The Story of Us (35 page)

“Johnny B gave me some.” The baker? “And Butch. Butch’s giving it up. Everybody gives it to me when they quit.”

“Goddamn it!” Something slammed down hard.
No F-I-T-I-N-G,
I thought. “You know, Rebecca? This isn’t working. This just isn’t. I’m in some fucking contest with that stuff. A triangle. A love triangle! And I’m done. You’ve got to choose, because I’m
done
.”

He was coming. I heard his shoes on the wood floor. I ducked into the open bathroom door next to me, the second duck-hide-flee maneuver I’d done in one day. The taffy shop, this bathroom—I was a character in my own video game, those shooting ones that Gavin and Oscar sometimes played, where chicks in combat uniforms darted around ominous empty rooms.

Shit. He’d see me shut the door. I didn’t want him to know I’d heard anything. Too embarrassing for both of us. I stepped into the tub, pulled the shower curtain across. I heard him storm past. But then the footsteps came back my way again. Another round with Rebecca, probably. An apology? A zinger that he couldn’t pass up?

But, wait, no.

He
was
coming my way, directly my way. Oh, God, he was there in the bathroom, and he was shutting the door, and it was worse than a video game because it was real, and I was stupidly hiding in the bathtub trying not to breathe and trying to keep my feet still so my shoes wouldn’t squeak against the porcelain. What were my options here? Come on! Speak up, stay quiet, do neither and be found out? Could he see my shadow from there? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

There was the loud sound of his peeing, a zip, a flush. The water running.
Please be done,
I begged him.
Pleasepleaseplease.
The water shut off. I was sure he would hear my heart beating, my breathing. He would
feel
my presence, he had to. But no. I heard a towel thrown softly to the tile and then a quiet sound.

“Ah,” he said softly. It was the sound of defeat, but also a cry of awareness, when you realize your life might be changing, going a direction against your will.

There was some strange storm front blowing in. I heard the high whine of a whistling wind outside the bathroom window. And it was raining broken hearts.

Ted left the bathroom. I exhaled. Thank God. I would
wait there for a minute, until he was definitely gone. I’d wait, and then I’d get the hell out of—

What was THAT? A herd of pounding feet, rising voices. What now? Shit! I crouched. Someone was running down the hall. Footsteps going one way, and another pair … Were they? Were they turning right into the bathroom? The shower curtain was flung aside.

“Aaaaaaaahhh!” Dan Jax screamed.

“Aaaaaaaahhh!” I screamed.

We stopped screaming. Dan had his hand to his heart again, but so did I.

“Cricket, for God’s sake, what are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing?” Sure, I was the one hiding in the bathtub, but who was the screaming, unreasonable one here?

“Looking for Baby Boo!”

“I was—What? Where is he?”

“We don’t know! John was upstairs with him, and then John fell asleep. He woke when he heard all the noise with the raccoon, and he realized Baby Boo was gone.”

“Oh, Jeez. I’ll help look.”

Okay, yes, it was another humiliating blow to my self-esteem, lifting my knees up high and stepping out of that tub, leaving a set of shoe prints behind, but there was no time for ego hits right then either.

“The tent,” I said.

“You’re right,” Dan said.

“That’s where he was before.”

“Christ, the ocean …”

Mr. and Mrs. Jax stood at the deck railing looking over, and so did Gram and Aunt Bailey. Hailey and Gavin and Ben and my mother had already had the same thought I did, and now they were rushing toward the beach, calling Baby Boo’s name. It was getting so, so windy out there. The waves were high, and water droplets were rising up and you could hear the clang of a flag on a flagpole, and the high pitch and whine of wind.

We were running down the boardwalk, me and Dan, Dan in front of me. Hailey and Gavin and Ben had already reached the tent, and we saw their backs disappear inside of it, and then they emerged. We were there now too.

“No,” Ben said. “Nothing.”

“I thought for sure,” Hailey said.

The tent nylon was flapping in and out,
whick-whick, whick-whick
, flapping kind of crazily, it seemed. But I had no time to register that fact in the narrow, logical part of my taxed mind right then, because there was a shout and a cry from up above, at the house, and we saw Jane and John on the deck, and George, who was lifting little Baby Boo in the air in a Lion King moment. You could hear the joy up there. Jane was shouting something down to us, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

“He wanted to see the Goddie?” Hailey said. Hailey lifted her shoulders, held her palms up to indicate to Jane that she didn’t understand.

“The Goddie!” Jane’s voice traveled down to us. She hooked her thumb toward the French doors, where Jupiter came trotting out. She stuck her head between the deck rails.

“Ah.” Dan Jax sighed. “Ah.”

“Thank Goddie.” I laughed.

He laughed too. He crooked his arm around my neck and around Hailey’s in relief. “I know. I thought … what next?”

Which is a stupid thing to say. You never want to say that, ever, unless you want to tempt the cruel and black-humored Goddies up above, the ones wishing to liven up the dull human poker games by upping the stakes.

“Whaaa!” Gavin shrieked. He saw it first, went grabbing for the nylon that lifted up as easy as a kite on a breezy day. A large, domed kite, an alien vehicle returning home by rising up into the dark sky. Gavin’s hands—they grasped only at air, and so did Ben’s, they were reaching up into black nothing, because the tent lifted up, up, up and out toward the sea, out for a wild outdoorsy tent ocean adventure, back out to wherever home was. It lifted high, and you could hear the collective gasp of our group even through the whistling wind. The tent rose and then slowly set itself down upon the waves, the window flap waving a mad good-bye as it drifted farther and farther out.

