STUNTED

Double

Spring 2016

Narrative

Stunted

Heel tapped on the table, left hand holding the same mug of coffee that had been sitting there for longer than even Heel was; not as wobbly. Knuckles warped and wrapping around the handle like tongue around words had been for almost an hour now. Heel was holding back tears. Hot mug eagerly waiting to catch something cooler.

“I simply can't accept you, Ly. I can't accept your actions, your answers.”

Heel hated coffee, but Ly had ordered two, waiting for Heel to arrive. Heel, late again. Ly, still shaking; part coffee, part stress. They were out of hot chocolate, anyways, and Heel assumed Ly didn’t care, either way. About preference. About other people.

At this point in their meeting, both Heel and Ly had abandoned any and all attempts of eye contact, disheartened that their timing of trying to look lovable again never lined up with the others’, probably staring down at single salt specs on the linoleum tabletop, waiting for the right time to re-capture the attention of the person they came here for.

It was hostile, as always.

It was awkward, as expected.

“You used to be more lively than exhausting. You used to trust my opinions.”

Heel was still battling tears, but not trying too much to hide these efforts of repression. Heel was not as good at repressing as Ly.

“I don’t trust you, anymore.”

Ly picked up the silverware wrapped in a navy blue napkin in front of the fallen salt, took out the fork, jabbed at the table a few times, at the salt shaker a few times. Heel pushed the rolled silverware, there beside the coffee mug still stuck in that same grip, towards Ly. Along with it went parts of perhaps six empty packets, sugar, shallow now broken in cold coffee. Heel had made this behavior routine - pushing away small messes turned larger created and kept over some time. There was an envelope somewhere in Heel’s wallet that held scraps of paper whose use was to rip at times like these, calm nerves. Heel had thrown many envelopes away, paper expired, too shredded for its own good, unable to heal. Ly usually made it routine to make, to label, trash before it’s time. Ly knew Heel would be so angry if, arrived from the cold, only coffee waited there with Ly at the table. Ly finished coffee number four.

“Why are we doing this?”

Ly’s chest matched Heel’s, stoic and breathless. Heel was not crying anymore.

Before Ly could say another word Heel jumped to crumbling knees and shaken posture. Ly looked around, in response, checking the room for signs of judgement in any face around them, distracted, as always.

Heel grabbed the spotlight. And stealing eye contact for just a second, whispered:

“They're dead. I mean, Ly… Have you forgo-”

Ly shot up, stable feet and harsh elbows turning, and walked outside, without a word. Kept walking away. And Heel stayed in place, refusing to follow Ly in leaving as history would suggest doing. There was nothing there to chase.

Ly cut through sidewalks, feet through yards, as if severing ties with each pedestrian passed in pursuit of this coffee-fueled escape. Like shouting “No!” at lovers, or parents. Or saying “Yes” when your instincts tell you otherwise. Ly was running from Heel as Heel had so grown accustomed. Especially recently. Especially after the accident. After the first phonecall. And then their father’s funeral.

Neither would argue that the past was unimportant, but neither was remembering any good from before to start that argument, anyways.

Ly was the survivor. It was not until, without Heel, loneliness had taken hold. Finally, here, hearing over-heard, unconcerned, hollow warnings, Ly could not outrun anything. Vulnerability had caught up with the escape artist on a sidewalk. Ly remembered, after certain sideways glances, how Heel halted, predictable. Regardless, in plain perspicuous pulses, Ly chased passive possibility.

And the past seemed an eerie reminder to Ly that good things always go bad and that good people do not survive. After their father died, Ly left home. Heel followed soon after. That is how they got here. Quickly.

Without Heel, Ly would suffocate. But without Ly, Heel would sink into whichever ground was underneath feet unmoved by certain empathy, and Heel would get stuck.

Heel lived for the view from other people’s shoes, so to speak. Ly simply made it a point to try them all on, returns pending. Ly made habit of barely seeing anything around, standing anywhere. Blind to subtlety and passion, Ly was intolerant of symbols. Heel had become a strong one.

But now, changing into another version of meaning so quickly, Heel and Ly were a broken structure still glued around a picture, strained and splintered, but stuck at each corner, still: a frame not worth its weight in paper.

Ly slowed pace as car horns began to ring on the asphalt around the already buzzing ears of stinging memory rocking Ly’s shoulder’s back and forth. Ly found bench to sit, place to breathe.

Heel had left for home by now, having sat back down for a while to calm down. Heel never made rash decisions, except for those seemingly choice-less in response to Ly’s impulses.

Heel walked, silent and stable, down the sidewalk in the opposite direction both siblings had arrived from, opposite of the direction Ly had disappeared back into. Feet flat and lifting as if knees bent with steel gears at the joints; right angles were comfortable to Heel.

Ly, still at park bench, wondered how long Heel would sit at their table, if Heel battled internally, if standing ground behind that tabletop was more difficult than any apparent goodbye had been before. Ly knew this was goodbye, before closed was the door.

From a small pocket on the interior of the leather jacket that was once worn by father, a small silver blade, rusted at the top end, blade-edge scraped clean with alcohol and unkempt fingernails, appeared between two sly knuckles. Ly watched a total of four joggers pass by the bench before it was adjusted to be held, the blade, in a more familiar way, switched to left hand, wrist bent at healing seams. Without looking, without flinching, familiar blood began to drip into those worn leather sleeves. Familiar pressure began to build in unfamiliar veins; unfamiliar life trickling down, ears and into those bones, each now so afraid of the color silver. Ly and hurt, box-cutter at the ready, ready for everything, prepared and preparing for nothing; like bleach to hair, Ly and instant - no matter the resistance, one was always stronger.

A family passed a tree a few feet from the bench claimed by Ly - no running here. They turned around. Ly looked behind him. Small child, picking up speed, in pursuit of family choices. Turning around. Ly forgot what was happening, for a moment. Tricked into security, unstable and frantic; children live unfair lives. Feelings like these, realizations of meaninglessness, they neutralized Ly. At least they never manifested outward displays of grievance.

Just blocks away, Heel was pacing the streets. Panic and farewell, setting in.

One place to surely find Ly.

One promise neither one of them had been keeping.

One foot off of the curb.

Four tissues formed a sufficient barrier between the drying crimson dust from this torn flesh and the off-black jacket surrounding that whole limb. Ly pulled a lottery ticket from the jacket’s chest-pocket. Dime in left hand, it took two seconds to lose all of two dollars. Seemingly everything that Ly had to live for was hope, expiring or not. Ly wanted to be found. Ly forgot what had just happened; with Heel, relapsed abuse, and relapsed abuse again.

Metal curling screams rang through the air, cutting through the trees protecting Ly from, apparently, only incessant sunlight. Ly was startled, for just a moment. Then confused.

Ly looked behind him.

It took four cars crashing into one another’s frames, into Heel, ever-unprotected, ever-searching for security in Ly and lies; but Ly was still turned, still deaf to Heel’s dust-settling cries for help.

Even after years of practice.