Dear Clew,
Just a few things you left behind that I thought you might be missing. I hope you’re having fun on the island and that it’s not too bloody hot. Bradbury and I are plugging along here. It’s a busy time at the college, but we’re looking forward to seeing you in August when you’re home. We miss you.
Love,
Dad
I flip through the journal, stack the books in a neat pile, set the clay cat on top. I pick up Edna and study her face—the whiskers that were meant to be stitches, which I drew on her cheeks after I got stitches of my own following an accident on the school playground; the bald spot where I cut her hair; the eye shadow I gave her with purple permanent marker.
“Why are you here?” I say to her. “Why did he send me these things when I’m going back home in a few weeks?” Unless you’re not going home, a voice whispers deep inside of me. Unless he never wants you to come home again.
I leave everything on the window seat. Edna lies on her back, one foot propped against the wall. Dandelion hops up beside her and starts bathing what’s left of her hair.
I grab the fisherman’s cap and my shoes. I leave so fast that I forget to bring an umbrella, and in minutes I’m soaked through. The cap has the smell of wet dog.
* * *
—
As I walk, I am thinking about the fact that my parents loved each other until my dad decided he didn’t anymore, that he wanted a family and then he didn’t. What makes someone stop loving you? One day there’s love; the next day there’s not. Where does it go? Something that lived and breathed like that—how can it just vanish as if it never really existed? I imagine a room or maybe an entire planet where all the love goes to live once we’re done with it. Like a kind of junkyard. Little remnants of love scattered everywhere. People picking through, collecting the strongest, biggest pieces, and trying to make something of them again. Isn’t this what we do every time we meet someone new or fall for someone new or start loving someone new? Pick up the old battered bits of ourselves and try again?
Eventually, I see a house just off the road. A bright blue shotgun shack underneath an enormous live oak. Bright blue rocking chairs on the front porch. Lights in the windows. It looks like a storybook house, cozy and inviting, and I want to go in and make myself at home.
I keep walking, because if I don’t, I might stay here forever. Just down the road there is another shack, this one a sunflower yellow. The next house is a soft green, the one after that a kind of rose color. From the outside they all look warm and welcoming, as if nothing bad could ever happen to the people living there.
* * *
—
The general store is just two short aisles packed with candy and cereal and junk food and calamine lotion. There is an ice cream freezer and a refrigerator with cold drinks. There are postcards of the island that look like they’re from the 1970s and a small counter where a woman with a round, scrubbed face sits reading a magazine. Her name tag says TERRI.
I clear my throat. “How often does the ferry run?”
She glances up at me, magazine still open. People. “Three times a day to the mainland and back, but if you’ve got money, you can charter a boat.”
“If only,” I say. “What are your hours here?”
“Whenever I feel like showing up.” She looks down at her magazine and continues reading.
Past the counter, over in one corner, there are a couple of round tables with chairs. I sit, dig out my phone, and call Saz. It rings once before she picks up.
“Sazzy?”
“Hen! Are you still in Atlanta? When’re you coming home?”
And all the pieces of me that I’ve been holding together for the past few weeks start talking at once, fractured and separate, but united in their ache. In the pain that comes with saying, “I’m not coming back for a while because my mom and I are literally on an island and this is where I have to be. Because my dad doesn’t want us and my mom is trying to figure out what comes next, so we came here. And I still can’t make sense of it. If he wanted out so badly, why didn’t he go away instead? Why did my mom and I have to be the ones to leave everything, like fugitives, like convicts on the run who’ve done something so horrible that no one can speak of it and who don’t even deserve to say goodbye?”
I don’t say home because Mary Grove isn’t my home any more than the island is. It’s just a place where I used to live. I’m not sure where home is. Maybe living in the junkyard with all the ruins of love.
Saz listens and listens, even when I tell her about my hair and how I cut it all off, and when I start to cry, she says, “Motherfucker.” And keeps listening. I can hear her sitting very still, not breathing, so that I can say everything I need to say, and after a while I’m not even sure what I’m saying because it’s not me saying it; it’s the pieces of me. And even as I’m crying, I can feel them slowly, slowly stitching themselves together again. Very loose. But together.
When I’m finished and there are no more words and the pieces of me are breathing hard and holding on to each other, Saz says, “First, I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Always. I mean it. I don’t want you to ever think for a minute that my love is going away. Second, fuck him. I’m not surprised, but fuck him.”
What does she mean, “I’m not surprised”? The part of me that loves my dad because he’s my dad wants to tell her to fuck off, but I can’t go around protecting him forever. So I echo: “Fuck him.” And a fraction of my heart chips off and falls away as I say it, because the words feel like a betrayal.
“Third, we need to get you out of there.”
And the idea of this makes me sit up a little straighter, and then I’m brushing the tears away because I want them off my face so I can concentrate on what she’s saying.
“What’s halfway between here and there? If I can get to…Hold on….” She goes quiet for a few seconds. “If I can get my ass to maybe Greenville, can you meet me? Can you, I don’t know, steal a car or get on a plane or something? I can be there tomorrow.”
