Thinking of You

by Rachel Kane

“Nothing, Pop. Go back to sleep.”

  “Hm. Got work to do. Can’t spend all day lying in bed. Supposed to talk to the insurance man—”

  “Insurance can wait,” I said. “Everything can wait. You’re not lifting a finger until I’m sure you’re better.”

  He blinked sleepily, and looked over at Marcia. “Did he tell you about that boy?”

  Marcia gave him a look of absolute innocence. “What boy?”

  “The tourist. Your replacement.”

  We both froze in our chairs. I could not move. Not a single inch. I could barely even breathe.

  “What now?” she asked quietly.

  His eyes turned to me. “I reckon it happened up the mountain. Saw them holding hands on the plane home. Guess they figured nobody saw. Then, watching you two make eyes at each other when he was here earlier. You got to tell Marcia, son. It’s only right.”

  I stammered, “I don’t…I don’t know—”

  “Staying out all hours. Damn boy, you’re shaking like a leaf. How come you hadn’t told her?”

  It was time to be brave. As shaky as I was, it was time.

  “I told her,” I said. “You’re the one I didn’t know how to tell.”

  “Me? You think I’d get mad?”

  “Hell, all I could remember was that time you nearly crashed the plane to disarm that drug guy—”

  “He what?” asked Marcia.

  But Pop laughed, which sent him into a new coughing fit. Eventually he recovered and said, “Dammit boy, that’s what you learned from that? To be scared of me being mad?”

  I shrugged. “It was pretty scary, as young as I was.”

  “No. What you should’ve learned was I’d do anything to protect my family. Anything. What, I’m going to risk my life to protect you, then turn you out because you had you a little boyfriend?”

  “You know, you could’ve mentioned that you knew,” I said. “It would’ve saved me a whole lot of stress.”

  “Pfft, not my story to tell,” he said.

  Marcia had said that too, a while back.

  But this was the first time in my life I’d felt the truth of that. This was my story to tell. Not just in the sense of having a responsibility to be honest, not in the sense that I was going to wreck everything if I wasn’t open about it…

  …it was mine. It belonged to me. It was something good about me, something I’d never really understood before. It had given me someone new to take care of, opened a new world to me.

  It wasn’t a dark secret about myself that would destroy the world. It was a part of me that my friends and family could know, could accept…and with that, came the realization that I deserved their love. I’d worked hard for it, worried constantly about risking it…but that’s not what love is about. I didn’t have to earn it. I just had to accept it.

  “This feels so strange,” I said, sitting with two of the three closest people in my life, feeling their love and understanding.

  I suddenly missed Eli. Badly.

  But I knew that there was no rush. These recent days I had been fleeing from one emergency to the next, one crisis to another, but something had changed here in this drab hospital room. A new life had opened up for me, and it was going to take some time to understand.

  I could have stayed there and talked another few hours about how this felt, about how much I’d feared ever telling them…about how that fear had distorted my relationship with Marcia, twisting me towards dishonesty, and how being honest now would eventually help us all fell better.

  But Pop was tired, and Marcia needed to get to work. And I really, really wanted to tell Eli this strange news…that everyone in my life knew, and yet the world had not fallen apart.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Eli, when he’d told me about his conversation with his father. “I thought…I don’t know what I thought. Maybe he would come around, when you confronted him with the book.”

  I’d called him as soon as I got out of the hospital, and the moment I heard the defeat in his voice, I told him I was coming straight over.

  He’d been lying on his couch, wrapped in a blanket, watching TV. The sound was off, but there were aliens on the screen, aiming strange weapons at an astronaut.

  “I should have known better,” he said. “I mean, really. Did I expect he’d drop years of prejudice and hatred, just because I exposed his affairs? No, it was stupid. Of course he was going to double down. Of course he was going to sink even deeper into his hatred. That’s who he is. Nothing but a tangled ball of judgment and wrath.”

  “It’s not fair,” I said, stroking his head. “My dad…it was so easy. How did he just know? I thought I was being so careful. But then…I thought I was being careful when Marcia caught me that time, too.”

  His arms tightened around me. “I’m glad for you, though. Clearly having to live a life of secrecy isn’t good for people.”

  “No more secrets,” I said. “Not for me.”

  “That includes no more going behind my back to talk to Amanda.”

  “Oh god, no. Jesus, that was stupid of me.”

  “If you have a problem, just come to me, okay?”

  I kissed him. “Of course. But also…I don’t know how to say this.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “No, no, it’s not a bad thing. But look, when I picked you up off the road… You can’t do that, Eli.”

  “Wasn’t it your turn to save my life? I could have sworn it was.”

  My laugh was as sad as it was warm. “No more saving. We’ve been lurching from disaster to disaster since the day we met. Can we just protect one another, from now on? Look out for each other? I don’t want either of us to do anything that requires saving.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, putting his head against my shoulder. “I feel like I need rescuing right now. Jake, I feel awful. So twisted up inside. Why can’t my dad just…be normal?”

