by Holly Bourne
“I don’t want to think about it either.”
I started crying. Never in the history of my life had I cried more in a summer.
“Sorry,” I said into the softness of her body, just above her breast, where my face was buried.
“It’s okay. I know it’s hard for you.”
Wasn’t it hard for her?
She let go of the hug. “So, you all set for this dance tomorrow? It’s usually pretty dramatic. Lots of the kids seem to think they’ve fallen in love with someone already, can you believe it? Aged eleven? We try to minimize the amount of slow songs the DJ plays, to limit the collateral damage.” She smiled, nudging me with her shoulder to make the joke funnier.
“Didn’t you have a whirlwind romance with Dad?” I asked.
Mum went rigid.
“It was…quick…yes.”
“You know, you guys never told me how you met.”
Mum went back to twirling ribbon. “Do we really have to talk about your father? You know things are…strained between us.”
“He’s never told me. I can’t ask him, he’s always with that psycho bitch.”
Mum laughed, then looked up, worried. “I shouldn’t have laughed at that. Sorry.”
“So… How did you meet?”
Mum put her scissors down again. “Amber!”
“Why can’t I know?!”
“All right.” Mum sat on her chair and looked off into nothing. I couldn’t believe it – she was going to tell me. She was finally going to tell me something. I should call Penny a psycho bitch more often. “We met when we were both travelling. In India. We met on the same bus going to the Taj Mahal…talked the whole seven hours there. By the end of the seven-hour journey back, we thought we had this special connection. We spent the rest of our travels together. He proposed on our last night in India.”
It was hard to imagine them like that, Dad more so. I could see Mum scurrying around the colours of India, taking photographs, bartering at stalls, making new friends in gross hostels. I couldn’t see Dad there though. The dad I knew who wore proper trousers, even on the weekend. Who organized his ties into colour order. Who left Mum for someone like Penny, and trimmed the grass in that way that makes it have light green and dark green stripes.
I said it aloud. “I can’t imagine Dad in India.” Mum laughed again.
“I know. I don’t think he was quite being himself. Maybe I wasn’t quite being myself either – thus the problem…” She trailed off, and was quiet a moment. “It’s easy to fall in love when you’re young and the sun is shining and you feel like the world is just there to have an argument with, with someone you adore by your side. But then life happens, and you start fighting against them, rather than with them…” She picked up the scissors again. “You should always pick someone who’s on your side, Amber. It’s too hard to be fighting the world, and the person you love.”
“Is Kevin on your side?”
Mum smiled slowly. “He is.”
“And Dad wasn’t?”
I didn’t know if she would answer. I felt like I was tiptoeing on broken glass, getting this out of her.
“He wasn’t on my side, no… Not when it mattered.”
When you became an alcoholic mess…
I realized something… I wasn’t on my mother’s side. Maybe outwardly, yes. But inwardly, I was still so angry, so resentful.
“How do you know if someone is on your team, then?”
She picked up crepe paper and twirled it using one blade of the scissors. “You test it. You have to test it. Then see what side of the line they’re on. Are they backing you up? Or are they shouting you down?”
I busied myself with tying some balloons together, the squeak of the rubber drowning me out as I mumbled my next question.
“What was that, darling?”
I coughed and put the balloons down. Still in disbelief that she was opening up, hoping I wouldn’t blow it. “I said, isn’t it good to not have someone agree with you all the time? Aren’t the best relationships supposed to test you?”
“Yes…” she admitted, slowly. “But there’s a difference between pushing you somewhere gently because it’s what’s best for you, and throwing you off a cliff and saying ‘Well, come on then, fly’.”
She was trying to hide it, but for a moment, the bitterness was there. A hardening of her eyebrows, the setting of her jaw. I saw then how much Dad had hurt her. By leaving her, by meeting someone else. By taking himself and me away so she had nothing left to do but self-destruct to a point where she knew she needed help… I guess it was good in the long run. I mean, she wasn’t dead. And there was that time we were told she’d be dead if she kept on drinking. But, still, for her, at the time, it must’ve hurt.
