The Turnout(92)

“I don’t care,” Dara said, Marie walking over, reaching for her hand, and adding, “We don’t care at all.”



* * *



*

He was gone. Charlie was gone, but something he said kept vibrating through her head for hours, all night.

I could hear her calling, he’d said about their mother. Their mother waiting for him on the third floor, her voice tantalizing, insistent. I could hear her calling. Calling until I came.

And, secretly, Dara knew what he’d meant. In some ways she could hear their mother calling too. Could always hear her calling, her whole life.



* * *



*

When did it happen?” Dara said to Marie later that night, both of them huddled in Dara and Charlie’s bed, the emptying bottle between them and Marie with a spooked look about her. Maybe it was being in their mother’s domain again. Even before she moved out, she rarely set foot in this room, saying it gave her hives.

“When did it happen,” Marie repeated, her mouth purple from the old wine.

“When did he become this . . . other thing.”

For so long, he’d been one of them. We three. For so long she thought it would be forever. But then, without her ever knowing, he’d turned into . . . But she couldn’t finish the thought, her eyes blurred.

“Sometimes,” Marie said carefully, “you get desperate. Trapped. Sinking. It’s like quicksand in your mouth. You have to do whatever it takes to get out.”

Dara looked up at Marie, her eyes dry in an instant.

“No, you don’t,” she said. “You can just leave.”





COLD, COLD


When she woke, her brain felt thick, wiry, an old scouring pad. Her phone was ringing. Her hand was tangled in Marie’s hair.

Missed call and it had to be Charlie, but it wasn’t. She was relieved for a second, then, obscurely, sad.

The voicemail clicked and beeped, and then a flinty voice began talking and talking and Dara felt the stir of old wine in her belly.

“. . . All-Risk Randi here, remember me? I’m like a bad penny. I was hoping you might be able to make time for me this morning. Planning to swing by, say, nine o’clock? Maybe I can speak with your sister too. So I’ll see you then if I don’t hear from you. Same address, same spiral stairs?”

Dara put her hand over her mouth. She thought she might be sick.

Pulling back the bedspread to rise, she saw Marie’s bare legs and arms covered in lurid rosy hives.



* * *



*

She guessed Charlie had spent the night nestled in the contractor’s marriage bed with his PT, the wife. In other rooms, there were children sleeping innocently. Everywhere, there were Derek’s things, the smell of his aftershave, all his shiny boots. Charlie, she thought, in the same bed, on those same sheets as Derek.

What did it matter, she thought. How different is he from Derek? She might never know.

Once, in the night, she had woken with a jolt. Derek’s injury, the pipe spraying hot water on him, the flood. Had that been Charlie’s first, failed attempt?

She might never know.



* * *



*

I dreamt about that old-timey dancer last night,” Marie said, her face puffy and voice scratched. “The one who caught fire.”

“I remember,” Dara said, trying to make the coffee go down, the instant crystals sludged at the bottom of the mug from the day before.

That story their mother used to tell—the dancer whose tutu brushed against the footlights and burst into flames. Whenever she heard it, Dara couldn’t help but feel herself burning. She was feeling it now, her feet tingling. Marie standing before her like a clean flame.

“She refused to wear the skirts that were safe,” Marie said, rubbing her face. “She only wanted to wear what was light and beautiful.”

Dara turned to the stove, her hand over the stove burner, lighting the jet for more coffee.

“She wanted what she wanted,” Dara said, the words tipping from her mouth, which felt hot, too, felt thick with hot water.

“But in my dream,” Marie said, “I was the one onstage. And it was my skirt that went up, up, up in flames.” She turned and looked at Dara. “And you were there.”

Dara didn’t say anything, watching the kettle.

“You saw me and you cried out,” Marie continued, her voice urgent and pained as if she were dreaming it now. “You threw Mother’s rabbit blanket over me and smothered the flames.”

That blanket again, Dara thought. The one she’d left moldering in the basement the other day.

“The flames ate the fur,” Marie said, rising and walking toward Dara. “But they never touched me at all.”

“Marie,” Dara said, turning off the stove.

“He set a fire in me—Derek. No, I set it in myself. But I’m burned through now, you see,” Marie said, her voice quivering but strong. “I’m burned through and now it’s over. It’s over.”

She reached out for Dara’s hands and held them in her own, hot as a burner coil. Dara swore she could feel Marie’s blood rushing under her skin.

It was like Marie was awake. Awake for the first time not just in six weeks—the sex haze and humiliations, the impulsivity and retreat—but in months, years maybe.