Free After Life by Rhian Ellis Page B

struggled for a short time, then the mud pulled me under.
    Naomi.
    It was Peter’s voice. I jumped, and my eyes flew open.
    All five of them were looking at me. “I’m a little tired,” I said. “Give me a moment.”
    Peter had never come to me before. But the voice was his; I knew the way his mouth formed my name. I had feared it and I had longed for it, and I had never forgotten his voice. My heart surged in recognition.
    I took a steadying breath and told David some hopeful things: chin up, you haven’t found a job yet because the right one hasn’t come around, etcetera, etcetera. I wondered if he could tell I was winging it. Usually they couldn’t. But David looked disappointed.
    Three syllables: Naomi. It was him. It was him.
    Afterward, I shook everyone’s hand. I gathered my purse and sweater and pushed in my chair. I was shaking a little. All around people were leaving—chatting and hugging and laughing.
    “Naomi.”
    “Oh! Oh, Dave, I’m sorry…”
    “No, no, it was me. My energy was all wrong. I’m sorry. My fault entirely.” He hunched himself into his windbreaker.
    “I was tired. I am tired. I’ll make it up to you, any time you like.”
    He made a wry face, obviously pleased. “Well, all right. Hey, how about some time this week? I’ll cook you dinner.”
    Oh, geez, I thought. “Maybe. You can call me.”
    “Of course. I will. Really, I really am sorry.” He gave me a little wave, and I watched his narrow shoulders disappear into the crowd.

    That night, after I walked my mother home, I thought I might watch the television news. Everyone else was in bed. From his room came the sound of Ron snoring, and occasionally I heard the squeak of Jenny’s bedsprings as she rolled around, trying to make herself comfortable. I had never liked television. It embarrassed me to watch people mugging and singing on behalf of new cars and drain cleaner. I waited impatiently through the weather and a car accident or two and the endless shots of ponytailed girls running up and down basketball courts, but there was no mention of the body in the woods. I turned the TV off and sat there for a few minutes, listening to the sound of my breath in my nose, then got up and went outside.
    I walked down Fox Street, toward the dock, until I could see the lake spread out in front of me, black as oil. Music floated across the water from somewhere. For a little while I argued with myself: It’s a woman, you heard what they said at the Safeway…they’re most likely Indian bones, anyway, it’s not Peter…Peter was not an Indian. But as I stood at the edge of the lapping water, I gave it up. The bones were Peter’s. Out there in the dark, on the other side of the lake somewhere, his grave was empty. I could feel it. Before, whenever I stood on the shore of the lake, I’d think I could sense him there, across the water. The presence of his bones had always been something I could take an obscure comfort in, a source of heat I could turn my cold face toward. But not tonight.
    He came to me; he said my name. Why? Could the disturbance of his bones have shaken his soul loose, the way prodding a dead animal might release a cloud of flies? I didn’t think so. He had come to me for a reason. To warn me? Maybe. Maybe he meant to taunt me.
    I wanted to hear his voice again. I wanted to see him. If I tried hard I could see his face in the shadows of the hills beyond the lake, his features alive and shifting, and I could see him in the ripples on the water. The shape of his body was outlined in the trees above my head. He was everywhere, everywhere. Inside me, something trembled and broke free: love—love and horror.

4

invisible
    During the night a storm passed through. Asleep, I interpreted the noise of rain to be a train I was riding, though in waking life I’d never been on one. I didn’t know where I was going or where I had been, but the train rocked from side to side as if it was going very fast, and the landscape out