by Meg Haston
“Seeing your mother get hit makes a person worry.” I dry the dishes as she hands them over. She’s moving too slowly. I shouldn’t be annoyed with her, but I am.
“Hit.” The word whooshes out like the last bit of air from a dead balloon. “God, Wil. You make me sound so—” Her face gets as pinched and red as her hands. “Pathetic.”
“Not you, Mom. Him,” I snap, and she winces.
I pat her back a little. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t brought up that stupid sweatshirt, Dad wouldn’t have been so angry.
“He didn’t mean it,” she says. “It was an accident.”
“Don’t make excuses for him,” I tell us both.
When she finishes the last spoon, she fills a juice glass with water and tilts it into the vase on the kitchen table. Dad’s put fresh flowers in there every morning: red roses on the first day and pink ones with those tiny white dried buds around them on the second day and today it’s flowers that have been dyed neon colors: pink and yellow and orange. She hovers over them and plucks the bad leaves.
“Get the salad out for me?” Mom says, fiddling with the stem of an electric-pink flower. “In the fridge.”
“Sure.” I tug the fridge open and lean into the cool. “Spaghetti ready?”
“Give it another minute. I set the timer.”
“Mom. Has he ever, like, has this ever . . . happened before?” I clench my jaw so tightly, my face could shatter.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Wil. I told you. Please.” When the oven timer screeches, she jumps behind me, startled.
“I got it, Mom. It’s okay,” I say. Soft, the way you talk to a scared kid.
“Let me get it.” She slides around me and grabs the pot and if I don’t ask her now, I’ll never ask her.
“Hey. Mom. Do you think I’m like him? Do you think I’ll turn out like him?”
She opens her mouth just as my dad comes through the door. He looks like a stranger who’s wandered into the wrong kitchen, searching for a family. I want to tell him to move along. We don’t need him here.
“Supper ready?” He claps me on the back. I cringe.
“Just about,” Mom says. I wait for her to answer me with her eyes, but she doesn’t. She just flips the pot into the colander in the sink. Dad slides up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist.
“Something smells good,” he says.
Screw you, I think.
Mom says, “Wilson,” like a high-school girl. She never says his name like that.
God, I think. She’s pathetic. I could just—
It happens that fast.
I could just. I could just . . . what? Hit her?
The thought blazes through my brain and then it’s gone, and God Almighty, I hope that wasn’t a Real Me thought. But it wasn’t a Generic Teenager thought, either, because Generic Teenagers think about getting laid and scoring weed and maybe the SATs.
Mom tells Dad and me to have a seat and we stare at the flowers instead of each other. I haven’t looked at the whole of him since it happened. If I look at him, he will try to have a talk, try to apologize. So I break him down into pieces, and I sneak a look now and then: his rough hands, his sunburned forehead lines. Looking at him at all makes my body ache. Three days ago, he was one person, and now he’s another. And I am half of him, but I don’t know which half.
“Here we go.” Mom serves us each plates of spaghetti.
I could just.
“Let’s say grace,” Dad says, and if I were looking at him, I’d look at him like he was crazy. We’ve never said grace in this house. Mom’s forehead wrinkles but she bows her head. This is a nightmare. We are playing at Happy Family.
Dad clears his throat. “Gracious Father, we want to thank you for this day and all its blessings. Most of all, we thank you for your grace, and for how you forgive us, even when we don’t deserve it. Amen.”
“Amen,” my mother says.
What. The hell?
“Missed you in the shop this afternoon, son,” Dad says, twirling a chunk of noodles around his fork.
“Homework,” I lie.
“Well, school comes first,” he lies back.
The food is too hot, but I force it down.
“It’s good, Henney,” Dad grunts. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a bloody stain.
“I’m glad, Wilson.” I still see Dad’s handprint on the side of her face, flashing red like a Mini Mart sign.
When the doorbell rings, I’m up. At the front door, on the other side of the decorative glass, Ana Acevedo is in abstract girl pieces: cutoffs and one hip jutted out to the side and her hair flowing over one shoulder. None of her quite fits together. I think about these Picasso paintings we had to look at on the first day of the art history elective Mom signed me up for last year.
