by G. B. Gordon
“Not like that. It could have been avoided, if . . .”
“If?”
I shake my head. There’s no way I can defend myself without throwing around accusations against Natalya or anyone else. Which the vindictive, angry voice inside me would really, really like to do. Serve Natalya right for throwing me to the wolves without even the benefit of the doubt. But it wouldn’t serve any purpose. So far it looks like Anna is trying to stay neutral, but she’ll have to defend Natalya if I attacked her. I hate this kind of strategy game with a passion.
People hurry this way and that, a motor starts up in the distance, and I try to ignore both. The spider reappears to my right. I close one hand around my wrist, around the comforting feel of the leather braids against my skin.
“Mark.” Anna lays her hand on the table, close to my arm, but again careful not to touch me. “Tell her. Let her know what you’re dealing with, why you insist on written information.”
“So she can take pity on me?”
“So she can understand where you’re coming from. She can be uncompromising, yes. Believe me, I’ve been there. But she’s never been anything if not fair. Right now she thinks you’re yanking her chain for the hell of it.”
“See? That’s what I don’t understand. Why would she think that of me? What did I do or say to make her believe I would ask for an email without a good reason? And why is an email such a big deal? It’s not like I’m asking something hard, here.”
“No, I know. And I don’t know why she would assume that, except that her life hasn’t always been easy. Some of us learn to expect the worst.”
I give her that.
She sits up straight, crossing her arms. “Still, I don’t think she would have mentioned it even to me, if she hadn’t thought you were endangering her crew.” She leaves it there, but her eyes ask the question for her: What’s up with that?
“I don’t know what you want me to say. By now I guess you know that Friday’s new production schedule didn’t go out to everyone in time. Natalya told me she mentioned a potential change after our meeting, but I didn’t catch it.” My fingers yank the bracelet around my wrist, keeping me focused, keeping my voice calm. “So, yeah, maybe I do need people to make allowances for me now and then. I try to make it as easy for them as I can.”
“I know that. And I’ve never heard anyone else complain, which speaks volumes about how good you are at acting like you’re facing the same challenges as everyone else, and how well you do your job. And that’s just it. It’s not like you to overlook a detail like canvas pants.”
“I didn’t. I have yet to figure out how Michael ended up with those damned pants, but I can assure you, no one in my team handed them out to anyone in the stunt crew. I am absolutely positive of that.”
“Okay.” She sighs. “I’ll let Natalya know. But, Mark, I can’t be your go-between. I won’t. You two will have to work out your differences. I’m never going to out you to her, you know that, but I strongly urge you to trust her. I perfectly understand why you consider your autism need-to-know information, but maybe she needs to know. It’s your choice, but if you decide to tell her, I promise you, she won’t let you down.”
“I don’t expect you to act as a go-between. It’s not— I’ll sleep on it, all right?”
“You do that. Now, I’d better get back to work, before someone sends out the dogs.” Said with a wink, a silent Are we good here?
The least I can do is to acknowledge the effort. “Thank you.” I hold out my hand, and, with a surprised tilt of her head, Anna shakes it.
The day continues as it started. Most days are high pressure—that seems to be the way the industry works—but this particular day is forever going to stand out in my memory, even among Mondays. The one good thing about the frantic scramble is that I completely forget to check my email for an answer from Jack until I’m on my way home that night.
I often check my messages on those silent rides, and Jack’s name jumps out at me as soon as I turn my phone on. My heart does an extra beat as I stare at it. Maybe I should wait until I’m home. Alone. I throw a quick glance at Jason’s profile. No intrusion expected from that end. I brush my thumb across the tab to open the email. It’s only one line: Going to an estate sale in Port Townsend on Saturday. Wanna come?
My heart is doing somersaults long before my brain has finished processing everything Jack has not said in that email.
