Axis of Aaron

by Johnny B. Truant

  “This is my last day at the beach,” he said, emerging. “Last chance to swim.”

  Aimee ran the towel briskly through her hair. Wetness had darkened it, but the sun had been lightening it all summer. It was a rat’s nest, worsened by salt. She was facing away from him, arms up, her form too tall and too long. Again, Ebon looked away.

  “It’s not for me,” she said.

  “I’ll be going back on the ferry tonight.”

  “I won’t be.”

  Ebon felt like he should be wounded. She seemed indifferent, like always.

  “Don’t you want to make the most of our last day?” It was a simpering dig for validation, but Ebon didn’t care.

  “Sure, but does it really have to be in the dumb old ocean? Let’s do other stuff.”

  “I don’t want to watch you draw.” Ebon knew how that went from abundant past experience. Aimee got immersed whenever she did anything remotely artistic — anything, judging by Aimee’s studio leftovers, that was like her mom’s old art. He’d spent three hours watching her sculpt clay once. It had been mind numbing. And though she was usually an insufferable chatterbox, Aimee had stayed mostly mute the entire time, at least beyond a string of thoughts on why she liked sculpting and molding as much as she did: so many things in life could slip right through your fingers. But sculpture was something she could touch, a footprint to prove she’d been here.

  “Then what do you want to do?” she asked.

  Aimee waited for Ebon to grab his towel before starting toward the cottage, but didn’t wait for him to shake its sand and use it as a wrapper on himself. He scampered to keep up, the towel more burden than comfort. The ocean’s salt left a corrosive layer atop his skin, and he could practically feel it drying him out. A sunburn in wait, especially caustic around his eyes and ears and nose.

  “I don’t know. Play a game?”

  “What game?”

  Ebon caught up to her, realizing he didn’t really have an answer. The cottage had been stocked with games by Aimee’s grandparents when her father had been young, and Richard hadn’t updated any of them. Sometimes the kids played the tattered (and babyish) Chutes and Ladders or the slightly less babyish but tedious Chinese checkers, but doing so was always a last resort. Usually Richard sat in his chair while they played, always at the table near the window rather than on the floor, eyes peeking over his book or newspaper when he thought Ebon wasn’t looking — or, Ebon suspected, specifically when he knew he was.

  “My dad’s not home,” she said.

  Ebon looked up at Aimee’s profile. He already knew Richard was away. Given how odd the man had been all summer — drunk often, though they both pretended not to know, and usually depressive to boot — his absence was the main reason they were at the cottage now at all. Throughout the later days of the summer, Aimee had mostly come to Ebon’s grandparents’ inferior cottage, or they’d met somewhere neutral. It was a treat for Richard to be gone now, so that they could finally enjoy the cottage without judgment.

  Ebon thought: My dad’s not home.

  Maybe they could find a bottle. Based on something Ebon had heard, that would give them a fun game to play. You spun it, then kissed whom it pointed toward when it stopped. When only two people played, the game would probably be predictable but still worth a try, if only he had the stones to suggest it. Which, of course, he didn’t.

  “I know he’s not,” Ebon said. He wondered why she was bringing it up, but guardedly excited by what she might have in mind.

  “Well, we could watch TV.”

  “Oh.”

  She looked over. “You don’t like TV.”

  “I’d just rather do something … you know … summery.”

  They reached the cottage, but instead of going inside, Aimee walked around the back toward a wooden cubicle that was open at the bottom. She slipped inside. Ebon started to follow, but then, realization dawning, retreated in embarrassment. He stood outside and watched her feet atop the wet stone at the cubicle’s bottom, then saw her bare feet dance as she slipped her suit bottoms over her ankles. True to Aimee form, she plopped the garment into a wet heap in the corner half inside out, rather than rinsing it. The suit’s top dropped onto the pile, and shower water began to flow, smacking the stone like hard rain.

  “Summery like what?” Her voice sounded somewhat canned, washed out by the running water behind the divider wall.

