The Story of Us (30 page)

In a book, in a movie or something, I would now have had some great moment of truth. A wrong kiss, which would send me back to Janssen. A right kiss, which would send me away. Or Ash would suddenly reveal himself to be a bad guy, making my path clear. The thing he did with his foot with Jupiter would have huge meaning. But it wasn’t that simple. It’s not how it happened in my own life.

In my own life two truths coexisted, and that seems to be how it goes. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that. There were a thousand kisses out there, but there was also the one that mattered. There was the one that mattered, and also the one that never had a chance.

It was the day before my mother’s wedding, a day to believe in love. The clouds lazed around as if it were a Sunday morning and they were wearing cloud pajamas. Soon they would drift off with better things to do, you could tell. I felt two truths inside of me, but under that roof there were too many truths to count, and it seemed that Jupiter and Cruiser were the only ones that had worked out their relationship. Things were very clear between them. She was smaller, she was older, but she was still the boss, something they both understood without
long talks and arguments and history. I bit your ass. We know where we stand. End of story.

“Let’s go outside,” I said to Jupiter. She tilted her head at the word. Wouldn’t it be freeing to be able to ignore all the words that weren’t important, like dogs did? Boring stories, painful ones, all those hurtful comments people flung your way—the rhythms and tones would wash over you like waves until you heard only what you needed to:
walk, treat, good girl
. You’d only have to listen for your own name, and the few things that mattered.

“Outside, then breakfast.” She put her paws up on my knees. “You hate those stairs. I’ll carry you. Don’t even have to ask.”

I tucked my phone into my jeans. Oscar had quit calling. I needed to go see those guys. They were my best friends, even if Oscar had turned into my stalker and Gavin had brought Hailey to the geek dark side of technology and junk food. Natalie was coming that day too. It would be good to have her here, to have all of us together again. I loved familiar.

I looked down at Rabbit, Jupiter’s familiar, and decided to leave him there. “You’re okay without him, right?” I asked. She licked the side of my face. “Oh, guck,” I said. “You goof. Silly girl.”

I could hear voices downstairs already. We’d all have a day to ourselves, but the rehearsal (if you could call it that) and the rehearsal dinner would be that night. My stomach fell at the thought, though I don’t know what my problem was. It wasn’t
me getting married. Still, I had that lurch of nerves you get when the something big that had been off in the distance is now in front of you.

“Do you remember how you used to always bring us something when we came back home?” I asked Jupiter quietly. “You’d run and get your blankie or Rabbit or some chew toy, and you’d greet us with it, and drop it at our feet?” She was riding down the stairs, under my arm. “You were always enough by yourself, you know. We never needed anything else.”

We almost bumped into George at the bottom of the stairs. He was rifling through the pockets of his jacket, which had been tossed over the banister. “Headache tablets,” he said. His accent reminded me of the plucking of banjo strings.

“Oh no, again? What happened, George?”

“Fucking raccoons. They are a curse. I sleep, and then there they go. Arthur says ignore it. He says,
Go back to sleep
. How can you ignore it, I want to know. It is worse than cats fighting.”

Well, of course I heard it.
Go back to sleep
. This could go two ways, right? An after-the-fact piece of advice, or a right-there-in-your-own-bed statement. God! Ben couldn’t be
right
, could he? I mean, we never did get the whole story about George and Grandpa, how and
why
they were friends. No. No! I was born after Gram and Grandpa had divorced, but they’d been married for nearly thirty years. We’d known two girlfriends of his—the real estate agent with blond hair
and manicured nails, who smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, and the thin, nervous golf pro. We met her once when they all went to my fifth-grade play. Gram had said,
Adult anorexic
, when they got into the car to go home.
She’s an athlete, she’s thin,
my mother said. She had practice keeping parents separate too.

When George went into the kitchen, I stuck my hand into his jacket pocket. I don’t know why I did it. I was hoping to find some proof, maybe. But all I felt were several loose coins and the smooth, thin wood of a few golf tees. Even my hand felt guilty. My brother was an idiot.

My mother sat at the table, wearing her Chinese robe with the dragon on the back. Her hair was all flat, and her face looked blank without her makeup. Either she was getting really comfortable here, or she’d stopped caring. Rebecca sat across from her, and they both had their hands around their cups and were leaning forward in conversation.

“It’s a damn shame, but ‘safe’ is just a sweet dream,” Rebecca said.

“Nooooo.” Mom groaned.

“Love, our shaky triumph over uncertainty.” Rebecca sipped her coffee. “‘Shaky’, key word.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one,” Mom said. “You sure we should do the ceremony outside, not in?”

“Absolutely.” Rebecca nodded.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “Dog’s gotta go out.”

“Go right ahead,” Rebecca said.

On my way out through the kitchen door, I saw a different spot of grass, ha, in an ashtray on the kitchen windowsill. I don’t have any experience with the stuff, but I was somehow surprised by the ashtray. It looked 1950s formal. Less Age of Aquarius or the guys in the back parking lot at school, and more martinis and boofed-out hair.

And then, right there, looking at that crinkled stub, something hit me. That pathetic little joint spoke to me. I’d never respected the act of doing drugs. It felt like a cop-out. And I still didn’t respect it, but all at once I
got
it. We used anything we could to protect ourselves against fear, against the ways life felt too big. We put God in front of terrifying things, and we knocked three times, and we took drugs and shopped too much and obsessed about food or success, so that the scary stuff would look farther away than it was. We worried, because maybe if we worried enough, it would act like a spell of safety. All those things, superstitions and addictions and anxiety, they were all about hiding from what scared the shit out of us.

And, say it, Cricket. Be honest: a relationship. A relationship could be a place to hide too.

