Before My Eyes (24 page)

Claire jogs across my backyard. She moves in circles, and the circles seem to move with her.

“I guess Brent isn't coming?” she asks from across the lawn, though I don't think this is a question I need to answer. I don't feel like me at all. I want to move closer to her, but keep a safe distance, a yard or so from her, a yard too far. Most of all, I want her to forget this guy Brent.

“Right now, all I know is Trish and Peter and you,” I say, careful not to gape at her legs, or even at her shadow, cast against the house. Her eyes are wide and gold-flecked. I don't think I can look directly at them without getting totally distracted.

Out toward the woods, leaves crash against bone-dry ground. Sometimes kids go back there and drink or smoke pot. Maybe some junior high school kids. That's what I used to do. Or maybe it's just raccoons. I trace a path around her.

“Is anything wrong?” asks Claire, glancing behind her.

The moon glints on the pine trees. The trees sway with a trace of wind. I shake my head. “Feels like a breeze. Maybe the heat will break tonight?”

“I don't feel a breeze,” says Trish, flapping her generous arms.

Claire takes a long drink of water. “Feels like we are in a dream within a dream.”

I nod as if I know what she's talking about. I don't want her to think that I don't know.

Great. The girls exchange looks like they could be friends. Trish seems to collect friends like Peter and Claire—and me? Anyway, I can look at Claire without her looking at me, look at her long, strong legs, look at her hair wave around her waist, until Trish proclaims that she has never been thirstier. “And how about some cake? Shouldn't there be a cake around here if it's a birthday? What the hell kind of birthday is this?”

At that moment, my mother and father return, exactly two hours since they left. And I don't know what they talked about in the diner, but they seem happier, or at least their arms are around each other, not jabbing at cell phones or other electronic devices. They stick their heads out to the deck and one of them, my mother, asks, “Hey, everybody okay?” Neither waits for an answer. They really don't want one. They want to know that we are all still alive and that's about it.

On the deck, Claire is bending down to help Peter tie his work boots. King barks sharply at the quick rustle of the trees. He's not used to being outside in our yard at night. In her lounge chair, Trish scrutinizes the backyard and says she thought she saw something move, too. “Are there animals that live in the woods back there?” she asks.

Giving my soccer ball one last fierce kick into the dark, I join them on the deck. I tell Trish that only raccoons and feral cats are back there. Claire and Peter are stroking King and he is content, squeezed between the two of them. I ask if anyone wants cake, chocolate cake. I retrieve the cake from the bottom of the refrigerator and return with it like an offering. Peter claps. Buttercream icing, points out Trish to Peter. My favorite, murmurs Claire to Trish.

Everyone wants cake. Even I want cake.

Claire

Sunday, midnight

We see Trish and Peter off. I hug them both and promise them we'll see each other again soon. Max, looking up at the stars, not at me, announces that he has to take King for a walk. “We can go by your house. We can take you home.”

I search up as if to see a shooting star or a comet, but the sky is calm and fixed. “Sure. Why not? Walk me—and King. Maybe we should walk on that trail behind your house?”

He glances back there. Shadows bend. All night long, Peter thought someone was watching us, and I can almost believe the trees were watching us, jealous of how we ran, how we laughed.

“It's really dark back there at night.”

“Are you afraid of the dark, Max?”

“Yup.”

I don't believe him. Maybe I'm not the kind of girl he walks home under the trees, under the moonlight.

On the way to my house, we watch King attack the whisperings of squirrels. Max patters on to him about being a good dog, and he is a very good dog. When the sidewalk narrows near my house, Max lets me go first with a silent offer of his hand. I stride ahead. I almost feel like running home, unfettered, to write about this night so it would feel more real than it does.

Soon enough, we arrive at my house. The outside lights blaze with new lightbulbs.

And I've decided on the walk over, under the full moon, that I want to kiss Max good night. I feel warm in my bones, lovely in a way. I want to kiss. I don't know if it matters if it's Max. I'm sure he doesn't want to kiss me. But the desire comes from some aching center. If I could pinpoint it, it would be beneath my chest, above my stomach. I'm not sure if this is connected to Max. If Brent were here, I'd kiss him. At this moment, under the moon, I want to kiss. And even more, I want to believe, for a moment, that summers are about things as frivolous as parties and long, deep kisses. I want to kiss.

