Drewanne hurried over. Her father, David, had bought another present for himself, and her mother and father were fighting about it. It was a boat that was due tomorrow, and her mother, called Honey because it was David’s name for her, was afraid of water. Honey felt unsafe on anything that floated. David said the boat was the biggest prize ever and that he’d earned it. Honey said he didn’t need one because he drove their car like a boat. That was when she’d started riding in the back seat with her eyes closed and taking seasick medicine with her.
The jokes were on the outside; on the inside the family wasn’t funny. They played out jokes, and that was dangerous. “I don’t like to watch you anymore,” Honey had said, riding around Daytona with him driving, her in the back seat, eyes closed. She kept saying, “You ordered a boat. We’re not a swimming family. We’ll drown.”
“Sailors don’t have to be swimmers,” he’d said.
“We all hate water,” she’d said.
“I love what I hate,” he’d said.
Then she’d close her eyes and let the Dramamine do the thinking.
They lived under the influence of water, a small spit of land between ocean and river—Daytona stuck growing older in a beautiful spot. The streets had the same tiny old Spanish and tropical houses that Drewanne had passed all her life, webs in their stucco, painted the colors of sucked candy. There were spurs in the grass and sand drifts on the sidewalks. Daytona could not move. Other tiny fish towns lay in wait at its edges. Drewanne’s parents were now living as high as they dared go because of hurricanes, fourth-floor condo. They had glass walls, bathroom-sized balconies, and carpeting so deep you felt like you were walking on chairs, and everything they had had a timer and a buzzer on it.
Currently, Drewanne lived where she felt safe and hidden, in the rental side room of an old house of a huge family. It had its own entrance with sand like loose sugar creeping across the floor and one window crammed with air-conditioning whose trembling respiration made her feel like she was living in her own lungs. When she over-cooled and got to the point of icy, she would say, “When will I ever get enough of myself?” and open the airtight door to sit on an outdoor step, knees to her mouth, like a child trapped in a growth spurt.
She liked to listen to the laundry on the line of the huge family. They always had something that needed washing, and it flapped like birds preening. She’d watch the dog next door, who was always busy burying things.
She never had a pet and she never in her life bought a whole tank of gas at one time. That was about commitments. She did, however, watch out sideways, while driving, for roadkills; she was in sympathy with them. “There’s Pain and Terror One,” she’d say quietly. Then, shortly, on the little crumbly Daytona roads, “Pain and Terror Two.” Sometimes that was followed by “A Half Pain and Terror” for one that had been there a few days without being delivered from its death place. “And I can’t do anything about it but feel,” she’d say. All she could do was watch the road and say, “It’s God I’m seeing,” and not hit anything herself, though her eyes were funny and sometimes pieces of her sight were missing. Maybe it helped their deaths that she felt and counted them, a terrible hobby. Maybe it helped, though she couldn’t for the world think how.
She was a little nervous now, and she felt it in her eyes. A piece of the truck in front of her came off but didn’t fall. It was something her eyes did, the sign of her affliction. But the affliction from what she couldn’t be certain.
In the guest parking lot, she crossed the speed bumps and rang them. Her wallet pulled down one pocket. She hid her glasses in the other; she tried not to wear them except for seeing. She got her Styrofoam box of dinner and carried it tightly. She knew the wind from the water would take life and pull at it.
Her hair was wound up in back, twisted. Done in anticipation of the wind and it might make her sight better. It did keep her awake; she was a night instructor.
She had done, again, what was contrary. She had ordered a takeout seafood dinner when her taste buds were set for breakfast. The Styrofoam was hot like it was still cooking. In a minute she realized she was carrying it too low. Under her clothes between her legs felt like the soft spot in a baby’s head; heat made it keep pulsing. She knew her pubis was a mess, disheveled as a small bird’s nest. She’d just gotten up, her lone sex dreams weren’t really finished; she’d given up on her boyfriend—he was disgusting and had a daylight job anyway. She was a night person and got up while he was sleeping.
