Did You Ever Have A Family (22 page)

Joe died a year later. Another good man who smoked himself to death. Will came home from college and we went together to the memorial. Some folks on the rez had always looked at me sideways, and I’m sure a few did that day when I showed up with Little Cedar. But it’s none of my business. My sisters didn’t go, just like they didn’t go to our dad’s funeral. Not because they didn’t love him, but the truth was that, for us, Dad existed in our kitchen and no place else. He was like a handsome neighbor who dropped in and lit the place for a few hours and left. The rez was his world, his people, and though he never said so, we weren’t welcome there. Still, I went to Dad’s funeral because Ben insisted, and I’m glad I did. Just like I’m glad I went to Joe’s. He was a hero on the rez and a thorn in the side of anyone who tried to keep from the Quinault what he believed was theirs. Hundreds of people turned up, and Will, among many others, said a few words. I was proud to watch him stand up before the people I avoided my whole life and tell them how Joe always had time for him, and how by example he taught him to want the kind of life he lived, the useful kind.

Ben and I didn’t have kids. We never tried but we never tried not to, either. It just didn’t happen and I don’t think about it much. But that once-in-a-blue-moon wonder about what kind we might have had came up as one by one people stood and spoke their good words. I
knew Joe was a leader and someone people looked up to, but I was surprised to see how many lives one man could affect. You could say I felt proud. Of Joe, of Will, of myself for pointing them at each other. But more than that I missed Ben and wished he were next to me, listening to Will speak about Joe. I don’t waste time wanting things to be different than they are. But on that day it hurt how much I wished Ben had stayed around long enough to know the only boy I would have been proud to call mine.

The world’s magic sneaks up on you in secret, settles next to you when you have your head turned. It can appear as a tall boy who smells like fish who pulls your braid one night in a bar and asks you to marry him. Or it can be a kid who shows up on your doorstep. Will didn’t show up empty-handed, and he didn’t go without leaving something behind. Not only did he give me a little bit of Ben when I was missing him the most, and good company that didn’t ask for anything but chores to do and to be nearby, but when I wasn’t looking, he tricked me into remembering half of who I am.

When the invitations for Will’s wedding came, I checked the box that said regrets and mailed it back the next day. He knew I wasn’t flying on some plane across the country. But I was happy he’d found someone. He brought her here their first summer to show her where he was from. I made them soup and we walked the beach and I listened to the waves as he told his love the old stories of mermaids and magic. Unlike most people, Will didn’t
bend a tale or make it more with each telling. He told each one to her as Joe told them to him when he was a boy, just as Dad told them to me.

After Will died, I expected I’d run through all the surprises. That everyone who would play a part or turn up would have done so by then. I settled in and did my bit at work and at home, and that, I thought, was that. And then a woman who called herself Jane checked into Room 6. And she stayed.

It is winter and there are no cicadas, but he hears them. He crouches next to the boxes of Ball jars, his back to the stone shed, and he hears the night frogs. They sound wild, tropical. It is cold but he can remember the warm air, the too-bright moon. He is where he was. And everyone is as they were, everything is still intact. He can see and hear it all. The words, the porch door, Luke’s white shirt glowing across the field, June following behind.

