The Story of Us

by Deb Caletti

  “My baby cousin ran away.”

  “Baby Boo?”

  “I only have one baby cousin.”

  Oh, you could want to say things you’d regret. It would feel so good. But the timing was bad—my head hurt. I wouldn’t even get the complete satisfaction I craved. It was true—if you drank, you did feel like shit in the morning. My head really did ache like you hear and my stomach was still queasy and my brain felt like it was a slab of that laundry lint you’re supposed to take out of the dryer vent before it becomes that slab of laundry lint in the dryer vent. In our house Ben was the only one who ever remembered to clean it out. We could have crocheted afghans out of the stuff.

  Cruiser was done eating, and I set Jupiter on the floor, petted her with my foot as I tried to decide whether to have one of those muffins or not. They looked deliciously homemade, and there was a big bowl of fruit too. My body didn’t know what it wanted, after that hit of venom.

  But it knew what it didn’t want. That smell. Lurking out of the kitchen, sneaking off. It made my stomach flip sickly.

  “Smell that?” I said to Amy. “She’s at it again.”

  “What?” Amy said.

  “Pot? You don’t smell that?”

  “I thought it was incense,” Amy said.

  “That’s not incense.”

  “Drugs?” Her eyes were wide. Horrified.

  “Illegal drugs, right there in the kitchen. Not ten feet from you,” I said. I may not have known my own mind, but maybe Jupiter did. She sat up straight next to my chair now, as if I were about to eat. She gazed at me with focused intent. Even her little white spot on her back looked serious. I guess I was hungry. I reached for a muffin. Dropped her a bit of it. She and Ben had the same appetite.

  I heard the front door open and then close. Ted Rose walked in, carrying grocery bags in each arm.

  “Morning, ladies,” he said.

  “Need a hand with those?” I said.

  “Got it covered,” he said, “but thanks.” He headed for the kitchen, then hesitated. He stopped and sniffed the air, same as Jupiter would. A shadow passed over his face, a speeding cloud, there and then gone again.

  There were voices and footsteps and the loud lift of conversation and laughter now in the living room. Mom popped her head in the doorway.

  “Found him.”

  “He ran off?” I asked.

  Mom poured herself a cup of coffee. “Hailey must have gotten up really early this morning. She saw Charles crashing his trucks down here and decided to bring him out to Gavin and Oscar’s tent. Did you know they have video games set up in there?”

  “Baby Boo is allowed to play video games?” Amy said. She sounded envious.

  “I don’t think so. But he was having a great time. His frog even beat Gavin’s monkey in Road Racers. Hailey felt bad. She didn’t think Jane and John would be imagining him lost on the beach somewhere, or in the sea.”

  “Hailey was playing?” Amy asked. “Hailey’s never played video games.”

  Mom sat down, sighed. “That explains why her teddy bear was in last place,” she said.

  “Mom doesn’t think those things are good for you. Hailey’s never done this before,” Amy said. Before now. Before we entered the picture. Next Hailey would be shooting up heroin in seedy motels, thanks to us.

  Mom ignored her. “They’re going into town to see if they can find a place to buy more controllers. Ben wants in. We were hoping for at least one day of a family activity.” She took a muffin out of the basket, laid it on a napkin and broke it in half.

  “Tomorrow, maybe,” I said.

  “Since Saturday’s the rehearsal, and Sunday’s the wedding, that’s probably our only chance. Is there something you might be interested in doing while you’re here? Something we all could do?” Mom asked Amy.

  “No,” she said. She sat up straight in her chair. Put her hand on her phone as if we might suddenly grab her and take her hostage.

  “Your dad says you like shopping.”

  Now, that would be fun. I’m sure Ben would love it. It reminded me of the time we all had to go to the cheerleading movie because that’s the only one Jon Jakes’s daughter, Olivia, would go to. Riveting pom-pom drama, the longest ninety minutes of my life.

  “I don’t need anything,” she said.

  “We’ll keep thinking.” Mom twisted her bracelet around and around her wrist.

  “How’d it go with the cake guy yesterday?” I asked. After all, we were supposed to be having a wedding. Weddings were supposed to be fun.

