Your eyebrows narrow into a frown.
“The yurt isn’t even finished, but I guess it’s the only place they had left to put me. It’s crazy; I can practically see into his cabin from my window.”
Your fingers tighten around the bottle of Advil. I feel the room get suddenly hotter. I imagine the lake outside boiling in sympathy with you, steam rising, scorching the earth around it. You glare at me with fire in your eyes. I cannot remember you ever looking at me like this.
“Sadie, what’s wrong?”
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
“Fuck you.” You throw your blankets off your shoulders. All your fatigue and weakness is suddenly gone. “How can you come in here and say something like that?”
“Like what?”
“You’re just shoving it in my face.”
“Shoving what in your face?”
“ ‘Oh, Sadie, you’ll never guess where I’m staying,’ ” you mock. “ ‘Oh, Sadie, you’ll never guess how awesome life is out there. You’ll never guess what a great time I’m having while you’re stuck in here.’ ”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Whatever, Max.”
“I’m sorry.” I can hear my voice getting higher. I can feel the tears pushing at my eyes. “I swear, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m so sorry.”
If it is you who is hurt, why am I the one crying?
“I’m sorry,” I say again. I keep saying it over and over. I’ve been saying it forever.
But what if I’m not sorry?
“I’m going to go now,” I say.
“Fine.” You cross your arms at your chest. “Go.”
What if I have nothing to be sorry about?
“Don’t be like this,” I say.
“Be like what?”
“It’s not my fault you’re sick. Don’t take it out on me.”
You pull the blankets back up around your shoulders.
I can feel you watching me from your corner as I collect the beanbag chair, a vase, and a couple of framed pictures off the walls.
“Can you close the windows before you go?” you say flatly.
“Don’t you want some fresh air?”
“No.”
I close the windows.
“I’ll bring by some books tomorrow,” I say. “Is there anything else you want?”
“My life,” you say. “I want my life back. Can you get me that?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. I walk out the door and close it behind me.
Νάρκισσος
NARCISSUS
In myth, you are a man. Your name means numbness. You know you are beautiful, and when you look into somebody’s eyes, it is only ever to see yourself; eyes are nothing more than glassy pools, just a surface to reflect you.
There are so many who have loved you, so many you have scorned, so many echoes of heartbreak. So many whispers packaged into a scream you still can’t hear. Those who love you are destined to waste away, to crawl into some hidden darkness, fading until they become only withered voices repeating what you say. You are followed by a trail of suicides, but you never look back.
Here is your pool, this lake surrounded by echoes. Here is the end of the line. You lean over the water, a glassy sky. Here is your reflection; the funhouse mirrors turn you into infinity. Here is the beautiful girl staring back at you, the only one you can possibly love. You are thirsty, but you won’t touch the water, won’t dare destroy your image with cruel ripples.
But water arms do not hold. You cannot kiss your own reflection. You cannot drink beauty. So you die and are replaced by a flower—beautiful but useless.
I have discovered a kind of rhythm without you. It’s nothing profound, but it’s consistent. I dig and I pull and I pick and I sow, and that’s all there is. Simple. Peaceful. You would call it boring. And maybe boring’s nice for a change.
But it’s strange swimming without you. That is when I miss you most. I float after a long day of work, and the lake seems so much more vast, so much deeper. I am always too far from shore. I hold the air in my lungs, trying to make myself more buoyant, but the water seems less willing to hold me. The field may be my place, but the water was always yours.
It’s the time between the after-work swim and dinner that I find strangest, when I feel the most lost. I towel off and put on clean clothes, but then I have nowhere to go. It’s too hot to stay inside my yurt, and I have no shade outside. If I go up to the house, someone will give me work to do in the kitchen. As tired as I am, that’s what I usually end up doing, even though all I want is to sit down and stretch my legs in the shade and read or nod off for a few minutes. But that is not an option. I have three choices: sit in the sun, sit in the hotbox of my yurt, or work in the kitchen, where there’s at least a fan.
I’m sitting in my doorway, hoping this time will be different than all the others, that maybe I’ll finally feel a breeze that will make this position bearable. But no. The air is still festering with heat. I’m already drenched with sweat, even though I just got clean.
And Sadie, there you are, across the water. I can see you looking out your window. The trees behind the trailer protect you from the afternoon sun, and for a second I feel a twinge of jealousy at how cool it must be inside. You are bathed in shadow, you have not worked for days, and I know these things mean nothing against your fever and quarantine, yet I can’t help but want what you have. I wave. I can’t make out the look on your face as you wave back, but I can read so many things into the way your hand moves—the stiffness of your wrist, the lack of enthusiasm. Then you close the blinds, and I’m alone again.
I haven’t seen you in three days. Skyler begged to take your meals to you, and I saw no reason why not. But now I realize you must be wondering where I am, why I haven’t come to see you. And I guess I am wondering the same thing. I am wondering why it has been so easy to let you go.
