And then last year she started forgetting things.
“She still knew how to can peaches, but she couldn’t remember my brother’s name.”
“What about you?” I ask.
“She always remembers my name.”
“That’s because you’re unforgettable.” I smile.
“God, I missed my marshmallow.”
And then he tells me about the night of our date. He left her home alone. His dad was working late, and his mom was at a book club.
“But I’m impatient. And I wanted what I wanted right then.”
“What did you want?” I ask.
“You,” he says.
So he left his grandma alone, thinking she would be OK. But when his dad got home from work, she was gone. His dad panicked. That’s when Luca got the call.
“I was supposed to take care of her,” he says. “I was selfish. I thought she’d be OK.”
They eventually found her wandering downtown, looking for the bus that goes to Colfax, where her farm was. She was desperate to go home.
“But my family sold that farm fifteen years ago when my grandma came to live with us. It hasn’t been her home in years. We’re her home. Or . . . we were until a few days ago,” Luca says. After she went missing, his dad decided then that they weren’t capable of taking proper care of his grandma themselves, so they moved her to the assisted living center.
“It’s my fault she’s here now,” Luca says. “I really fucked things up this time.”
“Luca . . . ,” I say. “This isn’t your fault.”
“It isn’t?” he says sarcastically. “Whose fault is it? If I hadn’t left her alone, she wouldn’t have gone missing. I could have stopped her.”
“But you can’t stop her memories from fading,” I say. “She’s safer here.”
“As safe as a person can be when their memories abandon them.” He pauses, then adds, “It’s the noise I can’t get over. I’m used to her noise in the house. The way she shuffled her feet. It’s not there anymore. When someone has been in your house for so long, when they’re gone all of a sudden, it feels . . .”
“Empty,” I say. I know the feeling.
He turns his beautiful brown eyes to mine.
“I can’t leave her.”
“That’s why you stopped going to work and Driver’s Ed.”
“Let me tell you, I’m a damn good bingo player. I’m thinking of going professional. And the best part is, the competition just keeps dying off.”
He’s attempting to be funny, but truth has a way of etching itself on the canvas.
“I don’t deserve freedom, Wren,” Luca says. “Not when she’s locked up here.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Forget Alaska. Maybe the bus can take us back in time.”
“I don’t think that’s possible. And I’m starting to think going back in time is overrated.”
“You’re probably right,” Luca says.
“So I guess we still don’t know where to go.”
“Don’t worry. This is all an illusion. They built this bus stop so people like my grandma have a place to sit when their memories come back and they want to run away. Everyone feels better when they think they’re going somewhere. But the bus never comes.”
“What happens when the bus never shows up?”
“By then no one remembers why they sat down in the first place.”
My thumb skims Luca’s hand.
“Now it’s your turn to tell me a story,” he says.
“I don’t have any good stories.”
“That’s a lie.”
“OK. It totally is. But where do I start?”
“Start where all good stories start,” Luca says. “Once upon a time . . .”
I rest my head on his shoulder. It feels like coming home. Luca is my undoing and my becoming all at once.
“Once upon a time . . . ,” I say, and start at the beginning, taking apart each piece of my life, unwinding the story bit by bit. I tell him about a mother who left, a father too sad to live in the sun, the forest growing in my own house, Lizzie and her postcards, the small make-believe lies that created a better life, Lizzie’s leaving, the numbness, the vacancy.
I tell him how I went cold, frozen. How I sat in my room for days after she left, looking out the window, waiting for her to walk up the driveway. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t move. Chief would talk, but the sun was gone, and I was wilting.
I tell Luca how Chief finally picked me up, held me like a baby, and made me go to the doctor. And when the doctor asked what hurt, what was wrong, I told him, “My heart.”
So they monitored and scanned, and my heart beat like it should. Doctors always lack imagination. My doctor saw only the organs that make a body, not the shattered story that made my eyes and hair and skin. The love between two parents that was scraped together one night in hopes that holding it close would make them a whole unit again. But my mom dissolved in Chief’s arms until all that was left was a baby, not the woman he wanted.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” the doctor said. “Your heart’s fine.”
“There’s a bird in there,” I said. “I can feel her flutter sometimes.”
The doctor looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you trying to tell me that you swallowed a bird?”
The wings stopped moving. Suddenly I couldn’t feel her.
“What happens when a bird stops flapping its wings?” I asked.
“It falls to the ground, I guess.”
With eyes glazed over and limbs dead, I gazed through the window in the room. Rain fell on the glass and dribbled down in streaks.
“I better hold on tight to the wire, then.”
I tell Luca how I used to paint for Lizzie, but how ever since she left, I couldn’t seem to pick up a brush. How I couldn’t see anything in life worth capturing and holding, until now.
I tell Luca my story until the scraps of the past are piled at my feet and I feel weightless.
This bus stop might really be magic.
Our hands are still linked, my eyes trained on our entwined fingers. If Luca’s skin wasn’t slightly darker than mine, I wouldn’t know which finger belonged to who, the two of us blurring together.
“Lizzie just left?” he asks. “No note? Nothing?”
