Falling Together (46 page)

“What?” he said, resting his hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Pen nodded, struggling to put words to the thought.

“Hey,” said Will, worried.

She shook her head and smiled to let him know she was all right.

“It’s nothing,” she said, but it wasn’t nothing, although she realized it might sound that way. “It’s just that—
all this time.
When we were home, driving our cars, drinking coffee.”

Will leaned closer, trying to understand.

“This.” Pen gestured toward the ocean around them. She meant the jackfish. She meant all of it. “All this time, every second:
this.”

Will stared down at the fish, then back at Pen. “It’s not just when we’re here. Is that what you mean? It’s going on the whole time, at the same time as our lives.”

“At the same time, in the same world,” said Pen. “And I never knew.”

She had never known, and, even now, she could just barely believe it. In a few weeks, Pen would describe what had happened to Amelie, and Amelie would nod and say, “That is
so
Soto Zen. ‘All is one and all is different.’ Or some people might call what you experienced the ‘oceanic feeling.’ Although not Freud, of course.”

But there in the boat, Pen didn’t call it anything. She licked the salt off her lips and wrapped her arms around herself, rocked by awe and the ocean, as the jackfish swirled beneath her like a typhoon or a galaxy or like a swirling school of silver fish.

T
HAT EVENING
, A
UGUSTA WANTED PIZZA
. S
HE DIDN
’
T JUST WANT IT
; she was hell-bent on pizza, running in place on the porch of her and Pen’s tiny “villa” and piling on the “pleases” to the rhythm of her feet in a way that Pen had seen before and knew spelled trouble. Under other circumstances, Pen might have given in. Augusta had been a remarkably good sport about eating unfamiliar foods on the trip, had even developed such a taste for the noodle dish
pancit,
shrimp and all, that Pen had vowed to learn how to cook it at home, even though it appeared to involve an awful lot of chopping. Plus, Augusta had been a trooper on the snorkeling outing. But this was Bohol; Bohol did not have pizza.

“We’re going to walk down the beach,” she told Augusta, “to one of those restaurants
right smack on the beach,
and we’re going to buy some delicious fish, and eat it.
Outside!”

Augusta stopped running in place. “Fish, like the ones we saw today at the reef?”

Uh-oh,
thought Pen. “Well, not those exact fish. Those fish live in a sanctuary, where they stay safe and no one catches them. The fish we would eat would be different fish.”

Augusta grew stony-faced. “They are still fish. They might have got lost and swum out of the sanctuary. Or they might be
relatives
of those fish.” Pen could tell that, even in the throes of her pre-tantrum, Augusta was proud of the word
relatives
.

“
Relatives
is an awesome word,” said Jason, who was standing nearby. He walked up to Augusta, crouched down, and lifted his hand. “High five on the vocab, baby girl.”

Augusta gave his hand an obligatory pat, but then turned her face away. “I just want pizza, Mama. Pizza is the only thing I want in the whole world.”

“I would give it to you, if I could,” said Pen, cupping her daughter’s pointy chin in her hand, “but there is no pizza in Bohol.”

Will had slipped away as soon as the “pleases” had begun and slipped back maybe fifteen seconds later. Now, he stood behind Augusta and mouthed to Pen, “There is pizza in Bohol.”

“Really?” said Pen. “Where?”

“According to the Americans sitting at the bar,” said Will, gesturing in the direction of the resort’s outdoor bar, “on the beach, about fifty yards from the beach entrance to the resort.”

“Right smack on the beach,” said Augusta with relish. “Right smack!”

It was good. Not chewy, as Augusta observed, but crisp and dotted with salty shavings of ham. After their long day on—and in—the water, they ate with gusto, washing down slice after slice with San Miguel beer, in the case of Jason and Will, or with mango shake, in the case of Augusta, or with bottled water, in the case of Pen, who thought she had never been so thirsty. It was a happy meal, although Pen could tell that, for Jason, the carefree feeling that had carried all of them through the long day was seeping away. As the meal waned, Pen observed him becoming increasingly fidgety and impatient. While Pen, Will, and Augusta watched the sunset, Jason watched, while pretending not to watch, the passersby on the darkening beach.

