Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  And it’s better not to think about it.

  “Whatever you say, Captain.”

  And this makes me feel better and worse because of course I’m thinking about it.

  In a minute he goes, “Do you feel it?”

  “What?” Up here, at the top of this old, old tower, I brace myself for the wind, thunder, a coming storm.

  “The floor.”

  I close my eyes and concentrate until, through the blanket, I can feel the wood beneath my hands, my legs, my back, my head.

  “I feel it.”

  Without a word I move closer to him so that I’m against him, right where I fit, and he pulls me in so my head is on his chest and his arm is around me. “I got you,” he says, so low I almost miss it. “I can be your floor.”

  My heart grabs on to this even as I tell myself, This moment is enough. Right now is enough. We don’t need to be anything more than now.

  DAYS 21–22

  To get ready for Addy’s visit, Mom and I change the sheets in both bedrooms and run the vacuum and clean the bathrooms. We give Miah a grocery list, and three and a half hours later he drops off four brown bags. I watch through the window as he moseys backward down the path toward his truck, grinning at me the whole way.

  I say to my mom, “I can stay with him while Addy’s here.”

  “Nice try, but no. Someone can sleep on the sofa in the office.” Which means me.

  “But you two have a lot to catch up on. If Saz was coming, we’d be up all night.”

  “Addy and I are old. We’ll be going to bed by ten.”

  * * *

  —

  The general store is open again. I leave my bike outside, next to the door, under the sign that says ICE, ICE CREAM, BEVERAGES & MORE! As I walk in, Terri looks up from her book (Valley of the Dolls) and says, “I heard Addy Birch is coming in today,” because the island is small and everyone knows everything.

  I ask her about her time off-island, and she tells me about her sister’s new grandbaby and the movie she saw starring that boy from Rocketman. I buy an ice cream sandwich and say I need to call my friend.

  I throw my bag down on the table, and before Terri can go back to her book, Saz answers the phone. “The hell?”

  “Sorry. The store’s been closed since Wednesday and it’s literally the only place I can get service. Are you okay?” I unpeel the wrapper from the ice cream and take a bite, enjoying the cold as it moves down my throat.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “You’re getting married.”

  “It’s about your dad.”

  “My dad?” My ice cream starts dripping onto the table. For some reason it takes me a second to realize she’s talking about my dad, as in my dad, Neil Henry. This is how little I’ve been thinking about him lately.

  “My parents were out at the White Lion—you know, that bar over on the west side? I guess they saw him there with someone.”

  It takes me a minute because I’m trying to imagine my dad at a bar. “Someone?”

  “A woman. I don’t know who it was. She had brown hair. They didn’t recognize her.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “Just having a drink. My mom said when your dad saw them, he left, like, a minute later. The woman stayed, so maybe it was someone he was just talking to, someone he met while he was sitting there. I mean, right? That was probably it.”

  “If that was it, why are you telling me?”

  “Because in case there was more to it, I thought you should know. I’d want to know.”

  “Would you?” My voice goes loud and sharp.

  “Yes. And I’d want to hear it from you.”

  I want to hang up on her. Actually, I want this conversation to never have happened because until this moment it’s been a good day, bright and warm but not too warm, and Addy’s coming and there’s the promise of seeing Miah later. But I don’t hang up on her because this is Saz and she’s my best friend and she means me no harm and she loves me more than Etsy and Jolly Ranchers and Byron, her favorite brother. So in this dry, small voice I thank her and tell her I have to go because Addy’s almost here and that I love her too. Not that I love her more than this and that and that, because my brain has gone blank and silent, but I love her just the same.

  * * *

  —

  Addy arrives on the afternoon ferry. Mom and I meet her, and she hugs my mom first and then me and then my mom again. Addy Birch is trim and elegant, with gray hair shorter than mine and dancing blue eyes. From the second she steps off the ferry, dressed in white linen pants and a flowing kimono top, she looks like the Addy I’ve known since I was a little girl—timeless, ageless—and I get a lump in my throat. Home.

  My mom has been close with Addy all her life. She was there for her when Danny drowned in the rip current. She was there for her after Addy divorced her husband, Ray. That was when Addy came here to this island house—the one she’d inherited from her mother—to catch her breath, as she called it. It was always Addy and Mom, Mom and Addy, just like Saz and me.

  We go to dinner at the inn and no one mentions my dad. I take the image of him at a bar talking to a strange woman and shove it as far down inside me as I can. Way deep down where no one will see it, where you would need mining gear to find it.

  Addy talks about the man she just started dating—an attorney from Columbus—and she talks about her work as a landscape architect, which takes her up and down the East Coast and sometimes to California.

  Addy has never made me feel smaller than. I’ve always felt like she was my friend too. But as good as it is to see her, it also feels wrong. Like she shouldn’t be here. Like even though we’re staying in her house, living in her universe, she’s bringing the outside world into this one, where it doesn’t belong.

