Stay

by Deb Caletti

  Breaking up could sit in front of you for a while. It was a ring of fire you had to at last decide to run through. You finally got tired of standing there and looking at it, feeling the heat, tired enough to finally just go. Getting burned at last seemed better than the waiting to get burned.

  “Did you do it yet, C.P.?” my father asked. It was the same thing Shakti had been asking me every day. Now that she knew I intended to break it off with Christian, she’d stopped the gentle hints and questions: Does it ever bother you when he . . . I’ve noticed that Christian always . . . Instead, she came at me full force. She was talking to me like the coach of the prize fighter. You waited too long already, Champ. You gotta get in there and do it. One fast punch, no hesitation. Take him down, Champ. If you heard this coming out of her, you’d know how funny it was. You’d know why I cherished that girl.

  “I’ll do it, Dad.”

  “You wait around for it to get easier, and he’ll have that knife at your throat.”

  I should say, too, how hard it was for words like that to actually reach the part of my brain that truly gets it. I was resisting the idea of any actual danger. It seemed overly dramatic in some bad-television way. The things you believed could happen if you watched soap operas, maybe, not if you read books and went to school and had a regular life. Parts of me, big parts, thought that Dad was overreacting. He was taking it too far. I tried to convince myself that what Dad said could be true, but it seemed like I was trying to manufacture fear. The times I had felt fear, the day of the fight about Jake Ritchee, the day Christian threw the glass—I had numbed those things in my brain with compassion and understanding, which worked on me the same way drugs and alcohol worked on other people. I understood Christian. I felt sorry for him. He was just afraid. Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.

  The thing is, though, a person keeps being who they are. They keep doing whatever it is they’ve always done. And this is a huge help when you’re trying to break up.

  I was in Fred Meyer, buying some poster board for a senior year A.P. English assignment. The visual aid part of my presentation. I threw a sandwich in the cart, too. A mascara. Some lotion I like that was on sale. Stuff for my poster. I was cruising around the music aisle, just seeing if there was something I couldn’t live without.

  I looked up and there was Christian. I had one of those stupid moments where the thought flash was that I knew him from somewhere, and then, of course, all his familiarity came rushing in.

  “Clara,” he said. “There you are.”

  “What are you doing here?” I thought he was over at his friend Evan’s house. Group project. Evan and some girl.

  “We’re finished.”

  My heart dropped. I thought he meant him and me. It was surprising how bad it felt when it was his idea. But then I realized he just meant they were done with their project. He was looking down into my basket. Looking in a way he thought there might be something incriminating in there. Like what? Condoms? A lacy black thong? Something other than roast beef on a kaiser and colored pencils?

  And then things came together in my mind. I realized what was happening. I had told him when we last talked that I had planned on coming here after school.

  He was checking on me. He was making sure I was doing what I had said I was going to. I knew that as sure as I’d known anything before.

  “You’re checking on me,” I said. I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t. I had seen him looking at my phone before, true. I’d actually caught him with it in his hand. I wondered sometimes if he’d looked at my e-mail. I’d go downstairs or something, and come back to find the computer screen changed. But he had actually come to Fred Meyer. This seemed somehow more damning than if he’d checked up on me at a Starbucks or some restaurant. It was freaking Fred Meyer. Where they sold weed whackers and groceries and tube socks in fat packages and knockoffs of knock-offs of designer clothes.

  “You said you’d be here after school.”

  “And I am here.”

  We were standing by the rows of CDs, by the videos, the cameras behind glass cases. A guy in a yellow Fred Meyer vest was watching us. I used to love those shoulders of Christian’s, that mouth, the way his hair fell over his eye. Funny, but I realized that most of the time I didn’t even hear his accent anymore.

  “What are you buying?”

  “I’m going to the hardware department to buy some rope to hang myself because I can’t stand this anymore,” I said. It was a terrible thing to say. Awful, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m done. Christian, we’re done. This is over.”

  He stood there staring at me. He was wearing a plaid shirt I had given him last Christmas. I loved that shirt. I had unbuttoned that shirt countless times. “Clara, you can’t do this. No. Please.”

  “We’re finished,” I said.

  He was right by the seasonal aisle, the place where time speeds past in candy minutes, Halloween to Christmas, Christmas to Valentine’s Day, Valentine’s Day to Easter. And then he turned and fled. I watched the automatic doors shut behind him. I watched them open again, letting in a mom with a toddler girl in a grocery cart. I looked over at the Fred Meyer guy in the yellow vest. He was not much older than me. Wheat-Thin thin, with glasses and pink-white skin. He shrugged at me, as if to say That’s how it goes, though I guessed these were scenes he usually only saw in those artsy independent films. Music was playing. An old Culture Club song from the eighties. “Karma Chameleon” in cheery, buy-me! instrumentals.

  I had done it. I’d walked through the ring of fire. I had broken up with Christian. I wanted to feel some relief, but instead I only felt some sick twist of emotion in my chest and some ache in my throat that was too big to swallow. I thought about calling Shakti or my dad, but I felt too stunned. My hands were shaking. Instead, I went to the housewares department. I walked in the aisles of sheets. I stuck my arms deep down in the folds of the cool cotton blankets.

