by CD Reiss
When I told myself the truth—that no matter how much I wanted to be with him every second, the odds were bad for a reason—I pulled away.
“You’re going to wait here, right?” I asked.
“Yes.” His arms relaxed and fell away.
“I love you,” I said, stepping back until I could see all of him.
“I love you too. Always.”
Not another word. Not another kiss or breath. Not another sight.
He’d forever be in the back of my family cemetery with his hands reaching for me and his lips claiming an eternity he didn’t own.
I ran to the house without looking back.
* * *
I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t hear him leave and I didn’t check.
In the morning, the back of my great-grandfather’s headstone had a crude picture of an animal with wings and message scratched into it.
Not even winged monkeys
Not even.
Part II
Chapter 18
CHRIS
Dear Chris,
Your letter came as a surprise. It’s wonderful to hear from you after all these years. How they’ve flown by!
I’d arranged for Lance to be buried on Friday morning. The body had been transferred. The plot purchased. A little stone tablet would say Lancelot Carmichael, Brave Knight. Marked territory in Barrington and New York City, 2004-2017.
Just because Catherine didn’t want me wasn’t enough reason to insult Lance’s memory. And maybe I’d find a reason to knock on her door and see if she was home.
I flew into the landing strip outside town and took a cab into Doverton, where the club had a car for me. I didn’t tell the driver who I was or why I was there, sure that I was as anonymous as I’d always been. My life in Barrington had been in the shadows, behind hedges, forgotten and never known by anyone but the girl in the tree. The girl on my lips. Catherine of the Roses.
As we passed Barrington, I saw the roofline of the factory her father had owned. Nothing new had popped up. No new businesses or signs. Exactly the same.
I could have asked the driver to make the turn onto the factory service road. I could have walked over the bridge to her house or pulled right up to her front door.
* * *
I am so sorry to hear about Lance. I think burying him at home is the right thing. I know Joan buried Galahad on Wild Horse Hill. You should get a space nearby.
* * *
The letter was so cold I could feel her effort to contain herself inside the page. I thought about why and knew it wasn’t anything as simple as another man. If there was someone, she’d invite me to dinner with him and we’d reminisce about everything but the way she gave me her body. There was more to it, and it was obvious. I’d written to her until I stopped. Those letters might have meant something to her, and I’d stopped because I needed a response she might not have been able to give. I’d abandoned her. I had no right to her. She wasn’t obligated to save me from a meaningless life I hated.
* * *
Though it would be great to see you, I’ll be unavailable while you’re here.
* * *
She was unequivocal, and she had me dead to rights. It had taken me four years to get out of the gutter and another two to make real money. I could have come to her a hundred times, but it was never enough. I was nursing some old wound where I wasn’t good enough. Never good enough.
So there I was. Not good enough because I’d waited too long to be good enough.
She was right there, over that little crest of land, behind the factory that had closed eleven years before.
Not waiting. I should have known. Why would she wait? It wasn’t long after I left that she started dating Frank Marshall, the best-dressed kid in our grade. I should have given up on her then, but I couldn’t.
I could go see her. Nothing was stopping me. She could tell me she didn’t want me to my face. She owed me that.
She didn’t.
Since Lance had been from Johnny’s litter, I left him a message with the details. I didn’t know if he’d even remember me.
The roses were being trimmed outside the club’s café. An older man with a floppy hat covering his brown skin was doing an efficient and more than adequate job of it. I went in for an early dinner and took a table overlooking the bushes. A few flowers braved the autumn temperatures. Even through the glass, I could hear the pock pock of tennis balls.
I was a paper cutout of a sixteen-year-old boy, sloppily taped onto the page of his life thirteen years later. Or maybe I was the hedge fund manager tripping into the scene of a play he’d starred in as a boy.
“Chris Carmichael?” A woman in a navy suit stood over me with my Coke. She put it in front of me and folded her hands in front of her. She had a blond bob and fresh red lipstick. She looked nothing like the girl I’d known when I worked the grounds, but I recognized her anyway.
“Marsha!” I stood and shook her hand. She pulled me forward and embraced me. I pulled out a chair for her, and she sat. “I didn’t think anyone would recognize me.”
“Well, I didn’t exactly,” she said. “I saw your name in the registration log.”
“Really?”
“I’m part owner here now, so I check it daily to make sure everything’s taken care of. I couldn’t believe it when I saw your name. How far you’ve come from biking all the way here from Barrington!”
“Yeah, and you.” I indicated the breadth of the club. “Part owner?”
She waved it away. “It was invest in something or starve.”
When we were kids, I’d thought people like Marsha had infinite resources, but as a man, I learned better. Anything could be lost.
“Good investment then.”
She put her elbows on the table and leaned over her folded hands. “What brings you back?”
I’d come for two reasons, and both sounded ridiculous when repeated.
“My dog died. He was born here, so I figured I’d bury him here. Up at Wild Horse Hill.”
