This Is the Story of You

by Beth Kephart

  But she stopped right there, didn’t think out loud, and now I was pacing again, back in the attic bedroom where everything went slanty—the stuffed animals and the good china and the low ceiling. In the world outside, the waves were coming in, higher than Old Carmen’s knees, close and getting closer. Everyone I loved most was on the other side of the sea, across a bridge, in a hospital that was painted all-wrong green, and I couldn’t save them; I was medium everything, helpless. My crooked, enzyme-leaching, too-short handsome brother had a tube in his throat and crystal something in his veins and he thought that he had swallowed the car keys. I was two hours from where I needed to be. I was two hours and stranded. Useless.

  Be brave. That’s what Jasper Lee would want me to do.

  “The doctors know what they’re doing,” I said. Finally.

  “Of course,” Mickey said.

  “And Jasper Lee’s a fighter.”

  “Always.”

  “A reaction, Mickey. Not a condition. Right? Beatable?”

  “I don’t know everything,” she said. “Not yet.”

  And even though I’m the world’s original hater of not knowing, even though I didn’t know the hyphenates yet, the terms for this emergency, even though I was crying, but crying so that Mickey couldn’t hear me, I said, straight as I could, sister to Home of the Brave, “You tell Jasper Lee that when he gets home, we’ll build him a new plane.”

  “I will.”

  “And that it will fly eternal.”

  “Okay.”

  “You tell him his Bag of Tricks is here waiting. And that I’ll make him the eggs and I’ll eat the scrapple, but he has to come home.”

  “We’ll be here overnight,” Mickey said. “At the very least.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll be here, but I’ll be checking in, all right? Stay near your phone? Keep it charged?” She was getting her voice back, her feet beneath her, she was standing up straighter, I could tell. “I love you.” That’s what Mickey said to me. And then the line went dead.

  Maybe you think I had options. Hitching a ride. Calling a taxi. Getting a police escort off the island, over the bridge, to Memorial. Maybe you think I should have done something, acted, used my big vocabulary for something actually useful. But Deni’s mom was at work. Eva was somewhere with Shift. Ms. Isabel was back in the bird sanctuary, where rule number one was to keep the electronics off, and all Mr. Friedley drove was a beat-up Harley, no room for two, and you know what a taxi would cost from Haven to Memorial? A taxi would cost all Mickey’s jobs put together, and then some.

  Jasper Lee would be all right because he had to be all right, that’s what I thought. Mickey needed me manning the house. Fixing it pretty so that when she drove home with Jasper Lee just fine up front, she’d have nothing to do but ooh and ahhh at the cleanliness of it all, the immaculate order—Oh, Mira, you thought of everything. She’d sit down with her toasted English muffin and its melted peanut butter, watch the heat rise off the tea, tell me the story and how it all, in the end, okayed out. There was dried yolk on the red plate in the scratched basin of the sink. I cleaned it. There were pillows and hats needing straightening. I hung coats. I hooked hats. I carried old purses to the closet.

  First rule when you feel afraid is to act. A lesson from Deni.

  I cleaned the hell out of that house.

  I don’t know why I figured the windows needed cleaning, too, the inside of the range, the handle of the refrigerator, the empty places in the pantry. I dusted the porcelain figurines. I rinsed the saltwater taffy bowl. I took a swipe at the ceramic ladies on the steps. I Lysoled down the toilets. The shampoo that had fallen into the claw-foot tub upstairs had left a little stain of goo; there was no more goo by the time I finished. I had never, in my entire life, cleaned a house so well. I had never counted so many minutes. An hour went by. Two. Deni didn’t call, Eva didn’t, either, and I didn’t hear from Mickey, didn’t get the call she was supposed to make to say Jasper Lee was fine, it was a silly false alarm. Hey, Mira, Mickey was supposed to call and say. We’re coming home. We’re one hour short of the bridge.

  I worked until every surface was buffed and straightened and the kitchen smelled like lemons and bleach. I slid down the hall, out the front door, to the pebble lawn, my heart set on the sight of the Mini Cooper. Nothing. Then I turned and looked back at the house—its stilty legs, its isosceles hat, its cedar shingles the color of cracked earth, its shutters a tint called Pumpkin Spice, its oddball mailbox, its front-door wreath built out of bright canaries, made special at the How to Live store.

