Sixteen
“Wow,” I said. “You weren’t kidding. You didn’t need
me.”
Deb turned around.
When she saw me, her face broke into a wide smile. “Mclean! Hi!
You’re back!”
I nodded, biting back
a laugh as she ran toward me, her sock-feet padding across the
floor. Partially, this was for her exuberant reaction, but also for
the words, newly posted in my absence, on a poster on the wall
behind her. NO SHOES! it read. NO SWEARING! NO,
REALLY.
“I like your sign,” I
told her as she gave me a hug.
“Honestly, I tried to
do without the visual,” she said, glancing at it. “But there were
scuff marks all over the streets! And the closer we get to the
deadline, the more tempers are flaring. I mean, this is a civic
activity. We need to keep it clean, both literally and
figuratively.”
“It looks great.” It
was true. There were still a few blank spots along the edge of the
model, and I could tell the landscaping and smaller details hadn’t
been put on yet, but for the first time, it looked complete, with
buildings spread across the entire surface and no huge gaps left
unfilled. “You guys must have been here every day, all
day.”
“Pretty much.” She
put her hands on her hips, surveying it along with me. “We kind of
had to be, sinces, surveyideadline changed and
everything.”
“Changed?” I
said.
“Well, because of the
restaurant closing,” she replied, bending down to flick a piece of
dust off a rooftop. A second later, she glanced up at me. “Oh, God,
you did know, right? About the restaurant? Because I totally
thought, because of your dad—”
“I knew,” I told her.
“It’s okay.”
She exhaled, clearly
relieved, and bent back down, adjusting a building a bit. “I mean,
May first was always ambitious, if I’m to be totally honest. I
tried to act all positive, but secretly, I had my doubts. And then
Opal comes up here last weekend and says we have to be all done and
out, somehow, by the second week of April, because the building’s being sold. I about
passed out I was so unnerved. I had to go count.”
I blinked, not sure
I’d heard her right as she moved down the model, carefully wiping
her finger along an intersection. “Count? ”
“To ten,” she
explained, standing back up. “It’s what I do instead of panicking.
Ideally. Although sometimes I have to go to twenty or even fifty to
really get calmed down.”
“Oh.
Right.”
“And then,” she said, taking another step before
crouching to adjust a church steeple, “we lost Dave, which was a
huge deal, especially since you were already gone. I had to go
count and breathe for that
one.”
“What?” I
said.
“Breathe,” she
explained. “You know, big inhales, big exhales, visualizing stress
going with it—”
“No,” I said, cutting
her off. “Dave. What do you mean, you lost him?”
“Because of the whole
grounding thing,” she said. When I just stood there, confused, she
looked up at me. “With his parents. You knew about that,
right?”
I shook my head. The
truth was, I’d felt so embarrassed about calling him, especially
since he never showed up, that I’d not ever tried to contact him,
even though I knew I should. “What ... what happened?”
“Well, I haven’t
heard all the gory details,” she replied, standing back up and
stretching out her back. “All I know is they caught him sneaking
out one night last week with the car, there was some big blowup,
and he’s basically under house arrest indefinitely.”
“Whoa,” I
said.
“Oh, and the Austin
trip is off. At least, for him.”
I felt myself blink.
“Oh my God. That’s awful.”
She nodded sadly. “I
know. I’m telling you, it’s been nonstop drama here. I’m just
hoping we can get this done without any more
disasters.”
I took a step
backward, leaning against a nearby table as she made her way around
the opposite side of the model. So that was what had happened to
Dave. All this time I’d thought he’d changed his mind about coming
down, but in the end, it hadn’t even been up to him. “So ... he
hasn’t been here at all?”
Deb glanced at me
over her shoulder. “No, he has. But just in the last couple of
days, and only for an hour here and there. They’re keeping him
pretty close, I think.”
Poor Dave. After all
that time spent toeing the line, doing the time. And now, all
because of me, he was right back where he started. I felt
sick.
“His parents can’t
really take that trip away,” I said after a moment. “I mean, maybe
they’ll reconsider, or—”
“I said that, too.
But according to Riley, it’s unlikely.” She crouched down, sitting
back on her heels, and pressed a loose house down, making it click.
“They already decided to use some of the fund to pay off Heather’s
car debt, so she can go. There was a meeting about it and
everything.”
