Axis of Aaron (44 page)

“Aimee,” he said. “What have I told you about Holly?”
 

She was still turned away, her posture now betraying more anger than anything else. But Ebon had known Aimee for years. They’d never lost touch. Not really. He knew her moods as well as she knew them, maybe better. This was hurt. And yet he didn’t even know how he’d hurt her.
 

“Aimee?”
 

The room around them became old and crumbled, reeking of mildew and droppings. Then modern, filled with stark chrome-and-black furniture. Aimee’s hair lightened. Darkened. Grew scattered gray at the roots.
 

“You once told me that when I was ready to talk, we could talk,” he said.

Aimee looked up. Her features almost seemed to be shifting before him, but one thing never changed. Her eyes were always,
always
the same, and always had been. He got the impression of an animal in a cage, the cage growing and evolving while the animal stayed the same.

“Now you want to talk.”
 

“I don’t know what else to do. I’m … ” Despite his decision to tell the unvarnished truth, he didn’t know where to start. She had to be willing to talk. She had to think he wasn’t beyond his mind, unable to hear her replies. “It’s hard,” he finished.
 

“I’m sure.”
 

“Please. What did I tell you?”
 

“You know what you told me.”
 

“I told you she cheated.”
 

“Yes.”
 

“And that when she died, she was with her lover.”
 

Aimee looked vaguely uncomfortable, but she also looked like she wanted to hear him. Not for Ebon’s sake, but for her own. Then, in a moment, Ebon realized what was truly going on: she’d been trying to get him to open up, but it hadn’t been for his sake. It had been for hers.
 

He closed his eyes.
 

“Are you okay?” came her voice.
 

You can control this,
he thought.
It’s about you. Whatever is going on, it’s about you.

“Ebon?”
 

 
If it’s really happening and nobody else can see it, that means it’s about you and for your eyes only. And on the other hand, if it’s not really happening and it’s all in your head, then it’s
also
for your eyes only. Either way, you can control it. You’ve lost control before. You’ve been at the effect, losing your grip because you refused to face what was happening. Face it now. Face it with Aimee.
 

Ebon thought:
This room is blue.
 

He opened his eyes. Every object in the room had become a hue between robin’s egg and navy. When children wanted a blue crayon, they got a color several shades darker than this, but the room hadn’t become that color. It had become
this
color, because this was the color of a cloudless summer sky. Because this was Ebon’s blue — the one he’d always known here on Aaron.

Aimee, her skin its normal color but clothed in blue from head to foot, was watching him with concern.
 

“Ebon?”

“Why did we make this room blue?”
 

“You wanted it this way,” she said.

Ebon closed his eyes.
Normal. Just for a while, give me normality
.
 

He opened his eyes. The room was Ebon’s vision of normal: the same as Richard’s cottage had always been, but under light construction. A pile of supplies sat in the living room’s middle, partially covered by a dust tarp. Paintbrushes and buckets of joint compound were near the walls, and a ladder was lying collapsed on the floor. If he explored, he’d find dozens of in-progress renovation projects, testament to Aimee’s inability to stay focused on one thing at a time and her inability to complete anything.
 

Music is playing. Something by Springsteen.
 

But when the music came on, it was playing Oasis. “Wonderwall.”

“Why isn’t this room blue?” Ebon asked.
 

“Why would anyone want a blue room?”
 

“Do you remember this song?”
 

Aimee nodded. “Sure.”
 

“When did it come out?”
 

“I don’t know.”
 

“But we listened to it together.”
 

“It was on, I’m sure. I don’t remember
listening
to it, like sitting there and doing nothing else.”
 

“But it was during those summers.”
 

“I guess.”
 

“Does it have any particular significance to you?”
 

“Like what?”
 

“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
 

“Why is it a problem?”
 

“What about that day,” he said. “That last day.”
 

“When I was seventeen?”
 

“Yes.”

“With my dad.”
 

Ebon nodded.
 

“What about that day?”
 

“How did you feel afterward?”
 

Aimee scrunched her brow. “How did I
feel?”
 

“After … ” This was uncomfortable. “ … with your dad.”
 

“I don’t know how I felt.”

That couldn’t be right. How could Aimee not know how she felt? Ebon knew plenty how
he’d
felt, that last day together, without wearing the weight of grown-ups. It was a cornerstone of his childhood, as unflinching an event as his first kiss, also with Aimee. He’d spent weeks afterward replaying that day in his mind, imagining what Aimee must have felt. What he hoped she felt. There must have been anger, and fear. There must have been loss and love.
 

“Angry,” she said. “Afraid. It was like I’d lost something, because I loved you.”
 

“I loved you too.”
 

“But we were kids. What does love mean to a seventeen-year-old? And for you, at fifteen?”
 

It had meant
everything
. Even now, years and years later, that early love felt unchanged. Ebon’s emotions then had been beyond their years. Either that, or his feelings today were behind.
 

“Things changed over the years,” she said, “but because we never lost touch … ”
 

The room slipped. It became old. Ebon forced it back to newness. This was like using a new muscle, tiring and hard to hold. Clinging to the moment took tremendous effort, like trying to divert a stream that was supposed to flow elsewhere.
 

