by Lia Louis
“Rain is forecasted for later,” Lucas had said earlier, fishing his black, fitted rain mac from the cupboard. “You might want a jacket.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I told him. “It’s not like I’ll be going on a country hike or anything. I’ll be at Marie’s. Inside.”
And I should have brought a coat; shouldn’t have been fooled by the late August sunshine. I don’t know where I am, and now I have absolutely no idea where Marie’s house is either. I have no internet signal on my phone to google anything, and if I call Marie, she is going to think I am a colossal dickhead for leaving her house with nowhere to go, no car to get into, and walking miles uphill, instead of just waiting safely in her home for a taxi. She will know something is wrong.
Lucas. Could I call Lucas? I stand beneath a tree, which slows the rain pitter-pattering down on my head to slow, steady, fat droplets, and hover my thumb over Lucas’s name. I can’t. I can’t call him and interrupt the open house he’s having to attend today—a ten-million-euro condo in Brittany he worked on—to tell him I walked out of his fiancée’s party because I felt insignificant in a room full of together, on-track adults, and wanted to head for wetter, greener, and what is looking increasingly like Missing Persons pastures. Plus, he’s hours away. I stand, the rain coming thick and fast, and say, absolutely pointlessly, “Fuuuck!” into the air and stamp a squeaky foot.
I wait. I listen for the sounds of a car, so I can hail it down, ask the name of the area, of the road, for a taxi number. Anything. But, nothing. Nothing but the sounds of pouring rain and the tweeting of birds. I want to cry. I could crumple into tears now, not stop. But I don’t. If I do, I know I’ll lose the quiet, sensible voice that is keeping me from panicking, here, in the middle of nowhere, miles from home.
I unlock my phone and stare at the names of my recently dialed list.
Lucas. Rosie. Louise Home. Eliot.
I look above me at the angry gray sky, and around me, to nothing but green, wild countryside I’m sure I would marvel at if I were seeing it from the safety of a car window.
I take a breath and push a wet thumb on his name.
“Hello.”
“Eliot. It’s me. I’m lost. I’m lost and it’s pouring with rain and I have no—”
“Lost?”
“I—I was at Marie’s mum and dad’s… and I left and started walking, and everywhere I go, there are just trees and fields and burnt-out barns and so many bloody cows, and I just keep walking and walking, but—”
“Okay, okay, hold up. You went to Marie’s parents’?”
“Yes. For a party. Marie’s birthday.”
“Okay, and did you turn left or right when you came out of there?”
“Left. Definitely left.”
“Okay, and when did you leave?”
“I don’t know, about twenty minutes ago? Half an hour? I know I’m an idiot, Eliot, but I thought I’d find a little village or town or a bus stop or something and… oh my god. Lightning. Fucking lightning. Like… Scooby-Doo fork lightning. Shit.”
I am sure I hear Eliot laugh, but the rain is so loud and the line so tinny that I say nothing besides, “Can you come and get me?”
“Already in the truck, Emmie,” he says. “Can you see anything where you are?”
I swing around. “No. No. Just trees and bushes and fields and…”
“Cows. Yeah, you said. Anything else? Remember seeing anything of interest on your walk down, so I know roughly where you are?”
I look up and down the winding country lane. “No,” I say. “Just trees and—”
“Don’t tell me about the cows again,” laughs Eliot. “Look, I’ll be there soon, okay? Just don’t move, no more walking, stay back from the road—”
“Turbine!”
“What?”
“A-About five minutes ago I walked past a massive wind turbine. Three of them. Massive, fuck-off wind turbines, and they were on my… my left. Yes, my left.”
“Okay, stay put. I’ll be as fast as I can. Put your phone away. It’ll get wet.”
Only two cars pass me in the twenty minutes it takes Eliot to get to me. I could have sunk to my knees with relief at the sight of his truck speeding down the narrow country lane, if I wasn’t so soaked to the bone, my legs shaking. He pulls up, braking sharply, and leans to throw open the passenger door. I jump in, sinking against the seat. Warm air that smells of old dust, like the old electric fire Mum would put on in the winter, pumps through the fans on the dash, and an Oasis song hums softly through the radio. I look up at Eliot. He pulls his face into a sad grimace, deep brown eyes on me. “What’re we going to do with you, eh, Emmie Blue?”
