“I know he did, Jess. Of course he did. You can’t see all the pieces. You haven’t lived long enough to know, but this happens all the time. All the time. Exactly like this. He’s trying to get his life back through you. It even has a name. Midlife crisis. We don’t even have to look far for an example. Look at your father.”
“He’s not the same as my father. It’s not like that. It’s not a midlife crisis. There was no crisis. He didn’t seek me out.”
“I’ll bet you a million dollars he did. You couldn’t see the signs. Didn’t know how to read them.”
“He didn’t,” she said, but she hesitated, thinking about the night on the deck. The night in the garage. The letter with the silver key, the first night in the empty house, his phone call, his note under the windshield wiper.
“No.” She shook her head. “He pushed me away.”
“That’s what he wants you to think. And now he’s told you he’s in love with you.”
“Yes.”
“How is that not manipulative? Telling a young, confused girl what she wants to hear?”
“It’s not what I want,” Jess said. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
Her mother let out a disgusted sigh. “What did you think was going to happen, Jess? He would divorce his wife, leave his daughter, and marry you when you turned eighteen?” She laughed. “You’d start a sweet little life together? Happily ever after?”
“I didn’t think any of that. I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t, did you.” She raised her voice until she was yelling. “He is using you, Jess. Using your youth, your beauty. He is a vampire, sucking the life out of you. He will use you to death. He will drain you until you are nothing, and you’ll wake up one day, and it will be too late.”
Jess plugged her ears. “Stop yelling.”
“I’m not yelling!” She lowered her voice, though. She exhaled hard through her nose. “Jesus. If this fucker thinks he can mess with my kid.” She shook her head. “Nope. Not on my watch.”
At first Jess felt relief. Her mother was on her side. But she was shaken by the yelling, which made her want to yell, too. “On your watch? Ha! When are you ever awake long enough to watch anything?”
Her mom narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t about me.”
“Why not? Why are you allowed to behave however you want, and I have to sit and take it? Because you’re the so-called adult? You don’t even know what you’re doing. You spend half your days in bed. You can’t even do the bare minimum: stay awake.”
Her mother stood and tucked the chair against the desk. “Enough. We’ll talk about this later. I need to go out and get some aspirin. My head is killing me. For some reason.”
Jess said, “It’s Thanksgiving. The store’s closed.”
Her mom whirled to face her. She yelled, “I know what day it is!” She pushed on her bad ear, holding her finger against it. “Goddamn, Jess. I can’t believe you did this. How could you be so stupid?”
Jess’s cheeks stung as if her mom had slapped her. She had never seen her mother look at her like that before, her face inflamed, the tendons in her throat distended. She’d never called her stupid before.
“I didn’t do anything.” Jess burst into tears, knowing it was technically true but that she was guilty, too, in her heart. She curled on her side and pulled her coat and covers around her, trying to fold up inside herself. She wept into her knees, choking on the force of her sobs. At the same time, she waited: for the bed to dip as her mother sat next to her. She waited for her mother’s hand to smooth her hair, pat her back. She waited to hear her loud voice: It’s okay, J-bird. We’ll figure this out together.
Instead, she heard the front door open and click shut. She heard the sound of the engine in the drive. She heard her mother pull away.
If her mother didn’t believe her, who would?
By Monday, Jess was sure everyone knew, and she knew everyone would say it was her fault. She seduced him, she was a home wrecker, a little slut who ruined a family. She could have stood that. What she couldn’t stand was the thought of seeing Dani. Dani, who blamed her. Who wouldn’t believe her, who would look straight through her. Who would never speak to her again.
