Life between seconds, p.13
Life Between Seconds, page 13
He’ll always be here to protect you.
Peter held onto the bear and pressed his hand against his chest, Release, he thought, a forever he promised himself, and squeezed it close to him. The itchy fleece pajamas scratched his neck, his dad kissed his forehead, and he fell asleep on his dad’s chest. He woke later with Claus in his arms: on the side of the half-paved road where the wind blew hard with the Wolf nearby. The Wolf must have been nearby because of the hard wind, the first wind Peter could remember, or thought he remembered after connecting the stories from storybooks and his cousin, about that night when his dad disappeared. Peter jammed together the stories whether the information fit or not and wound up with holes in the puzzle large enough to drive a broken and battered van through, but it was the story he believed because it was the story he grew up with. The story he created that no one could take away.
He watched the van get hit and fold in half, dad behind the wheel, behind the cracked windshield with a lost smile. Tires folded sideways. Car parts in the air, splintered and scattered around the road. The thick crunch of metal. The red traffic light blinked on and off, or the red ambulance lights blinked on and off, or the street lights blinked on and off in the red pool that crawled through the broken glass, and Peter waited for the world to go black and return to color with the van put back together, with his father put back together. Where his father still held him in his arms. The world remade, reshaped, redrawn. But the wind faded—forever faded. His father was gone, and the car was crushed. The blue sky went dark because all the blue was sucked into the tiny pill that Peter’s mom swallowed, the entire sky swallowed and gone, and the hot yelp of the dog stayed with Peter longer than the memory of his father’s smile.
Chapter 21
Sam held Claus close to her chest. She had tried to sleep but couldn't. The more she tried, the tighter she held Claus. The tighter she held Claus, the more she couldn't sleep. His fur itched her nose. He smelled too much like fish. He twitched in his sleep. He wasn't the reason she couldn't rest, but it didn't stop her from blaming him.
They lay in the tub. Sam's knees pressed to her chest. Claus nuzzled into her arms. Even bears liked to cuddle. The sun hovered over the horizon. Daylight and darker daylight. It wasn’t really dark when she closed her eyes. The sun shined through.
"Where are we going?" Sam said.
Claus pointed to the sail. "At this rate, nowhere."
Sam sighed and tried again to sleep. She wanted out of the tub. Surrounded by water, she would have nowhere to go but down. Maybe sinking would bring more…anything. She could use Claus as a paddle or wet his pajamas and use those as a paddle. She could try to huff and puff and blow the sail out. Or she could continue to do nothing. Her wrists itched. The only feeling she remembered—itchy wrists.
Claus jumped from Sam's arms and ran to the other end of the tub. He sniffed the air.
"Wind," he said. "We haven't had wind in a long time."
"That's good," Sam said. "Isn't it?"
"Not here," Claus said. He pointed to the distance. A stampede of clouds rushed in. The wind blew harshly. The boat rocked back and forth. The sail puffed as the wind blew harder and the clouds came faster, trampling over the sea. They expanded over the boat. The waves pushed the porcelain back and forth—faster, harder, back and forth. Water splashed over the lip.
Claus threw his head over the side of the boat. Sam had never seen a sick bear. She threw her head over the other side. Acidic and salty. A wave hit her in the face. She fell back into the tub. Water rushed in. Claus slid into Sam. She held him. The sail expanded. The boat flew through the waves. The sail expanded. The boat rocked. What could she do? Claus took care of all things nautical. She wanted to vomit again. She tasted acid in her throat. Tried to swallow it down. She hiccupped. Some escaped through her nose. She wanted to scream but thought that if she opened her mouth, she would swallow the sea. She preferred the vomit.
