Love Over Matter

by Maggie Bloom

  * * *

  “Congrats,” I say when I catch up with Ian outside the Milbridge High gymnasium. “You did it.”

  “Your father would be so proud,” my mother adds from behind me, her voice wet with emotion.

  In his crimson cap and gown, Ian looks suddenly grown up. “Thanks,” he says, scanning the sea of faces around us. “Have you seen Jeanette?”

  One of Ian’s aunts who made the trek up from Baltimore stayed on to see him through to graduation. She’s slated to ship out tomorrow. “Um, she was in the ladies’ room five minutes ago,” I report. “Haley! Come here!”

  My sister and Opal (geez, those two are as joined at the hip as George and I used to be) slink through the crowd. “What?” snaps Haley.

  “Where’d Jeanette go?”

  Haley pops her shoulders into a shrug. “I dunno.”

  “You didn’t see her in the bathroom?” I ask.

  Opal cocks her thumb as if she’s hitching a ride to Tijuana. “Isn’t that her?”

  A floral muumuu swishes and sways in our direction (is Jeanette part Hawaiian?). “Oh, yeah.” I nudge Ian in the ribs. “There she is.”

  His face lights up like a landing strip at LaGuardia. Thank God, I think. He’s tunneling out of the darkness. With a wave, he beckons, “Aunt Jean!”

  A few swings of her robust hips later, Jeanette floats up beside us wearing her own megawatt smile. “Well, there’s the man of the hour!” She plants a lip-smacking kiss on Ian’s cheek, leaving a coral-colored smudge in her wake. “I thought you’d up and vanished.”

  Mom and Dad exchange a satisfied glance and make a vague excuse to beg off (some sort of “restaurant business,” or so they claim). “Did you feel that?” Haley asks Opal, the forest of bodies around us starting to thin.

  “Yep. Coulda told you an hour ago that it was going to rain.”

  Opal is known for predicting the weather with her migraines. “You have a headache?” I ask.

  “A whopper.”

  A raindrop jumps off the tip of my nose; meanwhile, Jeanette substitutes a graduation program for an umbrella. “You guys better catch Dad,” I tell Haley and Opal, “before he takes off.”

  Haley’s face twists into a pout, but a clap of thunder deters her from arguing. “Yeah, all right,” she says with a huff. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Happy graduation!” Opal manages to squeak, her fingers rubbing circles around her temples as she scurries off.

  “See ya,” Ian says after them, though I’m not so sure he plans to cross paths with my sister and her sidekick again before heading to Castleton State.

  Jeanette twirls a watch around her wrist, studies it and frowns. “You know, I ought to be getting back to the hotel too.”

  I am so happy that someone from Ian’s mother’s side of the family has bothered to care about him. “What about BurgerRama?” I interject. “Don’t you want to get some dinner before you pack?” I mean, normally I’m not too keen on inviting adults along on my social engagements, but the more time Ian spends with Aunt Jean the better.

  Jeanette pretends to mull the idea over. “Oh, why in tarnation not?”

  I give a sigh of relief. “Perfect.” I turn to Ian. “So I’ll ride with you?”

  * * *

  I found another knotted Funyuns bag under the sofa while I was groping for a pair of quarters that had pinged like slot machine winnings from my jeans. Like the wrapper tucked into the backseat of Mom’s Prius, this nugget of garbage has no business being in my life since, three months ago, my parents hired a contractor to paint our living room, a job that required huddling all the furniture in the center of the room, including the plaid-skirted sofa in question. There’s no way the Funyuns wrapper could have survived such a move, leaving me to conclude it was deposited here in the last ninety days to taunt me.

  “Morning,” I grumble at Mom and Dad, who are seamlessly performing what I call “the kitchen dance”: him scrubbing the dishes and twirling sideways to hand them to her, whereupon she shimmies to the dishwasher and loads it up.

  “You’re up early,” says Dad.

  Mom chimes in with, “Want some toast?”

  I give a weak smile that hasn’t a chance of matching the upbeat one she’s shot me. “Nah. I have plans.”

  She knees the dishwasher shut. “Oh?”

