Month: April 2015
Please Olivia, Let Me Be Your Messiah, Please! – a.k.a. The First Time He Walked On Water
by John Brantingham
originally published in East Jasmine Review
No, he says. No, I don’t understand.
He stands up from the blanket she spread out earlier right on the edge of the lake, and he knocks over the fancy blue bottle of sparkling water. He bought it special because she was staring at one just like it that time in the grocery store.
It makes sense, she says. Her eyes are pleading with him to be reasonable. I’m going to be in college in a couple of weeks. You still have a whole other year in high school, and I want to experience things.
You want someone older?
I guess so. She shrugs and looks out over the lake. He turns to see what could possibly be distracting her, what could be more important than this, but all he can see is the lake, glassy the way lakes get on warm August afternoons.
You want some guy who can do big things, grown-up things.
She shrugs, and there’s nothing to say, so he walks out on the lake, walks on water, didn’t know he could do it before this moment, but that’s when God does these things for people isn’t it, when they’re desperate, when they need help. He can feel his need down inside him. Need is who he is right at this moment.
When he turns around, she’s just shaking her head slowly.
I can do things, he says. He keeps his voice calm even though he wants to scream. He gestures with both his hands at the little waves splashing around his Chuck Taylors. You want a guy who can do things, I’m right here.
Don’t make a scene, she says, and she casts around to see if anyone else is out here with them.
You want me to be your messiah, I’ll do that. He stomps on the water, splashing it up to make his point.
You want me to be your Satan, I can do that too. He sticks his index fingers on his forehead and growls. He tries to chuckle, like it’s all kind of a joke, but the laugh hiccups into a single, little sob that floats out there in the space between them for a moment. They both watch it silently until a breeze kicks up, and it blows away.
It’s not that.
Then what is it. What he wants to say is that he’ll do anything. He’ll be anything. He’ll change his whole personality if she wants him to, that he knows he’s only 16, but he also knows that this feeling — being with her — is the best and most powerful thing he’s ever going to feel, and he’ll do anything she wants just to be near her. He wants to say all of that, but she told him once that she hates when he says needy stuff like that, so he just puts his hands on his hips and waits for her answer.
Instead of saying anything more, she gasps her own sob and runs off towards the parking lot where he knows she’s going to get into her little blue VW and drive out of his life forever.
He should weep, he supposes, but that will come later.
Now, he dips his toe in the water below him and starts to script the same word over and over in big swooping letters. It seems the most beautiful word ever written, and it will in ten years when he names his daughter.
Olivia, he writes. Olivia, Olivia, Olivia.
Read more by John Brantingham in:
The Green of Sunset (Moon Tide Press, 2013)
– culturalweekly.com – servinghousejournal.com – johnbrantingham.blogspot.com –
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