The Story of Us

by Deb Caletti

  “A toy. My nose. Don’t ask,” I said to Dan.

  Ben cracked up. “Loser.”

  “You ate a bathroom sponge shaped like a whale!” I shouted in the parking lot. It was mostly empty, save for a minivan and a big camper with a license plate that read CAPTAIN ED. We headed toward the merry archway with the words PEE WEE GOLF! curving overhead in rainbow letters. Nearby there was a waterfall spilling from a fake rock wall, and a huge fake elephant with his trunk curled in a frozen fake trumpet. When was the last time we’d done this? Maybe when we were kids, with Mom and Dad? I felt a silly thrill. The silly thrill some of us get at very large fake things and childish games. Amy and Hailey and Aunt Bailey were behind us. Aunt Bailey was trying to show them pictures of her cat, Missy, as she walked. I imagined the scene—a stray rock, a sprawling Aunt Bailey, broken hips, canceled weddings.

  “He was always eating things,” Mom told Dan.

  “And you cut his hair that one time and made him cry.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Ben said.

  “God, I still feel terrible about that. I’ll never touch a pair of scissors again,” Mom said. “Honey, I’m so sorry.” She’d probably still be apologizing for that when she was ninety and Ben was sixty-five.

  Dan grabbed her hand, pulled her next to him. “Come here, wife-to-be.”

  “I’m playing without a handicap,” Grandpa said again. I was surprised he didn’t bring his own clubs.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t bring your own clubs,” Mom said.

  George looked through the gate. “It is like a small wonderland,” he announced.

  We gathered in a group as Mom and Dan pulled out their wallets. Grandpa Shine pulled out his, too, and so did Gram, and Aunt Bailey, and there was a small fight over who wanted to pay, as there always was in my family. You just had to expect it. It was one of our group rituals, the way some families pray before meals.

  “I don’t want to wear the ugly shoes,” Amy said.

  “That’s bowling,” Hailey said. She was skipping, throwing her arms around her father’s waist from behind. She, at least, was having a great time already. I had the thought, I did, so maybe it was my fault. I was the one who tempted fate, same as those people who wash their cars and cause it to rain.

  Maybe everything will be fine.

  There were score cards and short stubby pencils. Ben started getting competitive sometime after the pirate ship and the Brooklyn Bridge. It got worse as soon as we were at the giant frog, and it only pissed me off because I’d started getting competitive too.

  “The frog’s mouth is the other way,” Ben said to me.

  “Shut up. This isn’t the PGA, you know,” I said.

  “Quit it, you guys,” Mom said. “Move aside. My turn.”

  “Mom, you’re the purple ball,” Ben said.

  “She hit my ball!” Grandpa Shine said. “Everybody see that? You can’t just hit the one in front because you like it the best.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” George said. “Look, we are here in this tiny, beautiful place on a beautiful day.” My mother beamed at him, and he beamed back with his deep, dark eyes. Sure, she was ahead now.

  “Amy’s turn,” Dan said. “Here, honey. You just put your hands around … A little higher.”

  Amy’s hair dropped down to cover her face. The ball hit the wall surrounding the flat green in front of the frog, jumped the side, and rolled under a baby stroller of the people in front of us. “I can’t do it,” she said.

  Dan fetched the ball, set it up in front near Grandpa’s. “Hey!” Grandpa said.

  “My turn!” Hailey said. She gripped her club. She swung it high behind her, brought it forward, and whacked the hell out of the ball. It went soaring, landed with a crack on top of the paddle boat a few holes over. “Let ’er rip!” she shouted. I stared at her hard, and then I saw it. Chocolate? Was that chocolate at the corners of her mouth?

  “Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs,” Gram said. She arranged and rearranged her feet on either side of the ball. She put her hand up like a visor to see where Grandpa’s ball ended up.

  “Who are they?” Amy said.

  “Tennis players. A big man-versus-woman battle in the seventies,” Mom said.

  “Whatever,” Amy said.

  “Feminists do it with balls,” Gram said, and knocked it straight into the frog’s mouth. The frog closed his mechanical jaw, swallowed, and spit the ball to the other side.

  “Ehaw!” Gram said.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Grandpa said.

