by Ruth Morse
Max remained silent. He approached me from behind and wrapped his arms around my waist. I leaned my head on his shoulder. My hands found his and squeezed them.
I was ashamed that I overreacted, but at the same time, I was relieved. The heaviness to which I was accustomed finally disappeared. I was so used to it that only now did I realize how much it had weighed me down all that time. My lungs filled with air; I exhaled slowly and breathed with pleasant ease.
“The freedom I want for you is the freedom to choose what you really want for yourself,” Max murmured in my ear. “Maybe that’s what growing up is. You’ll have to decide many things without looking to others for the answers, even if they’re dear to you. But remember, you’re not alone. And I care. Whatever choice you make, I accept it. I love you, I trust you, and I support you.”
“Max, I—”
He didn’t let me finish. He turned me to face him and held me closer. I buried my nose in his shoulder.
“I understand,” he whispered.
I’d been gone from Lakewood for no more than two weeks, but it felt like some significant part of my life had passed. During that time, I’d changed, but Lakewood hadn’t. After San Francisco, I saw everything differently. It seemed like while I was away, the town got even smaller. Max looked at me, his eyes smiling.
“You look like you’ve never seen Lakewood before.” He chuckled.
“I actually missed this city.” I opened the window and breathed in the fresh air. Only now I realized that the air in Lakewood smelled somewhat special, infused with pine trees and distant mountains.
“Then it’s good to be back?” Max said.
A dog ran up the road as he spoke. She tried to reach Terry’s wheels, her teeth chomping in the air very close to the wheels but not touching them. The dog’s loud bark almost deafened me.
Max glanced at her. He slowed down a bit and crept along so as not to hit the rude dog. At first the dog barked even louder, but then her barking sounded less confident and more confused. She trailed behind Terry, not daring to bite the rotating wheels but not stopping her pursuit either.
“Do you miss your home?” I asked Max when the dog finally decided that we were not that important and ran off into the bushes.
Max shrugged. “Sometimes. But I try not to think about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can never go back so there’s no point looking in that direction,” he said.
I sighed. “I wish I had at least a tiny piece of your confidence,” I said.
“Confidence in what?”
“Your life, your views on it. Just overall self-confidence, I guess.”
Max gave me his half smile. “There’s nothing in this world that I challenge more than myself. You know what will give me more confidence than I’ll ever need?”
I looked at him questioningly.
“If you believe in me.”
“Then you should already feel like a superhero,” I said, smiling.
Max laughed and leaned over to me to give me a kiss.
***
The more pits and potholes appeared on the road, the closer we were to my home. I was thinking about the future. Not the future Max was concerned about, but the nearest one: the future in which I’d leave Terry and open my front door, greeted by that annoying creak; the smell of plants would hit my nose hard and that was how I’d know I was truly home.
Our journey was coming to an end. Soon I’d open that door and everything would be back to what it was before. But was that really what I wanted? How could I change anything if I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to change in the first place?
I felt like a person standing on the edge of a building, ready to jump, but then deciding to change their mind and escaping the roof before anyone noticed them there.
Max listened to me as I talked about our trip, the sights of San Francisco, the policeman on the beach, Italian food and the cat on the fountain, and Jack and Lily. He didn’t interrupt me, smiling when I said something funny and nodding when he wanted to show his agreement. We were stuck between two planes: the past and reality. Time passed by us without showing its ruthless presence. We kept talking so enthusiastically, like we hadn’t talked since we left San Francisco. In that moment we suddenly found the strength to fill this gap.
Dad’s car was parked in front of the house. Anxiety hit me out of nowhere, creeping to my chest.
Max killed the engine. “Isn’t your dad supposed to be at work?” he asked.
“He is,” I murmured.
Max shrugged. “Let’s go and see him then.”
“No, no,” I said hurriedly, cracking Terry’s door open. “You don’t have to go with me. What could possibly happen? I’m home.”
The end of the phrase sounded more than unconvincing. Max opened his door too. “I’m not worried something will happen, I just want to show your dad my respect and deliver his daughter to her final destination,” he said, smiling.
“But I don’t want you to do this,” I said.
Max’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Why?”
“Well, I… You know, I didn’t tell them I was coming back today.”
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
“I don’t know. Wanted to surprise them, I guess?”
I gave him a smile that was supposed to be cheerful but came out so tight and unsure that I bit my lip and lowered my eyes. Max gave me a long, suspicious look but then said, “Fine. At least text me when you talk to your dad so I know you’re okay.”
“Sure. I love you, Max.”
He paused, his eyes studying my face thoughtfully. “I love you too. More than you can imagine,” he said in a quiet voice. I cursed myself in my thoughts for creating this quicksand of incompleteness between us that I knew he too clearly understood.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
“Dad, I’m home!”
Everything remained silent. I walked into the kitchen and froze, clasping my backpack in my hands. There was an unfinished bottle of wine and a pair of glasses on the table, both used. Something dark and formless was floating in one of them.
