What I hear is, Everyone knew but you. We all think you’re so stupid for not being able to see that this was happening with your own father.
What she really says is, “You let me know what I can do for you. I’m not just here for your mom.”
“Thank you.” And suddenly I have to go, because if I don’t, I will start crying, and I won’t stop until I have melted into an enormous puddle on the floor. I say, “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
Then I tell Addy I need the bathroom, and I go in and shut the door and throw up my entire dinner. Afterward I sit on the closed toilet for a period of time that could be minutes or hours. And then I rinse my mouth out and reapply lipstick and smooth my hair until I look just like me again.
Back on the porch, my mom and Addy sit drinking lemonade and chatting in light, cheerful voices. Seeing Addy always does my mom good, and my mom needs this right now.
My mom looks up as I sit down next to her, and her face is happier than I’ve seen it in a while.
“Are you okay?” she says.
“Fine.” I smile. I’m good at smiling because I can hide too. I say, “Just thirsty.” I drink. My hand doesn’t shake.
She loves him, and he doesn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve either of us.
I want to lean into my mom and have her put her arm around me, have her shield me from everything. I want Addy out of our house, which is her house. I want us out of her house. I want to go back home, but not to Ohio home, because my dad lives there and it isn’t my home anymore. I want some unseen home where I will be safe and my mom and I will be happy and I won’t ever have to think about my dad again.
DAY 24
(PART TWO)
I am sitting on the bed, staring into space as if it’s a movie screen, faces flashing across it. There are three women who work directly with my father. Michelle, Fiona, and Pamela, the executive assistant. I’ve known all of them for years. They’ve come to the house for dinner. They came to my parents’ twentieth-anniversary party. They came to my graduation. Hovering like ghosts in the shadows. Like Tillie in the carriage-house window. Watching from the wings. Waiting. All of them have brown hair.
I’m not sure where to go, but I need to get out of the house. I tell my mom I’m supposed to meet Miah. I hug Addy and say I’ll see her later, even though I don’t plan to come home until they’re asleep or until she leaves the island.
I walk out.
I can barely feel my legs.
But I somehow manage to walk.
No more floor.
The words play in my head like a skipping record.
No more floor.
No more floor.
No more floor.
This is the second time in my life that the floor has disappeared from under me, and now I realize that you can never count on the floor because it’s a movable, changeable thing that anyone can take away at any moment. Same with the ground. Same with love.
I follow the drive to the sandy lane that circles in front of the inn. I walk the loop three times, and then I go back to the house and grab my bicycle and fly down Main Road.
* * *
—
I go past the horses that are grazing like it’s just another dusky evening. Knock on the door of the bright blue shotgun shack. Wait for him to appear. I’m not sure what I’ll do if he doesn’t. I don’t know where else to go. I wait and I wait, but he doesn’t answer.
* * *
—
I ride to the general store, as fast as my legs will take me. I push myself and the bike as hard as I can, trying to go faster, even though there’s nowhere to go because this is an island.
When I get to the store, I ditch the bike and run for the door. I pound on it, over and over until my fist hurts, even though—big surprise—it isn’t open because it’s late and Terri’s long gone. I dig out my phone, but of course there’s no service.
* * *
—
Back on the bicycle, I fly toward the Dip, hitting every bump in the road, holding on for dear life so that I don’t go soaring over the handlebars. I hear the music before I see the house, and then there are lights and people, and I drop the bike and go running.
* * *
—
Around ten p.m., I’m in the yard playing some sort of beanbag-toss drinking game. Miah is nowhere to be found, and so it’s Wednesday and me against Jared and Emory, and I’m downing beer after beer and enjoying the way the alcohol and the music are drowning out the noise in my head. I tell myself there is nothing in the world but this island and this beanbag toss and these people, my friends.
When we’ve used up our turns, Jared and I sit and watch the others play.
He says, “My friend Rashid was the best at this game.”
“He was the one who died?”
“Yeah.”
I study his face, which is usually wide open and easy. Right now he’s hard to read, as if a veil has dropped over his eyes.
Finally I say, “What happened to him?”
It takes him a few moments to respond. Then he tells me that Rashid killed himself three years ago in August. But this is all he says about the death. Instead Jared tells me about Rashid’s short, brilliant life, and about the strength it takes to be the one left behind. Like Aunt Claudine, I think, following the death of her mother.
Jared says, “Has Miah taken you to the old airfield yet?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We should go before you leave, maybe pack a lunch. There’s not much to see there, but for some reason I like it. I’m pretty sure you’d like it too.”
I stop thinking about one of the worst things that can happen to a person—suicide, your best friend gone forever, and all the upside-down that comes with it—and start thinking about a boy named Rashid who made the most of every second he was here and a boy named Jared who is choosing to live as fully as possible.
