All Rivers Flow to the Sea (2 page)

Come on, Rosie,
my sister would say.
Let’s walk.

And we would walk. Up the hill that leads to William T.’s house and barn, the broken-down barn where he keeps his flock of lame birds, a left onto Fuller Road, over to Sterns Corners, and then a right past Potato Hill Antiques, and up Potato Hill itself, and then up Star Hill, up the hills and down, through the woods with their green leaves brushing my head, the rutted mud tracks, and back to our house. Walking, walking, miles of walking, the silent screaming surges of electricity calmed and soothed inside the rivers and streams and oceans of my body.

It’s late. Dark out. The dishes are done, and my homework is done, and my mother is talking.

“Who knows what they might come up with, Rose? No one knows what’s happening out there, who’s working on what. They might be able to join nerves together one of these days — take someone whose spinal cord was severed and give him a shot and in an hour or two, he’s up and walking.”

“Come with me tomorrow,” I say. “Come and see her.”

If she could see Ivy. If she could see Ivy, Ivy with her hands folded in front of her, Ivy who loved to move, Ivy who used to say, “Come on, Rosie — let’s walk.”

My mother coils a strand of her hair, lets it spring back, coils another strand, lets it spring back. She’s working at her card table. Potholders. She’s making potholders.

“You never know what’s happening out there,” my mother says.

Her fingers work a loop of red through the sea of blue loops already fastened on the pins of the potholder frame. She tugs and pushes and eases the red loop through. Over, under, over, under.

“Did you know that most of our medicine comes from the ground?” my mother says. “Like in the rain forest? Stick a shovel in a patch of dirt that no one’s ever stuck a shovel into before, and see what’s in there. Check it out. Microorganisms never before seen. Who knows what power they have? They might be able to fix Ivy’s brain, stop that hemorrhage, or whatever it is.”

She eases another loop of red through the blue. She’s so good at it by now that she barely has to look down.

“It’s all uncharted territory,” she says. “It’s all a mystery.”

The next day Jimmy Wilson is at my locker.

“Hey, Jimmy.”

He has a look on his face, a set look. He keeps looking at me, as if he asked me a question awhile ago and he’s getting impatient for the answer. The card he sent me and my mother after the accident had a vase of violets on the front.
Dear Rose and Mrs. Latham,
he wrote on the inside.
I’m very sorry.
Then he had signed his name:
Jimmy W.

“What’s up, Jimmy W.?” I say.

He keeps looking. Waiting. I, too, am waiting. The water that is in me and wants out of me — out, out, out — beats in my veins.

“So what are you doing tonight?” I say.

He shakes his head. He’s still waiting.

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing,” I say. “I plan to skip rocks at the Sterns Gorge. Why not? It’ll still be light out.”

And that’s all it takes.

At twilight I stand on my favorite boulder at the Sterns Gorge, the one I always stand on when I’m skipping rocks, and I skip the last rock from the bunch gathered up in my shirt. I turn around, and there he is. That same set look on his face.

“You scared me,” I say. “I couldn’t hear you over the water.”

“Why did you do that yesterday?”

Right then, I could have stopped. Right at that moment, I could have retreated. Gone back to being Rose, the same Rose that Jimmy Wilson has always known, the one who never responded to his crush because she didn’t feel the same way, and she didn’t want to hurt him. I could have said what I started to say, which is
I don’t know.

I feel the way I felt just before I put my hand on his thigh, which is
Help me. My body is flying into pieces and I am shards.
Then my hand had spread itself onto his thigh. Had felt Jimmy Wilson’s muscles through the worn-out denim of his jeans.

But I don’t stop.

“I felt like it,” I say. “That’s why.”

Then I step toward him. He almost backs up, then stops himself. I step again, and again, and then I’m standing against him. We’re almost the same height.

I put my hands on his shoulders and tilt my head. He kisses me.

