Grim (5 page)

A sapling shot out of the earth and speared the improvised lasso. As the tree grew, it dragged the boat into harbor. Jeremiah clung to the rope until the hull struck shore. Then he collapsed over the edge, desperate for just one mouthful of air that wasn't tangy with fear.

A splash came from the middle of the lake and the surface turned to glass all over again. Erika lay curled in the bottom of the boat, still sheltering herself with her arms.

“Boy!”

She looked up and saw an old, summer-baked man standing beside the newly risen tree. He leaned heavily against a knotted staff and glared down at Jeremiah with sharp black eyes. It didn't seem that he'd noticed Erika yet.

“Every time, boy,” he said. “You never bring no good here.” His sandals scuffed the ground as he turned, and his staff kicked up dry dirt each time he jammed it down. “Help her along, poor thing,” he said. “No idea, eh? You not telling her.”

When Jeremiah reached out to help Erika to dry land, she latched on to his hands as if they were lifelines. Jeremiah draped an arm around her shoulders as she stepped onto shore.

He leaned down to her ear. “That's Baba Laza,” he said. The pitch of his voice soothed her. “Or Laza, if you like. He's going to offer you tea.”

Erika looked at the ground, thick and soft with grass, and at the trees that nearly buckled beneath the weight of their own fruit. Berries grew fat on shrubs, and bushes and flowers bloomed, yellow, orange, violet in any space not occupied by leaves. A cottage squatted on the rise ahead of them, small and made of cut stone like the house by the statues across the lake, but ropes of creeper turned this one green, and grapes like rubies bunched along its eaves. The air here vibrated with life. Erika looked over her shoulder at the lake and saw that the surface had stilled and, from here, the water had gone as French blue as the sky above it. The woods on the other side looked like the woods around her now — summer-drunk and thriving — but there were no statues, no moonflowers, no paved pathway to be seen. Jeremiah squeezed her arm and pulled her on ahead.

They found seats on an old vine-invaded bench until Baba Laza came out of his fairy-tale cottage with a clay bowl in each hand. He gave one to Jeremiah and one to Erika before stepping back to look at his two visitors. He took in Jeremiah, who still had an arm around Erika, and Erika, damp from the lake and covered in dust and sand from the bottom of the boat. She pressed herself into Jeremiah's side as if terrified of losing him. She'd traveled so far out of her element that Jeremiah was all that she had to anchor her. She could just about hate him for it.

“See her loving you,” Laza said. “After you bring her through that.” The old man shifted his weight, setting one hand on his hip and leaning heavily against his staff. “What would your brothers say?”

Jeremiah shook his head. “I can't hear you.”

Laza's papery laugh came out through cracked lips and broken teeth. “You
are
your mother's boy,” he said.

Erika took time to examine Baba Laza between sips of his spiced tea. His posture was all angles and his skin was all knots. There were fans of laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, and his mouth had stiffened out from frowning. His cropped hair was salted, the bristles on his chin were peppered, and each stood out against his red-brown skin, tough and burnished from gardening. Laza's mismatched appearance comforted Erika in a way that she couldn't quite place.

“I'm not a bad man,” Jeremiah said.

Laza dropped his chin. “Our talk is one-sided. You cannot hear and you will not listen, so your company is worth nothing. No better than usual.”

“We need a place to sleep, Laza,” Jeremiah said.

“And you will have my floor.” The old man tossed back a hand, rapping one dusty windowpane with his knuckles. “No better than usual.”

 

Shawn and Rebecca avoided each other all day. It was easy to do after Megan got up, because Shawn took her to the park, and then shopping for a funeral dress, and then for dinner and ice cream, where he tried, and failed, to finally talk to her about their mother. She just watched him with her big, steady fawn eyes and broke the silence by asking for more chocolate syrup.

Shawn was angry, and wanted to be able to blame Rebecca. Drunk, sad, unhelpful Rebecca.

He and Megan came home to find the lights on, as usual. When he pushed open the front door, the smell of flowers struck him.

Rebecca stood at the kitchen counter with her ear to the phone and a pen in hand. Clouds of white and pink peonies filled the room, the air heady with their scent.

Shawn walked over to her once he recovered from the shock. “We can't afford this,” he said, his voice low.

“Dad paid for it,” Rebecca answered coolly. “He's coming, by the way.”

