Stay

by Deb Caletti

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  My father set the phone down and sighed. “Clara, I’m sorry.” He had misunderstood me. He thought my apology was because of his anger. But my apology was a thousand apologies.

  I felt another set of arms around both Annabelle and me. Dad’s more familiar ones. It was funny, but as we stood there in that house on the endless beach of Possession Point, the wind whispering around us, the waves chopping and churning, the smells of Sylvie Genovese’s amazing concoction lingering in our midst, we felt like a small family.

  “Three out of the four of us in this room need to seriously embrace self-forgiveness,” Annabelle said.

  I separated from her, showed her the question with my eyes. Four?

  But my father was ahead of me. “The crab,” he said, and smiled.

  Chapter 13

  By the time I got home that day after the Jake Ritchie fight, Christian had called sixteen times.

  People can attach themselves to something—an idea, another person, a desire—with an impossibly strong grip, and in the case of restless ghosts, a grip stronger than death. Will is a powerful thing. Will—it’s supposed to be a good trait, a more determined and persistent version of determination and persistence. But will and obsession—they sit right next to each other. They pretend to be strangers and all the while meet secretly at midnight.

  This is what happens. You don’t even know it. You can be choosing Milk Duds versus Junior Mints at the movies, you can be ordering the chicken sandwich versus the veggie, you can be joking and laughing on a long car ride or talking for hours on the phone and it can already be in motion. In their mind, you are theirs and will always be theirs and your own choice about that matters very little. I can’t tell you how to avoid this. I’ve been there, and still I can’t. A person shows signs—of clutching on too fast, of being needy, of not hearing the word “no,” of jealousy, of guarding you and your freedom. But the signs can be so small they skitter right past you. Sometimes they dance past, looking satiny, something you should applaud. Someone’s jealousy can make you feel good. Special. But it’s not even about you. It’s about a hand that is already gripping. It’s about their need, circling around your throat.

  The signs, anyway—they aren’t enough to make you understand what is really going to happen.

  We made up. We made up, but I knew I had already decided something. I didn’t know when I would break things off, just that I would. A small piece clicks into place, and it’s done in your mind. You can put up with a lot of shit and then just be finished all at once. A decision can seem to make itself, quiet but firm. But the thing was, he knew it somehow. Like he always knew. I swear, he could read my mind. As soon as I had decided it, he started asking me if I was planning to break up. Maybe his paranoia gave him a sixth sense to emotional danger, same as a hurt animal knows when the coyote is near, or when the eagle is flying above him with his talons out.

  We were in my bedroom doing homework. It was stupid. Another stupid thing, but they were all that way, little things that wouldn’t even cross another person’s mind. My blinds were open. I walked past the window and handed Christian a glass full of ice and sparkling water. He was sitting on my bed with his legs crossed, back against the wall.

  “Do you ever shut those?” he said.

  “These?” I thought he meant my eyes. I blinked them at him. I was being silly. I had stayed up late studying for a midterm the night before, and I thought that’s what he was talking about. Maybe I looked tired, or something.

  “Your blinds.”

  I could feel things start to get weird, the usual wave of panic, the searching to make sense of what was happening. I couldn’t figure out where he was headed about the blinds. My mind tumbled in an attempt to figure it out—what could be bothering him, how I could explain so that he would be okay. And then I remembered something else—I didn’t really care anymore. The panic flattened out. Anger and impatience stepped in its place. I really used to care whether I lost him. That long ago night when I thought he might leave me had stayed and done its work. But now I wished he would leave. It changed everything.

  “What about the blinds?” I turned the lever so that they went one way and then the other. I swear, my patience had gotten on a bus and left town and I doubted I would ever see it again.

  “You’re so flip. Every time I come in here, they’re open. Do you ever close them? Or do you just keep them like that so whoever walks past can see you undress?”

  “That’s exactly what I do,” I said. “You should see the crowds gather around ten o’clock. I charge them ticket prices. No, actually. I pay them for the chance to watch me undress.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said. He was spinning the glass in his palm. His eyes got hard.

