Chapter 23 Lily #3
Then we were outside, near the harbor, and in the soft night air I felt like I could breathe again.
A few boats bobbed lazily along the bay, in little halos of light.
We walked around to the front of the casino in silence.
In the dark, the topiaries loomed, their overgrown shapes looking threatening, wild.
Or maybe that was just my mood that turned everything strange.
I pulled my phone out of my purse to see I had three new texts from Matthew.
I understand if you’re still mad but I’d really like to talk.
I miss you.
What are you doing right now? Can I call?
I slipped it back into my pocket.
Clara watched me. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so.” Between the adrenaline and the night air, I felt sobered. Penitent. I looked up and tried to see the stars through the clouds but could only find a few.
“That was really stupid, Lily. You were too drunk to go anywhere with anyone.”
“You were drinking, too.”
“I had two drinks.”
“Oh, come on. They definitely bought us way more than two.”
“Sam knows to pour me soda water with lime after the second, or Coke with no rum, whatever. It’s part of our deal. He’s never going to serve me more than two drinks even if I beg.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know that?”
“You’re not, that’s what I’m saying. You had no idea what you were getting into.”
“I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“Sure, Lily. I’m okay.”
“What was that, with the knife? Aren’t you worried they’ll report you?”
“No. They would have to confess to picking up prostitutes first.”
“Well, they didn’t pay us anything so are we technically prostitutes?”
“Who says we didn’t get paid?” Clara pulled a wad of cash from her pocket, counted it, handed half of the bills over to me.
One hundred dollars, hardly worth being treated like a toy.
I tried to think of a price that felt fair but couldn’t.
What I wanted most was the thing I wouldn’t get: the ability to forget about them, to push their leering faces and grasping hands out of my mind.
“How did you pull that off?”
“This? Before we even left the bar. I’m telling you, these visions are scaring me. I’m taking every chance I get to pocket some cash.”
I nodded. I had a new respect for Clara’s stealing. It seemed like another form of magic, another power she had. “Where’d you get that knife?”
“Pawnshop.” She held the blade to the light. There was still blood on it, blood that looked black in the dark.
“Do you want me to drive you home?” I felt sobered up, by everything, by our run through the stairs, the night air, the adrenaline.“Or you can drive us if you want.”
“I can’t drive.” Another bitter little laugh. “Never learned. Des doesn’t have a car.”
“Well, then let me take you. It’s way too late for you to wait for the bus.” I had thought she would demur, slip away like she always did, slide out from under my attention.
“Sure, why not. After all, I did stab a man for you. A ride is the least you could do.” We smiled at one another, tentative smiles, a little shy.
“Okay, I’m not too far. That’s my truck over there.”
“I pictured you as more of a sedan girl.”
“It was my dad’s.” Already, again, a lump in my throat.
She sighed. “You must miss him a lot.”
“Every day,” I said, my voice weak, light. “He used to work here.”
“What happened?”
“You didn’t see that part?” I asked, surprised. “Your visions?”
“It doesn’t work like that. I don’t get to choose. Sometimes if a memory or image is really strong, still really present, it just sort of intrudes upon me. Yours did.” We got in the truck, and I started the engine.
“What was it? What did you see?”
She took a deep breath. I drove to the exit ramp of the lot, stopped, and pressed my employee badge to the window before the booth attendant waved me on. “A woman. Your mother, I’d guess. Sitting on the edge of a bed. A hospital.”
“Just sitting?”
“No. Sitting and—and screaming. Sort of, clawing at herself. A man’s hand on a white sheet.”
Without thinking, I hit the brakes. If there had been room for doubt, her words undid it. That memory played itself in a loop on my worst days. How it had taken me a few minutes to reach for my mother, how we struggled against each other for a moment when I held down her hands.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I asked you to tell me.
” But I had only said that because a part of me refused to let myself believe, in what she said she could do and see.
I hadn’t been ready, truly ready, to look straight at either of these things: that memory of the hospital room, or the feeling like I had just been shoved into a new reality.
That Clara had a talent that defied logic, a talent I couldn’t understand.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like. Loving someone that much.”
“Me neither. I wonder if I ever will.”
