Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

“Should we say grace?” Emily asked.

“Sure,” Lila said. “I'll do it.” She paused, lowered her head, and quickly chanted, “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yeaaaaah God!”

Birdflower laughed.

“What?” she said, lifting her hands. “I bet he has a great sense of humor.”

“He'd have to,” Birdflower said. “If he looks down on all this.” Emily poured wine from a tall thin bottle with nuns whispering on the label. “You guys get one glass, okay?” Emily looked over the fish and cold pasta salad with shrimp and black olives. “You think you might go to Tennessee this winter for a visit?” Emily said to Lila.

“I might,” Lila said.

“Your mother may come up to my little house in Michigan this winter for a couple months.”

“Nothing's been decided,” Emily said. The light in the room was fading. Shadows aged every object. She watched Eddie number the items above the white porcelain sink. He seemed to count the petals of the bluebells in a mason jar on the window ledge.

“So,” Emily said. “It's been quite a summer.”

Lila said, “They're not much different, one from another.”

“I don't know,” Eddie said. “To me each one seems to have a personality.”

Birdflower nodded. “I'll agree with that,” he said, reaching for more fish. “But I guess you'd know better than any of us, Lila.”

“Even heaven would get boring after so long,” Eddie said.

“This isn't heaven,” Lila said. “It's not even close.”

“A place is what you make of it,” Emily said. She got up, walked to the fridge, and got another bottle of wine.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Dad's wife has this corny plaque in the bathroom—'Bloom where you are planted.’’

Lila laughed, “That'd be great if we were sea oats.”

Emily uncorked the bottle and poured more wine for Birdflower and herself.

Birdflower and Lila rocked on the porch swing, angel food cake and peaches balanced in their laps. Emily stood above Eddie, who sat straight against the back of a wooden chair. “Your father will throw a fit,” Emily said, holding an ice cube to his ear.

“Good cake,” Eddie said, bringing a forkful up to his mouth.

Birdflower set his plate on the floor and grabbed the guitar leaning against the house. He put his ear close and tuned each string.

Eddie said, “Come on.” Emily looked at the top of his head and tried to tell herself this was no different from bandaging his cuts when he was a boy. Emily thought of her fingers slowly moving a straight pin forward. The drops of blood that would gather around the needle and the steadiness of her hand as she waited to see the silver tip from the back side rise out of her son's skin.

Lila said, “Get it over with fast — that's the best way.”

“Will you hold the flashlight,” Emily said to Lila.

“Maybe we should do this inside,” Eddie said, the breeze moving the long hair around his neck.

Lila picked up the flashlight and shined it on Eddie's ear.

Emily pressed hard on the ice, let it drop to the porch, and rocked the alcohol bottle back. She dabbed his ear and the point of the pin.

“Hurry,” Birdflower said. “Before the numbing wears off.”

Fireflies blinked in the front yard. Emily moved her hand closer; the flashlight made her look like a haunted torturess. She inserted the tip of the pin just as a truck's lights blinked over the porch.

“That's him,” Eddie said, jerking his head. Blood quickly gathered on Emily's thumb and forefinger.

“He's not stopping,” Lila said, watching the truck rock down the sand road.

Eddie said, “I can't feel anything. Is it done?”

“You moved away,” Emily said, pulling the pin back and holding the cotton to his ear. “You're bleeding.”

“It doesn't hurt at all; all I can feel are your fingers,” Eddie said, just as the high beams of the truck turned again and blinked toward them.

Lila focused the flashlight on Emily's face. “I bet he's going to drive past here all night.”

E mily gave Lila a chunk of cake for her parents, and after bandaging Eddie's ear, told him he could stay out till 2 A.M. John Berry kept circling. Each time the truck turned, Birdflower looked into the lights. He wanted to protect Emily and would fight if he had to. Finally, she asked him to go. He got up and started pacing. The porch floorboards creaked and she urged him again. “Okay,” he said, grabbing his jacket. “I won't stick around if you don't want me.” Outside on the walk, he looked meanly over his shoulder and muttered, “I hope you get what you deserve.”

She sat down on a porch chair and tried to lock eyes with the truck's lights. It was like looking into the sun. It has to happen, she thought. Between two people, things could be bad for months, even years, but there was always one thing that signaled the end, that made any future connection impossible. Sometimes it was violence or burlesquing an earlier time, an encounter that meant something and was important to the beginning of the relationship. For some reason, the bottle wasn't enough.

On his twentieth revolution, he slowed and Emily focused on his face folded into the angles of the dark truck. He leaned out the window. Emily held up her hands to show that everyone had left. He went up the road, rounding again. Soon the truck lights grew brighter and moved to her neighbor's house, her own bent cedars, quick over her bedroom window, and then straight to her. He pulled up the driveway and switched off the lights. The truck hummed down.

For a long moment he sat there looking at her through the windshield, then got out and walked up the stairs.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. He leaned back against the porch rail and crossed his arms.

She noticed how long his hair had gotten and that, without her to shave them, the hairs on the back of his neck had grown and curled into ringlets. His body had thinned, and there was a ravaged and bruised look about his mouth.

“All I want to know, I guess, is if you love this guy or not.”

“I don't know,” Emily said.

“Well, decide,” John Berry said. ‘'I'll wait.” He walked to the porch swing and sat down. The chain creaked back and forth.

“What do you want from me now?” she said, looking over the yard at the shaded window of the neighboring house.

“What I want is a yes or no answer,” he said.

“I never think like that,” she said. She looked down to her hands resting in her lap. Her fingers curled toward her palms and she deliberately flattened them. The truth was, it was her moods, tonight, tomorrow, and a few weeks after Eddie left, that would motivate her one way or another.

She stood and leaned against her white porch pillar. “The part I like is when you can still buy the future.”

“Buy the future?” John Berry asked.

“Yeah. Because it's easy: an empty house on some street, not a specific one with a guy's lifetime of junk spread out like guts in every room.”

“None of this had to happen,” John Berry said, shaking his head. “You could have told me anything.”

The night breeze was deepening and Emily heard the metal mobile chime delicately.

“You know that's not true,” she said.

“It is true, damnit.” He pulled at the hair on the back of his head, as if to lengthen it.

“You threw a bottle at me,” Emily said, and turned. She shivered and felt goose bumps rise on her legs and arms.

“Emily—” his voice thickened. “I'm sorry.”

She walked across the porch. “Look at these,” she said, turning her head to show him the scars scattered all over her face.

“It was a crazy thing.” He grabbed her hand and tried to pull her down to him. The chair swing rocked jaggedly.