"Please. Please let me come! I'll be good. I promise."
"It's not that I think you won't be good, darling," she stopped her packing and peered over her suitcase. "But, you've got a fever. And sick little girls stay home in bed."
The child, the rosy pinkness of her cheeks bright against the white of the bedsheets, pouted and crossed her arms across her thin chest. "I'm eight years and two months old. That's not little."
Her mother smiled. "True. You're very nearly grown. A bonafide adult."
She may not have known the definition of the adjective, but, "Don't tease, mummy. It's not nice."
"You're right." Helena nodded apologetically. Because it was true that growing older was both a blessing and a curse. And it was true that this growing up always seemed to happen in the deepest hours of sleep, while dreams were given free reign to play the part of reality. Therefore, she desired nothing more than to take her daughter with her, and try, however impossibly, to capture the moment in her memory when the child took a step closer to nine and a leap away from merely eight. Those moments, those growing up moments were among her favorites. Late at night, her child firmly settled in the REM cycle, little face relaxed upon her pillow. When it's almost possible to pretend that the world has stopped spinning, when the silence is anything but oppressive, and the weight of the sheets against her skin is warm and cool all at once. When her daughter is still young enough to seek her mummy's arms after a nightmare, but almost too old for mother's bed. The moments that are past, present and future all at once. Those are her favorites. And she was loathe to miss even one.
She came around the end of the bed and sat down on the mattress, sighing happily when her daughter automatically scooted over to settle in her arms. This was home. She pressed a kiss to a warm forehead. "Sophie will be here soon and you two will have plenty of fun. I'll be back tomorrow evening."
"Will you bring me something from your trip."
Helena laughed brightly, cocking an eyebrow. "What would you like?"
Christina pondered for a moment, sucking on her bottom lip. "Mm...a puppy?" she tried, looking altogether too adorable.
Helena pretended to ponder the request for all of three seconds before attacking the child with tickles. The delighted squeals quickly drowned out any thoughts of cute, fuzzy creatures that pooped and peed all over everything. After several moments, the mother broke up the fun, leaving behind a panting and exuberant child. "Now, come on," she gave the girl an arm up. "I've got to finish getting ready, and you, little miss need to go and draw yourself a bath."
"But I'm sick," the child tried.
"Exactly. Now off with you," and she watched with a satisfied smile as her daughter headed for the bathroom, before turning back to do battle with the suitcase, hands on her hips.
She is quite certain that this is what freezing feels like. When your blood draws back into your extremities and your fingers and toes turn purple so you can't feel them and on a thermal screen you are only a single pulsing point of brilliant red light in a halo of blue. And for a moment, she almost wishes for some fantastical climatic event to occur, turning the earth cold and hurtling the planet into another ice age. She wishes that the ground beneath her feet matched the color of her hands and that the only sign of life was the heat of the core thousands of miles beneath her feet. She almost wishes, but she cannot complete the thought before the pain induced by rain hovering on the edge of sleet is wiped away once more.
"Mummy!"
"I heard it!" she calls back. "I heard it." She's rushing down the hallway, trying to tuck a few loose strands of hair back into the bun at the nape of her neck and smoothing down her blouse. "Sophie! Hello," she says upon opening the door.
The young, twenty-something Georgetown student smiles at her from the stoop.
"Do come in," she encourages. "I'm so terribly sorry to have called you just last minute, but Christina - Christina! Sophie's here." she shouts into the house, "Sorry," she apologizes. "Like I was saying. She came down with this fever, and I couldn't cancel the meeting so last minute, so-"
"Don't worry, Ms. Wells. Honestly. It's cool."
"Helena, please," she insists, not for the first time.
"Hey, Christina," the sitter waves to the child who has wandered out of her room, brown curls still wet and dripping from her bath.
"Hi, Soph," she murmurs, clutching a ratty old stuffed giraffe to her chest.
She is always shy when she's not feeling well, and once again, Helena feels the tug on her heartstrings, urging her to stay home. But, she can't. "Well!" she claps her hands together before checking the pocket watch hanging from its delicate, silver chain. "I really must be off. I don't want to miss my flight. There's chicken noodle soup warming on the stove, and you know where everything else is." Sophie nods. "Early bedtime tonight," she directs this towards the child more so than the adult. "Christina, one last hug?" she asks, opening her arms. She breathes in the fresh soap smell that clings to her daughter's silky skin. "Be good," she murmurs.
