The Very Best of F & SF v1 (65 page)

So, sadly, like
many a daughter, I learned that my mother had been right after all, and when I
returned to her, dripping with saltwater and seaweed, tiny fish corpses
dropping from my hair, she embraced me. Seeing my state, weeping, she kissed me
on the lips, our mouths open. I drank from her, sweet breath, until I was
filled and she collapsed to the floor, my mother in her black dress, like a
crushed funeral flower.

I had no time
for mourning. The lamp had been out for hours. Ships had crashed and men had
died. Outside the sun sparkled on the sea. People would be coming soon to find
out what had happened.

I took our small
boat and rowed away from there. Many hours later, I docked in a seaside town
and hitchhiked to another, until eventually I was as far from my home as I
could be and still be near my ocean.

I had a
difficult time of it for a while. People are generally suspicious of someone
with no past and little future. I lived on the street and had to beg for jobs
cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors, only through time and reputation working
up to my current situation, finally getting my own little apartment, small and
dark, so different from when I was the lighthouse keeper’s daughter and the
ocean was my yard.

One day, after
having passed it for months without a thought, I went into the art supply
store, and bought a canvas, paint, and two paintbrushes. I paid for it with my
tip money, counting it out for the clerk whose expression suggested I was
placing turds in her palm instead of pennies. I went home and hammered a nail
into the wall, hung the canvas on it, and began to paint. Like many a creative
person I seem to have found some solace for the unfortunate happenings of my
young life (and death) in art.

I live simply
and virginally, never taking breath through a kiss. This is the vow I made, and
I have kept it. Yes, some days I am weakened, and tempted to restore my vigor
with such an easy solution, but instead I hold the empty cups to my face, I
breathe in, I breathe everything, the breath of old men, breath of young, sweet
breath, sour breath, breath of lipstick, breath of smoke. It is not, really, a
way to live, but this is not, really, a life.

For several
seconds after Alex finished reading the remarkable account, his gaze remained
transfixed on the page. Finally, he looked up, blinked in the dim coffee shop
light, and closed the black binder.

Several baristas
stood behind the counter busily jostling around each other with porcelain cups,
teapots, bags of beans. One of them, a short girl with red and green hair that
spiked around her like some otherworld halo, stood by the sink, stacking dirty
plates and cups. When she saw him watching, she smiled. It wasn’t a true smile,
not that it was mocking, but rather, the girl with the Christmas hair smiled
like someone who had either forgotten happiness entirely, or never known it at
all. In response, Alex nodded at her, and to his surprise, she came over,
carrying a dirty rag and a spray bottle.

“Did you read
all of it?” she said as she squirted the table beside him and began to wipe it
with the dingy towel.

Alex winced at
the unpleasant odor of the cleaning fluid, nodded, and then, seeing that the
girl wasn’t really paying any attention, said, “Yes.” He glanced at the wall
where the paintings were hung.

“So what’d you
think?”

The girl stood
there, grinning that sad grin, right next to him now with her noxious bottle
and dirty rag, one hip jutted out in a way he found oddly sexual. He opened his
mouth to speak, gestured toward the paintings, and then at the book before him.
“I, I have to meet her,” he said, tapping the book, “this is remarkable.”

“But what do you
think about the paintings?”

Once more he
glanced at the wall where they hung. He shook his head, “No,” he said, “it’s
this,” tapping the book again.

She smiled, a
true smile, cocked her head, and put out her hand, “Agatha,” she said.

Alex felt like
his head was spinning. He shook the girl’s hand. It was unexpectedly tiny, like
that of a child’s, and he gripped it too tightly at first. Glancing at the
counter, she pulled out a chair and sat down in front of him.

“I can only talk
for a little while. Marnie is the manager today and she’s on the rag or
something all the time, but she’s downstairs right now, checking in an order.”

“You,” he
brushed the binder with the tip of his fingers, as if caressing something holy,
“you wrote this?”

She nodded,
bowed her head slightly, shrugged, and suddenly earnest, leaned across the
table, elbowing his empty cup as she did. “Nobody bothers to read it. I’ve seen
a few people pick it up but you’re the first one to read the whole thing.”

