Stay

by Deb Caletti

  Of course I did not sleep. I am guessing I was in that strange place that is not awake but is not entirely dreams, either. I felt sick with grief. Sick with what he had tried to hide from me and what she was guilty of. I spent the night with images flashing—limbs tangled in water, torment tangled with selfishness. The obligations we should feel toward others tangled with the obligations we should never, ever feel.

  Chapter 21

  Lots of kids, Christian had said.

  Oh really? Are you going to have some of them?

  They’ll look like you.

  Terrific. They’ll get my nose.

  He’d spun my hair around one finger. We were lying on a blanket again near old Denny Hall on the University of Washington campus. It was summer. His skin was warm on mine where our legs touched and his breath smelled like the juice we were sharing. His lips were sticky when he kissed me. We kissed again because it was kind of funny, that stickiness. You could turn to liquid in eyes like that, eyes that looked at you with such love. Mine gave it back to him. That kind of love could feel like a promise. And then I made a real one.

  Promise me you’ll stay right here , he said.

  Right here? You would have to bring me food. People would have to come and visit me.

  Here. He lifted his chin, meaning there, in his eyes, with him, where we were. Promise you’ll stay.

  That is so easy, I said. I promise. Of course I promise.

  Always. Stay always.

  Always.

  We see a promise as a personal law, and we see the people who break them as private-life criminals. We think it automatically, one of those truths that just is to us: breaking a promise is a bad, bad thing. A promise can be buoyant as whispered words or solemn as a marriage vow, but we view it as something pure and untouchable when it should never be either of those things. If a promise is a personal law, a contract, then it ought to be layered with fine print, rules and conditions, promises within those promises, and whether we like it or not, it ought to be something we can snatch back, that we should snatch back, if those rules are violated. And if a promise should be offered carefully, it should be accepted with even greater care and with the inherent agreement that it is conditional. Because we offer that promise in good faith—under a tree in the summer or in a church or in the dark holding hands. And then it’s fall and winter and there is black jealousy or endless depression or a million other poison arrows, and you are held hostage by that promise. The promises within the promises have also been broken, but that’s too complicated for some raging heart to take in. Betrayal—it goes both ways.

  When I got out of bed that next morning at the beach, my father was sitting on the back deck holding a coffee cup and watching the ocean. Oh, God, he looked tired. We supposedly age incrementally as we go through life, but looking at him then, I was sure that life sometimes instantly and insistently ages us. I saw it all there, the small and the large—he had searched for nine hundred and twenty-five parking spaces and had forty-two colds; he’d burned one hundred and twenty dinners and fallen over seven or eight tree roots and had three hundred and sixty sleepless nights. He’d lost touch with twelve friends and hung up on fifty-six telemarketers and was late and stuck in traffic four hundred times. And he’d had disappointments too many to count and gotten his heart broken, lost one father, suffered endlessly one tragedy, and it all now caught up with him as he sat in that chair holding that cup.

  I shouted out a good-bye. The house still smelled like smoke from the fire in the fireplace the night before. I didn’t want to talk anymore or be in that house—I needed to be out, even if out meant where Christian was. What was on my mind was my mother and the story that had been my story nearly my whole life long but that was now only truly mine for the last few hours. I didn’t know what to do with it.

  I parked in the lighthouse parking lot. I felt the kind of boldness that comes before falling apart. The What does it matter kind of false courage. If Christian was watching me, if he appeared right then, I’d rip him to shreds with my words. Go ahead and try to hurt me, because I was beyond feeling anything, that’s what I told myself. Your hand could be in snow and at first you’d feel the brilliant sharpness of cold and the stinging pain but then only heat and then nothing at all.

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look over my shoulder, though, as I made my way down that path and picked my way over the rocks to the beach and Annabelle Aurora’s house. I heard that phone vibrate on the nightstand during those hours of tossing and turning, and it rang again in my purse on the drive. I didn’t know if it was Christian or Shakti or even Finn, but I didn’t look.

