Leesie leans forward, her chin in her hands, elbows on knees, eyes soft now. “I’m so sorry.”
“That lake of yours freaked me. i thought maybe the pool . . . i had to go there. See if i could.”
She closes her eyes. “And i messed it up.”
i get up, cross the room, sink beside her on the couch, not letting my thigh bump hers. “i was down there long enough. And”—a knot forms in my throat that i can barely speak around—“maybe it was good you were there.”
She shifts toward me, relaxes enough for our shoulders to touch. “Don’t do that again.”
i stare across the room, trying to make out the details of that picture of my parents and me. It’s fuzzy from here. Did i want to stay at the bottom of that pool? Never come up? Sitting in Gram’s living room, that freaks me, but down there it all made sense. Diving is life to me. Isadore is death.
We sit quiet. Leesie’s too smart or too scared to say anything. i find myself longing for that shimmering blue place with my parents. It tasted so good.
Leesie whispers, “Do you mind?” She slides her hand under mine and lifts it to her knee like it’s something frail she doesn’t want to break. She weaves her fingers through mine, curls them up around my cold hand. She strokes the back of it. It feels good, safe, her hand smoothing over my hand.
i sink back into the soft cushions of Gram’s fifties couch. “The shark story is a bunch of crap.”
Leesie starts. “Somebody actually said that to your face?”
“DeeDee asked to see the scars.”
“Kids here are dumb. Generations of pesticide use.”
“We dove with sharks all the time.” i remember a hammer-head slipping through the blue at the limit of my visibility on a Cayman wall dive, sharks whizzing around my head in the Bahamas, and the massive bull sharks at the Blue Hole in Belize. i feel myself getting emotional. i sit forward. “i’ll go check—”
Leesie’s knee presses into my thigh. “It’s going to be all right.”
No way. Never. Not for me.
Heat emanates from Leesie’s leg, warm from the shower, and wriggles into the sadness, under the pain. i lean my head back, incline my face toward her hair, and breathe deep and slow, in and out, over and over. Training. Hanging on tight to her hand. With every vent, i suck in more and more Leesie. My grip on her hand tightens. Her fruity shampoo mixed with chlorine whirls around me. i cling to her hand like i held on to the mangrove tree that saved me in Belize. Isadore tugs, but i have Leesie’s hand—don’t want to let it go.
Her hand in mine writhes. My eyes stray down. My fingernails are digging dints into the soft flesh on the back of her hand. A tear makes a wet path down her cheek. i let go.
“Look what i did to you.” i shift so a space opens between us.
“It’s nothing.” She buries her bleeding hand in my sweatshirt’s pocket. “I’ll be back.” She slips away—just to the bathroom, though. She can’t leave. i still have her clothes, drying.
i stretch out on the couch, listening to the water run in the bathroom sink, sorry that i hurt her.
She comes back and leans against the doorway. Her eyes travel over the pictures on the desk. “I should go.”
“Not yet.” Please, no. She comes to me. i need to ask her before she evaporates. “Was it real?”
She looks down at her hand.
“i know that’s real. i’m sorry.” Four red fingernail digs—i can see them from across the room. It’s like i branded her. “i’m a freak these days.”
She blows on the cuts, meets my eyes again. “It’s nothing.”
“That ‘she comes to me’ stuff in your poem. Was it real?”
Her eyebrows draw together. “You want to talk poetry?”
“Did you make it up?”
“No.”
My palms get sweaty, and my fingers tingle. My slow, free-diver heart revs. “You saw your grandmother?” i need so bad to believe what she’s going to say. Maybe she’s a medium. Are Mormons into that? Fine by me. Pull out the crystal ball. Turn off the lights. If she can find me something other than two dead bodies in a morgue in Florida, i want to know.
Leesie breaks eye contact, stares down at Gram’s flowered rug. “It’s not like she zapped into my room and flew around.” Her voice is quiet. Calm but strong. “The whole thing happened in my head.”
i roll on my back, stare at the ceiling, disappointed. “Like a dream.”
“No. Not a dream. A few weeks after Grandma’s funeral, my mom and I spent the evening crying together. I went to bed, said my prayers, and tried to sleep.”
“You pray?” i sit up. She crosses the room, takes her old place on the couch next to me. i turn toward her.
She leans forward. Her hair hangs like a veil between us. “I think this was kind of a vision.”
“Okay. A vision.” Is that what happened to me at the lake? A vision? And in the pool tonight? What was that?
Leesie nods. “My mind raced. I couldn’t sleep, and then my grandmother was there, inside my head, pulsing with light.”
