Everyone We've Been (5 page)

Since he's just gotten back from his trip—and I guess he wanted to see me after he heard about the bus crash—I spend Tuesday night at my dad's, even though I rarely see him on weekdays.

My father lives in a tiny apartment, in the busiest part of downtown Lyndale. He isn't in it often, but even when he's home, when he's not flying, it's not my favorite place in the world. I love my dad, but I feel like we exist on separate islands. Like with my brother, whenever we are in a room together, it's as if there's this enormous gulf, a wedge between us that nothing can fill.

The sad thing is, I remember that my dad was my favorite person in the world when I was a kid. I remember him hoisting me into the air, letting me walk with my feet on top of his in the grocery store, teaching me to ride a bike in the driveway of our old house on the east side of town. He bought me my first viola. He called me Sunshine, in what remains of his lilting Caribbean accent, because he said I lit up every room I walked into. And I didn't walk, I
burst
into every room, according to him.

Some days when I've broken through on a piece I'm learning, the melody still thrumming through the tips of my fingers like an electric shock, and I feel so happy I could dance, I want nothing more than for him to see my face. To be the bubbly kid he remembers, and for him to be the dad I remember. For us to recognize each other the way you catch sight of your reflection in paneled glass. Even for a second.

“You know Dad can fly, right?” Caleb would tell me when we were really little, tricking me into thinking it was true in the literal sense. Superman-type flying with a cape and the forehead curl and the whole shebang. “Duh,” I would say in whatever way four-year-olds do. Then my dad would get home from his trips and put me on his shoulders, and I always felt so high up that every time he lifted his foot, it seemed like we were teetering, picking up air.

All my memories until about twelve—right around when my parents separated—are like that, and then suddenly they are distant and different and tinged with this sadness, an uncertainty I can't explain. There's just a trace of it in every memory with my dad, like the aftertaste of something bitter you've eaten, and I'm only really sure he loves me because I remember he once did.

Dad is different with Caleb. Less distant. But maybe it's because Caleb is older; maybe fathers and sons are just different. Sometimes I think my parents' divorce split us right in half: my mother and me on one side, Caleb and Dad on the other.

My parents met at a dinner party when Mom was doing the weather for radio. Dad used to listen to the six-thirty forecast before he went up, back when he was a training pilot, and he claims he fell in love with her voice. Her calm, matter-of-fact voice, which would inch up just a little bit when there was bad news. A storm, a tornado warning, bad weather for the Fourth.

When someone introduced them, Dad exclaimed, “You're Sandy Fairweather!”

“Sandy Houston,” she'd said, trying not to let on that she was pleased at the recognition.

“I didn't mind bad news if your voice was the one giving it,” I remember my dad telling her as they recounted the story for the billionth time, before everything changed.

Before Dad stopped coming home and then got his own place on the far side of town.

Still, I sometimes catch him watching Mom's report.

Dad's apartment is eternally stuffy because every now and then he'll get a new piece of furniture that he won't be home to use, so the space keeps getting more cramped, the stale scent of new leather and abandoned air mixing together to form something arid and claustrophobic. When it gets bad enough for him to notice, he'll fling open all the windows and the door that leads out to the balcony, and the apartment will sound like squealing brakes, drunk couples fighting, and too-loud ambulances for the whole weekend I'm around.

I think the worst part is that the apartments are so close together, the walls so paper-thin, that I am not allowed to practice here. We'll watch TV on opposite ends of the new leather couch he's just gotten, and every couple of hours, he'll pause the show to ask if I've seen the new lamp he bought or a new stool for the kitchen, and I'll say no even if I have.

Tonight we're watching hours of home renovation shows he's taped, eating Thai food out of Styrofoam containers.

“Are you sure your mother isn't using it?” Dad's question jolts me out of a trance, and I glance at him, confused.

“Addie?” I can tell from his frown that I have a glazed expression on my face, and I try to blink it away.

“Sorry. What were you saying?”

“I was asking about Grandpa's clock that we used to have at home. I thought it might add a nice touch to the living room. Caleb said it was in the attic somewhere—that your mother wasn't using it?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say unhelpfully. “I'll look for it when I get home.”

Today has been the worst day yet since the accident. I'm not in pain, but I feel like I can't concentrate on anything. Probably because the last really peaceful sleep I got was on the bus before it crashed. Katy is at her wit's end with me.

I've been tempted to mention it to my mom, but I know she'd just freak out and send me to the ER. And Dad—well, I'm not really used to coming to him when I need help. And what exactly is my issue—that I've been distracted and forgetful for three days?

I shake my head when Dad pauses the show again to ask if I've seen the new kitchen mat.