  * * *

  —

  I am busy with Addy and my mom at the museum and he is busy clearing trails with the Outward Bounders. I sit on the floor, sorting through files, and think of him, replaying our adventures in my mind. I go over them and over them so that I don’t lose a single detail, but I can already feel the edges starting to blur as we get closer to leaving.

  I tell myself that Saz’s parents only thought they saw my dad. That the person they actually saw was a man with curly hair and a scruffy beard who just looked like Neil Henry.

  I say, “I’ll be right back,” and then I get up and go into the room with the displays, where I dig through my bag until I find the blue notebook, which is beginning to fill up. I go outside into the afternoon and sit on the step. I flip to the middle of the book and find the blank pages. I smooth them open, running my hand across the paper as if I can feel the blankness and the words to come.

  * * *

  —

  After dinner, back at Addy’s house, back in the office, I leave the window open, the same way Saz and I have always left ours open for each other. For a long time I sit there, night air warming my face, gazing out into the buzzing, humming dark. The window is open and I’m here waiting. Please come. Even though we haven’t planned it, I’m hoping Miah will show up.

  I slap at a mosquito on my leg. At another by my ear. I close the window, except for a crack, and curl up on the sofa, restless under the sheet. I finish the thumbprint cookies and write until my eyes grow heavy and I can’t keep them open. I lay my head on the pillow and at some point nod off. Around midnight, I feel the pull-out couch sink a little, and Miah is there. I open my eyes and he has turned off all the lights but one.

  “Took you long enough,” I say. “I was being devoured by bugs.”

  “I think we both know I’m worth the wait.” He gives me this exaggerated wink and I roll my eyes.

  He takes the pen out of my hand, and as he reaches for the lamp, I say, “Wait.” Instead of telling him about my conversation with Saz yesterday
or my time with Addy, I show him the notebook. “You asked me if I was writing. I am. At least, I’m writing things down but I don’t know what they are yet. Maybe they’re nothing, or maybe they’ll be something more one day.”

  His eyes are on me and he is listening, really listening. He says, in this soft, soft voice, “I hope I get to read them.”

  DAYS 23–24

  Early the next morning, Mom, Addy, and I walk to the beach. We stop to pick up shells and watch the shrimp boats anchored off the shore, and I can hear the lilt in my mom’s voice, like music. When she laughs, the lines around her eyes crinkle, and I remember something I read once about the difference between a fake smile and a real one, and how you can always tell a real one by the lines around the eyes.

  Addy and my mom tell old family stories, the ones I like to hear, about when they were growing up in Georgia. I join in now and then, but these stories belong to them, and gradually I fall behind to give them some room, even though it’s just the three of us on this beach, under this broad blue sky. I watch my mom’s blond head and Addy’s gray one. They link arms and for a minute they look like sisters, gliding over the sand like swans. Addy says something and my mom starts to laugh again. She laughs so hard she bends at the waist and holds on to her knees, and when she straightens up, she wipes at her eyes and she is still laughing. For some reason the sight of this makes my own eyes go wet, and I concentrate on picking up shells.

  And then they’re waiting for me to catch up, and Addy asks me about college and am I excited and do I know who my roommate is going to be. I answer her questions, but I want to tell her to live in the moment. Let’s not think about college. I don’t want to think about college, even though it’s the thing I’ve thought about for so long. Most of all I don’t want to think about what happens to Miah and me when we leave.

  I bend down to pick up a shark tooth, and she says, “You know, Danny collected those. He kept jarfuls in his room. He loved this island. For a long time it was hard to come back here after he died.”

  “Did you ever think of selling the house?”

  “All the time. But there’s something about this place….” She trails off. “It took him away, but it can heal you. We’ve had our share of tragedy in this family, but generations of us have found solace here. That’s why I’ll always think of this island as ours. It belongs to us in ways you can’t see or describe.”

  “The island has this way of giving you what you need.” I say it almost without thinking, as if Miah’s words had been waiting right there for the perfect opportunity to come out.

  “That’s right.” She looks at me in a way that tells me she gets it or she’s heard it before.

  She hooks her arms through mine and my mom’s, and the three of us walk like this for a while. My mom says, “Claude met a boy.”

  Addy quirks an eyebrow at me. “A good one, I hope.”

  Mom goes, “His name’s Jeremiah Crew, and he works on the island.”

  “I know Jeremiah,” Addy says, and it’s hard to tell if this is a good or a bad thing.

  I bend down to pick up another shark tooth, hoping they won’t see how red I’ve gone. The tooth is the best one I’ve found so far. As large as a quarter, smooth and black. I’m thinking about how I can’t wait to show it to Miah when my mind goes to Danny. I hand Addy the shark tooth.

  “You should have this.”

  She blinks over and over, and I’m afraid she’s going to cry, but instead she takes the tooth and slips it into her pocket and gives it a pat.

  “Thank you,” she says. “He would have loved it.”

  * * *

  —

  That night, while Mom and Addy are opening a bottle of wine, I slip out with Miah. We drive down to the ferry dock. He grabs a bucket and two fishing poles from the back of the truck and we go walking out on the pier, where we catch and release, catch and release, as the night settles around us. Across the water, at the end of the world, I can see the glow of the mainland.

