When he saw Eleanor he imagined white sheets shaking and popping, billowing in the wind and held fast at the corners. But he also thought of his own bedsheets in the dark, softly glowing with moonlight and streetlamplight through the window. He imagined moonlight gleaming on the corners of things in his room at night and how, even though he had seen those objects a thousand times, he couldn’t reconstruct them for his eye out of the darkness. They stayed half-hidden, as if they might bleed out into the darkness forever beyond the indistinct spot where his vision gave out.
And he smiled, because Eleanor didn’t know he was watching her.
She sat unknowing, framed by the doorway at the end of the hall, her eyes tilted upwards at his mother who sat somewhere on the bed above her, beyond where he could see through the doorway. Her eyes pushed up sleepily through the light that fell in dancing, shifting shadows through the window like water moving on the bottom of a pool. His mother spoke, but all he could hear were her tones and the sharper syllables of what she said—disembodied things that floated down the hallway toward him, falling apart in the air just as they reached the stairs on which he sat, peeking over the top, watching Eleanor who didn’t know that he was watching her; who held a glass of wine in the light from the window and swirled it slowly; who had hands that always fluttered, soft and swift. White cotton in the wind. Her limbs moved like nothing was holding them down, easily through the air, unlike his mother’s limbs which moved only when they had to, and only with the sluggishness of inertia built up over years and years like stagnant water sucking at her, holding her back, because, he thought, she was old.
Eleanor was old, too, though.
But she was the old of matte skin saturated with lotions and powders, kept soft, caught on fresh currents of water, never pooling, never stagnant. No, she was old in a very different way from his mother. And he smiled, because she didn’t see him there and so he knew he was seeing her true self as he watched her swirling her wine that way, making a little amber whirlpool like an eddy in a stream, without any thought of an audience.
Eleanor knew that Noah was watching her, but she kept swirling her wine and looking at Mary on the bed above her. She didn’t have to look to know that he was there watching her, because he always was. Instead, she followed flaring motes with her eyes as they fell slowly through the light from the window. She pushed her foot against the bed frame and shifted her weight against the wall. She watched the red and purple wash the inside of the glass, leaving a film. She watched amber refractions of light on the skin of her palm as she swirled it, dancing with the leaves outside the window. The wall hurt her back. Mary’s words blew past her in gusts, rising up in her thoughts and then guttering as if blown by the breeze that came in through the window. As she sipped her wine, she felt a tingling seeping into her limbs and her face, and thought that she was already getting a little too drunk for this. For conversation.
“…because I just can’t do it. I mean I feel like if I could just get some sleep I could deal with it, you know? But they’re always fighting. If I look away for any time at all, you know? That’s why I came…”
And here she was. Mary, sitting on her guest bed; and there was Noah, watching her like always from the stairs. Sometimes she wondered if Noah knew why Mary brought them here, or if Sarah knew. She wondered if they were glad to be taken out of school for a few days like this or if it bothered them. Noah seemed happy, anyway, every time they arrived. He leaned out of the window and waved his arms; he smiled into the wind as their minivan curved its way up their driveway. There was something in him that was irrepressible, that couldn’t be dampened down by all the heaviness that surrounded him.
Not like Sarah, who sat in the back of the van as they drove up the same way she sat in the yard or in whatever corner of the house, dejected. Eleanor found it hard to talk to her. Something crawled along the back of her neck when she was around Sarah, constricting her throat. Though she tried not to show favoritism.
“…and it’s just like I wish everything could stop and stay still, even if it’s bad. Because I feel like it’s just out of control, and only getting worse. Do you ever…”
Eleanor nodded, and when she was finished nodding, she let her head continue to sway. There was a tingling in it, and a washing of sensation again and again over her eyes and her tongue. She ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth, against her teeth, and felt the pressure of it, thinking that Jake might be annoyed at her for getting so drunk in the middle of the day. He was probably downstairs right now, at the computer. Checking stocks or playing solitaire. She imagined her thoughts extending outside of herself, like a long periscope extending out of her face, snaking down the stairs, past Noah, peering over Jake’s shoulder. Nuzzling against his cheek. She smiled.
“…don’t want you to think that…”
She stopped smiling because she realized how it would seem to Mary if she smiled. She didn’t stop swaying her head or pressing her tongue against her teeth. She didn’t stop swirling her glass, and the tingling in her limbs and face only got worse; the waves of sensation lapping over her eyes and tongue, picking up in frequency. The light shook amber in her glass.
Noah was getting up because the way she had begun to sway her head back and forth in circles like her glass—the way she sat there framed by the doorway and swathed in the light, dappled by the leaves, graceful—it had been too much for him to watch from so far away. He clutched his notebook to his chest, because maybe if he sat in a corner and scribbled—maybe if he was drawing something and pretending not to pay them any attention—they would ignore him and let him stay.
Eleanor made a point of not smiling at the way Noah slipped in and huddled into the corner, or the look that came across Mary’s face when she saw him, or at the tingling feeling that was filling up her face. She pulled her thoughts back into her head and stopped bother Jake, because Mary’s look said, change the subject, quick! She didn’t know what to say. Her thoughts, returning to her head, were finding it completely empty. Sensation washed over her tongue and eyes. Her tongue pressed against her teeth, worrying her palate. Finally, she said: “When Jake and I take baths together, he always wants the water lukewarm. Why do you think that is, that men like their baths lukewarm? Is it because of their testicles?”
And then, as surprised at herself as the next person, she laughed.
“Noah, go downstairs and see what Sarah’s doing.” Mary didn’t laugh.

