by Spencer Hyde
“So we visited the island years ago and found this secluded alcove. This one we’re sitting in right now. Nobody was ever there. Here, I mean. Nobody is ever here. Anyway, we fashioned these wings out of leaves tied to sticks, and we’d hold them and flap them and take turns jumping off this lip, either into the water over there or into the sand along that ridge where you first dropped into the place. It was stupid and fun. It made Quentin so happy. It made me happy, too,” he said.
Fitz stopped and took off his bandana. He bunched it up in his hands.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Fitz,” I said.
“No. It’s fine. It wasn’t you. It was your Boggle word: warbler. That’s what upset me weeks ago. Sorry, again, for being so rude,” he said.
I turned and looked at the small dots of sand freckling Fitz’s face. His curly hair was covered in sand. I’m sure my hair was likewise a mess of sand and sea air. I liked that we matched.
We were both quiet for a minute. Then Fitz said, “That was the fall I started hearing voices. I’d just hit puberty—I know, you probably thought I was born with a voice this deep.” He looked at me briefly, then back to the sky.
I was aware he was trying to put on the comedy mask, but it wasn’t working. Those small gestures to swap masks never work in the face of something so persistent. It’s impossible to hide some things.
“And I felt that if I missed this year, it would be what would tip the scales of depression the wrong way.”
I rested my hand on his chest, and he let the bandana drape over his face, like he didn’t want me seeing him as he told the rest. He breathed, and I saw the bandana stir.
“I heard a voice tell me to push Quentin off the ledge,” he said. “It was something we always did, so I didn’t think much of it, though it scared me because I didn’t know where the voice was coming from—who the voice was coming from. But he wasn’t expecting the shove. We always yelled, ‘Think like a bird!’ before the push, or something like that, but I didn’t say anything that time. I just pushed him. He slipped, and . . . he landed weird. It was an accident.”
He took the bandana off and stood up and stretched. We both stared at the water for a minute.
“I’m so sorry, Fitz,” I said, reaching out my hand.
He didn’t reach back. It was awkward, and I felt stupid, making one of those cliché, stereotypical gestures after hearing about someone’s loss. So I gently took his hand and pulled him back down so we’d both be seated in the cool sand.
Loss is so messy, so impossible to hold or mold or shape in any way—we really can’t grab on to it. I worried it was wrong of me to try in that moment. But Fitz smiled at my touch and stared out at the water and clouds. Then he cleared his throat and rested his head on his knees and looked at his feet.
He’d kicked off his flip-flops and was rolling his toes in the sand. He sighed deeply and sniffed. I could tell he was trying to hide anger and sadness and probably a whole mess of emotions behind that handsome gap, behind that mask.
“Brain damage. He was barely here. He died a month later. You know, it’s funny,” he said, shaking his head and looking my way.
Before he could finish the thought, I jumped in. “Don’t throw something. That’s how Junior always starts his rants.”
Fitz smiled. “You’re right. But it’s true. Don’t worry, I’m not planning on leaving this spot. But it is cosmically funny. Maybe tragic is a better word for it.”
“For what?”
“Well,” he said, “Remember that book about the mental hospital where they call the psych ward a cuckoo’s nest? I guess it ends with the narrator breaking out, but I keep thinking about it being called a cuckoo’s nest.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I said.
I sat up and kicked off my flip-flops. He was still rolling the bandana in his hands. I scooted closer to him. He was warm, and I let our bodies sink close to one another as he kept talking. I felt like being closer to Fitz might make him feel less uncomfortable. What in the world did I know about comforting someone with such a traumatic past? Hint: absolutely nothing.
“Cuckoo birds are brood parasites. They lay their eggs in the nests of other species. When the cuckoo eggs hatch, the cuckoo fledglings nudge the other eggs out of the nest, and they are raised by the mother of the other eggs, the original eggs, who is totally unaware of the switch. Or if she is aware, she does it anyway. The siblings die and the cuckoos take their place and go on as if nothing is wrong. It’s awful.”
I saw where he was going before he finished the thought, and I was already working on a response. He looked calm, but like the-calm-before-the-storm type of calm. I didn’t like it.
“It was an accident, Fitz,” I said. “Quentin knows that.”
“You didn’t know Quentin,” he said, clutching the bandana and wiping his eyes.
“But I know you would never hurt someone intentionally,” I said. “And the fact that you care this much about what happened shows me that you didn’t want it to happen. You didn’t want this. Nobody wants that kind of thing to happen.”
“Except cuckoo birds. It’s what they do,” he said.
He dug his feet deeper into the sand and looked up at the sky. His fists were tight, and he kept wiping his eyes. He wasn’t crying real hard or anything, but I could tell he didn’t want to let his emotions out fully because he wouldn’t be able to contain all that frustration and confusion and hurt.
We didn’t speak for maybe five minutes—and if you know what it’s like to sit in silence that long, then you know it felt like an eternity.
“We can only see so far with our eyes. We can only hear so much with our ears. It’s like we’re in a room, and as soon as the lights go out, we can finally see,” I said. “I think that’s how it is, to die. To go on. I bet when the lights go out, we are shown some exit from the stage we never knew existed, and we walk off into some new forever where all the people we love are waiting backstage. And we do it all over again.”
