by Erica Boyce
“Listen.” He took a gulp of air. “I got married.”
I dropped into the closest kitchen chair. “To Zach?”
“Yes, of course to Zach,” he said, the armor back up.
“That’s wonderful, honey. I’m so happy for you,” I said, and I wanted to mean it.
“Yeah, well. I just thought you should know, I guess. You can tell Dad if you want to.”
When he hung up, I couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn off the receiver, so the dial tone wove its way through me. He had told me about Zach on our occasional phone calls, feeding me details like crumbs that I pressed together into something resembling a meal. I knew, for instance, that Zach wasn’t a doctor, that they met in a record store, probably, I imagined, near the punk albums that Charlie loved so much. I knew that they liked to go to the movies together, that Zach liked cooking and golf. I had to stifle a laugh every time Charlie mentioned they’d been watching the Masters, imagining him clapping politely when the ball dropped into a hole.
I fed these meals to Sam and refused to notice his grunts and his throat clearings or the way he wouldn’t quite respond when I wondered aloud if Zach was taller or shorter than Charlie, what his parents were like, where he was from. I would not, could not have a husband who was uncomfortable with our son finding love.
And now he was married. And we weren’t there. I should have expected this. From the very first time he told us about his sexuality, I knew I was making a mistake, that I was supposed to do more than say “Oh” while Sam gaped and Charlie shrank into the couch. Then he was gone, just a few weeks later, and I could do nothing. As soon as he hung up, I moved to the computer and looked up small business loans.
Now he’s here, with his husband, standing in the middle of our kitchen. Maggie stares at him, then at Sam. My breath burns hotter and hotter in my chest until finally, Sam stands. He walks over to Charlie and claps him into a hug, his eyes shut, fentanyl stick clenched between his teeth. Charlie’s arms are stuck down at his sides, but he taps lightly at Sam’s back. Sam says something, and it sounds like “Welcome home.”
Zach looks a little stunned, his eyebrows high, and I wonder what Charlie has told him. I touch his shoulder, and he startles, then turns away from his husband and father-in-law. “Can I get you anything?” I ask. “Glass of water, maybe?”
I can’t seem to remember anything else in the refrigerator, but Zach’s mouth quirks into a smile, and he says, “Water would be great.”
By the time I’ve filled a glass, Sam has released Charlie, and they’re sitting in the living room with Maggie. She’s leaning toward Charlie, gesturing wildly while he picks at a loose thread on the arm of the sofa. Sam is leaning back in his armchair, hands clasped over his stomach and eyes closed as he shifts the fentanyl from side to side in his mouth.
I set the glass down in front of Zach, sitting at the kitchen table with his feet neat and sturdy on the floor, his legs perfect right angles, as if he were built for that exact space. “You didn’t have to wait in here,” I say, and I hope it sounds welcoming. I sit down next to him. “We can go to the living room with everyone else if you like.”
He studies my face for a moment, his eyes traveling from my hair to my chin. My fingers twitch in my lap, but I don’t straighten anything.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. He hits the flat of his palm on the table, once, twice. The simple silver band around his ring finger taps cleanly against the wood. “I’ve got some photos from our elopement on here. Would you like to see them?”
“Oh,” I say, “yes.” My vision blurs.
Chapter Forty-Three
Daniel
So many times over the years, there have been things I wish I could tell my parents about. The grasshopper that landed on my shoulder in a dairy barn one afternoon, the periodical cicadas that emerged from their seventeen years of hiding and screamed. The farmer who spent the whole day listening to Rage Against the Machine on his headphones, the one who planted a field of tulips for his wife.
Somehow, when I step into their house—our house—all I’ve got is the carapaces of every fight we’ve ever had.
After my mom and Nessa leave, I wait for the “your mother” that comes every time my dad and I are alone. Instead, he sits down next to me on the couch and starts telling me about some scandal in his department, a professor who started sleeping in his office after his wife kicked him out. “And of course, we’re all wondering,” he says, “what did he do to make her so mad at him? Everyone else thinks it’s an affair, but I just can’t see him doing that. Can you?”
I haven’t really been listening, too busy straining to hear crying coming from the office. But there isn’t any, and when I turn back to my dad, he looks kind of desperate, and I know it probably has nothing to do with the story he’s telling.
“Sorry,” I say and shake my head a little. “Which professor is this?”
“Professor Herman,” he says patiently. “You remember. William?”
And I do remember, vaguely. He used to come to my parents’ Christmas parties in one of those tuxedo T-shirts. He’d hand my mom a bottle of wine, which she’d wrinkle her nose at after he’d turned his back. He always laughed the loudest and would thump my dad on his back on his way out the door. When I was younger, I thought he was the coolest nerd I’d ever met. But when I got to high school, I wondered if he’d taken a wrong turn on the way to the locker room, found himself in a lab, and started calling himself William instead of Billy or Willy.
“Um, no,” I say, “it definitely wasn’t an affair,” even though it definitely was.
My dad smiles, satisfied. Then he settles his hands on his lap, and I know it’s coming, the thing he really wants to talk about.
