The slate floor where I am bent over on hands and knees turns red, but not from blood. The drop that has fallen from my body sizzles and evaporates like water on a skillet, then turns to misty fog. The fog becomes smoky and suffocating. The sun is tipping west, and the trellis of pink bougainvillea gives me no shade.
The beach house again. The front porch again. I don’t like the porch.
The heat is unbearable, beating down on my back and rising up into my chest. I wonder what day it is now.
The front door opens, and Marina and Dylan step into the frame.
Twenty and sixteen are strange ages—no longer children, not yet adults. Or maybe the problem is that they are both.
Marina wears no makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes, but she’s pasted on a smile for Dylan. In shorts and a halter top, she bounds down the wide steps as if to show him how easily it’s done.
“Let’s go,” she says. And she keeps going, right through the ankle-high layer of smoke as if it doesn’t exist. For her, maybe it doesn’t.
Dylan takes his time pulling the door closed, testing the knob, and making sure each keyhole is turned. He manages the steps just fine. It’s the long walk to the end that kills him. An RV could park on this porch with a comfortable margin, it’s so long and wide.
Light plays with Marina’s hair as she passes under the bougainvillea. There are so many colors in black. My beautiful girl. She steps off the opposite end and goes around to the front of the garage, pulling her keys out of her favorite striped bag. The appearance of waiting for him will only make things worse. So she waits where he can’t see her by going through the motions of opening up the car and rummaging for something in the trunk.
Sea air tousles Dylan’s locks, black as his sister’s. He wears it heavy around his face, brushed forward, because Marina says it’s his best style. He’s a good-looking young man, laid-back on the outside even when his insides are in knots.
Apart from the private beach in front of the house, Dylan doesn’t get out much. It’s amazing what can be done online. The therapists and tutors come here, and his closest friends, surfing buddies. He’ll go to the doctor’s office if he must, and he can manage short car rides from time to time—like going through In-N-Out for a burger and back. That’s about all the energy he can put into leaving the house. The rest of the time he stays put, or he’s on a surfboard in the ocean.
His sister keeps hoping he’ll meet a girl he likes well enough to draw him out. But all of us know his condition isn’t that simple. Phobias aren’t logical. They don’t fit into neat categories. They don’t always have clear triggers. Take the surfing, for example. Dylan can’t attend a concert in the park with a crowd of friendly picnickers, but he can float on a vast ocean that teems with very real threats. He can put himself in the pipeline of a wave on a flimsy fiberglass board and not fear drowning. I’ve never understood that sort of thing, but understanding it isn’t the same as accepting it.
Today Dylan’s progress across the porch is smooth until his leg cuts the smoke that I’ve generated, and his step stutters.
Marina hears the hesitation. By the time she emerges from the front of the house, his feet are rooted. Can he see the mist lapping his shoes?
I roll off the tile onto the brick pathway that borders Marina’s flower beds. The smoke is transformed into sunlight as it clears away.
“What is it?” Marina asks.
Dylan takes a deep breath and holds it for a few seconds. Then he exhales. “Nothing,” he says. He proceeds to the edge of the porch. And today, that’s as far as he can go.
The fringe of hair that frames his face is collecting sweat at the tips. It’s the only outward evidence that Dylan stands on the edge of a cliff and is worrying about being pushed off. Someone who doesn’t know him might think it’s just the heat. Or the grief of bad news.
“You do this every time we go out for a bite,” his sister says gently.
“We’re not going out for a bite.”
“True. But you’re going with me, in my car, and that’s exactly the same. Come get in the car, then we can decide if you want to go any farther.”
From where he stands he can see that she’s already pulled it out of the garage. It’s idling, waiting for him. Marina has a convertible but only drives with the top down when Dylan isn’t with her. The vinyl is securely in place. It seems clear to me that he wants to get there, even if his legs won’t obey. His breathing becomes more shallow, and not from the exhaust floating our direction.
It’s been years since Marina stopped trying to talk her brother out of the way he feels, but she still aims to be helpful. She comes up onto the patio and leans against the trellis.
“We don’t have to hurry. You set the pace. If things start to go south, I’ll bring you straight back. You know I will.”
Dylan nods. Marina has rescued him many times.
