Darcey Steinke - Up Through the Water

“Everybody gets nostalgic,” the waitress said.

“You act like we don't exist when you all leave. Every day you're gone we get up in the morning. I don't even like the summers really,” Neal said. He drank one of the last few swigs from the bottle and passed it to the waitress. He looked at Eddie. “You'll be back here. I can always tell when this island has a hold of someone.” Neal drank up what was in his glass. “We better get out of here; the boss could blow in anytime.”

“I hope he does come in and see us,” the waitress said.

Neal shook his head. “You may be leaving, but I need this job.”

Their destinations seemed to rise up, separate and scattered, and for what seemed to Eddie like a long while they were quiet. The waitress passed the last swallow to him. He closed his eyes and gulped, thinking that he knew everything right now.

“This is the last time we'll be like this,” Lila said as she settled herself on the linen tablecloth Eddie'd taken from the restaurant. The ends fluttered like moths.

“No way,” he said. “You'll come to see me. I'll come down at Christmas. Then we can—”

“You're so stupid.” She turned her head away from him, back toward the houselights scattered around the inlet. “You'll never know what I mean.”

Eddie felt that warm sensation behind his eyes and knew that he might cry. “How late can you stay out?” his voice rose. Lila moved her face close to his and looked at him carefully. With her fingers she brushed his eyelids to check for tears.

“Not much longer,” she said.

Eddie nodded. She put her hand on his neck. “Want a butterfly kiss?” she whispered, and put her eye less than an inch from his cheek. She fluttered her lashes. Eddie closed his eyes — it felt odd, but somehow familiar, like that feeling he had sometimes of wings hidden and moving inside of him.

When she stopped, he leaned up and said, “We could get high. Neal slipped me a good-bye present.” He pulled a joint from his back pocket.

Lila nodded. He lit it, breathed in, and passed it to her. She sucked in, then coughed.

“Let me,” Eddie said. He drew, touched her lips slowly, and filtered the warm smoke into her mouth.

“I like that,” Lila said, turning to watch a slow shrimp boat troll its way into Silver Lake.

Eddie watched the island pass in a long jagged line of beige beach and dark brush from the car window. He had the hopeless sensation that even if he decided now to stay, this summer would be over for him.

His mother, her eyes on the dark road, looked sleepy and blank as cross-country drivers do.

“Maybe one whole year you'll stay with me,” she said.

He said, “Maybe I will,” though he knew the months were forever delineated and that he was too old for life with his parents to change.

“I got you something,” she said. With one hand she reached under the seat and handed him a flat package.

She turned on the car light. The cover was black with millions of white spots and THE HEAVENS written across the top. “I look up a lot here,” she said. “You know how it is, wide-open spaces and all that. And I thought maybe if you knew the sky better, if you had a few points of reference, you'd be more likely to turn your head up.”

“Thanks,” he said, watching his mother's face under the harsh light. “I don't have one for you,” Eddie said.

Emily smiled. “I'm the mother, remember?”

“You know, it seems like what's between us doesn't have that much to do with that,” Eddie said. “I'll tell you something. Starting this fall, starting now, you've got to take better care of yourself.”

Two birds rose from the swamp grass, their wings a smudge against the black sky.

She didn't answer, but she did glance at him, and he noticed how her eyebrows rose slightly and her features had an alert look as if she was seeing something new.

He knew that John Berry and she had come to an understanding of sorts. Eddie set his eyes on the small blue lights at the end of the approaching ferry dock and began worrying about what he'd actually say when they got there.

“How'd it go with Lila?”

“Okay,” Eddie said. It seemed as if they shouldn't talk about Lila. He had been unable to say the right thing, and then she had to be in so early. On her porch, she'd said good night without even kissing him and ran into the house. He half thought she'd come back, and he'd stood there a minute or two waiting.

At the docks, his mother stopped the car but left the heater on to warm their feet. It was scrappy down here. A toilet shack, a pavilion with picnic tables underneath, a snack machine that sold moonpies and kettle chips, a Coke machine and a telephone booth, the old-fashioned kind, spots of sandburs mixed with rough yellow grass and a scattering of fishy metalworks. They watched the ferry weave awkwardly forward.

“When you were a baby,” Emily said suddenly, “every night after dinner you'd cry and the only thing that made you stop was a drive in the car. Even at the red lights you'd cry. Your father drove and you'd lie between us on a blanket, looking up through the windshield at the sky.”

Eddie watched an old scrap envelope topple across the ramp in front of them.

“But it's not a bad thing,” she said, turning toward him. “I want you to understand that.”

Eddie nodded. “I want you to like your life,” he said evenly.

Eddie took her hand lightly. He saw the slightly worried set of her lips, the pupils of her eyes milky and anxious in the dark.

“You mean everything to me,” she said, running her fingers over his inner wrist.

The ferry backed into the dock. A battered pickup truck pulled onto the nearby shoulder. It was butter-colored and tingled the way shades of white do in the dark.

“That's Lila,” Eddie said. The truck was her father's; he'd seen it a million times, but he never thought he'd see her driving it. He couldn't believe it. He let go of his mother's hand and opened the door.

“You came,” he shouted over to her. He realized how his voice had risen and he blushed.

“Of course I came,” she said, leaning her head back on the rest.

He heard the ferry bump shore. Emily leaned over the passenger seat and shouted out the window, “You want to take him to the bus station?”

“Wait a minute now,” he said. His mother's face was shadowed and unreadable in the dark, and he leaned closer.

“I could,” Lila called.

Emily said, “Why don't you then?”

“You wouldn't mind?” Lila sounded surprised and she looked at Eddie. He shrugged his shoulders.

“No,” Emily said, “I really wouldn't.”

Eddie stretched farther through the open window and kissed his mother's cheek. “I'll call you in a few days,” she said.

She smiled at him as she started the engine, then she pulled out and followed the tourist cars up the beach road. The sight of her car getting smaller and smaller pulled at him.

“You kill me,” he said to Lila. He got in and the truck began to climb the ramp. He felt relieved and happy that Lila had come for him, and he watched her thin fingers curled around the wheel.

“I could take the wheel on the road to Kitty Hawk.”

“No, I want to drive you all the way.” She looked over at him. “Last night was weird.”

Eddie pried one of her hands loose and pressed each fingertip to his tongue.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking your fingerprints in case I lose you.”

This was the period to the long rambling sentence of the summer. The dawn. His mother. The starbook. Lila and the truck. All these were packed in behind his eyes. He knew the last thing would be he and Lila soaring down the early morning road. They pulled on and the ferryman secured the big chain at the back. Eddie felt the quick tug off the island and then the first few moments of floating between shores.