The Pisces
Page 55

“Stop it. I feel irredeemably awful.”
“Well, you’re not.”
“Do you ever feel that way? Like you’re the worst one and there is no hope for you?”
“Darling, I know I’m the worst one,” she said. “And of course there’s no hope.”
I began to cry.
“Oh, love, don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m guessing it wasn’t intentional.”
“No, of course it wasn’t intentional. And he had diabetes. So maybe it was that.”
“It probably was.”
“I really fucked up this time.”
“Listen,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. “Your sister can find another dog. But there’s only one Lucy.”
I wanted to believe her. I kept trying to wriggle out of the reality of the situation, find some way to prove to myself that I wasn’t a dog killer. But no matter how I looked at it I was a murderer, third degree at the very least. I wanted to see myself the way Claire saw me. She was so nonjudgmental. But she only withheld her judgment of me so she didn’t have to judge herself. She couldn’t have me be a villain, or she would be one too.
“What about your swimmer?” asked Claire. “Did he ever come back?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And?”
“We’re going to run away together.”
“To the desert?”
“No,” I said. “To the depths of the ocean.”
“Dark,” she said. “Like a suicide pact. So romantic, I love it.”
“Sort of,” I said. “Sort of.”
55.
Annika and Steve immediately got on a plane and headed home. I was terrified for their return. I sat on the white sofa, thinking of all that had gone on there, and dug my fingernails into my gums. When they bled a little, I imagined wiping the blood under the sofa cushions where my period bloodstains were. Now I understood the desire Claire had to hurt herself. I couldn’t drink anything or take a pill, because I needed to be clearheaded for their arrival. But the last thing I wanted was to be lucid. I needed an out, something to release me from the feelings of shame. So I took it out on my gums.
When they pulled up in the driveway, Annika refused to get out of the taxi and only Steve came in. He had never liked me to begin with, but now he clearly hated me. I thought of his trench coat, covered in Garrett’s semen, in a dumpster somewhere. He issued a brusque hello and went into the pantry, where Dominic was still covered with the blanket.
“Goddammit,” he said. He sounded angry.
Then he went back outside. I crept over to the window and saw him talking softly to Annika, coaxing her out of the cab. But she refused to come. I heard her crying and saying, “No, no, no.”
She looked up and our eyes met through the glass. She opened the cab door and came rushing into the house. I thought that she might yell at me, but she took me in her arms and hugged me. I sort of stood there as she cried on my shoulder, not knowing what to do.
“I loved him so much, Lucy,” she said.
“I know.”
“He was the most special baby in the whole world. I just, I never loved anything like I loved him.”
“Let’s sit down,” I said.
We sat down at the kitchen table. She was tan from the Roman sun and smelled like orange blossoms. Her ass had gotten bigger under her yoga pants and she wore a blousy shirt to cover it. I sat with my hands under me, clenched in fists, and squeezed them hard every time she spoke.
“What am I going to do now? I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?”
“Do you want me to go out and get you something to eat?” I asked.
“Eat?” she looked up at me. “Oh no, I can’t eat.”
“Okay.”
“I wanted so many more years with him. There was so much life we had left together. I mean, I would have eventually outlived him. But not for so many more years. He wasn’t even old. And to me he was still a puppy. He will always be my puppy.”
“Annika, I’m so sorry,” I said.
But she didn’t blame me. She didn’t say, “How could you have let this happen?” Instead she stared blankly, her full lips slightly parted, as though she too now knew the nothingness. Maybe it was the first time she could see it. Even when we lost our father she hadn’t had this look. This was the face of a mother who had lost her child. It made me think about my mother. I wondered, if my mother hadn’t died—if it had been me who died instead and my mother had lived—was this what she would have looked like?
Steve came over and put his hands on her shoulders. He said that they were going to have Dominic cremated, because California law would not allow them to bury a body so close to the beach. The vet tech would come pick him up in the morning. With that Annika began to sob. She went inside the pantry. I followed her to the door and saw her lie down on the floor with her dead dog, her hair fanned out beside him. He was hers, the creature she loved most, and I had taken him from her. I could smell him from the doorway. Neither Annika nor Steve said anything about the smell, but the scent of death was wafting up from his body and through the glass house.
* * *
—
After Steve had gone to bed and Annika fell asleep on the floor of the pantry, I crept out to the rocks in the dark to see Theo. He hadn’t come out of the water and was resting his arms on one of the rocks, bobbing in the waves.
“You’re late,” he said, looking up at me. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming.”
“I know, I’m sorry. But I’ll always come. And tomorrow, the water.”
“I’m glad,” he said without smiling.
I took his hand to reassure him. His fingers were chilly. I thought about how cold and lifeless Dominic’s body was, how death was not the warm bath I had imagined. The water was going to be freezing. I was scared of it, scared of feeling the freeze rush into me, or maybe scared of the warmth rushing out of me. I had never thought of that warmth as something I would miss. And Theo was being so distant from me now too, sulking. I felt lonely.
“I wonder what the experience will be like, how my life will—manifest under there. Also, how I will stay under the waves and not just bob to the surface.”
I was hunting for a potential answer.
“You have to trust me,” he said. “It’s going to be beautiful. I will help you go. You will have chosen, but I will assist you. Then we will have a very long time together.”
“And we’ll still make love under there?”
“Of course we will,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m just a little scared.”
“Here, let me come up and join you.”
With that he pulled himself out of the water and took a seat next to me.
“I love you,” he said, cupping my face with his cold, wet hand. He kissed me softly on the cheek in a way that made me feel like a sweet child, no longer horrible. I felt that I was again back in the womb he and I shared, an innocent. Was this all it took to be cleansed: one beautiful person to treat you kindly and gently, and you were exonerated? How could Dominic’s death and Theo’s love both be true at the same time? How could I have killed Dominic and still be worthy of such tender affection? I was either awful or I wasn’t. Which one was it? I didn’t think I could be both.
His kisses moved from my cheek to my nose to my lips. I gently kissed and licked his beautiful mouth, one lip and then the other. He lay back on the rocks and pulled me on top of him. My thighs sandwiched his pelvis. As we kissed more, I felt him get hard under his cloth. I was excited to still have that remaining life force in me, the kind that could make his cock come alive. I began rubbing my body against him, moving up and down on his thigh and then on his pelvis. Then I moved my pussy back and forth on the length of his cock, over the cloth, as though I were anointing him. I rubbed faster and faster as we stayed in an embrace, our mouths locked on each other. A warmth spread from my pussy up through my stomach and into my heart. It radiated out through the top of my head. Everything was suddenly warm, the cold completely eliminated.