Mud Vein (8 page)

“I’m an artist, Senna. I know what it is to put yourself into what you create.”

“What are you talking about?” I fake confusion.

Isaac already has a small corner put together. I watch his hand travel over the pieces until he plucks up another. He’s getting a good head start on me. He has at least twenty pieces. I’ll wait.

“Stop it,” he says. “We’re being fun and open tonight.”

I sigh. “It’s not fun to be open.” And then, “I was more honest in that book than I was in any of the others.”

Isaac hooks another piece onto his growing continent. “I know.”

I let spit pool in my mouth until I have enough of it to hang a really good lugie, then swallow it all at once. He’d read my books. I should have known. He’s at thirty pieces now. I tap my fingers on the table.

“I don’t know that side of you,” I say. “The artist.” I collect more spit. Swirl it, push it between my teeth. Swallow.

He smirks. “Doctor Asterholder. That’s who you know.”

This conversation is pricking where it hurts. I am remembering things; the night he took off his shirt and showed me what was painted on his skin. The strange way his eyes burned. That was my peek down the rabbit hole. The
other
Isaac, like the other mother in
Coraline
. He’s at thirty- three pieces. He’s pretty good.

“Maybe that’s why you’re here,” he says, without looking up. “Because you were honest.”

I wait awhile before I say-”What do you mean?”

Fifty

“I saw the hype around your book. I remember walking into the hospital and seeing people reading it in waiting rooms. I even saw someone reading it at the grocery store once. Pushing her cart and reading like she couldn’t put it down. I was proud of you.”

I don’t know how I feel about him being proud of me. He barely knows me. It feels condescending, but then it doesn’t. Isaac isn’t really a condescending guy. He’s equal parts humble and slightly awkward about receiving praise. I saw it in the hospital. As soon as anyone started saying good things about him, his eyes would get shifty and he’d look for an escape route. He was all clickety-clack, don’t look back.

Sixty two pieces.

“So how did that get me here?”

“Thirty minutes,” he says.

“What?”

“It’s been thirty minutes. Time for a shot.”

He stands up and opens the cabinet where we keep the liquor. We keep finding hidden bottles. The rum was in a Ziploc bag in the sack of rice.

“Whiskey or rum?”

“Rum,” I say. “I’m sick of whiskey.”

He grabs two clean coffee mugs and pours our shots. I drink mine before he’s even had time to pick up his mug. I smack my lips together as it rolls down my throat. At least it’s not the cheap stuff.

“Well?” I demand. “How did it get me here?”

“I don’t know,” he finally says. He finds the piece he’s looking for and joins it to the ear of his deer. “But I’d be stupid to think this wasn’t a fan. It’s that or there is one other option.”

His voice drops off and I know what he’s thinking.

“I don’t think it was him,” I rush. I pour myself a voluntary shot.

I don’t have much of an alcohol tolerance and I haven’t eaten anything today. My head does a little flipsy doosey as the alcohol runs down my throat. I watch his fingers slide, clip into place, slide, search, slide…

100 pieces.

I pick up my first piece, the one with the bulldog.

“You know,” Isaac says. “My bike never did grow wings.”

The rum has curbed my vinegar and loosened the muscles in my face. I fold my features into a version of shock mock and Isaac cracks up.

“No, I don’t suppose it did. Birds are the only things that grow wings. We’re just left to muck through the mire like a bunch of emotional cave men.”

“Not if you have someone to carry you.”

No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. I read a book about that once. A bunch of drivel about two people who kept coming back to each other. The lead male says that to the girl he keeps letting get away. I had to put the book down. No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. It’s a concept smart authors feed to their readers. It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more. Love is cocaine. And I know this because I had a brief and exciting relationship with blow. It kept my knife-to-skin addiction at bay for a little while. And then I woke up one day and decided I was pathetic—sucking powder up my nose to deal with my mommy issues. I’d rather bleed her out than suck her in. So I went back to cutting. Anyway … love and coke. The consequences for both are expensive: you get a mighty fine high, then you come barreling down, regretting every hour you spent reveling in something so dangerous. But you go back for more. You always go back for more. Unless you’re me. Then you lock yourself away and write stories about it. Boo-hoo. Boo fucking hoo.

“Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.” Even as I say it, I don’t entirely believe it. I’ve seen Isaac do things that most wouldn’t. But that’s just Isaac.

“Maybe lifting someone else’s weight makes yours a little more bearable,” he says.

We catch eyes at the same time. I look away first. What can you say to that? It’s romantic and foolish, and I don’t have the heart to argue. It would have been kinder if someone had broken Isaac Asterholder’s heart at some point. Being stuck on love was a real bitch to cure. Like cancer, I think. Just when you think you’re over it, it comes back.

We take another shot right before I snap my last piece of the puzzle into place. It’s the Waldo piece from underneath my coffee cup. Isaac is only half finished. His mouth gapes when he sees.

“What?” I say. “I gave you a good head start.” I get up to go take my shower.

“You’re a savant,” he calls after me. “That wasn’t fair!”

I don’t hate Isaac. Not even a little bit.

The days melt. They melt into each other until I can’t remember how long we’ve been here, or if it’s supposed to be morning or night. The sun never stops with the damn light. Isaac never stops with the damn pacing. I lie still and wait.

