by Deb Caletti
My instinct is on target about Jenny, because she answers the phone with, “Is everything all right?”
“I’ve been abducted,” I say.
“Aliens, I hope,” she says. “We can make some money when you sell your story to the media.”
“I’m going to hang out down here and then have dinner with a friend.”
“What friend?” she asks. I’ve forgotten that she knows everyone on this island.
“Bud, who owns Bud’s Tavern,” I say. “I know he’s fifty and has a little problem with the bottle, but love conquers all.”
“Bud wouldn’t touch anything stronger than an Orange Crush. They hold the Beer and Book Club there, and he has an iced tea.”
“Henry Lark,” I say.
“Henry Lark?”
“You sound surprised.”
She doesn’t respond to this. “Is it a date-date?”
“We just met. At the library. But yeah. I mean, he isn’t coming over in his suit and tie to talk to my father about his ‘intentions,’ but we’re getting a burger.”
“Oh,” she says.
“What? What does that mean?”
“I said, ‘Oh.’ It means ‘oh.’ ”
“It was the way you said ‘oh.’ ”
“I just thought Henry was . . .”
“You just thought Henry was what?”
“Um . . . busy with other things. People. People and things.”
“Not as busy as you thought, I guess.” I sound smug, even to me. I rather love feeling smug. Smug is kind of terrific, which is why it gets us into so much trouble.
“Can Henry give you a ride home? I hate to have you bike in the dark. Deception Loop is pitch-black at night.”
“Glad to see you’re making friends, Tess,” I say in a Jenny voice.
“Glad to see you’re making friends, Tess,” Jenny says.
* * *
Three and a half hours sounds like no time to kill, but it ends up feeling like three and a half days. I keep checking the time, and five more minutes have passed. Of all objects, clocks are the cruelest. Beds, second.
I stay in Randall and Stein Booksellers for a long while, and then I head to this chocolate shop, Sweet Violet’s. I have the great idea to buy some caramels for Henry and me tonight, but I end up spending a ridiculous amount of money. I could have practically bought a used car for the price. They pack them in this box with a big, fancy bow, too, and it looks like more of a gift than I intend. Then I sit on this hill in a park that overlooks the water, and I read How to Keep Almost Any Plant Alive by Dr. Lester Frank. Like all living things, plants require you to understand their personal language. Misunderstandings can have dire consequences. You must listen hard to what a plant is silently saying. Dr. Lester Frank sounds a little crazy. I look for his photo in the back of the book. No luck. Plants, animals, and children are the only beings who deserve unconditional love and the only ones you can trust to return it. He sounds crazy and bitter. I can picture Dr. Lester Frank, lovelorn and alone, in his greenhouse loft, surrounded by spider plants and violets and delicate orchids that only he understands.
The park I’m in is a little creepy—one of those dark, foresty sorts, with tall trees and grills set in concrete squares and empty picnic tables. The film version shifts: Now Dr. Lester Frank is burying a rejecting lover in his backyard with a gardening trowel. It’s time to get the heck out of here.
I am wishing for a shower and a toothbrush. At the thought of my date with Henry, my heart is back on the Las Vegas roller coaster, alternatingly plunging to the pit of my stomach and then rising high with victorious hands in the air. The old me thinks about calling Meg and telling her about my upcoming date, but the new me decides not to. Instead, I ride my bike a block over and find a pharmacy. By the back counter, I see a familiar violet sweater and white head. It’s Margaret, filling a prescription. I dart around, trying to avoid her, and buy a small fortune’s worth of travel-sized products: deodorant, toothpaste, lotion. My purse is bulging with tiny boxes.
The little toothbrush actually unfolds. Cool. I was never this nervous for a date with Dillon. I freshen up back at the creepy park’s creepier bathroom. I confess I even shave my legs, which is an awkward and disturbing thing to do in there. I hope I’m not murdered before my date with Henry. It’d be easy to do me in with a gardening fork when I’ve got one foot propped up on the park bathroom’s metal sink.