I lift my shoulders weakly to my ears. “Put me in the dryer?” I sniff, my voice tiny and pathetic. Eliot smiles, leans down, and pulls two fluffy white towels from a gym bag at my feet.
“The next best thing,” he says, unfolding them with one hand and gesturing for me to lean forward. I do. He tucks one around me and wraps it around my shoulders.
“Get as dry as you can,” he says, and I simply nod as he begins to drive.
Neither of us says much for a good ten minutes. Eliot fiddles with the heaters in the car, placing his hand over them to test the temperature, and sings softly along to the radio, not breaking out of the song even when waving to give way to people, fingers tapping the wheel. I am enveloped in towels, my head leaning back on the truck’s soft, sawdust-speckled seat. I like Eliot’s truck. It reminds me of Den’s jumpers. Always dotted with crusts of wood and debris from work. The jumpers he’d lift at the hem to put his hand in his pocket and pull out a Picnic bar or a seaside fudge.
Eliot drives and drives, and I warm, quickly, beside him on the passenger seat. I’m exhausted, and my head doesn’t feel as light now that the cold and rainy light of day has sobered me up.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” I say into the quiet of the truck. We are pulled up in a car park now, a takeaway coffee thawing my hands, the rain still pinging against the glass of the windshield.
Eliot nods slowly. “Anytime.”
“Were you busy?”
He shrugs and gives a smile, a flash of straight teeth. “I was only at Mum’s. Working on the bandstand.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. It started raining anyway, so your timing was actually on the nose.” He turns to me. “What happened? Shit party?”
I give a laugh, look down at my lap. “No. No, it wasn’t a shit party. It just… I dunno…” I trail off, remembering Ana. Eliot’s Ana. And I look at him. His handsome face, those confident brown eyes, the towel at my shoulders he wrapped around me caringly, and I can’t help but feel bafflement that they are together. Ana, so cold, so unfriendly. And Eliot… he’s kind. He’s funny. Warm. Safe. One of those people who would be really nice to have around if the world suddenly got the news of an imminent apocalypse. I trust him. I do. I suppose I’d have to, at least a little, to call him, to ask him to come and pick me up today, over Lucas.
“Do you ever feel like—like everyone else has it figured out and you don’t?”
Eliot hesitates, thinks, tapping the wheel with the heel of his hand.
“Do you mean Luke?” he asks.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Why would I mean Lucas?”
He gives a gentle shrug, looks down at his hands on the wheel. “I guess because you two are so close, and, well, he’s getting married. That must be… hard for you.”
I say nothing, lift a shoulder to my ear.
Eliot takes a deep breath. “Look, I remember I used to be one of those people. That appeared to have it all. Perfect life, perfect wife, perfect plans.” He looks at me then, a little smirk. “And I didn’t actually have any of that. Sure looked like it, though. But all of it—it was over in a heartbeat. Shit, I even had to piss off to Canada to sort my life out. Shut off. Heal.”
“Pull your head out of your arse,” I say, remembering the conversation we had at the dessert party, an
d he smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “And that’s what a lot of it is. How it appears. They’re probably just as lost as everyone else is behind closed doors.”
I look at him. “I wish I could feel sure about that.”
“Take it from me, Emmie,” he says softly.
I look at him, and he starts to laugh. “What?”
Eliot stretches to pull down my sun visor, to reveal a tiny, blurred mirror with a little pointless light above it. I look into it. There are black smudges all over my eyes, and little dots of mascara hanging off my lashes. “Oh my God. I look like Ozzy Osbourne.”
Eliot laughs, elbow resting on the armrest between us, hand at his chin. “I mean, I’m not one to usually agree with you on this stuff, but you actually do. Feeling a bit starstruck here.”
“Shut up.”
Eliot hesitates, looks at me. There’s a beat of silence. “Sort of wanna ask you where you came up with the concept for the Technical Ecstasy album—hey!”
