“How was it?”
“Well, I missed the cherry blossoms again, despite my best efforts. But there’s hope for the future, I suppose. Spring’ll come around next year.”
I melted a little. Her words pleased me, even if the sentiment was sort of ridiculous. And maybe it was something in the way she listened or the way she waited for me to speak, but Lucy was having the strangest effect on me. My mind raced, and I couldn’t stop talking. “So, uh, are you and Mr. Howe going to have kids someday?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, we wanted to once. Very much. But it’s too late now. We’re old.”
“Really?” I didn’t actually know about these things, but I also didn’t know how old Mr. Howe and Lucy were. If I had to guess I would have put them in their early forties, but that seemed like there was still time. “How long have you been married?”
“Kyle and I met twenty-four years ago this month. We’ve been married for eighteen.”
“So what happened? Jesus, I’m sorry. I know I’m asking a lot of questions.”
“It’s fine.” Lucy tipped her head to one side, letting her long hair fall even farther down her back and exposing her neck. “Well, first we moved around a lot. When I was finally done with school, we decided to come back to Teyber—Kyle grew up here. That’s when we really started trying. I always knew I wanted a large family. I’m the youngest of seven. Kyle’s the oldest of five. We thought we’d thrive on chaos.”
“But . . .”
“But it never happened for us. The doctors ran all sorts of tests. But . . . nothing.”
I stared at her. “That’s it? I thought there were all sorts of ways to have a kid. In vitro or surrogacy or egg donors. Something.” I would have tried them all, I thought. Every last one, if that’s what the woman I’d married had her heart set on.
Lucy seemed to have a window into my head. “I didn’t want to triumph over nature. Neither of us did. It’s not that we didn’t want a family. But once you put yourself in a war with what’s meant to be . . . well, I can only speak for myself. It would change the way I looked at everything. I couldn’t give that up.”
I could. I knew I would in an instant, given the chance.
“Ben!” I jumped and turned to see Mr. Howe walking into the kitchen, with his arms full of groceries and a huge grin stretched across his face, visible even beneath his beard. “So glad you could make it. You’ve met Lucia, I see.”
I leapt up to help and Lucy did, too, and later we ate lunch together on the screened porch, looking out at their yard. The food was good and they were funny and kind, and they both said they hoped I’d come over again. I told them I would. I didn’t want to leave.
After dessert, Mr. Howe took me into his book-lined study and showed me some of his climbing photos. I liked looking at those, to see places I’d never go. It was like looking at photos of a moon landing. He also showed me a ladder-backed chair he said my father had made. I didn’t believe him at first, the detailing was too delicate, but sure enough, when he flipped it over I saw the initials carved into the wood on the bottom of the seat: GG, for Gus Gibson.
“Did you know him?” I asked. “My father?”
“I sure did. We met when Lucia and I first moved back here. We used to surf together in the mornings before school. Gus loved the ocean the way I love the mountains.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Do you talk to him?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“I mean, he writes sometimes and sends money. He’s a doctor now, lives in Connecticut. But I don’t think my mother would want me, you know, having a relationship with him. After what he did.”
Mr. Howe frowned but didn’t mention my father again. Instead he asked for my help with the orienteering club that fall, and I can see now how maybe that sounds weird, the way I’m describing it. Like, here was this guy who knew I was fatherless and wanted to get too close. But it wasn’t that way, and after talking with Lucy, I got why. Everyone needs things they can’t have. So despite knowing absolutely nothing about orienteering or reading maps or even how to survive outside of my own stupid head, I said I’d help. Because Mr. Howe needed a son. And what I needed, above all else, was to succeed in making other people feel good about me.
5.
I HOPE IT’S not sounding as if i had no training for the job I’d been hired to do. I mean, I didn’t at first, but that changed in the weeks before school started. Mr. Howe had me take a CPR certification class as well as a first aid course, and I also completed an online wilderness safety training module. That was all in addition to the hours I spent on my own, poring over the International Orienteering Federation’s official rulebook, trying to figure out what I’d gotten myself into. Rose never wanted to hear about any of it—she didn’t consider not getting lost a sport—but I was diligent in my studies. I was ready for the challenge.
