Now That You Mention It: A Novel

by Kristan Higgins

  “I’m starting that. Audrey, too.”

  The picture of them learning sign language together made my heart swell painfully. “Sullivan, I’m so sorry about that accident.”

  “Already told you it wasn’t your fault.”

  “But I was...involved.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  Again, he was being generous. “Well. It feels like I was.”

  “Can I ask you something now?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Why are you afraid of the dark? Power goes out all the time here. You know that.”

  I hesitated. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” He nodded and I trusted him. Audrey’s dad, after all. Good old Sullivan, the quiet one. “I, uh...I had an experience last year. A bad one.”

  “What kind of experience?”

  “The not-good kind.” I pulled a face, trying to make light of it. The less said, the better as far as I was concerned.

  He didn’t say anything for a second, and I wondered if he’d heard me.

  “Were you hurt?” he asked.

  A memory of my face, purple and blue, the cut on my jaw, my left eye swollen shut, came back to me. Those days when only my schizophrenic hair made me believe it was me in the mirror. “A little bit.”

  He didn’t ask any more, and I loved him for that. “But here you are,” he said.

  It wasn’t a lot, those words, but somehow, they steadied me.

  Bobby used to hold me close and murmur that he was here, I was safe, he’d never let anyone hurt me. At the time I’d been so, so grateful to have him there, feeling like a broken bird, needing him to a degree that made me feel weak.

  Sully and his calm brown eyes...they said something different. I wasn’t sure what, but it was something better.

  “You all set here?” he asked rather abruptly. “Now that the lights are back on?”

  “Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sullivan. For checking on me.”

  He pulled out his wallet and took out a card. “That’s my landline and the boatyard phone. You have my cell,” he said. “If you ever need anything, call me.” He put the card on the counter, then looked at me again. “Good night.”

  With that he left, his work boots thunking on the dock. After a second, I heard his truck start up. The sound faded into the distance, and all was quiet again.

  A half an hour before, I’d been so scared I’d almost shot my old classmate. Now, however, I was just fine.

  15

  I woke up late on Friday. Because I had the day off, I didn’t have to rush the party prep.

  I had ended up inviting Amelia to the party, too; Gloria told me she didn’t have much of a social life, and my innate sense of Lutheran duty flared. Also, she signed my paychecks. There was that, too.

  School was out today because of professional development, so I decided to take Poe for an outing and drove to my mom’s house. After only twenty minutes of cajoling, ordering, begging and bribing, I convinced my precious niece to finally shove her arms into a denim jacket and slump outside with me.

  The road that led to our house continued a few hundred feet past it, into the state forest, marked by a sign that lectured on littering and swimming at your own risk. I went around the chain slung across the path, Poe a few paces behind me.

  “Where are we even going?” Poe asked.

  “It’s a place where your mom and I used to play,” I said.

  “Yay,” she muttered.

  We walked through the woods on a path springy with pine needles. The wind was gentle today, and the sky was achingly blue. Seagulls squawked overhead, and a crow fluttered from tree to tree, clicking occasionally, as if it wanted to be part of the conversation.

  Poe almost walked into a tree, so busy looking at her phone. “There’s no cell service out here,” she said.

  “Oh, well.”

  “Stupid,” she muttered, shoving her phone back into her pocket.

  “How have things been at school?” I asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Do you and Audrey ever hang out?”

  “Not really.”

  “Any other friends?”

  “Is there a reason to make friends, when I’m going back to Seattle in a couple months?” she asked with exaggerated patience.

  “You have a point,” I said. “But it might be nice to have a friend back here. For when you come to visit Gran.” I pushed a tree branch away from my face and held it for Poe. The smell of sea was stronger now. “By the way, I’d love if you came to visit me, too. Anytime. Maybe you’ll want to go to college out here. Boston has a lot of great schools, and so many great restaurants and things to do.” I sounded like a tourism brochure.

  “Do you have an apartment?” she asked.

  “Not at the moment. My boyfriend and I were living together. But before that, I had a really great place.” Best not to think about that. “Okay, we’re almost there.”

  We came out of the woods onto the great golden slabs of rock that made up the shore. The tide was low, and the rocks were dark brown where the water had been just an hour before.

  My feet hadn’t forgotten a thing. The cracks where I had to jump, the slanted rock that was perfect for pushing off, the little plateau with the best tide pool. Sure enough, two fiddler crabs were inside, skittering around each other in their own little world. I knew the way as if I’d never left the island.

  There was the rock that looked like an old lady in profile, then the rock Lily called the Tooth, because it had little ridges and bumps, like a molar.

  And here we were. I jumped down onto the rocky little beach. “Ta-da,” I said, waving my arm like Vanna White, pretending it didn’t hurt my heart, seeing this place again. “Come on in.”

  To access the entrance to the cave, you had to go out a bit. Unless the tide was dead low, as it was now, your feet would get wet. At high tide, the cave was underwater. I led the way, my shoes crunching on the pebbles that made up the shallow beach.

  Inside, it was damp and briny, and memories flooded in like a storm surge.

  I could almost see Lily, her unexpected, booming laugh as she crouched next to me. Her sweet smile, the dimple in her left cheek, her shiny black hair.