"Mhmm. Will you call when you land?"
"You'll be in bed, silly goose. But, I'll call bright and early tomorrow morning to check in, alright?" She feels the nod against her neck. "I love you, baby bear."
"Love you, too."
And she's pulling away and grabbing her bag, opening the door, nodding and waving and thanking Sophie all at once. Out of the house before she has time to regret missing a night of the leap towards adulthood. A single night. But if she moves quickly enough, she might be able to pretend it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
She is soaked through. To the skin. Except it's hard to tell where the rain stops and all of those tears that she's been trapping inside begin. Because even the rain tastes like the ocean when it's all around you and you've forgotten the way to the surface. She thinks that once upon a time there might have been a bench beneath her, and that this place might have been called a park, but now everything is the deep, dark pressurized sea floor where even the fish can't survive. And this thing that she is sitting on isn't large enough to be called a piece of drift wood; certainly not enough for an entire life boat. Perhaps once upon a time she knew how to swim, but apparently it isn't like riding a bike, and, just like the tracks left behind in the mud by the deer at the river's edge, the rain has washed it all away. Everything. Except.
"Hullo?" The clock reads 3:15 and from some hazy distant place, she knows she's missed Christina's next step towards nine.
"Yes, is this Mrs. Wells?"
"Ms. Wells. Yes." She sits up, because if there is a strange man on her phone line at a quarter past three in the morning, it is the only proper thing to do. "Who's calling, please?"
"Ms. Wells. I'm afraid I'm calling with bad news."
There is a moment in every parent's nightmare that appears as if from a half-remembered dream as soon as the child you adore is present in his or her bed, safely asleep before you for the first time. This is that moment. And all she can see is her daughter's face turning from 8 years old and 59 days to 8 and 60.
Her voice does not shake, "Yes?"
There is no one else in the park on this dreary fall day. No one willing to brave the elements. She is not brave. She does not know what the word even means. Except that she does not satisfy its requirements. Perhaps if she were courageous, she would not have run out into the storm when her brother spoke the truth. Perhaps if she were strong, she would not be shivering in the cold, goosebumps creeping along her arms, echoes of invisible children roaring in her ears, sounding suspiciously like rain swallowed by the waves. Perhaps if she were more alive than drowned, she would register the way her fingernails are turning blue, and she would choke on the water filling her lungs, and hear the cries of her body, abandoned by her mind. Maybe. But the line between alive and dead is a fine one, the line between sinking and floating is blurred, just as the lines between asleep and awake, child and adult are frequently overstepped, smudged out of sight by an unwary foot.
She picks out a t-shirt from the hotel gift shop on her way out. It is 4:22 now, and she has stuffed clothes into a bag, and paid a sleepy looking attendant at the front desk. And for some reason this gift shop is open twenty four hours, and so she remembers at the last moment to go back and pick up a souvenir. 'I 3 NY' it proclaims. It's orange. Like Christina's giraffe used to be. Size small.
She takes a cab to the airport, and finds herself bobbing to the sitar music blaring from the cabbie's radio. When she hands him the fare, he turns out to be a little old man from the South Bronx, wizened and missing several teeth. And he looks at the money in her outstretched hand. The money that is held in a hand that does not shake. And he looks up to meet her dark eyed gaze, and he frowns.
"Keep it," he tells her, handing her the suitcase from the trunk. She doesn't understand, but she pockets the cash anyway and then hurries through the sliding glass doors, into the halogen lighted hallways of La Guardia.
An hour and twelve minutes. That is how long the flight is meant to last, but it takes them an hour and fourteen. Those around her look tired, only half awake, but she sits rigid in her seat, hands folded in her lap, and she turns away from the man sitting beside her because he is wearing a red shirt. Looking instead at the seat back in front of her, the tray table: gray, the seat: blue. Blue like the color of the sky reflected in the lake she and her brother used to vacation on with their parents when they were younger. Still children. Still stepping between imagination and reality on a nightly basis.
And when the flight lands, the morning sky in DC is both blue like that lake, and red. Red, like- But she ignores the red, and focuses on the blue instead. Blue like peace and calm and floating.