The ticking hasn’t stopped. He wonders again if there is anyone else in the house. Is it possible Lolly is alone? How can she not hear it? How can anyone sleep through something so fucking loud
?
He pictures her topless, wearing only panties, sleeping above the covers. He imagines her skin—perfect, glowing—not like the girls from town who seem less protected from the elements.
WAKE THE FUCK UP!
he thinks and almost shouts. The ticking continues and there is no sound of movement in the house. He scans the field and tree line for signs of Luke and June, but there are none. Someone has to turn off the stove, and he knows there is no one but him. It will just take a second, he tells himself. He’ll be in and
out before Luke and June are back and without anyone in the house knowing. Just a twist of the knob and it will be okay. He won’t get caught. If he left now, who knows what could happen. He’s heard stories of houses filling with gas and with the flip of a light switch blowing a mile high. But aren’t these just stories parents tell their kids to scare them into being careful?
Shit,
he mutters under his breath, and starts to move slowly along the side of the house. He inches quietly to the porch door, opens it as carefully as he can, and steps through. He crosses the porch and takes two cautious steps up the slate stairs into the house. He stands at the foot of the dark stairway that leads to the second floor. He dares himself to look along the railing, up. There is no sound there, no movement. No one has heard him. The ticking is louder than the sound of his feet on the wide-plank wood floors, and he times each step to coincide with the beat of the stove’s threat. He steps up to the old white devil and looks down into the burner and sees the little hammer tap without sparking each time it ticks. No markings are on the stove or the dial to tell him which is off and which is on. No words are on the stove anywhere. He tries the knob closest to the burner and without thinking turns it to the left. It ticks once, and right away a small explosion of flames billows before him with a whoosh. It is nothing more than a flash, and just as quickly as it explodes, the flames recede to a few inches. The ticking stops. He turns it back to the right and the flame goes out. He
stands there, rattled by the burst but relieved the ticking has stopped. And then it starts again.
What the fuck
he whispers, scanning the burner, the knob. He turns it to the left again and the ticking stops and this time there is no flame. Maybe it was just because so much gas had built up before. Maybe that’s why when he turned it off there was a flame. It just needed to burn through. He’s suddenly confused and he wishes he’d never got out of bed that morning, never worked for Luke that day, never smoked pot on the Moon and lost track of time, never left his fucking knapsack behind in the shed. He looks at the stove for answers and there are none. The ticking has stopped but it doesn’t make sense that the stove is off. He thinks he smells gas but isn’t sure. If there is gas, it must be lingering from before. Or is it? He didn’t smell it when he came in. He’s sweating now, his hands are slick. He closes his eyes, thinks. It has stopped ticking so it must be off. He tries to think through all the movements—left, right, left. Or was it right, left, right? Didn’t the flame go on when he turned it to the left? How could that be off if he had to turn it back to where it was? Or did he? He blinks his eyes a few times, roughs his hair, and tries to focus again on what just happened. He hears a floorboard upstairs and knows he has to get out of the house. It’s stopped ticking, he reasons one last time, so it’s off. Before he leaves, he looks around the kitchen. It is bright, and as old as the stove is, the other appliances are new, sleek. Thick slabs of white marble are on
the counters, and below the window is a deep double sink with a high, curving faucet. The cabinets are painted pale yellow, the walls white. He takes one last look at the stove, sniffs for gas again, and this time is sure he smells it, but just a trace. On the counter he sees a pair of cat-eyed sunglasses he saw Lolly wearing when she was talking to what must have been her fiancé’s family in the lawn that afternoon. He moves toward them, but before he reaches the counter, he hears a door open upstairs and then footsteps. All at once he is moving, across the kitchen, down into the screened porch, toward the door. He knocks against a wicker chair and it skids a few feet across the slate. As quickly as he can, he gently lifts it back into position, symmetrical with the couch and opposite another chair. As he lowers the chair to the floor, he notices the tossed white and blue cushions, a soft beige blanket folded over the low arm of the sofa, scattered candles, extinguished now, their wax melted down, wicks black. He knows he should hurry but something holds him there. The just-used space, the lingering smell of citronella and perfume, the dimpled cushions where people had only minutes before been sitting. He remembers Luke’s mom and June Reid there earlier, laughing. A toilet flushes upstairs and he steps back, turns away, and leaves through the porch door, which he accidentally lets bang behind him. He lunges for his knapsack, which he’d left next to the shed, sprints across the front lawn, up the dark driveway, and onto the road. He fetches his
bike from the weeds, curls the knapsack over his shoulder, and tightens the straps to his chest. He swings one leg over the bike and grips the handlebars. His hands are shaking.
I’m going,
he mutters, confirming and challenging what is happening, what should probably not be happening. He toes the left pedal and imagines the first blessed hit. The tires begin to roll on the asphalt beneath him. He feels the bong shift in the knapsack behind him.
I’m going,
he says again, this time convinced.

He pedals furiously until he’s passed the church and turned left onto an old, unused logging road. He can practically taste the smoke in his mouth as he jumps off the bike, unzips his knapsack, and lunges for the bong. His arms are still shaking.
What the fuck just happened?
he mumbles to himself, remembering the smell of gas.
What did I do
?