Well, ready or not, on the first day the club met after school, only four students bothered to show up. That was disappointing. Three guys and one girl. I knew them all, obviously; Teyber Union was only so big.
There was Duncan Strauss, a junior, a well-known pot dealer, and someone who seemed to miss as many school days as I did; Clay Bernard, a clean-cut sophomore with a personality not unlike my own—that is to say, studious, quiet, and somewhat bland; and senior Archie DuPraw, who was kind of a wild card, and while Archie and I tolerated each other in a wary way, I certainly didn’t expect to see him in an extracurricular setting like that. Archie never took anything seriously, from what I could tell. He was the type of guy who, at seventeen, still got off on sniffing glue, getting blackout drunk, and doing stupid shit, like mumbly-peg or playing chicken on the train tracks. And not necessarily in that order.
But the real surprise was the girl. It was Avery Diaz, from the auto repair shop. It startled me to see her walk in the classroom on big, dumb Archie DuPraw’s arm—I had no idea they were friends, much less anything more.
Not much happened that first afternoon. Mr. Howe and I went over some of the activities we’d be doing: hiking, map reading, learning basic survival skills. There would be two backpacking trips during the year and anyone who went on at least one of those trips would earn PE units, which explained Archie’s presence, since rumor had it he wasn’t going to have enough units to graduate in the spring. The plan was also to participate in a number of team orienteering competitions throughout the northern part of the state, mostly out in the Sierras, although I got the feeling Mr. Howe didn’t approve of racing. “L’art pour l’art,” he told me, which I later found out meant “art for art’s sake.” After I handed out the club permission slips, we let the group go for the day.
I was walking across the parking lot when I heard someone call my name. I turned and squinted into the afternoon sun to see Avery running toward me. Alone. I stopped and waited for her.
“Hey,” she said. “I didn’t know you were working with Howe.”
“Yeah. I just started.”
“That’s cool.”
I didn’t say anything. I just stood there and felt awful. Depressed, I guess, and all that, which was stupid seeing as there was nothing wrong. The wind was blowing and Avery’s dark hair looked messy—it was sticking out in places. I had the urge to run my fingers through it.
“How’s your mom?” she finally asked.
I shrugged. Looked away.
“My dad and her were good friends growing up. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t know that.”
Avery smiled. “After my mom died, I wanted him to date her. So he wouldn’t be lonely. That would’ve been something, don’t you think?”
I put my hands in my pockets. Rocked back on my heels and cleared my throat. “That wouldn’t have been such a good idea.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”
“I gotta go,” I told her.
<
br /> —
I headed straight for the inn. It was full of autumn visitors, and it took a while to find Rose. She wasn’t outside with her brother, who was sitting in the garden reading Proust, of all things, and she didn’t answer any of my texts. Turned out she was helping her mother set up a wine tasting for a group of eager guests in that bright wicker-filled space they called the parlor. She took one look at me and dragged me up to her room.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.
“Everything,” I said, and I felt like a petulant child. My heart was pounding, and blood was rushing to my cheeks. I leaned down and I kissed her. Then I kept kissing her, frantically, eagerly, passion blooming inside me for the first time since she’d come back. In that moment, I couldn’t stand it, the way I felt; I had to have her. I pulled her down on to the bed beside me, pawing beneath her clothes and cupping her tits.
Rose kissed me back, but she laughed, too, like my ardor was something humorous. I didn’t mind, so long as she was with me, willing to meet me where I was with her own brand of passion. We stayed locked like that for a while, rolling around a bit, with me slobbering on her neck and dry humping her like crazy, but then she was pulling my jeans down, my boxers, too, and I wanted to take her then, push my way on top of her. But Rose had other plans, because she twisted out of my grasp and slid to the floor like a cat to settle between my legs.
