Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

Otis stayed with her, dividing his time between Columbus and Breathed. Even Elohim was taking the long drive to go see her. His visits were said to be doing a world of good. Of course, that would be thought. It’s easy to be the boulder rolling through what is left of the dandelion field when everyone has their backs turned and are looking at the already flattened ground.

“You’ll never get her outside,” Dad said again before closing the door of his study.

Mom frowned, angry that he’d given up on her and her fear so easily. Not like in the beginning, when he tried so desperately to get her out. Why didn’t he try anymore? she wondered. Doesn’t he still love me? Her anger shifted to nervousness, which put her face in a slope to the right that played favorably with the cluster of dark moles on that cheek side.

“Stella, you know it’s not going to rain today.” Sal held the curtains back even more, pointing out to the brown ground. “We are in a drought.”

She winced as if she was full of shards as she lay back onto the wall, closing her eyes. “What if I do go outside, and it suddenly and unexpectedly starts to rain?”

“Why are you so afraid of the rain, Stella?”

“Oh, you don’t wanna hear that.” She burst away from the wall, patting her cowlick and licking her hand to do the same to mine.

“No, Mom, stop.” I swatted her hand like it was an incoming wasp. “I said stop it already.”

“Fine. Hey, I know, let’s watch a movie.” She skipped, feigning cheer over to the cabinet full of our VHS collection. “What movie you boys wanna watch? Hmm? Something Wicked This Way Comes? How ’bout Mr. Mom? I just love that one. Oh, here’s Psycho. ”

“Yuck, Mom.” Grand leaned in the doorway, along with his friend Yellch. “Anthony Perkins is in Psycho. ”

“So?” Mom shrugged and we shrugged with her.

“I hear he’s a fag.”

Mom pulled Psycho out of its cover sleeve as she said, “I don’t want you readin’ tabloid trash, Grand. And what’d your father say ’bout usin’ that word?”

“I love that movie,” Yellch added his two cents before taking a bite of the peach in his hand, the juices slipping down his lanky wrist and dropping to the rug.

“Really?” Grand turned to Yellch. “You don’t mind Perkins? That he’s a—”

“Nah.” Yellch dragged his gapped teeth through the peach’s yellowed flesh.

Yellch was seventeen, soon to be eighteen like Grand. Both of them soon to be seniors in the coming year at Breathed High. While Grand was pitcher on the baseball team, gangly Yellch was first baseman. He was someone I always thought had the profile of Lake Superior looking out to the northeast. He wore these gold-rimmed eyeglasses that were round and old-fashioned, contrasting his dark, curly mullet.

His real name was Thatch. The reason for the change to Yellch was because of one day in 1975, when he was eight and Grand was nine. Yellch and his Jewish family had just arrived in Breathed. When they came, it was thought they would live Jewish lives. Maybe they’d want to build a synagogue, invite rabbis, constantly smell of matzo ball soup. These were the fears of a town that wasn’t comfortable with the Jewish identity.

One day a group backed Yellch into an alley and threw stones at him. Grand happened to be walking by. He ran to stand in front of Yellch, shielding him from the stones. Not only that. Grand picked up the stones and threw them back.

“What should I do?” Yellch cowered behind this nine-year-old god who stood fighting for him.

“Yell.” Grand did so himself. “Just yell, as loud as you can. Throw stones at them from your throat.”

Yellch yelled so loud, Grand had to look back just to see if it was still a boy behind him or something bigger. Those throwing the stones ran away. From that day on, everyone called Thatch Yellch.

Grand and Yellch became best pals after that, and as Mom slipped Psycho into the VCR, they went upstairs, most likely to play Space Invaders on Grand’s Atari.

We weren’t even past the FBI warning of the movie before Sal started to beg Mom to tell him why she was afraid of the rain. She ignored his pleas and tried to concentrate on the big knife, the shower curtain, and Janet Leigh’s screams. Finally she could stand Sal’s pleas no more and muted the movie.

For a moment afterward, she rubbed her neck as if she were loosening some long-held muscle. Then she cupped her cheeks as she slowly told about the night her parents were getting ready for a party.

“My father was in a tuxedo. My mother was in tulle. She spun ’round for me like a ballerina, I told her with giggles. I was thirteen. I remember it was rainin’. Pourin’, really.

“My mother went out the door, under an umbrella. My father after her. I called ’im back. I said, ‘Daddy, don’t you go out in that rain.’ He made fish lips. ‘I’m a fish,’ he said. ‘Your Momma too. We’ll just swim right through.’

“That whole night I dreamed ’em doin’ just that. Swimmin’ through the rain, Father in his black tie and Mother with tulle fins.

“When I woke, I did so to Grandfather tellin’ me there’d been a terrible accident. My parent’s car, well…” She turned her head, unable to finish the sentence.

“I thought maybe they’d bury ’em in the tuxedo and gown. I thought my parents would like to be buried in things like that. I don’t know what they were buried in, actually. The coffins had to be closed. So I don’t … I don’t know. That’s a terrible thing for a daughter not to know.”

She cleared her throat and stood, suddenly desiring to straighten the afghan on the back of the chair.

“For a long time, I hated ’em for leavin’ that night. Then I realized it wasn’t their fault. It was the rain’s. The rain was what killed ’em. Not the car. Not the turn in the road. But the rain.”

She couldn’t get the afghan as straight as she wanted it to be, so she yanked it up and bunched it into a ball that she sat down with in the chair. She hugged it into her stomach as she said with a slight chuckle or something like it, “I don’t know how to swim. My parents, the fish…”

Her words got lost for a moment as her eyes merged into a darkness that cast her face in shadow.

“They never taught me, and I know the rain is just waitin’ on me. Waitin’ to get me like it got them. So I stay out of it. How can it ever get me if I’m never in it?”

“I could teach you how to swim.” Sal stood before her. “I can’t say you’ll never drown in the rain, but at least it will never be because you don’t know how to swim.”

She stared at him until his fish lips made her laugh. He grabbed the afghan from her and tossed it to the sofa.

“Oh, you silly, silly boy.”

He gently pulled her hand until she was up on her feet. She tightened her apron strings and giggled like a shy little girl as he swam around the room, performing the breaststroke.

He directed her arms to do the same until she started doing it on her own, swimming around the room after him, soon kicking her heels off so she could swim faster. Her skirt billowed out behind her, the apron strings bouncing as she swam lap after lap, exhaling loudly through her mouth like a swimmer counting off her breaths.

“You too, Fielding.” Sal bumped into me as he passed.

I did the doggy paddle when they did, the backstroke, the butterfly, the deep dive, and the surface breach. We swam laughing all through the house like this, one country to another, until Yellch came quick and stomping down the stairs from Grand’s room, yelling for Grand to just stay away from him.

Grand followed so closely on Yellch’s heels they almost tumbled down the stairs together.