  Poe followed me inside. Even she couldn’t look disinterested in this. “Cool,” she said, her mouth opening a little.

  “We used to pretend this was our house,” I said, more to myself than Poe. “We’d drape seaweed over the opening to make a door, so none of the fishermen could see us from the ocean.” I pointed to a spot in the back, where the cave narrowed and a piece of rock jutted from the shore, making a surface that was more or less flat. “That was our bed.” I’d hold my sister against me, since it wasn’t quite wide enough for two, her skinny little body snug against my side.

  I swallowed. “We’d set up rocks here and pretend to have a fire. Sometimes Gran would make us peanut-butter-and-apple sandwiches, and we’d eat them here. The seagulls would follow us in to get a bite.”

  And then later, when Dad was in charge of us, we’d do what he called the Cave Challenge—who could stay in the longest as the cave filled up with water? It was a survivalist skill, he said, and I remembered the terror as the water came up to our knees, our waists, our shoulders.

  I was always the first one out, waiting anxiously on the Tooth for their heads to pop up in the water. Dad and Lily would stay in there till I was terrified they’d drowned, and just as I was about to go get help, there they’d be, laughing, gasping, triumphant.

  I wouldn’t tell Poe about that.

  The cave was big enough for us to stand, but not much else. Like so many things from childhood, it seemed to have shrunk. But it smelled the same—the wet, cold rocks, the salt water that slushed and slapped.

  “Your mom and I thought we were the only ones who knew about this place,�
�� I said. “Our Dad, too. But we made a pact never to show anyone else.”

  “Did you ever?” Poe asked. “Bring someone here, I mean?”

  “Not until today.”

  “Did she?”

  Maybe she had. Maybe she’d come here with the boys she’d slept with, or with Amy Beckman to smoke weed. The thought stabbed like a dull spear. If Lily had made fun of me here, if she’d mocked our little games, if this place wasn’t as sacred to her as it was to me...

  “I don’t know,” I said, my voice husky.

  It didn’t matter. She’d given me up a long time ago.

  A little wave sloshed over my shoe. “We better go,” I said. “The tide has turned, and it fills up fast. It wouldn’t be hard to drown in here.”

  “Yikes,” Poe said. “Nora...”

  Funny, I couldn’t remember her saying my name before.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Thanks for showing me.”

  “You bet.” I smiled at her, and she almost smiled back.

  When we got back to the house, my mother was home. I glanced at my watch; lunchtime. Mom often came back home to eat or, more often, brown-bagged it. Never bought something from town, never went out. That would be wasteful.

  “Hello, you two,” she said.

  “I’m going to my room,” Poe said. She gave me a look, then, shockingly, a shy hug, fleeting and all the sweeter because of it. My throat tightened.

  “Are you coming over for dinner?” I asked.

  “With all the old people? Uh, no. Thanks.” She rolled her eyes, but it wasn’t with the usual disgust, then went upstairs.

  Mom was in the kitchen, glancing through the mail. I sat down at the table. Like everything in the house, it was sturdy and worn, just like my mother. Last weekend had been Mother’s Day. I’d given her a gift certificate to a spa in Portland—manicure, pedicure, facial, same as I did every year. But this year, I saw her tuck it in the spice rack, and when she was out of the room, I went to check. Sure enough, there were all the other gift certificates from all the other years. She never used them.

  Then again, she always said what a nice gift it was. She was an enigma, my mother.

  “How was your day, Mom?”

  “Fine. Yours?”

  “Lovely. I can’t wait for our little dinner party later on.”

  “About that, Nora. I really don’t want to come.”

  “But you will, and you might even have fun.”

  She snorted, then opened the fridge to make herself a sandwich. Same sandwich she always ate—two slices of chicken, one slice of American cheese, mustard and butter, whole wheat bread. She saw me watching. “You want one?”

  “No, thanks. Hey, American cheese is all fat, you know. It’s not really even cheese.”

  “I like it.”

  So did I. Who didn’t? “Just watching out for your cholesterol.”

  She plated the sandwich, poured herself a glass of milk and sat down at the table. Took a bite of her sandwich and chewed placidly, like a cow.

  It was as intimate a moment as we were going to have. “Mom, I have a question for you.”

  “You always do.”

  “Yes, well...it’s about Dad.”

  The chewing didn’t stop. “What about him?”

  “Did you ever hear from him? Ever?”

  She swallowed, took a drink of milk. “Nora, we’ve been over this a thousand times.”

  “No, we haven’t.”

  A sigh. “I haven’t heard from your father in more than twenty years.”

  “But did you ever hear from him? I mean, he must be somewhere.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “I just want to know what happened to him. If he’s alive, even. Do you know that?”

  “You think I murdered him?”

  “That did cross my mind, but no, I don’t.”

  She took another bite of sandwich. “There were days I wanted to.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. But come on, Mom. I’ve Googled him a thousand times. Maybe he had a friend I didn’t know about?”

  “I don’t know, Nora. I don’t see what the point is after all these years.”

  “He was a great father. It never made any sense.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. “If he was a great father, he wouldn’t have left you girls.”

