She sat up on her board and looked right at me. “Teddy I have news, no one survives. Ever. And it’s dark and tragic and fate has your hand, dragging you to the end. You might as well grab a wave.”
She splashed away, paddling for a mushy lump that wouldn’t take her far.
Leaving me wondering, how to keep her here, ask her to stop paddling away.
Forty-Nine
Teddy
“So how’s Sid?”
I spooned a large helping of rice and forked a slab of steak onto my plate. “I don’t know, she keeps turning me away.”
“Oh.” A look passed between my mom and dad, but then nothing. I was glad Mom brought it up, but also surprised she didn’t have something to add.
“Got any advice?”
Mom sighed. “No. I hoped you could keep her involved, be her friend. I’m worried about her all alone.”
“Me too. I text her, I go by. She barely answers, or says she’s in bed, tired. I’m stuck.”
Dad said, “Keep trying. She needs you, her friends, she just doesn’t know it.”
“I don’t know, I feel like I’m hounding her, unwanted.”
“Take her surfing.”
“I’m trying. Mom?”
“Well, when I lost your grandma four years ago I was turned upside down for a long time. And we didn’t even live in the same state. I barely saw her. I don’t know how Sid will deal with it, the sadness. She needs friends, family, support. The trouble is, she might not know what she needs—what would help, what she wants. You have to be there for her, listen. Ask what you can do to help. If she asks for something, do it. That’s all you can do.”
Fifty
Texts
Hey.
Wanna surf?
Tomorrow?
Break wall?
I’ll pick you up at 7?
Not sure . . .
Surf report says big, good.
Heard Liam Hemsworth might be there.
Oh in that case ;o)
Really? You will?
I’m kidding about Liam.
Yes, and I know you are.
He surfs the Bu.
Not the lowly break wall.
Plus he’s too old for me.
I’ll see you at seven.
Are you busy now?
Can I come over?
I’m headed to bed.
Okay
goodnight.
Fifty-One
Sid
Dad smiled widely when he came home from work. “I had the most amazing thing happen last night!”
“Did you win the lotto?” I was opening a can of marinara for pasta, the only thing I was presently capable of cooking and interested in eating.
“Better. You know how people are always talking about the dead visiting the living? I mean, I generally think it’s total bullshit, but Sid, it happened last night.”
I poured the sauce in a pot and placed it on the stove. “What happened last night?”
“Your mom—she visited me. Oh man, it was amazing.”
I turned and stared at him slack-jawed.
“I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but here’s what I know. The people who leave this plane aren’t leaving for good, they’re simply living on a different plane, inside us, around us, above us and sometimes all at once.” He sliced butter squares and smeared them on a loaf of French bread and down in between slices. “So they’re here, and they have answers, news, things they want to tell us, but we have to be open to listening. We have to listen with all our heart, because they’re talking, Sid, all the time.”
I filled the pasta pot with water, slammed it on the back of the stove, and cranked the flame up high.
He continued, “Last night I was in my room and your mom appeared at the end of the bed. She held me and told me everything would be all right. And that she was glad I was starting to feel better. And you know what? It was like she took this burden off my shoulders. I do feel better. So much better.”
Tears welled up. I tried to hide it by rinsing utensils in the sink with my back to him. I managed, “That’s good Dad, I’m thrilled for you.”
“Yeah, it was great.” He hummed to himself for a moment as he wrapped the bread in tinfoil. “Has she visited you?”
I shook my head and because we weren’t facing each other, added, “No.”
“Keep an open heart and mind. You have to listen.” He tossed the bread into the oven and left the room to go change out of his work clothes for dinner.
I stood at the sink, crying. And this is what I kept thinking—the reason why mom hadn’t visited me? Because she knew I’d want her to explain herself.
Fifty-Two
Mary
Here’s the thing about fate. You can’t argue with it. You can’t control it. You can’t stop its ceaseless pull. You can only read the signs, try to understand which direction you should move, but you don’t have to worry about it too much. Reading the signs is only necessary if you wanted to get a head start, be there before the push.
Think of life like this: You’re a prisoner, and you can resist and struggle and be dragged kicking and screaming along, or you can stand firm, resolute, and be pushed from behind, or, and this is the hardest of them all, you can read the signs, understand, and take fate by the hand and follow.
This was Mary, following her fate when she had to govern a country that had embraced a different religion. She didn’t fight, she didn’t attempt to control, to suppress the people.
This was Mary when she married the Dauphin. When she fell in love with Darnley. When she accepted her union with Bothwell. She made the best of her available options.
This was Mary when she was imprisoned for being an heir to the throne. She sat and embroidered.
And this was Mary when she walked up the steps to her execution. Step by step by step. Wigged head held high, dogs under her skirts.
She was following where fate took her.
No sense struggling.
Follow the signs.
Fifty-Three
Sid
Usually when Teddy picked me up to go surfing, he stayed on his side of the car. I would run out, load my stuff in the back and he would stand on the other side of the car while I strapped my board on the roof. I would pass the straps to him, he would pass them under the racks and back and I would secure them. We had a system. This time though, Teddy jogged up to my door, rang the bell, offered to help carry my things, carried my board to the car, and basically did the whole thing.
