Erika Swyler - The Book of Speculation

I ask Enola if she’ll talk to Frank. “Alice shouldn’t be alone with him and Leah won’t kill him as long as you’re there.” The look she gives me is dark.

“Thought you’d be happy to see him dead.”

“Alice wouldn’t be. She’s mad now, but she won’t be forever.”

Enola glances at the tattooed man beside her, then back at me. “What the hell am I supposed to say to him?”

Doyle rubs her hair, possessive, comforting. She chews her lower lip.

“Please,” I say. “For me.”

“Fine.”

When Doyle starts to go with her, I ask him to hang around. He shrugs. We both watch her head toward Frank. With each step I whisper a refrain: Be good. Be good. Please be good.

“You put a lot on her, you know,” Doyle says beside me.

“Maybe.” I start for the bluff, a slow limp. He follows. Again the wary look. “They’ll be fine. She’ll be all right.”

We walk to where the sand sharply dips, where Dad’s nightstand emptied its contents: pill bottles, magazines, keys to locks that don’t exist anymore. Off to the west a quiet horn signals the ferry’s slow trek. I ask, “Where did you say your family’s from?”

“Mom is out in Ohio.”

Ohio is good. It sounds like somewhere I would never go. It sounds dry, like there might be dry places.

“Why did you come here? What did she tell you?”

He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his cargo pants. They bulge out. He breathes in, then lets out a prolonged hiss. “She told me you’re sick; she thinks you’re going to do something, something maybe like your mom did. I thought she shouldn’t be alone. Man, I don’t know. I heard about the mermaids and I saw you hold your breath, but I don’t know.”

“She lied.”

He turns quiet. Thoughtful maybe. “Enola doesn’t lie to me.”

“Yes, she does. I taught Enola how to hold her breath. She’s better than I am, or she was. Tell me, what’s worse than her brother being sick? Worse to you. Something she would lie about.”

His answer is pure reflex. “If she was sick.”

I say nothing.

He grunts and drops his head down. He kicks a pebble with his bare foot and it caroms off a shattered mirror, vanishing into the crabs. The tentacle tattoo extends down, twisting around his ankles, stretching out to his toes. “Damn.”

“You know some about my family. I’ll tell you about some other things, about the cards, specifically the cards.”

The sun is high, a bright bullet above the water. I tell him about the menagerie, about a Russian woman and a deck of orange cards, and how when you touch them you leave a piece of yourself behind, how these pieces work like a curse and the thoughts they contain seep into you like venom, how sometimes you hold on to things because you’re searching for someone in them, someone you want desperately to love you. How the very best intentions kill us.

We watch as Enola and Alice take Frank back to his house. The tide moves out, thick with horseshoe crabs. After a long time he speaks.

“Do you want me to get the cards from her?”

“I should take them so you don’t have to. I think we’ll be fine once they’re gone.”

“I can pick her pocket,” he says, quietly. “I used to, you know.” Of course he did. “She’s got this box for them. You want that, too?”

“Sure.” I look at him, this boy. He twitches his fingers to imaginary music. “Can I ask you something?”

A shrug.

“Why the octopi?”

He blushes, a dark stain under the ink. “My pop was in the navy. It’s an old sailor thing. Wards off evil.”

“Can I ask you something else?”

“The electricity?”

I nod.

His mouth quirks up. “A doctor told me there’s too much salt in me, that it makes me super conductive. I don’t think he really knew what it was. Maybe I just touched a light switch and it lit me up instead of the lamp. Is it really important to know why?”

“You love my sister.”

“I’m going to steal from her for you.”

Across the water the ferry has passed the Middle Ground Light. The tide is past peak, the tops of boulders just breaking water. Doyle looks at me, squint-eyed, head tilted. He turns and jogs the distance to Frank’s house and I watch his loose-limbed gait, the slow questing of tentacles. At the door he calls her name, then vanishes inside.

I wait, watching the remnants of the house. It’s alive with crumbling plaster, blowing papers. It was a house before there was an us . After we die there will be nothing to say that we ever were, no house left to speak of us, we’ll have all vanished into the water. But that will be later, much later. Not today.

Just now Doyle’s hand must be reaching into a pocket, maybe as he brushes her back, maybe as he leans over her. When he lifts the cards it will be almost like the tentacles are sucking on them. I feel hope. With the cards gone, it will stop.

Not more than a quarter hour and he returns, bounding through the grass, box in hand. I ask if she noticed. He shakes his head no.

“She’ll be pissed,” he says. But she’ll be alive to be angry.

“I’m sorry you had to touch them.” He should go back to Enola before he’s missed. Doyle cracks his neck. He wears guilt like another tattoo. Moments later he disappears back into the house across the street.

The box is smaller than I’d thought; I can hold it with one hand, rounded edges pressing into my palm. Dark red wood shows through layers of damaged paint. The top is covered with dulled illustrations — a man with a moustache, a faded bird with a tail made of flames. Oh, I remember you. I lift the lid and shock zips up my fingers. Maybe this is what it feels like when Doyle touches a light. Inside, the paper is orange faded to yellow, soft and ragged from my family’s touch. I snap the lid closed.

* * *

My right foot hits the beach and a horseshoe crab walks over it. There is hardly a place to stand for the winding and writhing of the crabs.

Simon.

The crabs have dragged the buoys out, pulled them far below the water so that not even the anchor buoys show; I’d need to walk for hours to find them. I take the box from under my arm. I’ll need sand, rocks, anything for weight. Quartz pebbles and ground-down bricks mark the high-tide line. As if knowing my intent, the crabs clear a path. I take as many rocks as I think will fit, but the box is so small that pebbles may not be enough. I’ll need to bury it, to make sure that when I leave they won’t come back. To give the Sound time to do its work.

The water is frigid, like April rather than July, and the first step strikes out cold. But even in the water the box feels hot like flame. Clawed feet swarm, and crab shells slow my walk to a shuffle. They circle, churning sand, tails switching and whipping my heels. As my bad foot moves forward they begin pushing, urging me along. Sharp feet pinch on my pant leg and the crabs begin to climb, clinging like a child to its parent, hanging on as if at any moment I might run. I dust off one and another grabs on.

As when taking out the anchors, I have to move slowly. With each step crabs grip higher, weighing me down. As the water reaches my chest, they’ve managed to dig into my shirt. I squeeze the box tight to my side. Now. Air out. A quick breath out that sucks in the stomach. Diaphragm up, like a tight drum. Navel to spine. One. Two. Three. Then in, quick breath, spread each rib. The trick is to breathe wide and not let go. The trick is to breathe like you’re thirsty. A crab loses its grip, falls to the sandy bottom. I am under.

Simon.

My mother’s voice lives in the waves as it always has, as though she never left. Each step is heavy, aching. The light from above fades, lost in the seaweed and the growing horde of crabs. If I look up I can see faint rays spiraling through the salt. I have to get farther out. I can’t chance they’ll wash up. A sharp tail pricks under my arm, tapping at the box. I pass a bicycle half buried in sand and rock, encased in barnacles and covered with crabs, now part of the Sound. My stomach flutters. A hiccup of air escapes. I walk.