  “Oh!” Mom said. “It was great. Unusual. Friend of Rebecca’s. Johnny B’s bakery. Well, his bakery’s out of his house. Big guy, Guns N’ Roses T-shirt.” She chuckled. “Drives a motorcycle. Can’t quite picture how he’s going to get the cake here, but okay. Maybe he straps it on the back. But … It’ll be beautiful. White chocolate curls all over. I wanted to eat the picture of it.”

  Amy made a little hmphh, the verbal version of an eye roll.

  I tried to keep my mouth shut, I did. “You disapprove of cake?” I said.

  Mom shot me a look. Fine. All right. So my hand got a little shaky on the hostility volume control. But I guess Hailey and Amy’s mother would never enjoy a picture of cake or any food, for that matter, not even those glossy images of heaping Christmas cookies in the holiday magazines. Not even those catalogs with cheese balls and towers of nuts and chocolate truffles that spell out “Happy Holidays.” I loved those.

  “I don’t disapprove of cake,” she said.

  We all sat in the kind of silence that feels like you’re wearing it—a wool coat, the heaviest, scratchiest, most unbearable coat. Mom stared down at her muffin for blueberry answers. “I love your earrings, Amy,” she said.

  “Oh!” Amy smiled. “I got these for my birthday last year. Ballet slippers. And they’re dotted with my birthstone. Pink tourmaline. It’s supposed to be lucky.”

  “They look great on you,” Mom said. Ha. So she knew the trick too.

  “My friend Kaylie gave them to me. I gave her the amethyst ones for her birthday. Purple. I don’t think she’s going to stay with ballet, though. She wants to quit now that I did. My mom said I need to at least do piano if I’m not doing dance.”

  “I saw a video of your recital. You’re really good,” Mom said.

  Somewhere in the middle of Amy’s story about the popular girls in her science class, I heard raised, scattershot voices in the kitchen. Ted, talking to Rebecca. Only a few phrases—or at least a few relevant ones. High. Quit. At least not at nine a.m.

  Mom met my eyes. “They’ve got a little roach issue.”

  Amy squealed. She lifted her feet off the floor. “Eyuw, are you kidding? Gross!”

  At the foot of the stairs, Jupiter stared up at me. A long way up, she seemed to say.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re lucky I love you.” I carried her up, set her down at the top. She trotted down the hall. Her little backside looked so cheery. She stopped at the right door and waited. She looked at me with her melted chocolate eyes. “Very true,” I said. “I’m lucky you love me, too.”

  It was a drizzly morning. I was glad. A tucked-in day sounded great, with everyone doing their own thing. I filled Jupiter’s water bowl, and she headed to it. Man, she’d been going through the water lately. She was a noisy drinker. Now she had water droplets on her beard. I tossed old Rabbit over to her, and she scratched at her blanket and bed to make a snug nest. She turned circles and settled in.

  “That’s such a great idea,” I said to her. “Just get in there and get cozy.”

  My phone rang. Natalie. I didn’t even feel like talking but answered anyway. Every time I ignored a call, I had the disturbing feeling that the person somehow knew I was looking at their name and making a choice. I hated to hurt people. My conscience never took a day off. “I haven’t talked to you in a million years,” I said.

  “I know it,” she said. “I’m coming down Sunday morning, okay? But I thought I was dri
ving with Oscar. He’s not answering his phone.”

  “They decided to get here early. They’re camping on the beach. You should see their place—”

  “He’s there? That asshole!”

  “Wait,” I said. “What happened?” We’d all been friends for years, and I’d never heard her talk that way and mean it. Except for maybe that one time when both Gavin and Oscar refused to go to Homecoming with her. They’d planned to sleep overnight in the Video Universe parking lot for the release of War Worlds Four, and nothing would change their minds.

  “I just thought … Oscar and I … Whatever. Just, whatever. I’ll be there on Sunday morning.”

  There was a soft tap on my door. Mom probably. “Hey, can I call you back?”

  “Fine.”

