Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

  “Probably never.”

  He laughs. “Okay,” he says. “Stay there.” And I know he means, Stay in it. He spins around and takes off running. The sky beyond him is blue and bright. When did the sun get here? As he runs, he tries to shuck off his shorts and nearly falls over. Click. I’m taking word pictures as he goes. Click. As he hollers, “Nothing to see here!” Click. As he’s running full speed again into the water. Click. Click. Click.

  DAY 27

  (PART TWO)

  I sit at the general store, in one of the four chairs set up in a corner, and chew at a hangnail. The place is empty except for Terri behind the counter.

  At noon exactly, my dad calls.

  “Dad.”

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  I have no idea what I’m going to say or whether I’m going to mention the other woman, at least by name. I need to hear what he has to say first.

  “I talked to your mother. Kiddo, I’m so sorry.” Not Clew. She is now your mother and I am apparently kiddo. “I’m sorry you found out this way and I’m sorry I told you not to talk about it and I’m sorry that I’ve let you down.”

  My heart is pounding in my ears. If I can just get things back to normal, everything will be okay. My house will still be my house. My parents will still be my parents. Maybe my dad will not have fallen in love with Michelle from work and that will go back to normal too.

  He says, “I wish I could be there.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes—”

  “Did you want to leave us before you did?”

  “Clew…” And suddenly I’m Clew again. Oh no, I think. You can’t just throw that nickname out there like that, whenever you want to. Take it away, give it back. Take it away, give it back.

  “Did you?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You met someone and you’re leaving Mom. That doesn’t sound very complicated.”

  The line goes completely quiet.

  “You told me there was no one else. You literally said, ‘It’s important that you know that.’ Why would you say it if it was a lie?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  It’s my turn to go quiet.

  “Clew? Are you still there?”

  “You know if you marry her, you’ll have to be a family again, right? You do realize that?”

  The line goes silent again.

  I give him plenty of time to respond. When he doesn’t, I say, “So I guess it really was us, wasn’t it? It’s not that you didn’t want a family. You just didn’t want our family.”

  “It’s not like that. I never should have said that. I just didn’t know how to say it, and so I said it wrong.”

  “Is it true you and Mom are selling the house?”

  “We’re thinking about it. Nothing’s definite.”

  “Is that why you’ve been sending care packages? To get my stuff out of there?”

  “I sent you those things because I thought you might want them.”

  “Well, I don’t care what you do with the rest of it. Light a match and burn it all to the ground if you want.” As I say it, I immediately want to take it back. My things are not to blame here. They shouldn’t be the victims.

  And suddenly I’m adding it all up—kicking us out, selling the house. He probably knew he’d do this all along. That’s why I couldn’t find his Nirvana shirt. It was already at her place, folded in some drawer or sitting on some closet shelf. And this woman will be using my mother’s things and my parents’ things and our things, and living our life, only in some new and improved version that doesn’t include my mom or me.

  Before I can say anything else, he says, “I know I’m going to see you soon and we can talk more then, but there are some things I need you to know right now. First, I don’t want you to ever doubt how I feel about you. While I haven’t always been the dad you might create on paper, I love you very much. Second, I won’t always meet your expectations in the future, but it won’t be for lack of trying.”

  As he talks, I start to pinch the flesh of my arm. But then I just let it go.

  “It takes a while to get to know your parents. You’re lucky enough to have a really special mother. I’m not sure that even you can fully appreciate the truth in that, but you’ll discover it as you get older. I’m not quite as special—you know that and I know that—but I hope the years ahead will also show you just how much I care about you and how important you are to me, no matter how much I fuck things up.”

  And even though I’m used to hearing my dad swear, I don’t want him to do this—tell me he loves me and be all sensitive and real. I want to hate him. I sit there trying to hate him.

  “I don’t want to see her. Michelle.” I can barely say her name.

  “You don’t have to. Not right now.”

  I don’t want to see her ever.

  I say nothing. He waits.

  Finally he lets out this sad little sigh. “We can talk more when you get home. We’ll go to the bakery and buy their entire stock of thumbprint cookies. We’ll buy as many as it takes. We’ll buy the whole fucking bakery.”

  “We can’t just go to Joy Ann like normal, like all of this didn’t happen. Like all of this isn’t happening. Things like you and me and Joy Ann died when you sent us away.”

  “They don’t have to, Clew. Not even when you’re in college. Not even when you’re in California being a famous writer.” Then he says, “I love you more than Beethoven and the Joy Ann Cake Shop and my Nirvana shirt you’re always stealing. I love you more than anything.”

  And now he’s taking the thing I do with Saz and using it to try to win me over, and this is the last straw. I hang up without telling him I love him too.

