A Scatter of Light, page 23
Sometime later the mom with the kid was called to the registration desk. After they left, I picked up their abandoned Time magazine, but the words swam together on the page. When my phone rang, I nearly dropped it on the floor before I answered.
“Aria?” my dad said.
“Dad,” I said in relief. “Aunt Tammy called you?”
“Yes. Are you all right?”
I wished he were here so fiercely I could barely breathe. “I’m fine,” I managed.
“Tammy wanted me to tell you she’s driving up there,” Dad said. “She’s going to call you when she knows more about her timing. I’m coming, too, but I’m kind of in the middle of nowhere, so it’s going to take me longer.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice hitching.
“Ari, it’ll be all right.”
I bit my lip, inhaling through my nose. I didn’t want to cry in the ER. I wasn’t even hurt.
“When the doctor updates you, call Aunt Tammy and let her speak to him,” Dad said.
“What about you?”
“I’m on the landline at the main lodge here. There’s no cell reception, but I’ll turn on my phone just in case. I have to get on the internet and figure out how I’m going to get out of here. I’ll call you when I have my flight information.”
I suddenly realized what this meant. “It’s that serious?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. I heard static on the other end, as if he were moving.
“Dad? Is it that serious? Is she going to—” I couldn’t say the word.
“It’s serious. But your grandma was very lucky that you were with her when she had the stroke. Without you— You did good. Tammy and I will get there as soon as we can.”
* * *
—
I read the whole Time magazine and a year-old issue of People before the nurse called me up to the desk. “You can see your grandmother now,” she said.
I followed her through sliding glass doors to a tiny room where Joan was lying on a hospital bed, the kind with rails on each side. It looked like she’d been fenced in. Oxygen tubes ran into her nostrils, an IV was attached to her arm, and one of her fingers was encased in a plastic clip. A doctor in a white coat stood beside the bed, writing something down on a medical chart.
“This is Joan West’s granddaughter,” the nurse said to the doctor. She turned to me. “This is Dr. Harrison.”
“What happened? How is she doing?” I asked him.
“She’s had an ischemic stroke, which means she had a blood clot in her brain,” he said, speaking in that very calm, emotionless doctor voice. “We’ve treated her with a drug to dissolve the clot, but she needs to remain under observation for a while. We’re waiting for a bed in the neuro ICU to open up for her. You’re welcome to wait here if you’d like, but I don’t know how long it’ll be.”
I remembered what my dad had said, and I pulled out my phone. “I need to call my aunt—her daughter. Can you tell her the situation?”
“Sure.”
I called Aunt Tammy and handed the phone to the doctor. While they talked I went to Joan’s bedside. Her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be asleep. I pulled up a chair next to her and reached out to touch her hand. I felt the bones of her fingers beneath her warm, dry skin. Only yesterday we had been in her old studio together. I’m always making art about time, she had told me. I felt like we’d taken a wrong turn into a timeline we weren’t supposed to be in.
Her hand squeezed mine.
“Joan?” I said.
Her eyes opened, but they were unfocused.
“Joan?” I said again, standing up to move into her line of sight.
She looked confused, and as her mouth opened, one side of it still seemed paralyzed. “Le—” she said.
“It’s me, Aria,” I said, not sure if she could see me.
“Lex,” she said. “Lexis? Where’s Russ?” she asked, her words slurring together.
My heart seemed to stop. “Grandma, it’s me, Aria,” I said. “Your granddaughter. My dad—your son is coming soon. Your daughter, too.”
My grandmother’s confusion seemed to deepen, and at that moment Dr. Harrison handed my phone back to me. “Your aunt wants to speak to you.”
I took the phone, and Dr. Harrison left. Joan’s gaze followed him briefly, then returned to my face. She looked exhausted.
“Aunt Tammy?” I said.
“I’m driving up tonight, as soon as I can leave here,” Aunt Tammy said. “There shouldn’t be any traffic on the Five, and I’m hoping to get to Woodacre by seven or eight in the morning. The hospital knows to call me if anything changes.”
“Okay,” I said. Joan’s eyes closed again.
“The nurse I spoke to earlier said you helped out a lot by giving them the time of the stroke,” Aunt Tammy said.
I sat down in the chair. My legs were shaky. “It all happened very fast.”
Aunt Tammy continued to talk, but I didn’t register her words. I suddenly remembered Analemma barking her head off in my room.
“Shit,” I said.
“What’s wrong?”
“I left Analemma in my room. But I left the front door open.”
“You left—are you sure?”
“Yes. I followed the paramedics out—I didn’t know what to do. I just ran after them.”
“Woodacre’s pretty safe. I think it’ll be okay. But when did Analemma go out last?” Aunt Tammy’s voice was brisk, as if she were working through an engineering problem.
“A long time ago. Maybe this morning. We took her on a hike.”
“Okay, you need to go home and take her out. Don’t panic, it’ll be all right. She’s a very good dog.”
“But what about Joan? Shouldn’t I stay with her? They said they’re going to move her somewhere.”
