Nobody, Somebody, Anybody

by Kelly McClorey

  “Nowadays we’ve got radar and satellites, you can track all of it, wind, moisture, pressure. Sure, you can still get caught unawares, but it’s not the same. Call me crazy, but sometimes I want to know how it felt—out in the middle of the Atlantic, no radio, no Coast Guard. Just you and your brothers fighting to stay one step ahead.”

  Wind lashed the flags down on the flagpole. Lightning spiked, and we both flinched. “I can see what you mean,” I said. “But probably most of them died. People were always dying of things that could easily have been prevented. Like scurvy. Thousands, millions, of sailors died from scurvy before they finally figured out it was just a simple vitamin C deficiency.”

  “How’d they find out?”

  “A controlled trial. A doctor divided all the sailors with scurvy into groups. One was assigned to eat oranges and lemons. And they were lucky, because the others were assigned vinegar or seawater or even vitriol, which is what they used to call sulfuric acid. He published the results, but people ignored it at first, like a lot of important discoveries.”

  I could feel Doug studying the side of my face. “Your parents must’ve done something right,” he said. “I don’t get it. My kids won’t even pick up a book. They’re only interested in whatever it is they’ve got on their phones. My daughter’s the worst.”

  For a moment I was flushed with the warm, pleasant sensation that comes with flattery. Then I remembered my life. The conscionable thing would be to tell Doug not to worry, his kids were better off, and not to waste his admiration, because this was the extent of me, the only answers I had and they’d brought me nothing and taken me nowhere, I couldn’t even make it through a simple trip to Cape Cod.

  “Anyway, I should be thanking the gods that the cruise isn’t set to leave today.” He hitched his pants and headed for the door. “This should mean an end to the heat, I hope. Now I can get back on my exercise routine. Ha.” He palmed the swell of his stomach and dipped out of the room. He started singing again, a new version this time—“Oh, I wish I were an iPhone app-li-cation, That is what I truly wish to be”—his voice accompanied by the gusts and cracks outside, the relentless volley of rain.

  When I’d finished for the day, I posted myself at a window in a vacant room. I wanted to avoid Roula, and everyone, to move invisibly from here to somewhere else, somewhere far, far away, where I could sleep away the hours. What I would have given to have plans with Gary tonight! To know that at this moment he was in his kitchen counting out tablespoons or preheating the oven in anticipation of my arrival. But we didn’t have plans; we might never have plans again. How could I have been so reckless? Letting my foolish reveries endanger everything we’d built. For this recklessness I deserved to be punished, yes, but not permanently. Even though Gary had acted brutally in the heat of the moment, he was a reasonable person, or could be, when he had me to guide him, but even without me, if given enough time, reason should eventually prevail. In the meantime, I would make it like I didn’t exist. If I could continue to avoid him, he wouldn’t have a chance to double down on the things he’d said, and I wouldn’t have to witness the way my presence grated on him. And then, after a week or two of not seeing me, of suffering through dreary, flavorless Hungry Man dinners during which a pleasant memory of me would naturally arise, he might soften a bit, start to forget what a maniac I’d turned out to be, and even miss me a little. It might be a long shot, but it was all I had.

  The rain slackened and the clouds began to wither, letting spots of muddy light filter through. From the window I saw Roula emerge then disappear under the bowl of an umbrella. I waited for the umbrella to cross the parking lot, my jaw tight, before retrieving my things from the closet. Just as I’d begun my wearisome descent down the stairs, I heard “Hey” behind me—it shot like a blade into the back of my neck. My legs went stiff. I couldn’t handle one more thing, especially the pigeon-toed waiter.

  He was drying his hands on the front of his apron. “You’re on your way out, sorry.” His skin looked mildly irritated, as though he’d just blown his nose. “I wasn’t sure it was you at first—did you cut your hair? Looks nice. Anyway, I just thought I’d see if you wanted to come to a party. Tonight, at my house. My parents are away all week.”

  “Your parents?”

  “We have a pool, too bad the weather’s crap. Looks like it’s starting to clear up, though. It’ll be a bunch of people from here and from school. It’ll be a good time.”

