by Erin Saldin
“Cryptic.”
“I’m an enigma.”
I laugh, relaxing into the ease of the conversation. We’ve started calling each other every day—sometimes twice a day—even if we don’t have anything to talk about.
“What are you up to?” she asks.
“Typical Friday. I have to read through some letters to the editor and pick the best ones.” I don’t think about what I’m drawing, but I can feel the pen moving in clean lines across the page. I close my eyes and keep doodling. “What about you?” I ask.
“Nada,” she says. Then her voice rises a little, and she asks, “Want to get coffee?”
Yes. Yes yes yes. I clear my throat. “Didn’t you just tell me you had three cups already this morning?” I ask.
“I could have more.”
“Well, then. Sure,” I say. Then, remembering—shit: “I mean, no.”
Ana laughs. “You’re the enigma.”
“I wish.” God, how I wish. “I just have to get this work done. Dan’s coming in an hour, and I have to have the letters ready for print.”
“Your loss,” she says, and I think about how right she is.
When I get off the phone with Ana, I look at my document for a few minutes, reading what I’ve written so far. Observations about Gold Fork. A compilation of reflections, maybe. It’s not an article. It’s not even for my graphic novel. In fact, I don’t really know what it is. But that probably doesn’t matter. I doubt Dan will ever let me publish it.
At the bottom of the last paragraph I’ve written, I type, We need them.
I close the document and open the letters to the editor. Before I dive in, I glance down at my doodle.
Turns out, it’s not Jane my hands want to draw. It’s not Jane at all.
Ana’s face stares back at me. Her hair sweeps across her chin in long, curved lines. Her eyes are bright. She’s looking straight at me, not off to the side or down, like Jane did in all of my drawings.
Not my train, Jane. Not my fucking train.
• • •
When I get home around four, Mom’s out front. Well, Mom’s feet are out front. More precisely, her feet are sticking out from under the car, which is parked at an odd angle in the driveway. She must hear my shoes on the gravel, because she scoots out on her back and says, “Oil change.”
I don’t know anyone else who changes their own oil. But that’s my mom for you. She calls it “a dying art,” like it’s on par with calligraphy or playing the pan flute. Suits up for it in a pair of coveralls straight out of a Bruce Springsteen video.
“Want any help?” I ask.
She gives me her look. It’s the equivalent of a raised-eyebrow-slash-eye-roll without really moving any part of her face. The kind of look only a minister can perfect. “What do you need?”
“Mom.” I try for indignant, and hit somewhere around apologetic.
She smiles up at me from the ground. “I’m almost done. But you could grab me a lemonade. Turns out the shade of a vehicle isn’t so useful when you’re stuck underneath one.”
“Sure.” I head in and pour her a glass. By the time I get back outside, she’s standing and dusting off her coveralls.
“Thanks.” We walk around the side of the house to our tiny deck and sit, looking out over the lake. “Summer’s almost over,” she says, sipping her drink. She glances at me, then away. “How’s work?”
“Good,” I say. “Not a ton of news.”
“Any leads on the arsonist?”
I shake my head. “Not really. Just that shoe print and the scrap of paper. Just the one word.” I look at her. “Keep a secret?”
“That’s all I do,” she says.
“ ‘Regret,’ ” I tell her. “That’s the word. No one’s supposed to know, but Mrs. Nelson let it slip.”
“Regret.” She mulls that over. “A love letter? Bad breakup?” She laughs. “Not that I have an easy time imagining the Nelsons in a steamy love triangle.”
I try to put that image out of my head as quickly as possible. “Thanks,” I say. “Let’s not go there.”
“Agreed. Anything else? At work?” She leans back in her chair and rests her feet on the deck railing.
“I mean, it’s mostly this new club. The demolition out at the Michaelson estate. That’s all anyone wants to talk about aside from the fires, so that’s what we’re covering.”
“And what do you all think of that?” I don’t look over, but I can tell she’s watching me. “You and your friends. Hasn’t that been kind of your hangout?”
