Three Little Words

by Harvey Sarah N.

  Sid puts his dishes in the dishwasher. “You need me for anything?” he asks Megan. When she shakes her head, he says, “I’m going for a bike ride. Might stop in and see Chloe. What ferry you guys gonna catch?”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Wain says. “I’m not going.”

  “Perhaps the three o’clock?” Elizabeth says. “I’m not sure. I want to say goodbye to Irena. You’ve all been so kind.” She reaches out and touches Sid’s hand. “You’ll be back before we leave, won’t you?”

  He nods. “For sure.”

  “Good.” She stands and clears her dishes. “I’ll just have a bath in that lovely tub of yours before I get organized then. It’s such a lovely view—all that sky and ocean. Wain, dear, why don’t you have a shower?”

  “I don’t need one,” Wain says. “Are you deaf, Nana? I’m not going. I want to stay here.” His voice is losing its bluster. He’s pleading now, like a kid who wants to stay up past his bedtime.

  “I wish we could,” Elizabeth says. “I truly do. But your mother needs us.”

  “Needs you, maybe,” Wain says, pushing away from the table. His chair falls backward and he kicks it out of the way as he runs from the room.

  Elizabeth puts her head in her hands. “I’m not sure I can do this,” she says softly.

  “Then don’t,” Megan says. “Wain can stay here. I’ll drive him down myself in time for school. Believe me, I’m used to this kind of thing. You should have seen Sid when he was Wain’s age.” She rolls her eyes. “Talk about mood swings! He put any teenage girl to shame.”

  Sid is astonished. “I was never like that,” he protests, although even as he speaks he knows she is right. He used to go days without speaking, and then he’d get into a fight with Megan or Caleb or one of the other kids in the house. The fights were always about something stupid, like whether he needed a haircut or how often he washed his clothes or why an older kid got to stay up and watch a movie.

  “What helped?” Elizabeth asks.

  “Not sure,” Megan says. “Sid can probably answer that better than I can. Sid?”

  Sid thinks for a minute before he answers. “Drawing helped. A lot. Riding my bike. Hanging out with Chloe. Helping Caleb on the boat. Now I just try not to take my bad moods out on anyone else. Wain’s not there yet.” And he may never get there, Sid thinks. It would be cruel to say it.

  “Give him some time,” Megan says.

  Sid rides up to the lake but doesn’t swim. It’s one of Megan and Caleb’s hard and fast rules: No swimming solo. Not that they would ever know, but he doesn’t feel like getting wet. Or betraying their trust. He just wants to sit by himself and listen to the water lap the shore, sift the beach stones through his fingers, watch the dragonflies skim the surface of the lake. He sits for an hour, the sun on his face. I should have put on some sunscreen, he thinks. Or worn a hat. He’ll burn if he stays out much longer, so he rides back toward his house, wondering if he should stop and see Chloe. Tell her that Wain and Elizabeth are leaving.

  He stops at the end of the long driveway leading to her house. He’s spent half his childhood there. Why is he so hesitant to do what he’s done a thousand times before: ride up to the front door, open it and call out, “Anybody home?” No matter who is there—Chloe, Irena or Esther—someone will always reply, “In here, Sid,” and he will be offered a cold drink on a hot day or vice versa. Esther might be playing old show tunes on her saxophone in the dining room or she might be curled up on the window seat with a book and a glass of wine. Irena might call him into the kitchen to help prepare and eat whatever meal is in the works. Chloe might drag him up to her room and ask for his opinion on a new hairstyle or an actor in a TV show he hasn’t seen. No doubt she’ll complain about her family, which Sid finds mystifying.

  Today he lifts his hand off the brass doorknob, knocks twice and waits for someone to answer.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Chloe opens the door and frowns at him. “Since when do you knock? I was doing my nails and now they’re all smudged.” She holds up her right hand—the polish is smeared. “I’m going to have to start all over.”

  “Sorry,” Sid says. “You going Goth on me?” Chloe calls herself Pretty in Pink or Pink Lady, movie references that had to be explained to Sid. Black nail polish is something she might wear on Halloween, but not in the middle of August.

  “Maybe.” Chloe grins. “I’m thinking of going the whole Dita Von Teese route. You know: black hair, lots of eye makeup, dark red lipstick. Craig thinks she’s hot.”