In front of my house, on the sidewalk, Max is staring above my head with a lopsided smile as if there's something in the night sky more than a moon and stars. I linger a bit closer to him. He looks left and right, as if expecting someone. The wind rises.

And my mother appears in the doorway, a fragile ghost in baggy jeans and her favorite sweater. Her hair is slicked back. She's freshly showered. She raises her good hand, as if we haven't seen her in the center of the doorway. She favors one side, and wavers. As if I suddenly have blurry vision, I blink. I'm afraid that she will fall. But she eases against the doorframe. She has her cane and it helps her balance. I know I should go to her.

Max waves back at her, friendly and open. And she steps back into the doorway, as if satisfied. I sigh. She's okay. And I still want to kiss him, even more right now. I want him to wrap his arms around me. On the sidewalk, King ruffles at my feet. He pants his dog breath into my palm. The moon is bright.

One kiss
. I jerk forward, toward Max. He jolts backward into the shadows. Gives a dumb laugh. I feel like I loom over him, oversized and aching. I peck him on the cheek because I can. A peck is nothing, one-sided. I don't even include a hug. That would be even more awkward. Maybe I should have been like other girls and waited to see if he would kiss me? But I've never been like other girls. Of course, I've never been kissed, either. I should have stayed home or followed everyone else down to the dunes tonight. Maybe Brent would have been there. Maybe trying to kiss him would have ended in another way. Luckily, King whines, and I can plant a smooch on the top of his head. He smells like dog sweat and grass. I hold on to him. He responds with a definitive tail wag, hustling into my side as I straighten up.

“Hey, about tomorrow,” says Max, pulling at King's leash. “At my father's event? At the community park?” He glances over toward my mother, placing a sweater from the hall closet over her shoulders, not paying attention to us. “The event starts at ten and it goes to about two, I think. I have to be there early.”

I don't think I'll go to the community park tomorrow, even though he asked me to earlier tonight, when we were on his deck, when the night felt different, the world wondrous. It's so obvious, anyone can see, this guy doesn't want anything to do with me. Instead of saying anything else—there's nothing to say, not even a question left—I race up the path to our house, and brush my lips against my mother's cheek. She kisses me back with a surprising fierceness. I press myself to the soft wool of her violet sweater, to the lavender on her neck, the scent of open fields, of my mother, too, a smell almost lost to me, and I know she's real.

BEFORE MY EYES

Barkley

Monday, Labor Day, 10:04
A.M.

Last night, I could not act in the dark of the woods. Nevertheless, this morning, I am in the tent. Inside the whiteness. All is within my vision, a wide shot.

The Cooper family is ahead: Max; the mother, Debbi; and the father, the state senator, and his sign:
Reelect Glenn Cooper, your neighbor.

PAN:
Balloons, bumper stickers, lawn signs, and pencils, hundreds of pencils.

I have been given clarity. There are those among us who are given the gift of blazing foresight, and I am one of them.

After this, I will never be alone.

This is the morning, the morning to cut off the evil from the land,
the voice signals.
Action.

Disorder reigns. Pollution. Fragments. Atoms spinning out. Speak truth to power. Demand answers.

FAST CUTS:
Light flashes. Screams bang in your head. Bodies hit the floor.

“He has a gun,” one of the tanned women shouts.

“A gun?” says another. “Just like that senator?”

“Senator? I thought she was a congresswoman?”

“From New Mexico.”

“New Mexico?”

“I thought Arizona.”

“Arizona?” One is pulling the other to run. Both of them are screaming; a lot of people are screaming.

They must all shut up. Quiet. The Glock aims at them.

Walk perfectly,
the voice insists.

I am thirsty, so thirsty. I itch. I force the grin wide. The Glock discharges. The crowd splits. A car screeches. Someone is shouting my name—a cop with a face sprayed with freckles. He got my name from Max Cooper, who is also shouting. “Barkley!” The officer must not be shouting my name, that name. There is no Barkley here. Only Brent.

