Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

Her hair flew back and she took her fingers from the handlebars. She knew this was like flying and that birds didn't have it any better. She passed the lighthouse, rounded the inlet, sped by the Trolley Stop and the gas station. She turned down Eddie's street and pumped hard on the pedals until her front tire slammed into sand. She got off then and walked her bike.

Daylight was nearly gone and the moon was clouded to a puzzle piece. Faintly, she saw Eddie in a white T-shirt throwing pebbles into the yard. His arm slung sideways. He pitched each stone as if it might skip in and out of the grass. The arcing arm movement let Lila see the scene clearly: herself at the kitchen table and the baby staring at her from a bassinet, watching her face as she took a long swig of a beer. In front of Eddie's house she pushed her kickstand down and watched the metal rod sink into soft sand.

U ltimately, in relationships,” Neal said as he turned the Dart onto the highway, “everyone is selfish.”

“I don't know,” Eddie said.

“This is how I figure it. A person gets bored with their life in general. Not with their lover, wife, or husband. And the cheapest, easiest thing to do is have an affair.”

“I couldn't tell you any of that stuff,” Eddie said as his hand snaked up and down in the wind out the window.

The cook looked at him. “How many beers do you want for you and your little friend?”

“A six is fine,” Eddie said, reassured that Neal remembered the point of the drive.

“You will drink a few with me first?”

The Dart passed a kid pushing his bike on the soft sand shoulder. Eddie was uncomfortable. “Sure,” he said. “But I gotta meet her at midnight.”

“Great,” Neal said, adjusting the radio. “We'll cruise a little.”

Eddie dropped his cigarette out the window and looked down to see the smattering of sparks. Since she had touched the inside of his wrist — whispered it so close to his ear he had heard each nuance of her breath — all he had thought about was Lila being pregnant. The fact made everything seem too loud: people's voices, the ocean, the dishwashers at work — the volume made him sick to his stomach and he couldn't forget it, not for one second. Though he had promised not to, he wanted to tell, to spread it over as many people as possible so that his solid problem would thin out and begin to disintegrate like an aspirin melting in water.

Eddie saw Neal looking at the crotch of his pants. Earlier, at work, while sorting silverware, he had noticed Neal staring at his rear. His mother had assured him that Neal would never actually touch him. But still. He'd heard from friends about the queer swim team manager who after meets stared through the steam into the shower room. He worried that the guy at the gas station would see him waiting in the car when Neal sashayed in to get beer. All I need is for people to talk. His eyes teared and he kept saying just under his breath: It would be stupid to cry. Neal hummed with the radio. “Do you have dreams about her?” he asked. “Nowadays I only dream about men.”

Eddie thought Neal inched his hand across the front seat, but he didn't want to act as if he'd noticed.

“Can't we get the beer,” Eddie said.

“In a minute,” Neal said, driving toward the docks. “Tell me what it's like.”

Eddie thought his mouth smirked slightly as he made a U-turn in the dock lot. “You know what it's like,” he said.

Neal gave a snort. “I guess I do.”

They rambled back around the inlet. Eddie slumped against the door and thought of getting so drunk his mind would move without his willful force from one thing to another. Neal pulled into the Texaco. “Tall boys?” he burlesqued. Eddie nodded and watched Neal walk in and get beers from the glass case. He didn't want to quit high school and come live here. Those deep lines would form around his eyes from squinting all day against sun and water. Eddie tried to imagine himself as a fisherman, guts smeared on his T-shirt and his beard uneven as a rag. His foot kicked the bottom of the glove compartment. But if he brought her home, his father's face would redden and he'd call him out to the barn, asking intimate and embarrassing questions.

His stepmother would put bushels of peaches in front of Lila and have her peel them and then stir till her fingers were sore from moving the big wooden spoon in the huge pots past dusk and into the dark.

Neal got in and shut the door. “You got some time,” he said. “Let's cruise to the beach and drink a few.”

“Okay,” Eddie said. “But I got to be there by midnight.”

“Kind of a late date,” Neal said. He looked over his shoulder and backed up the Dart.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. He rolled his hand to a fist and dug his nails into his palms. Once, while in the bathtub, through the cracked door, his mother had explained how a lover had never come along who treated Neal well and how, as a child, he'd been beaten up regularly for being a sissy. Eddie had sat at the kitchen table listening to his mother explain that Neal had told her he never knew his father and only remembered the broad brim of his brown hat and the calloused upper palms of his hands. Still, Eddie squirmed: No matter how lonely the guy was, how hard his life had been, he better not try some move on me.

As the car lumbered up the wooden planks of the beach ramp, Neal said, “You're not talking much.”

Eddie popped a beer; it foamed up and he took a gulp.

“Your mother told me the whole story,” Neal said.

“He won't be back,” Eddie said, jolting forward as the car's wheels fumbled over the sand. He didn't want to talk about John Berry's break-in.

The car stopped, they both settled silently into the dark. The cook lit a cigarette and popped a beer for himself. Eddie swigged his down fast, tossed the empty to the back, and opened a second. This is helping, he thought. This is definitely helping. A few gulls swooped in front of the crescent moon.

“My mom, you know, shouldn't do a lot of the stuff she does,” he said.

“She just comes and goes,” Neal said. “I understand it. Like I said, life gets dull.”

Eddie watched Neal's cheeks hollow as he dragged on his cigarette. His hair, a brushcut with loose longer curls in the back, was cool. He does it with boys, Eddie thought. He remembered himself staring at his gym teacher back in junior high. Eddie'd day-dreamed that during warm-ups Mr. Graudins came over and kissed him right on the lips while the other boys kept counting their sit-ups in one thunderous voice. It must have been some kind of mistake. Because he liked girls. Just the sight of one sometimes turned him on. He was getting hard now thinking of the way Lila threw back her head and twilled her throat like a bird.

Odd things could get him going: certain wrestling holds, advertisements, the jagged movement of the school bus — even the slight wrinkles around the eyes of older women.

Neal reached for another beer. “Does she suck you?”

Eddie's eyes pooled. He would slam the door and run into the surf, swim so hard he'd quickly be a mile out in the dark ocean. “Stop talking about her,” he said fiercely.

“I'm sorry,” Neal said. “I thought you might want to talk about it or something.”

Eddie wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. What a crybaby.

“She's pregnant,” he said, the fact out there and living in the air before he could even reconsider. The ocean waves beat back and forth against the sand.

“So that's it,” Neal said, stretching his legs to the brake pedals. “What are you going to do?”

“We're talking about getting married.”

“That's no good reason to get married.”