That’s what summers were always like at the beach. Salty. Greasy. Sticky. Hot. Damp.
Sometimes his parents’ friends came too, and some of them had kids the same age as Jamie. They’d play cards in the shade, girls would work on their tans unless they wanted to flirt, and then they’d play too.
A memory came back to him now. One of the times when Kristin and Phillip, his parents’ best friends, and their kid Kelsey came. She was always his favorite of the Parents’ Friends’ Kids, but he always claimed it was this kid Tyler. It felt weird to say he was excited to see Kelsey, especially because his mom teased him the one time he said so.
He liked her best because she wasn’t like other girls. She didn’t complain or whine about anything. When he and other kids on the beach got a game of Frisbee going, she would keep up. She was tall—almost taller than him, the last time he saw her—and skinny. When they raced, he had to really go all-out to keep her from beating him. Sometimes she still did. He always said he let her win. But he really didn’t.
She was funny too. She bothered the parents sometimes, had a loud voice, and was prone to sugar-highs, but it was one of the things he found so hilarious back then. Plus she could eat just as many hot dogs as he could—he only barely beat her in the one-on-one hot-dog-eating contest they once put on. Then they got caught by Kristin, who said they were going to choke to death if they did that, and that if she caught them doing it again, she’d strangle them.
The irony of this had sent Kelsey into a sugar-hyper giggle fit, her face still covered in ketchup.
Considering the way she ate back then, she was probably six hundred pounds by now. And toothless, if she’d kept on with her candy addiction.
But the memory that came specifically to him now was the last time he saw her. The last time he’d even gone to the beach. It was the last night of vacation, school only a week away. Late-summer winds already ruining perfectly good card games.
They’d spent the entire day on the beach. It was a long August dog day. Phillip had the wraparound sunglasses tan he always had by the last day. Kristin’s voice was raspy from laughing and telling stories for a week straight. (Kelsey got her boisterousness from her mother.) His dad was wearing one of his Hawaiian shirts for the last time of the season, the blue one. His mom was in this long gray dress Jamie knew was her favorite. He knew she only wore it when she felt really good about herself. He remembered feeling glad that she was feeling confident instead of being insecure, like she was at other times of the year. Surrounded by the people she liked best, everyone sun-painted and heat-crazy, she was happy. The blue Hawaiian shirt was also her favorite of his dad’s ugly shirts.
Kelsey and Jamie were in the living room, the parents out on the porch drinking beer and playing a game. Trivial Pursuit or something. He couldn’t imagine how much playing they were fitting in with all the shouting and laughing.
Kelsey and Jamie were listening to the Smiths, which Jamie was years away from realizing were an extremely depressing band, and which he was playing for her because they were one of his favorites. They were really only one of his favorite bands because his dad loved them. They were eating popcorn that they had made in their special way, covered in a gross amount of butter, salt, and melted cheese. They were playing Outburst, some ratty edition from a million years ago, so they had to skip half the rounds because they made topical references they didn’t get at all.
It didn’t matter, it was still fun. Mostly because even when they screwed up or she was losing, Kelsey would crack up, which always made him crack up.
It was almost midnight, and they were sent to bed in adjacent rooms
After they brushed their teeth and shut out the lights, Jamie heard Kelsey sniffling. It echoed lightly into the hall.
“Kels, are you crying?”
“No, shut up!” She took in a deep shuddering breath.
“Since when are you such a girl?”
“Now you really shut up!”
He did shut up.
“I’m just sad the summer’s over, that’s all,” she went on.
“You’ve never cried before when it was over.”
“No, I haven’t!” She sniffed. “Well, maybe when I was little, once we were in the car.”
It made sense a little, now that he thought of it. She was dramatic. But it was usually in funny or at least amusing ways. Her overreactions seemed almost fake—she would act like she was slapped just because the orange juice was gone.
“I don’t know, this year I’m crying, that’s all, stop asking me.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Okay, fine.”
He heard her roll over in her bed and could picture her, frowning.
“I’m just…” Her voice was as quiet as a mouse’s skittering. “I don’t want this to end.”
“I’m gonna miss you too, stupid,” he said, the words coming from his mouth without his decision or permission.
“When did you become such a girl?” He heard the smile in her voice.
But it was never like that again.
Life was never like that again. Because that was the last time they were all there. The last time his dad wore the blue Hawaiian shirt.
And definitely the last time his mom wore that gray dress.
Chapter Eleven
Willa
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep, it felt like just a few minutes, but I woke to a noise. A vaguely familiar noise that reached far back into the reserves of my memory.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
What was that?
And why did it tap into my subconscious and excite me the way it did?
Then, into the fog, the memory came. I knew what the sound was. Pebbles being thrown at my window.
Ben had done that when we’d first met and he wanted to wake me up in the middle of the night to go out and meet him. He could have walked right in the front door and come to my room, of course, but he liked the old-fashioned romance of the pebbles. Said it was like something from an old movie.
Tick.
Who would be doing it now?
