by Zoe Fishman
“I love him. I’m coming with you,” she told Sylvie and Paul. “Besides, I know how to camp and also, when he was in the bathroom one day, I put a tracking device on his phone.”
“A tracking device?” asked Paul, exchanging a look of concern with Sylvie.
“Sure, so I could always know where he is. Controversial, I know, but in a time like this: hello, I just saved us from wandering around like feral raccoons in the dark for ten hours. I know exactly where he is.”
“Feral raccoons?” said Barbara.
Sylvie met her mother’s gaze over Krystal’s head: Not Jewish, but I like her, she mouthed. Smart. Barbara tapped her own head with her ring finger to illustrate her point.
“You know where he is? Where? Show me,” Sylvie said to Krystal.
“Oh, no way,” said Krystal. “I’m not falling for that trick. Let’s get in the car and then I’ll show you.”
Sylvie looked at Paul, whose face underneath his hat looked strained. He shrugged slightly.
“Okay, fine,” said Sylvie. “You can come. But you have to tell your mother.”
“My mother drove me here,” replied Krystal.
What kind of mother not only grants her daughter permission to join the road trip from hell to a wild horse island enshrouded in dark dysfunction and trauma but delivers her upon its doorstep willingly? thought Sylvie, as she hugged everyone halfheartedly and headed out the door. What kind of mother was a secret pill-popping prostitute? Glass houses, Sylvie, she reminded herself.
“I’ll call you,” she told them.
“Be careful,” said her father. “I don’t trust that island.”
They had never spoken outright about Delilah’s death; her father had only pushed her hair away from her forehead one afternoon as she lay in bed a week later, still unable to move, the blinds shutting out the sun. His hand had felt as dry as sandpaper. It was the closest he had come before or since to comfort.
“I will, Dad,” Sylvie said.
“Paul, what are you doing?” she asked as he loaded the tent and two sleeping bags into the trunk of their car.
“Teddy didn’t take the tent, so who the hell knows where or how he’s planning to sleep?” said Paul, his voice thick with worry. “He did take a sleeping bag, though. We only have two, so—”
“I’ll sleep with him,” Krystal interjected, throwing her backpack into the car.
“Like hell you will,” said Sylvie. “You’ll sleep with me in mine.” Krystal shrugged from inside the car, her curls draped across the back seat.
“Sylvie, take it easy,” said Paul. And then, “Are we ready? We can stop for water on the way.”
“Ready,” said Sylvie, throwing her backpack in the trunk before he closed it.
“I’m worried,” she said to him.
“Me too,” he answered, but there was no softness there. Their concern was not enough unification to make him forget about the pills, Sylvie realized, as she looked him in the eye.
This was going to be the longest drive of her life.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Teddy
Teddy stood on the deck of the ferry as it pulled in to dock, glad he had remembered a hat to protect him from the unrelenting sun. He popped the last of the weird packaged cinnamon roll he had purchased from a vending machine into his mouth and hoped he would not suffer for his culinary sin later, alone, on an island with no bathrooms to speak of. The roll had appeared to be older than Teddy was, but he had been starving in the St. Marys bus station, so what could he do? He slugged back the Styrofoam cup of coffee he had also purchased right before boarding. He had never drunk coffee before and had been revolted by his initial sip. Six packages of a powder that claimed to be coffee’s mate later and it was mildly recognizable as a beverage people would willingly consume. How his parents were addicted to this stuff, he had no idea.
Addicted. His mom. Their conversation. It was all so surreal and unfathomable, that he would be the one asking her to cut it out and that she would be refusing—temporarily, as she had sworn, although Teddy wasn’t sure he bought it—but it had happened all right. And now here he was, trading one intervention for another but hoping this one was more successful.
He was terrified of the day and night that stretched out in front of him, but he figured if he had made it this far—if he had snuck out of his house in the middle of the night, taken an Uber to the bus station, hopped on said bus to St. Marys and boarded the ferry all by himself—then he was going to be okay. And if he came out on the other end with some closure, feeling better about the man he was supposedly on the cusp of becoming in two days, then all the better. L’Chaim, as Morty would say.