  Great. Now Natalie was pissed. And I still felt awful. My head wasn’t throbbing exactly. More like my brain had grown too large for its container. “Come in,” I said.

  Jupiter stood when she saw him. She trotted over and sniffed his pant legs. She put her front paws on his knees.

  “Down, girl,” I said. “Hey, I thought you’d be at work.”

  What felt most dangerous is that he was beginning to look familiar to me. His eyes, those shoulders. They were thick and sloped, where Janssen’s were strong and straight across. I had to think hard to remember how Janssen’s voice sounded, because it was Ash’s voice I’d been hearing.

  A person could leave you so quickly. So much history and time and memories, but they snuck away from you, and other things took their place. How could you hold on? Wait. A bigger question. The biggest. How could you hold on and let go?

  “I got down there, and Greg, my boss? He called last night and left a message, but I didn’t even check. He was giving this guy I work with some extra hours. So, day off, but I got up early anyway.”

  “Too bad.”

  “You work?” He sat down on the bed next to me. “Bed” had a ridiculous amount of meaning for a piece of furniture. It was a flat surface to sit on, that’s all, I told myself. But I knew that a bed usually had more stories than any other piece of furniture.

  “One disastrous summer at this café, Carreras. I’m not meant to be a waitress. And then I worked for a few years for my English teacher, doing research. Spent most of the time in the library.”

  “Bummer,” Ash said. See? Janssen loved the library. I did too. We’d go and sit in the squishy chairs by the magazines and read. He liked those legal thrillers. He wouldn’t hear anything you said when he got to the exciting parts.

  “Not working now, though. All this moving, and maybe going away to school.”

  “LA—sun, sand, surf, baby.”

  “I’m not really a sun person. I actually like the rain. No one likes the rain, I know. Don’t even say it. But I love it. Rain, clouds …”

  “Windshield wipers going …”

  I laughed.

  “I love that,” he said. “It’s so peaceful.”

  It surprised me. I don’t know. Those big shoulders, the dark eyes—I wouldn’t have guessed he was the kind of person to notice windshield wipers.

  “So, you don’t want to go there? USC?”

  It came out before I could stop it. “Not go there. But leave here.” I waited for him to laugh or narrow his eyes in a way that indicated he thought I was crazy. “Stupid, I know.”

  “Why stupid?”

  “It’s embarrassing. ‘Don’t want to leave home.’ Sounds like I’m a baby.”

  “No it doesn’t. Not at all.” He looked at me. His eyes—they weren’t just intense, I noticed. They were kind. He shook his head. “You know what happened to me? You spend the last years of high school dying to get away, right? But somewhere in there it hits you. It gets real.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “The, what, pieces of you that you’re leaving.”

  I stared at him. That was it exactly. Exactly. No one had put it that simply before. That rightly. I nodded.

  “Don’t tell anyone I said that,” Ash said.

  “Don’t tell anyone I said that,” I said.

  “For some reason no one says these things. You’re not supposed to talk about that part. Why is that? It’s wrong to love your family? The place you live? It’s your home. It’s all who you are.”

  “I don’t know why, but you’re right. You’re not supposed to say those things out loud.”

  “I should punch something now so you know how tough I am.”

  I laughed. “No.”

  “I’m not the punching kind anyway. Hey, you okay?”

  “I think it’s this headache. Last night … I don’t drink usually.”

  But it wasn’t the headache. It was something much worse. Much, much worse. I had made Ash into some simple, hot guy in my mind. An idea I played with, more than an actual person. I had made him into a type. A nice, safe type. Now, though, as he sat in front of me, I saw that he was more than big, sexy shoulders and dark, intense eyes. He was warm. He was thoughtful.

  Oh, God, I was in trouble now.

  “Alcohol—that shit is bad for you,” he said. “I don’t know. I’ve never been much of a party person. All that standing around and talking to drunk people. Hey, I gotta do an errand for Rebecca. You guys are having some barbecue tonight, right? She needs some stuff.”

  “We are? Okay. But I thought your dad just got back from the store.”

  “This happens every time she sends him. She wants a head of lettuce, he brings back a cabbage. He figures, round green ball … She’s pissed, he’s pissed. A chill in the air.”

