“Nothing makes time pass or shortens the way like a thought that absorbs in itself all the faculties of the one who is thinking. External existence is then like a sleep of which this thought is the dream. Under its influence, time has no more measure, space has no more distance.” ~Alexandre Dumas
***
(Ariel: unedited)
Chicago meant hibiscus. Lots and lots of orange hibiscuses, set upon crystal plates and white tablecloths. The dessert table could be hung with turquoise ribbon, gifts would be monetary donations only, and Anya was appalled.
“Can you imagine? Hibiscus, at a winter wedding? Hibiscus!” She flung her blonde, ropey braid over one shoulder, her free hand bracing the veins along her temples. “Why am I a part of planning this, if my name is going to go up in support of turquoise and orange?”
Ariel slid her hand into the jar of almonds, trying to refrain from unleashing a sigh as she rolled five almonds through her fingers and into her palm. “Tragic.”
“Lose the tone, darling.” Anya paused her rant long enough to flicker her daughter an icy gaze. “It sounds so cheap on you.”
“You’re the mother of the groom. How much say did you think you would have?”
“Enough to veto the turquoise! Anything orange, so long as the turquoise goes. Did I show you the cards?” She flipped open her wedding planner, yanking out a small string of neon blue-green. “The bridesmaids, the dessert table, strung along the pews.”
“Tragic.” Ariel repeated. There really wasn’t anything else to say; this same, long repeat of tired sentences had wound themselves around the cottage ever morning since her parents had returned from Chicago. While her mother waste time idling around, complaining and chugging vanilla bean espresso, her father had disappeared again.
“Is the city calling?” Ariel had asked him, waiting by the wooden door for him to duck out of her life permanently. She couldn’t wait until that moment – the severing, when her mother realized she was truly alone, and when she could claim that she was truly free.
Jude slipped his loafers on, focused upon straightening the skewed wingtips. “It’s the holidays, Ariel. This is a busy time of year.”
“All those amiable secretaries, wandering the snowy streets.” Ariel waited until he looked up. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep yourself busy.”
“I just got back from Chicago, a trip that I took specifically to appease your mother. That’s not a fair accusation.”
Ariel opened the door. “Well, darling daddy, life isn’t always fair, is it?”
He picked up his briefcase. “I’m the darling daddy now?”
“Only for as long as it takes you to drive away.” She gave him a tight smile. “Have a nice flight.”
“You sound like your mother.” He kissed her forehead, the nervous flickering of a moth’s wings upon her skin. “Take care of her. This wedding has her bent out of shape.”
“Nothing bends Anya out of shape. Except, maybe, turquoise ribbons.”
His goodbye was lost upon the click of the doorknob. She turned the lock; thrice, out of habit. It wasn’t until she heard tires squealing down the ragged road that she relaxed against the door. Her legs collapsed, the familiar dance of spots beginning behind her eyelids as she closed her eyes.
It had been Katrina’s words coming out of her mouth. Everything she said felt like borrowed time. A borrowed life, sitting in the back of her throat like poison. Darling daddy had described that bourbon collection, the one that was probably accumulating now that Katrina was safely ensconced in the hospital.
She had never worked up the nerve to visit her.
Price hadn’t decided how long he wanted to hide out, so they had only stayed for a few days. Long enough for the surface wounds to fade, to swirl with color and then begin to seep back into his skin. After his hug he had retreated, spending his self-imposed confinement locked in the guest room.
After three lonely packs of cigarettes, a bottle of orange juice, and an unopened bottle of green tea pills, she had begun to crave physical contact. Her body felt so cold, just sitting there in that big, old house. She was drifting, the world spinning before her eyelids like a top, her legs and arms leaden. Barely breathing.
Sometimes she wished that the cigarette smoke would stay. When it came out of her mouth, it writhed and then dissolved, melding itself seamlessly into the gray air. She wanted it to crawl down her throat. Sink, like talons, into her lungs, squeezing the last golden drops of oxygen away.
Wouldn’t it be better than this? Waking every morning to a wall of ice surrounding her, too high to scale and too solid to pierce through?
“Yes.” She blinked, and Anya was staring at her, voice saccharine as syrup. “It is most certainly tragic. Don’t you think, darling?”
Ariel opened her mouth hesitantly, just as footsteps sounded upon the hall. Iris appeared in the doorway, a 5x7 clenched in one hand, red nails tight upon the glossy photograph. Her hair was in curlers – the “orange juice can” ones – and her eyes were slits without mascara.
