by Rachel Kane
I had to laugh. “Okay, okay, I surrender. It’s not fine, it’s very awkward and weird. But what I don’t get is why it’s weird for you. It’s your house. Your family. I’m the one facing my mom moving in with me. Meanwhile, not that it’s any of my business, but you look tense as hell.”
He knelt down and picked up a stone from off the ground. In one smooth movement, he flicked it out over the water, where it hopped three times before sinking. “Are we going to talk for real here, or are we going to stick with small talk?”
Small talk only, my mind insisted.
“I’m starting to think small talk is the most stressful talk of all,” I said.
He nodded. “That’s it. That’s it exactly. It’s all pretense. It’s fake. I do it all the time, and it’s killing me. Whoa, scratch that, too dramatic. It’s…um…slightly wounding me.”
“All right, I’ll start then,” I said. “Just to make things as awkward for the both of us as possible. Why didn’t you ever get back in touch with me?”
“I can tell you’re a lawyer because you went right for the jugular,” he said.
I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have asked. It doesn’t really matter. It was years ago. Water under the bridge.”
“No, no, it’s a fair question…but the answer would be really, really long, and…hell, I don’t know, Micah, can you just chalk it up to me being an asshole? Do you want me to apologize, or do you want the whole story?”
He was giving me the Headache Look, and if I hadn’t been bombarded with nostalgia before, that hit me hard.
Back in the old days—before we were together, back when we were just friends—whenever Theo had a problem, he’d squint at it, and rub his temples. Massaging his brain into action, was the way Val used to describe it, but I always thought of it as Theo’s Headache Look. He looked like one of those guys on the ibuprofen commercials who is on the verge of a migraine.
Of course, usually his problems were self-inflicted, like when he was about to get in trouble, and had to figure out how to lie his way out of it.
Are you lying about something right now?
I realized that wasn’t the first time I’d had that thought about him today.
Theo was hiding things, and was having a hard time navigating through it.
“You know what,” I said, “I don’t need the story, but I don’t really need an apology either. It’s ancient history. Seriously, how many people from back then do we still keep up with? I know three guys from grade school that live up in Corinth these days, but it’s not like we hang out or anything. I’ve got one friend from high school that I still talk to regularly. And that’s it, really. It’s the past.”
He sighed, and some of the tension went out of those broad shoulders. “Thanks. You’re right. Life is too damn complicated, to be dragging the past around with you all the time.”
Yeah, but sometimes you get dragged into the past without asking for it to happen…like what just happened to me.
At least we’d acknowledged things. Cleared the air. Right?
Except for the part where he didn’t explain anything.
Yeah, it shouldn’t have mattered, but I was here, I was suddenly knee-deep in the past, and suddenly it did matter to me. It was easy enough to forget things back in Corinth, to surround myself with work and clients, but come on, right over there was the spot where we’d had our last kiss. How could I not think about the way things had ended?
But now I’d given him an out. I’d backed down, and now he’d never have to tell me what happened.
None of your business, that’s what.
Say what you will about Jerome (and I’d said a lot about him a few months ago), he’d made it absolutely clear why he had left me. You would’ve thought he was taking me to court, he marshaled so many arguments for why he was leaving. The lack of connection, the long hours, the way the spark between us had been extinguished.
At least there was no mystery there.
Hell, I could even agree with some what what he’d said. Lack of connection? Absolutely. If anything, I was demonstrating that right now. Cutting myself off from pressing Theo about our break-up, cutting off any connection with someone who had once been really important to me. Pushing the past aside, refusing to deal with it, pretending I was comfortable with that.
When you say it’s fine, it’s okay over and over, you’re not saying things are fine and okay.
You’re saying go away.
Now why someone would be so bad at connections…I’m sure Jerome could expound on that for a few hours, but I really wasn’t interested.
It didn’t matter for this weekend with Theo. I wasn’t here for therapy, and I wasn’t here to rekindle any old flames.
Lack of connection was just fine.
9
Theo
It wasn’t in my bedroom; most of my old belongings had been packed up, replaced with decor that matched the rest of the house, leaving my room strangely anonymous. When I first walked into it, I couldn’t even be sure it was mine.
It wasn’t tucked away in the closet, either in the two crates on the floor, or the boxes up on the high shelf.
It wasn’t in Val’s room either; I checked.
Beginning to feel like my entire life had been erased, I began looking through all the other bedrooms upstairs, except of course Mother’s, which I left untouched.
Where was it? There was no one I could ask. I surely couldn’t ask Mildred; she’d immediately have questions. Consuela never came upstairs, so she wouldn’t have any idea.
I looked around the hall, glancing down the staircase; the last thing I needed was for anyone to see me like this, frantic, consumed with the search.
While casting around, though, I spotted the attic door.
Surely not.
But it was worth checking.
As I reached the end of the hall, I again glanced behind me. No one was coming. No one would pose awkward questions. That was good.