He knew his parents were freaking out. They had called his cell phone fifteen times. Krystal had called six. But he had not picked up. He had to do this alone. It was the only way it would work. Five minutes prior, feeling guilty, he had sent them all a text telling them he was okay, he was on a mission, he would be back the next day, please don’t worry or call the police. Then he had turned off his phone.
His fellow shipmates began to disembark, all in various degrees of preparedness. There were around two dozen or so of them on this 9:00 A.M. boat, the first of the morning, all of whom Teddy had eavesdropped on, his notebook at the ready.
One family—two moms and their two daughters—were covered in camel-colored hiking gear complete with zippers placed at their elbows and knees in case the sun’s merciless heat won out over the danger of its dangerous rays. Three were red-haired and freckled, one of the mothers brunette and olive. The redheaded mom was Mommy and the brunette mom was Ma. The two girls were Charlie and, for some reason, Rabbit, which Teddy had double-checked. He hoped it was a nickname but then had realized that who was he to judge? He was named after a bear.
Another couple, Tammy and Ron—young, maybe in college or just out, Teddy had surmised—were tattooed practically from head to toe, and he knew this because they were wearing such little clothing, which was shocking to Teddy at first but then kind of liberating as he began to sweat even in the cool breeze, even at just 9:15 in the morning. Tammy had horses galloping up her left leg, which explained their trip. If she had a thing for horses, Cumberland Island was the place to go. They never left your memory once you’d seen them, those horses—wild eyes and matted manes, their sinuous muscles just beneath the glossy surface of their coats.
Tammy and Ron were not even remotely ready for the island, however. Both of them were as white as ghosts, and yet Tammy had refused sunscreen. And they were both in flip-flops. If Teddy hadn’t had work to do, he would have followed them around just to see them fall apart firsthand, as a kind of plot exercise for a future screenplay.
Not that he was that prepared himself. Teddy had left the tent behind but attached a sleeping bag to his backpack, thinking he would sleep under the stars as part of this entry into manhood. As his feet, encased in high-top sneakers, made contact with dry land, however, and the first mosquito made direct contact with the exposed skin of his neck, he realized he had forgotten perhaps the most essential tool of all for this journey: bug spray.
He began to panic a little as he walked, the beauty of the island lost on his addled mind, which was taking stock of the supplies he had had the good sense to stash in his backpack in an effort to make himself feel better. Three bottles of water, almonds, apples, protein bars, sunscreen, a change of clothes, some underwear, a travel bottle of shampoo in case he got to shower. A bathing suit just in case. A small towel. A sleeping bag.
A mosquito landed squarely on his forearm and he swatted it away, but not before it had gotten its fill of him. A red welt puffed up in its wake.
But no bug spray. Idiot.
Teddy forced himself to look away from the bite and up, to take stock of the untouched nature surrounding him. It was magnificent here; the trees alone with their wide trunks and dense branches that reached up, up, up into the sky were enough to make you marvel. Up ahead were Tammy and Ron snapping a selfie
of themselves, the illustrated canvases of their skin already beginning to pink, even in the shaded canopy the leaves provided.
Teddy grabbed a water bottle from his backpack and took a hearty swig. He put it back in, rezipped it and began again, the trees his umbrella. He reached back into his mind and remembered the last time he had been here, walking this same path of dirt and rocks.
His mom. Her body had been so warm to the touch when she was pregnant; just holding her hand was like putting on a mitten. I’m an incubator, she had replied as Teddy had told her this, helping her off the ferry.
He had climbed a tree, Teddy recalled, eyeing the majestic arch of one now, feeling its weathered bark against his palm. He had hauled himself up and over the low, thick branches as his dad struggled behind him, his mother shrieking in fear below.
