“God,” I breathed.
“The first few times, I avoided looking at him. I recited my story of deceit and contrition, while the people I was speaking to squirmed uncomfortably or, in some cases, got angry and cursed at me. I had many a door slammed in my face. But eventually, we came to the house of a neighbor who had shown me kindness in the past, who had a particular fondness for Archie, and I found I could not meet the sympathy in her eyes, so my gaze slid away, and landed on my father.”
Wilson laughed, harshly. “I have never seen such avidness, such naked enjoyment. He was eating it up, savoring every second of my humiliation. Oh, what fun he was having. And I understood, as I never had before, that the man hated me as he hated nothing else on earth. I knew that, as long as he had power over me, he would use it to try to destroy me.”
Wilson made a disgusted sound. “That sounds melodramatic, like something out of a bad play, but it happens also to be true. In addition, when I next went to school, my father came and had me stand before the entire student body at our morning assembly and confess. Later, there was even another article in the paper about the local boy who killed his dog and lied.”
No wonder, I thought. No wonder Wilson cut himself off from that monster and that town. But poor Barbara.
“Naturally, I went from being merely unpopular to universally reviled.”
“But you did it out of love!” said Willow.
Wilson gave an ironic smile. “A fact everyone found easy to overlook. Children hissed puppy killer when they passed me in the hallway. Once, someone chalked the words onto the sidewalk in front of my house.”
“Barbara didn’t overlook it, though,” I said. “She knew.”
Wilson softened, just the tiniest bit. “I suppose she did. She never blamed me openly, anyway. So I left as soon as I could, and I put that place and those people behind me. Very successfully, I might add. I rose above the gray twilight of my childhood. I emerged unscathed. I triumphed.”
He really thought that. He thought he’d emerged unscathed. Wilson, with his bad heart and his two estranged children and his precious second daughter whom he’d practically put in a cage in order to keep safe. It knocked the wind out of me, that he thought he’d triumphed.
“I think that’s enough for tonight,” said Caro, firmly. “It’s been a long day.”
She stood as Wilson got to his feet, and then she pulled him into an embrace, and he allowed it, right there in front of all of us. I saw Marcus look away.
After they left, Marcus said, “Yeah, his dad was a monster, but it doesn’t excuse him for all those years of coming up short and cutting people off and being a shitty father.”
“Marcus,” I said, with a worried glance at Willow.
“It’s all right,” said Willow, blandly. She looked exhausted, hollow around the cheeks and eyes.
We sat in silence, until Caro came back. She sat down next to Willow and took her in her arms, and Willow nestled against her. “Now you know,” she said, looking at me and Marcus.
I said, “Yes, we know. And my heart breaks for the kid Wilson was. Marcus was right, though. This thing that happened to Wilson was bad and his father was a rotten guy, but it doesn’t explain away who he became. It’s just not enough. You don’t fail to love your family because of something that happened so long ago.”
“But maybe it never ended for him,” said Willow, pulling away from her mother, “because he never told anyone. If you never share the worst thing you’ve ever done with a single person, if you just carry it all by yourself, maybe it comes between you and everyone you meet, even if it’s years later.”
Willow’s eyes found mine, and I understood that she was thinking of Mr. Insley.
“I don’t know,” said Marcus, “if I buy that. People get over worse things all the time. Wars. Beatings.”
“I don’t know either, for sure,” said Caro. “But I do know that he told me this the day he learned I was pregnant with Willow, and after that he was closer to me. And when she was born, he let himself love her. He has always loved her so much, not perfectly, of course, but so very much.”
“Not us, though,” I said. I hated sounding so petty, especially when I didn’t even feel very angry, but tonight was a night for truth telling. “I can believe that telling you that story allowed Wilson to love Willow, and I’m glad for her sake, but we were still here. We were eighteen years old. He could’ve loved us, and even Marcus might have let him, but he didn’t even try.”
“His loss,” said Marcus. He was being flippant, and although he’d said it hundreds of times before, I understood that it was true. We were Wilson’s loss, his great, great loss, bigger than the death of Archie, and he would probably die without ever feeling the enormity of what he had missed.
“He brought you here, though,” said Willow, my clear-eyed little sister. “He let me have the chance to love you and you the chance to love me. Maybe he did that for us on purpose, to make old wrongs right.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that his inviting me here had all been for her. I’d been the hired help, the life coach. But it came to me that there was just the smallest sliver of a possibility that Willow was right, that Wilson’s heart was more complicated than I knew, more complicated than he knew himself. Probably not, but I decided not to shoot the possibility down. I would let it hang there, that almost-nonexistent possibility, thin as a new moon. It wasn’t hope, thank God. I’d had enough of that. It would never be bright enough to light my way, but I could leave it there. I could let it be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Willow
The boy on the block is nervous and the color of honey.
Not nervous but so ready he vibrates with readiness, ready in his arms, ready in his back, ready in his jaw.
The boy on the block is the color of honey and ready.
He folds fast, clenched chest to thighs, hands holding on, holding on, holding on.
The boy on the block is still with the stillness of soon, of verge, of any-second.
