Between Here and Forever (8 page)

twenty-two

It doesn’t hit me until I see the Ferrisville shore
that I never went back to see Tess. I got so caught up in my strange conversation with Eli that I …

I forgot about her.

I slink home, where Mom and Dad are waiting for me in the living room like they know what I’ve done.

Except they don’t, because when I come in they both say hello, Mom’s voice as warm as ever, but strained, and Dad sounding—and looking—far away.

For all that Mom said I reminded her of him the other day, right now he’s reminding me of Tess and how she was when she was out of public view and got upset, right down to how he’s staring like he’s not here, like we’re not here. Like Tess would sometimes do. Like she did when she found out about Claire, or when she came home from college before the accident.

At the time, I figured she was worried about her grades, but now I think about how Beth said Tess was going to move out, and wonder if Tess had lost another friendship, if Beth had done something Tess couldn’t bring herself to forgive.

“What’s wrong?” I ask Dad, and he blinks like he didn’t see me come in even though he’d said hello.

“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Mom says, glancing at me before she looks back at Dad, who glares at her so strongly that … well, if I were her, I’d smack him.

“Nothing?” I say, my voice rising, and Mom looks back at me.

“Not now, Abby.”

“Not now? Are you—?”

“Go upstairs,” she says, in her voice that means “no arguing, or else,” and I stomp outside instead, slamming the door hard as I go.

Then I sneak over to the living room window, crouching down so they can’t see me.

“You know what the doctor said, Dave,” Mom says. “It’s not—it’s not that simple. Tess is—” She breaks off.

“I know,” Dad says, and there’s silence for a moment.

When Mom talks again, her voice is muffled, like she’s leaning into him. “I’m worried about Abby.”

I stiffen and press myself against the house, closer to the window.

“Abby?” Dad says. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Mom says. “And that’s the problem. I looked at her the other night, and she just—she reminded me so much of you when you first came back after John died. She’s so—she’s so quiet. So angry. So scared. But she hides it, or tries to, and Tess was always so—she was—”

I stand up then. I know what Tess was. So happy. So blah blah blah. So not me.

I head down the driveway and walk to Claire’s house. All the lights are off, but Claire is sitting on her front porch, soaking her feet in what looks like a bucket.

“Is that a bucket?” I ask.

“Mom borrowed the footbath she got me for Christmas last week and I haven’t seen it since,” she says. “My guess is she said she thought it wasn’t working right and Daddy took it apart and it’s in pieces out back and she can’t bring herself to tell me yet.” She swishes her feet around in the water. I hear it splashing against the sides of the bucket. I pop open the gate and walk up to where she’s sitting.

“What’s going on with you and Eli?” she says. “Everyone was talking about how you ran out of the hospital and he followed you.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“No?”

“Nope. I didn’t run. I left. Quickly.”

She laughs. “So he did follow you.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like how you’re saying it. We were talking about Tess.”

“Oh,” she says. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why? What else are we going to talk about?”

“Well, he’s beyond cute, for one thing.”

“Which is why he’s seeing Tess,” I say, and she leans back so she’s lying down, staring up at her porch ceiling.

“Why does Eli have to be Tess’s?”

“You’ve seen him,” I say. “Who else could he belong to? And besides, has anyone who ever saw her decided they’d rather spend time with me instead?”

“I’d rather hang out with you any day.”

“Ex–best friends don’t count.”

Claire laughs again, but the sound is softer now, almost regretful. “That’s true.”

I sit down and lean back next to her. The inside of the porch is easier to look at than the vast, empty nothing of the night sky. It’s real. It’s defined. It has a beginning and an end.

“Beth came to see Tess,” I say.

“Yeah,” Claire says. “I heard. I also heard you got upset.”

“Well, yeah. She said that she was boxing up Tess’s stuff, and made up some bullshit about how she and Tess had talked before, and that Tess was going to move out. As if Tess wouldn’t have mentioned that when she came home.”

Claire sits up, and I hear the water slosh as she lifts her feet out of the bucket. “Beth and Tess were—they weren’t going to live together anymore?”

“So she says. I think Beth just found a new roommate and wants to get rid of Tess’s stuff. What kind of friend is that?”

Claire’s silent, and I kick her, lightly. “You’re supposed to say, ‘A crappy friend.’”

“Poor Tess,” Claire says instead, her voice a whisper.