She washed her hair today as she always did. She couldn’t stand the touch of day-old hair, it made her cross. The breeze now moved through the little tunnels of fresh-washed fringe, hair broken at the ends.
The elevator was occupied. She knew the man, a friend of her father. He squinted at her. He didn’t have a free hand; he only had one arm and he was pushing the door button. The one-armed neighbor was as close as her father got to anyone. “Is that you?” he said. “Drewanne Aubrey? I just bought your father’s electronic piano.”
“He must have given up teaching himself music,” Drewanne said, amazed. “Another new thing gone. Last week, wasn’t it the hot-air popcorn popper?”
The one-armed man said, “You know he’s not a good loser.”
“Before that, an exercise bicycle. It was a Life Fitness bike. He’d gotten it up to a hill profile.”
“Just trying to get pleasure, Drewanne.”
“But he’s tried everything. A siege of buy, sell, nothing’s striking him right.”
“Well, I heard him and he couldn’t play music,” said the one-armed man. “It’s an electronic piano and he’s an electrician, and it didn’t work out. I’m teaching myself. I have to play twice as fast as anybody to have musical talent. I thought it ran in your family—talent. Puzzles me. Don’t you teach at night? Keyboard, as I remember?”
“Yes,” she said. “Computer.”
“Ah,” he said. “That was the problem.”
The little room of the elevator bobbled up a column between connecting halls, really breezeways which stayed open to the water and air and made it feel like the edge of a diving board.
He held the button on open again so the elevator floor wagged beneath them. She turned to the side as if sunlight were sharp to step into. He squinted good-bye at her. She knew sunlight almost erased her.
At the door to her parents’ she knocked under the number with the only available part of her body, her funny bone. Her “It’s me” had an odd ring to it. So instead of an opened door, she got Honey’s eyeball at the security hole. The center of her eye looked busy as an anthill.
“It’s you,” said Honey, unplugging the door against the breeze. “Aren’t you ever going to buy any clothes?”
“World’s oldest clothes on a living body. Honestly, I know it,” Drewanne said.
“Carrying a Styrofoam container instead of a pocketbook. Don’t tell me you’re going to actually eat in front of us. As a child you hid to eat, so we always ate without you, and by habit just now we’ve gone ahead, though we ate separately. But I left you a share of mine, you can nibble.”
“Thanks,” Drewanne said, “though I don’t eat after people. Where’s Daddy?” she asked, listening as if there would be an answer.
Honey didn’t think David was an interesting subject. “Oh, keeping walls between us, I guess.”
The condo kitchen was tiny. It fit around Drewanne’s waist, a space saver. She unlocked the Styrofoam lid and poked her face close to see how fresh the stuff was she’d bought. “It smells like the seafood has been having sex in there,” she said.
“Like David. He has to smell everything, too,” said Honey. A peevish expression pulled at her lipstick.
Drewanne had a sudden urge to lay a fist to the side of her own head, to take her own dinner away from herself, bury it all in her mother’s freezer. Honey didn’t put up with throwaways; she didn’t approve of garbage. If you had garbage, you needed to freeze and save it.
“About the clothes. They are looking dangerously worn.”
“Honey, clothes aren’t car tires, and any day now I may gain weight and not fit them.”
“You talk so much,” said her mother, “that’s what keeps you skinny.”
Drewanne was stuck with hush puppies like hot rocks in her hand. “If I keep walking while I eat,” she said, “I can finish.” The dining room table gleamed like dark water. Flat skirts of wallpaper spread out in a huge pattern. A soft sofa looked like it floated. A lone ashtray held everything but ashes. It was filled with loose threads curly from unraveling, a paper clip pulled straight to make a poker, things that could be dropped and found on a carpet. There was a tiny key flattened as if it had been run over by a car; Drewanne stole it and put it down in her pocket. She liked finding things rather than being given them.
