Signs of You (17 page)

I rack my brain for a response as the cars whiz by us on the road, cold reminders that no matter what happens, no matter who or what you lose, time and people and life just keep going. I search for something positive, something to make him feel better about seeing his dad, about what his dad said. “He must have been really sorry, Jay. Your dad got Peter to feel it, and your dad felt it, too. Peter's eyes were all red and watery and—”

“Stop,” Jay says. He leans over and puts his hands on his thighs. Like he might throw up. But he doesn't. He just stands there, bent over with his head half-hanging into the street. We're engulfed in a horrible silence that's broken only by the swooshing sounds of cars.

“You all right?” Noah asks, jogging up. Kate joins now, too. Noah puts a hand on Jay's back. “Jay?”

Jay straightens up and looks at Noah and then at Kate and then at me. “Peter did the right thing,” he says slowly. “My dad got him to do the right thing. He apologized. He did it. Which means Peter was my dad's doorway. My dad
crossed
. So now he's . . .”

The silence swallows us again. We wait and wait for what feels like hours. I want to run out into the street, stop the traff ic.
Stop.
I want to tell them all.
Just stop.
But I don't. And I also don't say what I'm thinking, what must be dawning on Jay, too.

Your dad is gone. Forever. And you missed your last chance.

“You guys,” Jay says, panic f illing his eyes. “What have I done?”

Chapter 18

Silly Buoys

The look on Jay's face as he realizes his dad is gone is terrifying. But so is the idea that his dad is
really gone
.
Forever this time.

Jay gets in the Camaro for the ride back. He refuses to talk the whole way home. We exit at Brecksville, turn down the main drag. Kate does her best to cheer him up. It doesn't help. She suggests going to her basement to debrief. He refuses. She suggests that we all go to his house for video games, but he refuses that, too. Then he starts saying he's okay, and I keep telling him that he's not. And that he shouldn't be alone right now.

He tells me to drive him to his house. Angrily. I know that if I don't, he'll just walk the whole way himself.

“Jay, please, think of this,” Kate says, trying a last-ditch effort to comfort him. “He got Peter to do what he was supposed to. He got his old friend to apologize to us. And your dad apologized to you, too. And he crossed. Which means he's def initely a good spirit, not a bad one.”

“It's okay. You don't have to say all this,” he says. His voice is a monotone.

I pull up in front of his house, and he gets out. Kate and I do, too. Noah pulls up behind us in the Honda and joins us. Kate and Noah give him hugs, and even Noah's is a real one—not one of those guy hugs where they sort of bump chests and pound each other's backs once or twice. He clings to Jay. Now it's my turn. And I hold him tight.

But he's not hugging back. It feels like I'm holding a statue, cold and unyielding. Finally, I let go, and he slowly walks toward his front door.

“Bye?” I say to his back. He turns and looks at all of us.

“I'm no good at this, am I?”

“Good at what?” I ask, even though I don't need to.

“At listening. At paying attention, to the spirits.”

“I think it just takes practice,” I say. “Time. I . . .”

But Jay's not listening. He turns around, takes the front porch stairs two at a time and disappears inside. The front door closes behind him. I want to open it again; I want to follow him, hold him longer. Except that now I'm thinking about what he said, about being bad at listening to spirits. I think about the spirit I saw in him when all this started, when he was texting Sarah after we'd visited my mom's gravesite. I think about Jay poring over his dad's archeology articles, crawling into a dark, dank cave, looking for something his dad spent his whole life trying to f ind. And yet, when Jay got the chance with his dad, he let it slip by.

And suddenly, I feel tired. So. Tired.

Tired of waiting for him. Tired of hoping he'll read the signs and see that I should be more than a friend. And maybe I shouldn't be. We're both damaged, easy targets for evil spirits to mess with. And maybe that's it. Maybe that's why I've liked him for so long; maybe it's no more complicated or romantic than that the damaged are drawn to the damaged. Connected by hurt. And something hits me then, too: a truth that maybe I've always known but has lingered just at the edge of my consciousness, like one of those imaginary hummingbirds I couldn't quite catch back at the cemetery.

I'm tired of liking someone who is just as bad at listening for spirits as I am.