She laid the picture on the kitchen countertop and hobbled over to give Ariel a hug. “Morning, doll. How about that summer wedding?”
“Winter.” Anya growled. “It’s a winter wedding! With orange!”
“And turquoise.” For a fleeting moment, Ariel’s eyes darted over her aunt’s shoulder. The 5x7 –it was Randall, eyes unfocused. She watched as one arm stretched out of the frame, followed by a mop of tousled black hair. One blink, and he was sitting upon the countertop, smile crooked, features swollen and distorted. Light shimmered through the translucent curve of his bones as he began to kick his legs.
“Don’t forget the turquoise.” He whispered. “For all those winter, winter, winter weddings.”
Somehow Iris was gone, moccasins sliding her across the room towards Anya. Everything was filmy, quiet, until the sound of blood rushing in her ears echoed like the smash of a waterfall. Randall slid off the counter. He walked into the waterfall noise, eyes gleaming, and tapped her lightly on the shoulder.
Ariel heard a crack. When she looked down, her collarbone had climbed out of the cavity of her chest, staining the whiteness of her winter skin a vibrant red. Her wrists popped, and then her ankles, and she was lying on her back, her bones rising sharply around her, closing around the remains of her body like a cage.
As in all nightmares, especially ones that have pierced into daydreams, she did not realize who was screaming until it stopped. And she was sobbing, trying to hold herself together as she slowly fell apart.
“Doll, doll, doll.” Randall tugged on her collarbones. It was stark against his hands. Blood rolled down his fingertips, but all she could feel was a blind, numbing pain. Every tug vibrated through her body as he waved it before her eyes. “Eating, eating, eating. All that eating that I’ve been doing for you.”
Screaming didn’t release the sensation of being devoured, organs and muscles grinding to a halt, folding in on her. “Wasn’t you.” She rasped.
He dropped the bone. They all snapped back at once – the blood was gone, the skin was flapping, pale as snowflakes as it fell. “Don’t worry.” Randall said. He was disappearing as quickly as he had come, legs curling up and fading like the Cheshire cat. “I’ll be giving it all back now.”
“Don’t want it.”
It was as if he was heedless of her tortured words. They clung to the inside of her throat, refused to pass through her lips. The puffiness in his face rescinded, draining down his arms, his fingertips, into the ridges of her hips.
“Every last bite.” He was singing, as the wooden sky faded to black. “Every. Last. Bite.”
***
The sky wasn’t wooden when she awoke.
It was white.
A brief, paralyzing flash of panic flashed through her – bedroom? hospital? – until she realized that the air was resonant with the smell of smoke and old seashells. A hospital wouldn’t smell like her bedroom, almost rancid with life.
Shuffling sounded, then scraping. A chill breeze flickered over her limbs, diving down through the layers of blankets heaped upon her body. Her hand was strangely warm, nearly burning with heat, and she felt the ridges of faux-tipped nails pressing into her skin.
“Darling.” It was Anya. Close enough to inhale the edge of vanilla bean in her breath. “Eyes open, please. How do you feel?”
Ariel struggled to respond. It was strangely difficult to pull herself from the sleepy, dreamless state of being. Her eyelids felt leaden when she lifted them. “Mother.”
“I can’t hear you.”
She gritted her teeth. Had she fainted? Even after fainting, her mother couldn’t give her a moment to get her bearings. The world swam, dancing as she tried to concentrate, blurring from black to grey to clarity. “Mother,” She repeated, louder.
“There you go. See, Iris, she’s fine. A trooper, my darling.”
The bed shifted to accommodate another weight. Iris was a swirl of black-blonde webbed hair and soulful eyes as she reached out to place one hand on Ariel’s forehead. “She’s burning up.”
“Probably has a fever.”
“It didn’t sound like a fever when she was rolling around on the floor, screaming.”
“I was screaming?” Ariel winced, trying to remember. She had heard screaming – so that had been her, waking up the world. Carefully, she touched her collarbone. It was sharp underneath her fingers, but it was still solid, rising and falling with her breathing, safely covered by skin.
“Almost bloody murder. Was it a daydream?” Iris asked. She pulled her hand back. “Randall used to have those.”
Randall. The irony felt painful on her mouth as she laughed. Of course it was Randall – such a thin filament of space while alive, and such an overbearing reality when gone.
“Lack of sleep, or something. Darling, really.” Anya sighed. “I go to Chicago for a weekend, and when I return you’ve fallen apart. Was it your father? Did he do something to upset you?”
