“Can’t let my baby brother go hungry.” She rolls her eyes. “Our parents were down and so were Adam’s sisters, and that was enough. It’s been a huge adjustment. It still is, but that first week, I felt like a walking train wreck. I kind of still do, actually.”
“You don’t look like one.”
“I like Romy, Leon,” Caro says. “Don’t mess it up with her.”
Leon doesn’t say anything. Keeps his eyes off me.
“It’d be me, if it was anyone,” I say. “He’s too good.”
He smiles a little, puts the lasagne in the oven, and helps himself to a bottle of water from the fridge. “So has the memory of pregnancy receded enough yet that you think you’ll have another kid, Caro?”
“Shut up,” she says pleasantly.
A car rumbles up the driveway.
“Adam,” Leon says. “I’m going to give him a hand.”
And then he’s gone to do it. Caro watches them from the window.
“So how did you guys choose the name Ava?” I ask.
She returns her attention to me. “We both liked it. Simple. It was the only name we liked, actually. We don’t fight that much, me and Adam, but I swear we had three world wars over names. Just vicious. And then we saw Ava and it just worked.”
“You seem more—” I try to find the words. “I mean, since I saw you at Swan’s…”
“Oh, right. That was a weird day. I don’t know.” She shrugs a little, embarrassed. “It’s just … my pregnancy was so miserable and I felt so out of control for most of it. I like being in control.”
“Me too,” I say.
“So I thought, I just have to have her and everything is going to fall into place because I’ll have myself back, that part will be where it should be again. But the car accident made me realize how out of my hands all of it is … I got really scared.”
“Are you still scared?”
She nods. “But I have to deal with it because she’s here now.”
The front door opens. Leon and Adam come in carrying bag after bag of whatever it is you run out of in the weeks you bring a newborn home, which must be everything.
“What is that amazing smell?” Adam asks.
“Romy’s lasagne,” Caro says. “She brought us an entire week’s worth of food.”
“Wow. That’s fantastic. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome and congratulations.”
“Thanks for that too. She up yet?” Adam asks and as if on cue, these tiny, grainy cries sound through the baby monitor I didn’t notice on the counter. Adam’s face lights up. “See, she knows I’m home.”
“You get the baby,” Caro says.
Adam takes the stairs two at a time while Caro gets a bottle ready. My hands start to sweat. I rub them on my pant legs and try to look like, I don’t know. I hope I don’t look like I want to hold a baby. It’s not long before Adam’s come down with Ava bundled in soft blue blankets in his arms. She’s still crying.
“There’s my favorite niece,” Leon says. He plants a kiss on her forehead.
“Okay, here we go,” Adam says. Caro holds out the bottle to him. “Here we go…”
“Latching issues,” Caro explains, like it’s something she has to justify. Or maybe she was already forced to. “So…”
“I was bottle-fed from day one,” I tell her. She gives me a small smile.
Adam watches Ava. I can only see a little of her from here, a bit of black hair, the side of her face. Caro turns to me and says, “Ava’s kind of fussy about being held before she’s fed, but after she’s fed, she’s fine.”
“Oh.” I swallow. “Okay.”
The rich scent of tomato and cheese fills the air while Leon tells Caro and Adam about how he was contacted by a New York Times bestselling author who wants him to redesign his site. Big project, big payout. He’s happy.
“Look at you,” Caro says. “That’s great.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
But my eyes are on Adam and Ava, my stomach knotting, waiting for the moment they’ll pass her to me. I don’t know why I didn’t just say it, I don’t want to hold her.
Just before the lasagne is done, Caro takes Ava from Adam. She coos at her for a minute, stroking her cheek. “You want to meet Romy?” She grins at me. “You look terrified.”
“I’ve never held a baby before,” I say.
It doesn’t deter her. Caro brings Ava to me, nestling her in my arms. “Not much to it at all. Just make sure you support her head—cradle her like—there you go. You’ve got it. Ava, this is Romy. Your Uncle Leon’s sweet on her.”
Leon laughs softly.
“Hi, Ava,” I whisper.
Her weight is in my arms, my palm cradling the swath of blankets cushioning her head. She’s got more hair than I thought a newborn would and her skin looks so smooth, so soft. She’s sleepy and full, her eyes half-open and not tracking anything. She yawns and shifts a little, and I feel it through the blanket, her legs pushing out, and it startles me enough that I flinch.
It gets so quiet, them watching me, watching her. I should say something but I still can’t find words, not the right ones. Because I can’t stand this. Because Caro’s right. She should be scared. Everything’s out of her hands now. All the things coming Ava’s way they won’t be able to control, things she won’t always ask for because she’s a girl. She doesn’t even know how hard it’s going to be yet, but she will, because all girls find out. And I know it’s going to be hard for Ava in ways I’ve never had to or will ever have to experience and I want to apologize to her now, before she finds out, like I wish someone had to me. Because maybe it would be better if we all got apologized to first. Maybe it would hurt less, expecting to be hurt.
“Okay.” Caro gently takes Ava from my arms. “Oven’s about to go. I’m going to put Ava down for a nap and then we’re going to eat.”
“Can I use your bathroom?” I ask.