So she stayed home from school, and her mother agreed to it for now, until they could figure out the best way forward. She might finish out the school year in Camp Verde or Prescott. Her mom swung by the house on her lunch break and picked up Jess’s homework from the school. She made dinner for them, and they sat together at the table, and after, in front of the TV. Every day, her tone brusque, she asked, “Have you heard from him?” When Jess shook her head, she said, “Good.” Her tone softened then, as did her face. After a week, when they sat on the sofa, her mother reached out and put her arm around her, but her body remained rigid. Jess knew she was disappointed, angry, and disapproving but trying not to show it. Jess cried so hard she burst a blood vessel in her right eye, a tiny squiggle from pupil to inner corner.
It was true she hadn’t heard from him. She didn’t know where he was, and she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to think of him at all. When the phone rang in the afternoons, she didn’t answer it. Whoever it was didn’t leave a message. Warren didn’t call, either, so she gathered that he knew. She gathered that that relationship was dead, too.
One afternoon after school, her teacher, Ms. Genoways, came by the house, bringing her homework.
“I heard you were sick,” she said. “You don’t look sick.”
Jess pressed at her bloodshot eye. “Scarlet letter fever,” she said.
Ms. G smiled. “Funny.”
Jess said, “You know, though, right?”
She scratched her cheek. “Well, yes. It’s quite the pickle you’re in, honey. But that doesn’t mean you should be locked up in the house. This isn’t the nineteenth century.”
“I’m not locked up,” she said. “I don’t want to see anyone, anyway.”
“Okay. Fair enough,” she said. “I brought a couple of books I thought you might like.”
Jess looked at the books. House of Light by Mary Oliver and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley.
“Thank you,” she said. She took the books from her teacher. “Does everyone know?”
“Some,” Ms. G said. “The adults, anyway. Don’t worry—they’re focused on him, not you.”
“I haven’t talked to anyone about it.”
“You don’t have to. That’s not why I came.” Ms. G sighed. “I was worried. I worry too much. I don’t know. I thought at this age I’d be less worried, but nope. Worse.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Jess said. She hesitated and then added, “But I wanted to.” That was the first time she’d said it aloud, confessed the truth. “I almost did.”
“But you didn’t,” Ms. G said. “And even if you had, you’re not the one at fault, kiddo.” She shook her head and muttered something that sounded like “that motherfucker.”
“We always talked about love in your class,” Jess said. “What makes it true. What makes it real. But we never found an answer.”
“There is no answer. There is no one way. That’s what makes it so complicated.”
“In literature or real life?”
“Both,” Ms. G said. “All.”
“Do you believe in it?”
Ms. G hugged her purse to her chest. “I believe people believe in it. I believe it has enormous sway when we do believe it.”
“He told me he loved me.”
Ms. G laughed. “Oh, honey. Of course he did. He probably even believed it.”
Jess shook her head. “I go back and forth. It was real, it wasn’t real. I believe it, I don’t believe it. It’s like he was pretending, playing make-believe, because it could never happen. But I hurt everybody. That’s real. What kind of love is that?” She pressed at her chest, at the terrible animal weight crouching there. “How do I fix it? What should I do?”
“I wish I knew. I wish I could tell y
ou.”
“Say I am you. Say you did this, and now you’re older, and you’re looking back, and you know what to do.”
“Jess,” Ms. G said.
“Please.” Jess scratched hard at her scalp and then clawed at her neck until red welts appeared. “I just want someone to tell me what to do.”
“You know I can’t. Poems and stories”—Ms. G tapped the cover of one of the books—“they help me when I’m lost and confused. Which is often.”
“Oh my god, fuck poetry,” Jess said, her voice rising. “Why can’t you answer a question straight for once? If you can’t tell me what to do, tell me what you would do.”
Ms. G slung her purse over her shoulder and stared at her a moment. “I’d finish high school, however I had to, and then get the hell out of here. Go to college. Put it behind me. Live my life.”
“Run from it, you mean,” Jess said.
“Run toward something else.”
