Swansong (15 page)

* * * * *

After mass I follow Judas outside the building.  He stands and talks with a middle-aged woman at the top of the stone steps.  I tilt my head back and take in the powdery stars dotting the midnight blue sky.

I hear the delicate wailing of a violin.  I remember Annwn with a start.  I glance down the sidewalk and spot her on the street corner, violin bow in hand, violin propped on her collarbone.  It’s a sweet melody; but the pedestrians pass her by without a thought to spare for beauty.

I tell Judas I’ll be right back.  He nods vacantly.  I walk down the sidewalk, hands in the pockets of my woolen jacket.

Annwn stops playing when I approach her.  “That’s a pretty dress,” she says warmly.

“Thanks.”  I smile.  “I didn’t know you go to mass.”

“I try, but it’s hard.  I’m so sleepy lately.”

“I didn’t know,” I lie.  Why is she alone?  “Your parents don’t go to mass?”

“I can’t say that I have parents at the moment.”

“Oh.
“  That’s a strange way to word it, but…  “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

She’s a little bit spacey, isn’t she?  I don’t know if that’s the right word.  She doesn’t hide.  She says what she wants to say; she does what she wants to do.  No; that doesn’t make her spacey.  That makes her refreshing.

She lifts her violin again.  “In the mood for a song?”

“Always,” I say, laughing.  “Whatever you’ve got.”

So she begins to play.

Annwn told me once that a good violinist can produce vowels and consonants with her instrument.  Maybe she was right.  Because her bow glides like water across the silk-soft strings; and the strings between us sing with practiced precision; and I can hear the words that aren’t being spoken, because I’ve heard them once before.

Rosa das rosas, e fror das frores.

I can see my mother sitting on the pearly sand, her loom stretched out in front of her, long threads of red fabric warping together into something real.  I can see her messy hair flying in the wind, a cloud of gold streaked with gray.  I can see the tiny, crackling radio sitting at her side.  She tucks her hair behind her ear and she pulls on the rods of the loom.  She doesn’t care when she gets sand in her mouth.  Her skirt is as blue as the bluest depths of the sea.  Sunset in scarlet and smoke-violet cloaks her like the mantle of a queen.

“
Rosa das rosas
,
e fror das frores
,” my mother sings.  Medieval Spanish tumbles with familiarity from her lips like iambic pentameter on an English stage.  “
Doña das doñas, señor das señores
.”

She lifts her head when I trek across the sands to her, wet footprints in my stead.  She smiles, youthful smile on an aging face.  Her hair escapes from behind her ear.  The swan-shaped earring glistens in her ear.

She disappears in front of my eyes.  The beach, the sunset, the ocean fall away.

A cloudy swan reaches for the bluest depths of the cosmos, her wings outstretched, her gleaming white regalia compromised by patches of blue and pink and amaranth.  The sea of kind green and burnt gold drifts underneath me, waves ebbing gently, lazily, like old friends.

Rosa de beldad’ e parecer, e Fror d’alegria e de prazer.

The swan collapses.  The sea collapses.  Darkness envelops me like the promise of a casket.  I ought to be in the ground.  Mom and Dad are in the ground.  Jocelyn’s in the ground.  It doesn’t make sense that I’m not in the ground.

Where am I?  Am I anywhere?

A spectral light permeates the nothingness of the horizon.  The not-horizon.  I can’t make it out very well.  But the more I focus on it, the more distinct it grows, as if it’s answering to my call, as if it wants to reach me just as much as I want to know what it is.

It’s a snowglobe.  It’s not a snowglobe.  As far as I can tell there isn’t any glass.  Snowy particles drift gently inside the not-glass.  Watching them, I’m warmed.  A smile springs to my lips.  I don’t know why.

The snowy particles look like stars.  They glimmer as I concentrate on them.  They spark with individual lights.  Strong lights.  Weak lights.  Some lights very cloudy; some lights red-hot.

