The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (29 page)

I felt the feeling of leaving, of
leaving
. That low sadness, that weight in my chest. That feeling
that if I could only just fully hyperventilate it would relieve some of the
ache. I took my keys off my keychain and squeezed them until my knuckles turned
white.

The RA knocked once, came in, apologized for being late.

“That’s OK,” I told her.

With quick glances—this exercise was a
formality—she examined my furniture to make sure I hadn’t wrecked
anything. I filled out a mail-forwarding card and then locked the door for the
last time. She held a little yellow envelope squeezed open like a frog’s mouth
and I dropped my keys inside.

“You’re free now,” she told me, tucking my key envelope and
the forms into a manila folder.

“We’ll see.”

She gave me a funny look. We left my suite and she continued
down the hall to the next one. “Have a good summer,” she said before opening
the other door.

“You too.”

I pressed the button for the elevator, feeling caught
between wanting it to come fast and wanting it to get stuck so I’d be forced
stay a little longer. I felt caught between everything. Part of me wanted to
hide and hole up for the summer in some dusty, forgotten corner of the dorm.
Another part couldn’t get away from here—away from Griff—fast
enough. I thought I’d almost made it—I was almost to my parents’ car.
He’d been out all morning. I thought I could sneak away without seeing him. And
then the elevator door opened and he stepped toward me. Griff.

“Oh, hey,” he said. He had on shorts and a white long-sleeve
t-shirt rolled up to his elbows.

“Hey.” It felt almost impossible to say anything at all to
him now. How had things degenerated so quickly? We’d talked the night before;
it was chilly, but we’d talked.

“I saw your parents outside,” he said, but it sounded like a
question.

“Yeah. I’m leaving.”

“
Leaving
leaving?”
When I nodded he added, “I thought your check-out wasn’t until this afternoon?”

I looked right into his eyes and told him that my parents
happened to come early.

“And you’re all checked out and everything already?” The
elevator door closed behind him. I reached past him and pushed the button
again.

“Yeah.”

“You should’ve called me. I would’ve come back and helped
move your stuff.”

“It’s OK.”

“...”

“...”

“Huh.” He looked at his hands, pushed his sleeves up again.
“Then this is it.”

I nodded.

“So I’ll see you around?”

He started to step closer, I thought, to hug me—but
then he put out his hand instead. It was warm, dry. I left it moist.

“I’ll be around,” I said.

“If your freshman is annoying, or smells, or anything,
you’re welcome to sleep on my floor any time.”

I nodded again. “Thanks.”

The elevator door opened for the second time. I started to
get on, but for a short eternity I froze with one foot in the elevator and one
foot in the hall, knowing I should apologize, should explain myself, should say
goodbye, should say all that and more. But I didn’t. I didn’t. I stepped all
the way on. I jabbed the door-close button again and again with my
thumb—not even the lobby button, the door-close button.

He glared at me through the narrowing gap. “You were just
going to leave, weren’t you? Your parents weren’t early. You weren’t even going
to say goodbye.”

His eyes looked bigger than usual. They were the last part
of him I saw. The door clanged shut and the elevator hung unmoving in the
shaft. At any moment either of us could push the button and the doors would
spring open again and we’d have a second chance, a second chance for all the
things I knew should be said and done. My finger hovered in front of the
button. And then there was a thump on the door and on the other side Griff
said, softly but as clear as if he’d whispered it in my ear, “Fuck you, Vince.”

I descended.

The next time I saw him in person was on graduation
day.

*

We drove up the Cape Cod coast, taking the long way
when we could, the scenic routes on little roads, but even as the new Jetta
ambled along it seemed Griff had some destination in mind for us. Maybe he had
all along.

He drove to the tip of Provincetown, where the road ended at
the mouth of an unplowed beach parking lot, between snowy dunes that rose high
on both sides of the little gray car. We idled there for a minute, exhaust
forming a cloud in the windless trench.

I looked out the window. It seemed we were encased in white,
a misty blank place between two worlds. “I guess this is as far as we can go.”

“Feel like taking a walk?” he said.

“Um... OK, sure.”

He turned off the car and got out; I grabbed my gloves and
got out too.

