Drowning Is Inevitable (21 page)

Mr. Barrow and the policeman were at the bed, standing over me, crowding my periphery, but I didn't look in their direction. They didn't say anything, they just watched. Was this what it felt like to be the dead person at an open casket funeral? I didn't think about them for too long, because my thoughts, like my body, were wrapped around Jamie and wanted to stay there. Memories of the two of us together collected behind my eyes. I heard the song coming from the river again, its lullaby sound snaking its way through the streets to find me, and I hummed its tune.

I
t wasn't the river this time. This body of water was much smaller—so small. I felt my heartbeat in my ears. I was caught in a nightmare I couldn't stop, my head just below the water, drowning. I died over and over again, as if my body was practicing and the dream was a dress rehearsal of what was to come.
Once more,
my subconscious said,
with feeling.
The water was back in my lungs and burning in my chest, making me wonder how someone could be wet and on fire at the same time. I wanted to wake up, but I knew even when I did there'd be no relief. The new day would carry an underwater echo of this nightmare, and I still wouldn't be able to breathe. On top of that I'd have to move forward, one foot in front of the other, each step without him.

Road swept underneath me, trees flying past my face, a blur of brown and green. We were being transported back to St. Francisville courtesy of the Louisiana State Police, all three of us sitting side by side in the police van. Even though there was plenty of room, our bodies were touching, knees bumping, much the same way as they did on the front seat of Max's truck during another road trip. Only Jamie was being carried home a much different way. Mr. Barrow was following in the car behind us.

I blinked, my eyes cried out from too many tears. Max sat closest to the window, and my face brushed his shoulder whenever I looked outside. The sun beat down on my face through the glass, and I reached my hand across his body to touch it, to see if I could feel the sun's heat. It was no use. I couldn't feel anything. I kept my hand in its place and spread my fingers wide to see if that would make a difference. Max put his hand on the window right next to mine. We didn't say anything, just sat hand to glass and watched the outside world speed by, the light moving through our fingers. When I relaxed my eyes, I caught glimpses of Jamie's face in the reflection, right beneath my fingertips, but when I focused them, he disappeared. Where did he go, and how did he get on the wrong side of the glass?

I entered a waking sleep. I saw Jamie everywhere, in the faces of the people in the cars passing us, the boy riding his bike on the side of the road. Jamie's voice came out of Max's mouth. But as soon as I looked closer or listened harder, he slipped away. So it didn't surprise me when I looked in the seat behind me, and it wasn't an empty seat that stared back at me.

Sitting straight up, like she'd been there the whole time, was my mom, the Mississippi River dripping off her skin. She wasn't solid; I didn't think I would've been able to touch her, but she sat there just the same, the sunlight slanting through her body. Now that I'd found her, she was following me everywhere. Her eyes met mine, and they looked sad. She looked back at me in a way that let me know she knew the line I'd crossed. We stared at each other for a while, and then she turned her head toward the window, her eyes taking in the road and the landscape around her.

“I've been down this road,” she said, her voice young and sweet. Then she smiled at me, serenely, the sadness leaving her eyes for just a minute.

I turned back to face the front and slid down the seat, my shoulders slipping from their grip on the leather just like my sanity was slipping. I was sinking downward, where I'd puddle up on the floor of the van and mix into the floor. But Max and Maggie pulled me back up, keeping me in my spot on the seat.

“Where are you going?” Max asked.

“You have to stay with us,” Maggie said. “Stay with us.”

Maggie looked at me and did a double take. I understood the gesture. Earlier we'd stopped for a bathroom break, and I'd risked a look in the mirror. In it was a lost girl. She wasn't someone I'd seen before, or at least it had been a long, long time. One thing was for sure: I no longer looked like Lillian. The loss of Jamie had pulled my face in unrecognizable directions.

Maggie looped her arm in mine and dipped her head to my shoulder, making me look down at her. Her face was wet from her slow tears. She whispered, “I'm afraid they'll never stop.”

I tried to wipe them away, but she was right. They were never going to stop. I gave up, and my hand went to my stomach, protectively covering the hole there, the one no one else saw, the place where Jamie had been cut from me.

“Do you think they'll still let me go to New York?” Maggie asked.

“My dad will make sure of it,” Max said.

She leaned around me to look at him. “My dad and I can't pay him. We don't have money for lawyers.”

“You don't need any,” he said.

I thought about Maggie in New York. Maybe she would paint us on her walls so we could be together.

The van came to a stop at a red light in an unknown town, rural, with farmland butting right up to a convenience store, the only business in sight. On the side of the road sat an old man in a folding chair. He was holding up a wooden sign in one hand and held a megaphone in the other. The sign said we should all repent because the world was ending soon. He took advantage of his captured audience and stood up, bringing the megaphone to his lips.

“You are lost,” he boomed at us.

You have no idea.

“You went astray a long time ago, and the time to repent is now.” He took a step toward the van and said, “Be careful, you're not on the right path. The road you are on is a lonely one.”

I was sure he could see into my soul, and I waited for him to say something more, but he didn't; he only stared at the window of the van. I looked back to see if Lillian had heard it too, but she was gone. I wasn't upset about it. I knew she'd pop up again. When I turned back to the window, the man was looking at me. His skin was worn, and his eyes looked tired. It was probably from warning people of their fates.

