Following Fish

the cross

When I get back to shore, Alice has laid out two towels and is sunning her naked body on one. I wring out my hair, shake the water out of my ears and lay face down on the towel that's mine. Not because I have body shame but because I am legitimately worried about that whole burning titty thing.

"So Lucee, can I ask why you came to Madrid?"

I feel guilty not letting her in, especially because I told Bruce last night.

"If I tell you why, do you promise not to ask any follow-up questions?"

"How long do I have to keep that promise? Hours? Months? Years?"

"A week." I'm certain that I won't be here for too much longer so this seems like a safe bet. Alice, having sat up now bobbles her head left and right a few times weighing this deal.

"I promise," she says.

I pause for a second and craft the Cliff's Notes version of what brought me here.

"My marriage is falling apart. For the better part of a decade, my husband has been more involved with his rage and mental illness than he has been with me. I gave him an ultimatum, get help or I'm leaving, and he took it. So, he left to get help in California. Then my dog died and I was all alone, so I came here. I don't know why I chose here. I don't feel like I have chosen anything in my whole life."

"You were called here!"

I put up my finger disapprovingly (I'll let you guess which one).

"That wasn't a question! It was a comment. You never said no comments."

She's right; I didn't. I sit up and hug my knees. At the far side of the lake, I see a white cross hammered into the bank of the water.

"What's that for?"

Alice squints into the distance and sighs. "A boy drowned this past spring. The family lived about a half-mile in that direction." She points past the field that we ran through. "No one knows what happened since he was a strong swimmer. Some people think he OD'd, some people think..." I watch her decide not to finish that sentence. "His parents put up the cross. I think they thought they would come here to mourn, but I heard they already moved away."

"What was his name? The boy?"

I know it before she says it and before I know what I'm doing I say it in unison with her.

"Benjamin."

The wildness of her eyes tells me that this was a mistake. A big one. She stutters and babbles before she finally gets out a single word. "How?"

"I'm a little bit psychic. Not for anything useful. I just find myself... 'tapped in' sometimes. I think things get into the ether just before we say them. It's more of a party trick than anything."

This seems to have relaxed her some, and it's not entirely untrue. I am a little bit psychic. I can also find lost objects. I'm a real-life St. Anthony, but that's not how I knew the name of the drowned boy. I know because that's the name that I called out in my dream last night. When I tried to say "Fischer" what came out was "Benjamin."

"Should we head back?"

I'm hoping she agrees. I feel overwhelmed by what has just happened. My muscles are heavy with the swimming I did. I just want to be... where? Home? But that doesn't exist anymore, not the way I want it to. I just want to be alone. That was the idea, I think, in coming to Madrid. It was to be alone in a place that wasn't my empty shell of a haunted house. Yet, since I've been here, I haven't been able to get away from anyone. Instead, I'm steeped in people in a town with a resident ghost.

"Sure," she says.

We dress and she repacks the bag. There is something magical and mystical in the shared nakedness of women. Now that we are clothed, the spell is broken. She smiles at me. Then hugs me hard and fast.

"Thanks for telling me about your life."

Retracing our trail back to Guy's grandmother's house, we talk, like friends, about nothing. No ghosts, no husbands, no drowned kids, or dead dogs. The conversation is filled with the normalcy that I have desperately been craving. Alice grew up in Southern California, and she's training to qualify for the Boston Marathon. She tells me that I've got to come when she makes it. Not if, when. I envy her confidence and shoo away the urge to tell her not to get her hopes up. I'm sure I wasn't always this hopeless.

When we get back to the car, Guy carries the baby out of the old hacienda accompanied by his grandmother. Alice waves enthusiastically at them all; Guy and Sky reciprocate but Grandma just stares. Even from where we stand, her eyes look beady and malevolent. I half expect her to shake her small but indelicate fist at us.

I flash my biggest smile and through my teeth say to Alice, "She does not like you."

"Or you." She grins back at me. I stifle a laugh.

"Adios, Abuelita!" Alice shouts to her. The old woman responds with a sharp turn on her heel, re-enters the house, and slams the door with enough force that we feel it where we stand.

Back in the truck, Alice locks eyes with me in the rear-view mirror.

"Same time next week?" she half-asks, half-pleads.

"You bet."