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For months she'd lain awake waiting for her alarm clock to ring and
wondering if he were already up at the other end of the house, pulling on his pants, rubbing his wet face with a towel. As he carried the garbage away from the attic, she watched the lamplight disappear from his back, then climbed, grabbing the dusty rail, to make up her brother's bed and groom him with the silver comb Mother had provided in its own suede pouch. As she fought the snarls, she thought of these new possibilities—that there were people in the world she'd never met, places she'd never been. She thought of the jet trails the young man had pointed out to her, far above the house.

At night they met again. Her back against the wall, she couldn't swallow, took quick shallow breaths until he had walked down the hallway toward his room. She could turn then, let a rat loose in her brother's apartments as she did every night, stamping so it would run the tunnel of passages to the bedroom. In the morning, there was always a spattering of blood around her brother's mouth to clean; it was dry, brown, and he let her pull it free with her fingernails, grumbling a little.

Silence reminded her where she was. The birds had stopped singing. Under the sheet it seemed grayer, as if the sky had clouded over or the sun moved behind the house. A rough weave, the cloth let in thorns of light. Had she not been pretty enough for him, full-fleshed? But in the boat he'd often called her his beauty. Had she not responded quickly to his touch? Did she sing too much during the day? Or had she failed to chant him to sleep? She'd never complained that she could remember, but perhaps she'd been found wanting in fortitude. Perhaps she'd recited a poem more than once, boring him.

His shirt stretched tightly across his chest. Every afternoon her father had gone to find him outside. She saw them standing just where the dry grass gave way to the green irrigated rows of vegetables. Both men bent their heads as they talked, their caps tipped low over their eyes, and the younger man always tapped the ground with a stick as if considering what the other had to say but unsure whether he agreed. If he saw her watching from behind the stiff parlor curtains, he gave her a half-smile and then turned so she could not see his lips move. Father gestured toward the house, speaking fervently, pointing in turn to the servants' wing, the dark green shades of Mother's boudoir, her own bedroom, and then up to the roof.

Later, she leaned on the dining room table with the heels of her hands and looked out the window behind the young man's blond head. “I can't leave my brother,” she said. “You know that. No one else can care for him.” She thought of her brother listening for her step as though the chores were done automatically by a body, her body, which somehow could not be replaced. She saw herself going upstairs, charmed, unable to stop, and all her feelings left on the landing.

He reached over the table toward her. “Let's go tonight,” he said again, pleading, nervous. “Let them fight it out themselves. It'll be better that way, you'll see.”

“What do you mean, fight it out?”

“Just come with me. If you want to come back, you'll be able to, later.”

“I can't,” she whispered until her refusal was the song of all their meetings, the silent refrain while they sat at supper with her parents and talked about the crops, weather, politics in town. “I can't say why,” she said later, the china bowl she held stained magenta from the beets they'd eaten. “I'd feel too guilty. He'd be alone.”

Outside, the young man worked, the sky spread about like a quilt.

“Give me a little more time,” she'd said. Inside, something gnawed at her—to climb a mountain and breathe the thin air at its peak, to step into a boat and sail to the edge of the world—but she couldn't agree.

“Time won't change anything,” he mumbled, and a fine network of lines formed on his forehead. “We can't wait any longer.” He grunted as he struck the spade into the earth, wouldn't turn around again even after she'd reached the house. He didn't speak to her for days, and she'd found him closeted more often with her father, found them whispering in the hayloft, the grainfield, and in the corner behind the stairs.

