Stay (4 page)

“I’m just glad your mother didn’t like L.A.,” I said.

He looked into my eyes, way down in, and I was sure he

could see all of the important things there. He looked and he

understood and maybe even had the ability to know me like no

one else had before. I didn’t feel like a seventeen-year-old girl, the

sometimes brave but mostly searching girl that I was. I felt fully

formed in ways that someone, a man, could respect and desire. I

felt all that right there on the cold bleacher seat. I was much more

than I normally was, that was for sure.

And his eyes, blue—if mine were all at once known, his

were all things unknown. The wide unknown, long plane rides,

a country of Vikings and midsummer, of beautiful blond people

4 Including, you probably remember, the crazy one who tried to replicate in real life

the plot of Fine Young Woman, but who thankfully was caught before anyone was hurt.

If you saw my father trying to cook and talk on the phone at the same time, you’d be

shocked at the power he holds over people. He’ll go around with his T-shirt inside out

too, and not even notice, the little flap of a tag getting a thrilling new view of the world

it didn’t ordinarily get.

* 22 *

Stay

and old royal castles and the white, icy shadow of Greenland.

Busy streets winding irrationally, brimming with people and the

smells of promising new foods. Our own streets were dull and

quiet except for the beep of the crosswalk sign that thoughtfully

let blind people know they could go ahead. We were vanilla here,

and the rest of the world had all the other flavors.

Those things—they sat there like an invitation. To a party you

never thought in a million years you’d be going to but suddenly

felt ready for.

He leaned forward and I could feel his warm breath. He was

going to kiss me, I thought. He waited, and so I leaned forward,

too. I wanted that kiss. He moved toward me and our mouths

met and our tongues entwined and it got hot right away. Jesus.

I stopped.

“I’ve got to get back,” I said. My mouth tasted different.

“Let’s walk, then.”

I felt awkward being so suddenly set free. My legs were wob-

bling walking down the bleachers. The night had seemed almost

graceful and fluid, which did not match with the clumping of my

shoes on the metal seats as I made my way to the field. Before we

got to the gym doors, he stopped.

“I told myself not to be an idiot and forget your phone num-

ber this time.”

“You’re right. What if we forgot?” It was so new and fragile it

could easily disappear like melting snow, like spoken words, like a

dream upon waking. You needed ways to pin it to the ground, ways

like phone numbers and addresses and plans to see each other

again. I looked around in my bag for paper, but no luck. I found the

* 23 *

Deb Caletti

business card of the guy who had just fixed my dad’s transmission,

Jake Ritchee, Smith and Gray Auto
, where I’d dropped the car off as

a favor to my dad. I drew a line across the front, wrote my name

and number and e-mail address on the back.

Christian took my pen, then turned my palm upright and

wrote his number there. “It’s on you forever now,” he joked.

“Okay,” I said. It was that awkward good-bye place. A kiss or

hug would have been too intentional then.

“All right,” he said as if we’d decided something important.

He grinned, but his self-confidence had shifted slightly. He

looked stunned, dazed. I had affected him. Knowing it felt vast

and shimmery. He thought for a moment. “You let me kiss you.”

“And I’d let you again,” I said.

He turned and headed back to his car. He
hadn’t
cared about that

game—he didn’t even return to it. But I did return, with his number

on my palm, black ink that looked as permanent as a tattoo. I had

forgotten my Coke cup back there on the bleacher seat, I realized.

I found Shakti where I’d left her. She stood there now with

Akello, a friend of ours from Uganda. Nick had moved on.

“So who was
that
?” Shakti asked.

“Christian. He’s from Denmark.”

“Hmm. Watch out,” Akello said. “Lots of consonants shoved

together, those people. And Abba.”

“Weren’t they Swedish?” Shakti said.

“ ‘Dancing Queen, long and mean, give it the Dancing

Queen,’ ”Akello sang. His made his voice really high. He shim-

mied around a little, with his arms up.

“Abba Greatest Hits Gold,” Shakti said, in an announcer voice.

* 24 *

Stay

I rolled my eyes at them. Shakti gave me a look that said we

weren’t through talking. But I didn’t want to share everything yet

with anyone, even her. I needed that time alone with it first, that

delicious time where you replay every moment, where you make

what has happened more real and also less—it becomes fact the

more you repeat it, but it becomes story, too, with all the charac-

ters and plot and fictional truths.

I didn’t even know what the score of that game was. I drove

home. I lay in bed in the darkness, bringing the night from start

to end in my mind again and again -
You let me kiss you. And I’d

let you again.
My words had felt daring and right (and lucky, too,

given how the right words usually came to me only when it was

too late), and his had seemed grateful and a little awestruck. It

was powerful to make someone feel awestruck. It was new, and

I liked it. I was sure that feeling of power could make me bold

again and
more
bold, too. I was not somehow smaller than him,

or less interesting. He wasn’t so large to be beyond me—he didn’t

see me that way, not at all. This was what confidence felt like. It

was swirling upward inside of me, and that was the irony. The

biggest feeling I had that night was of my own power.

Maybe he felt that, too. Maybe that was the seed. My power,

his sudden powerlessness. This, too, is the ugly little heart of my

guilt. I was the one who led, I was the one who stepped into that

power and owned it and liked it. But then again, I was maybe

only drunk from that kiss; my dark places were meeting his dark

places, and I could only see his words as
awestruck
. I didn’t see

the accusation there. It was already right there, wasn’t it, from

the very beginning? Did that mean it would have been there no

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Deb Caletti

matter what I had done or said or felt? Could it be that there was

never actually an
escalation
that I had caused, but instead only the

ways he increasingly revealed himself?