He likes the tour more than I do, the act of convincing himself his apartment is just as full as our house used to be. Or maybe it just gives us something to say to each other. Sometimes, watching TV on the couch, I'll pull out my bow and just hold it or swipe it against the air to threaten away the sadness.

“Did you look for the exits when you got on the bus?” Dad asks out of nowhere. It's the first thing he's asked me about the accident since I got here after school today.

“Yeah, I always do,” I say. For a pilot, my father has no faith in planes. He hates for any of us to fly. Years ago, before the divorce, the four of us went on vacation to visit Dad's extended family in St. Vincent—or Vincy, as he calls it. He grew up in the States, and his parents died here when I was little, but Dad always goes back every few years, and this was one of the few times we were going with him. Dad had the three of us in a semicircle at the airport, his Hawaiian shirt odd and ill-fitting on him. I remember I'd been hopping around singing every song I knew that mentioned the beach or islands or the sun. Dad looked each of us square in the face and said, “Always assume the plane is going down.”

It was the last trip we took as a family.

But his warning worked, because none of us will enter a plane or bus or train without knowing where the exits are.

“Your mom says all the colleges you ended up applying to were in New York,” he says now. There is no feeling in his voice, and he doesn't look at me. He never looks at me. “They have a pretty high crime rate.”

“Lots of places do,” I say.

He nods, then unpauses the TV. I steal glances at the side of his face, wondering what he would say if I did tell him I'd been feeling strange ever since the accident.

Would it make him worry about me? Maybe he'd actually be able to help?

“It's asking for trouble to be so far away from family,” he says, mostly concentrating on the TV now, and confirming what I suspect, which is that my mother got him to bring this up.

I bite the urge to say,
Um,
hello
? You've made a career, a lifestyle, out of being away from family.
But that feels like a low blow, so I don't answer and focus on the screen.

Even though he's not here actively
doing
anything to incite it, it's times like these I resent my brother. He's two years older than me, currently at community college—despite decent grades—and still living at home.

There would be nothing wrong with it, if it was what Caleb wanted. But I know that even if he'll never admit it, it's not what he wants. He's always been obsessed with planes like my dad, has dreamed of flying for years. But instead of doing anything about it, he stays in Lyndale, haunting parties and people he has outgrown.

The only thing my parents agree on is crushing any bit of desire Caleb and I have to go somewhere, to move, to stretch the seams of our lives. It's spearheaded by my mom, but somehow she always gets Dad to agree with her. She's convinced she can protect us from whatever dangers are out there. I'm seventeen and I have freaking
parental controls
on my computer.

As hyperbolic as Katy is about it, I know exactly what she means when she says she feels as if she was born for a place. I think I was born for the viola, to play music on one of the loneliest instruments.

But I chose New York because I want something else. The fact that Juilliard is in the same city doesn't mean I have to go there.

I want buzzing lights and rowdy streets and the Philharmonic and Broadway and Carnegie Hall and artsy, passionate, vibrant people with places to go.

I know it's the biggest cliché, but I love the idea of a city that reminds you every day that you're alive. I love that it is different and bigger than Lyndale in every way, and I want to believe my life there will be, too.

I've worked so hard to keep my grades up, to stand a chance of getting into NYU.

Now Dad pats my knee awkwardly.

“Let's think on it some more, okay?” he says.

I nod—
Yes, let's think on it some more—
but already I am thinking of all the things that could possibly stop me from leaving, and deciding that they are all things that won't.

The next night, I practice longer than usual to make up for yesterday, when I was at my dad's. As soon as I got home from the hospital on Sunday morning, I downloaded a version of Bach's “Air on the G String,” and I listen to it now, falling in love again with the way it swoops, in and out, gently, insistently. The millions of stories I can imagine hidden in it. I've started trying to learn a viola version of the song, but it doesn't sound as full and fantastic as it should. Instead of wistful and romantic, it feels desolate. Like someone waltzing alone.

Giving up on it for tonight, I decide to work on our new orchestra pieces. I almost have “Alla Hornpipe” from the second movement of
Water Music
by Handel memorized, but according to Mrs. Dubois, there's nothing worse than teaching yourself a flawed version of a piece. Mrs. Dubois has a theory about firsts: that the first thing sets the precedent for everything that comes after. The way you first learn a song, the way you approach the first note, sets the tone for the rest of that movement and the whole piece. The first piece in a concert sets the tone for the rest of the performance. She also says the first mistake you make in a performance—and how you recover from it—sets the precedent for all the other mistakes you'll make. But since I'd rather not have any mistakes, I decide to play from the sheet music until I have it perfect. Except that I left my orchestra binder in my car, which my mother let me drive today.

It's only seven at night, but it's dark and freezing out, so I throw my coat over my flannel pajamas and pad outside. I'm still humming “Air on the G String” to myself as I dig through my car and retrieve the black binder.