  “You know me,” I said. “Any chance I get to attract other guys, I just go for it. Lots of times I don’t even wait for night. I just do it right here in the daylight.” I unbuttoned the first button of my shirt, then the second. I looked out onto the street. It was still and silent. Rain dripped from a neighbor’s roof. A spider had built a web from the gutter to my window ledge, and it glittered with white raindrops.

  The glass hit the wall by my desk. It didn’t shatter, but broke apart into three neat pieces. Water dripped down the wall. Water was soaking the sheets from last year’s paper on Tess of the d’Urbervilles. It was dripping down my chemistry textbook, and down my cup of pens and pencils and the legs of the desk. I gave a little scream. It felt so sudden. We were in one place, and then all at once there was water dripping and things getting wrecked and broken glass, and Christian was on his feet and I was scared.

  He was walking to me. His arms were out. His face was twisted up like he might cry.

  “Get out of here,” I said.

  He did start to cry then. Big, noisy, gushing tears. I felt embarrassed and horrified and frightened all at once. My hand was out, I saw. Out in front of me like a stop sign. “Don’t. Get out.”

  “You’re going to leave me, aren’t you? You’re going to leave me.” He sunk down to the floor. He folded and fell, as if whatever kept a body standing was gone.

  “Christian,” I said. His head was in his hands. He was sobbing. I didn’t know what to do. He had gone from menacing to falling apart in seconds, and it was too fast and confusing for me to catch up. I was scared. Now the sobbing was scaring me as much as the throwing of the glass. The emotions seemed to be spinning and gathering into some great ball that was somehow in my hands.

  “I knew you would,” he cried.

  I had to manage this, and now Christian seemed so small and vulnerable that I knelt beside him and put my arms around him. He clung to me. He cried and said he was sorry over and over. My heart ached—I felt bad for him, but I was also repulsed. I hated how his arms felt on me. I felt like I was being buried under a fallen building.

  We sat there for a long time. He stopped crying, and there was only that heavy, heavy silence of things gone wrong. That terrible place you sit in when he’s done something awful and so have you, and you now are looking at the mess of regret all around. One thing different and you wouldn’t be where you are, but it’s too late. There’s nothing to be done except sit there until the pain lessens and you can move again, though the pain of that regret will stay with you for days. You carry it on you like an open wound.

  “I think maybe you should go,” I said. Very carefully. It still seemed like there was a bomb in the building that might go off.

  “Don’t tell anyone about this, please? Please don’t tell.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Stay with me. Promise me you won’t leave,” he said. He gripped my arms. He locked my eyes. I didn’t want to look in those eyes. They were not a safe place to be.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Look at me. Promise.”

  I looked. I hated doing it. “I promise,” I lied. I pictured it to soothe myself: The minute he was gone, I would bolt th
e door, except we didn’t have a bolt. I would shove some heavy piece of furniture in front of it, like they did in the movies.

  He kissed me. I hated those lips. I didn’t want them on mine. I hated the feel of them. But even more, I didn’t want the bomb to go off. So I kissed an awful kiss.

  He got up. I was so glad he was out of my room and then so glad he was down the stairs, and then he hugged me at the door. I had drawn so far into myself I could barely breathe. I felt squeezed by my own self fleeing him inside. He was out the door finally. I was smiling at him, saying soft words. I waved. He was far enough away that I could shut the door. I waited a long, impossible moment, and then I turned the lock ever so slowly so he wouldn’t hear it.

  It still felt like the bomb was in the house. I hid myself away from the window and stood still until his car drove off. I walked slowly up the stairs and shut my door and sat with my back against it and my phone in my hand. This was someone I had loved. We had lain together, skin on skin, been as close as two people could, and he was a stranger. He was that someone who you are afraid of as a child, stranger. They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew. Light came in the window, and you could see the dark blotches on the wall where the water hadn’t dried yet. The ink on the papers had smeared. It was good that the ink was black and blotchy. I could look down and see it, that glass, too. It seemed possible that none of it actually happened—that’s how surreal it was. The ink made it true.

