Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“Look,” he said to Susan, patting her shoulder. “They’re trading.”

Susan opened her eyes only slightly.

“The one with the braid is hoarding all the good stuff,” he said. “It’s breaking my heart.”

Susan’s yawn curled up into a cat-like smile. “Cheapness is always expressed through candy at that age,” she said and coughed, clearing the sleep from her voice. “It’s the money of childhood.”

Henry nodded, grinning. They watched as the girls ate from their two separate piles, then stumbled around in spacey states of bliss. “Kids are such drunks,” Henry whispered.

“Staggering and gleeful,” Susan added.

Soon they were called to board and Susan groaned. “Can I crawl?”

“Come on, love,” he said.

And it was a surprising relief to enter the familiar capsule, to know that now nothing was expected of them. Even the lift-off was pleasant, easy to succumb to. They simply sat there, letting the rumbling machine have them, then the sky.

Susan looked down at the blinky orange-lit city. How beautiful and monstrous, she thought. She imagined the land below them two hundred years ago. Just dark and trees, a canoe riding by. “Look at it down there. It’s so endless,” she said to Henry. “Civilization. It only grows.”

“Well, yes and no,” he said. “There are things like blackouts that give you a little taste of what’s possible. It’s all so fragile really.”

Susan nodded with a hum and leaned her head against his shoulder.

“I love the way you smell,” he said and she smiled. It was the smile of someone who would never in her lifetime tire of flattery.

“And how is that?” she gleamed.

Henry gave her hair a deep, theatrical sniff. “Like bread,” he said. “And the ocean.”

To this she laughed. It felt good. “I love your mind,” she said in an underwater way, nodding off on his shoulder.

“It kicks up a beautiful pearl once in a while,” Henry said calmly, though his shoulder hurt like hell. “Susan,” he said gently and kissed the top of her head. “Susan.”

Alice is standing by the stove when she thinks of him. Joe. She lights the pilot, sets her red kettle down, and proceeds to stare into space. He had kissed her neck when she was fifteen. He had been old but she wasn’t sure how old. He had graying hair and a red tan. Alice begins cracking her knuckles. She doesn’t know what has summoned the memory of Joe’s face and this bothers her. It is like a bat flung from darkness.

She can’t remember how Joe knew her mother, only that his son had died, and that this gave him a lonesome, saintly quality. Her mom had been a single mom and so she needed help and he was glad to give it. He picked Alice up from school and sometimes took her out for sushi, which Alice liked. She remembers him sipping sake from a little white cup and talking about his son. She remembers him bringing out his wallet and showing her a bent picture of the boy, who wasn’t a boy at all. Alice remembers being surprised to see a grown man grinning back from the snapshot. Alice had until that moment figured him to be a child.

Joe reported that his son had died during his freshman year in college and Alice watched the bubbles in her soda glass. She remembers that she wanted him to stop talking about his son. He was a little drunk and she felt herself recoiling from his grief, its endlessness. She remembers that he did stop talking about his son, almost as if he had heard her thoughts. He stopped talking altogether and stared at her and she could feel that he was admiring her.

“You’re very beautiful,” he said. Then, “Do you know that?”

Alice remembers how thrilled she was. She remembers that she could feel herself blushing, the heat rushing to her face. She remembers how this sublime feeling mingled almost immediately with dread. She remembers getting into Joe’s silver car and putting the seat back slightly. This was something she always did but when she looked up at Joe, she wished she were upright. She remembers turning toward the purple sky, the sinking red sun.

“You have a tan on your belly,” Joe said with a sideward glance. He was looking at the strip of flesh between her T-shirt and jeans.

“I know,” she said.

Alice remembers that all the lights were off when she got home. She remembers mounting the stairs to her white house and going inside. She remembers sitting on the couch with Joe. She remembers him putting his arm around her, his gold wristwatch ticking in her ear. She remembers him moving her hair and kissing her neck. She remembers being amazed that a kiss could land so gently.

She remembers that she could not speak. If he had lunged toward her, she thinks now, she would have screamed. But it was as if he was moving underwater.

She remembers that he continued to plant soft kisses on her neck and then her ear. She remembers that he asked her if she wanted to go to the bedroom. She remembers that her voice sounded strange when it arose, like it belonged to someone else. She said, “I have to do homework.”

She remembers that he looked scared when she said this. She remembers him staring at her. It was as if she had in her hands a new and damning videotape of him. A tape she would have until she died. He continued staring and the tape’s footage blazed between them. Then with a low smile, as if he were safe, he left.

Alice remembers going upstairs and getting into bed with all her clothes on. She remembers her sage green sheets and the round black clock by her bed, its loud, insistent ticking. She remembers picturing someone knocking from inside a coffin. “I’m not dead! I’m not!”

She remembers pulling a blanket over her head. She remembers hearing her mom come home. She remembers the phone ringing. She remembers her mom’s laughter, how it seemed obscene. She knew it was Joe calling to see if her mom knew. And what was there to know?

She remembers breathing through her blanket. No words had yet glued themselves to the videotape in her mind. It only played itself again and again. She remembers that she was very still as she watched it. She remembers feeling like an animal with no language. She remembers that she closed her eyes but that she did not sleep.

Alice remembers going to school the next day. She remembers her depression, how adult it felt. She remembers wanting to tell her friends but feeling that there was nothing to tell. She remembers wanting to exaggerate certain elements of what had happened. She remembers wondering if what Joe had done was even a crime. She remembers wanting to say, “I was raped.”

She remembers Joe picking her up from school in his silver car and how calm he looked, but with occasional flashes of worry, like dark fish darting under a frozen pond. She remembers how angry she was and letting it show. She remembers his worried smile. She remembers the car stopping in front of her house. She remembers saying, “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

She remembers him saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” She remembers that his eyes were full of violence. She remembers sensing — almost smelling — that he wanted to kill her. Or that for a split second the thought was spreading itself in his mind. She remembers the terrible little theater of his eyes, which she had always thought to be blue. But looking at them in the afternoon glare, she saw that they weren’t even a little bit blue. They were gray.

She remembers getting out of the car and running into her house and locking the door and locking all the windows. She remembers going into the broom closet and sitting in the dark until her mom got home. She remembers crawling out of the closet and telling her mom about the kisses. She remembers that her mom cried. She remembers looking away. She remembers their black cat, how he slunk through the flap door obliviously and hopped up the stairs.