Meet Me Here

by Bryan Bliss

  “I heard Jake came home at Christmas.” She looks at her lap as she says it, and I know what comes next: “How’s he doing?”

  It’s a question I’ve answered a thousand times since he came back. “Good,” I always say. “Never been better,” I tell them. Not because it’s true; because it’s easier. Nobody wants their war heroes broken. They want simple answers, ones that don’t involve an emptiness so present in Jake that it’s like he never existed any other way. They don’t want to know how much he’s changed, only to wish him the best, God bless America.

  But even if I were going to be honest, how would I answer Mallory? How can I possibly explain what’s wrong with Jake now? He isn’t the guy who chased us out from under this bridge, yelling as we ran laughing into the summer sun. He isn’t anything lately.

  “Yeah. At Christmas.” I hesitate. “He’s okay.”

  “Will you tell him I said hello?”

  “Yep.”

  And then the crickets again. A firecracker—or maybe a gunshot—somewhere in the distance. And Jake, of course, hanging over everything like a cloud.

  When he came home, they paraded him up and down the streets of our small town like a beauty queen, riding in the back of a shockingly red convertible on loan from Hickory Chevrolet. All I’d ever wanted to be was like him, and no more so than in those first days he was back. It didn’t take long to figure out there was something wrong. I could see it in his face, so tight and forced. The way he’d get whenever Kelly Simpson would come by the house his freshman year. Like he couldn’t get away fast enough.

  “Thomas.” Mallory turns around in the seat, both knees tucked underneath her. There’s a spot of mud on her nose, her chin. “Do you ever think about, you know, us? Back then?”

  “Sometimes. Sure.”

  The truth is, it comes in waves, like a jet crossing over my house at night. But just like a passing plane, those deafening seconds, when I forget what it’s like to hear, it ultimately passes. And then I don’t think about Mallory Carlson for months, longer.

  “We had some good times,” Mallory says, her voice turning as generic as a yearbook inscription. One step removed from her punching me in the shoulder and making me promise we’ll “Keep in touch” because “We finally graduated,” double exclamation point.

  Mallory stretches her legs out and yawns. “We should probably get going. I don’t want them to try and find us.”

  I don’t start the truck, don’t reach for the keys. How many times did I hope for a nearly identical situation? For her to come back and demand an apology? Even in my daydreams I didn’t have the courage to walk up to her and finally say: “I am sorry.” And now that the opportunity has finally presented itself, as Mallory lazily picks dried pieces of mud from her arm, I can’t escape the feeling that maybe I’m the only one who’s been carrying this around for the past seven years.

  The heat starts in the back of my neck, and soon my entire body is flush with embarrassment.

  “All right, then. Let’s get you home.”

  I swallow anything else I could say to her. Apologies, jokes: I zip everything up inside and present her the same face I give everyone. Happy, confident Thomas. I start the truck and slowly back away from the bridge. She doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word as we drive to her house—still painted white, still chipped and worn—and she opens the door of my truck and runs up her driveway without looking back.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When I pull into our driveway, Mom and Dad are framed in the window, sitting at the table with Jake. It looks so normal, like Sunday dinner. Mom smiling and upbeat. Dad acting as if nothing’s wrong. And Jake, void as usual. I almost throw the truck into reverse and pull away right then, leaving everything behind. And if I had the money stashed in my duffel bag with me, maybe I would. Instead, I get out and take a few deep breaths before I walk inside the house.

  “Hey, honey,” Mom calls.

  Dad looks up at me tired, as I enter the kitchen. “I’m surprised you’re back so early.”

  I don’t look either of them in the eyes as I grab an apple and take a bite.

  “Typical graduation party.”

  Mom smiles and Jake stares, his eyes distant and pitted like a Halloween mask. When he shifts, I notice the backpack at his feet—black and always present. I let my eyes linger on it for a moment, trying to guess what’s inside, why he keeps it with him, no matter if he’s going to the store with Mom or to the other room. Did he have it when he first came back? Probably, but I didn’t notice.

