We Run the Tides(47)

My head feels better when cradled inside the sweatshirt hood, so I walk with one hand holding the hood in place. I walk and walk until I find myself on Clement Street. The curtains of the ballet school are closed. The upstairs window is shut. I don’t know where Madame Sonya is but I’m relieved she’s not home. I turn into the passageway on the right of the building, step over the hose that’s lying on the ground like a noose, and I line up the stubborn numbers on the padlock to 1938. The sound of the lock opening is the sound of freedom.

I enter the shed, close the door behind me, and lie down on the pink divan. Where is the furry white blanket, I wonder? And then I recall the news reports. Maria Fabiola was found on Christmas Day on her parents’ doorstep, wrapped in a blanket like a newborn.

Yellow light drapes over me like mosquito netting. I dream that the long-haired woman from the beach hands me what I think is a flower, but when she opens her palm it grows into a bowler hat. She places it on my head and it’s too tight.

*

I WAKE WITH MY HANDS over my ears. My head feels like a Cubist painting. The hair on one side of my head—the side I offered to the rocks to save my face—is sticky with a viscous substance.

I search for a mirror in the shed. But there’s no mirror, no reflective surface, not even in the small bathroom. This is a space built to resist, and even repel, the passing of time. On the walls hang dried bouquets, retired pointe shoes, and The Raft of the Medusa. I crack open the door and see that it’s grown lighter outside. How is that possible? And then I check my watch. It’s seven. In the morning. I have slept through the night. Or two nights. What day is it?

And then I remember Keith. I wonder if the cops found his body, if the ambulance took him to the hospital. I wonder if, when hearing the ambulances’ sirens, cars pulled to the right of the streets or if they ignored the wails.

If I go home, I will be in trouble for staying out for the night, or two nights. And in more serious, life-haunting trouble because of Keith. There will be many, many questions. I will be hated, more hated than I already am.

If I stay away for a little longer, I can recover. I can nurse myself back to health and make a plan. I can figure out what to say about Keith, how to explain what happened.

I step outside the shed and tiptoe down the passageway and out onto Clement Street. The street is unpopulated except for a Chinese grocer opening his corner shop and two elderly women speaking Russian while they wait for their tiny dogs to finish sniffing each other.

I enter the small corner store. I need aspirin. And breakfast food. In a shopping basket I collect a bottle of orange juice, a box of Cheerios, and aspirin and approach the cash register.

“Is your head okay?” the grocer asks.

The hood of my sweatshirt has slid off. I hastily pull it back on.

The plastic bag crinkles loudly as I scamper back to the shed. Once inside, I secure the door behind me and sit down on the rug. I tear open the Cheerios so hastily I don’t realize the box is upside down. I scoop out handfuls of cereal and eat. The chewing sounds too loud. The chewing hurts my head. I open the bottle of orange juice and drink a quarter of it in one long gulp. I remember the aspirin. It’s difficult for me to twist off the kid-proof top. I take three pills and wash them down with more juice.

I force myself to scoot back onto the divan where surely it will be more comfortable. This act of moving requires ridiculous effort. I sit cross-legged and give myself instructions. “Think!” I say aloud. My voice sounds gravelly, surprising. I place my hands on either side of my face, as though I can force my head to look in the direction of the future.

I force myself to think but no thoughts appear. I picture thought bubbles in cartoons. The ones above my head are empty. I wake from a nap on the divan and spot an autumnally red leaf, the size of a quarter, where my head was resting. I try to pick it up and realize it’s dried blood.

I need to find a newspaper, to see if there’s news about Keith. I sneak out of the shed, in case Madame Sonya is home, and out onto Clement Street. I see a yellow newspaper box and approach it cautiously, afraid of what the headline might be. But the front page has nothing about Keith. The main article is about tax reform. I insert my coins and take out a copy and bring it into the shed. I sit on the floor and skim every section, every page. Not a single mention of Keith. Nothing.





27


In the early afternoon I go out for food again, and see a face I recognize. It’s my cousin Lazlo standing near the theater across the street. He’s holding hands with a man who’s clearly older than he is. Lazlo is eighteen. I look up at the marquee of the small art-house theater: My Beautiful Laundrette is playing. There’s a matinee showing.

“Eula?” Lazlo says to me, and quickly drops the hand of his companion.

I haven’t seen Lazlo for three years. We used to be close before my father and Lazlo’s mom had a falling out. That’s what my dad calls it, a falling out. My mother calls it a travesty.

“You okay?” Lazlo says. “What happened to your head?”

“I guess I fell,” I say, indicating the top of my ear. It hurts to touch the wound directly.

“You guess you fell?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. He’s still a teenager, but he has a thin mustache that wasn’t there last time I saw him. His hair is dark blond, his cheeks round, his eyes set deep in his face. We could be mistaken for siblings.