“A meeting,” I
repeated.
“Here, while they
were all working. It was serious multitasking.” She smiled proudly.
“I felt honored to get to witness it.”
As she bent back down
over the model, peering closely at a row of town houses, I just
stood there. It was unbelievable to me that for the past week that
I’d been in Colby piecing together what came next for me, all of
Dave’s plans, which had always been so clear, were falling apart.
I’d thought he let me down. But clearly, it was the other way
around.
When I woke up later
that morning at the Poseidon, I was alone. I sat up, looking around
me: the notebook I’d written in was now closed, set aside on the
bedside table, all the pictures and yearbooks stacked neatly on a
nearby chair. The front door was slightly ajar, the wind whistling
through the screen just beyond it. I got to my feet, rubbing my
eyes, and walked over. There, outside on the steps, were my mom and
dad, sitting together.
“I feel like the
worst parent ever,” she was saying. “All this stuff, the different
girls ... I had no idea.”
“At least you can
claim you were at a distance. It was right in front of my face,” he
replied.
My mom was quiet for
a moment. “You did your best. That’s all you can do. That’s all any
of us can do. You know?”
My dad nodded,
looking up at the road. It had been so long since I’d seen them
like this, just the two of them, that for a moment I just stood
there, taking it in. He was rubbing a hand over his face, while she
held a coffee cup with both hands, her head cocked to the side as
she said something. From a distance, you couldn’t guess all the
history and changes. You would have just thought they were
friends.
My mom turned then,
seeing me. “Honey,” she said. “You’re up.”
“What are you guys
doing here?” I asked.
I watched as my dad
got to his feet. “You left your mother’s house in the middle of the
night, Mclean. Did you really think we wouldn’t be
worrying?”
“I just needed some
time,” I said quietly, as he came closer, pulling open the door.
Once inside, he put his arms around me, squeezing tight, and kissed
the top of my head.
“Don’t scare me like
that ever again,” he said, before moving on so my mom could join
us. “I mean it.”
I nodded, silent, as
the door banged shut behind her. And then it was just us three,
alone in the room. I sat down on the bed. My mom, taking another
sip of her coffee, took the chair by the air-conditioner unit. My
dad, by the window, stayed where he was.
“So,” he said after a
moment. “I think we all need to talk.”
“You read my
notebook,” I said.
“Yes.” My mom sighed,
brushing her hair back from her face. “I know it was probably
supposed to be private ... but we had a lot of questions. And you
weren’t exactly up for answering them.”
I looked down at my
hands, knotting my fingers together.
“I didn’t realize
...” My dad stopped, cleared this throat. Then he glanced at my mom
before saying, “The different names. I thought they were just ...
names.”
God, this was hard. I
swallowed. “That’s how it started,” I said. “But then, it got
bigger.”
“You couldn’t have
been happy,” he said. “If you felt like you needed to do
that.”
“It wasn’t about
being happy or unhappy. I just didn’t want to be me
anymore.”
Again, they exchanged
a look. My mom said slowly, “I don’t think either of us really
realized how hard the divorce was on you. We’re ...”
She looked at my dad.
“We’re sorry about that,” he finished for her.
It was so quiet, I
could hear my own breathing, loud in my ears. Outside, the ocean
was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I
thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make
such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But
wiping the surface clean doesn’t really make anything any neater.
It just masks what is below. It’s only when you really dig down
deep, go underground, that you can see who you really
are.
Thinking this, I
looked at my mom. “How did you know I was here?”
“Your friend told
us,” my dad said.
“My
friend?”
“The boy ...” He
glanced at my mom.
“Dave,” she
said.
“Dave? ”
She put her coffee on
the floor by her feet. “When I realized you were gone, that you’d
taken the car ... I just panicked. I called Gus, and he left the
restaurant to head down here, to help me look for
you.”
“I stopped by the
house first, to pack up,” my dad said. “And, just as I was leaving,
Dave came over. He told me where to find you.”
“He was worried about
you, too.” My mom slid a hand over my shoulder. “He said you were
upset when you left there, and when you called you were
crying....”
She stopped, clearing
her throat. My dad said, “I wish you’d felt like you could have
called one of us. Whatever was going on, you know we love you,
Mclean. No matter what.”