Until it comes. Clarity, bleeding through my denial, warm against my numb brain. Warm—it’s a word I’m becoming less and less familiar with. Isaac has become increasingly worried about the generator lately. He calculates how long we’ve been here. “It’s going to run out of gas. I don’t know why it hasn’t already…”

We turned off the heat and used the wood from the closet downstairs. But now we are running out of wood. Isaac has rationed us down to four logs a day. Any day now the generator could run out of fuel. It is Isaac’s fear that we will no longer be able to get water through the faucet without the power. “We can burn things in the house for heat,” he tells me. “But once we run out of water we’re dead.”

My feet are cold, my hands are cold, my nose is cold; but right now, my brain is cooking something. I press my face into the pillow and will it away. My brain is sometimes like a rogue Rubik’s cube. It twists until it finds a pattern. I can figure out any movie, any book within five minutes of starting it. It’s almost painful. I wait for it to pass, the twisting. My mind can see the picture that Isaac has been looking for. While he, no doubt, paces the kitchen, I get up and sit on the floor in front of my dwindling fire. The wood is hard against my legs, but wood absorbs heat and I’d rather be warm and uncomfortable than cold and cushioned. I’m trying to distract my thoughts, but they are persistent.
Senna! Senna! Senna!
My thoughts sound like Yul Brynner. Not girl voice, not my voice, Yul Brynner’s voice. Specifically in
The Ten Commandments
.

“Shut up, Yul,” I whisper.

But, he doesn’t shut up. And no wonder I didn’t see it before. The truth is more twisted than I am. If I am right, we will be home soon; Isaac with his family, me with mine. I giggle. If I am right, the door will open and we can walk to a place where there is help. All of this will be over. And it’s a good thing, too, we are down to a dozen logs. When my toes are thawed, I stand and head downstairs so that I can tell him.

He’s not in the kitchen. I stand for a moment at the sink where I usually find him looking out the window. The faucet has a drip. I watch it for a minute before turning away. The whiskey we were drinking a few nights ago is still on the counter. I screw off the cap and take a swig straight from the bottle. The lip feels warm. I wonder if Isaac was in here doing the same thing. I flinch, lick my lips and take two more deep sips. I walk boldly up the stairs, swinging my arms as I go. I’ve learned that if you move all of your limbs at once you can chase some of the cold away.

Isaac is in the carousel room. I find him sitting on the floor staring up at one of the horses. This is unusual. It’s typically my spot. I slide down the wall until I am sitting next to him and stretch my legs out in front of me. I am already feeling the effects of the whiskey, which makes this easier. “The carousel day,” I say. “Let’s talk about it.”

Isaac turns his head to look at me. Instead of avoiding his eyes, I catch and hold them. He has such a piercing gaze. Steely.

“I haven’t told anyone that story. I can’t for the life of me figure out how someone would know. That’s why this room seems more like a coincidence,” I say.

He doesn’t reply, so I carry on. “You told someone though, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

He lied to me. He told me he hadn’t told a soul. Maybe I lied, too. I can’t remember.

“Who did you tell, Isaac?”

We are breathing together, both sets of eyebrows drawn.

“My wife.”

I don’t like that word. It makes me think of frilly aprons with apple pattern and blind, submissive love.

I look away. I look instead at the death that adorns the horses’ lacquered manes. One horse is black and one is white. The black has the flared nostrils of a racehorse, its head tossed to the side, eyes wide with fear. One leg is furled up like it was mid-stride when sentenced to eternal fiberglass. It is the more striking of the two horses: the determined, angry one. I am endeared to it. Mostly because there is an arrow piercing its heart.

“Who did she tell?”

“Senna,” he says. “No one. Who would she tell that to?”

I push myself to my feet and walk barefoot to the first horse—the black one. I trace the saddle with my pinkie. It is made of bones.

I am not fond of the truth; it’s why I lie for a living. But I am looking for someone to blame.

“So, then this is a coincidence, just like I initially said.” I no longer believe that, but Isaac is withholding something from me.

“No, Senna. Have you looked at the horses—I mean really looked at them?” I spin around to face him.

“I’m looking at them right now!”
Why am I shouting?

Isaac jumps up and rounds on me. When I won’t look at him he grabs my shoulders and spins me ‘til I’m facing the black horse again. He holds me firmly. “Hush and look at it, Senna.”

I flinch. I look just so he won’t say my name like that again. I see the black horse, but with new eyes: non-stubborn, just plain old Senna eyes. I see it all. I feel it all. The rain, the music, the horse whose pole had a crack in it. I can smell dirt and sardines … something else, too … cardamom and clove. I pull out of it, pull out of the memory so fast my breath stops. Isaac’s hands loosen on my shoulders. I’m disappointed; he was warm. I am free to run, but I curl my toes until I can feel them gripping carpet, and I stay. I came here to solve one of our problems. One of our many problems. These are the same horses. The very same. I trace the crack with my eyes. Yul says something about me repressing my memories. I laugh at him.
Repressing my memories.
That’s a Saphira Elgin thing to say. But he’s right, isn’t he? I’m in a fog and half the time I don’t even realize it.

“The date that it happened,” I say softly. “That’s what will open the door.”

The air prickles, then he runs. I hear him taking the stairs two at a time. I didn’t even have to remind him of the date. It’s cut into the fleshy part of our memories. I wait with my eyes closed; praying it works, praying it doesn’t. He comes back a minute later. Much slower this time.
Plunk, plunk, plunk
up the stairs. I feel him standing in the doorway looking at me. I can smell him too. I used to bury my head in his neck and breath in his smell.
Oh God, I’m so cold.

“
Senna,” he says, “want to come outside?”

Yes. Sure. Why not?