What used to be a thrill was now a bit scary and I got out of bed carefully and put a loose sweatshirt over my nightshirt. Then I crept over to the window and looked out, painfully aware of what a target I must look like, moving like a parade float into the window frame for anyone out there to see.
At first I didn’t see anyone. That spurred my nervousness even more than actually seeing someone. I could not take this vague, ethereal sort of “haunting.” I was a strong, reasonable woman. Okay, maybe not always all that strong but certainly reasonable. I had good sense. I wasn’t prone to imaginings.
I looked again and was relieved to see movement.
There was a kid out there. His stance reminded me of Jamie’s, so I put him in his late teens. He wore jeans and some logo’d T-shirt I couldn’t read.
Tick.
A pebble hit the window right in front of me. I started and stepped back reflexively. Then, slowly, I moved back to look outside. He was still there, whoever he was.
His face was shrouded in darkness. I could only see a vague outline and some small movement. I wondered if I should call the police or just put my big-girl pants on and go confront him. He was obviously a kid, not someone I should be afraid of. And the fact that he was throwing pebbles at the window kind of indicated that maybe he had the wrong house.
I settled on that explanation and was about to open the window and tell him to go away, when he bent over to pick up another stone and stepped into the light.
And when I saw his face, it took my breath away.
This time I didn’t sit there in disbelief, wondering if I was losing my mind. I was feeling pretty done with that game. Instead, I got dressed quickly and ran down the stairs to the outside, certain he’d be gone, but hoping—logic be damned—that he would be there.
And he was.
“Ben!”
“Hey.” He smiled. But he
was looking right past me. Still, I heard his voice. He was right there.
And he was as he’d been when I had met him as a teen: wiry, muscular but thin, blue eyes bright in his tanned face. His hair looked darker than its usual deep amber, but the lights were low and distant.
“What are you doing here?” I breathed, immediately thinking it was a stupid question, but I was unable to come up with a better one. There is nothing clever to say when the teenage ghost of your late husband shows up. “How are you here?”
The ocean was the only answer, rolling and groaning in its dark place out of sight.
What was going on here?
He smiled at something beyond me. God, that smile. I’d loved it when he got older, the lines got a little deeper, the crow’s-feet a little more pronounced, but it was heart-stopping when he was young. He would have aged wonderfully; he had already been on his way to George Clooney aging, but what an amazing thing to have a close-up vision again of how it had been when he was young and beautiful.
“Oh, Ben.” I said it on a sigh. Damn the logic, or lack of it, it was so good to see him.
He didn’t respond but seemed to be watching someone approach from behind me. When I turned to look I saw nothing.
I sensed nothing.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” he said, to someone else. “That wave really knocked you for a loop. We were worried about you. I still am.”
I reached back into the far cavern of my memory. Yes. I remembered. That had happened a long time ago. The week I’d first met him. I’d always been nervous swimming in the ocean, so when a huge wave rose before me, it just didn’t make any sense to my incorrect brain to dive into it, so I’d stood there, paralyzed with fear, as it descended directly on me, whirling me in sandy, shell-filled water like a sock in a washing machine. It even whipped the top of my bikini off, though that was the least of my concerns at the time. The entire event had been terrifying, and though I’d tried to hide it, I’d been disoriented for some time afterward.
That was something solid I could get a grip on.
His brow relaxed and I thought I heard him sigh. Breath. Voice. This was all so incredible. “I’m relieved. I just wanted to check on you. You need to rest, but I’m going to the boardwalk for something to eat. Can I bring you something?”
Yes, he could take me with him. He—or I—could wake up from this dream and we could be together.
Whatever this was, dream or imagination, I wanted to stay with him as long as possible.
“Okay,” he said. “Call me if you change your mind. Rest, baby. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Maybe he would see me in his tomorrow, but I was going to stay with him as long as possible now. It was hard to believe, now, that I had ever given up one moment of time that I could have spent with him. Of course, that’s how life is, you can’t spend every moment with someone, both of you would go mad. But now that I knew how ultimately short our time together would be, I shook a mental fist at the me who was apparently just turning and going back to bed while Ben walked the beach alone.
Only this time he wasn’t alone. This time I followed him.
We walked across the sand, down toward the shore, where the water broke and made it easier to walk. I could feel the spongy texture give under my weight, the water trickle over my shoes. There was no one else around us, though, several blocks in the distance, the boardwalk was alight and more alive with activity than it should have been this time of year. Usually the big crowds didn’t start until the end of June, when the ocean was more apt to be warm. A lot of things were open by this time of year but there weren’t usually so many people.
Ben, thinking he was alone, sang lightly to himself. A Smiths song. He’d loved that old alt-rock so much. Even passed this love on to Jamie. I’d never realized the subtlety of voice changes in the twenty years from teenage to thirties, but I recognized the voice as young him. If this was a dream, my subconscious was very thorough.
I wished so much I could talk to him, this Ben who was so close to his age at our initial meeting. I’d always asked him, What did you think when you first saw me? Silly, romantic girl. I think I’d always wanted a romantic answer about knowing I was The One, but I’d never gotten that. He always said he didn’t really remember but that he’d married me, so what else did I need?