  “I said good-bye to some people,” I say, forcing myself to look away from the backpack and into my mom’s eyes. “Had a slice of pizza. Listened to some music. Talked to Mallory.”

  I know I’ve messed up as soon as I say it. Dad doesn’t react, but Mom perks up.

  “Mallory?” Mom asks. “Mallory Carlson?”

  For the past few weeks my conversations with Mom have been nothing more than cursory. A simple report of the night, delivering the information I know she wants to hear. I take another bite of the apple.

  “Yeah, that Mallory. I gave her a ride home, actually.”

  Mom always liked Mallory, and well into freshman year she would still sometimes drop little hints—“Why don’t you give Mallory a call?”—as if it were as simple as just picking up the phone. As if the separation hadn’t been anything other than intentional. Still, in her mind, it was the normal drifting apart that happens as you get older. Something that could be fixed. Would she believe how Dad told me it was time to grow up? That boys didn’t play with dolls or wear pink, so why in the hell would I spend so much time with a girl?

  Maybe. But it doesn’t matter because I never picked up the phone.

  “Fight with her boyfriend,” I say. More apple. A casual shrug, because what’s the big deal? Just another night, chomp-chomp. Shrug, shrug. Normal.

  “You didn’t get involved, I hope,” Mom says, and I shake my head. “Well, good. Do you want dinner? You need more than an apple.”

  “Stop babying him,” Dad says, eyeing me. “He should know if he needs to eat or not.”

  Nobody says anything until Mom forces a smile.

  “It seems just like yesterday that this guy was graduating.” Mom reaches over and tousles Jake’s hair. He doesn’t move, doesn’t meet her eyes when she says: “Remember how much fun we had, Jake?”

  I sat at this same table, not knowing what to say—trying to decide if I was excited or terrified. So I kept quiet and watched as my mom cried and Dad told her to stop. When Jake went to bed, he slapped me on the shoulder and told me not to do anything stupid while he was away. That he’d still be able to kick my ass, even from Afghanistan or wherever he’d end up. The next morning he was gone.

  I wait for Dad to talk about how proud he was of Jake that morning, how proud he is still. But nobody speaks. Instead, he fiddles with the old kitchen clock. I can hear it ticking as I say, “Okay, I’m going to go finish getting ready.”

  “Already? I thought we could sit here and talk for a little longer,” Mom says. Dad turns momentarily, looking me in the eyes before going back to the clock.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t finished packing yet,” he says.

  “Only a few more things,” I say.

  He nods once, more a receipt on what he’s just heard than an affirmation. He pops the back off the clock and picks up the tiny screwdriver sitting on the table. I don’t think he’s going to say anything else until he sighs and says, “One of these days you’re going to figure out your priorities.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Mom says, swatting him with a dish towel playfully. “It’s his graduation.”

  He doesn’t look up, doesn’t say anything else. And he doesn’t need to; just mark another one in the disappointment column. I give Mom a quick hug, and she holds my hand as I’m trying to walk away. I pause, letting her tether me to the kitchen for an extra second.

  “Are you sure you’re not hungry?”

  I shake my head, tr
ying to blind myself to everything happening—not happening—in the kitchen. We are the royal family of leaving things unsaid, of sweeping everything underneath the rug. And while I want to lay the blame solely on Mom and Dad, I know I’m just as guilty. I’m the one who’s pretending to pack for a future that I gave up on months ago. I’m the one who’s leaving because I don’t have the courage to live up to my obligation. I don’t stand for shit, and I know it.

  Jake catches my eye, watching me with an inscrutable, catlike stare. It’s a flash of clarity, quickly followed by the fade-out thing, where he’s still staring but his mind is gone, flying into a completely different airspace.

  Dad sighs. Shakes his head at the clock, me.

  “I’m not hungry, Mom. Love you.”

  She squeezes my hand, and I hold on to it for another second, staring at Jake, willing her to look in his direction. To see what I see.

  “Okay. Be careful.”

