The Myth of You and Me: A Novel

by Leah Stewart

  I merged onto 128 toward Gloucester. The concrete and strip malls receded. I reached the woods, and everything began to seem beautiful and ominous, the lighted windows of houses glimpsed through trees. I passed the exit for the beach, and then turned off onto a tree-lined road. I passed a convenience store like a block of cement, then a fruit-and-vegetable stand, closed for the night. The moon was bright, and the light bounced off the little bodies of water that appeared, gleaming, around certain bends. I slowed to fifteen miles an hour. There were no streetlights. Long, weird shadows fell across the road, distorting its shape so that every curve caught me off guard. At a gravel drive marked by a looming boulder, I saw a sign with the house number painted on it. As I turned in, I passed a CHILDREN SLOW sign that a tree had nearly swallowed, its bottom half overgrown with bark.

  When I came to a fork in the drive, I hesitated, the car idling, and then turned right, onto a dirt road. It led up a steep incline to a flat space with at least ten rusting vehicles parked askew, among them a milk truck, a fire truck, an ice-cream truck, and an old school bus, as though the service people of this town had driven here one day, gotten out, and vanished into the trees. I thought of abandoning my own car—I could imagine leaving it here, with all my things inside, and stepping into the woods. When I imagined it I saw myself from the outside, a tall figure disappearing among the trees.

  I turned around and went back to the gravel drive. At the end was a house set back in the wood, with a porch that ran across its entire front. I turned off the car. There was a light in the house’s front window. I took the postcard from my bag, studied the picture, and then turned it over and read the address again. I picked up the package. I thought of Sonia squeezing my hand at the edge of the swimming pool. “On the count of three,” she said. I crossed the lawn and walked up the porch steps. I rang the doorbell and held my breath.

  Will Barrett opened the door.

  On the first weekend in April of our freshman year in college, Will came to visit. In the fall semester I’d endured several of his visits, lying awake in the bed across the room while Sonia slept beside him. It was a relief to me to find that once I began dating Owen, just after Christmas, my feelings for Will receded to the point that I believed I was finally over him.

  He arrived on a Friday, and we went out to dinner—Will and Sonia and Owen and I—and everything seemed normal, Sonia laughing and frequently touching Will’s head or arm, and Will looking at her in a way that suggested the passion that lay behind his public reserve. This was only the second time Owen and Will had met, but they seemed to like each other. They spent much of dinner discussing with great seriousness the prospects for Paul Westerberg’s career after The Replacements. In some ways they reminded me of each other. Like Will, Owen could be moody, withdrawing from company with a shadow over his face, and on occasion I was baffled by what made him lose his temper. Once, when I made fun of a sportscaster’s hair, he shouted, “Oh, and you’re so perfect!” and stormed out of the room. But I would’ve found him less appealing without those fluctuations in mood. I’d always been suspicious of unrelenting sunniness, what it must be working so hard to conceal. If I’d never seen Owen displeased, the obvious pleasure he took in my company would have lost some of its value. I knew I made him happy. It was also nice—though I tried to repress this feeling—to at last be preferred to Sonia. Unlike Will, Owen was mine. What a relief to be free to love him as much as I wanted to.

  That night, after dinner, I went back to Owen’s to give Sonia and Will some privacy. When I returned to our room late the next afternoon, the blinds were down and the room was dark. I flipped on the light, and Sonia said, “Don’t.”

  She lay in bed on her back, one arm flung across her face. I flipped the light off again, and she became a dim, frozen figure in the partial light, like a statue or an engraving on a tomb.

  I knew the news was bad, but it didn’t occur to me that she and Will had fought. My first thought was that someone had died; my more moderating second thought was that Sonia’s mother had called and upset her. “Where’s Will?” I said.

  “Gone,” she said flatly.

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I mean gone.” Her voice sharpened. “How many meanings does it have?”

  “He’s gone where?” I was still confused. Even in the worst days of my crush on Will, I’d never imagined the two of them breaking up—or more precisely, I’d never believed that it would actually happen, even if I had from time to time been unable to prevent myself from imagining it.

  “He’s at the airport,” she said. “We broke up. He changed his flight.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. I meant only to express sympathy, but Sonia heard it differently.

  “You could run to the airport and say good-bye,” she snapped. “If you hurry you’ll catch him.”

  For a moment I wondered if she knew, had always known, about my feelings for Will, and was only now, in the stress of losing him, being careless enough to reveal it. “That’s over now,” I wanted to explain. “I have Owen. I love him.” I moved closer to the bed and asked if she was all right.

  But then she said, her voice gentle again, “Cameron, I’m sorry. I really just want to be alone.”

  When I left the room, I had no intention of going after Will, but the suggestion had entered my subconscious. I found myself outside with no clear idea of where to go, thinking that if this breakup was final I really might never see Will again, and that that would be a shame, because we were friends, after all. It was amazing how quickly a person you’ve liked could go out of your life at someone else’s discretion.