Yes, I type and hit Send. Then my brain catches up and starts carpet-bombing me with questions. Is this really what Jack wants? He hasn’t addressed any of the things I’ve told him. Hasn’t, in fact, answered the question, whether what I’m dealing with is too much for him to deal with. Is the invitation an answer in itself, then? A No problem, let’s go have fun? Or does Jack want to let me down gently, as the saying goes? That would be a fucking pain. Being told to take a hike is bad enough. Assuming everything is fine, to then find out you just haven’t gotten the memo, is way worse. I’ve told him I don’t want that, but Jack wouldn’t be the first to ignore my preference for hard truths over painful attrition.
On the other hand, if Jack wants me to get a message, why pick an estate sale? Jack has never mentioned an interest in those, but I have.
No, this seems like a genuine effort to do me a favor, spend a Saturday together in a way I’m sure to enjoy. In any case, I’ve already said yes. Questioning that decision is only going to drive me nuts.
Jack pulls up at dawn on Saturday morning in a minivan, with Margaret riding shotgun. He’s cheerful and jokes about me collecting old crap, very much picking up where we left off before that fateful after-dinner conversation last Sunday. As if the week hasn’t passed in silence between us, not counting the brief email exchange on Monday night.
I nod at the minivan that has Your Daley Bread stenciled on the sides.
“For deliveries?”
“Yeah, sometimes. Do you mind? It’ll give us plenty of room for whatever you find.”
You, not we, so the outing has definitely been picked for me. “No, of course I don’t mind.”
And there’s that wide smile that wraps me up like the softest blanket every time. “Sweet. Hop in. It’ll have to be the back, I’m afraid. Margaret gets queasy if she doesn’t ride in the front. You okay with that?” The lines in the corners of Jack’s eyes crinkle into their starburst pattern.
I blink. “No. Yes. I mean, no problem.”
Jack drives with an easy assurance, like someone who’s spent a lot of miles behind the wheel. He never talks about his life, about what he did before coming to Bluewater Bay. His accent says South, though I don’t know enough to pinpoint it more closely than that.
Watermelon Slim & The Workers are on the radio, and occasionally Jack taps the rhythm against the steering wheel, but he doesn’t sing like he did when I surprised him in the kitchen. Despite his obvious good mood, he seems different. It isn’t anything I can put my finger on, but it’s there, like something on the edge of my vision. Gone when I try to focus on it.
Jack pulls up to a redbrick house on the edge of a wooded area in the northeastern corner of the peninsula. A few cars line the quiet street already, and all we have to do is follow the trickle of people into the enormous quadruple garage. Margaret beelines toward a crystal chandelier, but I stop at the entrance to get a quick overview. Furniture is piled high with glassware, porcelain, and knickknacks of all kinds alongside gardening implements and toys. A larger group of people are half obscuring my view of a car straight out of the seventies.
I stroll deeper into the garage, where a trestle table with refreshments has been set up. A dog lazes under the table, only its eyes following me around the toy mountain to a number of clothing racks behind it. I start on the left and work my way through them methodically, one hanger at a time, not bothering with styles or sizes, concentrating instead on the material. My fingers know acrylics and polyesters at a touch and flip past them. I pull out any leather items for closer inspection, as well as clothes m
ade from natural or undyed wool, the coarser the better; flannels; linens; some cottons. I’ve collected a sizable pile on an empty chair and am going through a tub with handbags, backpacks, and suitcases for their hardware and findings, when Jack’s voice pulls me out of my treasure-hunting fog and back into the present.
“Have you seen this?” Jack is holding open a large cookie tin filled to the brim with buttons and closures. Metal, horn, wood, some plastic, some ancient celluloid; all dun-colored, worn and hard-worked.
I hold my breath, then slowly, reverently run my hand through the hoard, loosely close my fist and let the individual pieces trickle and clink back into the tin. I look up at Jack, whose amused eyes mirror the small quirk at the corner of his mouth.
“It’s perfect,” I tell him. For the fraction of a second something hangs between us that makes my heart stumble hard against my ribs.
But then Jack closes the lid and sets the tin down on the pile I’ve accumulated. “Naw, I just thought it sounded like what I heard you talking about a bit ago.” He shoves both hands in his pockets, his eyes searching the crowd over my shoulder. “Listen, I promised Margaret I’d take her to see the lighthouse. Are you going to be okay here for an hour or so until we come back?” He holds up his cell phone. “You have my number?”
