Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  The last time Nolan spent any stretch of time with his father was two years ago at Christmas. He and Lucy took the bus and then the train to Los Angeles to stay with Robert for the holiday. The trip started out well enough, in part because Robert was dating a woman who aspired to be Martha Stewart and kept everyone buzzed on sugar cookies, gingerbread, and fudge. They drank hot chocolate until their stomachs ached and played three rounds of Monopoly back to back and had a Christmas movie marathon. Nolan even started to think that maybe his father wasn’t so terrible after all, and maybe he could figure out a way to get his parents to love each other again and put his family back together. But on the last night of their visit, he overheard Robert talking to his girlfriend about how his biggest regret in life was having children and that she should avoid kids at all costs. “They’re not worth the effort,” he’d said. “Ungrateful little bastards. All they do is eat your food and ask for money, steal your dreams and suck you dry.” The Martha Stewart wannabe had laughed, “Oh, Robert, you don’t mean that,” and Nolan had waited for him to laugh and agree, to take back what he’d said, but Robert only grunted—a sound that revealed everything Nolan needed to know about his place in his father’s world.

  After that, anytime Sandra talked about sending them to LA for a visit, Nolan made up an excuse. He was sick. Or he had too much homework. It got easier when he started working at the grocery store—he couldn’t get the time off, or he could have, but he never asked; the store was short-handed, or a coworker needed him to cover a shift; it was Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter or Fourth of July, always some holiday he could work overtime; he had car payments to make, they needed the money. His mother never pushed the issue, and because of this, Lucy often ended up going to stay with Robert by herself.

  He tried coming up with an excuse this time, too, but Sandra shook her head. “You can do your homework Sunday night when you get back. And I called your work and your manager said you could have the time off.” She pressed her hand to his forehead. “You’re not running a fever. You’re going on this trip.”

  There was nothing else to do but say okay and pack his gear.

  Saturday arrived and Robert with it, gunning up their driveway in his two-seater convertible. He honked the horn three times. Sandra yelled for Nolan to get his things, but he didn’t move right away. He was lying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking of Celeste, wondering what she was doing this weekend, if she was worried about him.

  He hadn’t spoken to her since the party and his arrest. He was grounded, allowed to go to school and to work and then come straight back home, no detours. His mother timed the drive between each place and if he was more than three minutes late pulling into the driveway, she added another day to his sentence. He was late only once.

  The Monday after his arrest, he’d driven to Gabriella’s on his way home from work and when no one answered the door, drove all the way back to Jake’s where he saw her through the front windows waiting on a family of four. She looked fine, unharmed. He watched her for a few minutes before driving home, where he walked through the door and got yet another lecture from his mother about responsibility and how much trouble he was in and not to press his luck and now he was grounded for eight days instead of seven and just keep pushing, mister, she’d make it nine. He made it home on time every day after that. He didn’t like disappointing his mother, didn’t want to make her life harder than it already was. Also, she was threatening to send him to military school—or worse, his father’s house—if he screwed up again. So he didn’t try to see Celeste again. He went to school and then to work and then back home where he watched TV and picked up the phone every time it rang, hoping it would be Celeste. It never was. Only silence on the other end, or sometimes a faint sound, like the ocean crashing against a rocky shore, or a murmuring crowd of people. Sometimes it was his mother, calling from the hospital to make sure he wasn’t sneaking out, and he felt like a child again.

  He wanted to hear Celeste’s voice. He wanted to find out how she was doing, how she got home from the party, if she was really as safe as she seemed through the restaurant window. He tried calling Gabriella’s house, sometimes three times a day and always when his mother wasn’t home, but no matter what time he called, Celeste was never around. Gabriella told him she was passing his messages along, but Celeste had yet to call him back. Once he’d called Jake’s and in a hurried whisper she’d said, “Now’s not a good time. Can this wait?” He’d said yes, even though he meant no, and now a week had passed and she still hadn’t called, and all he could think was that she’d heard about his arrest and knew he was being watched, that the government was suspicious and tracking his every move. Or worse, the government had found her despite his best efforts, had threatened her, and it was no longer safe for them to be in contact, and wouldn’t be for a while. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from hoping every time the phone rang. Neither could he stop thinking about her lips on his, the heat their bodies made together. The night, the stars, the sweet taste of her.

