Stay (21 page)

Stay

After a while my father came home, carrying bags of grocer-

ies. I could hear him rustling and putting things away. It was

getting close to dinnertime. I heard the clatter of pans. I knew

he’d be coming up soon to say hello, to ask me about rice

versus pasta, white sauce versus red. I needed to clean up that

glass. I didn’t want him to see. But I also
did
want him to see.

I was alone with something too big to be alone with. I couldn’t

even seem to make a decision about that—whether to talk to

my father. My head was both so numb and so full that nothing

felt clear.

I scooped up the glass onto a file folder on my desk. I walked

downstairs. Our house was a hundred years old, and the kitchen

was all tall glass cabinets to the ceiling, which was rimmed in thick,

dark molding. The floors were deep, old wood—you could see the

tiny nails that anchored each piece into place. There was a round,

sturdy table in there, too, curved legs, a soft African blanket used as

a rug underneath that gave a shot of color to the room. My father’s

back was to me as he put dishes from the dishwasher into the cup-

boards. He was in his jeans and a chunky gray sweater, his hair

wavy and loose, wearing those leather scuffers he loved. I might

have gotten away with dumping the glass without being seen, but

he whipped around when he heard me come in.

“Jesus, Clara, what’s the matter?”

So much for hiding anything from him. He could read the

slightest change in mood on my face; he always could. Something

this big, then—it was an emotional billboard. I opened my

mouth, but nothing came out. He looked down at the glass. He

took the folder from me and dumped it in the garbage.

* 163 *

Deb Caletti

“You guys break up?” he said.

“Fight,” I said.

“Where a glass got broken? C. P., not good, not good. What

happened.” It wasn’t a question, which I was glad about. I needed

someone to tell me what to do. Most of the time I hate people

telling me what to do.29* Whenever my dad told me to vacuum

or clean out the garage, or whatever, I’d even wait for a while to

do it so it would feel like my own idea. But I needed that now.

Direction. I needed something certain.

I told him everything. I had barely begun when he started

to make tea. Dad was like an old lady when it came to tea—he

thought it was necessary in a crisis. I told him about the fight, yes.

But I also told him about Christian and “other guys,” the way he

watched what I wore, the time he asked me to cut Dylan’s picture

out of the yearbook. Dad was doing really good for a while, just

listening. But finally he shoved his chair back in anger.

“C. P., this guy is dangerous. He’s a fucking freak.” 30*

“Dad! Christian? You know him. You know how nice he is.

He wouldn’t hurt a
fly
.” Really, he wouldn’t hurt one. He would

only catch them and send them back outside.

“God damn C. P. Do you know how often you say that about

him? Do you ever hear yourself? Nice isn’t the same as
good
,” he

said. “People are ‘nice’ for a million reasons. ‘Nice’ is the outside.

29 This may seem ironic, given what I’ve described about my relationship with Chris-

tian. This is not irony. Or some discrepancy in the story. It is, instead, one of its major

points.

30 Leave it to Dad to tell it like it is.

* 164 *

Stay

What people get to
see
. What you
want
people to see. ‘Good’ is the

inside. And this is a bad person, C. He’s making you a fucking

prisoner. You’re letting him.”

“I know,” I said. I did know.

“
Why
are you letting him?”

“He’s hurt. He’s sometimes just so hurt.”

“Hurt people are very powerful people, C. Hurt is a weapon.

Better weapon than most because it doesn’t look like one.”

“I don’t want to lose what we have. I love him. It was so good.

I can’t imagine not having him in my life.”

“Yeah, but you also
can
imagine it. And it sounds freeing.”

I hated that he was right so often. I didn’t know how it was

that he knew all this. It’s like he experienced it himself. Maybe

that was just his writer-insides. But, yeah. Freeing. A terrible

push-pull of loss and gain. “It felt . . . true. I mean, like he was

the
one
. I don’t know how to give that up. I don’t want to lose the

good part.”

“You already did lose it, the minute it was gone. A guy doesn’t

hear your voice? Controls you? You’re nervous around him,

Clara. I see it. You’re not a mouse. When have you ever been a

mouse? You weren’t even a mouse with Dylan. You dumped his

ass when he got like that.”

“Like that? It’s not the same thing.”

“It’s exactly the same thing. One uses his strength to get what

he wants, the other uses his weakness.”

I didn’t say anything. I looked at my hands. They were mine,

but they felt separate from me. All of me felt separate from me.

He was right. I was lost. I’d gotten separated from my own self

* 165 *

Deb Caletti

somewhere on a dark, huge, and endless mountain, and who

knew whether we could find each other again.

“You gotta get away from this guy, C. Immediately. He

can open every goddamn door for you and kiss the ass of every

teacher, I don’t care. The stuff he’s doing behind closed doors

where he thinks no one is looking—it’s dangerous. The dis-

traught, pathetic manipulators are the most lethal. You’re going

to get hurt. Remember that girl who got killed at Greenlake?”

I didn’t answer. But I was paying attention. It was like my

insides were suddenly sitting up. Some piece of me could still

hear reason, and it was taking notes, making the other, emotional

part stop for a second and listen.

“Jennifer Riley. I can see her picture now. Young. High

school. One of those kind of guys, Clara. Crazy jealous is noth-

ing to mess with. Slashed her throat with a knife. True love. Soul

mates. Meant to be together forever.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay? You gotta ditch this guy.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m taking you at your word, right?” He studied me.

I nodded.

