Stay (31 page)

ket of fries. He looped one into his mouth. Gulliver ignored the

food. Actually he was looking off into the distance as if we were

boring him.

“I missed you all day,” Finn said. “I missed you before I even

got out of bed.”

“Me too,” I said. “It was the longest morning.”

“How was the snake today?” He chose another fry, fed it to me.

“Sylvie?” It didn’t seem right to talk about our conversation.

What Sylvie had told me—it was too private to speak out loud

while slurping Diet Coke out of a paper cup. “She was fine.

Rotten kids touching everything, though.”

“Ah, man. You get those on the boat all the time. Parents

drinking their wine on the sunset sail, oblivious to the kid mess-

ing around. Sure, I’ll steer a seventy-foot boat, watch for tankers,

idiot speedboats, work the sails, and babysit your little monster so

he doesn’t drown. Nooo problem. You hear anymore from psycho

boyfriend?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Did you tell your dad?”

“No chance yet.”

“I saw him today. He was riding his bike. He waved, I waved.

My mom really liked you, by the way.”

“I really liked her. Your whole family . . .”

He grabbed my hands. Looked at me seriously. “You ever

think about staying on here after the summer? You graduated.

You wouldn’t have to go back.”

* 244 *

Stay

“I never really thought about that as an option. School, you

know? I’ve got to sort out the whole college thing.”

“
While
you sorted out the whole college thing . . .”

He was rubbing my fingers with his; our hands were clasped.

There was this sweet, sweet space between us and in it sat all

this hope, and I stepped into that space and kissed him and

he kissed back, and it was so great and that’s why it was such

a shame that I had been wrong about the uneasy feeling being

gone. It was like Christian was there, watching me kiss someone

else. I remembered a time when it was Christian and I sitting at

a waterfront—in Seattle, at a table at Ivar’s, eating fish and chips

and hot chowder on a cold day, watching the ships and the ferries

crossing the sound. You could see your breath. I had my hands in

Christian’s pockets. Christian had wrapped his scarf around both

of us, pulling us together.

I checked across the street. He would be there, his arms

folded in fury. Or worse, his face in his hands.

“Look at this stupid bird,” Finn said. “All these french fries

sitting here, and he’s just watching Cleo read her book.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for an invitation. He’s got better man-

ners, maybe, than the rest of them.”

“Or else he just doesn’t like the crunchy ones on the bottom,

either,” Finn said. He started lining up the leftover fries, the nar-

row dry ones we’d rejected. I smiled. Finn was making a heart

out of them. He was talking to Gulliver, telling him how lucky

he was. Not every seagull had his food formed into art. It was

because he was a particularly intelligent and devoted bird. He

shouldn’t have to lower himself by going through garbage.

* 245 *

Deb Caletti

The heart was finished. “Back to work,” Finn said. “Crazy

amount of tourists today.”

“I know. Want to do something tonight?”

He put his arms around my waist, pulled me close. “I hate it,

but I can’t. I got sunsets all week. Some corporate private charter

tonight. But you can come on the one tomorrow night. Casual.

Stupid Captain Bishop Inn summer tour. They do it once a month.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Call me later?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

We held hands, and we started toward the end of the dock

where
Obsession
was. I looked back over my shoulder. “Check it

out,” I said. I pointed back toward our table. Gulliver was eating

his way around the heart.

“Hey, you’re welcome. No problem,” Finn shouted at him,

and I laughed. If someone was looking at us right then, this is

what they would have seen. Our hands locked together, the effort-

less way we had with each other. They would have seen my head

tipped toward Finn with happiness as I laughed. It would have

looked like I had completely moved on.

Dad was still gone when I got back late that afternoon. His laptop

was on the kitchen table, open but turned off. I felt the kind of

tired old people must feel, and ancient sea turtles, and trees that

had been standing for hundreds of years. I got in my crispy white

sheets and put the pillow over my head and shut out everything.

When I woke up, the room had gotten dark, and I was

confused for a moment about what day it was and what time

* 246 *

Stay

until that wake-moment came where the pieces fall into place,

where there is either relief or some terrible remembering

about what is. I could hear the television on. As I said, my

father rarely watches television. It sounded like some nature

show, that TV rainforest background of twittering birds and

crickets chirping.45*

Sometimes a nap makes you feel worse. I got out of bed. My

head was draggy and fuzzed.

“Morning, Glory,” my father said. He wasn’t even wearing

his glasses, which meant I knew he couldn’t even see that lizard

walking along that branch. He was wearing pajama pants and

his old Al Gore
Prosperity and Progress 2000
T-shirt. I’d seen him

without his glasses a million times, but it still made his face

look odd, like a room after the furniture has just been moved

around.

“What time is it?”

“A little after nine. You were tired. I got us a pizza.” He ges-

tured toward the fridge. The lights from the television flickered

across his face.

“We conserving energy around here?” The room was dark;

outside those windows it was darker still, only the pink line of the

horizon breaking up the wall of gray turning rapidly black.

Dad switched on a table lamp beside him. We both blinked in

the sudden brightness. “Never mind,” I said.

45 You wonder if it’s the same sound track that’s been used for years, because, I swear,

from the time we watched nature films in elementary school to now, they always sound

exactly the same. Those birds and those crickets were probably alive when my parents

were growing up.

