Megan Hart - Tempted

I saw the blue-white flash of it from far away and heard the hint of a rumble. My stomach lurched. We were halfway between the Point and home.

I could swim. If the boat sank, I could swim. I knew I could. But people drowned all the time in sudden squalls because they weren’t prepared, because they’d taken chances, because they’d been stupid. Even people who could swim. Even those who’d won medals for it. And still, I couldn’t make my fingers let go of the boat’s sides long enough to grab up the faded orange life vest.

Alex muttered a curse when the wind came up and tried to steal the sail. He yelled for me to grab a rope, pull a knot, something I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how to sail. I’d never learned.

The boat rocked and jumped on sudden waves. One took us higher than expected, and when we dropped into the valley it left behind my stomach heaved into my throat. Up. Down. A roller coaster without exhilaration. Without the safety of brakes and seatbelts.

The rain coming across the water looked like lace curtains or the scrolling of the numbers and symbols on the black screen in the opening frames of The Matrix. It looked like the tornado from The Wizard of Oz, its curving dinosaur neck bringing doom.

The Skeeter was small, and it rocked when Alex shifted his weight to bend next to me. I drew in a breath, not screaming but heart pounding so fast and hard it hurt. My fingers gripped tighter, my knuckles white.

“Don’t worry!” He had to shout over the sound of the wind. “We’re almost home!”

The storm reared up in full force when we were just a few feet from the shore. Alex jumped out to tie the Skeeter up onto the small wooden dock James’s grandparents had built. The sail snapped and fluttered. I caught a face full of wet fabric and gasped at how cold it was.

Once we were safely on shore, my fingers unkinked. I helped him tie everything down and secure the Skeeter. The waves were storm-sized but still did no more than tickle the beach; this wasn’t the ocean, after all.

The rain came down in fat, stinging splatters. Drops struck the top of my head, my arms, got in my eyes and ears. We ran into the house and skidded on the tile floor. Alex slammed the door and the sound of the storm outside muted at once. I heard heavy breathing and realized it was me.

“You’re shivering.” He grabbed up a dishtowel from the counter and handed it to me.

I held it for a moment, the fabric inadequate to do more than wipe my face. I did that.

“My father,” I said, and stopped. My teeth chattered like dice in a cup.

Alex dripped, waiting for me to speak. Lightning from outside reflected in the puddle at his feet. I tried again.

“My father,” I said, “took me out on a boat. We were supposed to be fishing. It started to get dark.”

He ran a hand through his wet hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. Water ran down his face, off his nose and chin. His eyes caught the green light from the microwave.

“The storm came up fast. We weren’t too far out. But I didn’t know how to sail. And … he was …”

He was drinking, as he almost always was when he wasn’t at work. He’d filled his cup again and again from the jug of “iced tea” in the red-and-white cooler between his feet. The sun made him thirsty, he said. I was ten and had tasted what was in his cup. I didn’t see how it could quench his thirst.

Alex’s shoes squeaked on the tile as he came closer. His hand on my shoulder felt heavier than it should have, an undeserved weight. He meant it to be caring, but his understanding was too intimate to be borne. I didn’t want to be beholden to him for his compassion.

I shook off the memory. “We didn’t drown, obviously.”

“But you were scared. You’re still scared, remembering it.”

“I was ten. I didn’t know any better. My dad wouldn’t have done anything to hurt me.”

Gentle but firm, Alex squeezed the tension in my shoulder. He found the trigger point. My body wanted to melt into that simple touch, to give up the coils of anxiety woven into my muscles. I didn’t move, and we stayed like that, linked by the touch of his fingertips.

The flash of lightning and almost instantaneous crash of thunder made me jump. I slipped a little, but Alex was there with a hand under my elbow and a firm forearm for me to grab. I didn’t fall.

The power went out with a bleat from the microwave and came back on a moment later with a similar, electronic cry. Another rumble followed another flash, and the power stayed out. Night hadn’t fallen but the afternoon had gone dark enough to cast the kitchen into shadow.

Darkness reveals as much as it hides, sometimes. We were touching, hand to shoulder, hand to arm, hand to elbow. We dripped. We breathed. My teeth had stopped chattering, because of the heat.

“He was drunk,” I said.

Alex’s fingers squeezed again. I never said that aloud. We all knew, my sisters and my mother and I, but we never said it aloud. I never even said it to James, the man to whom I’d bound my life.

“He couldn’t get us back in. The water came over the sides and up to my knees, and I thought we were going to die. I was ten,” I said again, like it was important.

Alex said nothing, but we moved closer to each other anyway. The hem of his jeans caressed the skin of my foot revealed by my flip-flop. His shirt dripped onto my bare arm, and the water was cold.

“Families suck,” Alex said.

The power came back on. We moved apart. By the time James came home, I’d made dinner and we ate while they laughed together and I put a smile on and pretended it was real.

My mother was dithering. I didn’t know whether to scream or take pity on her and simply remove the choices that had sent her into such a frenzy. The air in the attic was so hot it was like breathing steam.

“Mom, just pick out a couple and let’s get downstairs. Or better yet, bring the boxes downstairs and we’ll look at them there.”

“Oh, no, no,” my mother said, her hands fluttering like birds over the carefully labeled boxes of photographs. “I’ll just be a minute. There are so many nice ones ….”

I bit my tongue against a sharp retort and craned my neck to see the pictures she’d lifted. There were a lot of nice ones. Nobody could ever say my parents weren’t photogenic, not even in the butt-ugly 1970s prairie-style wedding gown and brown tuxedo with the yellow ruffled shirt.

“How about this one?” She held up a portrait-size photo of the two of them. She had Farrah Fawcett wings in her hair and he had mutton-chop sideburns. They looked happy.

“Perfect.”

“I don’t know.” She dithered some more, going back and forth from one to the next, the only difference between the two was the width of their smiles. “This one is nice, too ….”

The heat sapped my patience; so had the lack of sleep the night before. I’d dreamed again of the weight of stones in my pockets and water closing over my head. “Mom. Just pick one!”

She looked up. “You pick, Anne. You’re so good at that sort of thing.”

I reached for the one closer to me. “This one.” I put it in the pile of others she’d chosen for the collage Patricia wanted to put together.

“Oh, but that one—”

I gathered them up and tucked them into the manila envelope for safekeeping. “I have to get out of here before I pass out. I’ll take these.”

Without waiting for her answer, I ducked through the low-hanging eaves and down the set of pull-down stairs. Compared to the stifling heat of the attic, the second floor felt like the arctic. My vision blurred for a moment and I swallowed hard against a swirl of nausea. I could blame it on the attic, but I almost always felt a twinge of stomach upset whenever I stood in the place I was now.