Things to Do When It's Raining

by Marissa Stapley

  “Bud!” she calls, and he gallops around the side of the cabin. “Come.” Slam. She starts to run, forgetting her fear of the ice and focusing instead on her fear of the truth.

  There’s an animal shelter in town with dogs and cats that need love. Ask if you can play with them. You’ll feel so good-and so will they.

  Here! Turn left. Summers’ Inn. This is where I live.”

  Lilly collapses against the seat and is able to breathe again. It was difficult to ignore the concerned glances the taxi driver directed at her in the rearview mirror on the trip home from the hospital, and nearly impossible to ignore the panic in her heart, but she managed. “Just drive to Alexandria Bay,” she kept telling the driver. “When we get there, I’ll know.”

  The taxi driver turns the car into the driveway. She sees the weather vane on the snowy roof, a beacon to home and safety, and the only place she knows. She can’t leave, not now. Why has it been so difficult to make George understand this?

  “Thirty-six dollars,” the driver says.

  “Heavens.” George wouldn’t approve, but George isn’t here. George is gone. He took the car. Didn’t he? Or did she leave the car at the hospital? She hates this feeling, the black pit of not knowing and the embarrassment of having to ask people to answer the simplest questions.

  The driver comes around to open the door and help her out. She stands in front of the inn and watches him pull away, waves like he’s an old friend. Then she hears barking and sees Mae walking up the driveway. “You’re home!” she calls out. It occurs to Lilly that perhaps Mae also got lost; she has a peculiar look on her face. What is she doing here, anyway? Wasn’t she supposed to be in New York City?

  “Is everything all right, dear?” Now that she’s closer, Lilly can see that Mae’s eyes are red and she’s been crying, or still is crying.

  Mae has dropped the dog’s leash. “I need you to tell me the truth about Gabe,” she says.

  “Oh! I saw him today, too,” Lilly says. “And then I lost him. And then he ran away.” She’s in the black pit now, and she hates that this is happening in front of Mae. But Mae doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Tell me about what really happened with him the night he left.”

  The dog—what is his name? He eats snow and sneezes, the daft creature. She wishes Mae hadn’t come home in this instant. She needs only a few minutes to gather up her thoughts again. These interludes are becoming more frequent, but they never last for long.

  “It’s so nice to have a dog around,” Lilly says.

  “Grandma.”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you please look at me? Would you please stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about?”

  Lilly hears the words but doesn’t know what they mean. She can only wait and hope for a clue.

  “I walked out to Island 51. And I confronted Gabe about stealing from us. Do you know what he said?”

  The smile is fading from Lilly’s lips. “No, I don’t know.” A shadow, though. There’s a shadow of a memory tugging at her sleeve. Gabe said something to her once, about a burden he was carrying. She should have taken it from him—but she didn’t. She tries to chase that memory, but it eludes her.

  “He said it didn’t happen. He said he didn’t steal from us. He said you gave him the money. And I don’t want to believe him, I want to think it’s something you never would have done—but I can’t. I have to hear it straight from you. The truth.”

  “The money?”

  Mae clenches her jaw. “Did he steal it, or did you give it to him?”

  The seconds flow past.

  It’s so cold. Lilly stamps her feet to keep the feeling in them. The money, the money. And something about Gabe.

  “Gabe didn’t steal the money,” she says finally, and she’s rewarded—or punished, she’s not sure, she’s so unsure—by a memory as clear and cutting as the night air biting at her cheeks. Gabe’s face. An eighteen-year-old boy in tears is a difficult thing to witness. She closes her eyes for a moment and when she opens them again she doesn’t see falling snow anymore. She sees Gabe as he was.

  That long ago night, after the shouting and the crying, after Lilly had banished Gabe from her home, she’d waited until everyone was in bed, then driven into town. There had been an envelope, thick with cash, hidden in the depths of her purse. Had she planned it? Not exactly. But as soon as the idea came to her, she realized this had always been something she was going to have to do.

