Friends Like Us (21 page)

“I think you have to have a real job before you can take a real vacation,” Jane says. She’s not just talking about Ben; she means all of us. She’s sitting cross-legged on the couch; Ben’s head is in her lap. I’m sprawled on the floor. It’s hot again, and we’ve sunk back into a torpor. We haven’t moved in hours. Maybe days. I fan my face with a magazine.

“We could drive north,” Ben says. “Somewhere cooler than here.”

“I … don’t … know.” Jane speaks slowly, as if simply moving her mouth requires all of her limited energy. “The Amsters might need me.”

The Amsters are a family she has just started babysitting for, to earn extra cash. We love talking about them as if they’re actual rodents:
Those Amsters keep such a messy house! That little Amster really loves nuts!
I have the vague feeling that babysitting for the Amsters isn’t going to be a good move for her, that with every extra hour of part-time work, with every new bathroom or toddler’s butt she cleans, she’s sliding farther into a fate she won’t be able to climb out of. She’s teetering dangerously close to the edge, to that elusive but irreversible moment when a person tips from full-of-promise to never-quite-lived-up-to-her-potential. But who am I to talk?

“I want to go camping!” I yell, surprising everyone, including myself. In fact, I hate camping. I hate, hate, hate it. The few times I’ve been—once during my short-lived involvement with a temple youth group when I was fourteen, once on an overnight, the culmination of a miserable summer at day camp when I was ten—were exercises in itchy discomfort, mosquito-riddled, sunburned days full of forced marches and lanyard weaving, and long, stuffy, sleepless nights in smelly tents. I’ve never understood the allure. I’m indoorsy.

But Jane’s reluctance has jostled something inside me. I don’t want to be a person who hates camping. If I feel so adamant now, at twenty-six, what will thirty-six look like? Or sixty-six? Will I be one of those old ladies who writes angry letters to the editor and calls things “newfangled”?
I can’t figure out this newfangled voice mail!
Jane doesn’t want to go camping? Well, I do.

Two days and a four-hour drive later we arrive at Wood Lake State Park (which Jane and I, from the backseat, dubbed Wood Tick State Park), and it is cooler here, in the shade of the tall pines, and it is better.

Declan, squinting, looks up at the twilit sky. “Ah, did anyone check the weather forecast?”

“No.”

“Nope.”

“Well,” Ben says, “it hasn’t rained in a week. So it’s not going to rain tonight. Isn’t that how it works?”

“In Ireland,” Declan says, “you don’t have to check the weather. Even if the sky is a brilliant blue when you start out, and the sun is splitting the heavens, you know to bring your rain gear. Because in ten minutes, it’ll be lashing.”

He’s gazing at the big Wisconsin sky, pinking toward evening, but he’s seeing something else. Lately he’s been talking about Ireland as if it’s a fond relative, a dear, slightly demented great-aunt, the one who makes jewelry out of uncooked macaroni and then gives it to you for your birthday.

We’re sitting around a campfire that, with the help of a whole book of matches, an entire newspaper, and no skill at all, is burning brightly. We’ve set up our tents, and we lit this fire, and now none of us knows what to do next. In fact, none of us knew what to do an hour ago; I don’t have high hopes for either of our rent-a-tents surviving a light gust of wind. There were so many stakes! We need an expert, but among the four of us, there is none. I look at Declan, balancing precariously on the two wobbly back legs of his canvas chair. “I mean,” he says, “just lashing. Pounding rain. Soak you through and through.” He turns to me and winks. Almost everything he says sounds dirty to me, stained with sex. I feel a familiar lurch, low in my gut. Like learning to play the piano, practice has improved us.

“In Ireland,” he says again, his cigarette dangling, “would you believe, there are corner shops that sell nothing but umbrellas and Wellington boots.”

“Nothing but umbrellas and boots,” Jane says. “Yes, I’ve heard that. I also heard that there was some controversy over whether these stores could legally refuse to serve leprechauns.” Jane has a way with Declan.

“Anti-leprechaun sentiment is unfortunately rampant in my country.”

I look down at my lap at the pencil sketch I’m doing, of the four of us gathered around the fire pit. For fun, I’ve been drawing us without looking at the paper. Nobody looks like they’re supposed to: Ben’s head is a half inch away from his body; Jane’s left eye floats near her ear. Declan resembles a praying mantis.

Ben heaves himself up. Bits of leaves and pine needles cling to his jeans. “Maybe we should collect some more of that, what do you call it, wood? To keep the fire going?” He and Declan wander off. When they come back, they toss some twigs into the fire and high-five each other.