Alex leaned
back, frowning.

She rolled her
eyes, which, he noticed, were a lovely shade of lavender, lined darkly in
black.

“See, I was
trying to do something different. This is the whole point,” she jabbed at the
book, and he felt immediately protective of it, “I was trying to put a story in
a place where people don’t usually expect one. Don’t you think we’ve gotten
awful complacent in our society about story? Like it all the time has to go a
certain way and even be only in certain places. That’s what this is all about.
The paintings are a foil. But you get that, don’t you? Do you know,” she leaned
so close to him, he could smell her breath, which he thought was strangely
sweet, “someone actually offered to buy the fly painting?” Her mouth dropped
open, she shook her head and rolled those lovely lavender eyes. “I mean, what
the fuck? Doesn’t he know it sucks?”

Alex wasn’t sure
what to do. She seemed to be leaning near to his cup. Leaning over it, Alex
realized. He opened his mouth, not having any idea what to say.

Just then
another barista, the one who wore scarves all the time and had an imperious air
about her, as though she didn’t really belong there but was doing research or
something, walked past. Agatha glanced at her. “I gotta go.” She stood up. “You
finished with this?” she asked, touching his cup.

Though he hadn’t
yet had his free refill, Alex nodded.

“It was nice
talking to you,” she said. “Just goes to show, doesn’t it?”

Alex had no idea
what she was talking about. He nodded half-heartedly, hoping comprehension
would follow, but when it didn’t, he raised his eyebrows at her instead.

She laughed. “I
mean you don’t look anything like the kind of person who would understand my
stuff.”

“Well, you don’t
look much like Agatha,” he said.

“But I am Agatha,”
she murmured as she turned away from him, picking up an empty cup and saucer
from a nearby table.

Alex watched her
walk to the tiny sink at the end of the counter. She set the cups and saucers
down. She rinsed the saucers and placed them in the gray bucket they used for
carrying dirty dishes to the back. She reached for a cup, and then looked at
him.

He quickly
looked down at the black binder, picked it up, pushed his chair in, and headed
toward the front of the shop. He stopped to look at the paintings. They were
fine, boring, but fine little paintings that had no connection to what he’d
read. He didn’t linger over them for long. He was almost to the door when she
was beside him, saying, “I’ll take that.” He couldn’t even fake innocence. He
shrugged and handed her the binder.

“I’m flattered,
really,” she said. But she didn’t try to continue the conversation. She set the
book down on the table beneath the painting of the avocado. He watched her pick
up an empty cup and bring it toward her face, breathing in the lingered breath
that remained. She looked up suddenly, caught him watching, frowned, and turned
away.

Alex understood.
She wasn’t what he’d been expecting either. But when love arrives it doesn’t
always appear as expected. He couldn’t just ignore it. He couldn’t pretend it
hadn’t happened. He walked out of the coffee shop into the afternoon sunshine.

Of course, there
were problems, her not being alive for one. But Alex was not a man of
prejudice.

He was patient
besides. He stood in the art supply store for hours, pretending particular
interest in the anatomical hinged figurines of sexless men and women in the
front window, before she walked past, her hair glowing like a forest fire.

“Agatha,” he
called.

She turned,
frowned, and continued walking. He had to take little running steps to catch
up. “Hi,” he said. He saw that she was biting her lower lip. “You just getting
off work?”

She stopped
walking right in front of the bank, which was closed by then, and squinted up
at him.

“Alex,” he said.
“I was talking to you today at the coffee shop.”

“I know who you
are.”

Her tone was
angry. He couldn’t understand it. Had he insulted her somehow?

“I don’t have
Alzheimer’s. I remember you.”

He nodded. This
was harder than he had expected.

“What do you
want?” she said.

Her tone was
really downright hostile. He shrugged. “I just thought we could, you know, talk.”

She shook her
head. “Listen, I’m happy that you liked my story.”

“I did,” he
said, nodding, “it was great.”

“But what would
we talk about? You and me?”

Alex shifted
beneath her lavender gaze. He licked his lips. She wasn’t even looking at him,
but glancing around him and across the street. “I don’t care if it does mean I’ll
die sooner,” he said. “I want to give you a kiss.”