Megan buried her face in a bouquet and came up smiling.

“He shouldn't be involved,” said Shawn.

Rebecca covered the phone's mouthpiece with one hand and smiled at her little sister. “I bought you a new dress, honey,” she said.

“So did I,” said Shawn.

“It's on your bed and you'll love it. Go up and try it on.”

As Megan's footsteps pounded up the stairs, Rebecca turned back to her brother.

“Sleep it off,” she said. “You'll be less bitter in the morning.”

Shawn rolled his eyes and left the kitchen. He still wanted to hate her.

 

Erika tried to sleep, but she was overtired. Her skin felt stretched over her bones and her muscles were worked sore.

She crept to Jeremiah's side and felt in his pockets for the little knife. His breathing went on slow and undisturbed even after she'd moved away. Curled tight in a corner on the other side of the room, Erika put the flat of the blade against her lips and let out a long, slow breath. She could feel the air funnel out along her cheeks and she could taste the metal of the knife. The light from the window thinned and then became a luscious, sacred white. Something sifted through the pores of Erika's skin and she wilted with relief. Everything in her flowed away.

 

Shawn sat on a cliff, his legs dangling over the edge and his hands gritty with black earth. He could feel the wind grate the back of his neck, where his skin stretched tight with sunburn and where his sweat gathered in a tangle of hair. He could feel a layer of loose sand shifting under his weight, sticking to the backs of his shins, a little more each time he touched the crumbling ledge. He could feel his mother beside him — could smell her perfume — but was too afraid to look.

When he opened his mouth to ask a question, no sound came out.

“I miss you, Shawn,” Erika said. “And I miss your sisters.”

You're dead, Mom
, Shawn wanted to say, but “Me too” came out instead.

“I want to talk to Meg,” she said, “but I'm afraid to scare her. Is she okay?”

Shawn didn't answer. He stared at his knees and the world that fell away beneath them. He thought, briefly, about jumping.

His mother waited out the silence until she had to break it. “Tell her that I love her. That I didn't mean to leave.”

“She knows, Mom.”

More silence. Erika reached over to touch Shawn's shoulder, but then stopped. Put her hand back down. “It's not the same, is it?” she asked.

“No.”

“I'm trying to come home.”

When Shawn opened his mouth, he heard his own voice say, “Don't.” As his teeth closed around the reproach, he felt a jolt of panic. What had he done?

Erika sat still for so long that Shawn began to wonder whether she'd disappeared.

“You're dreaming, Shawn,” she said at last. “But I'm not.”

He shivered. “Mom,” he said. “Why are you here?”

“I miss you. I still love you. I still want to come home.”

“We lost you, Mom. We bury you tomorrow. You can't come back.”

“I'm not dead, Shawn. I would know. He would tell me.”

“Who would tell you?”

Finally, she reached out a halting arm and put it around her son's shoulders. Her touch was cold. “You'll understand.”

Shawn turned his face to hers, more out of shock than curiosity. Her skin looked caked on and her eyes were yellowed and bloodshot. There were sores around her lips, and the gums that held her brittle teeth were blistered black.

He could sense his mother's distress, as if she could only see herself through him.

“Why do you picture me like this, Shawn?” Erika asked, close to tears. “Why would you think this?”

Shawn tried to move away from her. Instead, he slid too far, to the edge of the cliff, and lost his hold. He seemed to fall forever, but his life never flashed before his eyes. All he could see was his mother, looking down from the mountain, not saying a word.

He was less than a meter off the ground when the man caught him. The man slipped his arms under Shawn's shoulders and knees to stop the long fall and the crack of a skull and the jolt of a broken back. For some reason, Shawn didn't feel at all thankful.

The man smiled, but the warmth never touched his eyes. He looked miserable.

“I'm Jeremiah,” he said.

He sank down into a crouch and laid Shawn on the ground.

“What are you?” asked Shawn, looking up into his rescuer's troubled face.

Jeremiah took a pocketknife from his blazer.

He shook his head. “I'm sorry,” he said.

The blade flashed down, glittering, and Shawn gasped as his throat split open.

He woke up on the floor in a tangle of blankets, his wrists crossed above his neck to block Jeremiah's knife.

