Cut Away

1. Alexandra

1 Alexandra The lake is a mirror with clean, pink sky inside it. I stand at the water’s edge, feeling the slow tilt away from salinity reported by ecologists. It will take years, but she could recover to become that fresh, sporting jewel imagined in her heyday. It’s what I love about this lake. Not the dream of what she could be or the failure of that dream but that she stretches out between the two and settles there. I lift up my arms, saluting the morning’s sensuous blush. When I turn, there is a woman watching me. She stands by her car on the dirt in nice little Blahnik flats and fresh white linen pants. I recognize the look. It’s the kind of neatly turned trick I used to try out myself, but I was too lanky and angular for it—the clothes looked like they were slipping off a bent hanger. But this woman has it just right—a slim, compact body; simple, jet black hair; nails trimmed short and done in a modest pink. It all works together. As if she’s sewn right in. I was about to go past her to the shop and shoot the breeze with Mary. She works the shop on Tuesdays. The rest of the time she runs the science lab at the local elementary school. We talk about everything: the atmosphere on the moons of Mars, how elephants scatter bones of their dead, why scien- 2 / Cut Away tists make structures miles long to see what happens when tiny particles go very fast. All the strangest laws of the universe , it turns out, are packed inside the smallest measures. Mary, too, is more than she appears. More than the canned soup and dusty band-aid boxes she sells part time from her cousin’s mini-mart. More than her plain little wooden house with green cement lawn on Biloxi road where we sit on hot afternoons and drink homemade ginger ale. She always knows something new about the world and how it fits in among the other mysteries. Nothing is ever the way you think it’s going to be. That’s why I watch the woman for a moment and don’t just go on past. When a stranger comes into town and stands dumb-faced at the sight of things, I wonder why. Will they stay a while or get in their car, roll up the windows, and head off to the highway? This stranger seems caught, unable to take things in or turn away. So I stop and tell her about the lake and the Colorado River breaking from its banks. She does not seem to hear me. Her skin is pearling up with heat, but she remains composed, a perfect image of herself. Her stare sees and unsees me in one go. I suspect this is her manner, but it’s also something I bring out in people. I tell her to drink water, thinking she will crack a smile and thank me. But she looks even more confused. Like a stunned bird blown off course, the native creatures bewilder her. We are getting nowhere. I smile and turn to go. That’s when she calls out, “Wait! Have you seen this girl?” She’s hooked me with a neat twist. I turn to look. Her jaw is slack, lips dry and parted. When she runs her hand across her forehead, her brow smears with the fine, blonde, lakeside dust. I remember that feeling, from when I first came to the lake, like the heat was swallowing me. She really should get somewhere cool. It’s summer; the heat will spike over one hundred by midafternoon. Stepping toward me, she holds a flyer up. For a moment, I see Olivia’s face. Then the woman stumbles, Catherine Kirkwood / 3 falls out of her sandal, hops and winces, dangling her foot above the sand. I don’t want to bring her home. I am careful whom I invite into my life. There are steps to follow, intentions to sift, a slow, circling measure of whether things seem right. But this woman is bleeding, dehydrated, and confused. She stares at me when I offer to take her to my place. Then when I nod for her to unlock the car, she blinks and says nothing. It’s unlocked so I get in...