I took the glass and brought it to my eyes—it was a partly dissolved chocolate. An open pack of the same candy sat on the counter. How weird. Dad hated sweets.
While I was looking for traces of other bottles of alcohol to evaluate how bad things were and how bad they would be, happy laughter came from the second floor. It was my Dad’s. I halted for a moment but then my eyes widened. Of course! They fixed it! Seemed like while I was away they were busy improving their relationship and finally working on all their old mistakes. And I was so selfish and so stupid to not even think about them. I thought only about myself and how badly their silence hurt me. Such nonsense! They gave each other a second chance and that was the best thing they could actually give me. They gave me my family back.
I waited for them in the living room. The smile never left my face as I sat on the sofa with my legs crossed, leaning my elbows on my knees. I straightened my hair then checked the laces on my sneakers, and finally ended up messing with the drawstring to my sweatshirt. My gaze wandered around the room until I realized that something had changed. It felt like the room was much more spacious now. I glanced at the corner where the clock stood and raised my eyebrows in surprise. It was gone! I peered at the empty space where that antique once stood, proudly presenting itself, and shrugged.
I texted Max that I was okay. He texted me back saying that he loved me and wanted me to rest after the long trip. I smiled. I sure was gonna have an awesome rest after surprising my parents.
About half an hour had passed when I heard a soft, slamming sound from upstairs. Hurried steps rustled through the hallway.
With my eyes closed, I cried, “Mom, I’m home and don’t worry, I can’t see you!”
There was a rattling, cracking sound. I opened my eyes. An unfamiliar naked woman stared at me with her lipstick-smeared mouth open in a silent cry. The stairs were showered with shards of glass.
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“Ashley, are you all right?!”
The door upstairs opened again. This time, heavy steps shook the ceiling. My dad.
“What happened?… Oh Jesus!”
Seeing me, he raised his hands to his face. The sheet wrapped around his torso slid down silently. He backed away.
Something cracked.
“Shit!”
The pain must have sobered him up. He bent over and grabbed the sheet, forcing the woman to cling to the handrail to stay on her feet; the stairs were just too narrow. She tore the sheet from his hands so hastily that they both ended up not being covered. They wasted time flipping it over, only to get more tangled in it. Finally they stopped moving. A trickle of blood dripped onto the steps. Dad cried, “For God’s sake, Lana! Give me something!”
I looked around. Everything that happened next played out like a dream: my somehow unfamiliar hands rummaged through the couch and the same trembling hands reached for a red plaid; I tossed it and the woman was the first to catch it. Dad loosened his grip on the sheet and she separated from him.
While Dad sat in the kitchen with a Band-Aid in his hand and a shard of glass sticking out of his foot, the woman took flight to the second floor. She returned fully dressed only to disappear out the front door. I sat on the sofa, my hands clenched and my eyes fixed on the black TV screen.
Swearing came from the kitchen. The cut must have been deep. My gaze fell on the mirror next to the stairs; it reflected a girl, her eyes wide open and her shoulders trembling so hard that her curls fell on her face. Two tears dripped from her eyes. I ran a hand over my cheek. It was real. I was really crying.
“Lana?”
Dad’s voice made me shiver. I didn’t see him coming. When I raised my head to look at him he was already near me, his right hand stained scarlet from all the blood and his left hand scratching his covered with the two-days bristle chin. He coughed a few times.
“Hey, you’re back from San Francisco, huh?”
I looked at him in silence. He coughed again. “Listen, what you saw here, this isn’t what you think, okay? Let me explain—”
“How long?”
Dad blinked blankly. “What?”
“How long have you been cheating on Mom?”
He paused. “Oh dear. I know what I’m going to tell you isn’t easy to hear. It’s not easy for either of us, really. Look, what’s happening between Mom and me—”
“Does she know about this?”
Dad sighed. “She knows I’m seeing someone,” he said.
My heart skipped a beat. By the look on his embarrassed yet unashamed face, I realized he was telling the truth.
“I don’t understand shit.” That was all I could squeeze out from my mouth.
Dad gave me a sad smile and lowered himself onto the sofa, not too close, not too far away from me. “I don’t want you to think that I’m a cheater,” he said.
“But how…?”
He folded his arms over his chest and, taking a deep breath, said, “Honey, we tried really hard to make it work. Both of us. But we just couldn’t. There’s something that’s missing. And we couldn’t fix it. All this time there was only one thing for us to do—finally accept it. And only recently did we come to this. It was a relief for both of us. We couldn’t be together anymore. We couldn’t love each other… in the way we loved before. That’s why now it’s her life and my life.”
“And where is mine?” I murmured.
He didn’t hear me. He stood up slowly and limped his way to the kitchen. I followed. He poured whiskey into two glasses and handed me one. We both drank it to the bottom in complete silence. Then he filled his glass once again.