  Gabe’s apartment had surprised her: tidy, comfortable, books on a shelf, a desk stocked with drawing pencils, sheets of white paper, a photograph of Mae tacked to the wall, an image Lilly didn’t recognize, a look of devotion in Mae’s eyes that was unsettling.

  They sat at his tiny kitchen table, and she slid her hand into her purse and clutched the envelope.

  “You have to go. You have to take this opportunity I’m about to give you and leave here, start a new life.”

  He had ignored her words. “How is Mae? Is she okay?”

  “It will be less painful this way. Next year, she’ll go to New York for school anyway, and what are you going to do, follow her there, be her lapdog?”

  “Well, I was thinking, I mean, maybe. I’ve always wanted to go to—”

  “She won’t respect you for clinging to her, and it will ruin your relationship. You’ll have nothing left in the end, not even your friendship.” He was silent, so she continued. “We care about what happens to you, so we don’t want you to leave with nothing. We want to help you. Leaving is what’s best for you, and for her. Before it’s too late.”

  Gabe shook his head when she tried to put the envelope in his hand.

  “It’s a lot of money,” Lilly said.

  “You don’t understand. I love her.”

  “You’re young.”

  “It’s not—I always have. And the other thing . . .” His voice was breaking, those tears were coming back. “The thing is, I have to take care of her. Not just because I love her, so much, but because I promised. And I owe her, after—”

  “You don’t owe her anything. And you really can’t stay tied to her, tied to this town.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t want to end up like your father, do you? Living in a shack? Turning to drink?” It was a knife twist and he drew back from it.

  “No,” he said, his voice a wound. “No, I don’t want to end up like my father. But please, just listen to me. There’s something you need to know.” What he told her next, it was so absurd. How could a father let a son believe something like that? Lilly supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. With Jonah Broadbent, any level of cruelty was possible—but still, she was surprised. She looked at the boy she had taken in as her own and knew that if she told the truth, she would heal him.

  But she couldn’t. It was him or Mae. And she had always known she would choose her granddaughter.

  “You can never make this up to her. Don’t you see? Your relationship is even more doomed than I thought it was.”

  A gasp. A female voice. “Why would you do that to him?”

  Lilly’s eyes refocus. She had been speaking out loud, and she hadn’t realized. Mae is in front of her, her cheeks wet with tears or snow or both. Words are lost, then found, in the falling snow. What Lilly has said, it’s the wrong thing yet again. But maybe she can make it right.

  “I lost your mother to a man with a drinking problem, a man with a bad childhood he never recovered from. I wasn’t about to lose you to that, too.”

  “How could you make that assumption? He was eighteen! How did you know who he was going to become? We needed each other! And you didn’t even give us a chance!”

  “I lost a child,” she says. “No one understands what happens to you when you lose a child. You do things, you feel things.” Lilly’s head aches. She desperately wants the comfort of petting the dog. Where is he? She wants to call for him but she can’t, because you can’t call for an animal when you don’t know his name
.

  “Why won’t you look at me? Answer me! Tell me how you could have done this!”

  “I’m trying!” In Lilly’s ears, her voice sounds like that of a frightened child. “I did it for you,” she says, attempting to sound more in control.

  “No. Don’t say that.”

  “I thought he was going to ruin your life.”

  “So you ruined his?”

  Enough. Enough of this. “I’m very tired. I’m very cold. I need to go inside. We can discuss this later.” Lilly keeps her voice firm. She is the adult, Mae is the child. Not the other way around. Why don’t children have respect anymore?

  “I’m not sure I can talk to you about this ever again,” Mae says in a voice colder than the night Lilly is being forced to stand in.

  “Please . . .” Lilly sees she will always be out in the cold now. This was not a secret that should ever have been revealed. It’s too much. Her head, her heart, too much pain. She just needs to lie down. If she could just rest she’s sure it will become clear, the path toward getting Mae to forgive her for this, and maybe even toward getting George to forgive her. Toward getting them both to forgive her for the things she did for them because she loved them.