—The lights swim at me—

—Spiral discs glowing white and hyacinth—

—Effervescent question marks in ancient bronze—

—Ghostly gold chains wrapped around baby blues—

—Hyperviolet twin chasms fused at their fingertips—

The galaxies present themselves, hundreds into thousands, thousands into millions.  I grip my head with blinding pain.  I squeeze my eyes shut, a cry drowning in my throat.

By the time I am confident enough to open my eyes, the galaxies have returned to their peaceful epicenter.  They’re snowflakes within a snowflake, dancing around one another in childlike enthusiasm.  They don’t know any better.  They’re just as young as we are.

In the center of the snowflake something hovers; something glows.  I can’t make it out, misty as it is.  It dims when it flickers, sharing its light with the snowflakes that need it more.

The snowflake swells slowly, galaxies drifting farther and farther apart.

No.  No, Kory told me what this means.  Bigger means weaker.  Weaker means dying.  No, it can’t—

Pain blasts its way through my skull.  I grip the sides of my head.  I scream without sound, the vacuum of nothingness swallowing my voice.

The heart of the cosmos flares in intensity, a brightness to rival the blazing sun.  I see nothing now, nothing but light, nothing but pain.  The pain in my head spikes without mercy, spreading down my neck, my shoulders, drilling into my spine.

Please.  Please—

Cool relief floods through me.  My eyes sting with afterimages.  I’m seeing double, the universe and its twin blurry on the backs of my retinas.

The final notes of a sad song ring like phantoms in my ears.

Doña das doñas, señor das señores.

My mother’s voice—the quivering violin—crash together and fade away.

Annwn lowers her violin and bow.  Cars rush noisily down the street behind me.  Dirty city lights smother and starve the brilliant lights of the night sky.

I whirl around.  I fall to my knees and throw up.

* * * * *

When I was little I saw a shark on Tillamook Bay.  Oregon’s probably not the first place that comes to mind when you mention “shark attack,” but there was no mistaking the giant, silvery fin cutting through the ocean waves.  I watched it from my porch with one of Dad’s fishing buddies, who whistled at the sight of it.

“Too big to be a salmon shark,” he said.  “I think that right there’s a Great White.”

He went on to tell me about how the shark must have washed up all the way from Baja, looking for elephant seals to eat.  I found this very puzzling, and told him so; because anybody who’s familiar with the waters knows there aren’t any elephant seals on Tillamook Bay.  They live instead on Shell Island, right off the Cape.

“You think he cares about formalities?”  Then Dad’s friend told me that a Great White doesn’t know the difference between humans and seals.  Great Whites can’t see very well, but they can smell a colony of seals from two miles away.  To a shark, seals and humans smell the same.

Of course I was terrified.  It didn’t make sense to me that a predator couldn’t differentiate between animal meat and human meat.  It didn’t seem fair to me.

It didn’t occur to me that humans are animals, too; and the only ones who think we’re any better or any worse than all the other animals are humans ourselves.

What I won’t forget is the way that fin glistened under the warm, post-rain sun.  It sparkled like the surface of a smooth gray mirror.  It was beautiful; and it belonged to something capable of devouring me in the blink of an eye.

That I couldn’t see the shark in its entirety bothered me the most.  I didn’t like that it hid its scariest aspects underwater, only showing me the part I’d find the least intimidating.  I thought it was underhanded.  I thought it was cowardly.

In reality, it was very clever.

* * * * *

“You’re gonna be okay while I’m gone?” Judas asks.

It’s Monday.  I feel sick.  I’m not going to school.  I’m huddled up on my bed, the blanket around me.  Jude’s in the doorway, a look of oblique concern on his face.

“It’s fine,” I tell him.  “Just go.  Have a good day.  Don’t break any computers.”

The apartment’s dead quiet once Judas leaves.  The silence is almost consoling.  I take my morning meds.  I
lie down and close my eyes.  I’m not particularly tired, but sleep sounds more appealing right now than being awake.

I sleep for two hours.  I wake up, discontent.  I decide I’ll mop the kitchen floor.