  She used to say, “I love you,” when we left a room. But ever since Jake returned home, it’s always fear for our safety. I walk out of the kitchen. Before I get to my room, Mom offers to bake chocolate chip cookies to the thick silence behind me.

  I sit on my bed, pulling my duffel bag off the floor and onto my lap. Even if you searched it to the bottom, you wouldn’t know that I wasn’t shipping out in the morning. Pants, shirts, underwear—nothing unusual. I stare at the bag for the hundredth time, trying to find a mistake, a clue that when they come into my room tomorrow, I won’t be here. That I’m throwing this bag in the back of my truck and driving as far as the $1,312 in my savings account will take me.

  This was lawn-mowing money. “Give me a hand, and I’ll throw twenty bucks your way” money. Saved through high school because that’s what Bennetts were: disciplined. When my friends went to Myrtle Beach for spring break, I stayed home. When they bought hunting rifles and new rims for their trucks, I kept my debit card in my wallet. And now it was paying off, just not in a way I ever expected.

  Sometimes when the entire house is quiet, when all I can hear is the wind outside my window, I try to imagine what would happen when tomorrow came. I had visions of me driving across the state line, music blaring. Of ending up in Montana, Wyoming, or even Oregon. It wasn’t a plan as much as it was a way to escape, a detail that would come on me violently, pushing the air out of my lungs and doubt into my head.

  What are you going to do when the money runs out?

  How are you ever going to explain this?

  You are making the biggest mistake of your life.

  When I first committed, I was excited. Dad took me down to the recruiter’s office to sign the papers, and I would’ve taken my uniform and gone right then if it hadn’t been for high school and the hell Mom would’ve raised if I didn’t graduate. I would finally be like Dad and Jake, a part of the brotherhood.

  But that’s gone. Because this isn’t about signing a form and not showing up. It’s shirking every piece of responsibility I’ve ever known in my life, and it makes me sick.

  Everyone in this town thinks I’m cut from the same cloth as Jake, the fabric that makes a Bennett stand up and say: “I’m going to fight for your freedom.” If you’d asked me before, I would’ve told you that dying was the worst thing that could happen to you. But now I know sometimes it’s worse to come back alive.

  There’s a knock on my door, and I throw the duffel bag on the floor instinctively. As if whoever’s waiting out there would be able to smell the deceit.

  “Come in,” I say, standing up because I know it’s my dad. I get ready for the fight, the pep talk. They all sound the same lately. But when the door opens, it’s Jake. He stands in the doorway staring at me, as if he needed a second invitation to cross the threshold.

  “You ready for tomorrow?” he asks, readjusting the backpack on his shoulder before moving quickly and deliberately toward my bed. The suddenness of it shocks me. It’s like a tiny drill sergeant somewhere inside him shouted, “Go!” and he responded. I freeze when he grabs my duffel bag and starts rummaging through it.

  “You won’t need half this shit,” he says, sitting down. “They’ll issue you everything.”

  There was a time I wouldn’t dare bullshit Jake. He saw every move I was going to make two seconds before I even had the idea.

  “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

  “And when you get there, it’s going to be in your face. That’s how they do it, okay? They’re going to get on you right from the beginning, no matter what you do. There is no right or wrong that first day. Just shit, all around.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jake looks down at the duffel and then sets it back on the floor, his hands on his knees. He sits there like that for nearly a minute, grimacing at the carpet, before he pushes himself up and stands above me, searching for words.

  “Anyway. I wanted to come in here. You know. Say good-bye. Good luck. That’s it.”

  I assume we’re going to hug or shake hands, and I get ready. I haven’t touched him since the first day he came home, a shallow and awkward embrace. But he doesn’t come any closer, just kind of shrugs and then walks slowly out of my room. Before he closes the door, he turns around and opens his mouth like there’s more to say.

  I wait, watching as the thought slips away. He nods once and closes my door.

