Miracle Creek(47)

“Pak smokes?”

“He says he quit, but…” She shrugged again and closed her eyes, a crooked grin on her mouth. She pulled the cigarette to her mouth and breathed slowly, her chest rising before falling again. In, through her body, out. In, out. Matt matched his breath with hers, and something about the synchrony of their breath and the silence between them—a comfortable silence, the kind that wraps the moment in intimacy—made him want to kiss her. Or maybe it was her face, so smooth it seemed to reflect the blue of the sky. He bent down toward her face.

“So, how’s the tr—” Mary opened her eyes when Matt’s head was above hers. She stopped talking, and her brows lifted in surprise then scrunched into a frown with a dash of annoyance (at his perversion, for trying to kiss her, or at his cowardice, for stopping?).

Matt wanted to tell her. But how could he make her understand? That she’d looked so peaceful—no, it zoomed beyond peace to pure bliss—that he wanted, needed, to partake in it, imbibe the beautiful translucence of her skin and make it his own? “Sorry, I saw a bug, a mosquito, I mean, on your cheek and I wanted to, um, get it,” Matt said, willing the capillaries in his face not to dilate and send blood gushing to his cheeks.

Mary raised herself up into a half-reclined position, supported by bent elbows.

Matt took a drag. “What were you saying? How’s the what?” He tried to sound casual.

It could’ve been the look he glimpsed as she lay back down: the secret smugness of a woman pleased by a man’s interest. Or it could’ve been what she said next: “I was saying, how’s the treatment? You know, HBOT. Is your sperm fixed now?” said matter-of-factly, lightly, with no mocking or pity, as if his infertility were not the Serious Matter of Tragedy that Janine, their doctors, and her goddamned parents treated it like it was, had convinced him it was. Whichever it was, in that moment, the failure of his sperm to do what it was supposed to do, what it was planned to do, was no longer the cause of grief and penitence, but of relief and hope. Of worry-free, future-free, goddamned fucking freedom.



* * *



THE MOSQUITOES were a bitch. Funny, how they’d never bothered him last summer, sitting right here with Mary, but now, without the smoke repelling them, they were swarming him, droning their feverish excitement at the arrival of warm flesh, brined in sweat all day, hot blood surging through the veins puffed up by the heat. Matt slapped at the black bodies feasting on his wrists and neck. He wished he had a cigarette.

He stopped when he saw Mary approaching. Fuck it with the mosquitoes—it was more important to appear, to actually be, composed, and besides, his slapping wasn’t helping any. “Thanks for coming. I wasn’t sure you would,” Matt said when she stopped walking, pretty far away, just close enough to hear each other.

“What do you want?” she said. Her voice was a monotone, lower than before the explosion, as if she’d aged twenty years.

“I heard you might be testifying tomorrow,” he said.

She didn’t respond. Just gave him that look—the no-fucking-way-we’re-even-discussing-this look she and Janine shared—then turned and walked away.

“Mary, wait.” He thought he saw a pause mid-step, but he blinked and she was still walking. He ran to her. “Mary,” he said again, softer this time, and touched her arm. It was strange, seeing his fingers contacting her skin, but unable to feel its smoothness through his nerveless scars, his brain paralyzed over this sensory tug-of-war between sight and touch.

She stopped and looked at his hand, a wince of something—disgust? pity?—flashing across her face before she pulled her arm away. Slowly, cautiously, as if his hand were a bomb about to go off.

He wanted to reach out, touch his scar to hers, but he stepped back. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

He opened his mouth, but it was as if everything he’d wanted to apologize for—the notes, his wife, his testimony, and most of all, her birthday last summer—was racing to his vocal cords, causing a verbal traffic jam. He cleared his throat. “I need to know if you’ve told anyone.”

Mary twirled her ponytail around her index finger. She let go, then did it again.

Matt sucked the dense, musty air into his lungs. It almost felt like smoking. “Your parents. Do they know?”

“Know what?”

“You know,” he said. He was getting a cramp in his missing finger, which was unfortunate, since he couldn’t rub it.

Mary narrowed her eyes, as if trying to read small writing on his face. “No. I haven’t told anyone.”

He realized he’d been holding his breath. He felt dizzy, heard mosquitoes buzzing, the pitch of their drone getting higher, then lower, like sirens passing by.

“And Janine?” Mary said. “She’s on the witness list. Is she going to say anything?”

Matt shook his head. “She doesn’t know.”

Mary frowned. “What do you mean she doesn’t know? What are we talking about here?”

“Us,” Matt said. “Our notes, smoking, she doesn’t know any of that. I never told her.”

Mary’s face contorted with bitter disbelief before she stepped forward and shoved him, hard. “You fucking liar!” Her voice rose to its pre-explosion high pitch. “You think I forgot because of my coma? I remember everything. It was the most humiliating moment of my life, having her treat me like I’m some crazy stalker who won’t leave her poor husband alone. You know, I get it if you could never face me again. But why would you send your wife?”