  “What you did was wrong,” Mae says. “And I have to find a way to make it right.” She turns away from Lilly and heads down the driveway, back the way she came. As Lilly watches her, Mae begins to run. You can’t chase her. She’s just like Virginia. Wherever she’s going, you can’t stop her.

  The dog is nosing at Lilly’s hip, so she picks up his lead. Inside, where it’s warm. That’s where she needs to go. But instead, she starts to walk. She follows Mae, because she never chased Virginia, and Virginia is dead.

  But when she gets to the end of the driveway, there is no Mae. An empty street and snow falling thick. Did she ever exist, her granddaughter? Of course she did. Lilly turns left, then right, then stops walking and looks up at the sky. “Where do I go?” she asks. No answer. She holds her bare hands in front of her eyes and chooses left, then disappears into the falling snow, the dog leading the way.

  If it’s raining, one of us will have lit a fire. Pull up a chair, find a book-and enjoy.

  The cabin door slams. Gabe stands, frozen, in the doorway of his childhood bedroom. Then he runs down the hall to the living room window. She’s already sliding down the bank and onto the river.

  She was here. And I let her go.

  He sits on the couch. It stinks like his old man. Of course Lilly told Mae he stole. It all makes sense. She loved him as a child, but hated him as his love for Mae grew and changed—and became something that was less than what Mae deserved.

  And it was bad enough that he thought he was good enough for Mae—but when he told Lilly his horrible secret about Mae’s parents the night she came to see him, she sent him away. And she was right to do it.

  He stands and walks to the window. Mae’s walking fast, almost halfway across the river with the dog running ahead. The sun is low in the sky. He got to see her one last time. He’d always wondered what she was like as an adult, and now he knows: different, but also the same. An orange toque over her long curls, that color, kind of blond, kind of brown, with a little red. He’s never seen it on anyone else. The prettiest color in the world. Her voice: a little huskier than it used to be. Sexy, and appealing. Her eyes: a sadness there, a sadness he didn’t like to see. He had always believed that staying away, as per Lilly’s instructions, would guarantee Mae’s happiness. Her eyes were angry, too. She was mad as hell at him and those sad eyes were flashing with it. She pushed him away and she ran. Smart woman.

  He turns away from the window and takes one last look around the cabin. The night he left, he crossed the river on a borrowed boat to get a few things. Or maybe he wanted to say good-bye to his father, because he was that stupid. Jonah had been sober that night, or almost. Not drunk yet. He took one look at Gabe, packing books and tapes into a bag, and said, “Ah. It finally happened. They sent you on your way.”

  Gabe said nothing, just kept packing. “Don’t take it too hard, boy. No one was good enough for Virginia, and no one will be good enough for Mae either. Not you, that’s for sure. You’re better off moving on.”

  “Don’t come back,” he said when Gabe was at the door, but he didn’t say it in a cruel way. What was it in Jonah’s voice that night that made it different than usual? Sadness, relief. He had been a father commiserating with a son on the harshness of the world, a father letting a son go.

  Gabe hadn’t listened to him. He’d decided to return when he should have stayed away, when, for once, Jonah had been right. He thinks about Jonah, alone in that hospital room. He’ll die alone, or maybe he’s already dead. That doesn’t matter. Jonah would want him to leave, to finally do the right thing.

  He’ll go into town now, he’ll find out when the next bus is, and he won’t look back when he goes this time. Alexandria Bay will cease to exist, and so will Mae.

  He took something away from her, she’s right. He had started to apologize, but her anger had made him realize that in this case the truth was going to be worse. Mae wasn’t for him, and there was never going to be anything he could do to change that fact.

  Read a dime-store romance. Don’t be embarrassed: people need love stories.

  When Mae got back to the cabin, he was gone. He had poured water on the embers of the fire. There was nothing left of him except a slight divot in the bed where he had been lying. “Gabe!” she called. But she was calling to a ghost.