  * * *

  After a while my father came home, carrying bags of groceries. I could hear him rustling and putting things away. It was getting close to dinnertime. I heard the clatter of pans. I knew he’d be coming up soon to say hello, to ask me about rice versus pasta, white sauce versus red. I needed to clean up that glass. I didn’t want him to see. But I also did want him to see. I was alone with something too big to be alone with. I couldn’t even seem to make a decision about that—whether to talk to my father. My head was both so numb and so full that nothing felt clear.

  I scooped up the glass onto a file folder on my desk. I walked downstairs. Our house was a hundred years old, and the kitchen was all tall glass cabinets to the ceiling, which was rimmed in thick, dark molding. The floors were deep, old wood—you could see the tiny nails that anchored each piece into place. There was a round, sturdy table in there, too, curved legs, a soft African blanket used as a rug underneath that gave a shot of color to the room. My father’s back was to me as he put dishes from the dishwasher into the cupboards. He was in his jeans and a chunky gray sweater, his hair wavy and loose, wearing those leather scuffers he loved. I might have gotten away with dumping the glass without being seen, but he whipped around when he heard me come in.

  “Jesus, Clara, what’s the matter?”

  So much for hiding anything from him. He could read the slightest change in mood on my face; he always could. Something this big, then—it was an emotional billboard. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. He looked down at the glass. He took the folder from me and dumped it in the garbage.

  “You guys break up?” he said.

  “Fight,” I said.

  “Where a glass got broken? C.P., not good, not good. What happened.” It wasn’t a question, which I was glad about. I needed someone to tell me what to do. Most of the time I hate people telling me what to do.* Whenever my dad told me to vacuum or clean out the garage, or whatever, I’d even wait for a while to do it so it would feel like my own idea. But I needed that now. Direction. I needed something certain.

  I told him everything. I had barely begun when he started to make tea. Dad was like an old lady when it came to tea—he thought it was necessary in a crisis. I told him about the fight, yes. But I also told him about Christian and “other guys,” the way he watched what I wore, the time he asked me to cut Dylan’s picture out of the yearbook. Dad was doing really good for a while, just listening. But finally he shoved his chair back in anger.

  “C.P., this guy is dangerous. He’s a fucking freak.”**

  “Dad! Christian? You know him. You know how nice he is. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Really, he wouldn’t hurt one. He would only catch them and send them back outside.

  “God damn C.P. Do you know how often you say that about him? Do you ever hear yourself? Nice isn’t the same as good,” he said. “People are ‘nice’ for a million reasons. ‘Nice’ is the outside. What people get to see. What you want people to see. ‘Good’ is the inside. And this is a bad person, C. He’s making you a fucking prisoner. You’re letting him.”

  “I know,” I said. I did know.

  “Why are you letting him?”

  “He’s hurt. He’s sometimes just so hurt.”

  “Hurt people are very powerful people, C. Hurt is a weapon. Better weapon than most because it doesn’t look like one.”

  “I don’t want to lose what we have. I love him. It was so good. I can’t imagine not having him in my life.”

  “Yeah, but you also can imagine it. And it sounds freeing.”

  I hated that he was right so often. I didn’t know how it was that he knew all this. It’s like he experienced it himself. Maybe that was just his writer-insides. But, yeah. Freeing. A terrible push-pull of loss and gain. “It felt . . . true. I mean, like he was the one. I don’t know how to give that up. I don’t want to lose the good part.”

  “You already did lose it, the minute it was gone. A guy doesn’t hear your voice? Controls you? You’re nervous around him, Clara. I see it. You’re not a mouse. When have you ever been a mouse? You weren’t even a mouse with Dylan. You dumped his ass when he got like that.”

  “Like that? It’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s exactly the same thing. One uses his strength to get what he wants, the other uses his weakness.”

  I didn’t say anything. I looked at my hands. They were mine, but they felt separate from me. All of me felt separate from me. He was right. I was lost. I’d gotten separated from my own self somewhere on a dark, huge, and endless mountain, and who knew whether we could find each other again.