Warts and all, I thought as I glanced at the
notebook, the pictures and yearbooks piled near it. I swallowed,
then said, “When I found out about Hawaii, and then came down here
and everything was so different, the house ...” My mom wced,
looking down at her hands. “I heard you talking to Heidi. About how
having me here wasn’t what you expected.”
“What?”
I swallowed. “You
said you thought you’d wanted me to come, but—”
She was just looking
at me, clearly confused. Then, suddenly, she exhaled, putting a
hand to her chest. “Oh, God! Honey, I wasn’t talking about you when
I said that. I was talking about the party.”
“Party?”
“To watch the ECC
tournament,” she said. That was an acronym I knew well: Eastern
College Conference, the one to which Defriese and the U belonged.
“I’ve had it here the last few years, when I didn’t go with Peter.
It was planned way in advance for this week, but once we got here,
I realized I didn’t want to have to deal with it. I wanted it to be
... just us. That’s what I
meant.”
So that was the party
Heidi had mentioned. “I just assumed ...” I stopped. “I just felt
lost all of a sudden. This was the only place that was
familiar.”
“This place?” my dad
said, glancing around the room.
“We had a lot of good
times here,” my mom told him. “It was where we always stayed when
we took road trips to the beach.”
“You remember,” I
said.
“Of course; how could
I forget? ” She shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Colby.
And Peter’s right, there isn’t much here anymore. But I still drive
down here now and then. I like the view.”
I looked at her. “Me,
too.”
“Although I have to
say,” she added, “I don’t remember it smelling quite so
mildewy.”
“It did,” I told her,
and she smiled, squeezing my shoulder.
For a moment, we all
just sat there, no one talking. Then my dad looked at my mom before
saying, “Your mom and I think we all need to sit down and talk.
About what happens next.”
“I know,” I
said.
“Maybe, though,” he
said, “we can talk and eat. I don’t know about you but I’m
starving.”
“Agreed,” my mom
replied. She tipped her wrist up, glancing at her watch. “Last
Chance opens at seven a.m. That’s only ten minutes.”
“Last
Chance?”
“Best diner on the
beach,” she told him, standing up. “The bacon will blow your
mind.”
“You had me at
bacon,” my dad said. “Let’s go.”
Before we left,
though, they helped me pack up my boxes, each of us adding books
and pictures. It seemed like a ritual, something sacred, putting
all of these pieces back away again, and when I slid the tops on,
pressing them shut, the sound was not so different from the one
made when you pushed a piece onto the model. Click.
When we stepped out
to the parking lot, the wind was stiff and cold, the sky a flat
gray, the sun, barely visible, rising in the distance. As my mom
pulled out her keys, I said, “What about the twins? Don’t you need
to get back to them?”
“Don’t worry,” she
said. “Heidi called in two of her sitters, Amanda and Erika.
They’re covered. We have all the time in the world.”
All the time in the world, I thought as we pulled
out onto the main road, my dad following close behind in his truck.
If only there was such a thing, really. In truth, though, there
were deadlines and jobs, school years ending and beginning, time
running out with every breath. As we drove past Gert’s, though, the
OPEN 24 HRS sign still on, I looked down at the bracelet I was
wearing, twisting it across my wrist. Maybe I didn’t need all the
time anyway. Just a couple of hours, a good breakfast, and a chance
to talk with the two people who knew me best, no matter who I
was.
We were the first
ones at the Last Chance, there when a blonde woman in an apron,
looking sleepy, unlocked the door. “You’re up early,” she said to
my mom. “Kids have a bad night? ”
My mom nodded, and I
felt her eyes on me before she said, “Yeah. Something like
that.”
We took our menus,
flipping over our coffee cups as the waitress approached with the
pot. In the kitchen, past the counter, I could hear a grill
sizzling, someone playing a radio, the notes punctuated by the
register bell ringing as another waitress opened the drawer, then
shut it. It was all so familiar, like a place I knew well, even
though I’d never been there before. I looked at my mom beside me,
and my dad across the table, both of them reading their menus, here
with just me, just us, for once. I’d thought that I didn’t have a
home anymore. But right there, right then, I realized I’d been
wrong. Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was
wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together.
Not a place but a moment, and then another, building on each other
like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for
your entire life, wherever you may go.