“That would be nice,” he said. “As long as he’s actually waiting for me. So I can apologize forever.”
He kept his head down on his knees, drawing in the sand between his feet.
“I remember learning about Lincoln and his son Willie in class a couple years ago,” I said.
I was hoping to break the silence with something meaningful, or at least something Fitz might be able to relate to. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought of that thing about Lincoln and his family for years.
“President Lincoln?”
“Yeah. His boy Willie died of typhoid fever. He was eleven years old.”
“Same age as Quentin,” Fitz said. “Sorry. I mean, he’d be eleven this year. Sorry. Go on.”
“No, you’re okay. It’s just that, when Lincoln was dealing with all the big stuff—like the fate-of-the-country-type of big—he would go visit Willie’s grave. I guess that’s the place where love and justice met for him or something. Maybe mercy, too. Maybe he needed those visits to regain solidarity. He just needed to see him again and say sorry and ask for help. I don’t know.”
Fitz sat up a little in the sand and drew in a deep breath, letting it slowly out, controlling the release of air so his lips sputtered. He rested his hand on my knee.
“Thank you,” he said.
Then he leaned over and hugged me close and tight, and I felt his muscles through the soft shirt he was wearing. He was still just as attractive as the first day I saw him. Trust me. But I let myself melt into that hug because it turns out I was in need of that kind of embrace as well, I just hadn’t known it before it hit me, before his body rested against mine in that moment on the island.
And that’s when he kissed me.
Yes, it was my first legitimate kiss. Yes, I’d tried kissing before. No, none of the kisses had ever made me feel the way Fitz’s did. Yes,
he was attractive. Yes, I was a mess of hormones and emotions all tied together with a giant bow of giddiness. And of course, my disorder couldn’t let me take a break for even this moment of pure freedom and joy.
As we kissed, I started blinking in a numbered sequence with specific lengths for each blink. I counted them and tapped my hand on his knee. He opened his eyes and leaned back and started laughing.
“Addie Foster. Always multitasking.”
“I can’t help it,” I said, holding my hand over my heart.
“You can count the beats this time,” he said.
He kissed me again, and then he hugged me again and stared at the water over my shoulder. I listened to him breathe for a minute before he spoke again.
“I wish I could run around the island and maybe catch some trick or tear in time and space and find Quentin standing there and laughing. He deserves it more than anybody else. But I can’t. Time doesn’t get tricked, no matter how much we wish it might, or could, or should,” said Fitz, still hugging me.
“What happened to your mom after all that?” I said, waiting a beat before jumping in.
I felt Fitz recoil, and turn his body from mine. I immediately regretted asking that question.
“My mom dealt with it the way she deals with everything. Doesn’t matter. Let’s just enjoy the island right now. The weather is perfect.”
We both rested our hands on our knees and faced the water. We watched the clouds move through the bones and curl around the sky above the island. Then there was this noise about two hundred yards out or so, and a massive tale flapped above the water and shone super bright in the sun and then sunk back below the water.
We stood and ran out to where the water was pulling back from the shore and watched as this massive whale body rose up and opened its gigantic mouth before sliding beneath the sheets of blue.
“Wow.” Then I said again, “Wow.”
“You saw that, too, right? I’m not seeing things now, too? Wouldn’t that be a treat—auditory and visual!” Fitz said.
I stepped closer to Fitz and took his hand. I worried about sounding too sentimental, but I still said what I was thinking.
“Maybe that was Quentin. And he heard you. From a thousand miles away.”
“You really do mix your metaphors,” he said. “Stages and whales? I’m not a teacher, but I’d have to give you a low score at this point.”
Fitz rubbed his eyes again and then hugged me with one arm, pulling me into his side like I was being curled into a little alcove.
“All I ever wanted was forgiveness,” he said.
“He heard you. A thousand miles away, maybe.”
“Maybe,” he said, not sounding convinced.
“We dive as deep as we can and hope somebody is listening to our call across the deep waters. All of us, at some point.”
I hoped I hadn’t frustrated him in some way by bringing it up like that. I was so unsure of the ground I was walking on—the shaky earth of grief, the shifting plates of loss, the tectonics of memory.
It was all pretty fascinating, seeing that whale, and I thought about the guide and how much I wanted to tell him we saw a blue whale and how it was the coolest thing ever, and all about the skeleton. But we decided it best to keep it all a secret.
“This is your spot now too,” said Fitz, rubbing his eyes with the sleeves of his sweatshirt.
When I shivered in the cold wind off the water, Fitz pulled me close and hugged me tight, with both arms. I loved every second of it.
“Getting cold, Addie Foster? Sorry—I mean, losing heat?”
I nodded, and Fitz suggested we grab our shoes and head back to the boat.
“You asked about my mother,” he said as we climbed back over the small hill hiding the alcove.
“Yeah, sorry. Not my place.”
“No, I’m glad you asked,” said Fitz. “You know she’s never showed up for Parent Visit? Not one time. Not once, since she admitted me to that hospital. You know why?”