  I nodded. “I wish I could rescue you from that feeling. But that’s one disaster I can’t help with. Nobody can…unless he comes to his damn senses. But listen, until that time, I’m right here with you. I can’t replace your dad. No one can. But I can love you as much as I possibly can, and remind you that his feelings have nothing to do with you. It’s his own guilt and shame, coming out as anger. I know a thing or two about guilt and shame, and let me tell you…I’m glad I lost mine in the crash.”

  “No more red flags,” he murmured.

  “No what?”

  “Oh, Amanda. Talking about all the red flags in our relationship. Our inability to be honest with our families. The way we weren’t talking things through.”

  “Don’t be mad at her,” I said. “She’s just looking out for her little brother.”

  And yet…there was still one big worry on my mind. One thing I couldn’t quite let go of.

  Eli must have realized I was worried. He put his hand on my chest. “Come on, out with it.”

  “Out with what? I’m fine.”

  “Oh-ho-ho, how quickly we slip back into our old, lying ways! Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

  I settled back against the couch. “Well…here’s the problem. Nobody in your world likes me. Doesn’t that make you a little uncomfortable?”

  He pushed himself up and looked at me. “Who doesn’t like you? I’ll punch ‘em in the nose.”

  “Nobody does. I mean, I’m not saying that to get sympathy. But Amanda really doesn’t think I’m right for you, and your buddy Cam—”

  “Oh god, Jake! You can’t go by anything Cam says. Look, he’s one of my best friends, but he’s got some serious problems relating to people.”

  “Is that how all your friends are going to be, though? Judging me…judging what poetry I read?”

  His laughter filled the room. “That’s what you’re worried about? Cam’s opinion of Coleridge?”

  “I don’t want everyone to see me as your big dumb boyfriend, you know? And it’s not just Cam. Amanda—”

  “Dude. Let me tell
you something about Cam. That snobbishness hides an anxiety like you wouldn’t believe. Don’t worry, he’ll get what’s coming to him, eventually.”

  “And your sister?”

  Eli rolled his eyes. “She likes you just fine. She’s just protective. Trust me, if she hated you, you would know it by now. She’s really good at letting people know.”

  I looked away, still feeling uncertain, but he took my hand.

  “I’m serious, Jake. We’re going to have to get used to this feeling. Look, if I come around your friends, and I don’t know how to fix a plane engine or something, are they going to think less of me? Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but I just have to live with it, because I love you, and want to be a part of your world. And it’s the same with you. We come from different places. But we’re making room for each other in our lives. Right? Right?”

  I nodded. “Right.”

  “Exactly. So you don’t have to sit there worrying what my friends think. I’ll give them hell until they see you for the perfect specimen you are. And likewise, you’ll run interference for me with your world.”

  We both sighed, at that moment.

  Disaster has a way of focusing your mind on the present. That’s natural. Something huge is happening, and every part of your brain needs to think about it right now. You have to keep your attention on the emergency, so you can get through it.

  But something interesting happens when the disaster eventually goes away.

  You start to think about the future.

  I looked over at Eli. His eyes brightened. “What are you smiling about?” he asked.

  “Thinking about you. And me. And what happens next. Finally, finally, I feel like we can talk about what happens a week from now, a month, a year.”

  “Well, I know what I want to happen, once this head injury clears up.” He hooked his thumb back in the direction of his bedroom.

  “Yeah, let’s just wait on that until you’re all better…as much as I want to rush back there right now,” I said. “But…but Eli. The future. Us. Together. What’s going to happen?”

  “Luckily, as a science fiction writer, I have a lot of opinions on where the future’s going to take us.”

  34

  Eli

  “Planes are expensive,” I told Amanda. “Like, astonishingly so. You should see what they charge for new ones. But if you get a well-maintained used one—”

  “I still say I don’t like you flying up there. I’m nervous as hell about it. What’s to say this plane won’t be as dangerous as the first one?”

  We had almost reached the airstrip. “C’mon, what are the chances of me being in two crashes?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Of course I did. I’ll be honest, I was pretty scared myself.

  Jake and I had been talking about it for a while. What would it be like to take to the skies again? The nightmares about the crash had died down, and I had a very cool scar on my forehead now that the stitches were out, great for talking about at parties…but the idea of flying was still daunting.

  Hell, I didn’t even like it when people drove fast.

  But this new old plane was Pop’s baby. He and Jake had spent weeks looking it over before buying it, and then even more weeks going over every inch of it, oiling it or ratcheting it or whatever the hell they were up to. (Jake had stopped inviting me along for the repairs when he realized my mechanical skills are limited to sighing and asking when we were going to lunch.)

  Today was the day. We were going to take the plane up. We would spend the weekend in the mountains…or, up the mountain, as Pop always said. Taking some tools with us, we planned to tear down Ron’s place. Let nature finish what it had started, with that hole in the roof. It felt appropriate. Ron would have wanted his cabin to return to the earth, he would’ve thought it poetic.

  “It’s not too late to turn back,” said Amanda.

  I pointed at Mom’s car, parked next to Jake’s truck. “Sure it is. Everyone else is already here.”

  “How is Dad?” I asked my mom. My voice was quiet; this wasn’t a topic we were used to talking about publicly yet.