  Back on shore now, she stands with her hands on her knees, gasping. The gloaming has descended, transitioning day into night. She made it ashore just in time. The snow falls hard now, the kind of thick flakes that cause the world to go quiet. Did he have a car, or did he take the bus here? And where is he going, where does he even live? She doesn’t know—but she knows he’s running away and that she has to stop him from getting too far or she’ll never see him again, for real this time.

  She strides down Market Street, cutting a path that is erased by the snow as she goes, and pauses in front of The Ship. Inside, she approaches the little reception desk. “Did a man just check in, Gabriel Broadbent?”

  The clerk is wearing dirty eyeglasses. He looks like he’s in his forties, but his cheeks are covered in pimples. “I can’t give out information about our guests.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  The clerk’s shoulders slump. “No one has checked in today at all.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “It’s February in Alex Bay. Pretty sure, Mae.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “We went to high school together. You were in my AP chemistry class.”

  “Oh.” She looks more closely, but she doesn’t recognize him. “Is my grandfather staying here? George Summers? Please, just tell me.”

  The clerk adjusts his glasses, then says, “The old guy? Yep, still staying here.”

  Mae considers. “Can you give him a message for me, please? Can you tell him I’m home and that he needs to come home, too, right away, no matter what?”

  “Will do.” Somehow she doubts it. She’s probably not the first woman to come in here begging.

  Back out on the street a car passes slowly and she looks in the window. But it’s not Gabe.

  She turns down Church Street and stops in front of the Riverboat Bar. The door opens and Mae’s heart seizes. But it’s two middle-aged men fumbling for cigarette packs, exclaiming over the blizzard, folding their hands around lighters. She looks inside, still feeling hope. She imagines him on a barstool, head bent over a novel. But he’s not there.

  She walks in a square through the blizzard-blanketed town. He’s not at Skiffs, not at the Sunken Rock, not hunched over a mug at Coffee Pot Cathy’s the way his father used to be. Signs on doorways list winter hours for the other establishments. Most windows are dark. Soon, there’s nowhere else to look. “Gabe,” she says into the night, “where have you gone?”

  There’s a
car approaching, and at first she thinks she’s seeing it wrong, the light on the top that says “Taxi.” She lifts her arm halfheartedly—if you want a taxi in Alex Bay in winter, you have to call in advance.

  “Hop in,” says the driver, an older man wearing a black cap. “Where to?”

  “Watertown. The bus depot.”

  “You sure about this? It’ll take a while in this weather. I know because I just drove a fellow out there.”

  Mae clutches the back of the seat in front of her. “Was he . . . did he . . .”

  “Younger guy. Dark hair. Big backpack,” he offers with a sympathetic smile.

  “Was there a bus when you got there?”

  “No bus, not yet.”

  “Take me there. Please.”

  * * *

  Headlights illuminate the bus depot, a squat cinder-block building, half shingled, in the middle of a parking lot. They had tailed it for about a block, and now the bus is pulling in ahead of them. “Could you wait?” she asks the taxi driver, already breathless. “Do you mind?”

  She runs toward the building, singularly focused on the bus’s lights turning the snow into hundreds of wintry moths. She hears the rumble of the engine, the thudding of her feet, her heart. Around the back of the bus, she starts to slide on ice, almost falls, feels empty space and no one to catch her—but then there he is, stepping up and onto the bus. Dark hair and a backpack. “Gabe!”

  He stops moving but doesn’t turn around. She runs until she’s in front of the open bus doors. Snow falls and melts down her cheeks. She wills him to look at her.

  There is the sharp, clean smell of winter all around, combined with oil and exhaust. It reminds her of when they were young, of being with him after he’d been working at the garage or on boats at the marina. Whenever she has inhaled these scents since, she’s thought of him.

  “Don’t go,” she says. And finally, he turns. The bus is gearing up already, she can hear it.