I groaned, despite myself. Having her mouth where she put it was the hottest thing, but I couldn’t touch her when she was doing that and I wanted to touch her. So even as I loved what she was doing, even as she laughed again before quieting down and allowing the room and space around us to fill with a different sort of sound and the most perfect sort of feeling, a softness and rhythm that pushed me toward a shuddering end I lacked the ability to control, all I could think was, Oh, Rose, I want this, I do, more than anything. But this isn’t how I wanted it.
I wanted you to want me, too.
6.
TWO MORE STUDENTS showed up for the next orienteering club meeting, lured perhaps by that promise of PE credit. Otherwise I wasn’t sure what had brought them. The first was Shelby Sawyer. I’d known Shelby since her days as the bucktoothed, blond-haired, overly freckled girl who cried snotty tears every morning at kindergarten drop-off, but I had a hard time talking to her now that she’d emerged from puberty as this sleek, six-foot-tall, volleyball-playing goddess. This was clearly a personal flaw, because Shelby was friendly with just about anybody. She’d confided in me once that she preferred spending her time raising alpacas for 4-H, but that her parents insisted volleyball would look better on college applications. It made me feel bad to hear her say that, but I also saw their point.
The second person who showed up to the meeting was Tomás, Rose’s snob of a brother. Like I said, they were twins—fraternal, obviously—but with Rose’s short hair, the similarity between them was overwhelming, Tomás’s Y chromosome and crappy personality notwithstanding. It always startled me to see her bright brown eyes on him since the expression on his face usually read as if he were seconds away from throwing himself in front of a train.
It would’ve been easy, by the way, to believe Tomás had come to the meeting because of Shelby, only he’d never been anything but completely open about the fact his interests lay elsewhere. And yeah, sure, I wish I could say stuff like that didn’t matter—to Teyber, to me—but of course it did. His hating me didn’t help much either.
We picked the site of the first backpacking trip together, as a group. I liked that about Mr. Howe. He treated us, if not like equals, then as if it were a given that we would be someday. There’s just something about presumed competence that makes you really want to try, you know? We spread a map of Northern California out on Mr. Howe’s desk and scoured the acreage for an appropriate locale.
Archie DuPraw immediately homed in on Mount Shasta or Mount Whitney. Both had name recognition and a sense of imminent doom—climbers had perished on those mountains—but Mr. Howe pointed out that taking on a California fourteener as our first mountain was like getting a Mercedes as a first car. What would we have to look forward to?
“Be humble,” he told us. “That’s the only way to survive out there.”
Mount Lassen was in play, in all its volcanic beauty, but we finally decided on Thompson Peak—the tallest summit in the vast Trinity Alps, which felt like an accomplishment all on its own. Our day of departure would be a Friday in the second week of October; school would be closed for administrative development, which was a stroke of good fortune. The trip was soon, Mr. Howe acknowledged, and we had a lot of work ahead of us to prepare. But we wanted to get out there on the mountain well before the storm season hit. At 9,000 feet, Thompson Peak was crusted in permafrost, and there was usually snow piled high well into the summer, making fall the most accessible season. October was the warmest time in Northern California, full of dry heat and crackling with fire danger. The worst weather we might get was a touch of rain. And even that, Mr. Howe told us, was highly unlikely.
—
Shelby and Tomás needed permission slips, which I hadn’t thought to bring, so I had them follow me down to the faculty supply room on the first floor while Mr. Howe took the rest of the group outside. As we walked the empty halls, Tomás’s loafers squeaked on the linoleum floor in a way that sounded rude. I wanted to ask why he bothered wearing expensive shoes in such a shitty place, but I already knew the answer: There was nothing Tomás Augustine wouldn’t do to remind himself how much better he was than the rest of us.
