Alone Together

Emily Collins

The new hire was sexy and mean. When Violet introduced herself, Lara, brand new, had looked at her and said, “I’m twenty-three,” as if she would always be so. “When people tell me I’m too ambitious,” Lara continued, “that only fuels my ambition. Don’t cross me.” It was then Violet had noticed the scar on her neck, thin as a piece of thread.

Lara started working at the general store the summer she graduated from NYU. She wore short camisole dresses to work. Her skin was clear and dry. The island heat appeared to swirl above her though she was a little wet behind the knees. The gloss on her lips gathered in hard drops at the corners of her mouth. The faint purple beneath her eyes was speckled with mascara. She showed conditional hospitality, tossing half glances to visitors and co-workers. There was a type of islander and tourist she liked best. She’d greet them with her sweet and oily laughter, then chat with them about products and sometimes New York City. She sat on the counter and crossed her legs.

When she walked, her fingers traced whatever reached towards her. So much reached towards her. That summer the island thrummed with Queen Anne’s Lace and Tiger Lilies, and every soul was smothered with beauty, but Lara couldn’t care less. Yet her face was beautiful. Something furled and unfurled across it. It told the world she was curious about the nature of things but indifferent to passing its tests.

Rain pricked the table from which Violet had been offering samples of brie with rosemary lentil crackers. She’d sampled more food than usual. Tonight Bailey Island would host a conductors’ retreat in an old barn near land’s end. The conductors and musicians arrived by ferry an hour ago. They’d stood still as the ferry approached the island, their black instrument cases like erect shadows behind them. Once on land, the musicians disappeared into the hotel to escape the heat while the conductors scattered about the island to practice. Violet watched two conductors circle the general store parking lot. They moved in graceful turns. One pinched a bygone brie’s toothpick and used it like a miniature baton.

Thunder marbled the air. She packed the food in Tupperware and folded the table cloth and tucked it under her arm. She made her way into the store where Lara was leaning across the counter with a magazine. The air conditioner had made the room chilly. Goosebumps stippled what Violet could see of Lara’s breasts. Her hair smelled of lightning.

“You forgot the table,” Lara said. “It’ll be ruined.”

“It lived a long life,” Violet said.

“What?” Lara said.

“The table. It lived a long life. I don’t know about happy, though.”

“But what will take its place?” Lara said without the least note of humor.

The store was empty but for them and Mavis, who’d worked at the general store long enough to rise above anything. As a child, Violet had thought Mavis’s jowls hung like butcher meat. Now, Violet’s face with its new lines, turned for comfort to the old woman. She did no more than shrug at Violet’s glance, but today that was enough. Mavis, Violet knew, could glean heaviness from even the saddest soul.

“I was joking,” Violet said.

Lara set down her magazine and looked brazenly into Violet’s eyes. “Are you going to the conductors’ retreat tonight?” she said. “It’s open to the locals.”

Already Violet was but another casualty in the collection that had succumbed to Lara’s ambition. She knew this, and liked it, too, though she couldn’t say why. “Enjoy yourself,” she said.

“I’ll save you a seat,” Lara said, her eyes alight with interest.

The cheese and table cloth were heavy in Violet’s arms. “No need,” she said.

She stored the table cloth and cheese and stocked some items and refilled the icebox in the cooler. She said goodbye to Lara for the first time, then clocked out and walked home in the rain.

When her parents passed away, Violet moved into her childhood home on the island. It was two stories with walls pink as lungs. Returning to it each day after work she felt a sweetness in her belly. She sat down on the couch and closed her eyes. At thirty-eight, Violet didn’t know what was next. She thought an island was the best possible interlude.

Violet had been living in Portland but didn’t connect with city life. She smiled as she remembered the tipping point. It happened at a boutique. She liked to self-medicate with discounts and sales. She’d stood before a mirror bordered with stage lights. A salesgirl had brought her a red trench coat that fit Violet like a vine. She’d admired how the coat gave her a cardinal’s chest and full hips. The coat had shown her that perhaps everything would be All Right, that she had time to reverse a few things and begin again. She believed it until she turned around and noticed something about the coat she had missed. On the back were the words, THE FINISHER sewn in purple thread. She shook the coat off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Life no longer pretended to be sane. Why should she?