“Hey, Wil Hines,” she says before I’ve opened the door.
“Uh, hey,” I say. I’m so glad for an interruption, any interruption, that I don’t even care what she’s doing here.
We look at each other for a while. She bounces on my front porch with this pretty scrubbed skin and hair that floats in midair and I’m not even sure her bare feet are touching the ground. There is nothing weighing this girl down. I want her lightness.
My dad calls from the table. “Wil? We’re in the middle of dinner.”
I don’t mean to laugh. Of course! It would be rude for a girl to show up here during dinner! Maybe you should put her in her place, Dad.
“Oh.” Ana’s eyes get big. “Not a good time? I just—we said we’d get together to study. Seven-thirty, right? Your house?”
“Study?” My brain isn’t working. The last few days I’ve been swimming through the school day, underwater and against the current. I forgot that Ana had asked if she could come over and study.
“Marine bio? The test tomorrow?”
My dad’s footsteps make the whole universe shake. When he gets to the door, he clamps his hand over my shoulder like a vise. My insides crumple. We can’t stay here. She can’t watch us pretend.
“Hey there. Can we help you? Wil’s in the middle of supper right now.”
“This is Ana, Dad.” I mouth Sorry. “We have to study for science. And I’m done eating, so—” I duck outside of Dad’s force field (it was easier than I thought it would be; I should have tried it sooner). I can feel his eyes on me, but what’s he going to do? Hit me right here in front of a pretty girl in the middle of family time? “I’ll be back later. We’re going to her house.”
“Are you sure?” Ana’s eyes dart from Dad to me and back to Dad again.
“I’m sure,” I tell her. “Tell Mom dinner was good,” I toss over my shoulder as I head for Ana’s Jetta.
“Um, bye, Mr. Hines,” Ana says too brightly. She’s a nice girl, and she must have nice parents who taught her to use her manners even in the most awkward of social situations.
“Sorry for inviting myself over,” I say under my breath with an embarrassed laugh.
“No problem.” She presses a button on her keys, and the door clicks open.
“Rough night, huh?” she teases once we’re speeding down Atlantic. She’s got the sunroof open and the wind sends her hair whipping around.
“I had a fight with my dad. Needed to get out of there.”
She studies me. “You look sad, Wil Hines.”
“Eyes on the road, Ana Acevedo.”
She laughs a little and we’re quiet for a second, damp evening wind flowing through the car and me all at once. When we stop at the third streetlight, I look over. Ana’s hair is big and twisted around her face, and her cheeks are flushed.
“My parents are out with friends,” she says, and this time she does keep her eyes on the road. “They’ll be out late, so you can stay as long as you want.” Her cheeks flush deeper. Ana is so good. I should save her. Leap out of the car at the last minute and put as much distance between us as possible.
Instead, I say, “Okay.”
Walking into A
na’s condominium in jeans and a T-shirt feels like walking into a fancy restaurant where the guy at the front podium has to pull you aside and offer you some other man’s tie because what kind of an animal eats steak tieless? That’s never actually happened to me. I saw it in a movie once. But that’s exactly how I feel now: tieless in a steakhouse.
“This is really nice,” I say. It’s the best I can do, because I’m concentrating hard on trying not to knock over the huge oriental vase on the stand next to the door.
“Thanks.” Ana tosses her purse on the nearest beige sofa.
The condo is one enormous room with windowed walls that would show me the ocean if it wasn’t so dark. It’s lit like a museum. There are three or four beige couches, identical, at different angles all over the place. Clustered around them are beige chairs and wooden side tables, and beneath these are woven rugs that are the same color and feel like straw under my feet. There’s a hallway at the far end that probably leads to more beige.
I wonder what Ana is doing in public school.
She walks into the kitchen. I sit on a smooth wooden barstool. My phone vibrates in my pocket. I shut it off without looking.
