Left Drowning

by Jessica Park

  “No. He wasn’t. I don’t know who he was, and I have never seen him since that night, but it was him, not God or any other … illusory power … who tore me away from that fire. I give credit where credit is due. One human being made a choice, he acted, and I owe him my life. No god killed my parents, nearly killed James, and spared me. I know that, and I can’t go back and believe in things that I used to believe in … or that I used to want to believe in. I don’t know how much faith I had to lose that night, but whatever I had is gone now.” I take an incredibly refreshing deep breath. “And you understand that.”

  “I do.”

  “Yes,” I agree. I put my hand on top of Chris’s so that I am holding his between mine and look at him while he focuses on the road. “We want what’s real. Heroes are real.”

  “Some,” he concedes, “but not all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sure many people would consider my father a hero, but—”

  “But not you,” I finish for him.

  “No. Never me. And that, Blythe,” he says without taking his eyes off the road, “is reality. What is also reality is that I don’t have to see him again. I can make that choice.”

  “What does your father do?”

  “He’s an artist. All sorts of mediums. Sculpture, painting, you name it. The house was always filled with materials. Paint, plaster, sheets of metal. Wire. Lots of copper wire.”

  Chris tightens his grip on my hand. I turn to face him and rest my leg on the cushioned bench seat. “What about winter break? If you don’t go home, what do you do? Thanksgiving is one thing, but you can’t stay on campus over winter break.”

  He checks the backseat quickly and then says in a low voice, “Hawaii. But don’t tell anyone. They don’t know. It’s our new family tradition to go away for the month. Last year I rented us a place in Huntington Beach. I don’t tell them where we’re going until we get to the airport.”

  “Oh my God, I love it. You guys are going to have a blast. Sounds kind of expensive, though.”

  “I … I have access to money. My mother had money. A substantial amount. And her will, unbeknownst to my father, left all of her money to her children. I’m in charge of the trust.” He pauses. “What about you? What are your plans for break?”

  “Just me and James. This year we’re going to the house we grew up in, not my aunt’s like we always used to. Kind of the first time we’ll be there in a long time. It’s going to be … weird.”

  There is a deep roaring grumble from the backseat. “Where is my ginormous TV? Where is it? I need me some big plasma love.”

  I smile. Sabin is awake. “We’ll be there soon.”

  “HERE WE COME, STORE OF THE GIANT TVS!” he screams, planting a hand on top of Chris’s head and then mine and ruffling our hair. He leaves one hand resting on Chris’s shoulder as he sits back. “It’s a good day, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Chris and I say.

  When we get to the mall, we fight our way through the crowd of frenzied shoppers to reach the department store. Sabin disappears into the mob while Chris and I spend twenty minutes assessing the television options.

  “Which one do you like?” Chris asks.

  “The black one with the big screen.”

  He slaps my arm. “You’ve narrowed it down to twenty.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. They all look the same to me.” I look around at the array of sets. “It just needs to work.”

  “That’s an excellent quality to look for in a TV.”

  Now I slap his arm. “You pick. Don’t zero out my bank account, but pick the most awesome one, or there’s going to be hell to pay. I’m going to check on Sabin.”

  I locate him, not surprisingly, in the small appliance section. When he sees me coming, he joyfully holds up a box and yells, “See? I told ya! Coffee, toast, eggs, and bacon! All at once! It’s a miracle!”

  I laugh. “I’m very glad you found what your heart desires. Let this be my gift to you because I could never pick out such a lovely, er”—I look at the box again —“baby-blue gadget.”

  “It’s not a gadget. It’s a ‘breakfast station’,” he corrects me.

  “I would love to buy you this breakfast station.”

  “Fine. But in return, I’m buying you some DVDs to go along with your new television.” He puts his hand on my back and guides me to the movie section. “Let’s see … We’ll start with Blue Crush.” Sabin starts piling discs into his arms. “And then 50 First Dates. Oooooh! Lilo & Stitch! How about Pearl Harbor?” He waves the movie at me and winks.