  “Like hell,” Gram said. “Why was it you never took me golfing? Probably because of the floozies.” From where we stood, Gram’s peach pants and peach shirt looked like her skin.

  “Gram’s outfit looks like her skin,” I whispered to Ben.

  “I know,” he said. “Are you watching Grandpa watching George?”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. “You’re making stuff up in your head.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  I snickered.

  “Keep your eye on the ball!” Grandpa shouted to Aunt Bailey.

  “Don’t listen to him! I’m the one in first place,” Gram shouted too. I think she was flirting.

  “If you people would be quiet, I’m trying to concentrate,” Aunt Bailey said. She swung, but the ball sat where it was. Fifteen minutes later Aunt Bailey was still on the wrong side of the frog, which was the same thing that happened to her at every hole. She chased the ball around the green, tapping it and sending it sailing in a mad, forever circle. We waited. My phone rang. I checked. Oscar. Shit. Ever since that note, I was trying to avoid him. It rang again. Ben poked me on my arm.

  “Who is it,” he teased.

  “Lover boy calling,” Mom teased.

  “It’s Oscar,” I said, and they both wiggled their eyebrows at each other.

  “God, you guys,” I said.

  I was getting that feeling you have on a long car ride, where the wait starts to feel endless, and you start poking each other and teasing, and then the teasing becomes irritating because you want the hell out of that car. We sat down on a bench by the hole.

  “Maybe we could order a pizza while we wait,” Ben said.

  “This is kind of how she parallel parks,” Mom said.

  “Can’t we just move on?” Amy said.

  “Just one more!” Aunt Bailey called to us. She tried again, but the ball rolled with slow taunting back to its starting position. “Oh, I give up.”

  “Let me help,” Ben said. He picked up Aunt Bailey’s orange ball and gave a sidearm throw toward the frog, who opened his mouth and swallowed gratefully.

  “Finally,” Amy said. Mom tried to catch Dan’s eye, but he was looking somewhere else. Mom’s face cinched up tight. And this time I knew that look because it was my own, too. I felt annoyance circling around overhead, looking for a place to land.

  Grandpa was already at the windmill, teeing up. He popped the ball neatly through the spinning blades, and then George did the same.

  Hailey’s ball sailed through the air. You felt it more than you saw it, the sudden whoosh of air flying past your cheek. It was a defense missile shot toward enemy territory; it soared high in the sky and then vanished. “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … superball!”

  “Hey, it was my turn,” Ben said, but Hailey only shook her arms in victory over her head.

  “Whoo hee!” she shouted.

  “I’ll have to find that,” Dan said.

  “Remember which ball is yours?” Ben said to Mom.

  “Never mind, smarty-pants.”

  Ben and I hit, and then Mom went, tapping her ball neatly through the windmill blades. Amy did better this time, scooting the ball through on the second try, and Grandma’s beginner’s luck held, but then Aunt Bailey set her ball on the fake grass and placed her feet on either side of it.

  Amy was next to me. She crossed her arms. She sighed dramatically. Rolled her eyes. “Here we go,” she said to me.
r />   The thing was, I felt impatient too, I did—we still had a lot of holes to go before we got to the castle, the big Cinderella payoff, with the actual moat. At this rate we’d have to sleep here overnight, two nights, miss the wedding altogether, as Aunt Bailey tried over and over again to get the damn ball through the upcoming clown’s mouth and past the log cabin and from one side of the lighthouse to the other. Sure, I was feeling a little tense anyway. I was ready for my hot dog. I was ready to get the whole “family” expedition over with so I could be alone, and so that “family” could lose the tense step interplays of quotation marks.

  But as Amy stood there with her perfect teeth and her hair as glossy as cat fur, I could feel it inside, something bad building and spilling over. I felt some inner hand pulling me back, urging me to stop and think. Aunt Bailey was one of my own, though. Her good parts and her irritations too, they were all mine, and they deserved my protection.

  “Jeez, Amy,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Honestly? You don’t know?” I demonstrated. I sighed and rolled my eyes the way she sighed and rolled her eyes. I crossed my arms and turned my back. Oh, it felt good too.

  Ben appeared at my side. “Crick? Just, come on.” He held my elbow. We’d done this before. You learned how to get away from something like that together.

