by Harper Bliss
“Show them that you’re happy.” My throat closes. Before my voice collapses completely, I find Kay’s ear. “Show them that we’re both happy to be alive.”
* * *
When we arrive at The Attic, nerves fill me and I can’t shake the preference of wanting to spend this evening on Kay’s deck, perhaps with a skinny dip. But, at West Waters, with Nina’s arrival, everything is different now as well. So I plant my behind on a bar stool while Kay orders us drinks.
“Let’s go into a booth,” she says after receiving two beers.
Relieved, I follow her into the booth I occupied with my dad the week before.
“What a day.” Kay lifts her glass and clinks the rim to mine.
“How are you holding up?” It seems like weeks ago that we were lying in my bed at the cabin.
“I’m fine. Perhaps, emotionally, a bit more raw than usual.” Kay extends her arm toward me on the table top. “By the time Mom died, she had suffered so much, it was almost a relief.” She splays her fingers on the wooden surface. Instinctively, I reach for her hand. “The first time she got sick, I had just been accepted to UT. Literally, the day after I received my letter, she was diagnosed.
“Obviously, I couldn’t go. I made that decision as soon as they told me she had cancer. To this day, I still believe that if I had gone off to college she wouldn’t have pulled through that first time. But I stayed and she did pull through. Don’t get me wrong; it was rough. Chemo is not pretty. But she made it through, went into remission, and was declared cancer-free for a long time afterwards.
“There was a lot of stress every time she had to go in for a check up, but we always had a party after. Until the day came when the news was bad again.” Kay turns her arm on the table so her palm faces upwards. “She fought. God, Mom was such a fighter. She didn’t give up until the end.” Kay’s fingers curl tightly around my wrist. “Her last words to me were, ‘Sleep tight, my beautiful princess. See you in the morning.’ She was so much stronger than my dad. It killed her that she had to leave him behind, as though she knew he would perish without her.” She swallows hard. “And he did.”
“I’m so sorry.” Kay’s strength is engrained in every little thing she does. It’s in her body language—never wavering, always displaying purpose. My memories of Mrs. Brody are vague at best, but looking at Kay, taking in her grace and the determined stare of her eyes, I can see a little of Mabel Brody looking back at me.
“It’s life, you know. People die. Nothing we can do about it.”
“I’m sorry you missed out on college.”
Kay just shrugs. “It probably wouldn’t have been for me, anyway. I was always happy here. Never yearned for greater, faraway things.”
“That’s an illusion anyway.” I think of my life in Boston. Do I miss anyone there? Does anyone miss me?
“Imagine me in Texas.” A smirk slips onto her lips. “A biracial, bisexual woman who craves the outdoors and doesn’t take shit from anyone. I’m also not someone who could thrive in air-conditioned rooms.”
We both burst out laughing. Kay’s eyes narrow to slits when she giggles. I want to run my fingers along the lines of her face. I want her. The beer is hitting me hard, making me feel how exhausted this day has left me, but I’m sure I can muster up the energy to make the thoughts in my head come to life.
Before I have a chance to propose continuing the night elsewhere, the door of The Attic flies open in a rush of wind and loud bouts of laughter. My dad, his arm around Nina’s neck, followed by—I have to blink several times to clear my vision before I can actually believe it—my mother, walks in.
My father signals the barman. “Drinks all around, Joe. We’re celebrating.”
Perplexed, I glance at Kay, who shoots me a comforting smile. “More family time, I guess.”
I duck out of the booth and catch Nina’s eye. All three of them look as though they drained every last drop of that bottle of brandy we started earlier. A surge of panic in my blood. How can this possibly end well? Too much alcohol and The Goodmans have never mixed well. Mom and Dad’s heads shoot up in my direction.
Quickly, I turn to Kay. “We can get out of this,” I whisper.
Nina has reached our booth and throws her arms around me. After letting go, she eyes Kay and sends her a cocky grin. “Good to see you again, Brody.”
