by Deb Caletti
I headed down the boardwalk. The tent gang was probably having the most fun. Circus Racers, why not?
“Hey,” Ash said.
I was surprised. I hadn’t even seen him down there, sitting on his sweatshirt, his back against the high sand bank. I hadn’t even heard the sound of those strings—the music had gone out to sea.
“Hey!” I said.
“I was wondering where you went.”
“My family is crazy,” I said.
“Every family is crazy. If it’s not crazy, that’s crazy.”
“Did you see that little old lady?” I asked.
“Yeah. I heard. She’s getting a divorce. Everyone’s all upset. But look on the bright side. She’s not pregnant.”
I laughed. “It’s probably the whole unresolved toothpaste-cap thing.”
He started strumming. Some old Beatles song, I remembered. One of Mom’s boyfriends had given her the greatest hits CD. “Life is very short, and there’s no ti-i-i-i-ime for fussing and fighting …”
“You have a great voice,” I said.
“I’m a hack,” he said. “My Dad’s the one with the voice.”
“Really?” I couldn’t imagine it, Ted singing.
“He plays, too. Not a hack. You ever think about the fact that someday metal bands are going to be thought of as old-people music? Led Zeppelin and Metallica? Our kids’ grandparents will have listened to that shit. Come and sit by me. You’re pretty far away, standing there.”
I sat. “You’re not a hack.”
“I don’t mind. I’m realistic. I’ve got no grand visions. Just makes me happy to do this.” His fingers trilled on the strings. Ash stopped. He looked into my eyes. “What’s this?” he said. He put his fingertip to the bridge of my nose. “What are you worrying about?”
I smiled. “No worries.”
“Your face is screaming ‘worried.’ You one of those people who always think the plane’s gonna crash?”
“How’d you know?”
“It’s all right here.” He pointed to my nose as if he were reading my future.
“It’s stupid,” I said. “This stupid wedding.”
“You don’t want them to get married?”
“No, I do.”
“Well aren’t they doing that in, like, two days?”
The pamphlet in my mother’s purse leaped to mind. I pictured a solitary bikini-clad woman, taking a three-panel beach walk during a glossy-papered sunset. “I think so. I’m pretty sure. She just sometimes … She has this mental scale. Too much goes wrong, and the guy gets ditched.”
“Better than making a mistake.”
“I just worry that the ditching’s become a habit. Like, she won’t be able to stay with someone forever because she’s afraid.”
“She’s afraid of forever?”
“After my Dad and everything … Long story. But maybe something gets broken.”
“Oh,” Ash said. We were silent. I could hear the sound of the Circus Racers music coming from the tent, and someone shouting a losing Aww! I watched the waves. Grandpa Shine once said that every fifth wave was the biggest one. The problem was, you never knew where to start counting.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“People work around the broken parts, right? Like a bad knee or something? Sports injury? People make mistakes, they learn. Fuck, I’ve made a ton of ’em already and I’ve barely gotten started. I got broken parts.”
“I know. I do too.” I shoved my toes again and again into the sand until I’d made a pair of sand shoes to rest my feet in.
“And aren’t you?” he asked.
“Aren’t I what?”
“A little scared of the whole forever thing? Hell, I’m scared of it. I’ll just say it.”
He was right. The word even—it felt like those film shots of the universe, the deep darkness, the stars rushing past. “Yeah. Permanently permanent? Yikes,” I said.
“Nah.” Ash shook his head. “The scariest part of forever is that nothing is.” Ash tilted his head back then and let out a long howl. “Ahhh-oooooo! Fuck, man. You gotta leave, be left, face facts, move on…. Can’t escape loss no matter how careful or how smart you are, and, Cricket, my friend, that sucks.” He picked up his guitar. Started strumming, all silly and possessed. “You gotta lose someone,” he sang. “Baby you gotta lose someone, sometime …”
“Are you making this up as you go, or is that a real song?” I yelled over his loud, loud singing. If anyone had been sleeping nearby, they weren’t anymore.