The light had long since turned green, but the van hadn't moved, the policemen in the front seat caught up in the man's side-street sermon. The old man's arm shook at the elbow, making me wonder how long he'd been holding up that sign. I wished I could roll down my window, so I could relieve him of his burdens, so I could tell him it was okay to rest. I wanted to tell him the world ended more than a day ago, and we were all living in this leftover space, a place with disjointed rhythm and no Jamie. He nodded at me as the van finally moved forward, like he got the message, but he didn't drop the sign.

As we drove on, I was aware of my own disconnect. The road home was purgatory, an in-between place where the pain and the present wouldn't be real until we entered St. Francisville I knew the places purgatory was supposed to separate, and I knew life without Jamie could never resemble heaven, leaving me to wonder if we were on the road to hell.

I was suddenly cold, like my body was compensating for the heat it knew it would find in hell by cooling me from the inside. This scared me for two reasons: first, because it was the first thing I'd felt in more than a day; and second, because the feeling came from inside me. Maggie started rubbing my arm, like she was trying to warm me, or maybe she was trying to rub life back in me. “Quick, what's your favorite day of the week?” she asked.

I couldn't speak.

“Mine's Tuesday,” Max answered.

“Why?”

“I was born on a Tuesday. What's yours?” he asked her.

“My favorite day is Sunday.”

“Let me guess. Because Magnolia's and Bird Man's are closed on Sundays, and it's your only day of the week off work.”

“My dad and I paint on Sundays. We spend all day on our sun porch painting in the natural light. It's our church.”

“I like the sound of your church,” Max said.

“What's your favorite thing about St. Francisville?” he asked her.

“Olivia,” Maggie said.

I looked at her.

“Olivia is my favorite thing about home.”

“Mine, too,” he said. “When did you start singing?”

“My dad said I sang before I talked.”

She started singing softly, her voice making my eyes heavy, so I closed them.

Jamie's face appeared behind my closed lids, startling me and forcing them back open. I was sure this was a trick, too, and that if I closed my eyes again he'd be gone. But every time I blinked, he was there, making me smile, and making my blinks last longer and longer. I decided to keep my eyes closed altogether. His smiling eyes, a gift to me.
Stay with me.

It was easier for Max and Maggie if I kept my eyes closed; they both sighed in gentle relief, and their bodies relaxed around me, like they were tired parents who'd finally gotten a sick child to sleep. Maggie's singing continued, and I lost track of time as I slid into dreamland. Jamie met me there.

It was late in the night when we crossed into St. Francisville I didn't have to open my eyes to know we were home, because I recognized the feel of the van's tires on the familiar road. I knew each dip and bump by heart. When I did peek, I saw we were the only people on the road. Every other car or truck had long since been parked at home. At the first sight of the landscape, my eyes burned with tears. I couldn't believe how fast it happened, my protective shield melting away almost immediately. Max and Maggie scooted even closer to me, the feel of them the only thing that comforted me.

“I'm here,” Max said.

“We're here,” Maggie corrected him.

We pulled into St. Francisville's police station, and the sight of my dad's truck in the parking lot made my heart slide down to hide in my stomach. Reality was here, right in front of us now. The van's tires crunched on the gravel of the parking lot before coming to a stop. There was this moment of stillness, right after the engine died and right before the doors opened, when I begged God to please let the world stop spinning. But He didn't, and the van's doors opened with a creak.

“Let's go,” one of the cops said.

Maggie, who sat closest to the door, exited like she was told. Then she glanced back at me warily. The policeman stared at me with the same look, stepping closer to the van, like he was unsure if I was able to walk. Maybe he'd been warned about my bouts of immobility and was getting ready to pull me from the van. His hands reached for me. Maggie stepped between the two of us. There was no sign of her tears. Her fierceness was no longer muted, and she was the old Maggie, ready to cross more lines for me. But I moved quickly, to defuse the situation and to show them my newest trick.

I had discovered during the course of the day that it was possible to move without thinking. It was possible to move and breathe and blink and nod, all without thinking. This was my life now, a series of thoughtless movements.

The wind blew, moving in and out of the leaves on the trees, making them rustle in that quiet way leaves do, whispering their welcome home to me. Everything was so hushed outside. I'd missed the quiet of a small town after dark. The policemen herded us toward the front door of the station, Max's dad pulling up the rear. Max and Maggie came to stand on either side of me again. We went inside shoulder to shoulder.

Officer Tom met us at the door. We all knew him. He exhaled loudly, like the feel of us in one room together squeezed the air out of him. I got the feeling he'd been dreading this, too. I was hesitant to meet his eyes, but when I did, they held a look I remembered.

Once, when I was eight years old, Officer Tom had carried me home after I wrecked my bike a couple of blocks from my grandmother's house. I had skinned my knee pretty bad—or at least that's how I remembered it. He was on foot, for some reason, and he picked me up and carried me all the way home, telling me not to worry about my bike, that he'd bring it to me later. I remembered when he sat me down on my grandmother's front porch, he looked so sad, like he wished there was more he could do for me. Looking back on it now, I realize it probably had more to do with who I was than my bleeding knee. He was looking at me in that same way now, sad and wishing there was more he could do.

Only the light in the front room was on. Everything else was shut down for the night. Maggie's dad and mine were sitting across from each other on benches. At the sight of my dad sitting on a bench with his head in his hands, my knees felt wobbly, and I thought I wouldn't be able to stand. I had an impulse to run to him, so he could help hold me up, but we'd never had that type of relationship.