Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

Emily freed herself and stepped back. Even in the dark she suddenly seemed to see everything with perfect clarity — the shingled edge of her cottage, the clay pots of jasmine against it, the glints of light off the chain suspending the porch swing, the railings and the bits of bush that reached through them. And him, in the middle of these shapes and angles of wood, looking at her face, counting the places he'd marked her.

John Berry sat on the floor lighting candles. He moved from one short fat candle to the next. They smelled of honey, elderberry, or lemon. Hot wax gathered in puddles on the floor; flame shadows pulsed and jumped on the ceiling. He found shapes: animal bones, starfish, and whales. The poster women seemed to have joined hands in a circle, showed an occasional lip, earlobe, or thigh. Emily ran the spigot in the kitchen. John Berry surveyed the pans and bowls filled with water and arranged around the whole room. Together they sparked like the sea under light. The water stopped running and she carried two long aluminum cake pans into the bedroom. She moved quietly. “One at our feet,” he said, lying longways on the oval rag carpet in the center of the candles. “And the other at our heads.”

“Lay down with me,” he said. He smoothed his fingers on the inside of her wrist, then outlined her inner thigh. Her breathing changed. “Take your shirt off.”

She pulled her blouse over her head in one motion. Her loose breasts swayed. John Berry traced the blue veins branching like delicate road maps. He moved his face down and made his mouth and the movement of his tongue the center of the room.

John Berry unzipped her jeans, loosened her underpants, and with two fingers felt for wetness. Emily murmured. He was distracted again by the wineglass near the curve of her lower back. He reached over, lifted it to his lips, then tossed it into a nearby wooden bowl. Water flew up high and landed in droplets on her back. One wick sputtered, made a noise like a soul lifting from a body, and sent the thinnest line of smoke up into the room.

Emily watched the play of bluing crimson flames from inside closed eyelids. His hands were settling on her hips, every finger sending off silver. There were stretch marks there, like water, peachy currents crossing and connecting, moving under the skin then reappearing. She opened her eyes. The candle wax gave in the way mud does around high rivers and gathered on her wood plank floor. This shouldn't be happening, she thought, and pulled herself up. John Berry fell back as she rose. “Come back to me,” he said.

“You're just doing what you always do, and so am I.” John Berry sighed.

“Get up and lay on the bed,” Emily said. She watched his loose sex darken with shadow as he stood and walked in the thin passage between fire and water.

Emily took a deep breath and blew toward him. The air made everything in her room flicker with liquid light.

“Limitations,” Emily said. “I know mine better.”

“That's too bad,” he said.

“It's not bad. It's okay.”

They never touched except for once when he brushed the tips of her fingers with his lips. This summer is broken no matter what happens now , Emily thought, very late, as she listened to John Berry's breath widen with sleep. For the first time in a long while she felt still. For better or worse, the patterns of the island were taken into her completely now. Emily got up and moved about the room, nudging the water containers toward the walls with her feet. She swayed her hips; her hair twirled out. This night she had returned to herself. Spears of flame and shadow flickered over the walls as she moved, and she confused them into men and women and spirits.

T he screen windows of the restaurant dining room gave a garbled picture of the world outside. This is like being in a beehive, Eddie thought, as he sipped champagne and listened to a slow tune called “Almost Blue” that played over the restaurant sound system. The name of the singer eluded him, reminding him that on the island he seldom collected facts as he did in Tennessee. When “Almost Blue” was nearly over, he decided that sad songs were okay on a night like this. The kitchen door swung wide and Neal strutted out with a second bottle of champagne.

“It's all downhill from here,” Neal said, holding up the bottle like a trophy.

“God save us,” Eddie's favorite waitress said. She sat down next to him and began rubbing hard at her temples, as his mother sometimes did late at night.

Neal poured out the rest of the first bottle and they raised their glasses. Eddie tried to imagine his life at home: what a place was like without a breeze off the water. He watched the waitress tracing a birthmark, one shaped loosely like an S, on her arm. She made a sound like moving water while she did this, and Eddie recognized it was the same sound she made when the boss yelled at her. The dining room screens quivered with cool air. “You go on the 6 A.M.?”

Eddie nodded. “Yep. You know, this year I don't seem as anxious to get out of here.”

“It's Lila,” the waitress said, looking up. “Will you miss her terribly?”

“Naw,” Neal said. “Life goes on — he's not going to hang his head over some girl.”

“I think It's sweet,” the waitress said. “I remember my first love.”

Neal rolled his eyes. “You breeders can certainly get sentimental.”

The waitress didn't answer. Lazily, she fingered figure eights over her arm, onto the table, then into her champagne.

Eddie said, “If you'll excuse me.”

“Stuff goes right through you, doesn't it,” Neal laughed.

The restaurant men's room had blue roosters all over the wallpaper and a basket soap dish. As he peed, Eddie tried to figure out what he should be feeling and how he'd say good-bye to everyone. He thought it was kind of pitiful how Neal always lessened certain moments. You got the feeling that nothing meant any more to him than anything else.

This morning in bed, Eddie was thinking of the lighted buoys bobbing in the channel between Hatteras and Ocracoke, and how much like his annual spring going-away dinner they were. Both marked a path to be navigated: one through a royal blue light, the other by a grilled steak.

Eddie watched the yellow mix around with the flushing water. He'd known for a while that things you didn't know had a way of eating at you, but now he also knew that things you did know could stay with you. In some ways, the things he knew about his mother and Lila and the ways of the island were even more worrisome than the vagueness he'd felt before. He flipped the light and walked back to the dining room.

“Did I tell you,” Neal said, “that the other waitresses said they would have stayed, but they had to get back to their fat fishermen husbands?”

Eddie poured. “Dig these things,” he said, holding up his plastic champagne glass. “You guys are great.”

“I was thinking this is a weird place,” Neal said, lighting a cigarette and swishing the bottle to see how much was left. “People never seem to get what they're looking for.”

“Same as anywhere,” the waitress said.

Eddie said, “But here it's worse, because people expect more. They come here to find answers. Life is supposed to be easier to handle on an island like this one.”

“You should be relieved to go,” the waitress said. “I know I will.”

“You all don't know shit,” Neal said; his profile tightened quickly. “This place is a dream in the fall when the days are cool and at night you need just one blanket.”

“It's a dream now,” Eddie said.

“Yeah,” Neal said. “Come December, you'll find some sand in the pocket of a pair of pants you never wear and you'll think about this place.”