Esmé Wang - The Border of Paradise

Later William wanders into the room with a crate. It appears that the sedimentary crate has a layer of clothes at the bottom, books in the middle, and papers at the top. Gillian doesn’t know what the papers are, but if she looked more closely she would see that they’re a diary he’s kept while she was away. “Will we drive in this weather?” he asks. The rain is clattering against the windows.

“I suppose not,” Marianne says. “We can wait for the rain to stop.”

“We get horrible storms near winter,” says Gillian.

“Well, at least you two seem to have your packing finished. I say we settle in until it’s time to head out again.”

Gillian says, “The roads will be muddy. Tires slide. We don’t take the Buick for days after a storm.”

“Days,” William says. He sets down his crate for emphasis and sits on it, his knees open.

“I know how to drive in mud.”

“Of course you know how to drive in mud,” Gillian says. She rises to standing. “But it’s getting dark, and I’m sure William hasn’t had dinner. I’m going to make some sandwiches. William,” she says, “we bought some things for sandwiches. I expect you ate everything while I was gone.”

Left alone in the bedroom with William, Marianne says, “I knew your father when we were young.”

William ignores her. Her stomach clenches. You raped my daughter, she thinks. She’s gone through enough, you bastard. She hates herself for hating a child. He is a child, even if he is almost an adult in body — he can’t know any more than Gillian does about the world, and still she loathes him. “You had sex with Gillian,” Marianne says, and William says nothing. He gets up and goes into the kitchen, where Gillian is spreading mayonnaise on sliced bread. She’s wearing his favorite dress, the green one with the elbow-length sleeves and ruffles at the cuffs. Her elbows pink. Her hands and their rough motions.

“Will we kill her?” he says in Mandarin.

Gillian sticks the knife in the jar. “I can’t do that. I told you, she’s my mother. She gave me to our parents.”

“What about Ma?”

“I don’t know.”

“Regardless. You had no qualms about killing her .”

“Fuck,” Gillian says in English, and then, returning to Mandarin, “I didn’t kill her.”

William, in his button-down and linen pants, comes up behind her. She feels his hand on her arm, squeezing, and he feels the softness of his sister’s skin. He kisses her on the shoulder. His breath is unclean.

“I’m sorry,” Gillian says.

“We don’t have to decide now,” William says, but they both know that this isn’t entirely true.

Marianne is in the hallway, listening to them speak in the language she can’t understand. She sees William standing behind his taller sister, his face very close to her neck, and she wants to shout, Stop, please stop touching her. Leave her alone. She turns and walks back to the living room. She had been in that living room once, pregnant and wanting to die, wanting to die and feeling guilty for the desire. She can remember exactly how she and Daisy and David had sat in this room when she came with a fecund belly. She had loved him then, even then, if she had loved anyone. Marty is at home, she reminds herself, Marty is waiting for me to come back, and we will make a new life together, all four of us. It will be a family that she had never intended, but was in the end meant to be: she and Marty will raise David’s children.

Gillian reenters the living room with William at her side, and Gillian hands out ham and cheese sandwiches on napkins.

“It’s really raining very hard, isn’t it?” Marianne says.

“Doesn’t it rain where you live, when it gets to be December? And snow?” asks Gillian.

“Sure.”

William looks at the ceiling, holding his sandwich. They eat in a trance.

“I wanted some tea,” Gillian says. “It’s on the stove.”

Marianne says to William, “You loved Beethoven, when I knew you.”

“Yes.”

“Please,” she says, “play something.”

He has never not played the piano when commanded to. It is ingrained in his marrow. He gets up and goes to the piano bench, where his hands hesitate and then draw through the air to the keys, striking the notes of the bright opening, the collapse into waves of a climb and descent. He plays for a full three minutes before the teakettle shrieks a long note. Gillian leaves the room with her tote dangling from her elbow, swaying as she walks. The music seems to remain in the air, as if it has stained the dust motes and fading light with a sad hue.

“That was beautiful,” Marianne says.

“I don’t have the whole thing yet,” William answers.

Marianne says, “The Hammerklavier. It’s a difficult piece. Perhaps the most difficult. I’m impressed that you know so much of it.”

He plays more Beethoven while Gillian is in the kitchen with all the stolen pills that will fit in the mortar, smashing them with the pestle, and thinking, This is a kindness. She keeps looking at the doorway to see if anyone will appear to stop her, and no one does.

Finally Gillian returns with a tray of cups. They drink their bitter tea, made with the last of the loose-leaf-filled tin that Ma had bought in Sacramento. Marianne wonders if it would be idiotic to try to drive them away from here; maybe they were telling the truth when they said that it would take days before the roads were safe again. Maybe they can spend the night here, and travel tomorrow. Still, she feels the urgency of having to get them away from the poisonous house. The longer they stay here, the more polluted they become.

“With the money you have access to,” she says, attempting to be cheerful, “you’ll be able to find a really nice place to live. How old are you, William? In a year, if you want, you can be independent. You’ll be an adult in the eyes of the law. You’ll be able to do whatever you want.”

William says, “I do whatever I want as it is.”

“This is a small world you’re living in, William. There’s a larger world waiting out there for you. Freedom.”

Gillian echoes, “Freedom,” which arouses Marianne’s hopes.

“Yes, freedom. You’ll be able to learn and do so many things.” She leans her head against a cushion. It’s been a long day, and she is tired.

William and Gillian sit in the middle of the room in silence. Marianne’s eyes are closed. In Mandarin Gillian says, “We could all use a nap.”

“I want to talk to you about her. ” He jerks his head. “She doesn’t understand us at all. A kind woman, but… Gillian. .” he says. And he’s blinking slowly now, too, so slowly that his eyes actually remain closed for several long seconds. “Something isn’t right. You hopeless, hopeless — Gillian. No.” He presses his fingers into his eyeballs.

She takes him by the shoulders and gently lifts him to his feet. “Let’s go to bed,” she says.

They stumble to the bedroom they once shared. He’s been spraying clouds of perfume over the smell of fish and apples. She lays him down on the bed and lies down next to him, wrapping her arms around him. She kisses him softly on his sour mouth and he twitches, crying, putting his hand on the small of her back.

“Hey,” she says. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s okay.”

“I love you.”

“Shh.”

William goes quiet. When he hasn’t moved for as many heartbeats as Gillian can stand, she gets up and drifts from room to room—

— first the living room, where Marianne is slumped onto the couch, her form becoming ever softer, almost melting, as she sinks into the cushions. A spot of light from the lamp beside her comes over her thinly lined face. Here, too, are all the books in their shelves, and all the places they did not go. Gillian looks at her piano, but does not sit at the bench, nor does she play. There have been enough hours of playing. If only I loved it more, or loved anything more, she thinks. She wipes her eyes.