We talked a lot that
morning, over breakfast and the many refilled cups of coffee that
followed. And we kept talking once we went back to the house, where
my dad took a walk on the beach with me while my mom hung out with
the twins. We didn’t make any huge decisions, not yet, other than
I’d stay the week in Colby, as planned, and we’d take that time to
figure out what would happen next.
After more
conversations, both in person with my mom and on the phone with my
dad, it was decided that Hawaii wasn’t an option, at least for me:
they were a united front on that. Which meant, in the end, I’d be
finishing out my high school career in the same school where I’d
started it, back in Tyler. I wasn’t exactly happy about this, to
say the least, but I finally understood it was really my only
option. I tried to see it as bringing things full circle. I’d left
and, in doing so, fractured myself. By returning, I’d be able to be
whole again. Then, in the fall, I would start over again somewhere
new. Although this time, I’d be one of many in a freshman class
doing the same thing.
I spent a lot of that
week at the beach thinking about the last two years, picking
through my yearbooks and pictures. I also hung out a lot with my
mom, and as I did so, I realized I’d been wrong about assuming that
she, too, had fully reinvented herself when she left Katie Sweet
behind for Katherine Hamilton. Sure, she had the new family and
look, as well as a huge beach house and the entire different world
of being a coach’s wife. But I still caught glimpses here and there
of the person I’d known before.
There was the
comforting familiarity I felt, this strange sense of déjà vu, when
I watched her with Connor and Madison, sitting on the floor
building block towers or reading Goodnight
Moon, both of them snuggled into her lap. Or how, when I
found her iPod on the fancy portable stereo, I’d turn it on to find
some of the same music that was on my dad’s: Steve Earle and Led
Zeppelin mixed in with the Elmo and lullabies.
Then there was the
fact that every night, when the twins were asleep, the first thing
she’d do was take a glass of wine out to the deck, where I’d find
her looking up at the stars. And despite the high-tech kitchen
created to make gourmet meals, I was surprised and pleased to see
that she stuck to her old basics, fixing dinner casseroles and
chicken dishes that began, always, with a single can of Cream Of
soup. The biggest proof, though, was the quilt.
I’d brought it to my
room with the rest of the stuff in the bins when we came back from
the Poseidon. A couple of nights later, when the temperature
suddenly dropped, I pulled it out and used it, wrapping it around
me. The next morning, I was brushing my teeth when I stuck my head
out of the bathroom to see my mom standing by my bed, where I’d
folded it over the foot, holding one corner in her
hand.
“I thought this was
packed away downstairs,” she said when she saw me.
“It was,” I said.
“But I found it when I found the pictures and
yearbooks.”
“Oh.” She smoothed
her hand over one square. “Well, I’m glad it’s getting some
use.”
“It is,” I replied.
“It was a godsend last night. The twins clearly had lots of warm
clothes when they were babies.”
She looked at me.
“The twins?”
“The squares are made
of their baby clothes. Right?”
“No,” she said. “I
... I thought you knew. They’re yours.”
“Mine?”
She nodded, holding
up the corner that was between her thumb and forefinger. “This
cotton bit here? It was from the blanket you came home from the
hospital in. And this embroidered piece, the red one, was a part of
your first Christmas dress.”
I moved closer,
looking at the quilt closely. “I had no idea.”
She lifted up another
square, running her fingers over it. “Oh, I loved this little denim
piece! It was from the cutest overalls. You took your first steps
when you were wearing them.”
“I can’t believe you
saved all that stuff for so long,” I said.
“Oh, I couldn’t let
it go.” She smiled, sighing. “But then you were going, and it seemed like a way to send
some of me along with you.”
I thought of her
sitting with all those squares, carefully quilting them together.
The time it must have taken, especially with twin babies. “I’m
sorry, Mom,” I said.
She looked up at me,
surprised. “Sorry? For what?”
“I don’t know,” I
said. “Just ... not thanking you for it, I guess.”
“Oh goodness,
Mclean,” she replied, shaking her head. “I’m sure that you did. I
was a total emotional wreck that day left. I barely remember
anything about it, other than you were leaving and I didn’t want
you to.”
“Can you tell me
about the rest?” I asked, picking up my own corner, where there was
a pink cotton square.
“Really?” she said. I
nodded. “Oh, well. Let’s see. That one there was from the leotard
you wore for your first dance recital. I think you were five? You
had fairy wings, and ...”