* * *
—
At some point, I go inside in search of the bathroom. I close the door and lean into the mirror and examine my face, not as a whole, but each feature—mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows, freckles, forehead, chin. I stand back and look at all of me. I smile. The girl smiles back. I stick out my tongue. She sticks out her tongue. I scrunch up my face. She scrunches up her face. But it’s like Addy’s shampoo, perfume, mole—they’re just details that mean nothing.
* * *
—
I come out of the bathroom and crash right into Grady, so hard we almost fall over. “Watch it,” he says, rescuing his drink before it spills everywhere.
“Sorry.”
He studies me in a way that makes me go down a checklist of my mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows, and the rest, as if I’ve forgotten to put something back in place.
I say, “So you’re going to SCAD.” Because I need the spotlight on him, not me.
“That’s the plan.”
“With your girlfriend.”
“Not with her. But yeah, she’ll be there too.”
“How can you do that? You’re with her, you’re not with her. What is that?”
“It’s what works. Not just for me. For her, too.”
“So do you sleep with other people during the summer?”
“Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Are you asking for you or just generally?”
“Generally.”
“Uh, then I say that’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“Does she know you sleep with other people?”
“Again, you don’t need to worry about it. Although you seem to be worrying about it. A lot.”
“I’m not worried,” I say. I stare at him without blinking. I’m thinking about honesty and how it doesn’t matter how much you open up and put yourself out there—people are still going to lie.
“Do you have any of your art here?”
“Not really. One or two things, maybe.”
“Can I see it?”
And I’m not sure who’s talking—me, who’s had too much to drink and is walking around with no floor, or the girl in the mirror, whose features are all in place, just like always. What I do know is that a slightly ominous burning feeling is growing in my stomach, which means I’m about to do something I’ll regret.
Grady says, “Sure.”
* * *
—
His room is upstairs, at the end of the hallway, facing the marsh. It’s just a room, not some love den filled with pinups and bongs, like I expected.
I sit on the bed. “So show me.” It feels as if I’m daring him. Show me. Show me the kind of guy you are. Show me that I’m here.
He leaves the door open. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you to show me your art.” I try to say it as breezy as a summer’s day. And I know I should get up and walk out, but there is this terrible, hollow ache inside me and I need it to go away. I need to fill it with something so that there isn’t any room for the ache or all the thoughts that come with it.
He closes the door. My heart is beating too fast and my face is flushing hot and red and a little voice inside me is going, What are you doing, Claudine? Back away. Turn away. Run away.
He walks over to me and holds out his hand. I give him mine and he pulls me to my feet, and then that hand is on my face, tracing the line of my jaw, and his forehead is against mine, and his eyes are on my mouth, and I stand like a statue, stiff and unmoving. But I don’t pull away because suddenly I want his mouth on mine, to chase away the thoughts that are creeping back into my head. Maybe that’s what I’ve wanted since I crashed into him downstairs.
And then—without asking—he kisses me. And there’s the surprise of a new and different mouth from the one I’m used to. I make myself kiss him back even as part of me is going, Stop this. Walk away. Both his hands are now on my face, just like in a book or a film, and even as I’m thinking this is a move he knows well and uses all the time, and even as the voice in me is starting to shout, STOP THIS RIGHT NOW, I keep kissing him.
I kiss him harder and he kisses me harder. His teeth bang against mine, and instead of stopping I keep going. Harder and harder.
I kiss him until I feel his hand on the skin of my back, underneath my shirt, and then I pull away as if my brain has suddenly come back to me, along with all my common sense, along with me, actual Claude, who—floor or no floor—doesn’t want to kiss Grady.
“I can’t do this. Jesus.”
“You could a second ago,” he says.
“I changed my mind. Sorry.”
He’s smiling at me, but it’s not a friendly smile. Anger hides at the corners. He says, “I don’t fucking get you.”
“You don’t have to.”
As I head toward the door, he steps in front of me.
“I’m pretty sure you came up here to lead me on. And you started all this, and now you’re walking out. Which is frustrating, if you know what I mean. You’re lucky I’m a nice guy.”
“So lucky. Please move.” It’s as if every part of me is holding its breath, even my heart, which is no longer beating fast or maybe at all.
When he doesn’t move, I say, “I may have come up here and I may have started this, which—believe me—is not one of my proudest life choices, but when I ask you to move, you should move.”
I want to wait for him to get out of the way because I shouldn’t have to be the one to walk around him. But I also know that I need to get out of here, the faster the better, and in one piece.
He doesn’t stop me as I walk around him, as I push out of his room, down the hallway, past Wednesday, down the stairs, out the door, off the porch, into the yard, past Jared, who calls after me, and Emory and the others. I forget about the bicycle and run as fast as I can.