  “What’re you guys still doing here?” I ask, prying the refrigerator open and shuffling through it until I spy the OJ, which I tug out.

  “We’re taking the day off,” Dad says.

  A swell of panic grips me. “Why? What’s wrong?” Since Mom’s heart attack and George’s death, I’ve come to regard change—even the good kind, which by all appearances this unscheduled vacation day is—as suspect.

  Glug, glug, glug goes the juice as it sloshes into my mug.

  Mom floats over to the table and takes a seat (honestly, I wish she’d clomp around the house so I’d know she’s real; her near-death history and ghostly white-blond hair do nothing for my easily freaked out imagination). “Day trip to the Berkshire Botanical Garden, for our anniversary,” she informs me.

  “That’s right,” says Dad, a damp dishrag draped over his shoulder.

  “But”—I search the rooster-themed calendar for the date—“it’s only . . . Your anniversary isn’t until . . .”

  “Saturday,” says Dad. “But we can’t leave The Moondancer on a weekend.”

  Actually, they can; the place is on autopilot. “Well, have fun,” I say. “Pick a few extra daisies for me.”

  Dad gives me a peck on the forehead as he ambles by. “Already in the works, ma chérie.” I doubt he means this literally, since if he pilfered as much as a needle off a pine tree, Mom would divorce him.

  He pads off down the hall, and Mom asks, “So what’s the big plan today?”

  “Ian wants to hit some balls at the driving range,” I say. “It’s his only day off this week.” Since school let out, Waterslide Village has been keeping Ian busy, a good turn of events, I’ve decided, given his financial woes.

  “Isn’t it nice,” says Mom, a satisfied glow animating her face, “the two of you getting so chummy?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She wags a hand at me. “Oh, nothing. I’m just glad to see you and Ian moving forward together, that’s all. It’s sort of fitting, don’t you think?”

  Is she implying that I have a romantic interest in my dead love’s best buddy (besides me, of course)? “Yeah, I guess,” I say. “But it’s not like that exactly. I’m just trying to be there for him as a friend, you know?”

  “That’s how your father and I started out,” she tells me with a smirk. “Things turned out pretty well for us, wouldn’t you say?”

  I’d love to continue this off-base conversation long enough to set my mother straight, but time’s a-wastin’. I down the juice. “Yes, I would,” I agree, depositing the mug in the sink. I start toward my bedroom. “Have fun in Massachusetts. And happy early anniversary.”

  * * *

  “Why is this place so busy?” I ask Ian as we roll into the gravel lot beside Club Tee, the Love Machine purring like a kitten in the sun. (Before Jeanette hightailed it back to Baltimore, she put up six hundred bucks to get Ian’s van in tippity-top shape.)

  He gestures at the sky, which is brilliant blue with a sprinkling of cotton-ball clouds. “Need I say more?”

  We only get about fifteen days a year like this in Milbridge, so, in fact, he needn’t.

  He squeezes the van between a Smart Car and a dilapidated fence that is missing every other slat, giving it the appearance of a jack-o-lantern’s mouth.

  We slip around to the back of the van and fetch his golf bag, which is stuffed to splitting with putters, irons, and whatever other blunt-force instruments we may require for a morning of driving practice. “You gonna hit or just watch?” he asks, the bag scuffing along behind him like a gimpy third leg.

  “Hit, of course,” I say, trying to mask the ind
ignation in my voice.

  He tosses me a sideways grin. “Good. It’ll be more fun that way.”

  Club Tee is headquartered in a manufactured home—a double-wide trailer, really—with a rusty green-and-white sign tacked over a sliding window, outside of which customers line up to buy their buckets of balls. Ian and I fork over nine dollars each. I lug the buckets—one per hand—struggling to remain on my feet, the balls clunking from side to side in rhythm with my wobbly steps.

  “Whew!” I spout when we reach the driving range, a patch of land the size of a football field with circular targets (think carnival dunk tank here) stationed at various distances from golfers’ row.

  The arrangement of golfers’ row is informal: first come, first served. Ian selects a driving spot beside a serious-looking dude in his midthirties with a buzz cut and rippled biceps. I nab the slot to Ian’s left. “Okay, now what?” I ask once we’re situated.