We stood there for a
long time, with her moving from square to square, explaining the
significance of each. All these little pieces of who I’d been once,
with her to remember for me, stitched together into something real
I could hold in my hands. There was a reason I’d found it, too,
that night I’d run away. It was waiting for me. Your past is always
your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.
Now, in Lakeview, I
looked back at the model, where Deb was busy adjusting a couple of
buildings on the far corner, and realized that, like my mother with
the quilt, I could see a history within it that someone else would
miss. The sectors just left of center, a bit sloppy and uneven,
that Jason, Tracey, Dave, and I had started on the day the
councilwoman arrived all those weeks ago. The thickly settled
neighborhoods I’d labored over endlessly, sticking one tiny house
on at a time. Tracy’s old bank, next to the grocery store she’d
been banned from, and that empty building, unmarked and
unremarkable to anyone but me. And then, all around, the dragons,
the parts not mapped, yet to be discovered.
If the quilt was my
past, this model was my present. And looking at it, I saw not just
myself in bits and pieces, but everyone and everything I’d come to
know in the last few months. Mostly, though, I saw
Dave.
He was in the rows of
houses, so meticulous, in much straighter lines than the ones I’d
done. In the buildings downtown he knew by heart, naming them
easily without even having to look at the map. All over the
complicated intersections he’d taken charge of, maintaining that
only he, as a former maker of models, could handle such
responsibility. He was on every piece he or I had added during our
long afternoons together up here, talking and not talking, as we
carefully assembled the world around us.
“So,” I said now to
Deb, who’d moved over to the table, where she was sorting plastic
bags of landscaping pieces, “the new deadline’s the second week of
April. That’s, what? Four weeks or so?”
“Twenty-six days,”
she replied. “Twenty-five and a half, if you count it to the
minute.”
“But look how much
you have done,” I said. “It’s almost finished.”
“I wish!” She sighed.
“I mean, yes, most of the buildings are done, and we just have a
couple of final sectors to do. But then there’s all the
environmental and civic detail. Not to mention repair. Heather took
out an entire apartment complex the other day with one of her
boots.” She snapped her fingers. “It went down just like
that.”
“So she really worked
on this over break?” I said.
“Well, working is a
broad term,” Deb replied. She thought for a second, then said,
“Actually, I take that back. She’s very good with detail. She put
in that entire forest line over there on the upper right-hand
corner. It’s the bigger stuff she tends to mess up. Or, um,
destroy.”
“I can late,” I said,
more to myself than to her. Still, though, I felt her glance over,
so I added, “Sorry. It’s been kind of a long week.”
“I know.” She picked
up a bag of tiny plastic pieces, walking over to me. “Look, Mclean.
About that whole Ume.com thing ...”
“Forget it,” I told
her.
“I can’t,” she said
softly. She looked up at me. “I just ... I want you to know I
understand. I mean, why you might have done that. All the moves ...
It couldn’t have been easy.”
“There were better
ways I could have dealt with it,” I replied. “I get that
now.”
She nodded, then tore
open the bag. Looking closer, I saw that it was filled with tiny
figures of people: walking, standing, running, sitting. Hundreds
and hundreds of them, all jumbled up together. “So what’s the deal
with those? Are we going to just put them anywhere, or is there a
set system of arrangement?”
“Well, actually,” she
said, taking out a handful and spreading them in her palm, “that’s
been a big topic of discussion.”
“Really.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“See, the manual doesn’t specify, I guess because the people are
optional, really. Some towns chose to leave them off entirely and
just have the buildings. Less cluttery.”
I looked back at the
model. “I can see that. It would seem kind of empty,
though.”
“Agreed. A town needs
a population,” she said. “So I thought we should devise a sector
system, like we did with the buildings, with a certain number of
figures per area, and make sure they are diverse in their
activities so there’s not repetition.”
“Activities?
”
“Well, you wouldn’t
want all the bicyclists to be on one side, and all the people
walking dogs on the other,” she told me. “I mean, that would be
wrong.”
“Of course,” I
agreed.
“Other people,
however,” she continued, clearing her throat, “feel that by
organizing the people, we are removing the life force from the
entire endeavor. Instead, they think that we should just arrange
the figures in a more random way, as that mirrors the way the world
actually is, which is what the model is supposed to be all
about.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“So this is Riley saying this?”
“What?” she asked.
