The People We Choose

by Katelyn Detweiler

  I can’t help it—I feel myself soar up above this porch at those words. The sky today is an electric bright blue, the kind of sky that makes you believe in all the best things. I should want Marlow to be home, to be happy. But what if Green Woods could be that place?

  “Has it been decided? Are you leaving?”

  She shakes her head. Takes another bar and jams it in her mouth.

  “School starts soon,” I say, stating the obvious.

  “Dad wants to give it more time. Mom wants to leave.” She shrugs, swallowing her last bite and putting the plate down on the porch railing. “Mom usually wins, though she never really wins, you know?”

  I nod. It breaks my heart for Joanie. For Marlow and Max. For all of them. Being a family shouldn’t have to be about winners and losers.

  “What do you think we should do?” she asks, and I am so startled by the question that I slam the back of the rocking chair against the wall of the house.

  Every part of me wants to say: Stay. Stay here with me. I want to know you.

  Is that purely selfish, though?

  Or is that maybe the best thing for Marlow, too? And for Max, even if he’s not able to accept it yet?

  Maybe we need this chance to know each other. To exist in one another’s lives.

  Maybe this whole awful summer happened for a very good reason.

  It’s not what Elliot signed up for when he chose to be a donor. It’s not what my moms signed up for either. I realize that. This isn’t traditional. But then again, who gets to define what’s traditional about any of this?

  “I want you to be happy,” I say, because Marlow is staring at me and I have to say something. And I could stop there. I should, probably. But then: “I really like being your neighbor, though. I like sitting on the porch with you right now.”

  “Yeah?” she asks, her perfect eyebrows—far more perfect than mine have ever looked in my life—lifting up in surprise. And then she smiles, and it is the most real smile I’ve ever seen on her face. “I like sitting here, too.”

  My heart is so full and whole in this moment, I can almost forget how badly it was just broken. The pieces are finding their way back together, even if they’re forming a new and different shape. “After all, I could learn a lot from you. Like how to pluck my eyebrows for one. Your arch is pretty impressive.”

  She laughs. “Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t you supposed to be the one teaching me things?”

  “We can teach each other, I guess. You teach me to pluck and contour, and I’ll teach you how to light a fire and make lemon bars.”

  “Hm. Less interested in starting a fire like a Girl Scout, more interested in making myself baked goods.” She puts her finger to her chin, like she is solemnly deliberating. “I’m desperate for food,” she says, “so you have a deal.”

  “Deal.” I grin at her.

  “It’s weird, but I think your smile kind of looks a little like mine,” she says, studying me with squinted eyes.

  “That is weird, isn’t it? But maybe a good weird.”

  “Good weird,” she repeats, trying it out. “Yeah. Maybe this whole thing is good weird.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  I don’t sleep much that night.

  I’m too busy thinking, plotting, planning.

  The idea came on fast—it struck me like a lightning bolt as I’d sat on the porch, watching Marlow walk back to her side of the woods. Thinking about how I wanted more time. I wanted to have that eyebrow tutorial, bake those lemon bars together.

  What if we could actually make that old house feel like a home?

  I don’t know the first thing about fixing up a building. But we start small: make one room better. The living room. Peel off the ancient wallpaper, paint the walls fresh, some bright, airy color. Order a new windowpane. Polish the carved mantel. Refinish the floors. Make the living room feel like a room where people actually want to live.

  The sun is only starting to rise, dapples of pink smudging the sky above my bed, but I’m already wide awake. I dress in my ripped overalls I reserve for gardening and a pair of old scuffed boots and head down to the kitchen for coffee.

  “What are you doing up so early?” Mama asks, eyes half closed as she sits at the table sipping her coffee. “And looking remarkably perky, too.”

  “I have a plan,” I say, pouring a generous amount of coffee into an oversized Hot Mama Flow mug. More bowl than cup. “A terrible plan, maybe—I’m not sure yet. But a plan.”

  “Oh? Care to enlighten me?”

