In the Break (18 page)

My mother had threatened our family with church, and she kept her word. Two weekends after my “transgression” — my mother’s
term for stealing her car and running away with Jamie and Amber to Mexico on a surf trip — we went back to mass as a family.

Week after week we had to endure the monotone priest, the beaming parishioners, the handshakes at the end followed by “Peace
be with you.” One Sunday as I sat in the pew between Nestor and Paul, I remembered the times Raul and I used to ride our bikes
to early mass. So that we would be finished with the obligation early enough to get on with our day: He would hook up with
a girlfriend, I would surf. What I remembered was getting the giggles (we always sat in the very back of the not-very-filled
church) when Raul would stuff trash in the collection envelope, or gum, or even snot once. I would imagine some officious
layperson opening the envelope… .

I must have chuckled, for Paul slugged me in the arm. I leaned down and whispered, “Love, Jesus,” while pinching the baby
fat under his ribs.

He shrieked, and everyone in the whole congregation looked at us. Nestor spoke in a hushed though severe voice to him, and
then glared at me. What, was I going to get in more trouble? I didn’t give a shit, if this was my life.

I figured I
would
get in trouble big time from Nestor once we got home, but the opposite happened. He was so impatient to leave
that he took off before the priest walked down the aisle with the incense and shit he carried. My mother was furious with
Nestor, almost running to catch him as we hustled to the gravel subsidiary parking lot, the overflow lot, where we were forced
to park, since we’d arrived late. My mother liked to hang out in front of the church after mass, exchanging pleasantries with
strangers. Once she caught up to him she said, “What kind of example do you think you’re setting for your children?”

“What?” Nestor said. “I want to go.”

“What’s the big rush?”

“I don’t want to get stuck in the logjam getting out. This parking lot’s a bottleneck. We’ll be here a half hour.”

“So what?”

Before I’d even buckled my seat belt, Nestor peeled out, spraying gravel as he lurched the car toward the exit.

“That’s it!” my mother shouted. “You’re not going next week. You’re banned.”

I thought I saw Nestor crack the slightest grin as I looked at his face in the rearview mirror.

The first therapist I had to see was a therapist-in-training, and she was free, available from my church, St. Mary’s. My mother
had talked to Father Daniels, and he suggested that I begin sessions with Ms. Catrone.

The first session we just met and I pretty much wouldn’t talk. Why should I speak with a stranger? Why should I pour out my
heart to someone I didn’t know? I didn’t. And when I did talk in the
few sessions we had, I withheld the good stuff. I said that F was a cheap jerk and that Jamie should be given a medal for
fucking him up. Ms. Catrone didn’t think I was being very charitable. It was hard to reconcile the image of F in the market
with the one of him dragging Jamie off the beach that day. But the violent image always won out, ergo my apathy toward what
had happened to F.

She wanted me to talk about my feelings about Amber, once I said that we’d hooked up. But I wasn’t going to tell that woman
anything about her. Talking about it would somehow lessen our experience, wouldn’t it?

She knew we weren’t getting anywhere so she cut off my sessions. She told my parents that I didn’t trust her, which was true,
I supposed. And it was fine because there was nothing wrong with me; I was just stalling until Jamie returned. They’d find
him, or he’d simply get back on his own somehow. Jamie could do it, I just knew he could.

I had a fantasy about Jamie returning one day, all scraggly, like Chance, Shadow, and Fluffy had done in
The Incredible Journey
. There’d be so much celebrating that the whole area wouldn’t be able to contain itself, not the teachers at my high school
or continuation school, not any of the law-enforcement people, not the D.A. or my lawyer, not the neighbors who now looked
at us askance; not anyone, we’d all be so happy that all the bad stuff would go away.

“Don’t you know anyone who drives?” I said. Greg Scott and I were sitting in my room after school was out for him.

“Robert Bonham.” Greg Scott thought he was funny.

“You’re not funny, dude,” I snarled at him. “I want to go back down.”

“You can’t, dude. You’re on bail.” He was sitting on my bed playing his newest handheld.

“So?”

“So, you jump bail and they send bounty hunters after
you
.”

I knew he was right. But it was just that months were going by and nothing had happened. Except that Amber wasn’t coming back,
I didn’t think, and Claire had separated from F, or so we heard.

“Would your dad take us?”

“Shit, man, I got so much heat for getting you guys the sleeping bags and stuff. Gimme a break.” He turned off his system.
“You know who’s dating Corinna now?”