“Okay. We’ve got to eat. I’m going to make us something,” he

said. He was upset, though. He stood in front of the open refrig-

erator for a long time, just looking.

I played with the string of my tea bag in my cup. I looped it

around the cup handle. I made all the little rows completely even.

I knew what I had to do, but I could tell by the look in my father’s

eyes over dinner that he and I both understood that it was now

* 166 *

Stay

not as simple as it sounded. It was clear I was standing beside

Christian on the highest ledge of a building. I was looking down.

I could see the street way, way below and the tiny people and the

tiny cars honking; I could feel the cement wall under my hands

and the sick feeling in my stomach. Doing what I needed to do to

get off safely—it surely meant Christian would jump.

* 167 *

I drove with Dad that next Saturday to Anacortes,

the closest large town from Bishop Rock. We drove back over

Deception Pass, and one more time again on the return trip.

I had a new phone number now. My phone felt okay again to

me, fresh, like a second-chance phone. But the eerie question

still lingered: How did Christian get that number? And how

long until he would somehow get this one? We ate lunch in a

café called Mama’s Kitchen, and my father talked with Captain

Branson as I ate a turkey sandwich on rye. It’s a weird thing,

how something crazy and unimaginable can fold into your life

to the point that you can listen to your father talk about restrain-

ing orders and eat a turkey sandwich at the same time. The most

insane things can become normal if you have them around you

long enough. I knew that from Christian, too. A mind can’t

Stay

seem to hold anything too crazy for too long without finding a

way to make it seem normal. 31*

“Branson suggests holding the line,” my father said when

he hung up. He agreed to a refill of his coffee cup with a nod,

and the waitress poured it. “That’s what he says, ‘Hold the line.’

‘Hang tough.’ ‘Ride it out.’ The man speaks in rugged scraps of

machismo. Wait, I like that.” He looked around. I knew what he

wanted. I got him a pen out of my purse, and he wrote the phrase

on a napkin.

“No restraining order?”

“He still thinks it’s best not to engage. The guy didn’t

threaten, and that’s when you do something different. Contact is

what he’s after, and even legal contact is contact. ‘You respond

after the fiftieth time, and he learns it takes fifty times to get what

he wants.’ Stay away for a while until things calm down.”

“We’ll end up living here.”

“I like it here,” he said.

“I know what you like,” I said. “
Who
.”

“Nope. Not true. It’s not about Sylvie Genovese. I’m not

going down that path, I’ve decided,” he said. “I’ve changed my

mind about that. I’m holding the line. I’m hanging tough.”

“Whatever,” I said.

He meant it, though. Over the next two weeks while I saw

Finn when I could (out sailing, grabbing coffee, getting food

31 I guess that goes for soldiers during a war, too. People during funerals. Long

illnesses. All of high school, for that matter.

* 169 *

Deb Caletti

at Butch’s and sitting out on the beach) Dad stayed at home.

He worked on his book. He would rub his neck from so much

time bent down over a screen. He got another stack of books

from the library and was reading and tossing the finished ones

onto a pile by the leather chair in the living room. He was

spending too much time by himself, as far as I could see it. His

ankle had healed, and he was back to taking long walks on the

beach. He sat there with that scotch in the evening. Swirled it

in the glass in some morose way. I didn’t understand what his

problem was. It was the kind of alone that could gather you

up and keep you. The kind that needs to be stopped or else

it might become something permanent. It looked a little like

depression. At least, he was thinking too much and doing too

little. Wearing the same clothes too often. Leaving the room

when I nagged him about any of it. He was becoming one of

those people who spilled cereal on their shirt in the morning

and didn’t care about wearing the stain all day. It was pissing

me off.
You don’t want to be too alone out here
, he had told me.

And yet
too alone
was exactly what he was.

Sylvie took back her empty, clean orange pot and read the

note that Dad had tucked inside. I don’t know what it said, but

whatever it was, Sylvie turned bitchy again. Sometimes she made

me stay late when there was nothing to do. Her eyebrows were

always down, and she’d take that boat out on the water and rev

the motor—I could hear it. I could see her zipping around on the

ocean like she was trying to outrun whatever was behind her.

They
both
were pissing me off. I didn’t get the giddy love-

stuff and then the complete withdrawal. I guess he still loved

* 170 *

Stay

my mother and always would. Fine—but he was driving me

up a wall. Living with someone like that—it’s like you’re both

stuck in some house with boarded-up windows. You start feel-

ing depressed even though you’re not depressed. You can catch

a mood like the flu, and that sort of mood was easy to pass on to

someone else. Joy is not nearly as contagious as despair.

So imagine how angry I was when one morning I was leaving

for work and he was smoking that stupid cigarette he’d gotten out

of the ashtray of the car. That thing had been sitting in there for

years.
Years
. I couldn’t even imagine it would still have in it what

he needed from it, nicotine or whatever, but there he was. He

was wearing this sick-looking T-shirt from a thousand years ago

and his baggy pajama bottoms, and he was sucking on that thing,

and I just had enough. I started yelling at him, and he was telling

me it was none of my business, and I slammed out the door and

went to work, which was the same thing as saving yourself from

a sinking ship by jumping into the mouth of a shark.

Sylvie made me count the cash in the drawer three times,

even though I kept coming up with the same number. She got

several new boxes of merchandise for the store but just let them

sit there where the UPS guy had dropped them, unopened. She

snapped at Roger, who looked like he had his feelings hurt, I

swear. His eyes got sad. I wanted to scoop him up, because I