“Making this up,” he sang. “Does it suck, suck, suck,” he belted. He liked that word tonight. He shook his hair as part of the show.
“Badly,” I said.
He put his guitar down. “It sucks badly, did you say?”
“Worse than bad,” I said.
He grabbed me, and we rolled off the driftwood log, and I was laughing hard and he was tickling me, but I hate being tickled so I yelled “Stop, stop,” until he did.
A man’s booming voice came from an open window of the house next door. “Keep it down, Ash-hole!”
“Like it’s the first time I ever heard that,” he said to me. “Use your imagination,” he called loudly toward that open window. “Reach for it!”
I started to giggle. “Oh, my God, he’s going to hear you.”
“That’s just Randy, the ex-marine,” Ash said. “See his helicopter? You can’t take it personally. He yells at everyone. Probably that stress thing from Vietnam, whatever you call it. He still wears those big glasses from the 1970s. Steals our garbage cans.”
We were flat on our backs. I felt happy. The moon above was nearly full, and it was big and craggy and improbable. How could it be that we sometimes didn’t even notice it up there? When you thought about what it was, what was above and around every day, you wondered how we could ever forget.
“Moon, beee-you-tiful moon,” Ash started singing again softly.
“Oh no,” I said. “Not you again.”
“But does it suck?” It was a tickling warning.
“Best song I ever heard,” I said.
He scootched closer to me until our shoulders and arms and legs were touching. That’s all. Just that. Laughter came from the tent then; a loud group groan. I had been beside Janssen like this so many times. So many times, he’d roll over on top of me, and then we’d disappear into that great physical oneness of mouths and mouths and hands and hands and skin and skin. Ash propped on his side, and stared down at me. I was getting used to his face, but also it could surprise me—this different face than the one I knew leaning over me like that. He looked different so close up. This was a real him, a whole person, with his own nose than looked different than the one I was used to.
He rested his forehead on my forehead. I sat up before it happened, before he kissed me. There were things that needed saying here. Because I liked him again, right then. Even more. I really liked him. And I needed to do something about it. It had to stop. But just then the tent flap opened a good distance away from us, and Gavin’s voice bounced merrily down the beach.
“Where’d the music go, dude!”
I could see Gavin’s smile from there, where his head had popped out from the tent. He was having the time of his life. Hailey’s head appeared below his.
“Sing that one about fussing and fighting,’” she called. “It wasn’t half bad.”
“Losers!” I could hear Ben shout. “You are all pathetic losers! I challenge any of you! Mr. Elephant kicks sweet circus butt!”
“It’s a global challenge,” Gavin hooted.
“That means us, Cricket Girl,” Ash said as he stood and held out his hand.
When I woke up the next morning after playing Circus Racers until two a.m., a dog was staring at me. Apparently Jupiter thought it was time for me to get up. She had her paws up on my bed and her nose was right in my face, and she was breathing on me.
“Hi, funny face,” I said. “Are you the alarm
clock?”
Her big black nose was right there, and it cracked me up. I smiled. The rest of my life took a minute to return. I remembered the beach. Ash. That fun night. My Janssen, somewhere far. A sick remembrance of a name. Alyssa.
“I hate her,” I said to Jupiter. She looked very earnest with her face in mine. I stared at her and she stared at me, and we both understood how serious the situation was. She licked my face.
“Guck,” I said. “Help, dog kiss.”
Friday. The wedding was on Sunday. If there were no more shocking divorces and stepdaughter barbs and phone calls from ex-wives, if there were no sudden disasters of fate, maybe my mother could throw away the pamphlets promising escape and settle into life with her one, good guy. In two days.
Alyssa. I imagined my Janssen, lying on a beach with her somewhere, tickling her until she begged him to stop. I imagined him playing hysterical video games with her and our good friends. My throat was sore, I had laughed so hard. I got out of bed, looked for my phone. For a second I was sure. Decided. I was going to call him right then, ask him to come. I needed him. That was all. And I missed him. I missed that boy so much.