She shifts her hair so it falls down her back, almost dry. i touch it—just the ends with the back of my hand. She doesn’t protest.
“You have amazing hair.” i take a handful, let it glide through my fingers. She closes her eyes, tilts her head back. i take another handful.
She opens her eyes and stares into mine, doesn’t blush or look away like she usually does. “Grandma wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. So changed from the body we laid in her coffin. Not old. Not young. So beautiful I couldn’t breathe.”
Leesie’s hair cascades through my hands again and again, the scent of it, the rhythm, hypnotizing me.
She comes to me.
She comes to me.
She comes to me.
Awed joy rustles in her voice. “Happiness flowed out of her, filled me up. Tangible—like you could pour it from a pitcher.” She oozes with the power of what she tells me, what happened to her.
i drop her hair, break eye contact. “Couldn’t you have just imagined it?”
“Overcome. That describes what I was like when she left.” Leesie doesn’t continue until i face her again. Her eyes are tender now, reach down to my soul. “I lay in bed, holding my pillow, totally embraced.” She brings her hand to my face, pushes a stray lock from my eyes. “In the morning, putting the whole thing into words was impossible, like trying to capture a beam of light.” She takes my hand again. “Could I make that up?”
i look down at our hands. “i don’t believe there’s anything after. More than this. It’s over. You really think there’s heaven?”
“It’s real. I know it is. I’ve been told it all my life, but now I’ve seen it.” She squeezes my hand. “It could be real for you, too.”
“i don’t think so.” My eyes seek the snapshot across the room. “We always just dove.”
“Life is so much more than that.”
i drop her hand. “You don’t know—you don’t dive.”
“I had to write this essay for, well, that doesn’t matter, but it was about what has shaped my life the most.” She captures my hand again. “These past few years with my grandmother made me stop taking things for granted.” She strokes the back of my hand with her hurt one. “To see Grandma like that, healed and whole. I’ll never be the same.” She rests her head on my shoulder. “You’ve exhausted the diving opportunities around here. Maybe you’d like to try something new.”
i shake my head again, but i let her keep hold of my hand. i lay my cheek on the top of her head and breathe her in deep.
She wants me to try her faith? Maybe i’ll just try her.
i wake with the dusty gold afghan from the back of the couch tucked around me. i don’t know when i fell asleep, when Leesie left. This morning the water is blue, clear, like in the pool, but i can’t look. Please, give me quarry vis. Thawing stinks. Warm flesh hurts. That be strong crap is a joke. Walking? Talking? School?
No way.
/> chapter 13
INSPIRATION
LEESIE’S MOST PRIVATE CHAPBOOK
POEM #28, FAMILY PRAYER FOR MICHAEL
stephie climbs on dad’s back while he kneels,
head bowed, half strangled
as she grasps him around the neck calling,
Pick me, pick me.
I hit my knees as she pipes,
Dear Heavenly Father,
shrill into the night air.
Thank thee for Mom and Dad and Leesie and Phil and me, too.
Bless us nothing bad will happen.
and bless michael. about time
you blessed michael.
Help the people who are hungry get something to eat.
Bless that Leesie and Phil will be nice.
don’t worry about leesie.
she’ll survive.
Bless michael.
Help us not miss Grandma too much.
And bless the pigs, especially the mama ones with
new babies.
and michael, please don’t forget
my michael.
In the name of Jesus Christ,
amen.
LEESIE HUNT / CHATSPOT LOG / 10/5 12:13 P.M.
LEESIE’S MOST PRIVATE CHAPBOOK
POEM #29, NAIL PRINTS
Four little marks, pink half-moons,
that record his grief on the back of my hand.
they sting when I touch them—
but how can I discover what he means
with my baby sister’s Barbie Band-aids
blurring my vision?
strange how I hide his prints
from mom’s prying eyes,
how my throat closes when I glimpse them,
sore and puffy, as I walk through crowded hallways
empty without him, how my lips
ache to touch them
even though they are on the back of
my own hand.
strange how I guard them
from ointments and aloes,
hoping the thin scabs
will scar me with his
nail prints.
LEESIE HUNT / CHATSPOT LOG / 10/6 11:39 P.M.
chapter 14
CONFESSIONS
LEESIE HUNT / CHATSPOT LOG / 10/07 9:42 P.M.
LEESIE HUNT / CHATSPOT LOG / 10/07 9:56 P.M.
LEESIE’S MOST PRIVATE CHAPBOOK
POEM #30, WHO?
I stand in the bathroom and brush
my hair shiny.
I want it silk for him:
I want his hands in it
again,
his tan cheek nestling on it
again,
I want his arms to clutch me so close
I can feel him
inhale—
Who am I?
