thunderstones

     by Mary Akers

Olivia never should have started dating a geologist. That’s clear as quartz as she stands in the Museum of Natural History, Rob looking over her shoulder, his hot geologist’s breath tickling her ear, her pulse pounding in her temples. Whoever heard of spending hours looking at rocks? And that’s what they are, really, just big, lumpy Swiss-cheese rocks.
     Rob is breathing over her shoulder because she’s found the only interesting thing in the whole museum. Unless of course you count the Hope diamond, which God knows she hasn’t seen, since the gunmetal gray rocks are too riveting to forsake, especially for a bunch of silly, sparkling, jelly-colored gems.
     Olivia touches her finger to the freestanding computer screen that lets you design your own meteorite and crash it to earth. She picks the smallest, baseball-sized one, and brings it into Kansas farmland at night. When she touches “launch,” the bumpy meteorite hurtles toward her through black space like a Star Trek asteroid, then point of view changes, and she’s looking down from above, watching it crash to earth.
     “Cool beans,” Rob says in an awed half-whisper.
     Rob has a runner’s body, ropey and thin, and when he holds Olivia, the top of her head fits right under his chin. He has thick, wavy hair, the color of pebbled sand, and loves old Bob Dylan songs, the ones like poems put to music. He sings along, never missing a word. In his dorm he’s started a Jeopardy! craze. She could just eat him up when he commandeers the lounge and calls out the questions to the answers before anyone else. What is Cadmium, Alex?
     Olivia’s parents love Rob, too. Every time she comes home from Emory and Henry College they ask her if she’s gotten a ring yet. They’ll be happy as a bug when she shows them what Rob gave her last night in the Crystal City Marriot: his grandmother’s diamond. Olivia wrapped toilet tissue around the underside of the ring this morning in the hotel to make it stay on her finger. Rob’s grandmother was a big woman.
     After Rob’s roommate dropped out last semester, they had the whole suite to themselves. He could totally get her juices going, too, all squirmy and squishy in the heated air of his upper bunk. Hours would pass in igneous bliss. Whew. Just thinking about it makes her want to suck his breath into her mouth right there in the Geology, Gems, and Minerals exhibit. But when she turns her body toward him, Rob leans past her to take his turn at the make-your-own-meteorite screen. With his shoulders hunched and his eyes stuck on the screen, Rob picks a massive meteorite and sends it, super-fast, into a bustling metropolis. Devastation explodes across the screen.
     Olivia’s fingertips tingle. Her feet sweat inside her shoes like the steaming sauna rocks in the ritzy Richmond Carlton. First Rob explained how porous lava rocks retain heat and moisture, making them the perfect sauna stones, then they locked the door, draped a towel over the window, and did it right there on the redwood slats while hot air seared her lungs and sweat dripped into her ears.
     Olivia’s parents would die if they knew she and Rob were staying in a hotel together. They would die, and then they would kill her. She and Rob are supposed to be staying with his relatives, but she knows her mom would never call to check.
     Fortunately, Rob’s parents are loaded. They live in Lynchburg, and trust him to spend his graduation money righteously even if he is a geologist and talks about the world being billions of years old, which they don’t believe for a minute. Rob’s dad is a bigwig in the fundamentalist church, which scares Olivia, although she’s never said so.
     In the beginning, Olivia fended off Rob’s advances. She meant to save herself for marriage—she really did. But each time he stopped, she chafed with want for the slippery moistness of Rob’s lips against her skin, thirsted as if she lay cracked and dry in the desert instead of sliding in the slow press of his body against hers, breathing his very air into her lungs like life.
     Olivia finds a continuous film about a giant meteorite that struck earth sixty-five million years ago. Computer graphics recreate the impact. It hits just below Florida and makes a huge tidal wave that crashes all the way past the Great Lakes, scouring the land bare as it sweeps back into the sea. Wildfires spontaneously ignite, creating giant smoke clouds that block sunlight for a year. Seventy percent of all species are eliminated. The rats and shrews survive. They thrive. From this came humans.
     She turns away. Olivia can’t bear total destruction, even from a distance of sixty-five million years. Did those wicked things still hit earth? She doesn’t know what she would do if she had to always worry about things falling out of the sky. Live a helpless, waiting life? Horrible.
     She really should sit down. There’s a bench beside a huge chunk of meteorite that has a little sign saying Please Touch, but Olivia doesn’t dare. It might sizzle, or steam, or sting. She couldn’t take that.