“But we did lose touch,” said Ebon. “I lost track of you. You had to find me.”
 

“Then things changed and evolved in my mind,” she said.
 

“Because you carried a torch.”
 

Aimee nodded. “I guess I did. But you did too.”
 

“No. I didn’t. Not after those first few months.” The room was still slipping. Ebon saw the clean, new walls split to show rot underneath. In the corner, the roof caved in to cloudless daytime sky. He pushed back and it sealed. “I had Holly.”

“Holly never loved you.”

“She did. Of course she did.”
 

Aimee’s hair grew short, the way he’d seen it in a LiveLyfe photo from a few years ago. Then it became lighter, blonder, straighter — an experiment in her twenties, again as he’d seen in a shared photo. He’d liked it that way too.
 

“Of course she did,” Aimee echoed.
 

“Aimee,” said Ebon. “Don’t you see any of this?”
 

“What?”
 

“The changes. The shifts.”
 

“Things change. Things shift.”
 

“I mean around us right now. Look at your hair.”
 

Aimee held a strand of straight blonde hair and looked at it as if seeking split ends. The color turned chestnut as she stared.

“What about my hair?”
 

Ebon closed his eyes and laid his forehead in his hand. The room should be spinning. The fact that he didn’t feel dizzy or out of sorts was making this terrible. It all felt so real. Full of colors and smells and edges he could feel beneath his hands. The normality was a horror. He wanted to find himself sliding down a tunnel without brakes, his senses and sense becoming unhinged as he fell. But it was all so ordinary. So impossibly, out-of-the-ordinary ordinary.
 

He looked up. “I need you to see this, Aimee.”
 

“See what?”
 

“The things that are happening. The things I see. I can’t be alone.”
 

She put her hand on his arm, her earlier anger gone. “You’re not alone, Ebon. I told you, you can talk to me. I
want
you to talk to me.”

“Not about what happened this spring. About … ” He swallowed.
 

“Yes?”
 

“It’s hard to focus. I feel like I’m coming apart.”
 

“That’s normal, after what you’ve been through.”
 

“Aimee,
this isn’t normal.”
He held up her hand, showing it to her as he made it old and wrinkled. Young and smooth. Small, like a child’s. She gasped and pulled the hand away as if burned.
 

“You see it.” He had to work hard to keep the excitement from his voice. So it
wasn’t
just him. He was doing something, but at least maybe, judging by Aimee’s reaction,
it was actually being done.
“You see it, don’t you?”
 

“Jesus. I saw … ” She shook her head. “I’m sure it was nothing.”
 

“It’s not.”
 

“It’s nothing.”
 

Ebon leaned forward and grasped one of her hands in both of his. “It’s
not,”
he repeated. “Something is wrong. Since I’ve been here, something has been wrong. With the cottage. With you. With the island. With the other woman I told you about — with Vicky.”
 

“The woman you’re sleeping with.” Her voice was edged with spite, a secret assiduously kept from her.
 

“But that’s the thing. I don’t know her at all.”
 

Aimee shook her head in disgust.

“Not like that. I mean I don’t know how I
met
her
.
I don’t know what I’ve told you about her, or her about you. I don’t know how often I see her. I have no idea what she means to me.”

“Men.”
 

“I don’t know how this house is supposed to look, Aimee!
How is it supposed to look?”
 

She threw up her hands. Daylight had dawned, though Ebon wasn’t sure when. The sunlight looked warm enough to be summer’s. The beach, from where he stood, looked clean and clear, ready for sandcastles. “Like it looks!” she said. “I don’t know what you want from me!”

“I want help.”
 

“Help with what? With tickling her G-spot? Why don’t you ask
her?”
 

Aimee was no longer seeing the changes. She’d seen for a moment, but she’d forgotten already, sucked into the slipstream. He could feel himself wanting to go into the slipstream with her, but even though the cottage (in partial repair, simple in its floor plan, washed with morning sun and open) seemed average enough to settle into for morning coffee, it wasn’t. Five minutes ago, Ebon had been sitting beside an indoor pool. Five minutes ago, it had been midnight.
 

“Forget about Vicky! I need
your
help. I need
you
to be my anchor.”
 

A small, female voice inside said,
I want to be that for you, Ebon.
Then there was a noise like a foot stepping in dry grass and the pleasant, sun-washed cottage wilted like time-lapsed flowers around him. The walls turned dusty and gray. The floor creaked where Aimee pressed it with her foot.

“I was always your anchor. Always here for you.”
 

“Yes, but … ”
 

“Your port in the storm. But always at arm’s length. You could never make a decision, could you? And when I invited you here, you came right away.”
 

“Because we’re friends.”
 

“Yes,” she said.
“Just friends.”
There was something behind her words. Aimee had admitted to carrying a torch for Ebon all these years, but he knew for a fact that she’d had several serious, long-term boyfriends. Throughout her late teens and early twenties, she’d sent him letters — and then, later, emails. Aimee had never been shy in describing to Ebon all that she’d learned, her invitation to return seemingly always open. But that had been a hard time. There had been Holly. And before Holly, Julia.