I spin. The Glock fires—

Fires off again and again—and the policeman, a gun in his hand, too, stops shouting. He is sprawled on the ground.

And then, another body hits the floor. A flash of pink. Sparkly pink. Two old people tumble toward the pink. The Glock is firing in that direction.

A table topples over. Pencils spin on the ground. A dog leaps forward. Instead of backing off, his teeth bare. I roar. The dog rips into my right leg. I kick. Hard.

Fire. Fire the Glock. The Glock,
the voice orders.

The black mutt careens toward the coolers. Bullets—up, down, left, right. Water spills. Red liquid. I back off. A sudden banging in my ears—heavy metal guitars and drums and cymbals clashing—drowns out all but the voice. The bodies are hitting the floor. The bodies. Nothing's wrong. The bodies are hitting the floor.

To the side of me: Mrs. Cooper. She must be in collusion with those that would destroy me, Barkley, Brent. The Glock points at her. “Please,” she's screaming. “Please.”

And then Claire—in the frame—at Mrs. Cooper's side. She is not dressed in pink. Not one speck of pink. Claire is pure. Exactly. Phenomenal.

A firm stance steadies me. Focus on her.

TIGHT CLOSE-UP:
Claire. My Claire. Claire's eyes. Claire's mouth and lips. Claire. Claire. Claire.

Soon enough, she will know me as Brent. The world is listening to me. Everything comes together: the lens, the pen, the gun.

Fire. Fire. Fire.

I grin, wider.

The Glock shudders. Jams. Thirty-three bullets. Did the Glock shoot all thirty-three bullets?

Reload,
directs the voice with will and determination.
The morning is not over.

Claire

Monday, Labor Day, 10:04
A.M.

The world in the tent explodes into gunshots and screams.

*   *   *

I hadn't wanted to come here, to the community park. My father wanted to take my mother grocery shopping. She was supposed to work on the ordinary things, the everyday things. My mother wanted to go here first. She always liked to be involved in politics. I didn't even dress up for this—a white T-shirt over a bathing suit and cutoffs. After grocery shopping, I planned to go to the beach for one last time this summer. Yet right before we entered the tent, Izzy slipped out of my mother's hand, begging that she wanted to go to the playground first, running off in her sparkly pink top to the swing sets. My father said to me, “Why don't you go inside with your mother?” But my mother said, “Let me sit, for a while. We'll meet. Inside. How about that? Maybe that rakish young man, from last night, will be in there?” I insisted that I didn't want to go in alone. But she gave me one of those looks, one of her classic looks, that said, “Claire, you can do this,” and so I entered the white tent alone.

*   *   *

Now, eyes blinking, now, I'm afraid to run and even more afraid to stay. I feel like I'm less in the air and more in the sea, underwater, drowning.

Max is screaming above the din, “Bark. Bark!”

I don't know why “bark,” until I realize it's a name. That in fact, it's the name of the guy with the mirrored sunglasses on the beach—and it's also the name of the man with a gun—and it's the same guy. And as Max screams that name, “Bark,” that man stares straight at me. He grins, as if I know him, as if we've ever met. And he aims his gun at me. I'm going to die—the guy with the mirrored glasses from the beach is here, in this sweltering white tent, with a gun—and he's going to kill me.

I fall to the ground. My knees scrape against the dirt. I see a little girl in sparkly pink crying, and I think Izzy, although I know Izzy should be in the playground.

“Izzy,” I scream. The girl spins around. “Izzy!” But it's not Izzy, is it? It's a little girl wrapped in the arms of an elderly man and woman. All three are dropping to the ground. A flash of pink and blond curl. A cry for “Mommy” rises. A gasp. Is someone shouting, “Claire”? Is it Izzy? “Izzy!” Izzy is far away. The tent sways above my head. Mrs. Cooper is sprawled at odd angles, whimpering and crying. Her pink suit is twisted up around her hips. Her leg is bleeding, and I can't do anything. I'm not shot. I'm not. I'm sure I'm not shot. But she is, and I can't help her. She's Max's mother and I can't help her. Just like I couldn't help my mother. “Stop!” I order myself. “Stop!” I scream into the vastness of the tent. More gunshots pierce my screams.