Phantom Limbs (6 page)

“What’s that?” I asked.

“For pain.”

“You sure it’s safe to mix with alcohol?”

She waved me off with her stump, swallowing the pills.

I shook my head. “You really worry me.”

“Don’t worry about me. I hate that.” She took her soda and headed up the wide, curving staircase. I followed. She went into her bedroom and then into the attached bathroom. I sat on the bed. On her dresser sat the mirror box, the magic bullet for phantom limb pain. I’d come here with her several times, when the pain was bad enough that the hand-rubbing trick wasn’t cutting it. I’d seen how quickly the pain dissipated when she put her right arm in the mirror box and watched what appeared to be two symmetrical arms moving in concert before her. It was astonishing.

On the floor next to her dresser, a beat-up Stoli vodka box was filled with her swim trophies, medals, and ribbons, most collected from the years before the accident when she was virtually unbeatable. Not one of them was displayed on a shelf or hung on the wall, as mine were at home. The day I got my first ribbon at a meet, my parents put up a shelf and hooks in my room so every stupid ribbon I ever got could proudly be displayed. But Dara’s were heaped in an old box on the floor like so much trash.

I heard the toilet flush, then the water running and the scrubby sounds of toothbrushing. She emerged a minute later in sky-blue panties and a paper-thin white tank top. I started to worry that she was going to try something, but she just pushed past me.

I got up as she slid between the covers. “Tuck me in?” she asked, then turned onto her side, facing away from me.

I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant; she was already under the covers. I remembered the times I put Mason to bed. Usually I’d read him a story and then tickle him. I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to work here. Awkwardly, I patted at the covers around her.

Dara reached out and grasped my wrist, and then guided my hand to her head.
Ah, okay.
She let go and I stroked her hair.

My eyes drifted to a framed photograph on her bedside table that I’d never really looked closely at before. A string of beads with a boxy sort of cross was draped over it, which seemed odd because Dara was about the least godly person I knew. I reached out and quietly slid the beads to the side to see the picture.

A spotlight illuminated a ballerina, onstage in full regalia, in a pose that radiated grace and discipline and beauty. My insides turned to jelly at the resemblance — that lean, muscular frame. That dark hair. That doll-like face with the small mouth.

“Who’s this in the picture?” I murmured.

“Mama,” she said softly.

Mama.
I felt like bawling. I mean, I knew she’d had a mother, obviously. But seeing her, seeing the resemblance . . . The idea that Dara had once called someone
Mama
. . .

“She’s beautiful,” I whispered. “You look like her.”

A slight nod.

“What are the beads?” I asked. “A rosary?”

“Her chotki,” she murmured. “Same idea.”

I touched the black tassels that hung from the cross. “Was she religious?”

She nodded. “We used to go to the Russian Orthodox Church.”

“Do you believe in God?” I asked.

“I don’t believe in anything.”

I felt so empty, thinking about everything that had been taken away from Dara. As you scratched at her surface, the enormity of the hole underneath exposed itself.

“But my mom believed. I feel like if I keep the chotki with her picture, it sort of, like . . . blesses her.”

I couldn’t take much more. It was too fucking sad. I got up from the bed.

“Can you wait until I fall asleep?”

“Okay.” I sat back down next to her.

“Don’t turn off the light in the bathroom when you go.”

“I won’t.”

I waited until her breathing became even. Then I crept out and hoofed it the two miles home.

IN ENGLISH ON MONDAY, MR. CHAPMAN asked if anyone would be willing to share their sonnet with the class. When no one volunteered, he glanced around the room. “No one? Otis?”

I shook my head, my face heating up.
No fucking way.

He shrugged and asked us to turn them in. I spotted some Post-its on Kiera’s desk in front of me.

“Hey, can I borrow a Post-it?” I whispered to her.

She tossed her shampoo-commercial hair, sending a pleasant current of fragrance in my direction, and pulled off a Post-it. “You can even keep it,” she whispered.

I took it and wrote
NOT FOR LIT MAG!
on it. I stuck it on my sonnet and passed it forward.

Kiera looked down at it and then peeked at me from under a fringe of lashes so heavy that her lids must be chronically fatigued from holding them up. With a coy smile, she started reading quietly, “Beneath your window our magnolia stands —”

“Hey,” I whispered, lightly jabbing her shoulder. “Quit it.”

She turned to me. “I love your poetry,” she whispered, lingering on the word “love.”

My face went from hot to hotter.

Fortunately, the guy in front of her turned around and grabbed the papers from her hands before she could read further.

She turned back to me. “I liked the picture of that tree you posted. Is that the magnolia?”

This girl was connecting the dots way too well.

“So whose window is it under?” she asked.

I fumbled incoherently for a reply, but fortunately Chapman started class.

By that night Meg’s silence was really getting to me. So I sent her a riveting and provocative message:

I stared at the words on my screen, suddenly unable to account for my high GPA.

To kill time as I waited for a reply, I snacked, flipped through my poetry journal, and read one of Shafer’s stupid links:
100 EUPHEMISMS FOR MASTURBATION!
Somewhere between “mangling the midget” and “punching the clown,” a response came from Meg on instant message.

