“It’s something to do, all right,” I said, returning my eyes from Barney to my plate. I ate a fry. It was good, had some kind of seasoning on it. Spicy.
“You know what?” Griff said, leaning forward a little, brushing his sleeve against a pickle. “You should come with me! What do you think? You can keep me company on the way out there and I’ll buy you a plane ticket home. We could take our time, see the country. It’d be like that summer road trip we took in college.” There was a glimmer in his eyes that made me want to say yes. I would’ve liked nothing more.
“But I have the store.”
“Oh—right. Yeah.”
He put the burger to his lips and was about to take a bite when there was a thud at the bar. The man named Barney had fallen backward, was lying on his back on the floor with one leg over the toppled stool.
Griff spun around. I got up fast without first sliding out of the booth—the edge of the table slammed my crotch. The ketchup bottle tipped over and rolled into Griff’s lap. He absent-mindedly placed it back on the table.
The other men at the bar were scrambling into a group surrounding the one on the floor. One busied himself with uprighting the stool. The few other people in the pub were standing, some moving toward the bar, sneaking to it, almost, in a way that made clear they were only there to watch and wanted nothing to do with any blood.
“Is he OK?” I said to Griff.
“I think—don’t you know CPR?”
“In health class!”
One of the old fishermen was kneeling with his hand on the guy’s chest. He held his cheek over the guy’s mouth, waited for a moment without moving. Griff and I got up and stood on the edge of what had become a semicircle around the sick man. The bartender was on the phone asking for an ambulance. When it seemed it was up to me alone to help the guy, Lois pushed through the circle and told everyone to step back. People parted and Griff and I were given a scenic view neither of us really wanted. Lois started pumping the man’s chest, shapeless beneath his green plaid shirt, then breathing into his thin-lipped mouth. She did this for five minutes, maybe ten. Griff stood at my side, his arms folded, his fingers anxiously drumming on his elbow. I began to hear the distant but oh so reassuring wail of sirens.
But then, just like that, the old fisherman died.
His transition from living to dead was amazingly obvious maybe because it didn’t happen everywhere at once. His lips were still alive even as his eyes were dead, and then his nose. It was like a curtain being pulled from his forehead down to the bottom of his white-stubbled chin.
“Barney,” growled the guy kneeling beside him. He had a thick, phlegmy voice I suspected a good throat-clearing could do nothing to smooth. “Come on.” He took Barney’s liver-spotted hand and squeezed it white, whiter.
Lois kept doing CPR, now with her eyes mostly closed, until the paramedics came through the door. The man kneeling beside the old guy looked from Lois to these new men, the rescuers, with hesitation, with skepticism, as though unsure whether these strangers could help his friend better than their familiar waitress could.
“Let them do it, Stu,” Lois said, and she stood up to let the paramedics take over. She smoothed her apron. Her chest heaving, she looked at Griff and me and said, glancing at the men on the floor, “Barney and Stu. Been friends since before television.”
“You did good,” Griff said as she pushed past us.
“He’s dead, honey,” she said without turning around. She went through a white swinging door in the back of the pub and that was the last we saw of her.
We went back to our booth and poked at our cold lunches and watched the paramedics bring the old fisherman’s body out of the pub on an orange stretcher. There were diagnoses being bandied about by the patrons—heart attack, stroke. The ambulance pulled out of the parking lot with its lights off.
“Your food’s on the house, folks,” the bartender said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Stu returned to his stool and laid his head on his arms folded across the bar. The bartender filled a glass and pushed it against the man’s elbow, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“A kiddie pool, huh?” Griff said, reaching for his vest.
“I used to sit in it and read.”
“That sounds nice.”
He left Lois a forty-three dollar tip. It was everything he had in his wallet.
***
Five days after the Elsewhen show and one day after my ears finally stopped ringing, I sat down on the bed—my bed, at least until my RA arrived to check me out. It was empty now, bare green fireproof vinyl. The room looked strange split down the middle this way. It wasn’t bare the way it had been when we arrived last September. Griff hadn’t packed yet and his stuff was still there—his posters (always the items that left the most noticeable absence) still hung off-kilter on the walls. Only I was missing from it now, as though I’d been cut out with a scalpel.
I felt the feeling of leaving, of leaving. That low sadness, that weight in my chest. That feeling that if I could only just fully hyperventilate it would relieve some of the ache. I took my keys off my keychain and squeezed them until my knuckles turned white.
The RA knocked once, came in, apologized for being late.
“That’s OK,” I told her.
With quick glances—this exercise was a formality—she examined my furniture to make sure I hadn’t wrecked anything. I filled out a mail-forwarding card and then locked the door for the last time. She held a little yellow envelope squeezed open like a frog’s mouth and I dropped my keys inside.
“You’re free now,” she told me, tucking my key envelope and the forms into a manila folder.
“We’ll see.”
She gave me a funny look. We left my suite and she continued down the hall to the next one. “Have a good summer,” she said before opening the other door.
“You too.”