The door went creeeeeeeak, the old hinges complaining loudly. When I was little, it used to scare me every Christmas, when Mother and Mildred would go to the attic for the decorations. That long, solemn creak seemed to promise terrors beyond my youthful imaginings.
It’s just a door. A door that we never got around to oiling.
Behind the door, the dark attic stairs stretched upward. There were no cobwebs, because Harrison House wasn’t haunted, it was just a house.
All the ghosts I’d encountered since I got here were in my own head.
Would you stop?
That’s what Micah had said into the phone, when I was just a little distance away.
Listen, first off, that’s not what I’m down here for, and second, even if I were down here for that, it wouldn’t be with Theophilus Vandiver Harrison.
His words echoed in my head as I climbed the stairs.
Down here for what? What wouldn’t be with me?
How the hell did he remember my middle name after all these years? I couldn’t remember his!
Oh, wait, I did. Thomas. Micah Thomas Reynolds. Back when we were kids, if you called him Tommy he would punch you in the arm.
The attic spread before me, vast and dark. When I switched on the old bulb overhead, the room was cast into a warm glow. It wasn’t spooky at all up here, not really. If anything, it was a little sad, all the forgotten things. The old chairs we used to have in the drawing room. Val’s rocking horse. He would sit on that thing for hours, back and forth, back and forth.
What was going to happen to all this, when Mother sold the house? Where would it all go?
It wasn’t an entirely pragmatic thought. The answer, of course, was that we could easily store it all somewhere.
But that wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as having it here, where it belonged.
I’d taken her side, and yet here I was, having second thoughts. My fingers leaving a trail in the dust atop an old sideboard covered in boxes.
There were a few boxes marked Theo�
��s Room, and my heart fluttered.
Was it here? I rushed to those boxes, pulling them out into the light.
There were my race-car curtains, at the top of the first box! Not what I was looking for, but they gave me a rush of memory nonetheless. Down in my room, they had been replaced by ivory drapes.
That shouldn’t have been a surprise. Even if I’d kept coming back home, year after year, I’m sure at some point we would’ve updated my bedroom, removing all the little-boy decorations. The fact that I’d been a teenager with race-car curtains had been funny to me, a running joke, my mom insisting every year that we needed to redecorate, me insisting that it was tradition.
(Micah, lying back on my bed, skin still humid and soft from the lake and the sun, idly counting the number of red cars on the curtains, while I counted his ribs…)
I don’t know why I was looking for some sign that our relationship had happened. There wasn’t any doubt about it. I certainly hadn’t hallucinated our time together.
He had dismissed it so casually in our conversation by the lake. I don’t need the story, but I don’t really need an apology either.
I had readily agreed, although for me it wasn’t true. I think I did need the story. I needed him to ask me about it. Some part of me wanted to be prodded, interrogated, until the whole thing came to light, because now that I was back here, I was feeling guilty as hell.
Worse than guilty. Feeling like I was returning to a fork in the road, where years ago I’d taken the wrong path.
And nobody wanted to talk about that. The one person who could have really understood it, didn’t want to hear about it. Said it was ancient history.
Like none of it had mattered to him.
I sat on the floor next to the boxes and breathed slowly. It mattered to me.
Everything mattered. I was taking things so hard lately.
It’s not that I wasn’t grateful to Val. It’s not that I hadn’t found a niche, doing a job I was able to do, making money, strengthening the family’s legacy.
But it all felt so fake.
It felt like…like work.
I saw the corner of a canvas beneath folded sheets, and I dug it out. Turning it toward the light, I looked at it with a gasp, as I felt myself drawn back into history.
Let me paint you, I’d told him.
He looked up from the bed, the light playing across his cheek in such a complex way, I felt like collapsing. Back then, light could do that to me. I’d see a shape, a shadow, and want to capture it on canvas so badly it was all I could do to stand upright. The world was so vivid.
Me? he’d asked. Come give me another kiss first.
There had been no time for that. I dragged out my kit. He watched me, amused, as I hurriedly set up my easel, grabbed one of the prepared canvases I always had nearby. A few quick strokes of the pencil had the basic outlines in place—it was going to be rough, it wasn’t going to be about capturing every detail, it was about the light, finding a way to document the way his skin glowed with the sun at this angle, as though he were half-translucent.
I mixed paints on my palette with a passionate urgency, my hand gripping the brush, the bristles slapping and pulling through color, dabbing, going back, a little more on the canvas—
Can I see it?
No! Stay still! I’m going to lose the light!
His laughter was even brighter than the sun, and he lay back, his body full of that easy confidence of a young man in love.
A stray cloud passed in front of the sun.
I gasped. No. The glow had vanished, that quickly. Come back, I’d told the sun, rushing to the window, only to see a gathering storm. They happened so frequently during summer, you’d get used to it, getting your swimming done in the morning before the thunder started.
I looked back at Micah. He was still beautiful, but that angelic light had left.
You can still paint, he said, but he didn’t understand. It was about capturing a moment, a glow, a sensation.