  I jogged to the parking lot, got in my car, and drove. I hadn’t even reached the interstate before I started to second-guess myself. What if he found my sudden appearance melodramatic, out of proportion to the level of our friendship? What if all he showed was his disappointment that I was not Sonia, come to reconcile? At some point I kept driving mostly because I was more than halfway there.

  Inside the airport I realized I had no idea what flight Will was on. There was one to Boston leaving in twenty minutes—that had to be my first guess. In the line for security I danced up and down on my toes, feeling the minutes tick by as if there were a clock at my ear. As soon as I passed through the metal detector, I broke into a run, slowing to a walk when I got close to the gate.

  People were already boarding, the line short enough that more than half of them must have been on the plane already. Will wasn’t in the line. I stopped walking and turned to look up at the monitors to see if another flight was leaving soon, sure all the time that he was on this one.

  But then I saw him. He was sitting in the row of chairs on the other side of the monitors, close to the gate door. He hadn’t seen me. He was staring at the ticket in his hands, head down, elbows propped on his knees, carryon suitcase tipped over carelessly at his feet. He was the picture of stunned misery.

  I walked over to him, suddenly out of breath from the run. My heart beat uncomfortably. How easy it would be to slip away unnoticed. But how terrible for him to look up and see me walking away. I stopped in front of him, and after a moment he raised his head.

  “Cameron?” he said. He didn’t look surprised. Perhaps his unhappiness was too great for any other emotion to intrude. His eyes were dark, and I had to fight a physical impulse to look away, every bit as nervous as he used to make me feel. “I came to say good-bye,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice tight.

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,” I said. “I’ll miss you.” I would never have been able to show him this much emotion in the past, but now Owen stood between us like a bodyguard.

  He gave me a grateful smile, then rose to his feet. To my surprise, he took my hand and squeezed it. I had the impression that in a more formal era he might have raised it to his lips. The gate attendant announced the last call for boarding. She looked at Will. “Sir?”

  “Coming,” he said. He turned back to me, and
I was nervous again, not sure what to say now. And then I thought—no, I was certain—that he was leaning toward me at the same moment I leaned toward him. We kissed. A chaste kiss, just a quick pressing together of our closed mouths.

  “I’ll miss you, too,” he said, and released my hand. He turned. Without a look back, he was through the gate and gone.

  I told both Owen and Sonia that I had gone to the airport and caught Will in time to say good-bye, because I would have felt guilty keeping it a secret. Sonia asked how Will had looked, and I told her, “Sad.” After she fell asleep, I turned out the light and left to spend the night at Owen’s. I was glad to be snug in his twin bed with his arm around me. I loved Owen—my love for him was no less just because it couldn’t conquer every other feeling I had ever had.

  Some memories are kept not in the mind but in the body. That night, and for years afterward, I could summon the sensation of that brief kiss, the instant when Will’s warm lips touched mine.

  Now Will stood in front of me again, a book in his hand. He looked from me to the book and back, as if I had just stepped from its pages. He had a small scar—new, I thought—that cut his left eyebrow in two. I asked, “What happened?”

  “What?” He had a freckle on his right earlobe. Had I ever noticed that before? I pointed at the scar.

  “Oh.” His free hand flew to it. “Basketball,” he said. “I caught an elbow.”

  “When?” It seemed important to confirm that I hadn’t seen this scar before.

  “A couple years ago, in a pickup game at the gym.” He gave his head a determined shake, as though to throw off this non sequitur of a conversation. “Cameron?” he said.

  “Surprised?” Before he could answer I said, “Me, too. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  He looked perplexed. “I live here.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know that.” I wanted to offer him a quick explanation—I was beginning to be afraid he would think me a stalker, arriving on his doorstep at night—but I couldn’t think of how to frame it. “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “You’d better come in.” He stepped back and waved me down the hall with his book. I didn’t risk a glance back as he followed me in silence. My heartbeat was rapid. I felt slightly breathless—I felt like a girl again, and I didn’t know whether there was more pleasure or distress in seeing Will this way. He and Sonia had to be friends—why else would she have his address on a postcard in her office?—but they couldn’t be a couple, because of Martin, and she couldn’t be hiding out here, or Will would have seemed guilty, rather than surprised, when he opened the door.

  The hall opened into an enormous, even cavernous, room, with a small kitchen on the left, an arrangement of couches on the right, a doorway at the back next to a tall shelf full of record albums, and a winding metal staircase in the far-left corner. On the walls were pictures of animals—an old sign for a dairy featuring a large painting of a cow, a black-and-white print of a dog in motion beside a pond. No people anywhere. Asleep on one of the couches, chin on paws, was a large, pointy-eared dog. A gray cat watched me from the top of the television with a regal but suspicious air.

  Will came up beside me and looked at the room as though he, too, were seeing it for the first time. “This used to be a Montessori school,” he said. “Then they converted it. This was the main classroom.”

  “You know, I saw you today,” I said. “In Porter Square. You were getting on the T.”

  “I didn’t see you,” he said. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I wasn’t sure it was you.” I looked at him now. “I mean, it seemed crazy that it would be you.”

  He looked baffled.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I said again. I was sounding ever more like a stalker, insisting all our encounters were by accident. I moved away from him and pretended interest in the bowl of apples on his kitchen counter.