“Shut up or I’ll hit you again,” I laugh, wetting my finger and smudging it under my eyes. It does nothing but make it worse. I stare at my reflection. “Oh, I give up,” I say, pushing the sun visor back up and slouching back in my chair, the side of my face resting on the fabric of the headrest. “God,” I sigh, looking at him. “If the girls in that room could see me now, they would be thinking what the fuck.”
Eliot smiles gently, eyelids closing momentarily, then opening. “Who cares?”
“And then I’m sure someone would chime in about how that was when her boyfriend first knew he was in love with her. When she had makeup smudged all over her face like Ozzy Osbourne and looked like a wet spaniel after fleeing a birthday party.”
Eliot’s dark eyebrows knit together. “Is that the sort of stuff that’s discussed at parties these days, then?”
“It was at this one,” I say, sniffing, nose still running from the cold, wet weather I was caught in. “Your Ana was there. She instigated it actually, that conversation, so she is clearly very happy with you. Nice work on the candles and the bath last Sunday, by the way. Very eighties music video.” Even I am shocked by the bitter twang in my voice.
“Well,” Eliot says, ever cool, ever calm, his mouth opening as if to speak, but instead, his lips turning into a smile of disbelief. “Not sure I remember this romantic, eighties-music-video bath, but do go on. The party sounds like a fuckin’ hoot.”
I laugh, groan into my hands. “Oh, dunno,” I sigh. “I just felt… lonely. That’s what it was. Among all those people, those happy, together women, with these full lives and anecdotes and stories and… the fucking people behind them, you know? The wonderful people who love them unconditionally, who just take their faults and accept them. Love them, even. And I suddenly realized… I had absolutely nothing to add.”
Eliot pauses, as if considering my words, eyes narrowed. “But nobody, regardless of what they say, has a totally full and perfect, flawless life, Emmie.”
“No?” I look down, away from his unwavering gaze, conversations from that room with the baby grand echoing through my mind, fit to burst. “Helen back there, said she quit her job,” I tell Eliot, “without even consulting her husband because she was so miserable, and they had no money and she just quit, and Alan, well, she was really nervous about telling him because of all the debt they had, but he said, my flower—she said he actually said flower—”
“Right…”
“He said, you go for it. It’ll be hard but I will make it work, and I will sell my balls to make sure you’re achieving your dreams.”
Eliot bursts out laughing, his mouth open, like a goldfish, trying to find the words to interrupt, but I carry on, to desperately make my point. “And then Beatrice—Beatrice said she had a terrible fear of heights but climbed Snowdonia with her girlfriend anyway, because she knew how much her girlfriend wanted to do it. She even proposed at the top.”
“I see, but—”
“She shook the entire way up, Eliot, like a dog on firework night, and had to have beta blockers and everything. But she did it and, God, imagine! Imagine having someone that does that for you. I can’t even comprehend it.”
Eliot folds his strong forearms at his chest, stretching his legs forward, and looks at me, head resting back on the seat. “Emmie, there are plenty of people who—”
“And Amy,” I carry on, light-headed from the champagne and woozy from the exhaustion of walking for miles in the rain. Eliot’s eyes lift to the ceiling, and he smiles to himself as if he’s given up. “She broke her nose and damaged her back coming down some stairs at a train station. She couldn’t even shit unaided. Her nose… it looked like a fucking tomato. A blighted tomato, Eliot. I saw the photographs.”
“Jesus Christ,” Eliot laughs. “Well, it could’ve been worse, I suppose.”
“Could it?” I ask.
“A celeriac,” he muses. “A butternut squash…”
“And do you know,” I laugh but carry on, ignoring him, “what her boyfriend did? He kissed her nose. Her blighted tomato nose, and helped her wipe her arse. Several times, for weeks.”
Eliot lets out a noisy breath, his dark hair bristling. “Fucking hell, Emmie,” he says. “I thought you were meant to be going to a party. Are you absolutely sure you didn’t walk onto the set of the Sally Jessy Raphael Show?”
I laugh, snottily, from a million swallowed-down tears, and look over at him in the driver’s seat. “You’re so nineties. They don’t make Sally anymore,” I tell him.