“So, do you need a drink or something?” she asks. She dips below the counter and emerges with a frosted bottle and a couple of short glasses. Vodka, I think. I’m surprised that she can just do that, reach into a cabinet and produce booze. We don’t even have any in the house.
“But you don’t drink, right?” I say. I stare at the grayish veins in the marble countertop, feeling my face get hot. Maybe I shouldn’t have noticed.
“You don’t drink, either.” Ana fills our glasses to the brim. She’s clumsy with the bottle, and the booze sloshes over the side of the glass. It makes me like her, the way she’s never done this before. “But you look like you could use one tonight.”
I don’t argue.
She raises her glass. “To Agnatha.”
“Huh?” I lift mine, too, because what the hell? Maybe this is exactly what I need. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be someone else for a while. Somewhere else. This feels like the kind of house where the worst thing that happens is running out of organic coffee in the morning.
“Agnatha. Jawless fish.” She laughs. “Have you even read the chapter?”
“You got me.” The vodka is cold and crisp and tastes good, which I didn’t expect. We take another shot each and she tells me to grab the bottle. We’re going to the balcony.
On the balcony, we stretch out on lounge chairs that probably cost more than the good inside furniture at home and stare into the dark, taking turns sipping from the bottle. The cool air chills my skin and the vodka warms me on the inside. I can hear the waves, and it’s not long before my heart beats with them.
“You and your dad gonna be okay?” she asks. She pulls her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them. She looks sweet, like a girl who really wants to know.
“Ah.” I take another swig and it gets stuck halfway between my mouth and my heart. For a second I consider telling her everything, because it’s too heavy and Bridge isn’t here anymore to help me carry my weight. “I don’t know. He’s just been kind of an asshole lately.”
She nods. “My dad can be a jerk, too, sometimes. Especially about college. He’s got me lined up for all these college tours I don’t really want to go on, when I keep telling him Notre Dame is my number one choice.”
I feel the pinch of disappointment, even though it isn’t her fault that she doesn’t get it. No one on earth should understand what this feels like, this miles-deep blackness.
“Notre Dame sounds good.” I lift the bottle again and the night in front of me gets swirly—dark blue spinning just out of my reach. I wonder if this is how Bridge sees things when she’s drunk. I stand up and bend over the balcony, dizzy and loose. I’ll say it: I’m homesick for Bridge. She would get how confusing this is, how I hate my dad and want him back at the same time, just like she does. She’d get how lost I feel; how I don’t really belong on a high-rise balcony with a good girl and a bottle of vodka. Ana Acevedo, Wil? Really? she’d say. I wouldn’t know what to tell her. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going or who I am. That’s what she and my father have done to me. Without my dad, without Bridge, I am aimless. Tethered to no one. At the mercy of the currents, and too tired to swim.
BRIDGE
Spring, Senior Year
“DID you know grief can literally kill a person?” I ask Leigh. We’re sitting in Iz’s front seat in the school parking lot after school. I prop my bare feet on the dash and watch Wil heading for his dad’s pickup a few rows over. His shell is the same, but his head is down and his walk is syrupy; nothing like the loping gait that used to make it so easy to find him on the beach.
“Makes sense.” Leigh slurps the last of her Big Gulp. “When the heart chakra is blocked—”
“No. I’m talking about the pituitary gland, which is an actual thing.” I keep my eyes trained on Wil. He stops at the truck; notices the envelope I slid under his wipers at lunch. I see the moment—the exact moment—that his fingers recognize the scrap of sail tucked inside. One of the countless boat treasures Wilson had passed my way. On the corner of the sail, in Wilson’s precise handwriting, is the name of the boat. Freedom. Maybe Wil wants nothing more to do with me. But I know what he needs. And right now, he needs this small piece of his dad more than I do.
Wil’s face shatters, and he sweeps up the pieces quickly. He stuffs the sail into the back pocket of his jeans and dives into the front seat, deflated.
“Um, rude,” Leigh announces. “The heart chakra is absolutely a thing. And a certain person’s heart chakra is totally blocked right now.” She elbows me, hard.