“What do you think’s on the other side of this dune?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Beach?”

“Let’s check it out. I want to see some waves.”

We scrambled on all fours up the steep snow and sand slope
of the dune. Little clumps of snow rolled past us, growing into snowballs on
their way down to the road. Wind rushed across the top of the dune, blowing off
wisps of snow like steam, making the dune look at once very hot and very cold.

“Now how far can we go?” Griff said from the top of the
dune, his arms spread for balance like a tightrope walker. Down and across the
beach was the ocean, white and frothy at first, and then, farther out, a misty
black.

“That lighthouse down there?” I said, pointing to the small
building on the end of the peninsula, three-quarters of a mile away. Long
Point. The tip of North America, reaching out as a finger into the gray Atlantic.

“Let’s do it.”

We slid down the other side of the dune and were on the
beach. After smacking snow off our clothes we walked along the crest of the
waves, stepping over clumps of frozen seaweed and balls of icy sand. The wind
had swept most of the snow off the beach; it lay in razor-sharp drifts along
the dunes, bristles of yellowed beach grass sticking out like ancient hair.

Griff walked with his hands in his vest pockets, his hair
slapping his cheeks. The lighthouse was fixed in front of us far down the
beach.

“Do you think those old guys, Barney and Stu, do you think
they were together?” he said, raising his voice to compete with the crashing
waves.

“Depends on what you mean by together. I think probably they
were just old friends.”

“Lifebuddies?” he said with a smile.

“Maybe.”

“I wonder how they met.”

“Probably some freak thing that almost didn’t happen,” I
said. “I bet they crashed their boats into each other or something.”

He laughed and wiped snow off his knees. “It used to bother
me how precarious the start of our friendship was,” he said. “Like how if
anything had been different it never would’ve happened. You know? If I hadn’t
transferred to Shuster. If we hadn’t been in that same lit class...”

“Yeah, but nothing happens without a million pieces falling
into place beforehand.”

“I guess.” He kicked a stone and watched it splash into the
waves ahead of us, leaving a circle of white bubbles on the surface for a
second before the wave rolled over on itself. “But even then, none of the
pieces would’ve mattered if you were straight. If you didn’t think I was cute
in that class we had—if you hadn’t been
capable
of thinking that—we never would’ve become friends.”

“All I did was ask you to room, Griff. If I was straight I
still may have. There was nobody else.”

“You wouldn’t have,” he said with perfect certainty and
shook his head. Of course I knew it was true too. He kicked a piece of
driftwood and then stepped over it and we kept walking. “You didn’t know me at
all. If you hadn’t had a crush on me, one stranger would’ve been as good as
another.”

“So it was just luck? Me, I mean. So I could meet you?” It
was hard to walk in the sand and I pushed myself to keep up with him, to stay
at his side. He seemed now both vulnerable and powerful, as though I could knock
him over with the slightest shove if only I could catch up to him. He looked up
at the lighthouse again and his face was determined.

“I just mean, I know how sometimes you like get overwhelmed
by being the way you are, Vince. But look at what we both owe it. I’m thankful
for it, even if you’re not.”

Now we had come to the lighthouse. It towered above
us and cut the wind like a big rock in a big stream. It wasn’t the kind of
lighthouse anyone lived in; rather it was a beacon made up to look like one, really
just a rotating spotlight in fancy packaging. Icicles stuck out from it
horizontally, defying gravity thanks to the strong ocean breeze. In the
distance on our left, across the bay, the Pilgrim’s Monument rose into the sky,
lights flashing on its turreted top.

For a long time we stood shoulder to shoulder watching the
waves.

“It’s getting late,” I said finally, in a voice that earlier
would’ve been overpowered by the wind, but here in the shelter of the
lighthouse was only quiet.

“Yeah.” He turned away but then turned back quickly. “Hey
Vince—”

Griff grabbed the collar of my coat and pulled me up and
toward him, my heels lifting out of the sand. I felt him recoil, almost
imperceptibly, when his lips met the stubble surrounding my own. White breath
from his nose warmed my face, the warmest warmth I ever felt. He tasted like
the pub’s spicy fries. It lasted sixteen seconds.

