“This is the best night of my life,” I said, shaking some vinegar from a pouch onto my fries.
He didn’t answer. Of course.
“I love you,” I said, and people walking past gave me odd looks. But I couldn’t stop myself. I had to say it, just in case any part of him could hear me, could register it.
For a long time we sat there in strange silence, looking out over the ocean. I could feel his presence, but nothing about him indicated he could feel mine.
What really struck me was how alone he seemed. I was struck by that impression, but I wasn’t sure why. He was a kid, I knew he was—at that time—staying in a house full of people, and he had a new girlfriend, although she hadn’t felt like going out for food with him that night. He wasn’t lonely.
So why was that idea worming its way around my brain so disturbingly?
Then I realized it. With shame, I realized it. I wasn’t just seeing Ben. Whether this … this vision was real or my imagination or a dream, it had a purpose, and that wasn’t just to torture me with a past I couldn’t reconcile, it was to show me a present I wasn’t paying enough attention to.
It was showing me Jamie.
Jamie, who had lost his beloved father so suddenly—a loss as great as mine, albeit different—and whose mother had then indulged in a career as a basket case. I—we—had brought this child into the world and we were everything he had. Now that Ben was gone, I was all Jamie had, and I had been letting him down repeatedly.
Hell, I’d even left him home alone during this really important time when we needed to work together to move forward and leave the past behind us. I knew it would be painful for him to be at the beach house again, it was painful for me as well, but it was necessary.
I had to get him here.
After a while, Ben stood up and started to walk.
I looked at my fries and realized I’d been chomping on them reflexively and I was full. This was how I tended to handle my angst—I ate it. A walk would do me good, and, let’s face it, it wasn’t like I was capable of not following him.
I dumped the remaining fries into the trash can and we turned back onto the beach, making our way to the inky blackness that was the sea. A thread of phosphorescence wound up the coast, guiding us back to the block where our house was.
We approached it and he stopped. I watched him look at the window that had been mine, then ours.
“I love you, Ben,” I said to him, wishing to god it would somehow register, that he would acknowledge me at last.
But he didn’t.
Instead, his color went first, then his form, leaving only a blotch of mist that could as easily have been the last remnant of a nighttime mist that had shrouded the shoreline.
“Come back, Ben.” I started to cry, pointlessly. “Please don’t go. Don’t go again. Come back, I’ll do anything if you could just come back for even one more minute.” My crying grew harder.
“Willa.” His voice came, far away now.
But he was gone.
* * *
I went inside and moved through the dark living room and kitchen to sit down on the sofa in the family room. The comforting family room. A soft light glowed by the fireplace, warming the room and making it feel cozy. I simply sat for a long time, staring at the dormant fireplace, not even thinking, just coming down off of the strange experience.
What had just happened?
I was crazy, that was it. I was crazy. Losing my mind. The grief had made me snap somewhere along the way and I hadn’t even realized it. In fact, I would have thought I’d made the whole thing up, but I could still smell the boardwalk scents, and taste the fries and vinegar in my mouth. There was no doubt that I’d gone there, but had I gone alone or with Ben? And if it was with Ben, how?
My phone sat on the coffee table before me. Should I call Kristin? I looked at the clock. No, it was after midnight. It would be completely obnoxious to call her and tell her I was going crazy. There was nothing she could do about it tonight. There was nothing she could do about it at all.
There was nothing anyone could do.
Maybe I needed another therapist. Or church. Or a psychic. Or, I don’t know, something bigger than myself to cling to, like driftwood, in all this rushing water of emotion. Because, as much as I hated to admit my own weakness, this was more than I could handle.
I got up and went to the kitchen counter where my purse was, then dug around through the miscellaneous coins, receipts, an old packet of tissues that had been in there forever, until finally my hand touched the pill bottle I was seeking. Xanax. My doctor had first prescribed it for me for anxiety after Ben had died, and I rarely took it—I rarely took anything—but if there was ever a time I needed it, it was now.
Once upon a time, we had all been at Disney World, in line for the Tower of Terror ride. I was not a ride person, so I was extremely apprehensive about going on a thriller, but Ben and Jamie—little at the time, maybe ten or so—had convinced me to do it. Bullied me into it, more like. And as I stood there in the endless line, telling them I didn’t want to go, that I’d meet them in the gift shop at the end, and so on, the woman in front of me suggested I take a Xanax and put it under my tongue so it got into my system faster.
I didn’t have it at the time and I wouldn’t have taken it if I had. No use in making myself exhausted for the rest of the day just because I was afraid of two minutes of standing in a claustrophobic hydraulic elevator. So I sucked it up and went, hating every single moment of it. But I never forgot what the woman had said, and when I later got the prescription, that was how I took it.
The bottle was hard to open—I always had trouble getting around the childproof lids. Once I did, though, I took a whole pill instead of the half I usually took and put it under my tongue. It was bitter. Most people would have hated it, but I associated it with the taste of relief.