She remembers that there is a thing called fire. That in some far distant past, it was the invention of the century. Her skin tries to tell her that fire is warm. That it is good. But all she can remember is that it is orange and yellow with a heart of blue, blue like ice. And a shell of red. Red. Red, like- No.
Her hands on the steering wheel do not shake. She has tossed her suitcase in the back seat, but she has yet to let go of the t-shirt. It sits beside her in the passenger seat. She drives the thirty minutes from the airport calmly, obeying all street signs, sitting patiently through every single red light.
It is still early. There are few cars on the road. Dedicated employees heading in to the office. A school bus passes her, full of children with their heads resting against smudged windows. Still half-asleep, not yet accustomed to the way their older bodies react to this new dawning. They don't realize yet that they have stepped closer to graduation day. The changes are so small. But their parents know. Even as they woke their children up after alarms had been ignored, placed cereal in front of them, handed them backpacks hand in hand with opportunity, or even just looked in on them before writing a quick note and slipping out the door. Their parents have noticed.
She parks three houses down. This is Mrs. O'Leary's house. She's nice. She's watched Christina from time to time. She makes cupcakes. Christina loves Mrs. O'Leary's cupcakes.
And as she approaches her home, her house, because it is already a house and not a home, t-shirt in hand, she is brought up short by yellow caution tape and flashing lights. Blue. Red. Blue again. And a man, a man who holds up his hand.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am. I can't let you come any closer."
She peers calmly around him; there are many other such people milling around. Dressed in uniforms. Dark blue. Navy. She likes that word. Navy. It feels soft on her tongue. Safe. She supposes that's why it's the color that policemen wear.
She opens her mouth to say her name, but at the last moment, she can't remember what it is. Hello, my name is. Blank. She swallows the air she'd retrieved for the purpose, staring at the man in front of her silently instead.
"Ma'am, please," he begins, but, like the cabbie from earlier and the stewardess on the plane who hadn't finished asking her if she'd like a beverage, the officer stops mid-sentence. He ducks his head and she lifts her chin. "Uh, Mrs. Wells?" He asks, sounding both apologetic and frightened.
"Ms. Wells," she says.
"Right," and now he looks afraid, glancing left and right until he catches sight of someone and waves. "Sergeant," he calls, and the other man nods and heads over in their direction. She looks at the man expectantly. But he doesn't say anything until the older figure has reached them, looking both exhausted and in charge all at once. "Sarg," the officer says. "Thi-this is Ms. Wells."
The man sighs and runs a scarred hand through his close cropped gray hair. "Ms. Wells," his voice is gruff. But there is understanding hidden beneath the rough exterior. Sorrow. She trusts him immediately. His eyes are piercing and strong, and the blue of icy fjords in Norway that she had showed Christina in last month's National Geographic magazine. The child had been enthralled.
"Ms. Wells," he repeats. "If you'd come this way, we have a car ready to take you to the hospital."
She shakes her head, staring up the front walk towards the porch of her house. The front door is open. Men and women are moving in and out of the building as if they have been visiting for years. "I think I'd rather go inside first."
"Oh, Ms. Wel-" the younger officer starts, but his superior cuts him off with a hand on his arm.
She doesn't look away from the door, but she can feel those eyes studying her. Searching her. She waits.
"Alright." He agrees. "This way," and she is more than thankful that he doesn't try to take her elbow as he leads her towards her own house.
She has moved beyond cold and entered the realm of unfeeling. It is still raining. But that might be the sky simply crying.
"Mummy?"
"Darling?"
"Do the clouds get sad?"
"Sad?"
"When it rains? Are the clouds crying?"
"I don't know, sweet girl. What do you think?"
"I think we all need to cry sometimes."
"Oh?"
"Tears are the way the soul meets the air. And even the clouds have got souls. They're too beautiful not to."
Her heart explodes.
So maybe the clouds are just letting their soul out for a bit. She's not sure if she's got a soul anymore. And if she has, she doesn't let it out. This might be her greatest travesty. That and not being brave. Not being brave and that fact that has fallen in love with the darkness that is found only at the ocean floor.
"They're still processing," he tells her. She is wearing funny things on her shoes. But not gloves. Because she'd promised without words not to touch anything. The other people have filed out of the house. She thinks that perhaps he has told them to go, but she can no longer hear beyond the rushing in her ears. And her hands have started to shake.
