Stay

by Deb Caletti

  The seat had a rip in it, and foam was coming out. The brakes screeched when the bus stopped. I got up to get out. The floor was slick with water from people’s shoes. I brushed past the seated passengers in their bulky coats. I knew something I didn’t know before. Knew, but didn’t want to know.

  It was possible that Christian was crazy.

  Chapter 12

  So, Dad was an idiot for riding that bike to Sylvie’s with his bad ankle. A love idiot. He spent the next few days wincing and holding on to furniture when he walked. I thought he needed to see a doctor, but he refused.* Each night he’d drink more of our mystery host’s scotch, which seemed to numb the pain enough for him to hobble around and do the dishes and other jobs I insist he not do but he did anyway.

  At work, I asked Sylvie Genovese about doctors on the island, and that night there was a knock at the door and Sylvie Genovese was there with this older guy with a long gray ponytail and a black doctor’s bag, just like the kind you see doctors carrying in old movies. He didn’t look like a real doctor. Watch him be Roger’s vet or something, I said to myself, but I was wrong. Lately I’d been wrong a lot. The one thing I was figuring out good and well was that you needed information about people, more information, to really know for sure. First impressions were tricky. They could be so sharply on target that they were an instant bulls-eye, or they could be that humorous dart that hits a tree, or worse, the dangerous dart that injures. There was only one way to know and that was time. With the doctor, it took very little time at all—Sylvie Genovese introduced him as Dr. Leroy Vicci, who had a practice there in Bishop Rock. It turned out that Sylvie and Dr. Vicci were cousins, and he and his family were part of the reason she came to the island.

  Dr. Vicci sat my father down and moved his ankle in careful circles. It took him seconds to determine it wasn’t broken. It needed more ice and less activity and a strong anti-inflammatory.

  Sometimes that’s all you need, Dr. Vicci said. To know it’s not broken. To know you’re still whole and that you’ll heal.

  It sounded like a metaphor. I looked at my father, thinking he’d catch my eye then, but he’d missed it. He was watching Sylvie Genovese’s long fingers on the back of that kitchen chair.

  I wondered if Sylvie and I would become friends now, but that didn’t happen. She was less snappish with me, though, and didn’t listen in anymore when I gave tours of the lighthouse. I would catch her looking at me, in some way that meant she was taking in the details and trying to understand the whole picture. I guessed she was someone who felt the need for slow gathering of information, too.

  For one day we lost the bright warmth of summer—clouds lay low on the beach and then moved fast as they pelted us with rain, the kind of summer rain that brings up all of the smells of the earth. Gloominess that means a day inside. Fog was everywhere—circling the lighthouse, hanging low in the trees. I wondered what Finn and Jack did on days like this.

  Not a single soul came into the lighthouse. Even the tourists were staying dry in their B and B’s. The rain came down hard, the white-wet sort that looks like snow. Sylvie did something unusual. She brought me a cup of tea, mint, like I like. She set it down on the counter where I sat. She had a cup, too. Roger followed behind like a little butler.

  “Too cold not to have tea,” she said. She warmed her hands on the cup. Stuck her nose toward the steam and breathed in.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The wind picked up. Her garden wind chimes were going crazy, and you could hear the flapping of the plastic that covered her dirt pile, a corner slipping loose and taking advantage of the wild ride.

  “Miserable beach weather,” she said.

  “I bet it makes you wish you were home,” I said. Dad had told me she’d lived in Italy as a child, then in Southern California, then back to Italy. By “home” I meant either of those places. Sunny and warm ones.

  “I am home,” she said.

  She didn’t say anything more. It was quiet between us. You could hear the wind whistling a bit. The sea was getting rough out there. “Do you ever see the ghost that’s supposed to be here?” I asked. “The captain’s wife or whatever she is?”

  Sylvie surprised me. She laughed. Roger liked this and hopped up on his back legs, jumping on Sylvie’s knees. He was always game for going along with whatever feeling was in the room. She gave him a small push down and then set her hand on his butt so he sat nicely. “I do not believe in ghosts, so they do not believe in me.”

