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Alan used to do this weird thing with turtles, where he’d scoop them up from the pond, his fingers cupped around the tiny shells and water streaming down in the spaces between his fingers. He’d take them up the hill, into the house and up the stairs to the terrace, and raise his hands towards the sky, the evening sun threading its lazy fingers through his hair and painting the yellow and green shells in shades of red and orange.
What are you doing, Chris used to ask, and he’d startle and turn his head, like a child caught somewhere he shouldn’t have been. He’d go quiet, and gently set the turtle down on the parapet. I’m showing them the sky.
Oh, Chris said then. Oh, she said, and did not understand. They’d sit there and watch the turtle walk on the thin band between ground and sky, and when night came Alan would sigh and flee back to his room, eyes lowered and feet silent.
Chris would shake her head. I wish you’d talk to me, she’d call to him, and then sigh and take the turtle away from the edge and into her hand, down the stairs and back to the pond.
Turtles don’t have wings, she murmured one night, to the leaves that rustle in the dark and to the turtle that raised its little head to her.
I wish he’d listen, she said, and the next day she watched through the windows as he stood under pouring rain, head tilted back, hands empty and hanging at his side.
I wish she’d stop staring, he thought as the water streamed over his face.
Alan always wants too much, and Alan always wants the impossible.
I want to be a turtle, he thought on that cold, rainy spring morning, and on that night there was no one on the balcony and two voices skimming over the trembling waters; three, if one counted the rain.
Alan did.
*
I cheated on my husband, Chris declares distractedly one day as she strolls into the house, backpack slung over one shoulder and hands tucked in her pockets. Again. Mind if I crash for a day or two?
Of course not. Alan doesn’t ask. He knows how she is when she gets that look on her face, the one that’s so blank that it must be a mask, too perfect and whole to be anything real. But maybe that’s the cynicism talking. Alan doesn’t really believe in purity and perfection.
Sometimes he wishes he did.
So he says nothing, just goes back to his hopeless attempts at cooking, and is only too glad to leave it to Chris when she grows tired of watching him fumble and takes over the kitchen.
He winces a bit at the way she decapitates the tomatoes, but holds his tongue.
He’s an idiot, Chris finally says.
The husband?
Yeah. Well, okay, the other was a flake too. Handsome, but a flake.
Alan says, Okay. He’s leaning back against the counter, looking at her like he doesn’t know how to handle this.
Chris talks first, like she often does. It’s a bit of everything and a lot of nothing. She says she’s bored, she says all the guys in her life are idiots, present company notwithstanding, that she can’t stand her husband’s weird habits, the way he can write with both hands at the same time (what’s this got to do with anything, Alan wonders, but does not say), the way she’s tired of the rain but doesn’t want there be sun or how the neighbor’s dog’s been barking all night.
When she trails off the food’s ready and her voice’s shaky, but there’s no tears here. Alan’s kind of glad, because tears make him real uncomfortable, and Chris’ glad because she’s always hated crying.
That night there are clouds spread across the stars. From the terrace there’s nothing to be seen but blue, spinning dark and heavy into the horizon. Chris watches the sky, and wonders where the turtles have gone.
*
Chris, she’s got hands like sunshine and a voice like a storm at night. Alan thinks this, in the quiet moments that creep on him at three thirty in the morning when she’s asleep and he’s just waiting for something, anything, to happen.
Alan doesn’t speak much, Chris thinks, or rather, he doesn’t say much. She bumps against him now, hair still wet from her shower, and peers over his shoulder to look at what he’s doing.
What’re you doing, she asks, and he shrugs. Nothing. Doodling.
Alan does that a lot; says he’s not doing anything important, when really Chris would give the world just to be able to do half as much as he does. He says she’s weird when she tells him that, and goes back to drawing crazy animals on the margins of his notebooks. It’s nothing, he says, because no one but her ever gets to see them.
What about me, she asks, and smiles. Don’t I count?
He shakes his head, no. It’s not the same, he says. With you it’s different.
That’s kind of sweet, she thinks, and tells him so. He scowls at her, then returns to his scribbling. I take it back, Chris laughs, and leans her head against his shoulder. If this is nothing, she says as she runs a finger over a bird’s open wing, a wolf’s dark muzzle, a tortoise’s shell, and smudges the messy shading, then what’s something?
I’m not good enough. But you—you can sing, he tells her, like that’s got anything to do with what she’s talking about. She laughs again, shakes her head and sends water droplets flying all over his face. A few land on the horse he’s sketching, and they sink through the paper, dapple the pencil-gray of its coat, the crisscross of its lines.
He tenses up against her when she wraps her arm around his shoulders, and she relents. Sometimes it’s better just to leave him alone, and Chris knows not to push too far.
I’m going for a run, she tells him, and he nods, suddenly fascinated by the new ripples on the paper. Okay, he says. Okay.
*
Outside the old, cracked pavement shimmers from the heat and the parked cars glare bright and painful to her eyes. Alan hates this kind of weather, but Chris only breathes in the smell of burned rubber and dry leaves. With her eyes closed it feels like there’s nothing but the sun on her face and the beat of her pulse in her ears, and when she starts running the sound of her feet on concrete is a song that holds all of the world together; a song she keeps for herself and holds close, because it is always a promise of more.
And because Chris never lets go of anything, not even dreams, when the ground steals away from under her feet she doesn’t slow down; for a moment she is suspended in mid-air, her heart in her throat and her eyes full of sky.
Then she is falling, the ground rising to meet her; as she rolls down the hill she laughs, through the hair in her face and the scrapes on her shins, and only waves at all the people who stop and stare.
There’s nothing she needs to worry about right now, nothing but the play of tendons and ligaments and blood like clockwork, like well-oiled machinery.
Turtles can’t fly, she thinks, but I can.
*
Alan’s kind of afraid of the sky. He’s a bit in love with it too, which doesn’t help.
Chris know about this, or at least about this second reason. You’re an idiot, she tells him on that day she finds him with water running through his fingers and with grief tumbling down from his mouth. Not a word, not a whisper, but Alan’s never been a good actor. Chris thinks that Alan in love is a dangerous, dangerous thing indeed, and mostly she wants to keep him safe and she also kind of wants to keep him for herself.
I’m back, she calls out as she kicks the door open. You better still be here, Alan.
There’s a shuffling sound, bleary eyes peeking out from the corner. Where else would I be?
Dunno. You have this bad habit of disappearing on me.
He snarls, and she smiles, because he’s adorable like this, annoyed and sleepy and all. Do not. And did you really have to destroy the door?
She grins. Yeah, I did.
Alan’s kind of afraid of the sky, and he’s a bit afraid for Chris. She belongs there, he thinks—in the sky.
She can sing.
*
That night the skies are clear and the wind twirls at her ankles like the water used to.
Looking at the sky again, huh, Alan asks, and Chris says Yeah.
Yeah, looking at the sky. C’mere. Stay with me.
He lingers in the doorway, a silhouette cut out of shadows and rain. Chris’ standing on the parapet, her arms spread and her eyes wide.
You don’t have wings, he says, quietly.
Neither did your turtles, and yet—
You’re no turtle, he says.
Neither are you.
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Spoiler
Insert is Alan. Obviously, Chris is the opposite.
