by Alice Archer
“That is none of your… You shouldn’t…” Freddie spluttered.
“Also—wow—based on his photo, Hiroki is a lot younger than I’d expect for someone who’s retired.”
“He came into some money, not that it’s any of your—” Freddie lunged over the center console.
“Get off.” I pushed him back. “Your outrage would be a lot more believable if you hadn’t answered that message from Hiroki ten minutes ago with a photo of your dick, which at least you didn’t take while sitting here in the ferry line-up. I know because it’s the same photo you sent me a few weeks ago.”
I tilted the phone to assess Freddie’s cock, then scrolled up to see the earlier texts. “I can see why you like him. He’s shameless. Aw, but boohoo for Hiroki and the biggest dick he’s ever had in him. I had a bigger one in me a few days ago. Mmm… gotta get me more of that soon.”
“You mean Grant?” The rancor in Freddie’s comment twisted his face.
“Yeah, Freddie. It turns out I’m more into dicks who don’t want other assholes. And I’m not talking about body parts.”
The car in front of us rolled forward.
“Keep your foot on the brake,” I said. “You’ll get on this ferry. But not quite yet.”
Cars passed us from behind, driving around to board the ferry.
“You’re not coming with me, are you?” Freddie asked.
“Funny man. No, I’m not coming with you ever again.”
“Let me guess. You want to be exclusive with someone who has a bigger dick.”
I raised my eyebrows and held up his phone. “You told me you wanted to be exclusive.”
“And you told me you’d sold the DeVille.”
“Yeah. I lied. I’m sorry about that. I also lied about leaving my property.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.” I handed Freddie his phone.
“That was true?”
“Well, up until about thirty minutes ago.”
“Ha. I got you to leave your property, even if it was to break up with me.” His arrogant look was pure Freddie. “How long has it been?” Freddie asked. “Since you left?”
“Thirteen years. Since right after Dad died.”
“Fucking hell, Oliver.”
“And you didn’t get me to leave my property. I don’t think you paid enough attention to me to be able to pull that off.”
“Ouch, man. But—”
“It took Grant a few weeks to figure it out.”
“I hate him. He ruined us.”
That made me laugh. “He ruined us? There was nothing between us to ruin. You made plans to get with Hiroki behind my back this weekend. I concocted a future with you to escape from my real life. That’s not a relationship. That’s the ongoing bullshit of two liars using each other.”
“That is not true. We’ve been together for years, great years. We—”
“Oh, for the love of God, Freddie. Stop. Yes, we’ve been friends for years, and we still can be, but without sex, and only if we stop lying.”
“What about the suitcase? Is that just for show?”
“It’s everything of yours from my place. After all our ‘great years,’ it’s not even half full. Consider the suitcase itself a gift. Go be a famous journalist, Freddie. I won’t hold a grudge.”
Freddie stuck his arm out his window. The scowl on his face didn’t seem directed at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Giving Grant the finger.”
“He’s here?”
“You didn’t see your own van parked by the waiting room? He came to—”
I shoved open the door and got out. There was Dad’s VW, surrounded by a scrum of people, but I didn’t see Grant. Some of the people saw me and waved me over.
I checked for traffic and started across, scanning faces, searching for Grant’s frown. All I saw were smiles.
“Bye, Oliver,” Freddie said behind me.
I turned back long enough to say, “Send me a postcard. And give me a call when you come back to visit your mom.”
When I reached Dad’s van, Talia sidled toward me, a sport bag slung over her shoulder. “I got off early,” she said with a sly look. “So as not to miss any potential drama.”
An old man hobbled over with a kind smile—Mr. Wong, Granddad’s accountant. He hugged me close then passed me to Natalie, my babysitter after Granddad died. I wanted to hug them back and answer their questions, but not as much as I wanted to find Grant. I craned my neck to look farther back, out over the tops of people’s heads.
The dock ramp motor whined behind me as it lifted off the ferry. I saw Grant then, way out at the other end of the dock, past the DeVille and walking away.
“He thinks you got on the ferry with Freddie,” Talia said.
“But I didn’t.”
Talia rolled her eyes and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, Grant,” she shouted.
I pushed through all the people who weren’t him.
Chapter 84
Grant
I tracked the rumble-swish of the ferry’s departure behind me as it moved away, taking possibilities with it. Oliver did it. Good for him. I repeated the words over and over.
Talia yelled my name. It didn’t matter. She’d find the keys if she looked hard enough. I only had one mighty wish: Get under the trees. I marched on toward the upper lot.
Running footsteps behind me. “Grant. Wait.”
At the sound of Oliver’s voice, my heart lurched. I turned around.
He stopped a few feet away. “Hey.” Miles of copper hair lifted around his shoulders in the salty breeze. A fiery Medusa against a backdrop of blue sky and bluer sea, Oliver stunned me with his smile. In the distance, the ferry escaped to the mainland.
I balled my hands into fists. To my dismay, I was angry. I turned my back on Oliver, not wanting to confuse him with my confusion, and walked faster up the hill.
A minute later, I heard the DeVille’s powerful motor start.