I had had a crush on her since the fourth grade. Now, after Amber, Corinna Cervantes seemed a little girl. “No, who?”

“Dan Avon.” Greg looked at me as if I were supposed to care. I didn’t. “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird?”

“Why?” I couldn’t care less who went out with Corinna.

“You don’t seem to care about much these days,” Greg said, putting his things in his backpack, getting ready to go home, I
guessed.

He was right, I didn’t.

“Let’s check out the waves,” Greg said.

We went into my backyard and climbed up on the block wall. Not much was going on in the ocean.

“When do you get to surf again?” Greg Scott said.

“Ask Nestor.”

After he left I felt so lonely I thought I might actually cry, the one thing everyone was trying to get me to do, but also
the thing I refused to do. Jamie was coming back… .

And Amber, well, I was now almost embarrassed about how I’d behaved. Not for anything I’d done. More so for how I felt. I
was nothing to her. No, that’s not true either. I just wasn’t Robert Bonham; nobody could be, I now saw. They were meant for
each other, I think, and I got in the way for a time. A very short time. I guess like the other guy she had fooled around
with. Why would I think she would want to be my girlfriend?

It’s so silly, even though I have these incredible dreams about her. Last night we were in the ocean and I started kissing
her and we were getting down to business, and when I opened my eyes underwater Amber was a dolphin, pulling me into a wave
in the dream. Almost all the dreams are about sex and we don’t quite do it, or are interrupted or otherwise thwarted. But
in the dreams she still wants to, and I guess that’s something.

I guess we connect with people in so many different ways; there are so many different forms of like and love and friendship.
I’m good friends with Greg Scott, but he’s not Jamie and never will be. But he’s got my back and he does everything that a
friend can do, and vice versa on my part. And there are other guys as well. Girls too. Girls who just seem to like me because
I’m me, not any going-out stuff.

Maybe I should care that Corinna likes that fool Dan Avon. Maybe I should let her know that I liked her for a long time. Or
it can wait; it’s waited long enough. I guess the big thing is that I see that I could hook up with someone else again, and
I don’t begrudge Amber’s being with the person she wants to be with.

All winter the coast was battered by El Niño storms. Huge weather systems from the gulf of Alaska generating massive swells
that hit our coastline. Wind and rain pelted the house, flooding the streets and closing Pacific Coast Highway on a weekly
basis. And I couldn’t surf. I stayed around the house doing schoolwork, talking with friends on the phone, and seeing Greg
Scott on the weekends. My lawyer stalled the courts, and sucked money from my parents.

Robert Bonham showed up one rainy afternoon and knocked on the door.

“What do you want?”

“Amber’s board.”

“No way!” I snarled.

“We’re getting married. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Fuck you.” I pushed him off the porch, out into the rain. When he came back at me I slammed the door and locked it.

He pounded on the door and then kicked it. “You’re lucky I don’t
kick your ass, you little asshole. She’s marrying me!” he yelled through the closed front door.

I stood quiet in the hall, until I slid down the wall and sat on the cold damp tiles. I could see the television set from
where I sat, and couldn’t help remembering a time when Amber had showed up at the front door, breathless and in need.

And they did marry.

Amber sent me a letter, one that’s creased slick from having been read so many times, I could see as I looked at it yet again.

Dearest Juan,

By now you must know I’m married to Robert. Please, please, please forgive me if I have hurt you.

I can’t explain what happened down in Mexico with us, all that happened on the island. I still don’t know what to make of
it. But I know you’re a part of my life in the same way that Jamie. Oh, how I miss Jamie. And you must too. It must be so
very hard for you, Juan. I hope hearing from me doesn’t make things even worse. My intention is to ease your mind, to tell
you that I’m okay, I’m getting on, that you are always in my heart, and I hope that I might see you someday.

Much love,

Amber

P.S.: My mother’s wrong to hold anything against you. You acted, you didn’t hesitate to help Jamie She will realize that someday.

Claire did hold me responsible, my mother told me. She, Claire, had told my mother when they finally spoke that had it not
been for me, her son would be alive. My mother told her that she, Claire, was the person most responsible, if there were blame
to lay, which there wasn’t. They talked no more after that. And my life was completely severed from that of the Watkinses.

As the winter wore on into early spring, and the first peach trees blossomed and then the apricots followed, my thoughts began
to change. I knew that Jamie was not coming back. This was a result of everyone pounding that fact into my head, everyone
from the parish priest to the court-appointed counselor I now had to see once a week. My father, my mother, my older brother,
Amber in her letter, all of these things.