Her mouth
dropped open.

“Is something
wrong?”

She turned and
ran. She wore one red sneaker and one green. They matched her hair.

As Alex walked
back to his car, parked in front of the coffee shop, he tried to talk himself
into not feeling so bad about the way things went. He hadn’t always been like
this. He used to be able to talk to people. Even women. Okay, he had never been
suave, he knew that, but he’d been a regular guy. Certainly no one had ever run
away from him before. But after Tessie died, people changed. Of course, this
made sense, initially. He was in mourning, even if he didn’t cry (something the
doctor told him not to worry about because one day, probably when he least
expected it, the tears would fall). He was obviously in pain. People were very
nice. They talked to him in hushed tones. Touched him, gently. Even men tapped
him with their fingertips. All this gentle touching had been augmented by
vigorous hugs. People either touched him as if he would break, or hugged him as
if he had already broken and only the vigor of the embrace kept him intact.

For the longest
time there had been all this activity around him. People called, sent chatty
e-mails, even handwritten letters, cards with flowers on them and prayers.
People brought over casseroles, and bread, Jell-O with fruit in it. (Nobody
brought chocolate chip cookies, which he might have actually eaten. )

To Alex’s
surprise, once Tessie had died, it felt as though a great weight had been
lifted from him, but instead of appreciating the feeling, the freedom of being
lightened of the burden of his wife’s dying body, he felt in danger of floating
away or disappearing. Could it be possible, he wondered, that Tessie’s body,
even when she was mostly bones and barely breath, was all that kept him real?
Was it possible that he would have to live like this, held to life by some
strange force but never a part of it again? These questions led Alex to the
brief period where he’d experimented with becoming a Hare Krishna, shaved his
head, dressed in orange robes, and took up dancing in the park. Alex wasn’t
sure but he thought that was when people started treating him as if he were
strange, and even after he grew his hair out and started wearing regular
clothes again, people continued to treat him strangely.

And, Alex had to
admit, as he inserted his key into the lock of his car, he’d forgotten how to
behave. How to be normal, he guessed.

You just don’t
go read something somebody wrote and decide you love her, he scolded himself as
he eased into traffic. You don’t just go falling in love with breath-stealing
ghosts. People don’t do that.

Alex did not go
to the coffee shop the next day, or the day after that, but it was the only
coffee shop in town, and had the best coffee in the state. They roasted the
beans right there. Freshness like that can’t be faked.

It was awkward
for him to see her behind the counter, over by the dirty cups, of course. But
when she looked up at him, he attempted a kind smile, then looked away.

He wasn’t there
to bother her. He ordered French Roast in a cup to go, even though he hated to
drink out of paper, paid for it, dropped the change into the tip jar, and left
without any further interaction with her.

He walked to the
park, where he sat on a bench and watched a woman with two small boys feed
white bread to the ducks. This was illegal because the ducks would eat all the
bread offered to them, they had no sense of appetite, or being full, and they
would eat until their stomachs exploded. Or something like that. Alex couldn’t
exactly remember. He was pretty sure it killed them. But Alex couldn’t decide
what to do. Should he go tell that lady and those two little boys that they
were killing the ducks? How would that make them feel, especially as they were
now triumphantly shaking out the empty bag, the ducks crowded around them, one
of the boys squealing with delight? Maybe he should just tell her, quietly. But
she looked so happy. Maybe she’d been having a hard time of it. He saw those
mothers on
Oprah
, saying what a hard job it was, and maybe she’d had that kind of
morning, even screaming at the kids, and then she got this idea, to take them
to the park and feed the ducks and now she felt good about what she’d done and
maybe she was thinking that she wasn’t such a bad mom after all, and if Alex
told her she was killing the ducks, would it stop the ducks from dying or just
stop her from feeling happiness? Alex sighed. He couldn’t decide what to do.
The ducks were happy, the lady was happy, and one of the boys was happy. The
other one looked sort of terrified. She picked him up and they walked away
together, she, carrying the boy who waved the empty bag like a balloon, the
other one skipping alter them, a few ducks hobbling behind.