Remember Me Like This (40 page)

In her room, she started tossing the banana toward the ceiling again. She said, “Are you going to fess up?”

“Should I?”

“Would it help her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I bet she already knows. Even if she doesn’t know it yet. And I bet she’ll never say anything because she’ll realize we were trying to do something good. Ladies pick up on things that hairy-legged boys don’t.”

“The way you knew I was coming to break up with you.”

“So you admit it,” Fiona said.

“I thought it was the right thing to do. Justin said I should.”

“He was wrong,” Fiona said.

“He also doesn’t think you’ve had a bunch of lovers. He thinks I’m your first boyfriend.”

“So he gets kidnapped and comes back as, what, an all-knowing love guru?”

“It’s okay if it’s true. You’re my first girlfriend, even though I
used to tell people I’d made out with Melissa Uno and Kathryn Grosso.”

She caught the banana and brought it to her chest again. She turned onto her side and met his eyes. Griff couldn’t read her expression, which seemed both sorrowful and affectionate. He didn’t know if it meant Justin was right or wrong. She stared at him for a long, quiet moment, then said, “You’re a sweet boy, Griffin Campbell.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means come here,” she said, extending her hand languidly off the bed. “It means come here and I’ll show you what I have or haven’t learned from all my imaginary lovers.”

C
ECIL STARTED PACKING UP HIS TRUCK A LITTLE AFTER MIDNIGHT
. The suitcase full of clothes and an envelope of cash, two thermoses of coffee, a sleeping bag and Coleman stove and a tarp and a couple bags of canned food. The jugs of water and two gas cans were still in the truck bed, and the pistol was under the seat until he stashed it in the glove box. He passed through the house one last time, watering all of the plants Laura had given him and checking for things he’d want later.
Don’t be sentimental,
he told himself.
Don’t go down that road.
In the bathroom, he grabbed some old, thin sheets and frayed towels and balled them together, tucked them under his arm. Then he opened the medicine cabinet and retrieved his wedding ring and the gold nugget watch. He should have put them in the safe-deposit box at the bank; he understood that now, but he didn’t feel right leaving them behind. If need be, he could toss them out of the truck window. He could drop them into the dark bay.

Outside, the cicadas were thrumming in the trees. Years ago, Ivan had told him that they sounded different in Mexico, that the cicadas down there sang in a different register. It was something he’d been curious about ever since. The night was thick and deep,
draped with fog. Cecil stood on the porch for a while, breathing it in, accepting it. Then he locked the door to his house, checked the knob to make sure, and got into the truck. There was no more wasting time.

L
AURA DRIFTED IN AND OUT OF SLEEP
,
FEELING HELPLESS
. S
HE
remembered—or almost remembered, or dreamed or half-dreamed—those first weeks four years ago when she’d stay awake for days at a time until sleep insidiously claimed her. She never woke feeling refreshed or charged with renewed hope. No, she always opened her eyes to a world that had been further transfigured by guilt, knowing she’d failed her missing son, knowing everything would be different had she stayed awake just a little longer. Tonight, she trembled under the comforter and the trembling became a dream: She was a child, shivering and not necessarily herself. Her teeth chattered. She was naked and huddling in the dark. There was a cantilevered bridge. There was an ocean that looked like molten silver with birds skimming over it. No, the ocean looked like hammered metal. The moon beamed down in a cone of light like something she would draw with a yellow crayon. Her hair was soaked, dripping onto her bare shoulders, and long, cold winds passed over her, chafing her, whipping her. Then the ground was giving way, it had become the bridge and was now buckling, and she was tumbling and somersaulting through the dark until she landed back in her bed, gasping and sweating on the night before the Shrimporee.

