The Gap Year

by Sarah Bird

  “Anything is possible, but why would she? She knows that the trust stipulates that we both have to be present for her to make the withdrawal for the first year’s tuition. As many times as I’ve hammered that into her, she should know that. What if she is pregnant? She could be God knows where, doing God knows what right now.”

  “You mean an abortion?”

  “I don’t know what I mean. I’m in shock. Why isn’t she here?”

  “Cam, really, Aubrey is the sensible one. She’s going to be fine.”

  “Fine? Like Twyla’s fine?” I regret the words before they’re out of my mouth. “Dor, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m a bitch. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “No prob. You’re under a lot of pressure.”

  I nod.

  “And you are a bitch. So, we have to find her. What now? Coach Tighty Whitie?”

  “No. There is no way on earth I am ever going to speak to that asshole again.” Coach Tighty Whitie is Coach Hines, the football coach Tyler lived with until graduation. As I understood it from what sketchy information I could gather from my limited Parkhaven High mom contacts, Tyler had been “recruited” from another school district by Hines. Hines let Tyler live with his family so that he’d have an official address within Parkhaven High boundaries.

  Early in the summer I’d gone to Hines’s house trying to find Aubrey. When I introduced myself, he’d made a sour face at the mention of Aubrey’s name. While I explained my mission, Coach Hines had shifted his jaw back and forth like his dentures were bothering him, except that he didn’t wear dentures. Probably a tooth grinder. He was the type. He told me in his self-righteous way that he had “severed all ties with Tyler Moldenhauer.” Except that he’d pronounced “severed” like the adjective “severe.” Which described him pretty well. He’d probably “severed” a lot of people in his life.

  “Hines already told me everything he knows, which was nothing.”

  “I guess this means …”

  “What other choice do I have?”

  “Animal House it is.”

  Animal House is what Dori had dubbed the shack that Tyler has been renting with some of his football-player buddies since graduation. We’d located it after my visit with Hines, when the one thing he’d told me then was that Tyler had moved “out past El Dorado Estates somewhere.”

  Drawing on Dori’s extensive training in reconnaissance acquired during her years as a groupie, we had taken her Toyota RAV4 and done a drive-by. That’s when we discovered that El Dorado Estates was located on a farm-to-market road just off the interstate and that the Golden Estates consisted of a few acres of mobile homes permanently immobilized on blocks curtained behind sheets of flimsy wooden lattice. A few miles farther down the country road that had once been surrounded by nothing but acres of sorghum and alfalfa, we had spotted Tyler’s truck parked in front of a shotgun shack.

  Headbanger music had boomed out of the house. A couple of football players who looked like they’d been carved on Easter Island sat transfixed on a broken-down brown Herculon tweed couch, the blue light of the TV they stared into flickering across their faces. One other light was on in the house. I had edged the car forward so we could peek into that window.

  “Are they playing Monopoly?” Dori asked when we caught a glimpse of Aubrey and Tyler seated at the kitchen table beneath a wagon-wheel chandelier.

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “What do you want to do?” Dori had asked.

  “Hmm.” I pretended to ponder the question. “I guess I could either have a screaming fight with her, drag her out by her hair, shove her into the car that I’ve removed the inner door handles from like a serial killer so she won’t immediately bolt, or just accept that she’s safe and go home.”

  That day Dori and I had gone home. Today, I am determined, will be different. I am going to go completely Jerry Springer on her “sorry ass!” Even if bodily force is required, I will drag my daughter to the bank with me.

  Once we’re on the highway, Dori turns the radio on, hitting “seek” until something comes on that’s loud enough and mindless enough to derail the worry loop that’s twisting my expression.

  Slow ride! Take it easy!

  “Oh, Foghat, can you do no wrong?” Dori asks, cranking the volume, then screaming along, “ ‘Slow ride! Take it easy!’ ”

  I turn the volume up even louder and scream with her, “ ‘Slow ride! Take it easy!’ ”

  Dori throws in a “Woot!” and, for a split second, it’s almost like we’re having fun.