°°°

Coming into the living room, Noah could still feel the inertia of his rush down the stairs and the frenzy in his chest from the things that Eleanor had said. He wanted to laugh and yell because it was so funny that she would say those things and so strange, but he wouldn’t laugh because it was all mixed up too with the way his mother had scowled and told him to go downstairs and see what Sarah was doing. He didn’t care what Sarah was doing. He stamped through the living room and collapsed on the couch. He stared at the wall and the picture frame that hung there without a picture in it, framing just the bare wall and the wire that stretched in an upside-down V with a nail at its peak. He wondered what had happened to the picture. And where was Sarah, anyway? He looked at the window and the shady garden outside. He looked at the curtains bunched, framing the window. On the one side they hung limp, but on the other they bulged. He watched the bulge in the curtains until he saw it tremble.
Sara looked up at the dark folds extending above her like a tunnel. At the top, the folds were swathed in light and crimped with shadows. The light bled out as the tunnel widened to surround her, and in the darkness down where she sat, only hints of light pushed through the cloth dully. She buried her face; the fabric was heavy on it and cool. She imagined that these curtains were an impenetrable wall, and that the inside of it wasn’t connected to whatever was outside at all. Whatever was outside didn’t exist. Then it was easier to imagine things—the beautiful things that she and Noah used to know about.
There’s a mountain, he would say, and it’s the tallest one and we have to climb it, because on the top is a diamond—it’s the biggest diamond in the world and it’s yellow—and once we have it, if we touch it, we can turn into animals. But only for twenty minutes at a time. We have to be very careful with the timing. He would be a falcon and she could be an owl. She would tell him about the little girl who spoke to her from between the flowers in the woods. She was the most beautiful girl in the world, she would say, and she was in the flowers and the flowers were in her hair. She told me that she lives in the forest and that I could live there with her in the flowers if I wanted to, but I would have to give up living with my family forever so I told her no. He would make her take him back to the place among the flowers, but the little girl never came back. I think she’s angry that I didn’t want to live with her, she whispered. They would wait there in silence on the ground until the light that made the tops of the trees golden slid up and away out of the branches.
The fabric prickled her cheeks and her nose and it caught her hair. Her world, her cone of wrinkled cloth, was getting warm and she shifted. The curtains trembled. She was so pretty, she would say, and he would say, We’ll leave her some candy and maybe she’ll stop being angry. I can write her a letter to leave with it. You can tell me what to write and I’ll write it.
“Found you!” Noah ripped the curtains from around her in a flurry and she tumbled out into the living room, because the inside was connected to the outside after all. It always had been. He looked down at her on the carpet and something frenzied washed over him and surrounded his head and his limbs—it filled up his chest—because she looked at him as if she were bracing for something. She looked at him as if he were something inanimate and inevitable falling towards her from a high shelf, or as if she were falling from some high place and he were the thing that would break her fall. He spit and watched it break apart in the air, spattering her forehead and the carpet. He wanted her to stop looking at him that way.