I had a good guess, but I didn’t feel bold enough to say it. I was afraid it would hurt him, and I didn’t want to risk it after making my way over so much history to a place where I felt comfortable hugging him and kissing him and being with him and everything.
“Because I killed her son. She can’t forgive me. Should I even expect her to? It’s true. I did that to Quentin. Me,” he said, huffing and picking up his pace. “But I said sorry, and that’s what I wanted. Thank you for helping me, Addie.”
“You’re welcome, Fitz.”
“I mean it. Thank your.”
“Your?”
He pointed at my sweatshirt, and I laughed.
“Oh. You’re welcome, for.”
“For what?”
“No. You’re welcome, for. That’s it. Just thought we should end the trip on a preposition.”
Fitz laughed deep in his throat, and I smiled. Our walk to the ferry was all light as the sun swallowed up the sky and everything around us. We shed our lame sweatshirts as we boarded the boat from the dock where all the morning water had been licked back up into the sky.
Ten
It was a surprisingly sunny day even though it was, like, near the end of November. The sky was on fire, the clouds moving like hundreds of small boat sails set aflame.
When the boat approached the dock back on the mainland, I saw all these little black dots on the shore, and I worried we might be walking into the arms of the police. I tried to get a closer look, so I stood at the railing and squinted in the sunlight.
“Are you peering at the pier?” said Fitz.
“Nice homophone,” I said. “Are those cops?”
The guide didn’t hear us. Nobody heard us, thankfully. I had to be more careful with the volume of my voice.
“Sit down, Addie. Nobody is worried about us,” said Fitz.
That upset me. Not what he said, but what it made me think about. I’d been thinking about his mother the entire ride back. I’d been trying to concentrate on the beautiful day and lose my thoughts in all the wonderful scenery, but once a thought was in there, it was like being stuck in concrete, and the only way to rid myself of those thoughts was to see them through.
Compulsive, that’s right. Like clockwork. Like a Swiss watch. I never had to question my drive.
“It’s only one o’clock,” I said. “Let’s get lunch and then go see her.”
“Who?”
“Your mom,” I said.
“Max?”
“What? No. Your mom.”
“My mom’s name is Max. Well, Maxine, but she goes by Max. And the answer is no. I don’t ever want to see her again. As soon as I’m eighteen, I’m on my own. She won’t notice either way.”
I could tell he was lying. He said it all with too much emotion behind the words. I knew he had his mask on—the serious one, the coy one, the one that tries to hide all the worry and vulnerability. That’s right, the V-word.
“You need to confront her, Fitz. She can’t hold this over you forever.”
“Sure she can,” he said, slouching into one of the plastic chairs by the railing.
“Stop it. I won’t let you live your life waiting for forgiveness. You need to act. You need to forgive yourself, too. You’re holding it over yourself just as much as you think she is.”
Fitz stood and turned toward the water and started talking to Toby. I know that because I heard his name. Then Fitz mentioned Lyle as well, and then I heard him scream at Willy. He totally lost it on Willy about some joke he didn’t want to laugh at because it wasn’t the right time.
I wanted to put my arm around him or something, but instead, I sat down and rested my head on the back of the seat and looked at the sky, hoping when Fitz returned, he would be calmer.
“Addie Foster. The comic character-turned-heroine,” said Fitz with a thi
n-lipped smile as he walked back. “Sorry about that. Same old story, right?”
“You okay? I mean, seriously,” I said, grabbing his hand.
He sat down next to me and rested his head on his chair and stared up into the thinning clouds that were starting to pass with greater frequency.
“Maybe it is time I paid her a visit.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“But only so I can get Quentin’s painting.” He knew I was going to ask, so he nudged his bandana back from his eyes. “He painted a Kirtland’s warbler. It’s kind of messy and childlike, but that’s why I like it. I want it. I think he’d like me to have it.”
It looked like he was stretching into the idea of getting the painting back. I wanted him to find forgiveness so bad that I didn’t care how Max felt about it. And maybe I was finally starting to figure out just who I was, just how strong I was. That made me smile. But it also made me anxious.
I started tapping my knees and blinking. I thought about Dr. Morris’s essay question and realized, though I’d found out more about myself, I still didn’t know why the playwright would have characters sit around and talk without anything happening. It made more sense to me to get out and do something. Maybe that was part of the answer? That bugged me. Not the writers, but the fact that I still didn’t have an answer for the essay question.
I kept thinking about the way the play ends, with the characters saying if Godot shows up they’ll be saved, and if he doesn’t then they won’t have a life to live. They keep saying they will leave if he doesn’t show. But Godot doesn’t show up, and those characters just keep waiting. They don’t move. Whatever.
I stared out the window at the stern of the boat. Maybe I was looking for cops with their hats and bright badges, or maybe for white jackets from the hospital. I didn’t, in fact, know what I was looking for, but I knew people would be looking for us.
I wondered how the others were doing—Leah and Junior and Didi and Wolf and Martha. Maybe a little about Doc, but not so much. I thought about getting them souvenirs or something, but that was wishful thinking: we didn’t have enough money, and even if I brought something back, it would be confiscated.