Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  Mom sits listening, and when I’m done, she says, “Well, that’s something, at least, that we know about her.”

  And I can feel the slightest bit of helium filling me and lifting me off the floor.

  She says, “You know, that happened to me a long time ago. Getting locked in the basement of Rosecroft. Unfortunately, I was by myself and not with a cute boy.”

  She tells me then about the first time she came to visit Aunt Claudine, back when the house still had a ceiling and floors and all its walls were intact. While the grown-ups did boring grown-up things, my mom wandered off alone and found herself in the basement. She says it was used as storage then too, and she picked through old books and clothing until she heard her mom calling her. That was when she tried the door—the same one she’d come in, the one that led up to the hallway—and it was locked. She said she banged on the door and shouted her head off, and eventually she hoisted herself out a window. When she was back inside the house, she asked why they hadn’t let her out, and they said they’d never heard her, and besides, the door was unlocked.

  “So I tried it myself and it opened. Just like that.” She sits back on her heels.

  “Do you think it was Tillie?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure I believe in ghosts, but I do think we’re all made up of energy, and it makes sense we would leave some of that behind, especially in the case of someone who died so tragically. I always think of it as leaving an imprint.”

  I look around me, not just at this room but at the island outside the windows, and wonder if I’ll leave an imprint after I’m gone from here.

  For four hours we talk and read, and at some point I look up at my mom, at the way her hair is falling over the page of the book she’s thumbing through, at the way she blows it out of her face now and then, not bothering to brush it aside with her hands, which are too busy with papers.

  “Mom?” I say.

  She looks up. “Yes?”

  “Thanks for introducing me to this side of the family.”

  She smiles, and suddenly she looks like the mom I’ve always known my whole life, the one who chased nightmares away and had the answer to every question, no matter what I wanted to know.

  “More than words,” she says, which is shorthand for I love you more than words.

  “More than words,” I say.

  DAY 16

  (PART TWO)

  A black truck sits in the road outside Addy’s house. I walk past it, up the path, my mind still back at the museum with my mom and Tillie and Claudine. Miah is waiting for me on the porch steps. I’m surprised and not surprised, glad but irritated to see him. He sits like an old man, hunched over in the sun. The moment he sees me, he changes into Miah again, up on his feet, stretching, smiling down at me.

  I say, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  I look past him at the truck.

  “It’s important, Captain.”

  And his smile wavers, like he can barely hold on to it. Every part of me—well, almost every part—wants to tell him no, but there’s something in his voice and that wavering smile, and more than that, there’s me not wanting to be the person who worries for the rest of her life that the boy she’s seeing is having sex with another girl or being swallowed by an alligator or who just generally doesn’t let herself believe anything ever again.

  For all these reasons I say, “Okay.”

  * * *

  —

  We head north on Main Road. The truck is bouncing and shaking over the ruts created by the rain and the July heat. I can hear my teeth chattering from the impact, but he is being quiet. The kind of quiet where he is far away. I look at him to make sure he’s still there, one hand on the wheel, the other on his leg.

  I don’t talk and neither does he, and this isn’t companionable silence. This is me being so deep in my head that I can’t get out. This is him being somewhere else completely. I stare out the window and concentrate on the trees.

  A few minutes later he pulls the truck over on the narrow, grassy shoulder of Main Road, leaving just enough space for another vehicle to pass. He gets out, walks around to my side, and leans in the window.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “Can’t I just make out with you?” He’s grinning at me, but not really at me because he’s still somewhere else, like he’s phoning it in.

  “You can, but why are we stopping?” Because I know he’s up to something.

  “It’s time for you to learn to ride a bike.”

  “Here?” I stare at the road stretching out ahead.

  “Here.”

  “But I’m wearing a dress. And flip-flops. I can’t learn to ride a bike in a dress and flip-flops. And, I don’t know, it might rain.” I squint up at the sky, which is nothing but blue and sun. “And I don’t think I’m cut out to ride a bike. And really, it’s fine. I mean, if I never learn to ride one, I’ll be okay.” This is true, but I’m also feeling cut off from him and irritated and like, Why am I even here?

  All the while, he’s rummaging around in the truck bed. He comes back with a bright red helmet and says, “Captain, you’re going to learn to ride this bike so that tonight at low tide, we can ride on the beach under the stars.” He hands me the helmet.

  And then he opens my door, and I’m standing on the side of Main Road in my sundress and flip-flops, and he’s ducking behind a giant oak tree and wheeling out this old blue bicycle.

  “Isn’t there a better place to learn? The road is too rough and someone could come along.”

  He says, “It’s not rough anymore.”

  And I look past him, and that’s when I see that the road is completely flat and even.

  “I raked out the washboard so you could have a level surface to learn on.”

  It must have taken him hours. And maybe some part of him is still here and not far away after all, which is why I strap on the helmet and walk over to the bike and throw a leg over the seat and stand there waiting. I don’t want to look like an idiot. I don’t want to fall or break myself in two, and I don’t want to let him down. But he came out here and flattened the road so that I could learn to ride on it, which might be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, so the least I can do is try.

