Phoebe Will Destroy You

by Blake Nelson

  The receptionist put me through.

  “Nick!” he said. “How are you?”

  “Hi, Dr. Snow,” I said.

  “I’m so glad you called. How’s your summer going?”

  “Good. Good,” I said, talking louder as I passed the bumper cars on Main Street. “I’m in Seaside. I’m staying with my aunt and uncle. I’m working at their car wash.”

  “Yes. I remember. And how is that?”

  “It’s okay. It’s good. It’s fun.”

  “And how’s your mother doing?”

  “She’s still sober. Last I heard. Actually, she’s leaving my dad. She probably already left. She’s moving out.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. She’s probably going back with that guy Richard.”

  “I see. Well how about you? How are you doing with everything?”

  “I’m okay. It’s been nice to be away. It’s sort of different up here.”

  “In Seaside? How so?”

  “People are more . . . you know, it’s a small town. So it’s just more . . . it’s smaller.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Snow.

  “Yeah . . .”

  “That sounds great, Nick. I’m so glad you’re checking in. I’m sure you want to talk more about the situation with your mother. I’m looking at my schedule. I’ve got a cancellation at five thirty this afternoon. We could do a phone session then, if you’d like.”

  “Actually, there’s this other thing that’s happening.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “I’m in love.”

  “You’re in love?” said Dr. Snow.

  “Yeah, but I feel sort of . . . afraid of it.”

  “Of being in love?”

  “Yeah. It’s this local girl. She parties a lot. She smokes cigarettes.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, she’s great,” I said. “She’s super fun. And kinda weird. She’s got inside my brain in a way. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Does she know how you feel about her?”

  “Yeah . . . I think so. . . .”

  “And does she reciprocate your feelings?”

  As I thought about this, I pictured Phoebe on the beach that morning. The calm ocean, the stillness in the air. I remembered pulling the sleeping bag back and the sight of Phoebe’s pale, helpless body. How I loved her in that moment. How my heart seemed to leap out of my chest.

  “Nick?” said Dr. Snow. “Hello? Are you there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just thinking. . . .” This happened with Dr. Snow sometimes. My thoughts would take me to a place that I couldn’t bring him along. I mean, I liked Dr. Snow. And I trusted him. But he was an adult. He didn’t think of love as a force that takes you over. He thought of it as “a relationship.” And then he’d want to say if it was “healthy” or “unhealthy.” And then he’d talk about “boundaries” or “emotional needs.” He didn’t know how it could get inside you and tear you up. You couldn’t make it into something rational. Love was nature. It came down on you like a thundercloud, like an ocean storm. And trying to control it or manage it, you couldn’t do that, you couldn’t control a storm. You couldn’t control the violence of the world.

  “You know . . . ,” I said. “I’d like to do a phone session, but I can’t today.”

  “This sounds like something we definitely need to talk about.”

  “How about I’ll call back tomorrow?” I said. “And figure out when the best time would be.”

  “Of course. Call tomorrow. Talk to Carol and set up an appointment.”

  “Okay, I’ll do that,” I said, and I hung up.

  36

  I was already walking toward the Promenade when I ended the call. Now I turned in the direction of Phoebe’s.

  It took about ten minutes. I didn’t let myself think too much. It seemed possible that I might lose my nerve if I did. So no thinking. That was the rule I set for myself: No thinking.

  I arrived at her house. I didn’t let myself hesitate and kept right on walking, up the empty driveway and along the little path to the front door. I rang the bell, or I tried to. It didn’t seem to be working. So I knocked, in a polite way, and then knocked again louder, in case she was in the workroom in the back.

  A moment later I heard footsteps. My heart rose to my throat. I took a deep breath and waited.

  The doorknob turned, and with some difficulty the door opened.

  It was Phoebe. She was barefoot, in shorts. She looked like she’d just woken up. “Oh,” she said, peering at me with drowsy, blinking eyes.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The tone in her voice stung me. But I remained calm. “I was, uh . . . just walking around . . . ,” I managed to say. “They let me off early . . . from the car wash.”

  “Oh,” she said. I could see the house was dark inside, even though it was the afternoon.

  “I wanted to see you,” I said in a serious voice. “And I forgot to get your number. So I figured this was the best way.”

  She looked at me. She seemed unsure what to do. “Okay,” she said.

  “I can go,” I said. “I just wanted . . . to say hi.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s all right. You can come in.”

  She opened the door more, and I stepped inside. She saw the scrape on my cheek. I had taken the Band-Aid off that morning.

  “How’s your face?” she asked.

  “It’s a lot better,” I said, touching the scab. “Thanks for fixing me up.”

  She led me into her kitchen. She was wearing a man’s shirt. No bra. Her thick black hair was sticking out on one side.

  I looked around the kitchen. This was where we’d come the other night, after the fight. That had been the most thrilling night of my life. And here I was, back again.

  “Uh . . . so . . . yeah,” said Phoebe, scratching her head. She looked at me. “Do you want a beer? Or some coffee?”