Violet knew she would leave the city, but she didn’t know when or where. A week later she received a phone call about her parents and the fatal car crash. “Back to Bailey,” she’d whispered to herself.

At home Violet devoted her time to playing music and writing songs. She made videos of herself and posted them online. Recently a commenter had described her music as haunted and melodic. “I don’t condone drug use,” he had written, “but this stuff is like musical meth.”

Violet had soared and for days after that her head bubbled with fantasies of the man moving in with her on the island. She’d bring home samples from work and let him feast on her bare stomach. She’d run her hands through his hair. He’d suck on orange peels until they were strings.

Now Violet decided it was time for the fantasies to end. She didn’t want the fantasy of another. She wanted the swarm of her cells to meet another’s.

She checked her computer for new comments, then stepped to the back of her house, where it faced the sea. She stood barefoot in the grass and watched the horizon. She refused to think about Mr. Musical Meth taking off her clothes, and yet that was where her thoughts strayed. When she tired of staring at the blue stretch of nothing, she played her guitar on the porch. She didn’t sing. Even the playing was too calculated. Her fingers were tired and she was unsure why.

It had been over four years since that fatal car accident, but she thought she heard her father’s steps behind her. These were the moments when she couldn’t do anything at all. Grief swelled within her until she was nothing but this deep organ of love for her parents. She pressed her face against her guitar. She let herself fall apart. Then the sadness dulled and her eyes dried up. She felt like a bug strapped to the shadow of a boot, careless of the shadow’s size.

She looked up to a conductor in her yard. He stood several feet away absently twirling his baton in a white-gloved hand. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. His suit was wet from the rain. His eyes were a wild green and his voice was like a drooping flower. He apologized for intruding. He was lost, he said, and needed directions to the hotel.

It wasn’t until he was out of sight that he shouted, “You play good, lady.”

The words were gentle like a communion. Life wasn’t very wide and it didn’t last long. Violet would go to the conductors’ retreat. She would drink a glass of port wine then ride her bike to the old barn where Lara would wait for her with eyes full of this world upside down.  

At night the barn lit up like the pages of a storybook. Rosehip bulbs kissed its sides. The island shrunk and the mass of visitors made things seem warmer than they were. The world felt fragile and contained.

The show had already begun by the time Violet got there. In a shaft of light from the barn’s open door, Lara was smoking against a tree. Violet leaned her bicycle against the barn and walked towards her.

“I hope you have short term memory loss,” Lara said.

“Excuse me?”

Lara held up the program that listed all five pieces of the evening. “Each conductor plays at least one of these songs. Nothing else.”

Lara wore a white halter dress that showed off her scar and the tiny, amber beauty marks that arced across her chest. Her hair was piled in a sleepy hive of sparkly barrettes. Her ears were studded with plastic strawberry earrings so old some of the red had rubbed off. 

“Thanks for saving me a seat,” Violet said, leaning against the tree.

The island was lifted into Bach’s “Mass in B Minor.” Violet wished they had chosen something else. Bach tugged at her fringes. She refused to tear up beside Lara.

Lara quit crying after the third Bach. She wiped her cheeks with the end of her dress then smoothed the fabric over her thighs. Her mascara ran sweetly beneath her tears. Her nose squeaked when she sniffed. She looked amused, as if she’d made a private joke about broken records. Violet pretended not to notice.

She lost count of how many conductors played. Pachelbel’s “Cannon in D Major” weaved in and out of the barn. Lara’s profile was wistful. Her knee touched Violet’s. The conductor milked Pachelbel for more than he was worth. Romantics were brave but inconsiderate. When he was through, the audience applauded again, again.

“Let’s go,” Lara whispered.

They walked to the sea and stood barefoot on the rocks. Violet’s skirt billowed in the wind. Lara leapt onto the sand and gathered shells. Her shoulder blades shone in the moonlight. Violet joined Lara and held her shells.

“I hear you play,” Lara said.

“Word gets around.”

“No. I mean, I hear you play. Sometimes I walk by your house and can hear your voice and guitar. Do you ever perform?”

The last time Violet played live was at a waterfront bar in Portland. The heavy lighting had dripped like yolk over everyone’s face. It was distracting. She was better off playing alone.

“No,” Violet said.