  “Um … ”

  “I’m done with the beach for today. Before you started coming for summers, I never swam this much. The salt gets everywhere. Ugh.”

  “Sure.” It did too. He probably needed a shower himself, but knew better than to take his own shower inside while she was out here. What would it look like to Richard, if he came home and found showers in progress? The outside shower was utilitarian; it was meant to keep the beach outside rather than grinding it into the carpet. But on the other hand, the inside shower was intimate. He really should get in the outside one next, except that he was having all sorts of problems concentrating and might fill his mouth with soap by mistake.

  “We could take a walk.”

  “Um … ”

  “Do you know what’s crazy, Ebon?”

  “Uh … ”

  “We didn’t go to Aaron’s Party at night this year. Can you believe it?”

  “Terrible,” Ebon said. Shampoo began to stream down Aimee’s ankles, washing across the shower’s stone floor and into a drain. He turned away, acutely uncomfortable.

  “Oh, my God, my dad was such an asshole about it last year. Do you remember?”

  “I guess.”

  “I wanted to go just to piss him off. It was like he thought we were sneaking off to make out or something.” She laughed.

  “Right.”

  “I guess we can’t go tonight.” She sighed. “Sure you can’t stay another day? I really want to go at night, just to freak him out.”

  Ebon didn’t want to “freak Aimee’s father out” at all. He’d seen Richard as little as possible this summer. He often met Aimee at out-of-the-way places, their rendezvous planned via signals like spies. He’d wave at her from down the beach, and she’d come up to the roadside. Then she’d make an excuse and grab her shoes, and they’d go off walking, her making light of the vast piles of crap her father had been giving her lately, laughing it all off.

  But Ebon could see the way Richard’s abrasiveness had been wearing on her. When Aimee’s guard went down, he could see the way her eyes softened and how tired she looked. Her father was all the family she had left, given that Alan had moved off the island years ago and hadn’t, so far as Aimee implied, got along with his father very well for years beforehand. Ebon’s own parental relationships were simple and blessedly normal by comparison. But Aimee’s, based on her words and especially her letters, seemed to be composed of long periods of quiet tension, followed by fighting, followed by short-lived but intense closeness. Once over the summer, he’d been drunk all day, had sobered up at night, and then they’d spent midnight until daybreak discussing Richard’s thoughts on how math — his professorial specialty — intersected life’s biggest philosophies.

  “I can’t stay,” said Ebon.

  Aimee sighed. Water splashed.

  “Oh, my God, my boobs are so white.”

  Ebon turned, unable to help himself. But at that moment the water died, and he saw only the flash of tiny pink slivers between the boards as she bent down and picked up the swimsuit. She flopped it over the top of the cubicle, then reached for one of the dry towels on the nearby clothesline. He saw a flurry of activity as she halfheartedly dried her hair, and a moment later she emerged with the towel wrapped around her torso.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said, tipping her head as if to clear water from her ears.

  “Okay,” said Ebon, swallowing. He followed as she walked toward the house with just the towel wrapped around her.

  “Just come in once you’re cleaned up,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Oh.�
��

  Ebon turned back to the stall, unsure whether to feel disappointed or relieved. He showered quickly, pulled his own towel from the line, and skipped briskly through the house to where he’d left his bag with a change of clothes in the bathroom. Only once composed with his boner deflated did Ebon emerge, aiming for a nonchalant cool that he couldn’t quite manage. He found Aimee sitting on the couch, wetting its fabric with her hair, wearing a pair of pink shorts and a Foo Fighters T-shirt. It wasn’t a matching ensemble, but fashion was another place where Aimee couldn’t give a shit.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Chutes and Ladders.”

  Aimee laughed. “No, I thought we could … ”

  Before she could finish the sentence, something caught her attention, and her head swung around, droplets of hair-borne water spattering Ebon’s arms.

  “What?” Ebon said.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Shit!”

  Aimee stood, then scampered from the couch to the side window. She carefully parted the curtains at the same time as Ebon began to hear what she had moments earlier: the crunch of tires on gravel.

