The Floating Cradle

Ten

I pretend I'm asleep when my parents and Lyle come down the stairs before dawn on Christmas day. Mama fixes the men breakfast and retreats back to bed after they're through. A blast of cold infiltrates the house when they leave for the barn; I scrunch lower under my blankets on the couch and stare at the Christmas tree.

Allie and the tantum are in my bed, which is gross, but I try to be fair and tell myself it would be gross even if he were human. What bothers me more is the sock of pills hanging out in my desk drawer, just waiting to be discovered. Oh, and Pete, fast asleep spooning his dakimakura pillow—not once was it suggested that he should give up his room.

I shoot off a few texts, though I don't expect anyone will reply this early. Most of my friends from school don't live on running farms like I do; their parents are in the trades or work in one of the abundant factories that survive in symbiosis with our corner of America. I know a bunch of other farm kids from my 4-H days, back when I was the consummate, equine-obsessed "horse girl" (my email is hottotrot454@comcast.net, so I'm still paying for that phase of my life), but we're not as close as we used to be.

All of this is to say, I'm bored and lonely enough to text Cayden.

"merry xmas! :)," I send. I regret the smiley face immediately. I scroll up to the last text he sent me a couple days ago: "50/grm is going rate. we can start w a quarter. meet me @ 2:30 same spot."

I pick at my cheek with self-loathing.

You stupid loser. Allie never would've pulled this shit.

The stairs creak in pronouncement and I look up to see her, barefoot in an oversized t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. Two maracas encircled by the words "Tapas for Tatas: Alpha Delta Phi Bar Crawl to Beat Breast Cancer" span her chest.

"Merry Christmas," Allie says. "I guess I'm still an hour ahead. Can I sit?"

I pull my legs up and she nestles in next to me, eyes tracing the familiar contours of the living room. They linger on the tree, on the pictures perched on its branches amid baubles and glass icicles and crumbly macaroni reindeer made in kindergarten classrooms kept long past their expiration date by Mama.

"At least she didn't black me out of the family photos," Allie says. "Got rid of all my individual ones, though."

"But she didn't throw 'em out," I confide. "I saw her hide 'em—"

"Lemme guess—in her panty drawer?" Allie interjects. We look at each other, surprised at how easy it is to thumb our noses at something that once cast such a pall, then break into quiet giggles.

"Ugh, this family," Allie says with docile exasperation. "I told Jack he was crazy, wantin' to marry me."

I'm reticent, reluctant to share what's on my mind for fear of sounding like Mama. Allie picks at her elbow.

"I should've called more, written more," she sighs, hugging her knees. "You were so little—it wasn't fair of me to leave it to you to reach out. But I was so ready to forget this place. I was so angry. So if you're angry with me, Sarah, I just want you to know that I get it. I don't regret leavin', but I regret losin' you."

I puff my cheeks out and exhale, trying to come up with something to lighten the mood, but there's nothing. I don't want to bullshit her—of course I'm angry, just not for the reasons she thinks. And some little part of me fights to stay frigid, holding out for more.

C'mon. I know you can do better than that.

"What's been happenin' with you?" she hazards. "I'm not gonna ask you how school's goin'—that's just so annoyin', right?"

It's an absurdly broad question, more for catching up over coffee than overcoming estrangement, but I reward the effort. I start telling her things she's missed—Grandpa dying, Dan getting arrested and ejected from his electrician apprenticeship, the middle school's brief and disastrous experiment with "tantic immersion learning" a few years back—but the more I talk, the less I feel there is to say, and the less I want to say it.

I look at her nails, manicured a chic, greyish taupe. Her razor-thin phone cleaves to the underside of her arm, transparent in inactivity but still conspicuous considering our surroundings. When her head moves, those diamond studs either side of it catch the early morning sun; they even make the Christmas lights look dull. For a moment, it's like I'm sitting next to a stranger. What's left in common between us that she hasn't given up or erased?

I think of a science fact I probably read on the underside of a bottle cap: it takes seven years for the human body to replace every one of its cells, like one long blood transfusion into oblivion. Seven years. How long, I wonder, does it take for the tantic body to do the same?