I stare at the phone in his hand, trying to follow the quick mood change. As if a switch has been flipped from skin-close intimacy to . . . not distance, exactly, but a sort of underlying tension, like in the car earlier on the way here. Jack being alert rather than alive, consciously at ease rather than truly relaxed.
Yeah. Something has definitely changed. I was afraid of this. He’s keeping a foot or so of space between us, seems extremely aware of the fact that he isn’t supposed to touch me. And I have no idea what to do about that. I almost wish I could take it back, this whole confession thing. Maybe it wasn’t something that absolutely needed to be said after all. Should I have pretended to just have been deep in thought and startled? But then the next time I’d be just as surprised and would flinch just as badly as I did before, and then Jack would feel even worse.
“Mark?”
What? Oh. “Sorry. Lighthouse. Yeah.” The garage has filled with quite a number of people while I’ve been off in my own world, and visitors keep coming in. “Sure. I’ll be fine.” I might need to get out of here, but you’ll be gone and I won’t even be able to wait in the car, because that’ll be gone, too. The rising stress level is all too familiar. I wrap my fingers around the bracelets on my wrist, squeeze and twist, squeeze and twist, screwing the lid back on the stupid, useless panic. “Will they let you go inside?”
Jack shrugs. “I reckon. There’s supposed to be a tour. Hope it’s not too packed, though.”
I nod. Margaret and I are in the same boat as far as clusters of jostling crowds are concerned. I force my thoughts back to the conversation. “Fingers crossed. Have fun up there.”
I watch Jack until he turns the corner, then go back to my treasure hunting. But I can’t get back in the zone. That weirdly deliberate nothing-is-wrong vibe I got from Jack set my teeth on edge, and with each passing minute it bugs me more. But the harder I try to define it, the further it eludes me. Finding that tin, that was special. Jack read what I’m looking for exactly right, and he knew it. I saw it in his eyes, that brief light of delight and . . . something else. And then it was gone, leaving me confused and a bit lost. And, if I’m honest with myself, a little resentful. None of that is easy to sort out.
I go to find someone with whom I can haggle out a price for my lot. By the time it’s all packed up and I’ve found a spot on the lawn, away from the crowd, it’s almost noon. Jack and Margaret have been gone for over an hour and a half. I pop in my earbuds for some music—a new piece we started on at choir practice last Friday—and, hidden behind dark shades, lean back on my elbows to soak up the sun, forcing myself not to think about what lies between me and Jack.
The minivan comes up the road about twenty minutes later. Jack stops at the curb and jumps out. He hasn’t killed the engine, merely turned on his hazards. “Man, I’m sorry,” he calls out as he comes over and helps me gather my haul. “I saw this used-CD store on the way back, and they had the most fantastic jams.” He throws open the door so we can stash the bundles in the rear of the van. “A whole pile of awesome but perfectly obscure Canadian blues. You absolutely have to listen to this. The stupid van doesn’t have a player, of course. How about we grab some pizza and have dinner together at our place?” He stops himself with a contrite, lopsided grin that I want to trace with the tip of my finger. “I’m truly sorry. Did you wait long? Did you find all you were looking for?”
“Only a few minutes. I found some really nice stuff. Not as cheap as a flea market, maybe, but it’ll last me for a while.” Especially that tin of yours, I want to say, but don’t. I’m not sure what triggered what, but I’m not going to take the chance of seeing Jack’s happy, easy, exuberance vanish again. This, this is the Jack who’ll stop me in my tracks every time, who’ll make me dream of things I might not be able to have.
We keep meeting like that. Over music, or a movie, or dinner. Sometimes all three. Or we go treasure hunting. The August heat carries over into September, and everything conspires to turn an ordinary summer into halcyon days that I never want to end.
Today we’re sitting on Jack’s couch, listening to Ndidi Onukwulu, one of the artists Jack dug up in Port Townsend. He was right; she’s brilliant. “Which song’s your favorite?”
