Losing It (17 page)

Viv and I didn't say anything to each other on the drive back. I didn't know how much she knew, or if she knew everything; if she
was angry at me, or if she was just exhausted and sad. I put my hand out the window and let it glide through the wind. I glided back and forth through my memory of the day as I lay in bed that night. Or it was like I was lying in a boat on a lapping shore, the gentleness and warmth of the world pouring into
me.

Twelve

There was a storm that summer in Durham that became legendary. It came out of nowhere, the sky darkening to a bruisy green the Wednesday afternoon after the funeral. I'd never seen completely sideways rain before, as if all the water was rushing to get somewhere else. Once the blasting wind had subsided, the downfall came in great reprimanding waves. It was so thick you could see ripples in it.

Trees were whipsawed and uprooted. There were car accidents, and power lines went down everywhere. I'd seen bad storms before. In Texas, we had storms—flat rages that would pummel our tin shed. But this one was schizophrenic, unsure of what it even wanted to be, a pressure-cooked whipped fury. Hail drilled out of the sky from nowhere, and the mangled, cracking thunder was almost helpless in its anger.

By the time it was over, five people had died when trees fell on their houses, and two million were without power.

I was driving home from work when it started. When I pulled into Viv's driveway it was already raining so hard I couldn't see and accidentally nosed the car into the yard. I ran up to my bedroom to
change into dry clothes and saw that my bedspread was soaked. I slammed the window shut and listened to the panes rattle and the roar outside.

Downstairs I watched the back garden get pummeled, and then went into the kitchen with a giddy sense of danger and watched hail bouncing in the grass.

It occurred to me to worry about Aunt Viv. She usually got home a little bit after me, and so she was probably driving in this mess. I thought of calling her cell phone, but she could be so discombobulated by it ringing that I didn't want her to swerve into oncoming traffic.

We hadn't spoken much since the funeral. I wasn't sure if it was because Karen had told her about what she'd seen or because she was still in a quiet state of grief. All I wanted to do was ask her about Jack. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to talk about, I just wanted her to tell me things, having partially watched him grow up. I hadn't been able to stop thinking about that day. It was like a song I couldn't get out of my head, a memory filled with heavy, drippy gold.

I'd done enough Internet stalking to know that he was on one of the social networking sites I belonged to, and we actually had a friend in common, this girl I'd gone to summer camp with. But I didn't see how I could use that to my advantage. I couldn't look at any of his photographs. I found his name in reference to some kind of tutoring program in an article for the UNC student newspaper. Other than that he was a locked box. I only had that day to go on, to interpret, to keep unfolding like a worn-out treasure map.

I thought, What was implied by our time together at the funeral?
Was it implied by the ease with which we fell together that we were supposed to see each other again and again? Because to me it felt remarkable. Or was there some ending refrain codified throughout the whole thing? I kept tracing it, going over it, looking for grooves or markings that would indicate the genus or species of that afternoon. Or that would give me a plan forward.

A gust of wind socked the house, slamming the windowpanes against their frames. I was just considering again whether I should call Aunt Viv, she definitely should have been home by now, when I heard the front door open and close. I went into the parlor and there she was, completely soaked, hair streaked across her face, her bag crumpled at her feet, and holding an inside-out umbrella. We stared at each other a moment, it seemed that she was about to laugh, and then two things happened, one right after the other. The power went out—for a moment, we were spellbound—and then a loud crash came from the living room.

I said, “What was that?” And we both ran in that direction. One of the French doors leading to the garden had become unlatched and slammed so hard that the glass had broken and fallen out. The door was now lolling open, rain gusting in.

“Don't step on it,” Viv yelled as I attempted to roll up the rug the shards had fallen on. She walked quickly out of the room and was gone for a moment, and then returned with some large trash bags and duct tape and we went to work. I held the billowing bags to the door and she secured them, unwinding and cutting the screeching tape. It must have taken us a good twenty minutes to cover the whole thing.

“My God,” said Viv as we both stepped back, surveying our work.
The house creaked around us. I'd never seen it so dark during the day.

We set about looking for candles in various cabinets and utility drawers while the wind howled and the world pitched and swayed outside. We gathered and lit them at the kitchen table. Aunt Viv went upstairs to change into dry clothes, and I tried to assemble some sort of dinner for us out of leftovers in the fridge.

At the sink, Viv peeled an apple. The screen in the window was a gray blur.

“You're good at that,” I said, watching the skin unwind in a spiral below her swipes.

“Your grandfather was handy with a knife,” she said. “He was a whittler and he taught me how to do this.”

“That seems grandfatherly,” I said.

To my surprise, she laughed. A loud, bawdy guffaw.

I tried to think of something else funny to say. Aunt Viv stole a look at me. “You know you can preorder unpainted walking sticks?” she said.

“What?” I said. “No.”

“In case you don't want to whittle them.” She motioned with a knife. “I mean, if you want a whittled-looking walking stick, you can preorder them.”

“Oh, okay.”

“That's how I got started painting them.”

“Cool,” I said, slightly confused, never having seen any walking sticks around, painted or plain.

She put the peeled apple on the counter, wiped the knife on her pants. “Do you want to see them?”

“Your . . .” I said.