“I need a creative outlet. Can you teach me?”

“Torturing me at the store’s not enough for you?”

“I’m sorry,” Laura said with a humility Violet found surprising.

She hadn’t been looking for an apology, but there it was, panting at her feet. Violet breathed it in and was glad.

“When and where?” Violet said.

“Your place after work. Twice a week?”

There was a sadness in Lara Violet couldn’t name, but she felt it everywhere. Lara’s beauty put a fine point on sorrow. With a face like hers, Violet thought, a flicker of grief could ignite another’s heart into flames. 

In the distance there was more applause. Lara bowed. Violet laughed and did the same. When Lara straightened, her smile was gone. Her eyes took in the sky. She told Violet goodnight and left.

Stunned, Violet thought of everything Lara carried, known and unknown. The unknown tongued at her skin, erasing her.

Lara couldn’t play to entertain a child. In Violet’s living room her hand quivered from C to G. Her skin flushed beneath Violet’s guiding hand. When she strummed, the guitar sputtered.

“How do you do this?” Lara asked.

“Practice.”

“Before that. I get scared even before I start. Don’t you get afraid?”

“I’ve found the anxiety goes away the moment you sit down and just do the work.”

“You’re brave.”

Violet had never linked creativity to courage. Maybe courage was behind it all: jotting down the vanishing notes and playing until three in the morning, until the fingers bled. Taming the power and sparing no one in the way.

By her fourth lesson, Lara decided talent was a fancy parlor trick. She continued with the lessons, but they evolved into self-guided tours and questions about photographs on the walls.

One night she arrived stoned. She drank half a pitcher of orange juice and ate all the humus. Violet considered sending her home. Then Lara turned on the radio and swung her hips around the kitchen. She ran her hands through her hair. Violet couldn’t say no.

The next time Violet invited Lara to stay for dinner. They had salad and wine. Lara’s hair was coiled in French braids. She wore a crochet halter top and a denim skirt. Violet pictured the place beneath it bulbous with heat. She went to the bathroom to curse herself in the mirror.

“Don’t you do this,” she said. “Don’t you fucking do this.”

She rinsed her face. Beneath the weight of the towel her eyes flooded with the colors of Lara. And when Violet returned, Lara’s legs moved toward her, certain as an amen.

Upstairs Lara pinned Violet to the bed. Violet removed Lara’s clothes and ran her cunt up and down Lara’s thigh. Lara freed herself and swooped down. Violet brought a pillow to her face. Her voice rang foreign in her body. She didn’t want to release the sound too soon. Lara’s lips were swollen with love. She took the pillow and kissed her like she had nothing to lose. Her hands slid over Violet until they found an opening there, and there. Her fingers were spattered and wrinkling. Violet felt the softness of Lara’s back, her bottom wreathed in sweat. Violet tried to balance love and lust but failed. She straddled Lara, her face to her chest. Their hearts thrashed like waves.

A few hours before dawn, Violet rose to find Lara sitting with her hands in her lap and her legs dangling from the bed. Her eyes were open but unseeing, and from her lips flowed a stream of quiet gibberish. Lara was asleep, Violet knew. When she touched her back, Lara cried out and fell back on the bed with her knees to her chest. Violet put a pillow beneath Lara’s head and covered her with the sheets. She left to pee, then held Lara until the morning.

Sunlight filled the room. Lara’s face in her arms was peaceful, as if she hadn’t moved all night. Outside, the summer kites were like spirals of pleasure. Lara yawned. The sound was full, that of a woman improbably rested. She kissed Violet on the cheek and stepped into the shower. Soon Violet heard the tick of the gas stove and the sigh of its flames.

She found Lara in just a t-shirt, frying eggs. Two cups of coffee waited on the table.

“If you must know,” Lara said, “I remember some things about last night but not all. I get night terrors. Don’t bother asking why. I have no idea.”

“Lara—”

“Don’t diagnose me, Violet. Don’t you ever diagnose me.”

She plopped the eggs on a plate and sat at the table with her coffee. Violet tucked Lara’s hair behind her ear. Lara held Violet’s hand.

“I didn’t mean to snap,” Lara said. “I get sensitive about mental health stuff.”

“I’m sorry you had a bad dream.”

“Can I request you don’t say that every time it happens? Because it’s going to happen again.”