I look at Kay expectantly, waiting for some answer—secretly praying that she’ll give me an excuse to get out of there. She just blinks once and nods solemnly. “How are you settling in, Nina?”
“Scoot over.” Nina pushes me back into the booth and presses her hip against mine.
“Drinks for my girls.” Dad has sauntered over, Mom following close on his heels. Does she ever come here? I always believed she hated this place with a vengeance, that she thought of it as my dad’s second mistress after he ended it with the first. Apparently ‘my girls’ includes Kay, as he deposits fresh beers on the table for all three of us.
“We must be interrupting,” Mom says thoughtfully, nudging my dad in the arm.
“Nonsense.” Kay shuffles further into the booth, freeing room on the bench for my dad. “Welcome, Goodmans.”
On our side, Nina and I make room for Mom.
A few minutes ago, Kay and I were engaged in an intimate conversation and now my entire family is hunched around a table filled with beers. She seems so far away, perched next to my dad like that.
“Are you going steady now?” I can smell Nina’s boozy breath as she asks the inappropriate question. Only this morning I told her that Kay and I had slept together for the first time. Perhaps jet lag and brandy erase short term memories.
“Nina!” Flashback to when I was fourteen and Nina caught me holding hands with Desmond Johnson.
“Your family sure seems fond of me,” Kay says, her eyes on me, calming me down.
“I hear you own this place now.” Nina has gone right back to being as annoying as she was as a teenager. Her remark also tells me that she and my parents must have been discussing Kay after she picked me up. “A woman of many trades… and persuasions.”
Under the table—just like when we were children—I kick Nina hard in the shins.
“Ouch.” She glares at me, her mouth drawn into an O. As though hurting the unexpectedly returned daughter is the biggest crime ever.
“Just shut the fuck up.”
“Girls, jeez, it’s like you never left,” Mom blurts out. The flush on her cheeks betrays the ingestion of a few glasses of hard liquor as well.
“So, Nina, what have you been up to?” Kay asks in an even, conversational tone.
“She was an extra in The Hobbit,” Dad chimes in.
As much as I want to revel in this moment of sitting amidst my estranged parents and my sister who eloped, engaging in meaningless conversation, the entire situation is already starting to drive me crazy.
“Must pay well.” I can’t help myself. “If that’s all you’ve ever done all these years.”
“We can’t all be grade A students destined for greatness like you, Little Sis.” There’s snideness in Nina’s tone, but not as much as I had expected.
“We’re very proud of the pair of you,” Dad says. My jaw almost hits the table as my mouth drops open with sheer disbelief, but it doesn’t stop there. “No matter your professional or academic accomplishments.”
Nina sits there, basking in some newfound daddy’s girl glory, while, in the pit of my stomach, a knot so tight it will take many hours of therapy to undo it, starts building. Because, what I hear is: Ella may have worked her ass off while Nina was off somewhere gallivanting without frequently updating us on her whereabouts for years, but Ella tried to kill herself and Nina came back, which pretty much puts both of them at even keel. And I try. I try very hard to not think that way—in that destructive, going-nowhere fashion that sucks the joy out of everything—but it stings nonetheless. For all the degrees I’ve amassed over the years, in that moment, it still feels as though to them I will
always be the daughter who attempted suicide. No longer ‘their youngest’, or ‘the one living in Boston’, but ‘the one who gave up on life’.
As though the honor of such a compliment quickly becomes too much for Nina, she wraps an arm around my shoulder and squeezes tight. “I’m beginning to wonder why I ever left,” she jokes.
And I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve somehow landed in some parallel universe, where my family’s history has been magically erased, and we’ve always been a cheery, albeit borderline alcoholic family, going to the pub together, jesting like there’s no tomorrow.
“Fuck this.” The words start as a quiet hiss expelled from between clamped-together teeth.
“Language,” my mother automatically says, only adding to my bewilderment, but letting me know that I’m being heard in the process.