“Hard to choose.” Jack picks up the jewel case and studies the song list on the back. “‘Hush’ really pulls me in. Not sure why. Maybe it reminds me of—” He cuts himself off.
“Mawmaw,” Margaret says. She was caught up in an audiobook earlier, but is now sitting with her head cocked to the side, listening to the music, or the conversation, or both.
Jack flinches, then gives me a smile that’s hard to read. Pain in there somewhere. “Every lullaby ever, ain’t it?”
He doesn’t seem to expect an answer, which is just as well, because I have no idea what he’s talking about. It’s as if there’s suddenly an invisible layer between us, some constraint, like a film of oil on water that flattens down the ripples of his laughter and makes the surface move in slightly different ways. I want to tear through it, but don’t know how.
“My dad used to sing a lullaby to me when I was small.” I hum a few bars, then start singing softly. “He nani lua ’ole,” I stop myself. “I remember every word, even though I don’t speak the language. He thought it was more important I speak good English, and he was probably right. Still . . .”
Jack reaches out, but then grabs his own knee before touching me. “Do you miss him? Your dad?”
“Sometimes. He died almost twelve years ago, so I’m used to him not being around. But sometimes it still hits me.” Maybe if I talk about my family, he’ll feel at ease talking about his?
“What was he like?”
“A bit like that song: quiet, a little melancholic, a little removed. I know he loved me, and that he tried to make my life as good as he could make it, but I’m not sure I genuinely knew the man he was. I sometimes think he missed Hawaii with every breath, and the real him was back there, leaving me with, not a ghost exactly, but not the whole him either.” Talking about him is bringing up memories.
“Why didn’t he go back?”
“Money, I suspect. There was never enough.” I shake the heavy topic off. “You used to sing. The first time I was here for dinner, I heard you sing in the kitchen, but I haven’t heard you since. What’s up with that?”
Jack shrugs and gives me a self-deprecating grin. “I like singing, but not when Margaret’s around. She catches even the slightest slip off key. To be honest I don’t really have a singing voice; it does slip occasionally.” He laughs, but raises his eyebrows when I pull my head between my shoulders in a sympathetic wince for Margaret.
Jack rolls his eyes. “You too?”
“
Occupational hazard, or hobby, anyway.”
“Bunch of spoilsports,” Jack grouses, then nods at his sister. “Margaret sings, though. Very well, actually.”
At that Margaret’s expression turns intent. She cocks her head like she’s listening to something, then she taps a beat on her thigh with her thumb. She stands and starts humming quietly to herself, but then her voice gains force, and something not quite song bursts from her throat. A vocalise I’ve never heard before, sung with a power I never would have suspected in that slight body. Clear and haunting, it raises goose bumps on my skin until it suddenly stops as Margaret sits back down.
“Whoa. What was that? That was absolutely stunning.”
For half a heartbeat Margaret meets my eyes and smiles. The smile stays, even though her hand comes up to hide it, and her gaze flicks away.
Jack’s eyes are on his sister; his face is a study of pride. “One of her own, I think. She does that sometimes. As far as I can tell it’s never the same tune twice. That was enchanting. Thank you, love.”
“Love,” Margaret echoes, then in a different voice, “Play for me, Jack. I love to hear you play.”
I can almost hear Jack’s smile crumbling into minute pieces. “Some other time, love.”
“Margaret.”
“Margaret,” he echoes.
“Boise.”
Now Jack’s face downright shutters. “I reckon,” he says, and it sounds like a warning.
Margaret goes over to the window and runs her hand along the prisms, making them swing wildly. The room explodes into shards of light. She twirls with her arms stretched wide and hits them again on every turn. The flashes cut through my lenses like butter and eat into my brain.
“It’s okay,” Jack says. He’s tuned to her on levels beyond words. They hear each other in ways I can’t follow, except to understand that whatever was pride and love a moment before has turned sad and uncomfortable.
When Margaret leaves the room without acknowledging him, Jack takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, and drags his smile back up as he lets it out. “Isn’t that one of the loveliest voices you’ve ever heard?” he asks, as if nothing happened. There’s a pattern here, of him ignoring anything that might lead to talk about his former life.
