Someone, Please

Laura Baxter took off her glasses to wipe her eyes and found she had nothing dry to wipe them with.

She used the hem of her black T-shirt anyway. It smeared one lens. She put the glasses back on and looked out over Lake Erie through the blur.

He had said he was sorry three times. The first time, she had asked what he was sorry about. By the third, she had stopped asking.

Now she kept thinking of things she should have said before he left. There had been plenty of time while she stood there holding the door. She had watched him walk away instead.

A wave broke against the rocks below her shoes.

“Fine,” she told it.

Another followed, louder than the first.

“I heard you.”

She pushed her hands into the pockets of her gray sweatpants. The wind caught her untidy brown hair and dragged it across her mouth. She pulled it away, found a loose strand stuck to her wet cheek, and began crying again.

That annoyed her almost as much as the breakup. She had come to the lake to get out of the apartment. She had not meant to bring his last few sentences with her.

Light spread across the water.

Laura blinked. For a moment she thought a boat had turned a lamp toward shore. Then the rocks below her flashed white, and her shadow stretched behind her.

She looked up.

Something bright crossed the sky. She had barely found it when it struck the lake.

The sound made her duck. Water rose beyond the rocks, shining from within. Laura opened her mouth to gasp just as the wave hit.

It struck her face and chest. She stumbled backward, swallowed lake water and fell hard on the path. Her glasses slipped sideways. She caught them with one hand while coughing into the other.

For a few seconds she could see nothing clearly. Light swam behind her closed eyelids. Water ran from her hair and down the back of her shirt.

When she could breathe, she crawled farther from the edge.

Somewhere along the shore, people were shouting. Laura sat with her knees drawn up and watched the water until her hands stopped shaking enough to put her glasses straight.

Then she went home.

By morning, she had a bruise on one hip, damp clothes hanging over the bathtub and a headache she blamed on crying.

She stood at the bathroom sink with a toothbrush in her mouth. Her hair had dried in crooked waves. She tried flattening one side with her free hand, gave up, and bent to spit.

Something hissed.

Laura stepped back.

A thin curl of smoke rose from the basin. Beneath the toothpaste foam, a bright spot spread across the porcelain.

She stared at it with the toothbrush still in her hand.

The bright spot sank. There was a sharp little crack, then a glowing drop fell into the cupboard below.

Laura turned on the tap.

Water struck the damaged patch and splashed through it. She shut the tap off again.

She put the toothbrush down very carefully.

For a while she read the toothpaste label. It was the same tube she had used the night before.

She leaned toward the mirror and opened her mouth.

Her tongue looked ordinary. So did her teeth. Nothing glowed. Nothing hurt.

At the doctor's office, she kept her hands clasped in her lap so he would not see how badly they were trembling.

“Any burning?” he asked.

“Not in my mouth.”

He examined her gums, the inside of her cheeks and beneath her tongue. Laura watched his face as he worked. She wanted him to stop looking puzzled.

“I can't see any injury,” he said at last.

“I burned a hole through my sink.”

“What were you using to clean it?”

“I was brushing my teeth.”

He asked about the toothpaste. She took the tube out of her bag and put it on his desk.

He read it, just as she had.

She told him about the lake. He asked more questions. At the end of the visit, her mouth still looked healthy and she still had no explanation she could take home.

For the next few days, Laura tried to convince herself something had been wrong with the sink.

Then she coughed into a paper tissue.

A brown mark spread through it. She dropped it into the empty basin and watched a tiny orange edge eat its way across the paper.

She had not used the toothpaste that morning.

Laura sat on the closed toilet lid until the tissue had burned out.

After that, she began noticing where her mouth was pointed.

She turned away before coughing. She kept her lips closed when someone made her laugh. At night, she lay awake worrying about things she had never needed to think about before.

She went back for help. Each time someone examined her, she hoped there would finally be something to see.

There never was.

Once, she practiced an explanation in front of the bathroom mirror.

“Please don't stand too close.”

It sounded rude.

“There's something wrong with me.”

That sounded worse.

She stopped practicing.

The sink remained broken. She kept the cupboard beneath it empty and a folded towel on the floor. Every time she passed the bathroom, she could smell the scorched wood.

Months went by. The bruise on her hip faded. Her hair grew long enough to keep falling into her eyes, and she cut a little off over the kitchen trash can. One side came out shorter. She decided she could live with it.

One evening, she saw a couple kissing beside a bus stop. The woman had one hand hooked into the man's coat pocket. When the bus arrived, they broke apart laughing and hurried aboard.

Laura missed the bus.

She stayed where she was until the next one came.

That night, she stood before the mirror and touched two fingers to her lips. She snatched them away almost at once, then examined them beneath the light.

Nothing had happened. She had kept her mouth closed.

She tried to imagine explaining that to someone who wanted to kiss her.

Wait. Be careful. You can't.

She put her hands over her face.

She had been lonely before the wave. She could remember exactly how it had felt, sitting beside the lake and thinking nobody would ever want her again.

Now she wanted to go back and tell that woman to get up. Go home. Let him leave. There would still be other people in the world.

Laura lowered her hands and looked at herself.

“What am I supposed to do?”

The bathroom gave her back the hum of the light.

She began taking walks by the lake again.

At first she stayed well back from the water. She watched families pass, fishermen pack their things, and gulls quarrel over scraps. Sometimes she sat until everyone nearby had gone.

The water looked cleaner now. People talked about it on the bus. They talked about the Defenders, too, and the things happening in Cleveland.

Laura listened. She wondered how a person asked for that sort of help. Whether there was a number. Whether anyone would believe her if she found it.

One evening, long after the blast, she returned to the stretch of path where the wave had knocked her down.

She wore the gray sweatpants again. The black T-shirt was beneath her jacket. She had washed both so often that she could no longer remember where the lake had stained them.

She sat well above the rocks.

For a while she tried to put together what she would say to someone who could help. She wanted to start at the beginning, but the beginning was a man walking away from her door, and that no longer seemed like something she could explain without crying.

So she let herself cry.

When she could speak, she took off her glasses and held them between her knees.

“I don't know who I'm asking,” she said.

A wave broke below her, small enough to leave the path dry.

“I just need somebody to help me.”

She looked across the darkening water.

“Please.”