I sat up. Jupiter hopped down, found a paper towel I’d carried a sandwich on, and started to chew it up. I snatched it from her.
“You probably have rolls and rolls of paper towels in your stomach by now,” I said.
I picked my phone up and held it for a long while. It was strange the way your body and mind could shove you around against your will when you were confused. All you could do was stumble forward and do what they forced you to do, like kidnappers, until the day came when the blindfold was off, and you could see, and your destiny was your own once again. I put the phone down. On second thought (or third, or fourth, or six hundredth, depending on how you counted) I put it into my pocket. It would be like having Janssen right there. A phone call away.
Downstairs my mother’s hands were folded around her cup. She seemed pleased with herself, but it was the smug, irritated kind of pleased. This look? I’d seen this one a hundred times too. It was the one that said she was about to be proven right.
“Miniature golf?” Did I hear that right? “Are you kidding?”
“Not kidding. It was Grandpa Shine’s idea.”
“I think I need coffee,” I said.
“Pour me another cup too,” she said.
“What’s the problem? Miniature golf is awesome,” Ben said. He was eating breakfast and reading some boating magazine of Ted’s and following our conversation. “The mini castle with the drawbridge …”
“Everyone’s coming?” I asked.
“John and Jane are staying here with Baby Boo. And with these two.” She lowered her voice, nodded her head toward the tiny Mrs. Jax, who sat at one end of the big dining room table, picking a croissant apart delicately, and the silent little Mr. Jax, who’d arrived that morning. He sat at the other end of the dining room table, bobbing a tea bag in his cup. “They can babysit the dogs.”
“Cruiser will kill them,” I whispered.
“Mrs. Jax loves animals,” Mom whispered. “She told me about it this morning. I also heard all about her cousin Betty’s Parkinson’s.”
“Amy’s coming?” I asked.
“Supposedly.” Ah. There was the reason for that look on her face.
“Miniature golf and a coupla hot dogs. You have an attitude problem after that, you got deeper issues,” Ben said. He shoved a doughnut into his mouth.
I didn’t say anything. Mom noticed my silence. I don’t know what it said to her. Disapproval, I guess. Maybe I did wish she could do this better. With less mess. This—love.
“I’m doing the best I can here,” Mom said.
The room was quiet except for the shlick of turning pages, the slurp of Mr. Jax with that tea. So quiet that Gram’s sudden shout made me jump. “Fore!” she yelled from the doorway. She was wearing peach pastel capris, a peach shirt, and a sweater tied casually around her shoulders. She abruptly noticed the silence she walked into. “What?” she said.
“Jesus, Ma.” Mom had her hand to her heart.
“Do I look like a cantaloupe?” she asked. “Too much orange?” She plucked a bit of her shirt.
“You look good,” Mom said as she grabbed for napkins. Mr. Jax had startled at Gram’s yell too, causing a tea tsunami to spill over onto the tablecloth.
“He’s always been careless,” Mrs. Jax said.
“What?” Mr. Jax shouted. He cupped his hand to his ear.
“Careless!” Mrs. Jax shouted back. You could imagine how loud the television was at their house.
“I could care less,” Mr. Jax grumbled. “I’m the one.”
Giant mess. Insert golf balls. My mother and Dan were out of their minds.
The splitting up into two cars became as complex and calculated as a world war, with Ben playing Switzerland and Dan playing the weary, distracted leader whose country is truly run by his cabinet. Hailey claimed the front seat next to him, Amy got in back, and so did Ben and Aunt Bailey, who was passing sticks of gum to everyone for a little breath freshening. The rest of us piled into Grandpa Shine’s big squishy Lincoln, George up front, me and Mom and Gram in back. Then Mom had to run back into the house, because it was also a family trait that we could never leave without forgetting something.
Grandpa Shine almost collided with a delivery truck as he backed out onto the road. I imagined the scene. Broken bones, comas. No wedding.