  “Do you live here now?” he asked.

  I said no. He frowned. I could see him trying to put the pieces together. “I’m a nomad,” I said. “Everything I own is in the car.”

  “Really? You don’t live anywhere?”

  “I’m between homes. It’s a boring subject.”

  “Okay.” He frowned. “Well, what’s in that package?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s for Sonia.”

  At the mention of her name his expression became guarded. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “Sort of.” In a rush, I said, “I’ve been living in Mississippi, in Oxford. I was supposed to help Oliver Doucet with his memoirs. He’s a historian. His daughter, Ruth . . .” In the way Will kept his eyes trained on my face I saw an effort to conquer impatience. I was beginning the story too far back. I said, “Oliver wanted me to bring this package to Sonia. Obviously, she’s not here, so I guess I should go.” I turned back toward the door.

  “Wait, wait a minute,” Will said. He reached out like he was going to touch my arm, then let his hand fall. “Don’t you at least want a beer or something?” He was headed to the refrigerator before the yes was out of my mouth.

  I sat on one of the couches, and Will shifted his dog so he could sit on the other. The dog yawned hugely and resettled with its head on Will’s leg. “So,” Will said, “tell me why you’re here.”

  I told him. He had no idea why his address was on that postcard. He’d been in touch with Sonia on and off ever since he moved to Gloucester, about a year ago, and had seen a lot of her lately. He said this in a casual way that put to rest any lingering doubt I had about whether there was something between them. He said he didn’t know where she was. After that there was a long silence before I thought to ask him about himself. He was a veterinarian. He’d gone to vet school at Tufts, and then moved to California with his girlfriend. But he didn’t like it there, and so he came back to Massachusetts. I wanted to ask, but didn’t, what had happened to the girlfriend. I thought of him saying, when he was a boy, that he was unlucky in love.

  “I should’ve known you’d be a vet,” I said.

  “Because of that day with the dog?”

  I nodded, pleased that he’d known immediately what I was talking about.

  “I felt so helpless handing him over to that woman,” he said. “And then I made a fool of myself in front of you, kicking that tree and crying like a baby.”

  I shook my head. “I was just worried you’d hurt yourself.”

  He laughed. “I did. My foot was killing me.”

  “You didn’t show it.”

  “I was trying to be a tough guy,” he said. “And failing. You had a knack for catching me in vulnerable moments.”

  “Yeah, but that was why I . . .” I swallowed back the word loved. Our eyes met and held too long. “Liked you,” I finished, looking away. There was a silence. My mind raced, looking for another subject, and then to my relief Will spoke.

  “So what do you think is in it?” Will asked, pointing at the package.

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s just Oliver’s way of giving me something to do.”

  “To get over his death?”

  “Maybe,” I said, although I thought with some surprise that this was one motive I hadn’t considered.

  Will looked at his watch. “It’s late,” he said. “And I’ve been up since five.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, sliding forward on the couch. “I’ll go.”

  “No, stay. It’s a long drive.”

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  “Just stay,” he said. “If she’s really left town she’s not going to come back on the weekend, so there’s no use waiting at her place. I’ve got plenty of room. There’s a futon in there.” He pointed at the back of the room, where a door opened into darkness. “I’ll show you the beach in the morning. The water’s too cold for swimming, but it’s pretty.”

  Though I felt that I shouldn’t stay, there was no reason not to. It was hard to let go of the habits of avoidance and restraint I had a
lways practiced in his presence. “Okay.” I glanced at him and then away. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  The room in the back was small and seemed to be a repository for all the things Will no longer used. The built-in bookshelves along one wall were full of college and vet-school textbooks, The Lord of the Rings and other books he must have read as a boy, and a set of encyclopedias from 1983. There was a small futon with a white mattress that had a few holes in the fabric, and a sturdy but awkward-looking table beside it, painted three shades of green. His guitar was on a stand in the corner.

  “God, that looks awful, doesn’t it?” he said. He was looking at the futon mattress.

  “You don’t play anymore?”

  He shot me a look of confusion, and I pointed at the guitar. “Oh, every once in a while.” He shook his head. “I never got good enough.”

  He left the room. I heard his footsteps clanging on the metal staircase. I walked over and touched the guitar. Two of the strings were broken.

  I heard Will’s footsteps again and moved away from the guitar. He came in with an armload of bedding, and we unfolded the futon and put on the sheets. “I think your feet will hang off it,” he said. “Mine always did.” He flipped open a blanket and smoothed it down. He seemed in a hurry, and his rapid movements were making me more and more tired. “Okay, good night,” he said.

  I said good night. He closed the door behind him, and I felt both relieved and bereft. I changed into a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and then there was a knock at the door. I opened it, hyperconscious of the way my breasts now swung loose and heavy beneath my shirt.

  “Pillow,” Will said. He thrust one at me, and I took it, hugging it to my chest. We stood like that a moment. Each of us seemed to be waiting for the other to speak. Will’s eyes darted to my mouth and back up again, and for a moment I wondered if he was going to kiss me.