  “I thought he was going to be gone longer.”

  “This isn’t cool,” Aimee said, starting to pace. “He was supposed to be on the mainland all day, meeting with advisers. Or being an adviser, I don’t know, but he wasn’t supposed to be back until the seven o’clock boat!”

  She was getting worked up. It surprised Ebon to see. She was usually collected, always cool (except for the time she’d dropped that hamburger in her lap), and seldom visually rattled unless she was putting on airs for dramatic effect. Ebon had seen plenty of joy and laughter from Aimee during their two summers, but he’d almost never seen anything on the negative side of the emotional spectrum. It wasn’t that she didn’t get bummed out or angry or beaten down or sad or despondent. It was that she pretended those emotions didn’t even exist — at least and especially where her father was concerned — and buried them deep like a secret.

  But she was upset now.

  “What’s the big deal?” asked Ebon, watching her.

  “Dammit.” Another peek through the shades. “Dammit, Dad!”

  “Aimee!”

  She turned when Ebon called her name, but he could still see her thrumming nerves through her jittering eyes. Richard intimidated Ebon plenty, but right now Aimee was acting like he was about to enter the house with a gun.

  He looked at the clock on the wall. It was just after noon, meaning Richard and his car had taken the midday boat. The only person who had to worry about the seven o’clock boat at this point was Ebon, because he’d be taking it when it shoved off for the mainland a half hour later, at 7:30.

  Outside, the engine stopped. A car door opened and slammed shut. Aimee bolted forward, grabbed Ebon by the wrist, and dragged him toward the far end of the house. She popped into the bathroom long enough to grab Ebon’s bag, then tossed it to him before dragging him out the back. They exited just as the front door opened, then sneaked around the home’s periphery like thieves, avoiding windows, until the dirt road was in sight. Finally, still in her home’s shadow, Aimee grabbed a pair of flip-flops from the deck. They began walking. Ebon felt it odd that after all that waffling about what to do next their choice had been made rather decisively for them.

  “So I guess we’re going for a walk,” he said after they were five minutes down the road and it became obvious that Aimee wasn’t going to speak first. She was usually the chatterbox and Ebon her mute sidekick. They were in for a long, silent stroll if he didn’t speak up.

  “I hate him.”

  Ebon thought he might have heard her wrong. He turned to watch her grim profile as she stared ahead.

  “All he does is mope and yell,” she went on. “And drink. And when he drinks, he mopes more, yells more … ” She blinked heavily, seeming to force a reset. “Why do I have to deal with him being this way? It wasn’t like this when Mom was around.”

  In truth, Ebon thought, Aimee probably barely remembered what things had been like before her mother had died. But given the walls she’d built around her emotions, she’d probably idealized those old days … or at least, that’s what Ebon’s psychologist father seemed to think.

  The mind is a great storyteller, and sometimes tells a person what they need to believe even if it’s not true, he’d said when Ebon had complained about Richard’s overbearing presence. Your friend sounds strong, but I suspect it’s because strength feels better than helplessness. She’s lost one parent and has another who’s shut down inside, probably feeling a lot of pain and guilt. He can’t help how he is, Ebon. Or worse: he probably doesn’t even know how he is, and probably never will.

  Ebon thought about repeating the assessment for Aimee as they walked, but decided it would come off as insulting. The dam had cracked already. Her words, at this point, would continue to spill.

  “I hate it, Ebon. I hate him.”

  Ebon knew he shouldn’t weigh in, but her last sentence made him feel like an interruption was warranted. So he said, “You don’t hate him.”

  Aimee continued. “He just keeps getting worse. And because I’m the only one around, he takes out whatever’s wrong with himself on me! I have to make dinner, I have to do the dishes, I have to straighten up the things he messes up. You know what I did the other day? I mowed the lawn! He didn’t even tell me to do it, the grass was just, like, six inches tall, and I kinda figured someone should cut it. It’s so stupid. It’s like I’m the only person in the house, and if I don’t do something it won’t get done. I sure hope he’s paying the bills, though, because I don’t know what needs paying, and he’d kill me if I touched his checkbook. Besides … ” she rolled her eyes, “ … he probably likes that part because writing checks is math.”