The room was such pale colors, Honey looked like she was wearing silk slipcovers. Her hair had been hennaed. “It’s not dye,” she said. “Henna is a vegetable. And I’m watching you, Drewanne. If you stand with your legs crossed, you’ll look bigger. You know—one foot slightly ahead of the other?”
“Oh,” Drewanne said all of a sudden, “dinner is so tiring.” She drew up tight. “I’ve got too much inside to eat right now.”
“All you’ve got inside is organs.”
“And each one makes me feel too full. I ate on Thursday, so I still owe.”
“You’re not a bank, Drewanne.”
She ate so little, she almost didn’t have a face. Her profile was fragile; any expression seemed big enough to break it.
“Well, you eat standing up. Your nerves can’t let your body use it. Relax.”
“I can’t,” Drewanne said. “I don’t have that much of a sense of humor.”
“Keep your legs together when you walk, so you won’t look so painfully thin. Where’s that blouse I gave you for your birthday? The one with the metallic threads. It made your whole face light up.”
“Oh, I forget,” said Drewanne. “I’ll think of where it is in a minute.”
“I mean you should be wearing it.”
“Clothes are heavy, Honey. They make my skin feel like I’m a burn victim. I think it’s just being raised in Florida that did it. The whole state stings or bites you. We’re all saturated with heat.”
Where was her beautiful blouse? She knew. She’d torn it up and scared herself. Anything that was special to her—presents—put her in an agony she couldn’t understand. That’s why she liked living in someone else’s little room, furnished mostly with unbreakable books and a whole family of strangers living behind her walls. Their eavesdropping kept her safe, and made her behave and live her private life like a careful guest. Who was she really—inside? If she thought too much, she had to slap herself for relief. Once, to change the subject, she’d tried scratching at her face as if it would come off. That was it—she didn’t approve of things inside her.
“This condo’s too clean, Honey. There are no tweets, woofs, or meows. Pets are the nicest things.”
“You talk silly half the day. Why must you continue that night job? Who wants to work the wrong way?”
“But I’m an instructor for people who work at the right time,” said Drewanne. “Night’s the only time they can take my class.” She’d tried staying up all night so she wouldn’t be surprised by her dreams. “My dreams tell me secrets I can’t imagine. They get me into places I don’t know how I got there or how to get back. Don’t you dream anything, Honey?”
“Not since I stopped sleeping with David,” said Honey. Late last month she’d started going into the guest room, down to bare ticking, not making up the bed. She’d wear the sheets in her sleep and then throw them into the laundry when she woke up. “It was his snoring.”
“When did he start?”
“Oh, he’s always snored,” said her mother.
Often before Drewanne got to sleep, drowning herself in morning, night had already shaken her by her neck as she drove home, as if it were a big man hidden in the back seat behind her. It left a pit that stayed in her stomach—suddenly a space had been made in her. She’d peek into the rear mirror to see what she had imagined. She saw her own pupils with night in them waiting to get out. It was the pupils that marred her eyes; her irises were green as the sides of a fish tank. Surely there was something bad inside her that only her nerves remembered and her worry was a blind finger that kept searching. Her eyes felt nervous now; she had learned to hold them still by pressing them with her fingers. In front of her, her father’s footsteps had left white strokes on the carpet. She followed them. When she got near her father’s door, she heard her mother say, “Ugh.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to be so mad at somebody and stay in the same house with him?”
“I’m leaving. Sometime,” said Honey.
“Hello,” Drewanne said when she stepped into his room suddenly.
He was giving his face a little squeeze. “What?” he said.
“Oh. What’s the matter with your face? Did you sleep wrong on it?”
“I haven’t been sleeping. All afternoon, I’ve been at the boat slip watching them trim it up. My boat’s due tomorrow,” he said quietly. He didn’t sit down, but chose a bedroom chair and just nudged it. “The sun burned me on one side.”
For a minute, the toe of her shoe came apart, pieces missing as she stood still. Then her pieces flocked together again. She tapped her chest as if she were typing a thought on it.
“So why are you here?” asked David. “Is it your birthday?”
