Before My Eyes (3 page)

He's in the gray sweatpants that he has worn almost every day to the Snack Shack: stained, stiff, stinking. If he pulled his hands out of that sweatshirt for all to see, I'm sure they'd be rough, his fingernails thick with dirt, as if we spent the summer working fields and not serving up ice cream, hot dogs, and bottled water. He's not moving from the center of the tent. Usually, he doesn't smile much. But this morning, his grin is wide enough to make me think that something is wrong. He removes his sunglasses, wipes the sweat off the reflective glass with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and his gaze deadens on me.

Barkley

Monday, Labor Day, 10:03
A.M.

People move in slow motion.

“Does anyone need a cold water?” Debbi Cooper asks the crowd in the tent. “My son has bottled waters in the back, if you'd like one. Like a cold bottle of water?”

My fists clench. The smile stays fixed. My mouth is dry. My tongue, heavy. I am ignored. Jackson's father, the soccer coach who left me on the bench in fourth and fifth grades, ignores me now. He weaves over to greet Debbi Cooper with a kiss—big, fake. In his possession is an extra-large iced coffee in a clear, plastic container.

I wade through.

ZOOM IN:
Max, a lanky, athletic, seventeen-year-old boy with shocks of dark hair and blue eyes. He waves from the far reaches of the tent. I make sure he is not signaling her—Claire. But she has not arrived. I must tell her about today if she does not witness it for herself. She must not hear from Max. Nevertheless, I hope he is feeling good. Even weak men should not feel pain. I hope he popped one of those pills that I sold him the other day. I hope that I helped him.

CLOSE-UP:
Two women speak without listening to each other. They are talking about the state senator. How they never vote but are voting for him again. How they never “do” these things, but he's Glenn Cooper. Our neighbor. And isn't he good-looking? And such a nice family. They rub their spindly fingers down their tanned arms as if for some reason these thoughts chill them.
CUT.

When I do today what I must, forces greater than State Senator Glenn Cooper will recognize me. Crowds on red carpets will greet me. Claire on my arm. I understand that the personal is political. Yet I am more than personal. I am more than political. I believe in the end of plastic water bottles to save our seas, in grammar as the basis for a well-ordered society, and in speaking truth to power. I am more.

Inside the sweatshirt pocket, fingers curl tight around the metal.

Walk perfectly,
the voice reassures.

CLOSE-UP:
Max raises his chin—a dare, no, a beckoning.

Search for what he sees through the crowd. At the raised tent flap entrance, a flash of strong bare legs. She is dressed in a white T-shirt, tight cutoff jeans, and flip-flops. No makeup. Clean skin. A question in her eyes.

You must be heard. You will be seen. Action,
the voice incites. The heart is on fire.

State Senator Glenn Cooper is having his picture taken with neighbors. “Smile for the camera,” he says.

I smile hard. The Glock is out. A scream arcs. “A gun,” someone shouts.

My throat is raw. A plastic water bottle spins toward me. The world falls away.

I am the lens, the pen, the gun. The voice directs.

BEFORE

Claire

Friday, 6:30
A.M.

Water, bluish-gray, splattered with sun, and me, swimming with long, strong strokes, the only one out here. I duck my head into the water and swim harder. The tides are pulling me out, away from the beach, which is scattered with families on blankets and under striped blue-and-orange umbrellas, rented for the day. I swim on, imagining I'll soon be at the other shore, the one I can't see but I know is just ahead, across the Atlantic Ocean. Greater forces—the tug of gravity, the moon in its orbit—guide the tide. I steer through the sea, but the unseen controls the tide. Water buoys me. I float. I dive through the waves, hold my breath, and shoot up for air, but the break between sea and air shifts, and there is more water. My lungs tighten. I swim toward the light. Breathless. Airless. The light shifts on the surface. My eyes blur. I swim harder and, finally, break through the sea and gasp for air. I know I should turn around, go back to the familiar shore, find my little sister, Izzy. The waves pitch higher, the tide more insistent, and the light dips from clear blue to purple-black. Lightning cracks overhead. I swim faster. My arms and legs fail. I'm weak. I don't know how I found myself so far out to sea. I don't know how I got here. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea. Wasn't I supposed to be the responsible one? Wasn't I supposed to be the one taking care of Izzy? I scream. She signals me back as if this is a game. She runs off.
Help!
But no one is there. The blankets and umbrellas have been packed up, and everyone on the town beach has fled for safety. A wave smacks me, knocks me underwater. I can't see or breathe.
Help—
the sea sears my skin, my eyes. My mouth tastes seawater, broken shells, silver fish. I can't scream. I gasp for air.
Help.
Waves pound over my head. I am as alone as I have ever been. I don't deserve to have my summer end like this. I did nothing to deserve this. I should have done something wild, something unexpected, something that made somebody notice me. A wave, as broad as a football field, smacks me down. I'm grasping for light. My arms are ripping from their sockets. The waters churn black and dark and cold.