Oliver drove up beside me and slowed to match my pace. “I didn’t go with Freddie,” he told me out the open passenger window. “We broke up.”
“Go to hell,” I muttered. Anything I felt like saying, Oliver wouldn’t want to hear. When I reached the parking lot, I started across it with the hope of finding a street at the far corner that would carry on past the houses and yards to a trail.
“Would you please get in?” Oliver shouted from the road. “We can talk.”
With any luck, I’d find a trail with a view of ocean between the tree trunks.
In the time it took Oliver to drive around to the lot entrance and weave through the scattered vehicles, I’d made it halfway across the lot. He maneuvered the DeVille in front of me and stopped to block my way.
“Move, goddamn it,” I growled.
“What is going on with you?”
More than anything, I wanted to not be angry at Oliver. I felt bottled up and pressurized. Everything had happened too fast. I just needed… something. Something else. Relief. I needed relief. I walked around the back of the DeVille and moved on toward the trees.
Oliver drove to stop in front of me again and leaned across the seat to say through the passenger window, “I’m not leaving until you tell me—”
“You scared me,” I roared. “You scared me when I couldn’t find you.” I blasted my remembered fear into the car.
He’s safe, I tried to tell my fear. He’s right there.
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Please get in.” His bright eyes pleaded.
Anger welled up to push at the fear. “I couldn’t find you. The house was so clean and empty.”
Oliver gave me a wry smile. “You didn’t think I’d be able to leave.”
He was right. Even wh
en I knew Oliver had driven away in the DeVille, I hadn’t believed.
A station wagon rolled into the lot and disgorged two adults and three children who began to walk in our direction to reach the sidewalk down to the dock.
I didn’t want strangers to see me cry. That was the only reason I got in the DeVille. I opened the back door. I wanted to be as far from Oliver as possible while still being inside the car. The door was heavy enough to make the slam satisfying.
“Fasten your seat belt,” Oliver said in a calm voice.
“Fuck. Off.” I found the seat belt ends and buckled up. It was going to be a bumpy ride.
Oliver rolled up all the windows and we floated across the lot. We sat together in the quiet space. The air vents sighed. I slumped into the plush leather and ignored Oliver.
After he’d made the right turn onto Vashon Highway, Oliver asked, “How did I scare you?”
I sighed my irritation and made him wait. We passed a few cross streets in silence. “Couldn’t find you,” I muttered, sullen and rude and unable to look at him. “Saw the van. Didn’t know if you’d disappeared somewhere to… hurt yourself.”
“Oh.” The car slowed a little.
“I thought it was too soon.” I kept my eyes focused out the side window. “Too soon for you to try to leave your property.”
“You thought I’d try to leave, fail, and then… what? Commit suicide?”
It sounded absurd when Oliver said it, but it hadn’t felt absurd, not when I’d been careening around his property with fear and love and grief warring inside.
I felt embarrassed, and I regretted getting into the car. If Oliver would slow enough… I put my hand on the door handle.
“I wouldn’t kill myself,” Oliver said. “I wouldn’t do that. Not ever. I promised.”
My overtaxed mind delivered a new tangle. “I saw what you painted. In your bedroom. And your drawings on the dining table.” I felt like Oliver owed me an apology. Or at least an explanation.
“You broke into my house?” Oliver asked. He didn’t sound upset.
“Why did you lock all the doors? You never lock the doors.”
“What did you have to break to get in?”
“I didn’t break anything,” I snapped.
At the fork in the road, Oliver veered left to stay on Vashon Highway, instead of turning right onto Cedarhust and the quietude of the west side of the island. That made me angry too.
“Answer my question,” Oliver said.
“You answer my question.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
I folded my arms and glared out the window, longing for the trees of Westside Highway.
“I deserve an answer,” Oliver said as we passed Cove Road.
“Unlocked courtyard window.”
“Okay. Good. Well, to answer your question…” Oliver cleared his throat. “I locked the doors to keep the, um… ghosts inside. I was trying to avoid… a memory.”
“Did you?” I asked before I could stop myself.
After a long exhale, Oliver said, “No.”
“Are you okay?”
When Oliver didn’t answer right away, I huffed and gave him the silent treatment again, watched scenery go by, tried to understand myself.
“Your infinity symbols kept showing up,” Oliver said. “They made me think things I hadn’t thought before. Like how long I’d been running in place and going nowhere.”
We’d reached town by then. Oliver slowed to a stop at a crosswalk. People with cloth bags and bunches of carrots, children with dogs and smiles, and a slow man with a cane moved from one side of the road to the other. Summertime on a sunny Saturday on Vashon Island, and I hated everything—the tourists, the islanders, the specials in chalk on the cafe blackboard, the buckets of fresh flowers at the farmer’s market. I closed my eyes, aware of how much I’d missed while I’d been running in place too.
I kept my eyes closed until we picked up speed on the far side of town and I heard Oliver open the glove compartment. “Here,” he said.
I took the stack of papers he passed to me. My life-review pages from the treehouse. Seeing them in Oliver’s hand refreshed the feeling of being invaded.