Finally, it’s time. I walk my bike back to the library instead of riding it, so that the wind whooshing past doesn’t mess up my hair. I am waiting for Henry on the library steps when he puts his hands on my shoulders from behind. I didn’t even hear him coming. He gives me a little shake. It is the second time he’s touched me, and I want a third and fourth and fifth time, more times, until I stop counting.
Henry’s got a satchel over his shoulder, and it’s bulging like a fat man in a tank top. “New books?” I ask.
Henry shrugs. “I’m an addict.”
“Are you interested in everything?”
“Hmm. Not football. Not . . .” He thinks. “Eighteenth-century porcelain?”
“Basically everything.”
“Okay, yeah,” he admits. “Hey, do you mind if we stop at my house? I forgot my . . .” He pats his back pocket where his wallet would be.
“No problem. I’ve got my bike, though. Should I leave it here?”
“Nah. Kenny Travis will steal it. Kenny Travis will steal anything. He once stole the Jarvises’ Saint Bernard when it was tied up outside the bank. Anything goes missing, you head over to Kenny Travis’s house and his mother will give it back.”
“His mother?”
“Kenny’s eight.”
I am in Henry’s car, and I am having a hard time believing I am in Henry’s car. It is an old Mercedes, but don’t get the wrong idea. The car is about a thousand years old, and it’s yellow and boxy, and every now and then it backfires and I think we’ve just been shot.
“Car mechanics,” Henry says. “I’m not interested in car mechanics.” We’ve wedged Jenny’s bike into the backseat, and the front wheel is spinning near our heads. I watch Henry’s profile. I’m engrossed, because this is Henry driving a car. His elegant hands shift into third. I am on a fact-finding expedition in a new country that is Henry. There is a string of wooden beads hanging from his rearview mirror. There is an orange water bottle by my feet. A notebook with a worn leather cover is shoved partway into the fold of the front seat.
“Journal?” I gesture to it.
“Nah.” Henry blushes, though. Even the tips of his ears are red. This is what happens to Henry when he lies, although I don’t know that yet. “Just stuff. To do. Thoughts, whatever. Here we are.”
It isn’t where I pictured Henry living. He has turned into a neighborhood with a sign marking its entrance: WHISTLING FIRS. It’s a regular suburban-type street, with regular houses that all basically look the same. It’s the sort of place where someone’s bound to have one of those outdoor banners that remind you what holiday it is. And, yep, there it is. Decorated with a beach bucket and sunglasses, so we’ll all know it’s summer.
But wait. What’s this? There’s a guy washing a car while wearing a kilt. Maybe I’ve been out in the sun too long.
“Is he wearing a kilt, or am I seeing some sort of Scottish mirage?”
“He’s wearing a kilt. That’s Jackson. He went for a hike once on Mount Conviction a few years ago and got lost. Like, about-to-die lost. But then he heard the sound of bagpipes and followed it to safety. Now he wears a kilt.”
I make that heh sound in the back of my throat that means Are you kidding me? But Henry’s serious. He beeps his horn and Jackson waves and Henry waves back as we turn in to a driveway. I’ve learned my lesson: Don’t let a suburban ranch house fool you. Nothing is regular on Parrish Island.
Inside, Henry drops his bag by the door. I snoop around on my Henry fact-finding mission. There’s a grandfather clock and a bench to sit on while you take off yo
ur shoes. Past the hallway, there’s a staircase and a living room with a plaid couch and a rocking chair and a table with lots of magazines.
“Hell-o!” he calls out, but no one replies. “I live here with my mom. My dad lives on Velveeta.”
Well, this is what I hear him say, anyway. I am thinking this sounds like a very limited diet when Henry notices my puzzled expression.
“It’s a boat. La Bella Vita? ‘The Good Life’? He usually docks it down by Hotel Delgado, but he’s taken it to Tortola for a while.”
“Oh, wow. Cool.”
