“Whadja do that for?”
I didn’t answer but picked up the other drawings and tore them up too. I could feel Mel standing in the doorway, waking up, watching me.
“You feel like explaining or are you just going to sulk?”
“It’s my pathetic attempt to make myself feel better.”
“Feel better about what?”
“The fact that I can’t paint anymore. Or draw, for that matter.”
“I’ve seen your stuff.”
“What you saw was shit. Art therapy shit. Anybody can be a star in a loony bin.”
“What I think is pathetic is you feeling so sorry for yourself.” He turned away. “I’m going back to bed.”
I made tea and drank it sitting out on the dock. Behind me I could hear doors opening, cars starting, people going to work, beginning their normal day.
It was amazing how up until now I had almost been able to fool myself that if I worked hard enough, I could become an artist again. But it took something I didn’t have anymore. Going through the motions was a futile exercise. I had lost that peculiar quality of concentration needed to tap into the soul. That was the price for being allowed to live after having swallowed thirty-six tranquilizers. Or perhaps the truth was I had lost it way before that, at RISD, and I had known it then. That was the real reason I’d dropped out, gotten married.
I had my Swiss Army knife with me, but it was back in the bedroom with Mel. There was a paint scraper lying in the bottom of one of the rowboats, and I retrieved it, wiped the blade off on my shirt, and tested it on the inside of my wrist, where the impressions of Mel’s nails were still printed from last night like sickle moons. Then I moved higher until I found an open spot, closed my eyes, and flicked.
“When was your last tetanus shot?” Mel asked. He was furious, I could tell, although his voice was even. We were in the car, driving down the coast to a place where we’d heard brown pelicans congregated.
“I’m fine, I promise. It’s just a scratch. Anyway, I thought you liked my scars.”
“If this is a game, I’m not playing, Sally.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve been doing it since I was fourteen.”
“You sound proud of yourself.”
“I’m not. Why’re you being such a pill? You’re the one who brought it up. I wasn’t even going to mention it.”
“I think you’re mixing me up with someone, Sally.”
“Oh, so now we’re going to play group therapy. Who might that be? My father?”
“You said it, not me.”
“Maybe you should drive me home. I’m worried about my uncle, anyway.”
“We can turn around anytime you want.”
I didn’t say anything.
When we were almost to the beach he said: “Did you know that Catholic suicides can’t be buried in consecrated ground?”
“Are you trying to make me feel worse?”
“I’m trying to tell you a story. A cousin of mine blew his brains out. My aunt asked around at various Protestant churches to see if they’d take him as a member posthumously. No luck.”
“I want to be cremated.”
“Well, that’s what they did with Joey. His mom and dad flew to Italy and threw his ashes into the Mediterranean.”
Strewing ashes was what I was thinking about as we fed the birds. The pelicans ate only fresh fish, but you could buy plastic bags of meal at a shack by the road for the gulls and terns. A very touristy thing to do, I saw other people with bags, but I didn’t care. Not only did I want to be a regular tourist, I also wanted to be faceless, anonymous, not special. I was sick of being special.
The birds liked Mel. It was the way he flung the meal, so that it fell in an ostentatious arc, easily visible.
“They’re so ugly,” I said.
He pulled me so that my face was in his shoulder, so that no one could see me crying.
“Yes,” he said. “I guess they are.”
“Do you really want to know what I think about in bed?” I asked
It was our last night on the lagoon. Mel was steering and I was resting, slouched in the front of the canoe, knees up and my own paddle balanced on top of them. His voice came from behind me: “You know that stuff I talked about in the hospital, about my older cousins in the garage?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, there’s a part I left out. They jerked off on me while they were sticking the pins in.”
“Jesus. Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I didn’t realize what was going on until I was older. I used to think they were peeing. That was bad enough. The point is, I used to think about it during sex. In this very fucked-up way, it used to turn me on.”
“Why didn’t you tell that to the group?”
“I bet they’re some things you didn’t tell the group.”
“So do you still think about it?”
“Sometimes. Does that upset you?”
“No,” I said. “I guess you know what I think about then.”
“Yes.” The way he said it made me realize that not only did it not upset him, he got off on it a little.
“The trouble with us is that we know too much about each other.” I leaned over into the swamp, slid my arm in right up to the elbow. We were in a relatively deep passage and I could feel the variation in temperature, from body to lukewarm to a hint of chill. Mel made a crunching noise but I ignored him. I was remembering that dream I’d had at Willowridge, of the black water that was going to reflect something unspeakable back at me.
It was quiet, too quiet. Mel tapped the bottle of rum and Coke on my back. I knocked back a long swig and felt it almost immediately.
I said: “You know all I can pay attention to in the news are crime stories. Violent crime. The more violent, the better. Is there something wrong with me?”
“No, honey. It’s drama you miss.”
“What do you mean?”
“Willowridge was one big soap opera. You’re going to have to get used to the mundanity of daily life.”
“I’ll show you dramatic.” Without thinking about what I was going to do I began stripping, pulling off my T-shirt—I wasn’t wearing a bra—and then my shorts and underpants. Then I stood up in the prow, the boat jerking abruptly with the movement. Mel watched me, smiling, until I took a breath, and jumped.
Despite its murkiness, the water was surprisingly clean feeling, although as I surfaced I could feel my toes dragging a bit of seaweed. Or was it an alligator? Live body overboard.Let them get me, I thought.
Mel was leaning right above me. “Are you nuts?”
“Yes,” I said, and moved several feet away from the canoe. It was like I couldn’t stop myself. Treading water, I threw back my head and screamed up into the dark gray-green sky fringed with overhanging trees. Screamed once, got the echo, and screamed again. And again.
“Get back in here, Sally.” Mel sounded a million miles away, or maybe it was just the water in my ears. I swam over and he helped me aboard, a precarious and clumsy process which slopped a lot of water into the canoe. “You were afraid of drowning in the Gulf, but you don’t give a shit about being Jaws bait,” he said.
“I don’t know why I did that.”
“Sshhh.” He put his arms around me from behind, and we sat there like that until I stopped shivering.
“Feel better?”
“Guess so.”
“You probably needed to do that, although I wish you hadn’t picked alligator swamp.” He took off his own shirt, patted me dry, helped me get dressed.
I said: “I’m sorry about the other morning.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me.”
“I haven’t slipped up since I left Willowridge. D’ya think there’s a support group for that kind of thing?”
“You mean like Self-Mutilators Anonymous?”
“I guess not. Wouldn’t be a pretty sight, anyway. The meetings, I mean.” I thought of Douglas.
We headed back, neither of us talking, although we kept passing the bottle. I knew I was getting drunk and I didn’t care. I could smell and feel the swamp drying on my skin and hair, that high stagnant odor like the Katzes’ goldfish pond. When we tied up at the dock Mel said we’d better bail out the canoe, so we found a couple of old paint cans and scooped methodically until he laid his hand on my arm.