Her heart quaked. Her eyes were wide and dry and stinging, stinging so much that she wondered if she’d slept with them open. The house seemed quiet. She didn’t know if Eric had left yet. He’d taken the pistol down from the closet shelf. That, she remembered. Her mouth was sour and her head ached and she needed to push herself out of bed. She wanted to see if Cecil had come for Eric, but she also wanted to check on Justin, wanted to find him in his room or in front of the television, wanted to find that he’d kept his promise
about not going on a drive tonight. Please, she thought. Please. But she only pulled the comforter up higher, bunched it under her chin. She could feel herself drifting off again. Her consciousness was thinning and dissipating, the way froth from waves soaks into the sand when the tide is pulled back into the ocean. She thought: After Eric leaves, load the boys in the car and go. She thought: Won’t Mayne show up with a gun of his own? Isn’t he a father, too? She thought: Call the police, or Garcia, and confess everything. She thought: The inflatable alligator I brought to Marine Lab, the one I took from the garage years ago, might have been blown up by Justin before he was taken; it might still have his breath inside it. She thought: I used to be a little girl who wore dresses with lace sleeves and now I’m something else, someone else, somewhere else, and once a stain sets, you’ll never get it out, especially blood, and do I know anyone from California, didn’t the handwriting on the postcard look familiar, and dolphins are descended from wolves, somehow that’s true, and they rape each other, and kill each other, and when they beach, it’s because they’re sick or hurt or lost or just too tired to go on. Then she gave in, knowing it wouldn’t be very long at all.

C
ECIL HAD WORRIED THAT WITH
S
TATION
S
TREET CORDONED
off for the Shrimporee he’d have trouble getting his truck down to the marina, but the route was open. The barricades had been moved off to the side. He parked in a diagonal slot with a clear view of the
Oil-n-Water,
then clicked off his lights. He was hours early, but it was a relief to see the boat still tied to the moorings. The Bach Prelude undulated in the speakers, and as it played, the night stretched out. The moon was dull. The tide was in. Boats swayed in their slips, rising and falling on slowly lapping water. In his mirrors, the buildings that made up downtown Southport reminded him of what you’d see in an old Western, squat structures with high false fronts overlooking a wide street. He wouldn’t have been surprised if a
tumbleweed rolled by. There was no movement except for the boats gently knocking against the docks in front of him and the wind lifting the palm fronds and letting them down again. At some point, the Bach ended. He had no memory of the world going quiet.

Half an hour before he thought the Bufords would show, the moon slid behind a wide wall of clouds and he took out his cell phone to call Eric. His son answered after the first ring. Before Cecil could say anything, Eric said, “Where are you? We’re late.”

“I’m at the house,” Cecil said, his eyes on the boats in front of him. “I’m going to get some rest.”

“Rest? What does that mean?”

“I’m calling it off.”

“Why?” Eric said, confused, angry. “I’m outside on the porch, like we planned. I’ve been waiting for you to pick me up.”

“Laura came by the shop today. She talked sense into me. It’s not worth the risk. I’m too old and you’ve got too much to lose.”

“You have to be kidding,” Eric said.

“Go inside and get in bed beside your wife. She’s a good woman who’s terrified of losing you. We need to let this thing run its course.”

“You were so adamant. We had the whole thing worked out. I’ve been going over the variables in my head, feeling better about it. Setting him up with Rick in Mexico and—”

“Bring the pistol to the shop next week and I’ll enter it back in inventory.”

“I could go alone. I could do it myself.”

“I’d ask that you not,” Cecil said. “I’d ask you not to do that to your boys.”

“
For
the boys. I’d do it
for
the boys.”

“Someone could call the police. Someone could alert them where you’re going, what you’re planning. At best you’d be looking at possession of an unregistered firearm. That’s half a year in County right there.”

“You wouldn’t call them.”

“No, but I can’t speak for Laura.”

The moon came out from behind the clouds. The smell of the bay drifted in through the vents. Boats moved here and there along the docks, reminding Cecil of antsy horses in their stalls.

Cecil said, “Go to bed, Eric. It’ll turn out all right.”

“This feels wrong,” he said. “This feels like we’re rolling over. I was ready for whatever it took.”

“Things will work out,” Cecil said. “Trust me. Everything’ll look different tomorrow.”