He takes the stairs two at a time, and I’m not sure what to do, so I follow. And then there I am in Henry’s room. I am hoping his mom doesn’t come home right now. It’ll look bad if we’re in there alone. In the film version, my shirt is buttoned wrong and Henry is tucking his in as fast as he can, but it’s only the wish-fear of my imagination, because Henry is focused on the task at hand. He is searching around his desk for his wallet and feeling in the pockets of jeans, which gives me a minute to take in his room.
Books. Books are stacked and tumbling. Books are packed into bookshelves. Books are lying open on his unmade bed and are piled up to create a nightstand. There is also an old, sepia-toned map of the world on one wall, and on another, an elaborate boat in a rambunctious sea. I recognize that boat.
“Hey, the Dawn Treader,” I say. I am so happy to see the Dawn Treader, I can’t even tell you. I loved that book. The Chronicles of Narnia are my very favorite books ever. “Those are my very favorite books ever,” I say.
“I knew I liked you for some reason,” Henry says. He is kicking a pair of boxers under the bed so I don’t see. He is feeling around in his sheets. “Aha,” he says. He holds up the wallet and gives it a look that says that sneaky bastard has nothing on him.
“Great job, Encyclopedia Brown,” I say. Why his wallet is in his sheets, I’ll never know.
“We’re outta here,” he says.
And we are. But not before I see it. On his desk, there’s a picture frame. It is not odd that he has a picture frame on his desk, of course. The odd part is that it is facedown. At the sight of it—well, I know right then that there is more to be found out about Henry Lark than I first thought. More than favorite books, or fathers on boats, or boxers. A photo too special to get rid of but too painful to look at means one thing and one thing only—Henry Lark has had his heart broken.
* * *
On the way out of Whistling Firs, Henry waves to an old lady whose house has a FOR SALE sign out front.
“Mrs. Martinelli,” Henry explains. “They’re moving. She and her husband bought a cocoa plantation on the Ivory Coast. I’ve known them since I was, like, seven.”
“Does anyone around here just do anything . . .” I was going to say normal, but that sounds bad. “Usual?”
Henry looks at me with a baffled expression. He has no clue what I mean. The car deodorizer hanging from his rearview mirror is shaped like a Twinkie and smells like vanilla, and nothing in this place strikes him as odd.
“Everyone has a story, I guess,” he says. “And every person’s story is either a little crazy, or a lot crazy.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“You too? I mean, what are you doing on Parrish? You’ve never exactly stayed with Jenny before, at least for any length of time.”
“Does everyone know everything about everyone else here?”
“Pretty much,” Henry says. He is a careful driver. Or else, his car just can’t make it over thirty. Every time he turns a corner, the bike wheel starts spinning by my head as if it’s in the lead and rounding the last bend in the Tour de France.
“I didn’t know I was coming here.”
“Surprise trip?”
“You could say that.”
“Got it. It’s private.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t mean to be mysterious, but we’re having a happy evening, and in this particular story there’s a dead mother and an AWOL father.”
“Oh.”
“See what I mean?”
“Jesus.”
“So let’s talk onion rings for now. First thing I should know about you. Onion rings or fries?”
“Both,” he says.
“I knew I liked you for some reason.”
* * *
The Hotel Delgado overlooks the sound. It’s a stately, old white building with a huge porch and green shutters. It’s something you’d see in Key West, and I know this because we went there once, Mom and Dad and me. Dad wanted to go because he read that the town celebrated the setting of the sun every night. He thought we shouldn’t miss a place like that. The celebration turned out to be touristy, with people selling conch shells and T-shirts and handing out pamphlets for discount marlin-fishing trips, but this did not dampen my father’s enthusiasm one bit.
The Hotel Delgado, though, is surrounded not by lush palm trees and humid air, but by tall, shadow-casting evergreens and shaggy pines. There are several docks in front of it, packed with sailboats and cruisers, and it all seems like a big surprise because you drive and wind your way down a forested road and then there it is, this place so beautiful and strange at the same time.