  A tiny pop, like a rock on a piece of tin, rings out. At first I think it’s my doorknob, that Jake’s locked me in my room. But then it comes again, from my window. Birds sometimes fly into the glass from the tree in our backyard, but that’s more of a sickening thud. The first time it happened, I couldn’t look. Couldn’t handle the way the bird twitched, unable to move but not ready to die. Dad took it around the corner, looking over his shoulder at me as he and Jake went to put the thing out of its misery. I couldn’t sleep in my room for weeks afterward, sneaking into the den and praying I’d never hear a sound like that again.

  But this isn’t a bird. It comes once more, and then a fourth time. When I open my blinds, I nearly kill myself jumping backward.

  Mallory waves hesitantly.

  “What are you doing here?” I say.

  She cups her hand to her ear theatrically, pantomiming an epic bout of confusion. Of hearing loss. When I don’t open the window, she starts tapping on the glass even louder. And she doesn’t stop—tap-tap-tap-tap—until I give in. As soon as she hears the lock click, she lifts the window as high as it goes.

  “You’re like a little kid,” I say. But I might as well be talking to myself. She’s got a hand on the sill and a foot against the metal siding, struggling to pull herself up.

  “A little help here?”

  I give her my hand, watching her kick up and eventually through my window the way she has a hundred times before. Once inside, she looks around for a moment. She’s changed into jean shorts and a plain white T-shirt, more stylish than the ones she wore as a kid, but it’s another forgotten memory. Did I ever see her in anything other than those ragged cutoffs?

  “I like what you’ve done with the place.” She points to a poster of a model in a bathing suit leaning against a jacked-up truck. “Don’t let anyone tell you that isn’t classy.”

  As soon as she says it, she looks away. As if she’s embarrassed, too. We both stare at the carpet. I reach for my duffel, hoping it will end the conversation. A natural segue back to both of our regular lives. She grabs my hand like I’m about to touch fire.

  “We should do something. Like right now—” She pauses as if her words required clarification. As if she were trying to preempt my coming objection. “I went home, and all I could think about is us under the bridge. That was fun, right? Basically, it’s our graduation night, and we need to do something.”

  “I need to get up really early in the morning,” I say.

  But even the truth feels like a lie. And maybe it’s because what I really want to say is much simpler: we barely know each other anymore. The fact that we even spoke to each other—let alone went to the bridge—
is a gift. A chance to tie a bow on something I’ve admittedly regretted. But whatever magic we had as kids is gone, and there’s nothing left to do or say. It’s time to cut bait and thank the gods for getting a chance to remember how great we used to be, if only for an hour.

  My door opens, and before I can turn around, Mallory goes rigid. Dad is normally unflappable, but when he sees me standing there with Mallory, his eyes go wide and his mouth drops open. Mom hovers behind him, and she’s equally shocked but is able to get her mouth to work.

  “Why, Mallory! What—how are you?”

  As she hugs Mallory, I meet Dad’s stare. His initial shock is gone, replaced by the same face I’ve seen all my life: eyes focused and unwavering, jaw set. Words do not follow this face because the message is clear: “You have made another poor decision. You should know better.”

  And I do. I want to tell him: “I don’t want her here!” Because Mallory puts everything in jeopardy. This is the sort of attention I’ve tried to avoid for months. But as he keeps staring, as he refuses to speak, to even see that I’m trying to do my best with this, something breaks inside me.

  Maybe it’s the way he hasn’t blinked or how he always assumes everybody’s going to toe the line. To follow his orders. The injustice of it rises inside me, acid in my mouth. Why shouldn’t I be able to go out with my friends—or whatever Mallory is at this point? Why does that matter at all? What is it hurting if I spend an hour not being a Bennett, not being some kind of perfectly stoic . . . soldier?

  And I can’t lie: I want to see his face when I go against him. I want to see the shock, the anger—all of it—when I tell him I’m leaving with her. To get even the smallest whiff of what it would be like to tell him my real plans.

  “We’re going out,” I say. “Just for an hour.”

  Dad shakes his head, as if I were headed to the moon. “Out?”

  Mallory nearly jumps with excitement. “We won’t be gone long,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” Dad says. “Thomas is done for the night. I can drive you back to your house, if you need me to, but he isn’t going anywhere.”