I wouldn’t see the accusation in those words until I had

played that scene so many times in my mind. And many more

times still, the way you do when you are trying and trying to

understand the senseless logic of tragic things.

* 26 *

When I woke, my new bedroom in the rented house

was white with hazy morning sun still hid by clouds. I had left

the window open, and the breeze coming through smelled damp

and salty. I put on my robe, looked out to the long stretch of sand,

twice as deep as the night before now that the tide was out. My

heart did a little leap, that heart swoop that meant there were still

things to look forward to. We were right to come here, if only

because the ocean reminded you that impossible things were

possible. Miles and miles of the deepest waters that moved like

clockwork were possible. Creatures like jellyfish and sea urchins

were, too. Millions and jillions of the tiniest grains of sand to

form one long, soft beach—yep, even that was possible.

Or maybe it was just the smell of bacon cooking that made

me feel so good. Dad had the radio on, too—NPR, by the sound

Deb Caletti

of it. At home, he drove me crazy with the sound of that NPR,

but I liked it right then. It was familiar but new in this new

place. Pans were clattering, which meant French toast, too, and

I could hear him whistling. I hurried, and for the first time in a

while I was hurrying because of something good in front of me

instead of something bad behind me.

“The great day waits, Sweet Pea,” my father said hap-

pily. He was wearing drawstring striped pajama bottoms

and a white undershirt and was wielding a spatula. He had

his scuffers on, which is what he called those old slippers of

his with the open backs. His black-gray hair was longer than

usual, though his beard and mustache were kept trim, and he

had on the rectangular black glasses he wore in the mornings

or when his contacts were bothering him. His nose was big,

and he looked a bit rough, but women thought he was Italian

because of his olive skin. They
liked
his edge, and he often got

letters from them based only on that black-and-white jacket

cover photo.5*

“That looks so good,” I said. “I’m starving.”

“I’m glad. You’re looking too thin. It makes me think of your

mother.”

My mother. Rachel Fournier Oates. It was true, she had

been thin, I could see that in the pictures. I resembled her, not

Dad, with her light brown hair, angled face, and serious eyes.

5 Which, by the way, I took in our backyard. If you look closely at the photo credit, you’ll

see that it reads Photo by S. P. Clara, which is the name we gave me. The “S. P.” stands

for Sweet Pea. Pretty good photo, right? My mother was a photographer, and Dad says

I have her eye.

* 28 *

Stay

She wore her hair long and straight, though, or in a ponytail

down her back, whereas mine stops right at my shoulders.

“They’re all thin on that side of the family,” I said.

“Nerves,” he said. He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t want him

to. My mother’s family hated him, and it seemed like the feeling

was mutual. Still, they were our relatives, hers and mine.

I snitched a piece of bacon right off the plate. “Bacon makes

you believe in God.”

“A pig would disagree. See if he’s got any hot sauce around

here,” Dad said, which meant he would be making eggs, too.

“You’ll never believe what I found on the shelf above my dresser.”

He gestured toward the table, where a thin leather photo album

sat at what I guessed was now my place.

“Jackpot,” I said. “We know what he looks like now.”

“Not so fast,” Dad said. “Hey, take a look at these knives. The

guy likes only the best.”

I grinned at Dad brandishing the silver knife with the black

handle, looked down at the album. I opened the cover, expecting

to see our mystery host in full color, but instead there were only

dim, square photos from the 1970s—blond boys with shaggy,

feathered hair, flannel shirts tucked in to flared jeans with wide

belts. I turned the page. The same blond boys with groovy, 1970s

parents in front of a Christmas tree flocked white. Some family

trip to some unidentified state capital. “All we know is that he’s

blond,” I said.

“And a little younger than me. You think?” Dad said. “He’s

probably in high school there?”

My father was loving this. Maybe he liked not knowing, or

* 29 *

Deb Caletti

maybe he liked finding out. We once followed a searchlight for

miles until we ended up at a Fred Meyer opening in Lynnwood.

Dad wasn’t even disappointed. “I guess. Ooh. Looking hot here,”

I held up the album so he could see a teenage couple in front of

a purple backdrop with a gold moon. School dance. “Three-piece

suit in high school? He’s wearing a
vest
.”

“He’s not
hot
. He’s a
stud
. And she’s a
fox
. They’re about

to leave that idiotic dance to get it on in a Chevy van. Have you

noticed that no one gets it on anymore? No one is funky? No one

gets down?” My father was on a roll. He cracked eggs into a pan,

and they started to sizzle in the melted butter. He picked a bit

of shell out with the edge of his finger. “We could feed the fire

department.”

“No one boogies . . .” I added. I remembered my friend

Danisha’s mother, listening to the oldies station every morning

when we carpooled to middle school.

“No pretty mamas no more,” Dad said. You could tell he liked

how the words sounded. I did too.

We ate that enormous breakfast. Dad slapped more French

toast on my plate because we needed to
eat up
for a
big day
. I

groaned when Dad said this. It was the kind of heavy meal that

makes you feel in need of a nap. Food coma. I didn’t see how

truck drivers did it. I’d pictured lying around on my white bed

in the white room, reading books off of the mystery man’s shelf.

“Don’t you need to work today?” I asked.

“Explore the town,” he said through a mouthful of eggs.