“What about whatshisface?” That she pretended not to remember Matthew’s name gave me a small jolt of pleasure, and I felt lighter as I watched the casino recede in the rearview.
“It was never … never like that. I think in a way, that’s what I liked about being with Matthew.
I felt safe from that kind of loss. I mean, it still hurt a lot when we broke up.
It was humiliating. But I didn’t feel”—I searched for the right word—“despair. I felt like a version of my life was over. But not like, my entire life. My mom? My dad was her entire life.”
“She has you.”
“It didn’t matter. Not in those first few months.
She kept threatening to take a bunch of pills.
Or to leave the car running in the garage.
Drop the hair dryer in the bath. It was like I wasn’t enough to keep her here.
I guess that’s why I felt like I could leave. Like there was no real difference.”
“I’m sure there was. I mean, she didn’t do any of those things.”
“I guess so.” The clock on the dash said that it was 2:03 in the morning.
The streets were mostly empty, save for a homeless man rummaging through one of the metal trash cans on the corner.
I rolled the windows down and felt the stillness, the heaviness of the humid air.
We were just a few blocks away from Clara’s shop, but the night still felt incomplete.
After all the tumult, it needed some sort of closure. We needed a salve.
“I have an idea. Let’s go down to the beach.”
“Why?”
“Why not? We’ve got the whole town to ourselves.”
“You’re sort of a weirdo sometimes, Lily.”
“We can go for a swim. My dad used to say that nothing helped change your mood like swimming in the ocean. Like it could rinse everything bad away. I don’t think I’ve gone for a swim since I’ve been back.”
“I can’t swim.”
“Now you’re screwing with me. You live right on the beach.”
“No, really. Can you picture Des teaching me? I actually don’t think she can either. I mean, she grew up in Newark. Where was she going to learn?”
“Well, if it’s calm you should at least wade in. Get your feet wet. It’ll be symbolic.” I guided the truck up to the curb and cut the engine. “Let’s go.”
Clara sat for a moment, but as I crossed the boardwalk toward the bulkhead I heard her door open and slam shut again. The clouds had shifted, and the sand was washed with red, purple, green from the changing, blinking lights of the casinos behind us.
“This is sort of creepy,” Clara called behind me.
I pretended not to hear, but I knew what she meant.
It was a little unsettling but also very beautiful—or maybe the eeriness was what made it beautiful.
It reminded me of Mil’s portraits. How the most absorbing aspect was their suggestion of something sinister, something unsettling, underneath the fabric of our days.
There was a challenge underneath it all.
You wanted both to look and to look away, break contact.
Ahead, I could see the mound of a ruined sandcastle, a forgotten plastic shovel.
A sudden sadness gripped me in the ribs, a physical ache for my childhood that nearly made me double over.
When I was out of my shoes, the sand felt soft and cool beneath my feet.
The greenish glow of a pair of cat eyes beamed my way from the dunes and disappeared.
The waves lapped at the sand in little ruffles of foam, and the ocean was silvered with moon.
A few blocks away the Pier, the once-high-end shopping mall, jutted out over the sea like an accusatory finger, its billboards lit with spotlights that glinted off the water.
I crunched over the litter of shell fragments that had been pushed into a pile by the tide.
The thrill of the cold water on my feet rushed up my legs.
I waded out farther, until I was up to my knees, Clara behind me, tiptoeing into the waves.
When the water was at my waist I kicked my feet out and let my body sink under the surface.
The tingle of the cold was intimate and intense, cold on my scalp, cold on the back of my neck, cold over my hips, across my stomach.
Water in my ears, dulling everything but the steady wash of the waves, I held my breath until I felt it burn in my chest.
When I came up, I heard Clara’s voice, garbled a little by the water in my ears. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“Don’t worry. It feels good, that’s all. You should try it.”
She crossed her arms close to her chest. “I’m going back.”
“Don’t be such a baby.” I cupped my hand, splashed water in her direction.
“Cut it out!”
“Come on, it’s as calm as can be. Just go under.”
“I don’t want to. This water is freezing.”
“That’s the point. It’s refreshing. What are you so worried about?”
“Drowning. Dying. Getting eaten by sharks.”
I smiled, though the last thing I wanted was Clara to think I was laughing at her.
“What?” she said.