The sky would turn peach. Then the fence. Next, the hibiscus would fall out of shadow, deep red centers budding in the black. The white flies would come awake and flutter; they would begin their lazy leeching of the leaves.
She knew the orange pots would heat, terra cotta bottoms resting on gray concrete. Farther out, there were flowers in a circle of bricks. She’d laid them herself, one by one. They leaned. They toppled. They sank in the sand. They separated empty space from a larger emptiness.
Mia could still remember the day they’d spent sweating under the sun. It took them hours to dig up all the weeds. They cut furrows with cheap shovels, emptied bags of soil over the sand. They dribbled seeds from their palms—fistfuls of Kentucky Bluegrass. She held the hose, watching as the ground turned a dark, rich brown. The smell filled the air, ocean and earth, while her toes sank in the mud.
When they were done, he wanted a beer. She wanted to roll the cold bottle against her bare stomach. Instead, they padded barefoot to the pool outside their door. She stripped off her shorts and t-shirt, sinking into the water in her new black bikini—the one with the ties at the side. They splashed each other, laughing. She pretended that what they’d done would make a difference.
Time passed. A few blades of grass emerged, dark green stems rising up from black beds. Then they died, and it was just as well.
~*~
7am.
He hadn’t called. She was lying in the same place on the same green futon staring at the same view of the sky turning peach, lighting the yard where nothing would grow. This was eternity—unchanging—her view of the withering tree.
She wondered, briefly, how it could hurt this much. After all this time, it seemed she should be numb. There was blood flowing—she could see the suggestion of it beneath the thin skin of her wrists—but how could she still feel without her heart? This was mummification. All this gauze, like the honeydew of the white flies.
~*~
“I don’t understand.”
This wasn’t true. Mia thought she understood too well, but this was all she could think to say.
“What’s not to understand?” He tapped his foot, impatient. “I don’t want to do anything different.”
She had dared to complain, so now he was telling her The Way It Was Going To Be. He was saying, You know what you can do if you don’t like it.
Only the solution seemed to be that she crack open her own rib cage and empty the contents into the Pacific. It was waste. And wasted.
Her loneliness wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t responsible for her. He’d dragged her two thousand miles away from her home, but her protest had been mild. For the record, she’d outlined all the reasons why it might not be a good idea, but she hadn’t mentioned this one. She was superstitious. To say it would have been to call it to her. But it was already there, gestating, cells dividing, mutating. She’d seen the first evidence of it the day he’d snapped at her in front of the Walmart checkout boy. The tone of his voice had shocked her. It was the tone she’d heard from men whose wives walked behind them with their heads hung down on broken hinges.
They were weak, she thought, and she was—what?
Hiding something from herself.
~*~
In the end, Mia had been curious enough to go. She was scared of change, so she leapt into it whenever she could. She was terrified of tall bridges, and the one leading to Coronado was the worst she could imagine—200 feet high. She went over it sixteen times, peering over the sides at the drop that went down forever.
“That means I’m brave,” she told him.
He shook his head. “You don’t get to be brave for doing things everyone else can already do.”
~*~
Mia knew she couldn’t blame him—only, she did. Because there was something wrong with the way he looked at her. There was something very wrong, and it seemed impossible that she was only just now coming to realize what it meant. This very moment, because he’d done it again, that foot tapping thing. He was swaying back and forth, right to left, shifting his weight. He eyed the door, keys dangling from stubby fingers.
She had never liked his hands.
“Just hear me out.” Her voice was calm and even—the result of years of training. It had to sound like she was laughing at herself. But it was still a struggle. Inside, she wanted to scream. Inside, she wanted to rush at him and slam her fist into his face. She wanted to bloody his nose. She wanted to see fluid gush out in a stunning shade of red. She wanted to see if there was something to him. He was passive. Passionless. Inert.
She was perfectly calm. Furious. Fire. “I get worried,” she said. “You could be dead on the side of the road for all I know. Why can’t you just pick up the phone and call?”
“Because I don’t have to.”
You’re not my mother.
He didn’t say it, but she could hear the thought. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his chin jutted out like a child’s.
“True,” she said, nodding. “I understand that. You don’t have to. But why would you want me to worry, when calling is such a simple thing?”
“Because it’s your problem, Mia. I’m not responsible for your worrying.”
“This isn’t about making you responsible.” Patience. Deep breath. You bastard. “It’s about the simple, little things we can do when we care for someone. I don’t understand why it’s a big deal.”
“I don’t either.”
There was more foot shifting then. Another glance at the door.
“Look. I’ve got to go.”
She nodded one last time. It wasn’t that he had to go. He needed to go. He was fleeing the scene. It was their accident. It was their slow-motion crash—glass erupting, metal buckling. Her head was forever moving toward the windshield. Four years waiting for the impact. It was beginning. Now was the moment. She could feel the pressure on the top of her skull.
It was hard for him—she saw it then—all this pretending that he wasn’t simply exhausted by it. He wanted to be free. This was his way. He would convince her that she was being unreasonable so she would slink away. She would nod her head like a puppet. “Yes, dear. Of course, dear. You’re right, dear. I’m sorry. I wasn’t letting go again.”
She had been holding on for both of them.