  “I want to help fix up the Jackson house. And I want Marlow—and Max—to stay in Green Woods. I think Marlow wants to stay, too.” And then there’s Max. Who’s told me he doesn’t want to talk to me again. Multiple times. But this isn’t all about him. And deep down, I’m hoping that the Max I knew finds his way back—that some time and space has given him more perspective. More acceptance. Either way, I can’t worry about it until I try, or I’ll lose all nerve. If he chooses to reject this last olive branch, it’ll be his loss. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have my chance to know Marlow.

  “Calliope—” Mama starts, her voice sounding annoyingly uncertain, and I wave her off.

  “Mama. She wants to know me. And I want to know her. Why would life bring them back to that sad house if we weren’t supposed to be in each other’s lives?”

  She sighs. Swigs more coffee. Sighs again. “I don’t know, honey, but I think that’s for them to figure out, don’t you? As a family. It’s already complicated enough for them, I’m sure. And I don’t want to see you get hurt. You’ve been through enough.”

  “All I’m trying to do is help them make that depressing house feel a little more like an actual home. Maybe they’ll still leave. That’s up to them. Or maybe they’ll decide to stick it out. At least for Max’s senior year. I don’t know, but I want to do something.”

  “Are you doing this for yourself? Or for them?”

  I gulp a steady stream of coffee, considering. “Both. Is that so terrible?”

  Mama shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “I want you to listen to your heart, my baby girl. And if that’s leading you to this? Well, then, you go over there and try. And you let me and Mimmy know if you need any help. We are here for you. Always.”

  “I will,” I say, putting my empty mug in the sink. “For now, though, wish me luck.”

  The clerk at the local hardware store is friendly to me, in a curious, amused kind of way. Like a grandfather telling his granddaughter how to tie her shoes for the first time. I’m his morning entertainment.

  I end up spending a few weeks’ worth of my summer earnings at the studio to leave fully stocked with supplies he says I’ll need: plastic sheets and tape, a spatula and knife, sanding paper and sponges, primer, brushes, paint. Picking the paint was the hardest part of the process. I ended up making a decision based solely on the name: Hope Springs Eternal, a light, crystal blue, like water fresh from a winding forest stream.

  The anxiety hits as I turn onto our road. I take deep breaths, look up at the bright, cloudless sky. I think about Marlow’s smile. Deal.

  I pull down their driveway, park the car.

  He’s there, sitting on the bottom porch step, the most secure one.

  Max.

  There’s no turning back now. He’s seen me.

  I grab the bags from the passenger seat, heavy with supplies, and get out of the car.

  His hand is shielding his eyes, like he’s not sure if the sun is playing tricks on him, or if I’m actually here, walking toward him with my hands full of white plastic mystery bags.

  “Hey,” I say, dropping the bags on the patchy brown grass in front of the porch. I sit down on the step next to him.

  “Hey.”

  I’m not ready to look at him. It’s hard to say if he’s looking at me.

  I should have practiced this part. Rehearsed. I had plenty of time, lying awake in bed all night, researching ways to strip wallpaper off old plaster walls. I was too f
ixated on the practical side of this grand plan, not enough on the emotional.

  “‘Rowman’s Hardware,’” he reads from the side of the bag. “What’s in there?”

  “I thought we could… fix up the house a little.” I turn to face Max, but he’s still staring down at the bags. “Make a dent, anyway. I bought stuff to strip wallpaper and paint the walls. I figured we could maybe start with the living room? That is—only if you and Marlow want to. And if your parents say it’s okay. I just thought—”

  I don’t remember what I thought. Max is looking up at me now and his eyes are endlessly deep brown pools that give nothing away. I had thought I knew him so well. There was so much to learn, though. There is so much to learn.

  “Maybe it’s a stupid, insensitive idea,” I say, babbling to fill the gaping space between us, “and it is stupid, isn’t it? But I know you’re thinking about moving away. And I just thought that maybe if the house could feel more like a home, you would all stay. At least for now. But it’s not my business, and I’m probably majorly intruding. I just—”

  “You what?” he asks, and his face is so damn blank it makes me want to scream.