  He plucks a ball from his bucket and drops it in the dirt. “Now we hit.”

  I was expecting something more organized. I mean, even miniature golf has ordered holes, not to mention a bunch of kitschy obstacles and a bottom line goal: par. “Care to make a wager?” I suggest.

  He laughs. “Like what?”

  Smaaack! goes the ball to Ian’s right as Muscle Man clobbers it into the next millennium.

  “Lunch?” I propose.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Whoever gets the most bull’s-eyes wins. Loser buys tacos.”

  We shake on it. “It’s a deal.”

  We bang through half a bucketful of balls each, my arm aching from the repetitive motion. “How many’s that?” I ask as he nails the target once again.

  “Eight.”

  We’re on the honor system, so I don’t challenge him. “Seven more than me,” I complain. My next shot is a doozy, though, sailing for the finish line as if drawn by a magnetic pull.

  “Way to go,” comments Muscle Man on my shocking precision.

  I give him a perfunctory nod. “Thanks.”

  Three or four balls later, Muscle Man packs it in, leaving Ian and me to bask in our newfound solitude. “You know, if you bend your knees a little, you’ll be in a more neutral stance,” he tells me. “And you’ll get some extra spin on the ball.”

  He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, so I follow his advice and . . . miss the ball completely! I start listing toward him, and he throws an arm out to steady me. And for a fraction of a second, there’s a spark between us. A chemical reaction I’m sure is a product of our shared sense of loss over George, Ian’s father’s recent demise, and this intoxicating summer day.

  “Whoa!” he says as I straighten up, employing the same club that almost toppled me as a crutch. He chuckles. “I think you might’ve overshot that one, Tiger.”

  My ego is bruised, which explains (if not excuses) my snippiness. “No duh.”

  His gaze travels from my bucket to his; we’ve got a quarter of the balls to go. “Wanna call it a draw?” he proposes.

  “And let you win? No, thank you.”

  He shakes his head, fighting a smile. “I wish George were here,” he says out of nowhere.

  I somehow gulp, even though my mouth feels like dried cotton. After an awkward pause, I respond, “Yeah, me too.”

  “You miss him a lot, don’t you?”

  Why is he asking me this? He must already know the answer. “He was my best friend,” I say, my stomach gurgling with acid.

  “He liked you, you know, even if he never told you.”

  What I’m about to spill is a secret. “He did.”

  He crinkles his brow. “Really?”

  My legs go to mush; I curl up on the ground, lay the club across my thighs. “About two months before the accident,” I explain, “we were painting his room. His parents had finally agreed to let him cover that soft baby blue with orange-and-black racing stripes to match his skateboard.”

  Ian drops to a squat, gives an understanding nod that says: Go on.

  “We worked all day, taping the stripe pattern onto the walls, painting one section and waiting for it to dry. By five o’clock, we were starving. He ordered a pizza—a large—and we ate the whole thing in about ten seconds flat.”

  “He always was a bit of a hog,” Ian says, shrugging.

  “Really? I never noticed . . .” I could stop the story here, let the memory of that day fade away. But I’m afraid of erasing George. “So anyway,” I say, “we finished the painting around midnight. His parents were asleep, so we snuck downstairs and put on a movie: Aladdin.”

  “That’s a good movie.”

  “I know. But I only lasted fifteen minutes before drifting off.” Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a robust woman decked in head-to-toe white shopping for a slot. She takes one two spots down from me and starts chipping away. “I wasn’t asleep asleep, though,” I continue. “I was in and out. Plus, I could feel his fingers mesh with mine and his breath in my ear.”

  Ian’s eyes widen.

  “He was whispering,” I go on, “but it didn’t make any difference. I heard every word.” I poke at the dirt with the head of the club. “He said he was in love with me, that he wanted us to be together, that he didn’t know how to tell me.”

  Ian shifts to a sitting position, crosses his legs to mimic mine. “That’s deep,” he says, doing the worst stoner impression I’ve ever heard.

  “No kidding.”

  We go quiet for a while, the air rhythmic with the sounds of clubs whomping balls. “I kind of felt sorry for him,” Ian eventually says.

