Stay (27 page)

to the Gods of Material Success. I’m sure no one ever usually went in there, except

when Harrison’s mother made her weekly pilgrimage with the vacuum.

* 211 *

Deb Caletti

I got up to use the bathroom, and I don’t know why I did it,

but I looked in their medicine cabinet. Sometimes you get that

urge, the bathroom equivalent of googleing someone. Inside, there

was the usual assortment of Band-Aids and cold medicine, but a

whole row, too, of amber plastic bottles with white caps, prescrip-

tions made out for Thomas Bishop, Finn’s dad. He’d been dead for

years, and I guess Ness couldn’t throw those bottles away.

I felt bad when I shut that door. We’d been having this great

warm time together, but this family had seen some things, been

through layers of life I knew nothing about. Layers I couldn’t

understand. A father getting thinner and thinner, his skin yellow-

ing, those hospital rooms with sliding curtains. I’d glimpsed their

most private moments, and I was still a stranger to them.

I washed my hands, used one of the blue towels folded in neat

rectangles on the counter.

It hit me then.

Hospital.

My father’s words.
They said at the hospital that there was noth-

ing more that could have been done.

I felt the spin of confusion starting. Had he gotten mixed up?

Had I? I’d always been told my mother died at home. Did they take

a person to a hospital anyway? Was that part of the procedure? In

my imagination, I had never seen her in an ambulance, a hospital,

people in blue scrubs with their hands on her. I’d only pictured what

I remembered of our old house. A horrible imagining of her on the

living room floor. Being carried out down the stairs.
Hospital
wasn’t

a word ever used before about her. Was he lying to me? Because

that’s what it meant when people changed their stories, didn’t it?

* 212 *

Stay

I was scared. I felt it right there in the Bishops’ bathroom,

because it seemed like my father kept getting farther away

from me, and I needed every anchor I had left. I needed to

understand what was real, what I had to be afraid of and what

I didn’t.

Finn and I did the dishes since Ness and Cleo had cooked.

Cleo went out to meet some friends and Ness went to her room

to watch a movie. We washed dishes in that candlelight, Finn’s

arms plunged into the soapy water and me with the towel.

“You’ve got a great family,” I said.

“We’re enmeshed, right? I took psych 101. Cleo will probably

never leave the house.”

“You go through a lot together . . . That’s what happens,” I

said. I had a Disney Movie moment, the thought that if you put

Finn’s half of family with my half, we’d have a whole.

“We look out for each other,” he said.

“Right. Exactly,” I said.

He drained the water from the sink, snatched the towel from

me, and dried his hands. He pulled me close. His face was so

sweet in that candlelight. His eyes, showing me every bit of him-

self, even if I was not yet that open. I wanted to stay right there,

because it was so safe. I don’t know if it’s what every girl wants,

but it’s what I wanted, that feeling, being held firmly, the sense

that any storm could come and blow the roof right off but in his

arms there’d be shelter.

My phone rang then. I could hear it, thrumming in my purse

in the living room, muffled but responsibly doing its job.

“Your phone,” Finn said, not taking his eyes from mine.

* 213 *

Deb Caletti

“Stupid phone. I hate that phone,” I said, not taking my eyes

from his.

He kissed me, then, and it was slow and delicious and his

mouth tasted just like mine. I felt the sweet tingle of desire and

he pressed hard against me until we finished that kiss and he

drew away.

“Wow,” he said.

“Wow,” I agreed.

He kissed my forehead. “Do you need to check your phone?

In case your father twisted his other ankle or something?”

I laughed. “Probably,” I said. I went into the living room,

sorry that the moment in the kitchen was over, wishing I could

have held onto that and onto that. It’s wrong, how short changed

some moments are. So brief, and yet you can sit in some miser-

able math class for fifty of the longest minutes of your life. You

can sit in the DMV, you can have an argument, you can go to the

dentist—hours. And yet a sweet kiss is over so fast.

I fished around in my purse and stupidly couldn’t find my

phone, given that it was one of the biggest things in there. Finally,

yes, there it was.

Finn’s fingertips were on my waist. I opened the phone. I was

an idiot, because it took me by surprise. Every time it happened,

I was shocked.

I snapped the cover shut. “Jesus.”

“Clara?”

“Jesus, it’s him.”

“It’s okay, Clara.”

“It’s him already. He found the number already.”

* 214 *

Stay

“He doesn’t know where you are. You’re okay.”

The phone trilled then, right there in my hand. He was call-

ing again. I dropped it and it fell on the floor. I felt like my breath

had been taken. No more air.

“I’ll answer it,” Finn said. “Let me take care of that prick.”

“No!” I said. “No, you can’t do that.” I tried to breathe. I swear

to God, it was like he was right there watching us when we kissed.

Like he
felt
that betrayal, knew of it, miles away.

“This is crazy,” Finn said.

How can you ever explain this to someone who hasn’t been in

it? The way that you can still feel that alarmed responsibility, that

guilt? You could be away from it for weeks, be there at the beach

where your mind could clear and you could see how Finn was

right, it
was
crazy, your own responses most of all. And yet there

was that phone number, there was his fingers dialing you right

then, and you could snap back to that place of panic like you’d

never left. You fell right into that way of being, that craziness, same

as hooking back up with an old friend you hadn’t seen in a while.

“Don’t!” I grabbed Finn’s arm as he reached for the phone.