I didn’t know it would be so easy. He can hardly breathe. We’re down on the ground in a few minutes, and I’m taking off my clothes. My T-shirt, my jeans, my bra, my underpants. His clothes are gone, too, then he has a condom, then he’s lying on top of me, and his breath is coming in gasps, and his eyes are closed.

And it hurts — it hurts — it hurts — and where am I? I’m above, I’m to the side, I’m a tiny untouchable garden with no way in and no way out, and I’m a hovering bird; I’m a fighter jet spiraling away into the foothills, watching what’s happening back there on the ground, on that long flat warm rock of the gorge. And then it’s over. Jimmy rolls to the side and lies there.

He opens his eyes.

“Rose.”

Something in his voice. Something he wants to say to me. His eyes are dark and searching. I get up and put all my clothes back on. I hurt. My body hurts. The hurt feels good; it feels alive — and then that too is gone. I lean over and pick up a rock, a good one, and arc it out with a flick. It skips across the rushing dark water of that tumbling shallow gorge.

Next day there’s Jimmy again, standing by my locker.

“Rose.”

I’m organizing my books. I’ve decided that I want the top shelf of my locker to be a tiny bookcase. A tiny perfect bookcase, organized alphabetically.

“Rose.”

“Mmm?”

This must be what it feels like to be a mother, with Jimmy my child and me trying to get dinner on the table while he shoves himself against my legs and whines.

He doesn’t say anything.

I can’t fit my history book in. It’s too tall for the tiny perfect bookcase I’m making out of the top shelf of my locker. It almost fits, but it doesn’t. Shove. Get in there, book, you book of wars with your World War I and your World War II and your Korean War and your Vietnam War and your Gulf War and your one after another war and war and war.

What is the matter with these people, these people who won’t stop fighting, won’t stop hurting each other long enough to see that a body is a thing of beauty, is a miracle of rivers and oceans and islands and continents contained within itself? That the brain is divided into two hemispheres, each symmetrical, each perfect, each with its own system of waterways. These people of war should be shown an x-ray of an intraparenchymal hemorrhage, of a hemorrhage in an eighteen-year-old girl’s brain, a girl named Ivy.

Take a look at that, people of war. See, you should not hurt each other, and this is why. Without you ever even trying, this is what can happen to your body, your beautiful body, and your brain, your beautiful symmetrical brain, and your heart, and your soul.

A light blue truck will come sliding toward you without you ever wanting it to, and isn’t that enough hurt right there? Isn’t that enough? The rivers within me are rising again, flooding over their banks. There is too much inside me, too much to be contained. Get in there, book of wars. Get in there. Stay in there.
Shove.

Its spine breaks.

“Shit!”

I turn to Jimmy.

“Did you see that?” I say. “I broke the goddamned book.”

He’s silent. The same look is in his eyes as the day before, when he lay on that huge flat rock looking up at me, and said, “Rose?” Then he turns away.

Wait, Jimmy,
I want to say, but I don’t.

Wait, little butterfly, flapping your wings in your Amazon rain forest. Please wait. But, too late. The butterfly has flapped his wings and knows not what he has done. Too late, little guy. Too late. Consequences cannot be counted on. That boy behind the wheel of that light blue truck went a little bit fast around that curve, and now a girl who just wants to hear her sister say,
Come on, Rosie — let’s walk,
can’t. Did those men in my book of wars, those men flying over Hiroshima, have any idea what would happen? Could they ever have imagined what would result when they pushed that button? And when they flew away from what they had done, from what they now could see was happening back there on the ground so far below them, did they feel like me?

People stare.

Rose-whose-sister-was-in-the-accident. Rose-who-slept-with-Jimmy-Wilson-up-at-the-gorge-did-you-hear?

Rose the freak show.

The corridor swirls with color and sound and motion. I close my eyes and lean against one of the lockers that lines the walls. Feel the hard cool metal. Press into it.

“My mom said she’s going to be like that forever. There’s no hope.”

“Will she end up in a wheelchair?”