When they were getting ready to leave, Jason said, “So, hey, I was thinking I’d go take a look around for Cat, maybe inquire at some of the other resorts whether they’ve seen her.”

He saw Will and Pen exchange concerned glances and lifted his hands, three fingers raised. “I’ll be on my best behavior. Scout’s honor.”

“What about Ulysses and Ben?” asked Will.

“They stay in the old walleto,” said Jason, patting the buttoned pocket on his cargo shorts.

“You were a Scout?” asked Pen.

Jason shrugged. “Briefly. Until the fake bear scat trail/pile of rocks incident.” He waved his hand sheepishly. “That story’s a little convoluted.”

“I bet,” said Pen.

“But high five on the vocab,” said Will.

T
HEIR RESORT WAS ONE OF THE SMALLER ONES ON
A
LONA
B
EACH
:
AN
open-air restaurant, a pool, and a wide crescent of one-bedroom/one-bath cottages, or villas, with nipa roofs and miniature covered porches. Pen and Augusta’s villa was a twin, with Will on the other side of the wall, and after Pen put Augusta to bed, she came out onto the shared porch, where Will sat, drinking his second San Miguel.

“That was quick,” said Will.

“Yeah,” said Pen dryly. “It turns out that all Augusta needs to fall asleep at night is a coral reef. Maybe I should get one.”

“She’s slept like a pro the whole trip. Maybe you should get a Philippines, put it in your backyard,” said Will. “Tonight, she conked out before I could even go to the bar and get you a drink.”

“Here I am,” observed Pen. She pointed across the pool. “And there’s the bar.”

The night seemed as hot as the nights in Cebu, but now and then, a breeze pleated the lit pool and stirred the bushes next to the porch. Voices and laughter drifted toward them from the restaurant. Someone seemed to be singing “Waltzing Matilda.” (“This place is crawling with Aussies,” Jason had observed earlier. “Apparently, they come for the diving,” and Will had said, “Because they don’t have any coral reefs back home.”) Pen sipped her drink, icy calamansi juice spiked with Tanduay rum, and swore that it was the best drink she had ever had.

She told Will about her conversation with Lola Fe, including an only slightly edited version of her own crying jag.

“Do you think it works that way?” asked Pen. “Keeping everyone? Gone but not gone?”

“Hey, you won’t catch me arguing with Lola Fe,” said Will. “I might get hit by a thunderbolt.”

Pen smiled. “The earth might open up and swallow you.”

“Anyway, I kept
you
all those years, you and Cat. Even when I tried to shake you, you stuck.”

“Like burrs,” said Pen.

“Leeches,” said Will.

“Oysters,” said Pen. “Did you know that scientists are studying the way oysters adhere to each other in hopes of making better glues?”

“Oh yeah,” said Will. “Who doesn’t know that?”

Pen laughed, and maybe it was the drink or the heat or the thought of the Lolas or the jackfish epiphany or the sight of Will’s face, which always looked most like his face when he was smiling at Pen the way he was doing right then, and which, paintbrushed with shadows and washed in the lunar light of the pool, made her heart leap, but, suddenly, Pen felt brave.

The bravery filled her and she said, “Can I tell you about what happened to my dad?”

She had never told anyone. Actually, she had told a lot of people, back when it first happened, but only because she had to, and even then, it wasn’t her story that she had told. It was only facts, which belonged to no one. She had used as few words as she possibly could, and the words had been no one’s, too.

“Sure,” said Will quietly. “Of course. Whatever you want.”

“We were visiting my parents in Wilmington, Augusta and I. We did that a lot back then. It was before we lived with Jamie, of course, and I think we were lonely.” Pen smiled and corrected herself. “I was lonely. Augusta has never been lonely for a second of her life. She makes friends like that.” Pen snapped her fingers. “With other kids, dogs, waiters, mean old ladies, police officers, Jason, the occasional schizophrenic in the park.”