My heart sinks for my son. That coarse thread of mental illness runs through our family tapestry, and Dylan got caught in its weave. People like Jade think he’s manipulative, that his refusal to leave the house except when it suits him is irrational. And it is, unless you’re Dylan.
For starters, agoraphobia isn’t exactly about the fear of being in a certain place, or of leaving a certain place. Agoraphobia is about being afraid of fear itself in a way Franklin Roosevelt probably never comprehended. It’s the all-consuming dread of having a full-fledged panic attack in any location where there’s no escape route, no shelter, no protection. For someone with this preoccupation, the very logical, rational thing to do is to stay in the sanctuary where he knows he can survive, without the risk of public embarrassment, should fear catch him off guard. Our family understands this, Marina most of all.
Sometimes I worry that Dylan’s ability to float on the ocean is a subconscious death wish. What can a panicked man do on the ocean but drown?
“I know this is hard,” she says. “I won’t leave your side. You’ll always have an out.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
Still, he doesn’t move. His fingertips are trembling, so he wipes them across his sweating brow.
“I thought you wanted to come,” she tries.
“I do. I just can’t.”
Her gaze is sympathetic. “Is it that you don’t want to see Dad like . . . like that?” Marina asks. “I don’t want to either. But it’s just us now, Dylan. We have to do this, and if we go together—”
“I can’t leave Mom,” he blurts, “not with things the way they are.” His words bring me to my feet. Marina’s face mirrors my own reaction: surprise, worry, disbelief. My eyes dart to the ocean.
“Mom’s not here, Dylan.” Marina speaks so patiently. “Mom’s never been here.”
“She’s always been here. Ever since I can remember. You just don’t feel it the way I do.”
A painful silence passes between them.
Marina breaks it gently. “What brings that up now? You haven’t mentioned Mom since you were in fourth or fifth grade.”
“You don’t like to talk about her. About what happened.”
“But what does that have to do with . . . ?” She puts one hand over her mouth and then decides to give the argument to Dylan. “If we leave Mom here, just for a little while, she’ll be here when we get back, right? Just like all the other times you’ve gone?”
“It’s not the same now.” He takes a step back from the edge of the porch. “I’m really sorry. Could we go tomorrow?”
“What will be different tomorrow?” There’s frustration at the edge of her question.
He crosses his arms defensively. “Can Jade go with you?”
Marina’s tense shoulders drop an inch at this suggestion. She closes the gap between her and her brother and encircles him with a hug that he doesn’t return. “She’s not the one I want with me for this.” She studies her brother; he stares at his shoes. She looks over her shoulder as if she’s heard a sound on the street, but really she’s trying to hide her disappointment. Dylan already sees, but what can he do about it?
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then Marina spins away.
Dylan shuffles back to the cushioned bench under the trellis and sits. He leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. I stay in the yard, staring at him until the tips of his sweaty bangs dry into stiff points and his fingers stop trembling and his tight breathing levels out again.
In my mind’s eye I can see Marina entering the southbound lanes of the freeway. She’s left the top of her car up.
Then I can see Sara, working alone in a kitchen. It seems to be a private residential kitchen, except that it’s twice the size of any I’ve ever stepped foot in, and it contains equipment I don’t recognize. There’s no evidence she was thinking of my children when she fled Ian’s party.
The blood on my elbow continues to ooze slowly. It’s thick and black and seems to have forgotten how to clot. I blot it off with my fingers but don’t know what to do with the smears. I try to wipe my hand clean on the grass, but it passes right through the green blades. They don’t resist me like the hard, lifeless stuff of earth, but neither can I touch them. The grass is a living thing, like Sara. My fingertips can’t touch its softness. I try to transfer the smudges to the trellis like paint. Though my contact with the wood is sure enough, nothing will transfer. What am I going to do with this blood?
Dylan gets up to go inside the house. This is my chance to get in. I time my move to slip in through the door before he might see smoke rise from this cursed porch. I can’t be sure how much he sees but doesn’t say.
He withdraws the house key from his jeans pocket, unlocks the door, and pushes it wide. He steps inside and reaches back to close it without turning his head. I dart then, across the tiles and up the steps and into the house, and a breath passes through me as he pushes the door closed and displaces the air. I make it through.
Into someone else’s home.