The Story of Us

by Deb Caletti

  There was some strange storm front blowing in. I heard the high whine of a whistling wind outside the bathroom window. And it was raining broken hearts.

  Ted left the bathroom. I exhaled. Thank God. I would wait there for a minute, until he was definitely gone. I’d wait, and then I’d get the hell out of—

  What was THAT? A herd of pounding feet, rising voices. What now? Shit! I crouched. Someone was running down the hall. Footsteps going one way, and another pair … Were they? Were they turning right into the bathroom? The shower curtain was flung aside.

  “Aaaaaaaahhh!” Dan Jax screamed.

  “Aaaaaaaahhh!” I screamed.

  We stopped screaming. Dan had his hand to his heart again, but so did I.

  “Cricket, for God’s sake, what are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” Sure, I was the one hiding in the bathtub, but who was the screaming, unreasonable one here?

  “Looking for Baby Boo!”

  “I was—What? Where is he?”

  “We don’t know! John was upstairs with him, and then John fell asleep. He woke when he heard all the noise with the raccoon, and he realized Baby Boo was gone.”

  “Oh, Jeez. I’ll help look.”

  Okay, yes, it was another humiliating blow to my self-esteem, lifting my knees up high and stepping out of that tub, leaving a set of shoe prints behind, but there was no time for ego hits right then either.

  “The tent,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Dan said.

  “That’s where he was before.”

  “Christ, the ocean …”

  Mr. and Mrs. Jax stood at the deck railing looking over, and so did Gram and Aunt Bailey. Hailey and Gavin and Ben and my mother had already had the same thought I did, and now they were rushing toward the beach, calling Baby Boo’s name. It was getting so, so windy out there. The waves were high, and water droplets were rising up and you could hear the clang of a flag on a flagpole, and the high pitch and whine of wind.

  We were running down the boardwalk, me and Dan, Dan in front of me. Hailey and Gavin and Ben had already reached the tent, and we saw their backs disappear inside of it, and then they emerged. We were there now too.

  “No,” Ben said. “Nothing.”

  “I thought for sure,” Hailey said.

  The tent nylon was flapping in and out, whick-whick, whick-whick, flapping kind of crazily, it seemed. But I had no time to register that fact in the narrow, logical part of my taxed mind right then, because there was a shout and a cry from up above, at the house, and we saw Jane and John on the deck, and George, who was lifting little Baby Boo in the air in a Lion King moment. You could hear the joy up there. Jane was shouting something down to us, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  “He wanted to see the Goddie?” Hailey said. Hailey lifted her shoulders, held her palms up to indicate to Jane that she didn’t understand.

  “The Goddie!” Jane’s voice traveled down to us. She hooked her thumb toward the French doors, where Jupiter came trotting out. She stuck her head between the deck rails.

  “Ah.” Dan Jax sighed. “Ah.”

  “Thank Goddie.” I laughed.

  He laughed too. He crooked his arm around my neck and around Hailey’s in relief. “I know. I thought … what next?”

  Which is a stupid thing to say. You never want to say that, ever, unless you want to tempt the cruel and black-humored Goddies up above, the ones wishing to liven up the dull human poker games by upping the stakes.

  “Whaaa!” Gavin shrieked. He saw it first, went grabbing for the nylon that lifted up as easy as a kite on a breezy day. A large, domed kite, an alien vehicle returning home by rising up into the dark sky. Gavin’s hands—they grasped only at air, and so did Ben’s, they were reaching up into black nothing, because the tent lifted up, up, up and out toward the sea, out for a wild outdoorsy tent ocean adventure, back out to wherever home was. It lifted high, and you could hear the collective gasp of our group even through the whistling wind. The tent rose and then slowly set itself down upon the waves, the window flap waving a mad good-bye as it drifted farther and farther out.

  The contents of the tent sat exposed on the nylon floor. A vulnerable TV, and electric cords, a red cooler, sleeping bags and blankets. An M&M’s bag lifted in the wind too, and went running, end over end, down the beach. It all looked for a moment like the news footage after a tornado, missing roofs and the embarrassments of ordinary living exposed.