  This was it, our place, no more mortgage due, thanks to Mickey’s hard work, thanks to her priorities: Own where you live. This was it, thanks to my aunt, who had left it and Mickey behind.

  “We need some help here,” I said to the breeze, to the grayer sky. “He does. My brother. Jasper Lee.” I sent the words up to a passing gull. I looked down at my phone. I begged it. Ring. But in my freckled hand the phone was silent, and Haven was off-season still, and the gull had stopped to rest on a telephone pole, clicking its head from side to side, no opinion, yet, no text.

  Maybe fifteen minutes went by, maybe thirty. Maybe only seconds. But I know for sure that at some point next I heard a strange little knocking. Speed of a jump rope. Quality of a thud.

  Harder, then softer.

  Near-seeming.

  Far.

  Something knocking.

  I went back into the house and out the back door into the Zone.

  Thud thud u dud thud.

  It wasn’t loud. But it was there.

  In the Zone was all the junk we never used but hadn’t tossed away. The old bikes, deflated rafts, shovels, and horseshoes. The junk we never used but had never bothered dumping. It was all there, and so was the sound:

  Thud u dud u dud thud thud.

  Not coming from the crease in the chairs, not coming from the ropes of the rafts, not coming from the bright blue bucket that Jasper Lee used to wear on his head when he stomped by the sea, before we knew the name of the thing that he had. Not coming from the cooler and not coming from the phone in my hand, I kept checking the phone in my hand, I kept thinking Mickey would call me soon. Call me.

  But I was closer now, the sound was harder now, the sound was coming from the dark beneath the house— coming, it finally seemed to me, from a row of cinder blocks, where, years ago, Mickey had parked a wrinkled pleather trunk, that trunk like a queen upon a throne. My dress-up wings were in there. My sequins as jewels. My hairband tiaras. My ruby shoes. “There for when you’ll need it,” Mickey had said, like it was dowry material, worth a little something, but it was only one more bump of junk in the shade, and I’d not thought of it for years, but now, yes, I was headed that way, toward the trunk, and when I stopped and bent close, I saw: The trunk’s latch had popped.

  The noise grew more frantic, as if it could sense me near. It changed its velocity, telegraphic. A mouse, I speculated, had chewed its way in. Or maybe a pair of bunnies had been tricked in, a magician’s gift. Something was in there and it needed to get out. I touched the key above my heart. Gave it a rub for good luck.

  I took one quick breath, and I took another quick breath.

  I flipped up the top of that trunk.

  She was a true-silver silver with pale blue eyes, a pure white single sock, a triangle of pink for a nose, whiskers the color of a web. No name, no bell, no color dangled from her neck. You couldn’t call her a newborn. But she wasn’t a fully grown cat. She was trapped inside a wing. She had a string of beads around her neck. She had been trying, it was clear, to dig her trapped way out.

  She mewed. She was frantic. Her tail was a crazy SOS.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” I said, reaching in and pulling her free. “Hey. You. It’s okay.”

  I held her to my chest. She was anxious against my heart. I flipped the lid back do
wn and we sat like that on the trunk beneath the house on the safe side of the dunes.

  “I’ve got a brother,” I told that cat. “Wait till you meet him.”

  Deni was there in a Gem flash. Flying through the front door, out the back, finding me in the Zone with the kitten on my lap, my butt on the lid of that trunk.

  “Sterling,” I told her.

  “Huh?”

  “Sterling. That’s the name of the cat.”

  Deni plopped down beside me. Stuck out her hand. Got herself a whisker tickle, a pink-tongued lick, a meow. “Inside there?” she said, pointing to the trunk with her chin, continuing the conversation we’d had on the phone, seemed like just seconds ago, Deni was that fast, Gem and all. Deni had listened—about the stray, about my brother.

  I shrugged now. Clueless.

  “But how’d she get in?”

  “Someone must have tipped the lid,” I said. “And then she climbed in and the wind shut it down. I guess. Cat in a trap.”

  “And you heard her crying?”

  “I heard a bunch of tail whacking. That’s what I heard.”