  “What?” Amy said again.

  “You,” I said. I felt furious. Maybe I was feeling everyone’s anger, channeling it like some psychic channels the voices of dead spirits. My face was red, I could feel it. I started to sweat. “Your attitude.” I dripped venom into the word, and then I sunk the word into her, same as she’d been doing with every fake smile and huff through those semi-closed lips. It felt so, so good, which I suppose is the problem with anger. Everything comes falling deliciously down, every wall so carefully constructed, every bit of polite back-and-forth, brick and mortar, destroyed. You reach a certain point, and then … No more.

  Amy’s frosty, perfect exterior crumpled, and her eyes filled. “I can’t believe this,” she said. Amy stared at me. Her eyes burned with injustice and devastation. She flung down her golf club, and it clattered to the ground. She spun, took off running.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  The glorious kick of anger started to slink off, looking for some rock of regret to hide under. I should have known it. I should have known that Amy would crumple like that. There were two kinds of bullies. The kind like my father, who would come back swinging if you crossed him. And the other kind. The ones who went weak after their own veiled antagonism was called out. The ones who could dish it out but couldn’t take it. They got the best of both situations—they got to be strong and nasty, and then fragile enough so that whoever crossed them ended up the bad guy. Their tears always made it your fault, no matter who started what.

  Dan ran up. “What happened?”

  “She was being such a—” I said. He took off jogging after her. I saw his back pass the big whale and then the waterfall and the elephant at the entrance.

  “God, just let her go,” Ben said to Dan, who was long gone.

  “Cricket,” Mom said.

  “She was making fun of Aunt Bailey,” I said. We both looked over at Aunt Bailey, who was now attempting to roll the ball through the spinning windmill. Gram was urging her on. Aunt Bailey was chuckling happily, unharmed. Grandpa and George were teeing off at the clown mouth.

  “We were making fun of Aunt Bailey,” Mom said.

  “Different,” I said.

  “Whoo hee!” Hailey said.

  “Oh, my God,” Mom said. She put her face into her hands. “Look.”

  We did. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be up there!” Ben called.

  Hailey sat on top of the paddleboat, swinging her legs. “Look what I found!” she said. She held up one of her pink balls.

  “I know Oscar and Gavin are good kids. They’ve always been good kids,” Mom said. “But … is there any chance they were doing stuff out in that tent?”

  I didn’t catch her meaning at first. Stuff, yeah, they were doing stuff. But then I got it. “Drugs? Oh, come on. No way. You know them!”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. Just … look at her!”

  “They gave her their box of Snickers,” Ben said.

  “Chocolate?” Mom said.

  “It was a lot of chocolate,” Ben said. “She has no experience with the stuff.”

  “Okay.” Mom breathed through her mouth like women are supposed to in childbirth. “Ben, can you get her?” she pleaded.

  “Me?”

  “Please.”

  “Can’t you ask …” He looked around at her other options. “Fine.” Ben strode to the paddleboat. “Hailey, you gotta come down.”

  “Too high,” she said. Yeah, that was an understatement. She kicked her hanging feet back and forth, same as a toddler enjoying the swingy feel of legs.

  “How’d you get up there in the first place?” he called.

  “I put my foot in that porthole,” she said.

  “Jesus, then put your foot in the porthole to come down!”

  She peered over the side. “Can’t.” Her phone rang in her pocket, some hip-hop song done in electronic jingles. “Wait a sec,” she said. “Gotta get this.” Ben looked around nervously for some sort of miniature golf police. Ben was a good guy, and good guys followed the rules for the most part. Okay, there was that time when he and Janssen made that rocket …

  Hailey answered the phone. “’Lo?” she said. “Fine, Ma. Great. Having a wonderful time.” She pointed at the phone, mouthed My mother to Ben. “I’m sitting on top of a boat. Uhhuh…. No, I haven’t taken drugs. You know, Mother, you don’t even let me breathe. And I’m sick of it. Finished. Fini,” she said. She snapped her phone closed. “There. She is going to freak out. And I mean freak.”

  Ben was up the side of that paddleboat in some Spider-Man move. He grabbed Hailey, flung her over his shoulder. “I love fireman’s carry!” she squealed.