I pressed the button for the elevator, feeling caught between wanting it to come fast and wanting it to get stuck so I’d be forced stay a little longer. I felt caught between everything. Part of me wanted to hide and hole up for the summer in some dusty, forgotten corner of the dorm. Another part couldn’t get away from here—away from Griff—fast enough. I thought I’d almost made it—I was almost to my parents’ car. He’d been out all morning. I thought I could sneak away without seeing him. And then the elevator door opened and he stepped toward me. Griff.
“Oh, hey,” he said. He had on shorts and a white long-sleeve t-shirt rolled up to his elbows.
“Hey.” It felt almost impossible to say anything at all to him now. How had things degenerated so quickly? We’d talked the night before; it was chilly, but we’d talked.
“I saw your parents outside,” he said, but it sounded like a question.
“Yeah. I’m leaving.”
“Leaving leaving?” When I nodded he added, “I thought your check-out wasn’t until this afternoon?”
I looked right into his eyes and told him that my parents happened to come early.
“And you’re all checked out and everything already?” The elevator door closed behind him. I reached past him and pushed the button again.
“Yeah.”
“You should’ve called me. I would’ve come back and helped move your stuff.”
“It’s OK.”
“...”
“...”
“Huh.” He looked at his hands, pushed his sleeves up again. “Then this is it.”
I nodded.
“So I’ll see you around?”
He started to step closer, I thought, to hug me—but then he put out his hand instead. It was warm, dry. I left it moist.
“I’ll be around,” I said.
“If your freshman is annoying, or smells, or anything, you’re welcome to sleep on my floor any time.”
I nodded again. “Thanks.”
The elevator door opened for the second time. I started to get on, but for a short eternity I froze with one foot in the elevator and
one foot in the hall, knowing I should apologize, should explain myself, should say goodbye, should say all that and more. But I didn’t. I didn’t. I stepped all the way on. I jabbed the door-close button again and again with my thumb—not even the lobby button, the door-close button.
He glared at me through the narrowing gap. “You were just going to leave, weren’t you? Your parents weren’t early. You weren’t even going to say goodbye.”
His eyes looked bigger than usual. They were the last part of him I saw. The door clanged shut and the elevator hung unmoving in the shaft. At any moment either of us could push the button and the doors would spring open again and we’d have a second chance, a second chance for all the things I knew should be said and done. My finger hovered in front of the button. And then there was a thump on the door and on the other side Griff said, softly but as clear as if he’d whispered it in my ear, “Fuck you, Vince.”
I descended.
The next time I saw him in person was on graduation day.
*
We drove up the Cape Cod coast, taking the long way when we could, the scenic routes on little roads, but even as the new Jetta ambled along it seemed Griff had some destination in mind for us. Maybe he had all along.
He drove to the tip of Provincetown, where the road ended at the mouth of an unplowed beach parking lot, between snowy dunes that rose high on both sides of the little gray car. We idled there for a minute, exhaust forming a cloud in the windless trench.
I looked out the window. It seemed we were encased in white, a misty blank place between two worlds. “I guess this is as far as we can go.”
“Feel like taking a walk?” he said.
“Um... OK, sure.”
He turned off the car and got out; I grabbed my gloves and got out too.
“What do you think’s on the other side of this dune?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Beach?”
“Let’s check it out. I want to see some waves.”
We scrambled on all fours up the steep snow and sand slope of the dune. Little clumps of snow rolled past us, growing into snowballs on their way down to the road. Wind rushed across the top of the dune, blowing off wisps of snow like steam, making the dune look at once very hot and very cold.
“Now how far can we go?” Griff said from the top of the dune, his arms spread for balance like a tightrope walker. Down and across the beach was the ocean, white and frothy at first, and then, farther out, a misty black.
“That lighthouse down there?” I said, pointing to the small building on the end of the peninsula, three-quarters of a mile away. Long Point. The tip of North America, reaching out as a finger into the gray Atlantic.
“Let’s do it.”
We slid down the other side of the dune and were on the beach. After smacking snow off our clothes we walked along the crest of the waves, stepping over clumps of frozen seaweed and balls of icy sand. The wind had swept most of the snow off the beach; it lay in razor-sharp drifts along the dunes, bristles of yellowed beach grass sticking out like ancient hair.
Griff walked with his hands in his vest pockets, his hair slapping his cheeks. The lighthouse was fixed in front of us far down the beach.
“Do you think those old guys, Barney and Stu, do you think they were together?” he said, raising his voice to compete with the crashing waves.
“Depends on what you mean by together. I think probably they were just old friends.”
“Lifebuddies?” he said with a smile.
“Maybe.”
“I wonder how they met.”
“Probably some freak thing that almost didn’t happen,” I said. “I bet they crashed their boats into each other or something.”
He laughed and wiped snow off his knees. “It used to bother me how precarious the start of our friendship was,” he said. “Like how if anything had been different it never would’ve happened. You know? If I hadn’t transferred to Shuster. If we hadn’t been in that same lit class...”
“Yeah, but nothing happens without a million pieces falling into place beforehand.”
“I guess.” He kicked a stone and watched it splash into the waves ahead of us, leaving a circle of white bubbles on the surface for a second before the wave rolled over on itself. “But even then, none of the pieces would’ve mattered if you were straight. If you didn’t think I was cute in that class we had—if you hadn’t been capable of thinking that—we never would’ve become friends.”