“Just visiting,” she said.
“I’ve got private things to do,” said David. “Don’t you come round here on your birthday?” His teasing could hurt her. It looked like it hurt him, too. “So you better go, I’m busy.”
“You were just standing there holding your face on, Daddy.”
“You’re not listening and leaving, right? Don’t you have any friends?” he asked. “Specifically boyfriends?”
“Some boys like me cause I’m funny.”
“And then what?”
“They get tired of it.”
He turned from her. “You hold on for dear life the wrong way. I told you that the other day, didn’t I? Well, I told somebody,” he said. “Who was it? I can’t remember. Oh, yes, I was talking to the wall.”
She felt neck-deep in his embarrassment of her. Her fingers rooted for her glasses and she stuck them on; they clung to the sides of her nose as if they were afraid of falling.
There was something already in her eyes but she tried anyway. “What’s wrong? What makes you keep snoring?” She was afraid to go any further. The slightest words stirred deep water; the bottom of things came up.
“I’m still snoring. That’s the argument we’re squeezing at the moment. Can’t stop. Tried everything under my pillow—golf balls—balloons—eggs only once. I told Honey—go to bed drunk and then neither one of us will notice it.” He quaked with laughter, set his clothes spinning as if he were a juggler. He stopped, straightened up. She thought it was like he was hanging onto his clothes from the inside to keep standing. Somehow he was slipping as she watched him. The lens of his eyes were like a dropped camera, he was seeing her from the bottom of something.
She asked him to tell her again—the way she always did, “Why don’t you like me?”
He told her this time, too. His mouth dipped a low smile. “You can’t do anything.”
“Like what?”
“Gain weight,” he said. “Swim and stuff. Things I taught you. You make me nervous. Always have. That’s why I hit you. You can’t dance and I taught you how.” He came close. “Do you think I’m going to hit you? Whoops! Didn’t that time.”
She stayed very still. Then she felt a tendril of her hair grow from the back.
“What’s that behind you?” he asked as she whirled. He could scare her even when she knew the answer before the question.
“It’s my hair following me.”
“Ha! But you already jumped. You lose. Anyway,” he said, “your hair looks like a doorknob on your head. Should I turn it?” She drew her lips tight but he did nothing. “I’m too busy to tease anymore. I’ve got to get on with private things.”
She didn’t want to stay, but didn’t want to go. She sat and pulled out one of his old broken paperbacks, wedged into a shelf. She stuck her fingers behind her glasses and pressed her eyes in place and began speed reading. She had a tough talent for concentrating.
He was over her, scanned her as quickly as if she were tomorrow’s newspaper come too early. “I have to do something private in here. I warn you, you’re making me nervous. You’re too dramatic, you make me feel used up.”
“It’s only my emotions,” she explained. “I don’t mean to be dramatic.” She was running a little ahead of her thoughts. She paused for her ideas in her head to catch up.
“Well,” he said. “So watch.” She heard the whisper of the closet door, the tap of the closet light. A glimpse was all that was necessary. He pulled out a suitcase. She could smell the new leather. It had a strap like a leash and was on wheels.
She’d come to protect her mother and father. She took off her glasses and put them back down in her pocket now. She felt they might get broken.
“You’re sick.” Another voice. When had Honey stepped into the room? She would appear at the tiniest sound of a click to see who was using light for what.
David, one hand on the leash, one on a glass beside his bed, clicked another light on over it and was drinking what he had started. “I’m taking my medicine now.” He was ingesting a little gold for his arthritis. Drewanne’s own breath made her claustrophobic.
“Want a drink?” David said. “It’s medicine in bourbon.”
“Nobody wants to drink after you.”
He added another drop of gold. “It’s bitter and bright at the same time.” His lips changed to metallic, worn down as a weather vane.
He let go of the leash and patted the valise’s side. It made Drewanne ask a funny question. “Why haven’t we ever had a pet as a family?”