“I woke up and she was gone. Since then it’s been nothing except the postcards.”
He sits up. “That doesn’t make any sense. Something must have happened.”
“It does if you knew Lizzie. She was . . . untethered. Just like my mom. Even Chief knew it. It’s like . . . he expected her to leave at some point, as hard as he tried to stop it. He knew, once she turned eighteen, it was only a matter of time. I think when she left, a part of him was relieved.”
Luca turns to me in earnest. “Wren, Happy Homes built this bus stop for patients who are desperate to leave. But they always have a reason. It might not make sense to us, but it makes sense to them.”
I thought I was the reason. When I found her room empty, the hammock still, I blamed the curse. On some level I thought I deserved it. I was needy for her love, wanting more, craving every morsel Lizzie could give me, and I thought Lizzie wanted to be relieved of that.
But I created a forest in her room so she could go wandering safely at night and search for the love she was missing. And she didn’t have to look far. I was just across the hall. Lizzie knew how much I loved her. It was I who thought that it wasn’t enough, that Lizzie always felt a sip below full and that I couldn’t fill that space. Nor Baby Girl. Nor the trees and the moon and the flowers.
“But what’s the reason?” I ask.
Luca places his warm hand on my cheek and says, “Wren, maybe she found your mom.”
26
A KISS TO CONSUME
Luca has his phone out, too quickly. My heart can’t handle the pounding in my chest. The high I felt earlier is distant, receding.
“What’s her name?” he asks.
“Whose name?” It feels like there’s cotton in my ears.
“Your mom’s. I’ll google her.”
His fingers are typing, and the world is spinning, and I still can’t believe what Luca just said. Did Lizzie find our mom? Is that why she left? Why wouldn’t she tell me or bring me with her?
“Stop, please,” I beg. “I don’t want you to google her.”
“Why not? This could be the missing piece.”
It’s not like Lizzie and I never thought of this. The idea of searching the internet for our mom has spent so much time in my head, it’s built a home, brick by brick and room by room, in a corner of my brain. A home full of chairs and tables and dishes that make noise when they rattle and move, distracting me almost daily.
Why?
Because my mom left me. Because she thought I was untouchable. Simply putting her name in a search bar makes it all . . . real.
And then I might see her, and love her instantly, and break all over again. That’s the shittiest part—love happens even when you don’t want it to. Like breathing in and breathing out, it’s an involuntary reflex. Love hits the veins, and within milliseconds it’s everywhere. It’s the most heartbreaking reality of being her child. I long for her love, whether she wants to give it or not. It’s a thirst I will always have. But it’s better to starve out the thirst than quench it with saltwater.
Lizzie and I knew searching for her would lead to more. Desperate people cling, grasp, claw, and yet all that work only leaves their fingernails bloody and torn. Our mom would still be gone, Lizzie and I the ones in pain.
The one time Lizzie went into that dark basement, and returned a little more shattered, was enough for me.
I take Luca’s phone from his hands and set it on the bench.
“She didn’t want me, Luca. Why should I want her?”
He cups my face with his hands. “This isn’t about her. It’s about Lizzie. Wren, this might be the answer we need.”
Time stops. Even the wind pauses for this moment.
“We?”
“You can’t think, after everything you told me, that I’m just going to walk away and let you deal with this on your own.” Luca’s thumb caresses my cheek lightly. Tears wet my skin. “I’m not letting you go through this alone. You’re my marshmallow, Wren.”
His lips come a little closer to mine.
“No one’s ever wanted me before,” I whisper.
“This goes beyond want,” he says. “I’m consumed by you, Wren. Now, I think I’ve been patient enough. I’m going to kiss you.”
“Are you sure you want to do that? My toes haven’t changed.”
“Thank God.”
His mouth is on mine then. He pulls me closer, and I don’t resist. I hold him to me, mesmerized. I’ve never kissed anyone before, never thought it possible for a person to want to taste what I’m made of. To want to hold each part of me—my bones, my flesh, my being—in his hands.
Each movement Luca makes—his lips parting, his mouth opening to mine, his hands tangling with my hair—sends waves of heat through my body, deeper than the skin, deeper than my organs, to the pit in my stomach. To the space I knew could never be occupied.
I was living dissolved, particles barely held together, as time and memory took pieces from me, until I thought I wasn’t worth the space I occupied.
But now . . .
Luca pulls back momentarily to whisper my name against my lips. Off Luca’s tongue, it sounds like a song—a calling home.
I’m so thankful for this bus stop to nowhere, where a bus will never come and take me out of this moment. Out of this life. Here, we can stay. Intertwined, where make-believe and reality intersect and love takes a seat, waiting for what’s next as the worry of the past melts away.
Our lips separate, though our noses still touch, and Luca’s thumb caresses my cheek.
“What’s her name, Wren?” he asks again, warm breath flowing from his lips to mine, carrying strength in his words.
But I’m not ready. I don’t want to leave this moment with Luca. I just found myself.
If Lizzie did find our mom, why leave me behind? Why leave in silence, in the black of night? There’s more to this story—the dark kind of more—and I’m not sure I can handle that right now. I just found the sun again.