“Aw, I’m so sorry.” Her eyes flicked to my left hand. She was looking for a ring. I saw hers. The diamond was the size of a gumball. “My daughter buried her bunny up there.”
“You have children?”
“Two by my first husband. Mattie and Oliver. You have any?”
“No.” The shortness of the answer begged for clarification. I had nothing to lose by making conversation, except time. “Never got around to finding the right woman.”
She laughed a derisive little laugh. “Had mine with the wrong man, but they turned out all right.” She slid open her phone. “You remember Mitch Whitney?”
“That asshole?”
He wasn’t an asshole. He was a solid guy who’d laugh at being called that.
“He’s my second husband, and the right one. Charles…you remember him?”
I nodded. He was a real asshole.
“He knocked me up in that pool house right over there.” She pointed out the window. The pool house wasn’t visible past the courts, but we both knew where it was. She handed me her phone. The wallpaper was of a family on a boat with fishing poles cutting the sky behind them. Her, a man our age, and two kids. “Figured what the hell, right? Well, he was an a-hole all right. Wouldn’t marry me. Said our son wasn’t his up until the last minute. Took me five years to leave him, and his family made it hard. But I got out.”
“And is this the new Mr. Marsha?”
Her face lit up like a Christmas tree, as if I’d brought up her favorite subject. I handed back her phone. “I met him and it was, like, I don’t know. You ever play piano?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t know how else to describe it, so you’re going to have to live with it. You fight the metronome and then you get to this point where you feel the rhythm. And it’s easy. The song flows through you like it’s already there. That was what it was like the minute I laid eyes on Mitch. But you don’t play music, so you don’t know what that’s all about.”
“No, actually, I do.”
“You play something else?”
“No. But do you remember Catherine Barrington?”
“I do.”
It was too much to speak about. She’d nod sadly at my loss or we’d laugh about it.
“How is she?” I asked, sticking to the subject while I pretended to change it.
“Still living in that old house. Her dad closed the factory and died, I don’t know, maybe ten and change years ago? Their mother took off and left those girls.”
“What?” I had known the factory closed, but not the ugly personal details.
Marsha nodded. “The girls were of age and they had trust funds, but still. It was a tragedy. Catherine’s like a saint now. Selling everything to keep the people in that town afloat.”
Her letter got taut in my pocket, stretching the fabric to let me know it was there.
* * *
Please accept my condolences.
Sincerely,
Catherine
* * *
She’d needed me, and I’d let her down. I wasn’t worthy of her or a warm welcome.
“It’s her birthday, did you know?” Marsha said.
Did I? I knew it was in autumn because it was a few months after I left. It had taken me hours to find the right card and I’d skipped a meal to buy it. “I forgot.”
“One of the Barrington guys who fixes the AC mentioned there’s a party. You should show up.” She winked. “Might be like playing music.”
Chapter 19
CATHERINE
One thing you could say about the people of Barrington, they wouldn’t know how to kidnap someone and hold them for ransom. They’d used one of Mrs. Boden’s scarves to blindfold me and I could see right under it.
I was in front, with Juanita and Kyle guiding me down the hall and a crowd just behind them. Harper was up in her room with a headache but wished me a happy birthday from under the covers.
“I remember when this was unveiled the first time,” Mrs. Boden said. She was over ninety and remembered everything from the past sixty years as if it happened at breakfast. “You cried the entire time.”
I remembered too, and they weren’t tears of joy.
“Okay, ready?” Juanita said.
I nodded.
The blindfold dropped, and everyone shouted, “Happy birthday!”
I was in the doorway of the room I’d occupied after Chris left, and it looked so bright and happy I had to squint. Flat cream walls. New moldings. Repaired sconces. Even the doorknobs had been polished. I looked up. The painted tin ceiling was still there, flying monkeys and all.
“Don’t touch the walls,” Kyle called from behind. “Not yet.”
I turned to the crowded hall. “Thank you.”
Two of the children were jumping up and down with tiny-toothed smiles. They didn’t know why this room was significant to me. They only knew how to react to the happiness of others.
I held my hand out to Taylor.
He took it and said, “Let me show you what we did.”
He showed me the new fixtures in the bathroom, the fixed and finished French doors. Mostly though, he proved the ceiling remained untouched. The monkey wings were there.
“That’s all we could do,” he finished. “But the floor needs to be done, and you need new pipes and a rewire.”
“Can I sleep in it?”
“Paint should be dry by tonight.”
My cheeks tingled because I knew they’d fixed it up because Chris was coming. I hadn’t told anyone he wasn’t and I hadn’t told them that I didn’t know if I was staying or going.
But they were happy. The barbecue was smoking, and children were playing in the yard like kittens. The dogs, including old Percy, the runt of the litter and its last survivor, nipped at their heels. The kitchen was a hub of activity with Trudy gossiping and her older sister washing the dishes. The guys joked with Taylor about his proficiency with a nail gun. I watched from the back porch as the town went about its business. It would do the same whether I was here or not.
