Page 16 - WTP VOl. X #6

Like Ashes (continued from preceding page)
I took another step towards her to prove that I could
but felt compelled to stop.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Her face fainted into a smile. “That’s all we need.”
On the way home, Ellis walked in front. I tailed be- hind. The jug swiveled with her wrist, bobbing with her gait like an orange balloon in a breeze. The plastic was buzzing with static—or else the glint of the set- ting sun. I could almost see the spiderweb electric arches; they made the hair on the back of her calf reach for the jug as it swung by. The TIDE label spun in my direction. Was Janey in there? The jug grazed her skin. Ellis turned and winked a smile my way. She must have been relieved.
It took twelve couples therapy sessions before Ellis had the nerve to suggest moving the puddle back out of the apartment.
“Like ashes,” She repeated.
Ellis sat in the crook of the couch with her legs curled under her silk skirt. I nibbled my fingernails.
“Come again?”
“We never got closure.”
“For Janey?”
Ellis nodded heavily.
“You want to dump Janey’s puddle into the ocean like ashes? That’s grand.”
“It’s a thought,” our councilor said, “It’s up to you.”
Maybe Ellis regretted bringing the puddle home. Or rather, would not have preferred to have, seeing as I never released the thing into the basement. Ellis would not prefer a metric shit-ton.
She would not prefer the jug on the nightstand. (How I fall asleep with my palm on the cap).
She would not prefer it beside the two percent at breakfast. (How I reread the warning label over my cereal). “CAUTION: MAY IRRITATE EYES. Do not get in eyes.”
She would not prefer it tucked under my armpit like a handbag during our shrink sessions. (How we zipped our lips and swallowed the keys). She would not pre- fer it here or there. She would prefer it in the ocean.
I decided to do the responsible thing, so I made a plan. On a workday, I Ubered to the beach and sat in the sand. Ellis was on the train, clogging in and out of tunnels, on her way to a real job.
Three pre-pubescents in striped suits, each carry- ing a red plastic bucket, slogged through the sand towards the waves. Don’t mind the beached junkie with the jug of detergent, I thought. It’s probably filled with liquor, that jug, their mothers must have whispered from under their patio umbrellas, that’s no beach body, that’s a Tide-Pod bod, that woman is late-twenties, late-morning high. I chuckled to myself. I wished I was high. I wished I had been high the whole stretch of life that began when Janey tripped on a puddle and kept falling. If the kids drew near I’d tell them folk tales invented on the spot about pools of drool that hide under beds and eat little sisters.
What—how was this happening? I cradled my head in gritty hands. That was the question. God was probably just as baffled as I was. My eyes were smoldering; I tried to put them out in my palms. The day seemed so far away. It was too bright out there. The sea and city smarted with sunrays like shards of broken bottles.
But the questions kept coming. Did her earlobe stretch, spaghettifing with the fishing line? Was
it dark where she was? Was she okay? If I let the puddle slip from the jug and away on the sea, could it swallow a jellyfish? A turtle? A tigershark? Would they plummet too? Up? Could it swallow the sea whole like some giant oil slick? If not in the puddle, what did Ellis believe?
I had to let it go. It was the thing to do. My brain beat against my skull. The tide was rising. Ellis’s train must have been so far by then. So far and
so small that she almost didn’t matter at all. Her disbelief was never the most terrible; the most ter- rible was her support. Her money. Her carefulness to never mention Janey to me directly. What did she think happened?
From Ellis’s perspective, my annoying leech of a sister, who borrowed transit money and slept on our couch, called after midnight for me to drive out and rescue her from some god-forsaken corner be- hind a bar or city park or bike path. I answered the call and returned alone and Janey was never heard from again.
I didn’t want to imagine what Ellis believed hap-
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