  “I’m probably ten years older than you.”

  “Age is just a number,” he said, smirking.

  “Look, if you need someone to buy alcohol for you, you can just ask.”

  “No, no, that’s all taken care of. I’d really like you to come. I think you’d have fun. But if you already have plans or something, no big deal. Here, let me give you my address, in case.” He patted his apron and back pockets. “I must’ve left my pad in the kitchen.” He looked back at the kitchen door. “Here, I can just write it on your hand,” he said, uncapping a pen. He stepped closer and used his other hand to keep mine steady while he wrote. I was too depleted to resist. He smelled like seafood and steam from the dishwasher. “My name’s Jeremy, by the way. I’m not sure if you ever knew that. You’re Amy, I remember.” Our eyes met briefly before I turned to go. “Any time after eight!” he called out behind me.

  * * *

  The lightning was just a scribble in the distance now. I made no effort to rush or cover my head; I enjoyed the cool taps of rain, particularly when they surprised me in the eye. The tide was out, the exposed beach dirty and deserted but for one lone figure tracking the sand with a metal detector. There were no people on the street, no sounds but the weather and the slow march of my feet. The sidewalk appeared to be moving, twitching in response to every needle of rain. It was littered with debris that had shaken loose from the trees. When I reached for a berry on Magnolia Drive, my foot slipped on a pine cone and it spun off, jeering at me. I cornered it with my shoe, cracked its ribs.

  Through the gray drizzle I noticed him, the same homeless man from before. He was sitting outside an orthodontist’s office, a soggy cardboard sign propped on his chest. I paused in front of him. “Adapt or die,” I read. “Do you really think it’s that simple?” I figured a free ice cream had earned me at least a shred of civility.

  “You smell like chemicals,” he snarled. “You work for the government. Don’t try to lie.” I bolted away while he shouted, “Watch out! She’s radioactive. Don’t let her lie!”

  Once I’d turned the corner, I stopped under a tree and sniffed my shirt and hands. The chemical fumes of cleaning products did linger there, but only faintly. I turned my hand over. Jeremy’s message was smudged but still readable: “21 Sargent St.” I knew that house; it had a particularly grand fence. Under that he’d drawn a stupid little smiley face with an extra line so it looked like its tongue was sticking out. Age is just a number—how original!

  I’d been meandering for a good hour or more when I came upon the supermarket where the deli workers used to know my name. I dodged inside and paced the perimeter of the deli, trying to scout who was behind the counter. It was her—the woman with the mustache who had once been my favorite before she’d insulted me. She yawned into her hand. When she turned to get something behind her, I saw she had sprouted a belly—in fact, she was extremely pregnant. She rocked on her feet, flaunting the ugly eggish shape of it, her apron straining to hold it in. The sight of it turned me bitter and spiteful. I gave up hiding and strutted right by, close enough to feel the puff of air blowing from the vent at the bottom of the display case.

  “Oh,” she said. “Did you want to hear the specials? We’ve got a nice hot Spanish salami today, and a slow-roasted pork—”

  My hand in the air signaled her to stop. “Actually, I’m on my way to a party. Thanks anyway.” I didn’t look back to see her reaction, but my own words kept chirping in my ears, making my face hot—what did she care about me and whether or not I was going to a party?
And a high school party at that!

  I entered the liquor store next door. I perused the rum selection, then thought better of it—they were young, and rum might be more than they could handle; I didn’t want to be responsible for any accidents. I waded through rows of wine bottles wearing stylish, mysterious labels and came to the refrigerator section, finally tugging a cheap bottle of champagne out by the neck.

  “Celebrating something special?” the clerk asked as she beeped the sticker.

  “I just passed the EMT exam,” I said, partly out of habit and partly as a trial—to see how it would feel, whether anything could be salvaged. It felt as arbitrary as if I’d claimed to have passed the bar or a kidney stone.

  “Oh, congrats. My sister’s a CNA. She’s constantly telling me to switch my shift so I can take night classes like she did. She’s always got the answer, even when you didn’t ask the question. Especially then.”

