A Private State: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

the gorge. There were waterfalls, she said, and high cliffs where the Anasazi had likely lived. The way Hannah described the place, Julia expected sacral hush. Instead there was a rutted space where people parked trucks with huge wheels. Yowls filled the air, noise that came from the first pool, brimming with boys in rooster-bright shorts jumping from ledges in the sandstone cliffs. The water burst up white as their bodies slammed into the pool. Julia wondered what the Anasazi would have thought of that. Hannah disapproved. Though sunglasses shaded her eyes, her mouth thinned. Julia thought the Indians might have enjoyed the wildness of the leaps, the immersion. "Looks like fun," Julia said.
Hannah looked at her squarely. Julia had never been good on a high dive and Hannah knew it. But instead of challenging Julia to try the jump, Hannah murmured there'd be fewer people upstream. She was wrong. Swimmers lined the banks of every spot deep enough to wade in. On a sandy spit, in the shade of a willow, she finally said, "This looks like it."
Julia stripped off her shoes, eager for the tingle of deep water, but the river was warm. Weeds flowed along the bed. Triangles of broken bottle were scattered on the bank. Hannah settled her things, then unpinned her bun. Seeing the glow of her sister's hair, Julia felt the sudden lack of her own. "This is where Stephen and I come. During the week when no one's here."
Julia could imagine them making love on the sand, under the gauzy screen of willow leaves. Julia thought of the stuffiness of the afternoons she spent with Henry, how he made sure all the win-

 

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dows were closed so no one could hear them. Then two girls appeared on the opposite bank, below the cliff. They were fourteen or fifteen, hips and thighs already ripe, rippling. Their wet tops clung in bubbles to their skin. Giggling, fleshy, sad, they held chips of rock and turned to the cliff to scratch hearts. Julia looked at them etching the empty curves. Given the chance, she might have been tempted to add one herself. But her sister was fuming beside her. "Don't, Hannah," Julia said. "Let them be." Don't you remember, Hannah, she wanted to ask, the letters we carved in the birch with steak knives? Don't you remember how Mom slapped us?
Julia stared carefully at the way the sun lit the angled edge of the broken glass by her hand, then looked up at the girls filling the hearts with initials and ampersands. Those marks would wash off; the birch was still mending. "Do you wish I hadn't come?" Julia asked and stood up. Hannah said nothing. "I have to tell you I don't think your boyfriend is the nicest guy."
Hannah snapped, "I hear you've taken up with a married man." Suddenly, they were both standing.
"If I'd let him, Stephen would have kissed me," Julia shouted.
The girls stopped scratching and stared. "In your dreams," Hannah shouted back.
In her dreams, Julia wanted to scream at her sister, all she saw was their mother, braid bouncing as she wandered the house. Instead, she ran at Hannah and pushed her backward into the water. The girls fled. Hannah's dark glasses flew off. Her arms flailed, the way they had when she'd first learned to swim. Julia had always been better in water. She waded into the pool, stones and weeds slipping under her feet. She reached a hand toward Hannah, who grabbed it hard, pulling Julia in on top of her.
They splashed in the dead center of the pool, spouting, trying to gain a foothold. It was colder out here than Julia expected, cleaner feeling. They started to push toward the shore, breathing hard, bodies half in water, half in air. Hannah's hair tangled in a wet,

 

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black root straggling down her back. Julia's was drying fast against her cheek. But even in their stumbling, anyone could see they were related, arms tilting just the same way as they tried to balance themselves. As they reached the bank, they looked at each other, motherless, motherless.

 

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Luck
"Duncan's gone,"