Even in Paradise

by Chelsey Philpot

  Sebastian sighed and leaned back against the post. “H.G. is what Pip calls my girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?” I couldn’t help myself.

  “Horrible Gwyneth.” Julia lurched like someone was pressing down on her shoulders as she stood up. “She really is a monster.”

  I didn’t say anything, hopeful that my face was in shadow.

  Julia flung her arms above her head. “Mummy had to say her piece. Blah. Blah. Blah. Then Boom tried to be strict. Then I had to talk to that terrible woman with the ugly shoes because she’s a cousin three times removed or something. Blah. Blah. Blah.” Julia opened and closed one of her hands like she had on a sock puppet. “Then that gorgeous waitress was looking at me, and so I followed her outside.” Julia paused. “Well, that wasn’t blah, blah, blah.”

  Sebastian stood up. “Pip, I really don’t want to hear about your conquests.”

  “Fine. Then promise to never tell me anything about H.G., and I’ll promise to keep you in the dark.” She looked at me with her hands on her hips, still swaying a little, like a newly planted tree in a strong wind. “Poor Charlie. You must be very bored.”

  “No. I’m—”

  “Come on. I’ll entertain you.” Julia tried to pull me up, but I had to grip her forearm to keep her from falling over. “Let’s go get more champagne.”

  Sebastian waved his arm as if to say after you. I slipped my shoes back on and followed Julia. She was wrong. I wasn’t bored. I was stupidly wistful. I wanted to go back to the moment before I heard Sebastian say he had a girlfriend. The moment when I thought he was going to kiss me. I wasn’t bored. I was an idiot.

  When Julia reached the edge of the party she jogged toward a waiter and grabbed three full flutes before turning and thrusting one at me and another at Sebastian. “Cheers. It’s time for One Up.” She took a deep drink.

  Next to me Sebastian groaned. “Pip, not tonight. Mum will kill us.”

  “One up?” I asked. Sebastian clicked his tongue and shook his head at me.

  “There are too many people at this party. She won’t even see.” Julia looked at Sebastian over the rim of her glass. “Fine. I’ll start.” She dropped her nearly empty flute on the grass and lifted up a side of her dress and tucked it into her underwear.

  “Julia!” I said, coughing on the sip I had taken. “What are you doing?”

  She smiled, shrugged, and walked toward a circle of two women in floral sundresses, a man wearing a bowtie, and another man who stood so straight he looked like he had a rod taped against his back. She touched the silver-haired woman’s arm and pointed at the large rings on her fingers. Moments later, they were talking, both gesturing with their hands.

  “So what now?” I whispered to Sebastian.

  He groaned. “Now I have to one-up her.”

  When Julia waved good-bye and began to make her way toward another circle, the woman she had been chatting with raised a hand to her mouth and the two men sputtered into their drinks at the sight of Julia’s dress tucked into faded yellow underwear. The other woman reached as if to touch Julia on the shoulder, but she was pulled into a new group and began talking with a man whose bald head looked as polished as his white teeth.

  “Okay.” Sebastian sighed.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I can’t let her win.” He took one more sip from his glass before splashing what was left on the front of his pants.

  “Sebastian?”

  “Yes?” he asked as he straightened his tie.

  “You know what that looks like, right?”

  “Just be glad I didn’t need the rest of your glass as well. Okay. Gotta go join Pip.” He jogged over to Julia’s side, introducing himself around the circle and then settling an arm over her shoulders. The man standing next to him tried to whisper something in his ear, but Sebastian waved him away and turned to the plump middle-aged black woman with wildly curly hair across the circle from him. Next to him, Julia clasped and unclasped her hands. She was the life of the circle. The center of the conversation. No one in the group would meet their eyes, except for an older man leaning on a cane who nodded his head agreeably with everything Julia said.

  The moment Cordelia dashed off the porch to stand next to Sebastian with a four-foot trail of toilet paper stuck to the heel of her shoe, the laughter that started as bubbles in my stomach erupted into giggles. Sebastian slid his other arm around her and continued chatting to the blinking group.