     Across from her is a television screen showing four amateur videos of a meteorite that hit Westchester, New York, in 1992. It landed on the trunk of a woman’s car. There’s a full-color photo of her blackened, misshapen Chevy Malibu. What did she tell her insurance company? Does a meteorite fall under Acts of God?
     Rob wanders in front of the display case and blocks her view. “Hey, Liv,” he says after a moment’s pause, “did you read about this one?” He shifts his backpack higher on his shoulder and turns to look at her. “It says here that it came through these people’s roof while they were watching TV, and bounced into the living room and landed under a table. Can you imagine?”
     But she can imagine. That’s the whole problem. She can feel the shudder of the heavy metal space rock slamming into the roof, hear the screech of shingle and sheetrock giving way as it rips through the ceiling, and smell the smoke as that tiny piece of Mars lies smoldering at her feet. She looks up at Rob and opens her mouth to say this but all that comes out is a little puff of air.
     “You feel okay?” He grabs her hands and pulls her to her feet. When she looks up at him, he kisses her and says, “My feet hurt. Let’s go in here. Watch a movie.” He leads her into the quiet theater area and she relaxes into the padded seat. Olivia is tired. They left school over a week ago and in that time they’ve seen three battlefields, four James River plantations, Luray Caverns, Natural Bridge, Yorktown, Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, Richmond, and now Washington, D.C.
     The movie starts. It’s The Tumultuous History of the Solar System, and she’s getting absolutely breathless listening to the voiceover describe this cranky crust of earth on which she so precariously sits. On screen there’s a molten hose of orange lava spewing out from the coast of Hawaii followed by footage of a fiery white comet shooting sparks across the night sky. The deep-voiced announcer declares, “Our earth is constantly dying and being reborn, and parts of this land are only minutes old.”
     Olivia didn’t need to know that. She staggers out of the theater as the film restarts to a new crop of hapless viewers, then slides down the wall and sits outside the exit. The wall across from her is a huge aerial map of the Appalachian Mountains. The placard says they were formed five hundred thirty million years ago, when Africa slammed into North America and all those sediments that had been layering down for millions of years got pushed into the air, crumpling like car hoods in a head-on collision.
    
Olivia stares into the distant blue haze of those crumpled-car-hood-mountains the very next day when they drive to Lynchburg to tell Rob’s parents the news.
     “Really, Liv, don’t worry.” Rob turns onto the last street before his parents’ driveway. “They’ll love you. You’re great. What’s not to love?”
     “Plenty.” She pulls off the oversized ring with its toilet tissue padding and slips it into her pocket.
     “We’ll have it sized,” Rob says and pats her arm. Olivia thinks of the cutting and soldering, the removal of a bead of gold and the permanent change to fit her finger, forever and ever, till death do us part, and her lungs constrict with a fiery pain.
     “Did you tell them we’ve been traveling together?”
     “God, no,” says Rob. “Don’t say anything, either. Dad would have a cow, and Mom’d go to bed for a week. This is an overnight visit to meet them. That’s all.”
     They pull into the long driveway. It’s a huge Southern mansion two-story deal with four white columns. A silver-haired couple emerges from the front door and strides toward the car like they’ve rehearsed.
     “And you must be Olivia,” says the woman with her arms outstretched. She’s trim and pretty and Olivia accepts the stiff, upper-body-only hug. There’s an awkward moment during which neither woman knows where to turn her head.
     For dinner they have a roast with miniature whole vegetables perched in gravy. Effie the cook brings it to the table on an oval platter before she leaves for the day. The perfect little pearl onions, new potatoes, baby carrots, and embryonic squash surround the big hunk of meat, glistening in presentation.
     At age five, Olivia pulled up and ate two full sweet rows of immature carrots in her grandmother’s vegetable garden. For her heady snack she was soundly spanked, her fists still clutching the feathery green foliage. Her grandmother said you had to let things grow. Enjoy them in their fullness, warts and all.
     “So,” Rob’s father says, “what do you study in school, Olivia?”
     She wipes her hands on the linen napkin. “I haven’t really decided yet.”
     “Mmmm.”
     “I mean, I don’t have to declare a major until fall. But, I like psychology, I guess. And art.”
     “Oh, you could do art therapy with mental patients,” says Rob’s mother with a bright smile.
     “Gloria gets these grand ideas,” says Rob’s father.
     “Oh, you.” Gloria swishes her hand in his direction. “Don’t listen to him, Olivia.”
     “So you would be a psychiatrist?” his father asks.