°°°

Mary felt as though she were in a cage, trapped listening to Eleanor say things that were like hot brands against her skin.
“I’m worried,” Eleanor said, her head rolling sleepily with her words, “because Jake and I don’t spend any time apart. I mean, I go to the office but other than that we’re always together. And it’s not like we fight that much, but it doesn’t seem healthy, you know?”
Mary’s insides felt like they were coiling up. She pulled her knees up against her chest and pushed herself backwards slowly on the bed until her back was pressed against the wall and all she could see of Eleanor were her eyes peeking over the foot of the bed. She drained the wine left in her glass.
Just don’t listen, she thought. Just think of something else. Simple as that. She thought of herself in her kitchen, leaning on the island counter. She thought of the rest of her house, empty.
Then she thought of mangled limbs and torn metal.
What was wrong with her? She couldn’t even hold a conversation with Eleanor—with her best friend—without making herself upset, without thinking about things that made her insides coil up and her throat dry out; she couldn't stop thinking about things even after years and years because they haunted her. Haunted. She imagined herself huddled in the darkness of her empty house with ghosts hovering translucently all around her like shear curtains hanging on air so that she was afraid to move and she wished she could block something off—some space or stretch of time—and live in it without concern for how it related to anything outside. But everything remained so horribly related, and all paths led to one thought.
So that for eight entire years she had been trapped among the mangled metal without reprieve. She thought of the blood, and the way the street was strewn with shattered things.
“Are you okay, Mary?”
“I’m fine. Keep going, I’m listening. Is there any more wine?”
She shouldn’t drink because drinking only made these thoughts worse, which is why she never did it. But maybe it would make things better if she only tried to calm down. Maybe things got worse before they got better. Eleanor tipped the bottle, and wine sloshed out of Mary’s glass, sprinkling her fingers and Mary’s sheets.
“Woops! Oh well, I’ll bleach them.”
 Mary upended her glass.
“It’s not even that I don’t want him around all the time: I do! I mean when he’s gone I can hardly stand it, but…”
Oh god, don’t listen to her. Think of something else.
She thought of her children because her options of things to think about were limited. She remembered how they used to get along, and how it had been a joy to see them playing together. But it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t fair, it was too hard by herself. And maybe it was normal for them to fight that way? It wasn’t fair that she should have to do it alone. Eight years. Eight years and still she wasn’t used to it, still couldn’t figure out how to do it by herself. And that was why they fought. Because of her.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Do you hear that? Is that Sarah yelling?”
“Don’t worry. Jake will take care of them.” Eleanor shut the door.

°°°

Sarah kicked her legs and screamed. “Stop! It! Why don’t you just leave me alone?”
He didn’t know why himself. It was something about his arms and the way they felt; something about whatever was in his chest and the way she was looking at him like he was turning into something other than himself right in front of her. He pulled her hair and then grabbed her legs to stop them from kicking. She got in one last good kick, knocking him in the side of his head before he stopped them. She was looking at him like he was something ugly and inevitable that would swallow both of them up, so he didn’t stop. Because of that, and because it was like the room was filling up with something that made his arms feel funny and surged up in his chest.
“Hey, why don’t you guys quit it?” Jake stood in the doorway and Noah looked at him there, huge and blocking the light from the windows at the end of the hall. “You know this just upsets your mom.”
Noah looked at Jakes’ arms, thick and ugly, then he looked down at his own and how thin they were, how awkward and long, disproportionate. How they were covered now in tiny dark hairs. And Jake’s arms were ugly with black hair covering veiny dark skin. The air in the room grew thicker and stuck to his limbs and filled up his chest and he didn’t let go of Sarah’s legs.
“Do something! Make him stop it!”
Jake frowned and shifted uncomfortably in the doorway, then turned to go. “You guys have to work this out yourselves. But you should really quit it.”
The air in the room was ugly and thick. Noah didn’t stop.