I turn to look at her. “I didn’t know you knew about that,” I say carefully.
“You’d be surprised what I know.” Mom takes another sip of lemonade. “It’s got to be particularly hard on Erik.”
She’s a subtle one, my mom.
“How long’ve you known?” I ask her.
“Davis,” she says. “Plenty of people know about Erik’s dad. This is Gold Fork, after all. A secret’s only a secret until you come back to town. And Kyle . . . enough people remember when he left. A congregation talks, you know,” she says. “It’s more gossipy than a PTA meeting.”
“How’d he go?” I don’t even think Erik knows the answer to this one.
She looks at me like she’s trying to decide something. Then she says, “Quickly. He went quickly. One summer.” She does a little half smile. “The thing you might not realize—and, honey, I don’t mean just you; I mean all of you, all kids, teenagers, everywhere—is that the dramas you see playing out between yourselves . . . They don’t necessarily stop as you get older. The stakes just get higher.”
“God,” I say, “that’s exhausting to consider.” Then it occurs to me. “Does Erik’s mom know he’s back?”
“Yes.” She doesn’t even pause to consider the question.
“Oh, man.” Just thinking about Erik and his mom having dinner or something, neither one thinking the other knows—it’s like looking at an aerial photo of a village right before the bombing begins.
She puts her hand on mine. “You’re a good friend to Erik. And he’s going to need his friends.”
I think about what he and Georgie were talking about the other day. How he lost his scholarship. And I wish, for the hundredth time, that we trusted each other. “I don’t even know if he’s been getting together with his dad,” I say. “I mean, he doesn’t really talk about him. He definitely doesn’t talk to me. So, he might be fine.” But even as I say it, I know it’s bullshit.
Mom does too. “He’s going to need you,” she repeats. She glances at me, then away toward the lake. “How about other stuff? Your book, and”—meaningful pause—“other things? Anything eventful?”
“I know what you’re asking, Mom,” I say. “Real subtle.”
She laughs. “Guilty as charged.”
I should’ve expected it. The trajectory of all parental conversations ever.
So I say, “Don’t worry, Mom. Your prayers have been answered.”
“My prayers?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You know, the gambler’s prayer of parents everywhere.” I make my voice go falsetto. “Whatever you do, God, whatever it takes: Let nothing happen to my boy.” I look at her. “You should’ve stipulated that you meant nothing bad.”
She’s laughing too hard to respond at first. Then she says, “How are you my son?” She throws an arm around me and squeezes. “Love you, Moose. Love your crazy mind. And,” she adds, “someone else will too.”
“There it is.” I smile. “The parental pep.” But I feel something igniting in my chest for the first time since Jane said I wasn’t it—something hot and bright and real. Hope.
Erik, telling me that I was only writing happy endings in my graphic novel. I couldn’t believe it took me that long to figure out what it took Erik five seconds to see—that my whole book about Jane was just a fantasy.
And what a relief that was.
“Believe me or not,” my mom goes on. “I’m not worried about you.”
“People run into one another,” my mom says. “It’s inevitable.” Then she says, “Oh. Your dad had to go to work, but he left something for you. ‘Confidential,’ he says, so it must be good. Envelope in the kitchen.”
It’s on the table—a manila envelope, legal size. I pull out the contract and look at it. “Mom,” I yell through the screen door, “can I use your scanner?”
I send Ana a text. Got something for you. From what I can tell, nothing’s out of the ordinary, but who knows what she needs.
And I’d love to be the one to have something she needs.
ANA
When I get there on Saturday afternoon, Abby’s packing.
I stand in the doorway, watching her fold skirts from a pile on the bed and place them in a cardboard box. I’m clutching the printout from the document that Davis sent me yesterday. She looks up, nods at me, then continues folding.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” I say. “Where’s Vera?” Her bed is empty except for the pile of clothes, freshly made. Again the familiar panic, rising.
“On the patio, smoking with a nurse,” she says. “They’ll be back in a few.”