I pull up the map on my phone, and it keeps glitching because the service is shit, but finally I’m studying the route, and my heart is skipping faster and faster, just imagining running away, far from here.
“I don’t want to go back there,” I say. Even though I miss my room with its green walls and my dog and my house and my friends. Things I’ve taken for granted all my life.
“Of course not. We could hit the road. Just us. Thelma and Louise. A couple of outlaws. One last trip before college. You and me, wild and free. Maybe Asheville. We can find that sanitarium where Zelda Fitzgerald burned to death.”
And I can see it, the two of us. Claude and Saz. Saz and Claude. The way it’s always been and always will be. Stopping at every tacky tourist site between North or South Carolina and California. Because that’s where we’ll go. The West Coast. Los Angeles. No more winter. No more cold. Just sunshine and bright skies and city as far as the eye can see. We’ll lose ourselves and find ourselves.
Then Saz says, “Hold on.” And I can hear her talking to someone. And then laughing. And then saying something else. And then, to me, into the phone: “I’m back. Sorry. Yvonne’s ordering pizza and we can’t ever agree on what to get. I’m like, Pepperoni, extra peppers, and she’s all, Ham and pineapple. Which is so completely disgusting.” She practically shouts this, and I know it’s for Yvonne’s benefit, not mine.
“Am I on speaker?”
“What?”
“Am. I. On. Speaker?”
“Yes….”
“Take me off it now.”
Because I wasn’t calling SazandYvonne, I was calling Saz.
“Okay. It’s off. Sorry. It’s just you and me. Yvonne can’t hear you.”
It’s the way she says Yvonne, like they have secrets
between them. Ordering pizza and having sex and falling in love, while I’m on the outside, 843 miles away.
“So let’s meet in Asheville,” she says.
“Is it serious? You and Yvonne?”
“She broke up with Leah.” And waits for me to say something. When I don’t, she goes, “Hen?”
“Sorry. I wasn’t sure if you were talking to me or her.” And it’s there in my voice, the hurt I’m feeling. “Did she do it for you?”
“She says she didn’t, but this was, like, last Thursday, and we’ve been together ever since. She deflowered me again. And again.” And she laughs and laughs. “Oh, wait, hold on….” And she is gone again, and then back, gone and then back, over and over.
Each time she comes back, she apologizes, but I can feel myself shrinking. The island and its ruins and humidity and horses and wild hogs are closing in on me until I’m the size of an ant. For as long as I’ve known her, Saz has never felt like her parents really get her. They don’t begin to understand her sexuality or her sense of humor, but they are sweet and well meaning, and they try. Her dad goes to marches with her and wears Pride shirts and lets her decorate his car with rainbow bumper stickers, and every night he tells her he loves her, no matter what. Which is why she can’t possibly understand what I’m going through. Also, she’s being really fucking rude.
I suddenly want to hang up. I want to say, In the past four weeks, my entire world has fallen apart, and you’re arguing about pizza?
She goes, “So sorry, Hen.” And they’re talking again. And I’m sitting there waiting. And my palms have gone sweaty and my face has gone hot, and it isn’t the Georgia humidity that’s doing it. It’s the two of them. And it hits me right then—no matter how much I want it to, nothing will stay the same.
When she comes back on, I say, “I gotta go. My whole world is upside down, and you’re too busy with Yvonne to even listen.”
“I’ve been listening this whole time. Look, I’m sorry if I’m being an asshole. I didn’t know you were going to call, and I’m so glad you did, because I miss you like hell, Hen, I do. It’s just that she’s here, and I don’t know what I’m doing. This is all new territory for me—you gone, me in a relationship.”
We fall quiet. And in that quiet I feel the chasm between us growing so big and deep that I wonder if we’ll ever be able to fill it again. We were never supposed to have secrets. We were supposed to always be Claude and Saz. Saz and Claude.
She says, “I’m serious about meeting you somewhere. Wyatt’s been asking about you.”
“He texted me.” And then, for some reason, I add, “I told him.”
“You told him what?”
“About my parents.”
“You told Wyatt?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before I left Ohio.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
I start to say something about Yvonne, but instead I say, “No. You’re too close. It would have made it real.” It feels foreign to edit the things I say to her. Instead of rebuilding the floor, I’m building walls.
She goes silent.
I say, “Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” Her voice has gone inward, as if she’s swallowed it. For a minute, neither of us say anything.
Finally, she sighs, “So let’s do it. Let’s meet somewhere and then get you back to Mary Grove.” But the way she says it, it sounds like the last thing she ever wants to do.
And even though I’m furious with her for going on with her life while I’m here, frozen and paralyzed, and even though she’s furious with me for telling Wyatt before telling her, there’s a part of me that wants to. I almost say, Yes. Let’s do it. Let’s just go. For a few seconds, I can see it again—Thelma and Louise on the open road. Wyatt and me, together at last.