  Another honk sounded from the driveway.

  “Nolan!” Sandra shouted. “Move it!”

  He grabbed his sleeping bag, tent, and backpack stuffed with a change of clothes and gear, then shuffled to the front door.

  Sandra kissed his cheek. “Behave.”

  Robert drove over the speed limit and took the curves too fast. With the convertible top down, conversation was impossible, which was just fine with Nolan. On the way up the mountain, they passed a meadow that would have made the perfect camping and stargazing spot, but Robert didn’t even slow down. “I reserved us a nice little spot by the creek,” he shouted, gunning around a tight corner. A claustrophobic alcove, crowded with trees whose branches knitted into a pine-needle ceiling, blocking any view of the sky.

  They unloaded the car in silence. Everything of Robert’s was still new in its packaging. He used a pocketknife to saw through the plastic wrapping and cut off the price tags. Even the hiking boots he wore had the clean, hard look of being fresh out of the box. He spent twenty minutes reading the instructions on how to set up the tent, with all the parts spread out in the dirt, before he finally threw up his hands. “You ever set one of these things up before?”

  Nolan put up the red, two-person dome with stakes in the ground in less than five minutes, while Robert stood to one side, taking swigs from a flask he carried in his jacket pocket.

  “Well, it’s certainly not the Ritz.” Robert offered Nolan the flask. “But I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?”

  Nolan turned his back on the flask and began to set up the tent he’d brought for himself, a lightweight, gray backpacking tent his mother gave him on his twelfth birthday. The top was full mesh, offering an open view of the sky whenever the rain fly was rolled up. Not that he’d be using that feature tonight. He stretched the rain fly over the top of the tent and staked down the corners.

  Robert cleared his throat in the awkward way of someone who’s about to speak, pausing a few seconds, dragging out the inevitable longer than necessary. Finally he said, “About those pills . . .” then let the silence balloon again between them.

  “They weren’t mine,” Nolan said.

  “Then whose were they?”

  Nolan ignored the question. He didn’t expect his father to believe him; no one else did. That was the genius of using cops to do your dirty work. In the general public’s mind, police officers were the good guys. Officer Friendlies to be trusted and obeyed. To suggest that an officer charged to serve and protect had planted drugs in an innocent person’s car was to suggest the system flawed, even dangerous. And no one wanted to believe that.

  Nolan walked to the trunk of the convertible to unload what gear remained. Sleeping bags, firewood enough for two nights, a propane stove and lantern, a cooler of food and drinks, a hatchet with the protective plastic still covering the blade.

  Robert took the hatchet from him and started splintering a chunk of wood into kindling. Between hits, he
said, “You’re lucky they didn’t throw you in jail.”

  It wasn’t luck. The government didn’t want him locked up. They wanted to scare him, make sure he understood the extent of their reach and the kind of power they had, how easily they could wreck his life; but he was useless to them in jail. It came as no surprise to Nolan that Officer Williams released him into his mother’s custody with no charges filed.

  “That’s it? He’s free to go?” Sandra had been holding on to Nolan’s arm, squeezing tight enough to hurt. “What about paperwork? A trial? Community service, at least? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “I think your son learned his lesson here tonight.” Officer Williams gave Nolan a knowing look. “Haven’t you, Mr. Durant?”

  And Nolan had nodded, going along with the charade. Anything to get out of that concrete bunker with its countless cameras blinking red, and doors that locked automatically.