“I know it was a while ago now, but it’s been on my mind ever since.” He touches my arm, keeps his eyes on his fingertips as they fall back to the couch. “I hope—I hope it was okay I told your mom about your late girlfriend. I know you didn’t want me to, but I just, I didn’t know what else to do.”
Part of me wants to tell him then about all the times I’ve wished Mom could tell me what to do, where to place the bandage and be on my way. When he looks up at me, though, his eyes are teary, so I look away and shrug, wondering if he can tell how much I hate myself for doing so. “I kind of knew you were going to.”
He’s still staring at me, but his face is more solid now. “You know,” he says carefully, “I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like, losing her like that.” For a second, I think he means my mom, but no. It’s Claire. “If anything happened to your mother—well. You and I both know I wouldn’t make it very far.” He laughs faintly, and I join him a little, to stop it from echoing lonely through the room.
“What I mean is,” he says, “I wouldn’t want to underestimate what you’ve been through. But, well, you’re still so young, Danny. You might come across someone else one of these days. I don’t want you to force yourself to be alone. As much as alone sometimes seems like the easy way out, the truth is, it’s not.”
I turn to face him head-on. For the first time, I imagine him at my age, holed up in a library somewhere, doing research. He and my mom met pretty late in life, or late for their time, anyway. They used to tell me I was their miracle baby, something the doctors advised them against, my mom past her prime for things like that.
They never talk about their life before each other, though. Just as I open my mouth to ask, my dad stands, groaning with one hand to his back, and walks to the kitchen. I hear the crack and sigh of his 8:00 p.m. beer. “That’s enough of that. How’s the farming going?” he says when he returns, two brown bottles in his hands.
He holds one out for me, and I take it. The condensation clams up my palm. So I tell him what I haven’t been able to before, about the feel of a cow’s flank under your hand and the way a tomato tastes when it’s fresh off the vine, warmed by the sun. He leans tow
ard me, nodding as he sips, like I’m telling him something new, important.
I’m about to describe the Shannons’ milking system when he looks away. He studies the mouth of his bottle before he says, “Your grandpa would’ve been proud of you.”
“I know,” I say.
“And so are we,” he says. The words almost hurt.
* * *
It seems like forever until the office door opens again.
“Ah, here they are!” my dad says, like he, too, has been listening for clues. “Everything okay?”
My mom’s face is a little tense, and Nessa shoots me a wide-eyed look from behind her back like she’s trying to tell me something. I have no idea what it could be. Nessa sits down across from us while my mom hovers somewhere behind me.
My dad hops up from the couch and retrieves another beer, then pauses before handing it to Nessa. “Can you—I mean, are you taking—with the SSRIs…?”
She smiles up at him, uncomplicated. “In limited amounts.” She takes the bottle from him, and he sits back down. He glances at my mom, still standing, and it seems weird that he didn’t get her a drink, too. Last I knew, that was their routine, one bottle of beer each and falling asleep in front of the nightly news.
She lays her hand on my shoulder, and then it’s obvious, not so weird anymore. It’s my turn.
“Could we maybe—”
“Yup.” It’s more abrupt than I mean, and I avoid Nessa’s eyes while I follow my mom back into her office.
“Christ,” I say when I’ve shut the door behind me. “Could you be any more obvious that we’re talking about her?”
She rests her head in her hands at her desk, so I stop and drop into the old armchair. Luna rubs up against my legs, and I scratch the base of her tail to make up for the fact that I completely forgot she existed.
My mom’s face when she lowers her hands is pink and blotchy, the way it used to get when she thought she’d lost me somewhere.
“You need to tell me the truth,” she says. “Are you involved with Nessa?”
“No,” I say immediately, but for some reason, I squirm. “Why?”
“Well.” She spreads her hands out on the desk in front of her. My toes curl under. “She’s a very nice girl, and her disorder is by no means debilitating. But with what happened to your last girlfriend—”
Claire, I think to myself. Her name was Claire.
“—I worry that you’re finding these people, these girls, who you want to save. And addiction, mental illness, these are things you cannot fix.” She levels her gaze at me, staring through me.
“I know that,” I say. “Obviously, I know that.” There was a time when I didn’t. I thought all I needed was to find the right group, the right meeting, the right thing to say to wipe Claire’s face clean. Even after she was gone, I was convinced the contest would fix it all. Like somewhere, she’d be happy if I hit fifteen.
My mom shakes her head, not believing me, and I want to ask her if she pulls that move on her patients and, if so, how that’s working out for her. Instead, I say, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around and do nothing while someone I—that I care about is in pain.”
“No, I know. But, honey”—her face softens like butter—“we want you to find someone who will look out for you, too. Who will help you while you’re in pain. That’s what a healthy relationship is.”
I am about to raise my hackles again when I think of Nessa, in the parking lot of Mammoth Cave the first time, eyeing me worriedly when she thought I wasn’t looking. I think of her hand in mine in the darkness of the cave, thick-skinned with calluses—and, I know now, a few scars. I think of the smell of pickles in the paper bag.
I rub my hand through my hair, hoping that she didn’t notice the shift on my face. “So, between you and Dad, I guess tonight is Find Daniel a Life Partner Night?” I mean it as a joke, and I grin until she takes it as one, smiling wide.