  “How the hell did that happen?” Gavin said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Hailey said. “Back when I was mad? I undid the snaps. Those ones there.” She pointed to the now gaping halves of metal, which had once connected the secured tent floor to its dome. “I’m sorry, Gavey.”

  “Hailey!” Dan Jax said.

  Ben made a choking sound, a gasp. He was doubled over. He was laughing. He held one hand up in some sort of apology as he cracked up. “Shit.” He laughed. “Shit.”

  Oh yeah, it was kind of hysterical. Like that time with the cello in the Bermuda Honda trunk. The orange globe of tent was disappearing past the horizon as if it were a setting sun, and all of those electronics were sitting oddly out in the night, exposed and trembling in the wind. But that wasn’t what Ben was laughing about.

  “Oh, man.” He wiped his eyes. “God. Gavey.” He laughed.

  Ash was a good guy. I knew he was. He appeared out of nowhere, helping to lug inside the generator and the controllers and the speakers and the bags of freeze-dried foods in foil pouches. We didn’t speak. We all hauled everything up the boardwalk, away from the sand now rising and spinning in the coming storm. Oscar appeared too. He was holding Natalie’s hand, and she was smiling shyly. She didn’t seem to be minding that chin fluff, not at all.

  “I’m confused,” Ash said to me finally when he saw them.

  “He’s confused. It was a misunderstanding.”

  “Not something else to sort out?”

  “One thing is more than enough for me,” I said.

  He set a duffel bag of Gavin’s on the living room floor. The bottom of the tent, rolled up now, went next to it.

  “You know where I am, right?” he said kindly. He grabbed my fingers and gave them a squeeze and then headed out. In the doorway he turned. He had his car keys in his hand, and he tossed them into the air and caught them. “For-ever is a slippery little du-ude …,” he sang badly. It felt like someone was crushing my heart.

  “Definitely a hit song,” I said.

  “Later,” he said over his shoulder as he went out the door.

  All of Gavin and Oscar’s crap was in the house now, and they were taking most of it to Hailey’s room. It was just in time too, because it started to rain. Pour. You could hear the hard, driving splats against the roof. It wasn’t raining cats and dogs, exactly—more like small round gerbils. My mother had found a bottle of wine in the kitchen, and she and Dan and Aunt Hannah were each having a glass, watching the real weather channel out the living room windows.

  “Crazy weather. Perfect for a wedding,” my mother said. She looked sad.

  Dan raised his glass. “To crazy weather, crazy life, crazy parents.”

  “To crazy parents building crazy golf courses,” Mom said. I guess Grandpa had confessed. She and Aunt Hannah clinked.

  “To crazy parents in general,” I said.

  “Never mind,” my mother said to me. “Dear God, what next?”

  “That’s all, Daisy. I promise,” Dan said. “There won’t be anything else. That’s all we can take.”

  Ben appeared. Wiped his sandy hands on his pants. Jupiter was trotting behind him, trying to keep up. Cruiser, who’d been lying there quietly, hopped to attention as if the general had arrived. “Watch,” Ben said. “There’ll be an earthquake or something.”

  At that, one of the Goddies playing poker with our lives had a great idea. He set all the money in the world on the earth’s green felt poker table. He was looking straight at us.

  “What�
�s that noise?” my mother said.

  A noise, all right. A vibrating wha-wha-wha turning into a WHUP, WHUP, WHUP. The sound was so loud now, the windows were rattling.

  Dan stood, looked out. “Jesus,” he said. He put his arm over his eyes because a bright light, white and blinding, was shining in.

  Ted was running down the stairs.

  “Oh, my God,” I said.

  “Where did that come from?” Ben asked.

  “Goddamn it,” Ted said. “Our stupid-ass neighbor. Randy, he’s an ex-marine. I’m so sorry, guys. He’s got a helipad on his roof. Louder than hell—it scares the shit out us every time it happens. Sometimes he takes people back and forth from the island.”

  “Helipad?” I said. I remembered. That helicopter Ben and I saw.