Sam and Claus huddled in the tub. They tried to hide from the storm. The clouds gushed. Envelopes plummeted from the sky. They attacked the boat like rain. They surrounded the boat and soaked up the crashing waves. The wind pummeled the sail. It carried the tub into the air. The sail exploded. Deflated. The boat stopped. It continued to rock. Letters poured in. Sam pulled the drain. It let out water. It sucked out the letters. A slurp filled the tub. Thunder slammed the air. Lightning flashed the sky. The clouds fattened. Expanded. Poured. Until the clouds thinned. The letters eased. And the sun lifted from the horizon. The porcelain had cracked, and the sail had torn. Sam and Claus were covered in letters.
"Is this where Santa's mail comes?" Sam asked.
Claus twitched his nose and spat. More letters drained from the tub. Sam grabbed one. It had no address. No stamp. She opened it. There was nothing inside.
"I do not think you will find anything," Claus said.
"What thing?" Sam said.
"Whatever it is, you think you'll find it in an envelope," Claus said.
Sam grabbed another envelope and tried again.
“What do you know? Stupid bear." She grabbed another envelope. She wasn't sure what she would find, but she hoped for something. Something that would tell her what she was doing, why she was here. She wanted an answer.
"I want to fucking know!"
She stood and gripped the lip of the tub and pulled back and forth, strained her arms, her face almost smashed into the lip. She expected her scream to echo in the emptiness. It didn't. She screamed again. She picked up a pile of letters and threw them overboard. She thrashed her arms. She felt the itch on her wrists. She grabbed another letter, tore it. Threw the empty shreds over the side. Into the air. Another letter torn. More empty shreds airborne. Again. And again. She fell into the tub. "I just want to know." She lay back down and brought her knees to her chest. Claus snuggled into her arms.
"You will find what you want to know.”
Sam looked into the air, partly covered in shredded paper, the white pieces glued together and slathered across the sky, a collage of torn, empty pages that never fell in the water but instead pieced together a trolley car that stared down at Sam and Claus with a large window smile and happy glass eyes that winked. The trolley turned to climb a hill—no—a mountain made of more shredded paper that almost touched the sun, but the trolley only reached halfway to heaven before the paper disintegrated and fell into the sea.
“A push in the right direction?” Claus said.
“In any direction,” Sam said.
She wrapped her arms around Claus and breathed him in. His fur didn't smell like fish. He smelled like candle wax.
The letters were torn up, drained out, and watered down; the sun was high in the air again, but Sam closed her eyes, and for the first time she could remember, she saw darkness. She held Claus tighter. He nuzzled into her neck. And she welcomed the blanket of sleep.
Chapter 22
The explosion pounded Peter’s door, and smoke seeped into his bedroom through the tiny crack where light shone. Another explosion, another scream, more shattered glass. He held Claus tight and pulled the blanket to his chin. This was a constant debate with Claus, whether to pull the sheets over their heads and hide or use the sheets as a shield to protect themselves from whatever stood beyond the door where his mom and the TV were supposed to be.
To the guns!
We’re taking on too much water
…that’s an order!
Claus dropped beneath the sheets. Peter’s room lit up, the walls bright white, the ceiling blown away. All sucked into darkness. The pirate ship's nightlight lost its luster, now small and insignificant. Another blast, another bright light. The door pushed and edged and bulged and exploded forward. Peter swore splinters flew through the room but wasn’t sure. He kept his eyes shut tight. The smell of smoke grew stronger; the footsteps came closer. Claus stayed beneath the sheets. The bed deflated. A hand ran through Peter’s hair. He smelled tart alcohol—heard another blast, felt the bed bounce, and a hand run down his cheek. He didn’t want his mom to know he was awake. Not when he could smell the drink on her.
We’re going down!
***
Peter lay on the roof in a garden in San Francisco with plants in pots laid out in a heart shape, empty on the inside. He wanted to sink his teeth into the tomatoes, or the mint beside it, or the carrots behind them, or the radishes across from them, the radishes that he assumed were there, but he could only see their stems and figured they were radishes based upon what he had seen in cartoons in a life he almost remembered. But they could have been pumpkins. Bottle in hand and stars gone, given way to gray skies and the depression of sunlight. The door opened with an unmistakable squeak. He didn’t turn; he didn’t shuffle. He laid the bottle on the floor and stared into the gray as if it would absorb him. If he stared hard enough, he could rise above the bottle and the roof into something better than the truth he felt he could never understand, the truth of Sam’s choice to be lost at sea, to have followed his father to nowhere fast, leaving Peter behind. So he tried to be anywhere other than standing over his cousin while she slept to make sure she would wake up again because he didn’t want to be taken away again, or worse, sucked back into the bathroom.
