Summer
I fall in and out of myself. Who I think I am ain’t always who I am. I can go weeks where I slip from one person into another. It’s like gettin’ lost in the woods. I’ll pass by somethin’ I know maybe three or four times, but it don’t lead me out, it don’t show me the way.
I went to that fancy school with Savannah. The Maidenville Academy. It was ugly how much they had; the music room and the shined floors, the robot kids that slow-stepped with their hands neat behind their backs. Part of me ached for them. And for me.
I told Savannah I’d spoke to Momma about it, that she knew, but she didn’t ’cause pipe dreams are just that. They ain’t got no groundin’ beyond.
I met an old man in a dark-wood office with all kinda certificates on the wall behind, like they meant somethin’ more than vanity. He spoke and I smiled polite and Savannah put a hand on my shoulder. She told him I was special like that was somethin’ good, and then she smiled the whole drive back. That smile though, it was so much like Bobby’s . . . so much missin’ from it.
*
I found an article in the Maidenville Herald from three years back. Bobby and Savannah’s boy was named Michael, and he died in a car wreck when he was four years old ’cause a drunk ran a stop sign and his car seat hadn’t been fitted right. There was a small shot of them, the three before, so happy I cried right there in the library, till the old lady came over and handed me a glass of water and asked if I was all right. I don’t know, that’s what I told her, ’cause I didn’t.
*
I ain’t that big, anywhere. I ain’t tall, my tits ain’t as big as Raine’s. By the age of two you could tell us apart easy—her face seems to fit together in a way that mine don’t. It’s all right that she’s prettier, I ain’t jealous. She gets a lot of attention from the boys, always has, and not just ’cause she’s willin’. I saw the teachers look at her sometimes, the older men who carried that stain of pathetic about them; divorced ’cause they reckoned there was greener pastures waitin’ on them, skinny arms and potbellies and thinnin’ hair. They’d gawk for a few seconds then catch themselves, file the sight, and call on it later, when they reasoned away the guilt ’cause she was so much a woman.
I guess I looked pretty funny playin’ the cello, what with it bein’ so big. I felt like I was some kinda experiment—give the Ryan girl an instrument and see what kinda sound she makes. It came so easy. The first time Savannah settled behind me, her hand over mine, her head over my shoulder. I took a deep breath and played a note. I liked the sound; it was soft but strong.
Before long I could play Kalinka, and Bach’s second suite, and then his Arioso from Cantata 156. The music, the notes, I heard them full and rich and I let them run together. It’s hard to explain, it just is. Sittin’ behind it like it was armor, my mouth shut so no one could hear how I talk.
Savannah would look at me when I was playin’ and I’d see her throat move as she swallowed. Sometimes she’d close her eyes and hold her breath so long. Other times she’d breathe real fast and shallow.
There was a photograph of Michael on her desk; sand hair and brown eyes and a straight mouth, like maybe you had to earn his smile with more than an ask and a lens. I could see both of them in him. Savannah glanced at it sometimes when she thought I weren’t lookin’, and I caught that sharp kinda pain that told of what was wrong with her and with Bobby and what was wrong with them together. The gloss so thick, I saw it drip and run.
I could’ve cried and died for them.
*
I was playin’ and we had the door open. It was summer and the heat was heady and Savannah had switched the fan off ’cause it was noisy. She was sittin’ in front of me, her eyes closed as I played a cello arrangement of Étude Op. 25, No. 7 in E ’cause I loved it. Chopin. I would’ve been one of them ladies that fainted in his room come the end.
I saw Bobby stop by the doorway. He met my eye and smiled at me and I smiled back.
It felt different havin’ somebody else watch—havin’ Bobby watch. He’d come from the yard so his shirt was dark with sweat. He’d cropped his hair short and Savannah was gettin’ on him about it, sayin’ he looked more like a soldier than a pastor, and he’d rolled his eyes and winked at me and I’d laughed.
I played for him, held the bow tighter and sat straighter while he watched. That piece, sometimes Savannah played along on the grand they had by the window, and that piece stole her away someplace far.
Bobby had that same look, and for a while he was lost till he found me and nodded. And then he dropped his eyes down.
My legs were open, the cello between them; it ain’t the most ladylike way to sit. My skirt was high, bunched up at the waist.
Bobby followed my leg from my foot up higher.
I played and watched Savannah as she breathed in time with each note, her chest risin’ and fallin’ and risin’.
Bobby’s gaze at the top of my thighs. I saw him but he didn’t look away, he just stood there starin’ like I was a sight. And then he took a step forward and leaned to the side, his shoulder against the doorframe like he couldn’t hold himself up no more. That sad in them, in both of them.
He leaned and drew breath as the notes rose high above the three of us, and the room and the house and town.
I kept playin’. My throat ran dry and my heart raced and my cheeks were hot. That was a moment, right then, where I floated up and watched myself and watched Bobby watching me. A crossroads where both paths lead you someplace where light and dark ain’t nothing but shades of the same gray.
And though my hands were starting to shake and I was struggling to grip the bow, I knew what I was doing so I did it. I pushed my leg out a little farther. I saw Bobby dip his head an inch, so I pushed out more, and I could tell by the way he was focused, and by the way he swallowed, that he could see up my skirt.
We held that way froze, just me and Bobby and his wife with her eyes closed. The pain of what it was I hadn’t yet known; the evolving tragedy that was and would be our lives.