I put the bottle back in my purse and returned to the family room to sit down and wait for it to work. The bedroom was out of the question before that. What if I heard the tapping again? What if I saw him again? What if that was my new thing, seeing dead people? How old had Theresa Caputo and Tyler Henry been when they began to bleed into the spirit world for, sorry, spirited conversations with the dead?
Was I becoming a medium?
The thought made me laugh despite my anxiety. If anything proved I was losing it, it was me imagining I was going to be psychic in some way. Half the time I couldn’t understand what people were saying, much less what they were thinking.
I got up and flipped on the fire. The gas was off, so nothing happened. Disappointed, I looked for a candle instead and found one in the cabinet beneath the built-ins. There was a stick lighter there too and that, at least, still worked. I lit the candle and put it on the coffee table, then sat down to meditate on the flame.
Before long, I felt the drowsy pull of sleep tugging at the corners of my thoughts. Everything was going to be okay. I was going to get some sleep and wake up refreshed and sane in the morning.
That would be really great.
But first I blew out the candle, then went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, something I was fastidious about. I put the toothpaste on the brush and counted to sixty while I brushed my teeth, just like my mother had taught me, then turned the faucet handle to rinse.
Nothing happened. The water was still off. I’d totally forgotten.
There I was, mouth full of toothpaste and nothing to do with it. So I went into the kitchen, took a diet soda out of the fridge. (I always had them there but wondered if it was still okay after three years.) It fizzed when I opened it, so I guessed it was okay, and I used that to swish the toothpaste out and spit it into the kitchen sink. It tasted god-awful. Almost as bad as orange juice after brushing your teeth. But it was better than nothing, and I used the rest of the soda to rinse the bubbly mess down the drain.
Hopefully that was still working.
Foggy-headed, I went back to the family room and lay down on the sofa. Just for a
few minutes, I told myself. Until the tranquilizer took its full grip on me and I could go to my room without dreams of young Ben waiting for me in the dark.
I slept.
Chapter Twelve
Jamie
Roxy had come over in the afternoon, just as he’d suspected and feared she would: bolstered by her friends’ support, feeling like maybe he was more of an asshole than she realized.
Her hair, this time, was mahogany. Really almost purple. It was like she was a magical creature, able to express her changing mood through her changing look.
She’d acted annoyed with him for the first hour she was there, then seemed to lose interest in it when she seemed to realize that her passive-aggression wasn’t catching the same flies it usually did. He was distant and disinterested in her BS. So she changed tack, and instead jumped on the counter in front of him and suggested that they watch something he wanted to tonight—anything he wanted.
He’d picked an old Bond movie. His dad and he used to watch them, though he didn’t tell her this. She was bound to ruin it either way if he let her. Plus he never let her in, something she was always correctly accusing him of.
She’d hung all over him trying to make out the whole time they were watching, since she was evidently bored by the movie. He eventually gave in and figured he’d watch the rest another time. She slept in his room that night, but just when he started to fall asleep, she started talking.
What will we do when we graduate?
Should we move in together?
I’ll follow you wherever you get in!
He didn’t draw the comparison of this line to the famous one from Wedding Crashers—the one where the redhead girl says (threatens?), “I’ll find you!”
Instead he’d tried not to say anything that bothered her and avoided promising her anything.
Somehow it was just striking him that Roxy could become a long-term problem. Beyond anything he’d ever even thought of before. She’d already been this way for such a long time, but somewhere in his head he’d sort of been subconsciously thinking that it would sort itself out after graduation. Like the slate would be clean and he could … what, use it as an excuse? Move away?
No. If he didn’t break up with her she was going to stick with him like glitter.
He hated glitter.
His phone buzzed and he leapt up, taking the opportunity to get away from Roxy’s questioning.
“Sorry, it’s my mom, I’ve gotta go answer her.”
“But—”
“Shh.” He held a finger to his lips and then ducked out of the room.
He didn’t answer his mom’s call on time, and went downstairs to the kitchen. It was dark except for the stove light. He leaned against the counter, considering the realization he’d just had.
If I don’t make Roxy go away, Roxy will never go away.
And even then she might not, said some depressing voice in a corner of his mind.
He rubbed his face.
His phone did one quick buzz, indication of a voice mail. It was, of course, from his mom. It was only three seconds long. He almost didn’t listen. Usually voice mails that short are just an indication of not hanging up on time. But he’d do almost anything not to go upstairs yet.
The message wasn’t an accident.
“Jamie, I need you to come to the house and help out,” she said, then added the kicker that got him: “I’ll expect you tomorrow. I mean it.” She sounded serious. Almost angry. That wasn’t like her. He’d listened a second time, half expecting there to be more, maybe a please. But there wasn’t.
She didn’t sound right. Not at all.
Even when she was mad, there was usually a lift of lightness to her voice. Something that said, If you just say you’re sorry, we can laugh about this in ten seconds. Not always, not when he really screwed up (then she’d get sad and retreat), but usually.
This was different.