She knew better now than to ask when he’d be back, so she did not. The first few times, the question elicited a heavy sigh. Then, finally, the look. The look said, Don’t make me bother. You know it won’t mean anything.
This was the last time she’d ask this question, too:
“Will you call me, please, if you’re not coming home?” Her eyes begged him. They both knew it meant something else—something final.
The door clicked shut. She squeezed her eyes together. It was too early to cry. That would come later. It was only 11pm.
And so she waited.
But she did not call it waiting. Waiting was something you did when you were utterly alone, and the place inside you that held your dreams shrank to an impenetrable speck—when those things you once hoped to release to the world were first mangled by your own clutching fist. What emerged was dust.
She could not create in this place. The inspiration she tried to siphon seeped out as a poison. The world filled with sharp points. The succulents stabbed her when she walked by. The air gave her hives. It dried her to a husk; she scratched at skin until her nails left long, red welts trailing up her thighs. She wheezed in the night. Air bubbles shifted until her bladder felt full. She peed every ten minutes. She deflated in a place where beautiful, tanned plastic dolls jogged in the afternoons; they were golden to match their golden dogs on golden leashes, while she worked twelve-hour days just to maintain her brightly lit cage. She hated this place—where she could not breathe, and ash fell from the sky, and the perfect blue of the ocean chilled her to the bone.
She wouldn’t call it waiting. She would watch movies—eyes avoiding the clock. Listen to music—eyes avoiding the clock. Dance until it made her cry—this pathetic back and forth swaying that always ended with her arms wrapped around herself. She was pressing her palms into her back. She was her own mother, and father, and finally, confessor.
When they came, the tears made her furious.
~*~
It was 7am.
And the phone did not ring.
The sky turned peach. The sun rose. And there she was, lying on the couch begging for sleep but knowing it would not come—not until the pain swelled and burst and came rising over her eyelids like waves, pushing her under. Sleep was the last refuge for all things broken.
But the anger came first. The anger tightened the knots inside her until she swore she wanted him dead on the side of the road, because the other thing—the story that left him alive—meant that the tragedy was her. The tragedy was that she stayed. And stayed. And stayed. That the last time he’d touched her, his hands had been cold, and the pain blurred her eyes. She knew it was over then. Her body was the desert. Her blood was the sand, which had killed all the grass.
~*~
At 9am, Mia heard the door. She’d just drifted off, but the sound of the bolt sliding back jerked her awake. The sun was shining. It was always shining.
He walked in, then paused when he saw her, faintly disapproving. His frown was familiar.
So was the hurt in her eyes. How could you? they said. How could you make it so obvious? Shouldn’t you at least feel guilty?
But his guilt made him defiant.
Don’t make me say it. You know how bad I am with words.
He set his keys down on the table. The movement was rough, clumsy. She could tell he was drunk.
“Still awake?” he mumbled.
“Of course. And fuck you.” But she didn’t say it. It was impolite, and she’d been trained there, too. It would only prove that he’d been right all along—she was just too much, and also not enough. So how could I love you, he would say, when clearly you’re so difficult. Oh, I tried, but you made it so hard. The whole time.
“You didn’t call,” she said.
He looked away. “I meant to, but it was late. I thought it might wake you.”
She sat up. “What did you do all that time?”
“Talked. Played music.”
She nodded. He could have been with another woman. It hardly mattered. There was no heat in him.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”
She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, he was gone. She could hear the sound of the toilet flushing. Then, silence.
They both knew she would stay where she was, on the couch. They would both sleep better this way. And when he woke, he would pretend nothing was wrong. He would ask her if she wanted to go for a bike ride by the harbor. She would agree, and they would load their bikes into the car. He would make a show of it, removing her front tire to get it to fit. And then again, putting it back on.
See how much trouble you are? The things I have to go through?
He would pedal ahead. She would eye the boats and dream about jumping over the railing, swimming away, drowning—either one was fine. Sometimes, she would eye the men who walked along the pier. One of them might look at her—and what did that prove?
“Excuse me, sir?” she would ask. “Am I here?”
But she never asked. Instead, she made lists. The great getaway. She planned. She calculated how much it would cost to escape. A plane ticket? An apartment back home, on the other side of the world. She would return to her own planet. She would pretend this had been a bad dream. She would figure out a way into her chest, to see if her heart was still there. And if it was, she would start again.
“Someday,” she wanted to tell him, “I won’t be here. And you’ll be sorry.”
She never said it. Deep down, she knew the last part wasn’t true. He had never been sorry for anything. She would be the only one. Sorry and ashamed—always ashamed. Because she’d been a ghost. She had drifted into opacity, a white fog shifting over the water—the foghorn she heard every night warned ships of her passing.
But there would come a day. She knew it then, lying there with the sun streaming in, creeping only as far as the doorway, leaving him in darkness, his chest rising and falling and his world full of the surety of his own self-righteous heart. She knew the fog would lift, as all fogs do. The sun that had dried her would burn right through her. And this woman, who was beautiful, who leapt into change as best she could, who crossed bridges and peered over the sides at the drop that went down forever, someday, that woman would return. She would walk barefoot in grass,
and let go,
and trust again, in the truth of her own soul.
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