I'm halfway out of the car when the sight of a person across the road, illuminated by a streetlight, nearly makes me slam my head against the roof. I climb out of the passenger seat and am waving my binder at him before I can stop myself.

“Hey!” I say, watching as he registers my presence and a smile—that smile—stretches across his face. He is wearing the beanie again, but tufts of red hair stick out from under it now.

“Hi!” he says, and then crosses the road between us so we are both standing in front of my driveway.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He scratches the back of his neck. “I just kind of found myself here, I guess,” he says. “I was taking a walk. You?”

“I live here,” I say, signaling behind me, but instead of looking at my house, his eyes travel down the length of me. Stopping at the place beneath my knee where my coat ends and my Rainbow Brite pajamas are tucked into slippers.

“You weren't just prowling the streets like that?” he asks, his eyes twinkling playfully. Butterflies brush the cage of my chest.

“I certainly was not prowling,” I say, and scrunch my face up in mock offense. “Anyway, what do you have against Rainbow Brite?”

He raises his hand in surrender. “Nothing. I'm sure she's a very nice…person?”

“Right. Sure you're not following me?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him, and then my cheeks instantly warm with how flirtatious it comes out. For once, I am thankful for how quickly blood rushes to the tips of my ears when I'm embarrassed. They are currently unaffected by the cold.

Bus Boy laughs, but before he can answer, Caleb's car revs into the driveway, almost taking Bus Boy—who is standing closer to the center of the driveway than I am—down in the process. Bus Boy jumps out of the way, shaken. Before I have time to form words, my brother calls out his window, “Why are you standing outside, Addison?”

“Oh my God, do you have to drive like a psychopath? And I'm
talking to someone,
” I say, waiting for him to apologize for nearly mowing a person down.

“I was changing songs. I wasn't even that close!” Caleb never stops his car, though, continuing to roll into the garage so that he's yelling back at me when he says, “Can't you talk on the phone inside?”

Caleb doesn't bother waiting for my response, and the garage door gurgles shut behind him.

What?
Is he so determined to not see me that he didn't even glance up to make sure I was all right and just assumed I was on my phone?

“Are you okay? I'm so sorry.”

“I'm fine,” Bus Boy says with a laugh, already back to looking unruffled.

“That was just my asshat brother,” I explain.

Bus Boy nods in understanding. I know a lot of siblings aren't best friends and that my distant relationship with Caleb is probably normal. But there are so many days I wish things were different between us. That it wasn't just the two of us, or that we had some kind of middle ground. Right now, though, I sort of want to kick him.

“Hey, aren't you ever cold?” I ask, noticing then that Bus Boy is not wearing winter clothes. Again. His shirt is long-sleeved but far from warm enough to be walking around in.

“I'm not very cold,” he says.

“It's, like, twenty degrees,” I say, still stunned that he's not shivering or morphing into an icicle right in front of me. Can he not afford winter clothes? He doesn't
look
malnourished or homeless or anything. I don't see holes in his shoes or jeans. “You can't walk back home in that. You'll get hypothermia.”

“It's really okay,” he says.

I don't know if I sound more like Katy or my mom.

“You'll get hypothermia
and die,
” I say, deciding to invoke a stronger version of their voices.

Bus Boy laughs. A full, rich sound that makes
me
feel a little less cold. “Then I can go to Jimi Hendrix concerts.”

“Or not. I bet you still need an invite,” I retort. Okay, I'm definitely flirting. It's like channeling Katy a second ago has made her invade my body.

“You know, I have a coat I can lend you,” I say, suddenly thinking of something. “Well, my brother does.”

Caleb won't like the idea of me lending his coat to a stranger, but it's the least of my concerns.

“It's really okay,” Bus Boy is saying, his smile gone. “I'm not even that cold. And I bet it's not my size.”

“It's a jacket, not a leotard,” I say, and then we both burst out laughing at the mental imagery of either my brother or him in a leotard.
Ew.
Why did I say that?

“Hold on, I'll be right back,” I say.

“No, look—” I miss the last of his protests as I race inside the house and set down my music binder. I find an ivy-green winter jacket hanging in the coat closet, still warm. Must be what Caleb just took off. He's nowhere in sight, so I rush back out the front door.

“Okay, you can probably return this tom—” My voice breaks off as I stare out at the empty driveway. I look right, then left, then right again, as if I'm getting ready to cross the road.

Where did he go?

I walk to the edge of the driveway and look to both ends of the street, but there's no sign of him.

I had so many questions for him.

Who are you?

Why do we suddenly keep running into each other?

Once again, I didn't even manage to get his name.

I stand there, clutching my brother's coat as my hands tingle with cold, and I can't believe Bus Boy just left. All I can think is,
It felt like we were at the start of something.