Stay

by Deb Caletti

  “He’s nothing like Dylan. All you have to do is spend five minutes with him to see that.” They were different. Christian was courteous and mannered and got good grades and had life goals. Dylan barely passed classes and even got into it with teachers. “Nice is the difference,” I said to Dad. Nice was protection enough.

  “Nice can have an edge.”

  “That’s ridiculous! That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

  “You got your garden variety nice, C.P., where they’re just regular, fine people, and you got your goody-two-shoes nice. Underlying hostility. Self-righteousness without the balls to show its true colors.”

  “Jesus.” I spun around to leave.

  “C.P., I’m sorry. But did you not tell me to be honest after last time?”

  I stopped. Actually, I’d made him promise. Shakti, too. It had been one of those situations where after you break up, everyone tells you how they knew he was a creep all along. You’re mad they didn’t tell you, but how could they? You wanted their honest opinion, but you wanted their support, too, and there is no such thing as a truthful lie.

  “You saw him for five minutes,” I said.

  “Okay,” my father said.

  “I’m going to bed.”

  “I don’t even know the guy,” he said.

  I went to my room. The phone rang, and it was Christian. I let it go. I had to calm down a minute. I sat on my bed until the pissed-off-ness rode away. The confusion was still there. The clawing anxiety of things maybe going wrong, possible loss. I dialed.

  “Hi,” I said. Oh, I sounded cheerful.

  “Hi,” he said.

  I waited. Watched the landscape for oncoming trucks barreling my way. But Christian just started talking about something Mr. Hooper had done that day that he had forgotten to tell me. Everything was normal again, and the thought that I might lose him turned down to some dim light, a distant hum; still, it was a bad, panicked feeling I would remember. I would have avoided it in any way I could. His voice turned breathy in my ear.

  “You make me so crazy,” he said.*

  I was worried I would lose him. Him, which was not just him , but some sort of new life, some hopeful excitement, a new me, full of spells and the ability to hypnotize. That power. And the idea of that loss—the ugly rush of clinging-begging-panic . . . I had felt it, I had. It’s important to be honest about that. I had danced there, too.

  After we hung up, I found that song, “The Way She Moves”, and I listened to every word carefully, looking for meaning. Your eyes are on her and you want her. Your eyes have her. She’s yours . . . I decided I would put it on a CD for him, with a bunch of other songs I felt summed us up perfectly. All kinds of music suddenly seemed to make sense. All of the lyrics and movies and fuss about love . . . This was what it was about. This.

  I met his parents. His mom and his stepfather. Sandy was sweet, small and blond, kind. Elliot was a little cynical and sharp, I thought, the thoughtless kind of cruel. Where your own humorous jab meant more than someone else’s feelings. But I couldn’t see what the problem was with his mom. I really couldn’t. She’d left him a lot when he was young, I guess. But she always seemed to be trying hard. It felt complicated there.

  October turned to November. We did everything together. We’d bundle up and walk to the Rose Garden at the zoo, make out in the gazebo. I’d go with him to Mr. Hooper’s house; we would sit in the room with the French doors and the fireplace as Christian read from novels he’d bring from the Seattle library. Mr. Hooper wore his jogging suit and his scuffers. He didn’t care if the plot was slow or if the book took place in the 1700s or now or if there was romance or war. I think he just liked the sound of Christian’s voice, which I understood. Christian would make Mr. Hooper grilled cheese and tea.

  I went to Sandy and Elliot’s cabin east of the mountains with all of them once, rode in the back with Christian like we were little kids, eating red licorice and playing I Spy. We made a fort in the snow, tucked ourselves inside and tried to kiss, but our lips were too cold to work very well. He told me about winter in Copenhagen when he was a boy, how he and his parents would rent skates at the outdoor rink in the center of the city, set picturesquely in front of the snowy Royal Danish Theatre.

