“About the house? I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You should come with me.” She reaches over and tugs a book from my desk. Legends and Poems of the Baltic. Peter Bolokhovskis, the book Mom read to me. She bends the spine wide, almost breaking it.
“Leave that, okay? That book is hard to find.” And stolen.
She drops it on the couch and it falls open to a picture of a man leaning against a tree by a river. I remember the story. The man is seduced by a water spirit, Rusalka, I think. Half-souled spirits of children and virgin women who died unbaptized. Every culture has water spirits, mermaids, selkies, nixies. In America we don’t name them.
“I’m sorry I left the way I did,” she says.
“Okay.”
“I know you were trying.”
“Thanks.”
She puts her arms around me, her head on my shoulder. We stay this way, looking at the walls, looking anywhere but at each other. She nudges in the direction of a book. “Do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Read me that. I used to like it when you read to me. Nobody does it once you grow up.”
It’s from the Bolokhovskis. She wants me to read Eglė. I do. Slowly, the way Mom used to, unraveling the story of the farmer’s daughter who would become Queen of the Serpents, and her children who were turned into trembling trees. All folktales have a price. Enola listens silently, pressing her forehead to my shoulder, letting me remember her.
Later, when the sun has set, I shift to work the blood back into a pins and needles foot. She says, “It was a long drive and my head is killing me. I need sleep.”
I muss her hair with my knuckles. It mats up in soft, spiky black chunks. I want to ask why she cut it, but don’t. “Your bedroom’s the same. Haven’t touched it.”
She shuffles down the hallway. The door squeaks open. “Couldn’t you at least get a new quilt?” No good nights for us.
* * *
I’m squinting at a bad photocopy when headlights make the room suddenly bright. I look at the clock. Nine-thirty. I was supposed to be at Alice’s at eight. Yes, that’s her car, and yes, that’s her walking up the driveway. Jeans and a T-shirt, hair down. I look around. My things are everywhere, clothing, papers, books, noodle wrappers. Shit.
I head her off at the front step, leaning against the house, my back on the shingles. It would be good to ask her inside, but her apartment is clean, adult, and has a pillow-mountain bed.
“I completely forgot. I’m so sorry.”
She twirls her keys in her hand, then smacks them against her hip. “You say that a lot.”
“I mean it. Five minutes and I’ll be ready to go.”
“Whose car is that?” She nods at the Olds.
“Enola’s. She came home today. We were talking and the time got away from me.”
“She’s here?” She crosses her arms over her waist, rocking back and forth on her toes. I don’t know what Alice thinks of Enola, not really. Whatever she knows of her is from a long time ago, or from what I’ve said. Obnoxious, selfish, immature, insane, waste. I probably said that, probably to Alice. “I should say hi,” she says. A look toward the window. I tell her Enola’s asleep. She raises an eyebrow. “Do you not want me to come in?”
“No. Yes. She really is asleep. I want you to come in, but I’m embarrassed because the place is a wreck, my stuff is everywhere, and I already fucked up tonight.”
She smiles. For a second I do too.
“Okay.” Then she’s past me, barging in before I can stop her.
In the middle of the living room Alice turns a slow circle, like she’s surveying a gallery. Her flip-flops grind sand into the floor. We take it in, the papers, the clothing, the cracks and loose floorboards. I chew my fingers.
“Wow,” she says.
“I know. I’d offer you somewhere to sit, but it’ll have to be the kitchen.”
“No, no. That’s okay.” She looks down the hallway. There are three doors, one has my sister, one isn’t fit for me or a guest, and the other belongs to the dead. We would have to curl up on the couch with my books and clothing. “At work you were always so neat.”
“Escapism?”
She laughs a little. Thank God. I suggest going back to her place. “I only need five minutes.”
She says not to worry about it. “Enola’s here. You guys should spend time together.”
And then she’s on the front step and there’s a perfunctory kiss. Because she’s seen the house or because her parents are across the street? Their porch light is still on. I say I’m sorry again, and this time she takes my hand, giving my fingers a squeeze. There’s a perfect spot between her finger and thumb that’s been made smooth and tough by a fishing rod. A spark runs between us and we hold on for an extra minute.
“Just call next time, okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
I stay outside long after her car is gone.
I email a résumé for a video archive position. Out of my range, but worth a shot. Blue Point sent a message back. Position filled, of course. I listen to the water against the cliff, and let my mind run with thoughts of Alice, of the house falling in the water, of all those drowned women. I try for a while, but sleep won’t come. I give up trying and read.
Later I hear a quiet flicking sound coming from Enola’s room, the gentle slide of paper over paper. I look in. “Hey. You’re awake.”
She sits cross-legged, hunched in the center of her room. Her body sways slightly, as if in prayer. Lines of tarot cards spread across the floor, face up. She lays out six rows, each with six cards, quickly like a blackjack dealer. The cards move like a river. No sooner does she set the last card than she scoops the entire spread in one hand, shuffles, and begins to turn a new series on the floor.
“Enola?”
She doesn’t answer. She’s practicing. She doesn’t need to; her movements are ballet. The deck is heavily worn, the backs faded, dull and yellow. They might have been orange once, maybe red, but are now a suggestion with ragged sides. Old paper, the kind that shouldn’t be in this humidity. It’s difficult to see, but the faces look bold, rough, possibly hand painted. She clears the spread away again, methodical. I watch as she repeats the sequence, shuffling, turning, shuffling. It’s unseeing, compulsive.
I call her name again. She doesn’t hear. Doesn’t see me.
I pull the door closed. I’m in the living room looking at The Tenets of the Oracle when I remember. I’ve seen someone deal cards like that before — late at night on our square, metal-edged kitchen table, my father begging her to stop, to come to bed. She continued laying cards, swaying in her chair. The cards skimmed and swished. “Paulina,” he whispered. “Please.”
Something is wrong with Enola.
* * *
I take the phone outside. The night is warm and wet. He answers on the sixth ring.
“Simon? Heavens, it’s late.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“No, just one moment.” I hear him excusing himself and the gentle mumbling of a woman’s voice, presumably his wife. A few shuffled steps and a door opening and closing. “What is it?”
“I found something.”
“Something what?”
“It’s about my family. I think some of them are in the book, like you thought. But there’s more: they die. Of course they die, everybody dies, but they die young, very young. There’s multiple generations — they drown. Every single woman.” There is silence on the other end. I hear waves, cicadas, the blood in my ears. “Martin? You know about my mother. Her suicide.”
“She drowned,” he says after a pause.
“So did my grandmother, and her mother, and so on.”
“I — oh.” Little more than a dry whuff of breath.