  “Christ,” Deni said. “Something new every day.”

  I loosened my grip on the cat. She padded my belly like my belly was a pillow, didn’t run away, settled down. Like nothing had happened, like it was all usual, just some everyday business to wind up in a trunk that hadn’t been opened for years. The cat began to wash herself, her tail waving like a flag. It was a performance, a good one. It left us in silence, Deni and me and the Zone. Then Sterling stood on all fours and padded my belly and sang out with a full cat’s meow.

  “Got a pair of lungs on her,” Deni said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You keeping her?”

  “Only just found her.”

  “You think she likes Friskies?” Deni reached into her canvas purse, size of a Hefty bag. She’d made it herself in Art two years before—hand-stitched the seams, sewed some decals on, reinforced its stitches. She was famous for it. Now she was digging in and pulling out a brand-name bag, ripping it along its stitching line. “‘Tantalizing mix of ocean fish, salmon, tuna, shrimp, and crab flavors, plus a touch of seaweed,’” she said, mimicking the ad. “‘For seafood lovin’ cats.’”

  She pulled a fistful of the bits into her hand. Turned her hand into a tray, palm up. Sterling sniffed and chewed and decided. Friskies it was.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

  “It was on my way. I got a discount, thanks to all my purchases for dear old Cinnamon Nose.”

  “Yeah. Still. Appreciate it.”

  I leaned against Deni, watched Sterling feast. I thought about all the times I’d wished Deni would worry less, ease up on her endless contemplating, her caution signs, her armorizing the world she knew. She sat there beside me, feeding that cat, guarding our Zone, not talking Eva, not talking Shift.

  “You know my dad?” is what she finally said, and of course, one hundred percent, I had. Known him for all my years up until a few years ago, when he was killed by the empty place in his heart.

  “Yeah.”

  “He would have loved this story of your cat. Every creature, every thing, like Dad always said, is a candidate for saving.”

  I pictured the barrel of Deni’s dad, the gray stubble and the silver buzz cut, the collar he wore on Sundays to preach at St. Mark’s Episcopal, the White Elephant sale he conducted in the church basement three times a year. Deni’s dad had been a preacher man. He’d been the original advocate for salvage.

  There was light in the spikes of Deni’s hair. There was the day reflected in the mirror of her aviators. There was a piece of string tied around her ankle and the Afghanistan campaign anodized medal she’d triple-knotted onto that string, in everlasting honor of her brother. The sleeves of his army jacket were tied at her waist. Her chin was on her hand like a Rodin thinker.

  “I have a good feeling about your brother,” she said then. “I have a feeling he’ll be just fine; he’ll be home soon.”

  “That’s what I told Mickey.”

  “Mickey’s going to be all right, too.”

  “I know.”

  “She’s going to love what you’ve done with the house,” Deni said, and she tried to laugh, so I did, too.

  The sky was curtained with clouds by the time Deni went home. Gray purple and amber purple, with a violet purple farther out. The birds were flying closer still and the tide was high and feisty, the foam shearing loose from the sea and bouncing down the shoreline. The dune planks rattled when the breeze kicked in. The window boxes beneath the front bay window complained. The monsters of the sea were out there churning—the strange and lovelies, the dolphins I could see, the see-through fantasia, the Christmas tree worm, the Marrus orthocanna, which the textbooks call a rocket, which looks like a cross between a jellyfish and a sea anemone.

  Sterling and I had a whisker contract; she could stay as long as she understood that her business would get done in the big Tupperware I’d filled with sand and left on the floor of the bathroom.

  We’d talked.

  She was a smart kitten with the brains of a cat.

  Respectful.

  Tomorrow, I promised myself, I’d find out where Sterling really lived. I’d put up some posters. Make the roller- skating rounds. Inquire. But it was late, and I’d had enough ache for one day. That cat was good company. She roped between my legs as I cooked up a second pair of eggs. She drank her cold milk first. She relished her Friskies.

  Mickey called once. She called again. She said Jasper Lee was stable but the doctors needed time. A night or two, maybe three. Jasper Lee wants to say hi, he can’t actually say hi, but he is saying hi with his hand right now, waving to you.