Thank God. “Okay,” I say. “Good.”
She straightens. Gives me an odd look. “Would you bring that box over? This one’s almost full.”
I sigh. “Fine.” I watch as she expertly pulls tape across the box she’s been working on and writes in large black marker, Boyd. Then she opens the box I’ve carried over and lays a sweater inside.
“As though she needs this many clothes,” she says. “She really wears the same four outfits—have you noticed?”
Of course I have.
“Let me know if there’s anything you want,” she continues. “Though I doubt there’s anything valuable.”
I know what I need to do. But I don’t know how to do it. What would Davis say in this situation? Georgie? Erik? Sometimes I want to bottle up my friends, shake, and drink. Just to have an ounce of what they’ve all got.
But here’s what I say instead: “I want her.”
Abby looks up. And instead of saying the thing I expect, like, Excuse me? or What do you mean? she says, “No. You don’t.”
“You asked,” I say, “and I told you. She’s what I want. She’s what’s valuable.” I walk over and take a shirt out of her hands. Carefully, I place it back on a hanger in Vera’s closet. “It wouldn’t be that hard for you to leave her again,” I say, my back to her. “It’d probably be a relief.”
“Kids,” I hear her say. “You’re all just looking for a cause. Self-righteous. I’d admire it, if it weren’t so misplaced.” She raps her knuckles against the flaps of the cardboard box. “Everyone in this town thinks they know better.” I turn around and stare, but she keeps going, her voice getting stronger, louder. “You, your friends, probably. Even the goddamn priest.”
“Wait,” I say. “What? Has Davis’s mom—” But she talks over me.
“That’s the thing about you people. You don’t have the imagination to know what the rest of our lives are like. You think we appear one day, and one day we’re gone, and the space between our arrivals is just a long pause. It’s childish, really.”
“What about you?” I ask. “We’re not set pieces, you know. Not just extras in the great film of your Big Summer Vacation.”
“Does this look like a vacation to you?” Abby grimaces. “Does this look fun?”
“It probably looked fun when you met Kyle,” I say, and watch her expression shift. Her cheeks are red, and she blinks quickly. So I’m right about this. “Your very own Dead Ender. What was it, one of those summers you helped your dad get the place cleaned up? And how long, exactly, did you consider the fact that he had a family already?” I can see the effect I’m having, but I don’t care. “Or were they just the extras you didn’t see, like stagehands? So easy to ignore.”
“You know nothing,” she says. “Nothing. I can’t believe I’m even—” She steps toward me. “How about this. Call me in ten years. Call me when you’ve gotten pregnant at some grad school party and your mother—your own mother—acts like this is all she ever expected of you.”
“I—”
“Call me when you’ve got a little kid, a new job, no friends, and you haven’t been on a date in two years.” Another step toward me, close enough I can feel her breath as she speaks. “Call me then, Ana, and tell me what you consider when you finally fall for a guy who seems to see you more clearly than you’ve ever been seen before.”
“People can justify anything,” I say, but my voice is thin. In all of this, I never stopped to consider that Abby and Kyle might have actually been in love. She was, at least. I wonder if that’s still true, or if, as she said, he only seemed to love her.
“I didn’t expect you to understand,” she says, turning back to the pile of clothes. “You don’t know anything yet.”
“I know that you need to forgive her.”
“We don’t know each other well enough to forgive.”
I ignore that. “And I know something else, too,” I say. “I know Vera better than you do.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Abby picks up a skirt, looks at it, and then tosses it on the floor.
I walk over to Abby. Stare at her until she meets my eyes. “I might not know a single ‘truth’ about Vera’s life before the Royal Pines,” I say, “but I know the truth of her life now.” I’m crying a little, but I’m not embarrassed. “She’s hurt you,” I say. “I can understand that. But if you can’t be with her now—as she is now—I don’t think you should be with her at all.”
“That’s for me to decide.” But her eyes are red, and her voice sounds husky. “I’m the one in charge here.”