“Ow. I’m serious,” I protest. “The pituitary gland secretes this chemical in your brain that puts you in fight mode.” My toes curl against the glove box. “I read this article last night. After you lose someone close to you, your body is in this heightened state of stress all the time. Your cells actually start to die.”
“Bridge. My love.” Leigh turns in her seat and interlaces her fingers with mine. Her mood ring hurts like hell. “First, he’s gonna survive this. But in the meantime, it’s just going to suck, you know? You have to let it suck.”
“Let it suck. The lesser known follow-up to Paul McCartney’s—”
“And second, this is too much neuroscience for my brain.” She jams her keys in the ignition. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”
“Nah. That’s okay. I could use the walk.” I lean over the console and kiss her on the cheek. When I glance in Wil’s direction again, the truck is gone.
I take the beach route home. The air is hot and thick, an August day that has wandered into spring. I slip out of my sneakers and jog barefoot on the soft sand until my lungs aren’t big enough, and in minutes I’m slick with sweat and the muscle fibers in my legs are sparking. My skin is flushed the ugly, pale girl kind of pink.
Looking out over the water, I think, I could take a running dive and I could swim and swim until the beach is gone. I used to have those kinds of thoughts as a kid, and sometimes I still do. Driving over the Hart Bridge I’ll think, I could veer off this bridge and for a second it would feel like flying, or I’m sitting in class and it will cross my mind: I don’t have to go to college at all. These are my secret urges. I won’t do any of these things. But I like thinking I could.
I could run to the workshop. Refuse to leave until Wil speaks to me. Until he explains what’s changed since he broke up with me. What’s so big, so important, that I don’t understand his family anymore.
By the time I turn down my street, I’ve decided: He doesn’t mean it. He’s angry. He wants to hurt me like I hurt him. I kick through my front gate, sweat stinging my eyes and the spot above my ankle where I cut myself shaving this morning. I’m wiping my face with my T-shirt when I hear his voice.
“Took you long enough. What’s that? Like, a thirty-minute mile?”
I yank down my
shirt. Wil is sitting on my front porch, folded in half. His crumpled backpack sags on the step.
“What are you doing here?” I let the gate snap shut. I want to be pissed. I want to be pissed and I don’t know if I can be pissed at a boy whose family is in pieces.
“I don’t know,” he says. His eyes are foggy, a murky green that won’t let me see past the surface. “I was a dick the other day. In the shop.” He stands up and sort of sways in place.
My T-shirt melts into my skin and I wish I’d worn shorts. “I probably shouldn’t have shown up like that.”
“I don’t know,” he says again. “I really don’t. There’s no manual for this shit.” His hands curl into fists, then relax and curl again, as if they are beating hearts resting outside of his body. I want to hold all his hearts close to mine, but he won’t let me. I grit my teeth until my head hurts.
“I know. No manual.” I don’t want to take a step. I don’t want to breathe. We are fragile.
He rubs the back of his neck. “Ana keeps asking what kind of casseroles I like, and it’s like, My dad is dead, so really I don’t give a fuck about casseroles. But you’re not allowed to say that, you know?”
“Chicken tetrazzini. Done. She’ll never ask again.” I don’t know whether to smile or not.
His lips curve up, and I relax a little.
“We literally don’t have room in the freezer for another casserole,” he says. “I want her to know that. I don’t want to have to tell her. She just—” He blows out a breath. “Whatever. I can’t talk about this with you.” He looks past me.
That whatever isn’t just a whatever. If you cut the word open, so much more would spill out.
“This you?” He leans to one side and reaches into his back pocket.
“Yeah,” I say before I see the scrap of sail.
“You have anything else like this? Stuff from other boats?” His eyes light up.
“Yeah, definitely. Lots of stuff. Yours, if you want it all.” I take a step toward him, and his face hardens.
“Nah,” he says. “I have too much of his stuff already. I’ve been packing it up, and it’s, like . . . It’s the weirdest thing, trying to pack up another person’s life. It makes you think that we’re nothing more than the books we always said we’d read and old underwear and spare change.”