“Please just kiss me again.”
And Luca does.
Morning on the Seine Near Giverny, 1897
Dear Songbird,
Did you know that Monet was so fed up with boring, formulaic art that he decided to chuck it all and end his life by jumping into the Seine, like a madman? But he survived. It was only after that that he started painting the way he wanted to.
I guess it was a good thing he went a little crazy. And lived to paint about it.
I love you,
Lizzie
Wren Plumley
20080 21st Ave.
Spokane, WA 99203
27
BABY STEPS
I stand in my room, Wilder in his, both of us framed by open windows. The cool night air flows in, and I can still feel Luca on my lips.
Wilder and I stare at each other, as if seeing the real us for the first time.
“You did it,” I say directly to him. No phone needed now.
He takes a cautious breath, holding his hands on his chest, as if it might explode. But it doesn’t. And when Wilder exhales, so do I.
“I did.” His voice is soft and sweet.
But I can see the hesitation still lingering on his face. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Only seventy percent of people wash their hands after using the bathroom.”
“That’s really gross, Wilder.”
“I know. And bacteria double their number every twenty minutes. I’ve done the math. I don’t suggest you do it. The numbers are staggering.” He eyes the outside world skeptically. “Bacteria outnumber most life-forms on the planet.”
“But without bacteria, the earth wouldn’t have soil to grow plants,” I offer.
“That’s true.” Wilder looks at me. “Baby steps.”
“Baby steps,” I repeat.
He leans his body halfway out of the window.
“There’s life down there,” he says, pointing to the earth one story below. “But that grass could have pesticides on it. Or a bug could crawl into your mouth and lay eggs in your stomach, and the next thing you know, you’ll have a tapeworm.” Wilder offers me a sad expression. “What if I get sick again, Wren? Now that I’ve felt fresh air, how can I ever go back inside and not miss it?”
I climb up onto the windowsill. “Baby steps,” I say.
Wilder cautiously climbs up onto his windowsill, across from me, and we’re both perched there, two people on a precipice, waiting to jump.
“There are between ten thousand and ten million bacteria on each hand,” he says. “Damp hands are ten thousand times worse.”
“One kiss can hold up to eighty million bacteria,” I say.
“Kissing sounds lethal. I don’t think I’ll ever risk it.”
“It’s worth it.”
Wilder glances toward the earth once again. “Life is down there.”
“It’s not all tapeworms, Wilder.”
“Just be careful, Wren.”
28
BRAND NEW
I’m grounded. Olga tells Chief that I was out past my curfew, and I despise her even more for paying attention.
Wheel of Fortune is on. It’s Couples Week.
Chief is huffing and puffing like a dragon around the house. “What’s my vegetable?”
He is having a hard time finding his words this morning. He’s thinking more than talking, which is never a good sign.
“You’re a carrot,” I say.
Leia is broccoli. She has so many ideas sprouting out of one stalk.
Baby Girl is a tomato. She can’t decide whether she’s a fruit or a vegetable.
Chloe is a jalapeño. On the outside she looks innocent, but
if you take a bite, fire eventually consumes you.
And Luca is a green bean—long and thin and tasty.
“We should eat green beans more often,” I say out loud, dreamily. “I’ll add them to the grocery list. I really do love green beans.” And then I realize what I’ve said. “I mean, I like green beans. I couldn’t possibly love green beans. It’s been too short of a time for love.”
I might still be a little high.
“Stop talking about vegetables, and tell me where you were last night,” Chief says, beer in hand.
“With a friend,” I say. At a party. Where I got high. And then I kissed a boy. Numerous times. “Do you want to know why you’re a carrot?”
“No.” He slugs his beer.
“You’re skinny, firm, crisp, and grow in the dark.”
“We’re not talking about carrots right now.”
“We should. You need to change your diet. You don’t realize it, but it’s killing you.”
“No, you’re killing me right now. What were you doing last night?”
“I told you. I was out with a friend.”
“Who?” Chief asks firmly.
I don’t want to tell Chief about Luca or Leia. He’ll investigate. He’ll do his cop thing. I don’t want him interfering.
“Wilder.”
“Who is Wilder?”
Lies trip off my tongue surprisingly fast. Chief can’t know that Wilder is “what’s going on” next door either. He’d march over there. And Wilder just got the courage to open the window. He doesn’t need a cop banging on the door, yelling at him. “I met him at the library.”
“And what were you doing with Wilder?”
“Stop interrogating me like I’m a criminal. We didn’t do anything illegal.” More lies. “So, what’s my vegetable?”
“I want to meet this Wilder.”
“You can’t,” I say quickly.
“And why not?”
“He’s sick.”
“What do you mean he’s sick?”
“Tapeworm.”
“What?”
“He’s got a tapeworm. It’s a pretty shitty situation.” I try to smile. “Get it? Shitty?”
“Stop being cheeky, Wren.”
I ease back. “Look, Chief, I’m sorry. I lost track of time. I won’t do it again. But this is what you wanted, right? For me to have a life? You can be mad I was late, but you can’t be mad I made a friend.”
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