“That’s periwinkle,” he said to Ruth. “I’m going to clip some for my mom.”
“Cool, take your time,” Ruth said.
Ray ducked into the underbrush by the driver’s side and climbed up to the periwinkle while Ruth stood by the car. Ray wasn’t thinking of me anymore. He was thinking of his mother’s smiles. The surest way to get them was to find her wildflowers like this, to bring them home to her and watch her as she pressed them, first opening their petals flat against the black and white of dictionaries or reference books. Ray walked to the top of the berm and disappeared over the side in hopes of finding more.
It was only then that I felt a prickle along my spine, when I saw his body suddenly vanish on the other side. I heard Holiday, his fear lodged low and deep in his throat, and realized it could not have been Lindsey for whom he had whined. Mr. Harvey crested the top of Eels Rod Pike and saw the sinkhole and the orange pylons that matched his car. He had dumped a body there. He remembered his mother’s amber pendant, and how when she had handed it to him it was still warm.
Ruth saw the women stuffed in the car in blood-colored gowns. She began walking toward them. On that same road where I had been buried, Mr. Harvey passed by Ruth. All she could see were the women. Then: blackout.
That was the moment I fell to Earth.
Twenty-Two
Ruth collapsing into the road. Of this I was aware. Mr. Harvey sailing away unwatched, unloved, unbidden – this I lost.
Helplessly I tipped, my balance gone. I fell through the open doorway of the gazebo, across the lawn and out past the farthest boundary of the heaven I had lived in all these years.
I heard Ray screaming in the air above me, his voice shouting in an arc of sound. “Ruth, are you okay?” And then he reached her and grabbed on.
“Ruth, Ruth,” he yelled. “What happened?”
And I was in Ruth’s eyes and I was looking up. I could feel the arch of her back against the pavement, and scrapes inside her clothes where flesh had been torn away by the gravel’s sharp edges. I felt every sensation – the warmth of the sun, the smell of the asphalt – but I could not see Ruth.
I heard Ruth’s lungs bubbling, a giddiness there in her stomach, but air still filling her lungs. Then tension stretching out the body. Her body. Ray above, his eyes – gray, pulsing, looking up and down the road hopelessly for help that was not coming. He had not seen the car but had come through the scrub delighted, carrying a bouquet of wildflowers for his mother, and there was Ruth, lying in the road.
Ruth pushed up against her skin, wanting out. She was fighting to leave and I was inside now, struggling with her. I willed her back, willed that divine impossible, but she wanted out. There was nothing and no one that could keep her down. Flying. I watched as I had so many times from heaven, but this time it was a blur beside me. It was lust and rage yearning upward.
“Ruth,” Ray said. “Can you hear me, Ruth?”
Right before she closed her eyes and all the lights went out and the world was frantic, I looked into Ray Singh’s gray eyes, at his dark skin, at his lips I had once kissed. Then, like a hand unclasping from a tight lock, Ruth passed by him.
Ray’s eyes bid me forward while the watching streamed out of me and gave way to a pitiful desire. To be alive again on this Earth. Not to watch from above but to be – the sweetest thing – beside.
Somewhere in the blue blue Inbetween I had seen her – Ruth streaking by me as I fell to Earth. But she was no shadow of a human form, no ghost. She was a smart girl breaking all the rules.
And I was in her body.
I heard a voice calling me from heaven. It was Franny’s. She ran toward the gazebo, calling my name. Holiday was barking so loud that his voice would catch and round in the base of his throat with no break. Then, suddenly, Franny and Holiday were gone and all was silent. I felt something holding me down, and I felt a hand in mine. My ears were like oceans in which what I had known, voices, faces, facts, began to drown. I opened my eyes for the first time since I had died and saw gray eyes looking back at me. I was still as I came to realize that the marvelous weight weighing me down was the weight of the human body.
I tried to speak.
“Don’t,” Ray said. “What happened?”
I died, I wanted to tell him. How do you say, “I died and now I’m back among the living”?
Ray had kneeled down. Scattered around him and on top of me were the flowers he’d been gathering for Ruana. I could pick out their bright elliptical shapes against Ruth’s dark clothes. And then Ray leaned his ear to my chest to listen to me breathing. He placed a finger on the inside of my wrist to check my pulse.
“Did you faint?” he asked when these checked out.
I nodded. I knew I would not be granted this grace on Earth forever, that Ruth’s wish was only temporary.
“I think I’m fine,” I tried, but my voice was too faint, too far away, and Ray did not hear me. My eyes locked on to his then, opening as wide as I could make them. Something urged me to lift up. I thought I was floating back to heaven, returning, but I was trying to stand up.
“Ruth,” Ray said. “Don’t move if you feel weak. I can carry you to the car.”
I smiled at him, one-thousand-watted. “I’m okay,” I said.
Tentatively, watching me carefully, he released my arm but continued to hold on to my other hand. He went with me as I stood, and the wildflowers fell to the pavement. In heaven, women were throwing rose petals as they saw Ruth Connors.
I watched his beautiful face break into a stunned smile. “So you’re all right,” he said. Cautious, he came close enough to kiss me, but he told me he was checking my pupils to see if they were equal in size.
I was feeling the weight of Ruth’s body, both the luscious bounce of breasts and thighs but also an awesome responsibility. I was a soul back on Earth. AWOL a little while from heaven, I had been given a gift. By force of will I stood as straight as I could.
“Ruth?”
I tried to get used to the name. “Yes,” I said.
“You’ve changed,” he said. “Something’s changed.”
We stood near the center of the road, but this was my moment. I wanted so much to tell him, but what could I say then? “I’m Susie, I have only a little time.” I was too afraid.
“Kiss me,” I said instead.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to?” I reached my hands up to his face and felt the light stubble of a beard that had not been there eight years ago.
“What’s happened to you?” he said, bewildered.
“Sometimes cats fall ten flights out of the windows of highrises and land on their feet. You only believe it because you’ve seen it in print.”
Ray stared at me, mystified. He leaned his head down and our lips touched, tender. At the roots I felt his cool lips deep down inside me. Another kiss, precious package, stolen gift. His eyes were so close to me I saw the green flecks in the gray.
I took his hand, and we walked back to the car in silence. I was aware that he dragged behind, stretching my arm out behind me as we held hands and scanning Ruth’s body to make sure she was walking fine.
He opened the door of the passenger side, and I slid into the seat and placed my feet on the carpeted floor. When he came around to his side and ducked inside he looked hard at me once more.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He kissed me lightly again, on the lips. What I had wanted for so long. The moment slowed down, and I drank it in. The brush of his lips, the slight stubble of his beard as it grazed me, and the sound of the kiss – the small smack of suction as our lips parted after the pushing together and then the more brutal breaking away. It reverberated, this sound, down the long tunnel of loneliness and making do with watching the touch and caress of others on Earth. I had never been touched like this. I had only been hurt by hands past all tenderness. But spreading out into my heaven after death had been a moonbeam that swirled and blinked on and off – Ray Singh’s kiss. Somehow Ruth knew this.