“You know, I…” He drank up the second shot and returned his glass to the counter. “I wanted to apologize to you. I was an awful father. I wallowed in my thoughts, in my hatred of the world that had taken so much from me… I just couldn’t, you know? I couldn’t force myself to wake up, I couldn’t force myself to feel. I lost so much and I was losing even more because of my own actions.” He paused, glancing at me. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I didn’t know what to do. And more importantly, I didn’t know what to feel. I felt nothing as my right hand tapped my knee with the beat of some stupid song that suddenly came to my mind, and I listened to Dad’s voice.
We talked. We were having a normal conversation, as if nothing happened and I didn’t just see him naked—or with another woman. He looked at me with care, his gaze open and peaceful. He was no longer the man I knew as my dad. The main difference between the man I knew and the man that stood in front of me was the man in front of me was happy.
“I don’t know what to do,” I mumbled.
“It’s all right. Everything will fall into place,” Dad said.
“Just like between you and Mom?”
Dad hesitated. He reached for his empty glass and began twisting it in his hands. “When we stopped this chase and finally faced our fears, we realized that all we did was try to escape responsibility,” he said then, thoughtfully shaking his head. “Our responsibility is to have the strength to accept the truth. There’s no way to hide from it. The truth will hit you one way or another.”
“What were you chasing, anyway?”
“The ghost that we confused with finding a way to get out. The ghost of our peace.” He smiled softly. “I don’t want to do that anymore. Your mom doesn’t either.”
“So I won’t then, too,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I jumped to my feet. The decision was made already. It walked its way to my heart so delicately, so simply that I felt like I was always carrying it inside. My voice sounded a little husky and unsure, but my eyes were clear and bright.
“Too many talks for one day about responsibility,” I said, picking up my backpack from the floor. “Thanks, Dad. I appreciate your advice.”
“What advice?”
I glanced at him. “To stop ghost hunting. Nothing can ever be the same as it was before. I should’ve known that. I should stop looking back, hoping to find my ghost. Simply because there isn’t one and there never was.”
On my way to my room, I stopped and turned around. “What happened to the clock?” I asked, pointing to the empty corner.
Dad followed my gaze and then shrugged. “I always hated that bastard. Your mom and I threw it in the garbage. She was happy to get rid of it, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
A ray of sunshine broke through the barrier of clouds, slithered across the dusty curtains, and finally perched on my shoulder. I sat on my bed, looking out the window, trying to memorize this small, unremarkable piece of road, torn out of the whole landscape and trapped inside my window frame. I used to see it every day, not even knowing I’d actually grow to miss it over time.
I stood up as quietly as I could and opened my wardrobe, hooking two fingers into its door. I didn’t want to break the silence. As long as there weren’t any sounds, my room also remained frozen in time. At least that’s what I was hoping for, just a little while with no need to hurry, no need to abruptly erase the past so my life would become light enough to carry it with me in the future. I was still not at the beginning, yet beyond the point of turning back. I knew I wasn’t ready to move on, but I also felt that my entire life wasn’t all that different. I was always afraid of changes. Considering that, what difference would it make if I was prepared or not? Maybe the journey would be much easier, but that journey had to take place either way. It wasn’t the matter of my decision, because the decision was already made. And somewhere deep inside my heart, I knew that it was right.
I took a deep breath and let the spicy, slightly bitter smell of the wardrobe’s insides appease my excitement. Things were exactly as I’d left them. Their peaceful, neat appearance was soothing, like finding shelter during a storm.
Dad’s voice came from downstairs. He was speaking on the phone. I held my breath. Without waiting for panic to take over, I yanked my suitcase out from un
der the bed. The T-shirts flew out one by one. I was tossing them without looking, grabbing and crumpling everything in my hands. Soon the wardrobe was emptied. I closed my eyes, unable to look at its bare shelves, and leaned my forehead against its door. It squeaked.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you, my savior.”
My suitcase closed easily; I wasn’t taking much with me. I took one last look through the window, clutched the yellow cardigan that Mel gave me for my last birthday in my right hand and the suitcase’s handle in the other, and walked out of my room. Max was already waiting for me.
The second the suitcase wheels screeched across the stairs, Max jumped up to help me with my luggage. A smile flashed on my dad’s face.
Just then, the front door cracked open. Mom came in. Her always neatly combed hair managed to escape the bundle on top of her head, but she didn’t pay any attention to it. She was a little out of breath, looking vigorous and agitated. Her sparkling eyes, shaded with a dark gray eyeliner, quickly scanned the living room. Mom nodded to Max then smiled at Dad. Dad stood up from his chair and greeted her with an embrace.
I saw them looking at each other. There was no hint of past discontent in their eyes, only the understanding of people who went through too many things together to continue challenging each other’s right to be happy.
“Lana, honey!”
Mom came at me like a whirlwind. She pulled me to her side, straightened my hair, and kissed me on the cheek, all that in less than a few seconds. I smiled, confused.
“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” Mom asked when we finally let go of each other and sat down at the table to talk.
“Yes, Mom. This is what I need,” I said.
Dad looked at me from the opposite side of the table, frowning. After a long pause, he said, “I need to know that you’re doing this because you want to, and that it has nothing to do with your mom and me.”