  In early December, a guy in Christian’s class, Jason Patricks, jumped from the ledge of Snoqualmie Falls, and we went to his funeral together, joining all the others, our hands tight together. The casket was set in the front of the church, and even though I had not known Jason, he was alive and now not and inside that box. I didn’t remember my mother’s funeral, and I could feel it then, the grief and the loss and the thorny mess that life was, sitting there in front of us in the shine of that wood and the waxy smell of flowers, and I felt so close to Christian there beside me, then. It felt like we had gone through something together, or at least stood witness together to something huge that now bound us.

  We’d known each other for a few months when he told me he loved me. We had talked around the idea, we had used all the not-quite-there expressions of love, the appetizers and the desserts and the salad, but not the main meal. I think I’m falling in love . I love that about you. You’re a person I could seriously love. Still, it was the direct three words that you wanted; those were the ones that meant something. He had picked me up after school. We were in his car. We were parked near the gym where we had met. That basketball game seemed like a long time ago. He’d become such a daily presence in my life, it seemed weird that there had been a time when he wasn’t in it. Shakti complained she never saw me anymore. All my friends did. I tried to make sure I wasn’t one of those girls who dropped all their friends when a guy came into her life, but I guess I was, and I’m telling the truth here, so the truth was that I didn’t mind.

  “I’ve said this to you a million times already in my head,” Christian had said.

  I was quiet. An old-fashioned word comes to mind: coy. It was like he was on bended knee with a velvet box, with me waiting primly in some Victorian outfit. And the truth again—I wasn’t going to be the one to say it first. What’s that about? Love must be more about power than we think, if even in its most intimate moment of expression we think about not being the one who risks the most.

  “I love you,” he said. He was glad to have it out, I guess, because he said it two more times, relieved, and then he rolled down his window and shouted it out, which was so unlike him that I laughed and grabbed his arm.

  “Christian!” I said. Two senior girls were looking at us like we were the star performers in the idiot circus. “Roll that up!” I was laughing, and I was so happy. He put the window up. I held his hands. His eyes were bright. “I love you, too,” I said.

  And I did. That was the thing you should understand. Bad things happened. It was like seeing something great on the beach, something you ran toward because it looked special and different, and when you got close, you saw it was something that made you look away, a syringe, a condom, a dead seagull buzzing with flies. But I did love him. Very much.

  We’d gotten so close by then. It embarrasses me now, but we used those words: soul mates. Hard to admit that. Hard to admit, too, that I felt some future was actually possible. At least, I couldn’t imagine life without him in it. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, either. There were I want yous and more I want yous but that’s as far as it went. He took those things seriously. For someone who spent years of his childhood in a city where women went topless in the parks on summer afternoons, he was surprisingly, staunchly prudish. He judged people who had sex too soon. They were loose and stupid and had no morals, and I said I agreed but didn’t know how I really felt. It could be complicated, I thought. Okay, truth again. He had used the word slut. About girls who had sex.

  That night we had gone out with his friends—Jake and his girlfriend Olivia and Zach. We went to Neumo’s. A band I can’t remember. We were dancing. I wondered if Zach had had a few beers or something beforehand. He was loose and kept making dumb jokes. I
t was the first time we’d gone out with Christian’s friends. I’d met them. Hung out a little. But we’d never gone somewhere.

  After the concert everyone was laughing and having the kind of good feeling that comes after dancing to loud music in a small place. You felt happy. Or you did usually. But things were weird. I’d tried to hold Christian’s hand in there, but he kept snatching it away. He was barely talking. But when we got back into our own car, he snapped on the engine. His face had a tight look. He almost looked like someone else.

  I didn’t say anything. I just held my purse. I wanted a mint, but I didn’t want to unzip my purse and get one out. I wanted things to be in that still place before a fight, not in that other, upsetting one after a fight starts.

  “You had fun,” he said finally.

  I thought that was the idea, you know, to have fun. I wondered what his problem was. I didn’t know. I made my best guess. Christian didn’t drink. He was straight that way, too, actually. I was guessing he was pissed at Zach and pissed at me for joking with him. He had no right to accuse me of anything, but I couldn’t stand the thought of us arguing. We never argued. The thought made me remember that time we’d gone to the movies. That terrible, anxious feeling that I might lose him.

