Remember Me Like This (31 page)

“Exactly,” Justin said. He was surveying the room, trying to figure what to move next.

“I believe her. She used to tell me about all of her boyfriends.”

“Boyfriends? Plural? I’d be surprised if she’s had
one
boyfriend before you,” Justin said.

“She likes pilots and Coast Guard guys. She calls them her lovers.”

“I’m sure she does,” Justin said.

“You think she’s lying?”

Justin was glancing around the room like he’d forgotten something. Griff leaned against the dresser, hoping he looked bored and cool. He wanted to know why his brother thought Fiona wasn’t telling the truth, wanted to know what his evidence was and how he’d found it. But Justin wasn’t answering. He went over to the bed and lifted the sheets, then cracked his neck.

“Shit,” Justin said. He looked around the room, biting at the nail of his index finger. Then he picked a piece of nail from his tongue and said, “Where’s Sasha?”

G
RIFF SNEAKED OUT OF THE HOUSE LATER THAT NIGHT
. J
USTIN
and his parents were watching television, passing around a bowl of popcorn. Sasha lay coiled in Justin’s lap—earlier, they’d found her
wedged between the box spring and mattress—and Rainbow was sprawled on the floor. Griff didn’t need to leave so clandestinely, but he didn’t want to alert anyone to where he was going. Or rather, when he eventually returned, he didn’t want to answer questions about where he’d been. Before he crawled through the window in his room, he’d texted Fiona and asked her to meet him at the marina. She’d responded with “About time, jackass.” He didn’t know what he’d say once they were together. Part of him hoped she’d convince him that breaking up was a mistake. Another part hoped she’d be furious and erratic, hoped she’d dump him before he said a word. Who cares if I’m a pussy? he thought.

Lightning bugs flared in the air. Making his way toward the marina, carrying his skateboard instead of riding it, Griff tried to guess where the insects would next illuminate. He was always wrong. A few cars passed on Station Street, and far off, deep into the trailer park behind the raggedy soccer field, people were laughing. The smell of smoldering charcoal, of smoked brisket. Then, an odd and elusive thought: Griff wondered if the same lightning bugs he was seeing now had just flown through the trailer park, or if they were moving that way now and the people who’d been laughing would soon see their lights. It struck him as the kind of thing Justin would think about, but the notion gave him pause that had nothing to do with his brother. Just then, that he could share anything with anyone else, that he could be connected to them by a sight or sound was mystifying. Nothing seemed permanent. Nothing seemed to have a beginning or end; or, maybe, everything seemed only to have a beginning or an end, and lacked whatever qualities were required to last, to endure, to exist beyond the specific moment of Griff’s regard.

Without meaning to, he’d stopped walking. He stood on the street and found himself surrounded by stillness, by a jarring silence. No cars, no movement or distant laughter, everything mausoleum-quiet. During the years that Justin was gone, there had been times
like this, times when the streets of Southport seemed utterly deserted. Lifeless. Motionless. No gulls overhead, no ferry horn in the harbor, no tourists milling around or dogs panting behind fences. The town seemed emptied, abandoned. People had retreated indoors from the withering heat, or they were already in bed or not yet up, but Griff was out. He imagined the whole world this way, imagined that he alone remained. It reminded him of the moments when he used to try to think of himself as an only child, as a kid who’d never had a brother at all. How disgustingly easy it had been. How seamlessly loneliness took hold. The quiet and stillness unnerved him, taunted him. He envied everyone who’d disappeared. He resented having ever been spared.

He lost track of time. Fiona was probably at the marina, fuming. Again, he was torn. He wanted to jump on his board and skate to her as fast as he could, but he also wanted to turn and bolt home. How had his life reached this point? Just months before, he’d been dousing his socks with Fiona’s perfume, preparing to lose her to the next pilot or sailor to come along. (That Justin doubted she’d had other boyfriends was still a riddle he couldn’t unpack.) And before that, four years ago, he’d been where? Justin would have been gone for a couple of months and the searches were already wilting with disappointment; there was the pervading sense that anyone holding out hope was pathetically deluded. Griff had certainly stopped expecting Justin to waltz back into their lives like it had all been a silly misunderstanding; he’d stopped believing that their lives had been paused as opposed to ruined. None of it had ever seemed real, and it rendered everything that followed unreal, too. He remembered someone, his father or grandfather maybe, saying he wished it had happened earlier in the year, when school was still in session, so they could have organized the upperclassmen into search parties.