Who is this girl who commandeered
his hand? Who soothed him and testified?
Who aches to hold him?
Who is this girl who applies
watermelon lip gloss, wraps
in her accidentally sexy thrift store find,
and creeps down the stairs?
she hustles past my parents
nodding to the late news
into the safe basement
dark.
the stairs creak and I know
who she is: a criminal.
I flee into the cold
night, shivering, ashamed
that this all feels so
delicious.
I perch on the bottom step,
my top lip perspiring,
and await
my michael,
gray hoodie, black jacket,
jeans that hold him too close,
biblical hair, the stubble hiding
his face—his warm mouth that betrays
him more than he knows—
a pain in his rich gray eyes
that starts me
praying he’ll need me
again.
chapter 15
THERAPY
MICHAEL’S DIVE LOG—VOLUME #8
i launch into the night in Gram’s old blue Chrysler wondering if Isadore can attack while i’m driving. Would i crash and burn? Am i that psycho?
i must be. If i’m sane, what am i doing driving out to see Leesie? i should be heading down the highway toward Lake Coeur d’Alene. When i couldn’t get her online earlier, i tried to book a dive trip, but all i could think about while i surfed for deals was her hair. She thinks i’m a freak, or a patient, or her next convert. i don’t want that.
What do i want? i want to feel like a normal guy out with a hot chick, but i couldn’t even kiss her at the lake. i’m not even sure she wanted me to. Sunday night there was something precious and holy about her. Touching her, connecting, gave me the first moments of peace i’ve had since Isadore. i’m crazy to taste it again. Is that enough for her? Will she be okay if i just want to hold her hand, sink into her cool blue-green eyes, and breathe down her hair?
i take the first curve on the gravel road out to her farm too fast and spin out. Freaks me. i cut my speed and put on my high beams. The road twists again and then goes straight up and down steep hills, past empty fields, and, every mile or so, a house surrounded by low corrugated metal buildings, old wood barns, or a square grain elevator tower.
Leesie’s old-fashioned farmhouse sits back from the road. She waits for me, wrapped in her fringy suede, sitting on the bottom step of a short flight of cement stairs that lead from the road up to the yard. i can see the front of the house from the car, wide steps and a big porch. The light shows pumpkins and cornstalks crowding around the door.
When i get out of the car, she greets me with, “You shaved.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you look—” She trails off.
i washed my hair, too, so i know that barnyard smell isn’t me. i pull a face.
“Gross. I know.” She stands up. i wish she’d smile. Her hair refracts the floodlight shining on the yard. “It doesn’t always stink like this. The barnyard’s still drying out from that thunderstorm.”
“What is that?” i plug my nose.
“Hogs.” She crinkles up her nose. “Just up the road.” She motions toward the curved outline of a huge barn, dark against the bright night sky.
i glance around. From what i can see, the place is full of neat gardens like Gram’s used to be. The shape of a grain elevator hulks across the road from the house.
Leesie takes a step toward me. “You want a tour? Most of the plants came from your gram. Must be hard on her not being able to keep her garden up like she used to.”
“Naw.” i focus back on Leesie. “Maybe another time when we can see better.”
“We could walk down to the sow barn. There’s a new litter of piglets.”
i can only imagine how that place stinks. “Can’t we just go inside and talk?” i step closer to her.
“You want to meet my parents?” Leesie drifts over to the front fender. “I didn’t tell them you were coming. Just slipped out.”
“You don’t have a ‘family rule’ about that?” i back up to the car, lean against it, close to her but not touching.
She finally lets loose a smile. “Not yet. I better not be out too long.” She lifts her brows. “I don’t usually—”
“Sneak around with a guy?”
“And you’re not even a member.”
“Of what? The butt-pinching club?”
She laughs. “My church.” Her shoulder settles against my arm.
i lean into her. “Is that a prerequisite for sneaking?”
“Kind of.” Her words come out sort of breathless.
Standing next to her, touching her again, makes me feel breathless, too. Maybe i can do more than hold her hand. “i came all the way out here on your crazed road.” i touch her hair. “What do you want to do?”
She starts away from me. “That gives me an idea.” She walks around Gram’s car, sizing it up. “You ever been hill jumping?”
i shake my head. i want to touch her hair again. Smother my face in it.
“Better give me the keys.”
i hesitate. Gram loves her car. She’s had it for decades.
“Don’t worry. I’ve been driving this road since I was fourteen.”
i drop the keys into her hand. i’m ready to agree to anything as long as she doesn’t disappear into her house and leave me to pig stink and Isadore reruns, trying to find my way back to her lake alone.