* 247 *

Deb Caletti

He turned it back off again, and it was a relief. I went to the

fridge and took out a floppy slice of pizza from under the cello-

phane wrap on the plate. “Mm—love cold pizza. “

“Your phone’s been ringing in your purse,” he said. “I keep

hoping your wallet will answer.”

“Ha,” I said. “My wallet’s the strong silent type. Hasn’t spo-

ken to anyone in years.”

I hadn’t woken up all the way yet, because I was just eating

that pizza standing by the fridge and joking around and not think-

ing. And then I did wake up, because I realized the importance

of that ringing phone. It could be Shakti. It could be Christian

himself. It might be Finn, though it was still a little early for him

to be finished at the docks.

“I hate phones,” I said.

“We were better off when people didn’t talk so much,” my

father said. A disgusting-looking insect was apparently doing it

with another disgusting-looking insect on the television. “When

every little feeling anyone had wasn’t puked out on someone else.”

“Thanks for that image,” I said. My phone was blinking the

red on-off urgency of a message. “Shit.”

“What?” he said. He turned on the couch to face me. I held

up a hand.

Shakti. I listened.
Clara, it’s me. I’m so sorry. Something ter-

rible happened. I’m just sick about it. Christian called here while I

was out . . . He talked to my mom. I’d told her, you know, about you

being there . . . Not why, nothing about him. He was just being all

nice, looking for information . . . I’m so, so sorry.
She started to cry
.

I could hear her struggling to talk
. Call me back . . .

* 248 *

Stay

“No,” I whispered.
No!

“Clara?”

My father put the remote control down and came over to me.

I handed him the phone. He replayed the message. “Clara,” he

said. “Clara! Why? Why did you tell her?”

“
She
didn’t tell him. Her mother . . .” I wanted to cry. Oh,

God. God, I had been such an idiot.

“Jesus,” my father said. He rubbed his forehead. “He could

be here right now!”

“I’m so tired . . .”I said.

“We’re hostages. I’m finished being a hostage, all right?

Finished
.”

He slammed the phone down on the table. He opened one of

the kitchen cupboards, decided against getting whatever he was

about to get, flung the door shut so that it banged. He sat back

down on the couch, clicked through the channels until he came

back again to the nature show. He sighed. He took my hand. “Ah,

shit, honey.”

I didn’t say anything. Just held his hand.

“We’ve got to make a plan, Clara. He could come here. He

could
be
here. I’ve got to get in touch with Branson tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You need to stop being sorry and be this angry, too, Clara

Pea. Your guilt is bullshit.”

It didn’t feel like bullshit. My guilt felt so big, it was like

a living thing. I could feel its heart beating. I sat beside him

on the couch, drew my knees up, wrapped my arms around

them.
Night comes under the canopy, and a hidden world reveals

* 249 *

Deb Caletti

itself . . .
We watched frogs and the glowing eyes of monkeys. I

looked over at my father, watched his profile, watched his eyes

soften again.

“I saw you at the Portside,” I said. “With Annabelle. I would

have come over, but it looked like you were arguing.”

He kept watching that TV. His face flashed with colors from

the lights of the television—yellow and then green and white.

“We were,” he said.

“I heard her say something. ‘It’s her story, too.’”

So much sat there between us, suspended. He’d let it all

out of his hands, and what was suspended would be dropped,

and things would shatter, and I was not ready for it. “I thought

maybe you were arguing about your new book or something,”

I said.

“Right.” His face took on that sagging, old look I’d seen in the

restaurant. He didn’t look like the same person who was slam-

ming things around just a while ago. “Right. My editor. Her story,

too. One could argue. Etcetera, etcetera. I’m trying to decide

whether I agree or not,” he said.

The rainforest show was over. Upcoming—
Deadliest Sharks.

We sat there. We watched huge, prehistoric bodies snaking

through deep waters. Fatal encounters between humans and

great whites. We saw what happens when two dangerous crea-

tures end up in the same place at one ill-fated moment in time.

Well, I couldn’t sleep after that nap, obviously. Dad went to bed,

but I stayed up and talked to Finn and then half-watched some

stupid movie. It was late when my phone rang. It buzzed and

* 250 *

Stay

skirted around the hard surface of the table like a little remote

control car. Shakti. I didn’t feel like answering. Even her name

felt loaded, weighted down by the complicated responsibilities

of friendship. But Shakti—she had stayed up all night with me

once, helping me color this huge trifold map of ancient Greece

for a project due the next day. She was so serious about it, trying

to do a good job for me. She would offer her favorite jacket, too,

if I ever needed it, the new one any other person would be too

selfish to share. On Mother’s Day, she brought me flowers. Who

would think of that? That’s the kind of person she was.

“Oh Clara, I am so sorry. I’ve been gone all day because

Grandma Shia had some stroke or something. She’s fine, we

just got her home, but I couldn’t exactly call. I feel so awful

about this. My stupid mother. She feels terrible. She just keeps

saying, ‘He was such a nice boy. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’

He called all casual, trying to see if you’d been around. I should

have told her the truth a long time ago, but you know how she

freaks out about everything. And I was careless. I was so happy

to hear from you, I’d said to Mom, ‘Oh, I heard from Clara, and

she’s in Bishop Rock!’ and my mother said, ‘I thought she went

to Europe,’ and I said, ‘No. They’ve got a house on the beach.’”

Shakti started to cry.

“It was an accident,” I said.

“I’m so sorry.” She was crying hard. I looked out toward that

black, black sea out the windows. A layer of fog slunk along the