“You all right?” Johnny asked, tipping his empty beer at me. He was in his biker vest and a long-sleeve shirt that showed the tattoos that snaked over the tops of his hands.
“I’m fine.”
“You looked a little misty.” He leaned into the cooler for another.
“Birthday mist.” I heard the doorbell from the other side of the house. Weird. Everyone was coming around the driveway. “Let me get that.”
Bernard beat me to it, opening the front door to a very tall and handsome man in a black button-front shirt. He had a bottle of champagne in his hand.
“Hello?” I said.
“Friend of Taylor,” Bernard said. “I’ll get him.”
Rather than get him, the stranger took two steps to the base of the stairs and called up, “Hey! Hard-on!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said to the tall man. “He’s—”
“It’s fine. I’m Keaton, by the way.” He had a British accent. It was nice.
You can go to London.
“I’m Catherine. Come in.”
I could go to London.
Not for long. I didn’t have a ton of money. But they spoke English and I could get a job, or if I could find a buyer for the house, I’d have enough to live on for a while.
Taylor bounded down the stairs to his friend and I went outside. The sun was about half an hour from setting, and all my people had shown up after work or between shifts. They’d stay until the house was clean and the crickets were louder than the children.
I could leave them. They didn’t need me. If that Silicon Valley tycoon came to buy the factory, it would again be the hub of the town. Some would work there, some would be disappointed, but the purpose of the little place would be established without me.
I looked over the family cemetery hiding under the wild thorns. Last week, Harper and Taylor had started cutting through it but stopped halfway through, at our father’s headstone. I couldn’t blame them. The tangle was thick and twisted, dangerous to touch, guarding the history and roots of the Barrington family.
If I left, what would happen to my ancestors?
Standing at the edge of the white fence bordering the thorn bushes, I put my hand on a thick branch. I was immediately stuck by a sharp pain in my palm. I let it cut me.
“Catherine,” Reggie said from beside me, “you ain’t wearing down the points like that.”
“Maybe I don’t want to wear them down.”
“Maybe you don’t.”
He waited, and I drew my hand along the thorn, opening my skin. The blood falling on the branch looked black in the long shadow of the sun.
“This thorn bush,” I said. “I let it grow to keep Harper from defacing the graves. And because I didn’t want what was in here to be lost.”
“You can talk without cutting yourself open,” he said quietly. He must have thought I was going to slice my wrists on a thorn.
“I want to leave here,” I said. “I want to go far away. But I can’t.”
“Why not? You think this whole town wouldn’t put together the money for you to go where you needed?”
They would. I hadn’t considered taking a penny from them and never would, but I knew they’d support me. Their wishes weren’t the issue.
“And what would happen to this house if I sold it? My family’s graves? My history? Harper’s not going to be here much longer. There’s no one. I’m the last Barrington standing. I’m trapped. I might as well be under these damned bushes. They might as well have grown over me the past thirteen years.
“I don’t know how to get out. I don’t know how to ask for help because it’s not a thing or money in my way. It’s me. I’m in my way. How am I supposed to get out of the bushes if the bushes are me?”
I didn’t realize I was yelling and crying or that I’d attracted an audience.
“I don’t want your pity,” I shouted. “I love you, every one of you, but I want
to get out of here now. Right. Now!”
“The bushes ain’t you,” Reggie said. “We’re going to show you.”
He walked off, passing Damon, put his hand on Bernard’s shoulder and said something in his ear. They both sprang into action. Bernard said something to Orrin and Pat, who went to their cars. Damon reached under the barbecue for a can that—logically—could only be one thing.
“Now, here’s what I want to tell you and everyone.” Reggie popped the top off a gas can. “Catherine Barrington, get the fuck out of this shithole town.” He poured gas on the bushes.
“Reggie!”
“What?” he said. “You wanna save this mess?”
Orrin waited with a silver can. Damon had his lighter fluid. Juanita hustled the kids away.
“You’re drunk!” I said, referring to all of them.
“I’m asking you,” he replied. “You wanna get rid of what’s keeping you?”
Damon, a troublemaker since the day he was born, put an unlit cigarette in his lips, watching me like the rest of them. “Whatever, man.” He squeezed a stream of fluid onto the thorns. “These bushes are ugly and you got to go.”
They wanted me to leave.
I felt a little betrayed. I understood that they wanted me to be happy, but I wanted to be wanted more than I wanted happiness.
I was backward, and for the first time, I knew it.
So I nodded to Reg. For the sake of continuing something, anything in a forward direction, I motioned that it was okay to proceed. If I wanted my own life, I had to give up being needed.
I didn’t know who threw the match, but it took all of a second for the entire thing to go up in flames. I got blown back a step by the heat and light, putting my arm over my eyes. It was big. As tall as the house and bright enough to turn off the light sensor bulbs on the porch, it raged so hot that it seemed like the end of everything. Nothing could continue as it was after a fire like this burned in my own yard. No part of my life would remain untouched, unchanged, or unbroken.