A week before Christmas, after her mother fell asleep around ten, Jess snuck out for a walk to see the holiday lights. That had been one of their traditions in Phoenix, walking and driving the neighborhoods to ooh and ahh, to laugh and wonder at the over-the-top displays, at the skinny paloverdes wrapped tight with bulbs, prickly pears dripping with icicles. They hadn’t put up a tree or any decorations this year—their first Christmas in Sycamore, Jess realized—though they always had in Phoenix. There, the three of them would spend hours untangling cords and wires before tacking them along the roofline and wrapping the porch.
Tonight she walked down Quail Run past the orchard, where Iris had left on the twinkle lights, a ghostly glimmer against the black swath of trees. She wandered through the neighborhoods across from the Syc, admiring the colorful bulbs strung through bushes and wound around lampposts. She peered through windows to catch the flicker of trees and tinsel. On Piñon Drive, she passed Dani’s, where there were no decorations. No lights at all, in fact, the porch and windows blank. When she reached the District, she huddled against the wind in her alcove, watching the sparkling strings at the Woodchute blur behind her tears.
Around midnight, when she returned home and approached her driveway, a man stepped out of the shadows and into the porch light. She barked a scream.
The man held up his hands. Adam. “It’s me,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“God, you scared me,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“You haven’t answered the phone.” He had a scruffy beard, and his eyes looked bloodshot. “I’ve been at a hotel in Flagstaff, but I got a room at the Woodchute tonight. I wanted to talk to you.”
“I’m not going to a motel with you,” she said.
“I didn’t mean—never mind. My car is down the road,” he said. “I don’t want people to talk. I don’t want to make it worse.”
She laughed. “Worse?”
“Can you please—” He stopped, his voice choked up. He looked at his feet.
“All right,” she said.
He carried a flashlight and lit the way to the end of the street, where the Squareback sat on the side of the road. She climbed in the passenger side and crouched over her knees against the cold. Two trash bags crowded the wheel well at her feet, and the back seat was piled to the roof with more of them. She pushed at the plastic, and something sharp dug into her palm.
“Sorry for the mess,” he said.
Jess nudged the bags with her foot. “What is all this?”
“My things,” he said. “What’s left of them. Clothes. My mother’s paintings. I found it all on the lawn. I haven’t been in the house since.”
“Why do you have Dani’s car?”
“She didn’t want it anymore,” he said. “She said, and I quote, ‘I don’t want anything that reminds me of you.’ ” He turned on the engine and adjusted the heat vents.
“How is she?”
“I haven’t seen her since that night. She won’t take my calls, either.” He shrugged. “The only thing she said was, ‘Why? Why did you?’ ”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
Jess pressed her calf against a bag, let something sharp dig into her skin. She hadn’t imagined the possibility others could find out, or what would happen if they did. Now she could. Vomit on beige carpet. Flying knives and an upside-down pie. A car stuffed with black garbage bags. An unlit house. Everyone bloodshot and nauseous and hiding from the world. Secrecy, infidelity, betrayal, forbidden. If it was love, it was the love of Capital T Tragedies.
“I didn’t want any of this to happen,” she said.
“No. But it would always have been like this. No matter how I told them.”
“I didn’t want you to tell them. Why would you tell them anything? There’s nothing to tell.”
“Listen,” he said, “I can’t stay in town. I’m moving. I thought about moving into my mother’s place in Colorado, but it needs too much work, and it’s too far away anyhow. I found a place, a cabin in Kachina Village near Flagstaff. Far enough away but close enough to visit Dani. I’m moving in this Sunday, the twenty-second.”
“First day of winter,” she said. She cupped the heat vent, leaning close to it.
He gave a short laugh. “I guess so. Appropriate.”
She faced him, leaning against the door, the handle digging into her spine. “So I won’t see you anymore.”
“I don’t know. That’s up to you. That’s what I came to talk to you about.”
She squeezed her knees.
“Everything’s changed now,” he said.
“Because we destroyed people’s lives.”
“Okay, yes. Yes. So the question is, was it for nothing? Is this nothing?”