  “Coffee’d be good,” I said.

  As usual, my eyes followed her around the room. There was a slowness to her movements, but also a kind of composure, a controlled energy. I couldn’t look away from her.

  “So your mom’s not home?” I asked.

  She looked at me as if this was an odd question. “No,” she said. She put two scoops of coffee in the machine and then poured water into it.

  “What have you been up to?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Nothing much. Making T-shirts.”

  I didn’t believe her, but I said nothing. I took a seat at the small table. Phoebe remained standing. As the coffee brewed, she cleaned up a little. She dumped out some ashtrays. Then cleared the counter of empty beer cans.

  Eventually, she took a seat across from me at the table. She lit a cigarette. She hadn’t really looked at me yet, but now she did. It was not an affectionate look. It was more like she was studying me. There was something going on with her. Did she want me there? Did she not want me there?

  “This must be peak T-shirt-selling time,” I said.

  “Summer always is.”

  I nodded.

  The coffee began to brew. She smoked. It still looked weird to me, someone that young smoking. Nobody at my high school smoked; that would be considered a sign that something was seriously wrong with you. In Seaside lots of people smoked. I didn’t know what it meant.

  “Do you ever worry,” I said, “about cigarettes?”

  “Like what? That they’ll kill me?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Or they say they make your skin bad.”

  “My skin . . . ?” she said, thinking about it. “No. I don’t think about that.”

  The coffee maker began to gurgle. She stood and went to the cupboard and got two cups. She looked inside one of them. It must have been dirty, because she put it in the sink and then looked for another. She didn’t seem to like any of the ones on the lower shelf, so she pushed up onto her tiptoes and reached for one on the next shelf up.
/>   That was the moment. When she stretched upward. In her too-big man’s shirt, and with her bare calves and bare feet and her arm stretched upward and her tangled mess of black hair.

  I was up before I could stop myself, and then I had my arms around her, holding her from behind. She didn’t react at first. She continued to hold the cups in her hands, while I buried my face in her neck and shoulder. I breathed in her hair. After I’d held and squeezed her for a moment, I released my grip. She put down the cups and turned to me and slid her hands up my chest and around my neck and kissed me deeply on the mouth. So she does love me, I thought. A tremendous surge of happiness poured through me. My soul felt like it was turning itself inside out. I wanted to give Phoebe all of myself, everything I had. I wanted to surrender to her completely.

  “Come on,” she said in a scratchy whisper. She took my hand and led me into her bedroom.

  37

  “There’s so many things I want to tell you,” I said. An hour had passed. I was lying on my stomach, in Phoebe’s bed, half my head buried in a pillow. With my left eye, I watched the side of her face beside me.

  Phoebe blinked several times, her thick black lashes fluttering like a tiny bird. “Oh God,” she said. “You’re not going to be like that, are you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Just . . . talking too much.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Some people, they just talk talk talk,” she said. “They can’t shut up.”

  I stared at her with my one eye. What had gotten into her? “Yeah, but we just . . .”

  “And then you’ll want me to tell you things,” she said. “Which I’m not going to do.”

  I continued to stare at her from my pillow. This was not the conversation I thought we were going to have. Maybe she got touchy after sex. She was like that the other time too. Maybe something traumatic had happened to her in her childhood. That seemed possible, with her mother never around, growing up in Seaside.

  “No,” I said as gently as I could. “I wasn’t going to ask you anything.”

  She sighed. “It’s nothing personal,” she said. “But if you live in a tourist town, people come and go. You know? And you’re going to leave soon, right? To go back to school or whatever?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you in college?”

  “High school. Senior year.”

  “I can never tell how old people are,” she said. “I have a blind spot for that. Sometimes I can’t tell anything about people.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Like Nicole? When she sees someone? She instantly knows all these things about them. It’s like she’s psychic.”

  “It’s hard to know people sometimes,” I said. “Even when you’re around them a lot.”

  Phoebe looked down at her fingernails. “The thing about me is, there isn’t anything to say.” She looked at me with a sad expression.

  I propped my head on my hand. “I bet there is,” I said, running my fingers along her arm. “I’d want to know anything you felt like telling me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like . . . well . . . how you see things. And how you approach things. You’re really funny sometimes. But other times more serious. And like your family. Where are they? What are they like?”

  “My family?” she said, like that was the last thing she would ever talk about. She pushed the covers down and rolled off the bed. She walked naked to the bureau, where her phone was charging. She unplugged it and got back into the bed. “I have to check something,” she said. “Do you mind?”

  “No,” I said.

  She began scrolling on her phone, and I felt a sinking sensation in my chest. The presence of Phoebe’s phone was never good. The attention she gave it, the way it lit up her face in the dark. I hated her phone. I was deeply jealous of it.

  “I have to go soon,” she said, turning it off and putting it beside her on the bedside table.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. She pulled the covers up tight around her neck and closed her eyes.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you,” I said.

  “You didn’t offend me.”

