The Retreat by David Bergen

the field of grass, he saw Lizzy near the water’s edge. She was on her knees, pummelling a shape beneath her and then calling out. Standing off to the side was Shanti. William was running across the rocks and through the trees towards the camp.
    A shimmer of heat, like a false wave seen on the highway in summer, had settled over the scene. Everett walked into and through that gauzy lake. Fish was on his back. Lizzy had her mouth on his. And then she pushed his chest, and blew into his mouth again. Everett found himself beside Lizzy, looking down at Fish’s dead body. He was dead because Everett had finger-fucked Dee Dee. And now Dee Dee was over there, holding her skinny sister’s hand. Dee Dee’s fat, pale face. The crotch of her shorts, slightly twisted, her chubby thighs. Everett shivered. “Fish,” he whispered. “Breathe, Fish.” And his little brother opened his eyes and from his mouth flowed water, a soup of snot and brine and the dark pond itself. Fish coughed and spat and sucked for air and spat some more and then he sat up and said Lizzy’s name and she took him and he pushed himself against her chest.

T here was a time when Mrs. Byrd had been happier, light-hearted and carefree, but when Fish was born, she descended into darkness and she gave Fish over to Lizzy, who was too young to say, No, this is not mine. And she went away, sometimes for long periods, and when she finally returned she could not remember the children’s birthdays or where the salt shaker was kept. And yet briefly the gloom would lift for a while, and during this momentary drift from sadness, the mother held and cared for her baby, and Lizzy was for a time set free.
    There had been, in the first two years, a woman called Minny who came in to care for Fish during the days when Lizzy was at school. Minny was large and old and she wore sensible tan shoes and she suffered from pitting edema. She was constantly pressing a fat thumb against the dough of her flesh and showing the children how the imprint remained. She was from some foreign place where greasy soup was made in large vats. Fish did not like her, he wanted Lizzy, or his mother, but Mrs. Byrd had disappeared. She had been, in their father’s words, vacuumed up by the black dogs, and she came out of her bedroom only intermittently to view the state of the kitchen, or to stick her pale face into the den where thechildren had gathered to watch TV after school. Her wan pretty head, her grey eyes, her hair gone limp because she no longer bathed properly. Everett often curled up beside his mother and read while she slept. And when she woke, he silently combed her hair.
    Their father’s work was a short walk from the house. He came home for lunch and attempted to get Mrs. Byrd to eat. She sat with him at the kitchen table and studied the food on her plate, and then pushed it away. He tucked her up in bed before he left again, telling her to sleep, and that when she woke the world would certainly be a brighter place.
    And then, one evening, when Lizzy was caring for Fish, offering him sliced pear at the kitchen table, her mother returned from a night out. She’d gone with a friend to a talk given by a doctor of philosophy and religion. Lizzy heard her enter the house, and she knew, by the tenor of her mother’s voice and the way she sashayed into the kitchen, that something large had taken place. Her mother lived for big things, and when she found them, she became giddy and breathless. Mrs. Byrd stooped to kiss Fish’s head, and then Lizzy’s cheek, and she said that the Doctor had been absolutely amazing.
    “Amazing,” she said again.
    Lizzy could smell her mother, a mix of cigarette smoke and perfume and the outside air.
    “That man. He talked about, about” – and here her hands moved around as if seeking to gather a spirit from the air – “he talked about being mortal and about how I belong to myself and I am nobody else’s.” She paused and grimaced slightly,perhaps