But now I’d seen in his eyes something I hadn’t recognized at the time. He’d looked at me—the me I couldn’t see—with familiarity. Like he knew me so well already, even though I know now we’d been operating primarily on hormones.
When I first saw Ben I was struck by how damn cute he was, how my heart pounded when I saw him. That gleaming dark hair, light eyes with the dark fringe of lashes, a smile that lit his face up from very serious to joyful in a split second. I had reacted to him viscerally, but my feeling had been more that I would know him all my life, not that I already had. I felt certain that I would know that face forever.
And I would. That was true. Even when I saw pictures of him now, it wasn’t like when my father had died and details of his appearance began to fade from my memory. When I saw pictures of Ben, I knew every single detail of him and I knew that I always would. Even in our early days I just knew he’d be in my mind for the rest of my life.
It never occurred to me that those details wouldn’t keep changing with age. It never occurred to me that there might come a time when that face was gone and it was never going to see another birthday again.
A feeling of loss overwhelmed me and I chastised myself for wasting this extra time that way.
We went along a couple of minutes, with me catching up to him and trying to figure out if this was real and how it possibly could be.
There was no figuring that out. I had to just go with it. We moved closer and closer to the lights of the boardwalk.
Suddenly I could smell all the junk food in the air: buttery popcorn; Thrasher’s french fries with malt vinegar; greasy funnel cakes; pizza; Boog Powell’s barbecued meats; and the aroma of all the fudge and candies from Candy Kitchen drifting out on the breeze. It was a sweet, salty, savory tapestry of scents that could only have been, had always been, Ocean City.
He started to run. He’d always been a jogger; it was far easier for him to exercise than for me to. I’d gotten out of shape over the years; I hurried to catch up with him, a little breathless. The sand shushed under my steps.
But not under his.
Whatever this was, he was totally unaware of it.
The beach was wide by the pier, maybe twice as wide as it was anywhere else. This was the widest point, right by the end (or the beginning, rather, depending which way you’re going) of the boardwalk, and we walked slowly. I relished every moment, every sensation. If he noticed that I kept looking at him, gaping at him, really, he didn’t acknowledge it.
Lights were blaring, the arcade was clanking and whistling and shrieking, and it was, for all the world, like midsummer in full swing.
As I walked side by side with him up to the boards, the people ignored us completely. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I guess when you’re walking with a ghost you get kind of self-conscious. But no one seemed to think a thing of us. In fact, a couple of times I had to dodge people because otherwise they would have walked right into me.
We—rather, I—clomped along the boards. Tony’s Pizza was to the right, next to Love’s Lemonade and near a Candy Kitchen. But he went for his favorite.
Thrasher’s french fries.
We went and got in line, still side by side, though it was strangely troubling to me that he didn’t seem to sense me at all. If our love was true, shouldn’t it have spanned our realities?
We moved forward in line.
The wind lifted and the smell of grease and potatoes touched my nose.
I reached out and touched his face. It was a strange sensation; more solid and real than expected yet not quite warm. If this was a dream, why wasn’t he warm? And if it wasn’t a dream … well, it had to be. The
re was no other possibility. I could almost believe in a haunting, but not one that involved time travel as well. It was like those were two different movie genres that couldn’t be mixed.
We got to the front of the line and the guy looked at me. “What can I get for you?”
I looked at Ben. He didn’t say a word.
I turned back to the Thrasher’s guy and thought he was looking at Ben oddly, then he turned back to me. I couldn’t tell which one of us he could see—which time we were more present in—but I took a chance on it being me.
“Two,” I said at first. Then quickly corrected, “I mean one.” I looked at Ben again, but he didn’t seem to be paying attention. He was just looking off in the distance at the sea.
“One,” Ben said suddenly. “Thanks.”
Of course. He couldn’t see me, he couldn’t see this clerk, he was ordering for himself. But if this was not really happening, if I was following Ben into his past reality, why was the guy addressing me and not Ben?
He handed over the fries and I suddenly panicked. “Good lord, I don’t have any money!” I’d jumped out of bed, pulled on some shorts with my nightshirt and run down. It was just lucky I’d managed to pull on my shoes on the way out the door.
“Uh,” the Thrasher’s guy said, shifting his eyes between us, and I wondered what exactly he could see. Any sense of Ben? But there was no way to ask without sounding like a lunatic. “You can just go ahead and take them.”
“Really?”
“Just—yeah, just go.” It was unmistakably rude the way he said it, like he was trying to get rid of us—me—but there was a long line.
“Thank you so much.”
“Yeah, yeah.” His answer was clipped, and as soon as he issued it, he looked to the next person and asked, “What can I get for you?” He looked at her, then at me, then back at her like I was crazy.
I took the fries and we walked away. After a few minutes we came upon an empty bench and Ben sat down. Unsure what else to do, I set the fries down next to him. He looked off into the black that was the ocean, suddenly very still, like an animatronic doll after giving its performance.
Every Time You Go Away Page 7