This is the second time I’m skipping school.  I don’t know how well that bodes for my report card.  Miss Rappaport said she understood—that I’m disabled—but Cavalieri’s fierce:  They churn out artists and maestros and they cut the cord on you if you can’t match their standards.

It’s a game I don’t feel like playing anymore.  I just want to turn back time.  I just want my mom and dad.

Mopping turns into dishwashing.  Dishwashing turns into baking.  I pull out the flour and the sugar.  I measure the cinnamon and mash the sweet potatoes.  I pour the batter into the muffin pan.  Later on I’ll clean the oven.  I’ll do anything if it means I don’t have to think.

I take more meds around noon.  I bake two dozen muffins.  We’re all out of sweet potatoes.  It doesn’t matter.  They’ve been in the pantry for three weeks.  They would’ve gone bad soon.

The apartment is spotless and aromatic.  I sit on the kitchen floor, scrawling on my post-it notes.  I write the names of Dad’s favorite F1 racers.  I write the names of Mom’s favorite telenovelas.  I stick the notes all over the kitchen table until they cover it like a multicolor tablecloth.  I don’t want to forget them.  I wish they were here.  I’d give anything to have them here.

A knock sounds on the front door.  I get up and open it.  Kory’s on the other side, his schoolbag on his shoulder.

“Where
were
you?” he starts at once.  And then:  “Why are you in your pajamas?”  And finally:  “Are you okay?  You look ill…”

I let him inside.  He closes the door behind us.  He drops his bookbag on the floor.

“Is it contagious?” Kory asks me cautiously.

“No.”  I can’t muster up the stamina to laugh.  “It’s a brain thing.”

“Oh.”  Kory pauses.  “Are you baking?”

I lead him to the kitchen, and the mound of muffins on the counter.  He takes one.  I pour milk for him.

“I brought you your homework assignments,” Kory says slowly.

What if Judas was right?  What if I dove back into school too soon?  I smile feebly.  “Thanks.”

“Well?  Sit down,” Kory says.  “I hate eating alone.”

I don’t know whether he means he needs company when he eats, or he doesn’t like being the only one eating.  If it’s the latter, it’s a lie.  Every time he visits, he stuffs his face.

I lay a muffin on a napkin and sit with him at the table.  I pick at the muffin, not really interested.  Kory tries to hide it when he reads my post-it notes.

“That Towelhead came looking for you at lunchtime,” Kory tells me.

“Kory,” I admonish, stunned.

“Mom says I have Tourette’s.”  I’m sure she does.  “But anyway, Asad was worried.  Are you coming back to school tomorrow?”

“I—”  I swallow nothing.  “I don’t know.”  Suddenly I feel tired.  Kory’s tawny hair and diamond ear studs are making me tired.

Kory puts his hands on the table.  He puts his chin on his hands.  Behind his round eyeglasses his eyes are like an owl’s, perusive, inquisitive.  “Is this another of those things you can’t tell me about?”

“It’s not that I can’t—”  He knows how to make me feel guilty.  “My head.  It’s broken.  I just…”

“Are you on any antidepressants?”

“Kory!”

“What?  Friend to friend.  Tell me.”

I hesitate.  “Yes.”  Sertraline.  “Why does it matter?”

“Because you
should
be on antidepressants.  Your brain chemistry’s all out of whack.  That’s not a dig against you, it’s just the truth of the matter.”  Is he trying to comfort me?  I think he is.  “If you’re feeling all doom-and-gloom, Wendy, it’s not your fault.  These things seldom have anything to do with our personalities.”

“Why are you so smart?” I ask him.

“My IQ is 141.”

“Now you’re just bragging.”

“I suppose I am.”

I don’t know whether it was his intention; but I laugh.  He’s a really good friend, isn’t he?  In his own way.  I’ve known him just about three months now.  That’s one whole season.  One fourth of one year.  My mouth goes dry just thinking about it.  Time moves too fast.  I wish it would slow down.

“Oh,” Kory says suddenly.  “Have you started on your semester project?”