I feel an urgency to save that girl, and perhaps even a greater desire to let her drown.

It's a dream. And I know I'm dreaming.

I'm in the Atlantic Ocean, and somewhere else in my mind, I'm in my bed. I can see myself as if through a lens, and I am letting myself drown. I am there and not there. I am in the sea. At the same time, I'm in my bed, under the woolly muck of my inky purple blanket, crocheted by my mother for my sixteenth birthday. I feel someone pulling me up and out, and in fact, I hear my name—Claire Wallace—from afar and then near.

I swim out of the dream.

I jolt up ramrod straight. My room, its disorder of dirty clothes and lilac walls and writing notebooks, surrounds me. It's morning. I'm drenched in sweat and tears. In a daze, I wipe my hand across my cheeks, across my dry lips. I'm tangled in the wool, breathing in short, hard intakes as if I'm in water, as if I'm still drowning.

I shake the dream from me, literally, flapping my T-shirt from my body, wanting to change into something clean and fresh, but no one, meaning me, has done the laundry yet this week. My hair is frizzy and heavy around my waist. The birds are going wild, tripping through the trees. If I opened the window any wider they'd fly in, or I could fly out. I am not dreaming. Lying in bed, with my eyes open, I can't be dreaming. Yet a woman's voice rings in my head. Or rather, it's the memory of her voice. My mother was always impatient, always saying:
Let's go, let's move it, no dawdling, when I say it's time to go, angel, it's time to go.
Not angry. Just hurried. Just wanting to get on to the next thing. There was always somewhere to go. I can remember the voice—never soft, never quiet, oversized like her. She was, or is, tall like I am, had chestnut brown hair like I have. She never did any more with her hair than run a brush through it. Twenty-five hard strokes with her walnut-handled brush, a square, sturdy brush, and she was done, and it was like a mane—thick, loose, wondrous.

I wrap my blanket around me. I imagine lavender, but the scent is faint.

I can do this. I can get out of bed—in control, in charge.

A voice calls to me. This one I know for sure isn't part of the dream. “Come on, Claire, what do I have to do? It's time to get up. It's time to go.”

Please. One day. All I want is one full day at the beach, one day without wheelchairs, without the reek of bleach and urine and boiled vegetables and bodies struggling to walk a few painful steps, to raise a hand, to smile.

“Your mother counts the hours until she sees us.”

Three months ago, the beginning of the summer, my beautiful mother had a stroke, an aneurysm, a brain vessel burst. I turn that word over in my head all the time, “vessel,” an old word for a container, but this vessel carried blood, and it broke apart as if in a storm, causing damage—brain trauma and paralysis of her left leg and arm.

I'm not opening my bedroom door for my father. I'm not going out and visiting my mother at that rehabilitation center today. I want her home, back to normal.

My father, once a strong man, gives the door a weak push. The locked door, hollow, cracked, streaked with fingerprints on the inside and the outside, holds.

In the mornings, my father goes to work as an accountant. In the afternoons, he visits my mother. This has been the routine all summer. After three hours at the rehab center yesterday afternoon, I couldn't stay there any longer. I couldn't bear to kiss my mother good-bye on that parchment-white skin. I said we had to go—I lied and said I had to meet friends. My father wanted to stay. I demanded that he drive Izzy and me home. He did, then returned to her.