“Two hundred extra eyes,” he’d said. “That’s what we could use right now.”

And yet here he was, walking through nets of humidity to break up with Fiona. Because Justin was home and had told him not to be a pussy. Because Dwight Buford was out of jail and crowding Griff’s thoughts. Because letting Fiona go seemed somehow right. Because she deserved better. Because the world had stabilized to the degree that this was a worthwhile problem to have.

S
ITTING IN THE TELEVISION
’
S FLICKERING LIGHT WITH HIS
wife and son. A nearly empty bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, a movie full of rooftop chases and explosions on the screen. Eric thought he should feel more sanguine, more at ease. He was trying.

He felt good about having settled into the movie without the urge to vet it beforehand. For years, his habit had been to preview as many programs as he could before Laura or Griff watched them. Tonight he’d just started flipping the channels until they found something interesting. A small impulse remained, a low and constant concern that some plot twist would involve a kidnapping or sex, but it was endurable. Laura’s feet were wrapped in an afghan. She had her Moleskine on the arm of the couch and a pen in her lap in case she needed to make a note. Justin sat beside her, his eyes fluttering as he tried to stay awake. Sasha lay in his lap. The air smelled of her scales, musky. Relax, Eric thought. Enjoy this.

Griff had been in his room all evening, so maybe his absence was the problem. Eric couldn’t remember if Fiona had come over earlier, if they were holed up together. Or the problem could have been what he couldn’t forget: Justin admitting he’d been angry with them while he was in Corpus. Eric had never entertained that possibility,
though he should have. His breathing went shallow again. How was Justin to know they’d been tirelessly looking for him? How could he
not
assume they weren’t doing enough? Then, the more trenchant and damning fear that Justin’s anger was warranted, that they’d been sluggish and complacent when they should have been vigilant, monastic, relentless. Or maybe what was keeping Eric on edge was the worry that Dwight Buford had vacated his parents’ house. That he was gone for good and they’d always expect him to come after Justin. Eric looked at the window. Lightning bugs fired in the dark. Had Griff ambled in at that moment, with or without Fiona, Eric would have paused the movie and told his family how much they meant to him, how he would spend the rest of his life striving to live up to their standards, how he’d never forgive himself for the ways he’d let them down.

And like that, he understood: He needed Griff in the room. He needed the four of them together. He said, “Griff would like this. I’ll go draw him out of his lair and—”

“Shhh,” Laura said, her forefinger to her mouth. Then she shifted her eyes and Eric’s attention to Justin. He’d fallen asleep and in the half dark, he looked young and contented. He looked like the boy he’d been before.

Eric settled back into his recliner. He watched Laura watch Justin, watched her reach for her Moleskine and quietly flip to a page and write something out in her long, looping script. Or was she sketching him? He couldn’t tell. Contentment still eluded him. The three of them seemed a surreal version of the family they’d been for the last four years. Justin had taken the place of Griff, and Griff was missing. There seemed an open circuit, an incomplete iteration. Everything felt ephemeral. Laura wrote in her notebook and Justin slept and Eric was trying not to acknowledge how vulnerable they all were. But if something can be lost, he thought, then its loss is always just a breath away. Then it’s all but already gone.

T
HE WORLD RETURNED FROM SILENCE
. C
ARS TRUNDLED OFF
the ferry, their headlamps pushing through the dark. Griff was nearing the Teepee and could hear skaters in the pool. Urethane wheels groaned against the cement, rattled over the tile below the coping. There was also a dull banging.

Griff couldn’t stop thinking about where he’d been four years ago. He remembered—in addition to the dashed hope of Justin returning, of him explaining everything away—how he couldn’t decide if he should tell his parents or the detectives about the arguments with his brother. “Maybe it’s a small thing that doesn’t sound important at all,” the cops were always saying. “Cases turn on the tiniest detail. One domino tumps another and then, bingo, everyone is safe at home.” But he never mentioned their fighting, or how Justin had left the house because Griff had made him feel unwelcome. He remembered the filthy sense of empowerment, of feeling older and stronger, that came with exiling Justin. This was something else he’d never told: He’d been pleased with himself, proud even, for putting his brother out. What had Griff been doing four years ago? Hindering the investigation. Lying to everyone who could have helped find Justin. He might as well have been colluding with Dwight Buford.