HER:
Otis? What do you remember?

ME:
About what?

HER:
Me. Us. Anything. Everything.

ME:
Everything? That’s a lot of things.

HER:
Tell me.

Good God, how was I supposed to know how much or how little to say? I wished I could see her face, have some idea what she was after — not just at the moment, but with the whole visit this summer. Why was she coming back? Was it just to help her dad settle in? And what did she want from me? Was I one of the reasons for her visit? Or just a side note, a minor attraction on her tour of memory lane?

But I couldn’t ask any of those questions, not without sounding accusatory or egotistical — or pathetic. So I opted for “random” instead:

ME:
I remember when you lost your grandmother’s amethyst ring and you were terrified of your mom finding out. But she never did. (Has she?)

I wondered if I was getting too close to the subject of her parents, of their separation. I didn’t know whether to ask or pretend I didn’t know about it or what.

HER:
No, thank God. But that’s probably the last thing on her mind these days. Okay, what else?

ME:
I remember . . . that your favorite flavors of ice cream were dulce de leche and salted caramel. Really, anything with caramel in it.

HER:
Oh my God. Yes. Still true.

She didn’t have to prompt me to keep going; it was like I’d opened the Meg floodgates, and I couldn’t stop even if I’d wanted to.

ME:
I remember when you told me the code to your diary lock to prove to me that you trusted me. I also remember the code: 5-1-4

HER:
I can’t believe you still remember that!

ME:
How could I forget? It was the day we first kissed. May 14.

HER:
You knew that’s what it was?? I didn’t even know you knew the date!

ME:
Some things a man doesn’t forget.

HER:
You never told me you knew what the code meant!

ME:
Ha, no, because what if you’d chosen the number randomly?

HER:
But you knew.

ME:
Suspected. Hoped.

HER:
What else do you remember?

I hesitated, suddenly feeling exposed. I could go on for days about all the things I remembered about Meg. But what about her? What did she remember about me — about us? And what was she really after, anyway? Confirmation that I hadn’t forgotten her, that I would be excited to see her? Or something else?

ME:
I think I’ve covered enough for one day.

HER:
Please, Otis?

Oh God. Why did she have to do that?

ME:
Meg. Please don’t say please.

HER:
Please.

Somebody stop me. . . .

ME:
I remember that first kiss.

It was like missing your exit on the highway. It’s done. There’s no turning back. You’re on a new route now.

HER:
Oh, Otis . . . I saw the picture. Did you mean for me to see it?

I was pretty sure my heart actually stopped. I ran my hands through my hair, then pulled off my T-shirt. I was starting to sweat. What was the right answer to that question?

She started typing before I could come up with anything.

HER:
I probably shouldn’t say this. Argh, never mind.

ME:
Please?

HER:
Otis. Please don’t say please.

ME:
Please.

HER:
Oh God. Okay.

A pause — three or four seconds, maybe, that felt like an eternity. Then:

HER:
I’ve missed you.

I stared at those words on the screen, feeling like my chest might explode. I was thrilled, ecstatic, and so very, very confused.

And then — fuck! — her green dot disappeared. Before she could tell me why, if she missed me so much, she hadn’t been in touch for three fucking years. Before she could tell me what was up with her parents and why she was coming back to town next month. Before she could tell me that the magnolia picture did its job, which was to make her think about our first kiss.

It was a warm night in May, when the magnolia was in full bloom. A light breeze stirred the scented air, sending petals cascading down around us like mammoth snowflakes. “Crazy Love”— from her dad’s playlist — floated out from the open windows of her house. Her hair trailed loose from its ponytail, strands framing her face and grazing her neck — a look so fucking sexy that to this day it can make my eyes cross. Also contributing to my disequilibrium were her new-to-the-scene breasts, which swelled stunningly and stupefyingly against her tank top. Her legs were brown and long — at that time, she actually had a couple inches on me. The moon illuminated her blue-green eyes.

In that moment, I suddenly lost all threads of whatever we were talking about. All I was aware of was the way she was looking at me.

I reached a hand out slowly, my eyes never leaving hers. Her breath caught in a small inhale of surprise as my fingertips skimmed her bare shoulder. I stood like that for what seemed like twenty lifetimes, in my mind begging her to kiss me, make a move, give me a sign, help me,
help me
, for Christ’s sake. And I swear I do not know which of us initiated it or how it happened, but it just did, like the pull of the moon. I didn’t understand how a kiss, how lips, could bring such staggering pleasure.

When it ended — was it seconds? minutes? — the words rose from my heart to my throat to my lips. Possibly she would not have heard them over the stereo blaring from her living room, the din of crickets, the thundering of my heart.

But her whispered reply was unmistakable.

“I love you, too.”

That was the apex of my happiness, that summer. It was also the end of it.

In August, we buried Mason.

And then Meg was gone.

Each day of that week seemed to stretch longer than the last. By this point, the sun was already up when I went to morning practice and still up when I went to evening practice, which disrupted and confused my general adaptive pessimism. On the other hand, summer solstice was only a month away. It never seemed right to me that, just as the summer began, the days were already getting shorter. This was my favorite time, right now — when the days were still getting longer and all the good stuff still lay ahead.