“Where’s your husband-to-be?” Gram asked Mom when we were finally underway. Our thighs were touching in that too-close way. I could smell Gram’s coffee breath.
“Never mind,” Mom said. “This is supposed to be fun.” She looked out the window at Bluff House, as if she were saying good-bye to something.
“Well, you can’t take it personally. No matter who he picked, they’d have had trouble. You could be the queen of England,” Gram said.
“She’s not Dan’s type,” Mom said.
“Still, you don’t want the same problem you had with Jon Jakes.”
The expression, about an elephant in the room? The great big obvious that no one speaks about? Gram not only talked about elephants, she’d go on to point out the destroyed furniture and the big piles of elephant shit. Maybe she didn’t believe elephants should be in rooms.
“You want in on the golf betting pool?” Grandpa Shine said over his shoulder as he drove. “I usually don’t have a handicap.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, mister,” Gram said.
I could see Grandpa Shine grin in the rearview mirror. All these years, he’d always been patient with the verbal sparring. “George has never played miniature golf, eh, George?”
“Never,” he said. “May I turn on a little music?” The back of George’s head was serious-looking with his neatly combed hair. It made me think of boys in elementary school on picture day.
“You can do whatever you want,” Grandpa said. “My car is your car.”
Gram elbowed me in the ribs. All right, it did seem a little strange. George rolled the dial past Grandpa’s news radio station, settled on some pink pop candy music about La La Love. Gram did a little car dance beside me. “La la love,” she sang.
“I love this song,” George said. He rolled down his window a bit. Smelled the air, same as Jupiter. He had that same sweet look, come to think of it. “Is it too windy back there?” he asked.
“Nah, we’re fine,” Gram said. Even she had to be kind to George. He had a simplicity that felt like goodness. Gram’s carefully sprayed hair was blowing off her face, though, giving her a dueling look of carefree recklessness and alarm.
“What is it about the beach,” Mom said.
Out the window it stretched. In spite of all disasters small and large, there was that infinite curve of rock and sand meeting the edge of the sea. The sky was so big, bigger than it was at home, so much bigger than in the city. The haze had mostly cleared but was lingering lazily along rooftops. The smell of the sea pranced
into the car from George’s open window. That smell made you want to greet something, or someone, with open arms.
“It is a beautiful dream,” George said. “It feels like you are looking at a side of God. Something permanent.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Mom said.
Grandpa rolled his window down a bit too. Now Mom’s hair was rebelling cheerfully. I noticed the very same chin on either side of me. Gram and Mom both had it. I knew I had it too, that chin, and so did Ben. Whatever I had felt or wanted from Mom back at the house slipped away. The insistent force of genetics and generations—there it was, right on our faces. We all tried so hard to be as strong as we could, didn’t we? All of us, with our funny, vulnerable chins? When it came down to it, we were all trying to do the same impossible job of doing our best in a big world.
Grandpa Shine was grinning, and La La Love was all around now, and the point was—the point of the car ride, or of the beach itself, or of the whole nasty, glorious, uncertain, forever-not-foreverness of life—you could feel it. Love. You could keep feeling love no matter what. In spite of gnawing losses and the dark, gaping tunnel of change, love’s dewy, golden, bittersweet self kept appearing, same as the sun coming up every single day. The unexpected rise in my chest I felt—that was sometimes reason enough right there to face all the questions, to go forward and turn the next page. And these funny, infuriating people … Their stupid goodwill and stumbling intentions were the ways love showed up.
This was what I couldn’t bear to leave. This, this all. Right here.
“Ben was just telling us about the time you locked yourself in your parents’ bedroom and your mom had to get the hammer to pry open the door,” Dan said as they all piled out of the car.
“I was two,” I said.
“He said it happened last week,” Dan joked. He was slapping Ben on the back.
“No, last week she stuck that piece of—”
“Don’t even say it,” I said. “You’re dead.”
“She was a kid,” Mom said. “And we didn’t have to go to the emergency room or anything.”