I cannot work in the kitchen. I cannot bear to stand up, cannot bear to do anything with my hands. Even chopping vegetables seems impossible. Even peeling garlic seems like too much work for the tiny muscles in my fingers. But I cannot stay here in this excruciating heat. There must be an option I have not thought of yet. If anything will lead me to it, desperation will.
I look all around. Maybe there is some piece of shade that I missed, a tree previously hidden. But just like before, all the trees are on your side of the lake. And all the porches are on other people’s houses.
Yes, there it is, my new option: a porch on someone else’s house.
I look to my right, and there is Dylan. Even stretched out completely he would not take up his whole porch. He could fit two of me on there with him. He has shade to spare. And this is a commune, isn’t it? Isn’t everyone here supposed to share?
It looks like he’s sleeping. He’s lying on his back with his arms behind his head and a baseball hat covering his face. It’s not fair that he gets to be this comfortable during the hottest part of the day. I haven’t seen him step foot in the fields or lift anything heavier than a plate, and yet there he is taking a nap. I’m just hot and tired and grumpy enough to not care that I’m terrified, so I pick up my book, slip on my sandals, and limp my way over to his cabin.
“Hey,” I say. He doesn’t move. “Hey,” I say again, trying to sound like you when you get anything you want.
He finally stirs. He pulls the hat off his face and squints to see me against the sun. “Hey, what?”
“Can I sit here?” I say, trying to do that inflection you do that makes questions sound more like commands. “I have no shade at my place.”
He looks around, like he just noticed that he is, in fact, lounging in the shade. He looks at me skeptically. “What are you reading?” he says, like he’s asking me for the password to sit on his porch.
“On the Road,” I say. “By Jack Kerouac.” I hold my book up as evidence.
“Yeah, I know who the author of On the Road is.” He squints even more as he studies
me, and I have never felt more judged in my life.
“Kind of cliché,” he says. “A high school kid reading On the Road.” He scrutinizes me some more, and I hold my breath as I wait for his verdict. “But at least it’s not a romance novel or that young adult shit,” he finally says.
“There are some really good YA books,” I say, momentarily forgetting to keep my cool. “There’s even a National Book Award for young adult novels. That’s pretty legit, don’t you think? Have you ever even read one?”
He frowns, and I’m pretty sure I blew it and he’s going to kick me off his porch any second now. But finally he sighs and says, “Sit.”
So I sit. I lean against the side of the cabin and stretch my legs out. A light breeze blows, but the physical relief I wanted so badly is now compromised by a new tension. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to relax being this close to Dylan.
“What are you reading?” I say.
“You wouldn’t know it.”
“Try me.”
“Wittgenstein.”
“That’s a philosopher?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you read so much philosophy?”
“I like to know how people think.”
“But that’s not really how people think,” I say. “It’s only how one guy thinks people think.”
He looks at me like he’s surprised, like it just dawned on him that I exist. “Huh,” he says, and looks back at his book.
I try to read, but it’s impossible. I look across the lake, but your curtains are closed. I wonder if you’re on the other side, peeking through a tiny hole that I can’t see.
“What are you doing here?” I say. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I have always been the quiet one. You have always been the talker. But you are not here.
“What do you mean, what am I doing here?’ he says. “I’m sitting on my porch trying to read a book.”
“No, I mean here on this farm. What are you doing in the middle of Nebraska?”
“I’m just working like everyone else.”
“But you’re not like everyone else here,” I say, and as soon as it comes out of my mouth, I feel my face burn. It must sound like I’ve been paying attention, like I’ve been thinking about him enough to decide what he’s like and not like. “What I mean is you’re not a hippie really. You don’t really seem like the commune type.”
One side of his mouth turns up in a smirk. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say. Neither of us says anything for a while, but it seems like he’s laughing at me somewhere inside.
“What do you even do here?” I ask.
What am I doing? Max, shut up.
“Same as you,” he says. “Same as everyone. I work.”
“But what kind of work? You don’t do any farming.”
“There’s more to the farm than just farming.”
“Like what?”
“Administrative stuff,” he says. “Running errands.”
“So you’re like the secretary? Like the errand boy?”
He smirks again. I have a feeling I’m nowhere close to guessing what it is he does here.
“Sure,” he says. “Whatever you say.”
The sun gets lower in the sky, and people are moving toward the main house. They’ve been here so long they know what time it is without the dinner bell telling them.
“But why here?” I say. “You could do that kind of job anywhere. Why did you come all the way out here?”
“I don’t know,” he says, looking out across the water. “It’s away.”
“Away from what?”
He turns and looks at me. For the first time, he looks me in the eye. His eyes are piercing blue: not a sweet kind of blue, not like sky, but more like ice—sharp. They seem to look right through me, into my brain and down through my heart, into my stomach where he can see the butterflies in their frenzied flight. “Away from everything,” he says.
“What are you trying to get away from?” I say, my voice almost a whisper.