“What does that mean?” I say, sitting up.

“Nothing.”

“Claire.”

“All right,” she says. “I saw—I saw Tess by herself once when she first came home, at the grocery store. She was buying chocolate wafer cookies.”

“Oh,” I say, because whenever she was really upset, Tess could and would eat enormous quantities of chocolate wafer cookies, the old-fashioned kind that come in a box and crumble if you touch them too hard.

“Yeah,” Claire says. “When I saw that, I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know it was—I didn’t know it was her and Beth fighting.”

“You didn’t say anything to me.”

“I just figured it was Tess being Tess. I figured it was grades. You know how she always—”

“Yeah,” I say. “She did—does—worry about them. Poor Tess.”

Claire sighs. “Abby, you’re dealing with a lot of shit right now. And I know you think Tess waking up will fix it all but it—”

“I know it won’t fix everything,” I say. “I’m not stupid. But at least then she’ll be awake. Be better.”

“And you won’t be poor Tess’s little sister anymore.” She looks at me and shrugs. “I was her best friend for years, Abby. I lived in her shadow too.”

“Do you ever—do you miss her?” I say.

“No,” Claire says, and that one word is so sharp, so final, that I know she’s lying.

I let it go though, and just lean back again, looking up at the porch ceiling, at the squares that create it, a simple pattern where everything is neatly arranged. Where there are no open spaces, no gray areas. No places where you can miss someone even though remembering how they were only makes you wish they’d disappear.

Not that I wish that for Tess. Not exactly. I just want her back in her life. I’m tired of mine being all about her.

twenty-three

When I get home Mom is still up, painting her
fingernails with her legs curled up under her on the sofa.

“How’s Claire?” she asks, like our conversation from before didn’t happen. Like Claire is the only person I ever see.

Of course, she pretty much is. Not that it stops me from saying, “What makes you think I was with Claire?” just to see if Mom thinks I actually have a life.

Or could.

“I saw you walk toward her house when you were done listening outside the window,” she says. “You know, when I tell you to go upstairs, I don’t mean leave the house and then listen to our conversations.”

Caught, but I don’t care. “What’s wrong with Dad? And why are you talking to the doctor about Tess? Has something changed?”

Mom pauses, the nail polish brush over her last nail. “Your father and I want to know how Tess—how her outlook is.”

“And how is it?”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“Then why was Dad upset?”

Mom carefully paints her last nail, and then caps the bottle. “Because we all are. Look, Abby, I love that you spend so much time with Tess, but you can’t—you can’t let someone else take over your life, be everything to you. For you. Trust me on that.”

I shift, uncomfortable with what she’s saying. With how close she’s come to the truth: that Tess has taken over my life.

But what Mom doesn’t see is that there is no me when Tess is around. That there never has been.

It’s not that she and Dad have tried to turn me into Tess or anything like that. But Tess was the pretty one, the special one, the one people loved because she was so sunny and friendly and always knew the right thing to say. And no matter how hard I tried, I could never quite sparkle like she did.

“Are you thinking about what I said?” Mom says, and I nod, watching her eyes. They are calm, collected.

I look at her and almost believe things will be fine.

“I saw Beth today,” I say. “I bet the nurses told you, but the reason I got upset is because she told me she’s boxing up Tess’s stuff. She might as well have said, ‘I don’t think Tess’s ever coming back.’”

“She’s boxing up Tess’s things?” Mom says, and there, in her eyes, for a moment, is a flash of what I know she really feels. Surprise.

Worry.

Fear.

“Well, Tess can always move her things back,” she says, and she’s smiling and calm.

And lying.

I let her, because I know what it’s like to need to believe in lies. I once believed I could make someone who loved Tess love me.

I once believed someone could see me, just me. I once thought I could be happy like Tess was.

I know better now.

twenty-four

Dad and Mom are gone to see Tess by the time
I wake up—I like to sleep as late as I can on the weekends. Past noon is best. Whoever decided high school should start when it’s still basically dark outside should be shot.

I take a long shower and dry my hair, then debate what to wear to the hospital. Then I get mad at myself for doing that because Tess doesn’t care what I wear and it’s not like I’m trying to impress anyone. Right?

Not that I can imagine impressing Eli, even if I somehow managed to find an outfit that makes me look both taller and curvier. I finally throw on an old shirt and jeans that are ratty around the bottom of the legs because they’re too long for me. (I have yet to own a pair of pants that don’t end up dragging along the ground at some point or another.)

