Stay (22 page)

knew he was going through the same thing I was.

I decided to go see Annabelle Aurora. It was kind of like tell-

ing on Dad, but fine. He was responsible for me, sure, but I was

responsible for him too. Right or not, that’s how it was.

The air felt so good outside. I breathed deeply. It was a blue

* 171 *

Deb Caletti

sky day and the ocean just kept on being the ocean—wide and

consistent, in and out, in and out, bringing its little presents to

the shore and taking them back again. I made my way down the

trail, grasping at sea grass to keep me upright and doing the last

bit in an embarrassing half slide, hands up surfer style. That part

wasn’t on purpose.

I hoped Annabelle was home. I walked down the beach to her

place and was happy to see her gray head bent over in her garden,

checking on her plants. She was holding a fistful of weeds and

had a bucket of clams.

“Clara!” she said. She had an old T-shirt on, her jeans. Her

eyes revved up into that twinkle. I swear, her twinkle went from

zero to sixty in one second. She was happy to see me. “Where the

Christ has your father been? Is he mad at me?”

“I was hoping you could explain him to
me
,” I said.

“Let me make you something. A ginger drink.”

I followed her inside, and she bustled around the small

space. A minute later we were outside again, sitting at that

folding table. She set two tomatoes in a bowl in front of us,

along with a salt shaker and two tall glasses filled with a light

brown liquid.

She sat down. She propped her feet up on the extra chair. The

sea in front of her place had a few huge rocks in it—one shaped

like the curved back of a whale, another like the sharp triangle of

a fin. Waves broke around them in white froth. I sipped my drink.

It was cold, but with the heat of ginger and the sharp breath of

cinnamon.

“This is delicious,” I said.

* 172 *

Stay

“Good,” she said. She took a tomato, chomped into it like

an apple, sprinkled a little salt on it, and had another bite. She

gestured for me to do the same. I did. I didn’t even like tomatoes

all that much, but eating one that way made the tomato taste dif-

ferent. Sort of like its real self. Annabelle set it down on a napkin

and folded her hands. A patient Buddha in the guise of an old

lady, or the other way around.

I listened to the roar and crash of waves, the
chshsh
of water

rolling over sand. It was sunny, and the sand looked shimmery.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked. It was funny how you could

talk about some things in the daylight without a problem. Light

is good protection.

“Ghosts,” she said. She thought about this. “I think we make

our own ghosts.”

“That’s pretty much what Sylvie Genovese said.”

“Then again, the day after my brother died . . . I went out to

the beach. It was filled with sand dollars.
Filled
. Not one or two,

but hundreds.” She pointed to a glass jar that held a few of them.

“I’d never seen anything like it. He loved sand dollars. I had to

wonder.”

“Wow.”

“Yes, indeed. How ready is one to believe in coincidence? Or

that everything has an explanation? My brother himself would

have said there had been a certain tide . . . Why do you ask?” She

sipped her own drink.

“There’s supposed to be a lot of ghosts around here. The

lighthouse is haunted.”

“That’s what they say.”

* 173 *

Deb Caletti

“You don’t think it’s possible? For people who are dead to stay

here with us?”

“Oh, they stay here with us, all right.”

“I guess so.” I thought about my mother. It was strange how

often I was thinking about my mother lately. She seemed more

real and present to me than she had in a long time.

“Then again, I’m not one who thinks many things are
im
pos-

sible. My brother and I were different. A scientist, an artist.

Who knows what to believe? We can’t sit on our own island and

assume we know all there is.”

“I think Dad is still in love with Mom,” I said.

“Really.” She swirled her ice cubes.

“He’s sitting around morose all the time. He can’t seem to

move on.”

Annabelle made a little
hmmph
sound, thought about this.

“Love.” She looked at me with those blue eyes. “Isn’t it astonish-

ing how confused and complicated such a small, simple word

is? It attracts so many other things, doesn’t it, that stick to it like

barnacles on rock . . . fear, guilt. Need. You can’t even see the

rock anymore. I imagine love in its purest form is a rare thing.”

“Are you saying he’s
not
still in love with my mother?”

“I’m just saying it’s probably hard for him being here, right

by the sea. Can you imagine how hard? But, then again, we do

that, don’t we? We put ourselves in the worst places in order to

travel through them. We don’t even realize it. It’s some need we

have. Inner drive . . .”

I didn’t even hear the last of what she’d said. I got stuck

there, on the part about him being by the sea. I didn’t know

* 174 *

Stay

what she meant. Did she mean because he’d taken a trip to

the beach after my mother died? Is that what she was talking

about? But I felt something at her words. A tug, like the start of

a thread being pulled. The alarm of things starting to unravel.

The sea. My mother and father. Something else there, too.

Fiona Husted? Annabelle herself? A memory that wasn’t quite

a memory, more like something you saw in a photograph and

thought you remembered but probably didn’t.

I interrupted her philosophical rambling. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s purposeful, even if we don’t realize it. The desire

to put things in our path to figure out how to finally leave them

behind . . .” She didn’t understand what I was asking.

“No. The sea. What about the sea? Why would it be hard for

him to be here?”

Annabelle Aurora stopped. She started to speak and then

changed her mind. She looked at me, blinking. She took in a

breath. An
oh!
The kind of painful surprise you get when you

suddenly see that you’re bleeding.

