Creatures by Crissy Van Meter

Author:Crissy Van Meter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2019-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

Whale Fall

Carcass of a cetacean

QUESTION: What happens when something dies?

In the very beginning, when I’m showing him the island, I tell Liam I’m a mess. I tell him I don’t smoke, and then I smoke a cigarette, and later a joint right in front of him, and so he does, too. In that beginning, I do most of the talking, because I fear if there is any silence, any space between, he’ll leave. I tell him I have been abandoned. He says he has been left, too. I say that my father is dead. That my life isn’t complicated but it isn’t easy. He asks for another cigarette.

I can’t remember if I was being myself, but then who else could I have been, because it all came out so fast and there was no turning back. I pretend that I am at ease, and I know I’m good at telling half-hearted jokes. I think that laying it all out—the markings on my heart—will make it easier for us later, if there will be a later. That if I say all the bad things up front, I won’t have to ever say them again.

We are both silent even when I’m loud. Terrified to say things we don’t want to hear ourselves. Terrified that if we say it once, everything will open up, we’ll be cracked apart, and what if there is no way to seal it all back up? We say this without saying it. I say all the things that don’t matter: I tell the history of the sea.

I take him to the lighthouse, because I imagine that is what a romantic person would do, but it’s cold and wet there, and he slips and smacks his tailbone at the top of the stone steps. I try to help him to his feet, and he lets me, and I pull him up with my hands, and I wonder if I have ever let anyone help me. We sit on a bench on the windy bluff, and we see whales migrating south, and in my entire life on that island, I had never seen a whale from there. I want to tell him that it’s a myth that it’s so easy to see whales passing here, even though that’s everything we tell the tourists.

He finally starts talking, about nothing and everything, about the next boat, so that I can’t decide if the distant blowing of the whale matters like I thought it would.

He asks if he can hold my hand, and when our fingers lock, there’s a rush, and I can’t tell what’s real. He tells me he wants to see me again. And again. I go home that night and cry and cry.

So we are silent for most of our first year, talking only about paint colors, future vacations. I know of his mother’s broken heart, and his dad who left them for the South Seas and later, for death, and his brothers who fear the ocean. He knows of my mother, of Mary, then Tommy, and I try to tell him all about my father.

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