  “Kind of a random selection.” I stare at the movie until it clicks. It’s not a random selection at all. All of those movies have one thing in common. Hawaii. “Oh, God damn it, you were awake in the car, weren’t you?”

  Sabin starts to dance idiotically in the aisle. “We’re goin’ to Hawaii! Oh yes, we are! Gonna be some hula girls and some mahi-mahi dinners! Swimming and snorkeling—”

  “Shhhh! Stop it! You’re not supposed to know!” I look around to make sure Chris isn’t nearby. “Don’t tell him you heard anything, okay? He’s really excited to surprise you.”

  “Okay, okay. I promise. Not a word.” He turns serious for a minute. “I do have some words for you, though.”

  I frown. “Shoot.”

  “Chris is smart, but he doesn’t know everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, Blythe, last night you told me to let Estelle have her God, to believe in what she needed to.” He sighs. “You have to do the same. If you believe in …” He looks around the chaotic store and starts over. “I didn’t hear the whole story, but I don’t have to know details to realize that you’ve been through some shit, and you have every right to hold tight to whatever gets you through the night. Know what I mean, sugar? Maybe you believe that coincidences aren’t coincidences. Maybe you have your own version of a higher power, or you trust in the belief that there are connections among seemingly disconnected parts of the universe. Maybe you have a spiritual side that has nothing to do with God or religion, it’s just your own.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I don’t.”

  “I think you do. Don’t let Chris talk you out of something that’s real to you. He’s brilliant, and beautiful, and about as perfect as they come, but that doesn’t make him right about everything. Hell, even though I freaked out on Estelle, I don’t know there isn’t something else. You don’t know that, and even Chris doesn’t know that. There’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t have to know everything. If you believe in fate and some kind of meaning and sense in this fucked-up world, then believe with abandon. Enjoy it.”

  For a minute, despite the sound of the loudspeaker sales announcements and the nonstop chatter of shoppers, everything seems quiet. It is just me and Sabin in this huge store, and I’m overwhelmed at how well he’s tapped into my internal battle. My secret wish to believe in fate, spirituality, or something so I don’t only have to exist with the cold certainty I feel that there is nothing bigger than random chance. Yet Sabin’s words have somehow alleviated the pain I feel over the discord, and for a moment I wonder if it’s okay to be undecided. Or maybe to even hope for something.

  Chris appears. “All set.”

  I break away from Sabin’s stare. “What’s the damage?” I ask.

  “Nothing. You’re all set. We can pull the truck around to the back and they’ll load it in for us.”

  It takes me a second to understand what he’s telling me. “You bought me a ginormous TV?”

  “And we’re going to Hawaii?” Sabin starts jumping up and down and tossing movies at us.

  Chris just stands there grinning.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Old and the New

  Outside in the freezing cold, I try to pace myself on the last run I’ll be doing in Wisconsin this year. Tomorrow morning, December 21, I take a flight home. By the late afternoon, I’ll be back in the house that I grew up in. James come
s in on the twenty-third, so I’ll have two days entirely alone. But I am determined not to feel alone.

  I’m not sure where I’ll run at home, and it’s making me anxious. If I get lucky, we won’t have snow, and it’ll just be the cold temperatures that I have to deal with. I’m used to those from running here, and I actually like it now that I have the right running gear. My dependency on running is undeniable, and I know that my workouts are going to suffer over break. The next playlist starts, and I smile. It’s a new one from Chris, and it makes this run easy. More than easy: exhilarating.

  After my run, I shower and pack. Estelle is gone—again—so I set her Christmas present on her bed so that I don’t forget to give it to her before I leave. I have no idea if I’ll see her tonight or even tomorrow morning. As far as I know, none of her siblings know anything about this boyfriend of hers. I certainly wish that I didn’t.

