Song for this part: "One Time We Lived," Moby:
A half-hour later she was still sure of that but was not seeing any progress as she walked along. The ground under the water was sand, smooth and malleable and soothing to her but it made the going slow. She began to wonder if this was a real landscape or something in her head.
William Howard Taft had not moved. When she looked back, he was almost a quarter-mile away, still standing in the same place where she’d left him. He was not even looking at her. He was looking up at the stars. He had his hands clasped behind his back, or so she guessed, because the actual hands were hidden by the blue-black water.
She stood still.
She did not know how long she stood still. What did time matter anyway?
She then looked up at William Howard Taft again and wished him away. She said it to herself: go away. He did not.
She looked at the stars and said to them: Go away. They did not.
She clenched her teeth and clenched her fists and furrowed her brow and fervently desired that the water, the stars, William Howard Taft, would all go away, trying to want it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
They did not go away.
She then thought she was doing it wrong and instead tried to relax. She tried to feel at peace. She remembered, just after giving birth to Stephanie, years and years before, she’d tried yoga, and the yoga instructor had emphasized relaxation as the key to something, the key to yoga was how Saoirse had remembered it, being sure that wasn’t what he’d actually said. Every class had ended with the entire class relaxing for several minutes, just laying there breathing. It was the only part of the class Saoirse had enjoyed. She tried that now, letting her eyes droop almost shut, letting in the view of only a small sliver of the water with its ambient-light feel. She let her arms relax so that they hung at her sides, not straight but half-bent. She squished the sand in her toes and let her feet settle into the ravine that the squishing motion created. The water lapped at her chest. Her hair was dry. She breathed in through her nose, held it to the count of four, breathed out through her mouth, held her breath to the count of four once more.
She sat like that and tried to feel calm.
She let her mind drift as she pictured scenes from her life, not in any order, letting her mind drift. Stephanie in the eighth-grade spelling bee popped up. Her drapes needing to be vacuumed, dusty.
She tried not to think that this was all a way of willing herself back out of the After, and as soon as that thought popped up, she instead made herself remember the orange flowers Ansel brought her every anniversary, and tried to think of what they were called, trying not to think how deep down inside she’d always wondered why he bought her the orange flowers, tried not to think how deep down inside she’d been a little disappointed that it was never roses, that she never got her a dozen or more roses.
Then she tried to turn her mind away from the thought that her feelings probably were not so deep down inside, how she was terrible at trying to hide them, how Ansel had probably known how she felt.
Then she stopped trying not to think of things and instead wondered if Ansel had known how she felt but still kept giving her the orange flowers, whatever they were called. She was sure that he had known they disappointed her. He was… is… a smart man and was empathetic, so he must have felt her disappointment.
Then she remembered the two of them walking on a busy street, crowded with people, but also with tables and racks and shelves and dividers. It was a sidewalk sale. She remembered it was excruciatingly hot and they were holding hands, her hand sweating in his larger hand. They came to a florist, and they were admiring the flowers, the expanse of sidewalk-sale flowers that had been put out in large white buckets of water, beautiful but somewhat wilted in the heat. She had picked up one of the orange flowers and admired it. Ansel had bought her a bouquet of them, and a vase, and had carried them all day. That had been one of their early dates.
She opened her eyes and saw she was still chest-deep in the water, still in the water with the stars and off in the distance, William Howard Taft standing and looking in her direction.
“I need to go home,” she whispered to herself.
She did not, though, get whisked anywhere. She sloshed forward, more slowly than she’d moved out here, and began crying a little. A tear ran onto her lip. She licked it with her tongue, tasting the tiny salty drop. She was crying at the memory of Ansel carrying the vase through that whole sidewalk sale.
As she waded, she wondered what to do next. Would she have to go back to the house she’d left? Walk all the way from wherever this water was to the house where Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin were waiting? Her mind questioned if it was really Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin, there, if it was really William Howard Taft here. She sloshed forward and tried to decide how she could tell if there was a difference between the real people and these people. Her house had been cleaner, her cooking better, the neighbor’s yards neater. Would Ansel be… Ansel? Or Ansel-er?
She opened her eyes and looked up at William Howard Taft, still standing in the water. He had not moved, did not come closer but did not move away. Where was there to move to? She realized there was nowhere to go. The water stretched all around them. She had no idea how long they’d been standing in the water. The sand still felt cool beneath her toes. She was unconsciously squishing it, over and over, still. “You’re here to help me, right?” she called, as
“No,” said William Howard Taft.
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