Declan sits back down next to me. “Being outside always makes me crave a smoke,” he says, lighting a cigarette. “Then again, so does being inside.”

We sit for a long time, staring at the campfire, mesmerized. Ben and Jane roast marshmallows, Declan tears one of his special cheese-mayonnaise-and-butter sandwiches in two and gives me half. Minutes drift by in silence. Ben takes out a map of the campground and marks an easy trail along the lake for a hike tomorrow. “The local flora promises a riot of color!” he reads out loud. “If you’re lucky, Wood Lake’s very own beaver family might make an appearance!”

Jane rests her head on Ben’s shoulder. I stretch my feet toward the fire. The sun sets slowly, fireflies pop out of the darkness, frogs awake and start calling out to each other, a beautiful, prehistoric bellowing. We say things, like “It’s getting late” and “I wish we’d thought to bring more than just marshmallows and one sandwich” and “How long do you think we’d survive after an apocalypse?” And nothing touches me except the heat of the fire on my legs, my face. I’m in a pocket of glowing light, protected from complicated relationships and huge mistakes, past and future. The night feels perfect. Maybe I don’t hate camping!

The first drops of rain aren’t enough to send us into our tents, but the next ones are: a sudden, heavy downpour that comes in sharp little knives. Declan looks pleased as he grabs my hand and pulls me toward our tent. Ben and Jane duck into theirs. The rain falls hard on top of us, all around us, as if we’re being stoned. It seems like a miracle that our tents are holding up, an honest-to-goodness little miracle.

“Are you guys okay?” Jane shouts.

“Tell my mother I love her!” I call back. Declan flicks on our fluorescent lantern, and a bright, artificial, greenish light fills our tiny tent. It looks like an office in here, a little cubicle in the woods. It feels like old times.

We’re sitting on our big rumpled sleeping bag, knee to knee. Declan smiles at me and shakes his head like a puppy; droplets spray my face. Why are we in these tents, in these configurations? Why am I not laughing with Ben, or helping Jane find a dry shirt? Because humans couple off, slaves to biology, helpless under the vice clamp of desire. I reach my hand out, rest it on Declan’s arm for a second.

He inches over to a dry spot on the sleeping bag and stretches his long body out. “I’ve decided to go home for a visit in the fall,” he says. The top of his head touches one end of the tent; his feet skim the other. “For a visit, or maybe longer.”

I’m cold, all of a sudden; goose bumps rise on my arms and legs, the back of my neck. “ ‘For a visit,’ ” I repeat, “ ‘or maybe longer.’ …” What is he telling me?
Come with me, my darling
?
Good-bye
?

“Well,” he says. He seems to have grown a reddish shadow of stubble in the last few minutes. I’ve never noticed this in Declan, this tendency toward ruddiness. I lean forward to touch it with the same hand that brushed his arm. “Well,” he says again, “the agency. And my apartment in Chicago. I feel … untethered. I don’t know.” His accent lulls me for a moment, with its quick, sharp
t’
s, and those lovely, rounded
o’
s like music.

“Of course,” I say. Of course. It smells like mold and feet in here, that particular musky blend that brews inside a tent, and we’re breathing in each other’s exhalations. I pat my hair, thick as a fur coat in the humidity. “So, what, then? September?” I’m trying to sound breezy, carefree, like a girl who has just been told that the bakery is out of scones:
It’s okay, I didn’t really want a scone! A muffin will be just as good!
But my voice comes out weird and tremulous and loud.
Fuck your scones!

“Maybe,” Declan says, looking at me now, studying me with a wrinkled brow. I have the notion that things are easier for some people. Declan sits up and takes my hand. “You could come,” he says. “For a while?”

“Um.” The phrase echoes in my brain, changes shape, meaning, a noncommittal alloy of syllables.
Furrow Isle.
Could I come
4-0-aisle
? Maybe I could. Yes?

He’s still gazing at me, full of concern, the stepchild of affection. “Will, I really, really like you. But I don’t want to mislead you.”

“No,” I say. “Yes. I get it. Of course.” My heart goes numb, but underneath that, underneath its Novocained throb I can feel the stirrings of an ancient sorrow trying to thrash its way to the surface: a wretched thing, a blind, albino fish. Who am I in this world? What am I doing here, all alone? All alone forever, or only
for a whale
? It’s not that I haven’t asked these questions before, or that I’ll ever be able to answer them sufficiently. It’s just that a particular loneliness has been napping for a few weeks. And now, all of a sudden, it’s been zapped awake. The rain stops just as suddenly as it started, and laughter comes from Jane and Ben’s tent.

