Amelia Gray: Threats

“SOMETHING has happened.”

They had eaten breakfast together that morning, like any morning, every morning. She ate like a large, hungry bird. Mostly seeds. She looked out the window. On the mornings he asked her what she was looking at, she said she was looking at the world.

It was snowing. The snow fell harder than it had fallen all year, and steady enough to create drifts in the ash trees, where snow piled on nests and old leaves, inside of which animals burrowed, their eyes dimmed for the necessity of survival. “You’ve been tromping berries.”

The berries behind the house were speckled against the snow. She had tried to eat one of the berries once. It was bitter. “It’s blood. Could you call for help?” He thought of her eyes, an animal’s dark eyes. Later, when the officers swept the scene, they shook the snow from the berry bushes and examined the berries as evidence. Snow had fallen over her tracks from the fence.

“Of course. What’s the problem?” An expanse of time viewed from a distance, a horizon. He could live in the place where he saw her eyes. It was simple to live in a place.

Her body swayed, her feet bare. “God, damn it.” The workers who would come to clean the stairwell did not think about the origin of the stains to which they applied enzyme cleaner. One added up the number of cleanings required to repair the heater in his car. Another tried to remember if cleaning products had been ordered for the week. A third thought about his girlfriend’s hair on a pillow that morning, soft like a baby’s.

“What did you do? What happened?” That morning, she spooned the sugar into her cup of coffee and returned the bag to the pantry. She walked to the table and sat beside him. These things were as ordinary as ordinary. Missing them would feel the same as missing a chair that was not particularly comfortable or uncomfortable. Like missing a dinner plate, a door’s frame.

The course of events stood in a silent line, serving as sentries for the individuals who moved helpless among them. “Could you call the fire department?” Anything seemed possible, but only one thing was possible. “You don’t need to call anyone. Forget about it. I love you.”

“What did you get into?” The mess had frozen to her ankles, her feet, her toes, but she was thawing, a river of bright blood carving through. Her body warming to the indoors would be the end of her, but the idea of coming inside would have been too natural to ignore, even if she had an awareness of the danger, which she had not.

Her body was so cold against his. He reached for her, put his arms around her, warmed her. He put the warmth of his hands onto her wet feet until his hands were cold, and then he warmed his hands on his own neck, his stomach under his flannel pajamas, his armpits, and then laid his hands on her again, rubbing, warming without knowing that he was stimulating the arterial wound. “That’s your problem.” Her body moved beyond ache to something else. She felt like a bird in a nest. Time passed like a snowdrift.

“Doc,” he said. “You gotta understand.” He tried to move her legs into his lap, but she waved him off, laughing. Her laugh stopped his motion and he looked at her. His face was a panel. She felt a desire to touch her nose to his nose, such a pleasurable desire, and not acting on it made it a secret, which made it even more of a pleasure. He watched her. She was too tired then to express the desire aloud, and the secret became even more perfect. It became the most perfect secret she had ever experienced, as close as she was to him at that moment. Her heart pounded with pleasure. It seemed possible to express anything by looking at him, and so she looked, the energy leaving her feet and hands and filling her eyes. Her mouth slackened as she directed every electric impulse of energy into her eyes, which watched him and twitched slightly, scanning his eyes, imparting every truth with perfect clarity. She leaned against the stairwell, smiling, looking at him even when her eyes lost their energy and their light faded.

Her body swelled and stilled. There would be a moment when she would breathe for the last time. An exhalation. There would be that moment for him as well, for all, but it was her moment at that moment, her prize of air, her still lake, her sweet boat floating away away, her body warping wood, swale and heavy, a sinking thing. He sat beside her, a helpless observer, his only power in witness, some bleak ability to watch and record the event in his own brain, which sent the order to his lungs to breathe with her while she still breathed, channels rising, sparks of interior electrical connection fading with the mind’s fool hope that it could create some kind of measurable response, to provide some worth or warmth. Her body beside his, swell and still. He thought of her still. He thought of holding her absolutely still. He loved, he loved her. He loved her, still.

Thanks are owed to Emily Bell, Justin Boyle, Claudia Ballard, Maxine Bartow, Lisa Silverman, and Debra Helfand for their attention and care in the production of this book. Thanks also to Featherproof Books and Fiction Collective Two, Ron Carlson, Tom Grimes, Mike McNally, Debra Monroe, and my family.