Her father smiled. “Those questions of yours. Well, here’s enough answers. I didn’t want to be preoccupied. Love ties you down, and it interrupts your mother’s schedules.”
“Wait,” said Honey. “You’ve taken a double dose of gold. Why did you take the dose for tomorrow?”
“Because I’m leaving,” he said.
“But the boat’s coming tomorrow.”
“I thought I’d go up into the mountains of Georgia. You know I don’t like it when things finally get here. They never work out the way I expected.”
“The mountains? But that’s where you were born. You don’t like it there. And a boat’s coming. That’s a big thing.”
“You’re listing to the side,” he said to Drewanne.
“I took off my glasses and put them in my pocket. I’m trying not to sit on them and break them.” She’d had an incident with an old pair. She’d gotten cut on each cheek. It had been hard to conceal. Makeup over it in Florida heat had actually given it motion—made her look like she’d cracked before her own eyes.
He was so close to her now when she looked up he was headless.
“You’re leaving me,” Honey screamed. “I have your laundry, so what’s in the new suitcase?”
“New clothes.”
“For what?”
“Leaving.” He pulled the suitcase on its wheels after him. It made a tiny double ditch down the velvet carpet. Now he was in the living room.
Drewanne left backwards to the balcony, the glass door sliding through the divided air—air-conditioned cool and warm salt-washed air. Outside she listened to the palms, their constant and exhausted brushing of themselves with sea air. She looked over her shoulder as if to wish on the moon, but looked down instead. The pool was way below. From here it looked like a platter of water. Moths flew like tiny soft flocks of gray birds, miniatures of birds on a trial basis. All she could do now was turn to the living room. The thing was still following her father; it had its own momentum. David had made it to the door and gotten it open. A slip of light hit him and it showed his face as if it were wired on. The balcony chair touched her and she jumped. Night had its mouth open—its tongue had been all over the furniture.
He tried to turn back to them and walk out at the same time. “Ow,” he said.
“Daddy, you can’t go two ways. You’ll hurt yourself.”
David was gone. Honey was at the oven, setting the timer. “He’ll be back in twenty minutes,” she said. “Wait for the ding.”
“I’ll never get to teach school tonight.” Drewanne slid the glass; the central air-conditioning clicked on and filled the room with wings.
Honey had the entertainment center remote in her hand. They pretended to wait. The TV screen was bright and staring. “Nothing’s in that suitcase. It could have been empty,” she said. The mute was on.
Static like a bad station came up in Drewanne’s head. It was a rush of uneven air and water—the roar of ocean and wind in a shell. That’s what she’d heard when he’d struck her. The smooth white living room wall made her eyes feel that they had rolled back under her lids. A piece of the wall came unglued and dropped. She hated waiting and hated silence like they were diseases. It gave her not the answer but the question. Was it something inside her father that got inside her that caused it? Her father would slap her face back and forth, in a volley, till she had to keep her eyes shut so she could focus them behind her lids in secret. It couldn’t have been anything inside her because there was nothing inside—she could hardly stand a big bite of anything. A bit of hard fruit felt as heavy as a whole dropped apple. “Soo-oo,” one of the shaved-head punks she’d hung around with had said. “What do you eat? Nectar?” And they’d called her Nectar Face after that.
Her eyes felt very far away from her. The chair hurt under her. She wished she were teaching. She loved them watching her, listening and waiting for her to reach them and learn.
While she waited she thought her way through her own room—stepping-stones of books, soft wavering walls of books, books as tables, armrests, footstools. Her lids were like blankets, her eyes grew hot under them and she fanned her lashes to cool them.
Drewanne reset the air-conditioning—high for tops. “No, it was loaded; it pulled that way, the momentum.” Honey’s body looked strapped flat with nerves.
Class; she imagined them. She’d disappointed them tonight. Would they disappoint her later? If nobody showed up for her next class, she’d teach it to an empty room, ask questions, try to measure up herself, lecture to the electric light, pack and go only when the teaching hours were up, turn off the light and the air-conditioning, walk to the parking lot, empty except for her lone car, with her keys out for self-defense.