“Claire?”

I don't know when he came home and went to bed, or if he did. I'm pushing him too far. I know it.

“The insurance has run out,” he says on the other side of door, heaving one last time against it.

Why should a sentence so bland sound bad, or scary?
The insurance has run out.
What does that even mean?

My father is not someone given to long explanations or speeches. He likes numbers and columns. He likes things to add up. “I'm scrambling to see if we can borrow more, borrow more against the house. I'm trying to make the numbers work. But nothing's working—”

“Borrow?”

“The insurance has run out,” he repeats, louder, through the door, as if this should make sense to me. He never asked me to do anything around the house, but I've tried to keep up with it all, even though sometimes it feels like a race I can't win: grocery shopping; making sure we have breakfast, Izzy and I, and dinner; and vacuuming and dusting. “The insurance has run out and I can't make the numbers work, not now, not this week. It's the end of the month and next month's payment is due. But you don't need to worry about this. You have enough to worry about, but the insurance has run out and I don't know what to do.” Something hits the door—his fist? His head? He's pounding his head against my bedroom door.

“Take Izzy,” I say, softly. “Can't you take just her today?”

“I don't want to take Izzy without you. She's too young for all this.”

“She's six,” I say, knowing that sounds dumb from a seventeen-year-old.

I wish I were “too young.” I know I'm being horrible. But I hate the rehabilitation center. I hate going there. I hate having to smile at her and pretend everything is going fine, that I'm happy to be there, that it's a happy day to visit my mother at the rehabilitation center. I'm holding it all together, but I can't smile.

“Come on, Claire, for me.”

I do everything for him. Cook. Clean. Take care of Izzy. I wrap myself into my blanket.

He sucks in more breath.

“It's going to be over ninety-five degrees again,” I say, going to my door but not opening it. We couldn't take my mother outside yesterday, it was sweltering. Yet the inside of that rehab center was airless. A thrum of machines and moans swept down those long corridors—and I could barely breathe. Izzy sang “It's a Small World” with my mother, struggling out the words. They must have sung that song ten times. Yesterday, I was there forever, stuck to a plastic chair, pleasing no one, watching dust swirl in the heat, and mouthing without sound, “It's a small world after all.”

I can't go there today. I won't. I deserve a day off.

And I can't open my bedroom door now. I don't want to see my father. If I see him, if I look him in the eyes, I'll cave. I'll go to the rehab center. Maybe I will insist that we bring her outside to the courtyard, no matter the heat. I'll work with her on standing. I can support her. Upright, with a cane in her good hand, Izzy always cheering us on.

However, if she stands, I will see how much thinner she is, thinner than she has been since Izzy was born, even thinner than she was before Izzy. I'll see that she's all loose skin, as if vital organs have been sucked out of her. She will not have the strength to walk and talk. It will take all her concentration to struggle, left foot, right foot. After a few steps, my father will want her to sit. They may even argue. She is determined to walk. Soon enough, we will have to ease her back into her wheelchair. I will have to sing with Izzy “It's a Small World,” until all other songs—all other
sounds
—are banished and I'm without images or words.

“Why don't you take a day off from visiting, too?” I say to my father in a whisper, as if not going to visit my mother can be a secret between us. “And a day off from work, too?”

“I can't,” he says. “I haven't worked a full day at the office since this happened to your mother.”

He hasn't taken a day off all summer. He's pasty-pale and exhausted. “All you do is work,” I say, without adding—and visit her.

“All I do is work, Claire? I don't know if I can afford the rent on my office space anymore. Or the mortgage here.” Right before my mother's stroke, he was forced out of his corporate job. He set up his own income tax preparation business, but I know it's been hard, even though he was always saying at first that it was the best time to go into business for himself.

“I don't know if I can do this much more, Claire. I just don't know. I know I should go to the beach with you and Izzy. I know I should do more for you two girls—” His voice breaks. “But the insurance.”

I can't bear his tears, again.