“He left.” More of a relief than an upset.
“And he’ll be back. Sooner than later; we have another trip up to Chicago. I’m bringing roses for bouquet suggestions. Not that they’ll be listening.”
“I hardly think it was the trip.” Iris cut in. Her gaze was sharp on Ariel’s face, scrutinizing for clues. “Have you eaten anything today?”
She stared. Eating? When had she eaten last? Every last bite. Fear shredded through the haze of self-pity. They were going to make her eat. And then they were going to call Katrina, and she would tell them, and then it would be a matter of fainting and waking up to hospital ceilings.
Maybe she had already told them. What else could explain such a question, such a pointed intrusion of daily habits? Eating – something that had always been within her control – could soon be overpowered by the weight of Katrina’s words.
Ariel pulled herself away from Anya, from Iris, from the prying eyes and half-hearted darlings. She needed pick up the telephone and dial. Call the memorized number. She needed to apologize, to play the forgiving and forgetting game.
Or, she could visit.
But if she was dragging herself to a hospital, to face the source of her unraveling, she was bringing Price – and boy as practiced in grief as he was familiar with it – along with her.
“Almonds.” She whispered. “I've had lots of almonds.”
“Healthy fats. Not too much fat, darling.” Anya pinched her cheek lightly before standing. She shot Iris a smile that was tight, forced, borderline smug. “You have to fit into that bridesmaid dress.”
“Turquoise?”
“Pink. Tight, bright, and neon pink.”
She could hear the revulsion. Pink was the color of pills – of spilled medication and cotton candy, of spit-up and fairytale ballrooms. It wasn’t a wedding color, but it was beautiful. Revealing. So very, very revealing, an illumination to every ugly part of the body she was trying so desperately to hide, shrink.
“Maybe she’ll change her mind.”
Iris started laughing. “I hope not.”
The thought of fitting into a bridesmaid dress – of being on display, in front of a crowd of people, hit her after she realized what a horrible color pink really was. And then, the weight comment. Ariel slipped her hand under her blanket and rested it on her hipbone. It jutted into her palm with reassuring sharpness. Yet she couldn’t help but feel the skin, too, thick enough to pinch between her fingers. It formed a little roll between the stomach and the bone, plump enough to make bile rise in her mouth.
Maybe she should stop eating almonds. Maybe she should stop eating anything.
“When’s the wedding?” She needed a deadline. What should she aim for – 10? 20? 30? And was she really brave enough to step upon a scale to check?
“December 21st. They wanted it close to Christmas.”
“A hibiscus Christmas.” Iris mumbled, rolling it over between her stained yellow teeth. She grinned at Ariel, and winked one tiny eye. “Just beautiful.”
A thin, pink, hibiscus Christmas. A bony Christmas. Ariel took a deep breath, clenching her hipbone more tightly. A Randall Christmas. It was the first real Christmas without him – alive. The collarbone dream hadn’t been enough. He would be coming, haunting, hanging from the boughs of the Christmas tree, waving from the glimmering store windows, twirling in the falling snow.
You can lose all the weight you like, He would be saying, smiling like an idiot. The unease would be gone, replaced by a strange, twisted satisfaction. Run, run, run, too all those winter weddings. I’m alive as long as you let me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Iris was touching her face again, nails leaving little scratches on her cheeks. “You look pale. How about soup, doll?”
Calories. Calories. Calories. Ariel squeezed her eyes shut tight as her failure flashed before her eyes. She was so hungry, desperately hungry. Her stomach was quiet and empty – it had stopped gurgling a long time ago. But she felt the hunger, wiggling around like a parasite, chewing at her dissatisfaction. “Soup sounds good.” It hurt to say that aloud – to acknowledge that she needed food. “The bridesmaid dress…”
“Whole wheat chicken noodle. No salt; I promise.” Iris kissed her forehead. Sometimes it was confusing which mother was hers – did Randall belong with Anya, and she belong with Iris? Her mother was as cold as the dead boy, as icy as the winter wind that stirred the sand along the shoreline outside. And she was gone; planning, or whining, or making frantic phone calls.
Always gone.
Ariel pulled her hand from her hipbone. She didn’t want to feel the bump anymore, reminding her of her progress. She wanted a moment of peace, to forget about losing or gaining or winning.
“Organic chicken?”
The bedsprings creaked as her aunt stood. She sounded triumphant – a victory over Anya, or a victory over Ariel?
“I’ll see what Campbell’s can do.”