  We exit onto the farm-to-market road and follow it past the crusty rash of El Dorado Estates trailers. A few miles on, we find the shotgun shack again. Tyler’s truck is nowhere in sight. We pull off onto the shoulder, the car tipping a bit where the road slopes into the drainage ditch running alongside it.

  We cross the yard that has been reduced to a few patches of abused grass making a last stand on the hard-packed, cracked dirt. With the toe of her sandal, Dori taps a rusty Road Runner–and–Coyote whirligig and makes it spin so that Coyote is forever, futilely, chasing Roadrunner, and says, “I see the boys have decorated.”

  I climb the concrete steps up to the front door and knock, dreading having to face whatever bullet-headed throwback answers and the white-trash extravaganza that is sure to ensue. But there is no response. I knock again, harder.

  Dori leaves me on the porch and walks around, trying to find a window not covered from the inside by blinds. When she does, she stands on tiptoe, shades her eyes, peeks in, and yells back to me, “Check this out!”

  I take her place at the window and stare into a living room that is completely empty except for a few scattered crushed beer cans and a poster of “Chopper Babes” drooping from one tack.

  A “Chopper Babes” poster? That is where they have all led, all the lies that started in earnest when? Sometime last November? What would I have done if I’d known that this was where they were heading? What would I not have done?

  I face Dori. “Okay, I am officially worried now.”

  NOVEMBER 2, 2009

  All right! The quarry. That is the correct answer, Aubrey Jean.”

  We keep the windows rolled down and our seat belts unbuckled. He looks over at the tornado of hair whipping around my face and I know that he likes it that I don’t roll up my window or hold my hair in a ponytail clutched at the side of my face. He hits the gas and we leave the cramped little cars and minivans behind.

  We drive far out into the country. When we get to the quarry, no one else is there. Before it was abandoned, the quarry supplied the granite for all the state buildings constructed around the turn of the century. Since then it has filled up with rainwater supposedly a hundred feet deep. The water is clean, but the quarry has a dirty reputation. It is where the wild kids hang out to drink, do drugs, have sex. I don’t know about water depth or drugs. I have never been to the quarry before.

  “Great idea to come here on a weekday, Aubrey Janine,” Tyler says, parking at the edge of the cliff that is one wall of the quarry. “We have the place all to ourselves.” He hops out of the truck, careful to land on his good foot, and has his shirt off before he hits the ground.

  Swimming. Of course, I should have realized that swimming would be involved.

  Already unbuckling his belt, he looks back at me still sitting in the truck and asks, “Shirts or skin?”

  I don’t know what he means, but neither one sounds good. I know it is already too late to introduce “parasol and bloomers by the side of the water” as an option. I take off my shoes and T-shirt since I am wearing an exercise bra that covers up more than a bikini top would. The Nike shorts are definitely not coming off. Outside the truck window, Tyler makes a big oval of his arms above his head as he tugs off his T-shirt. His jeans drop. He leaves his underpants on. Boxer briefs. Gray. He hops to the long rope hanging from an immense cypress tree at our backs and grabs onto it. “Come on, Lightsey! Let’s see some hustle, girl!”
/>   I climb out of the truck in time to catch a glimpse of him pushing off from the edge of the cliff with his good foot. He swings far out above the quarry. At the top of the arc, he lets go of the rope. Arms thrown out wide, face tilted up to the sun, water forty feet down, nothing behind him but sky, Tyler hangs in the air for one impossibly long moment.

  Suspended.

  The water in its granite tub far below is almost black.

  Tyler flips in midair, makes a wedge of his hands, and, without even a splash, slides into the dark water clean as a knife. I peer over the edge, down the sheer face, and wait for him to reappear. In my mind, I see him popping back up to the surface, slinging a high Mohawk of water into the air as he whips his hair out of his eyes.

  But he doesn’t pop back up.

  “Tyler?” My voice echoes off the stone cliff. There is no answer. “Tyler!”

  I will his head to burst up. It doesn’t. I imagine him trapped underwater, his arm driven into a crack in the stone, leg tangled in a sunken tree, eyes bulging, hair floating around his head like ink swirled into water as he fights to come up. Maybe the water only looks a hundred feet deep. Maybe it is actually shallow and he dove into stone and is paralyzed, his head lolling forward on his spine like a wilted tulip.

