His smile was so clear and genuine it touched my heart. “I’m at peace, baby, this isn’t that hard for me, but it’s rough knowing how hard it is for you. If there was any way for me to stay by your side until you were okay, I would. You know I would. But I can’t. I don’t even know how long I have.”
I wanted to say that was cruel, that no one could reasonably withstand this, but how could I say that when I had him at all? Most people didn’t get this. I was exceptionally blessed and it was time for me to act like it.
This was the time to ask him all those things I had ever wanted to ask, about him, about his feelings, about how to raise Jamie without him, what to tell him as a message from his father. So much.
But before I could speak, he did. “But I’m here to make you happy. To help you get happy. To make sure you’re going to be happy for the rest of your life. I promised you that when we got married, and things have taken a little turn, but there’s no reason that lets me off the hook now.”
I gave a nod. “Right. So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make sure you stop mourning and move on with your life.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Willa
No sooner had Ben told me he wanted me to just trot along without him—an insult, to my mind, extremely unromantic—than he started to fade away.
“Wait a minute, you can’t just say shit like that and disappear!” I cried, not even mindful of being overheard.
He laughed. “Oh, my delicate little blossom. There’s such a lilt to your words, you’re like Longfellow.”
“Oh, shut up! Come back here so you can explain!”
He shrugged, and before I knew it he was gone.
“Sonofabitch!” I spat.
“Whoa.” Kristin was at the doorway, holding her hands out in front of her, palms out. “Slow down, sparky. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“It’s not you,” I muttered.
“Actually, I know that, I just got here. So who the hell are you yelling at?” She looked around surreptitiously.
“I was just … I was on the phone.” I was disconcerted by my interaction with Ben, and part of me wanted to sink into the despair of him leaving, yet I felt certain he’d come back. He’d come back again.
Wouldn’t he?
“Your phone is on the counter, charging.”
Oh, my god, leave it to her to notice a little detail like that just when I needed her not to. “Landline, obviously,” I said absently, then made a show of throwing a pile of unexamined clothes into the box and closing it up. “I’ve got to take these over to the donation drum,” I said, as if the matter had some sort of urgency. “Want to come?”
“Donation drum? Is that what those things are called?”
It took some effort, but I tried to rein my thoughts in to the conversation at hand. “I have no idea, but you knew what I meant!”
“I did, yes. Actually, I do want to come because we, my friend, need to go back to the grocery store. We ran through the fresh stuff fast. You’re pretty well stocked on wine and wafers, but I don’t think that’s such a great diet for Jamie.”
“Probably not, no.”
She laughed. “And besides that, I’m just dying for some cheese and you’ve got nothing, not even Whiz.”
“Mm, I love Cheez Whiz.” Ben used to make fun of me for it. Even a dippy little fact like that kept my heart throbbing.
“Me too. And the kind in the cans that you spray out onto crackers? I love that crap. I never understand how they come up with the flavors, though. Bacon cheddar contains neither.”
“Yeah, but it’s like green apple hard candy. It tastes nothing like green apples, but damned if it doesn’t consistently taste like green apple hard candy.”
“You know, you’re right. Same with watermelon.”
I shot a finger gun at her. “Bingo.”
We went into the kitchen, where, indeed, my phone was charging. I turned it on. No messages, no missed calls. I could hardly complain, since I’d actually been speaking with Ben, but I did wish Jamie had interest in staying in touch.
Instead I texted him. Going to store, what do you want to eat? Also, when do you get off?
I started to head for the front door when my phone dinged right back. It was him. Totally unlike him.
I’m off in fifteen. Can you get Chef Boyardee canned stuff?
No, I typed. What actual fruits, vegetables, and meat do you want?
There was a long pause, then, You know what I like. Also Beefaroni.
I would cave, of course. Kid wanted Beefaroni, it was probably better than not eating at all, so if he got hungry and I didn’t feel like cooking, that would be a perfectly good stopgap. Particularly if I got some good Parmesan to put on it. I made a mental note.
We left in Kristin’s car, a sleek Lexus SUV that held my three meager boxes of donations handily in the back compartment.
My mind kept slipping back to my interaction with Ben. Of course. Part of me didn’t want to get rid of the things I’d been working on when he showed up, but I knew that was not only silly sentimentalism, it went completely against what he’d been trying to tell me about moving on.
And as much as I didn’t want to move on without him—as much as I hadn’t wanted to in all the time he’d been gone—when he’d said it, it had resonated as absolutely true and correct.
I guessed that was why I was able to try and push the melancholy aside after seeing him: because I knew that he wasn’t here to fulfill some need that couldn’t be fulfilled without him, but rather to push me back into life. Because I had no choice, I had to live it.
“I’ve got to get rid of more stuff,” I commented, knowing it was true, as we pulled up to the big trash-can-looking thing that people put their clothing donations in. As usual it was surrounded by broken children’s toys and bags that looked as if they probably contained trash. All this despite the very clear, very big lettering on the thing that read CLOTHING DONATIONS ONLY. People were so lazy they’d just leave their trash here and let someone else handle it.