Teddy dropped his backpack on the ground and climbed again. The bark felt rough and warm beneath his hands; he could feel its ridges even through the fabric of his pants as he clung to it. Sideways and up, sideways and up, and then he stopped. He sat, swinging his legs underneath him, watching the swoosh of his blue Converse going back and forth. People milled below, adults and kids laughing and talking, the distant notes of their conversations like bubbles rising to the surface of water. He thought about the horses. Hiding in plain sight. He climbed down after a few minutes, resisting the urge to stop and eat. It was not yet eleven o’clock, and he hadn’t packed enough food for unnecessary snacks.
The tree-shaded path ended abruptly, depositing him without warning into an open green space mottled with patches of sand and dirt. In front of him were the charred remains of a mansion, its long-lost grandeur still apparent even in the hollowed-out brick shell of what remained. The Dungeness Ruins.
Teddy wandered its perimeter, imagining the life that once inhabited such a place. Fancy dinners and parties and maids in scullery caps; butlers and gardeners. A family of four, like dolls in very stiff clothes, looking out the windows. Maybe a little girl with blond ringlets down her back on a rocking horse, diligently watched over by her governess. Governess. Whatever had happened to that word? They probably still used it in England, Teddy reasoned.
He kept walking. He shifted his backpack and realized that underneath it, where it met his shirt, was soaked with sweat. He also realized that he had forgotten another thing. Deodorant. Great.
He wondered what Krystal was doing. Since their argument, he had been composing what he wanted to say in his green notebook, choosing words and then erasing them, picking others and then erasing those too. He didn’t have much written down. What he wanted to say and what came out were two different things.
I’m scared, he wanted to say, about my mom. I don’t know what to do. What he had written down was: My mom is not your dad. And then: I did it.
Krystal was probably with her friend he had never met at her neighborhood pool that he had never seen. He imagined her lying on a chaise lounge in the sun, her eyes closed. Did she wear a bikini? A surge of heat flowed through him, separate from the sun. He had never seen her stomach in the light of day, but he had touched it. Her skin was impossibly smooth.
He found a shaded area and sat down. He had to eat; his stomach was growling like a tiger in a cage. A protein bar and an apple. Some water. That should do the trick. Teddy removed his backpack and set it against the trunk of a tree, positioned his sleeping bag for a bit of lumbar support and leaned against it. That was better. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat off his face with his hands. He drank and drank from one of his bottles of water. He began to eat, too quickly at first, and then he reminded himself to slow down. The last thing he needed was stomach cramps.
His parents were definitely losing it right now; he knew they were. They would have no idea where he was, but he hoped they had taken his text to heart. He hoped that they trusted his word that he was okay, that he would be back. His mom had probably had to take an extra pill, just to deal. And his dad? Who knew. Teddy was mad at both of them, he realized, for the secrets he felt compelled to keep on both of their behalves. It was messed up.
Trudging through the white sand toward the beach felt like walking on the surface of the sun. It was just after noon; Teddy had checked the watch he had borrowed from his dad’s vast collection of time-interval, stopwatch, BMI/step-counter plastic behemoths. It looked and felt more like a satellite dish than a means of time measurement on Teddy’s skinny wrist, but he was glad he had it. Otherwise, he would have had to turn on his phone and read what he was sure were nine hundred texts from his parents, each one more agitated as they continued to go unanswered.
The sun beat down so forcefully on Teddy’s head that he felt it might burst into flames. He kept his eyes on his feet, and as he watched his blue sneakers move through the sand, he remembered complaining, crying in dramatic despair when he was nine, enduring this same seemingly endless trek. His father had told him through gritted teeth to buck up; his mother had looked at him with a mix of pity and annoyance.
“Come on, T,” she had said. “I’m as big as a house. If I can do it, certainly you can. Look at my ankles, Teddy; they’re like balloon animals.” And they were.
His parents had walked on when Teddy refused to budge, leaving him behind until he had no choice but to keep moving, lest he be stranded alone in the sand.