  “I guess your family is your own business.”

  “I’m not offended,” she repeated, without looking at me.

  I couldn’t think of what to say next. “Are you glad I came over?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. She turned and moved closer and began to snuggle with me. “Yes, I am.”

  She moved fully into my arms, which totally changed my thinking. The minute I felt her pressed against me, I was insanely happy again. I pulled her close and held her. I kissed her lips and caressed the sides of her face. The feeling of love was overwhelming. That was the thing about Phoebe: She seemed to need more love, and so somehow you generated more love. And all that extra love moving through you, it was like a drug, it was pure ecstasy, filling you up and then flowing into her, and then coming back to you again, creating this vortex of incredible bliss.

  * * *

  A half hour later we separated. She reached for her phone.

  “Do you remember when I found you on the beach?” I said, after I’d caught my breath.

  “No,” she said, checking her messages.

  “Really?” I said. I was on my back, staring at the ceiling. “After that first big party of the summer? At the Cove? Kyle was there. With Britney. You and Nicole were there.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Anyway,” I continued, mostly to myself. “I forgot my book on the beach and I went back early the next morning and I found you asleep on the sand. By yourself. Under an old sleeping bag.”

  “What?” she said, glancing at me once.

  “I saw this old sleeping bag. And I thought it was just lying there. And I picked it up, and you were under it.”

  She frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “But it’s true! You were asleep. Or passed out maybe. And I took you home.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I’m totally serious,” I said. “Do you not remember?”

  “No,” she said.

  I looked at her then. “Wow,” I said. “You really don’t.”

  “You should probably go soon,” she said to me.

  “Okay,” I said, but it was going to kill me to leave, to get out of that bed. I braced myself for the pain of it. I also wondered what she was doing later. And with whom. She hadn’t told me. It was odd how sometimes she didn’t answer when you asked her things.

  I finally sat up, slid off the bed, and began to gather my clothes. “But just so you know,” I said, pulling on my pants. “That really happened, finding you on the beach. Not that it matters. You were probably just really drunk.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s true. I found you. And I took you home.”

  She sighed. “I have to take a shower,” she said. She got up and went into the bathroom.

  I sat on the bed and put on my shoes.

  * * *

  It was dark when I went out the front door. I headed down the road toward the highway. It was the second time I’d made that walk after being with Phoebe. It was as peaceful and profound as the first time: the quiet houses, the single streetlamp, the dark sky above. And that deep sense of completion and satisfaction in my body. Things had definitely been more complicated tonight, but in the larger picture that hardly made a difference. When you really loved someone, and you connected with them, like really connected with them, body and soul, something happened. It was hard to describe exactly. But it was big. It was life-changing.

  But there was also the time problem. I was running out of it. It was mid-August already. Maybe for this reason I couldn’t quite bring myself to continue toward the highway. After I’d gone a couple blocks, I stopped and turned and went back. I guess that’s how crazy for Phoebe I was. I needed to stare at her house for a few more min
utes.

  The house across the street from hers had a big fir tree in the front yard, and I sat under it, in the dark, leaning my head back against the trunk. I could hear the ocean far in the distance. A wet smoky haze drifted inland from the beach.

  Then a car came down the road. I quickly moved around the tree so I wouldn’t be seen. As it approached, I saw it was Wyatt’s Camaro. I stayed hidden, watching it as it passed Phoebe’s and parked on the corner. So that’s who she’s hanging out with tonight. Wyatt and Carson. Why didn’t she just say that?

  For a moment nothing happened. Then the driver’s door opened. Wyatt got out. He was wearing a Golden State Warriors jersey and a flat-brim hat. But where was Carson?

  I watched Wyatt walk up the driveway of Phoebe’s house. But instead of going to the front door, he ducked around the side of the house. There must have been a back entrance I didn’t know about.

  Once he was gone, the street went quiet again. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Slowly my brain began to comprehend what I was seeing. So it wasn’t Carson and Wyatt coming to take Phoebe out. It was just Wyatt . . . and he wasn’t taking her out . . . they were staying in. . . .

  But what were they doing? My brain didn’t want to think about that. A sinking feeling came into my chest. And not just a sinking feeling. A sunk feeling. A game over feeling. A what the fuck feeling.

  I struggled to my feet. I needed to leave. I needed to get back to the Reillys’ and the safety of my basement room. And then, as I stood, a new sensation came over me. A feeling of a strain I couldn’t handle. A weight I couldn’t hold. I was breaking inside. And then it happened. Something inside me actually broke. Some inner part of me seemed to collapse.

  I staggered into the street as if I’d been shot.

  38

  I didn’t sleep that night. At breakfast I sat at the table with Emily and Uncle Rob and Aunt Judy. Nobody talked. I pushed some eggs onto my fork and put them in my mouth. I forced myself to chew, and when I figured I’d chewed enough, I swallowed. I drank some orange juice and bit off a corner of my toast. There were pancakes but they looked dry, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to swallow them.