  “If I knew who Dita Von what’s-her-name was, I could comment,” Sid says. “But I wish you wouldn’t. Dye your hair black, I mean. Your hair is beautiful.” And Craig’s a douche, he wants to add.

  Chloe blushes and touches her hair. “You think?”

  “Yeah, but I also think you just got nail polish in it.”

  “Crap.” Chloe slams the door and marches up to her room. “You coming?” she calls back to Sid. “You can do my toes.”

  Can’t Make Me

  “You can work at our spa if you like,” Chloe says. She’s sitting on her bed, her feet on a blue towel. Sid is bent over Chloe’s feet, concentrating on applying a clear top coat to her nails. She is right about one thing: he is good at pedicures. He has a steady hand, even though touching her foot is making him sweat. But there’s no way he’s working in her spa. He can just imagine what Wain would say.

  “I’m serious, Sid. Mom says I can set up a day spa on the porch—for teens only. I’m going to call it Spaaaah! You know, like it’s super relaxing. Fariza’s going to be my helper. We’re going to offer all-natural facials—chocolate or lemon—a cranberry body scrub—arms and legs only—manicures and pedicures. Irena said we couldn’t do the seaweed wrap or the hot-stone thing. Something about lawsuits.”

  “How did you learn how to do all this stuff?”

  “YouTube,” Chloe says. “And an article in an old Oprah magazine. It’s not like it’s rocket science.”

  “Or brain surgery,” Sid says. It’s an old joke of theirs, the rocket-science-brain-surgery thing, something they’ve been saying since they were little kids. He sits back and screws the cap back on the polish. “You’re done.”

  Chloe looks down at her feet. The polish isn’t actually black—it’s a deep, dark blue called Russian Navy. “Awesome job,” she says. “Very glam. So—you in?”

  Sid shakes his head. “Nah. I wouldn’t be any good at the chitchat.”

  Chloe wiggles her toes at him and grins. “You’re probably right. Maybe you could do a poster for us? Or some flyers? I’m gonna put them on the ferry and at the store.”

  “That I can do,” Sid says. “As soon as Wain leaves.”

  “He’s leaving? When?”

  “Today. Devi came back. She’s in the hospital. Elizabeth wants to go right away—on the three o’clock ferry. Wain says he won’t go. Megan told him he could stay. I left before they worked it all out.”

  “Wow. If my mom was sick, I’d want to be with her.”

  “Yeah, but your mom’s not crazy,” Sid says. “Not even close.”

  “You don’t have to live with her,” Chloe says. “And Devi’s your mom too. Did you forget that?”

  Sid stares at her. “Whose side are you on? Devi’s not my mom.”

  Chloe removes the cotton balls from between her toes and slips her flip-flops on her feet. “You and Wain are acting like five-year-olds.” She pretends to cry, screwing her fists into her eyes. “Wah! Wah! Wah! I don’t have a perfect family. I’m going to run away.”

  “It’s not like that,” Sid says. “I’m not running away from anything.” The minute he says it, he realizes it’s a lie.

  “So what are you going to do? Hide out here all day? Let’s go.” She grabs Sid’s arm and propels him out the door and down the stairs. “Get my bike. I gotta leave a note for Mom.”

  “You are so bossy,” Sid says.

  “That’s what you love about me,” Chloe replies. “Now get g
oing.”

  It’s true, he thinks as he gets her bike from the garage, I do love that about her. That and a lot of other things. She always knows what to do and say: Let’s make a fort, Sid. Let’s go to the lake. Don’t step in the dog shit. Keep your fingers out of the cookie dough. Do my nails. Get me my bike. He wonders if it’s a bad thing that he likes being ordered around.

  Chloe comes out of the house and jumps on her bike. “Let’s go, dude,” she says. “Time’s a wastin’.”

  He follows her down the long driveway. The poplar trees rustle in the breeze. The air smells faintly of the seaweed fertilizer Irena puts on her raspberry bushes. He wishes he could stop and pick some berries, but Chloe is racing ahead, standing up to pedal.

  When they get to his house, Elizabeth meets them on the porch.

