Every Little Thing in the World

by Nina de Gramont

  “No way.”

  The sky grew dark, then darker still. The lights in all the outbuildings had been turned off, and the stars gathered above in a thousand layers. The stars. How I would miss all those stars. Back home would feel like a more distant planet with its overhang of pollution and spattering of one star here, a moving airplane there. Here, on the lake, we hung flat out into the solar system, right in the thick of every world.

  Cody still didn’t speak. “It’s not what you think,” I said. “I’ve only slept with two people in my entire life.” Even as I defended myself, I realized that at sixteen two people might be exactly two too many.

  I waited for him to take his arm away, but he let it stay there, insistent and even a little protective. “So,” he said. “That night, when we were together. You were pregnant?”

  I nodded. He might not have been able to see me, but he would feel the top of my head brush against his chin. “Intense,” he said. I nodded again. He squeezed me a little closer. Up above, just behind or just in front of the stars, I saw a little flash of green. It flickered, then bowed. Something inside me contracted, and I reached for Cody’s hand.

  “Look,” I said.

  We lay back on our sleeping bags, holding hands. Above us the sky moved and roiled. It danced and flickered, like an ocean tide from a faraway galaxy. After a while it got colder, so we crawled into our separate bags. We didn’t hold hands again, but lay next to each other, staring up at that gently explosive sky.

  We could have said something about how beautiful it all was, and how lucky we were to be watching it. But what words could match the spectacle up there above our heads? How could we describe it in a way that would do justice rather than make it smaller? So we kept quiet, our limbs lying against one another, touching through layers of down and Gore-Tex.

  Tomorrow we would return to civilization. But right now everything—the white pine and the wildlife and the thousands of trails forged by the Deep Water People—lay around us in a pulsing hush of ancient wilderness. The two of us, so new in comparison. We were like babies, safe somehow in the forest. We were the newest creatures on Earth, with nothing to do but move forward into the world, starting fresh.

  epilogue

  a time made simple

  August in New Jersey. Hot, humid, muggy, and buggy. I’m living at my dad’s house. Every morning he wakes me up just before dawn—which comes much too early on these long summer days. I climb from the tangle of my sleeping brothers and pull on clothes that are almost as grimy as the ones I wore on Lake Keewaytinook. Then I go downstairs and eat breakfast with my father in the dusky kitchen. No one else is awake, not Kerry or the kids, so it’s just the two of us. My dad and me. We don’t talk much—some mornings we don’t talk at all. I’d like to say I feel closer to him, but some days the air just hangs with everything I can’t say. The silence doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s content to leave things between us just as they’ve always been, and I’m learning not to want any more from him than he’s capable of giving.

  It’s strangely companionable, the two of us eating the freshly laid eggs that he scrambles with unpasteurized butter and sprigs of basil from his garden. After breakfast he drives off in his truck. I put on a wide, floppy straw hat and pedal Kerry’s one-speed cruiser three miles down the road to Campbell’s farm. My only day off is Monday. The rest of the week I spend half the day in the fields, weeding and picking ripe produce. Then in the afternoon I sit out at the roadside stand, my face streaked with farm soil and my arms sunburnt and sore. I sell summer squash and corn, fresh tomatoes and blueberries. There are no checks or credit cards; the Campbells trust me with the folded cash and jingling coins, and although I am not getting paid for my work—I’m paying for my month on the lake—I have never pocketed a single penny. It feels good to be trusted.

  I pedal home in the afternoon and get there an hour earlier than Dad. I run upstairs to take a long, steaming shower before he’s there to remind me of the ten-minute rule and lecture me on precious resources. Kerry doesn’t tell. She’s grateful to have me there watching the kids. Some afternoons she naps, sometimes she goes for long walks. She looks like she’s lost a little weight.

  Rebecca can stand up on her own now. She teeters to her feet and wobbles in every direction. She beams so proudly, it’s like her smile is what keeps her balance. The other day she was sitting in the high chair and Kerry asked, “Where’s Sydney?” Rebecca lifted up her chubby arm and pointed right at me. It was the weirdest thing, like suddenly receiving direct communication from a houseplant.

  My mother saw Rebecca for the first time when she dropped me off here after my plane came in from Toronto. She even held her for a few minutes while Dad carried my pack into the laundry room. Mom said Rebecca looked just like me when I was a baby. Dad seemed surprised, as if he’d forgotten I hadn’t sprung up from the ground sixteen years ago, exactly the way I am today.

