by Jen Nadol
She came in dead last. We all looked at each other. I’d been dying to get out of the cold before, but now, not so much.
“This is going to suck,” Trip said. Reluctantly we stood and walked toward the pits.
We waited to the side while Tannis talked with her dad and brothers. I wondered if maybe there’d been something wrong with her car. I caught a glimpse of her face, pale with dark circles under her eyes. She was sick, I realized.
Finally her family moved away, and Tannis came over.
“Hey.” Natalie put her arm around Tannis, coming up to about her shoulder. “It’s okay.” Nat’s nose wrinkled, and I realized Tannis was really sick. There was puke on her uniform and the car. She stank and was crying.
“It’s okay, Tannis.” Trip clapped her on the back, careful not to get too close. “What’re you doing even trying to race with a stomach bug? You think you’re some kind of iron man? Of course it was a tough day.”
She didn’t even smile, just swiped at her eyes. “It’s not a stomach bug, Trip,” she said dully, barely looking at him. “I’m pregnant.”
***
“So . . . holy shit,” Trip said. We were driving aimlessly through town the way Trip did sometimes when there was stuff on his mind that needed to come out. Nat and John had driven separately, and we’d already dropped Sarah off. Tannis, of course, had stayed at the track.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I can’t . . . I mean, the whole thing . . .” I’d been shocked by her announcement but completely floored when she’d told us who the father was. Matty Gretowniak.
“Does he know?” I’d asked.
She’d glared at me. “Of course. You think I’d tell you dorks first?”
I’d wanted to ask what he’d said about it. What they were going to do. But those questions seemed way too personal. The kind of thing Tannis wouldn’t hesitate to ask. Except she was the person in trouble.
“Sarah’s been acting weird lately,” Trip said.
My gut felt hollow. Oh God. Is that why we were driving and talking? Did he know?
“I wonder if Tannis told her?” he mused. “Got her freaked out.”
“Maybe,” I croaked.
He glanced over. “You okay?”
I nodded, clearing my throat. “Yeah, fine.” I knew I shouldn’t ask. Should change the subject to something less dangerous. But I wanted to know. “Weird how?”
Trip turned the corner, cruising toward the rec fields where he used to practice football drills while I read. “I don’t know. Distant. Doesn’t call me back as fast. Doesn’t come over.”
“Doesn’t send you flowers,” I said, feeling unbelievably guilty.
Trip snorted. “Exactly.” He was looking out the window, and I thought back to that summer and how things might have been different now if I’d practiced too, made the football team. Or whether they’d have been just the same. Trip still drifting away to other friends, finding his way back to me when it suited him.
“I’m sure we’ve all been acting weird lately,” I said. “It’s been a weird couple of weeks.”
“Understatement of the year,” he said, pulling to the curb and abruptly changing the subject. “Want to go throw a ball for a while?”
I didn’t but agreed anyway.
He pulled an old football from his trunk, and I went long, my half-frozen hands fumbling the ball.
“C’mon, Ri,” he said, grinning. “No butterfingers.”
“They’re more like Popsicles, thank you very much.” I threw him a bullet, which he caught against his chest.
“No excuses.”
We passed back and forth a few more times before he said, “You get that this is another thing from that night coming true, right?”
I paused midthrow. Then nodded. I had, subconsciously if nothing else. Nat’s dad. Tannis with kids. And of course, the one Trip didn’t know about. Me and Sarah.
“It’s only a matter of time before she realizes it and freaks,” he said. “You still have those binoculars?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“At my house.” Not 100 percent true. I’d moved them somewhere farther away, the sense of them in my underwear drawer too unsettling.
Trip nodded but didn’t say more. I dropped a couple more passes before he said, “You had enough?”
“I’m fucking frozen,” I told him.
“Maybe not the best day for football,” he agreed.
“Don’t be a wimp,” I said, walking back to the car. He drove to my house, idled the car while I detangled myself from his seat belt when we got there.
“Hey, Ri,” he said as I opened the door.
“What?”
“Good luck tomorrow.”
“With what?”
“You know,” he said. “Your dad.”
My chest tightened. My mom and I always visited his grave on the anniversary of his death. Trip was the only one who knew about it. That he remembered meant something. “Thanks, man,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.
CHAPTER 27
THERE ARE THREE CEMETARIES IN Buford. My dad was buried in the one farthest from our house. I wouldn’t have minded if it were across the country. The idea of his body in a box felt so wrong.
I preferred to think of him as perpetually sitting on a rock by the banks of Stipler’s Creek like he had every summer he’d been alive. Dangling a line into the clear water, watching for the fish that you’d see long before they reached you.
But visiting his grave with my mom made it hard to hold on to that. She talked to him, and I couldn’t help thinking really weird stuff, like how she was talking to a pile of dust. Or how he’d never be able to hear her through all that dirt.
“You ready?” she asked as I clomped down the stairs.
I nodded. My mom was wearing a skirt like she did every year. Like a fifties housewife, he’d have teased her. They’d always been more the blue jeans and flip-flops types.