  “I was just about to call your house, Chloe. Wain’s disappeared. Megan has taken my car to go and look for him. I’m here with Fariza and she’s very upset. She keeps asking for you, Sid. Can you stay with her while I go and look for Wain?”

  “I’ll stay, Mrs. Eikenboom,” Chloe says. “You and Sid go and look for Wain. She’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure, dear?” Elizabeth says.

  “Positive,” Chloe says. She leaves Sid on the porch with his grandmother. They can hear her call out, “Fariza, sweetie, let’s make popsicles. Then you can braid my hair.”

  “How long has he been gone?” Sid asks.

  Elizabeth shakes her head. “We’re not sure. I was in the bath for a while, and then I had a cup of coffee with Megan. I thought Wain was upstairs packing, but when I went to look for him, he was gone. Megan left about an hour ago to look for him. He didn’t take the bike, so he can’t have gone too far. Can he?” She sits down heavily on one of the porch chairs. “What if he tried hitchhiking? Oh, Sid, I’m too old for this.”

  Sid squats down beside her. Today she looks old and sort of deflated—not like the Gray Matter Granny at all. She has pulled her hair back into a scraggly ponytail. The wrinkles on her cheeks seem deeper than when he first met her. Her eyes are hooded and tired.

  “You stay here,” Sid says. “I think I might know where he’s gone, and it’s easier for me to go alone. And when I find him, I’m going to drag him back here and stuff him into the car for you. Okay?” He goes to the kitchen to fill his water bottle and grab a nectarine. “Chloe,” he calls, “I’m going to look for Wain. Elizabeth’s still here. Is Fariza okay?”

  Chloe’s voice floats down the stairs. “She’s okay. I’m reading her a story. Good luck.”

  Sid jumps on his bike and heads to the wharf, where he borrows a rowboat from one of the fishermen. In ten minutes he is dragging the rowboat onto the islet’s rocky beach, where a blue kayak is tied to a low arbutus branch.

  “Wain,” he yells. “I know you’re here. This is getting old.”

  He stomps up the beach and follows a path around the islet, which is much smaller than Jimmy Chicken. It’s so small it doesn’t even have a name. He smells smoke before he sees the fire.

  “What the fuck, Wain!” He speeds up, almost tripping on a root in the path. In a clearing on the far side of the island, Wain is hunched over a small fire, feeding it with twigs.

  “Are you insane?” Sid yells. “It’s August! You can’t have a fire!”

  Wain turns and says, “Oh, hey, it’s Smokey the Bear,” as he adds a twig to the fire. “Sorry about that, Smokey. Didn’t think you’d mind. I mean, this island is kind of a dump.”

  Sid looks around for something to carry water in—there’s nothing but a battered yogurt container. He scoops up some water and empties it onto the fire, which is actually pretty small. Wain isn’t much of a boy scout. Sid runs back and forth to the ocean, filling and emptying the container until the fire is out. Wain does nothing to stop him—or to help—until Sid orders him to smother the fire with sand and stones. When he is sure the fire is out, he sits down on a rock and says, “You’re a useless piece of shit, you know.”

  Wain says nothing.

  “You took Fariza’s book, didn’t you?”

  Wain nods and sits down beside Sid on the rock. Sid moves away. He’s so angry that he has to clench his hands together to keep from punching Wain. Even from a few feet away, he can feel the heat of Wain’s body, smell his sweat. “You stink,” he says. “Where’s the book?”

  “At the house. Under my bed. Except for this.” He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, pulls out some crumpled pages and hands them to Sid. “I heard you reading her story. I picked up the book after you took her upstairs. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How scared she must have been. Must still be. I mean, her mother’s dead. Her sister’s dead. Her father and brother killed them. I thought it would help to burn the words, like, burn away the pain. Devi did that once—burned some letters she got from my dad. She chanted a prayer when the smoke went up, and sang some Indian song. After that she was calmer. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. It was a lame idea.” He turns away, his shoulders hunched.

  “You thought it would help Fariza if you burned her story.” Sid speaks slowly. He wants to make sure he understands correctly. He hates to admit it, but he can almost see Wain’s point. Megan used to say, Put it in a bubble and watch it float away. This isn’t much different, although it has a New Age craziness to it that Sid doesn’t like.