I watched him, separate from the scene. He buzzed around and merrily talked. While I stood watching. An empty shell.
We drove to the beach making small talk.
He asked if I had watched the latest Fear of the Walking Dead, and I told him I couldn’t anymore.
He changed the subject, quickly, deftly, to music, and asked, “Your dad still listening to nothing but Guns and Roses?”
I chuckled, “I had a long talk with him. He’s letting me turn him onto music. I started with Foo Fighters.”
“It’s hard to go wrong with them. Queens of the Stone Age might be good too.”
“Oh that’s right, I had forgotten them. His music education continues. My mission is to get his musical taste into the twenty-first century, even if it kills me. Either that or the volume needs to come way, way down.”
“Your neighbors will thank you.”
We pulled into a parking spot, and I put money in the meter while Teddy unstrapped our boards. Then I slung my bag over my shoulder and we picked up the boards and towels and walked down to the beach.
“Thank you for cleaning and waxing my board.”
“No problem, Sid.”
I pulled my spring suit up and zipped it, while Teddy struggled his on, and then I zipped his for him, and we paddled out, side by side. It was big and crowded. Teddy paddled ahead. He moved faster, and it had been a while since I had surfed. Or done cardio. Or really done anything besides sit at bedsides.
I watched him, s
trong and sure and capable, paddling up the wave face and then dipping down out of sight.
When he reached the lineup, he sat up on his board, and planted his hands on his thighs, his elbows out, scanning the horizon, counting the waves. I paddled up behind him and he turned—his face wide open and happy, his smile wide.
It hit me like a tsunami—Teddy loved me.
He loved me.
And you might think that would be a good thing. Because I loved him too. But it wasn’t. Because I didn’t deserve him. I was a broken wretch of a sad thing of limp nothingness and despair. Seriously.
I cried because one of mom’s tissues had been left behind on the nightstand.
I spiraled when I found, inside an old dusty shoe box, a pressed rose she kept from some long-ago boyfriend.
I curled up in a fetal position every time I remembered the last thing I yelled at her.
I didn’t deserve him. And I loved him.
I wanted Teddy to curl up beside me every night and hold me in his arms while I cried. But how cruel was that? To want handsome, happy Teddy to hold me while I cried, for how long? How long before he walked away and broke my heart?
Because he would leave.
The lesson I learned this summer was this: loving someone isn’t enough to keep them there.
So that’s what slammed into me when Teddy turned around with his smile, the sun glinting off the water drops on his hair, drips sliding down his jawbone, that his perfect happiness wasn’t mine to have. I couldn’t share it.
That tsunami I mentioned, the one that slammed this knowledge into my gut? It filled me and broke free with a sob. Tears streamed down my face. Teddy’s wide smile turned to worry. “Sid?”
I turned my board and paddled for shore. But guess what? Tear-filled eyes made me miss the big wave bearing down. It picked me up, sent me over the falls, and slammed me down, the full weight of the lip shoving me deep. My shoulder smashed into sand. It felt like the entire ocean held me down, sea water filled my nose, and when I scratched to the surface I was rolling and roiling in whitewater.
“Sid!”
From the shore two red-shorted lifeguards raced toward me in the sea.
I was pulled sopping, covered in sand, to the water’s edge, with pain on my foot’s instep, a looseness that didn’t feel normal. I pulled up my head. Blood spilled out in a bloom.
One guard told the other, “Get the kit.”
I dropped my head back, suddenly lightheaded.
Teddy appeared. “Will she need stitches?” Someone was wrapping a bandage around my foot.
A guard said, “Probably, take her to urgent care.”
Teddy said, “Sid, I’m running the boards up to the car. I’ll be back to help you across the sand.”
He darted away. If I twisted to look up the beach, I could see him jogging—a board under each arm, my bag thrown over his shoulder, towels under his arm—a goddamned superhero. I would have cried if I hadn’t felt so much like passing out.
Teddy drove me to urgent care and sat in the waiting room while a Doctor stitched me up, and then he drove me home.
The details are murky, because drama and fear, and oh no, yet somehow we pulled in front of my house.
Teddy turned off his car. “Sid, I . . .”
“Teddy there’s something I need to say.”
He looked surprised that I interrupted. What had he been about to say? I’d never know because I barged into the middle of it and without thinking plowed on.
“I have to tell you thank you, for being there, for being so supportive—”
“Of course.”
“But I need you to stop. I need you to go away.”
His eyebrows drew together. “What?”
“I’m too big of a mess, and so I don’t want you to keep coming around anymore.”
His face changed to incredulous. “What are you even talking about?”
“You and me and how we’re over.”
“I’ll remind you we never started, and you can’t just break up with me, we’ve been friends since we were babies.”