  I tried to wipe the tears from my eyes, but I had to clutch at my stomach with both hands to breathe. I couldn’t see Sophie, Mrs. Buchanan, or Boom, but on the porch, I saw Bradley talking to a woman at the bar. He shook his head, but he was smiling.

  If I had to pinpoint one moment, pick an exact second when it happened, I would say it was that night—when Julia, Sebastian, and Cordelia stood side by side daring, just daring anyone to say anything to any of them—that I fell in love with the Buchanans.

  VOTE FOR BUCHANAN!

  As a state senator, Joe Buchanan was the chair of the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities, vice chair of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, and a member of the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change. He proposed bills to strengthen gun control laws and provide universal kindergarten to all of Massachusetts’s children.

  As your governor, he’ll continue to fight for education, affordable health care, and funding for renewable energy research.

  A vote for Joe Buchanan is a vote for what’s right!

  I found the creased pamphlet in a copy of Leaves of Grass in the library. Boom’s photo on the front showed him standing on the steps of the statehouse building in downtown Boston. His gaze was fixed beyond the picture taker, and the set of his mouth and sharp focus of his eyes suggested that he was looking into the future itself.

  I took the pamphlet for my memory box. It was faded and forgotten, and I didn’t think it’d be missed.

  FIFTEEN

  AFTER THE PARTY—AFTER THE little white lights had been packed up, the tables dismantled, and the tent taken down—Arcadia felt as empty as a small town once the circus has left. That was fine by me. I was ready to have Julia—to have them all—to myself again, before I had to go home.

  The hours were long and filled with trips to town and the lighthouse, lazy games of cards, and dinners on the porch where ten conversations always seemed to be happening at once—most of them going over my head. The Buchanans had their own language: code words and nicknames for everything and everyone. I didn’t need to understand. I was happy to listen.

  When I called home, I struggled to describe it all to my dad. How to convey the ridiculousness of the way Boom sang while making coffee in the morning but was often quiet at night, how Bradley’s flirting was unnerving and flattering, how impossible it was to try to both avoid and be near Sebastian, and how the afternoons lounging on the porch with Julia and not talking at all were some of the best conversations I’d ever had?

  I could not capture it in words. So I tried to draw it on paper. Even then, the sketches I made for myself were never quite right.

  The hours were long, but the days were short, and as much as I willed it to never come, the end of summer arrived anyway.

  I woke up early on the Sunday I was finally going to go home. I had put it off too long and now only had days to get back, apologize to my boss for quitting so suddenly, and throw my life in boxes and then in my dad’s truck for the trip to St. Anne’s. I crept down the front stairs. The sun had barely reached the drapes in the front hall. When I was outside, I slipped my shoes on and grabbed one of the sun-bleached plastic pails from beneath the kitchen steps.

  The wet grass soaked my sneakers on my way to the beach, but my wet feet didn’t bother me. It was one more way to take Arcadia with me when I left.

  The seagulls didn’t care that I had nothing to give them. They swooped behind me as I bent to pick up a shell, a bit of sea glass, or an ocean-smoothed coin
of driftwood, ever hopeful that I was dropping food as I made my way down the sand.

  “You’re up early.”

  I glanced up from the shell I had been studying. Boom stood where the lawn met the sand. His khakis were so wrinkled it looked like he had slept in them. The collar on his dark shirt was flipped up against his neck and a pair of sunglasses hung on a cord around his neck. Henry, David, and Thoreau weaved around him as he lumbered like a bear just waking up down the slope toward me.

  “I wish you could influence the rest of the house. They’ll all sleep through lunch if I let them.” He laughed. “These guys,” he said, reaching down and scratching Thoreau’s head, “are the only ones who will seize the day with me.” He bent to pat Henry’s head, groaning a little as he stood up. “It’s a toss-up these days what hurts more in the morning: the knees or the back.” He pressed his hands against his lower back, his shirt pulled tight against his watermelon stomach. “Well, at least I have the mutts in the morning to sound the alarm when I fall in the sand and can’t get up . . . and now you, it seems.”