  Ben stepped over the walls of the paddleboat green. The people with the stroller were staring. Hailey’s butt was pointed at us, the skin of her back showing from where her shirt was scrunched up. “Where do you want her?” Ben asked.

  “I can see the ground from here!” she said.

  “Just …” Mom shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Here, I guess.”

  Ben set Hailey down on her feet. “Dizzy,” she said. She wobbled.

  “That woman is going to go nuts,” Mom said. “Dan’s phone is ringing this second, I’m sure of it.”

  “Stay put,” Ben told Hailey.

  “Guys!” Mom called to the rest of our group. “Everyone! How about some lunch!”

  Gram and Aunt Bailey looked up. I could hear Aunt Bailey, even from there. “Damn. I was just getting the hang of this.”

  Hailey’s golf ball missile had landed on Dan’s windshield. It now sat cradled on the wiper, but the glass had shattered in a complicated web, still together but obviously ruined. He was standing with Amy, and she was wiping her eyes as he spoke intently to her, his arms folded. I felt embarrassed standing there, embarrassed for my own self and for the rest of our group, which hung back like the losers in high school, not knowing whether they should stick around or leave.

  We group-walked over to the food stand in front of the building, and Mom took orders, and we all sat at the picnic tables on the grass. Everyone took out their wallets again, and then we unfolded our foil wrappers. Aunt Bailey and Gram chatted cheerily to George and Grandpa, but Mom was quiet. I felt shriveled with regret, like I had shattered that windshield myself. Ever since the spring of my senior year, I’d felt the gnawing, painful promise of endings. The thought of actually leaving—it held me in one place. But right then I would have been happy if some plane swooped down to scoop me up and take me away to a leafy campus where I knew no one. Not my family, not Janssen, not Ash, not anyone. Something had been whole—an idea, this idea that Dan and my mother had gotten something right this t
ime, completely and wholly right, and what I had done was to speak and break the spell. It was a translucent bubble—beautiful, but it required care, cautious steps and gentle words, and now I’d been loud and harsh and it had popped.

  “Crick, Jesus, don’t feel so bad,” Ben said. He had gone to squirt more ketchup on his hot dog. It had that pickle relish that you pump on too, which is just wrong, in my opinion. “What’d you even say?”

  “Her attitude.” I huffed and rolled my eyes so he could judge the replay.

  “You nipped her in the butt,” he said, and snickered. “Don’t try sleeping on her bed, though.”

  “Oh, you’re hilarious.”

  “Come on, big deal. You could have said a lot worse. Who didn’t want to? You barely said anything. People can say something and it’s not huge.”

  “Remember when we used to do something bad? Mom would say, ‘Go to your room and think about it.’”

  “Yeah, and then we’d come out two seconds later and say, ‘I thought about it.’ We’d see Mom trying not to smile, and then it was over. You don’t need to be punished for this, Cricket.”

  I hated doing the wrong thing. My words had felt like roaring lions and raging forest fires and toppling buildings. But maybe he was right. Was it possible my words had just been words, not capable of permanent destruction? Mom threw her foil ball and empty cup into the metal trash can, which was set politely away from the tables. She came behind me, set her hands on my shoulders, and kissed the top of my head.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. But what I wanted to say, what felt urgent, was what I didn’t say. Please marry Dan anyway, even if the windshield is cracked.

  chapter

  eighteen

  Dan’s windshield held together in spite of those spindly lines in the glass. We drove back to Bluff House. In Grandpa’s car the drive was quiet, except for the soft radio and the occasional snap-pop of Gram’s gum.

  It was quiet inside the house too. I didn’t know where everyone had gone, but John and Jane and Baby Boo had taken off somewhere, and the old people weren’t around, and even Ted’s truck was absent from the driveway. I found Jupiter lying on Cruiser’s pillow downstairs in the living room. I didn’t know where Cruiser was either, but Jupiter trotted over when she saw me, wagging. I clipped on her leash and took her out for a pee and then carried her up the stairs to my room. I closed the door behind us. I lay on my bed. Jupiter stretched her paws out in front of her, butt up, then butt down. She stared at me.