But then I look around me at this store and, out there, beyond it, the live oaks and palm trees and marsh, and suddenly I’m right back here on this island, and on this island is my mother, elbow-deep in letters and papers and God knows what else. Trying to keep herself distracted and busy and filled with purpose so that she doesn’t crack in half.
“I can’t.” And saying it makes me feel as if I’m going to crack in half. And this will be the start of it. The point where I don’t look back but vow forever to be allied with my mom. In that moment I make this lifelong choice. Her over him. Her over everyone, including me.
“Hey. We’re going to figure this out. You’re not alone, Hen. No matter how much you feel like you are. You’re never alone. Not as long as I’m on this earth.”
“Okay,” I say. But the thing is, I am alone. And the chasm is still there. And Yvonne is there, taking my place. “What did you mean you weren’t surprised, when I told you about my dad?”
“I mean, your parents never argue. And they both work all the time, and I’ve never seen them hold hands.”
“They hold hands.” But even as I say it, I’m trying to remember a time when I’ve seen them hold hands or kiss or show any real physical affection toward each other the way Saz’s parents do. “Just because you’ve had one relationship—if you can even call it that—doesn’t mean you know everything about love.”
“The hell? I just said I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I know things are shit right now, Hen, but you don’t have to take it out on me.”
“You have no idea what I’m going through.”
“No, I don’t, because you only told me ten minutes ago. Unlike Wyatt Jones, who has apparently known for a while.”
We sit in silence. I can hear her breathing fast and sharp on the other end. I almost end the call, but then she sighs loudly and says, “Listen. I don’t like you very much right now, but I love you more than Riverdale and bookshops and sunflowers.”
What about Yvonne? Do you love me more than her?
The door to the store opens and the photographer from the inn walks in.
I say, “I have to go.”
And then I hang up on her.
I stare down at my phone, where Saz just was, and my heart is pounding and my blood is boiling and my pulse is racing and my head feels like it’s going to burst. I pull up the texts from Wyatt and try again to send the photo of me in the bikini. This time it goes through. I write: Wishing you were here.
* * *
—
I don’t pay attention to direction. I just walk. I walk until I look around and I don’t see the bright blue shotgun house or the wild horses, only trees and marsh and sky. I turn back toward where I think the general store is, but the underbrush soon grows wilder and the trees thicker and the sky disappears.
If I could, I’d call my dad right now and tell him: It’s your fault I’m lost. You figure it out. If I don’t make curfew, you find a way to get in touch with Mom and tell her I’m okay and where I am, and then you get me back to where we’re staying. You fix this.
I search my phone for some sort of GPS, but it comes up blank. So I try walking in another direction and another until I’m completely turned around. At some point, I feel drops of water on my face. I look up at the sky, and a storm cloud the size of Texas has gathered overhead.
“Shit.”
And in that moment the sky opens and the thunder booms, and once again I am soaked through, but I keep walking because this storm isn’t going to stop me. I am the storm. I walk and walk until I hear voices and see a building through the slanting rain, and then I run for it. This is not the house I saw earlier. This one is two stories, yellow paint chipping, set against a backdrop of live oaks and Spanish moss that have a haunted, murderous look. There are people on the porch.
Jared says, “Claude?”
DAY 3
(PART TWO)
Jared is sitting on the top step, beer bottle in hand. A girl with thick black braids and large, dark eyes is next to him, a
long with another boy, African American, round face, round body, who gives me a wave and a smile, even though I’ve never seen him before.
I climb the steps and join them, and Jared passes me a beer. I drink it down, and it’s cool and bitter, and I like the taste of it. Something in it reminds me of Ohio and Trent Dugan’s party. I take off the fisherman’s cap and run a hand through my wet hair, trying to smooth it down and give it some sort of shape.
“Welcome to Serendipity,” Jared says, opening his arms. “Better known as the Dip.”
* * *
—
Several beers later, I know that the girl is Wednesday, another inn staffer, originally from Alabama, and the boy is Emory, a junior nature guide who grew up in South Carolina. He takes inn guests for tours of the island in the Park Service trucks. Today is their day off. The rain rattles against the roof of the porch as the sky turns into night, and I feel my bones start to settle. You’re safe. Not lost. It’s okay. You’re here. They’re here. You’re not alone.
The three of them start telling ghost stories and I’m half listening, half thinking about Saz and my dad and Wyatt, who is probably, right this minute, having sex with Lisa Yu.
Wednesday says to me, “Have you ever seen a ghost?” Her voice is velvety, and something about it and the beer and the rain act like a lullaby. I feel warm and content, eyes heavy, body heavy.
I answer, “No.”
“You will here.” My skin prickles.
Emory shakes his head. “Man, Behavior Cemetery has some scary vibes, but nothing like Rosecroft or the Dip.”
I say, “Why does the inn staff live all the way out here anyway?”
Emory stretches his legs out, crossing ankle over ankle. “You’re not allowed to build on the island because it’s protected, and this is the only place big enough to house us all.”
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