And, now, oh, now, the boy is all burst, and is, and yes.
He is stretched and flying, more air-like than the air.
He gives himself over to water, and the water receives him.
He is one long, winged pulse that beats out a song about wings and water and onward and fast.
The boy in the water is breathless.
No, I am the one who is breathless.
I love the boy on the block, in the air, in the water.
I am the one who is nervous, clenched, winged, who is the block in his hands, the air he slices, the water that gives itself over to him.
I am the one who receives him.
I am breathless, breathless, and I want to do it again.
It turns out that there is a lot of time at a swim meet when the swimmer you came to watch isn’t swimming, so I wrote this poem on my smartphone. That’s right: I, Willow Cleary, wrote a poem about my boyfriend on my smartphone at my boyfriend’s swim meet. Almost too much history making for a single historical marker, even an imaginary one! It didn’t start out as a poem. I was just fiddling, writing down thoughts, but soon, the words started to lace up and tighten like a corset, so that what I ended up with, even though it didn’t have rhyme or meter like most poems I’d read, struck me as positively poem shaped. I realized it wasn’t brilliant, which, since I don’t fancy myself a poet, was just fine. I also realized, only after I’d finished, that it could be seen as having a little live wire of sexual desire running through it, which wasn’t so very shocking to me since so did I, whenever Luka was nearby. But, honest to goodness, I wasn’t thinking about that when I wrote it. I was thinking instead about how shatteringly nerve-racking it is to watch someone you love be all alone out there in front of a crowd of people doing something hard. Luka’s mother, who sat with me during the second half of the meet, once she had finished her stint as a volunteer timer, agreed.
“I swim with him. It cracks my husband up,” she said, l
aughing. “Just watch at his next race.”
And she did swim: a sort of chicken pecking move for breaststroke, a rolling shoulders dance for freestyle, a reverse rolling shoulders dance for backstroke, and, oh gosh, every stroke of butterfly took her clean out of her seat. When Luka won, which he did twice, his elegant mother fist-pumped the air and hooted.
It was two days after what Taisy called our doozy of a Thanksgiving. When I had walked Luka to his car that night, I’d handed him a container full of leftover pie and said, wearily, “You must think we’re all crazy,” and he laughed and said, “No more than most families. Okay, maybe a little.” And then he kissed me and leaned his forehead against mine and said, “I’m glad I was there if you’re glad I was there,” to which I could only say, “I thank my stars for you, Luka Bailey-Song,” and that made him laugh again.
Because Luka had had to arrive at the pool at the crack of dawn, Taisy had driven me to the meet, which was nearly two hours away in New Jersey, but Luka was to drive me home. His mother and I waited for him outside of the locker room, and when he emerged in his sweatshirt, a giant pack slung over one shoulder, his damp hair in full hedgehog, I wanted to slow time down just to watch him walk toward me and toward me and toward me.
“Has he warned you about his car?” said his mother.
“I think I rode in it already, to the dance.”
Luka and his mother exchanged amused glances.
“That was my husband’s car. Luka’s car is a health hazard, a science experiment, a graveyard for banana peels. It’s like the Amazon rain forest; anything could be in there.”
“She won’t even ride in it,” Luka told me, grinning. “No one will. But I bet you’re game, aren’t you, Cleary?”
“Are we talking about bugs and mice?” I said, gravely. “Because I draw the line at vermin.”
“No vermin, I swear,” said Luka.
His mother raised her eyebrows at me. “If not, it’s only a matter of time.”
In the car, I told Luka a nutshell version of the Archie story and of my twisted, black-souled grandfather, and of how my father had left it all—and his little sister—behind. As soon as I finished, Luka said, “That must have been hard to hear. Are you all right?”
“Oh, Luka,” I said with a flutter in my voice, and I leaned over to kiss his cheek.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“I tell you a grim and sordid tale, and you don’t express shock or ask so much as a single question. You only want to know if I’m all right, as though that were the first thought you had.” I remembered something. “You know, Taisy did the same thing when she picked me up from the side of the road after the fire. There I was in the dark on an unknown street, reeking of smoke and covered with dirt and leaves from the ridiculous ditch I’d just been lying in, after having called her from clean out of the blue, and all she said was, ‘Just tell me whether you’re hurt or not. You don’t have to say anything else.’ What kind of person does that?”
Luka shrugged. “Sorry. Not to take anything away from Taisy—or me—but I don’t really see the big deal.”
“See? You’re so nice you don’t even know you’re so nice.”
Luka dipped his head the way he did when he was embarrassed, and said, “Okay, so anyway, if you want to talk more about it, that’s cool.”
“I don’t really, not right now. I’d rather talk about your swimming.”
At this, Luka relaxed, visibly. He shot me a sly look and said, “You like the swimming thing, don’t you? We don’t get a lot of that, not like football players. Girls who are turned on by swimmers are a rare breed. It’s the goggles, isn’t it?”
I laughed.
“This is good to know,” said Luka, thoughtfully, nodding. “A little something to keep in my back pocket.”