He thinks, briefly, of going back, calling upstairs into the sleeping house to wake Lolly or anyone who will listen. He considers this as he packs his bowl with thick pinches of pot and fishes in the front pocket of his knapsack for a lighter. He settles down in the grass next to his bike and crosses his legs, Indian style. He runs through the consequences—the police, his parents, Luke. He pulls the bong toward his lap, leans forward, and as he slowly fills his lungs, his mind empties. He holds off exhaling for as long as he can, and when he does, pot smoke curls around his head and dances above him like ghost flames. He closes his eyes and pulls his knees toward his chest.
The preceding hours, minute by agonizing minute, become less urgent, gradually vanish. He smokes another hit. His body calms, he exhales, and the world is, again, simple: the humming cicadas, the spark of a lighter, and the sound of one boy breathing.

Lolly was right. The Moonstone sits at the edge of the world. June has driven as far as she can and this is where she will stop. In this room with white walls and gray carpet and a golden mermaid painted on a piece of driftwood hung above the bed. She will stay here for as long as she needs to, maybe forever, she thinks as she switches the light off and lays her head on the pillow. She hears the ocean outside, pounding the shore, over and over, and for the first time she allows herself to remember that night, does not will it away.

She is standing at the sink, filling the kettle for tea, but she is already boiling. About something that has sat unbudging and blunt between them since New Year’s Eve when he asked her to marry him. She’d responded by laughing; evading the question by pretending he was joking, as if he’d suggested they cross the field behind their house, march up the steps of the main building at the Unification Church, and join the Moonies. Her laugh that night was so dismissive and distant, so effective, that it took him almost a month to bring it up again. He’d built a fire and they were eating bowls of risotto she’d
made, left over from the night before when Lydia was over for dinner. She’d asked about Lolly’s wedding in May. Lolly had called after Thanksgiving to tell June she and Will would accept her nearly-a-year-on-the-table offer to have the reception at the house. This now gave them less than six months to rent a tent, June explained, mail invitations, hire a caterer, organize flowers, and all the rest of it. June noticed Luke get quiet around the talk of wedding plans, but he didn’t say anything after Lydia left. He waited until the next night and asked if June’s hesitation had to do with money and the great difference in their circumstances. He was making a decent living with his landscaping business, but he could not compete with what she had in the bank and the house, which had been paid off when she was still married to Adam. He said if that was her concern, he was happy to sign any prenup or contract she wanted. She can’t say the idea of a prenup hadn’t crossed her mind since he’d proposed; it had, but barely. The truth was, she hadn’t considered the option of marrying him seriously enough to think through the financial or legal consequences. The only consequence that flashed through June’s mind on New Year’s Eve, when Luke bent down on one knee and held out an unusual and pretty pink enamel ring, was Lolly. It had only been a few years now that she’d been communicating with her. Less than two since she would even acknowledge Luke’s existence and speak his name. Only a few weeks since she’d accepted June’s offer to have the
wedding reception at the house. To barge into all this with the news that she and Luke were getting married would only confirm her fundamental theory about June: that she thought of herself first and foremost and only, and that her actions never took into account the impact they’d have on others, especially Lolly. This is what June thought that night as she tried to make up for her insensitive first response, tried to assure Luke that this was not something they needed to worry about. She did not explain her reasons because instinctively she did not want to pit Luke against Lolly. Position Lolly between Luke and what he wanted. She had finally convinced Lolly to give Luke a chance and did not want to risk his resenting her. But she did not say any of this that night in front of the fire in February. She also did not say she’d laughed when he proposed because she was caught off guard and because it was impossible. What she said was that she loved him and for now that had to be enough. And for that night, and a while after, it was. She kept the ring in its gray box in the top drawer of her dresser with the rest of her jewelry. She told him it was too large, that she would have it sized at a shop in Salisbury; but in truth the ring fit perfectly and she had no intention of wearing it. Not because she didn’t think it was beautiful—it was, in its particular, vintage art deco way—but because she did not want to be wearing the open question on her finger, waving it between them daily. What she wanted was for the question itself to go away.