  It would not be a day where the clouds would eventually burn off and we’d have the blue of summer sky, you could tell. The clouds looked like they planned to stay; they’d settled in. It was cold down there by the water. The gray sky made everything look gray; the water was gray, and even the beach and the houses looked dim. We were used to this in the Northwest—the way the gray would slink in and change how things looked. Our weather was moody. We lived with it for the reasons anyone lives with someone moody—when it was good, it was really good.

  But right then, gray. Cold. The water didn’t look inviting and wise, but morose and irritable. The wind even picked up a little, slanting the waves and bending the sea grass. I walked faster and pulled my sweatshirt around me.

  Annabelle Aurora. I rapped on her door, and she came to it, dressed in some silky kimono, no makeup on, her uncombed, silvery hair looking restless and unsettled. She put her hand to it when she saw me, and you could tell she was probably vain long ago (or still), a person who cared about her attractiveness.

  “Clara,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting company . . .”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.” She stepped aside. “Let me change . . .”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  “All right. I’ll make some tea.”*

  I sat down on her couch, watched her move around in the kitchen, watched the wind ripple the water outside. She came back with two mismatched cups, sat beside me, and folded her kimono around to hide her knees.

  “You knew them both. You knew my mother,” I said.

  “The two of you talked,” she said. Her eyes were blue like robins’ eggs.

  “Why did you know what happened? Did everyone know but me?”

  “We were close friends then,” she said. “And years before, too. He needed to tell someone. I think he told her family. Your grandmother, your uncle. They barely spoke.”

  “You were close friends,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I wondered again how close. All those years ago—she wouldn’t have been this old. It wouldn’t have been unheard of. “You knew my mother.”

  “I did. Not well. I saw her when I’d come to town. I met her briefly before they got married. I was at the wedding.”

  “She was some depressed person?” My voice sounded small. It started to waver. I felt small.

  “Sometimes. You felt how delicate she was. These tiny wrists . . .” She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger. “He liked that, I think. It made him feel . . .large. Not just his physical size, yes? But his being. ”

  Maybe I knew how that felt. I had once felt large and powerful with Christian. “What happened, then? If he liked it so much?”

  She thought. She spoke gently. “Maybe he stopped feeling large. Maybe he just felt, I don’t know. Perhaps burdened.”

  “I never saw her that way in my mind.” I saw her the way she was in photographs—that black-and-white one of her and my father standing on a bridge somewhere. It is raining and her eyes are closed, but her chin is lifted up to him as if she is feeling the rain and feeling his presence at the same time. It looked like joy.

  “And she wasn’t always that way. A person is never always one way. She laughed—a beautiful laugh. She looked deeply. She had an eye for photography.”

  “I knew that.”

  “An excellent
cook. One time I visited she made a cheese soufflé, though, and it failed miserably and it looked like she was about to cry. The table was set with these colorful mats and homemade breads . . . She was so mad at herself, and he pulled down cereal boxes and set them on the table. Instant oatmeal, too. Bowls, a carton of milk. He wanted her to laugh. He told her only the company mattered. He seemed to really love her, Clara. You ought to know that.”

  “What he did was wrong.”

  “Yes.”

  “What she did was wrong.”

  “Very.”

  “Why did she do it, Annabelle?”

  “There are just no answers for some things,” Annabelle said.

  Grief rose from somewhere deep down, filled my throat, my eyes, rose like some old, old wave that had been waiting until now to break. It hurt so much.

  “Oh, Clara,” Annabelle Aurora said. She put her arms around me. I cried into her shoulder because it was the shoulder of a woman, a mother’s shoulder. I sobbed there. “Clara,” she said.

  “Didn’t she love . . .” I couldn’t say it. I needed to know. “Me? Didn’t she love me?”

  “Honey.”

  I couldn’t get my breath. The grief came and came. “It wasn’t enough?” I didn’t say the word. I.

