Among the Dead and Dreaming. Samuel Ligon
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we would.
“There’s just so much we need to say to one another,” I said when she was about done crying. “And I bet you’re even prettier now than you was back then.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t. . . ,” she said, sniffling, and I said, “I would,” and waited for her to laugh, this long pause hanging heavy in the air between us.
Looking back, that’s when something started feeling just a tiny bit off.
Nikki
When I finally got off the phone, I had to leave work and settle myself out on the boardwalk, walking, wanting to throw up every time I looked right at it, so not looking right at it, and nowhere to go, just walking, moving. Alina was probably home, packing for school, and Kyle was probably in his studio, preparing paintings for his upcoming show. I just wanted to go, to run. But where? I wasn’t a kid like when I ran from Austin, from Providence, from Manchester. And I wasn’t going to run from Kyle.
There was a guy I met when I was pregnant in Portland, Bobby, who I became close to before and after Alina was born, who loved me and loved Alina until she was almost two. He was thirty years older than me. That’s when I realized how fucked up I was. Not the rape. It wasn’t that. I wasn’t even calling it that then. But just everything. My mother and how I’d run from her. Cash dead and Alina. My cousin Melanie in love with Daryl down in Austin, and how much I’d wanted him, how wrong that was, and how I wanted to be better than I was. Just all of it. And this guy, Bobby, in Portland, he loved me, I knew that. He loved Alina. And he was a good man—I liked him—but he wanted to be more than friends, which was perfectly natural, even though I didn’t feel that way. And even though I didn’t feel that way, I wanted to feel that way and made the mistake of trying. We slept together a couple times—twice—how I realized my feelings were never going to develop. I wanted them to, but there was nothing there. We lived together awhile as roommates, until I understood it was a kind of torture for him, that as long as I was around he’d hold out hope that we’d wind up together. I knew I was holding him back, that my presence in the house was hurting him. I’d never be able to give him what he deserved. I knew how much he wanted me to love him and I tried. But I couldn’t do it, and he’d never find someone if I was around.
I was taking classes at Portland State and he’d take care of Alina while I was at school. I came home one night and he was in the kitchen just beaming, because Alina had called him Daddy, and even though I knew it was the best possible thing for Alina to stay there with him, because he’d love her and take care of her, and love me and take care of me, something snapped in me. I knew that minute I couldn’t stay. I wasn’t going to be taken care of. I didn’t love him like that, and if I stayed one second longer I was never going to leave and we’d end up getting married and raising Alina and I would shrink a little every year and lose pieces of myself until there’d be nothing left. But wasn’t that what happened to everyone? I was too young to know. I only knew I wasn’t going to have that life. I ran to Seattle and didn’t look back. I was twenty years old and too wild and stupid to know better.
But now I wasn’t so young. I wasn’t so fucked up. And I wasn’t going to be so fucked up. I just had to satisfy whatever Burke wanted and get rid of him. Mostly, I had to make sure he never found out about Alina.
Before he called again, I tried to prepare myself, to anticipate him.
“I just can’t stop thinking about you,” he said when I picked up the phone a few days later, and I realized I hadn’t prepared anything at all.
“You don’t know how hard it is to heal in prison,” he said.
I’d noticed in his first call how often he mentioned prison.
“All I can think about is that night,” he said, “how they could have hurt you and how you might know something you don’t know you know. You learn just about all there is to learn doing time, including the fact that sometimes you know things you don’t know you know. That’s the guiding hand of fate, protecting you or steering you towards knowledge, the reason I keep wondering about that night and people that might have been around and such before he was killed.”
I hadn’t realized in the first call that he might be insane. I couldn’t tell if that made my situation better or worse. Or if he even was crazy. I said, “But I was gone by then. Up in Chicago,” and he said, “Why’d you go there?” and I said, “Just—the breakup and everything,” and he said, “You had it pretty bad for him, didn’t you?”
Since he’d discovered where I worked so easily, I knew he’d find where we lived, too, though I’d changed us to unlisted after his first call. But Texas wasn’t so far. Not far enough. He’d show up at work, if nowhere else, and I couldn’t imagine how I’d hide my feelings if I had to see his face.
“You seeing anybody now?” he said.
I thought of how Cash would have responded to Kyle, his insane jealousy. On the other hand, maybe the prospect of a man in my life would push Burke away. Though it wouldn’t have Cash. It would have made him meaner.
“Cash always said you two was wild,” Burke said. “Going down to the river after work at Stubb’s, the two of you drinkin’ and skinnydippin’ and gettin’ high.”
“That was a long time ago,” I said.
“Not for me, though,” he said. “Prison stops time. For me, it’s like yesterday. And now I find myself thinking so much about you, Nikki, almost like we know everything about one another through him.”
I felt myself sinking, and if I didn’t come up soon I was going to have to inhale everything around me, suck it all into my lungs and spit it out once I reached the surface. I made myself breathe. I said, “It’s been good talking to you, Burke. Good to remember those times.”
“It’s a kind of haunting,” he said, “not knowing what happened.”
“It’s probably what the cops thought,” I said. “How he was running with bad people.”
“Is that what you told them?” he said, and I said, “I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t talk to them,” and he said, “They didn’t track you down?”
“I told you, I was gone,” I said. “And if I’d been there when they killed him, they would’ve killed me too.”
“That’s what I’m so grateful for,” he said. “Like the guiding hand moved you away for a reason. For later, maybe. For us.”
I swallowed hard and kept breathing.
“I just want to learn about the woman he loved,” Burke said. “But not like this, a thousand miles apart.”
I would never be able to look at his face.
“You don’t need to be afraid, Nikki,” he said. “I hope you know that much. I want to learn about your love is all, and everything about you. Ain’t no reason to be afraid.”
That’s when I felt the old coldness—down deep. Just how he said I shouldn’t be afraid. Like he could smell it on me. Like he’d been smelling it for years.
“You wouldn’t begrudge me,” he said. “Would you? Sharing memories together?”
“I just want to get on with my life,” I said.
“Cash did, too,” he said, “but they took him from us. And now it’s up to us to honor his memory, the least we can do. Who knows what other chance we’ll get to make things right.”
“I just need some space,” I said, and he said, “We gotta heal each other, Nikki,” and I said, “I need time to think,” and he said, “There’s not one reason in this world we can’t help each other, Nikki. We’re practically family. Practically blood.”
I should have gone to Kyle right then, the only one who could have helped me. I wanted to. I was going to. But I’d been taking care of myself all my life, me and my mother, me and Alina. And I didn’t know how to tell