Mum tried to smile. “Now, can we please talk about something happier? And then, bedtime. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”
“Me too,” I said, thinking, But I won’t be sleeping tonight.
Kyle was already there when I got to the pier, laying out a blanket.
“Hey,” I said shyly, still not sure how to be around him.
“Hey. You’ve been a while.”
“I know. My mum… She wouldn’t go to bed.”
“Ha, it’s like she knows.”
“We’d know if she knew.”
I’d gotten so used to navigating camp in the darkness, I no longer found it scary. I wondered if it would jar – the crammed-together streetlights of England, the night never really being yours – when I got back.
When I got back… I didn’t want to think about that.
Kyle sat on the blanket and gestured for me to join him. I wanted to stop time, right at that moment. The way he looked, the open lazy smile on his face, the moonlight making his teeth look even more Hollywood white, the sound of the water lapping on the still lake…and the stars. I’d never seen so many stars. I didn’t let myself think about all the rules we were breaking by being there. Anyway, we’d agreed it would only be for an hour or two.
I sat next to him as delicately as I could, which was always an effort when you’re five foot eleven.
“Everyone asleep in the cabin?”
“Yes, and let’s pray to everything it’ll stay that way.”
There was always an awkward moment when we initially met, the bit before we started kissing. I lay back first and stared up at the sky.
“Oh my fucking wow,” I said. “The stars are, like, on steroids.”
Kyle laughed, lay next to me and held my hand.
“Do you not ever see them like this?”
“Seriously, Kyle, we need to report these stars to some kind of committee. They’re obviously on performance-enhancing drugs. We should check their urine.”
“Why are you always talking about urine and periods when I’m about to kiss you?”
“Oh, that? That’s my seduction act.” I made myself turn away from the infinite gloriousness of the sea of stars above me to look at him. “Is it working?”
Kyle put on the worst English accent the world has ever known. “You can bloody bet it’s working.”
With a whoosh, he was on top of me, nuzzling me with his nose, kissing my neck. I groaned, it felt so good. I stared up at the sky, letting myself feel happy, if only in this moment. Letting myself stay just there, if only for a while.
After huge amounts of kisses, we broke apart, and just lay there, catching our breath. I rolled onto my side, curled my legs up, and nestled my face in the gap between his arm and chest. He moved his arm to snuggle me in tighter.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“Don’t tell me Prom Kings are capable of such things?”
“Oh, you’re hilarious. Seriously, I’ve been thinking…about myself.”
I laughed. “Oh really, Mr Narcissist? You’re not supposed to admit that. Everyone always and only, really, thinks of themselves, but you have to keep up this huge pretence you’re interested in other people’s boring existences. You’re breaking
the rules, Kyle.”
“Yes, well, it’s probably for the first time. But, ever since Yosemite…when you said you didn’t know me…”
I reddened when I thought of what I’d said. “I was on the defensive…I’m not very comfortable with people liking me.”
“Ha, I’d noticed.” He kissed the top of my head. “But I was thinking, you’re right. You don’t really know me. So, I was thinking of stuff to tell you about me, and…well…there isn’t anything. I don’t really even know who I am…”
I rolled closer to him. “Come on, Kyle. This is getting dangerously existential.”
“Hey, hear me out. Anyway, I went through everything I do, and put it into lists in my head – working out what I actually like, and what I do because it’s what I think people want.”
“And…?”
“And, I like basketball. But I don’t like my major.”
“What’s your major?”
“Political science.”
“Why don’t you like politics?”
“I like it enough. But I don’t love it. I don’t feel the passion, you know? Like you do, whenever you start hating on the patriarchy.”
“But politics changes things.” I curled further into him, sleepily.
“Does it? Do you know anything about our political system at all?”
“I used to have a crush on Obama.”