  Two weeks ago we were quite a spectacle, the campers from Lake Keewaytinook, coming back to civilization. When we got off our chartered plane, everyone in the Toronto airport stared at us. We looked fresh from some major trauma, most of us in filthy clothes and all of us with deep, native tans. A few motherly-looking women actually came up and asked why we were all so dirty.

  Natalia and I said good-bye to Meredith, Brendan, Sam, and Mick. We all stood together under the airport security lights, the five of them with their hospital-washed clothes and me in the T-shirt and jeans that had been worn for almost thirty days straight without seeing a drop of soap. We took turns hugging one another and writing down e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers. But I think we all knew these good-byes were the most final we’d ever known. There would never be another time like the month on the lake, the six of us together. Not even if we decided to come back next year, as Meredith was already plotting.

  Mick seemed the saddest of anyone. He even hugged Brendan and Sam. When he hugged me he pressed his hand into the small of my back, a fierce but strangely gentlemanly gesture. “I’m happy for you, Syd,” he whispered in my ear, and I had to fight back the urge to say that I loved him. It was still Mick, after all, and of course he would take it the wrong way and turn it into a lewd joke. So I just said thank you and kissed him on the cheek. I’m pretty sure I tasted a salty tear.

  We all headed to our gates and let Mick and Natalia say good-bye privately. I was already settled into my seat on the plane when she came walking down the aisle. She paused and looked at her ticket—of course since we’d sat together on the plane ride to Toronto, we were assigned seats next to each other for the ride home.

  “Do you want to switch with someone?” I asked her.

  “No.” She sighed and sank down into the seat beside me. “Let’s not talk, though.”

  I agreed, but I don’t think she let a minute pass before saying, “It feels like a million years since we were last on this plane.”

  “It does,” I said.

  “Everything’s different,” she said. “Every little thing in the world is different.”

  “I know.”

  “But you know one thing that’s the same?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You and me. Sitting here together.”

  I dropped my hand into her lap and she scooped it up, clasping it tightly. She didn’t let go of my hand for the entire flight, not even when she drank her Coke—not spiked this time: How could we even consider ruining our first taste of Coke in four weeks? We didn’t say another word until the plane touched down in Newark. Natalia finally let go of my hand and said, “That was the best summer of my entire life.”

  I knew then that Steve would get some sad news when he tried to contact Natalia. Picturing Mick—his stubbly head and his sunburned shoulders—I couldn’t help feeling happy. I knew I would do whatever they wanted, Mick and Natalia, if they needed help finding a way to see each other again.

  When I walked through the security gate, my mom stood there waiting for me. Her hair was a little long
er. I walked toward her slowly, tentatively, and then she opened up her arms. I threw myself into them. She held me fierce and tight, like she would never let me go anywhere again. Her hair smelled like honey and Ivory soap. Just underneath her skin—soft and familiar—there was that sixth sense we shared, not a scent exactly, but something deeper and more difficult to define. Something I’d known my whole life, that whatever happened I could identify without naming it. Mom. My mom. The bustle of the airport disappeared, the two of us there together in our little pod of reunion.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Me too,” she said. “I’m sorry too.”

  She stepped back a little and gripped my shoulders tightly. She looked hard into my face, and then scanned my body from my toes to the top of my head. I almost expected her to start counting my fingers to make sure they were all there.

  “Are you okay, Syd?” she said.

  “I’m fine, Mom. I’m totally fine.” And she pulled me into another hug.

  On the drive to my dad’s she told me how things would go in the fall. She said she would let me return to Linden Hill Country Day. “I can’t imagine coming this far,” she said, “and then switching. I’ve worked too hard to keep you at that school to let you blow it now.” I didn’t feel particular relief at the news. It was more like I’d known all along that was how she’d feel in the end.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She reached across the gearshift and took my hand. “I want you to know,” she said, “that I decided about school before you called me from the hospital. I also want you to know that I’m not sure if I ever meant it, about making you change schools. I may have just wanted to scare you.”

  I felt a little annoyed that she wouldn’t just come out and admit this in a definite way. But then I thought, maybe she didn’t know herself. Maybe none of us can ever know, for certain, what we’re doing, or what we want, at any given moment.

  “You know, Syd,” she said, still holding my hand. “I never meant to be the kind of mother you couldn’t come to. All that time I was mad because I couldn’t trust you. But it turns out you couldn’t trust me, either.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Her eyes were on the road, but I could see tears spring up, and she squeezed my hand tighter. “Don’t you ever be sorry,” she said. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Sydney. More than I can tell you.”