  When she let go of me, her smile was sad. “Oh, you know your father.”

  But I shook my head. “I don’t think I do. I thought I did.”

  “I invited him to come today. He said he thought it’d be better if he stayed away.”

  Not the answer I was hoping to hear.

  My mom had thrown him out of the house. Not for his bi affairs, interestingly. She’d told me later that she’d always wondered about my dad, saying that a wife knows when something is up. But no, what she couldn’t tolerate was realizing how badly he had hurt me. Secrets are one thing, she’d told me, but nobody casts out my boy.

  Of course, she’d had a part in that too, not standing up for me, but she had apologized for that, putting it down to shock at my father’s reaction.

  He had called me one night, and offered me a rambling, drunken apology for giving me hell. But it was one of those apologies that’s more about justifying yourself than really admitting what you did was wrong and hurtful. So I was still keeping him at arm’s distance. One day he’d understand. I had to hope that. I wanted my family back.

  Speaking of family, Pop and Marcia were by the truck’s tailgate, pulling food out of a cooler. We were deep into summer now, and the watermelon Pop was holding was wet with condensation, ready to cool us down.

  I’ll be honest: It took me a long time to get comfortable around Marcia, and to accept she wasn’t going anywhere. I’d never really been jealous before, and wasn’t sure how to handle that emotion. But for Jake and Pop, she was part of the family, and that wasn’t subject to debate. At first we had been wary about each other, circling like nervous dogs. Then we made an incredible discovery, we had something in common: Jake’s foibles! Torturing Jake by sharing tales of his little idiosyncrasies was just the thing to bring Marcia and me closer.

  Like the way, when it was his turn to do dishes, he put the silverware into the dishwasher any which way. Or the way, when he slept, that his pillow would somehow travel down from his head to halfway down the bed. Or the way—

  You get the picture. It was so funny watching him squirm, when Marcia and I pounced on one of those things.

  And Pop? Let me tell you something I didn’t realize: Pop had known Uncle Ron for years. Ron had been coming up to the cabin for writing retreats long before deciding to move up there permanently, and Pop had been his pilot. They’d had many long talks on the trips, and Pop had stories to tell. It was almost like having my uncle back with me, hearing about his adventures.

  But where was Jake? I looked around for him and didn’t see him. I had the absurd worry: what if he decided not to fly? What if he let us all come out here, but in the end the idea was too much for him?

  Which was ridiculous, because his truck was right here.

  I found him near the plane.

  “They’re back in the parking lot, ready to send us off,” I said to him.

  His hand stroked the plane’s cowling, like he was petting a giant animal. “It’s a big day. Guess I just wanted a minute to take it all in.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Who?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a joke.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I mean, I’m surprised to find I’m a little scared.”

  I put my arm around him. “But this is what we’re supposed to do, right? After a trauma, you spend a little time healing, then you get back on the horse.”

  “Is that another joke?”

  “Not this time. But come on, let everybody say goodbye to us.”

  Everybody was a little nervous on our behalf. Well, except Pop. He’d been over that plane’s engine more times than anybody, even Jake, and wouldn’t have let us go up if he hadn’t been satisfied with it.

  “You bring my boy back safe,” Mom told Jake.

  “Or, y’know, just leave him up there. Might be good for him,” said Amand
a. She grabbed Jake’s face and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. (”I’ve decided I’m jealous,” she’d told me a few weeks ago. “He’s hot, he works with his hands, he likes poetry…why doesn’t he have a brother?”)

  “Whatever you do,” said Marcia, “please don’t end up in the ER again. I’m so tired of that hospital!”

  Pop shook both of our hands…and then pulled us into a massive bear hug. I suddenly found my face buried in his beard. “You boys take care while you’re up there.”

  “We will, Pop,” said Jake.

  I think we both wanted to linger, to draw out the goodbyes. Maybe we were hoping that someone would convince us to stay. But no. You have to get back on the horse.

  Nobody had to tell me to be silent during his final inspection of the plane. In a way, it was a reverent, almost spiritual experience, watching him go over every inch one last time. And watching him take the controls, starting us off, he looked so natural.

  Of course he did. At long last, he was back to doing what he loved.

  Jake was born for the air.

  I didn’t look out. I kept my eyes fixed on his face as we raced down the runway, building up speed. Watched the tight set of his jaw as he hurtled us forward, the tension of his eyes just at the last moment—

  And then we were up, and his face broke into a look of total joy. We were climbing, and it was everything to him. Now I couldn’t help it, I looked out, looked down.

  There was the big world, rushing away from us, as we raced toward the sky.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, and all he could do was nod. Was that a tear in the corner of his eye? He’d never admit that. It would be our secret.

  Time felt so strange up here, as the world below was overlaid by memory. I was surprised how soon we came upon the lake, still dazzling with the sunlight dancing off its waves. Our first flight had been in early spring, but now the trees were in the fullness of their green, rich and deep and dark beneath us.

  “Look,” he said. “There it is.”

  We could see it long before we reached it: The blackened scar etched into the trees, the place we had crashed.