The air-conditioned room was hotter; their emotions were burning.
Before the timer went off there was a polite knock on the door. That was the break they were waiting for.
“It’s him,” said Honey, turning the timer off even before she went to the door.
But it was the one-armed man, come to retrieve them. He lurched and grabbed at the opening doorknob to hold on. He said, “I lose my balance from nothing. A piece of yourself gets gone and everything feels slick.”
His five o’clock shadow looked crooked.
“It’s seven o’clock,” he said. “I’ve come to report you have a problem. Your car lights are on. Have been for about twenty minutes. I try to stay off my balcony because of my balance, but I’ve been out there tonight. I thought I heard something break—a jar, no louder, maybe a pot, but you know how noisy trees and water can be. That’s when I started watching your car lights. Your car hasn’t moved.”
“It’s not my car,” Honey said. “You’re mistaken.” Her eyelids looked webbed. “My car’s gone. David has taken it.” Honey never liked people with something wrong with them, and she didn’t like to get their messages.
To prove his own story, he let go of the knob, backed out, and started trying to run straight, scraping the walls.
Then they were all running for the little elevator. I must have gotten sick, Drewanne thought, because the sound is off everywhere.
The elevator fell fast, it dropped them. She rode it, her knees bent because she couldn’t straighten them.
“Something bad. Did he have a gun?” asked the one-armed neighbor.
“Yes, in the car. For self-defense, of course,” said Honey.
They ran into the thick night, the neighbor paddling with one arm, trying to stay ahead. “Hard,” he said. “One-armed is like wearing one shoe with the heel worn down; you’re always at the edge.”
The car had its broad slick back to them. The ground-level light of Daytona made low cold stars. Sand seemed to be in the air, rattling as Drewanne ran through it. She thought of her father standing in his bedroom, a loner who got married. The rattling got stronger. Her lungs took flight like wings of the heaviest bird. Too close now, she stopped. She had spooked a mockingbird out of its tree. It walked in hops in front of her, confused, holding its tail up like someone carrying a feather train.
The air was flung around her. There was a misshapen shadow or maybe a thing in the driver’s side of the car, thrown back and leaning terribly. She knew now through her pores, now through her ears. She hoped and felt the bottom drop out at the same time. She stopped, a piece of sight fell from her eyes; she spat on her shoe. Still she couldn’t catch what she’d understood, what was before her. Her body tried to balance by swinging between her legs. Apprehension was everywhere. She looked at her watch, but she had a habit of mistaking time—she was always reading her watch wrong.
Lopsided, the neighbor outran them with a half a whoosh. “Back,” he yelled. “Ooh, my missing arm hurts on heel vibrations.” He slammed into the side of the car; he couldn’t stop easily. “No, no, you don’t want to see. Look, run away, call Emergency, but there’s no hurry.”
Drewanne opened her mouth wide to ask a question. But the whole answer came up out of her, and all the nothings she’d eaten spilled down the front of her, even on her shoes. She was right about the weight of it inside her, rocks of apples, nuts of bread, string beans like thorns.
She didn’t know where Honey was. There was no room in her vision, except stuck against a tiny corner. Honey stayed. Drewanne walked herself back where she thought the elevator might still be. She went to clean up.
A moth, a bow of membranes against the glass, face down, looked in on her from the balcony. The moth fell and then her eyes lifted the moth back up again. “What does it want?” she wondered. Then wondered if she were crying or wet from the bathroom.
Then Honey came back in, so stunned she said, “I’ve lost all feeling. It was loaded. Gone. I didn’t look. There’s no repair possible. No self to see. Too apart to be put back together. No need to look. He cannot be faced and he cannot see.” She lay herself down on the all-white sofa, something she’d never allowed herself to do. Her hair, undone, fell to one side only and looked like it had been ripped, removed and placed beside her like a henna baby newborn. She was asymmetrical. “I gave him my hand,” she said simply. “He took his life.”