 

Erika opened her eyes and found Jeremiah standing over her, blade in hand. He flipped it shut with an irritated
snap
and put the knife back into his pocket. Even in her embarrassment and anger, Erika watched closely as it slid out of sight. It drew her in, made her desperate. Jeremiah noticed.

“Don't do that again, Erika,” he said. “It's not worth it.”

“They're my kids!”

“You saw the way Shawn thinks of you. And telling him that you're coming back — don't you realize that you're scaring him?”

Erika pushed herself off the floor. “I am their mother and I have a right to see them.”

He turned away and straightened his jacket. “I can't hear you, Erika, so stop. Stop all of this before you do something stupid. And don't steal my things.”

The door slammed behind Jeremiah as he left the room.

A rainstorm rolled in at noon, seething with a tension that made the city smell like cooling pavement.

Erika's children arrived at the interment site with armfuls of calla lilies. The flowers stood out against their black clothes and left smudges of pollen against their sleeves. When the children got there, their mother's coffin sat waiting beside the gaping hole, a polished cherry box with brass clasps and a lid draped with peonies and ivy. Shawn carried Megan from the car as she sobbed against his neck. Rebecca stood beside them, dark sunglasses hiding swollen eyelids. Only she knew why Shawn kept throwing worried looks at the gathering crowd.

Matt had come with them. He spoke quietly to the priest while the children waited by the coffin, watching the rows of collapsible chairs fill with family friends and a handful of Erika's coworkers.

The storm had not yet broken, but some mourners carried umbrellas with them, just in case. The pool of black suits and dresses broke in flashes of bright polyester, tucked quickly under chairs because the shock of color seemed inappropriate.

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

The priest cleared his throat and brought all extra talk to a close. He began by quoting a Bible passage to let them know that Erika lived with God now, and that she was happy. Shawn smoothed the back of Megan's velvet dress, to quiet her crying, and felt her drift to sleep against his shoulder. He looked at Rebecca, to see if she'd noticed, and then followed her gaze out to the stretching line of cars. His face fell. Beside him, Matt straightened up.

The priest began listing Erika's qualities: A good mother. A hard worker. A loving wife.

Rebecca leaned into Shawn and whispered, “I told you he'd come.” She wasn't talking about the priest, but about the man who arrived late, a navy Windbreaker over his suit jacket. Shawn didn't answer.

 

Megan woke up after the ceremony and threw flowers into her mother's grave. Matt offered to take her for a walk while her brother and sister accepted condolences from the crowd, and Shawn agreed before Rebecca had a chance to open her mouth. When she saw her brother's eyes hooked on the man with the Windbreaker, she thought it best not to argue.

A light rain began to patter against the cemetery grounds. Shawn opened a black umbrella and held it between himself and his sister, silent as Rebecca spoke softly to everyone who came by. She took hugs and promises with the same earnest half smile. Shawn watched the milling crowd, gauging the time.

After fifteen minutes, Matt and Megan made their way back to the grave site and climbed inside the patrol car to wait. The headlights flipped on and the wipers began their familiar slide across the front windshield. Megan put her chin on the lip of the door, her nose squashed up against the window. Matt suggested they turn on the radio, but she said no.

She watched the man who hung around at the back of the line, letting other people join in ahead of him, and knew that he wanted something. You didn't let people cut unless you wanted something.

“Did Mommy know that man?”

Matt sighed and drummed the steering wheel with his thumbs. “Yeah, Meg. She knew everyone who came.”

“Did she like him?”

Matt looked over at Megan. Her hair drifted up at the crown of her head, static charged from the rain. Her dress hovered at the bend of her knees as she knelt, pressed forward against the glass, her shoes working mud into the passenger seat.

“Sometimes, Meg,” said Matt, because he wasn't sure what else he could say. He wanted to tell her all about the other times too, but knew that it wasn't his place. “Sometimes she liked him a lot.”

There was quiet for a long time — just the tapping of rain on the top of the car and the slosh of tires spinning by, hurrying out of the cemetery to someplace where death could be mourned in secret.

“Should I like him?” asked Meg. She'd pulled back a little from the window, her face reflected in the glass, transparent as a ghost. Erika's ex-husband had almost reached Shawn and Rebecca. Men from the cemetery were standing by to fill in the grave.

“That's up to you, honey,” said Matt. But he knew that it wasn't.