  “Nothing can be enough sometimes, for some people. Nothing.” She held my arms and looked me straight in the eye. “You know this. You’ve seen it.”

  She held my hands. Old Annabelle Aurora, with her odd and unknown relationship to me, my father, my family. Still, I strangely felt her presence there for me. Her solidity. Her love, even. Maybe this is what she gave my father.

  “Why didn’t he tell me?” I needed to know this. She would know why.

  “Maybe he didn’t think he could stand to see what I’m seeing right now,” she said.

  “Finn’s been trying to call you,” Cleo said. She chewed on the end of a straw that was stuck in a paper Coke cup. “He was worried when you didn’t come by this afternoon. They’re not going out tonight. Too windy. He went over to the pizza place to get some dinner. Then he was going to head home. Shit, man, you look awful, no offense.”

  “One of those . . .” I didn’t know what to say. “Days. Maybe I’ll try to catch him.”

  “Good idea,” she said. “Vince’s? Pizza place around the corner?”

  I felt frozen, though. I stood there and looked at Gulliver, who stared off into the distance as if pondering the meaning of his life.

  “My stalker,” Cleo said. Then, “Oh, shit, I’m such a fucking idiot. I’m sorry.”

  “You heard, I guess,” I said. I didn’t know how I felt about this. I felt a flash of something. Anger, maybe. It was my private life. My business.

  “Sweetie, I think he’s told everyone on this street to make sure they keep an eye out for this asshole. Finn looks out for the people he loves.”

  The anger left as quick as it came. You could care enough to keep a secret, but you could care enough to tell one, too.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  I wanted to see Finn so badly right then. The dock was a clanging racket of noise—metal sail rings banging against masts, the sloshing of boat bumpers against dock, a high whistle of wind. I wanted to hurry, too. The wind made me want to hurry. There were only a handful of people out, and no one was in Vince’s except the people who worked there and Finn, who sat in a booth. This is what you did in a storm, I guess. You stayed home. The waitress at Vince’s sat at a counter stool, watching the television above the bar. Some news story about the weather. A reporter stood behind a microphone, her hair blowing. Finn held his phone, tapped a message. I surprised him—he looked up at me and smiled big.

  “I was just sending you a text.”

  “I’m so glad,” I said.

  “Clara? Are you okay?”

  “Too much is happening.”

  “Okay. Wait.” He slid out of the booth, walked up to the waitress, and spoke to her. She got up, went in back. Finn returned. “We’ll get it to go, all right?”

  “All right.” He put his arms around me. We stood there in Vince’s with its red plastic tablecloths. I set my head on his chest.

  We stayed there awhile, until Finn said, “Ready.” I followed him to the counter where he paid and was handed the box. We walked out together, my arm linked in his. The wind picked up. My hair blew in my mouth.

  “Too cold out here,” Finn said. “Want to go to my house?”

  I wanted to be alone with him. I didn’t feel like being polite to mothers or brothers or neighbors we might meet. “My car?” I said.

  “Alone,” Finn said. He got this.

  I nodded. I led us to where I had parked. I unlocked the doors, and after we got in, I locked them again.

  “Did I tell you this was my favorite restaurant?” Finn said. We put our seats back. He balanced the box between us. “You want some dinner?”

  “You go ahead.”

  He put a slice on a napkin. I remembered Christian then, in front of the fireplace at my house. Let’s try to think of every time we ever ate pizza.

  Every time?

  Every.

  Christian had been smiling. And then, Pagliacchi Pizza. In the car, with . . . Wait. It’s not my turn.

  I remembered the way his face had changed. The way it went from beautiful to something I wanted to run from. I just can’t stand the thought of your mouth on someone else’s. Let alone anything else.

  “Not hungry?” Finn said.

  “Tired,” I said. “Too much.”

  He folded the rest of his slice into his mouth, put the box into the backseat. He pulled me close. “I think I’ll keep it for later. Come here.”

  I maneuvered. “It’s tricky.”