  “You gotta get away from this guy, C. Immediately. He can open every goddamn door for you and kiss the ass of every teacher, I don’t care. The stuff he’s doing behind closed doors where he thinks no one is looking—it’s dangerous. The distraught, pathetic manipulators are the most lethal. You’re going to get hurt. Remember that girl who got killed at Greenlake?”

  I didn’t answer. But I was paying attention. It was like my insides were suddenly sitting up. Some piece of me could still hear reason, and it was taking notes, making the other, emotional part stop for a second and listen.

  “Jennifer Riley. I can see her picture now. Young. High school. One of those kind of guys, Clara. Crazy jealous is nothing to mess with. Slashed her throat with a knife. True love. Soul mates. Meant to be together for-evah.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay? You gotta ditch this guy.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m taking you at your word, right?” He studied me.

  I nodded.

  “Okay. We’ve got to eat. I’m going to make us something,” he said. He was upset, though. He stood in front of the open refrigerator for a long time, just looking.

  I played with the string of my tea bag in my cup. I looped it around the cup handle. I made all the little rows completely even. I knew what I had to do, but I could tell by the look in my father’s eyes over dinner that he and I both understood that it was now not as simple as it sounded. It was clear I was standing beside Christian on the highest ledge of a building. I was looking down. I could see the street way, way below and the tiny people and the tiny cars honking; I could feel the cement wall under my hands and the sick feeling in my stomach. Doing what I needed to do to get off safely—it surely meant Christian would jump.

  Chapter 14

  I drove with Dad that next Saturday to Anacortes, the closest large town from Bishop Rock. We drove back over Deception Pass, and one more time again on the
return trip. I had a new phone number now. My phone felt okay again to me, fresh, like a second-chance phone. But the eerie question still lingered: How did Christian get that number? And how long until he would somehow get this one? We ate lunch in a café called Mama’s Kitchen, and my father talked with Captain Branson as I ate a turkey sandwich on rye. It’s a weird thing, how something crazy and unimaginable can fold into your life to the point that you can listen to your father talk about restraining orders and eat a turkey sandwich at the same time. The most insane things can become normal if you have them around you long enough. A mind can’t seem to hold anything too crazy for too long without finding a way to make it seem normal.*

  “Branson suggests holding the line,” my father said when he hung up. He agreed to a refill of his coffee cup with a nod, and the waitress poured it. “That’s what he says, ‘Hold the line.’ ‘Hang tough.’ ‘Ride it out.’ The man speaks in rugged scraps of machismo. Wait, I like that.” He looked around. I knew what he wanted. I got him a pen out of my purse, and he wrote the phrase on a napkin.

  “No restraining order?”

  “He still thinks it’s best not to engage. The guy didn’t threaten, and that’s when you do something different. Contact is what he’s after, and even legal contact is contact. ‘You respond after the fiftieth time, and he learns it takes fifty times to get what he wants.’ Stay away for a while until things calm down.”

  “We’ll end up living here.”

  “I like it here,” he said.

  “I know what you like,” I said. “Who.”

  “Nope. Not true. It’s not about Sylvie Genovese. I’m not going down that path, I’ve decided,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind about that. I’m holding the line. I’m hanging tough.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  He meant it, though. Over the next two weeks while I saw Finn when I could (out sailing, grabbing coffee, getting food at Butch’s and sitting out on the beach) Dad stayed at home. He worked on his book. He would rub his neck from so much time bent down over a screen. He got another stack of books from the library and was reading and tossing the finished ones onto a pile by the leather chair in the living room. He was spending too much time by himself, as far as I could see it. His ankle had healed, and he was back to taking long walks on the beach. He sat there with that scotch in the evening. Swirled it in the glass in some morose way. I didn’t understand what his problem was. It was the kind of alone that could gather you up and keep you. The kind that needs to be stopped or else it might become something permanent. It looked a little like depression. At least, he was thinking too much and doing too little. Wearing the same clothes too often. Leaving the room when I nagged him about any of it. He was becoming one of those people who spilled cereal on their shirt in the morning and didn’t care about wearing the stain all day. It was pissing me off. You don’t want to be too alone out here, he had told me. And yet too alone was exactly what he was.