“Will!” Jane yells. “I have to pee!”

“Okay!” I lunge for the tent flap and unzip it, wriggle my way out. “Here I am!” The ground is black and soggy; fresh mud squishes underneath my sneakers. The fire pit is charred and sizzling, and the night air is cool.

Jane unfolds herself from her tent and comes over to me, smiling. “What was
that
all about?” She means the fierce rain.

“Yeah.” I’m stunned, dizzy, flung away from myself and snapped back. I grab her hand. There is a reeking public bathroom a few hundred yards away, and we head for it. As we walk, water from the trees drips onto our heads. Halfway up the stony trail I let go of Jane’s hand. “I think Declan just broke up with me,” I tell her. The words come out of my mouth, and just like that, they’re true.

“What?” Jane whispers. “What the?
Just now?
” As if the timing of it were the unforgivable sin. She stops to hug me, and I let her. Her sharp chin digs sweetly into my shoulder. “I never liked him,” she whispers. “Especially after he killed your puppy.” It’s our running gag, what we say to each other after the demise of every relationship, the first Band-Aid on the wound of every failed date.
I never liked him, especially after he tried to poison those babies … especially after he stole your nana’s wheelchair … after he had sex with that donkey.
Usually it makes me feel better. Now it just makes me feel hopeless.

She’s still hugging me in the middle of the path on the way to the outhouse when something nearby moves, scrabbles, a sound like newspapers rustling, and in the dim light of the moon, a hulking shape emerges from the brush, squat and huffing, red eyes flashing. For one weird second I think that it’s Declan. Jane grabs my elbow and screams. Then I do, too.

We stand there for a few seconds, petrified, all three of us. Jane is still screaming, and I might be, too, and the thing is staring at us with its demonic eyes, and then I close my mouth and I’m thinking,
That fat badger is going to kill us.
Although I don’t know if it’s a badger. It could be a sloth or a possum. Or an opossum. I wonder, briefly, what the difference is between a possum and an opossum. Is an opossum Irish?

Jane, finally finished screaming, clutches my elbow and tries to pull me away, back in the direction of the tents, but I’m rooted, so she lets go and skitters a few feet to the left, and then she stops, and the warthog stares and seems to contemplate its next move, and then we are a silent triangle of scared animals.

In what feels like ten minutes but is probably less than ten seconds, Ben is rushing up the path, Declan behind him. “What is it?” Ben yells. “What’s wrong?”

“Fuckit!”

Someone takes my arm; it’s Ben, pulling me away, pushing me aside; he waves his arms wildly and yells, “Go away! Get out of here!” in a low and menacing voice to the hippopotamus, who snorts and snuffles and then turns around and nonchalantly strolls back into the brush, as if that was all he was waiting for, someone to tell him what to do, and he didn’t want to come to our party anyway.

“Fuckit,” Declan says again, hopping over to us, clutching his foot. “I stubbed my fucking toe on a fucking rock.”

I look at him: tall, useless, too late.
Especially after he didn’t quite love me.
“That was some big bunny!” I say. My hands are shaking. My knees feel like water.

Ben hurries over to Jane. “Hey,” he says, breathing hard, half laughing. “Honey. You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Jane’s voice scares me. It’s brittle, hard as the fucking rock Declan stubbed his fucking toe on. She shoves past Ben and walks fast up the path, toward the bathroom, away from us all, and in a flash it’s clear to me. Yes, Ben saved the day, hero in the epic battle against a benign and lazy raccoon, but he saved my day first; Jane was wide open and he left her there, vulnerable. I’m the one he took care of.

Ben stares after her. “What?” he says. “What just happened?”

That night at the campground, nobody sleeps. Declan, insensitive enough to casually break up with me on a camping trip in a tent in the woods in the rain, is sensitive enough to stay on his side of the sleeping bag, leaving as much space between us as he can in this cramped hothouse of mildew. Throughout the night, he tosses and turns, sighs and grunts and occasionally whispers to himself.
Oh,
he mutters,
ohhhhh,
and
Christ, this is insane,
and
What was I thinking?
And I’m awake to hear it all, to wonder if he’s full of regret or just trying to get comfortable while a rock digs into his kidneys. I lie rigid on top of the damp sleeping bag in my jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, tensed against another invasion, animal or human.