  “So, you don’t see her, walking up the lighthouse stairwell? She isn’t in your kitchen making Kraft macaroni and cheese?”

  “That is what a ghost would come back for, true? No, we are the ones who haunt ourselves. I am sure of it.”

  Sylvie Genovese let me go home early. When I was gathering my things, she appeared again, this time with a large orange pot with foil stretched over the top. “So he stays off of that leg,” she said. The pot was warm. It smelled delicious.

  “It’s not Kraft macaroni and cheese,” I said. Sylvie Genovese laughed.

  Twice in one day. It was a new record.

  The orange pot sat on the seat beside me as I drove to the docks. Obsession seemed shut down and closed up. The Cove was open, though. Finn’s sister was sitting inside, reading Jane Eyre as rain dripped down from the awning. That seagull was out there, too, the rain dripping off his wings. Cleo didn’t seem the Jane Eyre type. I’d have guessed something tougher, true crime, one of Dad’s books, even.

  “That Darby is a pansy,” she said. “The shit they make you read for school. Online class at the community college. It’s a frilly romance! You can’t tell me it’s not.” I was glad to know I wasn’t always wrong about people.

  “You like mysteries? Bobby Oates?”

  “Love. Love. The Paring Knife. Let’s talk classic.”

  “He’s my dad,” I said.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” she said. “No way.” I realized all at once how stupid it was, what I had just done. What was I thinking? Bragging to get in good with Finn’s sister? As if some twisted need to be special hadn’t gotten me into enough trouble? I remembered too late what Finn had said about the cousin of Kurt Cobain. How the whole town knew his every move. Stupid, stupid. All we needed was one newspaper article on the web, and he could find us.*

  “You won’t say anything to anyone? His privacy is important to him.”

  “No, no, of course. Sure. You bring him down sometime. I’ll make him the best cheeseburger he’s had in his life.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I said.

  “You looking for Finn?” she said.

  “Kind of,” I said. Yes.

  She flipped her phone out of her pocket, punched a few buttons, and within seconds, I swear, the hatch opened on Obsession and Finn stuck his head out and called my name, waving.

  “Thanks,” I said to Cleo.

  “No problem.”

  “I’ll let you get back to the pansy,” I said.

  “Tell your dad he’s awesome.”

  I smiled, headed down the dock to the boat. I was glad I had my jacket. I stuck my hands deep into my pockets. Finn helped me up on board, and then I followed him down the few stairs into the boat’s cabin. It was as warm as I had imagined—teak wood benches with cushioned seats and teak wood cabinets in a small kitchen. Through a narrow doorway I could see a triangular berth up front, and through another, a small bathroom. It was a little messy down there, too, but in a comfortable way. A few coats piled up, a box of crackers on the sink, some mail. A life jacket, some rigging. Two pieces of something metal being repaired on a paper towel. Charts, and a radio. A book opened to keep its place. A thick paperback with a picture of an iceberg on it. Finn read, which was great. He read adventure, even better. Christian didn’t approve of too many American books. Or much of anything American, really.

  I wondered when I would stop looking at everything in comparison to what Christian was or wasn’t or did or didn’t. It had become a weird kind o
f map, a way of maneuvering.

  “It’s nice down here,” I said.

  “Shelter from the storm. No one’s going out today,” he said. “Hot chocolate?”

  “That’d be great.”

  He put a pot on the stove, made it the old-fashioned way with milk and chocolate. He poured us two steaming cups. My cup said VICTORIA TO MAUI RACE, 2004, and his said PACIFIC CUP, 1998.

  “Did the boat do these races?” I pointed to the cups. I knew he himself would have been pretty young during those.

  “Yep. My father and some other guys.”

  I nodded. He told me a story about how his father took off on his own boat when he was just twenty-two. How he met Finn’s mom in Key West, at the gathering the town has every night to celebrate the setting of the sun. We were sitting across from each other, him on one bench and me on the other, our feet propped on the opposite side across. He grabbed my foot and gave it a little shake, and I did the same back. We were grinning at each other. I liked it there in the warm bottom of that boat. You could hear the water sloshing against the sides.