I set Jupiter down, and she squatted on her narrow back legs. Her legs wobbled, I noticed.

“What’s wrong, girl?” I asked, but she averted her eyes. She was quite private when peeing, and I usually tried not to look,
out of respect. When she finished, she did her usual pride-restoring act, the vigorous back kick of dirt, but even that was done slowly.

We went back in. Jupiter gave Cruiser’s empty bowl a lick. I gave her a few biscuits to tide her over, and she crunched away. “Aunt Hannah is coming today,” my mother said. “My sis,” she said to Rebecca. “God, I can’t wait to see—”

She was interrupted by a pounding on the front door, and a deep voice, shouting, “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

“Yes, okay!” Rebecca hustled out. Her caftan caught on a chair and knocked it over. Mom stood quickly and righted it. I could see George out on the deck, watching the sea.

“Look what’s here!” Rebecca said.

“This thing’s a bitch. Watch out.”

“Oh!” My mother gasped.

“Where do you want it? Yi, yi, yi, gotta set her down.”

It was a man. In jeans and a sloppy T-shirt, a rough beard. He had a red bandana in his dark hair. Huge muscles. No wonder he could carry that thing himself. “Beautiful as the bride,” he said. He had the rough voice of a smoker.

The cake. Mom’s wedding cake. And as he set it down, slid it from his palms onto the table, I could barely hear their words anymore. He was talking to Mom and Rebecca and they were exchanging stuff, receipts, money, whatever, and then he left, the unlikely baker, and Rebecca was walking him back to the door and saying something to him. But I couldn’t even make out their words—it all felt underwater.
Because there was this beautiful, huge white cake, three layers of roses and swirls and new life starting, and my heart was in my throat and tears gathered in my eyes before I could stop them.

“Honey?” my mother said.

“I—” The word barely escaped.

“Oh, sweetie.” She came and put her arms around me. I started to cry. If I had to explain why even now I couldn’t. It was all just too big.

“I’m sorry, it’s stupid …”

“It’s change,” my mother said. She stroked my hair.

I sniffed into her shoulder. And then I pulled away and looked at her, and saw that she had tears in her eyes too. “I thought it was just me,” I said.

“How, oh how could that be? You leaving, and—” She waved her hand all around. “This. So much happiness. So much left behind.”

“The cake and everything …”

“It’s beginning now,” Mom said.

I nodded. I sniffed hard. I wiped my eyes, but the tears kept streaming. “I’m happy,” I said. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

“I know. It’s not that.”

Well, of course my stupid brother had to walk in then. But he knew how to handle us. “Oh, great. A blubber party,” he said. “What’s the matter, guys? Did they get the cake color wrong?”

“Shut up, idiot,” I cried.

“Come here, you,” my mother said.

And he did. He reached his arms around us both, and we reached our arms around each other.

“I love you guys,” Mom said.

“I love you too,” I said.

Ben’s voice was hard to hear, spoken into Mom’s shoulder. “Love you too,” he muttered. He wasn’t much for mushy stuff.

I would miss this so much. These people. The eighteen years before now. My own bed, in my own room. Waking up every day knowing that I was
home
.

“Frosting roses,” Mom said. We all looked at that cake. She took my hand and then Ben’s. She held each up and gave our hands a kiss. “My babies,” she said.

“I never knew you could get a bra in that color,” Natalie said.

“I know. Right?”

“I’m stuffed,” Natalie said. We headed out of Butch’s Harbor Bar restaurant, leaving behind the smell of frying burgers and onions and the ghosts of cigarettes past. We pushed the door open into the sun. I was glad the girlfriend contingent had arrived. My Aunt Hannah had come that morning too. I saw her and Mom walking far off on the beach, both carrying their shoes and heading toward the lighthouse.

Sea air, ahh. “God, I love the way it smells here,” I said. “I could live here for the smell.”

Natalie grabbed the pooch of her tummy. “How am I going
to get my little friend into my dress tomorrow?”

“Love your belly,” I said. “You’re not going to become one of those girls that talks about food all the time, are you? We hate that. Being
good
or being
bad
?”

“Yeah. I’m going to the dark side. Lettuce leaves and ketchup on a spoon are definitely the way to moral superiority.”

“If brownies are a sin, then, I’m sorry, I’m a sinner.”

“I’m a sinna!” Natalie said up to the sky. “You better stay straight yourself. If I hear you use the words ‘freshman fifteen,’ I’m friend-divorcing you.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” I confessed.

“Oh, my God. They were all talking about it on the campus tours. The fifteen pounds you’re supposed to gain from dorm food the first year. If we count up all the hours we talk about food and think about food and put that same energy somewhere else …”

“Let’s have a no no-fat movement.”

Natalie stopped walking. She looked over at me, her face serious. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since graduation,” Natalie said. There she was, Natalie, another loved person to miss. Natalie had this curly, curly brown hair that she hated but you wished you had. That hair alone was character. But she had relaxed smarts, too, and she was someone who always remembered what you said, who
listened.
She would bring you some great book because she was a book matchmaker, because she loved books the way other girls loved clothes. And when you were sick, she didn’t even worry about catching
whatever-it-was herself. She was one of those friends you knew you’d have forever. Or you
hoped
you would.

“Yeah. I know. All I’ve been
doing
is thinking,” I said.

“If I don’t do something about this now, it might be too late. Promise me you won’t laugh.”

“I promise,” I said.

We were standing out there on the sidewalk, with the marina stretched out in front of us. I tried to spot Ash’s fishing boat out there, but I couldn’t tell which boat was which.

“I think I’m in love with Oscar,” Natalie said.

A sound escaped my throat—an embarrassing bodily noise that fell somewhere between a gasp and a gulping swallow. Sometimes it was harder to keep your promise than others.