She pressed her hands on the sides of her neck. “No,” she said. But it wasn’t something, either. Nothing, something, the space in between. She tipped her head against the window, the glass cold on her temple. “I’m completely turned around. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do.”
“You could come with me,” he said.
The words floated in the close space, almost an incantation, as the air vents pushed warm air at their faces. She heard her mother’s scoffing question: You’ll start a sweet little life together? Happily ever after? She wanted to scoff, too. Going with him wasn’t an option. Was it?
“Hear me out,” he said. “You’ll be eighteen in a couple months. You could finish school in Flagstaff, away from all this. A fresh start. You could go to college there. The university has a great forestry program, or whatever you decide you wanted to study. You’d be close enough to visit home. And we could see—” He pushed his foot against the gas pedal and revved the engine. “About us.”
“We’re not an ‘us,’ ” she said.
“I love you,” he said. “It’s true, as much as everyone thinks I’m out of my mind. As much as, as Rachel said, I’m doubling down on it. Maybe so. But I know I want to be with you. I didn’t know how to make it happen before, but now.”
“We don’t even know each other,” she said.
He gripped the steering wheel and rested his forehead on it. “Do you love me, or don’t you?”
Her heart thudded as if she had run fast up a hill. She felt a pulse of heat in her traitorous body.
He said, “Shouldn’t we at least give it a shot? Shouldn’t we find out?”
He reached out and took her hand, pressed it between both of his. The engine rumbled under her, and more warm air gusted from the vents. A drowsy, dreamy heat. She pictured it: A cabin in the woods. A man who loved her. College, her mother close by. A happy picture. Did they deserve to be happy after what they’d done? Her father must have believed it. He’d burned his bridges, scorched his earth, and walked right into the sunset.
He lifted her hand to his face, put his mouth on her wrist. “It’s real, Jess. What can I say to make you believe me?”
“Don’t say anything,” she said.
He pulled her close, and she breathed in his
woody scent. His beard brushed her cheek, and she trembled, the gearshift digging into her thigh. That thread of heat wound through her, taut and golden. Her body told her it was true. Believe, it told her. What if, for once in her life, this was right? Unexpected. Unconventional. Irregular.
“Beautiful Jess,” he said. His lips were on her ear, his voice a low whisper, as if afraid to startle her from a trance. “My beautiful girl.”
She pulled away at those words, curling her hands in her lap. Her father’s phrase. His grumbly voice. She looked at her shoes, pressed her toe against the worn-thin canvas. Shoes she’d worn out with her walking. Feet to walk on, to run on. Her own two feet.
She grabbed the door handle. “I can’t,” she said. “I have to go, Adam.”
“Wait,” he said.
She knew what she had to say. “I don’t love you. Okay? I don’t. I don’t want this. I don’t want to be with you.”
He slumped in his seat. “Just like that. It’s that easy for you.”
“Yes,” she said.
And it was. The door swung open, and she stepped outside onto the pebbled pavement. She walked away. She walked through the darkness. She walked home.
Her mother was sitting on the sofa in her robe when Jess let herself in. They stared at each other for a moment.
“Were you with him?” her mother asked.
“Yes. Just talking. He wanted to talk.”
“About what?”
Jess paused, trying to find the right words. She had yet to say the words to herself: It’s over. I won’t be seeing him again.
“Do not lie to me, Jess,” her mother said. “Do not.”
“I won’t. He wanted to say good-bye,” she said. “He’s leaving town. He asked me to go with him, and I said no.”
“That son of a bitch. For Christ’s sake. Come here.”
Jess plunked down on the sofa and leaned on her mother’s shoulder.
“I’m proud of you,” her mom said. “That was the right thing.”
“Okay,” Jess said, wishing she felt right. Normal. “I want it to be over now.”
“I know you do. Hey, no more sneaking out,” her mom said. “Don’t make me wake up terrified.”
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