We order our burgers and have the polite, first-date argument over who will pay. No really. But I asked you. But that’s not fair. Okay, but next time . . . When we get our food, the bags are stuffed and hot to the touch. We sit down on this bench in front of the hotel and spread out our food. I’m feeling the happiest I’ve felt in a long time. Henry asks me about San Bernardino, and I ask him who the biggest jerk in his class is. (Zachary Riley, who’s a bully.) I ask him what he wants to do after graduation next year, and he asks me who in my class I’d take to a deserted island. (Xavier Chung, who is still in the Boy Scouts.) We are joking and talking about our mutual dislike of foreign films, and he is telling me how much he hates movie theater butter squirted on popcorn, and I am about to tell him my popcorn story (don’t ask), when my phone buzzes. I decide to ignore it, but then it buzzes again, and I start to imagine that Jenny has fallen on her kitchen floor. She is writhing in pain and has scooted inch by inch over to the phone, where she has just barely managed to kick it off the hook with her one unbroken leg.
“Sorry,” I say to Henry.
“No problem.”
I fish my phone out of my purse. It’s not Jenny at all. It’s another text from Dad, a photograph of a pregnant woman sitting on a bench, maybe at a bus stop. There are four children with her. One boy has a toddler on his lap, one kid is under the bench itself, and another is hitting his own head with a drumstick.
Shawntel Believed That One in Five Children Is a Musical Prodigy.
I turn off my phone. “My father.”
“Do you need to talk to him?”
“Not now. Anyway, he’s in Portland. With the creepy-cat-lady version of the baroness in The Sound of Music.”
“Mine’s in the Caribbean. With the ditsy twenty-two-year-old version of the baroness in The Sound of Music.”
“Hmm. I guess we’ve got something in common.”
We both say it at the same time. “I knew I liked you for some rea—”
We’re laughing again. We’ve been having so much fun that I almost forget how attracted to him I am. I’ve forgotten all about those sweet eyes, and that swoosh of hair, and that ever, ever so slightly imperfect smile. I’m comfortable with him. That’s the shocking thing. It is turning out that Henry is not only gorgeous, but that he could be a great friend. You always hear people say that about the person they’re with—he’s my best friend. But I never felt that way about Dillon. There were basic best-friend requirements he didn’t fulfill. He didn’t really get me. We didn’t make each other laugh. He refused to say I’d feel the exact same way if he didn’t feel the exact same way.
“Doesn’t your friend Elijah work here?” I ask Henry.
“He’s a waiter. I was trying to see if I could see him.” He looks over his shoulder. The restaurant is inside the hot
el, but it also spills out onto the hotel porch. There are a few couples having dinner at tables with white tablecloths and candles that have not yet been lit. “In an hour, this place’ll be packed.”
“I could never work in a restaurant. The whole balancing-dishes-on-your-arm thing. Have you always worked at the library?”
“There and the bookstore.” He gives me that apologetic look again. But there’s no need to apologize for loving books. It’s one of my favorite things about him.
“I worked at our Parks and Recreation department. I was a helper in this horse class for kids.”
“So you like horses,” Henry says. “Okay, horses are cool. Did you know they’ve been around for fifty million years? The first one was as tall as a fox.”
“I don’t know much about horses at all. I’m not sure I do like them. They kind of scare me. All I had to do was walk one around a ring with a kid on its back and, you know, clean stalls.”
“Crappy job.”
“Ha-ha. Hilarious. Hey, do you always laugh at your own jokes, Mister?”
“I think so. I think I do.”
“Wait. I do know something about horses. The whole measuring thing. Each hand stands for four inches. If a horse is sixteen-point-two hands, the point two stands for—”
“Two fingers,” Henry says.
I smile. It’s possible that Henry and I understand each other. He seems to realize this too. We are both quiet. The sun is beginning to turn to that bittersweet orangey yellow of twilight, and the water is shimmering gold, and the boats are bobbing and sloshing, and it makes this bench a perfect bench for a kiss. At least Henry is looking at me and I am looking at him, and though we barely know each other, there’s the sense it’s about to happen. I shut my eyes for a moment, ready for him to lean in. But I open them again and find Henry looking out toward the evening sky.