“Oh, no. Riley was totally down with the people-sector thing. It’s
Dave. He’s, like, adamant.”
“Really.”
“Oh, God, yes,” she
replied. “To be honest, it’s been a bit of a conflict between us.
But I have to respect his opinion, because this is a collaborative
effort. So we’re working on a compromise.”
I bent down by the
model, studying a cul-de-sac, until I felt her move away, turning
her attention to something else. Compromise, I thought, remembering the one Dave had
been working on with his parents, and mine with my mom. It was that
give-and-take he’d talked about, the rules that were always
changing. But what happened when you followed all the rules and
still couldn’t get what you wante? It didn’t seem
right.
“So,” Deb said now,
bending down by the far left edge of the model, “about the
restaurant closing. Does that mean ... you’re moving to Australia?
That’s the rumor, according to the grapevine. That your dad got a
job there.”
Typical restaurant
gossip, distorted as always. “It’s Hawaii,” I told her. “And I’m
not going with him.”
“Are you staying
here?”
“No,” I said. “I
can’t.”
She turned, padding
back over to the other end, by the tree line Heather had done. She
bit her lip as she bent down over it, adjusting a couple of trunks.
Finally she said, “Well, honestly ... I think that
sucks.”
“Whoa,” I said. For
Deb, these were strong words. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I!” She looked
up, her face flushed. “I mean, it’s bad enough that you’re going to
go. But you didn’t even tell us it was in the works! Were you just
going to take off and disappear, just like that?”
“No,” I said,
although I wasn’t sure this was entirely true. “I just ... I didn’t
know where I was going, and when. And then the whole Ume.com thing
...”
“I understand, it was
crazy.” She took a step closer to me. “But seriously, Mclean. You
have to promise me you won’t just leave. I’m not like you, okay? I
don’t have a lot of friends. So you need to say goodbye, and you
need to stay in touch, wherever you go. Okay?”
I nodded. She was so
emotional, on the verge of tears. This was what I’d wanted to
prevent with all those quick disappearances, the tangledness of
farewells and all the baggage they brought with them. But now,
looking at Deb, I realized what else I’d given up: knowing for sure
that someone was going to miss me. What
happened to goodbye, Michael in Westcott had written on my
Ume.com page. I was
pretty sure I knew, now. It had been packed away in a box of its
own, trying to be forgotten, until I really needed it. Until
now.
“Okay then,” Deb
said, her voice tight. She drew in a breath, then let it out,
letting her hands drop to her sides. “Now, if you don’t mind, I
really think we should tackle these last two sectors before we go
tonight.”
“Absolutely,” I
replied, relieved to have something concrete to do. I followed her
over to the other table, where the last group of assembled houses
and other buildings were lined up, labeled and ready to be put on.
Deb collected one set, I took the other, and we walked over to the
far right top corner, the very end of the pinwheel. As I bent down,
taking the adhesive off the bottom of a gas station, I said, “I’m
glad there was something left to do. I was worried all this would
be finished by the time I got back here.”
“Well, actually, it
would have been,” she said, pushing a house onto her sector. “But I
saved these for you.”
I stopped what I was
doing. “You did?”
“Yeah.” She put a
house on, pressing it until it clicked, then looked at me. “I mean,
you were here at the very beginning, when this all started, before
I even was. It’s only right that you get to be a part of the
ending, as well.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied. And then, side by side,
and without saying another word, we finished the job
together.
When I left the
restaurant, it was a half hour into opening and my dad still hadn’t
appeared. Neither had Opal.
“It’s just like a
sinking ship,” Tracey, who was behind the bar, told me when I asked
if she’d seen them. “The rats abandon first.”
“Opal’s not a rat,” I
said, realizing a beat too late that by saying that I was basically
admitting that my dad was. “She didn’t know anything about all
this.”
“She didn’t fight for
us either,” she replied, drying a glass with a towel. “She’s
basically been AWOL since they announced the closing and the
building sale. Polishing her résumé, most likely.”
“What’s that supposed
to mean?”
“Well, I can’t say
for sure,” she said, putting the glass down. “But the word on the
street is she’s been having a lot of closed-door phone
conversations that may or may not have included the words
relocation and upper management.”
“You really think
Opal would just leave like that? She loves this town.”