“Sure. I’ll show you where it is.” She turns to the boys. “Set the table.”
Caro leads me to the downstairs bathroom. I lock the door and rest against it a minute, waiting for whatever moment this is to pass, for my throat and chest to feel less tight, but all of it, it just gets worse.
You think she was raped before she was in the water?
I press my palms against my eyes.
Don’t.
* * *
on the way home, Leon asks if I’m okay.
“She’s so new,” I say because I have to say it to someone because I think it will kill me, more, if I don’t. “So new…”
“Yeah,” he says.
I close my eyes, focusing on the sound of the road rushing beneath us, trying to convince myself there’s nowhere we’re going, or that where we’re going isn’t Grebe. After a while he asks, “You fall asleep on me?” But he keeps his voice quiet enough so he won’t wake me, in case I have. I pretend I have.
i wonder if it feels like something, the dark.
I wonder if she was alive when she was in the river, her eyes open and hoping for the surface. I imagine the tiniest points of light, the stars through the water, but she can’t reach them before she goes out.
A body in the water rots. Her body in the water, rotted. Those beautiful blond strands of hair would have separated from her, drifted away with the current, and all that tight skin would have come loose. All her healthy colors would have faded into a pallet of green and gray and wrong. Insides spilling themselves out, everything unable to hold itself together, a final coming apart. It’s why they turned what was left to ashes.
I pull my nightshirt off and stare at myself in the mirror. My hair is matted and tangled, just skimming my sloped shoulders. My skin is pale, too easily marked. I drag my nails across my collarbone and watch red streaks appear there almost instantly. My chest, small and flat, is more a suggestion than anything else. I tilt the mirror down to my stomach, all soft, no definition, a tiny belly I inherited from my mother’s side. On my grandmother, it came with c
hild-bearing hips and the kind of breasts that cause back pain. On my mother, it fit nicely with the rest of her curves. I’d look at pictures of them both and stare at my stomach, thought maybe it hinted at my potential, but it only turned out to be fat I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of. There’s more of my father in me than there isn’t, and of course the way I wear him would only suggest what could have been. I take my underwear off and glance over my dark and wiry pubic hair, and then I study my hips. They’re bony, remind me of how middle school dances made me so uncomfortable. Boy hands feeling my edges. It seemed more personal than a kiss.
It feels wrong to have all this.
It always feels wrong to have all this, but especially today.
I pick clothes that cover all the places of me that seem like an insult. I wear dark colors, ones to blend into the background with. Long sleeves and pants. Hair down. My nails are fine, no chips, so I only do my lips and then I’m ready. When I get downstairs, Mom is in the kitchen, staring out the window and sipping a coffee.
“Where’s Todd?” I ask.
“Still in bed. You’re up early.”
“Then so are you. The assembly for Penny is today.”
“You need to go this early for that?”
“Yeah.”
I want to see the setup before anyone else. I want the shock of the display to be something I don’t have to share.
“I should drive you—”
“Nothing’s going to happen today.”
It’s not a promise I can really make, but she thinks it over and must decide it seems more unlikely than not, that anything bad would happen to me. “Okay. I’m going to send some flowers to the funeral home. Do you want me to put your name on the card?”
I swallow. “Sure.”
“Come here.”
She holds her arms out. I step into them. She pulls me so close, I can hear the beat of her heart and I wonder if she’s thinking this is a day that could have just as easily been mine and hers. I could be dust. She could be waiting to put me into the ground. But I was the one that came back. And there’s no why to it. I’m not here because I’m special, because I’m meant to be. It just worked out that way.
“I love you more than life,” she says.
The sky is overcast. In the school parking lot, there are reporters. Again. Back for this. They don’t ask me anything when I pass, so maybe they’re just here for visuals. Get a shot of devastated faces to round out some segment.
The school is cold and empty. I don’t see anyone, but I hear voices, noises coming from the auditorium. If I didn’t know better, I could pretend it was setup for a dance, anything else. I follow the sounds. There’s a picture mounted next to the auditorium door and it stops me because it’s not the one they used on the MISSING poster. It’s from last year’s yearbook and Penny’s shining in it because so much hadn’t happened yet, when that photo was taken. I could look at my yearbook photo then and see myself like I see her now, still new.
I try to keep hold of that feeling long enough for it to fold itself into me because I will never be that new again and I want to remember. I want that memory but it’s hard because I don’t think it wants me.
Mr. Talbot comes out of the auditorium at the same time someone steps through the door behind me. I stay where I am, my eyes on her, while he says, “Oh—thank you for bringing these and thank your mom for donating them. They’ll be beautiful next to her picture…”
The sickly sweet smell of roses is in the air.
“Yeah, they will.”
A voice like a song you never want to hear again. A voice I want to shut my eyes to, but I’m afraid to shut my eyes to. A voice that makes me want to run and makes me forget how. I can’t move. A wreath of red roses moves past me, and the boy who is carrying it comes to a stop when he notices me, his eyes lingering on my nails, first, and then my mouth before he opens his own and says—
“romy.”
I can barely hear Leon over my heart, its erratic beat.
I watch his mouth move.