“All I did was ask you to room, Griff. If I was straight I still may have. There was nobody else.”
“You wouldn’t have,” he said with perfect certainty and shook his head. Of course I knew it was true too. He kicked a piece of driftwood and then stepped over it and we kept walking. “You didn’t know me at all. If you hadn’t had a crush on me, one stranger would’ve been as good as another.”
“So it was just luck? Me, I mean. So I could meet you?” It was hard to walk in the sand and I pushed myself to keep up with him, to stay at his side. He seemed now both vulnerable and powerful, as though I could knock him over with the slightest shove if only I could catch up to him. He looked up at the lighthouse again and his face was determined.
“I just mean, I know how sometimes you like get overwhelmed by being the way you are, Vince. But look at what we both owe it. I’m thankful for it, even if you’re not.”
Now we had come to the lighthouse. It towered above us and cut the wind like a big rock in a big stream. It wasn’t the kind of lighthouse anyone lived in; rather it was a beacon made up to look like one, really just a rotating spotlight in fancy packaging. Icicles stuck out from it horizontally, defying gravity thanks to the strong ocean breeze. In the distance on our left, across the bay, the Pilgrim’s Monument rose into the sky, lights flashing on its turreted top.
For a long time we stood shoulder to shoulder watching the waves.
“It’s getting late,” I said finally, in a voice that earlier would’ve been overpowered by the wind, but here in the shelter of the lighthouse was only quiet.
“Yeah.” He turned away but then turned back quickly. “Hey Vince—”
Griff grabbed the collar of my coat and pulled me up and toward him, my heels lifting out of the sand. I felt him recoil, almost imperceptibly, when his lips met the stubble surrounding my own. White breath from his nose warmed my face, the warmest warmth I ever felt. He tasted like the pub’s spicy fries. It lasted sixteen seconds.
The first second was the best one of my life. I wasn’t surprised that this was happening—it’s hard to be surprised by something you’ve imagined for so long. The moment, the one chance I’d longed for, had arrived. I hadn’t had to kiss him at all. All along I’d only had to wait for him to kiss me.
The second, I felt his tongue push against my tongue, his nose move against my nose. He wanted this. I pulled off my glove and put my hand on his cheek, felt his stubble, felt his jaw, touched his ear and held the back of his neck, his hair thick in my palm.
The third second lasted forever and then was gone. It held within it a whole lifetime I knew now would actually come true for us. All I ever had to do was wait.
But the eleventh second, Griff opened his eyes.
The thirteenth, I lowered my hand.
The sixteenth, I realized that none of this would ever happen. That the lifetime I imagined was never meant to be. No kiss could change that.
We parted and he was looking at me, his eyes green with flecks of brown, quiet and sleepy like midnight, the weariness of midnight. He stepped back and looked at the sand. He licked his lips, laughed once, one single huff, and shook his head.
“My life would be so much easier if I wanted to do that again,” he said. He hit the side of his thigh with his fist. “You know that? Why the fuck can’t I just want to do that again?”
“Mine would be so much easier if I didn’t.” I felt my eyes well up and this time I made no effort to keep them from overflowing.
He turned and looked out at the bla
ck waves. The clouds on the horizon were turning pink. “Do you know that’s really why I came to see you, Vince? To do that?”
I didn’t understand. What had just happened was something I’d imagined for years—imagined and dreamed about and even cried for. Something I wanted back when it was a joke to everyone else. Something I’d wanted so badly it ended us. I always thought that all I needed was one kiss to get Griff to love me— Never in a million years did I think he’d be the one to kiss me.
When I didn’t respond he turned back and looked at me, as though he thought I might’ve sneaked away.
“When things flamed out with Beth and I was looking for a place to go, when I felt so scared and out of sorts, all I could think about was how comfortable and good I used to feel with you that year, you know? And how everyone said we were lifebuddies. And how I knew you loved me.”
“You knew—?”
“Of course, Vince. Of course I knew. That’s part of why I was so confused about why you stopped being my friend. How could you love me and just cast me aside like that?”
“Because one-sided love hurts, Griff.”
“You never stopped to think that I loved you too!” These words were like a lightning bolt to my heart, resuscitating all my hopes. But then he added, in a low voice as though it had been his great failure, “But just not in the same way.”
“Oh.”
“But I started to wonder if it could be the same way. If I could just somehow feel something more. If I could just— I don’t know.”
“...”
“I don’t know, Vince. Be with you!” There was a kind of hurt in his eyes I hadn’t ever seen before, but it was brief, and went away. A tear made a cold line down my cheek. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Dating was so easy before I met you, you know that? I had a blank slate. No expectations. I wanted to marry every girl I met. But the way you know me, the way we get along— What I’ve been looking for is a girl who can meet the standard of Vince. But I need to start dealing with the idea that I won’t find one. That my,” he paused, “shit, that my other half is a dude. That my soulmate is not going to be the woman of my dreams, but is my best friend. And the distance between those two things is the distance I’ll unfortunately always have.”
The Cranberry Hush: A Novel Page 24