Kyle burst out laughing. “Who didn’t? But he’s a great example. Everyone thought he was going to change the world, there was so much hope pinned on him. But he couldn’t really do much, because our system is so warped. All his decisions kept getting chucked out by Congress… I just spend most of my lessons feeling really pissed off, rather than intellectually enlightened.”
I sat up and stroked his face, still feeling so lucky I was allowed to touch him.
“That’s a common side effect of being intellectually enlightened,” I said. “Has Whinnie not told you about her obsession with the Tao of Pooh? Basically, the more you know, the unhappier you are. That’s why Winnie the Pooh is always happy – he doesn’t get into politics.”
“Maybe I should switch to a major that makes me happier?”
“I’m sure there is one…” I stopped, and thought of Lottie’s speech. “Okay,” I said. “I don’t mean to go off on a tangent here, and I am more than happy to help facilitate this navel-gazing discussion about you we’re having here.”
“Oi.” He dragged me back and distracted me with kisses. I laughed into his mouth.
“But…well…why are you measuring what you like and what you’re passionate about by what makes you happy?” I paused and pushed my hair off my neck. “Have you thought about why I came to yours, the other night? What changed my mind?”
Kyle sat up and brushed his hand through my hair, pulling it back to where it had been. “Not really. I’m just really enjoying that you did.”
“I’m enjoying it too. But…well, it took a kick up the arse to get me there. I was chatting to my friends about the situation…I wasn’t sure what was holding me back. And it was ’cause…well…I live in England, don’t I? And you live in California and Brown, wherever the hell Brown is. I didn’t see how I could get into a situation with you and come out without being hurt…”
Kyle’s arm was instantly around me. “Hey, I’d never hurt you. You know that, right?”
I nodded, feeling sad, trying to get my words out. “I know. But, the situation, it’s bound to hurt at some point, right? Even if we figure something out…” I felt dangerous even mentioning the future, daring to think he may want to figure something out, that this could mean more to him than a summer fling. “That’s why I stopped things. But Lottie and Evie pointed out that being hurt or upset is no reason not to do something. In fact, sometimes the best things about people are the things that hurt them. Take my feminism for instance – sometimes I think it’s not worth it. I get so angry, like you, at how unfair it all is and how hard it is to change things. I don’t know how…happy it makes me, but it’s one of my favourite things about me.”
“It’s one of my favourite things about you too.”
“You, just saying that, is one of my favourite things about you.”
“God, we’re cute!” He grinned and pulled me in for another kiss. I could sense him trying to plaster over something, to distract me with happiness, rather than think about what I was saying. But I was determined to finish.
“I’m just saying, maybe political science doesn’t make you happy. But maybe that’s a good thing? Every huge political movement has come from people feeling majorly pissed off. Anger is good sometimes, if you use it the right way.”
Kyle went quiet, he looked out over the water. Then he turned, eyes sparkling.
“You know what? Now you’ve said that, I like that more. I’ll put that in my Kyle-likes-this column.”
“Why are you so hung up anyway? On who you are? For someone who had such an easy time in high school, you are a psychological anomaly with your low self-esteem.”
Kyle stared out at the water again. It was so black, with just tiny hints of moonlight echoing off each ripple.
“I guess I just worry I’m boring… You know you’re all about the feminism? Well, do you ever think it’s possible for men to suffer from sexism too?”
I nodded. “It’s definitely possible. Boys have to put up with crap gender roles too – feminism is about helping all of us. How come?”
Kyle picked at some rotten wood on the pier. “I just think there’s this crap guys have to put up with, if they’re nice men, I mean. The word ‘nice’ is almost an insult. I think there’s like, a gender stereotype, The Nice Guy, you know? Girls are so judgemental about it. If you’re a nice guy, you’re basically bland, and boring, and they don’t want to be with you… They say, ‘I love bad boys’, and then look really proud of themselves for falling for people they know are douches. Do you have any idea how many times a day people tell me I’m a nice guy?”