  “I hope she respects her calling. Not everyone is suited for it.”

  “Me, I get squeamish around blood.”

  * * *

  The storm had boiled the heat off, and I wished for a light jacket or at least a change of clothes and a shower. I passed a lonesome bench and considered abandoning my sad pilgrimage so I could warm its lap and enjoy the bottle in peace. But I’d only end up terrorizing myself, replaying what had happened on the car ride home and envisioning all the nightmarish things that could still happen, and then I might be tempted to seek out Gary before he’d had proper time to stew. So why not go to the party and distract myself, what did I have left to lose?

  He’d taped a note to the front door with tiny letters that said “Come around back.” At the towering fence, I heard voices and got the urge to bulldoze right through and melt into the crowd, take on the form of them. Jeremy’s parents had dressed the outside of the fence in old fishing rope and strung up an assortment of buoys the shape and color of Popsicles, reds and yellows and blues. The latch on the gate was loose. Soft light winked through the crack, and I put my eye to it. Kids—they were kids—pumped beer from a keg and arced Ping-Pong balls toward pyramids of disposable cups. A girl pranced by in a bikini.

  After all that, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. What had I expected anyway, to stroll in and strike up a conversation about college applications? It was impossible, and depressing. I trudged on to the next house, slumped to the curb, and rocketed the cork off the champagne. I chugged until my throat fizzed and my eyes watered. The pavement felt damp, and I stuffed the plastic bag under my butt and chugged more. Everything began to shimmy.

  A gang of boys burst through the gate, howling and climbing over one another like mice. One broke from the group and came toward me. “Amy?” Jeremy said, curving his hand over his eyes as if the sun were shining. “What are you doing sitting out here? We were just going on a quick beer run. Hey, you guys go on without me!” he called back. One of them said something in a goofy voice, and they laughed and piled into a rusty car, the engine growling. “Don’t mind them,” he said, a bit unsteady on his feet. “Come, come in.”

  The gate tremored behind us, announcing my passage to the other side, not that anyone took notice. Kids flowed in and out of the house and congregated on a patio and in the grass. “Is that actor guy here?” I asked, scanning their faces.

  “Shell? No. He got fired. Finally. What an asshole, right?” I followed him through the yard, dimly lit by a row of bamboo poles spiked into the ground. “They’re just LEDs,” Jeremy said, tapping his nail against one. “They make them flicker so it looks like a real flame. My parents love fake crap like that. That too.” He stopped short, nearly losing his balance, to point out a table made from a wooden crate, with webbing around the base and a sheet of blue glass on top. “Supposed to look like a lobster trap.”

  We dropped into lounge chairs in the grass. Two girls in bikinis vaulted themselves into the pool, spritzing my ankles with water. “There’s Liza and Bridget—from work,” he said.

  “Seems a little cold for swimming.”

  “Not if you just killed a bottle of Smirnoff! It’s flavored like marshmallows. They go crazy for it.”

  “Alcohol actually lowers core body temperature. You might feel warmer, at first, since it increases blood flow to the skin. But really it’s diverting blood away from your vital organs. That’s why being drunk is a big risk factor in cold climates. It can lead to hypothermia.”

  “Ooh, champagne. Classy,” he said. “Can I have a sip?” His lips were so dehydrated that they made a peeling sound as they opened. The top lip snagged on his front teeth and he had to use his tongue to unstick it. He paused just before the bottle reached his mouth. “But what are we toasting to?”

  “Your parents being away.”

  “To you coming out tonight!” He put his lips where mine had been and triumphantly sucked some down. “I’m glad you decided to come.” He’d changed out of his waiter clothes and into a red T-shirt printed to look like the label on a bottle of sriracha, with the rooster in the middle and words like SHAKE WELL and NET WT. 17 OZ. The red of the shirt accentuated the reddish tip of his nose. “I want you to know, I’m not like what you think of as a typical guy my age.” Mercifully, he returned the bottle to me. I wasn’t nearly drunk enough yet. A while ago I’d stopped keeping alcohol in the house—it wasn’t like Florence Nightingale went around getting wasted. During the Crimean War, she’d even created a transfer system to encourage soldiers to send their money home rather than spend it on alcohol. But what did she have to do with me anymore? The boys came roaring back through the gate, two of them lugging a keg. “All right!” Jeremy cheered, to no response.