“You are.” I step back, sit on Vera’s bed, place the document next to me. “And you could decide to leave her here. With me.”
“What’s that?”
“The paperwork for the sale,” I say, and raise my hand when she opens her mouth. “Doesn’t matter how I got it. I have it. And there’s something here I find really interesting.” I peel back a few pages until I get to it. “ ‘The owners are in full agreement with the terms of sale,’ ” I read. “Owners.”
She looks at me, speechless.
“What was it you told me? They never declared Kathryn dead.” I refuse to look away from her. This is my only chance. I have to be brave. “Legally, you need her signature. Oh”—another wave of my hand, dismissing the obvious objection—“I’m sure you could jump through all the hoops to have a death certificate issued. But I understand that takes time. And sellers don’t want to wait. Summer’s almost over,” I add. “Gold Fork doesn’t look nearly as promising in the off-season. Just ask Kyle.”
Her voice is a whisper. “I can’t believe you. This isn’t—” Her voice falters. “It isn’t right.”
“Sometimes the right thing doesn’t look right from the outside.”
“Using my words against me.” She walks over to the box and picks up the skirt again. It’s one I’ve seen Vera wear often: pleated blue, with satin ribbon along the hem. She folds it again and then holds it in her arms. She stares down at that skirt like it’s got all the answers. Then she looks up at me. Her voice is a graveled, angry whisper. “Get out,” she says. “Get the hell out.”
“Gladly,” I say. I open the door and step into the hallway. Before the door closes behind me, I hear her clear her throat.
“Ana,” she says. “You’re fired.” Then the door clicks shut.
GEORGIE
The Sun Rider.
That’s what I’m thinking about tonight.
Most summers, there’s a pontoon boat that drives around the lake all afternoon, selling hot dogs and slushies to the Docksides. When the sun starts to set, the hot dogs
morph into little baskets of chips and salsa, the slushies into margaritas. The woman who owns it, a hard-as-nails ski instructor named Hadley, says it’s the most lucrative idea she’s ever come up with, and she swears she thought of airport massage chairs first.
But it’s not around this summer. (Davis reported that there was a problem with the liquor license.) Instead, the only boat doing dockside deliveries is much smaller, much faster, the customer service is shit, and the concessions are way more expensive.
Nine hundred dollars to go, and it’s already August. I need every delivery to count. Now that I’m spending so much time with Henry during the day, the boat deliveries are my bread and butter.
Dodge is here, of course, sitting in the seat next to me. I wasn’t supposed to work tonight—he was going to take his old truck. But I guess he changed his mind—wanted to go on the water. Who knows why. When I asked, he gave me a flat stare and said, “Ambience.”
Trying to figure out Dodge is like trying to track a mosquito.
Not like I was doing anything. When he dropped me off after we left the Nelson cabin site the other day, Henry said he had something going on for the next few nights—something about family friends visiting—and what? I’m going to sit at home on a Saturday night with my parents and watch the news while they kind of obviously don’t speak to each other? I’d rather make money. And so far, it’s been fine. Easy. Four deliveries so far. Nothing to it.
“Last stop,” Dodge says now. “Michaelson.”
I almost stall the boat.
“Michaelson?”
“Don’t act so surprised.” He reaches into the small cooler that he keeps at his feet and pulls out a bag. I try not to watch as he pulls a smaller bag from within it and grabs a couple of pills, which he pops into his mouth. Throws his head back and swallows. “My. Cull. Son.”
I drive the boat.
When I pull up alongside the dock, I don’t see anyone at first. I tilt my head and stare up at the deck of the house, where there’s music—something familiar, though it’s far enough away that I can’t quite make it out—pumping through a set of speakers. Then I see the glass door to the house open and a few guys come out, clear enough in the glare from the lights inside. College students, it looks like, from the insignia on one guy’s baseball hat, the Greek letters on another’s T-shirt. The Greek and the third guy, tall and kind of disheveled, make their way off the deck and come down to the dock. The third guy’s got on a pair of combat boots, an old flannel. He looks different.