Through the door. Red. There is something red there. A tiny something. Only a speckle really, but she zeroes in on it. He leads the way down the hall. She does not look into the library as they pass. Then they are standing outside of a white door. Except the door isn't just white. There's red on it too now. Like paint that has splattered down the wooden surface. A poor paint job. But they don't go through that door, instead they go into her bedroom. More red. And then the bathroom, and the pounding in her head is growing and growing and she feels her entire body shaking. She has dropped the shirt. The 'I 3 NY' is soaking up the red. And the nice sergeant, kind and without pity is speaking but she can't understand the words leaving his mouth. Because everything is red. Red. Everywhere. Oh, god. Red like the sun. Like fire. Like blood. Not like. Like is metaphor. This is simile. Red. Blo-
It's raining. Pounding down on her head. Dripping down the back of her neck. Coating her in the sky's tears. Until, suddenly. It isn't. She looks up slowly. Her palms are bleeding. She has dug her nails so deeply into her flesh that she has drawn blood. But the redness was being washed away immediately by the freshwater tears shed by the clouds above, until now. Now the red is pooling in her palms. So, she looks up slowly.
And there is a woman standing over her, with a black umbrella held above her, keeping her wiry brown curls only slightly damp as opposed to soaking. It takes her a moment to place this woman, with eyes that are normally the color of moss that only grows on the north side of the trees - wait, is that a myth? - yes. Eyes that are usually the color of moss, but are different today. Darker. More like the shadows under the oak trees, among the roots that rise from the soil. Fresh and clean. And smelling of both decay and growing things.
She raises one hand halfway out of her lap before remembering the blood and putting it down once more. "Hi," she says. But it's disjointed and comes out as three syllables because she can't feel her lips. She wonders if they're gone. If this is simply the next stage in the process of losing her words. Her voice.
The woman merely cocks her head to the side, her mouth drawn into a curious frown. She doesn't respond. And Helena wonders if any of this is real. How could this woman possibly have found her at the bottom of the ocean?
She finds that she is staring once more at her hands, so weak and helpless, clasped in her lap. They are unfamiliar.
There is movement that she sees out of the corner of her eye. The umbrella hasn't shifted, except there is something being placed around her shoulders. Heavy and warm and smelling of evergreen trees. She feels a hand on her shoulder, feather light, and she glances over to see long fingers fixing the item so that it lays evenly. When she looks back up at the woman with the umbrella, it is to see that she has taken off her coat and for half a second Helena wonders where it has gone and why it has been lost, until the sudden weight makes sense. She has been given this woman's jacket. This stranger's coat. Only she isn't a stranger.
And the woman, tall and strong and wearing a grey sweatshirt with a logo that she recognizes as government issue, is still watching her. Helena tries to place the expression. Sadness. Understanding. It reminds her of the blue eyes in an old man's face, worn after many long years of doing the same painful thing over and over again. This woman's face looks the way his did. Younger. Less lined. But the heaviness is there. The knowing. And Helena knows that someday the lines on this woman's face will match the creases in the old man's. And it makes her feel...melancholy. What a beautiful word. Melancholy. She almost says it aloud to taste it on her tongue, but her mouth is full of tears and raindrops so there isn't any room for beauty.
The woman sits beside her suddenly, and as she moves, Helena smells fir trees again. But also the smell of sunshine caught in white cotton sheets that have been hung up to dry on a line in a backyard with freshly mown grass beneath a sky so blue it feels like falling. She closes her eyes to savor the hint of summertime. She keeps them closed until the woman beside her clears her throat. Once. Taps her long fingers on her thigh. Twice. Takes a breath. Three times.
"Hi." Soft. A pause. "It's raining, you know." It isn't a question. "And you look like a popsicle."
Ten words. Ten words more than usual. And with those ten words, Helena wonders if one will ever be enough again. Because that voice is a bit shaky, but it's layered underneath with steel, and it sounds like the wind between the pines. She feels an ache in her stomach, in a space that is deep below her ribcage, to hear that voice again. Proper conversation etiquette says that she is supposed to respond. It's an exchange. And she would like to deliver, but most of all she wants to hear that voice again.
"I was afraid you weren't going to come anymore. You were here that one day with that man-"
"My brother," and her voice sounds hollow and old. A rocking chair that won't hold weight any longer, left forgotten in someone's attic. Gathering dust.