The first second was the best one of my life. I wasn’t
surprised that this was happening—it’s hard to be surprised by something
you’ve imagined for so long. The moment, the one chance I’d longed for, had
arrived. I hadn’t had to kiss him at all. All along I’d only had to wait for
him to kiss me.

The second, I felt his tongue push against my tongue, his
nose move against my nose. He wanted this. I pulled off my glove and put my
hand on his cheek, felt his stubble, felt his jaw, touched his ear and held the
back of his neck, his hair thick in my palm.

The third second lasted forever and then was gone. It held
within it a whole lifetime I knew now would actually come true for us. All I
ever had to do was wait.

But the eleventh second, Griff opened his eyes.

The thirteenth, I lowered my hand.

The sixteenth, I realized that none of this would ever
happen. That the lifetime I imagined was never meant to be. No kiss could
change that.

We parted and he was looking at me, his eyes green with
flecks of brown, quiet and sleepy like midnight, the weariness of midnight. He
stepped back and looked at the sand. He licked his lips, laughed once, one
single huff, and shook his head.

“My life would be so much easier if I wanted to do that
again,” he said. He hit the side of his thigh with his fist. “You know that?
Why the
fuck
can’t I just want to do
that again?”

“Mine would be so much easier if I didn’t.” I felt my eyes
well up and this time I made no effort to keep them from overflowing.

He turned and looked out at the black waves. The clouds on
the horizon were turning pink. “Do you know that’s really why I came to see
you, Vince? To do that?”

I didn’t understand. What had just happened was something
I’d imagined for years—imagined and dreamed about and even cried for.
Something I wanted back when it was a joke to everyone else. Something I’d
wanted so badly it ended us. I always thought that all I needed was one kiss to
get Griff to love me— Never in a million years did I think he’d be the
one to kiss me.

When I didn’t respond he turned back and looked at me, as
though he thought I might’ve sneaked away.

“When things flamed out with Beth and I was looking for a
place to go, when I felt so scared and out of sorts, all I could think about
was how comfortable and good I used to feel with you that year, you know? And
how everyone said we were lifebuddies. And how I knew you loved me.”

“You knew—?”

“Of course, Vince. Of course I knew. That’s part of why I
was so confused about why you stopped being my friend. How could you love me
and just cast me aside like that?”

“Because one-sided love hurts, Griff.”

“You never stopped to think that I loved you too!” These words
were like a lightning bolt to my heart, resuscitating all my hopes. But then he
added, in a low voice as though it had been his great failure, “But just not in
the same way.”

“Oh.”

“But I started to wonder if it
could
be the same way. If I could just somehow feel something
more
. If I could just— I don’t
know.”

“...”

“I don’t know, Vince.
Be
with you!” There was a kind of hurt in his eyes I hadn’t ever seen before, but
it was brief, and went away. A tear made a cold line down my cheek. He put his
hand on my shoulder. “Dating was so easy before I met you, you know that? I had
a blank slate. No expectations. I wanted to marry every girl I met. But the way
you know me, the way we get along— What I’ve been looking for is a girl
who can meet the standard of Vince. But I need to start dealing with the idea
that I won’t find one. That my,” he paused, “shit, that my other half is a
dude
. That my soulmate is not going to
be the woman of my dreams, but is my best friend. And the distance between
those two things is the distance I’ll unfortunately always have.”

I squatted down, rested my butt on the backs of my heels,
ran my fingers through the stiff gray sand. “I don’t know why you’re telling me
this.” My lips felt cold now without his against them.

“Because I’m
sorry
,
Vince. OK? I’m sorry that I can’t be everything you want me to be for you. It
kills
me that I can’t. And it kills me
too because I feel like I’m
missing out
on you, on this ready-made happiness that’s just standing there waiting for me.
If one tiny switch inside me had flipped the other way twenty-five years ago,
I’d be home, with you, and we’d be happy—and everything would be fine.”
He lifted his foot, rested it on my thigh for a second and let it slide off,
leaving a smeared waffle imprint of sand on my jeans. “Vince, do you know how
lucky
you are? You have no boundaries.
No limits on who you can be with and love.”