I sniffed. “What I was going to say is that I found it nearly unbearable to watch you.”
“Ha! Liar. You think I’m beautiful when I swim, remember?”
“When I watched you swim in the natatorium by yourself, I thought you were beautiful,” I corrected him. “When I watched you swim today, I thought you looked as alone and vulnerable as a lost baby seal on an ice floe.”
“Great,” said Luka. “I’m so glad I invited you.”
“Seriously, doesn’t it make you dreadfully nervous?”
Luka smiled. “Well, I don’t know about dreadfully, but sure. Pretty much as soon as I’m in the water, I forget about it, but I’m definitely jittery behind the block.”
I picked up his hand. “It was all I could do not to jump in and hold on to you while you swam, just to keep you company.”
“Next time, you should,” he said. “I mean, there’d be a little more drag than usual with you on my back, but I wouldn’t mind.”
Joy welled up in me and it must have shown on my face because Luka said, “What?”
“My two new favorite words,” I told him.
“‘More drag’?”
“‘Next time.’”
LUKA HAD A TREE HOUSE.
We were talking about the favorite places we’d had as children. Mine were the little white tent that used to be in my room and my kitchen table. Luka’s was the pool (any pool, apparently), his kitchen table, and his tree house.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that you had a tree house?” I demanded.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that you had a little white tent?” he said.
“Really, though. I have pined for a tree house since I was eight. My father thought they were too dangerous.”
“My dad, Jackson, and I built it in the woods behind our house. I think I was eight, too. Jacks and I went out the other day, just to see if it was still there, and it was. I figured it would be. My dad’s an engineer. He can get a little carried away with stuff like that.”
I clutched Luka’s arm. “Luka, can we go there? Right now?”
“Really?”
“Please, please, please!”
“Just to clarify: it’s not fancy. It’s not like one of those hobbit house things up in the trees with a chimney and window boxes. ‘Tree house’ might have been an overstatement, actually. It’s more of a fort.”
“Is it in a tree? And can you go inside it?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Can we go? Oh, gosh, when I was little, I always imagined I’d go to a friend’s house one day, and there would be a tree house, and we’d play in it, but then I never had a friend. Until you.”
“Pulling out all the stops, huh? Isn’t it kind of cold for a shivery person like you?”
“No.”
“Is this just a ploy to get me alone?”
“I always want to be alone with you; it doesn’t have to be in a special place.”
“Good answer.”
“I just want to be in a tree house. That’s all I want.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” said Luka, and he didn’t say it the way you say something that people just say; he said it like he was thinking about the words, as though he really, truly meant them.
WHEN WE GOT TO Luka’s house, I said, “I want to meet Jackson; I honestly do. But can we please go straight to the tree house, first? It will be dusk soon, and I want to see the view.”
“You’re funny,” said Luka, kissing me on the forehead. “A tree house: who would have guessed? Listen, though, there’s an old blanket in the back of the car; let me just get it so you won’t freeze.”
“No!” I said, opening my car door. “Let’s just go.”
But as we were walking toward the backyard, the sun disappeared behind a cloud, and I shivered.
“I’m getting the blanket,” said Luka.
“I’ll get it,” I said, grinning at him. “I’m faster! And I want to see that tree house.”
I dashed to the car and opened the trunk. In one corner of it was a wool blanket in black watch plaid.
“Willow,” said Luka, running up behind me. “Wait.”
“I found it,” I said.
I yanked the blanket, but it was stuck on something that was lying underneath it.
“Willow,” said Luka, again, from a few feet away.
I detached the blanket and slung it over my arm. I saw that the object it had been covering was a big plastic container with a black sprayer hooked to it and a handle on top of it. The blanket had been caught on the handle. I was about to reach up to shut the trunk, when I noticed the label on the container: “Roundup Weed and Grass Killer.”
Grass killer. Grass killer. My breath caught in my chest. It’s probably nothing, I told myself. It’s probably for something else altogether. But when I turned and saw Luka’s face, I knew it wasn’t nothing. He took a step toward me, the boy I loved, but I leaned backward and pulled the blanket to my chest.
“You?” I said.
There was panic in his eyes, the eyes I loved. A crumbling started inside me, the first, loose, tumbling stones before a landslide.
“No!” He ran his hand that I loved through the hair that I loved. I felt as though I were watching everything about him and every move he made for the very last time. “I mean, it’s not what you think.”
He started to say something else, but I lifted my hand to make him stop. I found I couldn’t make my breathing be normal. “Luka, did you put the ‘16’ in Mr. Insley’s lawn?”
He didn’t even need to answer. Guilt marked his face like a stain. But he did answer, the boy who never lied, “Yes.”
The rocks tumbled and tumbled, gathering speed.
“Oh, no,” I said, hugging the blanket to me. “Oh, no. It was all you.”
Luka reached out and held me gently by the shoulders. “No.”
“The night of the dance? When I told you the story, you didn’t say a word. You let me go on and on about who might have sent all those messages.”
“I was going to tell you,” he said, bending in so that his face was level with mine. “I swear. I just couldn’t figure out how to tell you without—” He broke off.
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