  Robert managed to get the fire going without too much trouble, thanks to a can of lighter fluid and a stack of wadded-up newspapers. He unfolded a camping chair in front of the twisting flames and sat down with a six-pack of beer cradled in his lap. “There’s soda in the cooler if you want. Chips and hot dogs for dinner. No buns though. I left those on the counter. No mustard or ketchup. Forgot those too.”

  Nolan wasn’t hungry. He sat in another camping chair opposite his father and tilted his head back, trying to glimpse the stars through a small hole where some of the branches didn’t quite meet. The patch of sky wasn’t big enough, the fire too bright. If he wanted to see the stars, he’d have to go someplace else. He pulled his down jacket tighter around his shoulders, stuffing his hands into his pockets and breathing hot air into the collar. Every so often, Robert cleared his throat like he was about to speak again, but then he’d crack a beer and tip it to his mouth for a swig, drowning whatever it was he was thinking about saying. His gaze stayed fixed on the flames, never once straying to his son.

  Nolan played out imaginary conversations with his father. About school and college prep courses and SATs and what major he should choose: physics or planetary science. About Celeste and dating and what it felt like to be in love. About Lucy drinking and smoking and hanging around with the wrong crowd. In his head, he asked Robert for advice and Robert looked him in the eye and said, “Son, everything’s going to work out just fine. Son, you’re going to be okay.” In his head, Robert said all the things a father should say, all the things Nolan needed to hear. In real life, he cracked another beer and went on saying nothing.

  Robert had just opened the last can when a car drove up the gravel road, headlights swinging into their campsite. The car parked behind Robert’s convertible. The engine shut off. The headlights went dark, then the driver’s door opened and the dome light snapped on. A young woman, who looked closer to Nolan’s age than his father’s, fluffed her curly auburn hair in the rearview mirror and spread a layer of gloss across her pouting lips. She blew a kiss to herself and then got out of the car. Robert rose to meet her, smoothing his hair and tugging at the hem of his shirt to make sure it covered his small paunch. She trotted up to him smiling, her voice like a little girl’s when she said, “Are there bears out here, Bobby?” He reassured her there weren’t, but if there were, he’d protect her. Then he encircled his arms around her waist and lifted her a few inches off the ground. She squealed and kicked her stilettoed feet, then his mouth was on hers, devouring her, it seemed to Nolan. He turned away, stared into the trees instead.

  A few minutes later, Robert led the woman to the fire pit.

  “This is Melissa,” he said to Nolan.

  She smiled shyly at Nolan, who didn’t smile back.

  “Mind giving us a little privacy?” Robert gestured to the red dome tent. “An hour. No, two would be better.” He winked and then pinched Melissa’s butt.

  “Bobby.” She swatted his arm playfully. “He’s just a kid.”

  Robert reached into his pocket, pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet, and passed it to Nolan. “Don’t tell your mother.” He pulled Melissa giggling into the tent.

  Sleeping bags rustled and swished. Robert’s low voice rumbled in the dark. Melissa continued to giggle and squeak. Nolan crumpled up the hundred-dollar bill and tossed it into the flames. In seconds, the money became ash.

  He stood and, without bothering to put out the fire or even find a flashlight, walked out of camp, a quarter mile back down the main road to the meadow they’d passed coming up. He pushed through waist-high grass to the very center, where no trees grew and nothing blocked his view. He tilted his head back, gulping in the juniper and late autumn air. The sky was a miracle of light and dark, and the stars were all there, and he wished he’d brought his telescope. There hadn’t been room in his father’s car, but he should have found the space. He wished Celeste was with him, too.

  He sank into the grass and stretched out on his back. He didn’t have to try hard to find the stars here. Wherever he fixed his gaze, there they were. Splashes of bright points as far and as deep as his eyes could see, and stars beyond those stars, too, hidden in darkness, too far away, millions and millions of light-years. Not enough time had passed for their light to reach Earth. He could lie here all night and still not drink his fill of the Milky Way poured out like cream across this black coffee sky.