  * * *

  —

  I find Miah outside his house, shirtless, bent over a pile of bones and a bucket of bleach water that makes my eyes sting from the smell. Music blasts from this ancient-looking radio and at first he doesn’t see me.

  I stand watching him and he looks lost and happy in the work, the way he was that day with the Outward Bounders, only this time I need to bring him out of it.

  “Doesn’t that ever feel morbid? All these bones?” It comes out angry, like I’m accusing him of something. I reach over and turn the music down.

  He’s dunking each one in the bucket. “Think of it as that junkyard you’re always talking about, where love goes to die. Think of these as survivors. The things that remain. Like the love that lives to see another day.”

  I say, “What happens to us in a week?”

  He stands, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “What happens to us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you even thought about it?”

  “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. Of course I’ve thought about it. I’m not just like, ‘Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Thanks for a great summer.’ ”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am. I don’t know what happens with us, Captain. I don’t even know what happens with me. Maybe I’m going, maybe I’m staying. Maybe five years from now I’ll be here in this exact same spot, ferrying back and forth between my mom’s house and here, bleaching the bones and thinking about the girl I knew one summer. Back when we were Claude and Miah. Wild-animal-wrangling, shark-tooth-collecting, freedom-dispensing warriors.”

  “Don’t make a joke. Not right now.”

  “Sorry.” He sits down on the top step of the porch, wet hands dangling off his knees. “Captain, we’re two people who didn’t expect to meet each other but did, probably years before we were supposed to.”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you, either. I won’t again because I’m pretty sure there aren’t a lot of Claude Henrys running around in this world. But we can’t
borrow trouble.”

  “So what do we do with that?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to you, and I can’t imagine a version of us where we call and text each other like we’re everyone else.”

  “Then what’s the point of all this?”

  I want it to be four weeks ago, with the summer stretched out before us. But it isn’t, and I suddenly have to go away from him, because I can’t just stand here and pretend to be in the moment when in my head it’s already time for him to leave and I’m watching him sail away from this island and me forever.

  He says, “Come sit by me….”

  “I have to go.”

  “Don’t run away.”

  “I can’t stay, because if I stay, I’ll lose it, and I don’t want to lose it. I want you to remember me like this.” I smile and then point to my smile like, Ta-da. “So I’m not running away from you; I’m running away from you leaving and me leaving. Just for a little while. Just long enough to catch my breath.”

  And before he can say anything else or try to stop me, I run.

  * * *

  —

  The beach is empty except for the gulls and the sandpipers. I walk across the sand, straight into the water. The wind is trying to push me back onto the shore, but I push against it, deeper and deeper until the drop-off happens and I go under suddenly, all at once, arms extending up toward the surface on their own, without any direction from me, reaching for air.

  I force my body down, down, down, imagining what it would be like to live here in this other world. The anger burns so big and deep inside me that I’m surprised I don’t sink from the weight of it. Anger at my dad, my mom, Michelle, Saz, Yvonne, Grady, everyone, even Miah.

  I hold my breath until my lungs are empty and I go light-headed and my body pulls me to the surface. The world tilts as I suck in air, and I think of the female loggerheads and how it must feel to be unable to stand, crawling up on shore, collapsing there, disoriented and lost.

  I tell myself, Feel this. Feel every last terrible, uncomfortable, overwhelming part of it. You have to feel it to get to the other side.

  I drag myself out of the water and drop onto the sand. I lie there and stare up at the sky and think about my cousin Danny. I think about all the things he will miss, all the things he will never get to see or experience. But there are other things he’ll never know—pain and secrets and the way it feels when your heart breaks in two.

  * * *

  —

  I walk back to the general store, and now I am thinking about my parents. My dad telling me he loves me. My mom needing to be a mom. And then I picture saying goodbye to Miah next week. All of this is the reason I call Saz again to tell her I love her.

  She answers right away. She says, “I love you too.”

  “More than shark teeth and loggerhead turtles and blood moons.”

  “More than pizza without pineapple and sleepovers and Yvonne. More than anything or anyone.”

  I say, “What happens to your room after you go to school?”

  “Nothing. My parents are keeping it the exact same for when I come home. Remember how when Mara’s sister went off to college, her parents immediately turned it into an exercise room? My mom was like, ‘I’ll go to the Municipool in a bikini before I do that to yours.’ ”

  I take a breath. Let it out. “My parents are selling our house. Which means my green room will be someone else’s green room, until they paint it some other color, and my house will be someone else’s house, and they will move in and change it completely.”

  And I don’t know which is worse—for a room to be turned into something different or for it to not be your room at all anymore, ever.

  “You know, you’re not the same Claude Henry who lived on Capri Lane in a green room with a canopy bed. Besides, you’ll always have a home with me, Hen.”

  For one long second, I can’t speak. Then, somehow, I manage to say, “I miss you, Sazzy.”

  “I miss you too.”

