Exposed

DONA MCCORMACK

The man inside the moon stretches his mouth wide and screams midnight light out into the what-should-be-black. The waisthigh grass reminds me of wheat, the way it sways and smacks Louis’s hips, right at the bone where he’s vulnerable, where only I see him bare.

We come out to these cabins this same time every year, when the grass has grown high, and the leaves have started to turn. Louis arms himself with one of his pills, for courage, to endure check in. He needs the pills to get through most things, these last few years. I worry he’ll take too many and I’ll be left standing over his corpse, wondering if he meant to die or if he forgot the time of day and which dose he was on. In the small office, ticking bear clock with moving eyes on the wall, neither of us looks at the other when we pay the desk clerk for our usual cabin, the one by the river. They rent to us even though they know who we are.

My husband’s bare chest above his jeans, the night clings to his upper body, the starlight collects in his soft, black hair. He holds his arms up and out to his sides. The hair lays flat against his skin and glows silver. The wind brings me musk and Speed Stick, notes of his body.

We feel alone in the park. Ever since our son Jack died of complications from lead poisoning six years ago, we often find no other guests seeking the shelter of a relaxing riverside cabin. Before Jack died, we spent every summer weekend here and the place was always busy. When the local health officials turned up no evidence of lead anywhere on our property, we suspected our favorite vacation spot.

The tops of the grass whisper against the sensitive underskin of Louis’s palms. He wiggles his fingers. Once. Then again. As though sensing the air. The movement of the grass. The texture of the wind within it. He stares up at the sky and the moon lights his skull up blue.

Blue. The water from the river remained blue, when we filled the test tube—from the one nearby lab we could afford to hire for tests. They found lead and a dozen other forms of industrial run-off, including copper, which gave the water its color. Once we received those results, the news picked up the story. Local news. Our son existed again, for a few news cycles. The cabins lost most of their business. The stories about Jack and the dirty water still appear first, if I search the cabins in my phone. And yet, every year when we return, we don’t, as we expect, find the land paved or grown over. We rent our cabin. Stare at the blue river. Louis walks the field. I follow him, halfway across the stretch of grass, when my husband spins and staggers towards me. “Candice?” The wind grabs my name and cuts it through the blades around me, beads of sound bouncing toward the river. Louis spins and stares around wide-eyed. He keeps his hands out, palms down, hip level, as though keeping his balance. I reach him, and he says my name again. “Candice.” His expression melts and drifts. My stomach sinks when I think I know what he’s done…

Every year, we come back here. To try to say goodbye. So Louis can try to say goodbye. I said goodbye at the funeral. I come to seek forgiveness. For not needing what my husband does. For being satisfied with merely knowing the lead didn’t come from our home, that it was not us who poisoned him.

I place my hands on Louis’s shoulders and try to meet his eyes. He won’t. Even when I exert subtle downward pressure on his body, he glances everywhere but my face. Tears run down his cheeks. “Ah, God, Louis, how many did you take? Not the whole bottle?”

Louis turns his ear toward me. His expression crumbles. Tears squirt from his wide open, staring eyes, black out here in the moony night. He guffaws. I jump and my heart thuds a few beats. “Didn’t take my pills. Except my prescribed ones. Not a whole bottle.” He grimaces. His cheeks wrinkle and his eyes, full of the moon, crinkle. “Won’t have to. Won’t have to come back here anymore, now I can’t look for him everywhere.”

He stares toward the river across the field behind me. His eyes drift against the too-moon-blue current. He doesn’t withdraw from my hand when I hold it an inch from his face. As though he can’t see me. As though he’s been exposed over the years, here, to something that’s leeched him blind but given him the perspective he needs to finally locate Jack in the blue water and leave him there.

Dona McCormack & her hubs & loving service human, Michael, hunt the sun & manage disability in Northeast Ohio. Sometimes, those become the same effort! Dona writes Realism & Weird Fiction & insists she’ll finish her thesis collection in 2020. (She already got the M.A. in Creative Writing; she’s just a turtlewriter!) She’s a 3rd place Reflex Flash Contest winner & has stories in several journals. Visit Dona at @DonaWritesInsta & http://DonaMcCormack1.wixsite.com/donawrites.