  I am afraid of deep water, more afraid of heights. Getting up on a stool to change a lightbulb makes me swoony. I don’t jump off cliffs. I had planned to crawl down, slowly picking my way along the path looping almost to the far side of the quarry before reaching the water. Tyler will be dead by the time I get down. I think about living the rest of my life as the girl who was with Tyler Moldenhauer at the quarry when he died and did nothing, and I jump.

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010

  What now?” I ask Dori as we drive away from Chopper Babe Palace.

  “The bank?”

  “What good would that do? Aubrey and I both have to be there.”

  “Well, who knows? Maybe they can tell you if there are any extraordinary circumstances clauses or something. Or you can get them to just transfer the money straight to Peninsula. I don’t know. Do you have a better idea?”

  “Besides beating Tyler Moldenhauer like a circus mule? Not really.”

  Which is how I end up in a line at the bank while Dori takes my car to zip over to PETCO and pick up the gourmet cat food that her grumpy, obese cats, Three-Way and Green Beer, insist upon.

  When, at last, I actually get to speak to a teller she looks maybe thirteen. I thrust the irrevocable trust document at her and explain that I know I can’t withdraw any money without my daughter being present, but I just have a few questions.

  The teller’s long, silky brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She’s wearing a gray empire-waist dress with a tiny white cardigan pulled over it. Her smooth skin wrinkles as she studies the trust agreement. “You’ll have to speak with an officer of the bank. If you’ll just have a seat in our waiting area, someone will be with you as soon—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “You don’t understand. I’m not cashing out or anything. I just need to know—”

  “If you could just step over to the waiting area,” she repeats, already holding her hand out for the deposit slip the man behind me is passing her over my shoulder. He eddies around me and I am edged out of line.

  In the waiting area, I mechanically drink bad coffee until I realize that I’m sending myself into tachycardia and my heart is beating like a hummingbird’s. This causes me to recall that I hate coffee and never drink the stuff. After a long wait, I’m ushered into an actual office inhabited by an actual grown-up wearing a reassuring blue shirt with white cuffs and collar. He looks familiar, but it’s not until he leans across his desk, and sticks his hand out for me to shake that I remember him. “Brad Chaffee.”

  Perfect. Of course. Of course I would get Joyce Chaffee’s husband. Luckily, it doesn’t appear that he remembers me. “What can I help you with today?”

  I hand over the trust agreement. “Actually, as I tried to explain earlier, I just have a few questions.”

  “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here.” He spreads the trust out on the desk. Turning it toward me like a car salesman, he produces a Cross pen, touches Aubrey’s name, and says, “And the beneficiary?” He glances up, looks around.

  “Aubrey’s not here. Again, just fact-finding. I know I can’t get any money unless she’s here.”

  “And the grantor is …” He searches the document, finds Martin’s new, famous name, takes another look to make certain he’s reading correctly, and asks, “Stokely Blizzard?”

  The first time Martin used his new Next name was when he had the trust drawn up sixteen years ago.

  “The Stokely Blizzard who’s …” He rumples his eyebrows in my direction, prompting me to fill in the blank if his suspicion is correct and not wanting to insult me if it’s wrong. “With all those pictures with …?” He holds his hand out as if to block the lens of an intrusive paparazzo. Next has been in the news quite a bit lately, what with Singapore banning Nextarians from entering the country and an IRS investigation into their status as a church.

  I give Brad a nod tight with censure, warning him to back off the celebrity chicken-hawking and be professional. “Could you check on this account? I’d like to see if there might be a way to just direct-deposit it as tuition payment. Or, really, all I want to do is find out what the options are, since Aubrey is … unavailable.”

  “I can do that for you.” Brad swivels to face the computer screen. “Let’s take a look.” His fingers skitter over the keyboard. He works the mouse with needless flourishes, as if to emphasize the heroic measures he is taking on my behalf. “Come on, come on,” he urges his computer, circling his hand in a hurry-up gesture.