  I had the unfortunate experience of seeing her with him yesterday, and if I’d finished my anthropology paper just a few minutes earlier, I would not have been in the dark corridor of the department building just before it closed for the afternoon, thick paper in hand, cursing my professor for not accepting digital copies. But I was. When I rounded the corner to my professor’s hall, I saw them through the windows of the door that led to the back stairwell. Even with all of the self-pleasuring time I’m afforded with Estelle out of the room, I can’t say that I’ve ever fantasized about watching my roommate have sex with someone.

  Especially not a professor.

  It does, at least, explain why she doesn’t talk about him. I’m guessing that Estelle’s God does not endorse fucking your professor. I recognized the man she was screwing because he’d filled in for my professor one day, and I’d been fascinated by the way he had thumped the desk and then immediately snapped his fingers every time he wanted to emphasize a certain point. I sincerely hope that Estelle does not have to tolerate that habit when they fuck. Like, does he have an orgasm and then do the old thump-and-snap to underscore the point? Luckily, I don’t stay long enough to find out and manage to deliver my paper and get the hell out of there without being noticed. Unfortunately, I am stuck with the visual of Estelle vigorously humping the guy.

  Distracting myself, though, is easy enough now that it’s the day before my departure. I want James to come home to a fully decorated house, so I’ve been keeping a running list of things to do and buy. I’ve ordered him dozens of presents online and done my best to time their delivery for after I’m home and before James is. Wrapping his gifts alone will take hours because I want them to be perfect. Aunt Lisa was a complete disaster when it came to gift giving, and I will not miss forcing a smile after opening my annual gift card to The Olive Garden or something dull like a set of twin sheets.

  When my suitcase is packed, I stop by Chris’s room to give him his present. I’m giving him something that’s actually wrapped in snowflake paper, even though I certainly felt the temptation to announce instead that I was gracing him with the honor of deflowering me for Christmas (Happy holidays!), but it didn’t seem like a good idea. We have a good thing going right now.

  He opens his door wearing a Grinch T-shirt. “Bah humbug!”

  “Ditto,” I say. “But I’m here to give you a little present anyway.”

  “If it’s not high-end electronic equipment, I don’t want it.”

  I hand him a gift bag. “Okay, then. It’s high-end electronic equipment.”

  “Yippee!” He sits down on the bed and shakes the bag. “Ah, I’m pretty sure this is a special gizmo for shrinking down ginormous televisions that have taken over your room. Right?”

  I glance over to where the Black Friday flat screen he bought for me occupies nearly his entire desk.

  “I think that you secretly love having this in your room and that when Sabin and I are not here you watch giant-scale porn.”

  “Obviously. But I’d still like to have desk space for the rare occasions when I’m not watching porn. And, hey!” he says with exaggerated annoyance. “Estelle came over last week and watched What You Need to Know about Roman Catholicism. That’s your fault.”

  I grin. “Sorry about that. Now you know why I wanted the television in here. Besides, the only way I could at all comfortably accept that you paid for it is to make sure it’s half yours. Now open your present. I have to go double-check that I packed everything and go to bed. I have a six a.m. flight.”

  He takes the wrapping off the square box and shakes it again, listening to it rattle. “I think it’s broken. You better return it,” he teases.

  “It is not broken. Now open it!”

  He reads the card. “So you’ll always have what you need.” I wiggle my toes inside my shoes, slightly nervous that this might be corny, but he empties the contents of the box into his hand and smiles at the silver disks. “Skipping stones.” He rubs one with his fingers and then pretends to throw it.

  “That’s why there are twenty,” I say, laughing. “I assume you’ll throw a few in the lake. Or all of them. Maybe they’re for making wishes.”

  “I’m not throwing these away on a ridiculous whim.” He looks up at me from his spot on the bed, and we’re quiet for a moment. “These are really awesome, Blythe. Thank you.”

  “I wanted you to open them on Christmas, but I didn’t think it’d be nice to make you pack them. They’re kind of heavy.”

  “Speaking of which,” he says as he reaches under his bed. “This you can’t open until Christmas. It’s packed well and not heavy, so it goes home with you. And no peeking.”