Unable to dissuade him, she'd stood on the landing, her lantern sending a thread of light after him through the partially open door. He'd broken her down; he'd been relentless. “It's too late for me to spare you now so you might as well help me. At least show me the way.” How hard had she tried in the end? She couldn't even grab his arm to hold him back. Her brother—splashing and clawing as she bathed him, willing to eat only after he'd tossed his food to the floor and made her scoop it up again—was harder to control than this young man would have been. She could have
stopped him with one word, said yes. Instead, she stood in the dark, the house silent, and thought how this year, all ties broken, her days would lighten, have a slow rhythm all their own. She would not have to lead her brother downstairs on his birthday, clean and combed. She would not have to watch him drink whiskey with the girls from town while they sat on his lap, fed him cake and ice cream, braided the hair on his massive chest and left the pink marks of their lipstick in it. They tickled his ears with straw until he, playfully, swatted at them, tossed one over his shoulder and carried her upstairs, the others following. For the rest of the evening, Father sat in a corner with a glass and a decanter of brandy, and she sat on the arm of his chair with her sweater wrapped tightly around her, afraid of any noise, waiting to see if all the girls came down again near dawn and how much money her mother slipped into their palms. She would not have to care for him at all; someone else would do it.

The young man had disappeared. He'd begged her, pleaded. Once, tears had even come to his eyes which he wiped away with his fingers. Still, she'd perversely said no. Now she followed him in her mind, heard the slab of oak rasp the floor, felt the rough wooden attic walls as he slid his hand along them, making his way toward the bedroom where a few rays of moonlight came through the shutters. She followed, all his blond hair gone black; together they anticipated the narrow opening where the darkness grayed a little. Her brother would be sleeping on his straw in the corner, but at the sound of feet approaching he would wake, stand on hairy legs, tilt his head around the doorway, and sniff with his flat nose to discover who was coming.

The time she had, so unwisely, brought a lamp at night, she'd found him like that—neck craned, watching, a savage look in his eyes. Once she'd put the lantern down, the shadow of his square head and shoulders slanted up the walls and ceiling. He'd leapt, ears twitching, crushed her to him and ripped her dress. He'd bent to lick her face, neck, breasts with his thick tongue as if to lick all the salt off her. He held her tighter, scratched his stiff white hair into the slime he'd left. Rubbing his body against hers, he spread his hand between her thighs. His sharp hooves trod her feet. When she screamed, he only snorted and blew damp breath, clutching her tighter still. Finally, her father had freed her with his whip, yanked her from
the attic and, hushing her so she wouldn't disturb her mother, brought her down to the black quiet of her room where he left her, warning her never to say anything about the episode.

She shivered, remembering, but part of her entertained the thought that things might change now. The land could be hers, not her brother's. She'd tear down this house and build a new one—spacious rooms, no halls, immense windows—but the vision was shattered by a volley of curses from the hall behind the almost closed door, screeching, echoing. She shook, and the patterned wallpaper flickered as she swung the lantern. She had imagined a silent meeting, not this which would surely wake the house and bring her mother stumbling up the stairs. She had seen the young man stare her brother down, subduing him with those bright eyes and thought then—what? She didn't know. There'd been a blank space. The screams grew louder, nearer, and a hollow thump-thump-thump followed them. She sent a sliver of yellow light through the door, calling to the man, listening to him run lightly toward her and to her brother trot unevenly, slowly, wheezing deeply, fall. The man burst through the door and slammed it behind him.

She never asked how the pursuit had ended, stood frozen in surprise as the silence gathered again. He'd stumbled through the door and swept her down the stairs—the first time he'd touched her, hot steel. He'd stepped through the door, stripped off his drenched shirt, and pressed her to his smooth chest, his cold skin. Awkwardly, she'd held the lantern aside. Not a scratch on him but his white shirt was red with blood. What weapon had he taken? In the yellow light his eyes shone purple, but by the time he helped her into the boat they were the same calm blue as always.

And he'd taken her away, quick note left on the sideboard, dark sail under the moon. Although the night was warm she shivered beneath her cloak, numb, looked back and saw lights come on in the house, awake, a vigil. She imagined her mother's hysterics, pounding the floor with her fists, Father comforting her roughly.

“You are glad you came with me, aren't you?”

She dipped her hand into the water without answering.

“You wouldn't want to be back there now. There's everything in front of us, the whole world.”

He'd
thrown off his shirt in a wide, grand motion, and left it on the stairs. His chest had tasted salty.