DAY 24
(PART THREE)
The blue shotgun shack is lit up now. In a second, the door opens and it’s him. Standing in bare feet, no shirt, grinning at me. I don’t say anything. I half expect to start crying until I’ve flooded his house and this entire island. But instead I launch myself at him. Kiss him hard. Catching him off guard. He wraps his arms around me and lifts me over the threshold and into the house, and now I’m against the wall in the kitchen and I can’t kiss him hard enough. I tug at his shorts, as in I practically rip them off him, and that’s when he pulls back. Lays his hand on mine.
“Hey. What is this?”
“I want you.”
“Yeah, we’ve established that. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Can’t I just want you?”
“Fair enough.”
I kiss him again and he starts kissing me back, and there it is—his wonderful mouth, the mouth I know, the one I’m supposed to be kissing. And then he wraps an arm around me and kind of carries me upright to his bedroom, where we fall onto the bed and I can’t get him close enough. I’m swept up in him and the heat of us, and at the same time Grady’s mouth is there. I need to forget the way it felt on mine. To forget everything Addy said about my dad. I need it out of me, back on the mainland, maybe as far as the moon.
It’s like my life depends on the sex I’m about to have.
The rest of his clothes are coming off, and mine are coming off, and we’re naked, but not naked enough, and I just don’t want to think about anything other than us and my body and what I’m feeling. Because if I stop, Grady is there and my dad is there, and I have to think about my mom and me, the two of us, homeless and cast out except for the house Addy’s letting us live in. I don’t want another before and after. Before my dad left us. After my dad found this other woman. No more befores and afters. For once I just want to be Claude Now.
Suddenly I realize there’s no condom.
I say, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Shit. Hold on.”
* * *
—
Afterward I lie there staring up at the ceiling, and Grady is still there and my dad is still there and the sex hasn’t chased them away. And then something else is there. The reality that Miah is leaving, that I’m leaving. And the reality of what I’ve done. The stabbing in my chest turns to an emptiness, and then a tightness, as if the breath is going out of me.
I go far, far away. He thinks I’m lying there, but I’m actually not in this room, not on this island, not even on this earth. I’m somewhere beyond it, looking out through my eyes, which are acting like computer screens, transmitting to me in space. And this is what happens when you are protecting yourself from caring too much. Because inevitably people will hurt you, and it’s better to cushion the fall. This way you still fall, but not as far, and maybe it won’t hurt as much when you hit the ground.
Miah says, “Hey. Captain.”
I kind of come to, and it’s clear he’s been saying something that I haven’t heard.
He rolls over onto his side, one arm draped across me. “Where are you?”
“Here.”
“No you’re not. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Everything. Instead of making me feel closer, the sex has made me further away, not just from him but from everyone.
“Yeah, no. Don’t do that.”
He reaches for my arm but I move it away.
I say, “Maybe I just want to have fun without thinking so much all the time.”
“Great, me too, but not when you’re acting weird.”
“I’m not acting weird.”
“Bullshit.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“You don’t be a dick.”
“You’re the dick who almost didn’t wear a condom.”
“Yeah, well, you were there too, Captain. And I hope you know that wasn’t on p
urpose. You’re going to run into guys who tell you they can’t get off wearing a condom, and they’ll try to convince you to forget protection. They’ll be all, Let’s be in the moment, let’s not worry—”
“Why are you talking about other guys?”
“I just want to prepare you for when I’m not around.”
“Thanks, but I’m not stupid. And I’m not going to sleep with anyone who tries that with me.” And now I’m seething. We’re still naked, and he’s already thinking about when we’re not together anymore.
“Sorry. With four younger sisters, you get used to being the protector.”
“I don’t want to talk about other guys I’m going to sleep with, not with you, not right now.”
“I get it. And just so you know, I don’t really want to talk about that either.”
We go quiet for a minute. Then he says, “So who’re you mad at? Your dad?” He sits up a little and he’s looking at me, and all I want is to get away, but then he goes, “Hey. Come on. It’s me.”
And he touches my face and lifts my chin and won’t let me look away. And the way he touches me is so sweet and gentle that I pull back so he can’t reach me. But I tell him. I tell him because I have to.
It comes out broken, little shattered pieces of glass, too sharp to pick up, too many to put back together. I tell him about my dad and his girlfriend. And then I tell him about Grady.
He sits listening. So quiet. So still.
“Say something.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
His voice is like an empty room, one that’s been vacated abruptly and completely.
“Please say something.” There is a weight on my chest that is making it hard to breathe, so heavy and fast-spreading that it’s suffocating me. In this moment, I suddenly feel as if the functioning of my organs—lungs, heart—is dependent on him speaking.
Breathless Page 27