She sounded upset.
What could be upsetting her enough to call him this late, and without information like that? He was always up late (unless he was trying to pretend to sleep to make Roxy cease her monologues), but his mom liked not to call or bother him.
A wash of guilt went over him, this one bigger than the usual ones he felt nowadays. Of course his mom was upset. It suddenly seemed ridiculous that he’d let her go do this by herself. It was one thing to want to avoid the scene of … what, the crime? But to let his mom go do weeks’ worth of heavy lifting, that was just shitty-son behavior. He should have separated his own … whatever, and just gone and helped her.
He ignored the other voice in his head that said, Yeah, but come on, you also kind of want an excuse to ditch Roxy.
True. But even when he wasn’t lying to himself about that, he felt like a dick for not being there for his mom if something was really messing her up this bad.
He should have remembered that she didn’t complain until long after most people would.
That’s when he decided he would go. He had to. As much as he wanted to leave Roxy, though, he still didn’t want to go to that house, but he had to.
For his mom. He owed her that.
He went back upstairs. Roxy had all the lights on, and all her clothes off.
“God, Roxy,” he’d said, and not in the flattering way. “Look, I’ve got to go to sleep. I’ve gotta go to the beach in the morning.”
She made the decision to figure out why, instead of deciding to feel insulted. She covered herself with a sheet. “The beach? What? Why?”
The way she’d asked it implied that he was going for some fun trip with the guys or something. Leave it to her to turn it into something that could hurt her feelings, rather than put together the fact that his dad died there and his mom was out of town dealing with that.
“I have to help my mom. Obviously.” He realized with shame that it should have been obvious to him much sooner.
“Oh…” She made a face like she was trying to remember exactly what it was that his mom was doing, and if she was supposed to know.
“Yeah, I’ll probably be gone for a bit. Like, weeks.”
“Well, do you want me to come? Does your mom need a girl?” She said this part with pity. “Girl time can help almost anything.”
He couldn’t even articulate how much his mom would hate having “girl time” with Roxy. He also couldn’t find the words to tell her that girl time didn’t solve problems involving dead dads and packing old houses.
As far as he knew.
“No. Roxy. No, I just need to go help. So I gotta get some sleep.”
He rolled over, and felt her not move. He knew she was sitting there, straight up, naked and barely covered, feeling offended and ignored, unprioritized.
Good, he thought, maybe she’ll get fed up.
A minute later she lay down, making a point of not touching him.
“Where’s your beach house again?”
“Fenwick,” he lied. It was Ocean City.
“Ah. Okay, just wondering.”
He didn’t know what sort of surprise visit she was considering—plotting was a better word for it—but giving her the wrong beach would throw her off. If she called him on it, he’d just say something about it being on the line between the two beaches and … blah blah blah, BS.
Or, he thought with a deep, deep breath, he could just finally dump her.
But that’s when he realized that he’d done this for too long. He’d played this game, and lost at it, for way too long. He told himself he’d handle it later so that he didn’t have to handle it now, and so it never got handled.
When had he begun this pattern? Was it lifelong? No, surely not; he could remember so many times as a kid when he was waiting for his parents to get ready to go somewhere or do something, and he’d been dressed for it and waiting for hours.
He’d been like that right up to the time his dad died.
Maybe that was what had changed things.
Oh, boy.
Obviously that was wh
en things had changed. If he was a sitcom character, he’d have slapped himself in the forehead. The minute he’d heard about his dad, he’d turned his mind away from it, pretended—as best he could under difficult circumstances—that it wasn’t true. Thinking about it was painful, incredibly painful, so every time he did, he thought about something else. The release of a new video game he’d been anticipating, or the return of Doctor Who, or whatever else he could come up with to turn his brain from channel three to channel four.
His mom had done it too. That’s why she hadn’t been to the beach house in three years. Going there, cleaning it up, selling it, made it real. And he knew, from every not-so-subtle clue her life had given him, that she could not bear for it to be real.
But they had both skidded along that same road, barely talking about his dad or What Had Happened, sniping at each other here and there, living on the surface, and handling everything from dinner to baseball practice to school and work in the most minimal way possible.
So going to the beach, going to face it, had been a huge step for his mom. Of course she needed his support. They hadn’t exactly been the best of friends these past few years, but there was no question that he was the only one fully in that boat with her. Obviously it was his responsibility to see this through with her.
And now that she’d made such a bold step on her own, he was going to take the cue and make a much less bold one himself.
“I think you’d better go,” he said to Roxy.
“What?” she asked, purposely making her voice sound foggy and sleep heavy, even though she obviously wasn’t asleep or anywhere close to it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, because he was. It was pretty ungentlemanly of him to just kick her ass out in the middle of the night, but that’s exactly what he was doing.
Forever.
“You’ve got to go. This just isn’t working. It’s not good for you.” Normally he would have left it there and she would have snaked in on that point and “assured” him that he wasn’t bad for her. So this time he added, “Or me. This isn’t good for me.”
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