Free Bodies of Water by T. Greenwood Page B

frayed with age, weakened by time and distance. Barely a thread anymore.
    Gussy coughs. “All of this is, um, more complicated than I thought.”
    It is my turn to sigh. I don’t know why she’s being so elusive. “What’s going on, Gus?”
    There is silence on the other end of the line, a terrifying abyss growing between us.
    “Gus?”
    “Please just come home,” she says softly. “We can talk about it when you get here.”
    “Talk about what, Gus? There isn’t anything you can tell me about Ted Wilson that’s going to upset me. Seriously.”
    There is that silence again, that gulf, and when she finally speaks, there’s a tumbling sense of urgency to her words. “I found a flight that gets into Burlington at three o’clock this Friday. I can pick you up and then we can have supper here, get some sleep. In the morning we can head up to the lake to see Effie and the girls. Johnny said he could come up on Sunday. Would Sunday be too soon?”
    “ This weekend?” I say, feeling suddenly too hot, my skin prickly. “I don’t know. This seems crazy.”
    “Of course, he has to work on Monday, so it would be a short visit. I can ask Francesca about coming up too. If you stay a couple of weeks, maybe she could visit the next weekend.”
    I can feel a breeze come off the ocean and through the cracks of my window.
    “Would chicken and dumplings be okay?”
    “Chicken and dumplings?”
    “For supper. When you get here.”
    My sister has always been the one to take control, the one to grab hold of the universe, my universe, when it begins spinning out of control. I am grateful to her. But I am also powerless when she is this determined.
    “I already bought the ticket,” she says. “You just need to get to the airport.”
    Later, as I lie in bed waiting for sleep, I try not to think of Ted and all the possible ways he might have taken his own life. I try not to think of Johnny and whatever bottom he hit after his father’s death. I try not to think of that tenuous bridge between us, the deep water beneath, the memories and years below. I try only to think of seeing my sister again. It’s been two years, and we may not have that many years left. Either one of us.

A t the end of that summer, when the girls and I returned to Hollyville from Vermont, the entire pregnancy and miscarriage seemed far away, like a gauzy dream. Going home after being away for so long always felt a bit dreamlike; it would take a few days before I felt as though I was in a real place rather than on a stage, the furniture and appliances all out of proportion to the ones in my memory, the colors too bright. Frankie looked strange to me too, like an actor playing Frankie. The touch of his hand felt foreign and papery at first, though he’d just been to visit us a couple of weeks before.
    Even Eva seemed like some fabrication of my mind, a story I made up to entertain myself, to pass the time. We didn’t have a phone at the lake yet then, but I had sent her a postcard from Vermont, taking nearly a half hour at the Rexall in Quimby selecting one that would somehow entice her to join us there the following summer. But I hadn’t heard back. And Frankie had been useless. He said he hadn’t seen Eva at all while he was home, that his encounters with Ted had also been few and far between. I half expected when we pulled onto Beechtree Street that Mrs. Macadam would still be sitting on her porch, or that the F OR S ALE sign might still be stuck beneath the lilac bush. But instead, there was Eva. Eva with a tiny little bundle in her arms. I felt my cheeks flush, my blood quicken in my veins. She rushed down her porch steps when she saw our car, Donna and Sally and Johnny all close behind.
    I threw open the passenger door as soon as Frankie pulled the car into our driveway and hollered across the street. “Pink or blue?”
    “What’s that?” she hollered back.
    “Girl or a boy?” I shouted again, feeling foolish.
    “Why don’t you go across