We’d both taken the day off, skipping school and work for the occasion. It was overcast and cold but not raining. Late October was a shitty time to visit a cemetery. Probably a shittier time to lie dying in the woods. He’d been shot clean through the gut. The other hunter hadn’t even known it’d happened until he’d read about it in the paper. He came forward as a witness, having been up on Neversink that day, only to find out it was his shot that had killed my dad.
My memory of it is crystal clear: I was working on a ham radio with pieces my dad had left me and some barely legible instructions his dad had written about a hundred years before. I stopped when the phone rang, listening. Maybe I always did that, or maybe I had a sixth sense about that call.
And then a crash in the kitchen.
I walked out there, my heart thumping. My mom’s teacup was broken, and there were brown splatters all across the floor. She wasn’t even looking at it.
“Oh my God, oh my God.”
She kept saying it over and over, crumpled on the floor, her jeans soaking up the tea she was sitting in.
I always thought of that moment as when my dad died, but it was actually the day before. He’d been dead for hours, lying in the woods alone while my mom and I had eaten dinner, said good night, gone about whatever our routine had been when I was thirteen and she was thirty-five. He’d broken one of his cardinal rules and hunted alone. Not like him, she always said. Not like any experienced, responsible hunter. Years later it struck me odd that he’d been gone overnight and we hadn’t worried. But I’d pieced together enough of what had been going on with my parents around then that I hadn’t asked. It probably hadn’t been the first time my dad had disappeared like that.
I guess visiting his grave on a dreary day like this was only fitting. Then again, maybe I’d think of him differently if it were a blue-sky summer morning, remember the happy times rather than the
depressing memories this trip always stirred up. I wish we could just pack it in, but my mom thought it was important to remember and respect. Every year there was less and less I remembered, grainy and nonsequential, like screen shots of an old and kind of sad movie.
My dad tinkering with wires and tools at his workbench, letting me watch by the side as long as I was quiet and didn’t fidget.
Him bringing home the retriever puppy we had to give up for adoption six months later when he lost his job.
The time we drove to Maine with Trip’s family and I got a hole in one at mini-golf. My dad boosted me onto his shoulders, paraded me around the course. We got ice cream later, and mine fell out of the cone onto the parking lot, but I didn’t care, still flying high from my golf triumph.
I mentioned that to my mom once. “You did so care,” she countered. “You cried and whined for ten minutes for a new one.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You most certainly did. And your dad got it for you too,” she said, ruffling my hair.
I spent most of the ride today thinking not about my dad but about Trip. Feeling both better about how I’d been handling the thing with Sarah and terrible that there was anything to handle in the first place. And what of the things yet to come? Me and her in bed. It wouldn’t happen, I vowed. Couldn’t.
My mom passed through the iron gates and wove down the roughly paved lanes, the worn and tilted grave markers turning gradually to newer, tidier ones until we got to my dad’s section near the back. She pulled to the side, not that anyone else would need to pass. In our years of visiting, I don’t think I’d seen another soul there.
“Ready?” I asked after a minute.
She took a breath and nodded. But didn’t move.
“Mom?” I asked. “You okay?”
“I was just realizing how long it’s really been, Riley,” she said. “You were thirteen. Eighth grade, right?”
I nodded. I’d been mortified when old Miss Bussey had hugged me right in front of the whole class when I’d gone back to school, pressing me against her scratchy, mothbally sweater. I’d had to hold my breath and count to five so I wouldn’t scream or wiggle away. I’d had practice by then. Lots of people had wanted to pat or hug or touch me at the funeral and after. I’d just wanted them all to go away.
“You’ve grown up without a dad,” she said softly.
“I remember the things he taught me,” I said. “About circuits and baseball and . . . other stuff. And you’ve filled in the rest just fine.”
She looked over, smiling through teary eyes, and I knew it had been the right thing to say, even if it wasn’t all true.
We got out then, tramped through the muddy grass, our boots squishing in the muck, leaving soft tracks to his marker.
“Hey, Wes,” she said softly. My mom stood stiffly by the gray stone. It was too hard for her to squat down anymore, and wet besides. “It’s been a busy year,” she said, talking like she always did, as if he were just down there waiting all this time for his annual update. She covered work: fine (a lie). The house: still standing, needs some work we hope to get to this year (if we win the lottery). Me.
“He’s so tall now, Wes,” she said, glancing back at me with a smile. “A full head above me. What was he when you saw him last? Up to your chest? You wouldn’t even recognize him. Except he’s got your blue eyes.” She paused. “He’s taking the SATs this year, maybe heading off to college . . .” I heard my mom take a breath, her voice catching for a second. “I wish you could see what a great kid he’s become. So smart and caring and hardworking.” Her voice cracked gently. “You’d be so proud.”