“Probably why people are sharing their sob stories at parties instead.”
I smile at him weakly. “I dunno,” I sigh. “Just all of them had these people behind them. These people who are saying, flower, I support you and accept you, and even though you’re a wreck, I’m here, through it all.” I pause, swallowing down a lump in my throat. “And what have I got? A job I’m too scared to go for. A dad that’s lived under my nose all my life and yet, doesn’t want to know me. And it hurts. And Lucas. Well, that’s just…” I stop then, look up at him, and he waits, watching me.
“That’s what?” he asks, words barely there.
And I want to. I want to talk to him about it, because if I am a closed book, unreadable as Rosie says sometimes, then Eliot is an open book. Not so much that he gives everything away, it’s more in the way he is, the way he carries himself. Eye contact. Arms open. Shoulders relaxed. As if nobody and nothing can faze him and he has nothing to hide, and it’s infectious. It is. It makes me want to tell him everything. But I can’t bring myself to.
“I guess I just felt out of place there, today, that’s all,” I say instead. “I looked at everyone in that room, with families and partners and plans and good jobs and houses and kids, these nice, designer dresses and gifts—” I look down at my wet jeans, the old, squelching sandals, the towel around me, and bring a knuckle to my eye, crusted with dry-again mascara. “God. Look at me,” I say, voice cracking. “Just look at me.”
Eliot stares at me. And softly, into the silence of the car, he says, “I am.”
The rain slows, and Eliot takes a breath, brings his hand to his mouth. “I’m thirty-three next week, Emmie,” he says. “My dad was thirty-three when he died, and from what people have told me, the dude spent every waking moment working his arse off to fit in. To pay off the mortgage. To get the next best car. Holidays. Loft extensions. Worked to the bone, to have everything he thought he should have. Probably because he was looking at people like you are, thinking they had it all compared to him.”
I stare at Eliot, my heart thumping.
“And at thirty-three, that was it. Heart gave out, all over. And nobody once talked about the money he’d saved, the car he had, the holidays he took. They just talked about him, Emmie. Missed him. For what he was. Because that was enough.”
A lump sits in my throat, my nostrils sting with tears that fall, heavy, and slow, drop by drop into my lap.
“And you’re enough, Emmie, without all that. Trust me.”
&
nbsp; After a while, the pair of us in silence, listening to the steady, slowing raindrops, the rumbling of passing cars, Eliot starts the engine.
“Come on then, flower,” he says, clearing his throat. “Let’s get you back.”
* * *
Mix CD. Vol. 5.
Dear Balloon Girl,
Track 1. Because you see the good in people
Track 2. Because I will always find it hilarious that you fancy seventy-year-old Dick Van Dyke
Track 3. Because you said you’d never heard of Eva Cassidy
Track 4. Because one Eva is never enough
Track 5. Because one day, I will tell you
Balloon Boy
X
I feel as though I have been yanked out of 2018 and been plonked back into 2006. Lucas and I are on the sofa of his mum and dad’s large, modern lounge, and he is flicking through the hundreds of movies on Netflix, as we fail to agree on a single one. The pillar candles in the fireplace are lit, the main lights off, and the two lamps on either side of the sofa both burn a soft amber light. Between us is a bowl of popcorn, and another big mixing bowl of random bags of chocolate and sweets. Whereas in 2006 it would have likely been glasses of Coke—or beer, if his parents were out—tonight we have lime-green cocktails Lucas rustled up at the bar in Jean’s study, and covering us is a gray, heavy, faux-fur blanket. Just like we used to. The nostalgia is intensified even more by the sounds of Eliot’s music in the kitchen, too, and him passing the living room door every now and then, phone in his hand, eyes lifting from the screen to eye us both, as he used to back then, as if he couldn’t quite work us out, and was always expecting to catch us up to something. He’d always join us, though, lifting the blanket and slumping on the end, putting his arm around us and saying jokingly, “Don’t mind me. Just pass the food this way.” I missed it when Eliot stopped coming in to sit with us. When he stopped coming over to visit with the Moreaus, or when he stopped jumping in the car to wave me off at the ferry. It’s nice to have him back.