 

Shawn and Rebecca stood side by side in the growing dark as their father stepped forward. The three of them stared at one another for a few long seconds.

At last, John Stripling cleared his throat. “I'm sorry about your mom,” he said. The familiar gravel in his voice made Shawn wince. The blunt words brought back the weeks following his parents' divorce, when friends came up saying, “Hey, I'm sorry about your dad, but can't you, like, get over it or something? I mean, we don't even know you anymore,” and he just wanted to tell them
No, no, no, it's not that easy
. He'd only been ten then, but the words still came to him now, and they still applied. This time they spilled out.

“No,” he said, his tone flat. “It's not that easy.”

He knew that Rebecca was staring at him with her mouth hanging open, and that Matt watched the three of them from his car, hoping that this reunion went as smoothly as possible. He knew that the shadows in his father's eyes came from surprise rather than regret. He knew that he should stop talking and walk away before anything else happened.

“Shawn, I'm not trying to make anything easy. I know it can't be.”

“You shouldn't be here.”

“You don't need to be so hard on him, Shawn,” Rebecca broke in.

Shawn turned to his sister. “How can you stand there and say that, Rebecca? He made our life hell.”

“He did
not
.”

“He
beat
her, Becca. He beat Mom.”

“He never hit her on purpose.”

Shawn's mouth went dry. His throat felt tight and stuffed inside a too-small neck.

“You believed him?” he said. “You believed what this drunk bastard said? That bullshit he sold us with bedtime stories, about loving us?”

“I did love you, Shawn,” his father said. “Both of you. All of you. I still do.”

Shawn glared at his father. He ignored the sun-spotted skin and the scruff of his beard and the silver creeping into his hair. “I'm going for custody, Shawn. Of you and Meg.”

“No,” Shawn said. “I won't go back to that, Dad, and you're crazy if you think that I'll let you get hold of Megan. I don't want to see you again, or hear from you, or hear about you.” Shawn shot a look at Rebecca. “Don't try to scare me.”

The comment could have been for his sister, or for their father. It didn't seem to matter. Shawn walked away from the conversation, rain spilling off his umbrella, and collected Megan from Matt's car. Rebecca had to jog to catch up with them before they left the cemetery. On the drive home, no one said a word.

 

The first hints of a path started out in the woods as fragments of crumbling, weathered stone. If Jeremiah hadn't been leading, Erika would have lost herself long ago. He picked his way through the forest, turning every now and then, until the cobbles began to run together and form a road. “Highway of souls,” Jeremiah said, and Erika couldn't tell if he was joking. The longer they walked, the bigger the trees grew, taller and thicker than redwoods, leaves as big as place mats, and the path curved around them, or plowed straight through the arches left by rotted-out trunks. After a few hours, the straight lines of buildings could be seen through the green and brown ahead. Jeremiah took Erika's hand.

“Welcome to the city proper,” he said.

“The city of what?”

“Limbo.”

Jeremiah and Erika cut through the woods to make better time. They didn't even pause when they finally broke out of the forest. The city walls were fifty feet high and made of smooth, dove-colored stone. The road ran up to it and then split, making an easy circle around the perimeter. The wooden shingles of houses could be seen over the wall's crown, and the upper stories of tall, skeletal complexes with broken windows and gray laundry out to dry. In a few places, a thin, oily smoke curled and drifted, tingeing the air. In other places, towers with arched windows shot up to overlook the city. Erika couldn't make out faces in the watchtowers, but saw movement every now and then, the flicker of a silhouette making itself known.

The buildings climbed, staggering higher as they reached a craggy hill with sides so sheer and chipped they looked to be chiseled out of the granite by giant hands. The city walls twisted up the incline and disappeared into the shoulders of the hill. On the flat top of that overlook sat a palace, shining white over the city that it protected, or was protected by. It had its own gates, visible even from the road outside the city, black and impassable, to sift out the rabble.

Just ahead of Erika and Jeremiah, past a flat expanse of green, stood a massive arch that the road ran into like a tongue. To the left of this gate waited another triptych of statues. All three of them seemed to be modeled on the same woman, following the stages of her life. Maiden, mother, crone. Each sat patiently in a high-backed chair, the first with flowers in her braids, the second with flowers in her hands, the third with flowers at her feet. The maiden looked just like the statues that Jeremiah had kissed, though happy and proud, with her chin tilted up. But as she aged, her expression turned from one of expectation to one of defeat, and her back grew more crooked with time pressing down. Jeremiah went to the oldest of the statues and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“My ears, Megaera,” he said gently. He put a piece of black ribbon over her knee and waited as her stiff granite fingers moved to pick it up.