°°°

“I don’t know what’s wrong with them. It’s something about Noah.”
“It’s probably just a phase.”
“Well yeah, that’s what everybody says, but it doesn’t make it any easier. It’s like there’s something in him that makes him do these things to Sarah. Like something about Sarah makes him angry. I don’t know.”
Mary set her glass down beside the bed. It was only making this pressure behind her eyes worse. She stared out the window and listened, but she couldn’t hear them through the closed door. Maybe they had stopped.
“He gets so angry. He never used to get angry like that. It’s like he can’t even think, he’s so mad. And any little thing can set him off. He always says It isn’t fair like there’s something I can do about it, you know? And I just don’t know what to say. Sometimes I say, Well, the world isn’t fair, but then he really goes off. I don’t know what to do.”
“He seems alright most of the time, though.”
“Oh, that’s just because you’re around. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about you. He talks about you constantly. He asks almost every day if we can come visit you. You know, maybe you could talk to him? I mean if you’re not comfortable don’t feel like you have to, but I don’t think he wants to listen to me.”
“I think I could do that…” Eleanor suddenly wanted to cry, looking at Mary. She looked crumpled up there, pushed against the wall with her knees drawn up. It had been such a long time that she had been this way that Eleanor hardly even saw it anymore except in glimpses like this. The way she sat there on the bed looking so despairing made it all come over her at once like an ocean of water dumped over her head. How long had it been like this? Sarah was what, eight and a half? So eight years. Eight years like that; like a crumpled up tissue.
“You know I caught him with my razor the other day trying to shave the hair off of his arms. I told him it was nice when a man has hair on his arms, and he said it was ugly and he didn’t want it there. I mean I guess kids do stuff like that sometimes, but I just don’t know what to do with him. I think there’s something going on with him.”
“But he’s okay in school?”
“Yeah it sounds like it. Actually he has a girlfriend, did I tell you? It’s really cute.”
 “Yeah, he told me. He told me how pretty she is.”

“She really is. She’s precious. I think she’s your only rival for his affection. Last week when I went to pick him up from school I saw him kiss her on the cheek before he realized I was there. He was so embarrassed, totally red in the face. It’s the cutest—” Mary’s head jerked toward the door and then she leapt up. A scream had risen and then been cut short in a yelp, loud enough to pierce the door.
Eleanor was right behind Mary coming down the stairs. Mary stopped in the doorway to the living room and recoiled, gasping, but Eleanor’s legs were too gummy to stop her, and her inertia from the rush down the stairs carried her right into the room.
Sarah lay on the carpet sobbing, her arm extending away from her at a skewed angle. Jake stood frozen above her, not knowing what to do.
 “Get the car started, we’re going to the ER,” Eleanor said, rushing forward and kneeling beside Sarah. “Where’s Noah?”

°°°

It had been a long time since Noah had moved. He’d watched the golden tops of the trees, and the way the gold disappeared inch by inch until only the very tips of the tallest branches held onto the light. The forest around him was murky and full of blossoms protruding from the shadows, made gray by the dimness of the light. Leaves and the wind made the sound of an ocean roaring above his head, and the entire forest seemed to pulse with movement, filled with a tumult.
He stayed as still as he could, inside his flowering bush.
He had stopped crying, and then started again, and then stopped. Now his cheeks burned with the cold of the breeze that blew in from outside the woods and found him even here, surrounded by these flowers, by these shaking buds and blossoms. He was inside his bush, inside the woods like an ocean of fresh water. Everything else was outside, separate.
It had been a long time since he had moved, and suddenly there she was, peeking at him from among the flowers. She was in the flowers and the flowers were in her hair. Her skin was matte and smooth, and it smelled like lotions and soap. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“It’s okay, Noah,” she said. “She’ll be fine. Come on, you can’t stay out here forever.”

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