The contents of the tent sat exposed on the nylon floor. A vulnerable TV, and electric cords, a red cooler, sleeping bags and blankets. An M&M’s bag lifted in the wind too, and went running, end over end, down the beach. It all looked for a
moment like the news footage after a tornado, missing roofs and the embarrassments of ordinary living exposed.

“How the hell did that happen?” Gavin said.

“I’m so sorry,” Hailey said. “Back when I was mad? I undid the snaps. Those ones there.” She pointed to the now gaping halves of metal, which had once connected the secured tent floor to its dome. “I’m sorry, Gavey.”

“Hailey!” Dan Jax said.

Ben made a choking sound, a gasp. He was doubled over. He was laughing. He held one hand up in some sort of apology as he cracked up. “Shit.” He laughed. “Shit.”

Oh yeah, it was kind of hysterical. Like that time with the cello in the Bermuda Honda trunk. The orange globe of tent was disappearing past the horizon as if it were a setting sun, and all of those electronics were sitting oddly out in the night, exposed and trembling in the wind. But that wasn’t what Ben was laughing about.

“Oh, man.” He wiped his eyes. “God.
Gavey
.” He laughed.

Ash was a good guy. I knew he was. He appeared out of nowhere, helping to lug inside the generator and the controllers and the speakers and the bags of freeze-dried foods in foil pouches. We didn’t speak. We all hauled everything up the boardwalk, away from the sand now rising and spinning in the coming storm. Oscar appeared too. He was holding Natalie’s hand, and she was smiling shyly. She didn’t seem to be minding that chin fluff, not at all.

“I’m confused,” Ash said to me finally when he saw them.

“
He’s
confused. It was a misunderstanding.”

“Not something
else
to sort out?”

“One thing is more than enough for me,” I said.

He set a duffel bag of Gavin’s on the living room floor. The bottom of the tent, rolled up now, went next to it.

“You know where I am, right?” he said kindly. He grabbed my fingers and gave them a squeeze and then headed out. In the doorway he turned. He had his car keys in his hand, and he tossed them into the air and caught them. “For-ever is a slippery little du-ude …,” he sang badly. It felt like someone was crushing my heart.

“Definitely a hit song,” I said.

“Later,” he said over his shoulder as he went out the door.

All of Gavin and Oscar’s crap was in the house now, and they were taking most of it to Hailey’s room. It was just in time too, because it started to rain. Pour. You could hear the hard, driving splats against the roof. It wasn’t raining cats and dogs, exactly—more like small round gerbils. My mother had found a bottle of wine in the kitchen, and she and Dan and Aunt Hannah were each having a glass, watching the real weather channel out the living room windows.

“Crazy weather. Perfect for a wedding,” my mother said. She looked sad.

Dan raised his glass. “To crazy weather, crazy life, crazy parents.”

“To crazy parents building crazy golf courses,” Mom said. I guess Grandpa had confessed. She and Aunt Hannah clinked.

“To crazy parents in general,” I said.

“Never mind,” my mother said to me. “Dear God, what next?”

“That’s all, Daisy. I promise,” Dan said. “There won’t be anything else. That’s all we can
take
.”

Ben appeared. Wiped his sandy hands on his pants. Jupiter was trotting behind him, trying to keep up. Cruiser, who’d been lying there quietly, hopped to attention as if the general had arrived. “Watch,” Ben said. “There’ll be an earthquake or something.”

At that, one of the Goddies playing poker with our lives had a great idea. He set all the money in the world on the earth’s green felt poker table. He was looking straight at us.

“What’s that noise?” my mother said.

A noise, all right. A vibrating
wha-wha-wha
turning into a
WHUP, WHUP, WHUP
. The sound was so loud now, the windows were rattling.

Dan stood, looked out. “Jesus,” he said. He put his arm over his eyes because a bright light, white and blinding, was shining in.

Ted was running down the stairs.

“Oh, my God,” I said.

“Where did that come from?” Ben asked.

“Goddamn it,” Ted said. “Our stupid-ass neighbor. Randy, he’s an ex-marine. I’m so sorry, guys. He’s got a helipad on his
roof. Louder than hell—it scares the shit out us every time it happens. Sometimes he takes people back and forth from the island.”

“Helipad?” I said. I remembered. That helicopter Ben and I saw.

“A landing place for the helicopter,” Ted said.

Ben and I looked at each other.

“I tell Rebecca it’s like living next to a goddamn airport.”

I’ll raise you,
the Goddie said.

Janssen—

A List of Things Jupiter Destroyed:

       1. Various garden hoses

       2. Our old backyard, from digging all those holes

       3. Several pairs of shoes

       4. One paperback book

       5. A rosebush

       6. Enough underwear to clothe a small country

       
7. The heads of those mini Christmas carolers of the mini village we always put under our tree

Actually, I can’t even remember everything. No way. When we first got her—man, she was a puppy bent on destruction. But you know, because of all the good things she’s done, all that she’s given—I don’t even care about that underwear. Some of them I really liked too. Some of them were my favorite pairs. Who cares about any of that stuff?

Humans, though, Janssen. It’s another thing entirely. We either give forgiveness too easily or we treat it like we’re a starving person with the last crust of bread—clutching it, withholding it, hiding it, a basic selfish grasp at self-preservation. If you give it away, you let go of the chance to be safe.

We have more reasons to worry about intentions, though, don’t we? Most dogs don’t wish ill on people (I think, anyway). I doubt they lie there hoping we’ll get ours when we’ve been mean. I doubt they think about what that other dog has
compared to them, or dream about better couches and fancier food that might be theirs if we could only do better. I doubt they are as confused as we are. Things seem pretty simple. Their needs seem pretty clear, except for those times when they stare and stare and you can’t for the life of you figure out what they want and you just wish you could
ask
. Mostly they seem just fine. And what a relief that is for a change.