  I was just having a nice rest in those sweet eyes when my phone rang in my pocket. “That’s got to be my father, spoiling the moment,” I said to Finn.

  “Parents are so good at that.”

  “I’m guessing he did something stupid, like go for a walk on his bad ankle, and now he’s marooned on a driftwood log somewhere.”

  “Parents can be such children,” Finn said. “We ought to raise them better.”

  I smiled, pulled the phone from my pocket, and looked at the screen. I stopped smiling. I suddenly froze. The kind of suddenly like screeching brakes, or when you all at once realize you can’t breathe after falling on your back off the monkey bars. I felt like gasping. Drowned sailors under water, deeper and deeper, until that moment when your chest grips for a single chance at air.

  “Clara?” Finn leaned forward. I just looked at the phone. I hadn’t seen that number in a while, not since I had changed mine and had only given the new one out to my closest friends. It’s funny how a number can be as familiar as your own home, as weighted with meaning. The number leaped out and told me a hundred things. It zipped me right through our history—the first time I saw it, the last time. It was a memory all on its own.

  “Are you okay? You’re, like . . . white.” Finn had put down his cup. He swapped benches to sit beside me.

  I shoved the phone in my pocket. I didn’t want him to see that number and all it meant. If he saw that number, it would tell him all the ways I was horrible and ugly and heartless.

  “I guess it wasn’t your dad,” Finn tried again.

  “No.”

  It was as if Christian had come out from the place I’d hidden him to slap me again with his presence. It wasn’t fair for a person to shove himself at you again and again when you wanted them gone. We should have the right to have someone leave when we want, to only allow those in who we want in. But the truth is, people can force their way into your life whenever they choose. If they want to remind you forevermore that they exist, they will. They can reappear in a card or a call or a “chance” meeting, they can remember your birthday or the day you met with some innocuous small note. No matter how little they matter in your new life, they can insist on being seen and recognized and remembered. A restraining order, those pieces of paper we think could/should protect us from such things, only we in this situation understand the complexities of that. How that paper is an invitation for more contact, for more binding ties and communications, even through other people.

  And, of course, those weren’t the only ways a person could be held hostage forever. Christian had inked his phone number on my palm that night long ago, but his mark on me was permanent. What had happened—forgetting would be impossible. I would never forget, and he would never be forgotten. Even if he only resurfaced in a song or in my thoughts or in the colors of a fall day or in a chunk of broken glass, what was between us was forever. He’d made sure of that.

  “Hmm,” Finn said. He looked at me gently. “You have secrets.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement of fact. Finn did not talk in layers—his words were fact just like wind was fact and water was fact.

  “Everyone has secrets,” I said. I was thinking about me, but also about my father. Sylvie Genovese for sure. Annabelle Aurora maybe. The mailman. The women who sold taffy. Butch, from Butch’s Harbor Bar. Cleo. Finn, likely.

  “Everyone? I don’t have secrets,” Finn said. “I’m all right here. This is where I work and where I live. This is who I am. Okay, one secret. My mother once showed us that old movie To Catch a Thief? Cary Grant and Grace Kelly? I had a crush on Grace Kelly. That’s weird for a ten-year-old. I imagined we were married. I thought about it all through the fourth grade.”

  I smiled, but my heart felt sick and heavy. That phone seemed hot in my pocket. I didn’t want to ever touch it again. Christian had found my number, and it was as if he had located me right there in Bishop Rock, right there in Finn’s boat with Finn beside me, holding my hand now. I was furious and anxious. Christian didn’t know where I was, I told myself. He had my number, that was all. A number could be anywhere. He wasn’t in the room, looking at me, but that’s what it felt like. He felt that near.