After I drop Noah
and Kate off, I drive home. I tiptoe into the house and f ind my father dozing on the couch. I gently touch his shoulder.

“Riley,” he says with a start. “What time is it? I hope my pot roast hasn't dried out. Wait.” He rubs his eyes. “
Where
have you been?”

“I'm sorry,” I say. I curl up on the other end of the couch by his feet.

He looks shocked that I'm sitting with him. The last time he saw me I was all freaked out about walking in on his date with Sammy, and now I'm crawling onto the sofa like we're best friends. I think he wants to yell at me for skipping school, but my couch move has caught him off guard, rendered him defenseless. I almost know what's coming next.

“You want soup?” he asks. “I made tomato artichoke.”

I smile and shake my head no.

He waits another minute. “You're not pregnant are you?”

I smile, bigger this time. “No, Pops. Not even close.”

“Oh, thank god.” He looks at me. Asking. “But . . . you're okay?”

I nod, hoping he buys it. And even though it's a warm night, I reach for the red blanket on the back of the couch and pull it around my shoulders. I'm cold.

And covered in chills.

The pit in my stomach is unmistakable. I picture the spirit I saw with the kids at air band practice, the one in the red f lapper dress. I imagine her with me now, twirling around in my ribcage, her sequins slamming into my heart and lungs. I think about what Noah said today about spirits, how they are most active around your deepest desires.

Stop,
I tell myself.
Remember that you've been given a gift. So stop and listen. What do you hear?

And I guess I sort of know. The answer isn't all that hard. It's just
. . .
I should say something to Dad, to tell him what I know.
But how? Maybe I should just tell him what I want. And what I want is to believe that even if he gets a girlfriend or gets married again, that we'll be just as close, that he'll still worry about me all the time, that he'll still peer into my eyes and make sure I'm okay from the inside out. That he'll still run around offering me eggs and soups and muff ins at all hours of the day or night. But maybe he won't. Maybe the strongest connection to my dad and even to Jay and Kate and Noah is through grief, and if any of us get over the hurt—really get over it—what keeps us all tied together will be snipped like a ribbon on a birthday present.

Then say all that,
I urge myself.
Say it.

“I guess, it's just that . . .” I pause and sit up, letting the blanket slide off my shoulders. I eye the front door because I know
I'm going to feel like running as soon as I'm done. But I take a deep breath. “I'm . . . freaked out.”

Dad's watching me like I'm a patient in the ICU about to get yanked off life support. He actually looks
frightened
. It's awful.

“Um,” he says slowly, his eyes a little wide, totally unsure of what to do with New Confessional Daughter. “If you wouldn't mind explaining. What is it that you're freaked out about?”

Say it.
Now it's too late.
SAY IT.
The twinge in my gut is back again. Every time I think of stopping, it's like buckets of water are smashing against a stone wall. I have to keep going. I have to.

“It's just that,” I pause and look down at the blanket, so afraid that I've f igured this all out. “I'm afraid that what makes me matter is all the bad stuff.”

He blinks several times. “I don't understand. What bad stuff, Riley?”

“I mean, you and me, are we close because of who we lost? And Jay, are we tight for the same reason? Because we both lost parents? Is that all there is?” I look up at my dad. My eyes f inally blur with the tears that have been two years in the making, but I keep going. “And if we get over it. What then? If you move on from Mom, will you move on from me, too? And then will I be . . .
alone
?”

As soon as I say the word
alone
—right now, in this moment, I know something new—that my deepest fear isn't that we'll never get over losing Mom, my biggest fear is that we
will.
And Dad will move on and bail out and shack up with some other family. And I'll be some sort of quasi-orphan. And maybe
I'll
even get over losing her, and then I won't really feel connected to Dad, and just as bad, I won't feel connected to Jay, or to Noah, or to Kate, either. My friends, my
family
—that's what they are, too, in just as real a way as Dad—won't get me anymore, and I won't get them, and the glue that binds us all together will be gone . . . and then what?

“Oh, Riley.”

That's all he says. I can tell he's drumming up the courage to talk about it all, and I brace myself for a food analogy. I expect him to say something like dating as a widower is like burning a new casserole you've never cooked before. Or that life without Mom is like cooking with an electric stove when you're used to a gas one. I prepare to receive offers of parsnips and al dente pasta. Hear another plug for the fresh corn bread and pot roast he has in the kitchen.