“My walking sticks.”

I looked around quickly. “Yes?”

We each took a candle and walked up the creaky stairs to the second floor, to a kind of closetish storage room with lots of random stuff in it. The flickering light threw strange shapes against the walls, and with sheets thrown over certain pieces of furniture, it had the feel of a Victorian ghost story.

“Spooky,” I said. “There's lots of stuff in here.”

Viv put her candle on a bureau and looked around in an affectionate way. “Yes,” she said. “I've been meaning to go through it. I just don't know where to start.”

She went over to a cabinet with tall doors. On top of it were two heavy brass bookends in the shape of a man's face with a swirling beard, like Poseidon.

“Whoa,” I said. “Can I have these?”

“Um,” said Viv, rummaging through the cabinet.

She turned around holding two long, painted walking sticks. One was pink and the other was yellow, and they both had flowers on them, vines, going up and then ending in a burst of petals at the top.

She was looking at me in such a way that it seemed as if her whole perception of this endeavor, maybe of our relationship going forward, would now rest on how I reacted to these sticks. I didn't want to fumble the moment, as I had with her plates, but my instinct told me I should not veer into overenthusiasm.

“Cool,” I said, in an inquisitive way, taking one from her. I thought it would suffice to just appear really interested. “You did this?”

“Yup,” she said.

“So they're decorative,” I said, as if really trying to clear the air about this one thing.

“Yes,” she said. “I sold a few, at a craft fair in Franklin County.”

“Why did you stop?”

She shrugged in a way that seemed to indicate the whole teeming world of reasons a person would stop painting decorative walking sticks.

“I'll show you something else,” she said, taking the stick from me and leaning them both against the cabinet.

I followed her to the other end of the room. She overturned a small metal trash can, sat down, and indicated that I should pull over a stool, which I did. Then, from a different set of drawers she took out something wrapped in cloth. It was a frame, and inside the frame was what looked like a ratty rag.

“I know it doesn't look like much,” she said. “But this was one of your grandfather's most treasured possessions.”

“Is it some Civil War kind of deal?” I said.

“No, it's Orville Wright's handkerchief.”

“Whoa, cool,” I said, genuinely impressed. “As in the Wright brothers?”

“Yes, and if you look here”—she indicated a streak in the rag—“that's supposed to be grease from the first airplane that ever lifted off the ground.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“Can you imagine?” she said, staring into the distance, her face animated and full of make-believe. “Your grandfather, before he sold his business, he owned a few automotive-repair shops. There was
one in Kitty Hawk, and he became friends with them through that. He knew them before they were famous, before they were the ‘Wright Brothers.'”

“I wonder why Dad never told me any of this,” I said.

Viv winced a little, shook her head.

“There!” I pointed to initials embroidered into the cloth, “O.W.”

Viv nodded and smiled, pleased.

“You know, there's something of her in you.”

I looked up; she was staring at me. “Ellen,” she continued. “My sister. There's a resemblance. It's in the way you tilt your head.”

“Really?”

Viv nodded again.

We were quiet for a few moments. It had stopped belting rain; now there was just a steady rolling downpour.

She smiled sadly, and looked around.

“This was her old room.” She pointed to a corner. “That's where her dresser used to be. A big old white-painted thing.”

There was some legroom in the moment, in the air, that I almost thought I could blurt it out: Why are you a virgin? And something about the momentary terms between us would mean she had to tell me the truth.

“So it was a car crash?” I said instead. “The way Ellen died.”

“Yes,” said Viv. “Just one of those senseless things.”

She put the wrapped-up frame back in the drawer.

Something of Viv's childhood came to me then—the hot fields, a father at a sleepy automotive shop, the long afternoons buckling under a sense of grief.

“She'd had a puppy,” said Viv. “A little Scottish terrier named
Sandy, who she adored.” Viv was playing with a scrap of fabric. “I was visiting you all and we were at the beach once—you were there—at South Padre Island, and I saw a little black terrier, just like Sandy—it could have been her—playing around in the sand. I watched her for a while, and then I watched her run into the water, playing in the waves. I didn't see anyone looking out for her, and I was the only one who saw when the riptide began to pull her away.

“I went in after her,” said Viv. “In all my clothes. You know how heavy clothes get when they're wet.”

“Wait, what?” I said. I'd been watching the flickering candle, my mind wandering. “You went in after who?”

“The dog,” said Viv. “The Scottish terrier. I'd heard about the riptide on the radio that morning. There were orange flags up, to caution people, but of course no one paid attention.”

“You just ran into the water? In your clothes?”

“Someone had to. The owner wasn't watching. The dog was getting pulled away. I was the only one who saw it, saw what was happening. It seemed to happen so slowly, and then so quickly. The way the dog was suddenly in trouble.”

I remembered that moment with her now: the time-share. The sense of trouble in the air. Something to do with Aunt Viv.

“What happened?” I said.

“Well, it was a big ordeal,” said Viv. “A lifeguard had to save us both.” She laughed. “My shoes and skirt—I was wearing sneakers for some reason, they were so heavy in the water. I think I overestimated what I would be able to do, and I got swept away by the current, too. Your parents weren't happy. Well, they were confused, mostly, I think.”