But all he did was stare, and squint, and feel the light force its way into his pupils and his eyes throbbed without end. He looked to the door and saw her, the woman he would come to know as Sofia, with her tweed, floppy-brimmed hat, her gloves covered in soil, her spray bottle, the sunglasses that covered half her face and kept the absent sun from her eyes, eyes that could have been his mother’s eyes, in clothes that could have been his mother’s clothes, long ago on a sunny Sunday in the garden where she wasted her days away. But Sam never had a garden. Sam wasted a lifetime of days, wasted more days than just her own.
Sofia closed the door, sprayed the tomatoes, scraped the leaves; the consideration she had for the tomatoes, the care, as she rubbed the water deep into their skin until they absorbed every drop.
The garden was hers. On the roof, with her squalid gloves and seasoned face. A rooftop oasis, he thought. The garden swallowed her whole, he thought, and she fed her life to the fruit—or vegetable—that was the tomato, the life she once held dear, driven from the youth that remained somewhere around her, that she fed to the ravished fruit—or vegetable—from the water bottle.
***
Peter had never heard a man drown, the scream for help lost in the gurgle, the muted gasp of swallowing water. But he heard it now from somewhere beyond his door, surrounded by explosions and curses, gunfire and metal—from somewhere beyond his mom where she sat on his bed and stroked his hair while the loudness pounded the walls and drowned his ears as he drowned in the fog of alcohol that poured from her skin.
“You awake, darling?” she said. Her fingers were cold and dry.
He stayed still and hoped she wouldn’t try to wake him, and hoped more that his body wouldn’t betray him with an itch or a blink. The chill of her fingers left his face. Her hand hit the sheets with a muffled brush. She reached beneath the covers and leaned so close he held his breath and hoped she wouldn’t notice his chest stall, wouldn’t notice when he started to breathe again so he wouldn’t choke on the smell of her. He felt Claus slide from his side, and Sam’s body slip away from him. Sometimes she took Claus and held him close to her nose, breathed him in over and over until she fell asleep with a smile. Peter sometimes did the same; no matter how little he remembered of his father, he remembered that smell; through the dirt and the rain and the refusal to wash Claus, Peter still smelled his father in the fur, and until his dad came back for their planned forever Peter refused to wash Claus, and chose instead to breathe him in as long as he could, like his mom did. Peter listened for her huff; instead, he felt the fluff of Claus next to his cheek. The bed dipped around him, creaked, and he knew she was there, her arm wrapped over him. She buried her nose in his hair and sniffed. He imagined she smiled.
…fuckin’ say another word and fire.
We can’t take much more, Captain!
We’re losing her…
***
Sofia’s cheeks were flush, absent of moisture, of sweat. He imagined the woman she may have once been or the woman she reminded him of, the woman he would never know, now, in her garden hat and gloves. But she parted her lips, gave herself to the fruit—or vegetable—and sang a song he thought he might have heard once upon a time, in a bathtub while water poured over his hair and his head dipped back to keep the soap out of his eyes while his mom sang the love song that his dad had taught her, a song she may have said would help Peter grow, as Sofia sang to help the vegetable—or fruit—grow, as he felt he wanted to grow, on the rooftop, under the gray that wrapped around the city, nurtured with water instead of fearing it.
Stay here,
In my arms
stay here
for me
***
Sam’s heavy breath pushed against Peter’s ear, warmed him, comforted him. He breathed from his mouth. Claus did too.
“I don’t believe you,” Peter said.