“Do you know what a channel buoy is? For boats?” he asks.

I shake my head no. Mostly I'm shocked. A boating metaphor? I guess I'm not the only Strout who's capable of surprises.

“Well,” Dad says. “A channel buoy is a big metal stand with a light on it, or with a bright orange or green sign. It f loats in the water, in the ocean or in a big lake.” He looks straight at me as he speaks. I'm not sure I've ever seen him look so serious. “It's anchored, so it never drifts. A buoy tells the boaters where the channel is, where they should steer so they can come into port. Safe. Out of the wind. It's tied to the bottom
real
tight. Storms come through, boats bump into them, but the buoy doesn't move; it's always there, always telling people how to get home. That's a channel buoy. Ever seen one?”

“Yeah,” I say, staring back at him. “I think so.”

He nods, reaching across the blanket to take my hands. “Well, the way I feel about you is just like that. Everything else in my life can change: my job, my kitchen, my silly hobbies.” He pauses. “Even a girlfriend. But not how I feel about you, Riley. That doesn't change. It can't. Not ever. Just like that buoy. It's tied down
tight
.”

For the f irst time in a very long time (maybe ever), I actually stop to think about something my Dad just said.
Tied down tight. Doesn't drift. Safe.

“You know what? You really have a way with analogies.” And the look on his face when I say that—it's a thousand times more awesome than when I tell him I love his Special Plate Breakfasts. “And I love you, too.”

Now I have a feeling that's totally different than when spirits have come before. It's not like when my friends fed me beef jerky and cigarettes and got it all wrong. It feels different than when I was in the elevator with Jay, when I was just trying everything that popped into my head. No, something has changed; something has left me. Something has f lown. But instead of emptiness or absence, I feel a crash of relief.

Or maybe not f lown, exactly. No, if Dad can move beyond food to buoys, I can put the hummingbirds to rest, too.

Because I think I'm a doorway. That just opened up
.

I manage to sleep
pretty well. I don't know whether it was the cemetery trip, or what we saw Jay go through, or plain old exhaustion, but whatever it was—I sleep okay. When I wake up, I text Jay to see how he's doing. I wait for his usual immediate text back. But nothing comes. Then I call. No answer. I text again. Nothing.

Oh, God, no,
I think. I really can't handle another disappearance right now. Haven't we all learned that none of us can go AWOL again?

I try Noah and Kate. Neither one has heard from him. I tell them I'll come pick them up so we can go over and check on him on our way to school. He's probably still asleep, that he's probably just exhausted, wiped out, that the phone isn't waking him. This is what I tell myself. But worry starts gnawing at me, slow and steady.

After a shower, I pull on some jeans and a tee and walk over to the sink to brush my teeth. On the way, I step on something. It hurts like crazy, like I've stepped on a thumbtack. I pick up my foot and see an earring. It's a big silver knot. And it isn't mine. And it isn't Kate's.

Sammy.

I lean over the sink, afraid for an instant that I'm going to vomit. I try to calm down and stare at my blurry ref lection in the steamy bathroom mirror. My mind races in a thousand different directions. But mostly, I'm thinking about what my dad said about the channel buoy. I want to believe him, I really do . . . and I know I should. I look at myself again in the mirror, at my heaving chest, my terrif ied eyes. And I feel something. Something
familiar.
Something
known.

“You're okay, Riley,” I say in a whisper to myself. I look deeply into my hazel eyes and at the fear that blankets my face like the steam on the mirror. “You're okay,” I say again. Chills make their way up my arms and legs. And then an idea comes to me. It feels good, it feels nuts; it feels . . .
right.

I'm still staring at myself in the mirror, my breath coming in quick bursts, when I hear my cell. It's a text. Kate and Noah are on the front porch. They got antsy and drove over. I get myself together and the feeling passes. I head down the stairs and open the door to see Kate and Noah standing there, waiting for me. Noah's wearing a T-shirt printed with the words
I Miss Pluto
. His eyes meet mine and communicate everything.

“I know,” I say with a sad smile. “I'm worried about him, too.”