  “Zach seemed drunk,” I said. “He was acting like an asshole.” I didn’t really think so.

  Christian was silent. The muscle in his jaw just kept working. I concentrated on the view outside. Streetlights, a McDonald’s, a bus stop where an old lady sat holding her purse like I was. She was up very late for someone so old. I felt worried for her. I watched a guy walking his dog past an empty bank parking lot. We wound around by Lake Union. Sailboats, lively restaurants. The Space Needle already decorated for Christmas with the tree at the top.

  “I saw you looking at that guy,” he said.

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “What guy?”

  “Come on, Clara. You were looking at him the whole night.”

  “Who?”

  “By the stage? Long hair? Oh come on.” A car tried to pass into our lane, but Christian wouldn’t let him in. It looked rejected, driving so slowly there beside us with its blinker on.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t even see the guy by the stage. Christian, for God’s sake, I was there with you. You were the only one I was looking at. Christian, pull over. Just, stop, and let’s talk.”

  He did. He swerved right there onto Fairview, which was the street directly next to the lake. He pulled over, parked on a gravel strip in front of a boatyard. I felt panicky. I wanted to make this right. It was ridiculous. The strange thing was, if he’d complained about Zach, I might have understood. But I didn’t even see the person he meant. I tried to think. Guy by the stage? There were a million guys by the stage. I was looking at the stage, probably. The musicians.

  I wasn’t mad, though, about being accused. More, I felt bad. Did he really not know how much I cared? It was only him I wanted to look at. He was more than enough for my eyes. I told him so. I was pleading. Part of me was pleading, and another part of me was wondering why in the hell I was pleading. I was wondering why I was sitting in front of a boatyard convincing someone I hadn’t looked at a guy I hadn’t looked at.

  He softened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you.” It was funny, but he could be insecure. I’d noticed that. He would make these comments about his looks or his abilities, but he had no reason to be insecure, none. He was this gorgeous blond, blue-eyed Dane and he was smart and nice and girls were crazy for his accent, but the person he was and the person he thought he was didn’t know each other and could never even be friends. It made me sad. I thought it was part of my girlfriend job to set him straight about how great he was. The insecurity—it seemed like a small thing. Ridiculous enough that it could easily be fixed with my reassurance.

  “Why would you lose me?” I said.

  We started to kiss. After a while, I had said I want everything with you. And so we had everything. For the first time. After that fight. In the car, a cliché.

  But the important thing at this part of the story, another part I’ve never told, is that he whispered something to me then. You’re sure you’ve never done this? It was something he’d asked me before. I shook my head into his bare shoulder, but it was a lie. I didn’t tell him about that one time with Dylan, that one fast, strange time. I didn’t tell him the truth then, or whenever we’d talked about this. He’d never been with a girl before. I knew this would matter to him. But what I knew even more than that was that he was the jealous type . That’s how I thought of it. As if the words were small print, equal to other qualities a person might have—the athletic type. The creative type. The type to get easily lost, or be late, or didn’t like food that was too different. It meant you made accommodations, you got directions beforehand or told him the concert was earlier or picked a place to eat that had hamburgers or didn’t say things that would hurt him. You didn’t even tell him the truth about who you were or what you had done. You protected him, kept things from him he couldn’t handle. Or else protected yourself from what he couldn’t handle. You managed it all, like someone who works in an office and who types and answers the phone at the same time.

  Why would you lose me? I had asked. And you can see, can’t you, better than I could, that the answer to that question was right there in the car with us as my knee rested against the gear shift and my elbow against glass? The answer was not a small human quality, a minor trait or a quiet one, but a loud twisting force moving between and around and through, gathering, the way a cloud gathers darkness, the way the clouds did right then over that car and the single streetlight and the sign that read LAKE UNION BOAT REPAIR. VALUE AND SATISFACTION. WE CARE.

