Wild Roses

by Deb Caletti

  Siang gasped.

  I tried to take in what I was seeing, but it didn’t seem real. Some awful feeling filled my heart—horror, shock. I felt like the ground was suddenly pulled from underneath me, and that things were falling, falling. He was writing, so everything was going to be okay. And here it was. All of those empty pages. All of that frightening white.

  “I’m not sure what’s happened,” I said.

  “Oh, my God,” Siang whispered.

  I wanted to shut the door. I wanted this out of my sight. Those pages, that gash of blood, sucked the air right from me. I felt a wave of shame, too, a sense of letting Siang down in an important way. I reached for the knob, but Siang put her hand on my arm.

  “Wait,” she said. Siang stepped into the office, did something I would respect her for forever. She walked over to that painting above his desk and she straightened it. She made sure it wouldn’t fall.

  Tears gathered tight and hot in my throat. I just kept seeing Mom the other night with her tea and her happiness. I kept thinking about our hope.

  “It’s okay,” Siang said. She actually put her thin arm around my shoulders. “Come on.”

  I closed the door behind Siang and me. The latch clicked. I felt like I was trying to shut a monster into a room. A monster that would not be held back for long by something so simple as a lock.

  I brought Mom to Dino’s office when she came home. I had to confess to her that I’d gone in there with Siang. Mom just stood in the doorway where I had, held her hand to her mouth. Oh, dear God, she had said. No.

  That night, I didn’t know where Dino was. His car was gone. I knew where Mom was, though. I found her in their bathroom, the pills from Dino’s medicine bottles laid out along the counter so that she could count them. The white pages sat in a stack on their bed. What you learn is, stability is a moving target. What you learn is, destroyed hope is the most profound loss of all.

  I went outside, took out my telescope. I was out there a long time, and I was looking at the moon. Thinking how many people looked at that very same moon. Wondering if maybe Ian was looking at that same moon now, too. And it was like I had almost called him to me, when I heard those bike tires. I thought I imagined them. I actually walked to the edge of the lawn, because I couldn’t believe my own hearing. But there it was—the sound was coming closer. It was him, all right, and suddenly all of the bad things just lifted up. They just rose and made room for Ian Waters as he rode, a bit wobbly, down that gravel street, as he laid his bike down on the grass. I needed something to take the place of the scary things in my life right then, and my heart surged with this ridiculous giddiness, went from bad to good with the simple sight of his coat.

  Bright orange maple leaves from our trees had begun to cover the lawn over the last few days. When Ian walked toward me, his shoes and pant legs shish-shished through them.

  “This is so weird. I was just thinking about you,” I said. My heart filled with wonderful-fantastic.

  “You were?”

  “Just this minute.”

  “What were you thinking?” He stood close. Put his hands on my arms.

  I forgot what friends could say and what friends couldn’t. I forgot all about his leaving in eight months. It was so good to shove aside what was happening in that house behind me and have something else take that space. I would take five minutes of wonderful-fantastic, if that’s all I could have. “I was thinking that maybe you were looking at the moon, too.”

  “Can I?” He nodded toward the telescope.

  “Sure.”

  He dropped his hands, moved to the telescope, and peered in. The wind blew in a gust, picked up an armful of the leaves, and tossed them around. A few made a run for it down the road, turning mad circles. Ian’s hair blew around too. There was something about smelling his shampoo that made everything feel it was right where it should be.

  “It looks like … the moon,” he laughed. “It really looks like the moon.”

  “I know it.”

  Ian shoved his hands in his pockets. “Are you all right out here? It’s getting cold,” he said, and he was right. October had done that sneaky October thing, changed a season on you without you noticing it. Fall always came with a sudden realization.

  “I’m great,” I said. I had a nice little cozy bonfire going on inside. Warm, toasty happiness. His care made everything just fine. “I like the cold. It smells good out here. Can you believe it’s almost Halloween already?” I said.

  Ian looked up, surveyed the sky with those eyes of his. He didn’t want to talk about Halloween. “Cassie,” he said to the sky, and then looked at me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately.”

  My heart avalanched. Raced my stomach to my feet.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you before. You’re … real. I like that.”

  Ian reached up to my face, tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear.

  “So pretty,” he said. I closed my eyes. Listened to the leaves scratching along paved driveways and the road. I felt Ian’s warm breath near my cheek, knew we were about to kiss. I felt as if I were being sucked in, taken captive. He could have asked anything of me and I would have followed, led along by this joy in his presence. I leaned into him. His coat smelled as good as the night—like coldness and fall and burning leaves.

  We kissed. Soft lips, night breeze, drowning. Dangerous, willing drowning.

  We had already pulled away from each other when the headlights shined up the street. Headlights, oh, shit—Dino. Instant fear reaction. Instant guilt at being caught, and the sudden remembrance that there were way too many reasons not to be doing what I was just doing.