“I have your journals too.” Oliver glanced back at me. “I’m sorry I took them, but… No, that’s a lie. I’m not sorry.”
He’d stolen my careful work and he couldn’t even apologize.
“Your creations, your art… helped me leave the property,” Oliver went on. “I sat on your journals, spread your pages over my legs. I tried to be as courageous as you are.”
My head cramped, tight enough to turn my ears hot. “I am so mad at you right now.”
“About what?”
“So. Many. Things.”
“Like…?”
“Like I wanted to be in the car with you when you left.” My voice rose and I let it. “Like driving us through town instead of to the west side. Like you stole my stuff. Like your beautiful drawings of Freddie. Like your painting of me. What if I left and never knew it existed?” The thought shortened my breath. I set the papers on the floor behind Oliver and turned to press my forehead to my window. To try to calm myself, I named the trees we passed.
Cedar. Holly. Cherry. Cherry. Douglas fir.
I think Oliver took pity on me then. He stopped talking, made a right turn onto Cemetery Road, which took us to Westside Highway. By the time we approached the turn onto 220th, which would take us to Violetta Road, I couldn’t wait to escape the car.
But Oliver didn’t slow down.
“What are you doing?” I shouted as we passed 220th. “Turn the goddamn hell around.”
“No. We need to talk. And I want to drive. I want to see the island. So much has changed.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
It made it harder to stay angry.
Oliver turned left onto 248th, blew past Old Mill Road, steered with apparent ease through the curves of Shawnee Road.
“Now what?” I said, to break the silence.
Oliver shrugged. He looked like a fucking badass driving the enormous Cadillac. I spent a while staring at him as we skimmed along the road, protected by the DeVille’s fabulous shocks. Mostly I stared at his topknot. He’d put his hair up after that Medusa moment at the dock, before he’d followed me in the car to harass me.
“I broke into your house today,” I said. “After you’d banished me.”
“So you said.”
“Then why aren’t you upset?”
“Because I love you.”
My jaw fell open, stayed open until I blinked and swallowed.
“That’s not a reason. I love you too, but I’m still angry.” I glared at Oliver’s bare neck under the topknot so hard my eyes hurt. He took his hair down for Freddie. I had too many feelings to care about being rational.
My slouch devolved into a flop. I loosened the seat belt and gave my hips a twist so I could lie back on the seat and fume out the window at the trees instead of at Oliver’s neck.
Now and then, as we sailed by, people honked at us. The DeVille’s soundproofing must have been state of the art. Between the honks, I sank into the hush of our plush capsule.
Oliver’s stomach growled.
We slowed. Slowed more. I sat up to see why.
The DeVille drifted into a parking spot in a far corner of the grocery store lot. Oliver turned off the engine and got out. “I need groceries.”
“Fridge wouldn’t be empty if you’d asked your friends for help,” I muttered.
He leaned down to ask through the open door, “You coming with?”
“Hell no.”
“See you in a few, then.” Oliver smiled at me, then loped away across the lot.
I lay down again with a huff.
I waited. Stared at the ceiling. Sighed.
The silence ran on and on.
When Oliver closed the trunk with a solid thunk, I startled out of my drowse.
He drove us out of the lot onto Vashon Highway, the blinker’s tick-tick-tick marking time until he completed the turn.
“I fell asleep in the DeVille yesterday,” Oliver said, his calm voice calm. “Right before I fell asleep, the… memory I’ve been avoiding… found me.”
His hesitations sharpened my attention. I held still to listen.
“My mother left when I was five. In the… memory, Dad and I were with her in her car, at night, in Seattle. They thought I was asleep and… talked. She’d gotten a job offer from Geneva and wanted us to move with her. She… begged.” The DeVille didn’t waver, but Oliver’s voice broke.
“My mother never begged. I once overheard Dad tell Granddad she was… cold. To me, she seemed calm and strong and… aloof. I thought she didn’t care about me, not as much as I wanted her to. But maybe she just didn’t care the way I was used to with Dad and Granddad. She begged Dad to go with her so we could be together as a family, and Dad… refused. We hadn’t all lived together since I was a baby. My mother only came to Vashon on weekends. Some weekends. Dad never took me to the city to see her. That memory of us in her car—that was last time I saw her.”
I sat up and watched Oliver’s shoulders rise and fall, his breaths slow as he lapsed into silence. His courage, the fears he’d confronted, stunned me. I didn’t know what to say.
He’d steered around a few more curves before he spoke again. “Dad gave my mother an ultimatum. If she took the job in Geneva, he would fight for full… custody. Of… me. He said so, right there in the car…” The breath Oliver took sounded painful, and he exhaled it for a long time. “He told her if she took the job, he would make sure she never saw me again.”
“Jesus.” What a thing for a five-year-old to hear. “How did she respond? Did you remember that?”
Oliver nodded and swallowed. “She said it was the job of a lifetime and giving it up would be like asking Dad to give up making art. She said Dad could make art in Geneva but she couldn’t do her work in Seattle anymore. She…” Oliver’s hesitation became a full stop.