“We want you to be happy, that’s all,” she says, and luckily, her eyes stay dry.
“I know you do,” I say, even though all I feel is overexposed.
“Okay,” she says, brushing her hands over her desk. “That’s really all I needed to talk to you about. Shall we?” She walks over and smooths down my hair.
I hold myself steady until she walks away. “Sure,” I say and follow her back into the living room.
Nessa is sitting on the couch next to my dad now, her legs coiled under her like a spring, nodding eagerly as he describes his most recent research. My mom settles into her chair across from them, folds her hands in her lap, moving her eyes between the two of them.
When I don’t sit down, Nessa swivels toward me.
“We should get going,” I say, looking only at her face, not my parents’.
“Oh,” my mom says, and the disappointment in it makes me wince. “We can fix up the guest room for Nessa, and your room’s always ready for you. You guys don’t have to leave.”
“Thanks, but we need to be back in Vermont by tomorrow,” I say.
Nessa unfurls herself and stands.
They come with us out to the front hall. My dad rests his hand on the shiny brass doorknob.
“I’ll call you guys next week,” I say, even though it’s still nowhere near our monthly check-in.
My mom’s smile is too bright to look at. My dad hugs me. “We’ll look forward to it,” he says.
Chapter Forty-Four
Nessa
As we walk into the motel, the lobby smelling of cigarette smoke and disinfectant, I try not to picture Theresa and Nick’s guest room. It probably has a fluffy down comforter worn soft and big, wide windows to let in planks of sunshine. Maybe she even arranges little soaps next to the sink, their shapes so perfect, you know you’re not supposed to use them.
I can see the tension melting away from Daniel’s shoulders as he pays for the room, so I say nothing until he slides the key card into the lock.
“They didn’t seem so bad,” I say.
He waits for the door to slam shut behind us, as if they might have followed us. “They worry too much about me. Old habits and everything.”
I can’t argue with that. After he and Theresa left, Nick spent five minutes fiddling with his beer bottle and tearing off the label before he gathered up the courage to ask how we met.
I swallowed a smile as he brushed bits of label paper and adhesive off his pants. It was less direct than his wife, but I knew he wanted the same reassurance. So I said, “Oh, you know. He was working at a farm in my hometown, and the people he was working for kept talking about how he was the best farmhand they’d ever had, so I decided I had to meet him.” I was laying it on thick, but he tapped his fingers on the cushion beside him in invitation.
I make the same motion on the stiff two-seater couch now, but Daniel starts digging around in his bag, coming up with his half-empty bottle of generic shampoo.
“You never told your parents about what you really do? About the crop circles?” I say.
“No.” He turns to me and says sharply, “Why? Did you?”
“Definitely not.” I look him in the eye so he knows I’m telling the truth. “But why haven’t you? Who are they going to tell?”
“Probably no one.” He sighs. “But the rules are clear that only the absolutely necessary people can know about our work.”
He looks pointedly at me, and I know that, strictly speaking, I’m not a necessary person. I send a quick prayer up to whoever that he never finds out I told Charlie.
“Besides,” he says, like an afterthought, “it’s weird enough for them to have a son who didn’t go to college and works on a bunch of farms. Like a step backward for the family almost. I guess they’re proud of me now, but I think if they knew what I actually do, their heads might explode.” He tips the bottle over in his hands, and the fluorescent blue shampoo glugs f
rom end to end.
“Maybe they’d find it interesting,” I say, but he snorts and shakes his head on his way to the bathroom. I wonder who I would talk to if I didn’t have my parents, or Charlie or Shawn. How long would it take before I filled entirely with pebbles, a bucket too heavy to lift?
I turn on the TV to Jeopardy reruns. As Daniel emerges from the bathroom in his pajamas, tousling a towel through his hair, Alex Trebek asks, “According to Nathaniel Hawthorne, this was Hester Prynne’s punishment.”
“What is a scarlet letter?” Daniel replies as he folds the towel in half and drapes it over the back of the fake-wood desk chair. “What?” he says when he turns and sees me staring. He grins. “I read a lot when I was a kid.”
“Just not any Anne of Green Gables,” I tease.
He flops down next to me. He spreads his arm across the back of the couch, the residual heat from the shower rising from his skin against the back of my neck. He smells faintly of mint and soap.
“Not yet,” he says, and my stomach flutters, not unpleasantly.
“Quick question,” I say, pretending it’s nothing, though the words have been pressing against my throat since we left his parents’. “Did your mom warn you to stay away from me?”
The smile drops from his face. I can almost see the cover-up forming behind his eyes, but then he changes his mind. “I told you they worry too much.”
I nod once and manage to keep myself from wobbling as I turn back to the TV. The contestants are working on Final Jeopardy, all of them bent protectively over their answers.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t blame her.”
There’s a pause while the contestants announce their wagers, chests puffed out. Then Daniel says quietly, “She doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does.”
I turn toward him, but he’s staring at the TV. Not thinking twice, not thinking at all, I rest my head against his chest. He curves his arm to fit neatly around my shoulders, and I fall asleep with his heartbeat filling my ear like the ocean in a shell.