He looks into my eyes with that smirk that until now seemed so cruel. But there’s something else in it, something playful, something that makes the butterflies go ballistic. He tilts his head and says, “What are you trying to get away from?”
The bell rings in the distance. “It’s time for dinner,” I say.
“So go to dinner,” he says, still looking in my eyes.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I’m not into crowds.”
“Okay,” I say, not moving.
“Bye,” he says, picking his book back up, resuming his place like nothing happened.
“Bye,” I say, barely managing to pull myself up. I concentrate as I descend the stairs from his porch, fully aware that if I were to trip and fall in front of him, now would be the perfect time.
I walk to dinner, take my plate, sit next to new people I don’t know. I think I join the conversation, but I can’t remember what we talk about. I stay up at the house after dinner, joining a game played on a converted Monopoly board, except they’ve renamed it “Collective” and changed the rules in some confusing way to make it less capitalistic. I go through the motions of being involved in whatever’s happening around me, but really I’m just replaying the few minutes on Dylan’s porch over and over in my head, looking for meaning, innuendo, anything to make it something bigger than it was. I keep looking around for him, waiting for him to arrive for dinner, but he never shows up.
“I’m going to go keep Sadie company,” Skyler announces in my general direction.
“Honey, I’m not sure you should be spending so much time with her,” Skyler’s mom says. “What she has is really contagious.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m being careful,” Skyler says with her chin in the air. “She really needs a friend right now.” She looks at me with the brattiest look an almost-thirteen-year-old could possibly give.
Sadie, I should probably visit you tomorrow.
“Skyler, you have such a beautiful, generous heart,” her mom says with a big embrace.
The guy with the phoenix tattoo grunts, and it’s nice to know someone thinks this exchange is as ridiculous as I do.
When I leave the house to walk back to my yurt, people hug me goodnight like we’re family and won’t see each other for a long time. With each hug my tension eases, and by the end I am hugging back. I can’t remember the last time I really felt part of something, felt part of a group that was bigger than two people.
“I’m glad you stuck around tonight,” Maria says with a goodnight squeeze.
“Me too,” I tell her.
It feels like midnight, but I know it’s only about nine thirty. I light my lamp and try to read, but my mind can’t focus on the words. So I turn it off and just lie there in the dark, listening to the music the night makes, the crickets and birds and mysterious other invisible things. It is so big around me, the millions of little voices taking up space, making themselves heard, all of them so much louder than the tiny size of their bodies. Sadie, it sounds so different on this side of the lake without you next to me.
Dylan is only a few meters away, separated by air and a couple of thin wooden walls. He is probably lying in bed just like me, hearing the exact same sounds. His breath is so close, I am probably breathing some of him in. He is breathing some of me. And the lake is a barrier, a fence between your world and ours.
Sadie, maybe this story isn’t about you anymore.
Part II
The gods have no mercy for the hero.
They swat her around like bored cats with a spider.
This is the thing about will—one can always choose not to play. But the tragedy of no is the refusal of maybe. It is saying “the end” before even getting started.
Say yes. Open your eyes and find yourself lost.
Step forward. Weave your way through the labyrinth with your frayed ball of string.
I cannot tell her story if I am not in it.
Time stops.
&
nbsp; Blank pages.
Stars dance in each other’s orbit, spinning faster and faster until they lose control.
There are two choices: fuse together or fly apart.
In one part of the world, she is sleeping.
In one part of the world, I am not.
Once upon a time.
After four days of avoiding her, I am finally bringing Sadie breakfast. The first thing out of her mouth is, “Where the hell have you been?” and it goes downhill from there.
“I’ve been busy,” I tell her. As soon as I say it, I know it is the exact wrong answer. “I mean, Skyler really wanted to bring your meals,” I try to correct. “She was begging me to let her do it.”
“So you could have come with her. And there are other times of the day, you know,” she says. “You could have visited me anytime.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
Neither of us says anything for a while. Her hair is even crazier than usual. It sticks out in all directions in stiff faded-pink tendrils. I can see how some caveman long ago would have been inspired to invent Medusa—facing a woman like this, full of rage and with snakes in her hair.
I remain standing as Sadie throws herself onto her couch throne. My beanbag chair is across the lake. My place here is gone.
“How are you doing?” I say.
“How does it look like I’m doing?” She sighs, lifting her legs up like they weigh a million pounds. “I’m miserable.”
“I’m sorry,” I say because I can’t think of anything else.
“Stop saying you’re sorry.”
I almost say I’m sorry again, but I catch myself just in time. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Tell me a story,” she says, closing her eyes. “Tell me what’s happening out there in the world.”
“I’m not in the world either, Sadie.” My voice is sharper than it should be. “I spend eight hours a day in the sun, pulling weeds. Most nights I go to bed before it’s even dark. Trust me, you’re not missing much.”
She stares at me. “Why are you being so mean to me?” she whines, her face getting red the way a baby’s does before it starts to cry. She’s lying on the couch like a lazy princess while I stand in front of her like a maid waiting for instructions.