  I nodded. “It’s hard to reconcile those things.”

  “Well, you’ve had twenty years to do just that, dahlin’. Twenty-four, but who’s counting? I have to get back to work. I’ll see you tonight. What time?”

  “Seven.”

  “Guess I won’t be home for Wheel of Fortune.” Another sigh. She got up and started to wash her plate and glass.

  “I’ll do that, Mom.”

  “I got it,” she said, not looking at me. She was irritated, both by the dinner party and the conversation.

  “Okay,” I said. “See you later.”

  * * *

  Xiaowen made good on her offer to come early, drink wine and shuck the oysters she’d brought, harvested from beds she’d planted herself. We slurped down a couple with a glass of wine, the fresh taste of ocean with a little bit of sweetness, thanks to the mouth of the riverbed where she’d planted them, she told me. Also, she’d put on her wet suit and dived for them herself.

  It was so nice, having her here. “Did you hate high school as much as I did?” I asked, chopping the ends off the asparagus I was serving.

  “Oh, God, yes,” she said. “Those mean girls were brutal to me. I always appreciated when you said hi to me in the halls.”

  “Same here.” I paused. “I wish we’d been closer back then.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I was shy back then, and you...you seemed so sad all the time.”

  “I was.” I chopped some parsley, not looking at my friend. “My father left us when I was in fifth grade, and my sister and I weren’t really close after that.”

  “I remember her as quite a bitch,” Xiaowen said. “She threw a used tampon at me in the bathroom one time.”

  My head jerked up. “Are you kidding?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m so sorry! God, that’s... That really is horrible.” I’d always suspected Lily was like that... I just didn’t want it to be true.

  My phone buzzed—Gloria, with an apologetic text saying she couldn’t make it; her sister had a crisis and she’d taken the last ferry to Boston and would see me Monday. I texted back that I hoped all was well.

  “Gloria can’t come, I’m afraid,” I said.

  “Too bad,” Xiaowen said. “You guys close?”

  “Not yet. But she’s a great nurse, and we get along really well at work. Hey, speaking of work, I’ve seen at least three girls this week with eating disorders. Two overeaters, one anorexic. Maybe you remember, I had a problem with food myself.”

  “You Americans.” Xiaowen sighed.

  “I know. But I was thinking of doing something to raise public awareness.” I thought of sweet Audrey. “Some kind of fun run. All shapes, all sizes, that kind of thing.”

  “Want help? Since I’m not getting married this summer, I have plenty of time on my hands.”

  “That would be great!” I handed her another oyster. “You want to talk about the fiancé?”

  “If by talk about, you mean murder, the answer is yes.” She sucked down the oyster. “In all seriousness, no. The classic story of I saw what I wanted to see, and then got bitch-slapped by reality. He cheated on me.”

  “I hate him.”

  “Thank you.”

  A knock came on the door, and there they all were, lined up on the dock like I was about to shoot them: Mom; Bob Dobbins; Henry Carver; Jake Ferriman, holding a twelve-pack of beer; Amelia with a bottle of her own; and just coming down the dock now, Su
llivan. It was exactly seven o’clock.

  “Sullivan Fletcher,” Xiaowen murmured appreciatively. “If my heart wasn’t encased in iron, I’d climb him like a tree.” She cut her eyes to me. “You could do worse.”

  “His daughter’s been hanging out here,” I said. “And he did me a favor the other night.” But, hey, she had a point. I opened the door. “Hi, everyone! You’re so punctual! Come on in.”

  “After you, Sharon,” Bob said. My mother gave him an irritated glance; I guess if Bob wasn’t paying for hugs, she had no use for him.

  Then again, Bob was wearing a brilliant yellow, uh, blouse, complete with ruffles, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, had marinated himself in a barrel of Polo by Ralph Lauren. “Bob.” I wheezed as he kissed my cheek. “So glad you could come. Mr. Carver! How are you?”

  “Call me Henry,” he said. “I brought you some wine.”

  “Thank you!” I said, taking it. Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill. “We’ll have to open this for dessert.” Or regift it to a wino on the streets of Boston.

  “What a charming place!” Amelia cooed. “Isn’t! This! Lovely! I’m Amelia Ames,” she said to Jake. “Wonderful to meet you.”

  “We’ve met,” he said, clutching his twelve-pack a little closer.

  “Have we? I don’t remember. Nora, darling, I brought you some vodka.” She set it on the counter with a thump. “Be a good girl and pour me some, won’t you?”

  “Not her first, I’m guessing,” Xiaowen murmured. “Come on, people! Move along, you’re crowding the kitchen.”

  Sullivan was last in. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.” He handed me a pie.

  A pie.

  It was still warm. “Strawberry rhubarb,” he said.

  “Did you make this?” Because of the chatter from the living room, I made sure to look right at him so he could hear me.

  “Ayuh.”

  “Do you mind if I go in the bedroom and eat it right now?”

  He smiled, just a little. My girl parts also smiled. I cleared my throat. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  I poured my guests wine (vodka for Amelia) and offered Jake a glass, which he refused, already downing his second can of beer, his eyes on Xiaowen’s chest.