“Money talks,” she
replied with a shrug. A couple of customers passed me, pulling out
stools at the bar, and she put down menus in front of them, then
said, “Welcome to Luna Blu. Would you like to hear our Death Throes
Specials?”
I waved goodbye to
her, distracted, then headed toward the kitchen and the back door.
As I passed the office, I glanced in: the desk was neatly
organized, the chair tucked under it, none of my dad’s signature
clutter scattered around the many surfaces. By the looks of it, he,
at least, was already gone.
Outside, I walked
down the alley, turning onto my street. When my mom had dropped me
off earlier, the house had been empty, but now as it came into view
I saw some lights were on and the truck was in the
driveway.
I was just stepping
up onto the curb when I heard a bang. I
looked over and there was Dave, coming out of his kitchen door, a
cardboard box under one arm. He pulled a black knit hat over his
head and started down the stairs, not seeing me. My first impulse
was to just get inside, avoiding him and whatever confrontation or
conversation would follow. But then I looked up at the sky and
immediately spotted a bright triangle of stars, and thought of my
mom, standing on the deck of that huge beach house. So much had
changed, and yet she still knew those stars, had taken that part of
her past, our past, with her. I couldn’t run anymore. I’d learned
that. So even though it wasn’t easy, I stayed where I
was.
“Dave.”
He turned, startled,
and I saw the surprise on his face when he realized it was me.
“Hey,” he said. He didn’t come closer, and neither did I: there was
a good fifteen or twenty feet between us. “I didn’t know you were
back.”
“I just got in a
little while ago.”
“Oh.” He shifted the box to his other arm.
“I was just, um, heading over to the model for a few
minutes.”
I took a couple of
steps toward him, hesitant. “So you got a furlough.”
“Yeah. Something like
that.”
I looked down at my
hands, taking a breath. “Look, about that night I called you ... I
had no idea you got in trouble. God, I feel awful about
that.”
“You shouldn’t,” he
said.
I just looked at him.
“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have been trying to sneak
out.”
“Trying to—” he
said.
“And you wouldn’t
have been caught sneaking out,” I
continued, “and then grounded, and your trip taken away, and
basically your whole life wrecked.”
He was quiet for a
moment. “You didn’t wreck my life. All you did was call a
friend.”
“Maybe I can talk to
your parents. Explain what was going on, and—”
“Mclean,” he said,
stopping me. “No. It’s okay, really. I’m all right with it. There
will be other road trips, and other summers.”
“Maybe. But it’s
still not fair.”
He shrugged. “Life’s
not fair. If it was, you wouldn’t be having to move
again.”
“You heard about
that, huh?”
“I heard Tasmania,”
he said. “Which I have a feeling might be bad
information.”
I smiled. “It’s
Hawaii. But I’m not going. I’m moving back in with my mom, to
finish out the year.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Right. I guess that does make more sense.”
“As much as any of
this does.” Another silence fell. He didn’t have much time, and I
knew I should let him go. Instead, I said, “The model looks great.
You guys have really been working hard.”
“Deb has,” he
replied. “She’s like a madwoman. I’m just trying to stay out of her
way.”
I smiled. “She told
me about your debate over the people.”
“The people.” He
groaned. “She cannot trust me to handle
this myself. That’s why I’m sneaking over there with my supplies
when I know she’s gone. Otherwise, she’ll stand over me, freaking
out.”
“Supplies?” I
said.
He stepped a little
closer, holding out the open box so I could see it. “No cracks
about model trains,” he said. “This is serious
business.”
I peered inside. The
box was lined with small jars of paint, all different colors, a
stack of brushes standing in one side. There were also cotton
balls, some swabs, turpentine, and several small tools, including a
large set of tweezers, some scissors, and a magnifying
glass.
“Whoa,” I said. “What
are you planning to do, exactly?”
“Just add a little
life to it,” he replied. I looked up at him, biting my lip. “Don’t
worry, she approved it. Most of it anyway.”
I smiled. “I can’t
believe the model’s actually almost finished. It feels like we just
put down that first house, like, yesterday.”
“Time flies.” He
looked at me. “So when do you leave?”
“I start moving stuff
next weekend.”
“That soon?” I
nodded. “Wow. You don’t mess around.”
“I just feel like if
I have to go to another school ...” I sighed. “I might as well do
it now.”
He nodded, not saying
anything. Another car drove by.