  “A landing place for the helicopter,” Ted said.

  Ben and I looked at each other.

  “I tell Rebecca it’s like living next to a goddamn airport.”

  I’ll raise you, the Goddie said.

  chapter

  twenty-four

  Janssen—

  A List of Things Jupiter Destroyed:

  1. Various garden hoses

  2. Our old backyard, from digging all those holes

  3. Several pairs of shoes

  4. One paperback book

  5. A rosebush

  6. Enough underwear to clothe a small country

  7. The heads of those mini Christmas carolers of the mini village we always put under our tree

  Actually, I can’t even remember everything. No way. When we first got her—man, she was a puppy bent on destruction. But you know, because of all the good things she’s done, all that she’s given—I don’t even care about that underwear. Some of them I really liked too. Some of them were my favorite pairs. Who cares about any of that stuff?

  Humans, though, Janssen. It’s another thing entirely. We either give forgiveness too easily or we treat it like we’re a starving person with the last crust of bread—clutching it, withholding it, hiding it, a basic selfish grasp at self-preservation. If you give it away, you let go of the chance to be safe.

  We have more reasons to worry about intentions, though, don’t we? Most dogs don’t wish ill on people (I think, anyway). I doubt they lie there hoping we’ll get ours when we’ve been mean. I doubt they think about what that other dog has compared to them, or dream about better couches and fancier food that might be theirs if we could only do better. I doubt they are as confused as we are. Things seem pretty simple. Their needs seem pretty clear, except for those times when they stare and stare and you can’t for the life of you figure out what they want and you just wish you could ask. Mostly they seem just fine. And what a relief that is for a change.

  You do them wrong, they move on. They do you wrong, you move on. In the grand scheme of things, what do chewed underwear really matter?

  You say this is not about forgiveness. Your last letter: “It’s not about you being sorry enough. It’s about you being ready enough.”

  But maybe, Janssen, this is what I’m most sorry for?

  Love always,

  Cricket

  chapter

  twenty-five

  “It sounds like the air force descending,” Dan said. He opened the living room doors. The rain was falling furiously. The full thunderous clatter of THWUP! THWUP! THWUP! rushed in.

  “All those years in the military for our man, Randy. I think it brings back the good old days,” Ted said.

  The noise brought everyone downstairs. Gram and Aunt Bailey in their matching robes, and Grandpa and George and Amy and Hailey and Gavin. I didn’t know where Oscar and Natalie were—probably making out in Natalie’s room. Who cared about a military takeover when you were in love? Jane and John appeared, with a sleepy Baby Boo on Jane’s hip. Jupiter began to bay and howl at the noise. Her warning cry. The cry meant for coyotes and mountain lions. Dangerous invaders. I picked her up, tucked her under my arm. She yelped when I picked her up. A cry of pain that surprised me. I must have gotten that tender place under her arm.

  “Sorry, sweetie.” I kissed her head.

  “Are we being attacked?” Gram said. With the door open she almost had to shout. The wind and rain were blowing in. Dan stood on the deck watching now. The wind blew a paper napkin off the table. Cruiser trotted out to the deck and was watching the helicopter too, his chin up toward the sky, eyes fixed. It was the same thing Jupiter did when she tried to catch flies.

  “Fool to take a chopper out in this weather,” Grandpa said.

  “Some idiot didn’t think it could wait until tomorrow,” Ted said.

  “Well, I’m glad that’s all it is,” Jane said.

  Rebecca was there now too. Ted folded his arms when she came in. She stood away from him, looking out those windows. “Good thing there are so many more sane ways to get to Bishop Rock and that Randy’s business is generally bad. We don’t have to live with this often.”

  Ben had gone outside to watch, and he stood beside Dan Jax, and Mom did too, and so did I, with Jupiter still tucked safely under my arm. Randy’s place was next to Bluff House, and we could see straight across to that flat roof. The helicopter looked like a sci-fi creature with its large glass nose and beaming headlight, its spindly legs wobbling and then alighting on the roof. The blades spun awhile before stopping.