     “Well, I’m deciding still, trying lots of things, actually kind of hoping a major will pop up and declare me, I guess.” She wipes her mouth and smiles.
     “Yes, well. A career isn’t always necessary.”
     “Actually, Mom, Dad,” says Rob, and Olivia thinks No! Don’t. “We’ve decided to get married.”
     Gloria finishes chewing and swallows quickly. “Married?” she says, then quickly adds, “How wonderful.” She holds her glass out towards her husband. “Isn’t that wonderful, Mark?”
     “Quite.”
     “Olivia has Gram’s ring,” says Rob.
     “Does she?” Mark speaks into the rim of his glass.
     “It’s very pretty,” says Olivia.
     “Married,” says Gloria, pushing a miniature squash along the edge of her gold-rimmed china.
     “You’re the first to know,” says Olivia. “I haven’t even told my mother yet.”
     “How sweet.” Gloria’s voice is lilting. “Isn’t that sweet, Mark?”
     “Very.”
     “Oh, we have so much to plan,” says Gloria.
     “Like what church to get married in,” says Mark.
     “Dad,” says Rob.
     “Church?” Olivia looks from Rob to his father.
     “Can we do this later?” asks Rob.
     “For the wedding,” Mark says, ignoring his son. “Where do you go to church, Olivia?”
     “I don’t think—”
     “Nonsense, Robbie,” says his mother. “Olivia doesn’t mind. Do you, dear?”
     Rob gives Olivia a look she doesn’t understand. “Um, no. No, of course not. I mean, my mom was—is—Methodist. And my dad, well, he doesn’t go much. But Emory and Henry is a Methodist school so I get that there.”
     “Methodist, of course. We learned about E & H when Rob transferred there from Liberty University.”
     “I’m really glad he did.” Olivia nudges Rob’s foot under the table.
     “Well, they don’t exactly study how the earth was formed at Liberty,” says Rob with a chuckle.
     “Don’t they?” Mark raises an eyebrow, his fork poised in midair.
     “Okay, well, six days doesn’t give a geologist much to go on.”
     “I thought we were talking about your wedding,” says Gloria. “I want to talk about that. Have you picked a church?”
     Rob takes his napkin from his lap, rests both elbows on the table and leans toward his mother. “We haven’t really discussed where, Mom.”
     “Okay, then, a summer wedding at least?” Gloria looks from face to face.
     “Look, we don’t know that either. Maybe not till I finish graduate school. The UVA geology program is really tough.”
     “Geology.”
     “Yes, Dad.” Rob pushes back from the table. “You know what I study. Don’t—”
     “Nonsense, dear,” says Gloria. “Sit down. Let your father talk.” She turns to Olivia. “You like all that geology stuff?”
     Olivia looks around the table. “Well, I like Rob, and it’s what he does.”
     “Of course,” says Gloria. “You have a dress picked out?”
     “A dress?” Olivia pictures herself facedown in the roast. Breathe slowly, she tells herself, just breathe slowly.
     “You know, my old wedding dress would look darling on you. It’s lovely, all-white, just precious.”
     White. Precious.
     “Back to the church,” says Mark. “Our religion is the cornerstone of our lives, Olivia. And Rob is our only child. We want to do this right, and we’d like to welcome his future wife as a member of the family. I’d like to know: What does the Methodist church teach?”
     “Teach?”
     “Yes. About Jesus Christ. And baptism, for instance.”
     “Baptism?” Olivia says.
     “Yes, full-immersion? Or sprinkling of drops?”
     “Well,” she says, taking a deep breath and rearranging her silver steak knife, “I was baptized as a baby, so I don’t remember it, but my mom had me christened and I have godparents and all.”
     “You don’t remember being baptized?”
     “Um, no. I was six weeks old, so I don’t.” She smiles. “But I’m guessing God does.”
     “Olivia, God wants us to come to Him through His son,” says Mark. “He wants us to ask for our salvation. What good is being washed in the blood of the Lamb if we’re too small to know what it means?”
     “Well, it’s still a baptism.” Olivia chokes slightly on the slippery roundness of a pearl onion.
     “Oh, our church had the most wonderful Revival last week,” says Gloria. “Six people accepted the Lord as their personal savior and were baptized right then. It was beautiful.”
     Rob takes a big breath to say something but his mother chimes in again. “I’ve got a lovely idea.” She claps her hands. “Why don’t we all go to church together? Tomorrow. You can leave from there to take Olivia home.”
     “Excellent idea,” says Rob’s father.
     “You’ll love our church,” she says to Olivia. “Won’t she, Robbie?”