“A wheelchair? Are you kidding? She can’t even move. She can’t eat. She can’t even breathe.”

“She can’t
breathe?
”

“Not without a ventilator. She’s a human vegetable. She can’t even open her
eyes,
man. She’s done for, but they wouldn’t pull the plug. That’s what my mom said.”

The un-bell rings again. That hideous sound that is nothing like a bell is let loose upon the world to do its damage.
Get used to it. War is noisy, Rosie. Open your eyes, Rose. Open your eyes and follow the voices. Around the corner. There.

“She can open her eyes,” I say.

They turn to me. Tracy Benova has a stack of books in one hand. Digging into her locker for her jacket with the other. Todd Forrest with his narrow blue eyes looks away, embarrassed, leans against the locker next to hers.

Tracy’s eyes dart back and forth the way they always do when she’s about to lie. I know. I’ve known Tracy Benova all my life. I stand and wait for the Benova lie. I am patient.

“Rose, we were talking about my aunt,” Tracy says. “My great-aunt? She’s like a thousand years old and she’s in a nursing home and she has to be fed through a tube and —”

“You were talking about my sister.”

Todd clears his throat. Todd, captain of the debate team. Todd, Mr. Football. I hold up my hand before he can start talking in that way he talks, like a politician on the television news.
Halt, Mr. Forrest. Cease and desist. You have already lost my vote.

“And she can open her eyes,” I say. “I’ve seen her open her eyes.”

Then there is pressure on my shoulder from behind. I turn, ready to smite the invader. Ready to defend my homeland against the forces that would overpower it.

“Hey.”

Tom Miller, his eyes on mine. “Let’s go,” he says.

He turns me around with the pressure of his hand, and he walks me to my locker with that hand on my shoulder the whole way. I think about saying,
Who the hell do you think you are?
But I’m too tired. And I already know who he is. He’s Tom Miller. I’ve known him, too, all my life. That’s how it is when you’re born and grow up in the same place, a place where there aren’t too many people to begin with. A place like here, in the Adirondacks, where the trees outnumber the people by a thousand to one.

“How is she?” Tom Miller asks.

He stands by my locker as I try to open the combination lock. Why do I even bother locking the stupid locker to begin with? There’s nothing of value in it. A rusty barrette, a sandwich left from the day before the accident, so moldy now that it’s half dust. A dirty T-shirt. A broken-backed book of wars. Who would want any of this crap?

“How is she?”

Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank. Tom waits. Stupid combination lock. Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank.

“Rose? How’s Ivy?”

I shake my head. What can I say to him? Nothing.

Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank.

“Okay,” Tom says. “How are
you
?”

Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank.

“Rose.”

I do the combination again, exactly right, 11-5-36, and still it won’t open. By now I’m late for history and I need the book of wars. Wouldn’t want to miss a war, would I? We’re up to Korea. Since March the class made its way through the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. And now it’s the end of April, and I’m back in school, and soon we’ll be on to Vietnam. Tom Miller’s father fought in Vietnam. He fought, and he lived, then he came home, then he kept on living for twelve more years, then he stopped living. Too much Jack Daniel’s. Cirrhosis.

“Rose.”

Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank. Nothing. Again. Nothing. 11-5-36. Tom’s hand again, on my shoulder.

“Shhh,” he says.

Am I crying? Yes, I’m crying. Crying, and I’m late for history, and I still don’t have the book of wars, and I don’t even want the stupid book of wars, because how many times can you read about Adolf Hitler, and see those black-and-white photos of him and his caterpillar mustache, and see those lines of German soldiers with their goose-stepping, without wanting to reach right into the book and rip him out of there, wring his maniac neck and stop him from doing everything that he and everyone who followed him did? All those naked dead bodies, calling out from their mass graves, their incinerators, their gas chambers.
This is not the world I want to be living in,
I want to scream to that awful, psychotic face of his, barking out all those speeches in German —
this is not the world I want!