  I’m insulted on George’s behalf. “Sorry for him? What for?”

  He pulls a ball from his bucket, tosses it from hand to hand. “You know he was adopted, right?”

  I have the birth certificate to prove it. “Um, yeah.”

  “Well, he was trying to find his parents. He had a trip planned and everything.”

  This might be a lie, though I’m not sure what Ian would have to gain by fibbing. With a doubtful squint, I say, “I never heard anything about a trip.”

  “He didn’t tell you everything.”

  I’m suddenly tongue-tied. “Oh.” I wait a whole minute before asking, “Where was he going?”

  The sun has peaked over my shoulder, or so says the prickly heat on the back of my neck. Ian shields his eyes, stares at my chin while he speaks. “The Big Apple. New York, New York.”

  Queens, I think, 66th Drive. “Did he have a lead or something? Last I knew, he’d hit a brick wall. Never really talked about it after that.”

  Ian hops to his feet, sloppily bangs a ball onto the green. “I don’t think so,” he admits. “It was a last-ditch effort. He’d given up on the internet.”

  I wonder if George had planned to invite me along. “We should do it,” I declare, “in his honor.”

  His eyes cross. “Like a road trip, you mean?”

  “Yeah, why not? I feel like”—I get on my feet, brush my shorts clean—“like we owe it to him or something. We could solve the mystery and—I don’t know—he’d be able to rest in peace.”

  “It’d have to be soon. I’ve gotta be in Castleton in eighteen days.”

  He’s in countdown mode? I guess I can’t blame him, since he’s still bunking at New Beginnings. “Name the time and place,” I say, feeling bold.

  “How about right now?”

  chapter 8

  I can’t believe we’re doing this, I think as I scrawl a hasty message to my parents, claiming an out-of-town emergency on Ian’s part that demands my prompt and undivided attention. I promise to call by the end of the day with the details, a move that at least buys me six or seven hours of alibi-crafting time. Plus, if my parents follow their usual routine, they won’t mosey home from Massachusetts until 8 or 9 p.m. anyway.

  “You almost ready?” Ian asks, popping his head into the kitchen.

  I flash a reassuring smile. “Two secs,” I say, my fingers forming an automatic peace sign.

&nb
sp; He spots my purple duffel bag stashed under the table. “Lemme grab that.”

  If he wants to play the hero, who am I to argue? I muscle a chair out of the way and hand the bag over. “Should I grab some snacks?” I ask.

  He shrugs, tosses the duffel over his shoulder. “Yeah, if you want to.”

  “How far is it to New York?”

  “At least two hundred miles. Maybe two fifty.”

  Doesn’t sound so bad. “And that’ll take, like, what?” I try some mental math. “Four hours?”

  “Maybe at midnight,” he answers with a laugh. “I’d add about two hours for traffic.”

  I rummage through the cupboard by the refrigerator. “You know, I don’t have a license,” I say, both to excuse my navigational ignorance and to remind him that, should he fall ill on this journey, I am unequipped to man the controls. I wave a fistful of Mom’s breakfast staples through the air. “Granola bars okay?”

  “Fiber bars?”

  “What? They’re good,” I argue. “And they’re chocolate.” I shove the bars into the pockets of George’s hoodie, which I plan to don throughout this trip in his honor. Then I rescue some bottled water from the fridge. “What else?” I say, felling like I’m missing something.

  Ian scans the kitchen, shifts back and forth on his feet. “Tolls,” he says. “Got any change? Or I can stop at an ATM . . .”

  There’s an old canning jar full of coins resting on the pass-thru between the kitchen and the living room. I gesture at it and say, “You can take those.”

  He glances over his shoulder, as if my father might show up at any moment to reprimand him. “Eh, I’ve gotta check the oil in the van. Why don’t you get ‘em?”

  “Whatever you say.” I tuck the water bottles under my arms, snatch the coins—jar and all—and trail him outside, the door slapping hopefully shut behind us.

  * * *

  We’ve been on the road for nearly an hour and devoured two fiber bars each when Ian starts scanning the roadside for turnoffs. “What about the GPS?” I ask. “Won’t that tell us where the filling stations are?”