“But I have to say,”
I continued, “that it stinks that when it came down to it, there
were only two choices. Go forward, to Hawaii, and start all over
again, or backward, back to my old life, which doesn’t even really
exist anymore.”
“You need a third
option,” he said.
“Yeah. I guess I
do.”
He nodded, absorbing
this. “Well,” he said, “for what it’s worth, it’s been my
experience that they don’t appear at first. You kind of have to
look a little more closely.”
“And when does that
happen?”
He shrugged. “When
you’re ready to see them, I guess.”
I had a flash of
those Rubbermaid bins, lined up in my mom’s garage at the beach
behind Super Shitty. “That is frustratingly vague,” I told
him.
“You’re
welcome.”
I smiled then, and he
smiled back. “You should go,” I said. “Before Deb decides to make
an evening visit because she can’t sleep due to obsessing over the
model.”
“You joke,” he said.
“But it could happen. I’ll see you, Mclean.”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“See you.”
He started to turn
away, toward the road again. But just as he did, I moved forward,
closing the space between us, and kissed him on the cheek. I could
tell I surprised him, but he didn’t pull away. When I stepped back,
I said, “Thank you.”
“For
what?”
“For being here,” I
said.
He nodded, then
walked past me, using his free hand to squeeze my shoulder as he
passed. I turned, watching him as he crossed the street and headed
up the alley to the bright lights of Luna Blu. Then I turned back
to my own house, took a breath, and went up to the
door.
I was just reaching
for the knob when two things became clear: my dad was definitely
home, and he wasn’t alone. I could hear his voice, muffled, from
inside, then a higher voice responding. But the lights that were on
were dim, and as I stood there, I noticed that their conversation
began to have short lags in it, little silences that became
gradually longer and longer, peppered with only a few words or
laughter in between.
Oh, God, I thought, slumping against the door and
losing all momentum as I pictured him lip-locked with Lindsay and
her big white teeth. Ugh.
I stood up
straighter, then knocked on the door, hard, before pushing it open.
What I saw before me literally stopped me in my tracks: my dad and
Opal on the couch, his arm around her shoulders, her feet draped
across his lap. They were both flushed pink, and the top button of
her shirt was undone.
“Oh my God,” I said,
my voice sounding incredibly loud in the small room.
Opal jumped up,
reaching to do her button as she stumbled backward, bumping the
wall behind her. On the couch, my dad cleared his throat and
adjusted a throw pillow, like decorating was the most important
thing at that moment. “Mclean,” he said. “When did you get
back?”
“I thought ... I
thought you were dating the councilwoman,” I said to him. Then I
looked at Opal, who was tucking a piece of hair behind her ear,
crazy flustered. “I thought you hated him.”
“Well,” my dad
said.
“Hate is an
awfully strong word,” Opal
replied.
I looked at him, then
at her, then at him again. “You can’t do this. It’s
insane.”
“Well,” Opal said,
clearing her throat. “That’s also a strong word.”
“You don’t want to do
this,” I told her. “He’s leaving. You know that, right? For
Hawaii.”
“Mclean,” my dad
said.
“No,” I told him. “It
was one thing when it was Lindsay, or Sherry in Petree, or Lisa in
Montford Falls, or Emily in Westcott.” Opal raised her eyebrows,
looking at my dad, who moved the pillow again. “But I like you,
Opal. You’ve been nice to me. And you should know what’s going to
happen. He’s just going to disappear, and you’ll be here, calling
and wondering why he doesn’t call back, and—”
“Mclean,” my dad
repeated. “Stop.”
“No,” I said.
“You stop. Don’t do this.”
“I’m not,” he
replied.
I just stood there,
not sure what to say. I could see Opal out of the corner of my eye,
watching me carefully, but I kept my eyes on my dad. At least, for
a moment. Then, I shifted my gaze, suddenly noticing the kitchen
behind him. There were grocery bags piled on the countertops, and a
couple of cabinets were open, revealing cans and a few boxes of
food inside. Some noodles and a couple of tomatoes sat piled by a
cutting board, and there was a new glass pan, sitting rinsed on the
dish rack, waiting to be used.
“What’s going on
here?” I asked, turning my gaze back to him.
He smiled at me, then
looked at Opal. “Come sit down,” he said. “We’ll fill you
in.”