“We can’t be anymore. I feel too sad. Whenever I see you I feel worse and guilty and awful and it’s not fair to you. You deserve someone so—”
Now he looked pissed. “I think I know what I want, what I deserve, Sid. Don’t break up with me and try to spin it like it’s what I want.” He mimicked me, “It’s not fair? To me? I deserve better than that bullshit.”
Tears spilled down my face. “I’m so sad, and you’re not helping!”
His hands gripped the top of the steering wheel, his jaw clenched. “I’m trying to help.”
“Your very nature, our circumstances, makes me so sad when we’re together. I can’t be with you and be happy.”
“So I want to help, and you want me to stop?”
“Yes,” I sniveled.
His hands flattened and gripped again on the steering wheel.
He turned and looked at me sidelong, eyes squinted. “You’re not even going to friend-zone me?”
“I can’t, I love you too much.”
“Jeez, Sid, that’s probably the meanest lie you’ve ever told.” He drew his hands slowly down the steering wheel. “Your mom would be really sad if she knew—”
“My mom was already the saddest person in the world; she just hid it well. Also, that’s exactly what killed her, being sad and hiding it.”
“So that’s your plan, to wallow in it?”
“No, my plan is to not be sad. Anymore. That’s why.”
Teddy sighed. He blew air up at one curl hanging on his forehead. “I don’t understand. At all.”
We sat for a long moment. He stared out the side window over his arm.
It was a long terrible moment. I wanted him to say something, anything, to tell me it was okay, that this was fine. That it made sense.
But instead he asked, “You want me to stop?”
I nodded.
“Okay, consider me stopped.”
And that, exactly that, is how someone in the middle of a crisis of grief can blow apart their life.
Okay, maybe not anyone—me. How Sid blew apart her life. Like a bomb. My heart was so full of grief and tears that I took the best part of my life and drowned it in my tsunami.
Because, dumb ass. Probably.
Also, doing the best I could. Considering.
From my room I watched as Teddy unstrapped my board, carried it up the driveway, and propped it against the wall in the garage. He carried my bag up to the porch, and then he returned to his car and drove away.
What I had just done, there wasn’t any take back. I had been ignoring him, evading him, for weeks, and this time I could see it in his eyes. He understood. He got that there was nothing to say because with me there was nothing left.
Sparkly fun Sid, laying on the sand in Malibu. Gone.
Sad Sid, looking through old photo albums, dreaming of ghosts?
Present.
Teddy?
Sent away.
Part Two
Fifty-Four
Sid
This was what happened next: a whole lot of nothing. Without Teddy, what did I have? No one to talk to. No one to plan things with. No ride to the beach. This might sound callous, all about me, what I had lost—but I couldn’t think about Teddy and what he might be feeling. It was too much—also; he was probably fine. He had that easy smile on the beach at Zoe. He would get over me. Faster if he didn’t see me. Which was easy, I didn’t go to beach day. Didn’t surf anymore. I stayed home, cleaned the house and watched tv.
But I only had to hide away for about three weeks before Teddy left for school in Santa Barbara. I marked the day by cleaning out my closet, deep, down to the carpet, and vacuuming there, but then putting everything back because I didn’t want to deal. Halfway through I got sidetracked by a drawer in the bathroom full of old junk jewelry (mine). I cleaned that too. Trashing a third of the contents. I kept wondering where did the time go—I missed lunch, also
mom only died one month ago, and also, Teddy was leaving already? How did this happen, everything in my life just sliding on by.
Then I curled up and watched Ten Things I Hate About You and cried through the end because it was my mom’s favorite movie too.
Dad came home and staged an intervention. With Thai food. “Teddy is in Santa Barbara, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Did you see him before he left?”
“Nah.” I picked a spicy pepper out of my Tom Yung Gung soup and separated it into the middle of a napkin. “I told you we just don’t want to hang out anymore.” He looked at me intently so I added, “just moved past that part of my life I guess.”
“Usually when someone moves on it’s toward something better. Whatcha got on the horizon?” He said it casually, but I could tell that question had been stewing for a while.
“Did Lori call you again?”
“Yep, she was pretty sad. Teddy’s leaving her, Alicia isn’t around to talk to. She thought you’d be there to see him off. I got to explain that you two weren’t friends anymore. Apparently Teddy is being quiet about the whole thing.”
I said, “Oh.”
“So it would help me if you’d have a plan. Anything. A reason you are withdrawing from your friends.”
“It’s been a month since Mom died.”
“Yep. It doesn’t have to be big or awesome or even thought-through. I need to have a way to explain it in my head and to Lori and everyone else who will ask.”
I pushed my food away with a huff. “Fine. I saw there’s a screenwriting class. Local. On Tuesday and Thursday nights. It costs about $475 for eight weeks.”
Dad raised his eyebrows. “That’s more thought-through than I expected. Let me try it out.” He put on a falsetto voice, “Mike, why doesn’t Sid come to Beach Day anymore, we’re so worried about her. And I answer, Oh, she’s very busy, she’s taking a local screenwriting class.” He smiled, “I think that works.”
Sid and Teddy Page 7