     Olivia looks to Rob. He shrugs. “All right,” he says.
     They sleep in separate rooms that night, of course. Olivia gets Rob’s old yellow-walled, green-shag-carpeted room. An early rock collection lines his childhood desk in dusty rows, from amethyst to zircon in separate small square boxes. She falls asleep to the odor of alphabetized ores and labeled minerals.
     In the dark hours of the night one side of the bed presses down and Rob is there, whispering Baby, sliding his hot hands under her nightgown, breathing into her hair.
     “Your parents.”
     “Quietly,” he says, his urgent breath against her ear. Her belly seizes, pulling towards his sudden weight and warmth above her in the dark.
     “We can’t. What if they hear?”
     “Shhh,” Rob says, a wordless rising hiss that lifts her body up to his. Olivia craves this urgency, this magic weightless drop into surrender, this ownership, this thing that they will always have between them, this thing that binds her to him.
     “Oh, my God,” she whispers, clutching his back in the heavy darkness, pulling him to her. She is dying, giving over, opening, body and soul. Her sigh fills the room, swelling the air with a heady, fervent hush.
    
Over breakfast at the Cracker Barrel she watches Rob’s parents for signs that they heard the bed frame thumping the wall. When the food arrives, she digs in, happy and starved, but Mark clears his throat and everyone looks at her, waiting. She puts down her fork and they say grace over the pancakes while her heart hammers away in the cave of her ribs; she places a hand above her breast to calm it.
     At church they sit three rows from the front. Rob stretches his arm across the back of the pew and cups Olivia’s shoulder. She expects the lights to dim but they don’t and the preacher strides out in a jaunty suit. He makes jokes; the congregation laughs.
     Olivia eyes Rob’s family sideways. They’re smiling and nodding, chuckling on cue. Mark offers the occasional, encouraging, “Amen” and Gloria, eclipsed by Mark, emits soft sighs of approval.
     During the sermon, which is about submitting your will to God’s, the preacher paces back and forth, treading the front of the church like a stage. “No one here today,” he says, “is here by accident.” He runs a hand through his thick black hair. “God has brought you here for a reason.” He looks right smack at Olivia and a tiny shiver climbs the ladder of her spine.
     “God is trying hard to reach you, my friend. All you have to do is answer.” He strides away from the pulpit and stops. Olivia’s fingers burn under the nails. She looks down expecting to see them glow. She stares until she’s dizzy, but they’re just her normal hands.
     “We don’t know when the Lord will come to take us. It could happen today. You could walk right out that door and be hit by a bus, or a big old rock, straight from outer space. When God wants you, He takes you, my friend. Will you be ready?” Olivia watches his lips move and purse, his teeth come together and smile. She can feel his voice move throughout her body.
     In the front row, a woman with dark hair and gray roots lifts her hands above her shoulders, palms up, and sways from side to side. Rob squeezes Olivia’s shoulder and pulls her close. She can’t take a full breath—it’s as if iron bands are encircling her chest. In that colonial cooper’s shop, the man in breeches and buckled shoes had hammered the last hoop down around the staves and crushed them up against each other, tight as a drum, bound them together until even water couldn’t get between them.
     “Let me ask you now,” the preacher says, “do you really want to leave here today without the assurance of everlasting life?” His voice falters and his face crumples. Olivia’s own throat constricts in sympathy. “You can have it, my friend.” He speaks in a near whisper. “All you have to do is open the door.”
     “A-men,” rumbles the congregation.
     Organ music starts and everyone stands. Olivia grips the pew-back in front of her for support. The preacher slides his silky words between the lines of the hymn.
     Even with her eyes closed, she feels the room spinning. God wants her. She sways slightly. He wants her. Her hands are on fire. He wants her.
     The air swells with the weight of the entire congregation, singing and waiting and praying. Her knees are weak as water. Her eyes burn. Her head will surely burst into flame. Images of the trip run through her mind: early morning mist hanging over a deserted battlefield like long-forgotten smoke; a bent, old cooper pounding his barrels into rightness and rectitude; her boyfriend dripping down on her in the cloistered heat of the sauna; a fiery spurt of lava hissing its way into the cool, blue ocean; a hurtling meteorite headed right for her.
     All she has to do is give in.
    

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Mary Akers’ work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Fiddlehead, Brevity, and other journals. She is the author of the short story collection Women Up on Blocks and is a graduate of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA program. Although raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia—which she will always call home—she currently lives in western New York.      

       
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