Emma Garrison came home unannounced the way a thief comes to rob the hearts of those who lay in death. I mean, it is not like she was not welcome home in any way possible. That is to say that she had already thought of coming back home. In this way, she pushed through her limits so she could see what it could be done about it. The thing is, no one could change it.
It was one of those late-spring Saturdays in Carlisle where the sky couldn't decide if it wanted to rain or remember summer, so it did both in fits that no one could ever dream of that sudden fat drops slapping the windshield of her beat-up BIKE, then sun slicing through like it had changed its mind mid-apology in which she would think about how to tease Karl today. The thing is, he had driven the four hours from her boarding school in Maryland without telling anyone that she had for, not because she was running from something dramatic that I may feel every time I have for the unity of life and death, but because the silence of the dorm on weekends had started to feel like judgment and intrusion that no one would ever satisfy.
That is to say that she needed the smell of her father's coffee the way a girl yearns to be woman in the first years of her life to feel protected, the creak of the back stairs, the particular way the house smelled like old books and teenage boys who forgot to open windows. Maybe, it was not what she expected, but it was something that everyone would actually wonder.
She parked crooked in the driveway, pedals ticking down like it was catching its breath because of goddess like capacities. Grabbed her duffel the way no one would come to understand still half-packed from last break that she broke through and let herself in through the side door that never locked right or perhaps it seemed to be closed, but in reality, it was just away from the real key to seeing what's behind the love and the pain.
The house was quiet. Too quiet. Everything seemed to come to a stop. Everything slowed. Too slow. No television murmur. Maybe, it is just me trying to find any reason to live for. No James Garrison humming off-key in the kitchen while he graded papers that a real man would handle easily due to his capacity to initiate the dual tendencies of real capacities. No Karl's footsteps pacing the upstairs hallway like he was trying to outrun his own thoughts or maybe the need to have them.
Emma dropped the bag by the coat rack. Kicked off her sneakers. Listened.
A soft clink from the living room. Mug on coaster. Then voices low, overlapping, intimate in the way only people who have forgotten anyone else exists can sound. That initial love that we have whenever we want to go through that feral pain.
She moved down the hall on sock feet, slow, not sneaking exactly, but not announcing herself either. Curiosity had teeth today. Today was a special day that we could actually observe from all and nothing. Infinity, finite, and 0 in one.
The living room doorway framed them like a painting no one had asked permission to make. This was a spot that she observed for 9 minutes to feel her goddess like powers.
Karl sat on the floor, back against the couch, knees up, quilt draped loose over his shoulders the way a true king would come to see the reality of life. That is to say that no one could come close the way he would feel about life. The thing is, no one would see the need for company. The idea of loneliness was gone. Larisa…Larissa, the girl from down the block who had been coming over since they were small enough to share crayons or maybe she was her rival in love, was curled against his side, head on his shoulder the way lover would give their hearts, one hand resting open on his thigh like it belonged there.
In the end, it did not depend on the lineal love. The television was off. Off to nothing. A single lamp burned low on the end table, throwing gold across their faces. They weren't kissing. They weren't even looking at each other. Just breathing in the same rhythm, staring at nothing in particular, the way people do when the questions have finally gone quiet for once.
Emma stood in the doorway longer than she meant to. Maybe, she was not just there. But absent.
Something twisted under her ribs not jealousy, not exactly. Perhaps, it was more than that. More like recognition of a door she had never noticed before, already closed and locked from the inside that she could not hold back. Something powerful. Something delicious. Something unstoppable.
Larisa noticed her first. Lifted her head slow, no startle, no guilt. Just calm acknowledgment, the way a queen might note a new courtier entering the throne room.
Lari: Emma, (she said, soft, no surprise in it.) You're home early. For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home. Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort. I mean, you know me.
Karl turned. Blinked once. Then the smallest, realest smile cracked his facethe one he saved for people who had seen him cry and hadn't run. Perhaps, it was just me imagining the idea of being loved that way.
Karl: Em. NO! Hegel's impulse. t is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. That is to say that you are not by definition what you think you are.
Emma crossed her arms. Leaned against the doorframe. Tried to decide what expression belonged on her face. She seemed to be pissed off.
Emma: You two look cozy. Then you are mistaken if you think thaat, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable to give a human being, knowing that I am something more than a normal human being. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear and maybe it already is.
Your mind is my treasure that I can resist sometimes, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still to hold forever in my eternal embrace: if you raved, my arms should confine you the way no one woman would, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace that you would never escape from, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her the way a lover gives value to loving.
Karl didn't flinch. Didn't apologize. Just shifted the quilt so there was room if Emma wanted to sit or maybe he was kinda moved.
Omega: She stayed over, (he said, plain.No defensiveness.) Dad was at a conference in Philly. Storm knocked out half the power grid down her street. Couldn't get the heat back on.
Larisa tilted her head the way a girl with utmost wisdom would do.
Buitrago: My mom's working night shift at the hospital. Said it was safer here than freezing in the dark. Never presume to know a person based on the one dimensional window of the internet. A soul can't be defined by critics, enemies or broken ties with family or friends. Neither can it be explained by posts or blogs that lack facial expression. Perhaps, Yang saw something good about you not knowing it.
Emma nodded once. Slow. Processing.
She looked at the quilt. At the two mugs on the coffee tablesteam long gone, tea cold. At the way Karl's arm rested loose around Larisa's shoulders, not claiming, just there. At Larisa's bare feet tucked under the edge of the blanket, toes painted chipped navy like she had done them herself last week.
Something in Emma's chest loosened. Not all the way. Just enough to breathe. I mean, it was tense to begin with. This was new for them.
Emma: You didn't text, ( she said. Not accusation. Observation.)
Karl shrugged one shoulder.
Karl: Didn't think it needed saying. You know how it is. For truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with pen- that one must learn how to write. That is why she stayed. By virtue of fact, she told me that she would tell me something good.
She did. She knew exactly how it was.
Emma pushed off the doorframe. Walked over. Dropped to the floor beside them, back against the couch leg, legs stretched out so her socked foot bumped Karl's knee.
The three of them sat like that for a long minute. No one spoke. The house creaked around them old timbers settling, wind brushing the gutters, distant thunder deciding whether to come closer.
Finally Emma said, You two gonna keep pretending this is just sleepovers and philosophy debates? This is not like you may think. This appears to be more than just childish games. It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it. I mean like you have something special going on without my consent, nor my blessing.
Larisa laughed quiet, crystal-fracturing, the sound that always made Karl's shoulders drop half an inch.
Karl looked at his sister. Not defensive. Not pleading. Just honest.
Omega: It stopped being pretend a while ago.
Emma exhaled. Long. Like she had been holding the breath since Maryland.
She reached over. Took the edge of the quilt. Pulled it across her lap too.
Emma: Then I guess I'm crashing the party
Larisa smiled, small, real, the one that reached her eyes and stayed.
Lari: Room's big enough.
Karl leaned his head back against the couch cushion. Closed his eyes for a second like a weight had lifted he hadn't admitted he was carrying.
Emma looked at them both. At the way Larisa's fingers stayed laced loose with Karl's under the quilt. At the way Karl's thumb traced slow circles on the back of her hand like he was reminding himself she was still there.
She felt something shift not loss, not exactly. More like the last piece of a puzzle she hadn't known she was solving clicking into place.
The storm outside picked up again. Rain tapped the windows like impatient fingers.
Inside, three kids who had grown up too fast sat under one quilt in a house that still smelled like coffee and old books.
No one moved to turn on the light.
No one needed to.
The dark was warm enough tonight. Bud... this is going insane.