Erika Swyler - The Book of Speculation

“No, but that’s just because I don’t do grants.” She taps a nail against the rim of her glass. “The question is, have you applied for a grant that could eliminate half of what I do?”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“See? And that’s what will get you fired.”

We finish our wine and order more. Soon, we’re soft and smiling and talking about a Fourth of July and Frank nearly burning my father’s hand off with a roman candle. Alice swears it was the other way around, that she remembers her mother wrapping Frank’s hand with gauze. It’s difficult to reconcile the girl who launched herself off swing sets with the woman in front of me. I think she’s always had a boyfriend. Men from Rocky Point or Shoreham, vague people I never met. She might have one now. Our food arrives.

“My dad’s worried about your house,” she says, pushing a piece of asparagus around her plate. “I called him last week and he couldn’t stop talking about it.”

“I’m worried too,” I say.

“I don’t understand why you haven’t sold it.”

“There’s a lot of history in it.” My phone rings and Alice rolls her eyes. I promise to get rid of whoever it is, but when I pick up I know that I won’t.

“It’s me.”

I mouth to Alice that it’s my sister and she waves me off. The benefit to knowing someone your whole life is that you don’t have to explain why certain calls must be answered. I excuse myself and go outside. “Hey. Where are you?”

“Some hole in the wall. Can you talk?” There’s a clinking sound in the background — glass striking glass. I ask again where she is.

“I don’t know. A mall parking lot. Does it matter?”

“Not really. You don’t sound good. What’s going on? I’m in the middle of dinner.”

“I had a really bad reading,” she says.

“What? The cards?”

“Yeah. I feel cagey and I want to talk to you. Can I talk to you?”

I look back in the window at Alice, sipping wine and eating. I catch her eye. She waves. “Yeah. For a little bit.”

“Do you remember when I cut my legs? I don’t know why I thought of it, but I was driving and my legs hurt and I needed to talk to you.”

“Why?” For a moment I think my phone’s gone dead. Three times I say her name before she answers.

“Remember? I slid down those rocks and you carried me. I must have been heavy.”

“Not at all.” I was thirteen and she was eight. She weighed nothing. “Do you need me to get you?” I could take her to a doctor, or a hotel, get her food, anything. “I’m with Alice, she can come too if you want.” Provided she’s still there when I get back.

“We were climbing on those boulders with barnacles all over them. Don’t know why we did that. Were we looking for snails?”

“Yeah. Enola, should I come and pick you up?”

“No, no. I’ll be fine. I had that bathing suit on, the black one with the pink dots. You were on the tall rock, Toaster. Stupid we called it that. I wanted to get to you.”

Inside, Alice chats with a waiter, who laughs and flirts with her. My date — it is a date, isn’t it? — continues without me.

“Yeah, I remember,” I say. At low tide the rocks crawl with life — barnacles, seaweed, sand fleas, and snails. We were on all fours, balancing on ledges, hooking fingers into crevasses.

“My foot slipped on a patch of seaweed.”

I remember the sound of her skin smacking the rocks, and reaching to grab her, but she was small and wet and my footing was bad. She slid all the way down.

“Enola? Can I call you back?”

She doesn’t listen. “The barnacles shredded me and the fucking saltwater stung so bad I thought it was eating me. It was so sharp. Then I got dizzy and everything closed in.”

“I saw you slip and the next thing I knew you were underwater.”

“I sank all the way to the bottom. My feet even got stuck in the sand. I screamed and screamed, and then you were behind me. You got there so quick.”

I grabbed her and felt the open skin on her legs. No, there had been no skin; bits and pieces of Enola hung from the rocks. I flipped her onto her belly and cradled her.

Alice looks out the window. I mouth One minute. She shrugs and drinks her wine.

“You carried me home,” Enola says.

She didn’t see the bloody trail we left in the sand. When I reached the house it felt empty though it wasn’t. Dad was at the kitchen table with a newspaper, drinking from a cup of what had once been coffee. He didn’t look up. I carried Enola to her room and dropped her, stomach down, on the bed, then rummaged through the medicine chest. Half of it was filled with Mom’s prescriptions. Six years expired and Dad still kept them.

Barnacle cuts are a wonder of nature — so many different kinds of bacteria and no way to avoid infection.

“You put iodine on me, you fuck.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

I threw myself over her middle, holding her in place while she screamed. We stayed there for what felt like hours, me sprawled over Enola’s back, Enola on the bed, Mom’s medicine all over the bathroom floor, Dad in the kitchen nursing empty coffee cups.

“You were good to me, Simon,” she says.

I did what I could. She sounds calmer than she did when she first called. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to hear your voice. Sometimes you make me feel better.”

“Okay.” Bess Visser. I suddenly remember where I’ve seen that name. It was on a slip of yellow paper with two other names Mom had written down. I found it last year when I moved her dresser to patch a leak. The paper was hidden in the back of a drawer. Mom knew that name.

“Wait, did you say you were with Alice McAvoy?”

“Yes.”

“Alice. Nice. I should go. See you in a few weeks.”

“Enola?”

“Thanks.” There’s a click, and she’s gone.

Back at the table, Alice has finished eating and paid the check. I must look bad because she immediately asks how I am. I tell her that Enola just needed to talk. She raises her eyebrows but says nothing. I make all the proper apologies but everything feels off. My feet feel off. When I walk Alice to the car, I notice she’s listing. She mutters something about her heels and leans into my side, a comfortable weight.

“It isn’t fair,” she says after we’re buckled in and driving back toward Woodland Heights. “You always looked after her. I know you did. Then she leaves and expects you to just drop everything when she calls.” She seems prepped and ready to go on but stops herself with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m drunk.”

I smile. “No, you’re not. You’re right, but it’s just how things are.”

“Well, it’s shitty.”

“Sometimes.”

We linger in the doorway to her apartment. I apologize again and promise to pay her back for dinner. She says not to worry about it. Her skin blanches where her hand touches the door frame.

“I need coffee,” she says. “Would you like coffee?” And then, because she’s complained about my family for me, bought me dinner, worn a dress, because we may not have jobs in a few weeks, because of the way her eyes close when she says coffee, and because she’s Alice and in that lives the difference, I take the risk and lean in. Her lips are soft, inviting. At this too, she’s better than me, perfect.

Her bedroom is a mix of practical and whimsical. An imposing hardwood desk lines a wall. Clean, square shelves are filled with perfectly organized books and pictures. Near her window hangs a small mobile made of periwinkles, broken moon snails, and tiny horseshoe crab shells — the sort of thing only a beach girl could love. It suits her. The bed is another matter. A mountain of pillows, different fabrics, sizes, different shades of pink. I start to laugh, but then her hands are on my shoulders, pushing me back, and falling on it is wonderful.