The one-armed neighbor was in the room; nobody bothered to lock the door. “If I can ever. . .” he offered.
“Oh, no,” said Honey. “No. I don’t want another. One David was enough.”
“I didn’t quite mean that,” the one-armed man said.
The carpet was covered with white footfalls. Drewanne for the first time took her mother home with her. But Honey couldn’t stay and couldn’t lie down. She went back as soon as she could see the next morning’s light seeping around the air conditioner. She drove back alone, Drewanne’s car limping. “Do I have a flat already?” Honey asked, pulling out, slow as a beginner. “No, that’s how my car drives.”
Later, Drewanne walked over. Neighborhood cats and dogs followed her for a while.
Police had talked with them quietly and privately and out of uniform. A mechanic came over, his face set as if he had swallowed gelatin. Tragedy was of course compelling. Suicide is always interesting. The one-armed neighbor said, “He’s come to give us a hand.” The mechanic put a glove on.
“Sell it,” said Honey. “I don’t want the car fixed and cleaned. I want a new one that nobody’s ever been in. Only display miles showing.”
The boat was cancelled, though it came anyway and had to be returned.
“He left no notes, no words, no gesture,” said Honey.
“A will is a note,” the one-armed man said.
They read the will in the lawyer’s office. He wanted to be turned to ashes. “And spilled out upon the water. Taken to sea, ten miles to get into the current.”
“I’m scared of water,” said Honey. “And I’m scared of ashes.”
Drewanne knew that whole persons turned to ashes are not soft and fine but the ashes have bits of bones in them. “But the urns he requested will be sealed,” she told her mother. “He wanted to be in two.”
“I don’t want him divided. I don’t want to keep one,” Honey said. “Cause I don’t believe in suicide.” And she offered the urn to Drewanne. She too said, “No, thank you.” She was embarrassed that her father fit into a pitcher.
On the boat, rented, with two urns, Honey complained, “The sky and the water are the same color. And I have nothing to stand on that’s not moving.” Ten miles out she cast him upon the water. When the boat swung to start back, she said, “We’re going the wrong way, Drewanne. We’ll never get back to land. We’re going out farther.” But they did get back.
At the memorial service Honey put her rings on backwards. “It’s like learning to eat left-handed,” she said. And then she needed something just as the minister was exploring his mouth with his tongue to get going. “Drewanne, my eyelids are quivering. I need my sunglasses to hide my eyes; that stained glass is so loud.”
Drewanne hurried out with the one-armed neighbor. She got confused. Which car was their new one? Out of confusion she grabbed the sunglasses from just somebody’s dashboard and started running. She fell on the wrong side of the one-armed man so he couldn’t help her. They heard the pop through her clothes. Bone of my bone, surely broken. Her stocking hung like shed skin. The congregation came out like everything was over, and scared her with their gentleness. Emergency was called; they came quickly.
They went with her, followed her to ER in a motorcade. Attention had always terrified her. Who knew who was driving her car for her? They set her leg in Emergency and the ER doctor gave her pain pills for now and later.
She wanted to go back to her room on the side of the house of the big family who were strangers. “I live on the ground floor. I drive with my right leg. Nothing’s stopped me,” she said. And to show them she was okay, she took a pair of pills from her pocket, swallowed them dry. “See what I can do?” and she smiled.
The medication made room inside her now, curled tickly little tails around, and the pills broke open a purr. Her lids lifted. Her eyes emerged.
Honey’s eyelids had swollen, two stuck doors, protected till they could heal. The congregation held onto her and she moved as if her eyes would never open.
They fed Drewanne water and mints from the bottoms of their pockets. She felt as fresh as if she’d been reinvented. She handed them back her funny little words, little jokes for thank-you’s and question-stoppers. To Honey, she said, “My father will never know whatever became of me. But you’ll see me soon.”
She drove herself home, right before them. She knew she was in for much worse and much better. Her father had taken her and left her at the threshold of memory.