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I sit up, because I can’t lie down. Not for this. I peer down at him, and he looks up at me, and I continue in a quiet, steady voice. “I like colored telephones, the rotary sort, in orange or neon green or pink. If I had a need to, I would own more than one. Also, I’m incredible at knitting. I can knit a long, warm scarf in under a quarter hour. My hands just…understand. When I throw clay, that’s also quite natural for me. I’m good at it. I’m bad at swing dancing, and truly I don’t care for telly. It seems so distant and irrelevant. Why would I care what these people are doing? Books are different. Books feel real. I’ve got a few books in my pack because I can’t go anywhere without a book, not ever. I have three dear friends, two of whom helped welcome you that day at the café. They’re younger and naive, and I believe that day was magical for them.”
He gives me a funny little smile, but offers no comment.
“The four of us came up together, learned alongside each other at the schoolhouse. I’ve never been in love,” I whisper, “but I—I’ve been close to someone. I’m not so strange, I promise. When I tell you this, you’re going to suspect I am, but I am not this story, okay? I’m a piece of ume candy or a constellation. Aquarius, in fact. January-born.” I take a deep breath, and find I feel I need to sit up straighter to bestow these facts upon him.
“Are you ready for this melancholy, Carnegie?”
He sits, too, and in a way that feels magnetic, we’re shifting to face each other. “Ready, Siren.”
The pet name brings a deep sting to my eyes, but I blink past it. Best to spit it out, or else I never will.
“As you perhaps already know…when I was seven—on my seventh birthday—I went with my parents in a boat on an excursion.” Saying that, just that, makes my throat feel so tight, I have to stop and swallow. His eyes hold mine, and I let myself be hypnotized by their dark shine. He doesn’t blink or move, not while I put a hand over my mouth then move it down and draw a shallow breath.
“A storm came and…my father—he pitched overboard. Mummy went in after him.” I don’t mean to close my eyes. They slip shut because I’m not seeing his somber eyes; I see her halo. Flowers in the white caps. “Mummy and him drowned—” It doesn’t feel real, even saying it. “And I remained on the boat...floating, unmoored, as you can likely recall. For seven days.”
I open my eyes and am relieved to find his face impassive.
“On the seventh night, the boat ran aground on Gough Island. The one place, as it were, that I could run aground and be found by those searching.” I suck back a breath and force myself to carry on. “I believe your father was on the boat that found me.” I didn’t realize that until much later, when I saw his face on the world wide web. “Gammy, Mummy’s mother, took me in after. I grew up in your cottage. We flew kites in that field between the house and the cliffs there at the plateau behind it, and for a brief time Gammy let me use my bedroom’s walls as a canvas before we painted over. Gammy was a good mum, to my mum and me. She made the greatest pies you’ve ever tasted, and she loved the scent of lemons.”
It’s there on the tip of my tongue, a terrible addendum to an unthinkable story. I didn’t speak for ten years after…
I look at his face—his now-familiar face that I can sense is waiting before jumping to expression. I look at his painful-handsome face that makes me feel like someone scooped my guts out. And I can’t tell him I was broken.
I say, “I won’t go near boats now.” What I mean, of course, is that I barely look at boats and wouldn’t get in one to save my mortal life. I don’t even go down to the harbor. Cresting the hill just after he arrived was the closest I’d been to the ocean in years.
I don’t remember anything about what happened after I lost sight of Mum. I never have been able to, not even during the two years a specialist made visits to the island to try to help me. But I know I can’t get in a boat. I know it the same way I know I can’t hold my breath indefinitely. It’s a limit that I can’t exceed, no matter how much I may need to. Any plans toward that are simply…silly.
The Carnegie blinks at me, and his mouth softens.
“I’m an all-star knitter, remember? I forgot to mention—I, too, make great pies. There are many things about my life that are quite wonderful, so don’t go feeling badly for me. That’s the story of my phobia. I’d like to know if you remember any of it—you were visiting here at the time—but I’d also like to stop speaking about it now. So it’s your turn. What’s your fear?”
I watch him from the corner of my eyes as he lies on his back again, so I can’t see his face as clearly. I watch as his chest rises and falls. He waits a while to speak, so long I think he isn’t going to.
Finally I feel him look at me. He props an arm behind his head, and his eyes close. After another small moment, he opens them and gives me a small smile. “Confining spaces.”
I lie down beside him, feeling strangely light and also quite heavy.
“Like my knitting and pie-making,” I say finally, “you seem quite good with a hammer. So that’s fortunate.”
He chuckles softly. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
Fifteen
Finley
“So what do you think?” He holds out a copy of The Paris Review, topped by chunks of chocolate-chip granola. “This look like a breakfast you could choke down?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” I leap from my bag and launch myself at him, knocking a small chunk of granola onto my sleeping bag as my arm goes around his shoulder. I give him a squeeze before shifting back into a crouch beside him, my hand hovering over the granola. “Where was it?”
He grins. “Bottom of your bag, in a zipper bag underneath a pair of pink socks.”
I pop a piece into my mouth, closing my eyes. “Heaven.” I gobble down a few more bites before frowning at him. “Did you have some?”
“I’m good.”
“Speak now or forever I’ll hold your piece.”
His smile widens, and he hands the magazine/plate to me. “All yours, Siren.”