  The morning suddenly felt a little bit warmer. The wind less chilling. “I wanted to take some shells before I leave. I hope you don’t mind,” I said.

  He waved an arm. “Not at all; take whatever you like, kiddo. You know.” He paused, shuffling his feet in the sand. I could see where Sebastian got his fidgeting from. “I wasn’t going to disturb you, but I doubt Julia offered you a car if you’re a churchgoer. Just because we’re a family of sinners doesn’t mean we need to drag our guests down.”

  “Oh.” I looked up from my bucket. “I don’t . . . my family isn’t really . . . no. Thank you, though.”

  He kept kicking at the sand. “We used to go . . . to church, that is. I’m sure Julia complained to you. I made all five . . . all four of them go every week.” He bent down to pick up a rock. As he stood, he squinted into the sun, which was creeping bit by bit across the sand to where we stood. “But then we kind of lost our religion, I guess.” He paused. “Or maybe it lost us. Who knows?”

  Since I had met him in the library, Boom had looked ready to give a speech at a second’s notice—to shake hands and kiss babies and listen to the needs of strangers. But at that moment on the sand, he looked tired—or maybe pensive was the better word. He was a man watching a memory flit away as though it was a balloon disappearing into clouds.

  “I never understood how you could ‘lose’ a religion . . . where does it go? It’s not like a watch or a set of keys . . . something that can disappear in a purse,” I said, stumbling over my words to fill the silence.

  Boom shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “Charlie, you ask the strangest questions. I understand why you and Pip are joined at the hip.” He chuckled at the rhyme.

  He gestured down the beach, bowing a little as if asking me to dance. “Can I walk with you?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I mean, yes.” I reached up to tuck my hair behind my ears, forgetting it was short now, then bent to work a shell out of the sand at my feet.

  “Pip used to be inseparable from this girl. Her parents have a place nearby,” he said, vaguely pointing back toward the house. “Piper. But I haven’t seen her since last spring. You kids are teenagers, I know, and I don’t pretend to understand her relationships, but . . .” He sighed. “Well, I’m just glad you’re around to watch out for her.”

  “She’s my best friend.” I fell into step beside him, letting the pail hang from my wrist and bump against my thigh so I could shove both my hands into my sweatshirt pockets.

  “Just friends?”

  “Just friends.”

  Boom stared straight ahead, but his squinted eyes didn’t look like they were taking anything in. “After Augustine, I wasn’t much help to her. I protected her, but I also lost touch with her for a while. Lost touch with reality for a while.” He laughed, but there wasn’t any joy in the sound. “I’m trying now, but it’s hard to make up for vanished time. Most days I’m just happy if I put my shoes on the right feet.” He coughed, both swallowing his words and clearing his throat.

  I nodded, sensing I was not expected to say anything.

  He exhaled loudly and bent to pick up a stone and toss it in my pail. “Sorry. Guess I’m a little melancholy this morning. Well, I’m not telling you anything those gossip-mongers at St. Anne’s aren’t spreading around anyway. I’m good friends with the headmistress and know more than Julia would like about what goes on at that place.” He forced a smile. “My spies tell me you’re quite the artist.”

  I shrugged.

  “Have you thought about schools? Colleges?”

  I ducked my head. “I’m going to apply to a lot of places. Anywhere that’ll give me a scholarship would be great.”

  “You must have a dream school.”

  I looked at my feet. “I’d like to go to RISD most. I guess. But it’s wicked competitive and expensive and—”

  “Got to reach for the stars, kiddo. Let me make some phone calls. I know a couple of trustees on the board over in Providence.” He laughed, a deep chuckle that sounded like it started in the very center of him. “One of the perks of being an ex-politician is knowing an awful lot of awful people in an awful lot of great places. For what it’s worth, I could write you a letter of recommendation, too.”

