“Ainsley and your sister have gotten to be buddies pretty quick, huh?” he said, smiling. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, so I nodded. He stared out at them for a moment, then back at me. He smiled, then stood up, grunting. “You be sure and get in some swim time, champ. The water is great,” he said, then walked away. He kept looking back at the girls and I felt uncomfortable. I got up and walked down the beach.
On the beach, my father and mother were at it again. The sun and the heat made them half crazy, continuously bickering back and forth about who got the longer towel, who should go get the drinks from the little soda stand, etc. I had to get away. The beach was huge and the sand felt so warm shifting under my feet, and it helped to hear the hum of other people’s conversations as I’d walk by. It calmed me to see other families and how they were around each other. Every time a saw a little boy, he looked like Randy, though, so I tried not to focus on people. They became indistinct blurs as I walked. The sound remained, though. The millions of things that people talk about when they don’t think you’re listening.
I came back to the plane and noticed just how similar the background hum of people was to the way it sounded that day. The only thing missing was the soft but high pitched squeal of children hitting the cold water. Across from me, both boys were asleep, and the mother was reading a book. She looked whole.
Through the window I could see we were slowly descending. Every few minutes, a cloud that seemed miles below was closer. I felt the slight forward pitch of the cabin in my stomach and toes. ‘Not long now,’ I kept thinking. The music had long ago started to repeat and was halfway done once more. I wondered what my mom would look like. I wondered if my father would be happy. I wondered if Sarah would make it home.
That night, all those years ago, after we got back to Mr. Rickels house, I was exhausted. I’d run and swam miles that day. My skin was hot and my head miles thick. I lay down on the couch and was asleep almost immediately. I remember that the dream had something to do with being pulled gently to the bottom of the ocean. Something had long, silky tentacles wrapped around my legs. They were soft, caressing and stroking my legs but at the same time, definitely pulling me down to the inky-black bottom.
I woke, hearing someone else breathing near me. I held still and started to shake a bit. Someone had their hand down my pajama bottoms, cupping parts of me no one else had ever touched. I felt very thick headed suddenly, and my legs were numb. I couldn’t breathe and my heart pounded in my chest. Some small part of my mind was amazed, though, at the adeptness of the fingers. That section of my brain marveled that without me even being present, that part of me could grow, jump and react on its own.
The button on the front of my pj’s was undone, and I slipped out. The hand pulled out as well, but wrapped around me again outside of my clothes. With each slight movement of the fingers, my legs twitched. Something dark and heavy was growing just behind my hips.
Then a door opened down the hall. The hand disappeared instantly, and I felt a breeze as whoever it was rushed from where they had been kneeling. I heard first one door creak closed, then another, shutting less quietly or slowly. Then I heard the sound of water running, and a toilet flushed. That same creaking and shuffling steps back down the hall. The first door opened, and closed once more. I waited for a while, wondering what I would do if the hand came back. I watched the hands on the wall clock move for two hours before I fell asleep again. The hand never returned.
The next day, Mr. Rickels and my dad barbecued. Ainsley and my sister played off in the woods. When I said I didn’t want to go, my sister whispered something to Ainsley, and I knew what it was. She was telling her that everyone thought I was adopted because I didn’t act like any of my family. I was different. They left giggling, and I stayed. My mom kept asking me to help her with things. She seemed really happy I didn’t go, so I stayed next to her. She and my father barely spoke. Mrs. Rickels said she had to take care of something over at the church and didn’t return until well after nightfall. Mr. Rickels kept calling me sport, and touching my shoulder. When it was time to eat, Ainsley sat near me, and my sister sat across from her. Mr. Rickels sat next to my sister. The only reason I remember that so clearly is that all through eating, someone kept rubbing their foot against my ankle. I couldn’t concentrate, and it made me so nervous I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t look, either, to see who it was. I could hardly breathe, worrying someone would see somehow and get mad at me. My father kept asking me why I was so quiet. I just shrugged every time.
That night, I lay awake for hours, again, nervous and waiting. The hand didn’t return. I couldn’t resist, though, and touched myself in a similar way. When my whole body burned and my legs seized, my mind exploded outward, then plummeted back to me. I thought I’d hurt myself, broken something inside me. I was afraid, though relaxed. I crept down the hall and cleaned myself up. Dr. Bledsoe told me that imitation is a quite normal way to begin touching yourself. He asked me who I thought it was who had fondled me that night. To this day, I don’t know. Every night, though, until the day I met Susan, that hand beckoned and I welcomed the touch to my skin. Every night, I was thirteen, again, asleep on a couch in Mobile, Alabama, stirring awake to someone else’s fingertips.
“Attention, ladies and gentlemen,” the flight attendant’s droning brought me back from that other place I had been in. I was hot, confused, and my head felt full of cotton balls. She continued by telling us that we were in approach, what local time was, what the local weather was like, and asking us to return out seats to the proper positions. I did as I was told, and reset my watch. She said that we’d lose an hour, but somehow, I felt like I’d lost much more.
SIX
Airports are awful. The landing was bad, too. At one point, I swear we were only on one wheel. Even the flight attendant looked nervous. I just knew we were going to go over, but we didn’t. I felt like disaster was just barely averted. Getting off the plane, my legs were rubber. The mother with the twin boys was just behind me, and trying to hide the jitter in her voice, too, I could tell.
I managed to find my luggage. It didn’t really hit me that I was home until I walked out of the doors into the cold air. Home always smells like home, no matter how long you’ve been away, I guess. Outside I hailed a cab. He tried to hide his smile when I told him how far. Even at a fifteen percent tip, he’d have a good day. I got my stuff into the trunk, then settled into the corner of the back seat and slept a bit. I felt exhausted, so it wasn’t any trouble to drift off. I wondered if Olympic athletes felt like this after their event was over.
I dreamed of an empty bicycle rolling down the sidewalk. It was my old neighborhood, and I followed the bike for hours, it seemed. The dream made distance confusing, but it was very far. The bike never wobbled or even swerved; it was like someone was on it, and I just couldn’t see them. The bike went past Kevin O’Mally as he’d been in the sixth grade; bull necked and with a barely enough fuzz on his head to qualify as having any. I remember running faster to avoid any trouble he might give me.
The bike eventually slowed down and then came to a stop in front of Mr. McPherson’s house. I put my hand on the seat, and the bike slumped against me. Mr. McPherson was out on the lawn. I moved closer to him and the bike disappeared. He was trimming weeds away from the bushes in front of the big bay window they had. I said hello and he looked up, smiling.
He said, “Randy?” to me and I woke up. The taxi rattled around me. Cold air seeped in from where the window wasn’t snug with the frame. In the driver’s seat, the driver was humming something. His ID badge swung from his rearview. His name was ‘Ed’.