“They’re waiting for a bed to open up in the ICU. I don’t know how long it’ll be. They’re going to call me when she’s moved. I think you can go home.” She gave a sudden nervous laugh that showed how tense she was. “In fact, I’d really like for you to go home right now and take Analemma out and then lock the front door.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry! I’m so stupid.”
“No, no, it was an emergency. Go home and call me when you get there so I know everything’s okay.”
“Okay.” I glanced at Joan again. Her eyes were still closed. I left the room and said to Aunt Tammy, “I’ll call you soon.”
Back in the waiting room, I explained to the nurse that I had to leave. She didn’t seem surprised by this, only checked to make sure they had contact information for me and Aunt Tammy. I headed outside, Joan’s purse banging against my hip, when I realized I didn’t have a ride home. I halted, the doors whooshing shut behind me. It was dark. The parking lot was lit by regularly spaced streetlamps that shone calmly over rows of cars.
I looked down at my phone. It was after midnight. I’d been in the hospital for five hours. I might not have an Uber account, but I knew I could call a taxi. I’d never seen one in Marin, but they had to exist. The hospital could probably even give me the number for a taxi service.
I called Steph.
Usually, climbing into Steph’s truck was like stepping through a doorway into our secret world, but tonight things were different. Our world had crashed into this one. In the truck’s dim overhead light, Steph looked worried. “How is she?” she asked.
“Asleep.” I closed the truck door and the light went out, leaving us in the glare of the emergency room sign. Steph pulled out of the ER driveway and headed for the hospital exit.
“Your family’s coming?” she said.
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
We turned onto a wide, four-lane road with a central median. There was no traffic. In the distance was a big church, the cross lit up on top of its Mission-style cupola.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” I said.
“No worries. I hope she’s okay.”
Now that I was no longer in the ER, I felt completely drained from waiting. I shivered.
“Are you cold?” Steph asked, and she waved her hand in front of the vents. “It takes a while to warm up.”
“I’m okay.”
She reached over and put her hand on my thigh. I could feel her warm palm through the fabric of my jeans. I leaned my head back against the seat and looked at her profile, outlined by the white lights of the dashboard. She kept her eyes on the road. After a while I laced my fingers with hers. She drove all the way to Woodacre holding my hand, not letting go even when she shifted gears.
* * *
—
The front door was closed—maybe the firefighters had closed it—but still unlocked. As soon as I turned the doorknob, Analemma started barking. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I called as I went up the stairs, flipping on the lights. Her barking quieted, and when I opened the bedroom door, she burst out wagging her tail. Steph came up the stairs into the living room, and Analemma ran over to her.
Steph knelt down to rub her ears. “Hey, Ana.”
I called Aunt Tammy to tell her I was back. While I talked to her, Analemma nosed around the floor, sniffing at the tomato paw prints she’d left earlier. I followed her through the living room, past the Southern Cross painting, and into the kitchen, where the tomatoes had made a gigantic mess. There was a clump of them where Joan had dropped the pot, red footprints from the firefighters and paramedics and me, and a big smear where I had pulled Joan across the floor.
Analemma whined as she sniffed around the kitchen, and I realized she was looking for Joan. Then she started to lick the tomatoes off the floor. “Analemma!” I cried, and she looked up guiltily for one second before going right back to what she was doing. I told Aunt Tammy I had to go and pulled Analemma by her collar out of the kitchen.
Steph was standing in the living room, looking at the mess. “This is a lot,” she said. “Do you need some help?”
“I’ll have to deal with it later,” I said. “I have to take Analemma out.”
“I can come with you.”
I felt a surge of relief that embarrassed me, because I didn’t want to be clingy but I also didn’t want to be alone. “Okay,” I said.
Downstairs at the front door I clipped on Analemma’s leash and took her outside. Once we were in the yard she relaxed and started nosing at the plants. Steph followed us out, and then we all went down to the street.
“We don’t have to go far,” I said, opening the gate.
There were only a couple of streetlights down here, spaced fairly far apart, so the woods were quite dark. Analemma was a deeper blackness against the pavement. I looked up, wondering if I’d be able to see any stars, but they were blocked by the leaves overhead. I could only see a fraction of the moon.
We paused by a curb that seemed to be particularly fascinating to Analemma, and while she smelled every inch of the ground, my thoughts went back to my grandmother in the hospital. She had looked so lost and confused, as if she were no longer Joan West at all.
I didn’t realize I’d started shaking until Steph put her arms around me. “It’s okay,” she told me, her voice muffled in my hair. Her hands stroked my back gently. “It’s okay.”
* * *
—
It took us a while to clean up the tomato remains. I told Steph she could go home but she said she wanted to help. We worked together in silence. My clothes were already stained, so I did most of the cleaning in the kitchen while Steph wiped up the footprints on the living room floor. Analemma had left paw prints on the floor of my room, too, but she must have licked off most of the tomato because her paws were clean.
By the time we were finished, it was almost two in the morning, and I was covered with even more tomato stains than before. Analemma had fallen asleep in her bed in front of the cold woodstove, emitting faint, regular snores.
“To be a dog,” Steph said, smiling.
“If only.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “Thanks for helping.”