“I’m just going to shut it off, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

And then he did. And after he did, I pulled him down beside

me on that saggy couch and I told him everything.

* 215 *

I parked Dad’s car in Christian’s driveway. Your mind

can sometimes do this interesting thing (mine can, anyway) where

it seems it’s the mind of two different people, acting and feeling two

different ways, because right then I was still not feeling afraid, and

yet I remember that I put my keys in my pocket, not in my purse, in

case I needed to get out of there in a hurry. Part of me was in charge

of being naive and part of me was handling the street smarts. Even

though it seems like self-protection leaves you, I think it is probably

always there. You don’t listen to it for a thousand complicated rea-

sons—your own fear and denial and stupidity and good-heartedness,

but it stays on task, shouting truths at you. You turn your back on it,

but self-protection never abandons you. Never.

I kept touching those keys with my fingertips in my jacket

pocket. I can feel their cold, jagged metal on my fingertips right

Stay

now, this minute, as if my fingers have their own memory. It

was reassuring to know they were there. I imagine it was the

same kind of false reassurance people get from a can of mace on

their key ring or a deadbolt or some superstitious behavior like

knocking on wood, because, really, those things are no protec-

tion against someone’s strong will.

I’d asked Christian if his parents were going to be home, and

he’d said yes. Only one of their cars was parked on the street,

though. The driveway looked empty, just a scattering of leaves

scritching and doing leaf somersaults in the wind. The house

looked dark. My mind was still performing its dual role—it

seemed possible Christian wasn’t there at all, that he’d stood me

up and I’d have to turn around and go back home, and then I

flashed on some stupid eleven o’clock news vision of him lying

in there in a pool of blood.

Keys in my pocket. Good. I knocked on the door. There was

some new, floral wreath type decoration hanging there—dried

flowers, a fading smell of potpourri. My stomach started to feel

a little sick. I realized I didn’t want to see him again. Not at

all. Not for a second. Out here it was me in the cold air, trees

whispering the far-off rumor of spring, my hands in my pock-

ets, freedom. In there, the dark weight of emotion. Nothing

he would say could change my mind. As I’ve said, he often

seemed to know my thoughts before I did and could sense the

secret murmurs I didn’t dare speak. But at the same time he

refused to know what I told him outright, what I wrote to him

over and again, what I was most sure of. To face someone with

that much hope felt horrible. I felt so cruel.

* 217 *

Deb Caletti

He must have been watching me out of the living room win-

dow, because the door opened right up. “I thought you’d change

your mind,” he said.

My throat clinched. All at once I felt like crying. I had been

worrying about his emotions, but mine were there too. Big, a

storm, they could wash me out to sea, because he was still just

himself to me in so many ways. I was still drawn to the good

parts. But he also looked strange—his cheeks thinner, his eyes

different, like they were too far from me and too close to me at

the same time.

“You probably won’t even come in,” he said.

“I’ll come in,” I said. My voice was shaky from the desire to

cry. It was happening already. I was getting sucked in as if I were

reading a script and not saying the things I wanted to say myself.

He shut the door behind me. “Let’s go upstairs. My parents

might just walk in.”

“I thought your parents were going to be home,” I said. But

I followed him upstairs, anyway. I touched the keys with my fin-

gers. “Where are they?”

“They’re moving some stuff up to the cabin.” Their second

home, the A-frame on a rambunctious river. I remembered one

time that Christian and I had driven out there alone. We’d spent

a short but fantastic afternoon mostly on that couch in front of

the fireplace before driving back. I’d felt so close to him then. I

couldn’t have imagined anything coming between us.

“It’s a good two hours away,” I said.

“You act like you’re afraid to be alone with me,” he said.

He shut the bedroom door. I felt the closing of it in a way I had

* 218 *

Stay

never felt before or since, as if we were sealed in a vault, as if

the elevator doors were closed with you and a man and a bad

feeling. I was aware of myself in relation to where I was in the

room, where the door was. That other part of my brain was tak-

ing over. I did not want him between me and that door. I could

be backed into some corner. He sat at the edge of the bed and

reached his hand out to me. “I missed you so much.”

I didn’t take his hand. “Christian . . .” I said. I meant,
Let’s not

do this
. I meant,
things are different now.

“You won’t even hold my hand?”

I wanted to open that door so badly. “You won’t even
touch

me?” I could feel his anxiety rise. It started to slowly seep into the

closed room, the way poisoned gas does in some action thriller.

I felt like gagging.

“Christian, you said you wanted to see me. You said it would

give you closure.” I could hear the begging in my voice.

“You think we can have
closure
? You think this is something

you get
over
? Come on, you know we belong together. You
know

it.” Now
he
was pleading. I felt tricked, but it was stupid. Why,

why had I believed he only needed this one, last thing? I’d been as

morbidly hopeful as he was being now. His hands sat helplessly

in his lap. Something looked funny about his arms. I could see

scratches disappearing up his sleeves, like he’d been attacked by

some cat.

“I’m so sorry you’re hurting,” I said. I stood there by the door.

It was all starting to feel a little unreal. I was taking it in in pieces.

His room, that known place, the bed where we had lain together,

the brown plaid flannel sheets. His bookcase, where his CD

* 219 *

Deb Caletti

player and speakers sat, a plaster figure of one of those London

phone booths, a mug from the world ice hockey championships

that his real father had given him, an ashtray of golf tees from the

time his stepfather took him out. A framed picture of me that I

had given him last Christmas. I was there, looking out at myself.