  One of the boys careened toward us, flanked by two others. “So who’s your friend?” he said. “No need to hide over here.” He came behind and gripped Jeremy’s shoulders. “My brother Jeremy here, he’s a stand-up guy. Hardly ever talks to a girl. He’s holding out for someone special. Are you someone special?”

  “You’re such an asshole,” Jeremy said.

  “I’m just trying to help.” He turned to his friends and they agreed, he was just trying to help. “Okay, okay. We’ll leave you to it.” He gave me a long look, and the three of them staggered away, laughing.

  Jeremy exhaled. “That’s word for you. Blaa”—he made a noise almost like gagging, with his tongue extended. “I mean Ward, like the name. Not word.” He touched his forehead as if to measure his level of intoxication. “Man, I started early.” He checked my expression, and I suspected he was trying to judge whether to play his drinking up or down, which would earn a better reaction from me. But I couldn’t have cared less. I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the companion or both, but having zero stakes in a conversation made me feel almost euphoric. “Don’t know why my parents had to give him such a stupid name anyway.”

  “That’s really your brother?” They seemed to belong to two different species, let alone families.

  “Three more days till he goes back to college. See, he’s like the perfect example of the typical douchey guy. In a fraternity and everything.”

  “Boys in my high school, they used to rank all the girls based on looks. They did it every year. The Hot One Hundred. They had a whole complicated system with different brackets and they’d all vote online and certain girls would move to the next round depending on their percentage. It took a month at least, and they wouldn’t tell the girls anything until the very end. Then they’d have a conclusive list of the top one hundred girls in order, best looking to worst.”

  “See, I’m not like that,” he said. His fingers had migrated to the arm of my chair, wriggling near my elbow. “That’s disgusting.”

  “I thought it was sort of impressive, in a way. At least they were rigorous about how they collected their data. I mean, people can’t help but be attracted to certain people and not other people. There’s no need to pretend.”

  “You’re interesting.” He turned his head to swallow a burp, faced me again, and swallowed a few more times. “
I want to figure you out.”

  “I’m not a math problem.”

  “Ha. I know that. I’m not, like, trying to find the square root, like carry the one—” He broke off into a fit of laughter. “I just mean . . . I want to get to know you. All the girls at school are exactly the same, like they’re too scared to be themselves. You can’t even tell them apart. But you seem different.”

  Different. It wasn’t a word I felt like hearing. “I’m not,” I said. “I’m the same as them.”

  “Liar.” He smiled like this was a flirtatious game we were playing, then suddenly held his chest and grimaced. “I’ve got to run inside real quick.” He stumbled to his feet. “Did you want a sweatshirt or something? You look cold.”

  “Okay.”

  “Be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

  I closed my eyes and reclined, taking long swigs of champagne. The sweet taste had turned nauseating, but the effect was just right.

  “So are you really into him or what?”

  My eyes flicked open. It was like my vision was on a delay, like I had to fit the puzzle pieces together to make it work. A figure stood above me, blotting out the light from the fake tiki torch. Finally I registered who it was: Ward, the typical douchey guy, at least according to Jeremy.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I took another, more dramatic swig.

  He was pleased by this answer—I’d played my part well—and he swept his hair back and settled into Jeremy’s chair, scooting it closer. “How do you know my adorable little brother anyway?”

  “I don’t really.” I liked how the champagne warped my voice, made it echo in my head. “He’s just always trying to hit on me at work.”

  Ward was good-looking in a way that had unanimous appeal, moody eyes and two well-punctuated dimples, and he knew exactly what type of effect this had on people. He reminded me of a boy from my high school, Brady Caldwell—he usually dated the girl who had been ranked number one.

  “Oh, Jeremy,” he said. “He watches way too many movies.”