“Romy,” he says again, but it’s not enough. It’s just a name, anyone can say it.
I need him to show me who it belongs to.
“I couldn’t be there,” I tell him, and he lets me in. “I didn’t want to be there.”
“Okay. All right.” He walks me through his small apartment and I look around, but I can’t process his place beyond its walls. He tries to get me to sit but I shake my head. I stand behind a chair at his tiny kitchen table instead.
“Did you walk?”
He’s wearing an undershirt. Pajama pants hang off his hips. He wasn’t expecting anyone, but now I’m here.
He asks again, “Romy, did you walk?”
“Does it matter?”
He opens a cupboard door, pulls out a glass. He fills it with water from the sink and sets it in front of me. I don’t want it, but I take it, clumsily clacking it against my teeth. It tastes like nothing going down, but I drink it all and when I’m finished, I wipe my mouth and realize, too late, what that might have done to my lips. I check the back of my hand for red but there’s none. Leon watches uncertainly.
“I wanted to be here,” I say. “I wanted to be here with you.”
He tries to parse the meaning behind the words because he knows there’s more to them than that. This is what they mean, Leon: I need to see myself.
“Okay,” he says.
I follow him into the living room and we sink into his couch. His eyes travel over the pieces of me in front of him, but he’s not bringing them back together the way I need.
“Roses,” I say.
“Roses?”
“They brought roses for the memorial. I had to leave…”
“It’s okay,” he says. He grabs my hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
No, no, it’s not. Something is happening inside me and I need it to stop, I need to stop this feeling, the past trying to put itself on me because it’s too heavy to wear.
“Leon, kiss me.”
“What?”
I need to see myself.
“Please.”
He hesitates and then he moves to me so slowly, maddeningly slowly. The first parts of us that touch are his legs against mine. He brings his hand to my face, palm open against my cheek. He runs his thumb over my lip, the red.
“Romy,” he says. “I…”
“You’re the good part,” I tell him, so he won’t say anything else.
He brings his other hand to the other side of my face and leans forward. He kisses me, presses his mouth softly against mine and then starts to pull away, like that could be enough but it’s not enough. I wrap my fingers around his wrists, and keep his hands where they are. He exhales and then he brings himself to me again, kisses me again. His mouth opens against mine but I still feel his hesitance so I kiss him back, hard, because I want him against every part of me so I can feel every part of me. I want her back, that girl he stopped for.
Leon’s hands move down and I inch back into the arm of the couch, my knees between us and he leans against them like they’re in the way, finally kissing me the way I want him to. He kisses me until my mouth feels bruised, but it isn’t enough. But now he’s hungry.
I get myself under him and then he’s on top of me, breathing heavily, and he is so against me I know where the blood goes. My hands on his back. His hand moving up and down my thigh, then his fingers drifting past my jeans and under my shirt, under my shirt. My red on his face, his lips. I hear another heart beat under my heartbeat and it’s louder than all of this. His mouth against mine and all I can hear is the heartbeat of some other girl, no—I close my eyes.
“Hey,” Leon says. “Hey, look at me.”
he covers her mouth.
That’s how you get a girl to stop crying; you cover her mouth until the sound dies against your palm.
He says, okay? Okay.
When he’s sure she’s going to be quiet, he lets her breathe again.
He tells her, i
t’s okay.
He brings two of his fingers to his mouth and slides them inside it and it makes her want to be sick and maybe if she pukes, he’ll stop. She wills it to happen, it doesn’t happen. He takes his fingers out of his mouth and puts that hand between her legs, moving her underwear aside and then—a sharp, unwelcome pressure.
I want to make you wet, he whispers.
She makes the kind of noise she never thought she’d hear herself make, small and pleading whimpers. She closes her eyes, while his fingers stay inside her.
If she can’t be sick, she’ll just go away.
Look at me, look at me, hey, look at me.
At some point, he moved his hands from there and she comes to herself, her legs spread open. His pants are down. His weight is on her, heavy. She closes her eyes again. He makes her open them. Wake up, wake up. Wake up because you want this, you’ve always wanted this. But she didn’t want this. She doesn’t want this. He forces himself inside her. She’s tight and she’s dry.
It hurts.
Open your eyes.
But it hurts.
Open your eyes.
She’s sick then, five-six-seven-eight-nine shots coming out of her. Her body doesn’t make sense to her, can’t move when she wants it to move, but this? She turns her head to the side and vomit spills out her mouth, pooling in the ridges of the truck bed and he swears, but he doesn’t stop. It’ll hurt him too much if he stops. They can clean up together, after. Like that’s a promise, like she’d want it. Not that it matters, because he’ll leave her there anyway, half-awake and raw, her mouth bitter. Her head is so heavy. Why isn’t this over yet? She closes her eyes and he makes her open them again.
Look at me, look at me, hey—
“Romy—”
Wake up, wake up. Wake up from this, wake up from this. But it’s never over and she can’t stop making those sounds and he says—“Romy—” and I push at his shoulders and his eyes are on me, lingering on my mouth and my nails but he sees past them, he sees the dead girl and says “Romy” and brings her back.
“Don’t look at me,” I whisper.
leon sits beside me on the couch.