  “God, Chris, you didn’t have to get me anything!” I gesture to the monstrosity on his desk.

  “That was a Black Friday present. This is a Christmas present. It’s nothing crazy, and I don’t know why I picked this out, but … It’s random. It just made me think of you for some reason. You’ll probably hate it.”

  “I’m not going to hate it.”

  “No peeking until Christmas. Promise?”

  “I promise.” The present is wrapped in deep blue paper with a dark green ribbon. The colors of the Atlantic Ocean, I think. I’m dying to know what it is, and I immediately try to calculate how many hours are left until Christmas, but I’m not that good at mental math. “What time is your flight tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Noon.”

  “You probably have to pack still and stuff, huh? I should get going and get some sleep.” I hate good-byes. And I’m out of practice because I’ve had virtually no one to say good-bye to for so long.

  Things haven’t felt awkward with Chris in a while, but we’re not going to see each other for over three weeks, and … I don’t like that. In the scheme of things, it’s not that long, but time moves differently in our insulated college life. This break will feel interminable.

  “Hey, do you want me to give you a lift to the airport?” he asks.

  “Thanks, but like I said, it’s a six a.m. flight to Logan. I don’t think you want to get up at three thirty.”

  “Bet you don’t, either.”

  “Not really, but I wanted to have the whole day there to get stuff ready for James.”

  “Sounds to me like you’d be better off staying awake all night.”

  “That sounds boring.”

  He smiles. “Want company?”

  “You don’t want to do that!” I protest.

  He props up pillows and pats the bed. “Sure I do. Come on. I’ll make you a French press coffee, and we’ll watch a movie. I’ll even heat some milk for you in my frother.”

  I cross my arms. “Extra froth and no porn?”

  “‘Extra froth’ and ‘no porn’ do not belong in the same sentence.” He tosses a pillow at me. “But if that’s what you want. Weirdo. Grab a seat.”

  Man, I’m going to miss him.

  ***

  James is having one of his friends pick him up at the airport tonight, and I’m disappointed. I guess that I had some wistful vision of us reuniting at baggage claim, complete with tear-filled greet
ings and excessive hugging. The good thing is that I’ve had some time to adjust my expectations and am prepared to go with whatever homecoming attitude he brings. It’s unrealistic to expect that coming into this familiar house that holds so many old memories of our parents will be easy. This is not a situation that lends itself to a comfortable holiday.

  I’ve spent a number of hours outside the house going food shopping and doing other holiday errands, but I refuse to be driven out of my house because of memories and because of my emotional reactions to even small things. Like, that the hum of the fridge is still exactly the same, and that creates the expectation that there will be accompanying sounds: my father’s shoes slapping across the tile floor, my mother groaning as she can’t get the kitchen radio to pick up the station that she wants … Sounds of normalcy and happiness.

  With one hand, I stir the pot of spaghetti sauce that is simmering on the stove, and with the other hand I hold an invitation, staring at the cursive lettering. It’s an invitation from my parents’ old friends Lani and Tim Sturgeon, who have asked James and me to their Christmas Eve party.

  I’m going to accept.

  This feels like a spectacularly bold move, and I know that’s completely silly. People RSVP to invitations all the time. I, however, do not. But I dial their number anyway with my free hand, using the other to keep stirring the sauce. My family spent many dinners and even a few weekend vacations with the Sturgeon, and they knew our family well.

  Lani answers and is unable to disguise her surprise that it’s me. “Oh, Blythe McGuire! It’s so good to hear from you. Tim and I think about you often.”

  “You do?” I blurt out. “That’s … that’s so nice. Um, I was just calling to say that James and I would love to come over on Christmas Eve if it’s not too late to reply.”

  “We would be thrilled to see you,” she says. “I’m really excited that you two are coming.”

  “Well, thank you so much. I guess we’ll see you—”

  “Blythe?”

  “Yes?”

  There is an uncomfortable moment of silence, and I dread what she is going to say next.