  I sat quiet for a minute, trying to remember if I’d ever heard her apologize to me before. I couldn’t be sure if this was the first time, or if in the past I just hadn’t been listening.

  “But you know,” I said, “the truth is I did come to you. Maybe not right away, but when it really mattered. And you did exactly what I knew you would do. You came through for me.”

  She let go of my hand to wipe her eyes with the back of her palm. Then she reached back and pushed a crazy strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Thanks for that, kiddo,” she said. And we rode together, quiet and smiling a little, all the way to my dad’s.

  Now my mom calls to check in a few times a week. On Sunday nights I’m allowed to call a friend. The first time I called Brendan. He had just won a role in an independent film and was headed back to Canada—Vancouver this time, the opposite coast. He told me that as soon as he got home he’d Googled all the Pittsburgh papers for a news story about a guy found dead under a tunnel last summer.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. I think we were both disappointed as much as relieved.

  Now it’s Sunday again. My body has returned to normal, no more cramps or blood. In a couple of weeks I’ll probably get my period. Every morning I eat a huge breakfast and every night I eat a huge dinner. But for lunch I only have some fruit from Campbell’s farm, and with all the biking and gardening I haven’t gained much weight.

  It’s weird to think that while I’m here in this other universe, Jane, Silas, and Bucket Head are rowing on Lake Keewaytinook with a new group. I picture them seeing Jane peel off her shirt for the first time, or listening to Silas’s guitar, and I have to fight back a stab of jealousy. I’m thinking about asking Dad if I can go back next summer. I’d be glad to do the same cycle: a month on the lake followed by a month on the farm. Maybe the year after that I could even be a counselor. Lifeguarding suddenly seems a pointless bore in comparison.

  For dinner tonight Kerry prepares homemade pizza on the grill. I helped her roll out the dough. We cover one with homemade pesto, the other with homemade tomato sauce. Everything is from the garden. Everything is healthy and good. I can’t imagine having nightmares here anymore, no matter what scary predictions my dad makes for the future. Right now—in this moment—we’re all safe. I’m willing to let that be enough.

  Do I ever feel guilty? Do I ever feel sad? Sometimes. Tonight I look around the table. I see my brothers and sister gobbling down their pizza—Rebecca’s cut into teeny tiny squares—and I wonder where that missing person might fit, what he or she might have been. But the feeling passes quickly. I understand that I did what I had to do, and if I occasionally feel like I need forgiveness, it’s not very hard to grant it myself. In the end it’s impossible to regret a future that terrified me so completely. What I mostly feel is gratitude at having my old life back, the way it’s supposed to be. It’s almost like I had the chance to travel back in time and right something that had gone terribly wrong.

  “Sydney,” Kerry says after dinner, as Dad collects the dirty plates, “do you want to call one of your friends?”

  I think of who I might call. I’ve got Cody’s number upstairs, tumbled into my single drawer in the room I’m sharing with my little brothers. I know he’d be happy to hear from me. And I’d love to hear Natalia’s voice. She’s been e-mailing Brendan, so I’ve gotten most of her news from him. She won’t be at Country Day in the fall, though she’s not going to Switzerland.

  “She’s going to live with her sister in New York,” Brendan told me. “They’re sending her to Brearley. It’s an all-girls school.”

  “I know,” I said, silently wishing the Miksas luck with this new strategy.

  Now Kerry puts her hand on my shoulder, and I realize I haven’t answered. “Sydney,” she says again. “Want to make a call?”

  Outside it’s grown dark. Through the screens I can hear all the good summer chirps and buzzes. I’ve had a long day in the sun. My body is bone tired in the best possible way, and if I closed my eyes for even a second I would feel the first gentle threads of sleep. I know that in a couple of weeks I will be back at my mother’s house. I will return to school, and my old life, with a fresh understanding of all that’s been rescued. And I will definitely call Natalia, my best friend, to hear all her news. I will certainly call Cody, to discover whatever possibilities lie between us.

  But for right now I’m tired. I’m happy to be just one person, with a long day behind her and another one ahead. “I think I’m fine tonight,” I tell Kerry and my dad. I love the purity, the honesty, the lack of secrecy in that single sentence. There’s nothing in the world I need except a good night’s sleep. I’m fine tonight.