“Bananas,” Will reminded her, and if Pen had had even the slightest doubt about telling him the story, it disappeared with this single word. Will knew what tone a situation called for; it was one of the things about him that she loved.

“Bananas,” agreed Pen. “Very small ones. So we were at my parents’ house and we’d just had dinner, and my mom had made a strawberry pie, and she realized she was out of ice cream.”

“Breyers,” said Will. “Vanilla bean.”

“You remember,” said Pen with gratitude.

“The no-apostrophe in the name drove you crazy, your whole family. But you loved it anyway.”

“So my dad and I drove over to the Acme. You remember that Acme?”

“You called it the Soviet Acme because it was always running out of things.”

“Like bread! And toilet paper. But that night, they had the Breyers, so we bought it, and on the way home, my dad says, ‘I need to make a quick stop at the ATM, sweetheart.’” Pen’s throat had gone dry, and she took a long sip of her drink. “I knew what he meant.”

She looked up and met Will’s eyes. “We were so broke. I was doing the author escort work with Amelie, but it had been slow, and rent and babysitting seemed to eat up everything that Patrick gave us. I probably should have asked him for more, but I was the one with custody of Augusta. I hated asking him.”

“I can see how you would.”

“My dad gave us money every time we visited or they visited us. He’d never say anything, just slip it into my bag or the kitchen drawer where I kept my car keys, and I would just hug him or something the next time I saw him. He knew what it meant.”

Pen prepared herself for the next part of the story, and Will waited. Two buff-colored lizards, no longer than a finger, skittered around the edge of the villa and froze in the light.

“They eat insects. Mosquitoes,” said Will, and Pen nodded and went on with her story.

“We went to the bank at the intersection across from that bar that’s always changing its name. The one near the drugstore.”

“I remember it,” said Will.

“My dad parallel parked in front of the bar, like always, but he had to go a little way down the road because of all the cars. So I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see the ATM from there. And he was taking a long time, but I wasn’t really worried because sometimes there’s a line at that ATM because of the bar, you know. It took longer and longer, though, so I called him on his cell phone, thinking maybe he’d run into someone he knew and started talking. He didn’t answer, but even that didn’t worry me all that much.”

“He was the kind of guy who probably wouldn’t answer his phone during a conversation,” said Will.

“Yes,” said Pen, smiling. “If he even remembered to bring it with him at all.” She took a breath. “Finally, I got out of the car and went to find him.”

Pen was crying now, quietly, and she wiped the tears off her face with both hands. “He was on the sidewalk in front of the bank behind one of those big potted plants that public buildings sometimes have. A hibiscus with white flowers, big as saucers. But he wasn’t really hidden and the light from the streetlamp was shining right on him. I remember that, his face in the yellow light. He was lying on his side with his legs bent, like he was sleeping.”

Pen closed her eyes and let herself see him. It was the first time that she had let herself see him without trying to chase the memory away.

“His face was his face,” she said. “It looked peaceful, just the way it looked when he was sleeping, so it took me a few seconds to understand. Even when I did understand I didn’t really because I thought he must have had a heart attack. But then I saw the blood on his shirt and pooling under his head, and I started talking to him and kissing his hands, begging him to be okay and to wake up. Telling him that I loved him. I was beside myself. I talked to him until the ambulance came.”

She opened her eyes and stared out at the pool and at the moonlight resting on the peaked roofs of the villas. “He wasn’t dead. He died almost as soon as the ambulance got him to the hospital, but when I was talking to him, he was alive. He didn’t respond to me, his face never moved, but I don’t know that that means he couldn’t hear me. I think he could. I hope he could, even though it would have upset him to hear how distraught I was and to not be able to comfort me, but I hope that the last voice he heard was mine and not—”

“Pen,” said Will.

When Pen looked at him, she saw that his face was full of sorrow and love and that he was crying. Even through her own sadness, she felt wonder at the sight of Will crying. He brushed his eyes, roughly, with the back of his wrist and then reached out and cradled her cheek with his hand.