The drive back was ensconced in silence. Marianne slouched in her seat, resting her feet on the dashboard and pressing her forehead against the window. She didn’t look in my direction, and I kept my own eyes on the road. I was relieved to retreat into the automatic functions of driving. It allowed my mind to wander without confronting the reticent outcast to my right.
My thoughts were riddled with worries and questions. I replayed the scene that was still fresh in my memory, pondering whether I should have watched more closely. Marianne’s previous mood had been a cover, and I had known it. But complacency had lulled my reactions into an impotent haze. Now a sandstorm of ash and cigarettes whirled behind my eyes, clouding my confidences. Joe’s last words repeated like a foreboding soundtrack, and I couldn’t help but feel that they applied more to me than my friend. Although I hadn’t committed any crime, it would be a long time before I could show my face around Ken’s without intense pangs of shame.
We entered Marianne’s driveway and I cut the engine. She still did not move or speak, so I stared out the windshield. The lowest branches of the tree that hung over her drive waved broad shadows in front of me. Black leaves tossed and writhed, dragging the tree-fingers toward the ground. Autumn would arrive soon to sever them. The drained weights would collapse and blow away, so that the newly freed branches could rise tall against the sky once more while they slumbered in peace. If we sat in the car long enough, we might see it happen.
Just as the air seemed to grow crisp with a hint of the northerly shifts, Marianne turned and broke my reverie.
“Am I a ‘bad’ person?” she asked in a firm but colorless monotone.
“I don’t think you are. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”
She snorted. “Don’t pay me lip service, Emmitt.”
I shrugged. “I’m not. You do some bad things, but so does everyone. I think you’re good, matter of fact.”
“How can you think that?”
I considered this for a moment.
“All that stuff you write and make – what is it you’re trying to create?”
“I don’t know… something beautiful… but it doesn’t make a difference. Everything’s ephemeral.”
“That’s true, I guess.” I gazed once more at the tree. “Anything you create will be destroyed, or fade.”
“I just want to be remembered for something. Something beautiful.”
“Remembered by who? People are ephemeral too. And a long time from now, after you’re gone, it won’t matter to you if anyone knows who you are.”
Marianne shifted uncomfortably in her seat, pulling her shirt down to cover her stomach. “I know. That’s why I can’t do it… Emmitt, I’ve destroyed so many things.”
“So have I. But it’s okay.”
Her voice grew impassioned for a moment. “No, it isn’t!” She twisted back around to face the window again.
“You’re right. It’s not okay. That’s what I mean. It’s not supposed to be. Things are tough to handle, and they often hurt a lot, but that’s the part that’s okay. It’s how life is.”
“Mark – I should have known this would happen,” she replied, still facing away. “He was always an earthquake, and they never leave anything but damage behind. Here…gone…nothing.”
“It’s how life is,” I repeated. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Life. Do you believe in past lives, Emmitt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither, but I’m starting to. Did you know that I don’t know how to swim?”
“Really? Why not?”
“My parents tried to teach me when I was young, but I refused to go in. Water terrified me. I couldn’t even look at a full sink without freaking out. I didn’t understand it. As I got older, I began having nightmares about it. I would be in what seemed to be a river, in the bluest-greenest waters… submerged. I could see the sunlight above me, somewhere just overhead, but something held me back from it, pushing me down. Bubbles everywhere. Beautiful bubbles of every size would swirl around me, running past me. I’d try to catch them, to grab anything. My chest would be in so much pain – aching and stabbing. But it was never any use. I’d just flail without moving. Then the sun would turn grey – and I’d wake up. It was horrible. I had the same dream over and over, for years.
“Then, one day, my mother and I were in New York City, and we stopped at a fortune teller’s. Before I said anything about the dreams or my fear, she told me I had drowned in a flood on the coast of Indonesia. And before that, I had been murdered in Estonia, also by drowning. She may have just made that stuff up, or gotten her cues from something about me. They do that a lot… it’s a good trick. But maybe she knew something I don’t.
“I’m still not sure about past lives, but if they do exist, then my karma must be pretty fucked up. I must have done some terrible, terrible deeds. It’s the only way I can explain my life now. But I guess that’s just how life is, right?”
Not sure how to reply, I cast my eyes toward Marianne’s house. From the outside, it appeared venerable and historic, a classic colonial accessory on a wooded hillside.
Wooden beams rose from the short front porch to the slanted overhang, where the second floor protruded slightly. Marianne’s living room windows were visible from here, though they were currently cloaked in draperies and obscurity. Inside, lives were led in haphazard styles. Miniature universes were created and tailored to the individuals who inhabited them. Across the street, where ostensibly similar houses stood, were other hidden microcosms. Could a person ever fit into any that was not his own?
“I don’t think you did anything to ‘deserve’ all that,” I said, looking again at Marianne.
“You’ve no clue all the things I’ve done.”
“And you don’t know what I’ve done. I’ve done some pretty bad shit, too.”
She waved my statement away with her hand. “Not as bad as me.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. That you recognize it as bad for you, that you’re sorry for it, is the first and most important step to getting beyond it. In this life.”
Now she turned toward me. “But how can I? Nobody else will forget what I do, no matter what. They always remember.”
“Marianne. Some people never forgive. Some things break. But you’ve got yourself. The only person who has to deal with it is you. And no one else can stop you from doing that.” For the first time since leaving the bar, Marianne smiled. A genuine, pleasant smile. Her bloodshot eyes grew crystalline once more.
“You know what I see when I look at you, Emmitt? I see kin.” She moved toward me, gently turning my head with one hand. Her lips met mine, slow and warm. It was comfortable. I felt the tenseness in my shoulders relaxing. And then, in a sea of fluid motion, the embrace ended.
“I cannot walk among the dead,” she said, gathering her purse. “I’m so tired I might pull a Rip Van Winkle.”
“Okay.” I felt her absence already.
“You may not be self-assertive enough yet,” she quipped, opening the car door to the crickets and stray cats outside. “But you’re good at taking care of people. I don’t know which is more important. Still, thank you.”
“What for?”
As she stepped out, Marianne said, “For taking care of me.” She closed the passenger door before I could react. I watched her walk to the porch, fumble with the lock, and disappear, consumed by the deeper blackness beyond her door.
Then I started my car and pulled away, knowing that the next time she called me I would not answer.
#
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