Mud Vein

Seven days after he walked backwards out of my house I went to the mailbox and on my way back, found a CD on my windshield. I clutched it to my chest for an hour before I slipped it into my stereo. It was an intense crescendo of lyrics and drums and harp and everything he was feeling—and I was, too. The most remarkable thing was that I was feeling.

It ripped at me until I wanted to gasp for breath. How could music know what you were feeling? How could it help you name it? I went to my closet. There was a box on my top shelf. I pulled it down and ripped off the lid. There was a red vase. Bright. Brighter than blood. My father sent it to me when my first book was published. I thought it was terrible—so bright it hurt my eyes. Now, my eyes were drawn to the color. I carried it to my white room and set it on the desk. Now there was blood everywhere.

I searched for a song for days. I was new to the wonders of iTunes. I went back to Florence Welch. There was something about the intensity of her. I found it. I didn’t know how to transfer it to one of those generic CD’s he used. But I found out. Then I drove to the hospital, the disk on my lap the whole time. I stood for a long time next to his car. This was a bold move. It was color. I didn’t know I had any color. I put the brown envelope on his windshield, and hoped for the best.

His songs reminded me of swimming, which somehow I’d forgotten.

He didn’t come right away. He probably wouldn’t have come at all if he hadn’t seen me at the hospital a few weeks later. I’d gone to sign some of the financial paperwork for my bill. Insurance crap. I only saw him briefly—a few seconds, tops. He was with Dr. Akela. They had been walking down the hall together, their identical white coats differentiating them from the other humans milling around the nurses’ station—two demi-gods in a sea of humans. I froze when I saw him, felt a feeling only drugs can give you. He was headed for the elevator, same as me. Oh great, this is going to suck. If there were people in the elevator I could scoot to the back and hide. I waited hopefully, but when the doors slid open the only people inside were on the poster advertisement for erectile dysfunction. We should do this more often, the slogan said. A handsome, athletic couple in their late forties, woman looking coy. I jumped in and hit the lobby button with my fist. Close! It did. Thankfully, it did, but before the doors sealed shut Isaac appeared in the gap. For a second it looked like he was going to hold a hand between the doors, force them to open. He drew back instead, the shock sketched around his eyes. He hadn’t been expecting to see me today. We should do this more often, I thought. It all happened in a dizzy three seconds. The time it takes for you to blink, blink and blink. But I didn’t blink, and neither did he. We locked into a three second staring contest. We couldn’t have said any more in those three seconds.

When you spend extraordinary amounts of time pushing someone away, their reaction to your apology tends to be slow. I imagined so, anyway. That’s how I wrote it in my stories. He came a week later. Since then I’d put away the red vase, gone back to craving white.

I was at the mailbox when his car pulled into my driveway. I felt.

You feel.

When had that started happening again? I waited with the stack of junk mail clutched in my hands. He stepped out of his car and walked to me.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

“I’m headed to the hospital, but I wanted to see you first.” I took it. I missed him. You miss Nick, You know Nick. You don’t know this man.

I pushed that away.

We walked up to my house together. When I closed the door behind us, he took my mail from my hands. I watched as he set it on the table next to the door. A single, white envelope slipped off the edge and slid to the floor. It skidded to a stop behind Isaac’s right heel. He turned to me and took my face in his hands. I wanted to keep looking at the safe white of that envelope, but he was right there, making me look at him. His gaze was slicing. Sluicing. There was too much emotion. He kissed me with color, with drumbeat, and a surgeon’s precision. He kissed me with who he was, the sum of his life—and it was all encompassing. I wondered what I kissed him with since I was only broken parts.

When he stopped kissing me I felt the loss. His lips, for a brief moment, touched my darkness, and there was a glimpse of light. His hands were still in my hair, touching my scalp, and we were only a nose apart as we looked at each other.

“I’m not ready for this,” I said softly.

“I know.”

He shifted positions until he had me wrapped up in his arms. A hug. This was far more intimate than anything I’d done with a man in years. My face was underneath his chin, pressed to his collarbone.

“Goodnight, Senna.”

“Goodnight, Isaac.”

He let me go, took a step back, and left. His impressions were so short and so acute. I listened to the hum of his car as it left my driveway. There was a small kick of gravel as he pulled onto the street. When he was gone everything was still and quiet as it always was. Everything but me.

Part Three: Anger and Bargaining

Chapter Twenty-Two

Out of the walls, music begins to play. We stand frozen, looking at each other, the whites of our eyes expanding with each beat. There is an invisible chord between us; there has been since Isaac saw my pain and accepted it as his own. I can feel it tugging as the music accelerates and Isaac and I stand immobilized by shock. I want to step into the circle of his arms and hide my face in his neck. I am frightened. I can feel the fear in the hollows of my mind. It’s pounding like a doomsday drum.

Dum

Da-Dum

Dum

Da-Dum

Florence Welch is singing Landscape through our prison walls.

“Get warm clothes,” he says, without taking his eyes from mine. “Layer everything you have. We are getting out of here.”

I run.

There are no coats in the closet. No gloves, no thermal underwear—nothing warm enough to venture into negative ten-degree weather. Why didn’t I notice this before? I push through the hangers in the closet, frantic. The music plays around me; it plays in every room. It’s making me move faster. Those songs Isaac gave me, who knew about them? They were private … sacred to me; as unspoken as my thoughts. There are plenty of long-sleeved shirts, but most of them are thin cotton or light wool. I pull each one over my head until I have so many layers I am too stiff to move my arms. I already know it won’t be enough. To get anywhere in this weather I’d need thermals, a heavy coat, boots. I pull on the only pair of shoes that looks warm: a pair of fur-lined ankle boots—more fashionable than practical. Isaac is waiting for me downstairs. He is holding the door open like he’s afraid to let it go. I see that he doesn’t have a jacket, either. He’s wearing a pair of black gum boots on his feet. Something for rain or yard work. Our eyes lock as I walk past him, through the door and into the snow. I sink into it. Right up to my knees. Knee-high snow, that can’t be good. Isaac follows me. He leaves the door open and we make it twenty feet before we stop.