H
OW MANY TIMES HAD
G
RIFF IMAGINED LYING NAKED WITH
Fiona? How many scenarios had he entertained over the years, how many strategies had he devised with this as his singular and ultimate goal? The number was unknowable, and yet now that her beautiful weight was pressing down on him, now that she was enfolding him in a warmth he’d never imagined, a warmth that somehow cooled his sunburn, he remembered every last thought he’d had about her. The distant smell of the candles, the seams of pale light framing her foiled windows, the fear that her parents would come home. She raised herself, straddling him, and brought both of his hands to her mouth. She massaged his fingers, gently kissed his knuckles and gently bit his thumbs and gently closed her soft lips around them. With her eyes closing, she said, “I like these thumbs.”

But he also felt disconnected, off to the side, tethered only by the places where their bodies touched. The soft skin on the underside of her arm, the arch of her foot fitting itself over his ankle, sliding up and down over his shin, her fingers laced into his. He was thinking about his mother and the postcard, about the Shrimporee and the ruined Teepee pool and the woman who’d driven him to the clinic and Fiona, and Fiona, and Fiona, and about how he’d thought he’d probably always be a virgin, but now that he wouldn’t be, the whole business seemed easy, fated. He thought about Justin and what he’d said at supper and what he’d said about Fiona. Who knew if he was
right? Who cared? As she crushed into Griff, dragging her tongue up his neck and into his hair, as she traced her finger over his lips and slid it into his mouth so that he could feel the ridges of her fingerprint on his tongue, he wondered if Justin had ever had an experience like this. To his surprise, he was positive Justin hadn’t. He was almost as positive that Justin had embellished his relationship with Marcy, that he was guilty of the same lies he’d accused Fiona of telling. It made him acutely and intensely sad, and he wondered what else he knew that his older brother didn’t, what else Justin was withholding. For a long and bleak moment, he imagined their lives unfurling before him like a carpet and while Griff proceeded ahead, he was leaving Justin behind.

“Are you cold?” Fiona said. She was beside him now, tugging the covers up and over them.

“No, are you?”

“You’re kind of shaking.”

“Then I guess I am cold,” he said.

“Here,” she said. She pulled him closer, then closer still, and wrapped them tighter in the sheets. His head was on her chest now, her chin on his scalp. She started pulling her fingers through his hair. She said, “Just come here, you poor thing.”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Try,” she said. Her fingers were still in his hair, tangling it into a nest.

Then, before he realized he’d ever thought such a thing, he said, “If you’re not in front of me, I feel like I’ve lost you.”

“I know,” she said.

“I feel like you’re going to leave me or find someone else when school starts or your parents are going to get jobs in a different state and you’ll disappear.”

“What can I say? What will make you feel better?”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “You’ve never been more wrong, which is saying something because you’re wrong a lot.”

“Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” she said.

“Tell me again.”

“I love you,” she said, pulling him closer. “I love you so stupid much.”

L
AURA WOKE DRENCHED IN SWEAT AND WENT FAST TO THE FRONT
door, feeling faint and terrified and alive. She fumbled for her keys. Her hope wasn’t to catch Eric before he left. Her hope was to bring him home.

When she opened the door and stepped into the thick early-morning dark, he was still sitting on the porch. He was holding his phone with both hands, staring across the street toward Ronnie Dawes’s house. The pistol grip jutted out from the back of his pants. She thought to say something, but instead sat beside him without a word.

Eric said, “Do you think it’s easier for someone like Ronnie? Do you think not knowing everything we know, not understanding or worrying about things the way we do, makes life easier?”

“I don’t think it’s easy for anyone,” Laura said.

“I’d like to think he’s happy,” Eric said. “I’d like to think his mind is quiet, and he’s dreaming of pleasant things.”

“I bet he is. I bet that’s exactly what’s happening.”

Overhead, tight gray clouds lined the sky like long bolts of cloth. Moonlight permeated them in places, but the glow was dusty and distant.

Eric said, “Cecil shut it down. He said we had too much to lose. I’ve been sitting here trying to decide if I should go alone.”

“And?”

“And I figure I’ve got about fifteen minutes left before they’re on the water.”

“I meant what I said. Say the word and we’ll load up the cars and be gone before there’s light in the trees.”

“I wouldn’t take him to Mexico,” Eric said. “I’d just kill him at the marina.”