“You are a nice guy!”
“That means I’m boring!”
“And you’re worried girls won’t want to sleep with you?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Because, anyway, girls definitely want to sleep with you.”
He grinned, his happiness returning instantly. It was amazing how fast he ricocheted back to joyful, like it was his factory setting.
“Oh, do they?”
I went very red again.
“Kyle, you’re not boring. You’ve just not figured it out yet…”
“Whereas, you know who you are…”
I screeched a laugh. “No I don’t. I have no idea who I am. I’m just pissed off all the time. That’s all I know about myself. I’m pissed off. And tall. How attractive is that?”
Kyle scooped me up in his arms and pulled me onto his lap. He kissed me right on the lips.
“You’re very attractive.”
“So are you.”
We kissed gently, stopping here and there to stare at each other. His eyes were black in this light. He pulled away after a few minutes.
“I don’t like thinking of you going away. I’ve not been letting myself think about it.”
“It’s not my favourite thing to think about either…but it’s going to happen.”
We were both quiet, contemplating it.
“How many days of camp left?”
“Not many.”
“Seriously?” Kyle scratched the back of his head.
The night air soured around us at the cold hard truth of the situation. What were we supposed to say? It’s not like we loved each other, not yet. It wasn’t like that, I’m sure it wasn’t. I always knew if I fell in love it would be like warming up a can of soup really slowly. So why was I doing this? I had just under two weeks left in America after camp finished, but Kyle would be driving to Brown, to try and get a job early. The thought of it being just me and my mum actually didn’t appeal any more. It would just be her, me and Kevin – me gooseberrying my
own mother, while she no doubt carried on living her life like I wasn’t there.
“Hey, remember what Lottie said,” I said hopelessly. “It’s all about enjoying the moment.”
“I guess…” Kyle still looked upset. “Wise friend you have there.”
I nodded. “The wisest.”
He pulled me into him and lay us down. The stars looked so close, like they’d been strung up on individual bits of see-through string. Easiness returned to us, as was so usual whenever Kyle was around. I told him what Mum had told me, about her and Dad. It seemed less sad and more romantic when looking at the stars.
“So they met abroad?” Kyle asked.
“In India, yes.”
“Whirlwind romance?”
“Yep.”
“And it went horribly wrong?”
“Yes, but, well, I think that was the alcoholism more than anything else.”
He was still a moment. “Do you know why she even started drinking?”
I closed my eyes…said my guess out loud. “I’m not totally sure. I have these, like, bursts of memories of what she was like before. I just remember feeling really safe…but she’s been a drunk for so long…” I paused. “I think they lost a baby… They told me I was going to be a sister…I remember Mum and Dad going away, and my grandma came over to stay. Mum came back – sobbing – and clutching her stomach.”
“They’ve never talked to you about it?”
“No. And I’m too scared to ask them. You’ve seen what Mum’s like. My memory is so muddled anyway. I can’t remember if she drank before then, or if drinking maybe caused it…”
“So you have no real idea why she’s an alcoholic?”
I shrugged. “Does anyone know why? Is addiction ever that simple?”
“I don’t know…”
I smiled, just as a gentle breeze blew my hair.
“There were times when she dried herself out, you know?” I said, feeling warm in the memory of it. “She’d go weeks, months even, not touching a drop. She was so incredible to be around then – so creative. She taught me how to use paints. And she was so energized. She’d make just a trip to the park seem like the most amazing thing in the world – pointing out how pretty a cloud was, how beautiful just a regular meadow could be if the sun hit it right… She wore these amazing colourful clothes – all drapey fabrics that no one else’s Mum had… It never lasted though. And I never saw Mum and Dad happy…not really. All I remember was fights and shouting and him pretending things were okay when they weren’t… He had an affair eventually. With my stepmum. Forced me to go live with her and her evil kid… I’ve not been replying to any of his emails all summer. I’m mad at him…I’m mad at all of them.”
