The Last Romantics. Tara Conklin

Ace jump on one leg, then the other, taunting Joe, daring him. Ace’s feet were wrapped in silver as the water rushed over them.

      “Come on, Joe,” he said. “You pussy.”

      And then Ace slipped. One foot dropped over the far side of the dam. He landed heavily on a knee, which cracked with a sickening sound just before he slid off. For an instant Ace’s hands hung grasping onto the lip, water pushing into his face, but the force of it was too strong and the hands disappeared.

      This happened so quickly that we barely registered his absence. Ace was there on the dam, and then he was gone. The still, hot air remained the same, the sound of rushing water, the buzz of a sapphire-blue dragonfly that started and stopped across the surface of the pond. It seemed possible that Ace would return, pop up again, that the thrust of those seconds would unfurl and bring us back to the start. But of course that can never happen.

      Ace fell, and no one spoke, and then Joe ran up the path and into the woods surrounding the pond and down the hill on the other side. I heard the crash of underbrush, the thud of his feet. The drop on the other side of the dam was the distance of a three-story building to the ground. The pool into which the water fell was dark, rocky along the edges, and who knew how deep? The pool swiftly became a thin, roiling stream bordered by thick undergrowth and tall, shaggy trees. For us the pond marked the edge of our world. Beyond the pond, below the dam, stretched an unknown wilderness.

      Joe called for Ace, his voice growing weaker as he traveled farther into the woods. Nathan began to follow Joe, and I stood, ready to join them, but Nathan told me harshly to sit down. “Joe and I can do it,” he said. “Girls stay here.” And then he, too, was gone, bounding into the brush.

      Five hours after Ace fell from the dam, Joe stepped through the door of the gray house. He was sweaty, feet muddy, face and hands scratched from branches and brambles. Ace was fine, he told us, fished from the stream by Joe about half a mile from the pond. He’d swallowed some water, Joe said, and had been struggling when Joe found him.

      “Was he drowned?” I asked.

      “Not exactly,” Joe said. “He puked up half the pond once I pulled him out.” Joe was smiling, but his face was tight and nervous.

      Ace’s ankle had twisted in the fall, the knee was grazed raw and swollen, but he was able to walk with Joe and Nathan half carrying him back up to the road and to his house. Only Ace’s mother had been home, Joe reported, a woman none of us had ever met. She was tall and skinny, and she didn’t look like Ace one bit. She was sitting on a flowered couch and smoking a cigarette when they pushed open the front door. Ace’s house looked shiny on the inside, and Joe had been afraid to touch anything or even to place his feet on the pale carpet and so they’d hovered half in, half out of the door, holding Ace.

      Ace’s mother blew smoke from her nostrils like a dragon before asking, “What happened this time?”

      Joe and Nathan deposited Ace onto the couch and then waited as Ace’s mother poked and prodded at the ankle.

      “Just a sprain,” she declared, and gave Ace a bag of frozen peas and the TV remote control. She pulled two crisp dollar bills from her wallet, handed one to Joe, one to Nathan, and said, “Thank you for bringing him home. Run along now.” So they did.

      It was another week before we saw Ace again. One morning he returned to the pond with a slight limp, his left ankle wrapped in a putty-colored bandage, the laces of his left sneaker loose. He sat beside me on a towel.

      “Mom says I can’t go swimming for another week,” Ace told me. He pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. “Rummy?” he asked.

      Soon it became clear that Ace had changed. The challenge that he’d worn like a badge was gone. The bite of aggression between Ace and Joe evaporated. In its place was a new, cautious friendship. Joe treated Ace with kindness and some pity, almost as though he were a much younger child. Ace followed Joe, he courted him with a sort of stifled awe. Finally Ace understood, I thought, that Joe was special.

      This continued for the rest of the summer, until we arrived back at our different schools, each of us locked in our own grade and class and routine. Sometimes during the winter, I’d catch a glimpse of Ace at the grocery store with his mother or gliding through town in the blue BMW his father drove, sleek and shiny as a slow-moving bullet. Always Ace looked small and shrunken beside his parents, who were both tall, graceful people. Later I understood how every day Ace disappointed his parents simply because of who he was: unambitious, easily distracted, petty-minded. Even then I recognized the signs of that disappointment: the way his mother did not look directly at her son. The way his father walked a pace in front. I found myself feeling sorry for Ace. I found myself unable to recall the Ace that once had seemed like a threat.

       Chapter 3

      THE PAUSE COULD not go on forever. We knew this. There were dangers. We were children alone, the four of us, without protection or instruction, and while Renee played the part of quasi mother, she buckled under the weight. Unsustainable, I wrote later. Unsupportable, hazardous, perilous, unsafe.

      The year that Renee turned thirteen, she grew high, round nubs on her chest and hair that went lank and greasy just days after her bath. She exuded a musty, earthy smell and was inhabited by a new atmosphere of churning activity like a spirit possessed. We had all seen the movie Poltergeist, and I thought that this was the only explanation for my sister: an otherworldly occupation.

      One night Renee was late coming home. After cross-country practice, she always caught the late bus at five thirty, but it was now six fifty and dark, and still no sign of her. Joe and Caroline and I made ourselves cheese sandwiches for dinner and chewed silently on the couch, plates on our laps, watching the door. Twice Joe said he should call the school, but he hadn’t, not yet.

      “What if she doesn’t come back?” Caroline said. She was ten years old and afraid of spiders, the kitchen garbage disposal, and the grrr sound Joe made only to frighten her. Nightmares still plagued Caroline and would well into her twenties.

      I was undisturbed by Renee’s mysterious absence. Life without Renee was simply impossible. She made charts that listed our chores, homework, Joe’s baseball schedule, Caroline’s flute concerts, her own cross-country practices and meets. Renee ensured that we wore clean clothes to school, brushed our teeth, brushed our hair, caught the school bus, did our homework. Renee relit the pilot light on the furnace when it sputtered out. She forged Noni’s signature on checks and permission slips. She cooked spaghetti and frozen peas and pancakes from the Bisquick box. We had learned to exist without our mother, but we could not exist without Renee.

      “Maybe,” Caroline said, “we should wake up Noni.” We hadn’t seen our mother today. We hadn’t seen her yesterday either.

      “No,” said Joe. “I’ll go find Renee.” I saw in him the same air of responsibility, of taking charge, that he’d worn when Ace fell off the dam.

      “I want to come,” I said.

      Joe crouched down to look me in the eye. “Fiona, it’s better if I go alone. I’ll go faster. And you need to keep Caroline company. Keep her safe.”

      I expected Caroline to dispute this, but she only nodded. “Yes, Fiona, stay with me. Please.” Caroline’s eyes were going red, her voice shook.

      And so I stayed as Joe disappeared out the door, into the night. Caroline and I sat on the couch to wait. We did not talk or turn on the TV; we finished our sandwiches and listened intently for a sound, any sound, to come from Noni’s room.

      Forty-five minutes passed, perhaps an hour, and at last the front door opened and Renee and Joe, both breathless and agitated, tumbled inside. Relief flooded me, a rush I had not known I was waiting for. Caroline burst into tears.

      “What happened?” I asked. “Where were you?”

      Renee pulled roughly at the curtains,