  “No F-I-T-I-N-G,” I said.

  “He hates all the …” He put an imaginary joint to his mouth and sucked in. He shrugged. “You want to come?”

  “I think I just want to hang out here,” I said. My head, it was throbbing. God, no. I could like Ash. Really like. As a real, live whole person.

  “Cool,” he said. “I hope I’ll see you tonight.”

  He grinned, headed out. Images whipped past. Ropes and balloons and my family and Janssen and the little bit of life I’d lived yet and all the life that was still waiting.

  I fished a book out of my bag and fell into the deep, safe hiding place of story. It was a book about a voyage, involving magic and good and evil. Good guys and assholes (with swords, on horses). Safety and danger, and keeping the bad away with shields and stone walls and brave soldiers. My mother always said that our own stories were where we made sense of things, but I think all stories have that power. You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don’t know why stories worked that way, but they did. They’re an actual place where confusing things order themselves.

  So I felt a little better when I went downstairs again. Jupiter plomp-plomped down the stairs behind me, and I let her out to pee. I gave her a biscuit, which she crunched happily. I loved giving her treats.

  Mom was sitting in her sweats and having tea in front of a beautiful fire in that living room fireplace. She was reading, too. She set down her book when she saw me. The fog outside hadn’t cleared, and the huge windows in there were filled with gray-white waves and gray-white shores and gray-white seagulls flying in gray-white skies.

  “Do you think Jupe is losing weight?” I asked.

  “I wondered it too,” Mom said.

  “She’s eating a lot. She stole Cruiser’s food this morning. He was so upset. But, still. Maybe we should weigh her.”

  Mom set her book down. “She does look pretty trim.”

  Jupiter loved her food. Once, she got so chunky, we had to cut down on her snacks and keep a weight chart for her on the fridge. It didn’t help all that much. Maybe we should have put up pictures of thin model dogs by her bowl for inspiration.

  “I lifted her up the stairs earlier, and it wasn’t too bad,” I said.

  “Of course, she hasn’t been to Gram’s in a while. That’
s where she gets to eat all the good stuff.”

  I sat down on the floor, my back to the couch. Jupiter sat right next to me, leaned against my side. I think she liked when we sat on the floor, when we joined her world. Of course, whenever I was on the floor doing sit-ups or something, she’d climb onto my stomach. “Hey, remember her first birthday?”

  Mom laughed. “Favorite things: underwear.”

  We’d had a party, just Mom and me and Ben and Jupiter. We made homemade dog biscuits. Ate hot dogs. Drew a poster too, and hung it over her water bowl. The poster showed her favorite things, which were mostly the stuff she’d chewed up that year. Garden hoses, underwear, socks.

  Mom scooted down off the couch. Now the three of us were on the floor, Jupiter between us. Mom scratched her black velvet head, rubbed the tips of Jupiter’s ears the way she liked. Jupiter was smiling her dog smile. We were together, and she liked together.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “They could only find controllers at some outlet mall on the mainland. Gram and Aunt Bailey—you know they’d never miss an outlet mall. The place had a Golf Universe, so Grandpa and George went too. Dan took the girls to get them out of the house.”

  “You could have had your family day. We’re the only ones not there.”

  “You know how I love to shop.” She rolled her eyes. Yeah. School clothes shopping was a twice-a-year, get-it-done marathon. Ben and I would end up whining and pleading for a rest, clinging to the comfort of a dressing room chair. One Orange Julius break, and that was it.

  “Probably if you went, Hailey and Amy wouldn’t go anyway.”

  She sighed. “Don’t take it personally, honey. It’s hard. Complicated. Dan’s in a bind. They’re just …”

  “Old enough to have a good attitude,” I said. It seemed pretty simple to me. Dan deserved that. Mom, too. You did your best, at least until you had real reason not to.

  “We stole the food out of their bowl, you know? Like the dogs. Same thing. It’s hard,” she said again.

  “Hard?” I didn’t like the sound of that. How hard? Cancel-the-wedding hard? “But if you love him—it’s supposed to be enough, right? If you have that …”