  Chapter 8

  I returned that book to the Bishop Rock Library the next morning. I had a few more days to fill before I started work at Pigeon Head Point. I wandered around in the stacks of fiction. I tipped out the spines, read the covers and first pages. I did what I could to make sure I had a few books right enough to devote myself to.

  Afterward I went to the docks. The wind was whipping pretty good, and the sailboats were clanging, and the dock was groaning and squeaking. The boats bobbed and sloshed, and it all seemed happy, if a little deranged. Obsession was gone from her spot. I sat on the end of a nearby dock, took my sandals off, dangled my feet in the water. I couldn’t see the boat anywhere, and then I could, and it seemed her arrival was very fast. She got larger and larger and more in focus, and suddenly they were close enough that I could see the faces of the individual passengers, and I could hear Finn shout something and the others laugh, and the big sail came down, tumbling into messy folds.

  I watched everyone get off the boat and saw Finn return again to coil the ropes. There was a familiarity to it that made it all feel good, and so I got up, carrying my sandals by their straps, and walked over.

  “You going out again?” I shouted.

  “Hey,” he said. His brother stood at the tip of the boat* smoking a cigarette, looking out. He turned when he heard my voice. “Shy girl.”

  “Clara,” I said.

  “Finn,” he said, though his name had traveled through my mind on a million different paths already. “My brother Jack. Don’t mind him; he’s trying to quit.”

  “Don’t mind him; he’s an idiot,” Jack said, blowing smoke up into the air. You could tell they got along just fine, though. They both were thin and fit and had unshaven scruff, but Jack’s hair was longer and wilder and Finn had those sweet eyes. Finn hopped off the boat. There he was, next to me, in his tight T-shirt and loose jeans, black hair messed up from a windy, windy ride.

  “Come on out,” he said. He seemed shy himself. But not so shy that he couldn’t say what he wanted. “It’s fast. It’s fantastic.” His eyes danced.

  I must have shivered. It was a little cold out there. “Scared?” he said.

  “No,” I said. “My father’s afraid,
not me.”

  “The whole ghost thing?” he asked.

  “Ghost thing?”

  “I thought maybe you were staying at the Captain Bishop Inn. They love that stuff. Shove it at the folks that go there. People eat it up. They make pamphlets, even.” I shook my head. I didn’t know what he meant. “Deception Pass? Used to have a lot of sailing vessels. The big old ships . . . But—high winds, narrow channel . . . The waters were, are, so treacherous there that most of the ships sailed around the whole island rather than go through that pass. They had to lose a few for sailors to know that, though, right? So, supposedly, you know. Old dead sailors haunting the waters. Captain Bishop’s young widowed wife throwing herself off of the lighthouse in despair. Blah blah blah.”

  “Some TV show came out here and filmed the lighthouse and now we have every bored, middle-aged kook who is hoping to be freaked out,” Jack said.

  “I know the shows,” I said. “Old ship on choppy sea? Guy with a pocket watch and a telescope? Filmy white images?”

  “You got it,” Finn said.

  “I didn’t even know,” I said. “My father just hates the water.”

  “Ah,” Finn nodded. He shrugged his shoulders, to each his own. “Anyway, you wouldn’t believe how many people ask about the ships down under there. Number one question.”

  “Tell me about the ships down under there,” I said.

  He laughed. Someone called Jack’s name. It was the girl from The Cove, yesterday’s hamburger place. She was waving at him madly.

  “Our sister,” Finn said.

  “Pretend I never saw,” Jack said. “I’m not chasing that fucking seagull for her.”

  “There’s this seagull . . .” Finn said. I nodded. I knew about him. “She claims to hate that seagull, but I have my doubts. You coming?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to—”

  “Work at the lighthouse?” he grinned. “Did she hire you?”

  “Starting on Monday,” I said. The brothers looked at each other. Knowing glance. “What? Come on. Tell me.”