Along Station Street, it wasn’t dark enough for lightning bugs.
The streetlights were burning, casting a dusty glow onto the cement. A film of dirt and sand and pollen on everything; it had been months since rain. The dull banging fell and rose, and Griff assumed it was down in the marina, a mechanic working on a dry-docked boat. He was more focused on the noises from the Teepee pool, the harsh rumble of skaters grinding and the clatter of their boards when they fell. He could hear voices, too. Someone, maybe Baby Snot, said, “To the victor go the spoils, and tonight we’re all named Victor!” Others laughed and clapped their boards against the concrete. Then, a new thread of a scent tinged the air: the sticky tang of marijuana. It grew more cloying with every step, and put Griff on alert. If he’d had more time, he would’ve doubled back and taken the long way to the marina. He didn’t want to see the skaters, didn’t want to nod and make small talk, didn’t want to watch their expressions soften as they exhaled pale smoke. Call Fiona, he thought. Say you’re sorry. Say your parents called you home. Say Justin did. Say it’s an emergency.

But he was already in front of the Teepee, and Baby Snot was doffing an imaginary hat, saying, “Top of the evening to you, young Griffin. Unfortunately, the pool is closed for the night. No lifeguard on duty.”

“It’s cool,” he said, thinking he was missing part of a joke. The pool wasn’t closed at all. There were two skaters in the shallow end, and another was carving the round wall. Griff said, “I’m meeting my girlfriend.”

“Ah,” Baby Snot said. “The siren song of the snatch should never be ignored, should ye be lucky enough to receive it.”

He was shirtless, sheened with sweat, aping a bad Irish accent. There was a crude black tattoo of a koi on his stomach. Behind him, the skaters in the shallow end waited to roll in. One of them looked familiar to Griff, but the others were new. They were older, maybe by ten or fifteen years, with stubble and bellies. Their van was parked close to the bowl. The dull banging started up again, louder.

Baby Snot said, “You enjoy yourself, laddie. And remember, when in the company of a lovely lass, always put a helmet on thy jimmy lest ye—”

“What’s that noise?” Griff interrupted.

“It’s Baby Snot sounding like an Irish pirate,” one of the new skaters said from the pool. He had a graveled voice and rangy, board-straight posture, like he’d been in the army. He drained a beer and tossed the empty onto the deck of the pool, then said, “Do Irish pirates even exist? Is that a thing?”

“I thought he was a leprechaun,” another skater said. Then more of the dull banging. It was coming from behind the van.

“No,” Griff said. “
That
noise. What is it?”

“ ’Tis none of your business,” Baby Snot said. “ ’Tis time you run and find the lass with the golden chali—”

“Shut the fuck up, Snot,” the skater said. Then the sound of steel hitting steel hitting concrete.

Griff started toward the van. All of the skaters trained their eyes on him, like he’d dropped a tray of dishes. He said, “What’s going on?”

“ ’Tis nothing to see here,” Baby Snot said, stepping in front of Griff, blocking his path.

But Griff had already seen: Half of the pool’s coping had been removed. The cement blocks were stacked like sandbags inside the van; they were so heavy that the back end sat lower than the front, the rear shocks depressed. Griff went cold. Everything seemed immediately fraught, changed, dangerous. Two skaters from Baby Snot’s crew were working to pry the next block loose. They had crowbars and hammers. The banging was less dull now, more resonant and hollow. It was the same sound Griff’s heart was making in his ears.

“Like I said, Mr. Griffin, it’s best if you run along,” Baby Snot said. His fake accent was gone, and his chest was inches from Griff’s.
His sweat reeked of pot and beer, a thin and desolate odor that scared Griff. He said, “This is a carnival ride you’re not tall enough for.”

Griff couldn’t take his eyes off the skaters sliding their crowbars under the block of coping, wedging them under and knocking them in with hammers, and then wrenching the piece off.