  I stepped away from Ian, and real life filled the space between us as Dino parked his car in the drive and just sat there in the driver’s seat, watching us. This, Ian and me, it was something I couldn’t do. I just couldn’t. Not only because Dino would be pissed, and he certainly already seemed pissed, not only because our lives were fucked up enough already, but because of what would happen to me if I let myself feel this much, this deeply, this good. Ian was leaving, and when he did I would feel this much, this deeply, this destroyed. I’d already seen what happened when you let your passions have their way. There were plenty of images to choose from—take your pick. My mother counting pills lined up along the bathroom counter, round yellow pills like dress buttons. My Dad’s haunted post-divorce eyes, the chaos in my mother’s postdivorce house, bills and dishes and laundry, all the evidence of a life out of control. My father with the Cavalli books spread out over his bed. Broken and destroyed hearts. I was only seventeen. It was too soon to be part of a train wreck.

  I broke away, ran into the house before Dino got out of his car. I left Ian Waters standing alone on the lawn. I saw his face, enough of it, anyway, to see that he was surprised and hurt, but I didn’t care. I told myself I didn’t care. What mattered was avoiding the train wreck. I ran upstairs to my room, shut the door. I shut it all out behind me. Shutting doors was the solution of the day. I tried not to imagine Ian standing there outside, making his way home to that house by the ferry terminal. I just said to myself No. I held that snow globe with the bear in it, turned him upside down. He was the more sensible one of us. Sure, he was floating aimlessly, but he would never leave that glass dome. He would stay inside that place, even if it snowed and snowed.

  “Cassie? I need to talk to you about something,” Mom said to me in the morning. What a surprise. After last night I knew we would be having this conversation. She sure hadn’t wasted any time—I was in the bathroom getting ready for school. I had just brushed my teeth and was doing a quick toothpaste survey, seeing if I’d ended up with a white toothpaste drip. I swear, every day I end up with a spot of toothpaste in a different location. It’s like a game of Where’s Waldo.

  “What?” I said. I knew what.

  “It’s about Ian.”

  “What about him?” Defensiveness crept up my spine, settled somewher
e in my throat.

  “Look, I don’t know what the situation is….”

  “There is no situation,” I interrupted. Which was mostly true. There wasn’t going to be a situation anymore.

  “Okay, fine. If that’s the case, great. There are just things you don’t understand here, about this. If you were to get involved … okay, Cassie, stop with the face. Let’s just say you were. It’s not a simple thing. Not even for you.”

  “I know that. That’s why I’m making my own decision about it. You don’t have to tell me that.” I was angry. I didn’t feel like I was the prime concern here. “Tell me, though, because, you know, I just don’t get it. I don’t get why Dino should have such a problem with me and Ian, anyway. Can’t Ian have friends? What, he’ll be contaminated like the kid who lives in the bubble? Or does Dino just not want me to be happy?”

  “Come on, quit it. It has nothing to do with Dino not wanting your happiness. He’s got a responsibility to Ian. Ian’s got to stay focused. Dino’s got to stay focused too. It complicates things unnecessarily.”

  “For Dino.”

  “For Dino, for Ian. For Ian’s family. Ian is coming here for training. Professional training. This is his life course we’re talking about. He needs this scholarship. Think about him, too. Dino had to have a talk with him last night.”

  “Oh, great. Just great.” Humiliation. Like we were a couple of kids caught playing doctor. Shit.

  “He can’t be coming over here with you on his mind when he needs to be dedicated to that violin right now. There’s a lot at stake here. Yes, for Dino, too. The structure, the chance to help this kid succeed—it’s a stabilizing force. It means a lot to him to have the chance to help Ian make it. Cassie, let’s just… if we keep things … uncomplicated …”

  “I already told you, I’m not going to get involved with him. You can tell Dino to relax. Ian’s going away, I know that. It’d be stupid.”

  “Exactly. I don’t want to see you get your heart broken, either.”

  “It’d be stupid,” I said again. “Nobody has to talk to anybody anymore.”

  “Dino’s record deal, this concert—it’s all final. His three pieces have got to be finished by March. He’s got to write. Ian’s audition is right before that. Let’s just get through those two things. Remember what’s best for Ian, if you care about him. Help me out here.”

  “Mom, okay.” Jesus. I got it. It was over. Finished. I’d decided that before she even opened her mouth. Before Dino ever opened his to Ian.

  “Things will calm down after March.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “I love you, and I’m sorry things are crazy right now.”

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  “You got toothpaste there by your collar,” she said.

  I walked past their open bedroom door and could see Dino’s figure in bed, the hunch of his bare shoulders. Even as he slept there you could feel the unease in his form. I resented the lack of peace he had brought my mother and me, resented the fact that you could look at that sleeping back and see a possible eruption, a mountain of problems rather than the quiet security that sleeping shoulders should make you feel. I wanted the safety of someone folding warm laundry, or plunking down a bag of capably chosen groceries, or fixing a broken lawn mower. But in that bed was the meteor we lived with instead, who brought unshaven torment and sheets of notes written in almost clichéd fury and shoved in the kitchen garbage along with the coffee grounds and crushed Cap’n Crunch box. It occurred to me then that all we want a good part of the time is to feel in safe hands.

