate things like the sweetness of a breeze.
I was feeling the trickle-down happiness of Silver’s new zest for life when I registered that she had swum very far away.
The waves really were crazy in the morning.
My limbs felt as wobbly and useless as in a dream.
Every stroke pushed me back, my body buffeted by a singular force while Silver, it seemed, had discovered some mysterious slim passage propelling her forward, one too small to carry me.
Just as I began to panic, I glimpsed her tail a pool length’s away.
Then it vanished. At that moment, from a shorter distance, disparate currents began to meet, building into a wave.
The wave grew bigger and faster until it stood very tall, but still it was too far away, still it continued to climb.
With terror, I realized the wave would break over me.
I took a breath and, just as the wave began to curl, dove into the lowest point of its belly.
The crash rumbled around me, but suspended below the water’s surface, I was untouchable, newly mobile.
I imagined my body like a hot knife cutting through cold butter.
I swam—I swam. And it occurred to me that Silver, despite her dexterity, only ever swam with her head about water.
If she’d been caught beneath this wave, she might not have made it.
A low purring like a motor sounded from above. Relief flooded me. I kicked hard, broke through to the surface, and seized her. She jerked out of my grasp, lunging toward the deep. I grabbed her tail just in time. As I dragged her close to me, she let out a desperate meow, garbled by water.
On shore, Isabelle ran over to us with towels. “God, you guys scared me,” she said. “I couldn’t see you at one point. James never goes that far.”
Silver shuddered against my chest, weak again.
I wrapped her in her towel and put my nose to hers.
She blinked back at me, her expression impassive, as if nothing had happened.
But I couldn’t unsee it: her determination, even after I saved her, to keep swimming out into the deep.
What was she thinking? What did she keep from me inside her little secret heart?
—
Sensing my reluctance to return to James’s place alone, Isabelle invited me to her house.
As she drove, I watched the town disappear slowly from the side mirror, replaced by thickets of trees and telephone lines.
I was anxious to see where Isabelle lived.
We seemed to be driving somewhere wild and remote.
At last she made a right turn and there we were, the house a shock—not so much for its sprawling size but for the sheer fact that it existed on its own out here, without any neighbors or street signs.
It didn’t even have a number, but rather a name on a plaque.
Edington House. How were mailmen meant to find it?
The door opened to high ceilings, arched windows, and a shining wooden floor. Bruno the dog greeted us, his fur stinky as ever, his barks echoing. From my arms, Silver hissed.
“He won’t hurt her, I promise,” Isabelle said. Gently, upon Isabelle’s coaxing, I lowered Silver. She arched her back, the fur on her spine spiky. Bruno might not hurt Silver, but I wasn’t sure about the opposite.
Bruno bowed his head and sniffed Silver.
In response, she whacked his face. “Silver,” I said.
But Bruno only retreated in play position, wagging his tail, and put his nose on her butt.
Silver jumped. Then, to my surprise, she took a timid step forward and licked his ear.
Together they trotted down the hall, as if they’d always been friends.
“See?” Isabelle looked proud. I had to give it to her.
“Do you want a drink,” she said, not like a question. I followed her. The kitchen, with its sterile white walls and pristine sinks, contained no sign that it had ever seen food or whatever you needed to make it.
Isabelle produced two glasses and a bottle of white wine. Shooting me a conspiratorial look, she said, “I’m not supposed to, but my parents are away.” She didn’t specify what she wasn’t supposed to do: drink wine, or drink that specific bottle, or drink it with me.
“Do you want ice? It’s sacrilegious, I know, but I can’t have white wine without ice.
” She shuffled around the freezer and returned with two perfect frozen spheres.
They cracked hungrily beneath the liquid.
“Don’t move,” she said, handing me my glass.
“The sun’s just hit the window behind you, and it looks like your hair’s on fire. ”
I wanted to look at the window and was slightly annoyed at being denied permission.
But the wine was cold and sweet, and I soon got over it.
Over Isabelle’s shoulder, I spotted a few photos on the refrigerator, the first sign that this house had occupants and was not currently being advertised online—certainly the kind of listing I’d read with focus.
“Ugly baby, right?” Isabelle caught me looking. “But cute kid.”
“That’s you?” The baby was indeed hideous.
“I don’t know why they insist on keeping it up. It really kills your appetite. You can literally still see my mother’s placenta.”
“Your hair used to be so light.” I looked at the young girl grinning on a park slide, her hair white in the glare. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t connect her face to the person watching me from across the table.
“You sound like my mother. She’s obsessed with how blond I used to be.”
“Is that why you went dark?”
“Partly. But also because of Megan Fox. It gave my mother a mental breakdown, but it was worth it. Blond makes me look sickly.”
“It’s sweet, all these old photos.” They reminded me of the ones my mother taped to her headboard.
A chubby child grinning with no teeth. Hair in pigtails and fingers up both nostrils.
What happened to her? I had the feeling that if the girl in those photos were still alive, she was living a life I would never know about.
“Yes, before I could fail to live up to all my potential.” This Isabelle delivered with a practiced immediacy.
She spoke again, quickly, but it was too late; the sentence imprinted inside my head.
“Sorry. I hate these photos. It’s like that’s the only version of me that matters to my parents.
I’ve even printed more recent ones of myself, but my mother never puts those up.
Sometimes I think she keeps these ones just to punish me. ”