"Your brother. I see." They lapse back into silence, but it's nice. Easy. Like the rain drops pattering on the umbrella above them. She is not quite as numb as she was, and it's painful. Coming back into yourself is always painful. Pins and needles.
"Well, anyway. You weren't here for a few days," it isn't accusatory. "So I thought maybe you'd stopped coming."
She plays back all of the words in her mind. Afraid. The other woman had said afraid before. Helena understands fear. She is not brave. But this person is brave. She can already tell. Brave in the way that police officers are brave. Brave in that she has walked into the park on a rainy afternoon that is almost sleeting and wrapped her coat around a woman she doesn't know. But this woman, who doesn't admit to fear, Helena knows, has said the word afraid. And she hasn't lied.
"Sorry," she whispers. She is not quite sure what she is apologizing for, but perhaps it is for making this woman afraid. Or perhaps it is because they are sitting on a bench in the middle of a rain storm during a month when it should already be snowing.
The woman, she is looking far away, reaches out and wraps her hand in Helena's. She doesn't seem to mind the red. Helena wants to pull away, because she has not held hands with anyone in many months. Because all of a sudden the bench she is sitting on feels a bit more like a life raft than it did ten thousand raindrops ago, and she is as much afraid of floating back up to the surface as she is of staying down below. Because she does not remember if she is capable of breathing above water.
They sit. Together. They are sitting together. Holding hands. Together. For how many heartbeats, she does not know. She loses count. Her body is still shaking. But she can feel her lips again; they have not disappeared. And her fingers are not purple anymore.
"Can I walk you home?" the other woman asks out of the blue. That might be vulnerability hidden there. She does not ask for Helena's name, and if she were to stand and walk away now, she is quite certain that the other woman would make no move to chase her down. She is not trying to yank Helena out of the sea, she's merely tossing down a rope.
Helena's stomach flips over. She nods. She waits for a moment, because she is still wearing this woman's coat, this coat that is like forest of safety. She waits because this is not her coat and she expects it to be removed from her shoulders, and when it isn't, she glances shyly over to see that the woman with a forehead crinkled in thought is not thinking about a jacket. So she stands up, and the taller woman matches her movement smoothly, and she begins to walk forward, hesitantly. Stiffly, on feet that feel like ice cubes and glaciers. They walk together. Hand in hand. Beneath the protection of the umbrella, except it isn't large enough for more than one person. It takes Helena two blocks to realize that the woman's right shoulder is getting drenched.
She tries to move over, but the pressure of the palm against her own keeps her centered beneath the waterproof fabric. Perhaps she shouldn't be showing this woman where she lives. It's a thought that doesn't stick for long, because she trusts the person beside her. Trusts her in a way she hasn't trusted a human being in quite some time. She walks, one foot in front of the other. Avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk. Holding hands with a woman is both strong and soft. Whose name she does not know, but desires more than almost anything.
When they arrive at her mailbox, she turns to face the house and the other woman stops immediately as well. The light is on in the front window. Charles - she forgot about Charles - is waiting for her, and suddenly she wants nothing more than to stay out in the rain with this person for the rest of the evening. Forever really. Safe from the rain, safe in this sea they've created for themselves.
Helena needs to let go. Quickly. She unclasps her fingers, but the other woman does not let go immediately. She gives the smaller woman's hand a quick squeeze first, strong. Promising. And then she lets go.
"I'll see you tomorrow," it is both a question and a plea.
She wonders when she got so good at reading the inflection in this woman's voice. Because somewhere between, 'hi' and her neighborhood, she has found that she is once more an expert at something. She thought she'd managed to give up that part of her. The part of her that enjoyed the rush she received whenever she solved a particularly difficult puzzle or managed to fit the phrases together perfectly. But this feeling is wonderful, like honey and milk before bed. Tea.
"Okay," except it is not nearly adequate enough for the situation. It will have to do. The woman shoots her a smile, quick like lightning. Then she's walking away, and Helena is watching her walk away, but she feels none of the loss that one normally feels with a goodbye. They have not said goodbye. They've said, 'See you later,' and that makes all the difference.
AN: Comments, questions, concerns? But, actually, y'all. These characters and this story are just kind of begging to come out. And I have absolutely no control. Your reviews are so wonderful. Love.