Claus gave a dead stare. His tattoo pulsed like a dare.
“The Wolf is gone.” A bright light began to reappear, slow, controlled. It didn’t come through the door. It came through the window. Another sunrise, another morning to see if the light of the world would bring his father back or promise that the Wolf had gone. The sunrise a bomb, defying gravity until its light exploded in the sky and the fog lifted from the ground to show another empty morning.
***
And don't tell me that you love me,
Don't tell me that you adore me
Just tell me that you'll stay
One life, alongside me
When Peter’s bottle fell and knocked around the roof, he breathed more from relief than anxiety, to the sound of Sofia’s voice and the reminiscent scent of soil and earth. The mountains he had climbed, once or twice, the mountains he wanted to climb, the air he wanted to breathe, for the first time or again. Under a man-made canopy, the sound of the sprayed water settled on the plants, the plants sprouted up and around like a jungle, where Peter felt he could hide in the lush vines of the plants and watch Sofia garden and sing without her ever noticing.
Take me over there,
Take me in your longing to another place
Where I no longer have to promise
Where I no longer have to lie
Where I only exist for you
***
The wind rattled the window. The fog was ready to swarm, wrap, tumble to the horizon; it had drifted in and blown out like a useless candle. Claus looked at Peter; he could feel him. It was the howl of the wind that hung heavy over the silence, replaced the explosions from the TV, shook the walls like laughter. But Peter wasn’t laughing, and neither was Claus. Peter felt him shiver behind the blanket shield. Sam snored over the wind and the walls.
“That’s him now,” Peter told Claus. “Right?”
The ground cleared of fog, of leaves, of pebbles, almost ready to peel back the grass, pull it over the tree trunks, and tuck them into the earth with the worms and sludge.
***
And don't ask me if I love you
And don't worry about what I think
I’m completely yours in my own way
The sun melted deeper into the fog, the ever-fog that ensnared the city. Always on Peter’s clothes, in his hair, on his skin where he could taste it like the saltwater that never left his tongue. Part of him felt that if he could take a bite of that ripe fruit —or vegetable—that maybe, this time, the saltwater would dissipate or he would evaporate into the clouds of the city; as part of the fog, he could move around, float away, burn off and disappear to a place where the disappeared go. Instead, he’d been stuck in the fog for so long that often times he wondered if it made him. Each breath would release more fog to the point that he could see his breath leave his body and hang in front of him. After a while, he could see himself in his breath before it disappeared into the atmosphere, a piece of him with it, a small part of him climbing into the sky, waving goodbye to himself as his breath left and he disappeared with it, his skin paler, his cheeks redder, his shoes more broken and his toes loose. Instead, he was surrounded by it, haunted by it, living with it.
But in exchange I want to be your dream,
I don't change because of your kisses,
I want to give you all that I feel and more
***
Peter and Claus watched the sun try to rise, but it was caught on the horizon. The earth tucked into itself like a child, wrapped and warped inside, with mud slung into the air, until it stuck to the sky, and they could almost smell the brown through the window while the trees were sucked deep into the ground and left under the grass until their roots once more poked through the soil. The windows went still, and the rattle silenced.
Sam breathed deeper—deeper. Claus rested his head on his shield. Peter nudged him; the silence settled but unsettling. Claus raised his head and picked up his shield. Peter had heard it too, knew it too, felt the cold run from his toes to his fingers—the howl that was supposed to be gone and disappeared forever, that blew through lives like straw houses.
“To the guns,” Peter said.
Claus nodded. They both knew. Peter’s tongue was thick in his mouth. He watched the brown bleed from the sky to the earth, and the trees sprouted from the grass and were jerked by the wind, picked up and pulled out like weeds thrown into and over the horizon.
***
The water bottle empty, the garden flushed, Sofia looked about to leave, but Peter wasn’t ready for the soft sound of her voice to go, the longing he heard in the song she sang that filled the sky with more than the cold.
“You have a lovely garden,” he said.