With a smile, Jeremiah turned back to Erika. “All together now,” he told her. “Shall we go in?”

She only shrugged, feeling worthless.

“I'm sorry, Erika,” he said, taking her by the arm. “I'm sorry about what I said before. But we're almost home. My home, at least. We'll be safe soon, and then we can talk.” He led her to the gate. “I'm a prince here,” he added. “Of sorts.”

“Jeremiah, I —” Erika broke off and looked at her arm, following Jeremiah's fingers as they slid down to her wrist, and then to her palm, and then wove themselves between her own. “I feel crazy,” she said, still watching. A plea, not a statement.

He stepped back to her and tipped up her chin. Took her shoulders in his hands. “Of course you do,” he said, looking sorry. “I've been a terrible guide.” He cradled the back of her head, just above her neck, in his right hand, and pulled her close into a hug. He smelled the way Matt did — she'd placed it now and hated herself for not realizing before. Hated herself for barely thinking about the man who she'd left behind while she put her whole life and sanity into the hands of someone else. But she hadn't recognized it because the smell was different. Not softer or stronger; not too much sandalwood or too little orange peel. Different because he wasn't Matt. She worked two loose fists between her chest and Jeremiah's and pushed away.

“Don't,” she said. “Please don't.”

His hand slipped away from her hair, trailing a curl with it, which he let settle against her collarbone.

“Erika,” he said, “I owe you. I owe you more than you realize right now. But if you don't come inside with me, I cannot help you.”

Erika took a breath, unable to break eye contact with Jeremiah. She thought of John. Of all the men she'd ever put faith in and lost parts of herself over. Of Matt and the way he loved her kids like a dad would. He was her promise that things didn't have to turn out in shambles. She nodded and took Jeremiah's hand. He pressed it, looking relieved but not surprised. Armed with her consent, he finally led her through the arch.

Erika shivered, her body struck by the full weight of sudden winter. Jeremiah's palm, so warm, burned against her own.

“It's no longer summer in the city,” he told Erika, and dropped her hand to walk on ahead. “When you leave the woods, time comes back to you.”

Erika crossed her arms to hold in the escaping warmth. She looked around.

The woman at the gate was a pitiful sight. She sat off to the side, just inside the border, and waited with an empty tin can in her lap. Her hair, mussed and greasy from going unwashed, fell down a crooked back. Dirt, food, and what looked like blood stained the cloth that she used as a wrap. Beneath it, her skin stretched itself so tight over her bones that she seemed painted on. The fingertips that held her alms can were pointed, joints clearly defined. Her face and shoulders looked sharp and chipped beneath the shadows of a falling sun.

Jeremiah walked past her.

“Give her something,” Erika said. “I know you have something.”

Jeremiah glanced around, puzzled. “Who?”

“Her. Jeremiah, please.”

His eyes found the old woman and the tension in his joints released. “Oh, Erika,” he whispered. “If Earth's richest man gave half a penny to each pauper in the Middle Kingdom, he'd be a pauper himself before the line even dwindled, and no one would be the happier. They only eat to make themselves feel more alive, but one day they'll realize that their bodies are just shells. It isn't charity they need — it's courage.” He tapped Erika's shoulder and motioned her forward. When he turned away, she fished through her pockets for change and dropped it into the woman's tin. The coins clattered loudly against the can, but neither the beggar nor Jeremiah acknowledged it. Erika followed him on into the city.

Limbo resembled the poor places of Manhattan, Erika thought, but without electricity or water. It smelled stale. Old food, old piss, old air. She tried to breathe as lightly as possible. Houses gaped open without window glass or curtains to line them. The streets were littered with garbage, crawling with beggars. Children ran naked, leathery skin thick on their undeveloped bodies. Babies, too young even to crawl, screamed from within the hollows of empty houses. Erika walked, hands over her mouth, as if in a trance. She stared ahead, too shocked at the poverty to register half of what she saw.