  I told Finn about Christian. Or, at least, I told him that I’d broken it off and that Christian couldn’t let go. I told him that a policeman friend of my father’s* had been advising us. Don’t expect some restraining order to protect you, he’d said. They often make a bad situation a dangerous one. No contact, period. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave town for a while. He’ll go away eventually if you don’t reward him with a response. I told Finn that I couldn’t let anyone know where I was. But I didn’t tell him everything. It’s a simple truth that a secret is something you’re ashamed of.

  Finn let out a long exhale after I told him. “Wow,” he said. I waited for what might come next. Some distancing maneuver on his part. I didn’t come without complications. I fought some weird urge to apologize.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you,” Finn said finally.

  A lump started in my throat. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t dare. I thought I might cry, the way you do when someone gives you some kindness when you most need it but when it seems the most surprising thing.

  Finn’s eyes were intent. “I just want to say—if that guy comes around here, Jack and I will take turns knocking some sense into his fucking head.”

  We’re supposed to hate violence, and we do hate violence. An act of violence is the worst and most shocking thing a human being does. And yet the truth is, the absolute honest truth, is that words like Finn’s . . . When you feel small and there is someone large and brave standing beside you, baring his teeth, ready to protect . . . Even when you know you wouldn’t want him to, and even though you know he’s not even that type . . . Well, here’s what you do, then. You squeeze his hands. You look into his eyes. You let yourself, for a moment, anyway, feel safe.

  I brought the orange pot from Sylvie Genovese inside the house. I was surprised to find old Annabelle Aurora sitting at our table with Dad, sharing a pot of green tea. There was a crab sitting in newspaper in the kitchen sink. His laptop* was open on the table, meaning he’d been working. I was glad. Ever since his ankle and Sylvie Genovese, he’d been too distracted to work. He’d stare off and answered different questions than the one you’d asked.

  “You make us dinner on the drive home?” he joked.

  “My boss thought she’d save you some hobbling around.”

  I couldn’t believe what happened next. I just couldn’t. He blushed. I’d never seen him blush in his entire life.

  “I’ve never seen you blush in your entire life,” Annabelle Aurora said.

  See? “He’s red as that crab,” I said.

  “I am not blushing,” he said. Annabelle and I looked at each other and laughed. “It’s hot in here is all.”

  “A sudden rise in temperature,” Annabe
lle said. She wore her jeans and a loose red shirt and a gorgeous orange scarf. Her blue eyes glittered.

  “And only his face seems to feel it,” I said.

  He shut his eyes for a moment, shook his head, as if summoning the great patience putting up with us required. I brought him the pot, and he lifted the lid. The dish had cooled, but even so, all kinds of smells danced out—onions and wine and cheese and twirling bunches of herbs.

  “Stunning.” Annabelle said.

  “Look at this. You’ll have to stay for dinner,” my father said to Annabelle.

  “No, Bobby, I can’t. I have to get back to my scribbling. The impatient muse . . .”

  “Reminds me. Did you read that article by Charles Whitney?” my father said. “The muse, the spark of inspiration . . . New York Times?”

  “Dad,” I interrupted. This could go on all day. One line from him and off they’d go on another conversation. I knew this from that one night at dinner. But I didn’t have time for that. My father must have heard something in my voice. He finally stopped and looked at me.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “He called.”

  Annabelle sighed. My father slammed his palm on the table. “God damn it. All right. Clara Pea, we’ll get the number changed this afternoon. Did he leave a message?”

  “I didn’t want to listen.”

  “Give the phone to me.”

  I took it out of my pocket. I wished I could have put a Kleenex around it to handle it, like some crime scene knife. My father punched the buttons to retrieve the message—his eyes were black, a lock of hair fell over his face. He was pissed. I heard Christian’s voice. Not the actual words, but the murmuring rhythms, his own self alive and speaking just a while before.

  My father saved the message. “Same old bullshit,” he said.

  I put my head in my hands. Arms came around me. The soft, thin arms of Annabelle. It was like being held by a mother. It was something I remembered. It made me want to weep. I put my face into her shoulder. She was thin, but solid. Firmly planted.