Once in the supply room I tried using the copy machine, which had detailed instructions laminated and pinned to the wall above. I followed these instructions in precise order only to have the copier promptly jam, making me swear. Tomás rolled his eyes and walked out of the room, phone in hand. I crouched to fix the machine—there were no instructions for that—and just ended up pushing a lot of buttons.
“Let me.” Shelby elbowed me aside, squatted down, and pulled out the bottom tray, the one with the angry blinking light. She reached her arm in and dug around for the stuck paper. I mumbled a few words of gratitude, before getting up and stepping back to watch her work. I appreciated the help, naturally, but thing was, the farther Shelby reached, the higher the hem of her insanely short shorts went. Not to mention, it appeared she wasn’t wearing any underwear. I couldn’t help but stare. Already I could see bronzed skin, the sweet pull of tight curves, a hint of shadow and more. I held my breath and felt lucky. Willed Shelby to keep reaching.
And reaching.
“Jesus Christ, Shel,” a voice behind me said.
I whipped around at the same time she did, only to see Tomás leaning in the doorway, his jaw tight and his arms folded. He spoke to her while looking directly at me. “Your entire ass is hanging out.”
“Is it?” She reached back to pull her shorts down, wiggling her butt while she did it. “Hope you got a good look, Ben.”
“I didn’t see anything,” I said. “I swear.”
“Yeah, right.” Shelby stuck her arm in the copier again. Groped around for the jammed paper.
I glanced back at Tomás, to gauge his reaction to my lie. The dark look on his haughty face said it all: He hated me more than ever.
7.
PEOPLE LIKE TO ask if Rose was a jealous girlfriend. I’m not sure that it matters, but back then I would’ve said yes. My answer today would be different, of course, but I’m allowed to change my mind, just as much as Rose was allowed to change hers.
It is true that when we were together I was leery of spending time with other girls. Rose was never the type to make catty remarks or sharpen her nails at the first sign of competition, but on those rare occasions when I happened to neglect her, it always made her so sad. I couldn’t stand it, to know I’d hurt her like that. My mother liked to tell me I was being manipulated, that girls used their tears as a weapon—their kindness, too—but s
he wasn’t looking out for my best interest when she said stuff like that. Just the opposite: She could only conceive of a girl using me because she saw no value in me in the first place.
My mother, by the way, was the sole female in my life Rose was ever openly jealous of. That should’ve been a clue, perhaps, but neglecting Rose to care for my mom didn’t make her sad so much as it royally pissed her off. Tension had smoldered between them from the first day they met and Rose accidentally called my mother Mrs. Gibson.
Admittedly, the name mix-up was my fault. I hadn’t had a chance to tell Rose that my mom had dumped my father’s name the minute he’d dumped her. Later, she’d gone on to take Marcus’s Salvatore and pushed me to take that name, too. Insisted, even—apparently it was the Christian thing to do, like Jesus wouldn’t want people knowing my mom had ever screwed anyone else. But I refused, mule stubborn, finally growing so furious with her prodding that I wrapped a piece of cord around my neck and tried to hang myself from my closet door in rebellion. I was only six when I did this and it was stupid; the cord snapped almost immediately, sending me crashing to the floor. But it must’ve scared my mom because she never mentioned the name-changing thing again.
Anyway, not causing Rose pain was the reason I didn’t want Tomás to tell her about catching me staring at Shelby Sawyer’s ass. It was also the reason I assumed he would. And maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal in retrospect, but I felt sick over what I’d done, physically sick, which meant I shouldn’t have done it.
The strangest thing was, in the days that followed, Rose never once mentioned Shelby or what her brother caught me doing. She didn’t say a word about it. Instead, she did the most surprising, yet most Rose-like thing of all—she joined the orienteering club. She didn’t tell me she was doing it, either. She simply showed up at the next meeting and jumped into the trip planning with the rest of the group, full of unexplained fervor and verve—the type of energy I hadn’t seen her expend since she’d gotten back from Peru. As if spending three days backpacking without electricity or running water was just the rejuvenating opportunity she’d been dying for.
When I Am Through with You Page 3