  While he waits, he asks, “Where is Aubrey going this fall?”

  I am flustered that, apparently, Brad Chaffee does remember me. But, of course, any boob-whispering single mom would be a Parkhaven gossip staple.

  “Uh, Peninsula. That’s what the trust is for. And Madison? Duke, right?”

  “Yeah. She’ll be closer to her mother out there.”

  “Joyce? Joyce is …”

  What? Going to college with Madison? Sharing a dorm room?

  “She moved out to Chapel Hill. After the divorce last winter. Joyce has family there. We made sure Madison got into Duke before we filed.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, you know. These things happen.” Brad is a little too cavalier: Joyce must have been the dumpee. I search his desk and spot a photo of Brad and a petite, dark-haired woman who looks young enough to be one of Madison’s friends. They’re both wearing running shorts that show off their matching long, muscular legs. Numbers are pinned to their tank tops. Gleaming with sweat, they hang on to each other and grin, having obviously just clocked a couple of personal bests.

  “All right,” Brad announces, beaming at his monitor. “That’s the page I was looking for. Just have to access that account now.” He places his finger beneath a number on the document, types it in, hits “enter.” A few seconds later Brad’s smile fades and he hunches forward, squinting at the screen with his head poked out between hunched shoulders like a vulture.

  “What?”

  He ignores me.

  “Brad, what is it?”

  Brad straightens back up, swivels around to face me, states, “The available distribution has already been made.”

  “In what sense do you mean ‘made,’ Brad? Because no distribution is possible since I wasn’t here.”

  This is a mistake and it will be cleared up; Brad has confused me with some other boob-whispering ex-wife of a cult bigwig.

  Brad resumes his vulture study of whatever carcass he’s seeing on the screen. “No, our records show that all available funds were distributed to Aubrey this morning.”

  NOVEMBER 2, 2009

  I hit wrong. The air and sense are knocked out of me and I sink under. The water that fills my mouth tastes like
it came from a tin cup, cold, clean, metallic. I will drown. My body will drift all the way to the bottom of the dark quarry to rest on top of Tyler’s. I fear even more that he is not dead and will see that I have made a fool of myself. Again.

  And then Tyler is dragging me back up through the water. I soar to the surface, where he yells, “Breathe, A.J.! Breathe!”

  I can’t obey. My mouth is open, but no air pulls into my lungs. As I flail about, panicked, Tyler holds us both up, treading water. The water is a hundred feet deep. The shore is too far away. I am going to die. I hope my face won’t contort in agony as I drown. I hope that Tyler will carry an image of me dying with a serene, yet ultimately incredibly hot, beauty.

  Tyler hugs me tight, stares into my eyes until I stop struggling, and orders, “Aubrey, chill. I’ve got you.” He sounds the way he did when he called that kid “Son.”

  I stop struggling and let myself be held aloft by the strong, steady surge of his legs scissoring together. The air is still knocked out of me, though, and I can’t fill my lungs. His tone is casual, like he’s making a suggestion, when he says, “Breathe.”

  I cough, sputter. When I can tread water, he lets me go.

  “Seriously, Puke, you have got to regulate your fluids. First not enough. Now too much. Props for the jump, though. Not that many girls jump.”

  In a mousy, embarrassed voice, I say, “I thought you were going to drown. Or that you were down there paralyzed.”

  “Paralyzed?” He almost laughs, then doesn’t. “You jumped to save me?” He stares hard, checking whether I am joking. When he sees that I’m not, he says, “No one ever tried to save me before,” in a suspicious way.

  I feel my hair plastered to my skull like Wednesday from the Addams Family, take a big breath, and dive under to wash it back off my face. Tyler plunges under and soars past me, going deeper and deeper. He goes so deep that his tan skin turns pale and blue. I follow him until he stops and we face each other with our hair swirling around our heads and patchwork squares of light wobbling across our faces. He puffs his cheeks out and flutters his hands under his jaw, imitating a blowfish. I stretch my arms out and wriggle in S shapes, curvy as an eel, then clamp Tyler’s face between my powerful moray eel jaw hands.