I set my brush down.
Oh, I see what you’ve got in mind, he said, and I didn’t realize what he was talking about until I looked down, and saw that this burst of painting had caused me to stiffen, my hardness pressed tight against my pants.
Shaking my head, I set the painting back in the box. I felt dizzy and unable to breathe.
What happened to me? I had been so passionate then. Yes, all teenagers are passionate, their hormones pushing them to the point of the ridiculous, all emotions thundering at the extremes, but this had been different. I’d known what I wanted to do with my life. I’d had a plan, one that gave me such hope for the future.
School in Paris. Studying the great masters. Learning everything, from the techniques of Durer to the theories behind the latest pop art movements. Positioning myself in the great history of painting, finding my own voice, my own light.
Micah by my side, my love, my muse.
None of it had happened. None of it. Not a single shred of a dream from those days had come true.
I pulled the painting back from the box.
Wretched thing. The outlines of a young man, blotches of color, you couldn’t even tell what was happening yet, it had been interrupted.
Back then, it had felt like there would be time to come back to it.
When I’d started this painting, my father had been alive. Val had just started working with him. Mother was hosting parties, convincing her coastal friends to join us by the lake. Micah had been talking nonstop about college, ever since my dad agreed to pay his way. Everything had been so full of potential.
Everyone had moved on.
Val, flush in the fullness of his life, doing exactly what he pleased, and making millions at it.
Mother, now apparently with a new boyfriend, refusing to be a permanent widow.
Micah, who hadn’t quite followed his dreams, yet was still an attorney, and you could feel the way the energy crackled off of him. You knew that he would be passionate in his work. His passion had not been smothered. And what was going on in his personal life? I hadn’t dared ask. But men who look like Micah aren’t single. The world can’t stand it. There would be a line of suitors a mile long, trying to get with him.
Everyone’s life, all full up, except mine. Feeling that lack. That emptiness.
When you read about desire, when you read about attraction, lust, love, they sound like very positive things, don’t they? They sound glorious, like sunbeams shining down from heaven.
But they all begin in the emptiness.
In the recognition that there’s a void in your heart, and if you don’t fill it, your soul will die. You’ll be like a flower that tried to grow in a dark cave, pale, withered, finally falling to the ground, unable to bear your own weight.
Looking down at the painting, I could feel that void, could feel it calling out for help. Mixing up the Micah of before, and the Micah of right now.
No, it was too much to ask of anyone, to help me with this emptiness.
It was too late. Too much time had passed between me and Micah. No matter what I felt, it would be wrong to pursue him, to put myself in his path, to ask him to recognize me.
I shoved the painting back in the box.
I turned off the attic light.
Downstairs, they were having coffee.
“You missed dinner, dear,” said Mother at the head of the table.
Val and Micah had pushed aside their dessert plates, and were watching my arrival.
“I’m not a painter,” I said, sitting down.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Val cocked an eyebrow at me.
“I’m telling Micah. I’m not a painter. I gave it up, so I could join the business. I never went to Paris, I never did any of the things we talked about. I just wanted you to know.”
A strained silence fell over the table. Micah wouldn’t meet my eyes. His cheeks reddened, as though he were unsure how he’d become the center of attention.
“Were you drinking
upstairs?” asked Val.
“What? No, I wasn’t drinking,” I said. “I was rummaging. I was trying to figure out something about the past, since one way or another it’s all about to be erased. We’re all friends and family here, right? If I can’t tell you about the futility of my life, who can I tell?”
Mother set her coffee down. “Just like old times, I see. What brought this on?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Ancient history. Isn’t that right, Micah? It’s all ancient history now.”
Val looked over at Micah, then at me, as though wondering if something had passed between us, some meaningful moment he had missed.
But Micah knew what I meant. He touched his napkin to his lips. “I’m sorry to hear you don’t paint anymore,” he said. “I thought you mentioned—”
“Yeah,” I said. “I lied. Sorry for that. But hey, at least you’ll accept an apology about that, right? If not for anything else?”
Mother pushed herself up from the table, and nodded to Val. “I think I’ll go back to the study.”
Val was busy looking between me and Micah, as though trying to puzzle out what had just happened.
Mother cleared her throat. “I said, Val, that I think I’ll go back to the study.”
“Oh. Oh. Yes. I will come too.”
Elbows to either side of my plate, I rested my head in my hands. “At least I haven’t lost my touch. I can clear the room with the best of ‘em.”
“So,” said Micah.
“Yeah.”
10
Micah
“All this time, when I’ve imagined you—”
“Does that happen often?” asked Theo.
I ignored the question and its implications. “I thought of you as this intense painter, locked away in a messy studio, dropcloths and spilled paint, jars full of brushes… Off living your dreams, unlike me. I suppose I resented that.”
“Surprise,” he said. He had picked up his fork and was tapping the tines against the edge of his empty plate. “I see you looking very shocked there, but I might mention that of the two of us, you clearly came out ahead.”