  He might do it, too, stay out here instead of returning to camp. His down jacket was thick, the temperatures unseasonably warm for this time of year. There wasn’t even any snow on the ground yet, though the air was edged with the familiar, metallic bite of winter’s coming. He thought about his father’s girlfriend, Melissa, a new one, not the Martha Stewart wannabe from two years ago. Then he didn’t want to think about her anymore, and so he thought about bears instead, wondering if when they wandered late at night, they followed the silver path of the moon and used the stars to navigate home. He thought about bears and he thought about Celeste and he thought about the grass blades beneath his fingertips and the satellite arcing across the sky above him from left to right. He blinked, and the blink was slow, his eyes suddenly weighted, though he didn’t feel tired. His whole body went heavy then, like his bones were made of hardening cement. The stars began to tremble. Funny—he could no longer lift his hands.

  The next thing Nolan was consciously aware of was someone standing over him, shining a bright light into his face, shouting, “What the hell are you doing? Where are your clothes?” The voice raged loud and sounded like his father. “Get up! Get out of there! Goddamn it, Nolan! Jesus Christ!”

  Firm hands gripped his arms, fingers pinching into his flesh, dragging him backwards, up and out of a cold creek. Water rushed over his legs. He’d been half-submerged, up to his waist in a babbling brook. He struggled to comprehend. He was drowsy, half-asleep, and numb from the waist down. He shook, teeth chattering.

  A woman screamed, “Oh my God, oh my God, is he all right?!”

  “Get his sleeping bag,” Robert said.

  A few seconds later Nolan was wrapped in something heavy and slick, and his father was rubbing his arms, his back, his legs, trying to get his blood flowing hot again. A lantern sat in the dirt beside them and cast unnatural blue light across the creek, making the running water crackle and spark.

  “What the hell were you doing in there?” His father continued to press Nolan with questions he had no answers to. “Where are your clothes? Say something!”

  The woman—what was her name again? Nolan couldn’t remember, and he didn’t care—hovered nearby. Her hair looked like flames, looked like the sun’s corona. He closed his eyes a moment, shutting them out, his father, the woman, their nervous chattering. He tried not to think about the chill settling deep in his bones, and instead tried to think of the last thing he saw before he blacked out, the last thing he remembered. Lying on his back in a meadow, staring at a sky wild with stars. And then . . . and then a pinpoint of light becoming several small points of light, growing in size as they moved closer to him, forming a triangle
right above him, hovering there, waiting for what? For him? He didn’t remember what happened after that, or how he ended up in the creek.

  He opened his eyes to find his father’s face pressed close to his, a small flashlight swinging back and forth across his pupils.

  “Did you see Them?” Nolan whispered, his voice hoarse and strange to his own ears.

  “Get up.” Robert clicked off the flashlight and returned it to his jacket pocket. “Get on your feet. Let’s go.”

  He slipped his arm around Nolan’s waist and guided him up the sloped bank and back to their campsite. Pine needles pricked the bottoms of his feet. Pebbles jabbed into his toes. The woman tripped after them, whimpering.

  “Did you see Them?” Nolan asked again, forcing his voice louder.

  “See who?” The woman sounded even more scared now.

  “The Visitors,” Nolan said. “Extraterrestrials.”

  Robert’s grip tightened. He thrust Nolan to the edge of the fire, almost too hard, almost into the smoldering coals, almost. He tossed a handful of kindling and shredded newspaper onto the embers, and when a small flame appeared, he added a log and then another, turning the flame into a blaze.

  “Bobby?” The woman stood on the other side of Nolan now, her cheeks orange from the firelight, her eyes startled and darting. “What is he talking about?”

  Robert said nothing, just added another log to the fire.

  “The meadow,” Nolan explained. “After you told me to . . . after I left, I went to that clearing we passed coming up here. I wanted to see the stars. They were moving. There was one that came close, right over top of me and just stopped and . . .”