  I raised my hand. Waved back. Said nothing about Sterling. Nothing about the wind kicking up and the birds flying low, because on TV the weather people were saying that a giant storm way out at sea had stalled—one thousand cloud miles caught on a jet stream and carried away, out of reach. The storm chimney was popping, the storm system was squalling, the storm was sliding around and losing its head. The gray and purple clouds were the edge of something dying. The wind was incidental.

  “Get some sleep,” Mickey said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Lock the doors.”

  “I will.”

  “You need anything, call Deni’s mom.”

  “I’ll call Deni,” I said. “Deni’s enough.”

  I could feel Mickey smiling through the phone.

  “Say hi to Jasper Lee,” I said.

  “Okay, we’re saying good night,” she said.

  Right now, telling you this, I remember four years ago. I am thirteen and Jasper Lee is six, and it is November. A steel-plate sky. A nude-tone beach. Dune grasses tall, scrawny, wheat-colored. The surfers are out by Cedars, catching the year’s tallest risers. The diner is open, the hardware store, Malarky’s Pub, Uncle Willy’s Pancakes, the bank, Rosie’s, the Roman Catholic, the Come as You Are, the St. Mark’s Episcopal, Deni’s dad still upright and in charge. The traffic lights on off-season blink.

  “We should do it,” Eva says.

  “Do what?” Deni takes the tease; she asks. We are at my house, back in the Zone. We’re playing horseshoe toss with the stakes planted into the uptilt of the dunes. Deni is winning, Jasper Lee is keeping score, Eva is bored.

  “End to end,” she says. “Main Street. Winner takes all.”

  I cross the Zone, finagle the latch, dig into the trunk for the old dress-up things and grab the finest pair of wings—3-D and glitter, more ladybug than angel, bird, or fairy. “If we’re doing it, we’ll need some of this,” I say. There’s a red-and-blue towel with wide stripes tossed over the picket fence, and I snatch that, too, and now the game is on, they understand—Eva unplanting the pair of Fourth of July pennants from the white-we
ave basket of my mother’s bike and Deni running into the house and up the stairs and coming back down with that stuffed turtle I won at the Mini Amuse in her hands. “Mascot,” she says, her glasses pushed up even then are onto the top of her head.

  We should do it. End to end.

  Rite of passage, on Haven.

  My house is at Mid. We’ll start back at South, finish at North. These are the rules we give to ourselves. We single- file out of the Zone, in through the house, out onto the street. I’ve got Jasper Lee on piggyback and my skates by their laces around my neck. Deni stuffs the turtle onto the Gem’s dashboard and pushes from behind. Eva carries her Taperkick board like a baby. We push, we roll, we carry four blocks west and ten blocks south, to Haven’s farthest tip, where Atlantic City in the distance is every casino color inside a veil of gray.

  Jasper Lee will go with Team Gem—a group decision. I knot the striped towel at his neck, lower him down into the passenger’s seat, make sure his cape is fly-ready through the golf cart’s open back end. Deni adjusts her turtle mascot: front-and-dashboard-center. Eva sticks the two pennant flags into her braids so that they flap like elephant ears on either side of her head, and now I’ve got my wings tied on, and we are ready, three across plus one, wheels drawn up to an imaginary line. End to end. Six miles, no sprint. Haven is as flat as God ever made a place. Our topographic troubles will be potholes and sand slides and all the roughened places on four-lane Main, where we will keep to the gold divider lines of the perfect center, Year-Rounder traffic beware.

  “To the lighthouse,” Eva shouts. “Ready! Set! Now!” A turn of a key, a bend in the knees, a push, and we fly. Eva whooping and the Gem purring and my skates counting a steady one-two one-two glide, and you should see the cape on my super brother fly. Speed-skater style I crouch, adjust my wings, catch a ripple of November breeze, and maybe I’m medium good at most things, but I’m extra-large good at this. I’m crazy happy swift. The skates beneath me fly. The key bangs a bigger bruise above my heart. Eva, meanwhile, rides her Taperkick straight as a pin, her big pennants flapping like Dumbo ears. The Gem is all easy gleam, and Jasper Lee’s super cape is flying and Deni’s hands are on the wheel.