I wanted to run. Right then. Take off as fast as I could through row after row of stones. Out of here, away from the way this hurt, fast enough to turn today to yesterday and back to the night when we didn’t think to call and find out where he was and why he wasn’t home. Sarah had been right. I’d do anything to have him back. My chest burned with it, hot and tight, and I had to bite my lip, hard enough to draw blood, so I could stay there, steady for my mom, and not leave or cry or scream the way everything in me needed to just then.
“Riley?” I looked over at my mom, who’d stepped back and was beside me now. “Your turn.” She gestured toward the gravestone.
I took a few hesitant steps forward. “Hi, Dad,” I said, wishing my mom weren’t standing there listening to every word I said. “Mom already filled you in on pretty much everything. So I . . . uh . . .” I fidgeted, then stopped, remembering how he’d look at me, his rough face softening, in the light and shadow by his basement workbench. “I miss you,” I said, adding quietly, “a lot.”
I stepped back, my left boot making a disgusting squelchy noise. My mom patted my back, leaning forward to put a wrapped cigar onto the headstone. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” she said softly like she did every year. Then we walked silently back to the car.
***
The other thing we always did on his anniversary was make tacos. His favorite meal.
As much as I dreaded the day, this part felt warm and safe. I had run the gauntlet, completed another year’s worth of rituals and trials. Now I could relax.
“When’s the test?” she asked, handing me the grater and cheese.
“What test?”
She gave me a funny smile. “The SAT?”
Oh. That one. “Two weeks.” I was still uncomfortable talking about it, but it was easier now that the house was warm again.
She started slicing tomatoes, saying, “I’m glad you did it, Riley.”
I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have. It was stupid—”
“No.” She cut me off. “It wasn’t. It’s what you’re supposed to be doing. You probably should have done it months ago, right?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged uncomfortably. “It just seemed like there was never a good time.”
“Sometimes you have to make it a good time.” She smiled. “I guess you figured that out.” My mom shook her head. “I can’t believe you’ll be graduating high school this year.”
“Me either.”
It struck me that these were the times—more than when bills came due or we had to shovel out the car—that I wished my dad were still alive. Wished that it weren’t just me and her. Because even if we got the financial stuff figured out, the idea of leaving her here in this lonely house hurt.
“Maybe you should, you know, start dating, Mom.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“You know.” I blushed. “Go out. With guys.”
She stared at me, a different kind of smile stuck on her mouth. Half-amused, half-uncomfortable. “What brought this up?”
“I just think . . . I don’t know,” I fumbled, embarrassed. “Aren’t you lonely?” I blurted finally, giving her a glance before studying my ragged fingernails.
“Lonely?” she said slowly. “No. Not really.”
“But won’t you be?” I asked. “When—” I quickly corrected myself, “If I go to college? Someday?”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe,” she said. “But I have friends here . . .”
I let the silence hang a minute, hoping she’d continue so I wouldn’t have to. But she didn’t.
“I know, Mom.” Her friends were mostly people from church or work—with their own families and husbands—who weren’t going to spend their evenings cooking dinner with her. “But maybe it’d be nice to have a . . .” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it.
“Partner?” she said teasingly. “Companion?” She grinned. “It’s very sweet that you worry about me, Riley, but you don’t have to. Really. I’m fine and I’m happy.”
I gave her a skeptical look.
“There are people who look out for me,” she said comfortingly.
“But, Mom,” I blurted, “he’s married.”
She gaped at me, speech
less. I was a little shocked I’d actually said it too.
“Yes,” she said after a minute, “but I can’t change that.”
“But you don’t have to be . . . involved in it.”
“What brought this up, Riley?”
Good question, one I wasn’t sure I could answer. Something to do with Sarah and me and Trip. And the binoculars. “It’s just . . . well, it doesn’t seem right, Mom.”
Her lips tightened, but she stayed calm. “It’s probably hard for you to understand, Riley. But we have a history, he and I. It means something. I care about him. He cares about me.”
Not enough to leave his wife, I wanted to say. That was the part that got me angriest, the way he used her. And she let him.
“It’s not ideal,” she was saying. “And I’ve agonized about it a lot for a long time, but I can’t be responsible for everyone’s happiness. I’m happy, he’s happy, and she’s . . . well, no less happy than she would be any other way, I think.”
I left it there. What else could I do? But I was disappointed, which is stupid, because parents are just people too, and most of the ones I knew—Trip’s, Natalie’s, mine—had proved time and again that they were far from perfect. I wanted my mom to be better, nobler. I didn’t love her any less, but I think I respected her less. It might have been unfair, given my own conduct, but somehow that made it even clearer for me. If I could feel how wrong it was, having only done it once or twice, how could she have let it go on for years?
Not that my heart didn’t skip a beat when my phone rang later, Sarah’s name on the caller ID.
“I had a thought,” she said when I picked up.
“Again?”
Sarah took a deep breath. “You know how John was saying something isn’t adding up?”
“Yeah.”
“Think about the things we know: what Galen said about that night, what we learned when we went back to the trailer, the lighter you found.”
“So?”
“How do we know all that stuff?”
“Well, Trip talked to Galen—”