Some nights Lara slept peacefully. Other nights her dreams were like hell entering through the cracks of the floor. They filled the bed with an invisible war. Violet wanted to help but didn’t know how. They drank green smoothies and watched meditation videos. Violet lost sleep. The purple beneath her eyes matched the purple beneath Lara’s. One morning Lara traced the marks with a finger.

“They’re kind of like mental break down hickeys,” she joked. “You’re welcome.”

“Happy to help.”

“It’s what you do,” Lara said.

“What do you mean?”

“Mavis told me about that time on the bridge after her husband died.”

In high school Violet worked as a dishwasher at Morse’s grill. The kitchen window faced the water and the cribstone bridge. One day she saw Mavis walk across the bridge to the halfway point. She rested her hands on the railing and leaned over. Violet panicked. Still aproned, she ran towards the bridge. Violet knew the granite slabs could withstand wind and waves, but what about Mavis who, since the sudden loss of Joel, moved through life as if her insides were packed with clay? She and Mavis locked eyes. Before Mavis could say anything, Violet took Mavis’s hands into her own and said, “What can I do?” even though nothing could be done and nothing else could be said.

Lara wrapped her legs around Violet and held her.

“You show up,” Lara said. 

On the anniversary of the death of Violet’s parents, in September, she and Lara had dinner with Mavis. She lived on the east side of the island in a two bedroom house atop the Giant’s Stairs, a jagged formation where mica had left twinkling pictures in the rocks. From the screened porch they watched tourists Bacardi-stung and aloe-smeared descend the trail. The waves drooled spindly creatures into the crook of the reaches.

Mavis cooked salmon stamped with lemon slices, Violet’s favorite. Lara set the table and lit a candle. Violet told stories of her past as it was. Somehow her brain conjured images of moments she’d thought lost. She remembered her parents encouraging her music, the islanders encouraging the child she was, the child she was hopping through doubts, blaming the world without knowing why. She wondered how she loved the world anyway.

Her father had been a pianist. As a child, she once asked him if he loved his piano more than her. He’d scooped her into his arms and said, “Of course not. You’re my girl.”

As Violet talked, Lara focused on the candle’s flame, her eyes gleaming like glass. Her lips trembled and tears slid down her cheeks.

 “What is it?” Violet said.

Lara told Mavis that she was sorry and that she’d love to get together again sometime soon.

“What happened?” Violet said after Lara had walked away.

“Do you want to lose her?” Mavis said.

“Of course not.”

“Then go to her, now.”

She found Lara at the end of a hallway papered with images of clouds and trees.

“I know I lost it a little,” Lara said, “but I’m okay.”

“What happened?”

“Thank you for sharing those things about your family. It was beautiful.”

“Lara,” Violet said. She wanted to say more, but Lara silenced her with a glance. Her face was puffy. She looked at Violet and softened. She told Violet to come closer. Now, a new moment for Violet’s brain: Lara pulling her towards the paper sky, kissing her.

That night in bed Violet brought her finger to Lara’s scar.

“Do they have anything to do with this?”

“Violet. Please.”

“You’ve got to help me out here,” Violet said, though she’d meant something very different. If you leave, I won’t make it.

“Yes,” Lara said after a long pause.

“Yes what?”

“The dreams. They have something to do with this.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Please, love, stop saying that.”

Outside fall cloaked the island. They lit candles that smelled of maple sap and piles of leaves. They made love and roasted pumpkin seeds, then took a bath. Violet sat with her back against the tub and Lara between her legs.

“Sometimes I miss life off the island,” Lara said.

“Like what?”

“Well, New York mostly.”

“Why’d you leave?”

Lara was silent.

“Did you have a hard time finding a job?” Violet asked.

“I was great at finding jobs. I was bad at keeping them.”

“I like you more every day.”

“Don’t you ever tire of being a sample girl? I mean, the name alone is awful.”

“I have my whole life to be called a woman, Lara.”

Lara turned and sat on her knees, her breasts over the water. A soap cone stuck to the side of her head like a party hat. “I’m no girl,” she said to Violet with immutable certainty. “I’m a woman. You know that, right?” Violet thought of Lara curled up in bed, her dreams lost to morning. Sometimes her eyes were heavy and her lips quivered with something awful she couldn’t say. Violet would kiss her, then. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. It was that, after all these years, she was still bad at being herself. “I started looking for jobs,” Lara said. “I don’t want to stop us, you know? But I won’t work at a general store all my life either.”

