The throb had started prematurely, because grieving was supposed to take a year, at the very least a year, and she wanted to believe that. Where had she first read that it was a year? She had read it so long ago that it had become accepted and unquestioned.
What about Queen Victoria? She made the entire country mourn with her, wear black, slide their feet along the floor noiselessly, and speak in whispers. She let almost all of Ireland starve and die, horses go unfed, colonies rise up, and all because she held on to her grief like it was sewn into her skin.
Rocky was not prepared for the flutter that she felt when Hill brushed her forearm at their last archery lesson. Her body had arced and sputtered, her battery started up as if AAA had sent out the big-deal charger. Bob hadn’t been dead but eight months and she still searched for him in her dreams.
Hill had said, “Pull your hand back even with your jaw, make it one line,” and he lightly grazed her skin. They had started holding their lessons twice a week in the old Grange building. He had set up two targets on hay bales. It had been just the two of them in the large cavern of a room. And ever since he had touched her the last time, she felt her inner circuitry begin to power up.
This can’t be right, she argued with herself. She endured all the signs, the quickened pulse, the sudden fit of energy, and the three A.M. wide-awake restlessness that felt remarkably unlike despair. She even walked the dog at that hour, although she discovered that it is hard to keep track of a black dog at that blackest of hours. He kept disappearing every time the moon dipped behind a cloud. One night they walked until dawn, came back and went to bed and when she finally did sleep, she dreamt of Bob. She had found him quite by accident; he was dressed in a crisp white uniform, selling ice cream bars along an ocean boardwalk in a wood shack.
“Eat it before it melts,” he said, handing Rocky a Cream-sicle that had already begun to ooze over her fingers. That was all she remembered.
She sat up in bed and said to Lloyd, “He’s selling ice cream, big guy. I think he’s going to be okay.”
She had found him, and it had not been as she had imagined. She did not try to pull him from the land of death and he did not yearn to come back with her. And she had not pleaded to stay with him.
Rocky and Hill had agreed to skip a few weeks of archery lessons over the Christmas weeks. He had family to go see. Rocky was going to tough it out on the island no matter how much her brother threatened to haul her butt out of there.
She fed Lloyd and waited until a respectable time to go to Tess’s house where she could practice archery. Lloyd had never seen her with the bow and arrow in hand; she thought that might be too much for him to bear. She left him at home to sleep undisturbed.
She practiced with the twenty-five-pound bow for two hours until she started getting negative returns, as Hill would call them. She started hitting only the outer ring. Her muscles were fatigued and needed recovery time. She wanted to strengthen her arm muscles so that when Hill got back, she would no longer have quivering arm muscles or a spasmodic trapezius.
Tess was a retired physical therapist and only took a few patients privately for the oddest ailments. When Rocky tumbled into Tess house, Tess put her hands on her hips and said, “At least let me do a little acupressure to keep you from seizing up like an engine without oil.”
Rocky gratefully climbed on her treatment table with her nose and mouth peering through the open slot at the top of the table. Tess talked as she pressed her thumbs and knuckles into key places on Rocky’s back.
“It was a sheer waste of time for me not to come clean with my synesthesia when I was working full-time. I would have had a different shingle like, ‘Synesthesia assisted techniques.’ People are more accepting now; ten years ago it was harder. Do you want to know how I see your body?”
“Sure, what do you see?” said Rocky.
Rocky was relieved to hear Tess talk. It kept her from thinking about the next archery lesson and Hill.
“Most bodyworkers see through their hands. There are the mechanical ones who see the body in an architectural way, bones attached by joints and ligaments and tendons and nerves. Their hands see which muscle is pulled tight, which tendon has sprung. And their hands send them a picture of what’s out of place and they figure out how to get it back in place.”
Tess’s hands paused over the area between Rocky’s shoulder blades, then jumped to a place at the back of her neck, and with surprising gentleness, she placed a knuckle above her tailbone. Rocky felt a clear buzz run up her spine.
“Now others see or feel a certain tick, a rhythm that each person has. It’s not a pulse from blood pumping, they say it’s something else, and by tuning into it, they can tell if it’s too erratic, too fast. The PT sort of joins with it and changes the beat. I don’t know how to do that. Not my style. When I close my eyes, I see a picture of your body, color and texture.”
She placed one hand on the front of Rocky’s left shoulder and one on the backside and guided the shoulder in a small circular motion.
“I see some burnt umber here. Not screaming orange, but tiny muscles that have been overtaxed and need time to repair. The body is amazing; you let these muscles rest for two days and they’ll be ready to go again. You might consider using some moderation.”
“I’ve never been good with moderation,” said Rocky through the hole in the table.
Tess placed a shockingly hot palm on the small of Rocky’s back.
“Oh. Now this is interesting. I feel a swarm of pollen-filled bumblebees. Not really, but that’s the sort of buzz I get. This area is about sex and creativity. Generativity.”
Rocky abruptly pushed her body up with both hands. “Thanks, Tess. That’s all the healthy intervention my body can stand.” She swung her legs around and leapt off the table. She grabbed her parka and left. When she got into the yellow truck, she felt the gushing drone of honeybees, drunk with nectar, between her hipbones.