  Ebon nodded. For Professor Richard Frey, who taught at a mainland university fifteen minutes from the dock during the school year, math seemed to be less of a concept and more of a way of life. Even if paying bills was simple arithmetic, he wouldn’t trust Aimee to do it right. She shouldn’t take offense, Ebon thought. He’d barely trust a computer.

  “What was he doing while you were mowing the lawn?”

  “Crying,” Aimee snapped. She said it spitefully, as if inviting Ebon to ask her to elaborate. But Ebon found himself too embarrassed to repeat the word, let alone inquire further. Richard was a bulwark of a man, strong in body and will. Such men didn’t cry.

  “This was supposed to be our last day,” she whined, her footsteps rhythmic on the packed clay of the empty road’s surface. “It was going to be perfect. For once, we could just hang out around the house and on the beach like we did last year.” She shook her head. “But I swear, ‘around the house and on the beach’ has been the last place I wanted to be lately, with him lying around like a big, fat lord.”

  “It’s still our last day,” said Ebon, his voice hopeful. But he had nothing more to add beyond those obligatory few words because she was right. Thanks to the inhospitality of her cottage this year, they’d gone “everywhere else” all summer long. Staying put would have been nice for a change. Going anywhere else felt like old hat, done and tired.

  Aimee sighed. Ebon wanted to take her hand as a show of understanding, but he could already sense her protective crust beginning to reform. She’d been soft and vulnerable for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t last. Any reality in which Aimee admitted herself hurt and helpless wasn’t one she could live with. Her mind (great storyteller that it was) had already begun spinning an alternative yarn that she could handle: a story in which she was the strong and unassailable heroine, annoyed by her father rather than hurt by him. Ebon knew that story well. It was the one she’d been telling him all summer.

  Ebon watched her lips firm. He watched the sadness retreat from her eyes. He watched her take a deep breath, her mental armor clicking back into place.

  “Well,” she said with a heavy exhale. “What should we do? Want to go back to your pl
ace?”

  Ebon had already considered and dismissed that option. His grandparents thought it was cute that he had a little friend and became overbearing whenever Aimee was over, attending to them both as if they were seven years old. The attention made Aimee, who loved the old couple, giggle. But with just six hours left and so many opportunities yet to miss, Ebon wanted something more intimate.

  He looked at Aimee, his glance covert. But even in that single quick look, his eyes were drawn by the blush of pink lips amid her sun-kissed, slightly freckled skin. She was naturally pale and tanned pitifully, her color these past two summers creeping sluggishly from cream toward darker cream. This year more than last, she’d seemed upset that she couldn’t manage a tan … and based on what she’d said from inside the shower stall, some parts weren’t browning even a little. The thought made Ebon uncomfortable, and he again looked down the road. The clay surface ahead looked like a neat path cut through a jungle, but beyond the thicket to the left he could still hear the sounds of waves and gulls.

  “No,” he said. Then he paused, his feet now unmoving and pointed north, toward an obvious choice. “Wait. Why don’t we just go to Aaron’s Party?”

  Aimee shrugged. “I’m kind of Party’d out. I used to think it was awesome, but now that I’m older … ” She trailed off, shrugging.

  “You just said you wanted to go. Back at the house.”

  “I said I wanted to go at night.”

  “To piss your dad off.” Ebon felt dangerous saying the words, because in his own household, “pissed off” was a semiswear. But saying it to Aimee now felt grown up, and made him stand taller. Maybe later he could squeeze in a “shit” or two, as she’d done.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “We could call him from the phone on the pier and tell him what we’re up to just to piss him all the way off: ‘Hey, Mr. Frey, it’s Ebon, the boy you don’t trust. I’m with Aimee at Aaron’s Party.’”

  “And then say, ‘We’re going to be out past curfew,’” Aimee added, picking up his lead and playing along.