Aquarium

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How do you recover from a day like that? My grandfather on the floor trying to breathe, Shalini and I naked and wet and both hurt, my mother crawled away into her own corner, Steve hiding. How do you put a family back together, and how do you forgive?

Caitlin, my mother said. My baby. I’m sorry.

She was tucked against the wall at the end of the couch, her hands up to her face, hiding her mouth. Hands in fists like a boxer defending. She seemed animal. The fact that she could talk didn’t seem to fit at all. I watched her as I would something at the zoo, removed for the first time, distant.

My grandfather leaning back propped on his hands, as if he were lounging on the grass or at the beach, but his eyes were closed and his mouth looked like pain. I don’t think I had a heart attack, he said. I think I’m okay.

Someone needed to help us, all of us. Someone needed to help my grandfather up, and check my face, and dry off Shalini and put her in clothing, and somehow take care of my mother. But Steve had vanished, still hiding somewhere in the kitchen or a bedroom, failing to appear, and there was no one else.

My face was sore but strangely not broken and not even very painful. That popping sound must have been my mother’s hand. Shalini so gentle, fingers on my cheek and then kissing me again.

I just can’t watch that, my mother said. You don’t know what it’s like. None of you know. I wasn’t even a dyke, but I’ve been called one plenty of times, working construction. And called a muff diver on stage when I danced with another woman. Men love the idea of two women together. They want to watch and then kill. You’ll be hated all your life.

I think the world is different now, my grandfather said. I think they’ll be okay.

You don’t know anything. And I can’t watch it. I won’t have it in my house. Shalini is going home now. I’m sorry about what I did. But Shalini is going home now, and she’s never going to come over again, and I don’t want Caitlin to see her at school.

My grandfather heaved forward onto his hands and knees and then stood. He walked to the kitchen table and I could see Steve back there, standing with his arms crossed and one hand to his mouth, looking afraid.

Matches, my grandfather said, and he pulled open a drawer. This is a box of matches. He lit one, a flick and flash, and then turned to the table and lifted the contract, and he brought it over the sink and lit the lower corner and held it up as the flame grew and devoured. There’s your contract, he said. Notarized and burned. And the house is not going in your name tomorrow. I don’t care anymore what you think of me, or whether you’ll ever forgive me. All I care about now is protecting Caitlin and Shalini. So you have a choice. If you want this house, if you want to go back to school and stop working your job, you’ll let me take you tomorrow to find some help. Some counseling. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you, but I’m going to protect Caitlin and Shalini now, and Shalini can stay here tonight if she wants, and she’ll always be welcome. And she and Caitlin can do whatever they want. It all looks like love to me.

My mother still tucked against her fists, and I thought she would explode out of there, tear my grandfather into pieces for what he’d done, but she wasn’t moving.

I think he’s right, Sheri, Steve said. And I’ll help you too.

My mother’s mouth twisted like she was going to cry, and I felt so sorry for her but also a new coldness, something I never would have imagined possible.

My grandfather came to her, knelt on the floor and put his arms around and held her close. She put her arms around him and they just stayed like that, rocking a bit. I knew both would have their eyes closed, and knew that finally they had met again. Maybe this is as near as we can come to forgiveness. Not the past wiped away, nothing undone, but some willingness in the present, some recognition and embrace and slowing down.

Shalini’s skin felt cold, and I was shivering, so I sat up, my head pulsing, and we went back to the bathtub, slipped into the warmth and submerged. I closed my eyes and went all the way under and just hung there in a void because too much had happened. I heard the faucet and felt water cold then hot, and the temperature rose and I was lost in the sound of all that water, reaching like a goldfish to the surface with my lips for a quick gulp of air and then back down, returning to nothing. Shalini’s hands on my legs, some caress from another world, from darkness, gentle and reassuring. The end of terrible days, the end of being afraid, the end of being alone, and I knew it, even as it happened. The end also, though, of loving my mother in the same simple, full way. The limits of my own forgiveness.

I stayed under as long as I could, not wanting to return to air or words, but the heat drove me to the surface, and then Shalini’s lips, and it was the most perfect love I’ve ever known. No one will believe that, because we were too young, but we were absolutely there, not partially gone as adults always are. I had all of Shalini. Nothing was withheld. And she was far above me, in class and family, intelligence and sophistication and knowledge and beauty, and we didn’t yet consider those things, and I couldn’t yet feel inadequate in the adult way, really, even in the terrible shame of that day. And so nothing in me was withheld either. And there was the freedom of permission for the first time. On the other side of the door they knew what we were doing, and it was okay.

The house was silent when we emerged, only one light on, over the kitchen table, all the rest darkness. Three pizzas, mostly eaten, left out for us, so we sat wrapped in our towels, the air cold but our bodies still shielded by warmth from the bath. My family hidden away, no dinner together, contact too much. The Christmas tree lying on its side along a wall. We were starving, and we finished every piece.

The comforter cold when we first slipped under, so we clung together for warmth. My own room become our room, and my family let us sleep together without shame. Sometimes the worst moments can lead to the best.

That night was perfect and the beginning. Shalini sleeping on top of me, the warmth and weight of her, the fan of her hair making a cave around my face, rise and fall of her breath and small twitches as she slept. She abandoned herself to sleep, and I was held finally to the bottom of the ocean, as I had always wanted, thousands of feet down and the two of us gliding on great wings.