  “I just don’t want you to go, okay?” I stand up, because there is too much happening inside me to stay still, too much nervous energy. I walk in circles along the lumpy overgrown hedges. “For some silly reason I’m still fighting for us, even if you’ve given up. What happened and how it went down sucks, yes, a thousand percent. But the connection we had—it was real, wasn’t it? I want more time to figure out a friendship. And I want that with Marlow, too. I really want that. If you leave—if you leave, I’m afraid I might never see either of you again.”

  I finish talking, but I keep pacing. Waiting.

  After a few minutes, I start to wonder if I’m waiting for nothing. Maybe silence is the last thing I’ll hear from Max. He really is incapable of dealing with this. Us.

  But then he stands up, too. I stop to watch him as he picks up the bags, one by one. There’s a pause, and I think maybe he’s going to hurl them into the woods.

  “Okay,” he says finally. “Let’s do this. If Marlow puts on scrubs and helps, too. She doesn’t get to stay clean if I’m scraping down filthy old walls.”

  “Really?” I ask, too stunned to follow him as he starts up the stairs.

  “Really. My goodbyes don’t seem to work with you anyway. And I’m glad about that.” He stops on the top step and turns back to face me. “Marlow told me, by the way. That she’s talked to you.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t asked her this—if he knew.

  “I didn’t love it when she first told me. I wanted to, I don’t know, protect her somehow. From all the baggage. But she seemed happy about it. About you. Happier than I’ve seen her since we left Philly, to be honest.”

  “Really?” My heart ticks faster. “Did she say that?”

  “No, but she didn’t have to. I can see it. And she asked my parents if we could stay. I’m pretty sure that’s about you.”

  “I wasn’t trying to meddle,” I say, even though I’m glad I did, if that’s what it was, my conversations with Marlow.

  “I know.”

  I lift an eyebrow. “Do you? It didn’t seem like that. After our last conversation.”

  He sighs and drops the bags on the porch. “I’m sorry, Calliope. I really am. That wasn’t my finest moment. As a matter of fact, none of our last few discussions have been. There’s a lot to be sorry about. I was angry, yeah. And sad and horrified and shocked and disgusted and, oh you know, everything. Pretty much every emotion in the book. But I shouldn’t have taken that out on you. You were right—none of this was anybody’s fault. And there’s nothing I can do to punish the universe, so I guess that’s that? Time to move past it all and see what’s next.”

  “Just like that?” I ask, so much hope filling me up I feel woozy. Maybe he took a long time to get to this place. Too long. But he’s here now. That’s not nothing.

  He nods. “Yep. Just like that. If you can forgive me, that is. Because it should have been me, making this kind of grand gesture. I should have come to you.”

  “You’re not wrong,” I say, and I can’t fight the smile breaking out on my lips. “But if you stay, you’ll have plenty of time to make up for it.”

  “Then come on,” he says, reaching down to pick up the bags. “I’ve got some serious work to do.”

  The three of us peel and scrape and sand and patch up scrapes and dents.

  Joanie watches silently, her mouth a thin, unreadable line.

  I don’t notice at first when Elliot comes in. But I turn to get fresh sandpaper, and there he is, standing next to Joanie with an arm draped loosely around her shoulders. She’s angled away from him, their bodies making minimal contact.

  They both disappear then, up the stairs, and we keep going. We only take a break to microwave frozen burritos and popcorn and spoon some ice cream into bowls, bringing it all back to the living room to eat as we work.

  And then suddenly Elliot is here again, too, in faded jeans with holes in the knees, measuring the pane of the cracked window, climbing a ladder to tinker with the broken overhead light.

  None of us say anything, but no words are necessary.

  We work until the sun goes down and the room is too dim to see what we’re doing. Elliot orders a pizza, and the five of us eat outside on the porch, sitting on the drooping wooden planks.

  Good weird, I think, looking around me: these people, this house, our woods.

  Good weird.

  I come back bright and early the next day to start painting.

  Joanie is in the living room when I get there, draping the sofa in a clear plastic tarp. The rest of the furniture is already covered.

