by Amy Reed
I tiptoe closer. “Do you need anything?”
“He’s my son,” she moans. “My goddamned son.”
I touch her back, lightly. This is what people in TV shows do when someone is like this. It is supposed to make them feel better.
Now is the time to tell her about Caleb. She needs to know that he’s safe. That I know where he is. That she can see him again.
I feel her tense under my hand. She stops crying.
“Grandma?” I say. “I have something to tell you.”
But then she spins around, whacks my arm, lunges, and even sitting on the couch she’s strong enough to push me to the floor. My butt slams on the hard wood as my back smashes into a bookcase. I will have bruises tomorrow, but not anywhere anyone can see. The new one on my butt can join the old faded one from when Caleb pushed me.
“Get away from me,” she growls.
I am numb. It doesn’t even hurt. I barely feel my body as I stand up. I don’t even remember what I was thinking a few seconds ago.
This is what we do. Grandma. Caleb. Me. I tried to be different, but who am I kidding? We push people away when we’re hurting the most. We literally push them away. We’re so dumb, it’s not even a metaphor.
The house is silent as I climb the stairs to the attic. It has nothing to add to the conversation.
I feel immediate relief as I enter the structure I rebuilt out of blankets, more rounded and cavelike than Caleb’s walled fortress. I find a loose sheet and hang it over the window, muting the already pale natural light. It’s like the outside barely even exists anymore.
I think about the painting in my room downstairs. I wonder what it’s doing. I guess I could hang it up here, but something tells me the attic wants to stay bare.
I sit in the dark. When you can’t see anything, the world is so nice and small and manageable.
Maybe I should stay up here forever. Maybe becoming a hermit isn’t such a bad idea. It could be so much worse.
LYDIA
IN LESS THAN A WEEK, I will have quite possibly the most important afternoon of my life. Except for maybe the afternoon I found out my mom was dead, but that’s the opposite kind of important than this coming Saturday. Fog Harbor Dance Academy’s annual Winter Showcase isn’t just any old dance school recital. We perform at the biggest theater in town. Tickets sell out every year. People come who don’t even have kids who go to the school. Dancers use the videos of their performances in their applications to college and dance companies. If this thing goes well, I might actually have a future besides working at Taco Hell for the rest of my life.
I dump the bag of groceries I picked up at BigMart on the kitchen counter, exhausted after three hours of practice at Natalie’s house. We spent the first half on the modern and contemporary ensemble pieces, and the second half on our pas de deux, with a lunch break in the middle. Natalie’s mom hovered around the kitchen without saying anything while we scarfed down the protein smoothies and fancy tuna salad she made us. The salad had some kind of French name I can’t remember. Natalie’s mom is one of those people who overpronounces “croissant” to sound fancy.
The whole time I was eating, I was terrified I was holding my fork wrong. I was terrified the little girl was going to do something to embarrass me. But she was surprisingly well behaved, like even she wanted to impress Natalie’s mom.
Neither of us are quite ourselves when Natalie’s mother is around, especially Natalie. Her shoulders tense as soon as her mom is near. She turns silent and almost surly. The smart and funny girl I’ve been getting to know just kind of evaporates in the presence of her mother, and she turns into a ballerina-shaped shell. I think about how jealous I used to be, how much I thought I hated her for having such a perfect life. I wonder how many people I’ve hated like this, for no good reason.
Now I’m in my kitchen, taking a few items from the grocery bag to deliver to Caleb. He’s been here for almost a week, and every time I enter what used to be my studio, he’s either reading or sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed. Once he was even doing what appeared to be yoga. He cleaned up all the broken glass. He’s been polite. He says thank you every time I bring him something. He hasn’t asked for drugs or anything weird. He even offered to help rebuild the studio. But I’m not getting my hopes up. I know how these things work. People don’t really change. They may have a few good days, but they’ll always return to the worst versions of themselves when things get tough.
I put my key in the dead bolt, but it’s already unlocked.
I open the door and Caleb is gone.
“Hello?” I say. Nothing.
I look in the bathroom. Nothing.
I look in my room. Larry’s room. The hallway closet. Nothing. The apartment is empty.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit,” I say out loud. Where is he? Would he just leave without telling anyone? Is he out looking for heroin? Did he keep a shard of mirror and take it somewhere he wouldn’t make a mess? I remember hearing that it’s common for people to seem to get better briefly before killing themselves. If something happens to Caleb on my watch, Billy will never forgive me.
I run outside because the apartment feels like it’s crushing me. It is still so full of my mother, still so full of the kind of silence that has weight and mass. The little girl clings to my leg and won’t let go.
Then suddenly I feel the grip on my leg loosen. I look down and see the girl distracted for a moment, sniffing the air. It’s then that I notice the smell of something burning. Black smoke rises from behind the apartment. I run toward it, fearing I will see something I will never be able to unsee.