“Have you found anything?”

“I have an interview next week for some stupid office job in Chelsea.”

“Oh.”

“I know.”

Lara laid her head on Violet’s chest. Before she met Lara, there’d been a cold husk within her. Day by day Lara had carved at this husk until it broke. Now light flowed from its frayed edges. It was scalding.

“People can sense something different in you,” Violet said. “They’re afraid of it.”

“Are you afraid?”

Violet kissed the top of Lara’s head. “No,” she said. “Once, I thought you were a little mean.”

The next week, after Lara left for her interview, Violet wrote new songs. Her fingers leapt and her voice filled the house. Love, she realized, had distracted her from the very thing that had taught her what love was. For two full nights she slept well. For two full nights she hurt.

On the third day, when Violet returned from work, Lara was waiting for her on the porch, a suitcase at her feet. She wore a camel jacket and silk scarf. Her bowler hat was the color of the Russian sage. Her face was flushed, but her smile had been sapped of delight.

“How did it go?”

“Okay, I think.”

Violet’s head throbbed. She said nothing.

“Can you sit with me for a second?” Lara said as she sat down and patted the spot beside her. “There are things I wish I could tell you. I want so badly to tell you.”

In Lara, Violet saw something terrible. The earth rotated in her stomach. Lara beside her was miraculously still. There was a secret in her so blurred, Violet wondered if either of them would ever see it clearly. Lara’s breath wobbled, and her voice was hoarse.

“In the dreams,” she said, “I can’t touch anything. It’s a world without language. The entire dream is a feeling, the kind of feeling there are no words for anyway. A part of me loves you very much. That’s the part of me I want to live by.”

Without mascara, Lara’s lashes were gold. The breeze pinched her cheeks and they glowed. In that moment her body looked enchanted, but her words expressed only this world’s harshness.

“When the love part of me fades—because sometimes it fades and I don’t know why—I’m left wondering how I’ve managed to be with you or anyone else. It’s amazing, you and me alone, together.”

Violet remained still, Lara’s face crystallizing in her mind.

“Truth is,” Lara said, “there’s this thing in me that keeps me from loving as much as I want to. This thing knows me better than anyone else. When I try to push past it, I am sick and frozen and terrified.” 

Violet took Lara in her arms. “That thing you say is inside you,” she said, “I’ve had my whole life, too.”

“You have?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For saying it first.”

They sipped tea on the couch. Two crystals dangled in the window and scattered rainbows of light across the room.

“I’m very tired,” Lara said. There was a slash of rainbow on her cheek. “Could you play me something while I rest?”

On her guitar, Violet played a wordless lullaby she had never performed. Lara closed her eyes, and Violet stared at Lara’s scar.

“They offered me the job,” Lara said when Violet had finished.

Violet saw the coming days in a flash. Lara would accept the job offer and more suitcases would populate the house. Violet would become a ghost in her own bed. In her mind, the relationship would remain dark and fresh, like a plum bitten into, the juice of it powering her through the days of no touch or sound. She’d imagine Lara on the roof of her apartment, tracing with her hand that riverbed of monstrous hopes, the New York City skyline. She’d imagine Lara swimming back to her. She’d wash ashore bound in lush seaweed.

Several months from now, not in her head but her house, the phone would ring. A young woman’s voice over the rush of midtown traffic would sound in her ear. After a time, the woman would say, doubtfully, “I’m thinking of visiting the island this summer,” and Violet, weightless, would say how ever so lovely that would be.

“Come here,” Violet said, and lay down beside Lara. She pressed her stomach against Violet’s and hooped her arms around Violet’s neck. Violet breathed her in and held her. Their fingers locked. Their skin heated. Violet swore never to lose the fever of them, and she wouldn’t. This heat would cover her body like a tarp until she pulled it back and saw what was there: a woman who loved and was loved, her scars hidden in plain sight like a child at rest, her heart withered in place. Lara squeezed her hand and Violet felt the beginnings of a loss she could live with. Seeing it through would take all her breath. It wouldn’t look so bad.