  It felt different right away. There was silence from him at first. For an entire day. I got scared. My dad made me soup. Shakti offered to come over, but I said no. Nick, too. He said he was making me a CD with breakup songs on his iPod. Annie said she was taking me shopping that weekend. We’d buy new life shoes. But I couldn’t think of soup or music or shoes. I could only hear how loud that silence was and wonder what was happening in it. I was worried about Christian. I thought about texting his friends to make sure he was okay, but I knew I shouldn’t. He suddenly seemed a million miles away, like some astronaut that got his cord to the spaceship severed, and now he was floating God knew where in the blackness.

  I heard from him two days later. I’d been wishing he would call, praying to whoever might be listening that he would, just to know that he was all right. Once he actually did call, though? I was wishing as badly that he’d go away and stay away. You can want someone gone and still care. You just want to care from a great distance.

  I answered. He was sobbing. Pleading. I used my softest voice and said the words again. He hung up on me, then called back, angry. I had to break up with him several more times, that’s what it felt like. He sent e-mails of apology and promises to change and accusations and memories of the times we’d said it was forever. I explained my reasons again and again. I started to sound like those people who answer the phones at stores. Thank you for calling Vibe my name is Missy how can I help you today? As if it were all one sentence they’d stopped caring about several hundred phone calls before. It started to hurt to see his name in my e-mail box or on my phone. Not hurt like heart-hurt, but hurt like those sounds you hear at the dentist’s office you just want to stop.

  “I don’t think a relationship is something a person should have to talk you into,” Shakti said. She was sitting at our kitchen table, having one of Dad’s homemade pizzas with us.*

  “You shouldn’t have to defend yourself about your choice, either. You don’t want to be there. Th
at’s enough. That’s it. That’s all you need,” my father said.

  “He’s right,” Shakti said.

  “She’s right,” he said. They grinned at each other. My dad loved Shakti. She was what he called a solid person, no bullshit. It was his own bullshit she liked. This was on any regular day. But, right then, they were a pair of deprogrammers having a lovefest while their cult member squirmed.

  “Can’t we change the subject? I’m sick of this one,” I said.

  “Not if you keep talking to the guy,” my father said. He leaned back in his chair. He had eaten half of that pizza by himself.

  “This is an emergency,” Shakti said.

  More mutual grinning and nodding.

  “Don’t answer his calls. Stay off the fucking computer. And for God’s sake, promise you won’t ever see him again.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “She didn’t promise,” Shakti said to Dad.

  “I noticed that,” he said. His smile was gone. His voice was getting testy. He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “This isn’t a game, Clara. We’re not kidding around here. You can’t give this guy any room.”

  “I promise.”

  “If you don’t handle this, I will.”

  “No, Dad. I told you before, no.”

  The house phone rang. Dad shoved his chair back. He pushed the button to answer and just as quickly pushed the button to hang up. Who knew who just got cut off—maybe one of his friends. Maybe some telemarketer asking for money for Seattle schools. Maybe Christian. Still, the point had been made.

  I told Christian not to call anymore, but I kept giving in. He’d send five e-mails I’d ignore, but then that sixth would sound so sad and pathetic, I’d have to respond.* This could all end up okay, I thought, if I managed him right. I was used to managing him. I knew how to keep my eyes focused on him when we went out together. I knew how flattery could make him forget his jealousy. I knew how to play up both my own purity and my own desire for only him. It was manipulative. I didn’t think I was manipulative in the rest of my life, but it seemed crucial with Christian. People who dated diabetics likely had to learn to give shots, and people who were with epileptics had to know when a seizure was coming. I had to do both of those things in my own way—I gave shots of reassurance and kept watch for an all-out disaster. I was his emotional nurse. I managed the crisis. Maybe I could get both of us to the other side of this in one piece. Stitched up, maybe, but still whole.

  It was my responsibility. It was the least I could do. I had made this happen.

  It’s been two weeks since you left me. If you really wish the best for me, you’d know the best thing would be to come back. I would treat you better than anyone you could ever find. I give you my word about that. I know why I acted like I did. I was horrible to you. I’m a different person now, I swear. Please give me another chance. I want to go to the park with you and swim to the dock like we did, remember? I want to wrap you in your scarf in the winter and unwrap you until I find your face to kiss. Remember when we bought those cherries at that stand? You are so perfect. We are perfect together. Please—we deserve another chance.

  And then, anger.

  You say you will always love me, but that’s not true. That will go away when you meet the next guy. You have the ability to just go on and forget people and how much they meant, but I don’t. You can put people in their own little boxes and leave them there. So much for love. So much for soul mates. I’m sorry you don’t want to believe the best of me or how I can change. You put a stake through my heart. I’m the only one who cared enough to suffer like this.

  And then:

  I would wait an eternity for you. I will wait. I know I can never find someone as right for me as you are . . .