And there is Caleb, very much alive, sitting on a log, staring at a fire burning on the ground in front of him. He is freshly shaven, and his usually unkempt shoulder-length hair appears to have just been washed and is tucked behind his ears. A wave of relief almost pushes me to the ground, but the girl grabs my hand, steadying me just in time, and leads me to the fire.
We sit down on the log next to Caleb, facing the thick wall of evergreens that separate us from the river. He does not seem surprised at my arrival.
“Want some tea?” Caleb says, raising a steaming mug.
“No,” I say.
“Did you know the worst part of a craving lasts just about as long as it takes to make a cup of tea? If you really concentrate and focus on every step of making the tea, by the time it’s ready, the craving is over.”
“That seems a little simplistic.”
“Most of the time, the simplest answer is the best.”
“Are you a philosopher now?”
Caleb shrugs. “I’ve just been thinking.”
I look into the fire and watch as the remains of Caleb’s weird dolls burn and melt and turn even more grotesque than they were to begin with. The little girl watches too, and she looks almost sad, like she knew those dolls. I wonder if she remembers how bizarre things got the last time we were here at this fire together.
“You killed your babies,” I say.
“Better than them killing me.”
“Did you use the pink razor to shave your face?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’ll buy you a new one.”
“The pink one’s Larry’s. He’s convinced girls’ razors are better because they’re more expensive.”
We sit in silence for a while. The little girl pokes the fire with a stick, making sparks fly, occasionally looking at me out of the side of her eye like she’s checking on me. I’m starting to understand what her looks mean. She’s calm right now. She seems to be the happiest when I feel the most uncomfortable, like my discomfort is exactly what she wants.
The mouth of one of the dolls melts open into a silent, burning scream.
“I thought you killed yourself,” I say.
“I’m done doing that, I think.”
The last thing I want is to care about this guy. But that doesn’t mean I’m not curious. I want to know what changed, what it was that made him shave, made him stop asking for dr
ugs, made him start saying “please” and “thank you.” What made him want to stop dying? It couldn’t have been something as simple as a change in location. But maybe there was another goodbye, something that happened in that attic that woke him up. Because maybe all those rehabs, all of Caleb’s public humiliations and failures, even the overdoses and near-deaths—maybe none of those were ever going to be his bottom. Why fear death if you’re the only thing you have to lose?
I feel the little girl’s fingers thread through mine, and I don’t pull my hand away. We sit there next to Caleb, holding hands for I don’t know how long, watching the fire destroy the dolls he worked so hard to create.
“I’m tired,” Caleb says. A doll makes one last gasp before crumpling in on itself. The little girl waves goodbye to the remnants in the fire.
“All you’ve been doing is sitting around doing nothing,” I say. “How are you tired?”
Caleb smiles faintly. “The most exhausting place in the world is inside your own head.”
“Okay, Yoda.”
He takes a sip of his tea. With his face freshly shaven, he looks younger. Similar to the famous version of himself, but much healthier. Less pissed off, but a lot sadder. A lot more like Billy.
“How’s Billy doing?” Caleb says.
“Not good.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Yep.”
The river rushes, out of sight. The fire crackles. As if we are camping—one of those Seattle couples in fleece jackets and fancy hiking boots who drive their Subarus out to this forgotten corner of the world on a holiday weekend to pretend they love nature and breathe the same air as a bunch of people they never think about.
“Billy hasn’t been okay for a long time,” I finally say. “Way before I met him. It just took your bullshit to make him see it.” The girl stirs the bed of coals with her stick, making sparks fly. She has a smile on her face. She could be our daughter. “And now he sees it,” I say.
And what about me? What is my part in his not being okay?
“I want to make it better,” Caleb says, his voice raw. Is he crying? “How do I make it better?”
“How should I know? Stop being an asshole. Take care of your own shit. Those are probably the first steps.” I sigh. The girl sighs too. She leans against me, so weary for such a little ghost. The weight of her body feels good against mine. She’s not so bad when I don’t fight her. Without thinking, I put my arm around her, and when I realize it’s there I don’t pull it away.
How does anyone make anything better? Billy’s been trying to do that his whole life, but he’s just been running in circles. Is there a way for people to be close without sucking each other dry?
But then I see Billy’s face in the fire. Natalie’s. Even a faint shadow of Larry’s and my mom’s. The fire suddenly burns hotter, but it is not the oven like the last fire, not painful. I am not scared. My heart fills with warmth despite the sadness, as if loneliness and love can coexist, as if they are meant to. The girl squeezes my hand so hard it almost hurts.
I stand up and shake her off. She looks at me with pleading eyes, like she’s not ready to leave. “So are you going to get out of here now or what?” I say, but as the words come out of my mouth, I realize I’m not entirely sure what I’m asking. Caleb can’t stay here; that’s obvious. But there is also something accusatory in my question, something shaming him for leaving Billy years earlier, something daring him not to leave again.
“Soon. I just have to figure a couple things out first. I need to borrow a computer.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Research my options.”
I’m supposed to be suspicious. There’s all kinds of trouble a person can get into with a computer. But I feel a strange, unexpected clarity: I trust him. “You can use Larry’s,” I say. “But only for, like, two hours. Then I’m taking it back.”