“You do,” Kristin said. “I agree.”
I’d lost track of the conversation. “Huh?”
“Need to get rid of more,” she said. “Your house at home is so full already—cozy, homey, but full—you just don’t have room to take more stuff back there.”
“It’s true.”
“And you already have more clothes than you could possibly know what to do with. I say not only do you get rid of everything here, but we should go through your closets at home too. You wear the same few things all the time and I would bet my eyeteeth that it’s because your closet is so full you stand at the edge and just grab the closest thing so the rest doesn’t avalanche down.”
She had it exactly right. That was literally what I did and why I did it. Naturally, the things that were most accessible were the things that had just been washed because I’d just worn them, and so I wore them again because they were most accessible. It was a vicious cycle. “You’re right,” I said. “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. Clutter is chaos. I’m going to pull myself up by the bootstraps and get it done.”
“Good!”
I dropped the boxes off, ignored the pang of regret that tried to tap on my heart, then got back into the car.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Food Lion on Racetrack Road,” I said, though I really would have preferred to go to Rehoboth and get some fresh fish and cheese from the markets there. This would do for now. That wasn’t what was important. What was important was my latest interaction with Ben.
I wanted so badly to tell Kristin about it, about not just seeing him but talking to him, but could she possibly understand? Could anyone? She’d been patient with my tales of seeing him, but I knew that seemed like a pretty normal imagining for someone in my position.
The conversations were not.
Hell, I couldn’t even understand and only half believed it myself, yet it was true. In
my heart and even in my head I knew it was true. We’d reached a point where it was actually more far-fetched to conjure a “logical explanation” than to just admit that there are things in this world, and around it, that we can’t explain or even comprehend with our human limitations.
We drove for a few minutes in silence, the radio playing an old Beach Boys tune quietly in the background. “God Only Knows.” I loved that song.
“Phillip sang this to me at our wedding,” Kristin said, and glanced at me. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“No! How cool! I didn’t know Phillip could sing.”
“He cannot. He. Cannot.” She laughed. “It was a cute, if embarrassing, attempt to make a romantic gesture.”
I tried to imagine it. “Does he know he can’t sing?”
“If he didn’t before he started, he certainly knew by the time he finished.”
“Oh, no.”
“Howls of laughter,” she said with a nod. “He’s such a joker, everyone thought he was kidding. Honestly, I couldn’t blame them.”
I chuckled and tried to picture it. “I wish I’d known you then.”
“What fun we would have had, huh?”
“We always have.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “So, about this Ben thing.”
“Which Ben thing?” I knew exactly which Ben thing. I only hoped she wasn’t going to mention my talking to him in the bedroom earlier. Or talking “to myself,” I guess she’d think of it.
“You thinking you’re seeing him.” She held up a hand to stop me from objecting. “I’m not sure it’s not true.”
It was not what I’d been expecting to hear. “You believe me?”
“You, yes, I definitely believe you. The question is how to believe that what you’re seeing is real. And, I don’t know, it makes no sense, but I don’t understand cell phones either, but I know they work. You could strand me on an island for a thousand years, and even though I know all about using one, I wouldn’t be able to begin to make one.”
“To be fair, an island probably wouldn’t have a lot of materials that could be used for a cell phone.”
“Oh, you know what I mean. Send me back in time, even just fifty years, and—why am I defending this? You know what I mean?”
I laughed, a good, hard laugh. It was relaxing. It had been a long time since I’d really let go. “I do know what you mean. Even though I’m pretty sure I could build an iPhone. But, yeah, I don’t understand this Ben thing either.”
“Did it ever happen before you got here?” she asked. “I’m sorry if it did and you didn’t think you could talk to me about it. You really can now.”
“I know I can.” But I didn’t know it. I didn’t know how much I could say. I’d hesitated even to tell her the part where I saw him interacting with “Jamie” and “me”; I sure didn’t know how to tell her I’d been chatting with him like normal. “I never saw him before I was here. At least not beyond the usual face-in-a-crowd sort of thing that happens all the time and you know it isn’t real.”
She nodded and turned right onto Racetrack Road. “But the thing is, if it’s real, maybe it’s because you need to let him go in a more real way. Tell him to follow the light or whatever.”
I knew what she was saying. She thought I was holding on in an unhealthy way, whether my “visions” were real or not. And I had been for a long time. I had to let him go for him and for me.
“I don’t know,” she went on. “I’m sure it’s a lot more delicate and sensitive than that, but, honey, if some vestige of Ben is still in the house, surely you want him freed.”
“I don’t know,” I said, more to myself than to her. I felt wistful and alone, unable to truly get counsel from anyone on this.
She swung the car left into the parking lot. “I don’t want to push you on it, but I want you to know I’m here if you want to talk. No matter what you want to talk about.” She put the car in park and turned the keys in the ignition. “No matter what you want to do.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Jamie
The yard had a couple years’ worth of nature puke that had piled up in the grass. Right away upon arriving, Jamie had removed the easy armfuls of soggy leaves, but there was far more left.