  If you’ve ever made a decision not to have something you really want, you’ll know how I felt over the next few days. Sure, there were these moments of resolve, of Zen-like peace that lasted all of a few seconds. But mostly I was pissed off. At my mother and at Dino and at the world that didn’t arrange things in a better way. At my own chickenshit self.

  It wasn’t the kind of pissed off that was raging and full of energy, but the variety that was flat and snappish and lethargic. I was going through life in a fog, an expression that was true in every sense. I felt like I was watching and not really participating, like my life source had called in sick and was wrapped up in a quilt somewhere, zonked on cold medicine. And the fog was a literal truth, too—for those days it lay around in wispy streams, around the water and on the lawn in the morning, as if the clouds had pushed the wrong elevator button. That’s what fog is anyway—lazy clouds. Clouds without ambition. The fog was eerie and beautiful, soft and thoughtful, and it usually lifted in the afternoon to an annoying display of sun that made the October orange colors so bright that they hurt your eyes. Everything glistened with dew, and it was vibrantly cold out. I didn’t want that, the cold that made you want to put on a big coat and do something useful and happy, like rake leaves. I wanted the rain again, or just the fog, looking miserable and spooky.

  I went through the motions at school, caring even less than usual about the fact that Kileigh Jensen highlighted her hair or that rumors were flying about what Courtney did with Trevor Woodhouse, which everyone knew anyway by taking one look at them. The things that I might have laughed at, the fact that Sarah Frazier wore enough makeup for her and two of her closest friends, for example, or the coincidence that Hailey Barton’s bra size doubled right about the same time that two Chihuahuas disappeared from the area, didn’t even seem very funny.

  My emotions were manic-hormonal, and when Jeremy Libitski got up and turned in his math test after, I swear, five minutes, I started to get all panicky. By this time you know better. You know there’s some kid who always turns in his test after five minutes and you have that oh-shit moment of realization that you’re still on the second question. You know to tell yourself that he’s either some super-smug genius or just went along answering B to everything. But I panicked, and even the easy stuff seemed suddenly complex to the point of total confusion—Name:, for example. This is how messed up I was.

  On Friday it was Halloween, and I decided to go to Brian Malo’s party even if I wasn’t really in the mood. I thought that maybe being with my friends would help me remember where I was before I even met Ian Waters, and remember that I existed fine without him before. It’s strange, but you can feel excitement in the air on Halloween night, even if you’re staying home, as if all the energy of those little kids too jazzed to eat dinner is just zipping around the atmosphere. We carved pumpkins the night before, and I Just Said No to those intricate designs that take three days without food or sleep to carve—haunted houses and cat faces and Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper done in gourd. I did two triangle eyes and a frown and tried to put a tooth in there, but it fell out and I had to stick it back in with a toothpick. Mom, who for the last few days had been talking to her friend Alice a lot on the phone and walking around Dino as if she were carrying a feather in cupped hands, carved the same thing she did every year, a music note. Dino came out of his study and watched us light the candles and sat there in the dark with us, which is probably a metaphor, come to think of it. Since Mom confronted him with the blank pages, he’d been defensive, then well behaved. It reminded me of Mom (a leadfoot) when she gets a speeding ticket. First, she’s ticked off at the cop. Then, for three days running, she won’t go a notch over the speed limit. After that, she’s back to her old extreme and dangerous ways.

  When I left, Mom and Dino were doing something they never did—just sitting on the couch and watching a movie. Very regular couple. Very non-genius of Dino. His arm was around my mother, sucking up. This was what his illness was like. A crash. Then enough quiet to make you think it might be getting better. Then an earthquake. And Mom would just buy into it. That’s how bad she wanted things to be okay.

  I walked to Brian’s, because I liked to see the little kids with their costumes flowing out behind them as they ran, their parents calling Thank you! to open doorways, the miniature ghouls and power guys and gypsy girls. I remembered sweating like a sumo under rubber m
asks, and as a kindergartener, parading around the classes of big kids. I remember pouring out my candy on the floor when I got home from trick-or-treating, picking out the Butterfingers and separating similar things into piles. I remember my Mom wearing a witch hat to answer the door, and my Dad holding my hand when we crossed the street, and me sleeping in my bride costume when I was six. Yes, okay, I had a bride costume, so don’t give me any crap about it. That night, the streets were full of the sound of tennis shoes running on pavement and of the spooky music some people played when they answered their doors. The air smelled like singed pumpkin lids and the beams of flashlights bounced around the darkness, and for some reason it all made me want to burst into tears.

  Brian’s party was noncostume, but a few people were there anyway in bloody and gory wounds and cat ears and the like. Michael Worthman, who I had a crush on last year, came as Minnie Mouse, which doused any lingering sexual chemistry. Beth Atkins, a girl who made costumes for drama, came dressed as a cow, demonstrating that it takes guts to wear an udder. Jeff Payley wore a dog costume, and went around shaking his butt and saying, “Look, I can wag my tail!” I ate pumpkin seeds and wondered why, as the experience is vaguely like munching on toenails. I talked to Zebe, who was wearing fishnet stockings and glow-in-the-dark fangs that she had to take out in a rather drooly fashion whenever it was her turn to answer.