There were lots of times in his life that Teddy had been acutely aware of the fact that his father, and sometimes his mother too, wished he was a tougher kid. The kind of kid who didn’t stand on the soccer field daydreaming as the ball rolled right past him, a gaggle of boys kicking at one another’s shins in an attempt to redirect it. The kind of kid who wanted to ride his bike. He knew that when his dad narrowed his eyes and massaged his temples with his thumb and index finger that he was frustrated with what he saw as Teddy’s laziness. But Teddy didn’t think he was lazy. He just wasn’t interested, and wasn’t that okay?
It was so hot.
Onward Teddy trudged, and then, mercifully, the sun ducked behind a cloud and he was granted reprieve as his sneakers moved onto the wet sand of the shore. Tentatively he sat, sinking slightly into the ground.
The water was as gray as the horizon, and just as still. Dragonflies darted in and out of the air all around him. Teddy drew his knees to his chest and waited.
In the stillness, a tribe of horses walked in front of him, their hooves making small splashes in the tide. They had appeared out of nowhere, it seemed. Like ghosts. But they were as real as the wet sand on which Teddy sat. They whinnied and snorted as their matted tails cut through the thick, humid air, swatting at the flies hovering around them.
There were four of them, walking in a line. The leader was the color of syrup, the second a chocolate brown, the third white dappled with gray and the last a deep, dark, midnight black. They were completely unconcerned with Teddy and couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet away from the toes of his sneakers. He did not move.
How could you not believe in God when nature like this, in its purest form, existed? thought Teddy. How else to explain this beauty? How did these horses even end up here in the first place? Had their ancestors been born under the care of the millionaire who had owned the now-decrepit mansion? Had they lived in barns stuffed to the rafters with golden hay, been fed carrots by their owners, been meticulously groomed by the staff until they shone like marble? And when all that wealth and grandeur had disappeared, they continued on, still? The white-and-gray dappled one stopped suddenly and stared at Teddy with her rheumy black eyes, directly into his own.
What had Morty said? L’dor vador?
Yes.
Teddy could see the window of the hospital waiting room, feel the scratchy sofa beneath his curled-up legs, remember the fear that had kept him wide awake even though it had been so late. Later than he had ever been awake in his nine years of life. He had been alone for hours in that room, and he had been terrified, even though he had pretended he wasn’t because his parents, in another room down the hall with a closed door
, were too. And he had never seen that before either. He had never seen them scared by anything, and yet his mother had been trembling and crying when he hugged her goodbye, and his father’s eyes, above the pale green of his surgical mask, had been as wide as saucers.
The horse snorted and broke its gaze. The tribe of four continued on down the shore.
As he watched them walk away, sobs rose up inside Teddy like small earthquakes. He erupted in tears, damp and sweaty and sandy, all alone just as he had been in that hospital waiting room. He cried for his mother. He cried for his father. He cried for Delilah, who never even got the chance to see the world. But mostly he cried for himself. He’d been robbed of a sister he’d never known, but he’d also been robbed of the parents he’d once known. They had never been the same.
And now his mother was a drug addict because she couldn’t bear her own reality. A reality in which she hated his dad. A reality in which his dad secretly texted with women who used emojis and poured his money down a giant cyber hole, all the while running, cycling and swimming away from the void that threatened them all. And Teddy watched movies on a loop. Because anything was better than the void. Anything.
That night three years ago, Teddy had finally fallen asleep underneath a mauve blanket a nurse had draped over him in that waiting room. In the wee hours of the morning, his father had returned, sitting down next to him. The shift of the cushions had woken Teddy.
“Hi, buddy,” his dad had said softly. Teddy remembered it as clearly as if it had been the day before. “Come here.”
His father had pulled him close. Teddy had looked up, his eyes blurry, not quite sure where he was. His father looked different, not like his real self. His real father was not the color of putty; his real father’s eyes were not bloodshot and ringed by blue circles. And yet Teddy could tell by his hands, his long, tapered fingers, that it was indeed him.
“Delilah didn’t make it, buddy,” he had said, choking back a sob.
“Didn’t make it where?” Teddy had asked.