“No problem.” Steph tapped a finger against her own face. “Uh, you might want to check yourself out in the mirror.”
I went into the bathroom and groaned. I’d gotten tomato on my face, too. “I look like I was in a massacre,” I said.
“Why don’t you wash up? I’ll look around and make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
“Thanks.”
I closed the bathroom door and turned on the shower. I got undressed, and as I pulled my T-shirt over my head, I realize I’d somehow gotten tomatoes in my hair. I carefully extracted myself from my shirt and stepped into the spray.
I realized, at that moment, that I was alone in the house with Steph. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known that before, but I’d been so focused on Analemma and cleaning up that it hadn’t entirely registered with me. I was alone in the house with Steph. I was naked in the shower, and she was outside in the living room. It was the middle of the night. She had to go home to her girlfriend, and the only reason she was here was because my grandmother had had a stroke, and in a few hours my aunt and my father would arrive.
Tonight we were alone here, together. I had been tired when I stepped into the shower, but I wasn’t tired anymore.
When I finished, I carefully dried myself off, rubbing the towel over my wet hair and combing it back from my face. I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were bright, my skin pink from the hot water. I hadn’t brought clean clothes into the bathroom with me, so I wrapped the damp towel around myself and opened the door.
Steph was sitting on the couch looking at Joan’s catalog, open on the coffee table in front of her. She had her back to me and didn’t seem to notice that I’d come out of the bathroom. I told myself I should go put some clothes on, but there was something about the posture of Steph’s shoulders, a vulnerability, that made me go over to her.
The catalog was open to one of Joan’s self-portraits. She was sitting in a seventies-era kitchen with my dad on her lap. By the year in the caption, he must have been around three. She was holding on to him while he tried to squirm away from her, his legs kicking out in a blur. But her eyes were steady as she gazed at the camera. Behind her I noticed an old-fashioned wall clock, centered like a sun above her head. It was three o’clock exactly.
I sat down beside Steph, still clutching my towel around me. I noticed that her T-shirt was so old it had a constellation of tiny holes in it near the shoulder. The faded print on the front read SAC STATE. I wondered if it was something she normally slept in. My phone call had woken her up. It had made her climb out of bed and leave Lisa behind to come and pick me up.
“What did you tell Lisa?” I asked.
Steph looked at me. Her eyes were rimmed with red, as if she was holding back tears. “I told her Joan was in the hospital.”
I took her hand and squeezed it. “She’s going to be okay,” I said. Then we moved toward one another and her arms went around me as we hugged. Her body was warm, her breath catching in her throat. I felt the dampness of the towel pressed against my skin. A shudder went through her.
When she pulled back, I felt tender toward her. I cupped her flushed cheek in my hand. I wanted to kiss her, but I hesitated. Her eyelashes were damp. For one long, silent breath, we looked at each other, motionless.
I felt the weight of that moment all the way through my body, every nerve alive. I think she felt it, too. We could have made a lot of other choices that night, but we made the only one we wanted to make.
* * *
—
She let me lead her into my room where I lay down on the bed, and she lay down beside me. All I had to do was let go of the towel, and her hands were sliding over my hips, cupping the curve of my ass, her mouth on mine. It felt as though we had abandoned all pretense and were finally acknowledging the truth.
I had never had sex with a woman before, but Steph didn’t feel like a woman to me. She felt like Steph, this person who had dominion over my daydreams, who made my body turn molten when she touched me, as if she were forging me into a new person. When we kissed, I wanted to devour her.
She did everything right. Her mouth on my nipples, the slightest graze of her teeth on my skin. Her hand sliding between my legs, her fingers stroking me. I was shocked by how liquid I was, an ocean beneath her touch. And then she moved to the end of the bed and knelt between my thighs.
The boy I first had sex with, Zachary, had gone down on me, but he often acted as if he thought of it as a precursor to intercourse—not quite the real thing. With Steph, all of it was the real thing.
I became uncomfortably aware of what she was about to do—her tongue on me, inside me, a great intimacy. I wanted it, but I was also embarrassed to want it, to display so blatantly the degree of my desire for her. I wanted to be cool. Remembering that now makes me laugh. I was so far from cool at that point. She might have been kneeling before me, but I was the supplicant.
I raised myself on my elbows to look at her and said in my cool voice, “You don’t have to do that.”
She paused. Her eyes were dilated as her gaze swept over my stomach, my breasts, my face. I wanted to take a picture of her looking at me. She said, “I want to.”
Her words lit me up inside.
I lay back down. Above me the ceiling was bathed in yellow light from the bedside lamp. I curled my fingers into the coverlet and thought, I’ll have to wash this tomorrow. And then—
It’s not as if I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I was still stunned when I felt her mouth on me. Her tongue, climbing the swollen ridge of nerves at the cleft of my body. Her fingers inside me, that exquisite friction. I closed my eyes but I still saw her face, her hazel eyes. I would see her face for years to come. The way she opened me, as if she had always possessed the key to this lock. A smooth, well-oiled click, the tumblers sliding into place, effortless. And I was there so soon, so fast, shuddering against her mouth, the center of my world. She made me feel transcendent, exceptional.