“Okay.”
“You know you can’t stay here forever.”
“I know.”
“You have until Saturday. Then I kick you out.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Don’t think too hard.”
“Trust me. I’m trying.”
“I know,” I say.
“Thank you,” Caleb says softly, his eyes on the fire. “For everything. For being family to Billy.”
And that’s when I start crying. My tears are silent and thick. I am grateful to Caleb for not looking at me, for pretending not to notice.
Billy is my family. I can’t let him drift away.
And all of a sudden, I can’t see the little girl anywhere.
BILLY
I KNOW RAIN. I’VE LIVED here my whole life. I know the constant drizzle, like a sprinkler turned on half power that no one ever remembers to turn off, how it seeps into you, how your pant legs and ankles are always wet, how nothing ever completely dries, how you get so used to looking at the ground to keep the raindrops off your face that you forget to look up even when the sky clears.
But this is a different kind of rain. This is the sea falling from the sky. It’s been raining bullet-size drops nonstop all day. Storm drains are overflowing all over town. People are making sandbags out of the beach to put in front of doors and garages. The few basements in Criminal Fields are now swimming pools.
In just a few days, Fog Harbor County went from record cold to record rain. In that time, someone cut down the five trees that have blocked Cult Girl’s house since before I can remember, and even though it’s raining, the windows are wide open, like the house needs to breathe after all its years of being shut tight. I’m sitting on my front stoop, watching the river that used to be my street carry things it’s collected from upstream—a pizza box, a green plastic comb, a deflated bike tire, several beer cans, a dirty syringe, a baby shoe. Who knows how far these things have come. Who knows where they are going. Maybe they’ll make it all the way to the ocean. Maybe they’ll float all the way to the other side of the world and become someone else’s trash.
I look up and see Cult Girl standing in her doorway across the street, looking straight at me. For someone whose dad was just committed to a mental institution, she doesn’t look that upset. If anything, she looks happier than I’ve ever seen her.
I wave. She waves back, then runs inside the house. No surprise. Nothing ever really changes, even if it looks different on the outside. A dead, bloated pigeon floats by, followed by what appears to be a pair of boxer shorts.
But then the girl reappears, carrying an umbrella. She runs across the river, splashes punctuating her steps, and sits down beside me.
“I like your outfit,” I say. She’s wearing a black button-down shirt with ruffles around the collar, a black knee-length skirt, black tights, and black winter boots. Her long dark brown hair is hanging down around her pale face instead of being up in its usual tight bun. If I had to give her style a name, I’d call it “Goth librarian.” It certainly is different from the shapeless floral-print sacks she usually wears.
“Thanks,” she says. “I like black.” Her voice is lower than I imagined it would be, like something inside her is older than she looks.
“My name’s Billy.”
“Ruth.”
“It’s funny we’ve lived across from each other our whole lives and never talked to each other,” I say.
“ ‘Funny’ is not the word I’d use,” Ruth says.
“I’m sorry about your dad.”
Ruth looks me in the eye for a moment, saying nothing, but I see the answer in her eyes: I’m not.
“It’s going to be a long time until he gets out,” she finally says. “If he ever gets out.”
I have no idea what to say to that. Usually things just come out of my mouth even if I don’t know what to say, but this isn’t a conversation I want to mess up.
“My mom says I can go to public school now if I want to,” Ruth says.
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’d show you around.”
“Thanks,” Ruth says, and smiles. She has a nice smile. I want to see more of it.
An actual boat floats by now, one of those plastic ones babies play with in the bath. It seems so sure of where it’s going, like it has charted its course and is right on track.
“It’s weird suddenly having to make a choice like that,” Ruth says. “To make a choice at all. I never really had to make any choices before. But now I’m free or something, and I have no idea what to do. Like, what’s the point of freedom if I don’t even know what to do with it?”
I don’t know if she wants me to answer, or if this is one of those questions people say out loud because they just want someone else to be confused with them.
I am confused. I don’t know what my choices are. I don’t even know what I want. I am frozen in place while everyone else is moving on.
“I think I’m having an identity crisis,” I say.
“Me too,” Ruth says. We sigh in unison.
This is a pretty deep conversation to be having with someone within the first two minutes of ever talking to them. But in some ways, Ruth is my oldest friend.
“I think maybe life is one big long identity crisis,” I say.
“That would be disappointing.”
I shrug. “You can’t be disappointed if you never expect anything in the first place.”
“That sounds like a sad way to live.”
Even Ruth knows more about living than I do.
“Are you moving?” Ruth asks.
“No. Why?”
“Trucks kept taking loads of stuff out of your house.”
“My Grandma got on that show Hoarder Heaven.”
“What’s that?”
“A show about hoarders.”
“What’s a hoarder?”
“Someone who can’t throw anything away.”
Except people. They can throw away people.
“Why do you always hide your eyes?” Ruth says.
I tuck the long curtains of hair covering my face behind my ears and immediately feel anxious.