  “Cool,” Ben said. “Never seen something like that so close before.”

  “It’s freezing out here,” Amy said behind me. “We’re getting drenched.” I didn’t know she was there. I didn’t know everyone was there. We really weren’t getting all that wet—the rain had turned to a drizzle—but the wind kept on. The door of the helicopter lifted up when the blades had stilled.

  “It is an action movie,” George said. “Now the spy from the United States of America will step out with his briefcase of important documents.”

  “I saw that one,” Gram said.

  “That’s not a spy,” Dan said. His voice sounded funny.

  “Dan?” my mother said.

  “That’s not a spy,” he said again.

  It was a woman. Wearing a big parka and high heels. She was speaking to Randy, and he was gesturing in the direction of Bluff House.

  Suddenly Dan was shouting. “Gayle! Goddamn it, Gayle, is that you?”

  “Mom?” Amy said.

  “What?” my mother whispered. “What! No. You’ve got to be kidding me. This isn’t happening. This. Is. Not. Happening.”

  “Oh. My. God,” Hailey said. “My crazy mother. That’s my crazy mother! Gavey, what did I tell you?” She stood at the deck rail and shrieked. “Go home, Ma! Go home! We’re fine, see! Fine!”

  The voices were lost in the thick tunnel of wind. The woman didn’t even look over.

  Dan, though—he began to run. Down that boardwalk, down that beach. I had wanted him to do something, and that’s what was happening, all right. I’ve never seen him look like that, so furious. I didn’t know he could even get truly angry—it was one of the things I liked about him. But it was there now. Anger, and decisiveness. Needed action.

  The waves were crashing white against the dark shoreline. I’d lost all track of time. It had to be quite late now. I watched Dan’s determined figure stride across that beach. But it was my mother who made me do what I did next. Her face—crushed, fallen. It looked like defeat. The face of someone who had given up.

  “I can’t believe this,” she said. “This is nuts. This is too much.”

  I made my way back through the group. Me, with my dog still under my arm. I needed to get inside. Away. I got the hell out of there. I heard Ben say, “Hey, George. Better than a spy movie, eh?” But I didn’t feel like joking. Farthest thing from it. It was too much. She was right. I felt the landslide—the ripples building on ripples, the rock pushing against rock, until the cracking, roaring crash became inevitable. The polite image of a balloon tied to the ground with strings—it shattered in natural disaster, the crashing roar of avalanche, and the string
s were yanked from the ground with the endless and insistent forces of change. Because the rain keeps falling, and the wind keeps blowing and the sea keeps making small shoves of water against sand, change, change, change, and there was not a thing you could do about it.

  I went to my room and slammed the door. I put my face against Jupiter’s body. Maybe safety was only a creation of our imagination. I smelled Jupiter’s comforting wet-wool-blanket smell. I could feel her heart beating. She looked at me with concern. Her eyes said, I am worried.

  I found my phone. And then I called my very own Janssen Tucker. I did. There he was. His same, familiar voice. I wept. I could barely talk, I was sobbing so hard. I was filled with sudden, crashing grief. I was saying the most important thing, asking the biggest question. How, I cried, how am I supposed to do this without you?

  I was awakened the next morning by a knock at the door.

  “Crick?”

  Ben.

  “I’m sleeping.”

  “Do you know where Mom is?”

  I sat up. I saw Jupiter over there, looking up at me without lifting her head. She was tired from being up late last night too. “Don’t say this. Don’t say you can’t find her.”

  “Dan woke up, and she wasn’t there. He was wondering if I’d seen her.”

  I scrambled out of bed, flung open my door. Ben—for all of his easy, let-it-go advice, he looked troubled. He was still wearing the same clothes from the day before. He was unshaven, and his eyes were bleary. “Wedding day,” he said.

  “Shit, Ben. Shit.”

  “I know.”

  “We would have heard that helicopter leave, for one thing,” he said.

  I pulled a sweatshirt over my head. I clipped Jupiter to her leash. I had the irrational thought—maybe we should look in the same places Charles had hid, the places even small people know to seek for escape.