  “I wish you were here.”

  “You know I am, right? There? Even though you can’t see me.”

  And maybe she is and maybe she isn’t, and maybe I do know it and maybe I don’t. The point is, it’s what you say to your best friend when you don’t know what else to say, and all you want to do is be there for them and make the bad things go away.

  Which is why I say, “I know.”

  DAY 28

  I ride my bike to Rosecroft. Except for two wild horses on the edge of the trees, the place is deserted. I go up the steps and past the NO TRESPASSING sign until I’m standing in the ruins. I pick my way through, room by room, carefully stepping over bricks and debris until I am in the heart.

  I stand there and I see it—not Claudine’s house, but mine.

  Over here is the living room, and the window—the one closest to the front door—I left unlocked for Saz, like the ones she left open for me at her house down the street, in case we couldn’t sleep.

  And here, in front of this same window, is where we placed our Christmas tree so that you could see it from the street because there’s nothing like going up the walk on a cold winter night and seeing those lights. The piano sat across from it, against that wall there, opposite the sofa. I hated practicing, but for years I took lessons with Ms. Gernhoffer, who would get so frustrated with me that her wig would be crooked by the time I was done. My dad played the piano best of all of us, and Bradbury would just howl and howl. “Jingle Bells” was Bradbury’s favorite. We hung our stockings by the fireplace here in the basement family room.

  Over here is the porch, which looks out over the creek. My dad screened it in so that the dog and the cat could enjoy it too. The five of us—Mom, Dad, Claude, Bradbury, Dandelion—used to sit out here after dinner and listen to the woods.

  These height markers in the kitchen doorway, that was something my mom did—measured everyone who came to the house, even the adults, even the pets. My bathroom was this one, in the upstairs hall. If you look closely, you can still see the dent in the tub from where I threw my hairbrush at it the first day of middle school, when my hair just wouldn’t cooperate.

  This was my mom’s office, with the floor-to-ceiling bookcases my dad built one weekend after we first moved in so that every one of her research books would have a home. This is the chair I would sit in while she worked, reading and helping her when I could, and learning to find the story in everything. This is where I first started writing stories, back when I was ten.

  My parents’ room was this one at the end of the hall, looking out over the creek. This is where my mom and I had the talk about Santa Claus and, later, the talk about sex. This is where Dandelion used to sit on my dad’s dresser every morning, knocking all his things off one by one until Dad got up to feed the goddamn cat.

  And this big green room with the slanted walls was mine. It was filled with music and space for dancing. My books lined this wall. My closet was here, but most of the clothes lived on the floor. The canopy bed was over there. The posters were here and here and here. My desk—the one where I first started writing my bad, overly long novel—was in front of this window. And this window was the one where I stood while I watched Wyatt Jones and his friends toilet-paper my yard before my dad interrupted them….

  I sit on the green of the grass, the green of my floor, until I can see every last detail.

  * * *

  —

  An hour later I am on the steps, leaning back against one of the columns. Through my shirt, the brick feels rough and cool. I pull out my pen and notebook and write.

  I lose track of time. No counting days or minutes. No worrying about how much time has passed or how much is left in the day. I fill up pages with thoughts and scenes and pieces of me. I write until my hand cramps, and then I close my eyes and rest my head on the cool, rough brick.r />
  When I open my eyes again, it’s sunset. The sky is pink and gold and orange. I sit watching as it grows brighter and then darker as the sun begins to fade. I write twenty-eighth sunset because that’s how many I’ve seen here. And then I pack up my things and head home.

  * * *

  —

  That night I leave the window open and fall asleep to the hum of the cicadas. Sometime around midnight Miah slips into my room, into my bed. I feel his skin and his chest and his breath on my neck as he pulls me into him.

  “Here’s what I know,” he says. “I’m right here. We’re right here. I can’t tell you what the point of this is except that I’m so fucking happy I met you, and I can’t tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week or next summer or five years from now. But I do know that right now, in this moment, on this island, I’m where I’m supposed to be, and that’s with you.”

  DAYS 29–30

  I wish there was a way to freeze time. Like if this was a Ray Bradbury story and we were each given five chances in our lives to stop time for as long as we wanted so that we could live in a certain moment indefinitely.

  On days 29 and 30, this is what I wish for. The ability to breathe because he is here and I am here and no one is leaving.

  THE ISLAND

  THREE

  DAY 31

  The day before he leaves, it rains. My mom stands in the living room, papers spread across the floor like tiles. She scans the pages, glasses on the end of her nose. Every now and then she moves the papers around, stands back, scans them again. Dandelion walks in, sits on one of the stacks, and starts washing his face. She picks him up and sets him on the couch.

  “What are these?”

  “Letters written immediately following Tillie’s death. Apparently there was an inquest before the police officially concluded it was suicide.”