“I wanted to come,” she said at last and went to sit next to him. “Of course I did. There was never any question about that.”

Until the points of light on shore were no larger or brighter than stars, everything was silent.

“I've never killed anyone…,” he started, rubbing his palms together. She reached out and stuck her hand between his to silence him.

They spent their nights in the bottom of the boat, swells pressing against the hull, one swell and then another until she wasn't sure whether the rocking was the sea's movement or their own wild tumbling in that sharp space. The halyard tink-tink-tinked against the mast. She slept most of the day too, curled in the sun, and when she woke up, reached for him. His fingers were a drug of forgetfulness; she thought they were crossing Lethe.

————

How did the girl spend her time on the island?

Winter: she went into town less frequently, following the road when she did, a strip of white on white. The houses lay back in the landscape, sucked up by snow. Around them the pines were black, the palms dauntlessly green. Out over the water the fog twisted around the islands like scarves around a throat.

At home she arranged and rearranged her few belongings, lining up jars on the shelf, folding blankets into squares of the same size, opening and refolding them more precisely. She sat by the table and knit, leaving the door open to smell the snow because the snow smelled of salt. She positioned her chair so that, when she looked up, she could see through the falling snow to the water, waiting for a flash of purple. She looked up often; jittery, she couldn't sit still. When she felt the cold on her ankles, she swept the snow out the door and closed it, then pulled her chair closer to the stove where the water boiled for the tea she drank constantly. The liquid warmed her. Cold comfort her mother taught her to knit—the thin tough hands had held her own around the needles, clumsy stiff movements. Her mother's hands fought to keep her fingers moving correctly. Together they made wide ribbons for her brother who tied the colors around his head.
When one of her hairs fell free, she wrapped it with her needles, knotted herself in. The material dropped to the floor, spread under the table, chair, bed, the color of the winter sea, gray-green. She had an idea that if she knit a net fine enough and wide enough, she could cast it over the waves, entangle him and draw him back. Through the winter she worked on it. Once before she had pulled him free, blond hair shining suddenly, from the dark, but then, of course, he'd wanted to come. In the spring, she thought, she'd stand on the promontory, fling her net out and reel him in, the pattern of her fabric embossed into his clean, red, salty skin. He'd turn and turn in the waves, his body rising in the swell, and the water would shine around the dark form she could see from shore. She floated, her breath lifting her body.

He might be lost at sea and pining for her. In which case, once he found his way back to the island, they would make the cabin their home, cut windows in the walls to let in the light, order pots and pans from a catalog and bed sheets in bright colors. She smiled, saw him tapping his fingers impatiently against the gunwale.

He might be dead, a skeleton, a web of bones in the stern of the boat. A tremor started in her stomach and spread; she couldn't stop shaking. The stench of his rotting flesh was everywhere. Still, at least she'd know, sail up or down, mast gone, anchor ripped loose or pulled into the boat. She'd know how he died: thin bone-hands pressed under his cheek as he slept, the shape of a child.

He could be eight hundred miles away in her sister's arms saying, “Poor girl. I miss her so. I cried for days when she disappeared overboard.” He licked her sister's neck and she tweaked his earlobes with dainty baby hands. Such treachery! The image slid across her knitting, but she didn't know where it came from as she didn't have a sister. She stared at their body parts magnified, distorted by the rippling cloth, twining and relaxing. Her fingers slowed, she enjoyed the sour taste, the stiffness of her mouth. She didn't care; she would get him back, she could do anything. Rising, she tossed her knitting to the floor and strode the length of the cabin—stove to door, table to bed. When she looked outside, the storm was a blur of white. She let the fire burn out.

Once, in a gale, the potter came from town to make sure she had wood and food to last out the storm and found the cabin door propped open. He
stood thinking how he should have come sooner, until the sound came up from the inlet on the wind, and he saw her on the ledge howling—the only name for that noise—with her arms thrust behind her and her skirt plastered to her thighs. When he took her hand, she came quietly but as if she didn't know what was happening to her.