  “Thank you. That’s . . . really, wicked generous.” I again reached up to tuck my nonexistent hair behind my ears.

  “Not really,” he said. “You see, my offer is purely selfish. I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “Okay?” I picked a piece of sea glass out of my bucket and ran my fingers around its smooth edges. How could I possibly help Boom?

  “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind rooming with Julia this year. She’d murder me if she knew I was asking.” He cleared his throat again. “She was so stubborn about going to Gus’s school . . . and your parents would probably tell you this, too, but half of being a parent seems to be second-guessing every decision you make, but . . .”

  He put a hand on my shoulder and we stopped walking. He twisted me gently to make me look at him, leaning down so his eyes were level with my own. “You’re good for her. I haven’t seen her this happy since . . . since a long time.” He dropped his hand, but the weight of it lingered on my shoulder.

  “Mr. Buchanan, I—”

  “Call me Boom. Just think about it. Okay? You don’t have to let me know right this instant. Now.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Let’s find you some treasures.”

  I took the gray shell he handed me, and bent down to rinse the sand from it in the wave that drifted toward my feet. I didn’t drop it in the bucket, but slid it in one of my pockets. I would keep it somewhere special. Somewhere just for me.

  So we walked, turning back toward the house only when the sun was hot on our faces and the wind had picked up enough to whip the top of the waves into white froth.

  Had I known the heights of the joy and the depth of the hurt to come, perhaps I would have been smart. Perhaps I would have left the beach that day and taken the ferry for the safe world I had always known: a world of art made in a garage, car parts on the kitchen table, and Latin tests. Perhaps I would have been rational and chosen to have no more to do with the Buchanans.

  But I have no illusions. Even knowing everything, I would have chosen the same.

  It’s only in hindsight that we can point, as easily as finding a town on a map, to the moments that shaped us—the moments when choices between yeses and noes determined the people we became.

  SCULPTURE II

  It was the last thing I packed to take with me to St. Anne’s.

  I covered what little sculpture I had started at Arcadia in bubble wrap and an old fleece blanket and made room for it on the backseat instead of the bed of the truck with the rest of my things. I didn’t care that I had to push my seat all the way forward for the long drive.

  I would have held it on my lap, but I already had my memory box. Its weight against my legs anchored me as
I stared out the window at a view I had seen countless times before that was now forever changed.

  THE MIDDLE

  Non est vivere sed valere vita est

  (Life is more than just being alive)

  SIXTEEN

  THAT FALL WAS LIKE IT had been the spring before—except things with Rosalie went from a tentative truce to her outright avoiding me again.

  After I told her that I was rooming with Julia, if she saw me walking in her direction, she turned and went the other way. If I was in the front row in Environmental, she sat in the back. If we were stuck at the same formal dinner table, she placed herself on the other side. The few times I tried to get close enough to explain, her eyes were so full of anger and hurt that it made my insides twist. Each time my practiced speech seemed stupid and superficial. Each time I lost my nerve.

  Once again, Julia and I made our own little universe and found that this time the gossip had moved on to fresher faces and rumors with more grit to them. Julia gave up Pembroke Hall and her tower room with all its furniture to live with me in Campion, closer to the library. She was just as much a slob as when she had had her own room, but she was quick to apologize for a wet towel carelessly thrown on my bed or her river-drenched sweats left in a pile in the middle of the room after her morning crew practice.

  We went to the dining hall when we had to for formal dinners, but by and large we survived on microwave noodles and the massive care packages Sophie sent each week.

  Sebastian came to campus a handful of times to check in on Julia. We were awkward around each other. Or maybe I was just especially awkward around him.

  The time Julia left us alone together in the school store while she ran outside to talk to her crew coach, I tipped a large coffee onto a pile of newspapers with my elbow and he knocked over a display of Halloween candy. He made me clumsy. He made me tongue-tied and sloppy and nervous and want what was not mine to have.