“Will this family ever snap out of its denial? What does it take? Huh?” Kay’s hand snakes over the surface of the table, trying to reach my elbow, but I ignore it. “What does it take for you people to wake the fuck up? Nina ran away because you did what any parent would have done, and that makes you proud? Mom was depressed for years and no one ever bothered to tell me, which, for your information, might have spared us this whole ordeal.”
“Ella,” Kay says sternly, making me look up. “Don’t say things you’ll regret.”
“Regret? I have nothing but regret. What’s a little more added to the pile? Living with regret is basically what I do with my life. And you know why?” Little drops of spit have started to form at the corners of my mouth. “Because they were lousy parents. There, I said it. You were so shitty at it—”
“Enough.” Kay has risen from her seat, her palms planted firmly on the table, her torso leaning over. “Take a deep breath. And stop talking.”
My muscles collapse and I fade into the bench, wanting to disappear into the worn leather completely. Shame engulfs me instantly. The ugly side of me, this side of me that I always hate the most when I wake up in the morning—the part I wanted to extinguish forever—has taken over and I don’t know where to look. Don’t know how to undo the things I’ve said. Certainly, an apology will not suffice. The damage has been done, of that I’m sure. But what’s worse, is that nagging feeling in my soul that, even though I should have been strong enough to avoid this outburst, the gist of it, in my ears, still rings true.
“I’m sorry.” The same two words that started sounding inadequate when I turned twenty-one and chased away Amy, my first girlfriend, with too many of them. The same two words that would elicit the sort of ice-cold glare from Thalia that, perversely, turned me on like nothing else she ever did. The same words Kay has forbidden me to utter. “I’m sorry.” I hold my hands up in defeat. “I shouldn’t have said that. I know that, under the circumstances, you did the best you could.” If only they hadn’t walked into The Attic like a merry gang out on the town. If only. Sometimes in Boston, when looking out over the Charles River from my bedroom, taking in that sprawling, staggering view outside my window that should have lifted my spirits, but always failed, I would play the ‘if only’ game. If only Dad hadn’t cheated. If only Mom had found a way to be happier. If only Nina hadn’t run away. If only I could deal with it better.
‘If’ and ‘only’ are the two most useless words in the human vocabulary, Dr. Hakim had made a habit of saying. They should never be used together in a sentence, because they speak of something that’s beyond your ability to change. A waste of energy.
What’s his life like? I used to think, when he came out with one of his well-practiced phrases. Does he really have it all so together as he makes it appear?
“Ellie, it’s fine.” Dad is the first to speak. “It’s important that you can say these things.” Where did he all of a sudden go to shrink school? Or did someone whisper it in his ear while ordering a beer from Joe?
I shake my head. “It’s never okay to say things like this. Never.”
“So many things are not okay to say and do,” Nina cuts in, her tone surprisingly light. “Does it ever really stop us from doing them? I don’t think so.” She taps her fingers on the table. “Would everyone have been better off if I hadn’t been the hothead that I was and packed my bags? Perhaps, but who knows? Have I hurt Mom and Dad—and you, Ellie—by settling on the other side of the world? For sure.”
I glare at her tapping fingers and she stops their movement.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, and yes, we could go down your route. The difficult, painful one, because, let’s face it, Ellie, you’re a fan of the hard way through. Or, we could, slowly but surely, try to forgive each other for all the mistakes we’ve made and the hurt we’ve caused each other. None of us sitting here is innocent”—she glances at Kay—“except you, of course, Brody. Sorry to be dragging you into this.”
Kay waves her off with that determined hand gesture she has.
“We could just go on with our lives, Ellie.”
“Just like that?” I mumble. “It’s that simple?”
“Of course not, honey.” It’s Mom’s turn to speak, her voice so shaky it makes me tremble inside. “We are not the same people we once were and”—she halts here, taking her time to find the words—“you need to understand that we don’t think any less of you because of what you did. It shocked us. It hurt us. It, frankly, made the bottom drop out from under our lives. But we love you just the same. You’re ours, Ella. You’re our beautiful, brave daughter. You always will be.”