  Wain nods. “I was imagining I was, like, a shaman, or something. On an island in the wilderness. I thought it would help her like it helped Devi.”

  Sid smooths the papers in his hands. “I can see that.”

  “You can?”

  “Kinda.”

  Wain leans into him and Sid doesn’t move away. “I didn’t mean to make it worse,” Wain says. “Is she really upset?”

  “Yup,” Sid says. “But I’ll give her back the pages, tell her you were trying to help. Or you could tell her yourself. Think you can do that?”

  Wain nods. “I guess. I’ll try anyway.”

  “Good luck explaining the shaman thing.” Sid gets up and starts to walk back to the beach where the boats are. Wain follows him, shuffling across the stones. “Maybe we could have a little ceremony in the backyard or something—that might work,” Sid says. “Tell her it’s an island thing—that we all write our nightmares down and then burn them. Watch the fear blow away.”

  Wain turns to face Sid. “Would you do that?”

  Sid thinks for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “I could do that. If you tell her you took the pages.”

  They make their way back to the wharf in silence, Sid in the rowboat, Wain in the kayak. Sid helps Wain haul the kayak up onto the wharf. Nobody seems to have noticed it was gone.

  “You’ve got a golden horseshoe up your ass, don’t you?” Sid says.

  “What?”

  “First the rowboat in Oak Bay. Now this kayak. You got away with stealing—twice.”

  “You gonna tell?” Wain asks.

  Sid shrugs. “Probably not. Least of our worries, right?”

  “Yeah.” Wain shuffles down the wharf behind Sid. “You were the lucky one, you know.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Yeah—to be brought up here. By Megan and Caleb.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you miss her? Devi?”

  “No. I hardly remember her.”

  “I think she misses you.”

  Sid stops walking and Wain bumps into his back. “Why would you think that?” Sid asks. “She hasn’t seen me for fourteen years. She left me here.”

  “She draws you.”

  “What do you mean—she draws me? She doesn’t know what I look like.”

  “She has a whole sketchbook full of drawings of white kids: babies and toddlers and little boys. All with eyes like ours. All with ringlets. They’re sure as hell not me.”

  Sid doesn’t know what to say. It freaks him out. All those years, Devi was thinking about him, wondering what he looked like. But as far as he knows, she never tried to take him back. She let Megan
and Caleb become his parents. Does that make her a good mother or a bad one?

  “She’s not a bad mother,” Wain says, as if reading Sid’s mind. “Not really. I mean, I know she loves me, but she’s not—you know—reliable. One day she’s putting little notes in my school lunch and going to work at the gallery, the next day she won’t get out of bed or she goes to a bar and brings home some random guy. When she’s manic, she can go for days without sleeping. When she’s depressed I have to get Phil or Elizabeth to buy groceries and shit. It’s hard.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sid says. “Maybe it’ll be better now—Elizabeth says they’ve got her on lithium. That helps, right?”

  “Lithium.” Wain spits the word out like a ball of phlegm. “Like that’ll last. The side effects are brutal. She never stays on it.”

  “Oh.”

  They walk side by side up to the house. Elizabeth’s car is parked in the driveway. “Megan said I could stay,” Wain says as he trudges up the steps, “but Elizabeth won’t let me.”

  “I know,” Sid says. “Maybe you could come back though. Once your mom is feeling better.”

  “Yeah.” Wain pauses on the top step. “Or maybe you could come with me.”

  “Come with you?”

  “To meet Mom. Maybe it would help her.”

  Before Sid can reply, Elizabeth opens the door and throws her arms around Wain. “It’s okay, Nana,” he says. “It’s okay. Sid found me.”

  “Thank you, Sid,” Elizabeth says. “We’re sorry to be so much trouble, aren’t we, Wain?”

  “Yeah, sorry, Sid,” Wain mumbles.

  “Run along and pack,” Elizabeth says. “The ferry leaves at three.”

  Sid puts his hand out to stop Wain from going inside. “Um, Elizabeth,” he says. “I have an idea. I mean Wain and I had an idea. If you can wait until tomorrow morning to go, then I’ll come with you.”

  “You will?” Wain says.

  “Yeah—on one condition.”