The grass—what little there was of it—needed to be cut, but he couldn’t do that until all the millions of pinecones and pine needles had been dredged out. His mom hadn’t even asked him to do it, but it drove him nuts and he couldn’t stand to look at it. Even he knew the concept of curb appeal and how lacking that was in this yard.
Maybe it was because of all the shows he heard as ambient noise at home, HGTV blasting while his mom diced garlic and sizzled chicken breasts. Or maybe, hopefully, it was just common sense.
He had in his wireless Bluetooth earbuds, the ones that sank so deeply into his ears that they canceled out any of the tweeting birds or cars zooming by.
All he could hear was “Vicar In a Tutu” by the Smiths. His skin was baking in the sun, slick with the sunscreen he’d sprayed on and the sweat that fought to roll it off. He was in a pair of his dad’s old shorts, which were a little too big for him. He had been reluctant to put them on. (It was one thing for his mom to wear a pair to paint, but it started to seem like they were treating his clothes either as too holy to leave folded or too unneeded to do anything but ruin.)
In the end, obviously, he’d put them on anyway. He was hot, and all he’d stupidly brought with him were actual pants. Usually he was fine in those and a T-shirt, even in summer.
He was leaning over, collecting everything that wasn’t grass, tossing it into a bag. He’d been out for almost two hours, and the yard was finally, satisfyingly getting to look like the grassy lawn it used to be.
He was about to reach for another fistful of damp pine needles and mud when he saw a sandaled foot a few feet in front of him. The sandal was dark tan leather, and the foot was connected to a thin tan curvy leg. Unmistakably a girl, even before you saw the handmade anklet.
Jamie stood up.
He dropped the pile of brown muck.
He wrenched the buds out of his ears and they hung on his bare collarbone.
“Shit,” he said when he looked at her.
“That’s what I hope you’re not grabbing with your bare hands.”
She smiled.
“No. Already did a round of cleaning that up. This is all just … you know, nature trash.”
She laughed, and it sounded just like it used to, even though her voice was lower now, a little raspier.
“What are you listening to?” She threw down her canvas bag, right onto the dirt. He noticed this because she didn’t go inside and hang it up neatly in order not to ruin it. Just like always, that wasn’t how she was.
She put a bud in her ear for a second, awfully close to his chest. “‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’?” she said. He didn’t mean to, he tried to avoid it, but for a brief second his face was in her hair. She smelled like soap and something else. Salt water? Like the beach? Maybe it wasn’t that she smelled like the beach, but that the beach had always sort of smelled like her.
“Probably. It was on ‘Vicar In a Tutu’ when I tore them out in shock.”
“I prefer ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly.’” She released the bud.
“Typical,” he said with a shake of his head that didn’t really mean anything.
More than anything, it was unsurprisingly typical that she knew the album right away.
“This lawn looks terrible. The grass has gone from … military buzz cut to mid-nineties Jared Leto.”
He narrowed his eyes in question.
“As in, too long to look good. Deflated and flat.” She laid a hand on her chest. “But loads of potential.”
“It’ll get there, Mrs. Leto. I’m working on it.”
“Are our moms here?”
He shook his head. “They went to the store.”
It was so strange to see Kelsey. He didn’t really use social media. He had Facebook b
ut only because you sort of had to. He never posted anything. She didn’t much either, which had both impressed him and bugged him. It impressed him because he was glad she hadn’t turned into one of those girls who posted every single little thing they ever did or didn’t do. She wasn’t one of those girls who went on to get attention through hot pictures or through passive-aggressive, potentially tragic comments.
Roxy. Roxy with her misleading, always varied, frequent Facebook Goodbye world …
It bothered him that Kelsey posted so little, because he didn’t feel right “reaching out” to her and having some stupid messenger relationship, but he kind of still just wanted to know what was up with her life. What was she doing, what was she like?
He could almost not believe she was in front of him now, that he could talk to her and that she could become real to him again. He would almost sooner believe she was a mirage.
She broke his eye contact and looked up at the house.
He was afraid she was going to turn back and ask, Is it tough for you being back here?
But instead she gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head, and then looked back cheerily and said, “I’ll go change and come help you.”
A few minutes later she came out in a big white T-shirt and ratty denim shorts, worn-in Nikes and mismatched socks. Her hair was up in an amusingly spiky ponytail now. He actually didn’t see her come out, he had begun working again, when he looked up and saw her trying to figure out the speaker on her phone. He watched her until she sorted it out and then pulled out his own music.
It was the rattlesnake start to “Southern Girl,” by Incubus. They’d listened to the CD countless times at the beach. They had iPhones, but even as kids, and only at the beach, they liked doing it the old-school way, like their parents.
She put her hands out and let them fall.
“Forgive my nostalgia, but it really just feels right.”
“I agree. Bags are over there. You’re about to ruin any manicure you might have.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “It’s like you don’t remember me at all.” She flapped the trash bag open. “It’s Kelsey. Remember me?”
Every Time You Go Away Page 17