  When we’re done fishing, we sit on the bench at the edge of the dock and look up at the stars, taking our time, delaying going back.

  “We should go,” I say, even though I don’t want to.

  “I know.”

  We sit for a while longer, and then I get up and he gets up, and my hand is in his and we’re climbing into the truck again.

  When we get back to the house, the living room lights are on and I can see my mom and Addy through the front window, right where I left them. Under those stars, up against the side of the house, Miah kisses me. I stand on tiptoe so I can be almost as tall as he is, so I can kiss him as hard as he’s kissing me.

  I want you I want you I want you, I think. Now now now.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, the late-afternoon thunderstorm leaves the air cooler and less suffocating, and Addy offers to cook dinner. Afterward the three of us sit on the porch, Dandelion watching through the window, and eat ice cream while I tell them the ghost stories I’ve heard since I’ve been here.

  “There’s also a lady in white,” Addy says. “Over at the carriage house by Rosecroft. I saw her once when I was little. She was just hovering at the upstairs window. Watching me.” She stands, ice cream cone in hand, and demonstrates, staring blankly at me, then my mom.

  “Who was she?”

  “I don’t know.” She sits again, takes a bite of her cone. “No one’s ever been able to figure it out. But if you ask me, it’s Tillie. Some ghosts stay still and some move around. Tillie is one of the moving variety. She supposedly protects Rosecroft, and that includes the grounds and all its buildings.”

  I tell her about Tillie taking Miah’s bracelet, and then I mention the Secret Drawer Society, about how Mom said they would write notes and leave them there.

  Addy groans. She and my mom exchange this look, and suddenly I can see them at my age, even younger. Addy says, “Every summer I would fall in love with someone, and every summer before I went home, I would write them a letter telling them everything I was too chicken to say in person. When Ray and I divorced, I came here for a while, to get my bearings.” She glances at my mom. “And I wrote him a few letters too.” She laughs and then pops the last bite of ice cream cone into her mouth. “What about you?” She turns her gaze on me. “Getting any writing done while you’re here?”

  “A little. Nothing earth-shattering. But a little.”

  Addy says, “The writing can save you.”

  My mom winks at me and I say, “So I hear.”

  I don’t want to talk about my writing, so I tell them I’m going inside to get a drink. In the kitchen, Dandelion threads through my legs, and I stoop down to pet him. In a minute I hear the screen door slam.

  “So how are you really doing?” Addy stands above me, hands on hips.

  “Oh, you know.”

  “I know.” She squats down beside me and rubs Dandelion under the chin. “I’m sorry about your parents, sweetheart. Your mom is one of the greatest women on this planet and my very best friend. She’s more my sister than my own sisters. Something like this—I don’t know. I can’t imagine it, even though I’ve been through it. But she loves that man. I’ll never understand it.”

  And it’s hard to know what she doesn’t understand—why my mom loves my dad, or why this separation is happening at all. But in that moment it feels like a curtain is lifting and I’m seeing my mom behind it, completely exposed, and all I want to do is look away but I can’t because now I’ve seen it.

  I say, “She’s always got it together, at least on the outside. I think the work helps. It’s good that she’s busy.”

  “As long as she’s not hiding. She can do that, you know. That’s why I came here. To make sure she’s not hiding too much. I want her to know she’s got me, always. And of course she has you. I need you to keep an eye on her for me until I can
come back, especially now that people know.”

  “People know?”

  “About the separation, about the fact that your mom is on an island off Georgia indefinitely, about the girlfriend.” She mutters this last thing so that I almost don’t hear it. Only I do hear it. The girlfriend.

  And in that moment the floor disappears again. I look down, searching for it, and even though it’s technically there, I know it’s gone. I don’t have to ask, What girlfriend? because I know. It goes beyond Saz’s parents seeing my dad in a bar with a woman. The way my stomach has just turned over tells me. The cold, cold chill in my bones tells me. The too-fast beating of my heart tells me.

  I don’t want you to think there’s anyone else. It’s important that you know that.

  But there is someone else. Which means not only did he drop the floor out from under me, but he also lied about it.

  “The fact that she works with him is such a fucking cliché.”

  “I know.” Because it’s easier than saying, I didn’t know. I didn’t really know any of this. I didn’t even know she existed till just now. I don’t want to hear this. Whatever this is. I want to forget I’ve heard any of it. I want to reach inside my ears and grab the words and fling them at her.

  “Your mom is being a real trouper, but it’s hard for her. And I know it’s hard for you, too.”

  I somehow say, “It is.”

  If it’s true that my mom knew about this, that she kept it secret and chose not to tell me, then she lied too. And because it’s her, this is so much worse than my dad.

  Addy puts an arm around my shoulder and squeezes me. I can smell her perfume and her shampoo. I can see the mole on the side of her neck, just behind her ear. I think of how long I’ve known her, all my life, and that I’ve known her perfume and her shampoo and the mole behind her ear just as long. But right now they seem like things that add up to nothing.