“Why would it be hard?” I asked again. My alarm was grow-

ing. She knew something. And behind that something was a

whole other world beyond that island I lived on. I didn’t want to

know, but I needed to know. A part of you understands when it’s

time for that.

“Clara,” she said. The wattage in her eyes dimmed. She

looked sad. No, she looked crushed.

“Tell me.”

“No,” she said. “I’m an old woman, and I can’t always keep

everything straight.”

* 175 *

Deb Caletti

I knew that wasn’t true. I could ask her anything, I’d bet, what

those weeds were called out there, the medicinal properties of

ginger, the National Book Award winner of 1976, and she would

know it. “Please,” I said.

“No, Clara,” she said. She was old and small enough for her

wrists to be broken like twigs, but I could tell, too, that she could

stand immovable as a tree trunk.

I sat there and looked at her and she at me. We were two

forces. “Why are
you
here?” I asked.

“I came one summer, after I divorced my husband of thirty-

five years. It was more honest here than the city. Salt grass

doesn’t lie, and neither do thorny urchins or sea lettuce. I’m

getting too old for anything but the truth. My friends think I’m

crazy. My daughters haven’t forgiven me. They’ve tried to come

and fetch me more than once. People like their own free will

more than anyone else’s.”

“Annabelle,” I tried again.

“No, Clara.”

“You said you believe in the truth.”

“I love your father. And this is not mine to tell.”

I pushed away from the table. I wanted to get away from here.

This old woman knew things about my father I didn’t know.

Maybe even things about me. I thought we were here to get away

from Christian. But maybe there was another reason. I needed

to get home to my father and find out what the hell was really

going on.

“I need to go,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Clara. I’m so very sorry,” Annabelle said. But

* 176 *

Stay

when she reached her hand out to me, I turned away. I left that

little house where Annabelle found truth.

By the time I had gotten back to the car, my brain had done a nifty

trick, one of its best, something it was really good at. Already,

several stories and excuses and reasons for what just happened

had popped in to calm me down. Annabelle knew something,

okay, but there were a million possible somethings that would

not change my life. Maybe my dad and my mother had met by

the ocean. He had a love affair, maybe, a long time ago. Some

tragic happening that made him hate the water. No wonder he

didn’t want to talk about it. Shakti’s father had been involved

with some violent political protests in India, and he wouldn’t say

anything about that. It didn’t affect Shakti’s every day life. It was

her father’s own private business.

The feeling I had, that I was pressing up against something

huge, a sense of gathering panic—it was just me, probably. After

what had happened with Christian, all of me felt fragile, that was

all. I had started seeing tragedy everywhere I looked. I’d stand on

a street ready to cross and would be sure I’d get hit by a car. I was

sure, too, at other moments, that my father had cancer. Or that a

cinder from the fire Dad had built would rise and catch and set us

both ablaze. My terror had been turned on and now it couldn’t be

shut off, like those stupid car alarms you hear on the street that

keep blaring long past any danger.

We’re as good at talking ourselves out of fear as into it, aren’t

we? Maybe better.

I ate a Snickers bar Dad had on the seat of the car, and I

* 177 *

Deb Caletti

turned the key, and those two normal acts made me quite sure

everything else was normal, too. The lighthouse was still the

lighthouse and the road was still the road and my hands were

on the wheel and there was a scrunched up chocolate bar wrap-

per beside me, and it was all normal enough that nothing could

really be going wrong. I decided not to drive straight home and

confront Dad, who would likely think I’d lost my mind. So, big

deal. Annabelle knew why he was afraid of the water. So what.

I calmed down. I drove to the Bishop Rock docks. I could see

Obsession
out on the water, its tall mast looking old and regal as a

king. I waved to Cleo, smelled the reassuring smell of ocean and

piers and Cleo’s cheeseburgers. I felt comfort at the solid sound

of my shoes against the dock wood, and at the racket of those

seagulls—swooping and arcing and whining seagull complaints.

Finn put his hand to his mouth and called. “Clara!” The pas-

sengers were still aboard, and a few laughed.

“Lovestruck baby,” Jack sang, and tossed the rope to Finn

as he hopped off. It was like watching acrobats—their sure and

quick-footed moves.

I relaxed again, in spite of the strange thing that had hap-

pened back there with Annabelle Aurora. I realized this was also

true in a larger way—even with my past and the sudden bouts of

irrational panic it brought, it was relaxing here. It was the forever-

ness of the water, the ancient art of those huge white sails, the

old rocks; it was the Bishop brothers with their family history

that named this island. And Finn’s firm grip, and Jack’s cocky

scrubble on his face, and Cleo’s seagull that stayed and stayed

every single day.

* 178 *

Stay

Finn helped the passengers off the boat, lending each his

hand. He trotted over to me when he was finished. Every time

I saw him it was the same.
He
was the same. He was his same,

easygoing self with his wide smile and shy eyes. He didn’t

become other, surprising things. I had realized what a great thing

sameness was. You wouldn’t think it, but it was true. There was

a shelter in certain rhythms—seasons and tides and boats that

went out and came back in, people who were steady, who kept

steady hands on rudders.

I guess that’s what safety is. Sameness you can count on.

And sameness was something we should be grateful for,

who knew? He wrapped his arms around me. He had never

given me such a big, wide open hug before. He smelled like

the cold air of outside, and I loved that. Maybe we had come

to a similar feeling by our own path, because it felt like we