  My father had said that the only way to stop it would be silence on my part, but silence only revved things up more. How could I explain, though, what a delicate balance it all was? How his ability to be okay or not okay was in my hands, dependent on how I responded? When I didn’t, his e-mails would become anxious and pages long. I would ask him again not to write or call, saying it was too hard on both of us. I leaned on the fact that it would be better for him, and that it hurt me too much to hear from him. Gentleness seemed to calm him down. So did my own “pain” which was a different pain than I was demonstrating to him. I told him I would always love him, but love was dripping out of me same as blood from a critical wound. The truth is, I played up how much it all hurt me when the hurt had stopped being hurt and was becoming a desperate desire to be free. I felt like I had a pillow over my face. Or that we were one of those couples in a dance contest, the only ones left standing, draped over each other in terrible fatigue while the seasons changed outside the ballroom window.

  He begged me to see him. I had once wanted to see him so badly that I’d snuck out of the house in the middle of the night. I did. We met at a park. We made out like crazy, and I went back home feeling full and satisfied and dangerous. I had grass stains all over my body when I woke up and saw myself in the daylight. When I was about to meet him, it didn’t seem like my car could get there fast enough. I would be mentally urging it and the traffic and the stop lights to go . Each lost minute hurt. But now I could only feel the pull and the drag. The opposite of desire—obligation mixed with dread.

  He needed some kind of closure, he said. Just one more meeting. Just once, was that too much to ask? After all we were to each other? To see each other face-to-face and say good-bye?

  After all that had happened, I still believed he meant it. That it was one last time. I actually believed it. I was that naive—a trait so deep inside of me that even when I was aware of it, I was continually fooled by it.

  I told Dad I was going with Nick and Akello to the movies. He told me it was good for me to get out. I tried to act casual so he wouldn’t see the lie in my eyes. I was lucky, because he was having his friends Teddy and Liza over for dinner, a couple of writers he knew. He was bent down over some delicate sauce meant for halibut, and that’s why he didn’t notice.

  In the car driving over, I tried to feel the wrongness of what I was doing. I tried to imagine the girl at Greenlake, tried to make her face my own. But I didn’t feel actually afraid. I felt uneasy. I was nervous to see Christian again. I felt this huge, weighty block I’d been feeling for weeks, but I didn’t think it was fear. I was just an exhausted nurse, weeks on the job with no break, no time to even wash the uniform, called back in to work. Another situation to manage. One more thing, and then I’d be closer to freedom.

  Naive. And plain stupid. But the truth is, when you can’t imagine committing evil or crazy acts, you can’t imagine other people committing them either.

  It was dark, and the dashboard was lit up all spaceship-like. Do you know how you can be just going along and see something and then you flash on the fact that you had dreamt that very thing? It gives you a small hole to break open, and then you remember the rest. That’s what happened. The dashboard. I had dreamt it. The rest came forward—I was in a car. I was trying to get away. It had been terrifying. He was chasing me. My heart was pounding. One of those awful, real dreams, where your heart actually seems to pound in your sleep. I was outside, too, running along the banks of a dark, murky lake. Sliding in mud. It was impossible to get my footing.

  What is uneasy when you are awake in the daylight is terror in the dark honesty of your dreams.

  Chapter 16

  “I found this,” my father said. He slapped something down on the table as I walked into the beach house that day I’d seen Annabelle. I went over to look at it. A Christmas card, the photo kind, a paper frame decorated with gold holly. It was a young couple and their new baby. A really beautiful couple. The baby had a red velvet dress on. The woman had long, blond hair and a sleek black skirt and a too-perfect smile that meant she’d had braces. I opened it. Adam. I thought you’d like to see something I finally accomplished. Thinking of you. Amy.

  “Our film producer has a complic
ated romantic history,” my father said. He was wearing clean clothes; I was glad of that. Something was cooking on the stove in a pot. A tomato sauce. I could smell it.

  “Cool,” I said. I didn’t want to play.

  “Amy. I’m thinking Amy didn’t finish college and disappointed our Adam,” he said. “And now she’s popped out a baby . . .”

  I walked past him. I went to my room. I tossed my purse on the bed. I wished I could be alone. Me and Finn’s kiss. Me and the way things were moving forward. I wanted the happiness to have a land of its own, a valley of flowers and flowing hills and sunshine, minus any clouds coming in.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I heard him say from the living room.

  Irritation shoved all that good feeling away. Good feeling can leave you so fast. “Great. You’re feeling better for five minutes and I’m the one with the problem?”

  “If you’re going to take that tone with me, it would be in your best interests to stay in there,” he said. “Work on reapplying to college, which we seem to have forgotten. We won’t be staying here forever.” I heard him moving around the kitchen. I heard the pop of a cork being slid from a wine bottle. I folded my arms and looked out my window. Irritation was turning to anger, and I wished it wouldn’t. I wanted more time with that happiness. The actual, real-life clouds outside were hurrying across the sky, the evening rush; they would come in fast and then drop and hover like phantoms, low and white, waiting. Already the lighthouse was fuzzing with fog. I could see only the tip of it, and soon—wait, now—the light was on, the slow spin beginning.

  I turned away from the window. I came back out of my room. In the kitchen, Dad’s back was to me. It seemed like a complex back. It had years of experiences I would never know. He was a man who went to bed at night with his own thoughts. I don’t know why the idea of that made him feel like a complete stranger.