We burst out into tears at the same time—as though both looking into a time-machine mirror.
“This was never going to be easy.” Kay’s deep voice cuts through the ensuing silence. “But you have each other, and that’s a lot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
In the car back to West Waters, Kay at the steering wheel, my sister—out cold—in the back, I sulk in silence, but rage on the inside. My quiet anger is, for once, not aimed at my parents, but at my sister who, just this morning, didn’t have a good word to say about Mom and Dad. But I have no more fight left in me for the day. I just want to drop Nina off at the cabin and curl up into bed next to Kay.
“Sorry for ruining your commemorative drinks.” Sideways, I glance at Kay. She keeps her eyes on the road, her face in the same stern expression.
“Hey, I’m up for a fun family outing with The Goodmans anytime.” From the way she says it, I can’t be sure if she’s being sarcastic or if she actually means what she’s saying. “Never a dull moment, I tell you that.” She casts me a quick glance, and the sparkle in her eyes gives her away.
* * *
After we’ve put Nina to bed, we walk along the water to the lodge.
“Dip?” Kay asks. “It seems like forever ago.”
“I’m exhausted.” I’m already half-leaning against her. “I want you so much and I’m too tired to do anything about it.”
“Pity.” Kay runs her fingers through my hair. “I had plans for us.”
“Don’t tease me, please.” I make my voice sound extra pleading.
“If I can’t tease you, then what can I do?”
“Mmm, you can give me a neck rub, or a back massage,” I joke.
“Okay.” Kay doesn’t protest. “I can do that.”
I lean a bit more into her, deeply inhaling her scent, and the pure air around us.
“If you do something for me as well.” Kay intensifies her hold on me, her fingers pushing into my side. “I know that, on the inside, you’re still fuming. Do yourself a favor and give your sister a break.”
“Not you as well.” I recognize my tone. Catty. Tight.
Kay stops. We’ve almost reached the lodge. Only a few more feet and I can shrug off my clothes, slip between Kay’s cool sheets, and forget about this day.
“Listen, Ella.” She positions herself in front of me, her hands on my shoulders. “You have to realize that not everything someone else says or does is an attack on you. People act for various reasons and, mostly, those reasons have far
less to do with us than we like to presume.”
“It’s ‘us’ now, is it?” More poison coming from my mouth.
“You have to drop the defensive act. If you want something good to come out of your return home, you have no choice.” She stares at me, her eyes as ink-black as the night sky. “If you want ‘us’”—emphasis where I didn’t expect it—“to have a chance, you need to let your guard down. And stop feeling so ganged up on, as though the entire world is against you, because, let me assure you, that silly notion only exists in your head. Nowhere else.”
“It’s just,” I start, tapping into the last ounce of energy burning away in my body, “the way they were sitting there, as though Nina leaving didn’t matter anymore, after all those years—”
Kay tilts her chin, lightly shaking her head. “You don’t know what they talked about after you left. You can never know what goes on in another person’s mind, Ella. Stop wasting your energy on trying to predict someone else’s thoughts. It’s as pointless as it gets.”
Perhaps falling in love with someone like Kay is exactly what I needed. Someone I have a sizable emotional investment in who actually makes me register the things she says, as opposed to just acknowledging them, hearing them briefly, the sound of the words sitting in my ear for a moment, before falling away because I always know better. How could I not? It’s always been this way, ever since I can remember. This is how I’ve lived my life. Gauging other people. Filling in the silence. The little bit of confidence I do have, built with the wrong bricks. But mainly, through the years, ever since I first spotted that cold hard glare in my mother’s eyes when she looked at my dad—sometimes even at me or Nina—I’ve been afraid of everything.
“Come on.” Kay curves her arm around my shoulder again. “Enough therapy for you for one day.” Slowly, we head toward the lodge, this haven of escape, this place where Kay and I originated—where she fucked me against her bedroom door.
“Were you planning on majoring in psychology at UT?” I ask as Kay unlocks the door.