  He moves to the front of the bike so he’s facing me.

  I say, “What if I can’t do it?”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure you can do anything you set your extremely stubborn mind to.”

  “I’m not stubborn.”

  He laughs, and it sounds more like him than anything I’ve heard him say so far today. Then he places one hand on the seat and the other on the left handlebar. “Okay, a few things to remember. Pedal hard. Pedal fast. And keep your chin up and eyes forward. The bike’s going to go where your eyes go. The trick is to pedal. The faster you go, the easier it is. And don’t overthink it.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “On three. One…two…”

  “Wait. Kiss me.”

  He moves closer, bracing the bike with his legs. Then he puts his hands on either side of my face and pulls me to him. And kisses me long and deep, as if I’m a soldier going off to war. I drink it in because his hands on my face and his mouth on mine make me feel like he’s actually here after all, and even more than that, they make me feel like I’m here too.

  He counts down again, and on three we take off, me pedaling and him pushing. I’m pedaling as fast as I can, and the bike is wobbling, and just when I think I’m going to go over, he steadies it.

  “I’ll be right beside you until you get so good at it you’re ready to fly down the beach.”

  We go like this for a while—me pedaling fast, him pushing. The bike wobbling, him holding on, my feet hitting the ground. Over and over again. Nothing on earth but Miah and me and this bike. Every t
ime, I hit the brake too hard and nearly fly over the handlebars.

  “Go easy on the brake. Worse comes to worst, you’re going to fall. But if you do, screw it. You’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t want to fall.”

  “But you might. The sooner you accept that fact, the better, Captain.”

  “This is some bullshit life lesson, isn’t it?”

  “I’m just here to teach you how to ride a motherfuckin’ bike.” He wears an easy grin, like, Everything’s good, I’m just messing around. But there’s a sudden edge to his voice that I’ve never heard before.

  “Whoa.”

  “What?”

  “That.” I point at him. “That tone. What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. It’s not like you to blow me off and then pretend nothing happened and then be all, Everything’s great, everything’s fine.”

  “Maybe you just don’t know me very well.” And it feels almost like he’s testing me.

  “Maybe if you’d tell me what’s going on with you, I’d know you better.”

  “Listen, I’m good, Captain. I’m fucking great. I’ll be even greater if you learn how to ride this bike.”

  I narrow my eyes at him, just to let him know that I don’t buy any of it, not for a second.

  “Now come on. Let’s do this.”

  “Fine,” I say. “But we are not done talking.”

  I take off, mostly to get away from him. He runs beside me. “Pedal hard, pedal fast.” I pedal harder and faster so that he can’t keep up. The last thing I hear him yell is, “Chin up. Eyes forward.”

  And then it goes quiet. I’m pedaling and pedaling, and in a few seconds I realize he’s no longer there. For one instant, I take it in—the air on my face, the wild, exhilarating rush of sailing past the world. I am completely and utterly free. I want to keep going. I want to go faster and faster until I go soaring off into the sky like in E.T. I want to fly above the earth and the clouds and the sun.

  Suddenly the pedals are spinning too fast and furious for my feet. I brake too hard and nearly go over, a dust cloud billowing around me. But I steady myself, digging my feet into the road, coughing up a lung, and when I turn around, I see him sprinting toward me.

  He nearly tackles me, and we’re laughing and I’m jumping up and down, only I get tangled in the bike, and then we both go toppling over into the dirt of the road. We lie there catching our breath, and the trees and sky are our ceiling.

  We blink up into the blue. I tell myself to let the silence be. To let him talk when he wants to. If he wants to.

  I quiet my heart and my pulse. I quiet my brain, which is saying, He’s changed his mind. That’s what yesterday was about. You don’t really know him. You’ll never know him, no matter how naked you both are. This is what you get when you let yourself care too much. Even if he says the thing you dread most—“I don’t like you anymore; I never liked you or loved you because you are unlovable”—you are going to be okay.

  I tell myself to live right now in that blue and to stop bracing myself for the worst. I lie perfectly still until the blue surrounds me, until it moves through my veins and holds me there, part of it.

  From the ground he says, “My mom had a panic attack in a grocery store last week. My sister called the inn yesterday to say she’s been in bed since it happened. She hasn’t gone to work or eaten, and Kenzie’s trying to look after everything. I had no idea.”

  “Is she okay? Your mom?”

  “She will be, to the extent that she’s ever okay. The first episode I remember, I was six, only I didn’t know what it was. I thought she was playing a game….” His voice trails off. “So that’s where I was yesterday. I had to go to Jacksonville to take care of it.” There’s more that he isn’t saying. I can hear it under his words.

  I lie back and say, very still, very quiet, “I can only imagine what that was like, and I’m so sorry it happened. But it’s not okay to get edgy with me or take it out on me or make me feel like some kind of inconvenience. And it’s not okay to ghost me. The first thing I’ll think is that it’s something I did or that you’ve changed your mind or that you’re fucking things up because this is good, you and me, and I’d rather just know what the real story is. You be honest with me; I’ll be honest with you. I’m talking this is you; this is me. Take it or leave it.”