Mom and Dad get home late in the afternoon, just as I’ve finally headed downstairs and am grabbing something to eat. They both look tired and sad, how they always look when they get home from visiting Tess, and especially on the weekends, when I think they remember Tess dragging us all down to the beach or Tess sighing over her homework or Tess getting phone call after phone call or talking to the three or four or twelve people who’d stopped by to say “hi” to her.

“What have you been doing?” Dad says, trying to sound cheerful and failing miserably.

I point at my bowl of cereal.

“You don’t have to stay home all the time, you know,” he says. “You can go out. If anything … if anything happens, we’ll find a way to get in touch with you.”

I don’t say anything, because we both know I don’t go out. I didn’t when Tess lived here, and I don’t now, except to see her.

I finish my food fast and escape to the ferry.

When I get to the hospital, Clement is sitting outside, looking at his watch.

“You look like a little bird,” he says when he sees me. “All that hair and those eyes.”

“Birds don’t have hair, Clement.”

“I know that,” he says, and sounds almost petulant for a moment, like a little kid, like Cole. “But feathers, hair, it’s bascially the same thing. Is it so hard to take a compliment?”

“Thank you for saying I look like a bird,” I say, and he shakes his head at me and digs around in his pockets for a cough drop.

“Never loan your car to anyone,” he says as he unwraps the cough drop and pops it in his mouth. “You always end up waiting for it to come back.”

“You loaned your car to someone?” I didn’t know Clement liked anyone in Milford well enough to loan them anything, much less his car.

“I told Eli he could take the car while I was at work,” Clement tells me. “But here I am, done with work, and is my car here? No. His father was the same way, only he’d bring the car back with no gas in it. You don’t do that, do you?”

“I don’t have a car,” I tell him, pointing at my bike as I realize what has been right in front of me all along.

Clement is Eli’s grandfather. The family here that Eli talked about. The reason why he’s working at the hospital.

Talk about missing the obvious. I lock up my bike and tell myself I won’t ask Clement where Eli has gone, or what he’s done today.

“I’m sure Eli will be here soon,” I say instead, which really isn’t much better than asking about him because I’m still mentioning him.

“I know,” Clement says. “He’s meeting you. What did he say to you in the cafeteria, anyway? He wouldn’t say anything when I asked him about it.”

“He’s not meeting me. He’s coming to see Tess.”

Clement snorts, then chokes on his cough drop. I know I should pound his back, but he feels so frail when I tentatively tap my hand against him that I’m afraid I’m going to snap him in half.

“Damn things,” he says, waving my hand away. “I’m always swallowing them. Harriet got me hooked on them, you know. Nagged and nagged me to give up smoking and finally brought home a box of lozenges that were supposed to help me quit. To this day, I spend more time taking them than I ever did sitting around for ten minutes after dinner with a cigar.”

“Wait. You’re not eating cough drops? You’re eating those things people take to quit smoking?”

“Who eats cough drops?” Clement says. “Do you know what those things taste like?”

“No,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “We don’t have them over across the river. We just got chewing gum last year, you know.”

Clement grins at me, then glances out into the parking lot and says, “Ah, there’s Eli now.”

I follow Clement’s gaze and see a long, expensive car pull into the lot.

Eli gets out, moving toward us, and I swear I actually shiver inside when I see him coming, this little hot jolt worming its way through me.

Remember Jack, I remind myself.

Remember Tess.

“Sorry,” Eli says as he reaches us, handing the keys to Clement. “I got—I was on the phone.”

“Is there gas in the car?” Clement says, and Eli grins, then nods.

“Good,” Clement says. “Now I can go back to work.” And then he heads back into the hospital, leaving me and Eli alone.

“I thought … I thought he was leaving,” I say, feeling a little awkward about being alone with Eli even though we’re in the hospital parking lot and there are a few people around. It’s just … well, it’s the weekend. And Eli is standing next to me.

“He doesn’t like being home much,” Eli says. “He—he says he gets bored, but I think being there makes him sad.” He crosses his arms, tapping the fingers of his right hand against his elbow. “Were you—he didn’t say anything while you were waiting, did he?”

“Just that I look like a bird,” I say, and Eli stares at me.

“I don’t see it either,” I tell him, and we head inside.