  “Your moms called last night,” she says matter-of-factly, and I nod, dazed but reluctant to ask more and disturb whatever fragile new peace this is.

  But I don’t have to wonder for long, because soon Mama and Mimmy are on the porch, a wheelbarrow full of gardening tools between them. Joanie goes out to greet them, and I watch from the window as she points to the hedges and mounds of weeds and dirt that had maybe been a flower bed once upon a time.

  Max and Marlow paint alongside me. Elliot makes lists of what needs to be done—lists that I think he’ll actually make use of this time.

  Because he apologizes to Joanie and Max and Marlow as I paint silently in the background, slow, careful strokes. “I should have done this in June. I’m sorry I’ve been so distant. Negligent. This house. The memories. But we had some happy times, too, while I was growing up. And I want it to feel happy again. That’s why I could never bring myself to sell it after Dad died. This place—it’s a part of me. For better and for worse. Hopefully more better from here on out. The three of you deserve so much better. You always have. And I’m sorry it took almost losing you to get me on the right track.”

  They all cry then, Elliot especially. I stay in my corner, turn my head away as I brush away my own tears.

  This isn’t my home. I know that.

  They are the Jacksons. The Martzes. I’m not. That won’t ever change.

  But in this moment, here and now?

  We feel like one big messy family.

  Blood. Not blood.

  Family.

  Chapter Twenty

  “LET’S go out,” Marlow says to me and Max on Sunday evening, like it’s that simple. The three of us—one Jackson, one Martz, one Silversmith—venturing anywhere beyond these woods. “I never leave this damn house. Ever.”

  Max starts to shush her for cursing, but she waves him off. “Seriously, I feel like I’m tripping from all these paint fumes. Take me somewhere. Anywhere. I’m begging you guys.”

  It’s been three days—three very long days—of working on the house. The living room at least is finished. Our job is done. Professionals, thank god, will work on the rest, now that we’ve made our point to Elliot and Joanie.

  “Where would we go?” I ask. I start to undo the
old button-up shirt I’ve used for a painting smock, and every last muscle in my neck and back screams at me to stop moving. “I’d have to shower and change before getting in a car. Unless you want some paint stains to mark up that sweet green dream machine of yours.”

  Max smiles at that. I hoped he would. “That’s not a terrible idea. Just another story to add to all the dents and scrapes.”

  It’s decided then.

  Five minutes later we’re all in his car. Marlow hopped in the back first, leaving the passenger seat for me.

  Max puts the windows down as we drive, letting the smell of paint diffuse out with the cool breeze. “Am I driving somewhere in particular?” He looks over at me. I shake my head, look back at Marlow. It’s her turn to call the shots.

  “Do you have anything but pizza around here?” she asks, making a gagging face. “I never thought I’d say it, but I’ll puke my guts out if I eat pizza again tonight. Mom has that Mario’s place saved as a favorite on her contacts list. She needs more options.”

  “One Chinese restaurant. And grocery stores. Fast food, too, but I draw the line there. That’ll make me puke my guts out.”

  “Okay. Chinese then. To go.”

  “To go where?”

  “I want that neighborhood tour you gave Max when we first got here. Show me that pretty view on the hill he kept going on and on about.”

  I steel myself and wait for the sadness to hit—thinking about that first day exploring with Max, the beginning of everything.

  But it doesn’t come.

  I don’t feel sad.

  Instead I feel grateful to be going back there. With both of them this time, Max and Marlow. It should have been that way the first time, too—we should have included her.

  “Sure. I can do that. If it’s okay with you, Max?”

  I glance over at him as he drives. He thumps his fingers on the wheel, nods slowly. “I don’t see why not.”

  Max parks the car on Main Street a few minutes later, and the three of us make our way into the Golden Bowl. It’s a tiny place, a few small, sticky-looking tables that no one ever really uses. But it’s crowded at the counter with other customers ordering takeout. I recognize a few of the faces. From the studio, school, everywhere in Green Woods, really, because that’s how it is in a small town.