  He holds my gaze for a second. “Shit.” He turns his eyes back to the sky. “Okay.” He sighs. And I can see him thinking and struggling and trying to figure out what to say. Finally he goes, “So I’m used to it. It happens. It’s been happening all my life and I’m there, I show up, I handle it. But I’m supposed to have eight weeks this summer here on this island. Just me. Eight weeks. That’s all. Two months for me to be here and do the work I need to do without having to go take care of everyone.”

  “What about your brother? He’s older. Can’t he help?”

  “Was older.”

  “What?”

  “My brother was older.”

  Before I can ask what happened, if this is the heartbreak he’s alluded to that he’s not ready to talk about, he says, “It’s the first summer I haven’t ferried home every weekend. I’m getting ready to go away for a year, and they need to get used to me being gone. But how can I go away when my mom needs me? The thing is, she’s sick but not sick enough to not know what she’s doing. ‘So now that you have this fancy life, you’re just going to turn your back on us? Do you want to tell your ten-year-old sister that you don’t care about her enough to stay here and look after her, or are you going to leave just like your dad? Who do you think put up with you all those years you were causing trouble? Of course you want to be there with all those rich people instead of here where I raised you.’ ” He exhales as if he’s been holding his breath. “This is going to sound stupid, Captain, but I just want to be eighteen. Free to fuck up and make my own decisions and not be an adult all the time. It’s like, what if I go away and something happens, something worse, and I’m not there? Or what if I stay in Jacksonville and nothing happens? Either way it’s shitty.”

  I picture what this life would look like for him. No island. No adventures. No Jeremiah Crew lit up by the sun, only Jeremiah Crew working and worrying and withering away indoors.

  “It’s your life too.”

  “But it isn’t. It never has been. It’s always been someone else’s.”

  I say, “My dad broke my mom’s heart. And sometimes all I want to do is give up college and stay with her and make sure no one ever hurts her again. But she’s the adult. She’s the mom. I have to go do what I’m supposed to do.”

  “But the difference is, she lets you be free to worry about you. You don’t have to feel selfish if you want to go off and live your life. It’s what you get to do. I can’t even look my sisters in the eye knowing I’m going to leave them, much less my mom. The day before I came to the island this summer, my sister Channy gave me a present wrapped in a paper grocery bag. It was her favorite stuffed animal, the one she’s had since she was a baby. The one she sleeps with every night. She said, ‘I’m giving you BeeBo so you won’t have to go away.’ ”

  I don’t know what to say, so I reach for his hand, threading my fingers through his. We lie there for a long time, the blue filling us both.

  After a few minutes, I turn to look at him. “So what are you doing in the fall? The real answer.”

  “Joining the rodeo circuit, becoming a full-fledged cowboy.”

  “Is this before or after NASA and the CIA?”

  “Somewhere in between.”

  I feel this rankle of frustration over the fact that he’s still deflecting. I want to ask where he’s really going and what he’s really doing, but instead I stay here, on this ground, staring up at this sky, in this moment.

  At some point he says, “I know you technically
met Shirley, but I want you to meet Bram, too. We should go have dinner with them, like she said. Let them tell you all about what a shit-heel I was when they first met me.”

  He’s letting me in. This is a big deal, but something tells me not to make it a big deal, as if he might change his mind and take back the invitation.

  “I’d love that,” I say, light and breezy. “Jeremiah Crew, thank you for teaching me to ride a bike.” Even though there is so much more I want to say.

  “Claudine Henry. Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  I sit up and look down at him, lying there.

  His eyes meet mine.

  “For you.”

  DAY 17

  I ride the old black bike to the general store, where there’s a sign tacked to the front door written in a lopsided scribble: Gone to mainland. Back soon. I jiggle the doorknob, but it’s locked. I peer in the window, and the chairs are upside down on the tables and there’s no Terri behind the counter.

  I sit for a while on the step, trying to get service. I hold the phone up this way and that. I try calling Saz anyway, and when it doesn’t go through, I write her a text:

  I know you asked me to call you and I’m trying. I hope you’re okay and that everyone is alive and well, most of all you, Sazzy.

  I read it over and then add:

  What are you and Yvonne planning to do about college? Isn’t she going to Prescott in Arizona? Do you talk about it or not talk about it? Do the two of you ever just want to stay in Mary Grove so you don’t have to leave each other?

  There’s nowhere for the text to go, and I try everything. I see an old nail in the wood of the door and pry it out. I’ve never picked a lock before, but I jiggle the nail around in the keyhole and hope it will work. It doesn’t budge, and so I stand on one leg, on the other leg, phone outstretched to the sky. I set the phone on the ground and do a handstand and my skirt balloons over my head so that the world is a black-and-yellow swirl of leaves and flowers. I think, What would the world be like if these were the only colors?