Karolina Waclawiak - The Invaders

“The doctor said it’s still a long road,” I said.

“But he can do more for himself.”

“He can.”

“I want to continue our conversation,” Jeffrey said. “I can help you get on your feet somewhere. Get you set up until you can handle things on your own.”

“Somewhere like where? I live here.”

“I mean an apartment,” he said. “I can’t go over this again.” He had finally found someone to excite him again. I suspected there were new, younger retail girls who appealed to him, who he could woo with his cluelessness about neckties.

“Whoever she is, she thinks of you as an old man,” I said and watched his face fall. I knew which cruelties still worked on him.

“Think about options while I’m gone,” he said, getting up and zipping his suitcase.

“Don’t I have a say in how things play out? How my life is supposed to go? Look at me when I’m talking to you.” He wouldn’t.

“I can’t change how I feel.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Sometimes you try and try and it’s not enough. Wanting it is not enough. Just like love isn’t enough. When are you going to learn that, Cheryl? I don’t want to do this to you. This isn’t fun for me.”

“Then don’t,” I said simply.

He couldn’t even look at me when he said, “I have to go.”

I stood in the guest room after he left, numb for a long time. Buzzing with grief.

Jeffrey had probably found another woman, or women , on his business trips. As long as they weren’t in the neighborhood, no one would really find out, and it allowed me to stay in denial. All the men had someone. The ones who didn’t would pick up someone new once their wives had an untimely passing, usually from cancer or something else tragic and ordinary. Men couldn’t be alone, so how could I expect Jeffrey to feel loneliness on the road and not crave attention? He liked blondes, buxom ones with big teeth. Would his son be any different? Doubtful. Someone else would have to take care of him now. I hoped a divorcée would pick him up and care for him along with the rest of her children. Someone motherly.

I went into the bedroom and pulled the scraps from the bedside drawer and dialed one number after another. No one picked up. They were all at the clambake. I could hear the deejay playing music by the pool all the way over here. I gave up after five numbers, unsoothed.

I thought about hotel bars. The upscale ones, with single women, working women on business trips. Families at home that they never saw. Wearing slim-skirted business suits. Or perhaps Jeffrey was meeting locals. Sad packs of women looking for businessmen to take them upstairs, away from baby bottles and babysitters and teething children. They wanted something other than infants nibbling at their chafed skin. He was probably with someone like my mother. I didn’t think he’d pick someone like me again. The outlet girl with no obligation to go home to anyone, always convenient and willing. I was always curious about Jeffrey’s approach to women. Did he go up to them or did they make the initial approach? Did he play shy or did they? Who else did he promise to pamper?

I slipped my hand into my underwear and imagined Jeffrey talking to a toothy blonde. Asking her name, taking her up to his room. Probably a room with dark wood cabinets with brass handles, the air conditioner turned to 64 degrees, and turn-down service with the television turned on to the channel that played music on a loop and flashed soothing images. He probably asked her if she wanted a drink from the minibar. He would ask her to take off her clothes while he folded his pants neatly over the seat back of a chair. Was she nervous about being with a stranger? Maybe. Maybe not.

When I was finished, I pulled my hand out of my underwear and tucked it tightly in between my thighs. I squeezed as hard as possible, trying to erase my hand. I rolled to my side in a fetal position, feeling everything at once, and began to cry.

I thought I heard someone outside, rustling around in my garden, but I was too tired to get up.

TEDDY

I WOKE UP in the reeds, my pants completely soaked with salt water. Pauline and everyone else were gone and high tide was in full effect.

I got up and started walking around the island. Broken glass was blinking in the sun and sand and there wasn’t a single person left but me. What the fuck, Pauline? She didn’t care about me. I went inside the red barn and hunted around for anything I could float on. The inside of the barn was gutted out and painted in graffiti. The wood was weather worn.

I sat down on a bench and stared out the broken window of the barn. It was all coming back to me now. My arm was hurting. I needed some painkillers, but my pockets were empty. My fucking phone was gone. This was terrible shit.

Even in low tide it would be difficult to get back to land. I’d have to wait for another party. The only other option was to try swimming with my one good arm. I wasn’t even sure what time it was. I stared up at the sun, trying to figure it out, and nearly burned my eyes.

The tide was receding and I tried wading out into the water, but the bottom dropped out beneath me suddenly and I lost my footing, going under for a minute. I flailed my one good arm and it didn’t do much. I tried to move my other arm, but it stayed stubbornly limp by my side. I dragged myself back to shore, paddling with one hand through the water, kicking up black mud with my shoes. The water was murky and thick as I crawled back to land. Fuck, what was I going to do?

I looked out at the sailboats on the horizon. They’d never come down here, in the marshes, in the muck. The water was glittering like I’d never seen it before, or maybe I’d just never noticed. Everything looked hyper-colored. The marsh grass was tall and green. I could even hear the chattering of the small fiddler crabs running back and forth across the sand and into their holes. I started throwing empty clam shells into the water, trying to make them skip. One fucking arm. I couldn’t remember much from the car accident, just flashes in front of me and me trying to avoid them. It didn’t matter anyway. I was never going to be Richard Shepard. I was never going to be my dad. I would have to learn not to be successful. I would have to stop using words like “excel.”

I threw a shell and it actually skipped. That small thing made me feel like a human being.

Then the fear that I was going to have to live at home forever with my dad and Cheryl overwhelmed me. Avoiding them both as they avoided each other? She was just getting worse. And when I’d ask her what was wrong, she’d just mutter something about nothing working.

Or worse, what if I had to stay with my father forever, alone? He’d keep telling me to get it together and I’d fucking let myself die.

I lay back and stared at the clouds. I loved doing this as a kid — looking at cloud formations, staring at butterflies — things you didn’t tell anyone about. One hand could feel the sand and the other couldn’t. It was the strangest thing, like part of me didn’t exist anymore. I dropped sand onto my dead arm, thinking back to last night, when I’d asked Pauline to cover me. I wanted to be gone and hidden for once, but it hadn’t worked. Neither did pouring sand over my dead arm. I didn’t feel a thing, not even a little bit. I thought about cutting it off, but there was nothing around to do it with.

This island hadn’t always been a shithole. I used to come here with my parents when I was a kid and people would have family picnics or neighborhood parties here. Back then, the graffiti was just some names surrounded by crooked hearts cut into the wood of the barn wall with pocketknives. I sailed small boats off the muddy waters and pulled their strings to bring them back to land. I’d load the boats with angry crabs and snails and whatever else I could find and spend hours watching the crabs scurry and jump out of the miniature boats and into the water for safety. I watched my mother untuck foil-wrapped dishes of potato salad and corn while my father tried to start the rusting, slanted grill someone had installed on the island. He’d cook hot dogs for us and I’d watch them, my mother’s hand on his back, rubbing it while he turned the dogs and think, I could float away and they would never notice.