  “Ow—you okay? Look, we fit.”

  He set his hand against my face, pulled me softly to his chest so that I could rest there. He rubbed my head, the way you might to get a baby to sleep. I didn’t want to talk to him and tell him what I had learned about my mother. I didn’t want to talk at all. I thought my father was right, then, that sometimes there were too many words and too many feelings spilled. I just wanted to be there with Finn. His Finn-ness was better than a mountain of spoken feelings.

  I watched the trees shaking off the wind. A few fat splatters of rain dropped on the windshield and the hood of the car.

  I thought of another car, another night.

  I don’t want to lose you.

  Why would you lose me?

  “Clara?” Finn whispered. “I know we’re just getting to know each other, and you’re not supposed to say big things, and there are all these rules around that, the no-freaking-someone-out rules, you-can’t-love-someone-so-soon rules . . . I’m not making any sense probably.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just kept my head still, felt his chest moving up and down. “But you know what? Shit happens, too, and I keep walking around lately knowing how fragile everything is since my dad died, how fast it goes, how quickly things can change, and so I’m not into bullshit games and rules anymore, okay? I want to let you know that whatever the word is that’s more appropriate than love right now . . . I whatever-that-word-is you.”

  I smiled into his chest. “I whatever-that-word-is you, too,” I said.

  He kissed me then, and I kissed back, and it was some strange mix of heartbreak and joy and past and present and life rushing in without words to explain it. Just, big. We shifted and I faced him and he held me and we just kissed for a long time, and he pushed the collar of my shirt down so that one shoulder was bare and he kissed it too, like it was a precious thing. I unbuttoned his shirt and put my face against his chest, and that’s all that we did. If anyone was watching right then, they would have seen my bare shoulder, his mouth against my skin, but there was nothing else. It could have looked like there was, but there wasn’t.

  After a while, we separated. It seemed better to keep wanting more than to have too much.

  “Can I come over later tonight?” Finn asked. �
�Maybe after you guys eat?”

  “That would be great,” I said. It would. I couldn’t stand the thought of Dad and I alone together all night with our history between us.

  “You should stay tucked in. It’s supposed to be really bad tonight.”

  “Maybe you should stay tucked in.”

  “Sailors are used to weather,” he said.

  “Look how dark it’s getting,” I said.

  We untangled. I drove Finn home. When we left, the marina parking lot was empty. I didn’t see any other car there. I thought it had been empty all along. But love can wrap you up tight inside love. It can be hard, then, to see a long distance off.

  Chapter 22

  As soon as Finn closed the car door, I felt it—the worming finger of unease. I looked all around, but there was only Finn’s regular street, a row of mailboxes standing like dutiful soldiers, his neighbor’s wisteria snowing white flower petals in a sudden gust of wind. A flash of something? No, just a dog running home as the rain started to fall and splat hard on the car roof and the asphalt and the lids of garbage cans.

  The sky had gotten so dark with thick clouds that Dad’s automatic headlights came on. The drops of rain were the fat, insistent kind. Then, a deluge, and I had to drive slowly out of town and back to our house. The pummeling rain stopped, and for a moment the clouds cleared and you could see a crack of sunlight and then it was gone again. The black clouds kept rolling in; you could see the next ones approaching, filling the sky once more, an endless stampede, like a pounding, resolute cloud-migration over flat land.

  I was driving through the dunes now. Cloud shadows skimmed over the grass. Something heavy sat inside me, something next to the boulder of sorrow. Dread, and maybe knowing. You don’t usually feel fate until you see evidence of it afterward, but then I felt fate moving and it moved like those clouds did, definite as they were. It was full like those clouds, too. Full of something needing release. I wondered—did Jennifer Riley feel this, too, when she stood on the muddy banks of Greenlake? Did my father, the night he and my mother were at that beach house? Did he feel it as he sat there holding his drink; did he see fate there in the way she stood, in her eyes, the way her hip leaned against the doorframe? Or did he only recognize it afterward?